If you haven’t spent significant time on the West Coast, you’ve probably never of a hamburger chain called In-N-Out Burger. I've only been there once but I can understand why so many people love the place (just an FYI: I had two "double-doubles," four cheeseburgers "animal style," two orders of fries, and a water). But according to this article, it's not just the burgers that make this chain hugely successful, even in these trying economic times. According to the author of "In-N-Out Burger: A Behind the Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules," there are six principles that have made In-N-Out Burger more profitable than competitors like Burger King:

1) Keep a Relentless Focus on Quality
2) Listen to Your Customers

I've been doing a lot of thinking about conferences lately as a result of all the presentations we've all been doing (e.g., AERA, CCCT, TCETC) and the one that i am currently most fascinated by is the Apple Developer Conference. This year the conference is being held in San Francisco from June 8-12. I've always wanted to attend just to understand the hype and see how it is organized. But I've always had a conflict and the cost seemed exorbitant (this year the registration fee was $1,595). Plus, the conference has been sold out the past two years. So you can imagine how happy I was to learn that Pranav was recently invited to attend the conference. Additionally, he was awarded an Apple Student Scholarship.

For folks who don't know, Pranav has been working on Fluensee (video below) with Jo, Faisal, Gonzalo, Ting, Shuchi (partner at CU), and myself. Hopefully, he will be able to share some valuable insights from the conference that will help us to develop additional educational applications.

Check out this incredible new tool from Google called the Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE). The possibilities are limitless. It is almost as revolutionary as Google TiSP.

Happy April everyone!

According to three Georgia Tech professors, the University of North Carolina will emerge as the winner of March Madness 2009 (Coincidentally, President Obama also made this pick). How did they come to this conclusion? They used a predictive algorithm they created called "Logistic Regression/Markov Chain" (LRMC). Last year, it correctly picked the Final Four teams and the eventual winner.

Click here to see how their bracket looks this year.

Learn more.

And for all you iPhone/March Madness fans out there, check out these six apps.

A few weeks ago the New York Times Magazine ran a great story about Toyota (yes, I know I recently blogged about Honda as well). The piece probably paints an overly positive picture of Toyota but you get a sense from the article that Toyota will come out better positioned in the auto industry as a result of the economic downturn.

I think there are two reasons for this:

1) Toyota's increased investment in R&D

2) Toyota's commitment to the organizational worldview

R&D has always been an important part of Toyota and they are well known for far outspending their counterparts in design, research, and development. The idea is that innovation, small and big, will lead to better products that retain current customers and draw new drivers (e.g., Prius). And if you doubt the importance of R&D, check out this story about R&D in pharmaceutical companies.

Brian's earlier post on teachers got me doing some research on tools that might help them better engage their students. Check out this story on a new educational product called "Siftables" (or watch the Ted Talk below).

This article from New Scientist outlines some pretty interesting ideas for how siftables might be used to support learning. Anyone have any additional thoughts for how we might use this tool for an educational purpose?

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Here were some interesting education-related stories in the news today:

Education Dynamics reports that the two most important factors for converting prospective online students into registered paying students are 1) response time and 2) explaining "how particular offering[s[ address the prospect's needs and concerns." Read more.

Rocketship Education wins $5 million grant to open 7 more Santa Clara County charter schools. Read more.

Teaching Mathematics in Finland with Japanese Puzzles

Ousted Staten Island education official apologizes over racist e-mail

iPhone App-a-Day
Safety Button

Arianna's and Jo's "iPhone App-a-Day" updates have helped me to be more attuned to new developments in the mobile app world. The one that I am most currently intrigued by is called "Card Counter" (for more on card counting click here or read the book Bringing Down the House). Card Counter made news recently when the Nevada gaming authorities warned casinos about the application.

The part that I am most interested in is the possibility of using the app to teach probabilities to students. Anyone interested in organizing an EdLab seminar around the fine art of card counting (for educational purposes of course)?

Here is the latest information from the Card Counter website:

I was doing some research for the Learning Opportunities Lab course that Gary and I are teaching and I came across the Stanford d.school. What I found most impressive was their emphasis on "design thinking" (as opposed to "design") in their work (very reminiscent of the seminar series Stephanie led last semester on design).

I started to browse the site to learn more, but then came across this caption with the following image:

d.manifesto
All you need to know
On a napkin

To learn more about the d.school and their founder David Kelley of IDEO, click here. The article also explains why starting in 2003 Kelley began refering to the IDEO approach as "design thinking" rather than "design."

Check out the Charlie Rose video below titled "Future of Newspapers." Interviewees include Walter Isaacson of "Time," Robert Thomson of "Wall Street Journal" and Mort Zuckerman of "The New York Daily News."

In addition to the discussion on subscription-based revenues (as opposed to advertising-based revenues) and micropayments--both of which I think TCR is doing to some extent--I found the conversation about Google's impact to be quite relevant to various projects we have going on at EdLab and the College.

Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson, talking about the impact of the Web on the newspaper industry says:

"... Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google, but it's terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content."