Tag: Off-topic

Can you guess what this device does?

September 17, 2008 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

They say that form follows function. So – take a look at the form of this strange device, which stands about a meter tall. Can you guess its function?

Smell Display Device at teh Potsdam Biosphere

No, it isn’t a trashcan with dreadlocks.

I saw this thing in the Biosphere at Potsdam. This pleasant museum is smaller and less ambitious (should I say, less pretentious?) than the one in Arizona, and serves very well to exhibit different ecosystems to the visiting public.

The item you see here is a display device for displaying smells. You sniff the end of a tube to get a whiff of the plant shown on the round image below it.

Did you guess?…

Great service for a CardScan!

August 1, 2008 / Nathan Zeldes / 3 Comments

The day I left New York to fly back to Israel I bought, on an impulse, a CardScan business card scanner at Best Buy. I’d received all these cards from colleagues at the IORG conference, and the thought of typing all the details into my computer was depressing…

Anyway, I got home, installed the software, and the scanner wouldn’t work right. Yikes! I mean, I build electronic gear, so I know this can happen… but I was thousands of miles from the nearest Best Buy. I’d just transported a paperweight halfway across the planet!

So I called CardScan’s tech support number, and a nice gentleman there took me patiently through some troubleshooting and concluded that the hardware was at fault. The guy told me he’d get someone in touch about a replacement and I went to sleep. Next day I get an email from a Mr. John Phillips in Canada, who is with OptiProc, a CardScan reseller. He told me to send him a scan of my receipt, my address, a description of the fault, and so on; and he’ll ship me a replacement as soon as I did. Not after considering my reply, mind you; nor after I send back the unit. Immediately when he gets my address. And he did; in fact he FedEx’d the new unit, for added speed. Only when this tested OK – which it did – was I to post the old unit back to Canada.

Good customer support is a key part of the user experience, and this is as good as it gets – so, kudos to CardScan, to OptiProc, and to John!

CardScab business Card scanner

The scanner, by the way, turned out to be a cute little gadget – you place a card in its input end and seconds later it’s scanned, OCR’d and parsed into your contacts database. A truly useful device if you venture often outside your cubicle and actually meet other people!

Information Overload Research Group launched!

July 16, 2008 / Nathan Zeldes / 5 Comments

Quite off topic, but how exciting! After months of preparation, the group I co-founded is now alive and kicking!

The Information Overload Research Group (IORG) is a non-profit association of researchers interested in solving theglobal problem of Information Overload. It prides itself on bringing together key people from industry, academia, consultancies and software vendors who bring their diverse points of view to bear on the problem – thereby creating a collaboration that far exceeds what each can do alone.

So, I’m in New York City now (quite a city, that!) and yesterday we’ve held a wonderful conference at the Penn Club where we formally announced and launched our group, and delighted in meeting some scores of like-minded researchers and practitioners, and listening to some fascinating lectures. Jonathan Spira of Basex , my fellow director on the IORG board, gave a perspective on the nature and extent of the problem; Mark Hurst, author of Bit Literacy, shared his approach to attaining an empty Inbox; Maggie Jackson lectured and then signed her new book, Distracted; and Prof. David Levy of the university of Washington spoke of his research into the phenomenon of ” No Time to Think”, giving us a scary historical perspective into the degradation of Contemplative Scholarship in academia in recent times.

There were also two panels, one to discuss what corporations were doing about it all (that was where I spoke) and one for visionary vendors who presented amazing new products they’re introducing.

I usually blog about my work elsewhere, but I thought I’d share this!

FameLab!

April 6, 2008 / Nathan Zeldes / 1 Comment

Off-topic it may be, but I had a delightful experience last week judging in a round of the FameLab competition FameLab contestant organized by the British Council in the Jerusalem Science Museum. This international event strives to encourage scientists to communicate their work and their excitement about it to the public; young scientists (mainly graduate students) were invited to present a scientific subject of their choice – in three minutes sharp.

So, I was treated to two dozen fantastic presentations on subjects as diverse as celestial mechanics, protein reactions in cells and the lifestyles of dinosaurs; delivered by talented young people just as diverse in their styles and approaches to communicating their knowledge. Winners will get to compete at the next level, and will be treated to a communication skills workshop that will help them develop their skills.

What a wonderful way to promote science!

Intriguing objects at Possibly Interesting site

March 31, 2008 / Nathan Zeldes / 0 Comments

Glass cup Do you recognize the glass object in this photo? If not, you may want to check “Prey to Oblivion“, the March article on my Possibly Interesting web site, which has a bunch of everyday objects that were quite familiar a century ago but are now all but forgotten.

To avoid confusion:

This here Commonsense Design is my blog, updated with new brief posts a few times a week.
Possibly Interesting is my personal web site, where I post hopefully interesting but longer articles once a month.

I figure I should cross-post a link to the blog when an article of interest comes up on the other site.