5 Seemingly Random Factors That Control Your Memory

We have all experienced zone-out moments when we know we totally should remember something that has apparently been deleted from our brain's hard drive against our will. That's because the human brain is a haphazard, messy machine that glitches at the slightest, strangest provocation. However, our old friend science has tracked down some of the completely random things that decide whether or not your memory will choose to function at that particular moment. Things like ... #5. Photos.com You're standing in a room, looking around, confused. You try to decide if this is the sign of a cripplingly short attention span or early onset Alzheimer's. Photos.comIt's corn dogs, isn't it? It's doorways. Your brain uses a very similar directory system to that of your computer. Photos.com"Son? And the effect of doorways is so strong that you don't even have to physically move for those bastards to put the kibosh on your memory. Photos.com"Hey there, Jerry! #4. What the hell? #3. Imagine Morgan Freeman.

How Trello is different by Joel Spolsky Friday, January 06, 2012 Just a few months ago, we launched Trello, a super simple, web-based team coordination system. Trello is new kind of development project for Fog Creek. The biggest difference you’ll notice (compared to our previous products pitched solely at software developers) is that Trello is a totally horizontal product. Horizontal means that it can be used by people from all walks of life. Vertical software is much easier to pull off and make money with, and it’s a good choice for your first startup. It’s easier to find customers. Making a major horizontal product that’s useful in any walk of life is almost impossible to pull off. Forgive me if I now divert into telling you a quick story about my time spent on the Microsoft Excel team way back in 1991. Everybody thought of Excel as a financial modeling application. Round about 1993 a couple of us went on customer visits to see how people were using Excel. What was I talking about? Bing! We work in public.