In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces that influence the person. Overattribution is less likely, perhaps even inverted, when people explain their own behavior; this discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias.

This is rampant in literature on invention and creativity. Attribution to personality is most often used to describe his/her work that had a major influence on the society.

From this perspective it is useful to describe invention as a personal event, while innovation as a social event. This way we can shift participants' attention from psychological to systematic effects.

As a result, some sites are turning to a new strategy to keep their services "sticky" and their users satisfied: They're not just encouraging them to network online, but to attend offline events and parties in the real world as well. Yelp now regularly hosts parties in big cities around the country.

Now smaller start-ups are trying use the offline-online hybrid model to gain momentum against community heavyweights like Yelp and Meetup.

Recently relaunched Going, for example, is a "social-event calendar" that aggregates announcements, encourages members to network with each other online beforehand, and lets them maintain profiles with favorite events and photo galleries.

"The secret to Yelp bridging the online-offline gap is the reviews," Yelp user Adrian said. "Someone's writing can reveal a lot about that person, so before I meet a reviewer in real life, I have a general idea of who they are and what they are like. With Facebook, I might get an idea of what a person looks like, what movies and music they enjoy, but reading something (that) someone has put a piece of themselves into makes a complete difference."

http://news.com.com/Social+networks+geared+for+offline+success+-+page+2/2100-1038_3-6192780-2.html?tag=st.num

For social networking web is becoming an orchestration layer that allows people to identify potential friends and control the flow of social events in their lives. Very similar to what Dell, for example, did to PC manufacturing, Amazon to book shopping, and etc. Also, very relevant to the emerging click-to-brick model.

ARM dominance

What's the most dominant company in the technology industry? Microsoft? Google? Intel? How about a 1,300-employee British company named ARM?

ARM has created the chip design that is at the center of virtually every mobile phone on the planet. About 98 percent of all mobile phones use at least one ARM-designed core on their motherboards, according to research from the analyst firm the Linley Group.
http://news.com.com/ARMed+for+the+living+room/2100-1006_3-6056729.html

On the history of the Cartoon Bank:

Q: Tell us about how the idea first came about for Cartoon Bank. Was it yours exclusively?

A: I’ve been a cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine since 1977. For most of those years I would submit between 10 and 15 cartoons each week and might get one accepted for publication. That’s the case for most of the other cartoonists at the magazine. In 1990, during a week when I had sold no cartoons to the magazine (despite having drawn 15, some of which I thought were pretty good), it dawned on me that perhaps there was a market for the cartoons that the New Yorker rejected. I convinced friends of mine, who, not coincidentally, were also New Yorker cartoonists, and who, not coincidentally, I was buying drinks for, that they had nothing to lose by having me scan their rejects and try to market them.

So, the original Cartoon Bank was made up not of New Yorker cartoons, but of the rejects. The New Yorker got the cream of the crop, and the Cartoon Bank got the rest. Commercially, second-best proved good enough, and these rejected cartoons went into many textbooks, newsletters, CD’s, intranets, and onto the fledgling Internet, creating a profitable business.