People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests.
Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others.
See full article on MSNBC.
Problogger has an interesting article on the dangers of spending too much time on trying to build incoming links to your website. He points out:
Give it some attention by all means – but keep things in balance and realize that of all the factors that make up a successful blog – incoming links is at best midway through the list.
In general, the danger is that if you spend too much time and effort on incoming links you might end up neglecting your content.
I managed to increase the numbers of links to my blogs over time. In the process here’s what else happened:
- My posting frequency dropped
- Readers became frustrated with my content (which was obviously linkbait)
- I lost some of my passion for blogging and my topic
- I sold out content wise (started picking topics to write about that didn’t really add value to my blog)
- I started watching my metrics more than the news in my industry
- Frustration crept into my blogging when the links didn’t come
- My Page Rank increased – but my actual SERPs (the position of my blog in search engines) dropped
See full article.
The Indian Economy Blog is reporting on very interesting observation:
not once in world history has a large-sized country gone into rapid industrialization mode, while also guaranteeing universal franchise or a vote for all of its citizens. When you think about it, this claim is probably true. Forget China, think about the U.S., Soviet Union, the U.K., France, Germany etc. Not one of those countries actually industrialized while everyone had the vote.
To me, this appears more to be coincidence than anything else. But there’s no denying the fact that India is one of the largest, growing economy in the developing world that has a working democracy.