In this one hour video, Professor Barry Schwartz explains why too much choice is not always good. This is a paradoxical concept since western belief is that more choice means more freedom and happiness.

At about 45 minutes into this video, Schwartz comments on the effect of money on happiness. He says that …”What is true is that once you cross subsistence, whatever subsistence is in your society, additional increases in wealth have virtually no effect on well-being. There is a hugh steep curve going from zero to subsistence. But once you cross that line of subsistence, the curve flattens out. It is worth knowing, in case you have a choice between choosing x and making more money, almost certainly choosing x is what you should choose.”

(more…)

Computer scientist Jeff Hawkins (who also pioneered PDA’s) tells us the theory of brains and how the brain work. The talk is not technical but covers the theory. There are a few chuckles here and there as well.

Very fascinating. Deborah Gordon, who studies ants, explains how ant colonies work. In particular, the idea of task allocation explains how each ant know what to despite having no central control from the queen..

Chris Anderson, editor of “Wired” and author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, explains the concept of “The Long Tail” (a term he coined and is now widely used).

He talks about the “power law” and “scarcity effect” and the “long tail” economy that is taking place in business today.

Eva Vertes poses some interesting questions about cancer. Could it be that cancer is the body own immune system go awry and unable to complete the process?

Daniel Gilbert, author of the book Stumbling on Happiness, claims that the “impact bais” causes people to over-estimate the amount that events will affect people’s happiness. Gilbert is a psychology professor at Harvard University. He suggests that “synthetic happiness” is just as good as “authentic happiness”.

Employees at Google talks about what it is like working at Google.

This video demonstrates Microsoft’s new surface computing product consisting of a diffuser surface and a series of cameras underneath. It can response to human touch, certain physical objects, as well as tagged objects to provide an interactive and collaborative experience.

The host demonstrates various commercial applications such as a cell phone provider informational kiosk, an interactive dining menu, a music jukebox, a video puzzle, and others.

Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace.com, talks to “TheHour” about MySpace.

Luis von Ahn, assistant Computer Science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, starts the talk explaining captcha. This is an example of an application where computer can not solve it very well but humans can. He then goes on to explain other problems where humans can solve things much better than computers can currently. The idea is to harness the “human cycles” and use them to solve computer applications by making a “game” out of it.

Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience at Google, did a talk in Paris on June 19, 2007. She explains the four components of searches: comprehesiveness, relevance, speed, and user experiences. You will see slides of the evolution of the Google home page. She talks about the future of searches, universal search, and personalized search. She then answers audience questions.

Watch the video at PodTech.net

Ely Greenfield, architect of Abode Flex, presents an overview of the Flash and Flex architecture on a whiteboard.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, talks about technology trends at TED.

Steve Souders of Yahoo explains how to make web pages faster by front-end optimizations.

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Google, talks at Stanford University where she got her Bachelor and Master Degree in Computer Science. She gives nine philosophies of innovation that she learned while working at Google. She also took and answer audience questions about Google.