How to Sleep Less & 'Live More'

I thought I would share something useful I have read with my lovely classmates in this free-style last post for this class. I have read an e-book by Kacper Postawsky titled "Powerful Sleep: How to Sleep Less and Feel Far More Energy than Ever." I have used his techniques and tips for a long time and I can say this guy knows what he's talking about. It's a totally different feeling when you wake up in the early morning very energetic, alert and excited about what this new day has in store for you. On the other hand, it's very depressing, at least for me, to wake up at 2 or 3 PM only to find out that more than half of your day has been nullified, canceled, gone.

I've always wondered why many babies and children sleep for much fewer hours than adults do. And I guess that besides the physiological reasons, kids have such exciting lives to lead that sleeping is so boring for them in comparison to what they can do when they're awake. They have so much to learn and experiment with. New words, or rather, an entire new language, new experiences, new skills. (I'm always in love with the magical moment of a baby's first few walking steps :-). I think everyone's lives should be one of such excitement and vibrancy, but the sad truth is that most adults forgot what it's like to be really alive and have fallen into the day-to-day boring rhythm of urban routine life. Here are some tips from the aforementioned book if you would like to enhance your sleeping system and make room for more waking-life excitement:

• Expose your eye to more indirect sunlight because it increases your alertness and inhibits the secretion of sleep hormones. (That's why we sleep at night and wake up in the morning:-). Open the curtains and don't overwear sunglasses.
  
  
• Take power naps. But make sure you take it at the right time -when you feel really sleepy in the afternoon and avoid late naps as they are night-sleep destroyers- and for the proper duration- the shorter the better. any nap longer than 45 minutes would turn the benefit into harm.
  
  
• Exercise in the morning right after you wake up for at least 15 minutes. When you start to move, it increases your cardiac rhythm and your temperature and slows down melatonin.
  
  
• Drink enough water. Proper hydration makes your sleep a lot more restful and deeper, because, remember?, during sleep all the important immune metabolic activities take place. And it all requires a great amount of water. (Which is why many people wake up thirsty)
  
  
• Make sure you have total darkness in the room your sleeping in.
  
  
• Have fixed rising and sleeping times every day. It programs your body to automatically rise and sleep at those certain times.
  
  
• Find your ideal wake-up time; the time you feel you are most alert you almost get out of bed automatically without any effort (or for some folks, battles). The way you find this time is through trial and error. Keep trying different wake-up times everyday, in 20-minutes variations, until you hit your target.
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  etc

The book is so cool. I recommend it to everyone who is struggling with his/her sleeping schedule.

How Would Web 3.0 Look Like?

Picture taken from www.asiamediasoft.net

With the web 2.0 applications being very well-established with websites like Youtube, Myspace and Facebook, one has to wonder what is the next big thing? If there is gonna be a Web 3.0, what would it look like? From what I read, it seems to me that there is gonna be a huge contrast between the way web 2.0 content is presented and the way web 3.0 content is gonna be.

More free content in 2.0, but less shared content in 3.0. Many issues about privacy in 2.0, but fewer issues in 3.0 since it is expected to have more strict policies and restrictions to quite the huge amount of privacy fears present in nowadays social networking sites. When marketing companies are getting into the picture to try to take advantage of the abundance of personal information available on those sites, users are freaked out and many people actually delete their accounts or never create ones.

The huge openness of the web 2.0 reflected by sharing very personal stories, appointments and media is being ardently questioned by analysts. How far could you go on trusting that what this person is telling you is accurate or just totally made up? No one can tell and it's not very easy to tell. Personally, I don't completely trust the profile unless I personally know the person in real life because, again, there's no way for me to tell. Maybe web 3.0 developers could do something about this .. Who knows?

Digital Convergence, This Era is Yours!

Pictrue taken from http://www.businessinnovationinsider.com/

I wonder if one day, I wake up and all I need to do before I go outside is to push a button for all the morning routines to be performed. Quite a stretched thought, but that's what the "Digital Convergence" trend will lead us to if it continues to go on forever. Digital Convergence is "the technological trend whereby a variety of different digital devices such as televisions, mobile telephones, and now refrigerators are merging into a multi-use communications appliance employing common software to communicate through the Internet" [source]. It's very intriguing that as time passes by more and more functions are performed by fewer and fewer number of devices until we reach the degree that we only need one or two devices to perform most of our daily tasks.

It's like the humorous definition of an expert; "Someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know nothing." Electronic devices are surprisingly becoming experts on serving us! And I think mobile social networking or "Mobile Storytelling" is only one aspect of this huge phenomenon. When someone uses his mobile phone to report something, it's only one use of the multiple converging functions the device is increasingly possessing. Camera, calendar, browser, music player, voice recorder, planner, GPS locator, alarm ... and a phone all in one.

So I have to wonder; would that affect the quality of each individual service or function the mobile phone has as the number increases? In other words, if the number of functions is the denomenator, would that decrease the individual quality of each service? Maybe .. maybe not. I don't know!

Is More Always Better?

Picture take from www.netsnake.com

Since the dawn of the internet, everyone has been flooded with storms of information and hurricanes of irrelevant web content. Yet, it has been looked at positively most of the time. It brings people together; It makes knowledge available to everyone; And it makes the world a small global village. But rarely do people wonder if this overwhelming stream of information is always an advantage.

To me I think it depends on the perspective you're coming from. I think we can rate walks of life in terms of what I'd like to call their "weboresistence" (God bless physics and the abundance of fun terms it supplies ). Politics, in my opinion, would score the highest on this measure. Everyone is using the web to merely affirm their stands and go further down the line of polarization. The net has strengthened the opposition, provided each party with more weapons in its campaign arsenal, and has proven to not have this much of a unifying effect on the field of politics. From this perspective, more information; more tools, did not mean better position at all.

In the field of finance, some research shows that additional trading information does not always mean better decisions and higher returns. The value of the information varies greatly with the nature of its source and content. Even in marketing and advertising, it is known that more exposure, bigger ads and longer videos in social media is only better to a certain extent.

As I said, it depends on where you're coming from. More information is not always something you want to look for.

Blog Your Career Into Existence

Picture taken from http://www.kaushik.net/

I was very happy I had the opportunity to attend the career night the Information Systems department at Kogod held last Thursday. We had great panelists that shared their wonderful experiences with us on how to find our passion within a certain career path and excel at doing it. It was a great event that I benefited from so much. Lots of sweet food, too :-)

One of the things they all emphasized and repeated more than once was to watch what we put out to the cyber world of the internet. "What you publish online is who you are to your employer. If you won't share it publicly, don't upload it electronically." They also said that if you have anything you don't like your potential employer to find out about you, begin the cleaning process immediately because it's not a quick one neither is it easy to completely remove it from the nervous system of the net.

Furthermore, on the positive side, if you want more opportunities and greater career advantage, show your talent online. Display what you're good at on your blogs, your profile, or whatever. If you're a tech savvy and can answer tech questions professionally, use your online activities to show that. If you have an innovative idea or a creative solution, show the world your talent because no one is gonna hire you based on your resume. "The blog is your new resume!"

News Prosumers: Let's Make What We Take

Picture taken from http://www.textually.org/

I remember last year when the bridge in Minneapolis fell apart, my friend who lives in the same state, told me that a very interesting phenomenon took place there. It wasn't only newpapers and TV journalists. Everyone there was taking photos and videos to share with the world. The "citizen media" phenomenon was born (at least in my mind back then :-)).

I think what this means to media companies is that they have to rethink their tradional methods of top-down distribution becuase people who used to be at the consuming end of the channel are now shifting towards to production end. Smart newsmakers can use the eruption of this phenomenon to gain better communication with their customers and increase the shared circle of understanding with this "used-to-be" audience.

The tools are exploding! It's not just blogs and media sharing websites, there are the wikis (from which the most famous user-generated website, wikipedia, emerged) and mashups that take data or services from more than one place and combine them, and much more on its way to see the light. The key is to ride with the wave and understand what's in this inevitable transition.
"Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or a greater Benefit.” ~Napoleon Hill

Not Facing Each Other; An Advantage

I like the idea of looking at being virtually connected rather than being in physical proximity as a boost to the team productivity instead of an obstacle. I've always heard people complain and state "lack of face-to-face" on the disadvantages side, but now more people are recognizing how it can actually help.

What if I personally prefer my desk rather than a round table in a conference room? I'd join a virtual team. What if I hate frequent travelling, the tiresome jet lag effect and the awful airport delays? What if I believe in the "No-Place-Like-Home" philosophy? ... What If? What If? What If? ... All of these are valid reasons to prefer a virtual team over a physical one.

But it's always a matter of weighing pros and cons in a subjective judgement call. What about the time difference? What if the team finds a convenient meeting time to most members, but it's 3:00 am in the morning where I live? How can I -as the group manager- maintain trust between the members? What if I get more motivation from being in a group- physically in a group- rather than being alone with a laptop? ... What if? What if? What if? ... All of these are also valid reasons to prefer a physical team over a virtual one.

As I said, it's a subjective judgement call, I believe.

How Networking Changed My Life ....

picture from www.mysocialnetwork.net

"It's not what you know, it's who you know"

I like this saying very much. Looking back at major events in my life, I can't see any great thing that happened to me happening without knowing someone or being connected in a way or another to someone who helped me climb to a higher level of my life.

The way I got into college; It was the first year our embassy had cultural exchange seats in Kuwait University. I was planning on going home for college, until my dad's friend who works as an administrator in the embassy told my dad they have scholarships in Kuwait University.

The way I got to AU; It was my dear professors who recommended me to this scholarship. I salute these people from the bottom of my heart; these people without whom, I wouldn't be writing this blog post right now.

The way I'm spending my time in the summer break in Virginia; It's because of miss Dorothy; my mentor in KU who is an instructor in The Monroe Institute (a stress management and brainwave technology institute in Virginia). She suggested that I apply for their student scholarship, and I did. Thank you, miss Dorothy. Thank you very much.

I think all the luck I have and all the blessings in my life is totally because of the great people who surround me (physically or even virtually). I could go on for ever, but I think the point is clear.

My warmest gratitude to every person who entered my life. I love you all ...

Go Online? What about my privacy?

Virtual Reality or Split Personality?

"Have you ever been to Hawaii?"
"Yes ... in my Second Life ™"

A funny thought that occured to me after waking up while still in bed thinking about what I read last night about virtual reality. I was thinking, what if people's constructed mental split between their real-life actions and virtual actions start to blur? What are the legal & eniviromental implications, not to mention business and economics? After all, what scientist are discovering in the field of Quantum Physics is pointing very boldly to the fact that what we experience with our senses represents a very tiny portion of reality. The unseen is much much greater than the "seen", according to them.

"Get a Second Life", more than one online article were titled. "What?!" was my reaction. "What about my first life? I'm having difficulties managing stuff in my first life; I'm not sure I want to add a second life now."

"Choose from our list of wide variety of last names", the Second Life registeration page instructed. "What?!" was my reaction again. "Changing my name? .. Now that's worth my meditation time" ;-)

Personally, I love my name, but I think I'm going to leave this post open to the readers' stands on this without me taking a solid position. I'm curious to know what other people think and feel towards a VR vs. SP (the title?) hypothesis and how they perceive it.

The Internet is Killing Our Culture ?!

I must say it's a scary thought with regard to the internet. I always thought of the explosion of the web as a powerful culture-enriching tool to exchange knowledge and expertise. Many metaphysics gurus saw the internet as an inevitable physical expression of the oneness and connectedness of mankind, and so did I. But the issue that this weeks' reading raised in my mind is whether this connectedness is only enriching our repertoire of intellectual resources or is going too far beyond that to the extent at which indviduality and cultural uniquness are melting down.

Personally, I don't think there can be creativity and constructive change without diversity. I'm a strong believer in the saying, "It takes a world of differences to make a difference in our world" Again, the title is a scary thought. Imagine waking up someday only to find that your roommate is a clone of you wearing and looking totally the same. Not only that, but when you go outside, everyone; on the streets, in classes, in the metro, everywhere look the same. How boring & how daunting that is!

My conclusion is that there should be some limits set to the democratization of social media. I was shocked by Wikipedia's founder's disbelief in the intellectual authority of experts. It is those experts who are keeping your encyclopedia sane and nonsense-free. Without respect to their authority, knowledge just becomes sourceless. Let's believe in anything from wherever it comes. It's all connected, you know!

My Blog Circle; A Circle of Cool Bloggers

Hi. I want every one in the world who is reading my blog to know about the other awesome cool bloggers that belong to my blog circle. They are (in order of how I met them):

Stephanie
Evan
Brian
Jessica

Enjoy their creative ideas and thoughts. Have Fun!

What is artificial & what is not?

I know the title could be somewhat unrelated to the business implications of crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence, but I'm a person who likes to have those little ponderings from time to time as a form of mental, internal kind of joy. "Can a machine think?" It's an interesting question that is often quickly answered in negation without proper thiinking and analysis. Regardless of the answer, I think, a more critical point to the issue is: How can we tell? What if the machine CAN think, but we have no way of examining its own kind of thinking? A good answer I came across while looking up AI is the Loebner prize for Turing Test. Turing postulated that if machines can think, then the output of their thoughts should be indistinguishable from those of humans. And so, he suggested that examiners sit on different computers in a lab that are -unkowingly to them- either connected to AI "chat bots" or to human respondants. If an examiner "chats" with a machine and can't tell it's a machine, then Bingo .. that's intelligence; it's not artificial any more.

"What do you think? Can a machine think what a human can think? The answer, I think, if someone thinks what he saw is what a human would think, a machine can think, I think.
If what a machine thinks is not what a human would think, a machine can't think, I think."
I just invented an awkward AI tongue twister! Excuse my internal MOPs (Moments of Pondering) :-)

Technology is getting more personal; or is it?

One thing that intrigues me a lot when it comes to technology and its applications is the following question: Is it creating a more personal interactive experience for us; human beings, or is it separating us more and more everyday? Is it bridging the gap or is it widening it?

It's true that we are now able to connect to a greater number of people, but what looks scary to me is when it starts to substitute face-to-face interaction. One of my friends is on Facebook. What annoys me is that when we have a really fun night; an amusing weekend with lots of pictures; if we just upload the pictures on Facebook and comment on them, that's it! We don't "talk" about it anymore because we have "Facebooked" it !!

This question can be posed in all fields social networking & the internet is applied to. I like to probe the example of e-religion; people gathering online, doing religious rituals, and sometimes having mystical or spiritual experiences. Personally, I can't imagine this replacing the actual physical weekly prayer in a temple, church or a mosque. When I think of it, the word "electronic" comes to me; and I can't get to fit the word "spiritual" with it. It's just sooo .... "electronic" to me ;)

In conclusion, I think that when we speak from a business context, it is more acceptable and it makes more sense since businesses have tended to be very formal & impersonal and technology has allowed them to get closer to their customers. But still, the question is open to debate in many many other areas. Only time would show us the final answer, I guess ;)

Informal Network Diagrams: Are they taking over?

It always amazes me how fast and unexpectedly massive change can be in the field of business. It's a fact that the only constant in this dynamic environment is change, but, to tell the truth, the rate of this change is ever increasing year after year and day after day. What was working yesterday might not work today, and what is working today might not work tomorrow.

The first article I read was the interview with Mr. Cross titled "Connecting to Collaborate", and I was surprised to find out that Organizational charts are insufficient and don't show the whole picture. I mean, academically speaking, we all used to think that an organizational chart is a good method to represent the structure of an organization and show the different ranks within it. However, it turned out that people who are high on the hierarchical structure of the organization are not always the most influential people in the organization. And this is why informal network diagrams have been formulated; it's because "Appearances deceive"; formal hierarchies don't necessarily reflect actual lines of influence. And although these informal networks operate on their own, without the need of any diagrams representing them, presenting a more accurate portrait of the organization helps managers focus on strength points and reallocate weakness points.

When I looked to the sample network diagram in the article, I loved how it is very similar to computer networks, which tells me how generic the term network can be that it can fit as a prefix to so many things (Technological networks, social networks, and even biological & biochemical networks ! ... etc). Everything is constantly interacting with everything; everything matters and there is no "staying the same!" which, again goes back to the principle of constant change.

Picture taken from Economist Magazine (10-18-2007):

The second article I read "Social graph-iti", does not directly refer to the informal network diagrams in a business context, although it reinforces the need for having them for their great value in some forms of marketing. It centers specifically on the role of Facebook and it made me wonder "Yes, it's true that Facebook is now worth billions of dollars. But why? Why is it getting such high valuations? and is that justifiable?" Well, in my opinion, Facebook might be overvalued in the monetary terms, but it is definitely worth a lot more than anyone expected. And the reason for that, I think, is that the person who invented it "Embraced Change"; a concept that has been proven to be a timeless success principle. (The Success Principles by Jack Canfield). The world is becoming a more and more connected world; a little one village, as they say. And the guy who made Facebook was smart enough to identify that change and its great potential in many different fields including business. So he decided to embrace that, and not only did he create a social network (many before him did), but he also opened up gates of collaboration to other fellow developers; something that created a vast amount of unlimited possibilities.

Let The Blogging Begin

Hi everyone,
This is Abdul from the Six Degrees class. I hope you enjoy this class and have lots of fun.
Best of luck to all of you.



On my honor, all posts on this blog are my own