Claus Wolf from mactopics.de teaches us some cool tricks to use PopClip by Pilotmoon Software and a Bookmarklet he made for us to help you to use Amazon Affiliate links. NosillaCast PopClip Extension, Popmaker to make your own extensions, Claus’ NosillaCast Bookmarklet at otzberg.net/nca/nca.html. I walk you through how I improved the speed of podfeet.com using the built-in Firefox network diagnostic tools Bart taught us about in Taming the Terminal. I review Bienna’s $24 Bluetooth 4.1 Headphones. In Chit Chat Across the Pond we’re joined by Dr. Maryanne Garry, Deputy Dean in Graduate Research at Victoria University of Wellington, who will explain to us the difference between focus and attention. If you haven’t done the homework yet, be sure to watch the videos first from last week!
Blog Posts
PopClip & Bookmarklets for Amazon Affiliate Links by Claus
Using Firefox Web Development Tools to Speed Up Podfeet.com
Will Bienna’s $24 Bluetooth 4.1 Headphones Work for Me?
Clarify
This week I was poking around on podfeet.com and noticed that a bunch of my tutorials weren’t sitting nicely within their categories in the left sidebar, they were listed on their own outside of Tutorials. I couldn’t for the LIFE of me figure out where I control that! I looked at the pages themselves and they had the right categories listed, and I checked my theme settings to make sure I didn’t need to do some sort of exclusion of pages nonsense. Finally after about an hour of searching I remembered that I’m using a thing called simply Menus which shows up under Appearances in WordPress and I have to specifically remove pages from Menus when I create them. I’m telling you all of this because as soon as I unraveled the mystery, I launched Clarify from clarify-it.com and documented this darn process! I didn’t want to lose all this time ever again when I inevitably forget it. I took a few screenshots, wrote a REALLY descriptive title so any word I search on will find it, and saved the whole thing to Evernote so I won’t ever lose it.
If you do complicated things on the Mac or Windows and have the memory of a goldfish like me, go over to clarify-it.com and get a free trial of Clarify.
Chit Chat Across the Pond
This week we’re joined by Dr. Maryanne Garry, Deputy Dean in Graduate Research at Victoria University of Wellington.
Before we get started, let’s ask people to take a look at this video, with the caveat that they might have seen it or something like it before. That’s fine. Just ask them to watch it with the sound up so they can hear the instructions. It’s also best to watch it alone, or if that’s not possible, with others so long as everyone agrees not to make noise or gesture or whatever. The point is for everyone to have his or her own experiences.
The video is here: youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&list=PLB228A1652CD49370
So my guess is that many people have seen this video, because over the past 15 years or so it’s become an Internet sensation. So now let’s watch this video. The instructions (sound, watching alone) are the same as before (and in fact let’s just assume that should be the instructions for all the videos): youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY&index=2&list=PLB228A1652CD49370
“Change blindness” : we fail to notice even large changes in our environment (“change blindness”).
For more on change blindness and other illusions of thinking and perception, see Professor Dan Simons’s home page: http://www.dansimons.com and get his terrific book, “The Invisible Gorilla“
The problems of change blindness/inattentional blindness affect other professions, such as radiologists (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3964612/ ) and lifeguards. Also, the problem can occur with other kinds of stimuli such as noticing an alerting sound (an alarm) while you’re doing something else.
For more on the “Halfalogue” study psychologicalscience.org
And finally, to see how much knowing about these illusions matters not one bit, watch this video: youtube.com/watch?v=ubNF9QNEQLA
Here’s the basic idea:
a. we take in a surprisingly tiny amount of the information around us. We think we take in a lot, but we don’t.
b. we also think that “attention” is the same thing as “where we’re looking.” It’s not.
c. implications for how we integrate technology into our daily activities like driving while talking on a cell phone or even heads-up displays
Other people’s use of technology can impair your cognitive functioning
Overhearing someone else talking on a cell phone (“halfalogue)
* you try to predict what comes next, and that’s a cognitive cost
* you’re worse at tasks requiring attention
* same level of sound and intonation without being intelligible, you will not be worse at those tasks while listening
That’s going to wind this up for this week, many thanks to our sponsor for helping to pay the bills, the makers of Clarify over at clarify-it.com. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Check out the NosillaCast Google Plus Community too – lots of fun over there! If you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.