Author: coolerinsights

Book Review: The Pirate’s Dilemma

August 4, 2011 • Book Reviews • 1 comment

Pirate DJ, music buff, and magazine publisher Matt Mason’s book The Pirate’s Dilemma – How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism is a fascinating tour-de-force of the world of youth culture, content piracy and the future of commerce.  Written from an insider’s perspective – Mason himself was once voted pirate of the year by Business Week – the book traces the development of various music genres over the decades and how they impacted societies. 

Defying the class action suits launched by record companies and copyright owners around the world, Mason declared that piracy isn’t a sin but instead, a necessary ingredient for innovation and invention. By allowing others to adapt and modify original content and spread it freely around, piracy helps to foster change in popular culture in all its forms – fashion, food, hairstyles, movies, games, software and even enterpreneurship.

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Cheap Advertising

August 2, 2011 • Blog • 1 comment

Singapore is not just a “fried rice paradise”. It is also a “hard sell paradise”.

If you flip through the papers on any single day, approximately 80% of the advertisements scream “DISCOUNTS”, “SALE”, “FREE”, “PROMOTION” and other words aimed at tugging at your wallets. Because we’re such avid bargain hunters, anything priced at the normal rack rates or list price will fail to trigger any immediate (or impulsive) purchase decision.

As I was about to enter my car a few days ago, I spotted this bright colourful flyer on my window.

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Brainy Insights

July 31, 2011 • Blog • 1 comment


Courtesy of Inner Altitude

Last night, I decided to catch a much talked about TED talk by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor and boy was I blown away! In the video, the celebrity neuro-anatomist described her experiences when she suffered a stroke on her left brain and painted a beautiful and vivid picture of that somewhat transcendental encounter. From that incident, she was able to isolate the functions of both brains via a first person perspective, showing how the two cerebral hemispheres (connected by a bunch of tissue called the corpus callosum) interact and work with each other.

Here’s the video for your viewing pleasure:

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HP Hops on Tablet Train with TouchPad

July 28, 2011 • Blog • 1 comment

By now, tablet PCs are fairly de rigueur in almost any household with a need for fuss-free technology. Initiated first by Apple with its legendary iPad launch in April 2010 – barely 15 months ago – the market for tablet devices has swelled tremendously with major technology players launching a range of devices operating on Apple, Android, Blackberry, and Windows 7 Operating Systems (OS).

The latest player to jump into the fray is computer giant HP. Its tablet device the HP TouchPad runs on a proprietary HP WebOS 3.0, and comes with a 9.7 inch diagonal flush capacitive multitouch display, support for Adobe Flash, a virtual keyboard and instant-on access.

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Managing Visitor Fatigue in Museums and Attractions

July 22, 2011 • Blog • 3 comments


Museum visits needn’t be a yawn if you design them well (Courtesy of BelieveJay)

While doing some desktop research recently, I came across an interesting article by Gareth Davey titled “What is Museum Fatigue?” in InformalScience. The academic piece explained why visitors get tired when visiting museums, and proposed how we can better manage visitor behaviours when designing exhibitions.

Apparently, from research conducted thus far, the following findings are derived:

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Employee Engagement: Lessons From Universal Studios

July 20, 2011 • Business and Management • no comments

Universal Studios Grand Opening - 28 May 2011
Managers should lead by example and be there when it matters (Universal Studios Singapore)

Leadership and management are two of the most difficult tasks any manager needs to do in today’s organisation.

The new rules of work mandate that hierarchical ways of bossing people around will no longer work. Against such a backdrop, how can you and your leadership team engage your team members more effectively and impactfully?

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