Archive for the 'Wow!' Category
Paying Employees to Quit
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Stumbled upon this discovery on Harvard Business Publishing mentioning how Zappos, an internet shoe retailer (on course to exceed $1billion in annual revenues), has a very unique method of retaining committed staff - they pay their newly-hired staff $1000 to quit:
After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!
Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)
Wow. I’ve not dealt with Zappos personally - never bought or returned any shoes from them. But apparently the customer service are legendary. I guess this eccentric strategy (does eccentric have to be opposite of logical? Because if the numbers are balanced, this strategy seems really logical too) was one of the factors that helped them achieve this level of service.
I guess if it’s not already in every business case study textbook, it’d soon be!
Using Photoshop as Measuring Tool
We all know how powerful and you can say essential Photoshop is to a designer - It’s virtually the bedrock program for any designers. From touching up photos to creating montages to making posters, Photoshop has embedded itself firmly into the toolbox of virtually any designer.
But what else can Photoshop do besides arts/design related stuff? For instance, can it do math and scientific measurements? Jacks of Science finds that there are some functions in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended that you can take advantage of - in particular the ‘Analysis’ menu - to go about some research problems that could otherwise be much more tedious:
Can you determine the phase of each moon based on this picture?
Turns out you can approximate very accurately - by using the Magic Wand to select a single instance of the moon, and then ‘Record Observations’ under the ‘Analysis’ menu, you get a rich panel of information, including “Circularity” (Circularity measures how circular something is. A value of 1.00 indicates a perfect sphere). By combining the moon’s circularity with the knowledge that there are 30 days between each full moon, you can estimate at which phase your moon is in!
Now, for those of you who like a challenge: how do you know how many green M&Ms are there in this picture?
Answer, and quite a few more of such examples, over at Jacks of Science.
I love the World!
A very cool spot from Discovery Channel - makes you go all mushy inside, be amazed and rekindles the love for the world’s wonders and miracles…
Alphabet Book
This simply amazing book by book and graphic designer Marion Bataille floored me - it’s really delightful to watch how those 3D alphabets pop up, morph into the next, etc. - it’s like watching a live magic show:
From the lenticular cover that changes with the angle of your hands, all the way to the Z, ABC3D is as much a work of art as it is a pop-up book. Each of the 26 dimensional letters move and change before your eyes. C turns into D with a snap. M stands at attention. X becomes Y with a flick of the wrist. And then there’s U… Boldly conceived and brilliantly executed with a striking black, red, and white palette, this is a book that readers and art lovers of all ages will treasure for years to come.
You can pre-order it on Amazon here - it’s only $19.95! On my wish list it goes!
Home Virtual Reality Display
Check this out! Jonny Lee, a PhD candidate in Carnegie-Mellon turned a standard flat-screen television into an immersive 3D environment not unlike those you see in the 3D cinemas or those dorky ‘immersive-reality’ goggles, all by cleverly hacking readily available Wii parts and custom software. This seems to be a proof-of-concept, showing that it is indeed not too difficult to create an immersive environment at home. The advantage of this over the traditional visor-like implementation is of course, not having to encumber the user (and the product package) to have to wear a screen on the head. This could mean it’s much lighter, easier, comfortable and certainly cheaper - all that needs to change is pretty much just the software (the hardware is almost insignificant in terms of part costs).
You can already think of the gaming possibilities (I’d drool at a first-person-shooter game with something like this…). This would definitely be a breakthrough - in breaking the fourth wall. Imagine a Playstation 4 with impeccable graphics and this motion-sensing, immersive, spatial reality.
Of course there are some limitations as well - with this configuration the virtual reality can only work for 1 person. It is also somewhat different from the traditional VR-goggle implementation in terms of experience, I think. With the goggles, you can turn your head around and the virtual world follows through. With this hack, if you turn your head, the TV still remains at where it is (though the screen changes) - so chances are you’d be staring at your TV rack or speakers, and this would jolt you out of your virtual world. In other words, the former can accommodate rotation, while the latter is more apt for translation-in-space motions (with your eyes still constantly oriented towards the screen).
For more information, head here.
Musical Windows
What one man can do with those pesky little .wav files…long live the creatives!
(The entire musical score is written based on the sounds found on Windows XP and 98.)
Insane Street Football
Sometime back, the director/comedian Stephen Chow made a movie called Shaolin Soccer - in which crazily exaggerated football skills were derived from Shaolin Kungfu. Well, it turns out that it may not really be that far from reality - judging from what this clip shows. Amazingly acrobatic moves in capoeira paired with street football - these people are insane!
Bloody Omaha - The Incredible Making-Of
Say you have 3 guys and you give them 4 days to reenact one of the epic battles of mankind - the Omaha landing - what do you think they could come up with? How real can they portray the massive scene with hundreds of soldiers, exploding shells and all? Well if you have an astronomical budget you would be able to churn out something somewhat real - but what if you’re on a practically shoestring budget?
Ultimately and fortunately, there’s no limits for human creativity. Here’s how a few guys did it - it’s not a lame production for sure: it was a part of BBC’s Bloody Omaha documentary series. Extremely impressive - watch on to the end to discover their process and the very impressive end results:
After massive interest on the Internet with this very clever and effective ‘making-of’, the BBC is going to rerun the actual show. This is probably the only ‘behind-the-scenes’ that can rally and compel a great desire to watch the actual show itself.
Amazing Body Paint Art
There are body paints (the stuff we douse on ourselves on Halloweens or on particularly patriotic occasions), and then there are body paints - the stunning pieces of art that artist Kim Joon creates. The human body is sometimes even lost within the picture, as the eyes are drawn by simultaneously intricate and engaging patterns on the skin. He has a lot more work on his site - check it out!
