Cool Stuff

Hans Rosling came up with an amazing way of bringing life to statistics. Google has now bought gapminder's technology to do these motion graph's and added it as a widget in google charts.

You know you are a nerd when this kind of thing excites you as much as it did me... but hey, whatever.

I played around a bit and put one of my own together and it is a really great way of getting the ideas to come out of the numbers. Ideas that can now be put into pictures. I think once people can visualise things, it has a bigger impact.

The other thing playing around with this new stuff in `Beta' format showed me is how I have never really done this before. `Beta' is when the company `puts the product out there' before it is finished. So there are lots of problems still... but you know that. So when you find something wrong, you are supposed to email them and tell them. Even suggest how you would like it to be done instead. So people who are really interested become your testers... for free! Makes a lot of sense to me. Then, once it is tight and error free, you launch it for all the people who don't like any mistakes.

The other thing it reminded me is of all the stuff I haven't tried yet. I have never bought or sold anything on eBay. I have used Amazon fairly regularly. I haven't tried twitter or second life out (they concern me a little more)... and actually probably don't know how the majority of stuff even in Microsoft Office/Home works.

Most of the time we just use the stuff we know how to use already, or the things we are comfortable using. Trying to use other things or finding out about stuff we don't need right now seems a bit too much like hard work.

The other thing is fear. People don't blog or join facebook for example because they think it is going to change things for them in a way they don't want things to change. Privacy is probably the thing that is held dearest and most at risk. I still think that maybe privacy will soon be a thing of the past whether we like it or not... BUT that we can manage it better by understand technology better.

Don't think that is a very well thought through response or a convincing enough answer to get doubters to buy in though.