Cubicles – The Documentary

This is the first documentary I made back in film school. As you can see, my fascination with offices has been around for quiet a while.

If you’ve been wondering where cubicles came from, how they affect the way we work, and where office design is going in the future (and I know you have), then look no further, all your answers lie above.

You can check out more short films on office design at the Cubicles Film YouTube Channel.

Great TED Talk by Dan Pink on how rewards do not make a great motivation tool. There’s tons of research from decades worth of studies that have proved this, yet the system still continues as normal.

There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

He also touches on Results Only Work Environments (ROWE), which I’m a big fan of and that idea was part of what inspired me to go independent.

Also making the rounds is the release of a study by Stanford concluding that multitasking makes you bad at everything you’re doing.

The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media.

So, bottom line, if you see an executive multitasking who works on rewards, run far away.

The terms were for $100 they would transcribe 15 hours of footage over 2 business days. Well let’s just say you get what you pay for.

It ended up taking about a month for everything to be completed. Now normally that would be unacceptably long, but I was so busy with other stuff I didn’t have time to work on the film, there was no rush. Plus the low, low price and headaches it saved me was worth it.

The transcriber dude (or company) said the hiccups were due to the footage containing a lot of techno mumbo-jumbo, and I’m sure the people doing the transcribing were not native English speakers. I bet he wanted to charge me more after he realized what a headache I provided, but he stuck to the original price. For what I got it was well worth it.

The transcribed files were to my specifications, with time code marks and speakers identified. I’ve printed them all out and they fill a 2-inch binder. They’re now covered in notes and highlights and is the bible for editing. (The provider was CreativeBlox. Despite the length I would recommend them.)

I’ve been experimenting with Elance for other jobs but haven’t had as much success. One was for someone to build a custom WordPress theme for this site and another site, but all the bids I got were for generic, corporate lamo blog designs.

I posted it under programming, but I think I needed a graphic designer. Ideally a graphic designer/WordPress guru. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Another job was for this weird text editor program idea I had, similar to JDarkRoom or WriteRoom. This was a really simple lifehackery mod to a text editor program I wanted to put on this site. I thought it would be cheap and easy but I was getting bids for hundreds of dollars. Any programmers? Bueller? Bueller?

First TechCrunch50 dispatch. Micoy has created a 3D technology that lets you walk around and interact in a 3D virtual environment.

What prevents this with traditional 3D technology is since there is only one focal point, when you look away you lose the 3D illusion. With their technology, each pixel is 3D so you can look anywhere and still maintain the virtual illusion.

With sensors you can even interact with the world a la Minority Report style.

Check out the camera to shoot live action towards the end of the podcast. It’s like Disney’s Circle-Vision on steroids.

Star Trek’s Holodeck a Reality – Episode 02

Fitbit is actually a device that you wear to track your movement and fitness. It’s more than a pedometer, with an accelerometer and other gizmos inside to track a range of data, such as three dimensional movement and calorie burn and how much you slept. When you walk by the base station connected to your computer, the data is automatically uploaded. Like RescueTime tracks your computer use, Fitbit tracks your physical activity with the idea being you can adjust your habits and become more fit. $99 to buy the device and the website tracking is included.

Swype is a new way to input text. It’s from the guy who created the current input software that’s on like a billion phones. On a querty keyboard on a touch input screen, instead of tapping each letter, you swipe over each letter to spell the word. The technology recognizes what word you want and types it. Once you get the hang of it you can get about 50 WPM.

Basically, 50 companies present to some of the most influential venture capitalists and press (me?) to launch their company and explain what it is. The only requirement is TechCrunch is when they launch, so no one knows what’s going to be presented.

Last year Mint, my favorite money management tool, launched and even won Best Presenter (check out the link to win a free pass to TechCrunch50).

There is one little secret they let out – Ashton Kutcher will be launching Blah Girls at the event.

I will be video podcasting, which means it will launch sometime next week (hopefully this weekend).

Let me know if you’re going in the comments.

TechCrunch50 » TechCrunch50. It’s like TechCrunch40, but better

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