OverMatter

Post-it Notes

"On April 6, 1980... a remarkable new technology arrived in stationery stores around the nation. It was so simple to use, even a CEO could master it. It was so perfectly designed, it didn’t require semi-annual upgrades. It was so versatile, it actually performed better than advertised. It was the Post-it Note.

Two and a half decades later, as the little yellow notes celebrate their silver anniversary, it’s easy to forget what a recent innovation they are. Thanks to their material simplicity, they seem more closely related to workplace antiquities like the stapler and the hole-punch than integrated chips...

In 1968, while searching for new, patentable adhesives, a chemist named Spencer Silver mixed some simple organic molecules with a reaction mixture in proportions that defied industry convention. This produced an adhesive that, in the lexicon of science, consisted of “inherently tacky elastomeric copolymer microspheres.” On the molecular level, this substance resembled the pebbled skin of a basketball. This characteristic sabotaged its bonding power; the tiny spaces between the microspheres made it impossible to get complete contact between the adhesive and another surface. In layman’s terms, it was a glue that didn’t stick very well.

Pessimists would have called this a failure; Silver viewed it as a challenging puzzle. What could an underachieving adhesive be useful for?..."

(The Rake: Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes)

Life on the Scales

"There is a universal biological clock, he says, "but it ticks in units of energy, not units of time."

...Most evolutionary biologists have tended to approach biodiversity questions in terms of historical events, such as landmasses separating, Kaspari says. The idea that size and temperature are the driving forces behind biodiversity is radical, he says."

(Science News Online)

The 50 Greatest Gadgets

PC World's 50 greatest tech gadgets of the last 50 years:
1954 Regency TR-1 (transistor radio)
1956 Zenith Space Command (tv remote control)
1963 Kodak Instamatic 100 (film in plastic cartridge)
1965 Learjet Stereo-8 (8-track tape player)
1965 Polaroid Swinger (camera)
1969 Motorola Handie Talkie HT-220 Slimline (first portable radio to use integrated circuits instead of discrete transistors)
1971 Phonemate Model 400 (telephone answering machine)
1972 Hamilton Pulsar (first solid-state digital watch)
1972 Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (first Polaroid to automatically eject the snapshot and produce images, without making you wait 60 seconds and peel off the outer wrapper of the film)
1973 Texas Instruments SR-10 (first affordable handheld to calculate reciprocals, square roots, and other slide-rule functions)
1975 MITS Altair 8800 (first popular home computer)
1975 Sony Betamax (first stand-alone video cassette recorder)
1977 Atari Video Computer System (first successful game console to use cartridges)
1978 Magnavox Magnavision Model 8000 DiscoVision Videodisc Player (laserdisc - first commercial optical video disc)
1978 Milton Bradley Simon (toy)
1978 Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (educational toy)
1979 Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (portable music cassette player)
1982 Commodore 64 (personal computer)
1982 Sony CDP-101 (first commercial compact disc player)
1982 Timex/Sinclair 1000 (computer)
1983 Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (portable phone aka The Brick)
1983 Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 (first popular notebook computer)
1989 Nintendo Game Boy
1989 Sharp Wizard OZ-7000 (personal digital assistant)
1990 Poqet PC Model PQ-0164 (pocket computer)
1993 BellSouth/IBM Simon Personal Communicator (first mobile phone to include a built-in PDA)
1994 Apple Newton MessagePad (personal digital assistant)
1994 Connectix QuickCam (webcam)
1995 Iomega Zip Drive (external storage drive)
1995 Sony Handycam DCR-VX1000 (digital video camcorder)
1996 Motorola PageWriter (wireless text messaging)
1996 Motorola StarTAC (flip cell phone)
1996 PalmPilot 1000 (personal data assistant)
1996 Play, Inc. Snappy Video Snapshot (computer video input device)
1997 Franklin Rolodex Electronics REX PC Companion (credit-card-size PDA)
1997 Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 (digital camera)
1998 BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld (wireless email)
1998 Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 (first portable MP3 player)
1998 Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System 1.0 (robot building kit)
1999 Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer (first mainstream optical computer mouse)
1999 ReplayTV RTV2001 and TiVo HDR110 (digital video recorders)
1999 Sony Aibo ERS-110 (robotic pet)
2000 M-Systems DiskOnKey (USB thumb drive)
2000 Sony PlayStation 2 (game machine)
2001 Apple iPod (digital music player)
2002 iRobot Roomba Intelligent Floorvac (robot vacuum cleaner)
2002 Jakks Pacific TV Games (game controller/console)
2002 Sanyo SCP-5300 (camera phone)
2003 Handspring Treo 600 (palmtop/phone hybrid)
2004 Motorola Razr V3 (cell phone)
(PCWorld.com)

Ten-minutes to Remarkable

"Linda's story about being rebuffed at the chocolate shop, reminds of a policy I discovered while writing about Commerce Bank, which practices customer service as if it were a retailer. Its ten-minute rule addresses the exact scenario that Linda described - a customer arriving moments after the doors close for business. At Commerce, the branches officially close on the hour, but the managers will open the door for customers who arrive within the next ten minutes. They don't advertise this, so customers are bowled over when someone lets them in after hours. They feel as though the bank is making an exception for them. It's a classic wow moment that fosters loyalty if not outright evangelism. Why ten minutes? The bank figures that's a reasonable amount of leeway." (Fast Company Now)

iPod Invisa

"Steve Jobs, Apple's rainmaker, was even parodied in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, evidence of how Apple is ingrained in pop culture like no other tech company.

In the skit, an actor impersonating the chief executive (sporting black turtleneck and jeans, of course) introduces three iPods within minutes of each other. Each device makes its predecessor obsolete - from the iPod Micro to the iPod Pequeno, and finally the iPod Invisa, which though invisible can still hold 8 million songs and every picture ever taken."

(Why Apple Is The New Sony)

Inventor of headphone lifestyle

"It took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corporation and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it: Andreas Pavel invented the portable personal stereo player...

He took his invention to one audio company after another--Grundig, Philips, Yamaha and ITT among them--to see if there was interest in manufacturing his device. But everywhere he went, he said, he met with rejection or ridicule.

"They all said they didn't think people would be so crazy as to run around with headphones, that this is just a gadget, a useless gadget of a crazy nut," he said.

In New York, where he moved in 1974, and then in Milan, where he relocated in 1976, "people would look at me sometimes on a bus, and you could see they were asking themselves, why is this crazy man running around with headphones?""

(Unlikely trendsetter made earphones a way of life | CNET News.com)

Apple as Microsoft of music?

"Dear Recording Industry, You're being had." (AFF's Brainwash :: The recording industry's new clothes)

Ten Rules for Web Startups

By Evan Williams, co-founder and CEO of Pyra Labs (makers of Blogger, now part of Google): evhead

Users Rule

"At Y Combinator we advise all the startups we fund never to lord it over users. Never make users register, unless you need to in order to store something for them. If you do make users register, never make them wait for a confirmation link in an email; in fact, don't even ask for their email address unless you need it for some reason. Don't ask them any unnecessary questions. Never send them email unless they explicitly ask for it. Never frame pages you link to, or open them in new windows...

In "How to Start a Startup" I advised startups never to let anyone fly under them, meaning never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. Another way to fly low is to give users more power. Let users do what they want. If you don't and a competitor does, you're in trouble...

The ultimate way to be nice to users is to give them something for free that competitors charge for. During the 90s a lot of people probably thought we'd have some working system for micropayments by now. In fact things have gone in the other direction. The most successful sites are the ones that figure out new ways to give stuff away for free. Craigslist has largely destroyed the classified ad sites of the 90s, and OkCupid looks likely to do the same to the previous generation of dating sites.

Serving web pages is very, very cheap. If you can make even a fraction of a cent per page view, you can make a profit. And technology for targeting ads continues to improve. I wouldn't be surprised if ten years from now eBay had been supplanted by an ad-supported freeBay (or, more likely, gBay).

Odd as it might sound, we tell startups that they should try to make as little money as possible. If you can figure out a way to turn a billion dollar industry into a fifty million dollar industry, so much the better, if all fifty million go to you. Though indeed, making things cheaper often turns out to generate more money in the end, just as automating things often turns out to generate more jobs."

(paulgraham.com)

Dilbert's Humor Formula

"In today’s blog entry I will teach you how to write humor, thus removing the mystery and in the process turning you into a joyless zombie, albeit a witty one.' (The Dilbert Blog)