Repost from Jeremy: AI to Structured Play

Repost from Jeremy’s new Tumblr.

Artificial Intelligence

Growing industry and something that you would want to specialize and find a way to grow a company in

Sales Reports using Google spreadsheets and javascript

Joel taught himself Google’s api script, which uses javascript

On Sales Reports – Joel was confident that the increased transparency would add to his bottom line

Jeremy was skeptical of this – not all good ideas work as expected

Good to be crazy and iterate – Newton had crazy ideas some good some bad – Newton believed in gravity and ghosts

He was only right about one

Took 2 days to build a program that pulls information from your sales people’s spreadsheets into one main spreadsheet

More flexible than Salesforce

Joel thinks that this is superior to Salesforce or any off the shelf product, because you basically expand it as needed and there are no limitations

To do lists – Joel’ s list is 100 to-dos, start with ideas break them into tasks

Jeremy’s list is 5 -10 to dos per day of small, small tasks – research shows such as write thank you notes should be broken down into smaller tasks such as, look on Amazon.com… read more “Repost from Jeremy: AI to Structured Play”

Italian Employment Law Caused Carnival Cruise Ship Debacle

Almost everyone agrees that the Italian captain of the Carnival cruise ship was utterly incompetent and caused the deaths of several people when he ran his ship aground.  He is now being charged with manslaughter, abandoning ship and other crimes.  Read more about him abandoning ship here.

The question is: Why was this idiot the captain of a major ship in the first place?… read more “Italian Employment Law Caused Carnival Cruise Ship Debacle”

Interesting Conversation on Singularity.

7:03 PM ”A Friend”: I like Kurweil’s idea

7:04 PM he’s kind of a salesman for it

this blog of his is good

http://www.kurzweilai.net/

7:05 PM absolutely man will combine his body with machines to a ridic extent

already happening

google in your hand

next in your glasses

sorry I was at dinner last night

plus this http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/01/sexual-favors-chicken-mcnuggets.html

… read more “Interesting Conversation on Singularity.”

Singularity

Ray Kurzweil has some very interesting ideas, especially around the exponential increases in technology. He has an idea he calls the singularity- its the point in time in which computers begin to create innovations of their own and our technology advances even faster than it ever has before.  Read a full description of the idea here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Christmas Truce 1914

I just watched a great movie on the Christmas Truce of 1914 when young men from both sides sent to fight and die in World War 1 spontaneously rebelled against their commanders in order to celebrate the holidays together. Bitter old men in powerful positions unfortunately cause far too much conflict in the world. Read more here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce