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In Living @Color!

Anita | 3/31/11

In terms of journalistic buzz, the hottest new tech development is the social photo-sharing app, Color. Headed by Bill Nguyen, (whose music service, Lala, was rumored to have been acquired by Apple for $80 million) promises and delivers an experience that really is different than those of other photo-sharing apps like Path or Instagram.

 
Based on location, rather than a private friend circle, users within 150 feet of each other can share photos taken while using the app, whether or not they know each other. There’s no password. Rather, the feed is real-time, showing you the world through the eyes of the community around you.
 
Palo Alto International Film Festival’s offices are within 150 feet of Color’s office. So when we downloaded Color to play with it, guess whose photos were at the top of our list? That’s right. The world inside and outside the Color office.
 
Color’s home page says: Find someone. Party. Play date. Lunch? So, Alex and I decided to say hello to Bill. “Bill, We’re blogging about Color. What’s your favorite movie? Ciao! Alex & Anita from PAIFF.net. P.S. Hopefully this doesn’t remind you of a scene from SCREAM : )”
 
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Within 3 minutes, Bill responded, “Bring It On.”
 
Over at our office, we wondered. “Bring on the blog? Bring on the challenge? Or… Bring on the cheerleaders?”
 
John commented, “Cheerleader movie.”
 
Bill added, “Other one is Fried Green Tomatoes.”
 
Suddenly, our offices, just blocks from each other were talking!
 
We’re in an age where we want to be more electronically connected to the people we already care about. We’re hurrying to our jobs or rushing around running errands. But, what about the people that are all around us that we never take the time to meet? We shield ourselves, instead of connecting with our neighbors.
 
Color isn’t limited to pleasant photos of your daily life- Japanese users are sharing photos of their surroundings with rescue workers to aid tsunami relief efforts. Since different people can gather and share snapshots of events, there’s a lot of forensic potential. Criticism of Color misses the point.
 
Instead of insulating us, the way most social apps do, Color uses technology to build a real-life community. It was also very fun to play with. But, Bill, as for the movie favorites, “Let us know if we should drop off some DVDs for you. Lunch?”
Anita

Women and Comedy

Anita | 3/11/11

In 2007, self-proclaimed contrarian Christopher Hitchens wrote an extremely unfunny editorial for Vanity Fair, asking “Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny?” There may nothing less funny than dissecting gender differences in humor, but it’s even less funny to studiously avoid the topic when we have a humor conference coming up at PAI.

Turns out men and women are wired for humor differently. In a Stanford study conducted several years ago by Allen Reiss 10 men and 10 women, hooked up to MRI machines, viewed 70 cartoons and then rated the cartoons on a 1-to-10 "funniness scale." From the MRI data, researchers found that certain brain areas were more activated in women than men, such as the nucleus accumbens, or NAcc, part of the mesolimbic reward center.

Reiss and his colleagues theorized that women in this study used a more analytical approach when interpreting humor, which meant that they weren't necessarily expecting the cartoons to be as rewarding as men believed they would be. At the punch line, the reward center of a woman’s brain lit up. "Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon," said Reiss. "So when they got to the joke's punch line, they were more pleased about it."

In other words, it’s possible that women just have a better sense of humor than men.

So far, I think the best explanation for the difference in male and female comedians comes from Tina Fey’s recent article in the March 14th edition of The New Yorker: “Not all the men at ‘S.N.L’ whizzed in cups. But four or five out of twenty did, so the men have to own that one. Anytime there’s a bad female standup somewhere, some idiot Interblogger will deduce that ‘women aren’t funny.’ Using that same math I can deduce that male comedy writers piss in cups. Also they like to pretend to rape each other. It’s… don’t worry about it. It’s harmless, actually.”

Some of Today’s Top Funny Females? Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman, Mindy Kaling, Maya Rudolph, Alia Shawkat. And at Secrets To A Funnier You: The Art & Science of Being Funny we will be featuring the very funny Emily Levine doing cosmological stand-up. Yes, you read that correctly.

Anita

About The Blog

At the Palo Alto Institute, new ideas and perspectives are explored and played with on a daily basis. Our blog is a place for us to share some of these ideas and insights with our community. We'll throw in the occasional recipe or other tidbit, too, just for fun. Enjoy!

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