Nilesh Babu

10 things to learn from the almighty WWW today:

Searching for the Why of Buy – Los Angeles Times


Psychologists and economists are using sophisticated brain scanners to tease apart the automatic judgments that dart below the surface of awareness.

They seek to understand the cellular sweetness of rewards and the biology of brand consciousness. In the process, they are gleaning hints as to how our synapses might be manipulated to boost sales, generate fads or even win votes for political candidates.

They have glimpsed how the brain assembles belief.

The why of buy is a trillion-dollar question.

By one estimate, 700 new products are introduced every day. Last year, 26,893 new food and household products materialized on store shelves around the world, including 115 deodorants, 187 breakfast cereals and 303 women's fragrances. In all, 2 million brands vie for attention.

Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses – Advertising Age – Digital


Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that's hoping to go national — Mark Cuban is a backer — has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day's business.

"Every phone call was tracked, every order was measured by where it came from, and it told us very quickly that Twitter is useful," said Jeff Leach, the restaurant's co-founder. "Sure, there's the brand marketing and getting-to-know-you stuff. … But we wanted to know: Can it make the cash register ring?"

Why People Won't Pay for Online News the Way They Pay for HBO


Here's why cable and satellite subscriptions aren't a good model for newspapers.

In the first place, cable and TV offered something better than broadcast TV — much better. Their packages included perfect reception; many more channels, some with no commercials, mostly unavailable any other way; and types of programming you couldn't get otherwise, i.e., shows with "adult" language and situations. In the second place, cable and satellite were optional products people could buy to enhance their programming.

Newspapers will be banding together, on the other hand, to take back certain content people already view on the web free. And for what? International news, sports coverage, city-council meetings already attended by bloggers? That's not necessarily comparable to "The Sopranos," live out-of-town sports, recently released movies and, well, nudity. Sorry to say.

The Rise Of Social Distribution Networks


Over the past year there has been a rapid shift in social distribution online. I believe this evolution represents an important change in how people find and use things online.

At betaworks I am seeing some of our companies get 15-20% of daily traffic via social distribution — and the percentage is growing. (Full disclosure: Betaworks is an investor in Twitter and other social distribution companies.) This post outlines some of the aspects of this shift that I think are most interesting.

Distribution is one of the oldest parts of the media business. Content is assumed to be king so long as you control the distribution flow to that content. From newspapers to NewsCorp companies have understand this model well. Yet this model has never suited the Internet very well. From the closed network ISP’s to Netcenter. Pathfinder to Active desktop, Excite Lycos, Pointcast to the Network computer.

Gizmodo – How To Install Windows 7 On Almost Any Netbook – Windows 7 netbook installation


Windows 7 is free for now, and works extremely well on netbooks. That said, installing the OS on these tiny laptops—especially low-end models—can be daunting. Here's how to do it, the easy way:

If the Release Candidate is any indication (and it should be), then Windows 7 will be a nice upgrade for any Windows user. The new OS, however, is a huge step up for netbook users. Vista is notoriously poorly suited to netbooks; a buggy resource hog that subjects its users to incessant dialog boxes and requires far too many clicks to perform basic tasks, it's kind of a nightmare to use on a 9-inch laptop with a 1.5-inch trackpad.

How Executives Should be Using Social Media – BusinessWeek


How smart companies are using Twitter and Facebook—and what's next on the horizon

How To Sniff Out A Liar – Forbes.com


There are plenty of dangerously skilled liars–and not just the Bernie Madoffs and Jeffrey Skillings of the world. Indeed, under the right (or wrong) circumstances, we're all guilty fibbers.

According to an oft-cited 1996 University of Virginia study led by psychologist Bella DePaulo, lying is part of the human condition. Over the course of one week, DePaulo and her colleagues asked 147 participants, aged 18 to 71, to record in a diary all of their social interactions and all of the lies they told during them. On average, each person lied just over 10 times, and only seven participants claimed to have been completely honest.

To be fair, most of the time we're just trying to be nice. (When your wife asks if you enjoyed the dinner she cooked, most husbands who know what's good for them say, "It was delicious.") Such "false positive" lies are delivered 10 to 20 times more often than spurious denials of culpability, according to DePaulo's research.

Financial and business Wi-Fi easy to crack or non-existent – Security


A recent study by wireless security vendor AirTight Networks, conducted by researchers doing "war walks" in the financial districts of seven international cities (Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Wilmington) from February through April of 2009, has discovered that wireless networks in those financial districts are wide open and overexposed.

To the point, the overall data showed that 57 percent of the wireless networks detected were still using WEP encryption as a form of security or, in some cases, they were simply open with no security at all. During the five minute scans used during the survey, many of the open networks were linked to internal networks and resources.

Gizmodo – How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks – Steal moon rocks


In 2002, rogue NASA interns stole millions of dollars in moon rocks. This is the untold story of how they did it.

Building 31 North's white halls are empty, because it is the middle of the night. NASA interns Thad Roberts and Tiffany duck inside a bathroom, and tear off their clothing. Then they change into the contents of their duffel bags—2mm thick neoprene bodysuits. Like in a bad movie, the suits will help Thad and Tiffany avoid heat sensors armed to feel out threatening climate changes inside a vault. The adrenaline, their attraction, the smell of rubber suits and the fear of failure is almost overwhelming. After pulling on the thermally shielded gear, Tiffany and Thad step back into the corridor, moving toward the turnstile lock that guards their target: NASA's prized stash of moon rocks.

Intelligence And Physical Attractiveness Both Impact Income


People looking for a good job at a good salary could find their intelligence may not be the only trait that puts them at the top of the pay scale, according to researchers. A new study finds attractiveness, along with confidence, may help job-seekers stand out to employers.

"Little is known about why there are income disparities between the good-looking and the not-so-good-looking," said the study's lead author, Timothy Judge, PhD, of the University of Florida. "We've found that, even accounting for intelligence, a person's feeling of self-worth is enhanced by how attractive they are and this, in turn, results in higher pay."

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