This book describes a revolutionary —but now fully accepted— approach to probability and statistics. Monte Carlo resampling simulation takes the mumbo-jumbo out of statistics and enables even beginning students to understand completely everything that is done.
— from books intro
Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail, has published a new book that looks at something of interest to Consumerist: the trend of content and services to slide toward free, especially in the digital world. It's pretty light reading and an interesting look at economics in the digital marketplace in particular, and for now, at least, it's available in multiple formats for free.
— from consumerist
People need uninterrupted time to get things done
37signals is spread out over four cities and eight time zones. From Provo, Utah to Copenhagen, Denmark, the five of us are eight hours apart. One positive side effect of this eight hour difference is alone time.
There are only about 4-5 hours during the day that we're all up and working together. At other times, the us team is sleeping while David, who's in Denmark, is working. The rest of the time, we're working while David is sleeping. This gives us about half of the day together and the other half alone.
Guess which part of the day we get the most work done? The alone part. It's not that surprising really. Many people prefer to work either early in the morning or late at night — times when they're not being bothered.
When you have a long stretch when you aren't bothered, you can get in the zone. The zone is when you are most productive. It's when you don't have to mindshift between various tasks. It's when you aren't interrupted to answer a question or look up something or send an email or answer an im. The alone zone is where real progress is made.
from: 37 signals - getting real
Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that's not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn't).
Getting Real is staying small and being agile.
Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change.
Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.
Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don't.
"With the countless distractions that come from every corner of modern life, it’s amazing that we’re ever able to accomplish anything. The Power of Less demonstrates how to streamline your life by identifying the essential and eliminating the unnecessary — freeing you from everyday clutter and allowing you to focus on accomplishing the goals that can change your life for the better."Thanks José Santos, for the suggestion.
