Marvin Gaye Come Get to This
What an amazing show! USC GearFest 2012
Keep Ya Head Up covered by Jhene Aiko at USC GearFest 2012.
"The principal reason for this, I think, is that educational systems are increasingly out of touch with the needs of the ideas economy. The current education system that our and other countries developed was suited to the industrial revolution, a one-size-fits-all model for education that treats people as commodities. But we’re in an innovation age where creativity, individual initiative, willingness to think out of the box and disrupt established business or even lifestyle patterns is much more important than simple manual tasks that produce the next widget. So I think the great challenge for developed economies like the U.S. is to reinvent education."
Absolutely. Nothing gets me more wound up than watching my children go through an educational paradigm that is completely out of touch with the world into which they will be sending their students. If I weren’t busy trying to re-invent finance, I’d focus on education.
(via smarterplanet)
(via emergentfutures)
WZRD Teleport 2 Me, Jamie LIVE
![smarterplanet:
How Three Businesses Scored Big with Gamification | Entrepreneur.com
Ready or not, gamificationReady or not, gamification is taking the business world by storm.
For anyone unfamiliar with gamification, it’s the application of game-like elements such as challenges, points, badges and levels to business and other nongame websites. An estimated 70 percent of the top 2,000 public companies in the world will have at least one gamified application by 2014, Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc. predicts.
Patrick Salyer, CEO of gamification platform Gigya, believes there are two keys to success with gamification. “One is making sure that all gamified elements are inherently social,” he says. “That is, don’t restrict engagement to the internal site community. Award points for activities that reach users’ social [networks] to bring in referral traffic.”
The other is to focus on rewarding activities that create value for your businesses. “For example, award points and badges for behaviors like subscribing to your company’s newsletter, checking into your store or sending coupons to friends,” Salyer says. “Gamification is not about haphazardly throwing badges across your site.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0u3ol3acn1qzs4rbo1_400.jpg)
How Three Businesses Scored Big with Gamification | Entrepreneur.com
Ready or not, gamificationReady or not, gamification is taking the business world by storm.
For anyone unfamiliar with gamification, it’s the application of game-like elements such as challenges, points, badges and levels to business and other nongame websites. An estimated 70 percent of the top 2,000 public companies in the world will have at least one gamified application by 2014, Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc. predicts.
Patrick Salyer, CEO of gamification platform Gigya, believes there are two keys to success with gamification. “One is making sure that all gamified elements are inherently social,” he says. “That is, don’t restrict engagement to the internal site community. Award points for activities that reach users’ social [networks] to bring in referral traffic.”
The other is to focus on rewarding activities that create value for your businesses. “For example, award points and badges for behaviors like subscribing to your company’s newsletter, checking into your store or sending coupons to friends,” Salyer says. “Gamification is not about haphazardly throwing badges across your site.”
Twitter acquires Posterous, Yahoo sues Facebook and a bunch of new Facebook Timeline apps are launched. It’s all in today’s Daily Dose.
(Source: thenextweb.com, via thenextweb)
(via br0nopoly-)
in case you missed it…
Slow jams make up a fair amount of my favorite songs. I have a very weak spot in my heart for the quiet storm genre. That being said, Prince has a ton of great music that he has recorded over the last thirty-five years or so but my favorite track of his may be “Do Me, Baby” off of the Controversy album. Why? Because it may very well be the greatest slow jam of all time.
Oh sure, there’s plenty of competition out there. R. Kelly’s “Bump n’ Grind,” Marvin Gaye’s “Distant Lover,” The Isley Brothers’ “Between the Sheets,” etc. Even Prince’s own “Purple Rain” is up there. However, there’s something about “Do Me, Baby” that pushes it beyond these tunes and I think it has so much to do with the delicate and intricate arrangement. But that’s not to rule out the undeniable sexual savant that is Prince himself.
“Do Me, Baby” hits all the right marks of a slow jam. One could say that it provides a template, even. It’s masterful from that first piano glissando. The chord progression is fairly simple, but the instrumentation keeps it varied enough to never get boring. While the piano fills out the chords and some melody licks, the guitar part provides a constant rhythmic pulse with that ingenious volume swell in and out. So many things in this tune are done well, but the bass may be the best one of all of them. That pop on the and of one throughout the tune is placed so perfectly in the measure as Prince’s vocal usually comes in on the second beat. It’s like the bass preps you for the vocal delivery.
I love the direct message of the song. Prince is an artist who has written so many songs that I imagine they would begin to run together. It’s difficult to come up with new and interesting material. Even if you rule out the occasional subconscious plagiarism, your ideas are bound to start overlapping after a while. There’s so much pressure to be clever and dance around the subject of sex in these types of songs and while that is wonderful in its own way, sometimes when you’ve tip-toed around the subject for so long, it’s best to just get straight to the point.
Do me, baby. That’s about as direct as it gets.
(via erotic-city)
