If like me you grew up with the original Star-Trek and following suites, you must have some point thought that the coolest gadget of all time was the famous tricorder. Well a MIT group is bridging the gap between the tricorder and an iPhone with some cool image processing algorithms. See this Eulerian Video Magnification and in particular the movie as you scroll down.
One day this might be the coolest father’s day gadget (or App) 😉
This is not a traditional post with regard to the theme of this blog. Still, I would like to dedicate it to my 13 years old daughter whom today was one of the rare women (adolescent, which in this context is even more important) at her school to underwent the shaved head challenge to help children with cancer and their families.
She has done it for the right reasons and I am very proud of her.
For those who might not have read the first post in this series about the hardware side of things, please have a look: Digital Office I
Here is a list of the main software that I used regularly on the Mac as part of my digital workflow, including links to the most important one:
During a recent group meeting, one of the student was making a comment regarding the document really bad powerpoint by Seth Godin. Her point was how can one impart emotion to a scientific talk. Clearly, when you have 7 or 8 minutes to get to the point it could indeed be difficult to make time for humor…
Yet emotion can still be generated in term of response of the audience to your data, figure or conclusion: raising eyebrows, smiles, figures looking at you making yes (or no) motions. Of course in longer presentation, these could be much more involving.
Here is an example of a great presentation of data by Hans Rosling. He used this technique numerous times but you will get the idea: Hans Rosling’s new insights on poverty | Video on TED.com.
Now, story telling is of course at the heart of what you should be doing. It is sometimes easier said than done (sometimes it works and others it don’t, unfortunately). Again, here is a great link to a talk on story telling and getting the message across on TED: Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks | Video on TED.com.
Hope these inspire you.
Working efficiently in the digital world is not as easy as it sounds, in particular as you get more and more files to deal with. Furthermore, while eliminated paper sounds like an excellent (and green) idea, it is not obvious to fully to eliminate all of it and yet still be productive without putting too much time on the gadgets themselves. I am have been toying with the idea of going fully digital around 2009 by bringing my notebook with me everywhere, including meeting. The truth is that many people around the table find typing and looking at a computer while having a meeting quite impolite. I further find it impractical. However the coming of the iPad change all that. The next few posts will look into the digital workflow I settled in since then.
Ruminating... 