sarp centel

In an interview, Fried, creator of Ruby on Rails, talks about the power of small teams and small businesses. He has some advice for software projects as well: “List all the features you’d like on your product and cut them in half. Then, cut that list in half.” I think it’s pretty funny, true as well. As we bloat software with more features, it becomes complicated and creates usability problems for users. The product becomes difficult to learn and use. Less is more approach is becoming an important methodology in software design. “Being a small business is better than being a big one. Having few resources is better than having unlimited resources. Having less time is better than having all the time in the world.” In fact, isn’t engineering itself an art of optimization under constraints? These constraints are the driving force behind innovation.

I believe the internet is going to replace word of mouth. I still rely on others’ opinions and expertise, however I do this via searching the internet. The problem is that Google’s clever searching algorithms still can’t compete with the enormous amount of information present. What we really need is to augment Google’s searching technology with the wisdom of the crowds. Who would have believed that the Wikipedia idea could actually work in reality? But it does, and works really well. Now take a look at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, people are still better than computers at performing simple tasks such as categorizing images. Why not try the same approach for reorganizing search results? Who can judge better than you whether that site has the information that you need or not ….

Showing top posters on the front page, thus creating a competition probably increases user contribution to that site. But do I, as a reader, care about who the top posters are? Does it deserve to be on the front page, or even belong there?

On one side it degrades the quality of your site, while it increases user contribution on the other one. So which side weighs heavier?

It really depends on your goals and preferences. When I was running a gaming forum, showing quick reply forms or displaying post counts were positive motivators for increasing the number of posts made. However, the tradeoff made was regarding to the post quality. To increase their post counts, people made unnecessary posts and the quick reply form promoted making quick posts of poor quality. Since quality was more valuable than quantity, I always removed post counts.

You know the nasty tricks marketers make, like placing fundamental needs such as water, bread etc. at the end of the store, or putting escalators to only one end of a shopping mall. The idea is to make you walk around to increase your consumption.

I noticed a trend towards creating more social environments at the restaurants in Kanyon. I guess that is a managerial decision by the mall itself, it’s less likely that all the owners of cafes and restaurants collectively followed a new trend. Maybe the concept of Wagamama was influential in making this decision, who knows … Most restaurants have seating arrangements such that you have to sit in a big table, next to other customers. It’s a bit uncomfortable at first, but I believe this is a more civilized manner. It is beneficial for the café owners as well, since they can fit in more customers to a limited space.

I love shopping malls. Who doesn’t? In today’s busy world, being able to find all the shops in one place is certainly a time and effort saver. Kanyon, a new shopping mall in Turkey certainly deserves some publicity here.

The architectural design is astonishing, as the name suggests the design resembles a canyon. If we look at the previous shopping malls in this neighborhood, Akmerkez stands out by being the oldest one. The circular shape of Akmerkez is a brilliant way to design a shopping mall, because MetroCity’s rectangular design helps you realize the design flaw and appreciate the difference between the two approaches.

In MetroCity, when you walk till the end of a floor, you notice that you have come to a dead end and there is nowhere else to go. Therefore, you have to turn around and walk back which is pretty irritating because you are aware that you have already looked at all those shops before. However, in Akmerkez, the corridors are circular. There are certain advantages of being able to walk forever in a loop. Not being forced to stop by reaching a dead end is less irritating, and it is to the advantage of shop owners as well, since you may not immediately notice that you have already walked through that part of the mall.

Despite its architectural flaw in shape, MetroCity has a different architectural advantage. Akmerkez is an unnatural place, with all the artificial lighting and closed roof. Imagine yourself as a cartoon character that is shopping in a can. Yes, that is actually who you are. On the other hand, Metrocity’s roof lets sunlight in, which helps to ease the feeling of being in an artificial place.  But the kudos goes to Kanyon with its revolutionary approach. The place gives a mixed feeling of street shopping and mall shopping.

• People who go after their dreams is something to talk about. Barış Akkırış, at the age of 28, quits his big corporate job to go on a journey around the world. He shares the details of the journey that lasted 9.5 months on his blog as well. I’m sure that it was a priceless experience and I feel very, very envious…
• The experience of using an Apple with a 30” screen is tempting for everyone with an interest in computers. I need to stay away from these Apple stores for a while, in order to continue enjoying products of other brands. Apple products are so impressive in their design and very appealing to the eye as well.

It is the little things that makes a difference, they always say. Yeah, surely it is. It is the five minutes my friend spared to help me with my baggage, it is the automatic pause feature of ipod when your headphones get plugged out, it is the automatic underlining of numbers in your Sony Ericsson phone and it is the lights at the ceiling of Kanyon shopping mall that resembles stars at night. It is probably these little things that separate the special ones from the rest…

I enjoy reading non-fiction books and Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors. He published two best sellers, The Tipping Point and Blink. The former explains how social phenomena emerge and focuses on the tipping points, small factors that have caused great changes in the society. In the latter book, he argues about the power of snap judgements and the importance of trusting our senses. His style is argumentative, in the sense that he makes an observation and supports his claim with research findings in social sciences.

Freakonomics, a recent best seller, resembles Gladwell’s style in content and writing. It is written by Stephen Dubner, another writer at the New Yorker where Malcolm Gladwell also regularly writes. The book is based on the ideas of an economist, Steven Levitt, at the University of Chicago. He’s presented as an original thinker with opposing ideas to conventional wisdom. His ideas were mostly based on game theory and regression analysis, mainly simple things you never cared to explore. Journalists like to create heroes and present people as genius, surely Levitt has some interesting thoughts and findings, but does that make him Einstein?  I think his studies are more in line with sociology rather than economics, but you know what they say: Economics is not about money.

The book reminded me the Games and Strategies course I have taken from Özgür Kıbrıs. His lectures were always fun, and this was the kind of course that doesn’t rely on loading you with information. Instead, it presents a new perspective, a way of looking at things you encounter during your daily life. It’s the kind of university course that you will be grateful for the rest of your life. Levitt’s book mentions incentives people have, and why you shouldn’t trust your real estate agent because the 10% commission he gets from selling your house for $15,000 higher is just $150 more for him, which is certainly not worth his effort. These kinds of things are obvious, but you don’t seem to notice them. For instance, have you noticed the pun in the Turkish name Özgür Kıbrıs, or was it just another name for you?

If I had to compare the two authors, I would say that Gladwell’s books are more satisfactory in writing style, story telling and perhaps literary value, whereas Freakonomics seems to contain more interesting ideas and in depth analysis. Nevertheless, both books are worthy in their interesting content and are definitely quality reads.

And last, it was surprising to find a reference to works of Ali Hortaçsu, a Turkish citizen who turns out to be working at the same university with the author. Either the world is getting smaller, or Turks are starting to make more room for themselves at American universities, which is certainly a good thing for us…