Author Archives: Espen

Unknown's avatar

About Espen

For details, see www.espen.com.

Beer and diapers again

Regdeveloper tries to debunk the wonderful story about the co-buying of diapers and beer. And it turns out the story is based on an actual finding, but the reasons for the covariation is left to the imagination of the marketeer.

My take on the situation was always that diapers is a stress purchase. When you run out of diapers, you don’t wait until the next time you go shopping – someone has to get in the car right away, or pick up something on the way home from work. The man of the house gets the job, enters the store and goes straight to the diapers section, then rewards himself with a sixpack since he is out shopping anyway.

The fact that Osco never moved beer close to diapers to increase sales is neither here nor there – they could have. And perhaps they should, at least between 5pm and 7pm on Thursdays.

So I will continue to tell this story, with careful insertion of “it might be a good idea to” rather than the affermative.

Power of power laws

Note to self: Chris Anderson’s discussion of the underlying distribution of long tails looks interesting. Time to investigate, at some point.

Testing Windows Live Writer

This is a test of Windows Live Writer, inspired by this review by Om Malik. Installed fine with Movable Type 3.2, we’ll se how things turn out. The idea is that you can write blog entries locally, and then upload them to the blog.

One good side I can see right away – backup. I keep forgetting to back up my blogs. This way, there would be natural duplication. Another good aspect is the interface, though in my experience most programs that are supposed to generate HTML code tend to insert lots og spurious stuff and make the code unreadable and impossible to edit manually.

I suppose what I really want is a sparse and syntactically correct WYSIWYG HTML editor to edit my regular web pages, for instance those that go with courses. With offline page management.

Oh well. Put that in there with the wish for the PIM that makes me effective, not just efficient….

Changing, not ending business travel

Seth Godin thinks new security requirements (no laptop, no hand luggage, no carry-on liquids) will cramp business travel. I don’t think so. All the airlines need to do is install in-seat terminals in business and first class along with in-the-air Internet connections. Throw in some decent food and you have a much lighter and more satisfactory flight.

Goodbye laptop, hello Gmail, Thinkfree and Skype. Looking forward to it. Not to mention reading books and blogs online, rather than buying them at the airport Dan Brown outlet. Yay.

No cosmopolitan, me….

Douwe Osinga has a cool feature on his web page – a mapping system where you map out all the countries or US states you have been to. Here are mine:



Hmmmm…..seems there is a lot of unexplored territory, I have never been to South America or Africa, for instance. Anyone need a speaker on technology and strategy in those parts of the world?

(Via Doc Searls) 

New Yorker on Wikipedia

The New Yorker has a good article about Wikipedia, written by Stacy Schiff. Nothing really new here, but it is well written, has a fairly complete history of Wikipedia, and made me read about the Boston Molasses Disaster….

The transparent propane container

Statoil komposittbeholderBoingboing makes noise about a transparent propane container, made out of fibreglass, which allows you to see how much gas is left for your barbeque.

Well, puh-leeze, the Norwegian oil/gas/hotdog company Statoil has sold a propane container with this feature for at least 10 years (that is, it was available here in Norway when I moved back in 1996.)

That being said, my view is that the main benefit is not being able to see how much propane is left, but the fact that the fibreglass container weighs much less than the traditional steel one. I have a bad back, and really appreciate this feature.

The funny thing is, no other company than Statoil sells this version – since propane gas containers have a return deposit – meaning that you have to shell out serious money to get a new one – it is very hard to break into the market with new technology. Hopefully this is not a problem in the US, though that remains to be seen.

UPDATE 7/30: This is indeed a Norwegian invention, it seems, from a company called RAGASCO.

Favorite things Boston

This is outdated – there is a new post here: Things to do in Boston.

I have lived in Boston (or, strictly speaking, Arlington, MA) for six years, and go back there occasionally. Since there are many universities and conferences in that part of the world, I am often asked by colleagues and others what they should do when they are in Boston. This is a list of my very personal recommendations – your mileage may vary:

Harvard Square, uterestauranten Au Bon PainI will start at Harvard Square, not really Boston but in neighboring Cambridge. The Square is in the middle of the constantly encroaching Harvard Campus and is one of my favorite places (though, as a slew of critics like to point out, it has become less personal and more mall-like over the years:)

  • Take a deep dive into The Harvard COOP Bookstore (the large and “official” university bookstore, much better after management was taken over by Barnes and Noble a few years ago) or the Harvard Bookstore (my favorite, an independent bookstore with great selection, competent staff and a used book basement. Make sure you get their stamp card, reduced prices after a while.) Spend time browsing (nobody will bother you) and wearing out your creditcard.
  • Have a burger at Mr. Bartlett’s Gourmet Burger Cottage (right next to the Harvard Bookstore.) No alcohol, but great lemonade, crispy onion rings and a huge selection of excellent burgers. Cash only, noise level can be high.
  • Have a late and large American Sunday breakfast at the breakfast restaurant (can never remember the name) [UPDATE 7/30: The name of the restaurant is Greenhouse, and I have reliable information that it is no longer as good as it used to be – seems you will have to go with Au Bon Pain instead] next to Cardullo’s Delikatessen, after first having purchased 6lbs. of New York Times Sunday Edition from the newsstand on the sidewalk outside.
  • Buy Harvard-paraphernalia for the kids and people back home at the COOP (cheap and good by Norwegian standards)
  • Have a coffee at Peet’s Coffee (worn locales but good coffee) at Brattle Square. This is the place to bring your newly purchased stacks of books and dig into them without feeling awkward.
  • Another alternative, especially if the weather is good, is Cafe Pamplona, more Spanish than many things found in Spain. Here, you escape the American “HellomynamisBrandyandIwillbeyourservertoday” restaurant culture – sit as long as you want.
  • Visit the “glass flowers” at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and spend an hour or more at the Harvard Fogg Art museum (one of my Norwegian colleagues, an art buff, characterized it as “small and selective, just great for a relatively short visit.”) [Update: Fogg is closed for renovations 2011/12, unfortunately]
  • Bring a bunch of friends and have a Tex-Mex dinner with much shouting and joking at the (ask for Bohemia beer, recommended by John Steinbeck) at the Border Cafe. The bar here is also good, try a Marguerita as an aperitif. No table booking, expect to stand in line.

Stata Center, MITYou can take the T to MIT/Kendall Square, where you can

  • (nerd alert!) visit the MIT Press bookstore (not to be confused with MIT’s branch of the COOP, which is on the other side of the street.) MIT Press Bookstore is tiny and on the right side of the street when you look towards Boston, at Kendall Square.
  • Check out the Stata Center, MIT’s newest building and an example of deconstructionist architecture. In my opinion, not very functional, but interesting shapes.

In Boston proper, you could

  • Newbury StreetIf you feel flush with money and want to impress someone, take a shopping (or, perhaps, browsing) round in the fancy stores on Newbury Street
  • Visit the Museum of Fine Arts and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
  • Stay away from Cheers, a bar that from the outside looks like the TV series. If you are looking for a real, Cheers-like, bar, try Rosie’s, which is at Porter Square in Cambridge about 7 block up Mass Ave from the Harvard Common). Or just go to any of the Irish bars downtown.
  • Have dinner in North End, the Italian district.
  • Have seafood at the Union Oyster House, USA’s second oldest continuously operating restaurant. It is regarded as a bit of a tourist trap by the locals, but it has been a huge hit with anyone from abroad I have taken there.
  • Walk around and explore – Boston is a city of culture, with interesting stores and restaurants. A car is not necessary.

Outside Boston: Pilgrim Monument, Provincetown

  • Go to Newburyport and Plum Island. Eat seafood from one of the food joints.
  • Visit Concord, have lunch at the Concord Inn and take a walk around Walden Pond (Where Thoreau wrote his book)
  • Go to Marblehead for an icecream, a stroll along the harbor, and some seafood.
  • If you have a weekend, rent a car and drive to Cape Cod, visit Provincetown (“P-town”, if you want to sound local) out at the tip of the peninsula
  • If you have an oval weekend: Go to Marthas Vineyard or Nantucket (the latter I haven’t visited myself, but I have heard good reports.) These are summer holiday islands southeast of Cape Cod, an interesting and very distinct part of the USA. It can be very crowded in summer, so make sure you have accomodation before you go.
  • If you are in the mood for some real shopping: Drive to the L.L.Bean store in Freeport, Maine. There are a number of other factory stores in the area as well. (According to their web site, L.L.Bean is about to open a store in Burlington, just north of Boston snart, so the long drive may not be warranted. The store in Freeport is, anyway, open 24 hours – it has actually been open continually since 1951, except for two Sundays.)

There are, of course, lots of other things to do and see, but these are some of the things I like. Have a great trip!

Dog bites man

Random acts of reality, an excellent blog written by a London ambulance driver, has a post discussing a hostage situation that never made the papers. In it, he reacts to a commenter who accuses the police of looking for people to shoot, and how the incident he is talking about never made the papers:

‘Let’s hope they don’t gun down an innocent brown-skinned young man this time.’

A somewhat snide remark. The police don’t go around looking to shoot people, despite what the media may lead you to believe. Whenever I’ve been involved with armed police I’ve been impressed by the pure professionalism that they show. They are anything but looking for brown-skinned people to shoot.

People who make such pronouncements don’t understand how confused a scene can get, with differing intelligence, hearsay, rumour and lines of communication suffering from Chinese whispers.

Well now some ten hours after your post, and I can’t find anything on the Beeb web site. I’m keeping the conspiracy theories at bay by acknowledging that I’m probably not looking for the right thing…

Related to the above comment, this is an example of how the media works. The operation went off without a hitch – no one was shot, there were no interesting pictures of irate kidnappers. The only injury was someone who had been punched in the mouth.

In 2002 the armed police were called out 2,490 times in London alone.

How many times was this reported in the media?

It’s only a story if someone gets shot.

This is why the public have an imbalanced view that the police enjoy shooting people. You never hear of all the lives that have been saved because of their attendance.

The reason why blogs such as mine are so popular is because they tell you the stories that aren’t interesting enough for mainstream media to dedicate time to. We humanise the jobs that are often just ‘nameless men in uniforms’. Perhaps we need an armed police blog…

I think we do. We need blogs from hospitals, from hospices, from the inner sanctums of bureaucracies, from refugee camps and military bases. Information want out, and direct from the source is best. I am looking forward to it.

Dragonspeak

Dragon NaturallySpeakingThis is a test using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to dictate a blog entry.

Language recognition technology has been seen as promising as long as I can remember.  When I started studying in the United States in 1990, one of my fellow students came from IBM, where she had worked with language recognition technology for 12 years.  Six years later, I purchased my first language recognition system myself, IBM’s ViaVoice.  It cost the whopping sum of $ 89, and you had to pause between words when you dictated.  I used it for a few weeks, but the slow pace of dictation and the frequent errors, partially a result of not having enough computer, was frustrating.

Now, 10 years later, I read about Dragon NaturallySpeaking on Kevin Kelly’s blog Cool Tools. Apparently, language recognition has progress, thanks to more powerful computers and better software.

I have now fiddled with Dragoan NaturallySpeaking for about an hour, and I must say some progress has been made.  You can now speak rapidly and fluently, and there is an autopunctuation feature, which inserts commas and periods as best as it can.  It kind of works.  I could see myself using this for instance to record speeches I give on telephone conferences, or to dictate blog entries and essays if my carpal tunnel syndrome flares up again, a friend of mine has used language recognition technology to meet into the computer long reams of text and data without having to type them.  

Nevertheless, the technology still has a way to go before it can do it very hard task of taking dictation.  Correcting errors is rather cumbersome, you have to select words, and then laboriously tell the computer what you want to do with them.  Also, the system has problems interpreting what I say occasionally.  For instance, I tried to say laboriously, and it came out labor asleep.  Hopefully, dictation will do for my diction what Graffiti did for my handwriting — train me to make the computer recognize it.

Whether this works or not remains to be seen.  I will report back when I have learned how to insert a Colón cola call on….

Thoughtful Scoble

Robert Scoble has an interesting "exit interview" with his readers as he is leaving Microsoft. Very interesting. One key phrase on blogging in general and how information moves: "All you need to do is tell 15 bloggers something and if it rings true it’ll get repeated around the world. That’s what gets executives fired."

I am just waiting for blogs from, say, inside General Motors or some of the large airline or media companies talking about their struggles to stay afloat. Not to mention the blogging-induced Enron, whoever that will be.

Hans Rosling talk at TED

Hans Rosling at TEDHans Rosling, professor of public health, speaker extraordinaire, software entrepreneur and one of the best illustrators of fact-based research and policy discussions I have ever seen, is now available in English from the TED conference.

See it. This is required viewing for anyone wanting to understand how the world evolves and what we need to do to make it evolve in a direction beneficial for all. Rosling is one of the best speakers I have ever seen, on any subject, and this subject is critically important.

 

That word again

Not only brillantly written, but laugh-out funny without (overtly) trying to be: Fuck by Christopher Fairman (March 2006). It will be interesting to see which journal, if any, will publish this. Not to mention, who will debate him?

On a side note, I missed a reference to Bill Bryson’s brilliant discussion of fuck in Mother Tongue, where he lays out all the various ways the word can be used. Brilliant, indeed.

(Via Feld). 

Googlecontext

There has been much speculation following the NYTimes report about Google’s amazing new data center, located near a large river primarily because it needs a lot of power. Why do they want all that storage and processing power?

One interesting idea from Ian Betteridge: To learn to model context. Sounds plausible to me, though I think a reasonable model of how we think has much wider applicability than merely getting the right ads in front of you at the right time.

Paul Graham on conditions for entrepreneurial success

Paul GrahamPaul Graham, one of the finest essayists to ever publish on the Internet, has two stellar examples of how to take a complex issue and present it in a clear and consistent way:

As usual, Paul does not leave out the difficult parts or avoids pointing out the faults of the current model. Both essays are reworked from a keynote he gave at Xtech.

Excellent stuff. Read it. I will assign it for classes.

(Via Dragos.)

Found on the web

Jasbone has a good little article on Media Center configuration.

Brad deLong and Susan Rasky have written on what journalists should know about economists and vice versa.

John Markoff and Saul Hansell has a good article about Google’s very hush-hush new datacenters.

Scoble leaving Microsoft

scoble banner

Robert Scoble is to leave Microsoft to join a startup, for higher pay and a stock option upside.

I think this was very smart timing – the role of "humanizer" is great in a transitional period, but how much upside was left in this relationship? Scoble has co-written a book, become popular, and in the short run his departure seems a loss to Microsoft. In the long run, however, it is hard to see how his blogging at some point might not force a confrontation, either with corporate management or with his audience. If Microsoft had wanted to keep him, they could offer higher pay – but that would mean that his status would change from "regular employee talking about his work" to "semi-official spokesman with good salary" and undermine his legitimacy.

As it is, Scoble has parlayed his fame and skill into a new role to build – I, for one, look forward to his video interviews. Microsoft has gained a better image and can now figure out how to evolve their Channel 9 and other interactions with their developer network and general public, unencumbered by a dominant and ungovernable gatekeeper who would have experienced increasing difficulty in maintaining a very precarious balance. It will be interesting to see whether a new Scoble will show up (thus indicating that semi-corporate blogging is possible) in Microsoft or any other company, or whether it will turn out that he was a once-in-a-lifetime exception.

Hugh Macleod, as usual, has the right comment. 

Blogs help Microsoft

Scobleizer quotes some interesting statistics: Microsoft is gaining server market share because of blogs (and wikis). Though some insightful comments modify the numbers a bit, the increase is still large, and shows that Microsoft can make a dent in that market by doing what they did on the desktop: Offer functionality that is "good enough" and relatively easy for the end user to set up. At the very least, it is in indication of blogs becoming a "must have" on any web site.

To respond, the open source community would have to go from pluribus to unum in terms of user experience, configurations and setup. I doubt that is going to happen. Wonder which segments of the market Microsoft is gaining in?

One for the gallows….

It turns out, as I speculated, that the report about the English farmer selling gallows to African dictatorships seems to be an elaborate hoax. Well, score one for good ol’ economics – it just doesn’t make financial sense to make something simple out of wood and metal in the UK and sell it expensively to Africa.

Moose bridges

ElgebroCory writes about overpasses and tunnels designed to let animals tranfer themselves – and their genes – across highways from Yukon to Yellowstone.

This is not news here in Norway – we have had "moose bridges" for years. They are a standard feature of all highways leading out of Oslo, as well as across the high-speed train to the main airport. The design is less ambitious than that visualized at Boingboing. We don’t do underpasses, since Norwegian moose won’t use them (whether US critters are less discerning remains to be seen.) As for using barbed wire for capturing fur…, well that is going to be a real motivator for sexually adventurous animals, isn’t it?

Anyway, the motivation for the bridges here in Norway is much simpler: Avoiding collisions between moose and cars. A moose can weigh in at 550 kg (1200 lbs.), and has long, thin legs which elevates most of that mass to just the perfect height for entering your car through the windscreen.

Moose warning signWhich reminds me of a little anecdote: When I moved to the US in 1990, I had to sell my SUV, a Mitsubishi Pajero (1987 model). I advertised it, and it ended up being bought by one of my business school colleagues. I was a little uncomfortable selling the car to a colleague – not that there was anything wrong with it, but if you sell it to someone you know, you take on a bit more responsiblity, at least morally.

Anyway, I moved to the States, then came back home for a holiday a year later. Visiting my old place of employment, I was walking through the main hallway when I heard my colleague shouting "Espen, Espen!" and literally running towards me. My neck hairs came up – was there something wrong with the car?

My colleague – a professor of organizational psychology – was short of breath and panted "Thanks for saving my life!" Eventually, the story came out:

He had been teaching a course at a branch campus outside Oslo in January. On his way home in, he had decided to take a short-cut using a dirt road through the forest. And as he came round a bend, he ran smack into a bull moose that nearly totalled the Pajero. But since the car was high off the ground and frame-built, it absorbed the impact in the front rather than with the windscreen, and my colleague was not hurt. If he had had a normal car, he said, he would almost certainly have been killed. "What a car, what a car!", he exclaimed, again thanking me profusely.

As he walked off, my heartbeat slowly returned to normal, and I thought it was a good thing I had kept quiet and not pointed out the obvious: If he had had a normal car, he would never have taken that shortcut in the first place….

—- 

Incidentally, here’s a page, in Norwegian, explaining about moose bridges. As for the moose signs, one of the problems with them is that tourists – particularly Germans – like them and steal them as souvenirs. So now you can buy them at all the tourist shops.