Rolandt

The Business Insider reports that American families are no longer packing up and spending their evenings and weekends shopping at the suburban mall, and it is expected that 25 per cent of the suburban malls in the United States, approximately 300 will be losing their anchor stores as the mainstream retailers like “Macy’s, JC Penney and Sears shutter hundreds of stores to staunch the bleeding from falling sales.”

“When anchor stores close, it can be hard to find businesses to replace them, because they occupy the multistory buildings at mall entrances that are often at least 100,000 square feet. If no replacement tenant is found, the loss could trigger a decades long downward spiral for the shopping mall and surrounding communities.”

Malls do not die quickly-they wither as stores are closed. “Within the last couple of months, several mall-based stores — including American Apparel, Abercrombie & Fitch, The Limited, Bebe, BCBG, and Wet Seal — have announced mass closures.”

Mall consultants say that the rise of online shopping and a change in consumer preferences are the main reasons for the decline of the mall. “Studies show that Americans are increasingly choosing to spend money on technology and experiences like vacations over apparel. When they shop for clothing, an increasing number of them are going to discount stores like TJ Maxx or ordering from Amazon.”  The proliferation of cheaper dollar stores and discount clothing stores has also enhanced the decline.

To counter this trend  ” experiential retail“, creating a mix of pubs, restaurants, theatres, trampoline areas and laser tag locations in malls is being instituted. The challenge is to create an experience that cannot be duplicated by the internet. ” That’s becoming our big competitor now — the web. We want to give people real life experiences.”

Brian Peddle, EdScoop, Mar 20, 2017

Discussion of the concept of a "modernized transcript". It's similar to what I have been calling a "personal learning record", with the main difference being that it is specific to a single institution, as opposed to incorporating data from multiple institutions and specific to a single individual. And it also seems to be focused more on academic record - "secure, verifiable credentials that reflect more comprehensive data on student learning" - rather than a more general statement of competencies and achievements. What's holding it back? "A better way to track, communicate, and authenticate the depth and diversity of these experiences in a reliable and coherent way." That, I guess, and an affinity for fax machines.

In The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage, says this about the unexpected challenge facing William Cooke and Samuel Morse, the inventors of the telegraph:

[They] had done the impossible and constructed working telegraphs. Surely the world would fall at their feet. Building the prototypes, however, turned out to be the easy part. Convincing people of their significance was far more of a challenge.

That must be what it feels like to be Ivan Sutherland. Or Alan Kay, for that matter.

A couple of days ago, I spotted a post by Oli Hawkins on Visualising migration between the countries of the UK which linked to a Sankey diagram demo of Internal migration flows in the UK.

One of the things that interests me about the Jupyter and RStudio centred reproducible research ecosystems is their support for libraries that generate interactive HTML/javascript outputs (charts, maps, etc) from a computational data analysis context such as R, or python/pandas, so it was only natural (?!) that I though I should see how easy it would be to generate something similar from a code context.

In an R context, there are several libraries available that support the generation of Sankey diagrams, including googleVis (which wraps Google Chart tools), and a couple of packages that wrap d3.js – an original rCharts Sankey diagram demo by @timelyporfolio, and a more recent HTMLWidgets demo (sankeyD3).

Here’s an example of the evolution of my Sankey diagram in R using googleVis – the Rmd code is here and a version of the knitred HTML output is here.

The original data comprised a matrix relating population flows between English regions, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The simplest rendering of the data using the googleViz Sankey diagram generator produces an output that uses default colours to label the nodes.

Using the country code indicator at the start of each region/country identifier, we can generate a mapping from country to a country colour that can then be used to identify the country associated with each node.

One of the settings for the diagram allows the source (or target) node colour to determine the edge colour. We can also play with the values we use as node labels:

If we exclude edges relating to flow between regions of the same country, we get a diagram that is more reminiscent of Oli’s orignal (country level) demo. Note also that the charts that are generated are interactive – in this case, we see a popup that describes the flow along one particular edge.

If we associate a country with each region, we can group the data and sum the flow values to produce country level flows. Charting this produces a chart similar to the original inspiration.

As well as providing the code for generating each of the above Sankey diagrams, the Rmd file linked above also includes demonstrations for generating basic Sankey diagrams for the original dataset using the rCharts and htmlwidgets R libraries.

In order to provide a point of comparison, I also generated a python/pandas workflow using Jupyter notebooks and the ipysankey widget. (In fact, I generated the full workflow through the different chart versions first in pandas – I find it an easier language to think in than R! – and then used that workflow as a crib for the R version…)

The original notebook is here and an example of the HTML version of it here. Note that I tried to save a rasterisation of the widgets but they don’t seem to have turned out that well…

The original (default) diagram looks like this:

and the final version, after a bit of data wrangling, looks like this:

Once again, all the code is provided in the notebook.

One of the nice things about all these packages is that they produce outputs than can be reused/embedded elsewhere, or that can be used as a first automatically produced draft of code that can be tweaked by hand. I’ll have more to say about that in a future post…

From The Guardian:

A story in three tweets

Robots and AI are predicted to eliminate 6% of the jobs in the U.S. in the next five years according to Forrester https://t.co/XoIs7VG7XT

 — @stoweboyd

@stoweboyd @scottnewell I worry globalization backlash we're seeing will grow into a neo-luddist movement, threaten progress/civilization

 — @andrescolonpr

@andrescolonpr @scottnewell Worry about joblessness, not neo-luddites. The threat to civilization isn't anti-machine sentiment, it's anti-work economics.

 — @stoweboyd

Education is not about filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.

— William Butler Yeats

Dan Meyer, dy/dan, Mar 20, 2017

Dan Meyer takes a swipe at this article (behind a paywall, for no good reason) in Educational Leadership on “ personalized learning” and in passing also raises questions about potential conflicts of interest on the authors' parts (there's an interesting exchange with the publisher in the comments). "This isn’ t good instruction," writes Meyer. "It isn’ t even good direct instruction. When someone is explaining something to you and you don’ t understand them, you don’ t ask that person to 'repeat exactly what you just said only slower.'" On a related note: they could use the volume switch to have them repeat it louder as well! See also this  MathiaX review (source of the image above).

The YMCA is a leading nonprofit dedicated to strengthening communities through youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. Today, the YMCA serves more than 58 million people in 130 countries around the world. The YMCA is a loose federation, meaning that each association operates independently to best meet the needs of the local community. In the United States alone, there are 874 associations, each with their own CEO and board of directors. As associations vary in both size and scale, each YMCA is responsible for maintaining their own digital systems and tools at their own expense.

In 2016, the YMCA of Greater Twin Cities set out to develop a Drupal distribution, called Open Y. The goal of Open Y was to build a platform to enable all YMCAs to operate as a unified brand through a common technology.

Features of the Open Y platform

Open Y strives to provide the best customer experience for their members. The distribution, developed on top of Drupal 8 in partnership with Acquia and FFW, offers a robust collection of features to deliver a multi channel experience for websites, mobile applications, digital signage, and fitness screens.

On an Open Y website customers can schedule personal training appointments, look up monthly promotions, or donate to their local YMCA online. Open Y also takes advantage of Drupal 8's APIs to integrate all of their systems with Drupal. This includes integration with Open Y's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and eCommerce partners, but also extends to fitness screens and wearables like Fitbit. This means that Open Y can use Drupal as a data repository to serve content, such as alerts or program campaigns, to digital signage screens, connected fitness consoles and popular fitness tracking applications. Open Y puts Drupal at the core of their digital platform to provide members with seamless and personalized experiences.

Philosophy of collaboration

The founding principle of Open Y is that the platform adopts a philosophy of collaboration that drives innovation and impact. Participants of Open Y have developed a charter that dictates expectations of collaboration and accountability. The tenets of the charter allow for individual associations to manage their own projects and to adopt the platform at their own pace. However, once an association adopts Open Y, they are expected to contribute back any new features to the Open Y distribution.

As a nonprofit, YMCAs cannot afford expensive proprietary licenses. Because participating YMCAs collaborate on the development of Open Y, and because there are no licensing fees associated with Drupal, the total cost of ownership is much lower than proprietary solutions. The time and resources that are saved by adopting Drupal allows YMCAs around the country to better focus on their customers' experience and lean into innovation. The same could not be achieved with proprietary software.

For example, the YMCA of Greater Seattle was the second association to adopt the Open Y platform. When building its website, the YMCA of Greater Seattle was able to repurpose over a dozen modules from the YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities. That helped Seattle save time and money in their development. Seattle then used their savings to build a new data personalization module to contribute back to the Open Y community. The YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities will be able to benefit from Seattle's work and adopt the personalization features into its own website. By contributing back and by working together on the Open Y distribution, these YMCAs are engaging in a virtuous cycle that benefits their own projects.

The momentum of Open Y

In less than one year, 18 YMCA associations have committed to adopting Open Y and over 22 other associations are currently evaluating the platform. Open Y has created a platform that all stakeholders under the YMCA brand can use to collaborate through a common technology and a shared philosophy.

Open Y is yet another example of how organizations can challenge the prevailing model of digital experience delivery. By establishing a community philosophy that encourages contribution, Open Y has realized accelerated growth, feature development, and adoption. Organizations that are sharing contributions and embracing collaboration are evolving their operating models to achieve more than ever before.

Because I am passionate about the Open Y team's mission and impact, I have committed to be an advisor and sponsor to the project. I've been advising them since November 2016. Working with Open Y is a way for me to give back, and it's been very exciting to witness their progress first hand.

If you want to help contribute to the Open Y project, consider attending their DrupalCon Baltimore session on building custom Drupal distributions for federated organizations. You can also connect with the Open Y team directly at OpenYMCA.org.

Swatch, the world’s biggest watchmaker and owner of brands like Omega, Tissot and Swatch, has announced its plans to create its own operating system for connected objects and wearables.

Nick Hayek, the company’s chief executive, says Swatch aims to create a platform that has low energy consumption, a high level of data security and won’t require frequent updates. The company is working in partnership with Swiss research institute CSEM to create the OS, which Hayek calls an “ecosystem.”

“I don’t want to become the industry standard for smartwatches,” Hayek told Reuters, noting that it’s dangerous if everyone depends on one or two dominant operating systems, like Google’s Android Wear or Apple’s watchOS.

He added: “But in Switzerland we have a lot of expertise when it comes to creating something that is smaller, consumes much less energy, is independent and more cost-efficient and can go into little objects.”

Hayek also stated that Swatch’s OS would serve as a flexible open-source operating system for startups in the field.

In the past, Swatch has released watches with limited connected features under its Tissot and Swatch brands.

Swatch’s strategy for wearables is different from that of its traditional watch company competitors. Tag Heuer recently announced a $1,600 USD modular connected watch running on Android Wear 2.0, while Richemont also recently announced its $890 USD Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch.

“There’s a possibility for wearables to develop as a consumer product,” Hayek told Bloomberg, “But you have to miniaturize and have an independent operating system.”

Source: Reuters, Bloomberg

The post Swatch is developing its own operating system to take on watchOS, Android Wear appeared first on MobileSyrup.

I must be getting old. I’ve really enjoyed watching Ireland in The Six Nations rugby – its my favourite sporting event. And for 80 minutes, all Ireland has a single voice – and it feels like the future, an identity completeness I’ve longed for. There is so much to put behind us, and it’s already a long way forward from the Northern Ireland I grew up in. I believe the opportunity is there – to build something new. But how many generations it will take?

Happy Ireland day!

The post And a leafy pint to you! appeared first on Visual Thinkery.

As farm workers found in the century before last, and factory workers in the last century — machine takeover of human work is a fact of life. And with the rise of artificial intelligence and ever cheaper, ever more powerful chips to run this AI software, not even journalists (and lowly bloggers) are immune from disruption.

Shannon Rupp writes (for now at least) in The Tyee about the state of the art in AI-journalist software. It’s amusing until it isn’t. And there’s a hint of how this AI software can function as an intelligent assistant, so maybe all is not lost.

Bots have been on the news beats since 2015, and they’re starting to get good at it. The Washington Post’s Heliograf program was a big part of its stellar election coverage, with digital-reporters writing 500 election stories, and pulling 500,000 clicks, in a fraction of the time it would take meat-reporters to churn out that copy. . . .

Heliograf also functions as a kind of journo’s assistant, alerting a human to odd voting patterns or unexpected election results. That frees up the human journalists to analyze the information, ask questions, do interviews, and write engaging prose for stories where the quality of the writing matters.

The upshot is that the Post is attracting new subscribers, partly due to the depth of its coverage. Which also means that this year it is adding about five dozen meat-journalists to the newsroom.

Afraj Gill in the Globe and Mail gives us a broader look at the AI-abundant future that is probably out there and steadily trundling our way. It’s a plea to understand the coming job and life disruption, and to plan to surf this wave, rather than getting pounded down by it.

At this point, there is little value in reiterating the litany of research on the number of jobs that will be automated in this Fourth Industrial Revolution (such as the World Economic Forum’s study stating five million jobs in 15 economies will be automated within five years – Canada is no exception, with nearly half of our jobs set to be affected by automation within a decade).

When I was first heard about Adriane Carr’s motion to have staff looking at why the city is still shutting down illegal suites, I thought she was surely wrong.

After all, when COPE and Larry Campbell swept to power in 2002, one of their first major actions was to declare that all secondary suites were allowed. (It didn’t mean that all of them had official permits, which require them to meet certain building-code conditions, but they were at least not illegal, no mater what.)

But it turns out there are a whole bunch of, not secondary suites, but tertiary and quadernary (is that a word?) suites in the city that no one envisioned dealing with back in 2003.

I didn’t have the information in time for my Globe story that detailed one particular case and some others talking about the issue, but there are apparently 7,000 of these kinds of suites in the city, according to the always helpful Jens von Bergmann.

Carr’s motion to have staff look at ways to legalize these passed, so we’ll see what happens next.

Vancouver planners are looking at a raft of ideas to increase housing in the city.

One that didn’t get as much attention as the mayor’s statement that the city was going to look at more ways to do gentle density in single-family zones was his reference, in the same speech, to new strategies for densifying apartment zones.

My Globe story on this here.

For those who’ve forgotten, there has been a moratorium since 2004 on demolishing or re-developing most of the city’s stock of those old three- and four-storey apartments that were built in the 1960s and ’70s.

It’s seen as a hugely valuable resource and, after a small wave of demolitions in the early 2000s, the NPA council of the time freaked and imposed the moratorium.

The only way a developer can take something down now is by building an equivalent number of rental suites in a new development and offering to rent them to existing tenants at discount on whatever the new rents are. I suspect hardly anyone is taking up that offer, but the city has never done a study to see what the outcome has been.

In the meantime, apartment brokers have been lobbying heavily to get the city to lift the moratorium, saying it is stifling the creation of new rental in the city.

Okay, that background aside, now they’re looking at possibly allowing owners to add one or two floors to existing older apartment buildings. A half dozen owners have done this in the West End, where additional density is already allowed. A change would mean tweaking the zoning in the many other apartment zones in the city to allow it.

At least a couple of apartment owners I talked to, though, thought the idea was unworkable. Adding that much weight to an old 1960s foundation and doing the electrical, elevator and stairwell upgrades would far outstrip the advantages of getting rents from two more floors of apartments, they said.

So … more to come on this issue.

This was a surprise move by the city’s new director of planning.

Gil Kelley, who was supposed to be just giving an update on feedback to the city’s proposals for ways to protect “character houses,” also announced last week that it was removing one city tool from the package — the proposal to drastically limit the size a new house could be if the owner had torn down a pre-1940s house on the lot.

My Globe story on same is here. My colleague Kerry Gold did another one that has more details on people who think that was a bad move. The issue also came up at the Urbanarium debate last week, where there was a really interesting back and forth about the merits and challenges of saving character homes.

Michael Kluckner, arguing for the pro side, made what I thought was a really valid proposal — that, if the city wants more density, it should stop just stringing it along arterials or allowing gentle density throughout the whole area. Instead, it should create more Kerrisdale-like villages that allow people to form more of a sense of community, which won’t happen among apartment dwellers lined up on busy streets.

He had a post on Gordon Price’s blog re this.

Javier Campos from Heritage Vancouver, on the other hand, raised some eyebrows with his statements that the emphasis on preserving homes only pre-1940 was a sign of Vancouver “anglo-colonial bias” when it comes to housing.

The video of the debate is here.

This was a strange one that no one could understand the timing of.

BC Hydro, in the last week of January, suddenly announced it wanted to build new electrical substations under a couple of downtown Vancouver parks — but it needed an agreement from parks, school board, and the city by March 31.

CEO Jessica McDonald said that it was because Hydro would have its unused capital money taken away by the provincial government at the end of the year if it wasn’t spent. It just didn’t make any sense.

The only explanation I’ve heard that does make any sense was that they wanted the deal in time for the election — something that could be shown off during the campaign as an innovative way the province was working to save money and build schools. (Hydro had offered to build two new schools downtown as part of the offer.)

Anyway, after some rushed public hearings and a quick online survey, it was raring to go. But the city, which had been pretty enthusiastic about the idea, calling it innovative and potentially rewarding for citizens, said it just couldn’t meet that deadline and wanted more time.

Council members voted in camera on that. There was also some initial skirmishing over the price. Hydro claimed Vancouver wanted the same value as buying the surface land, so then there would be no savings and no money available for building schools and refurbishing pars.

City manager Sadhu Johnston said there had been nothing beyond an opening offer and response, which, as anyone dealing with land knows, was not necessarily where they would end up.

So Hydro announced last week it was ceasing negotiations and rescinding the offer.

But I’m wondering if it might not come back next year.

I love community pools, as I think many of you know. I mourn the loss of the Mount Pleasant pool near me and I’m an ardent fan of New Brighton. The NPA campaign promise that got me the most excited was the one to build three new outdoor pools.

As a result of all that, when I travel, I’m a sucker for any hotel, agriturismo, resort, or Airbnb listing with a pool involved.

But what I love the most is not those private pools (though I do have a particular fondness for the one on the rooftop of the hotel I stayed at in Montevideo). It’s the local city pools wherever I go.

Here’s my Globe travel story on same.

I didn’t get to mention a few other anomalies I’ve discovered as I’ve swum my way through various cities

• We in Vancouver don’t realize how lucky we are in how many pools we have and how much they are open. In Minneapolis, I could not find a community pool in the middle of summer. The Y was closed, the city pool was open only to members. I guess that’s a function of the fact that they have multiple lakes in the city that are open for swimming, which is where I ended up going, but still. Not a single pool in a building for visitors? In Seattle, many of the pools are closed on Sundays — can you imagine anyone going for that here? And in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the lovely local pool in a gorgeous old building was only available to members who paid a hefty sum per year — more than was worthwhile even for a week of swims there.
• Pools show you the hidden side and the changes going on in a city. In Portland, the pool on the far east side of the city took me through areas where there was very little sign of the Portlandia hipsters who have become the caricatured symbol of the place At the pool in the Mississippi district, an area that has been undergoing a transformation from predominantly black area to hispter haven, it was obvious in the aquafit class, where there was a  mix of both demographics in the pool.

I missed this when Jim put it up, but Martha Burtis’s keynote abstract is up for the Domains conference:

Four years into Domain of One’s Own, I wonder if we are at an inflection point, and, if so, what we will do to respond to this moment. At its onset, Domains offered us paths into the Web that seemed to creatively and adequately address a perception that we weren’t fully inhabiting that space. Our students could carve out digital homes for themselves that were free of the walled gardens of the LMS. Our faculty could begin to think of the Web not as a platform for delivering content but as an ecosystem within which their teaching could live and breathe. In doing so, perhaps we would also engage our communities in deeper conversations about what the Web was and how we could become creators rather than merely consumers of that space. But in those four years, as in any four years, our popular culture, our technical affordances, and our political landscape has continued to march forward. How does Domain of One’s Own grow into and with these changes? Where do we take this project from here so that we continue to push the boundaries or our digital experiences? How do we address the ever-looming tension between building something sustainable while also nurturing new growth?

I’m excited to hear this keynote, not just because Martha is one of the most thoughtful people in this space, but because for me this one of the big questions.

The core of open education for me is that we learn together by sharing what we know to the network. But a lot of open tool use is not about learning, but about creating in-groups and out-groups. A lot of internet activity is not about sharing what one knows but about telling others what to think.

Some of that is fine — I’m telling you what to think now, in a certain way. But balance is key. The projects I’ve admired most in this space over the past couple years — from UMW to Plymouth State to VCU — have been the projects that have used technology to do the sort of things that expressive platforms like Facebook can’t do. Ones that model the behaviors that are more likely to stop fake news rather than propagate it. Ones that engage students in the activities that increase the web’s usefulness to communities and citizens. But they are few and far between for reasons both technological and cultural. (I could write a book about the difficulties with my own Digital Polarization wiki project, for example).

Anyway, really looking forward to this talk.

Context switching is expensive yet inevitable in our multi-tasking world. If you are a knowledge worker, lowering the costs of context switching may be one of the highest payoff investments you can make. How should we go about thinking about the problem of context switching to reduce those costs?

Switching contexts vs. switching tasks

A context switch is bigger than a task switch. Moving from answering one email to answering another is a task switch within a single context. Switching between answering email and drafting a client presentation or facilitating a planning meeting constitutes a context switch. Basic productivity advice encourages you to group like tasks precisely to avoid unnecessary context switches.

How can we organize our mental models, intellectual scaffolding, and the supporting environment to shorten the time it takes to shift gears from one context to the next? How do we reduce the time and effort it takes to get back in the zone and focus effectively on the task at hand?

It’s helpful to break the context switch process into three stages. For any one context there is a setup stage of getting all the elements for performing one class of tasks up and running. Second, when switching from one context to another, there is a teardown stage of clearing out all the elements of the first context to make room for the next. Finally, it helps to think of the space between two contexts as a third stage where we can do things to simplify and streamline the switch from Context A to Context B.

The first step is to make a particular context as standard, distinctive and evocative as possible. We want to setup a context to trigger the mental state we want to achieve. This is why writers often have a separate space dedicated to writing tasks. Research materials on the left, reference books on the shelf to the right, coffee mug in its familiar place and word processor open to where you left off the last time. Identify all the cues that evoke the mental state you seek and arrange them in their proper place. Other examples of physical contexts that prepare you mentally for the work at hand include a cook’s kitchen or a craft-person’s workshop.

Setting up a digital context

Increasingly, our contexts are largely or exclusively digital. Taking some cues from physical contexts we can call to mind, we might think of setting up our computer for a writing or a programming session in terms of opening a collection of applications and documents arrayed across our monitor(s) in exactly the same way every time we write or code. Few of us put that much thought into this setup process, but cognitive science suggests that we have something to gain if we do.

If you are a programmer, this is part of the logic behind encouraging the use of Integrated Development Environments (IDE); all of the tools and data you need for a coding session are available at once and each is in the same location on your physical screen. Over time, this means that the pattern of screens, data, and tools in front of your eyes maps directly to a comparable array in your mind’s eye. Using the physical patterns to evoke and trigger the mental patterns speeds your transition into programming mode.

By way of contrast, consider how else you might begin to work on a programming task. First, you open your favorite text editor, close whatever document might be left over from the last programming session, open today’s code module and begin to read. Launch a test machine and run the code until the code encounters an error. Then, load a debugger to examine the errant code. Then, open a document containing the program spec. Possibly, fire up a browser—or switch to a browser that is already open and pointing to a random site; search for a discussion thread relevant to the error code you are looking at.

Which scenario feels likely to be more productive and effective? Which is more common in your experience?

Breaking down a context

Whether analog or digital, switching from one context to another starts, ideally, by wiping the slate clean. In the analog world, leaving a context behind can be as simple as leaving a room and closing the door.

The digital world is a bit trickier. Leaving random elements of the preceding context cluttering the landscape means your mental landscape starts out comparably cluttered. Better to break down a digital context by closing all open documents and shutting down open applications.

The space between contexts

Switching contexts in the analog world might entail a short walk from an office to a conference room. Although brief, that physical transition serves an important function of easing the necessary shift of mental gears.

Shifting digital contexts can occur more or less instantly with a handful of keystrokes; that may not be a good idea. You want to give your mind time to complete its shift as well. This is one of the benefits of the Pomodoro technique, which deliberately builds in breaks between mental sprints. The breaks are the ideal spot to locate context shifts in your work.

There are some other things you can do to ease shifting from one digital context to another. For example, to the extent you can control it, order context switches such that adjacent contexts are as distinct as possible. For example, switch from working on a spreadsheet analysis to writing a report rather than switch between two reports. Better yet switch between writing a report and debugging computer code if your collection of tasks is sufficiently broad.

Make different contexts as visually distinct as possible to engage more of the senses in making the switch. If you are using the Pomodoro technique, contemplate clearing your monitors to some standard, neutral display as a resting step between adjacent contexts

Context switching and team work

We’ve been focused on context switching as an individual cognitive task. Most of us do large portions of our work in team settings. How does context switching apply to team environments? On the one hand, moving between teams and team venues probably provides more than sufficient triggers to switch smoothly. On the other hand, the proliferation of virtual teams and the all too common experience of days of one conference call after another may be making the context switching problem worse. Can we extend our thinking about context switching to the team and virtual team level or is that simply a bridge too far?

The post Lowering the costs of context switching appeared first on McGee's Musings.

• At the Near Future Summit, one of the most astonishing presentations was by Osman Kibar, the founder and CEO of Samumed, a biotech firm, valued at $12 Billion, which proposes to reverse aging, restore eyesight, fix Alzheimer’s…the list goes on. It boggled the mind. My kneejerk reaction is that if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. But what if it were true, that we could make our cells re-regenerate? If we do eventually die, and Samumed releases all their magic, we’ll feel great up until death and look beautiful in our coffins.

• Fantastic talks here at #nfs2017.  I think we’ve found the new TED, and learned so many things. I knew that during Lincoln’s day the average person read as much in their lifetimes as is contained in the Sunday Edition of the New York Times, but I hadn’t known that in Medieval times people met only 150 people in their entire lives. We encounter that many people after an hour spent on the internet. Dunbar Fatigue.

• I was astonished by this image that David Gallo showed during his talk, which shows how much water there is on Earth–it’s really just a thin film on the surface. The much tinier dot is the amount of fresh water there is on Earth–not much, my friend, not much.

• Our friends took us for a lunch at Gjelina in Venice, where we ordered a round of vegetables (broccolini, Brussels sprouts, carrots), then the Duck Confit, which was divine, and then the butterscotch cream something for dessert. Recommended!

• Some lovely pastel-colored motion graphics with some facts about the internet, by Sander van Dijk

 Image courtesy of Shadow Shows

Review: Bruce McDonald's Weirdos

Written by Cayley James

You might ask yourself why a bike magazine is reviewing a film about two hitchhiking teens? Well: It was made by Toronto-based director, and cyclist, Bruce McDonald. And the film’s central themes of self discovery, self expression, exploration and escape are things we can really get behind here at dandyhorse. Plus, there’s a character named Beans who is seen early on riding a banana seat bicycle. That’s pretty cool.

Directed by Bruce McDonald and co-written with Daniel MacIvor, Weirdos tells the story of Kit (Dylan Authors) and his best friend Alice (Julia Sarah Stone) as they hitchhike from Antigonish up to Sydney during the July 4th weekend in 1976. Kit is on the cusp of coming out of the closet and set on leaving behind his small-minded small town, and homophobic dad (Allen Hawco) to live with his charismatic, but unstable, artist mother (played like a whirling dervish by McDonald regular Molly Parker) -- a woman he idolizes, and idealizes, by regularly recounting her exploits in Toronto and the time she was photographed by Andy Warhol.

 Image courtesy of Image PR

Alice is Kit’s foyle, the realist to his dreamer, and perennially disappointed by those she loves. Of the two she longs for control and stability and is more comfortable calling bullshit than getting lost in the fantasy of what could be. However, her attempts at being cool and above it all are thwarted by her vulnerability and youth. Some moments of which are particularly heartbreaking. The two hitch rides from pot smoking teens, bugged out old dudes, and a friendly cop. There’s nothing sinister about their jailbreak style roadtrip. Everything, even the teenage debauchery, is charming.

Canadian film seems to have a soft spot for coming of age stories that grapple with sexual identity and the notion of home. Just last year saw the release of Sleeping Giant, Fire Song and Closet Monster, all of which could fit comfortably under that banner. Unlike those films, which hinge on extreme emotional and physical violence, Weirdos is one the gentlest films I have ever seen.

Rather than constantly looking inward Weirdos handles characters interiority with an awkward charm instead of histrionics. It’s also a sly criticism of Canadian identity in the shadow of American hegemony. The choice to set it on the Bicentennial weekend, with parades of stars and stripes illuminating cathode ray TV sets is a subtle dig at Canada’s ongoing uncomfortable relationship with its neighbour. All while Andy Warhol (Rhys Bevan-John), the ultimate American Dream dreamer, appears as Kit’s imaginary friend, popping up intermittently to doll out droll, shallow advice.

The film’s central questions of how you manage to balance who you are, what you want to be, and what people expect you to be, are questions that can just as easily be applied to a nation state as they are to wayfinding 15-year-olds.

McDonald and MacIvor’s efforts to not get bogged down in nostalgia serves the film well. Mcdonald’s relationship with music is well documented element to his films (hello, Hardcore Logo) and the radio hits of the day that pepper the soundtrack from Led Zeppelin, Gordie Lightfoot, and Anne Murray are immediate short hands for time and place. There may be appearances of ubiquitous stubbie bottles but there are no rose-coloured glasses.  Its crisp black-and-white photography is a tip of the hat to Goin Down the Road and I couldn't help but be reminded of the charming dramedy The New Waterford Girl. Whose lack of sentimentality is something it shares with Weirdos.

McDonald's films are similar to his commitment to continuing to collaborate and foster supportive artistic relationships in Canadian film, by challenging the narrative of collective identity and cultural memory. His films are testaments to patience and empathy and challenging the status quo.

Even if you haven’t stepped a foot farther east than Montreal Weirdos is a film that manages to resonate beyond its regional reminisces. It's worth a quick ride to TIFF this week to take in some classic CanCon.

Weirdos opens for an exclusive run at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox starting this Friday, March 17 running to March 23. http://www.tiff.net/films/weirdos/

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If you have ever discovered your self struggling to listen to your music within the sound of the noisy plane or train then the couple of noise-cancelling headphones may be just what you will need. 

As their name suggests, these headphones eliminate background noise to help you to concentrate on your music, videos or podcasts. 

Even although you’re perhaps not utilizing your headphones to hear any such thing, we have found ourselves periodically turning the headphones on just to get a bit of solace on a long flight. 

We won’t go in to the particulars of just how this impact is achieved, but suffice to state the outcome could be very remarkable. 

This efficiently lets you tune in to your music at a reduced (read: safer) volume, since you need not turn it around hear it over history sound. 

The end result is not completely perfect. They truly are less efficient at cancelling out higher-pitched noises, but also for probably the most component they’re exemplary at coping with low, constant noises just like the hum of a train or plane. 

If you opt for among our top picks to find the best noise-cancelling headphones, you’ll get moobs that do not only effortlessly eliminate the many background noise feasible, but will also make your music sound very good in the act. 

When it comes to noise-cancelling headphones, there are two kinds to look out for: active and passive. Passive ensures that once the headphones are pressed against your mind, some noise is cut right out in the process of shutting your ears off to the planet outside. It’s not high-tech. Lots of headphones claim that this really is some kind of advanced level strategy, but it’s only a few levels of foam attempting their darndest to keep noise out.

Active noise cancellation, on the other hand, involves some pretty interesting procedures to block out noise. Combined with the cushioning which passively blocks sound, microphones planted in ear wells of headphones actively analyze the ambient sound level and reflect sound waves back in your ear that work to zap the outside sound. The target is to hear just the music, or whatever it really is you are listening to.

Active noise cancelling headphones tend to be more good at whatever they do, nevertheless the downside is this noise termination requires batteries to be able to function, so that you’ll have to have them charged if you wish to keep the noises of outside world at bay.

Since you know, you’re willing to go with a set. Let’s take a look at top noise-cancelling headphones around:

1. Philips Fidelio NC1
2. Bose QuietComfort 35
3. Sony MDR-1000X
4. Bose QuietComfort 25
5. Plantronics BackBeat Professional 2
6. Bose QuietControl 30
7. Samsung Level On Pro
8. Sennheiser PXC 550
9. Sony H.ear On MDR-100ABN
10. Imaginative Sound Blaster EVO ZxR

1. Philips Fidelio NC1

Acoustic design: Closed | Weight: .74 pounds | Cable length: 3.9 feet | Frequency response: 7-25,000Hz | motorists: Two 1.5″ Neodymium drivers | Driver kind: Dynamic | Sensitivity: 107 dB | Impedance: 16 ohm | Battery life: 25+ hours | Wireless range: N/A | NFC: No

Brilliantly balanced noise

Great build quality and battery pack life

Some noise leakage

Philips gift suggestions a stylish noise-cancelling solution using its NC1. These on-ear headphones are not cordless, but that’s scarcely grounds to knock them. Arriving at $299, equivalent price as Bose’ QuietComfort 25, the NC1 are a scaled-down set that is on top of comfort and battery pack life.

You obtain a whole lot for the money here. Within the field comes the headphones, a tough situation for storage space therefore the headphones rock a rechargeable battery providing you with noise termination for near to 30 hours. But additionally, the sound performance is very well-balanced and warm.

Browse the complete review: Philips Fidelio NC1

2. Bose QuietComfort 35

Acoustic design: Closed | body weight: 0.68 pounds | Cable length: 3.94 feet | Frequency response: N/A | Drivers: N/A | Driver type: N/A | Sensitivity: N/A | Impedance: N/A | Battery life: 20+ hours | Wireless range: N/A | NFC: Yes

Broad and clear soundstage

Amazing noise cancellation

Active EQ an acquired style

Boring appearance

Bose has finally brought its fantastic noise-cancelling technology to a set of cordless headphones and it’s really done this with no of this old-fashioned disadvantages of cordless headphones. They sound great, and their battery pack life is long enough for many nevertheless the longest of flights.

At $349.95 (£289.95 / AU prices tbc) the QC35s rest firmly at the premium end for the range, but if you would like the greatest noise-cancelling headphones available today you then cannot get any better.

See the complete review: Bose QuietComfort 35

3. Sony MDR-1000X

Acoustic design: Closed | Weight: 275 grms | Frequency reaction: 4Hz – 40kHz | motorists: 40mm | Driver type: Dynamic | Sensitivity: 103dB | Impedance: 46 Ohms | Battery life: 20 hours | cordless range: 30 feet | NFC: Yes

Fast Attention mode

Noise termination

Long battery pack life

Finicky Ambient Sound mode

The MDR-1000X are definitely the closest competitor to Bose’s QuietComfort show we’ve ever endured the pleasure of evaluating. Some high-end codecs (LDAC, AAC and aptX) assist the 1000X noise even better than the QC35s, but fundamentally the noise canceling is just a bit less effective in Sony’s pair of cans.

Just what should drive your choice on whether or not to buy the MDR-1000X is your very good music player – if you are a Sony Xperia owner, you’d be hard-pressed to locate a pair of headphones that seem as effective as these with noise canceling technology integral. Even though you’re not, Sony’s wares continue to be worth a listen – and possibly a purchase – if you should ben’t too put out by its $400 (£330 or AU$700) price tag.

Browse the complete review: Sony MDR-1000X

4. Bose QuietComfort 25

Acoustic design: Closed | Weight: 0.68 pounds | Cable size: 3.94 feet | Frequency reaction: N/A | Drivers: N/A | Driver type: N/A | Sensitivity: N/A | Impedance: N/A | Battery life: 20+ hours | cordless range: N/A | NFC: Yes

Stunning noise-cancellation

Comprehensive sound

A bit older

Colors cost extra

If a great set of noise-cancelling headphones is one thing you are willing to shell out for, think about the excellent-but-old QuietComfort 25.

The QC25 actually cohesive product that balances design, features and noise profile delicately, and excels at all of it. While $300 is certainly a chunk of modification, the QC25 represents a great value based on its stunning build quality, function set and vibrant sound. You’re getting a finely-tuned set of headphones that offer over 35 hours of excellent noise-cancelling performance with one AAA battery.

See the full review: Bose QuietComfort 25

5. Plantronics BackBeat Professional 2

Acoustic design: Closed | body weight: 0.64 pounds (289g) | Cable size: N/A | Frequency reaction: N/A | Drivers: 40mm | Driver type: Dynamic | Sensitivity: N/A | Impedance: N/A | Battery life: twenty four hours | Wireless range: 100 meters (330 legs) | NFC: No

Incredible 24 hour battery pack life

Noise-canceling at an excellent price

Bass overwhelming from time to time

Styling maybe not for all

If you should be a regular tourist you’re probably all too knowledgeable about headphones that can not hold a charge, can’t block out sound and, generally, cannot appear great. If you should be sick and tired of buying headphones like that let us expose you to the Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2, mostly of the headphones on the market that may do all of the above and cost not so much than half as much as among the larger names like Beats, Bose and Sony. 

If we must boil it down to its core, the BackBeat Pro 2 has an exemplary travel headphone with incredible battery pack life, supreme convenience, the capacity to set two unit as when and, most of all, good quality of sound the price.

See the full review: Plantronics BackBeat professional 2

6. Bose QuietControl 30

Acoustic design: Closed | Weight: 23g | Cable size: N/A | Frequency response: N/A | Drivers: N/A | Driver type: N/A | Sensitivity: N/A | Impedance: N/A | Battery life: 10 hours | cordless range: 33 ft | NFC: Yes

Excellent noise-cancellation

Comfortable earbuds

Maybe not great sounding

Divisive neckband

The Bose QC 30s would be the only in-ear headphones on this list, all things considered, it is much easier to filter back ground sound when you experience two thick cushions sitting around your ears. 

Offered the limits of the kind factor, Bose has done an excellent work on the noise-cancellation of this QC30s, that will be honestly a lot better than some over-ears nowadays. 

The drawback is that these aren’t the most effective sounding headphones with this list, however if you’re prepared to make that compromise then it is difficult to find fault using them. 

Read the complete review: Bose QC 30

7. Samsung Level On Professional Wireless Headphones

Acoustic design: Closed | body weight: .7 pounds | Cable length: 3.6 feet | Frequency response: 20Hz to 20kHz | motorists: 40mm Dual-Layered Diaphragm | Driver kind: Dynamic | Sensitivity: N/A | Impedance: N/A | Battery life: 8 hours | Wireless range: 30 meters (98ft) | NFC: Yes

Comfy faux-leather earpads

Extra features for Samsung owners

Synthetic, delicate connection

Short-range cordless

The Samsung Level On professional Wireless are one of the few headphones we have tested that feel just like they are meant being a deal for the next unit. Yes they are going to make use of every Bluetooth and 3.5mm jack-equipped handset available on the market, nevertheless’re better off sticking with a Samsung device in order to squeeze every ounce of aural goodness from UHQ audio codec.

It’s among the comfiest pair of cans in the marketplace, and something of the finest noise-cancelling, too. If it had a better sound quality the the greater part of cell phone users it will be a simple recommendation but, since it stands, actually makes the absolute most feeling at checkout whenever purchased alongside Samsung’s upcoming Big Thing.

Read the full review: Samsung Level On Pro Wireless Headphones

8. Sennheiser PXC 550

Acoustic design: Closed | body weight: .7 pounds | Cable size: 3.6 legs | Frequency reaction: 20Hz to 20kHz | motorists: 40mm Dual-Layered Diaphragm | Driver type: Dynamic | Sensitivity: N/A | Impedance: N/A | Battery life: 8 hours | cordless range: 30 meters (98ft) | NFC: Yes

Great sounding

aptX connectivity

Unresponsive touch settings

Sound termination might be better

The PXC 550’s best strength is the sound. Other wireless noise-cancelling headphones might offer a better interface or better noise-cancellation technology, but ultimately none of this above complement towards sound quality of these Sennheisers. However, nevertheless, there are a couple of irritations that prevent united states from being able to completely and unreservedly suggest them. These annoyances aren’t quite deal-breakers, but there are definitely other noise-cancelling headphones available that don’t experience the exact same problems.

See the complete review: Sennheiser PXC 550

9. Sony H.ear On MDR-100ABN

Acoustic design: Closed | fat: 1.9 pounds | Cable length: 3.94 legs | Frequency reaction: 5-40,000 Hz | Drivers: 1.57 inch | Driver type: Dynamic | Sensitivity: 103 dB/mW | Impedance: 32 ohms | Battery life: 20+ hours | Wireless range: N/A | NFC: Yes

Brilliant Hi-Res Audio functionality

Extremely comfortable

Insufficient low-battery warning

No touch settings

Beautiful to wear, great to look at and great for sound, the Sony H.ear On MDR-100ABNs would have been a fine purchase for anybody searching for noise-cancelling cordless headphones because of the additional bonus of Hi-Res Audio.

At £220/$350 (around $AU480) they’ll be on upper end on most budgets – but i mightn’t hesitate at hand over that kind of cash for headphones which have enough technology in them to last years.

See the complete review: Sony H.ear On MDR-100ABN

10. Innovative Sound Blaster EVO ZxR

Acoustic design: Closed | Weight: N/A | Cable size: N/A | Frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz | Drivers: Two 1.9″ drivers | Driver kind: N/A | Sensitivity: N/A | Impedance: N/A | Battery life: 8+ hours | Wireless range: 33 legs | NFC: Yes

Sound termination

Works together contemporary game systems

Expensive

In the event that design of loves for the Bose QC 35 is a little too tame available, read the Creative Sound Blaster EVO ZxR. The name of those headphones is really a small tongue-twister, however you will get equally tripped-up operating down the exhaustive a number of features present in them too.

Active sound termination helps maintain your immersion at an all-time high with help for paying attention over Bluetooth. You may also touch an NFC-enabled device for super-quick cordless connection. However, if you feel like keeping things wired, linking a 3.5mm cable starts up help for PS4, Mac and PC. As mentioned early in the day, the style is bold, however it matches the feature-set loaded into these cans.

Read the complete review: innovative Sound Blaster EVO ZxR

We’re constantly reviewing brand new noise-cancelling headphones, but inform us if there is a group that you’d like united states to have a look at within the opinions below.

The post The most effective noise-cancelling headphones available today appeared first on The Nokia Blog.

BlackBerry has joined the Vulnerable Persons Project, a tech initiative that plans to create a database to prevent or help solve missing persons cases in partnership with the Mohawk Council of Kahnawa:ke.

“It is good business to align ourselves with Indigenous peoples,” wrote JP Beaupre, senior development manager for global partnerships in a blog post on Inside Blackberry. “It is also the right thing to do to help stop violence against Indigenous women and children.”

The company is joining to fight what it calls a “quiet plague of violence” that saw Canada’s aboriginal women and girls account for at least 16 percent of the country’s murder victims over the last three decades, despite being just four percent of its total female population.

The plan, says BlackBerry, will enable community-run data collection and system management, emergency notification and crisis communications (powered by its existing technology AtHoc). It will also allow families to securely share sensitive records with law enforcement agencies and healthcare providers.

Other partners in the project are Forrest Green, a Canadian consulting and professional services firm and analytics firm SAS Canada.

Source: BlackBerry

The post BlackBerry signs on to fight violence against Indigenous women appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Recently my firewall at home had a bit of a hick-up and decided to change the rule to forward a high external TCP port number to port 22 of one of my servers into a 1:1 mapping of that port instead. As I was about to go into a long meeting I couldn’t immediately react and fix things so for a couple of hours the SSH server of that machine was accessible from the Internet via its native port – with interesting results.

I was not particularly worried to leave things this way for a couple of hours as I’ve deactivated username/password authentication on that server and the patch level of the machine was up to date. I expected a couple of robots to try getting access but not much more. When I checked my logs after a couple of hours I was however quite surprised at the frequency I was attacked by bots. While there were periods of 30 minutes or so without any activities there are also instances where I got a visitor every 2 or 3 minutes from everywhere around the world and I had one bot that tried to do password authentication every second for a couple of minutes before it gave up after several hundred attempts.

First thought: This sets press reports by companies and governments into perspective that they get attacked many times per hour. That is nothing special, everybody with a public IP address gets constantly bombarded by connection attempts from robots that try to find weaknesses.

Second reaction: Don’t even bother connecting low power IoT devices with a public IPv4 address to the Internet, it will never have an opportunity to go to sleep and its small battery will be empty before the day is out. Even only having a public IPv6 address that is reachable for initiating incoming traffic won’t help as people are working on methods to scan that infinitely bigger address space as well.

This week Fraser and Federico take their Apple Pencils in hand and share some notes on taking notes with the iPad Pro.

We've covered some excellent Pencil-based note-taking apps for iPad on this week's Canvas, and also explained why the Pencil is a must-have accessory for iPad Pro owners. You can listen here.

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→ Source: relay.fm

Travelled the Arbutus Greenway on its temporary surfaces today.  A few things to see (at least temporarily), as the temporary planned temporary surfaces come into being, prior to resumption of design consultation.

Signs of humans.  A service (Mobi).

Click to expand and get into the captions.

The excellent work that Dr. Larry Frank is undertaking at the University of British Columbia has been reinforcing the importance of walkable cities and places to keep citizens mentally sound, emotionally happy, and physically fit. The  Australian journal “The Conversation” has now joined into the conversation and asks a simple question-what would happen if EVERYONE built 8,800 steps a day into their routine? Would this be a game changer for the health of citizens and for the budgets of nations that fund universal health care?

“Considering only the people aged over 55, at a minimum it would reduce the need for hospitalisation by 975,000 bed days per year, for a saving of $1.7 billion dollars. Given there are health benefits at other ages, and the less healthy Australians not represented in our study could benefit more, the actual benefit is likely to be even greater.”

The study classified people over 55 as inactive if they took 4,500 steps a day or less. An active senior took 8,600 steps a day. Just the simple act of doubling the steps, or increasing walking time to roughly 40 minutes a day reduced hospital days by a third.

“With governments searching for ways to reduce spending, and 16% of the federal budget being spent on health, tackling physical inactivity of individual patients, as well as ensuring our urban centres are walking- and cycling-friendly would make a major difference.”

Given these findings, does it  make sense for Provincial governments to provide funding to municipalities to make communities more walkable for  seniors, and provide safe comfortable linkages  to  shops and facilities? How can we further link the health benefits of walkable livable places to the well-being and longevity of residents?

From the New York Times:

So the couple did what countless other city dwellers with growing families and a hankering for more space or different lifestyles often do: They moved to the suburbs. Some, like the Simons, may have been priced out; others looked to cash out and take advantage of the steady run-up in property prices. …

“It’s less about the home you want to buy and more about what you’re looking for in terms of the lifestyle,” said Kathy Braddock, a managing director of William Raveis Real Estate, which recently created the Raveis Escapes website to match buyers with towns that best reflect their desired lifestyles. …

For many city residents, the decision to leave is difficult, and often fraught with a whole new set of compromises. You may be happily trading an overcrowded co-op for a commodious colonial, but you may have less time to enjoy it because of the long train ride home from work. And you’re responsible for maintaining it, rather than relying on a super. Forget, too, about hailing a cab to get you around town. …

Another important consideration: where your extended family and close friends reside. “Are they going to be part of your life? This can anchor you to an area,” Ms. Bernstein said. …

Let’s start with the tangibles. Some characteristics of a community will obviously remain constant, like the geographic composition. Others are slow to change, like the population and demographic makeup, along with the infrastructure and housing stock. …

Something to keep in mind: Communities tend to transform every 15 years or so as residents come and go, or local ordinances change. “You have to look at the young migrants,” Ms. Bernstein said. …

Now for the less tangible: discerning a community’s personality. While Ms. White was exploring Bedford, she said, she took note of interactions with the residents there. “Do they say hello on the sidewalks? What does it feel like in the grocery store?” …

“All the data is out there,” Ms. Bernstein said. “But it’s not the data that you necessarily need. Go and see the people who are sitting in the local Starbucks. Go to the preschool you’re thinking of sending your children to and see who’s picking up and dropping off.” The latter can reveal whether the community is made up of families with stay-at-home mothers or commuting couples. …

You can typically afford a lot more square footage in the suburbs, which is one of the reasons city dwellers decide to leave. The median sale price for a home in Westchester, for instance, was $438,000 at the end of last year, compared with $1.050 million for co-ops and condominiums in Manhattan and $750,000 in Brooklyn, according to the appraiser Jonathan J. Miller of Miller Samuel. …

Then there are the hidden costs buyers might not have considered before their move. “Some people may not be getting much more when you look at the longer commute, higher property taxes and additional upkeep on their property,” Ms. Bernstein said. “It’s not necessarily always cheaper living in the suburbs.”

The Simons, who paid $1.05 million for their Upper Montclair house, had to buy two cars after their move. Other unanticipated costs included the need to replace the hot water heater, fix a gas leak and buy a new stove, washing machine and dryer. …

Technology has changed the way some people evaluate commuting times. Because more people’s jobs allow them to telecommute, it may not be as crucial to live near a transit hub, which can open up more purchasing possibilities. Mr. Peschiera, for one, regularly works from home part of the week.

For those with less flexibility, having a good commute — one that is an hour or less each way and with more than one transportation option — can be invaluable. Agents, though, recommend that buyers try out the commute during peak hours to get a better gauge.

Adam Van Fossen, 30, a marketing director for a tech start-up, said that having a reasonable commute was a major factor in his decision …  “I’ll really miss the fast commute that I have now,” he said. “It was only a 15-minute subway ride.”

.

Conclusion: In some ways, good frequent transit is more important to the lifestyle of the suburban commuter – and hence housing prices – than the city dweller who has choices.  Odd that the debate seems to often assume the opposite.