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October 21, 2011 - Comments Off on What are you saying?

What are you saying?

A person who is fit is capable of living life to its fullest extent. Physical and mental fitness play very important roles in your lives and people who are both, physically and mentally fit are less prone to medical conditions as well. Check out the best exipure reviews.

What is Fitness?

Fitness does not only refer to being physically fit, but also refers to a person’s mental state as well. If a person is physically fit, but mentally unwell or troubled, he or she will not be able to function optimally. Mental fitness can only be achieved if your body is functioning well. You can help relax your own mind and eliminate stresses by exercising regularly and with the help from HHC infused supplements.

Why is it Important to Be Physically Fit?

People who are physically fit are also healthier, are able to maintain their most optimum weight, and are also not prone to cardiac and other health problems. In order to maintain a relaxed state of mind, a person should be physically active. A person who is fit both physically and mentally is strong enough to face the ups and downs of life, and is not affected by drastic changes if they take place.

How Can You Become More Physically Fit?

Becoming physically fit requires a change in life style as well. You will have to incorporate a regular exercise routine in your life and also eat healthier. By avoiding junk foods, fizzy drinks, bad habits like smoking and alcohol and by getting adequate amount of rest, you will be able to become physically and mentally fit. Just by eliminating all these food substances from your life, no matter how temporarily, you will allow your body to detox and become stronger. Make sure that you spend more time outdoors in the sun, and fresh air and take part in more healthy activities. Fishing, bicycling, swimming, hiking, and even playing foot ball with your kids should be a part of your physically fit lifestyle, make sure to check out the best supplement reviews at bigeasymagazine.

What Are the Advantages of Being More Active?

By becoming more active you can increase your body’s fitness levels and also avoid health problems like diabetes and high blood pressure from developing. Exercise is also good for your joints and makes your body stronger overall. These are some of the best liver health formula benefits.

Read more: The Importance of Physical Fitness https://www.healthstatus.com/health_blog/wellness/the-importance-of-physical-fitness/#ixzz6ZqoLF3Ho
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Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism

October 14, 2011 - Comments Off on When Deadlines Allow

When Deadlines Allow

This week has been full of news and digital action, so much so we are still processing all of it (while waiting for the interminable iOS5 update to finish, it seems there is some turbulence in the iCloud). And, we are working hard executing milestone deadlines today, including some intense presentation prep from Dave (follow us on Twitter @themechanism for more on #MobileMojo in the coming days).

So instead of the normal fare here is a short TED Talk about technological magic.

 

[ted id=1211]

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism

October 5, 2011 - Comments Off on In Praise of Steve Jobs

In Praise of Steve Jobs

For those of us passionate about technology and art, for those of us who thrive creatively because of technology and art, for those of us that continue to pursue education and make a living because of technology and art, the day began with much discussion about iPhones, iOS, Android, Google, Facebook, Siri, Amazon, Kindles, this one is better, that one is awesome, where is the iPhone 5 that I so wanted, this system is better than that system, my patents can beat up your patents, all in a frenzy of strong opinions.

Then as the day ends, all that passion, all those opinions, get shaken to the core with an incredibly profound sense of sadness. It's surprising, shocking even, how truly, deeply sad we feel.

At this moment this is all I know for sure.

When I wrote my university applications and essays on a Mac I didn't know who Steve Jobs was, all I knew was that this device, this computer, it gave me the keys to the American Dream.

The American Dream looks very different now, feels very different now. We use technology and art to help us endure the vicissitudes of surviving our daily lives.

Last night I sat in a small room waiting for a board meeting to start. A board meeting for an organization I volunteer my time and energy towards, spending countless hours in front of Macs creating things out of nothing to help a dear friend fulfill his vision of an exceptional concert series.

While waiting I had a quick Skype chat with one of my oldest friends, a friend who knew me when I was a child and now lives on the other side of the world. It was 1:30am where he lives and we commiserated about insomnia and made plans to connect soon again.

After he said good bye I looked at my iPad, the technology I was going to use to talk about music and art, and stared at my iPhone. My New Jersey friend walked into the room and I told him how I just had a casual conversation with my Saudi Arabia friend like it was nothing, like geography, time and space weren't an obstacle at all.

Your tools may be different than mine, your technology may be different than mine, and if we pause for long enough to notice, they are awe-inspiring

It is that feeling, that awe, that I think about when I think of Steve Jobs.

He led many brilliant people to create tools that helped me get an education, get a career. That help me keep up with my family, connect with my friends, derive joy from the things I love.

For that I am grateful.

 

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients. This special edition of The Thinking Mechanism is cross-posted from my blog SmarterCreativity.com.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism

September 30, 2011 - Comments Off on The Week In Videos

The Week In Videos

 The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism

September 23, 2011 - Comments Off on The Right To Privacy

The Right To Privacy

Frankly I'm a bit deep fried after all the social media firestorm that was this week. Google+ goes live to the public, which is to say, it's on perpetual beta. Facebook changed their layout, again, and the crowd goes wild. Just when the crowd was calming down then Facebook announces more chances, Timelines, and other social media extras that guarantee less of your life is private. (I think team member Roma is onto something, his response to all the talk? Delivered with a devilish grin and a glint in his eye, "what's a Facebook?")

It's worth noting that all this transpired while the market plummeted, in what felt like a remake of a movie we've already seen (or if you are George Lucas remade and ruined.)

So rather than commentary, opinion and lists of updates I would like to leave you with this for deep thought:

From Exploring Constitutional Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School, an overview of the right to privacy.

 The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy.  The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information.  In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people."  The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some persons (including Justice Goldberg in his Griswold concurrence) have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

The question of whether the Constitution protects privacy in ways not expressly provided in the Bill of Rights is controversial.  Many originalists, including most famously Judge Robert Bork in his ill-fated Supreme Court confirmation hearings, have argued that no such general right of privacy exists.  The Supreme Court, however, beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the "liberty" guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, and termination of medical treatment.  Polls show most  Americans support this broader reading of the Constitution.
...
The future of privacy protection remains an open question.  Justices Scalia  and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees.  The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed.  The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy.

I can't help but wonder what the founding fathers would make of the internet, or Facebook. Would they like it?

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism

September 16, 2011 - Comments Off on A Library of Links

A Library of Links

A shrewdness of apes. A business of ferrets. A team of horses. A convocation of eagles. A parliament of owls. A company of parrots. An army of frogs. A group of animals always receives a name, and links being like animals in the wild, we've decided that a collection of links is called a library.

This week's edition of The Thinking Mechanism is a library of links:

• RIM Off 19%: Year View Weaker; Margins Going Down. Some people we know, that in the past swore by their blackberries, are now awaiting the iPhone 5. Why put your faith into something that seems to be fading, they seem to be asking.

Jensen Harris shows what makes a great Metro app, and demonstrates the future of Windows. Mind you the tablet and OS shown are early betas and will not be available to the public for a year. A lot can happen in a year. A lot will happen in a year.

The Boston Globe implements responsive design on their site. Beautiful and clean information and visual design Are you watching NYTimes.com?

• The United States of Design: Fast Company selects the 50 most influential designers in America, while First Lady Michelle Obama honors National Design Awards Winners.

• The much awaited Google+ API is now available.

48 hours of footage are uploaded to YouTube every minute. And now that they've added a built-in editor to the site the number is sure to rise.

• Google+ wants to be like Twitter wants to be like Facebook wants to be like Google+. Next step: Facebook launches a subscribe button.

• To help all the marketeers that are questioning the value of Promoted Tweets, Twitter opens up their web analytics via a free dashboard.

• In the UK a fight to extend copyright is won. Are copyright terms on their way to being permanent? Disney sure hopes so.

• And lastly, using technology to do something just cause it's cool: dynamic water signage/sculpture.

 

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

 

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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September 9, 2011 - Comments Off on The Egg

The Egg

During meetings, on phone calls, while casually talking in the hallway, someone utters the phrase "it's a chicken and egg thing." It is usually uttered to describe a challenge where determining what should happen first is hard to ascertain. In reality the whole chicken and the egg metaphor is just an easy way to not make a decision. By hiding behind an aphorism a decision is postponed, the conversation put on hold.

Well, the answer is the egg. So there.

Now you can't say "what came first?" because you know the answer. So, don't postpone the decision, keep the conversation going.

Yes, the egg.

The chicken evolved from another animal. Maybe a dinosaur, maybe a bird, maybe some other creature we have yet to discover. Chickens are mutants. Some animal laid an egg, inside that egg was a mutation and when it hatched, a chicken was born.

Except, once I started writing this and went searching for the scientific evidence that I held as truth I learned British scientists had discovered a protein they claim unequivocally proves the chicken came first.

The scientists found that a protein found only in a chicken's ovaries is necessary for the formation of the egg. The egg can therefore only exist if it has been created inside a chicken. The protein speeds up the development of the hard shell, which is essential in protecting the delicate yolk and fluids while the chick grows inside the egg, the report said.  "It had long been suspected that the egg came first but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first," said Dr. Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University's Department of Engineering Materials, according to the Mail." The protein had been identified before and it was linked to egg formation, but by examining it closely we have been able to see how it controls the process," he said.

Well, the answer is the chicken. So there.

Every day you have the capacity to know more than the day before. Every day the potential exists for you to realize that something you held as absolute truth it's not.

Next time someone says it's a chicken and egg thing, just say the chicken came first, make a decision, move the conversation, question your assumptions, get the thing done, and go learn something new.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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September 2, 2011 - Comments Off on Water Always Wins

Water Always Wins

It used to be that art was the device we used to view ourselves within the world around us. Art would help us see things in new ways, with new perspectives. Once you stood in front of Monet's Water Lilies at MoMA, a massive triptych the size of a wall, you never looked at water the same again.

Today technology is what we use to view ourselves, but unlike art, the better the technology gets the more introspective the perspective becomes. We are coddled by algorithms and mobile devices to do what we want, the way we want it, when we want it, everything shifting towards us and not the world around us.

As hurricane Irene assaulted our area with it's macabre beauty and destruction, it was hard not to think that water is truly the enemy of technology. Hard not to think that we need more artists using technology to create art that shifts our viewfinder outwards allowing us to see things again for the first time.

That is precisely what two young filmmakers did while Irene pummeled the streets of New York, and in turn shared with us a new, unexpected perspective of the city we love and often take from granted.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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August 26, 2011 - Comments Off on The P is for Paul

The P is for Paul

This week we saw an earthquake hit New York, a hurricane shutting down the city's massive subway system, Google forfeiting $500 Million generated by online ads for Canadian pharmacies and the aftermath of HP's decision to flat out get out of the PC business, but the biggest news of the week was the resignation of Steven P. Jobs as CEO of Apple.

Though it did not come as a surprise, what with the medical leave and the move of the publication of his biography from next year to this November, it did shock. We knew it was coming, and yet it startled us.

Many stories have been published in response to his resignation, and about the future of Apple, including many profiles of Tim Cook who was immediately named CEO in perfect succession.

[ Shame on all those who have only focused on the sexuality of the man whose operational genius allowed Apple to produce the Macs, iMacs, Macbooks, Airs, iPods, iPhones and iPads the way they wanted while simultaneously maintaining an envied inventory chain worldwide, leading Apple to profits so large they recently had more money in the bank than the US government and surpassed Exxon Mobile (for a brief period of time) as the world's most valuable company. So if you want to talk about who the man sleeps with go ahead, you are an idiot. ]

Jobs reinvented many industries and forced all of us to reconsider what we thought was the norm. There is a reason we always hear the question "how would Apple do it?"

I was tempted to include lists to my favorite articles concerning the resignation, a quick search would yield many of those. Instead I'll share this: I wrote my university application essays on a Mac. All my college papers, dissertations, assignments, all done on Macs. I made a website to sell the arts, in 1993, on a Mac. All the career-elevating work I've ever done in my life, happened on a Mac (and now on an iPhone and an iPad as well). All the work we are doing here for our clients, happens mostly on Macs (and every time we have to test a website on a PC I am reminded why). Many call such loyalty fanboy-ism, and yes, there is a touch of that, but the truth is simpler. At every step of our lives when we wanted to challenge ourselves, when we had to challenge ourselves creatively, when we've pursued something so large we weren't sure how we could do it, or whether we could do it at all, an Apple product helped us forge ahead. It really is that simple.

Oh alright, one link, the commencement speech is really a must see.

And in the spirit of all those amazing keynotes that I will surely miss:

One More Thing.

Pixar.

Because of Pixar we know that Apple will have a bright future without Steve Jobs as CEO. Jobs has been an integral part of the growth of Pixar and yet we seldom think of him when talking about the unprecedented string of multi-billion-dollar-earning movies created by the studio. Because Jobs' biggest contribution at Pixar is the company's team and culture, the way they work and create, in essence the company itself. Likewise, Jobs' greatest accomplishment at Apple is not any of the many products they've created but a team, a work ethic, a company capable of producing them.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

Published by: antonioortiz in Pharmaceuticals, The Thinking Mechanism
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August 19, 2011 - Comments Off on A Penny for your Thoughts

A Penny for your Thoughts

"A definition is the enclosing of a wilderness of ideas within a wall of words." Samuel Butler

In last weekend's The New York Times the paper featured an Opinion article by Neal Gabler titled The Elusive Big Idea. In the article Gabler explores the very definition of ideas and thinking. What is an idea? What are they for? And, do we care?

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.

It is not so much that bold ideas are passé as it is that bold ideas tend to be very costly.

Patent lawsuits are rampant at the moment, everyone suing everyone else, from Lodsys suing independent developers (and Apple trying to defend them), to Google, Apple, Microsoft, HTC, Samsung, and others all suing each other in various incestuous permutations fighting to put up the the walls that will determine what "mobile" means.

And it's not just technology. Lawyers, especially lawyers from Thompson Patent Law, with their walls of words, are doing a great job to make anyone pursuing creative thought feel like the simple act of thinking is always pending litigation. Check This Out to find out the easy solution to sort out this issue quickly.

Ultimately there are two kinds of ideas: those that live in the ether of concepts and angels and dreams and those that are made known through action.

The boldest idea is the one that is actually implemented. Anyone can have a thought, anyone can try to define it, contain it, claim it, sue for it, but few, those that dare develop it, build it, are the true thinkers.

Bold ideas may be passé, but bold, differentiating action is not, and never will be.

Most importantly, if you can make something happen from an idea once, you can do it again.

With apologies to Benjamin Franklin, well done is better than well sued.

The Thinking Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Fridays, covering the ideas The Mechanism is thinking and talking about with our peers and clients.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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