prknight

Increasing the dataset of color names doesn't really work as well to address this problem in my opinion. I looked at a pretty large set of colors of 5000+ and I discarded it because it just introduced too many exotic sounding names only a color expert can tell apart - it wasn't an UI improvement and it still doesn't give consistent results for the darkest and lightest colors.

I think working with HSL values works better in principle. Just adjusting the lightness value can be used to arrive at a more sensible color description. The most common lightness values for color names hover around 50% (at least in the 3000+ dataset I compiled). One solution is to have a simple formula that takes in account how accurate the nearest color name match is and if it is too inaccurate, to find the color name for the color's HSL with the L adjusted to 50%. I guess you could call it staying true to the hue. I think that would make the color naming script even more useful though.

Well this is funny and cool to see, I spent the better part of Sunday playing with the name that color script (http://chir.ag/projects/ntc/) and jPicker and I compiled a larger color list for it using a couple additional sources. That particular script's color list only requires the name and hex value of the color which is a little more compact. I don't see any other major differences though. It's handy to know that the Wikipedia list has duplicate values for different names (Chestnut Rose = Indian Red for example), looks like your script just grabs the first match it finds.

I was wondering what to do with darker colors as they are less represented in terms of color names. So, when you pick a random darkish color the accuracy reduces because there are less names to choose from.

I was thinking perhaps the best solution would be in these cases to extrapolate a lighter variation of the picked color and display that color with a measure of its darkness (30% darker purple). Right now, if you pick a color like #291c36 you'll get dark jungle green when it's a dark purple. Any thoughts on tackling that problem?

would make a nice replacement for what is shown on an empty new tab in Chrome.

maybe in 2007. You're a couple of years behind.

Agree, I'll take a good desktop app over a webapp any day. Webapps disappear frequently, aren't as quick and most importantly you put your data in the hands of a 3rd party which can work against you.

More ideas Rank it then sell it to someone who can do something useful with it, such as a fitness coach/company or any other interested health related org.

Or build up a list and instead of trying to monetize immediately provide tips to get a healthier bmi, then offer products or services after building up a relationship with the listmembers.

Or partner up with someone who is a coach or has value to offer to people who are interested in improving their bmi.

All three of these are more interesting and likely more profitable than trying to push affiliate or cpa type offers straight up to your visitors.

Barbara Sher - Refuse to choose. It's book about people similar to you.

Also, if you work well with a particular extrinsic structure (and enjoy it), why not leverage that. did you enjoy the uni projects that were for grades? Why not create the same type of conditions. All motivation is ultimately intrinsic anyway.

I think a partnership can make sense if there is complimentary leverage, i.e. both parties bring something to the table that the other can leverage to their benefit + the combination of both parties creates additional leverage.

Just having the idea in most situations just isn't a lot of leverage for a developer to become interested. But if you pair an idea up with:

Idea + capital, Idea + connections, Idea + salesmanship, Idea + passion + market opportunity + timing etc..., Idea + hustle, Idea + mentorship / experience, Idea + proof of concept, initial customers etc, Idea + market knowledge with a significant edge over others, Idea + accounting / misc biz skills

or a combination of those...and then you should be able to find a developer that is able to see enough upside to work with an idea person. The default answer shouldn't need to be 'learn how to code' in most cases. My viewpoint is to not do what you're hopeless at in 99% cases. There's not a lot of leverage there - ideas like speed. It's more valuable to get better at what you're already good at. If you're stubbornly trying to learn how to code and design despite hating the process, you simply didn't exhaust other avenues that yield a more expedient route to launching whatever idea/vision you have.

I did go down the learn how to code/design/market myself route because it's fun to me and that's a form of leverage that gives a potent edge. But I really hate seeing people struggle because they suck at what they are trying to learn, don't enjoy what they are learning but yet are using such things as obstacles to be conquered that they falsely believe are necessary to succeed. Sometimes it's just an excuse not to be doing what you're good at.

First, I wouldn't focus too much on the total amount, instead work out what you need to make per month, per week and per day and you'll arrive at an achievable non-astronomical sum. Focus on that. Stay in the present.

Second, let go of guilt&pity when/if it arises - it's destructive, along with any thoughts or opinions that condemn whatever got you in the situation you are. Ask better questions, like 'how is this a good thing and what is going well?' and 'what can I do better today?'. You can clear your debt with the same force you created it: compound effects over time. It's all about making small forward steps, every single day.

check out wealth dynamics to get some different ideas about mindset & money.

Same goes for words like hustle or pigheadedness. I think grit maybe an even better way to state it. Stubbornness and tenacity can work for or against an entrepreneur or business. (comment inspired by reading http://andymckenzie.blogspot.com/2011/04/when-can-we-measure...)

Doesn't that make it even easier for malicious users/bots to cause problems? How does qbix.com strategise against that?

They can't be avoided in most cases. Among a host of other reasons, there are the opt-in laws in the US & EU http://www.lsoft.com/resources/optinlaws.asp

+1

not to mention that some people just do better when they have more than one project running concurrently.

A contrary approach to working non-parallel is the little and often philosophy (Mark Forster talks about this in his time management books). Working on big projects in small chunks, but with great regularity.

Personally I only switch to a strictly 'serial' approach when I'm faced with a deadline, I'm in a zone or when I'm feeling stubborn about getting something solved. The problem with serial mode is that it tends to reduce quality and drains energy to an extent.

I watch it, I like watching the group dynamics although in terms of business lessons it doesn't have a ton to offer, in the first few seasons were more watchable in that respect. Also I find Trump kinda fascinating to watch, despite all the things that one would normally find detracting (ego etc). I find it interesting how he embodies a role (the big NY billionaire) and plays it unashamedly and boldly, it reminds me of the world view the author of the 48 laws of power (Robert Greene) talks about.

I like watching the 'Dragon's Den'(UK tv show) and seeing how entrepreneurs pitch/fail to pitch and watch how potential investors evaluate deals.

I'd love to see other types of reality shows that follow startups & entrepreneurs.

This traffic comparison seems to somewhat support that http://goo.gl/FdQi3 Swoopo started tanking when bigdeal started rising, but bigdeal hasn't been anywhere near as well trafficked as swoopo was in its prime.

I find it irrational that people got more worked up about Swoopo than they do about gambling/lottery business models. Unlike with gambling you are able to purchase a product before an auction ends and use all the credits you had used on it. It's a pretty transparent model provided you think it through. It's recreational consuming that leverages a host of psychological principles really well - love it or hate it.

This seems like a step in the right direction, but I'd love to see a bookmarking service make accessing and utilizing bookmarks easy by 1) indexing bookmarked pages and extracting keywords & identifying content & enabling tag based search + auto-organized index 2) offer an easy to use interface for accessing the bookmarks.

The main annoyance I have with bookmarking present day bookmarking tools is the amount of steps it requires. Selecting text to be bookmarked is nice but it's an extra action. I don't want to have to file/tag/place in folder, mouse drag and click around just to bookmark a page. Why not a single click?

*currently using the note in reader bookmarklet for google reader

Tablets don't excite me either, it makes me appreciate the tactile feel of a keyboard and the benefits of using a mouse (you can't hover like you can with a mouse with touch input on an ipad).

I use a hp touchsmart, which is an affordable laptop-tablet hybrid. It's a fantastic input device due to wacom technology (shame ipad doesn't excel at pen input), but using the touch screen with my hands is only really convenient when I'm laying back consuming content leisurely.

Persistence may guarantee a certain quantity of output and that may allow for a higher statistical chance of 'wins', but it's not a must-have habit to be highly creative. Compare the histories and creative methodologies of Edison (known for persistence) versus Tesla (mad, but more creative scientist) - I'd rather be Tesla creative than Edison creative. What a lot of creative people that appear incredibly persistent have in common are lifestyles that are driven by curiosity. Leonardo Da Vinci is perhaps the most creative genius to have walked the planet but it wasn't the habit of persistence that set him apart - it was his curiosity. He produced like crazy but he was famously known as a flake in the day (for not finishing stuff). He didn't care about output - he was driven by his questions, his curiosity. Curiosity driven people don't stop because they intrinsically need to find the answers, they can't help it - it's a form of persistence. I'd rather have a insatiably curious person working on developing ideas than a persistent workaholic.

A lot of commenters don't appear to have read the paper on which the article is based on - critiquing at its best. Some factoids of note:

The Bem study isn't unique, there have been 1000s of studies exploring psi that have arrived at significant results. Look up Dean Radin for starters in case you're interested.

The Bem study is unique in that it is getting published in a mainstream journal, which is unusual since the mainstream psychology community doesn't believe or like the idea of researching psi, i.e. most consider it impossible. But that mainstream attitude is just that, an attitude.

Bem is fairly unusual as most researchers that do psi-research are considered on the fringe of the community and don't get in to the mainstream journals.

Researchers that do explore psi risk their reputations and careers.

Bem started out as a skeptic when he was invited to critique another researchers psi experiments. He's a well reputed researcher who has contributed his own theories that have been a real contribution to the field of psychology(non-psi related), something few scientists achieve in their careers.

So far, 2 papers have been written in response to Bem's study, as noted by another commenter. The first uses the Bem study to argue an entirely different agenda: the need for changes in the way general studies use statistics. The core of their argument would affect hundreds of thousands of papers across the entire field of psychology (and others). How valid the authors points are in relation to the Bem study is open to debate.

In the 2nd paper by other authors, it was attempted to replicate their findings. If you read the paper, you can't even tell how closely they followed Bem's original experiment, ie. what software did they use, how did the users install it etc? (and they didn't replicate all of Bem's experiments). One big warning bell is that they used internet participants, which is a shoddy way to do a psi experiment, or most any experiment for that matter.

For those that critique the design: Bem took 9 classic psychological experiments that the field is extremely familiar with and reversed them. Designing a good psi-experiment is incredibly hard and a lot more thought and scrutiny than the average experiment. Using classic experiments makes a great deal of sense.

@araneae: Welcome to psychology research. Almost all the experiments, findings and studies that make it into journals were paved in copious amounts of (pilot)studies and experiments that yielded no results. Such is the nature of doing research in the field of psychology. Designing a psi experiment that stands up to scrutiny requires even more work, failures etc.

The concept of backward causation has been verified in other fields, like quantum biology and from a physics point of view, it is widely accepted both by theory and empirical study. It's not that big of stretch of the imagination that the most sophisticated organ that we have encountered in the universe (our brain) might be capable of it.

Fact #389: number one reason start ups fail and random critiques are flawed: they're based on relentlessly operating on unproven, unverified assumptions.