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You’re not stupid, but you can be fooled. For millennia, the best salespeople have known how to exploit the vulnerabilities of the human mind. In the burgeoning field of behavioural economics, we’ve begun to give precise names to the mental weaknesses that make us all susceptible to a well-crafted pitch. Drawing on the insights of psychology, behavioural economists have explained why we buy more stuff at 99p than at £1 (the “left-digit effect”), why we commit to gym memberships we’ll never use (“optimism bias”), and why we don’t return things we buy as often as we should (“post-purchase rationalisation”). The giants of the web, from Amazon to Zynga, use similar tricks to keep us coming to their sites, playing their games and buying their goods. In fact, that’s how they became giants in the first place.

Here’s how they game us — and how, in some cases, we wind up gaming ourselves.

Get to know how online companies like AMAZON, Apple, Groupon and Zynga trick you into sharing more

Read the rest of this entry online »

Quelle: wired Magazine, August 2011

Dein iPressl – Team

Mit Steve Jobs hat die Welt einen herausragenden Menschen verloren. Das folgende Zitat stammt aus seiner legendären, unten als Video eingebetteten Rede, an der Stanford-Universität (2005):

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Stay hungry, stay foolish!
Dein iPressl Team

Während es in den USA schon am 11. März so weit war, mussten weitere 25 Länder, darunter auch Österreich, bis heute warten.

Aber nun ist es so weit – das iPad 2 ist auch bei uns in Österreich erhältlich!

Ab heute, 17:00, ist das iPad 2 in den Apple Retail Stores und bei ausgewählten autorisierten Apple-Händlern verfügbar. Wer bis dahin nicht mehr warten kann oder möchte,…

(more…)

Hello Readers,

Apple is gonna give us a treat tomorrow and so I thought why not give my readers a treat, today! Three, actually and that being three really cool sites and ideas on the web:

IKEA Hacker

Check out this site and you will be bedazzled when you see what else you can do with IKEA furniture!

NexPod

Is it the next iPod? No, it is all about coffee! Even better! ;_) Do you like Nespresso and others?! What if you could fill those tabs with your favorite blend and reuse them over and over!!! Nexpod does the job!

And here is a site that can get you really addicted and maybe change your life!:

Musicovery

Musicovery lets you hear music depending on your mood, or depending on what mood you want to be in while and after listening. Even without being a member, the collection of available music and possiblities are humongous. Of course, you can also go by genre (or even by year of release,…!) and while browsing through the songs you will get a feeling what mood the different titles deliver and you can then choose to keep that kind of mood or change it up or down a bit, or left or right, or whatever you like. ;_)

Let me know what you think about this one and what you were able to find out about your favorite songs and music that you love most, in the comment section, BELOW! ;_)

Well, readers that is it, for today! I wish you a great day and am looking forward to Apple’s treat, tomorrow! ;_) Meanwhile, I am listening to some energetic and positive Music! See you!

Many people have been predicting this for years. I thought, they should have done it already, when the MacBook Air came out, INSTEAD OF IT! ;_)

Kindle and other e-readers, goodbye? Here, is how the new Apple Tablet COULD look:

link to Maclife article

Here is something else that I have been following, for a week now:

A 12 year old kid gets famous! by lip-syncing top ten songs in an apple store, standing in front of one of the computers webcams and uploading the cool videos to youtube – something made possible only by today’s internet – amazing!:

When a report went up on BoingBoing one of the cool videos (see above) had around 60.000 views, already! 2 days later (middle of last week) it had 200.000 views! That is around 70.000 new viewers per day! The video “I gotta feeling” also has 200.000 views already, today!

Web 2.0, you are so strong!

Wow, that was a huge event in history! Amazing decision made by Apple (to pull back and let help in) and Microsoft (to help their only real opponent in the market)!

1997: Microsoft rescues one-time and future nemesis Apple with a $150 million investment that breathes new life into a struggling Silicon Alley icon.

In a remarkable feat of negotiating legerdemain, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs got needed cash — in return for non-voting shares — and an assurance that Microsoft would support Office for the Mac for five years. Apple agreed to drop a long-running lawsuit in which they alleged Microsoft copied the look and feel of the Mac OS for Windows and to make Internet Explorer the default browser on its computers.

Full length article at WIRED.com

0. In my last blog I interviewed David Merrill (PhD Candidate at the MIT MEDIA LAB), who is the creator of SIFTABLES.

Having been in the i-team, finding a way for Siftables to enter the Market, I keep a close look for the NEW in this area and what I consider worth sharing at the moment are

1. The HP TouchSmart

2. Or the upcoming! XO-2

For products like the latter, I thought Apple would be first, but lately I find that Apple really waits until a product has proven ground and THEN develops a “new” shiny version. So, we will have to wait a bit longer, until Apple makes something like the XO-2, although, they surely have a whole lot of the necessary patents to do anything they want!

3. And here is the Napkin PC, something I already showed to the i-team during our first meeting this spring. It is just a Design, BUT Siftables – you better hurry up! ;_)

The Napkin PC ended up winning the Microsoft NextGen PC Design Competition (2007-2008)!

Entrants in next year’s competition will gain even more recognition when it is folded into Microsoft’s Imagine Cup!: