Day: June 6, 2011

Let’s play “Celebrity Quora”!

Posted on by Deano in Personal Observations, Q & A

There appears to be a new feature on Quora:

“Allow comments on my answers and posts”.


(See right there at the bottom? Yeah. That.)

I dunno why it took me so long to realize this setting existed, but it did… Oh no, wait, I know exactly why – I’ve never, ever seen this feature used before Michelle Rhee‘s (otherwise excellent) answer to What are some of the biggest problems with public education in America?

Maybe I’m just trolling about the seedier side of Quoraville or something, but in my experience one of the great attractions of the site itself is the perception that public figures who do choose to participate do so “fully”, even when they do not wade into the muck of comment threads. Hate on him all you like, but Robert Scoble seems like a “Quora member”, and not a hit-and-run “Quorcaster”, which is what I worry this feature will ultimately promote.

In many ways, this is worse than aggressive/hurtful anonymous answers, as it limits the querent’s ability to followup with what may often be popular answers, and applies an explicit social hierarchy that would seem to mark the average Quoran as part of the “untouchable class”.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people maintaining their privacy, and limiting their interactions for what they have time and energy for, but I simply don’t see the utility here in preventing communication in this fashion – wouldn’t it make more sense to have a setting that just said “don’t notify me when the plebes reply”?

(Oh wait, that does already exist. Huh.)

This is like the “Ignore Facebook Friend Request” feature… I can see Michelle, but in some significant ways, she can’t see me – not in the contexts that matter to her, at least. And, being that I’m so awesome, the whole thing just strikes me as sad. For her. You know?

Anyway, just finishing my lunch, noticing new things about Quora that make it feel a little bit more elitist than usual. Carry on, and have a good weekend…

You can read my original Post on Quora, if you like. I wonder if Michelle will respond? 😉

Deano’s answer to: “How much impact have food trucks had on the lunch business of normal restaurants?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

How much affect has the internet had on the music/movie business?

In many senses, “none“. They are two entirely different channels. Their respective rises and falls are not correlated, for many good reasons.

In other ways, however, “huge“. It’s now possible to know in advance whether a movie/album is any good… And in some cases to even download the content itself “for free” in order to try it out, or even avoid paying for it. Still, there are solid arguments to be made that the net effect is that bad content suffers, and good content becomes more popular, faster.

Similarly, between sites like Yelp providing reputable and voluminous reviews of restaurants, and the food truck phenomenon disrupting the distribution and competition for restaurants, it’s a lot harder to “skate by” with a crappy restaurant in a convenient location… Or to open to raves in your first six months, and then allow food and service quality to backslide a bit as a profit-taking measure.

What food trucks do, primarily, is put pressure on restaurants and cafés to perform to a higher standard for their lunch crowd – and to highlight or even force out of business those businesses that fail to compete effectively. In the latter case, definitely, those restaurants lose lunch business to the food trucks, even if they have no overlap between menus.

For an example of a restaurant that “couldn’t handle the pressure”, and instead legally challenged the food truck parked outside, read on:
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie…

In that case, the result was a backsliding of Yelp rating for the restaurant, as well as awkward search result placement: http://www.yelp.com/search?find_…

This answer originally appeared on Quora: How much impact have food trucks had on the lunch business of normal restaurants?

Deano’s answer to: “Why do some people find it hard to maintain focus while reading books?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

Format may have a lot to do with it:

  • Some people thrive on reading printed paper or hardbound books in a linear fashion.
  • Others excel at retaining information gathered by hopping around quickly through a digital text, as well as the additional options to easily read for a short time (in line at the bank, for example) while also marking one’s place as provided by most e-readers.
  • Still others find “reading” audiobooks is the best method to ingest and retain knowledge long term for both fiction and non-fiction works.
  • Graphic novels blur the line a bit – in some cases retaining key description and dialogue, and replacing a bulk of the text with pictures, which can convey meaning equally, or in some cases, with much greater understanding.
  • While there are precious few titles available, even “micro-chunking” a book, by having it sent over time as a series of emails is now an option for some books – see http://www.dailylit.com/ for one example – which again provides an ease of access/lack of routine change element that can bring regular reading to those who otherwise can’t push through a 200 page paperback.

Overall, I think we’re finding that as scientists discover more details about how different personality/behavioral types learn, the options to accomodate these different types is expanding into areas that aren’t thought of as traditional “reading”. And as this fragmentation is then perceived (perhaps wrongly) by some as an inability to “focus on reading” in a specific medium.

Thus, it may be the case that people are not losing focus while reading in a given format, simply that their ability to focus while reading is tied to an alternate reading method.

This answer originally appeared on Quora: Why do some people find it hard to maintain focus while reading books?