Capitalogix

Weekend Links

Hillary Clinton may have to deal with more fall-out from her deleted e-mail fiasco.

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• The Economist Explains: The End of Moore's Law. (Economist)

• Big Data Explained in Less Than 2 Minutes - To Absolutely Anyone. (DSC)

• A Preliminary Taxonomy of the Voices Inside Your Head. (Digest)

• Disney’s Research Lab Figures Out How To Put Words In Your Mouth. (TechCrunch)

• 'What I Would Tell My 20-Year-Old Self'.  (Fortune)

 

Trading Links:

• Tech Boom 2015: What's Driving Investor Insanity? (Forbes)

• This Is Your Brain on Money: How Investors Trip Themselves Up. (WSJ)

• These 2 Simple Slides Show Just How Hot FinTech Is Right Now. (BizInsider)

• Soros Says China Is Major Risk For World War 3. (ValueWatch)

• China’s Yuan Has ‘Long March’ To Reserve-Currency Status. (MarketWatch)

How Not to Exercise - Video

Sometimes just knowing what you want to do is not enough.

Spending time and energy doing the wrong thing doesn't necessarily take you in the direction of your desired results.

Watch this video of people misusing their exercise equipment.  It's pretty funny.

 

 via JuJitsu Times.

You get the point.

The Dangers of Selfie Sticks - PSA Parody

This PSA parody warns people to stop abusing their selfie sticks.

Apparently, self-obsessed people will go to any lengths to top other selfie addicts. This results in longer selfie sticks, and increasingly dangerous situations. 

 

 

via YouTube.

The video ends by asking viewers to “please selfie responsibly,” an aptly-timed message considering Disney World’s recent ban on selfie sticks at the theme park.

This social commentary is a cleverly disguised Pizza Hut ad.

A Different Look at Things

This video was taken at the SXSW conference.  While it seems a little silly, the video illustrates an interesting point.

 

 

via TimeSlice Films, pioneers in multi-camera array imaging.

 

Perspective is important. 

Being able to see the 'invisible' makes the 'impossible' possible

 

via Flug.

New technology seems like magic until you understand how it is done.

What Is The Real Value Of A Dollar? The Answer Might Freak You Out.

You've probably seen one of James Schamus' movies. The former CEO of Focus Features was the screenwriter for The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger - Hidden Dragon, and producer for Brokeback Mountain and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Schamus recently took part in a new series, We the Economy (which was produced by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock).  The series was designed to raise awareness and understanding about the mechanics of the US economy.

The video, below, sets out to address the question: "What is the real value of a dollar?"  The answer, as Schamus puts it, is going to "freak you out."

 

 

via YouTube.

Click here for the second part of the film.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading

Bad Lip Reading pours its talents on into the mouths of unsuspecting football players, just in time for the Pro Bowl and  Super Bowl.

 

 

 

via YouTube.

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• Google's Larry Page: The Most Ambitious CEO in the Universe. (Fortune)
• Decrypting Google: Examining the Growing Giant's Business Methods. (Economist)
• 25 most commonly used password list 2014. (Visual.ly)
• 10 Fad Diets, Debunked. (Io9)
• Woman Sends Bank Angry Letter After They Bounced Her Check. This Is Gold. (Tickld)

 

Trading Links:

• The Best and Worst Hedge Funds of 2014 - and Everyone In-Between. (ZeroHedge)
• Top 5 Chinese Trends That Will Shape The Global Economy in 2015. (GeekTime)
• Top 10 Trading Movies. (Futures Mag)
• A Venture Capitalist's Five Predictions for 2015. (Fortune)
• 3 Reasons Why Legal Marijuana is Happening Now. (Wall Street Cheat Sheet)

What’s Going On - Playing For Change [Music Video]

Here is a different take on Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Going On”.

It is a "Song Around The World" recording by Playing For Change.

It starts with an acoustic guitar in Africa, adds a drummer in Los Angeles. Next comes the electric guitar and bass on the streets of Chicago and strings in Serbia.  You get the picture ...

Now listen to the music.

 

 

 

Years in the making, minutes to watch. Very cool.

This Song Around The World is featured on PFC3. The album features 185 musicians from 31 countries.

88

Carrot: A Pitch-Perfect Satire of the Tech Industry

This comedy short parodies the type of announcements made by seemingly every start-up in America.

 

It is not hawking a watch or a pair of glasses .... Rather, it is pitching the edible root:

"It's not just a vegetable. It's what a vegetable should be."

 

Well done and funny.  Worth a quick view.

 

 

 

via Introducing Carrot.

 

Wisdom in the Age of Information: The Future of Story-Telling

“We live in a world awash of information, but we seem to face a growing scarcity of wisdom,” states Maria Popova, Founder of the website Brain Pickings.

She believes that stories—in the broadest sense of the word—shape the meaning and momentum of everyday life.

 

 

 via YouTube.

Stories will never die, but the ways we tell them are changing.

Interesting.

What It Is Like to Prepare to Speak at a TEDx Conference (Part 2)

To use an athletic analogy, a normal speech and a TED Talk are totally different events (like a sprint vs the decathlon).  It takes a surprisingly different set of skills and type of preparation to perform well.

I've given hundreds of presentations, and don't normally stress about them.  I did for this one.

 

  
In most of my talks, there is very little "set in stone" to memorize.  I tend to have a main topic (or theme), and each slide serves like a module ... and I think, talk, interact, and improvise throughout the framework.

This works well for me because I tend to think in anecdotes that branch out from the main theme. That may be a great skill to have, but it's not one that helps you write a good TED Talk.

Why?  Because, in contrast, a TED Talk is really about "one idea worth sharing".  

In many respects, it's much harder to write and deliver a good 10 minutes about one idea, than it is to prepare to talk about a much broader topic for one hour.

 

My wife, son, and me at the TEDx Plano event

 

The TEDx committee created a sense of formality with stringent standards and deadlines.  My guess is that, during the planning and rehearsal  process, they wanted uncomfortable speakers to provoke better speeches.

As a result, I prepared (and threw away) four separate talks before coming up with something that felt right and flowed properly.

Here are some bullet points that highlight lessons learned.

• One of my early listeners coached me that the trick to a good TED Talk is that it is not about what you say, but rather about what they feel. In other words, for a TED Talk, evaluate the story and the particular wording choices based on the emotions they elicit in listeners.
• One of the best ways to get a point across emotionally is to tell a story.  And, if I couldn't remember it easily, it probably wasn't a story.
• The speech committee and several early listeners strongly encouraged me to go with as few slides as possible. I started with 15 ... I got it down to six  ... and I ended up with two (relying, instead, on the performance and connection rather than images and words).
• They encouraged me to take almost everything about business (in general) or my business (specifically) out of the talk.
• In fact, they kept encouraging me to make it simpler and more basic on almost every level. "Why did you say that?" I would answer; and they would say "Then say that."

I didn't realize how hard it was to make something simple.

The video should be ready next week.

 

EDIT: Here it is:

Related articles

How to Create and Deliver a TED talk

How to prepare and deliver a TEDx talk

What It Is Like to Prepare to Speak at a TEDx Conference (Part 1)