Cognitive Labs

Gravity, that fundamental force explained by Isaac Newton so well, may not be so constant afterall.

Recent probes hurtling across Earth's terminator have not behaved as expected, missing the tightly calculated predicted trajectory by a small margin. The incidence has been measured at least five times in cases around the Earth and also on the outbound slingshot characterizing the departure of Pioneer X and XI from the solar system, billions of miles -- and several light-minutes away.

This troubling occurrence has suggested to some scientists that the law of gravity is somehow incorrect and needs to be modified - if something is mostly true, but not always, than by definition it cannot be a law in the physical sciences, at least as presently conceived. Or, on the other hand, a new principle of physics exists that we have not accounted for up to now.

Attempting to force observation into a law and creating a 'fudge factor' was previously the case with the Ptolemaic system, which defined and expanded the concept of epicycles or tangent circles to account for perturbations in planetary orbits, in particular the planet Mars - until it was realized (by Kepler) that orbits were ellipses. Previously, it was believed that orbits must be circular (perfect).




more at space.com

Labels: epicycles, kepler, ptolemaic

Yahoo's "boomer blogger" says you can raise your IQ with an ipod and that there are 100 quick and easy ways this can be accomplished, besides putting cheese in it and leaving it in the middle of your mouse Algernon's maze and watching.

Labels: blogger, boomer, ipod, IQ

Spock and McCoy in the 23rd century - Tri-D chess

The advocacy group Gene-Watch has an interesting collection of links to academic studies related to IQ, intelligence, and cognitive speed...the genetic component is said to be approximatetly 50% of this measure.

Labels: chess, tri-d

I bet you didn't know that Cognitive Labs was involved in something that involved the U.S. Chess Federation. Well, now you know. It seems that chess may build cognitive skills, and rely on a tendency to strategize that is encoded genetically.

The Federation looked at BrainSpeed (tm) and decided to support it as a neuroenhancer, which came with our testing.

Myself, I like tri-dimensional chess.

More on this story later...

Labels: brain, chess, cognitivelabs.com, federation

Everything was back up by early AM (P.S.T.)

In case you're wondering, a server outage began around 7:15 PST and is still ongoing. The path hosting this blog is not affected, however, most of the pathways and directories on cognitivelabs.com are down. The ETA from engineering on uptime at our host is around 6 AM.

Sorry for the glitch. This is the most prolonged outage since 2005, as our host has been 99.9% reliable over that period. We were headed towards possibly our busiest day yet today with around 30,000 visitors at the time of the crash.

So again, our apologies.

Labels: server, uptime

That's a fine question.

We did a little digging and went back to the year 1999 - the year of the IPO with many deals grounded in three words: internet, potential, optimism and the year made famous by the artist once again known as prince.

That was also the year in which a small interactive agency created the first action-game advertisement, punch the monkey which was Flash, not Java - which had jillions of impressions in the remnant inventory category by 2001 and was used as a system default by companies like L90, DoubleClick, Avenue A, etc as they slid down to temporary obscurity (most were resurrected in the past 2-3 years, like a Phoenix, if they stuck to their knitting).

Here's one I grabbed from mikeonads.com which he grabbed from mySpace...

We’ve all seen this ad… it loudly proclaims “Punch the monkey to win a free _____”, fill in the blank with whatever is new and out today. A ps3, an xbox, maybe even an iphone (which hasn’t even been released yet). It’s perhaps one of the strangest phenomenons of online advertising, and I have yet to meet a person not in the industry who understands how these make money.

lets look at an example I just saw on myspace.com:

So, if I hit this monkey ten times, I’m going to get a FREE PS3!!!

We would contend that Advertising is in its infancy. Disliked though it may be, advertising drives spurts of online innovation and will morph into forms that are heretofore unimagined, including not only avatars and virtual worlds (which already exist in version 1.0 format) but more bold and even 'dangerous' visions involving neuroscience and cognition which will impact multiple senses - vision, touch, and smell and thought.

The sense of smell (olfactory sense) is one of the most powerful emotional influencers, and the nose is the most direct pathway to the brain, bypassing the blood brain barrier. For this reasons loss of smell is one of the signs of cognitive dysfunction leading to Alzheimer's, and is a typical symptom of individuals suffering from Alzheimer's. (see William Frey's work on olfactory delivery methods).

Smell-based advertising opens up a new vista for marketers, activating memories and fomenting action: hitting a key, thinking a thought, etc.

Imagine if thoughts themselves could be tagged? Marketers could then finally measure mindshare. Since thoughts are electrochemical impulses, the known universe of human thoughts constitute the available market. By distributing a peer-to-peer ad system that people could subscribe to, (e.g., influenced by Sharman Networks, but opt-in, once called altnet, also linked to Skype) the basic marketplace could be formed. In technical theory, a peer system (or hybrid ad servers + peers) would be more ideally suited than a centralized operation..

imagine this:

Advertisement:

"A penny for your thoughts?" Nonsense!
Join neuroadvantage and get paid $100 a month for your thoughts. In fact, the more you think, the more you can earn! (Thoughts replace page views/Think-throughs replace click-throughs)

The peer would faithfully record your individual thoughts for a time. Once the activities were downloaded from all of the subscribing peers, patterns in the data would be located. Now the tricky part...creating electrochemical impulses with affiliated topical tags, that can be shared across the network in real-time, and inserted via your local peer (either a device or something like a personal cognitive address, not unlike an IP address, for each brain). These tags would then be inserted into breaks between individuals thoughts, not unlike the DART system or the old EDI systems broadcasters use to tell affiliates what ads to run when. The disconcerting aspect is that subscribers wouldn't know if that sudden hankering for pizza hut were real or a 'tag.'

This is quite similar to what happens today except the data gathering device is done at the root directory, the brain, rather than a remote subdirectory - the eyeball. Keep taking the concept further and you end up inside the Matrix.

Let's put together a biz plan...

Labels: ads, frey, neuroadvantage, neuromarketing, nose, sri

One time when I was in Korea, an enterprising merchant extolled his collection of leather coats and handbags, striding in front of his store in the crisp winter air, declaiming expansively with a dollop of exuberance and showmanship: "Everything is Free!" He did not fail to get attention. It's the kind of statement you would not hear in Japan.

Web Economics work much the same way. The truth is the web sunders the relationship between markets and hierarchies in the area of theory known as Transaction cost Economics, which seeks to explicate the seemingly rational behavior of actors and agonists in the Economy that march in lockstep to the status quo, even if the tune is flat and overwrought and the relationship dysfunctional.

When an Internet provocateur emerges, endemic industry inefficiencies are revealed like a Hollywood actor sans make-up. Digital economics are driven by increasing returns - at least on the way up, until an alternate appears to steal the thunder, which nevertheless also will operate under the principle of increasing returns. An incumbent's comfortable and predictable profit margins can vanish just like the revenues from classified advertising have.

What should an incumbent do? Adapt as soon as possible to the methods and technologies of businesses that have scale and cost leadership, since it's likely that efficiencies removed from the system will not be recovered or rolled back.



More on the Free Revolution from Chris Anderson (Wired)

Labels: classified, scale, TCE, wired

Say you have a health oriented website or blog (or anything for that matter). How can you create the effects you see on yahoo, aol.com, revolution health, and others. What I am talking about are those nice pictures that fade in and out, usually celebrity-related such as the latest Britney Spears gaffe, tie in with television, or model shot of jolly, healthy-looking people on the home page of a health portal.

You can do it with a Flash slider gadget or you can do it with JavaScript.
I found a site that makes it all easier than coding purely from scratch...here it is.
I don't know that this device is a match for cognitive labs, due to our intentional simplicity, but we may use it on some other websites.

It's interesting that with experimentation, you see that the latest and greatest looks good on first glance but becomes tiresome for repeat users - a particularly bad idea is too many moving sliders and drop down boxes associated with basics like checking email. Losing a half second every time you want to check email becomes irritating eventually. That's why simple, even banal design - well executed may trump fancy templates and complex CSS. I've come to this conclusion just through watching the numbers and activity. There's a fine balance between innovation and disruption of the user experience.

Labels: Ajax, slider

Labels: addicting games, AI, billions, gdc, kurzweil, respirocytes, running, singularity

Designers at CEBIT got much digital ink when they announced this mental typewriter and game controller which let anyone control their computer with their brain alone. Telepathy, stage one.

Just 23 short months later, Emotiv, a San Francisco based company, has improved on the prototype with an actual beta consumer device - letting you control the existence or dissolution of an orange box on your computer's screen - with just your thoughts.



As you can see this is closer to the proverbvial iBrain: no wires, electrodes or swim cap - just pure design, closer to headphones or a svelte racing bicycle helmet.
The entrepreneurs aim to have a product in stores in time for Christmas 2008.





The pace of change is accelerating...

Labels: emotiv, gamer, gdc, mental_typewriter_and_game_controller

Think Faster, Live Longer. It's all Connected.

Labels: AI, longevity, thinkfaster

Some highlights from the 2008 Game Developer's Conference happpening now in San Francisco. Nolan Bushnell, a founder of Atari, demos a system for inserting video ads during breaks in casual games.

Wild Tangent has developed a product called orb that lets any powerful computer play games across a network for free - no need to Wii or Xbox, synchs with widescreen/flatscreen HDTVs.

Labels: Atari, gdc, hdtv, orb, wildtangent

That's the intriguing idea behind some new research published here. Those in immediate contact with peers and colleagues seemingly are prone to groupthink and the proximity to others leads to negation of innovative ideas in favor of seeking approval (an echo of Frederick Herzberg's concept of hygiene to students of management theory)

On the other hand, those in contact with a more dispersed network of thinkers and who themselves are isolated from a commotive environment are more likely to create breakthrough work...

Labels: commotive, dampening, groupthink, herzberg, innovation, peers

Cognitive Labs just reached 800,000 visits in 2008. I created an alert bug that would send a text SMS to my phone when it happened. And it just did. This compares to about 3 million in 2007 - hopefully the growth will accelerate even further. Speaking of accelerate, I just heard about a company called XLR8 Mobile. Funny, because I was affiliated with a company called Accelerate Mobile, both as a professional and a personal investor. It developed packet loss reduction and data acceleration technology and had a successful trial on the KDDI EVDO (Evolution Data Optimization) network in Tokyo. Wonderful things.

Labels: 800000, cognitive, evdo, kddi, xlr8mobile

A recent discovery by two explorers on a survey in the trackless Western Desert of Egypt has pushed the boundary of influence of Egyptian civilization some 650 kilometers further to the west than previously believed.

In a canyon with walls approximately 80 feet high, carved heiroglyphic inscriptions, the name of the king in a cartouche, and an image of the ruler were located.

It was only in 2003 that the previous boundary was "discovered" to the west of Dakhla oasis (pictured above-best reached by Land Rover).

How far did the sphere of influence extend? More discoveries doubtless await.

From the Maltese Independent

Labels: cartouche, dakhla, egypt, explorers, oasis

Q: Longevity is optimized in three distinct communitites on earth.

(1) Okinawa
(2) Ovodda, Sardinia
(3) Loma Linda, CA

Why?

Each boasts a higher percentage of centenarians than anywhere else on earth. Scientists speculate that this is due to both genetic and lifestyle factors. For example, Okinawans practice a form of caloric restriction, consuming only 1,200 calories per day which may fool the body into not releasing hormones associated with excessive cellular tissue growth, inflammation, cellular breakdown, and malignancy. Their "real age" so to speak is lower than their calendar age due to these factors.

In Ovodda, nearly everyone is related since individuals are all descended from the original emmigrants to the island, encapsulating positive as well as potentially harmful genetic code variants.

In Loma Linda, a significant percentage of the population belongs to the 7th Day Adventist organization and it is surmised that faith and ability to manage and weather responses to life's stresses - coupled with a vegan diet in many cases are also associated with longer than normal life.

Labels: bbc, lomalinda, longevity, okinawa, ovodda

Ethical concern for the future: HIPAA vs. the Three Laws of Robotics: Discuss

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has just released their list of the 14 greatest challenges facing humanity.

About 4 of them involve action items/parameters that Cognitive Labs' is also working on (highlighted). The list follows:

-Make solar energy affordable
-Provide energy from fusion
-Develop carbon sequestration
-Manage the nitrogen cycle
-Provide access to clean water
-Reverse engineer the brain
-Prevent nuclear terror
-Secure cyberspace
-Enhance virtual reality
-Improve urban infrastructure
-Advance health informatics
-Engineer better medicines
-Advance personalised learning
-Explore natural frontiers

Among the predictions, not challenges, is the making of a sentient robot by the year 2029. In addition, nanobots will flow throughout the bloodstream, making minor corrections in cellular function to prevent malady. In the brain, the nanobots could prevent the accumulation of amyloid tangles.

Think of it as McAfee ViruScan for your body. There's no reason the Internet will not play a part; in fact application engines might exist that receive inputs from you (body and brain)or your computer (keyboard, voice, etc.) via the Internet 24/7 and collect data like a seismograph.
Blood sample? A nanobot can analyze the blood in real time and submit the data wirelessly to a medical database, either centrally located but more likely on your own computing platform. The era of symptoms and potential misdiagnosis or diagnostic 'dead reckoning' and fear of false positives may be then be at an end.

Labels: 14, coglabs, mcaffee, nanobot

Natrol, Inc., our partner in offering the BrainSpeed (tm) test both online and at retail - has been acquired by Plethico, a healthcare co. based in Mumbai(Bombay) India for $81 million in cash consideration. (details of closing)

The innovative combined test, which represented the first time consumers were able to track their mental state in conjunction with a consumer packaged good (CPG) like they might track something on ups.com or their favorite online retailer, was first launched in 2005 at E3 in Los Angeles; subsequently - more than 50,000 people logged in after purchase. Blogs, specifically weblogs, inc and our own brainspeed.blogspot and our simple javascript game brainSpeed blaster (tm) which has logged hundreds of thousands of plays (developed by me), were used to support the effort, along with standard marketing stuff.

The Natrol blend was scientifically engineered, containing Huperzine A, among other ingredients. Following this launch, the NIH sponsored a large scale clinical trial of Huperzine (ongoing) as a possible treatment for Alzheimer's. At least one company, Neuro-HiTech has gone public as a biotech company on the emerging neurocognitive potential of Huperzine.

Labels: 81, brainspeed, E3, estonia, weblogs

Researchers in Denmark tracked a genetic mutation showing that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor.

Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen and his team examined mitochondrial DNA and compared the eye color of blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, Denmark and Turkey.

"Originally, we all had brown eyes," Eiberg said in a statement. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch,' which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes."

The switch, which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 does not, however, turn off the gene entirely, but rather limits its action to reducing the production of melanin in the iris -- effectively "diluting" brown eyes to blue.

Variation in eye color from brown to green can be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes, Eiberg explained.

"From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor," Eiberg said. "They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA."

The mutations responsible for blue eye colour most likely originate from the north-west part of the Black Sea region, where the great agricultural migration of the northern part of Europe took place in the Neolithic periods about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago," the researchers report in Human Genetics.

What's the bluest-eyed nation? Estonia - with 92.9% of the population blue-eyed. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany follow - with 75% of Germans blue-eyed.

Most significantly, this illustrates how fast genetic change can propagate from a single mutation-in practically a millisecond of the human experience. Change is constant. Imagine tomorrow a baby is born with plaid eyes-in a few thousand years this could become the norm! The Blink of an Eye Test:


type="text/javascript"src="http://cognitivelabs.com/cognitive.js">

Labels: blue, blueeyes, dna, estonia

// posted by neurofuture10:35 PM permanent link

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  tags: take a quick memory test | games for your brain | moving pix for your brain | gamer IQ

Excerpt from New Scientist:


The giant planet HD 189733b is too hot for its methane and water vapour to signal life (Illustration: Christophe Carreau/ESA)

Organic molecules – in the form of methane – have been detected on a planet outside our solar system for the first time. The giant planet lies too close to its parent star for the methane to signal life, but the detection offers hope that astronomers will one day be able to analyse the atmospheres of Earth-like worlds.

Astronomers Mark Swain and Gautam Vasisht of Caltech in Pasadena, US, and Giovanna Tinetti of University College London, UK, used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the giant planet HD 189733b, which is slightly more massive than Jupiter and lies 63 light years from Earth.

Labels: 700, alien, HD, methane, o-molecules, organic, world

I reprint here Bill Grimes' (former CEO of ESPN during its period of highest growth [college football besides USC, Alabama, and Oklahoma meaning teams like Oregon finally got airtime, college basketball and the tourney, e.g., Dick "get a T.O. Baby!" Vitale, the Itidarod and Australian rules football, plus SportsCenter), the Spanish-language network Univision, and various newspaper groups, and advisor in our internet radio adventure) essay on media, which is interesting juxtaposed with the rocketing growth of widgets and gadgets, started by Flickr, then YouTube, continued with Photobucket and so on. Can old media become a palette for these new objets d'art like the social networks? Otherwise, they may be trapped in a drying pond. Or perhaps they stand shoulder to shoulder, defending the four corners of their threatened empire with a ready sword.

The Inexorable Decline of Traditional Media

January 30, 2008

By

Bill Grimes


I have just read a sentence in the current issue of the ECONOMIST that as much as anything I know or have heard spells the growing doom for traditional media. I define traditional media as those companies which create, produce and distribute information and entertainment content and which pre-date the commercial content businesses of the Internet. The future of these companies as financially sound purveyors of content in consumer demand is exclusively or highly dependent on profits of newspapers, magazines, yellow pages, outdoor, radio and TV stations and broadcast networks assets--traditional media.



The sentence: "There is still a gap between the time people spend online as a fraction of their media consumption (about a fifth) and the fraction of marketing budgets spent on the internet (about 7.5%)."



First, that such a gap or variance exists between a media property’s audience share and share of ad expenditures is neither new nor surprising. Previous new or emerging media have experienced similar significant gaps in their early days of entry into a content market replete with entrenched competitors. At CBS Radio, I remember in the early 70's that as FM stations' combined share of listening was nearing 40 percent, their share of ad expenditures was in the low 20's. When I left ESPN in 1988, the major basic ad supported cable networks such as ESPN, USA,CNN, MTV and more had been in existence for eight or nine years. That year, 1988, the combined viewing share of all basic cable nets was about 20 percent. Yet cable nets’ total ad revenues were approximately $400 million or four percent of the $10 billion spent by advertisers on national TV networks then. For the year 2006 (latest information), total network ad revenues were $25 billion and the cable networks generated $11 billion or 44 percent of this spending. Total viewing to basic cable networks is 48 percent according to the Cable Advertising Bureau.



These market gaps narrow over time and I know of nothing that can change that reality. After all, a media property should receive about the same share of the revenue that its audience represents. I call that market equilibrium the medium's entitled share (of market), even though the top-rated station, network or the leading magazine in its market segments usually enjoys a slightly higher share of revenues than its audience share for a number of reasons that include buyer loyalty and lethargy, perceived industry prestige and seller confidence exhibited in aggressive pricing.



The continual narrowing of the gap as Internet sites march inexorably toward their entitled share is what trumpets the gloom and doom for traditional media. To illustrate quantitatively, let's assume that in ten years from now time spent with Internet media (websites that accept advertising) represents 25 percent of all media consumption. That would assume an increase of only five percentages points from today’s share of 20 percent (above). Given the growing increase and availability of broadband Internet access and the explosive growth in Internet-produced video, this growth estimate ten years out seems highly achievable and even conservative. Now, let's assume that in ten years Internet's share of advertising advances to 18 percent of media ad expenditures. This assumption holds that the Internet share of total ad spend is still seven percentage points less than its share of media consumption (18 percent to 25 percent), or its entitled share. The argument is stronger that the share will be higher than 18 percent than less than that, but let’s proceed with this analysis using the lower revenue market share number. (One could argue that the Internet share could possibly be as much as five percentage points higher and not be accused of reckless forecasting--see cable networks’ performance above.)



Now let's assume that over this period of time U.S. total ad expenditures grow by four percent a year. This growth rate may be a tad lower than the last ten year average rate but with current economic uncertainties and a lower (three percent) projection of total ad expenditure growth for 2008, it does not seem unreasonable. Annual ad expenditures for the latest reported year (2006) were $300 billion. Therefore a four percent average annualized increase (a total of 48 percent increase in year ten, or 2017, because of the multiplying effect of compounding) would produce ad spending of $444 billion. Internet’s total revenues of $79 billion would result in a market share of 18 percent. Remember it is arguable that this market share is more likely understated than the reverse.



An important metric to focus on is that today (2006 to be specific) traditional media generates $277.5 billion (92.5 percent) of all ad revenues (ECONOMIST). In this scenario traditional media’s share of market will decrease to 82 percent in year ten or $334 billion. At first, to mention a $50 billion increase in revenues for traditional media seems a generous amount. However, it would for traditional media be an annualized growth of only about three percent. Remember the assumption is that all spending is growing at four percent annually and with Internet gaining ten total market share percentage points by year ten the annual revenue increase for traditional media would be reduced by one percentage point or three percent. Obviously some traditional media properties will fare better and some will fare worse.



However, with three percent annual revenue growth how can media companies expect any profit growth? A company could achieve profit growth with revenue growth of three percent but only if two conditions exist: First is that its annual operating expense increases must be less than five percent--a considerable challenge even if inflation remains around three percent, which could be difficult to achieve. Added to that macro-economic unknown is the well-known fact that traditional media companies have been earnestly reducing operating expenses for several years. That industry reality suggests that additional reductions will be more difficult to make and will likely be more injurious to the quality and quantity of any media property’s most important asset, its content. The second condition that must exist for a company’s profit to increase with these revenue/expense assumptions (let’s call it the 3/5 percent scenario) is that the company would have to have a profit margin of 21 percent or higher the year before the 3/ 5 percent scenario occurs.



To illustrate, let’s assume a company today has $100 in revenue (that 100 can be any amount in actual dollars providing the following ratio of revenue-to-profit exists) and operating expenses of $80. Its operating profit that year would therefore be $20. If revenues increase three percent and expenses five percent, the following year the company’s revenues will be $103 and its expenses will be $84. Its profit would be $19, or a $5 and a five percent reduction versus the previous year. Such a performance would occur with many traditional media companies because in the last five years many have experienced profit margins declines and are operating with margins less than 20 percent.



One of the worst possible media company performances has been The New York Times Company. Last year this company had zero profit margins. It reported an operating loss of $534 million on $3.289 billion of revenue. This was a substantial slide from 2005 actual profit of $319 million on virtually the same revenues: $3.231. Something particularly untoward happened to expenses this past year, which I assume was related to the new corporate headquarters, one-time severance, write-offs and basic increases above five percent in customary operating expenses. A more important observation is that despite growing revenues from About.com, a relatively recent Internet acquisition, the company’s revenues were unchanged from the previous year--no three percent growth here. Virtually every newspaper, particularly its second largest property, The Boston Globe, suffered revenue declines. Again, importantly, the company’s operating margin in the much better year of 2005 was just under 10 percent., not the 21 percent needed to grow profits in the 3/5 percent scenario. I use NYT as a surrogate for the traditional media industry and while acknowledging that its plummeting financials have degenerated more severely and more rapidly than most traditional media companies, the reason may be that NYT, because of exceptionally incompetent management and an over-reliance on print assets, is just among the first of these companies to experience the bitter taste of market medicine, or “creative destruction” as the eminent economist, Joseph Schumpeter, wrote in 1975. Before leaving the battered NYT it should be noted that in mid-2002 NYT’s shares were trading at $52. Yesterday’s closing price was $16.06.



Assuming that declining profit growth is the norm and not the exception for most traditional media companies, what are the additional impacts (beside further headcount reductions and the weakening of content)? Company credit ratings will be downgraded meaning that their cost of capital will increase. The result of this is higher interest payments on debt and an increasing inability to make acquisition because the company’s other capital component, its equity (often essential in making acquisitions), has decreased. Lower profits and lower margins equal a lower share (equity) price. We will likely then see further industry consolidation but consolidation is only a short-term fix for an industry that has endemic deterioration in its business fundamentals. This tactic has never been a remedy to the ills of a business; witness the performance of these traditional media today after decades of mergers and acquisitions.



What’s a NY Times Company or a CBS to name just two companies to do? Can expenses be reduced much further? Maybe, but I cannot envision that happening without a concomitant decrease in content quality. Can some technological breakthrough such as low-cost animated actors for movies and television or the elimination of paper-based newspapers and magazines be upon the horizon? And if so, will the hidebound management of many of these companies be willing to adapt real change? And, of course, such changes would be fraught with the risk of diminishing consumer satisfaction which if so would result in continued decrease in share of media consumption. That in turn which would more rapidly reduce traditional media’s share of ad revenue dampening any profit growth. None of the above addresses an almost equally nasty problem of the deleterious impact on the loss of subscriber revenues upon which some media rely heavily upon.



We all talk about traditional media’s deteriorating future and its increasingly competitive media marketplace, but I believe, and hopefully I have demonstrated, that everything we have heard to date is understated and that the severity of the problem has not been fully realized. There is no silver bullet solution but the best thinking I have heard on future strategies for these companies was in a recent talk at an investor conference by Peter Chernin, President of News Corp. This is the traditional media company that really does get it. It knows what today younger generations want in electronic and mobile content. Chernin articulates a strategic path that I would think so many other traditional media companies would want to follow. But there is little evidence that most of these companies’ CEO’s will not or cannot (for fears of change, risk, failure, lethargy and more) follow the News Corp. strategies. What we will increasingly see as we view the media horizon is fewer traditional media, particularly fewer newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations. The good news is that the Internet, like a fertile field blessed with the best mix of soil, sunshine and rain, will sprout an ever-widening array of rich flowering content of all genres and forms. Just as the time has come to say goodbye to old politicians and to welcome in the new, it’s time to say goodbye to many old traditional media, those once surviving perennials which today find themselves in an overgrown garden that they insufficiently tended, their gray petals wilting as the last signs of life are now evident.

http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/GrimesDeclineOfMedia.htm

Labels: bill, charles, chernin, economist, grimes, media, warner

Scientists have just found that components of junk DNA known as introns perform a very valuable service. Introns are considered as 'noise' in the midst of gene sequences. However, the researchers now say that RNA encoding for a nerve-cell electrical channel, called the BK channel, contains an intron outside the nucleus. The intron assures that the BK channels are made in the appropriate place in the cell.

In nerve cells, some ion channels are located in the dendrite, which branch from the cell body of the neuron. Dendrites detect the electrical and chemical signals transmitted to the neuron by the axons of other neurons. Abnormalities in the dendrite electrical channel are involved in epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, and cognitive disorders, among others.

In 2005, a Penn group first found that dendrites have the capacity to splice messenger RNA, a process once believed to only take place in the nucleus of cells.

When this intron-containing RNA was knocked out, leaving the maturely spliced RNA in the cell, the electrical properties of the cell became abnormal. "We think the intron-containing mRNA is targeted to the dendrite where it is spliced into the channel protein and inserted locally into the region of the dendrite called the dendritic spine. The dendritic spine is where a majority of axons from other cells touch a particular neuron to facilitate neuronal communication" said Dr. James Eberwine. "This is the first evidence that an intron-containing RNA outside of the nucleus serves a critical cellular function."

"The intron acts like a guide or gatekeeper," said Eberwine. "It keys the messenger RNA to the dendrite for local control of gene expression and final removal of the intron before the channel protein is made. Just because the intron is not in the final channel protein doesn't mean that it doesn't have an important purpose."

The group surmises that the intron may control how many mRNAs are brought to the dendrite and translated into functional channel proteins. The correct number of channels is just as important for electrical impulses as having a properly formed channel.

The investigators believe that this is a general mechanism for the regulation of cytoplasmic RNAs in neurons. Given the central role of dendrites in various physiological functions they hope to relate this new knowledge to understanding the molecular underpinnings of memory and learning, as well as components of cognitive dysfunction resulting from neurological disease.

Labels: BK, Eberwine, introns

This shows the stepwise growth of Cognitive Labs - Q4 2007 was more than 300% over Q4 2006, with about 1.5 million visitors. Q1 2006 and Q4 2006 both had number one hits on digg. With the acquisition of brain.com, we've had additional lift.

We're up to 2,319,000 users. I never thought it could get this big, and we're basically in stealth mode. However, it's likely that this is only the beginning. Where should we go from here? We have some ideas, but let's hear yours: michael@cognitivelabs.com or poke me. Spam/shmam - but I do get about 4,000 emails/day, unfiltered.

Labels: cognitive, digg, labs, q4, traffic

In the U.S., both political parties are heading towards their respective conventions. Private equity poster boy Mitt Romney, while looking very presidential and youtubogenic (adjective: the ability of an individual to appear as eyecandy on a small, Flash powered gadget) trails the old warrior John McCain.

For the Dems, babe-in-the-political woods Barack trails the old pro, Hillary Clinton.
There has been talk that figures like Wall St. digitizer Michael Bloomberg and the Inconvenient Guy will run.

Who knows? Time will tell, ol' sport.

However some predict an out of this world, 'life's a beach' ticket (see above)

Labels: hasselhoff, inconvenient, romney, shatner, youtube, youtubogenic

SRI had their latest "watering hole" this morning on anti-aging: which features presentations by scientists and bioengineers....

Labels: antiaging, sri

It is not as if our jobs are anonymous. Our names, after all, are conspicuously slapped above our work. We identify ourselves before we interview people, before we ask for the facts or urge others to bare their souls.

So why has my equilibrium as a reporter, a sportswriter of 25 years, been so thrown out of whack these past three weeks?

It is not the reason that seems most obvious: simply because I turned the proverbial tape recorder on myself.

Related links

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Alzheimer's hits family hard: 'Something's not right with Mom . . . and now, Dad.'
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Alzheimer's: Intimacy found after all is lost
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Scientists can't get their minds around Alzheimer's

Yes, writing about my parents' decline from Alzheimer's disease, in a piece that ran Jan. 13 in the Chicago Tribune Magazine, was an emotional undertaking. But there remained a comfort level there, a familiarity with an audience I had imagined had read my coverage of the Bulls championship runs and the Bears mediocrity, who came with me to Wimbledon and the Olympics. They did not always like what I wrote, and sometimes told me so with brutal candor. But that is where it stopped.

Readers wrote. I wrote back. And we both walked away.

But baring my own soul on a topic that profoundly affects so many people involves a lot more than one story on one day, I have learned.

The sheer volume of mail was enough to set the Alzheimer's story apart from any I had ever written. But it was what people wrote that has perhaps forever changed my relationship with readers.

"The dog got a very long walk this morning," wrote Joan, who told me her mother resides in an Ohio Alzheimer's residence. "I cried ... and that was a good thing. I don't allow myself to cry enough. Your story helped me to know that it will be painful and difficult, but we will all get through the journey. Even though I cried today, I am not feeling so alone."

No longer could we walk away from each other. No longer could I hit delete and move on. How could I not get emotionally involved when a man asks me, as one did, how to tell his father that it is OK to die?

Or when another reader asked if I could persuade her siblings to forgo a feeding tube for their dying mother?

I was left with a headache and a stomachache each night as I read heartbreaking stories; brought to tears by those who told me they were brought to tears; and inspired to do more by those giving so much of themselves.

Younger people wrote of their lingering fear for the future, of dealing with their own aging parents or of perhaps developing the disease themselves. Others, in their 60s and 70s, described a dread that all but leaked through the computer and onto my lap.

There were amazing tales of love, painful honesty and aching guilt.

There was Pat, who described her father, Jim, writing love letters to her mother for the last several years of his life, something she would not discover until her mother shared them with her the night of his death.

In the letters, the family could trace the disease's progression, the early letters "beautiful and sentimental," the later ones apologetic for "all of his forgetfulness and mistakes." He asked for his wife's forgiveness and thanked her for still loving him.

"As the years passed, the letters made less sense," Pat wrote. "By the end, you could not even read them."

I thought of my own mother's letters to me during my first two years of college, a stash I found when we were cleaning out the house. They were so smart and funny and revealing, her voice all but jumping off the page. I thank God I hung on tight to them, like the handful of recipes also written in my mother's own hand -- hilariously imprecise measurements scribbled on paper by a wondrously imprecise cook -- but her voice once again back in my head.

I read the words of Alissa, who was just 23 when her mother developed Alzheimer's at 53.

"[She was] also the sweet, adorable, needlepointing, mah-jongg-playing, newspaper-reading, matzo ball-making, selfless 4-foot-11 Jewish mom who always thought for others, and never herself," the daughter wrote.

"When my mom lost all of her friends to the disease (it was too 'hard' for them to hang out with her ... and 'embarrassing' when she made mistakes)," the daughter wrote, "we joked (because that's how my family also deals with stress), that if she had breast cancer, they would all band together, wear matching T-shirts and walk for three days in her honor.

"But with Alzheimer's, people seem to run away as far as possible."

Finally, there was the man named Robert, who said he stopped reading my story after the third page, calling it "ludicrous and boring."

"My wife has the disease, and it is not the hilarious picnic that Melissa describes," he wrote.

In the past this would have annoyed me, probably angered me. I would have been tempted to whip off a sharp reply. But this time, all I could see was a man's pain. And all I could feel was sadness.

Am I left with closure, to use a word I can't stand? I don't think so. I really don't. What I am left with is a strong sense that even in a cyberspace world of infinite space and time where the story of my parents reached well beyond the audience I had imagined, there is still community. There is compassion. And there is great comfort in that.

Labels: alzheimers, chicago, tribune

I haven't checked what Arrington says about Microhoo/Yahoosoft but it's a little like the old joke Fedex is merging with UPS and now there's one company called "FedUps."

I see a couple of effects: check it out

(1) the yahoo mail franchise which may be the biggest asset now could become a platform for getting people to upgrade to Vista

(2) many tech types will switch to gmail. there's a huge number of users that have a gmail account but not for their primary use

(3) hotmail and yahoo mail integration creates an email behemoth, which may be unwieldy like the giant in 'jack and the beanstalk'

(4) a gap may be created for an enterprising dark horse (or two) to emerge

Labels: microsoft, yahoo

We're just about ready to report on our 4th Quarter numbers which were 'astounding' in the view of one interested viewer that we pinged, especially when compared with Q4 2006. Up, up, and away. By the way, January 2008 beat December 2007 in all categories including visitors, page views, and time on site - now up to 11.5 minutes per session.

It's been a big day, with Microsoft making a $40 billion dollar offer for Yahoo! The powers that be are moving the deck chairs of the clipper that is the Internet. Everyone is looking for a shortcut around Cape Horn in the race for web economies of scale.