According to Allocca, this video has the defining characteristics of a viral video: Firstly, a tastemaker, in this case Jimmy Kimmel. The video had been on YouTube for months before Kimmel mentioned it on his show. The second characteristic is, “community participation.” Nowadays people don’t just enjoy things, we participate. The double rainbow video had parodies, an auto-tuned version, spoofs that showed the double-rainbow guy in other settings, and more. The third is, “unexpectedness,” and that’s self-explanatory.

While it is common to think that viral videos happen randomly, it turns out that a bit of up-front thought and creativity can go a long toward setting the stage, so to speak, for a viral video. Some time ago, the band, “Ok Go,” partnered with Synn Labs, where they merge art with technology, to make a viral video. They spent months strategizing on creating a spectacular Rube Goldberg machine to execute a task – and you should watch the video to see the ending. After months of planning, smashing two pianos and ten television sets in the process and getting all the action into one shot, they now have over 35 million views. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

With Apple selling 70 million iPhones and about 30 million iPads in just the past year, it’s increasingly evident that the way for a business to stay on the hearts and minds of its customer base is through an app. Corporate apps aren’t so much for direct selling as they are about providing useful or fun experiences for customers. Delta does it for flight check-in and status information. Samsonite helps travelers track miles for free gifts with an online purchase. Again, General Mills launched the Yoplait Greek4Good app to entertain users and also to support food banks. There are also iPhone apps for all the major banks (of the financial kind). Along the way, making an app used to be an expensive proposition, open only to the largest corporations. But now there’s AppNRG, where any business, big, small or in-between can build its own app or have it built for them at a truly affordable price. So what are you waiting for – get an app.

In Ni’s opinion, poor communicators tend to make statements with, “You should,” “You need to,” “You’d better,” but not necessarily “You positive statements” such as, “You are amazing.” Other fighting words begin with, “You always …” or “You never,” followed by something negative. Presumably, nobody “always” does bad things or “never” does anything good. In short, good communicators avoid using universal negative statements because these types of statements tend to evoke negative feelings and reactions from team members. It causes them to freeze up or run away, which is not good for team work.

Of course this doesn’t mean that a leader cannot criticize team members. A good communicator finds a way to be tough on the issue at hand while also being “soft” on the person who committed the error. Perhaps this might be something along the lines of, “I noticed that you lost two billion dollars this week, and I really like your tie, where did you get it? Maybe we can go shopping together.” Well, this last bit isn’t what Professor Ni advises.

While we’re discussing the sharing of slides on Slideshare, it should be noted that this could very well also become the way to lose an audience with poor presentations. This is why it might be worth your while to head to Slideshare for a quick view of “You Suck at Powerpoint,” which commanded such instant popularity that it lead to a job for the presenter. As it turns out, the top mistake made by PowerPoint presenters is “too much information.” This overload of information in one slide causes people to tune out. On the other hand, Slideshare also has a popular presentation on designing “Slides that Rock” – from the folks of the same name. One thing to remember is that it takes about 30 hours of preparation to make a good one hour presentation. And if you think that’s a lot, remember, it’s better than the maple syrup ratio, which is 40 to 50 gallons of sap to a gallon of syrup.

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1. “We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.” Earl Nightingale

2. “There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a  difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are  afraid you will succeed.” Ray Goforth

3. “If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.” Thomas J. Watson

4. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” Pablo Picasso

5. “Create experiences that leave you in awe, for these will be the highlights of your life.” Ryan Blair

6. “Failure is not in your vocabulary; rather, you convert all working experiences, be they positive or negative, into fuel for future success.” Anonymous

7. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absense of fear.” Mark Twain

8. “Repetition is the father of learning, I repeat, repetition is the father of learning.” Dwayne Michael Carter

9. “Top Achievers are improvisors, not perfectionists. If you want to create more success in your life you have to move forward not knowing all the answers.” Douglas Vermeeren

10. “Weak people talk and do not act, strong people act and keep quiet.” Eliphas Levi

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Drive Carefully: Google gets Nevada driving licence for self-drive car

Article from BBC

Driverless cars will soon be a reality on the roads of Nevada after the state approved America’s first self-driven vehicle licence.

Google driverless car operating on a testing path (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first to hit the highway will be a Toyota Prius modified by search firm Google, which is leading the way in driverless car technology.  Its first drive included a spin down Las Vegas’s famous strip.  Other car companies are also seeking self-driven car licences in Nevada.  Read More at BBC >>

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Beyond Pinterest, today’s mom is a very digital being. She is 38 percent more likely to become a fan of or follow a brand online. Approximately one in every three moms is a blogger, with a preference for Blogger (24.3 percent) over WordPress (10.8 percent). Busily trying to balance work and family, mom saves time by shopping online for clothes, toys, music and e-books – no shades of gray in the statistics. Moms spend an average of 66 hours per month online. Approximately 65 percent of moms own smartphones which they are likely to use for shopping or streaming videos. It is thought that moms account for somewhere between $2 and $5 trillion in spending. So here’s to you digital moms everywhere, “making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got,” – but mostly your smartphone. Cheers.

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But we digress. What is a Sleekbook, really? Well, the biggest difference is that it has an AMD processor as opposed to an Intel processor. Only computers with Intel processors get to be called Ultrabooks. Along the way, it was said that an Ultrabook is a Windows version of a MacBook Air. The Sleekbook is 0.8 inch thick (or maybe that should be thin), weighs less than four pounds and comes in red or black – aforementioned shiny coat of birds and animals is not an option. A 14 inch Envy Sleekbook with a 500GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM is yours for just $699. A 15.6 inch sized Sleekbook with a 320GB hard drive starts at $599. Notes from the world of HP say that users in China prefer 14 inch laptops while their counterparts in the U.S. prefer 15 inches. But wait there’s more. HP also announced the upcoming EliteBook Folio 9470m specifically aimed at the “corporate world.” That’s news we can all use.

On the other hand, says Ashkenas, rather than completely dispense with the idea of continuous improvement, we should improve on it. And yes, it is an interesting concept that continuous improvement needs to be improved. One way to improve on continuous improvement is to take a more nuanced approach. Inject discipline but not to the point where it drains the creative energy out of the organization. Rather than work on improving processes, ask why these processes exist in the first place. And ultimately, it should be noted that some people like rules while others break rules. Innovation is more often linked to the breaking of rules rather than the following of rules, but without rules there’s anarchy and, well, what’s really needed is common sense. While, many have said that common sense isn’t common, W.C. Field’s once said that horse sense is the thing a horse has that keeps it from betting on people.

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Sahil Lavingia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to Lavingia, who has been building “cool things” since he was 13, he never aimed to own a company but rather to build stuff. As a result, he was in the middle of building something when Gumroad came along. One Friday night just over a year ago, Lavingia spent hours designing a photo-realistic pencil icon. Then he wanted to sell the icon and that’s where the path to Gumroad began. Selling wasn’t easy. There was the marketplace model or the personal website model. There had to be a better way, he thought. But that better way didn’t exist, so he built it and now he hopes everyone will come around to thinking that selling online should be as easy as sharing online. Gumroad’s model is to convert social networks into marketplaces. And he still believes that every successful product is a solution to a problem.

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