How to Eat Less

Do you finish all of the food on your plate or are you able to stop eating even if there is still food left?  Chances are, many people will not stop eating until all the food is gone no matter how much is on the plate.  This action is logical in some cases.  Many people who grew up during the depression did not know when they would receive their next meal therefore they would eat all the food on their plate.  Other people are members of the Clean Plate Club because as children, their parents spoke of the starving people in other countries.  Luckily, food scarcity is less of a problem these day and restaurants will often serve more food than the average person should eat in a typical sitting.  So why do you still finish all the food even if you know when the next meal is coming from and how do you limit your eating to prevent weight gain?

The answer may lie in a behavioral bias called the Endowment Effect which causes people to place a higher value on things that they posses.  The Endowment Effect states that people will demand more for an object that own than they are willing to pay for that same object.  In other words, if I gave you a mug as a present, you would only be willing to sell that mug for a higher price than you would be willing to buy it for.

In the case of eating, it may be, that people are unwilling to give up the food on their plate because they feel it is theirs even when they know that they should not eat all of the food.

To break this cycle, you need to be willing to give up some food on your plate.  Of course it would be impolite to take food off of your plate and put it someplace else on the table.  However the following plate design would serve a similar purpose.

To eat less, just push some food on your plate into the "For Later" section.

At some point in your meal, simply push some food into the portion of the plate that says “For Later”.  The phrase can be interpreted different ways.  For some people, it could mean that they want to bring the extra food home in a doggy bag for a snack at home.  For others it could mean that the food they do not eat today does not increase their weight later.  Another way to view it is to give your body a chance to digest the food that you are currently eating before eating more.  Often times, the feeling of satiation or fullness takes a while to kick-in after a meal.  Pausing during the meal gives your body time to register the food you have eaten and you will find that you are really not that hungry for the remaining portion.  Either way, by pushing the food away from you, you are overcoming the Endowment Effect thereby gaining control over how much you eat.

The amount of food that you push away is not important.  In the beginning, it feels very strange, but with time, it becomes second nature.  When using this technique, you will find that you leave the table with a feeling of lightness rather than heaviness.  See a related post on ways to make you feel better after eating: http://latentvalue.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-restaurants-can-increase-value-of.html.

By designating a portion of the plate for later, people would more comfortable not eating all of the food on their plate creating a healthier balance between caloric intake and caloric needs.

Note:  There can also be other variations on what is written on the plate.  You could show a cute monsters mouth or say something like “Feed your Willpower”.

Wagon Ruts of the Web

Imagine that Google had discovered the ideal search algorithm and every search returned the best content from the web.  This ideal algorithm would be based on a  larger number of factors including back links, how long people stayed on a page, how long the page has existed and the relevancy of the content.  Under the ideal model, it would seem that each time a page was visited, the page would become even more solidified as the proper results for a particular search term.  This action would be equivalent to creating wagon ruts in the internet.  People continue to travel down the same path and that path becomes self fulfilling forcing people to travel in that path.

An example of wagon ruts worn into rock.

Does search fall into the same trap?

Source: http://www.txaisi.com/Texas_History.html

Unfortunately, while the algorithm was ideal and gave the best results for your search query, it would be very hard for new sites to get a better ranking since rankings would be based partly on historic data.  In some cases, the wagon ruts would be accepteble.  Suppose you searched for "official IRS website".  In this case, the first result should be www.IRS.gov.  However, if you searched for, "favorite song in Canada", you might be taken to a page that lists the most popular songs but would this be really relevant to you?  The context would determine how relevant the results were.  It is very likely, many different people have an opinion about the best song in the country and it is up to the searcher to further sift through the different pages.

It seems then, that search is a mix of exact matches and some not so exact matches.  The results for, "restaurants within 1 block of 1800 Union St" would fall into a wagon rut only changing when a restaurant physically went out of business or a new one opened. However, searches for, "best restaurant within 1 block of 1800 Union St", should return a a more open path result.  The campus map below shows many paths across a campus.  It is very likely, that people often leave the path and look for a direct route that meets their immediate needs.

There are many paths that let you cross this campus.

Source: http://www.ohio.edu/athens/greens/cgreen.html

YouTube shows evidence of wagon ruts.  Here is an example of a search for, "golf swing" taken two days apart.  Are these the absolute best results in the world for golf swing?  The only difference between the two results is the second ad.  The first ad is the same in both results.

YouTube search results on 4/9/12 and 4/10/12.  

The only change is the second add.

When searching YouTube, people are not usually looking for a wagon rut result.  They usually are looking for something new and interesting.  The one exception to this is when people are trying to find the original version of a video that has many parodies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrfUXuBaJ1E&feature=youtube_gdata).

Research has been done that shows that wagon ruts are not only a result of technology but also are the result of social behavior.  In a study titled "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market", http://www.filosofitis.com.ar/archivos/experimentalmarket.pdf  Matthew J. Salganik, Peter Sheridan Dodds and Duncan J. Watts showed that wagon ruts can also be created when people are influenced by other peoples choices.  When people were asked to rank different songs, people gave a higher ranking to songs that other people liked.  This causes some songs to rise to the top of the charts only because they happened to get some sort of initial push.

So how could Google or Bing improve their search results?  To improve the results, search engines should combine a mix of wagon ruts and open paths in their search results.  The wagon ruts would be helpful when people are looking for exact information that has a defined source.  The open paths would be used to introduce new possible results that might meet the users' requirements.  Over time, if the open path results are useful, they would upset the wagon ruts and become wagon ruts themselves.  This continuous testing would allow new ideas to be introduced without creating too much chaos in the results.

By mixing up wagon rut results with open path results, Google would present a broad result set that would help a rational person find the specific information that the person is looking for.

Best Backpacking Stove

Weight, reliability and flame control determine whether people like a stove.  The SVEA 123 and Optimus 111 Hiker stove are all-time favorites for reliability but are often criticized for being heavy.  MSR stoves like the Whisperlight, Dragonfly or XGK are lighter but their large number of moving parts and o-rings leads to constant failures and maintenance in the field.

Here is my recommendation on how to make the lightest most reliable stove. Start with the basic concept of a SVEA 123 using a brass burner, internal wick, self cleaning jet and fuel cap / pump attachment.

Begin by getting rid of the brass windscreen.  Next remove the brass fuel storage / stand.  Instead replace it with a round brass sphere that incorporates the fuel cap.  A sphere will hold more fuel for a smaller amount of material and will sustain greater pressures with thinner metal because of the round shape.  Additionally, if you turn a SVEA 123 over, you will see that the bottom is actually concave to withstand the pressure.  This adds extra weight, and makes the stove bigger for a smaller amount of fuel.

Here is how the guts of my new stove would look.  

Ideal Backpacking Stove

The sphere should hold enough gas for three days of camping.  Ideal for a 2 day weekend trip with one day to spare.  A larger bulb could be screwed on for larger group use.

Now build a lightweight cage around the stove to hold the pots as well as provide a windscreen.  The center stove would be attached to the cage spring like connectors.  That way if the stove assembly was dropped, the outer cage would absorb the shock and the inner stove would be protected.  Add little tabs to the top and the bottom of the cage to provide additional support.  The tabs would fold into the cage when not in use.

Stove with Windscreen and Fill Cap with Schrader valve

The fuel cap / pump attachment / pressure relief valve should have a Schrader bicycle tube inflaetor nozzle.   The pump on an MSR stove is the weakest link and should be eliminated.  By moving to a Schrader valve, you can get the entire bicycle industry to start developing lightweight pumps.  Each pump is interchangeable and the bicycle gear heads will have a field day.  Win / win for both industries.  Don't forget to add a small chain so you do not lose the cap.

The standard way of lighting a SVEA 123 is by holding it with your hands to warm it up until a little gas spills out and then lighting the gas.  In cold weather, you may not want to take your hands out of your gloves to touch a cold metal stove.  This is where the pump comes in handy.  Another alternative is to use a small cup on the end of a little stick.  Unscrew the fuel cap, dip the stick into the gas and then pour it into a small reservoir in the burner head.  Replace the cap, light the fuel and when the stove is hot, turn on the gas.  The cup could be incorporated into the fuel control key to keep from losing it.

By using similar components as a reliable SVEA 123 but incorporating a round gas tank and light weight wind shield, MSR, Primus or Optimus could create a next generation stove that is compact, lightweight and extremely reliable.  The most complicated part, the pump, could be based on the open standard of a Schrader valve allowing a large number of companies to contribute designs.  With this hybrid approach, many complementary companies outside the camping world would support the new design with pumps solidifying the stove as the leader in the industry.

Improving Home Security with your TV

When buglers are deciding what house to rob, one of the critical factors is, "is the owner home?"  When you go on vacation, it is always important to have your neighbors pick up the mail and the newspapers so things do not pile up in front of your house.  People also have lights on timers that turn on at night to make the house lived in.  Unfortunately, setting the lights on timers can be difficult and you have to decide which lights to turn
on.  A bright light only in the front room will still make the house look empty.

TV Light coming from a window

Source: http://faketv.com/

There is one exception to this rule and that is having a single TV on in a room.  Many times when you drive by a house, the entire house will be dark except for the TV light coming from a window.  This usually means someone is watching TV before bedtime.  If a burglar sees the TV light, they will typically move on to the next house.  So how can you take advantage of this fact?

Here is how it would work.  TV manufactures should add a option to the menu that allows the TV to turn on and off for a certain time period each day.  The channel could periodically change. The volume would be set at a level that is a little louder than normal viewing.  If you have dish network or comcast, just leave the reciver box on for your vacation.

When a burgler drives by your home, they would see the lights flickering from the TV and hear the sound and think that someone is home and move on to the next house.  Of course this would not work if your TV is in the front room visible from the street.  It would work better if the TV were in a back room where no one can see who is watching the TV.

By adding a menu option that turns the TV on at specific times during a vacation, TV manufactures can create the illusion that someone is still in the house causing burglars to move to the next house.  This should add no cost to the TV but should provide piece of mind to the owner.

PS. While searching for images for this article, I came across the following company that does this very task expect they sell a stand alone LED device that mimics the TV light in a room.  http://faketv.com/

How to increase bike safety.

The blog Lovely Bicycle has a great article on a concept she calls the Mary Poppins effect http://lovelybike.blogspot.com/2011/01/mary-poppins-effect.html.  The Mary Poppins effect states that drivers will give more room to a young women riding a traditional bike with no helmet and long flowing skirt than to the same rider wearing a helmet, tight clothes on a race oriented bike.  The author developed this concept when she noticed that some drivers treat her differently depending on what she is wearing and what bike she is riding.  Reading the comment section of the blog, you see that several people have also confirmed the effect while.

The Merry Poppins Effect

http://lovelybike.blogspot.com/2011/01/mary-poppins-effect.html

At this point it is difficult to identify which of the factors – gender, attire or bike type have the greatest impact but there is one comment from a man that may be helpful.  He states that he has observed the same effect when he wears a coat that flaps in the wind.  The flapping coat and skirt may cause the bike rider to appear bigger than they actually are causing drivers to give them more room.  Another theory is that drivers fear that the coat or skirt may catch on their car window and they give the biker room out of their own interests.  A third theory states that the flapping causes some confusion and unpredictability.

A road bike however is the exact opposite.  When you see a biker in spandex on a road bike, they ride with precision and consistency.  A driver is more likely to come closer to them because the bike almost appears stationary next to the car.


Another thing to notice is that a road bike has a triangular shape with the thinnest part of the bike in the back and the widest in the front.  Drivers may see the back tire and assume the rest of the bike is the same size.

Top view of a bike.  Notice the bike is thinnest in the back.

http://www.zuckbikes.com/bikesthedon.php

Bike Safe http://bicyclesafe.com/ shows one example of how a rider addresses this problem by using a foam pool toy to show the maximum width of their bike.

The noodle is the same size as the widest part of the bike.

http://bicyclesafe.com/

If there truly is a Mary Poppins Effect, how can that concept be used to improve bike safety?

The first method is to modify bike clothes.  One way to do this is to add small ribbons to the sleaves of a bike jersey.  As the rider pedals, the ribbons would dance in the air and create a confusing image that should help create the Mary Poppins effect. 

Streamers create confusion causing drivers to give more room.

http://mdweightmanagementsolutions.com/2010/07/26/how-to-improve-your-athletic-performance/

For road racers like the one above, this ribbon would have to be small to help reduce aerodynamic drag.  One option for bike commuters who do not wear tight fitting clothes would be to have a coat that has tails that  are designed to flap in the wind.  Remember the goal is to create confusion and make the rider look like they take up more space.  Betabrand http://www.betabrand.com/ is one company that could help produce this type of clothing for daily commuters.

Another method would be to add streamers to a stick on the bike itself.  Care should be taken that they are not too long so they would get caught in the spokes or brakes.  Again, as the rider pedals, the streamers would fly in the breeze erratically creating confusion about the riders actual size and location causing drivers to give more room.

Of course, this does not mean you can ride recklessly.  When the morning radio states that there is an accident involving car vs motorcycle.  There is no doubt about who wins.  The motorcyclist goes to the hospital and the car my need a paint touch up.  Bicyclists suffer the same fate.

By modifying clothing to create some sort of visual confusion, bicycle clothing manufacturers can reduce the possibility of a collision between a car and the rider.  The visual confusion will cause drivers to keep a greater distance between their car and the bike rider which makes for a safer bike riding expereince.

Marketing complimentary disruptive products using the network effect.

How do you get someone to buy a Blue Ray disk player if there are no Blue Ray movies available?  This is the dilemma when marketing disruptive complementary products.  No one wants to support a market until after the market has matured.  In network theory, this is called an indirect network and poses the biggest challenge when introducing new products.  Geoffrey Moore provides an excellent model in his book Crossing the Chasm where you focus on one segment of the market and then expand into other segments until you reach critical mass.  This post offers another solution using a network based approach.

In Crossing the Chasm, pragmatists look for the whole product which is really a strong network of third party components, a trained labor force and referenceable customers in the same industry.  Under the new model, instead of waiting for the entire network to be created with strong links, create weak links between the nodes of the network and then help strengthen the links until they are sufficiently strong.

Here is how it works.  Imagine a grape vine seedling symbolizing a growing network.  In the wild, it will grow in every direction looking for something to attach to.  The leaves may shade other leaves and the grapes will be difficult to harvest if they grow at all.  Once the vine has matured and the branches are strong, it is difficult to change the shape of the branches without damaging the vine itself.

This network grew without structure and will be impossible to correct.

Source: http://www.terryodell.com/editable_files/Africa2.html

To solve this problem wineries create a weak network structure using a stick and wires.  As the vine grows, it wants to follow the predefined network path.  The winery even cuts off the top shoot of the vine as it extends past the upper wire to encourage nutrients to go into the side branches.  With just a little bit of attention, the vine has grown into a well structured network that allows the plant to receive the most amount of sunlight and produce abundant fruit. In some case, you can even remove the trellis after the plant has matured because the vine or network will be strong enough to stand alone.

This network has grown following a predicted path.

Source: http://youngoakvineyards.blogspot.com/2008/05/young-oak-vineyards-vol-5-grafting.html

In business, you would use this model by creating weak links between the eventual players with little up front cost.  After each group sees that there is the potential for a strong network, a single event could trigger a chain reaction of adoption.

Here are the steps:

1. Identify all the constituents who would participate in the final network.  For the vine, this is determining the optimal sun and spacing between the plants.
2. Create weak links between all the parties so that everyone has visibility to the other players and what role they will play.  This can take the form of commitments based on a specific condition. The trellis serves as the path that the vine or network will follow.
3. Trigger an event that causes one of the commitments to be met.  When this condition is filled, the other players will join in causing a strong network to be created following the lines of the weak network.  In the case of the vine, plant the seed and water it.  The vine will follow the predefined network as it grows.

Here is an example of how this technique could have been used to help HD DVD win HD DVD/Blue-ray format war.

Step one is to identify the best content producers, player manufacturers and distribution channels.

Step two, go to the major content producers and ask them for a commitment to produce several titles if a specific milestone is met such as 100K HD DVD devices sold.  Next, go to the player manufactures and ask for a commitment to manufacture HD DVD players if a specific number of customers agree to buy the players.  Repeat the process with the distribution channels.

Next, announce to the public the titles and manufacturers that are committed.  Create a website that shows all the information in one place where people make a small deposit to buy a player at a defined price.  The deposit is returned if the 100K other people do not sign up.  People can also pre-order what title they want, showing the content producers exactly what titles have demand.  Also show who is willing to handle distribution.  To create referenceable customers, offer a bonus disk to people who sign up 10 of their friends and a free player to anyone who signs up 20 friends.

At this point, the titles are known, the distribution channel is in place, the hardware is identified and the customers have expressed demand.  No one has spent any money, but the network has defined nodes with weak links between the nodes.  The key factor is making sure everyone knows exactly what path they will follow and what to expect from the other players.  Now the question is, "who will blink first?"

In step three, you need some public kickoff event to create a chain reaction.  You could pass out disks for a major blockbuster on opening night or randomly start to ship players to the people who signed up the most peers.  Any event that exceeds peoples expectations should start the process.  In this case, just the fact that people are signing up should trigger the event.

Sample webpage that would show the weak links between nodes.

As the number of users increases, the strength between nodes also increase.

By creating weak links between nodes using a lattice structure, companies can lay the foundation for a network before the various parties have made major investments.  This technique should allow rapid adoption of disruptive products with mimal risk of backing a technlogy that will not get adopted.

How Google can make it easier to print maps.

Google Maps allow you to quickly zoom into a specific region and print out a map of where you are going.  Unfortunately you usually need multiple maps for a specific trip.  The first map shows you the detail of where you are going and the second map shows you how to get to the central region.  While this method helps get you to your destination it wastes paper because the two maps are usually only used once.

Imaging you live in Portland but you don't spend much time downtown and are unfamiliar with the region.  You are trying to get to the corner of NE 32nd and NE Klickitat near the intersection of NE 33rd and NE Freemont St. in the map below.  See the red X.  The first thing you will do is print out a detailed map of the city that shows the cross-street of your destination.

Detailed street view, X is the final destination.

Now you need to know how to get from the freeway to the city center so you print out the other map below.

Zoomed out view showing how to get from highway 84 but no detail at final destination.

Notice, that you don't print out a detailed map for the whole trip, only for the final cross streets.  The reason for this is that people need less information close to their house and more information as they get closer to a new destination.  On their way home, people don’t need as much information because they start to recognize the major streets and can take a number of possible routes.

To make maps that better reflect how people navigate, Google should use multipe scales on the same map.  Higher resolution at the final destination and less resolution further away.  See below.

Multi scale map that increases detail the closer you get to the final destination.

Notice that the zoomed in area is not just a higher resolution, but that it has a slope where it squezes the streets together on the sides.  This makes a blend between the two different resolutions.  In the area between the freeway and the Prospect Street, the side streets do not have names just like the zoomed out map above. Only when you get closer to your destination do the streets start to have names.  Of course, this is just a demonstration; the engineers at Google would be able to do a much better job.

Other people have explored the concept of multi scale maps but many of these solutions just put one map with greater detail over a map with lesser detail with no transition between the two.  When this is done, the more detailed section obscures some of the road leading to your destination.  The method proposed in this article has a smooth transition between the different regions.

By using blended multiple scales on a map, Google can create maps that better reflect how people navigate.  A zoomed out view for choosing freeways and a more detailed view closer to your destination. This will simplify travel by eliminating the need to flip between different pages as you are driving and will save paper and ink by requiring only one page to be printed.