ProfessorBainbridge.com

Good PowerPoint Practice

As an inveterate user of PowerPoint in both teaching and and when making academic presentations, I'm always open to ideas for how to make PowerPoint better. I'm not sure I learned anything new from Megan McArdle's post on good PowerPoint practice, but it's a very useful reminder of the basics of a useful PowerPoint presentation. There's still too much bad PowerPoint in the world, so make sure you're at least observing her basic ideas.

Do you hate the new Google Reader as much as I do?

Sarah Perez, amongst countless others:

Former Google Reader Product Manager Brian Shih has posted a scathing, but fairly accurate, review of the update to Google Reader. The update, which removed Reader’s own social sharing features in favor of Google+, was unpopular among Google Reader’s most active users because it destroyed their niche community built up over the years. But in Shih’s opinion, that’s only one of its problems.

Just as bad is the new visual style, he says, referring to the stark, black-and-white user interface Google has been rolling out to all its products in recent weeks. Says Shih: “it’s as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something,”

Regular users of Google Reader will likely cheer upon reading Shih’s critique, which hits the nail right on the head:

...

The second and more obvious change, is that someone took the magic color-removing wand and drenched the whole page in grey. It’s so unbelievably stark, it’s hard to imagine a more desolate experience. Even G+ has blue links for post titles. Blue titles are good enough for Google search. Reader, which is built entirely around posts with titles, does away with this in the name of the almighty grey god.

Sadly, there don't seem to be many viable alternatives.

Brown screws Bainbridge and 20K other Californians

Regular readers will notice a minor design change: All Amazon-related links and ads have been deleted. I'm a longtime Amazon Associate. I never made big bucks at it; in some years, I didn't make enough to even get a 1099 form. It did pay my TypePad fees though.

Unfortunately, in a moronic attempt to raise tax revenues that has predictably backfired, Governor Jerry Brown and the Democrats in Sacramento have forced Amazon to put me out of business:

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law California's tax on Internet sales through affiliate advertising which will immediately cut small-business website revenue 20% to 30%, experts say.

The bill, AB 28X, takes effect immediately. The state Board of Equalization says the tax will raise $200 million a year, but critics claim it will raise nothing because online retailers will end their affiliate programs rather than collect the tax.

Amazon has already emailed its termination of its affiliate advertising program with 25,000 websites. ...

Board of Equalization Member George Runner blasted Brown for signing the law. "Even as Governor Jerry Brown lifted his pen to sign this legislation, thousands of affiliates across California were losing their jobs. The so-called 'Amazon tax' is truly a lose-lose proposition for California. Not only won’t we see the promised revenues, we’ll actually lose income tax revenue as affiliates move to other states."

I won't be moving to another state, but any chance the state had of getting income taxes from my Amazon sales just went out the window, so that's one tax loss they'll suffer, Meanwhile, while Brown and the bill's proponents say the bill will help small local retailers, this is one consumer who's going to go right along doing the vast majority of my shopping at Amazon.

From Wizbang:

This will be a huge blow to bloggers and freelance website owner/managers, who often depend on affiliate programs or click-through advertising as a primary source of the revenue that pays for website hosting and up-keep. 

And when websites start closing down, or when their owners dissolve their California companies and file for business incorporation in other states, the Mainstream media will once again be stumped by the UNEXPECTED failure of this bill to raise even a fraction of the revenue that was originally projected.

It has been said that insanity is repeating the same failures over and over again, hoping to achieve a different result.  I think we can now safely say (as if we hadn't suspected all along) that the government of California is truly insane.

Yep.

And from Walter Jacobson:

This is why Obama will not see the trillion dollars in new taxes he wants, even if such legislation were passed.  People change their business and personal practices once taxes reach a tipping point.

This why we can’t tax our way to reducing the deficit.  We can control spending, but we cannot control revenue because we cannot control people.

Yep, again.

Research note organizer software bleg

I am starting a very large project that is going to entail generating lots of research notes. In the old days, of course, I would have used 3 x 5 index cards that I could sort into a logical sequence. I'm looking for software that would do pretty much the same thing.

I want to do research and enter research notes (in length from 1 sentence to 4 paragraphs per note) into the software.  For each note, I want to assign it several topics, such as "china" and "international trade" and "currencies" along with a date.  Then I want to be able to select a topic and view all the notes that are associated with this topic in order of date.  But, then later, I also want each individual note to be organizable into my paper flow but still linked to the reference they are from.

I've tried mind mapping but my brain just doesn't seem to work that way.

Any suggestions?

iPad improves corporate governance

BNA reports:

The iPad's user-friendly features have increased directors' and executives' interest in electronic board portals as a way to facilitate communication among members of a company's senior leadership team. Many companies have found that the iPad's usability, portability, and the minimal training it requires makes it an ideal tool for providing access to an electronic board book.

Some board members who in the past preferred traditional paper board books have now welcomed the iPad as a way to access an electronic board book.  ...

Joseph Babtisa, President and CEO of Mechanics Cooperative Bank and a current user of a board portal system provided by Director Access, told BNA March 30 that board members at his company who were uncertain about using board portals, or did not want to use a laptop to access an electronic board book, were receptive to using an iPad because of its user-friendly features. Babtisa indicated that the transition to the iPad at his company has “been a positive experience, even for those initially hesitant.”

[Joe Ruck, the CEO of BoardVantage, a board portal provider, told BNA March 29 that] the following scenario is a common use of the board portal: during a board meeting, the board book is projected on a large screen, while directors have access to the board book and their personal notes on their iPads. Ruck noted that although iPads are becoming the go-to device to access board portals, directors can still access board portals using a laptop. In other words, once a company decides to use a board portal, directors can choose what device they use to access the electronic board book. According to Ruck, once board members begin accessing board portals using an iPad, companies usually transition fully away from using paper board materials within a year. The iPad's graphics and other capabilities allow companies using BoardVantage's portal to give board members access to all information relating to the board in one place, including logistical information about meetings, past board documents, and other more advanced communication features.

Directors can also use a board portal to vote and take action by unanimous consent by using an electronic signature and verification process. The method of approval, signature authentication, and vote-counting varies depending on the particular board portal vendor. Board portals can also help companies meet regulatory requirements, with features including electronic paper trails and record retention features.

The iPad. The wonder tool.

The only programs I have trouble with on my Mac...

... are made by Microsoft. MS Word for Mac is particularly prone to freezes. Even in the wonderful world of Apple, the evil Bill Gates still manages to make my life complicated.

FedEx Office Print Online SUCKS

I've got a 400 page document that I wanted printed on 3-hole pre-punched paper. Since I'm working at home, I thought it would be easy to print it using FedEx Office online printing and pick it up at my local FedEx office instead of schlepping all the way down to my office at UCLA. WRONG.

Instead of printing at my local FedEx/Kinkos store, their automated system decided to print it at a store in Poway California. Approximately 100 miles--and a 3 to 4 hour drive in traffic--from my house.

Then I call Federal Express customer service and get some moron [excised] who, as near as I can tell, kept asking for the tracking number on my package! Where did they hire this guy? [Excised]  When my repeated efforts at basic communication failed, I gave it up as a bad job. I'll just print the damned thing at work on Monday.

One thing's for damned sure. I'm never using Federal Express Office online printing again.

Update: I contacted Fed Ex Office via their online email. Here's the unedited response:

Thank you for contacting us.

Due to the fact that product/service availability and pricing vary from location to location, we ask that you contact your local store for more information. To find the closest FedEx Office location to you, please visit our website at http://www.fedex.com/us/office/ to access our homepage. You may then "Find a FedEx Location" on the bottom-right of the page. If you do not have a zip code you can click on the "advanced search options" link and search by city and state.

You may also find your nearest location by calling our 24-hour Hotline at 800 463 3339 (press 64 or say FedEx Office Services).

Sincerely,

Gloria
FedEx Office Customer Relations

This is customer service? I bet it's just an automated response. Total bullshit.

So what have we learned? Federal Express Office's customer service sucks just as badly as their online printing service.

Update: Score one for social networking. Although neither a phone call nor 2 emails elicited any help, blasting this post all over Twitter did. So thanks to FedEx for stepping up to the plate and making it right. Update post here.

Update: Apparently, some folks thought the excised comments were racially insensitive. I don't see it myself, but since I don't want to offend readers unnecessarily, I've struck the offending passages and offer my apologies.

Stross on iPad 2

SF writer Charles Stross weighs in on the new iPad:

Firstly, there's nothing revolutionary here — but a lot of minor irritants in the first generation iPad have been sanded smooth. It's a bit lighter, and now weighs as much as a 300-page hardcover novel: that's surprisingly important, as the predecessor weighed about as much as a giant doorstep book, and was just too damn heavy to hold in your hand for lengthy periods. They've replaced the inadequate old book-style case (a dirt magnet with sharp edges and a lid that flopped open, incompatible with docks — including the keyboard dock) with a genuinely elegant cover system held in place by magnets. And they've bumped the CPU and GPU performance significantly: no hardware teardowns yet, but it looks like they've gone from a single-core ARM Cortex A8 with 256Mb of RAM and a PowerVR SGX 535 GPU (same performance as the Intel GMA500, if I remember correctly) with a dual-core ARM Cortex A9, an unknown amount of RAM (probably 512Mb), and a GPU that's claimed to provide nine times the rendering throughput. That's going to make it a much snappier machine in everyday use.

Secondly, it's all about the hardware/software synergy.

For starters, iOS 4.3 uses a faster Javascript renderer — double the speed on the same hardware. But that's trivial. Every new feature of the iPad 2 seems linked to a piece of software that makes use of it....

There's no one thing about the iPad 2 that makes it a must-have upgrade over the iPad 1, but the sum of the parts offers a whole slew of benefits. Apple are going to sell a freightload of these things. And then in 6 or 12 months (once they can get part yields they can sell at an existing marketing price point rather than for $BIGNUM) they're going to roll out the iPad 3 with a quadrupled pixel-count and force everyone to upgrade again.

In the last week I used my iPad to: Watch QI on Youtube. Watch TV shows, movies, and music videos from my iTunes library. Online banking. Online shopping. Web access. WSJ. BBC. Dinner reservations over Open Table. Deer Hunter. Online poker. Document access via Dropbox. Document editing via Quick Office. IMDB. Twitter and Facebook. Online cribbage. Paypal transfer. NY Times crossword. Listed to Sirius radio. Looked stuff up on Wikipedia. Blogged. Played around with a mind map. And, oh yes, read a couple of books. It's become an essential gadget. A lighter, faster one with better hardware/software integration will be well worth it. Even if I do have to upgrade next year.

Looking for advice on accessing work documents via my iPad

I'm going to be traveling a lot this spring (grumble, grumble) and I'm planning on taking my iPad instead of a laptop on some of the trips. This poses the question of how to easily access my work files using an iPad. Unfortunately, I don't have room on my iPad for all the files and, of course, there's the little problem of not having a useful file manager. (BTW, any advice on choosing a file manager app?)

I'm guessing the easiest thing to do would be to open a Dropbox account, sync my work files with Dropbox, and use the Dropbox app to access the files I need on the road. I understand you can download the files to edit on your iPad although not upload them back to Dropbox. Right? In any case, I'm open to alternate suggestions.

On a related note, I've been told that TSA has changed its policy and is now making people remove the iPad from their briefcase when going through security. True?

And, yes, for those who know me well, I am dreading going back on the road. I hate flying. I hate hotels. It's going to suck.

Thanks.

Tweety Got $

Report:

Twitter has completed its latest round of funding-$200 million at a $3.7 billion valuation

How on earth is Twitter worth $3.7 billion? On around $50 million in revenue? Even if every dollar of revenue went into earnings that would still be a P/E ratio of 74!

It's like a flashback to the dotcom bubble. Revenue? we don't need no stinking revenue!

"Welcome To The Future, Where The Stars Belong To Corporations"

Remember when Star Trek TNG wanted us to believe that the economy of the future had transcended capitalism? In fact, as io9 concedes, the future of space belongs to the corporation. Just as the early colonies were chartered companies and companies like the East India Company ruled trade in the early modern period, so too it may be that space travel and exploitation will be the province of multinationals (or, should I say, multiplanetarys (sp?)).

The should not surprise us. “The limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modern times... Even steam and electricity are far less important than the limited liability corporation, and they would be reduced to comparative impotence without it.” -- Nicholas Murray Butler

Curiously, however, science fiction almost never deals with a future in which corporations are the dominant players in space. And the few exceptions almost always turn the corporation into the evil antagonist. See, e.g., this list of the 15 most evil corporations in science fiction. Tellingly, there is no comparable list of the most beneficial SF corporations. Where are the SF versions of Ben & Jerry's (if super premium ice cream served up by sanctimonious left liberals is your idea of a "good" corporation)? Other than in Jerry Pournelle's Falkenberg series, where are the SF versions of Blackwater (if mercenary private military companies are your idea of a "good" coirporation)?

Why is there no SF whose author seems to have read and understood even so basic a work as Micklethwait and Wooldrige's The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea? If one had, s/he would know that "Companies were behind the slave trade, opium and imperialism, and the British East India Company ruled the subcontinent with its standing army of native troops, outmanning the British army two to one." And s/he would know that source material for an interstellar future ruled by corporations thus lies readily to hand. Better yet, s/he might come to realize that "for all the change companies have engendered over time, their force has been for an aggregate good."

So what's the problem? Is it that most SF writers are naive liberals, like Gene Roddenberry seems to have been?

If one looks closely at “Star Trek,” Gene Roddenberry’s United Nations-based concept of the “Federation” and the military life of his space travelers, one concludes that he adhered strongly to the fanciful ideas of utopian socialism. Like the socialists who preceded him, he favored large-scale blocks of control instead of small political bodies or individual autonomy. He rejected private property and market exchange, believing that man would “grow out” of those childish idiosyncrasies. He embraced a paternalistic view of the future that would inevitably lead to depleted resources, impoverishment, and economic stagnation, not a galaxy-hopping culture that found adventure at every turn. -- Gardner Goldsmith

Or were most SF writers too hungover (or baked) in college to get up in time for Econ 101? (Do people still say baked?)

Before actually coming up with a viable theory, however, I suppose I'll have to go brush up on Larry Ribstein's theories about why artists hate business. But I may be back.

Update: In response to some of the comments, bear in mind that I'm not saying there are no corporations in SF. I'm saying that where they appear, they are almost always the bad guys. So "CHOAM holdings" doesn't count. Neither do the corporations in films like "Alien, Outland, Rollerball (in that the world is run by utilities), and of course Avatar." Gawd help us Avatar doesn't count. Vile piece of shit.

Works like Charlie Stross' Clan Corporate series or Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League don't really count, because they're really about merchants -- not companies.

 

Tweeting

If you'be been paying attention to the Twitter feed widget in the side bar, you'll notice that I'm increasingly using Twitter to post short notes on a bunch of stuff that didn't seem blogworthy. Admittedly, whether something makes it onto the blog or goes on Twitter is somewhat arbitrary and mood dependent, but for those who want the complete PB.com experience, you may want to follow me on Twitter.

Here's my Tweet Cloud to give you a sample of what I'm tweeting about:

 

Apple's next steps

Charles Stross speculates on Apple's next moves. He anticipates a beefed up iPad and a 7-inch iPad.

As for me, would I buy a 7" iPad?

Well, the full-sized first-gen iPad is the best ebook reader I've ever owned — except that it's heavy. With a case on, it weighs 50% more than a 400 page hardback. What I'd kill for would be much the same guts, squished into a case the size of the Sony Pocket Reader or, at most, the basic Amazon Kindle, at the weight of a paperback (250-400 grams). If you want an ebook platform the regular iPad is comparable to the Kindle DX; however, the iPhone/iPod touch is too small. The current iPad requires a shoulder bag or backpack. A 7" iPad, in contrast, would stick to my pocket like glue, everywhere I go. I'd buy the bottom end model with 8Gb or 16Gb of FLASH and no SIM slot, and I'd use it as an app platform (games and information) and ebook reader.

In contrast, I plan to upgrade to an iPhone 4 and iPad 2.0 when the latter comes out. I use the iPad as an e-reader, but that's probably only 10% of the time. As a replacement for a laptop for email, blogging, web surfing, and so on, the bigger screen (and my aging eyes) and virtual keyboard will be much more useful than a 7-inch version.

The interesting question is whether I'll talk myself into thinking I also need a 7-inch iPad to complete the collection. What would it offer (besides a lighter e-book reader) that the iPhone and iPad don't?

Top 10 Economists on Twitter

Oddly enough, I didn't make the list. But a bunch of people I follow did. I especially like Tyler Cowen and David Wessel.

Tweet, tweet

I've broken down and joined Twitter. Why? Mainly because I'm big fan of the LA gourmet food truck movement and Twitter is the best way to keep track of these mobile feasts.

I'm not 100% sure what else I'm going to use Twitter to do, so I'd welcome constructive suggestions.

There's a widget in the sidebar that links to my most recent tweets. If you want to follow my tweets on Twitter itself, you can do so here.