Validation – a short film (16 min) about the magic of looking for the best in people:

This film tells the story of a parking attendant who gives his customers REAL validation by dispensing both free parking and free compliments.  It’s a great reminder of how we can all create a better world, instantly, by sharing a smile and a few kind words.  It will bring a smile to your face and maybe even some joyous tears!

This movie has played at 34 film festivals worldwide and won 17 awards.

Directed by Kurt Kuenne / USA / 2007

• Man on Wire
• Wear Sunscreen
• Watch Matt Dancing Badly Around The World
• The Inspiring Story of Rick and Dick Hoyt
• Tell me a Secret!

The historical film Gladiator directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crow has a fictional storyline. It is only loosely based on historical events.

It’s interesting to read how Marcus Aurelius described the character of the real Maximus:

“Maximus set an example of self-mastery, steadiness of purpose, and good cheer that no circumstance, not even illness, could extinguish. He combined in beautiful measure gravity with charm, and he did whatever needed to be done without making a fuss. Everyone believed what he said was what he thought and that he never acted with an intention to do harm or give offense. Nothing surprised or frightened him, and he never seemed to be in a hurry or slow to accomplish a task.

He was neither intimidated and embarrassed on one hand, nor aggressive and suspicious on the other. So giving, forgiving, and loyal was he by nature that he appeared to be a man whose virtues were inborn rather than acquired. It is unimaginable that anyone ever felt inferior or superior around him, perhaps as a result of his pleasing sense of humor.”

- Excerpt from the Emperor’s Handbook by Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180 AD) -

• Man on Wire
• Validation
• The World’s First Computer Bug!
• It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure

The following essay was written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. She described it as the commencement speech she would give if she were asked to give one.

When you read the speech below, you will be able to relate to some of the things Mary had written and you will enjoy reading it as much as I did.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ‘97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-old I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the successful music single "Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)", released in 1998, by Baz Luhrmann. This song was a number one hit in several countries.

• Validation
• The Inspiring Story of Rick and Dick Hoyt
• Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
• Nick Vujicic – A Man With No Arms, No Legs And No Limits!
• Man on Wire

Two planets meet in outer space.

The first one asks: "How are you?"

"Not so well", the second answered "I’ve got the Homo Sapiens."

"Don’t worry," the other replied, "I had the same. That won’t last long."

In this spirit watch George Carlin explaining why the planet is just fine. Very funny!

• What’s Easier? To Change Yourself or the World Around You?
• Watch Matt Dancing Badly Around The World
• Microsoft Surface Parody
• Bobby McFerrin Hacks Your Brain with Music
• Wear Sunscreen

Information overload has been around since the introduction of the printing press; so why do we still consider it to be a new problem?

Clay Shirky, New York University new-media professor, writer, and consultant argues that the problem isn’t information overload, it’s filter failure:

“What we’re dealing with now is not the problem of information overload, because we’re always dealing (and always have been dealing) with information overload…Thinking about information overload isn’t accurately describing the problem; thinking about filter failure is.”

Watch the video below to hear Clay Shirky’s well-argued points:

The  Gutenberg economic logic of publishing required that publishers act as filters. The Internet reduces the economic risks of publishing by allowing more and more information to be published at almost no cost.

This means it’s increasingly important for us to create better filters. Having access to information is great, but we need to filter and focus based on what we want to accomplish and what we need.

What kind of filters do you have in place to keep yourself from getting overwhelmed by too much information? Let me know in the comments.

• Top 10 Tools for Learning
• How to Support Knowledge Sharing in Your Organization?
• What Everybody Ought to Know About Twitter?
• Wear Sunscreen
• Top 6 Tools to Support Knowledge Sharing in Your Organization

In this fun and entertaining 3 minute performance from the World Science Festival, Bobby McFerrin uses the pentatonic scale and an audience’s expectations to demonstrate neural programming of our brains. Brilliant!

• Watch Matt Dancing Badly Around The World
• Saving the Planet!
• Microsoft Surface Parody
• What’s Easier? To Change Yourself or the World Around You?
• Wear Sunscreen

Lewis Gordon Pugh, the first person to swim at the North Pole, talks about his using extremes to accelerate the conversation about global warming. He talks about his record-breaking swim across the North Pole. He braved the icy waters to highlight the melting icecap.

Lewis Gordon Pugh was the first person to complete a long distance swim in every ocean of the world and over a period of 20 years he pioneered more swims around famous landmarks than any other swimmer in history. During this period Lewis witnessed the oceans change rapidly due to pollution, over fishing and climate change. He campaigns for the protection of the marine environment and a low carbon society.

Pugh teaches us that you should strive to push yourself to your limits.

• Nick Vujicic – A Man With No Arms, No Legs And No Limits!
• Wear Sunscreen
• The Inspiring Story of Rick and Dick Hoyt
• Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
• Man on Wire

In his famous 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, Steve Jobs, the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks – including death itself.

In this inspiring speech Steve Jobs tells three stories about his most pivotal points in life:

Connecting The Dots

The first story is about connecting the dots.

Steve Jobs tells the story about his parents, explains why he dropped out of college and why this was a good decision for him.  He explains how his fascination about calligraphy in college led to the innovation in beautiful typography on personal computers ten years later.

…you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards

Find What You Love

The second story is about love and loss.

Steve Jobs tells the story about his rise and fall with Apple.  He explains why getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to him, how he fell in love with an amazing woman who would become his wife and how he returned to Apple after a remarkable turn of events.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

Your Time Is Limited

The third story is about death.

Steve Jobs tells how he was diagnosed with cancer; how he barely escaped death and how the awareness of dead is the most important tool he has ever encountered to help him make the big choices in life.

"If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Read the full transcript of Steve Jobs’ address here.

• Wear Sunscreen
• The Inspiring Story of Rick and Dick Hoyt
• Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
• Nick Vujicic – A Man With No Arms, No Legs And No Limits!
• Juggling Five Balls Of Life

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free online service that enables you to broadcast short messages of 140 characters or fewer (aka status updates or tweets) to your friends or followers. People interested in your status updates then subscribe to follow your messages and you can subscribe to follow others. Whenever you start to follow somebody on Twitter you will instantly receive their status updates and you can read all of their messages in one place.

You can use a web browser, instant messaging, your mobile phone or you can choose from a gazillion of third party applications to access Twitter.

Watch the following CommonCraft video, which explains Twitter in Plain English:

How to get started?

The best way to find out what you think about Twitter is to experience it yourself. Go to Twitter.com and sign up for a free account. I recommend using your real name as your user name. In this way your friends will be able to find you easily.

Each user has his own profile page, in the form of Twitter.com/username (Example: my Twitter profile page is Twitter.com/RainerFalle). To customize your profile page write something about yourself, upload a picture and customize the look of your profile page. Your picture will appear next to each status update you send.

Your profile page will show information about you, who you are following and who is following you. It will also display your recent tweets (known as your timeline).

Now that you have a Twitter account, tell your friends about it!

Finding and Following people

Your Twitter experience will be defined by the people you choose to follow. Who you follow is completely up to you. During the sing-up process, Twitter will suggest some people to follow. If you are new to Twitter you can start following some of them to get used to the system.

If you already know people on Twitter you are interested in, start following them. You can use Twitters people search to find people by name. It is a little bit like coming to school for the first time. Nobody will tell you hey here is your list of new friends. Over time you will figure this out on your own.

A good way to find new interesting people is to take a look who your friends are following. Take a look at the pictures in the sidebar on your friends’ pages. Those are the users they are are following. If you click on one of those pictures, you’ll go to that user’s page.

Every time you came across a persons Twitter profile take a look at their recent tweets. If you like what you see click the “Follow” button. Following someone simply means receiving their Twitter updates. When you follow someone, every time they post a new message, it will appear in your Twitter home page. How many people you follow is up to you. Some people follow a small number, others can cope with hundreds if not thousands. Remember you can always stop following people if you are not interested in their updates any more.

When people follow you you shouldn’t feel obliged to follow them back. Just follow who is interesting to you. If you don’t want someone to follow you, e.g. a spammer, than you can easily block that person.

Sending Twitter Messages (Tweets)

There are three types of Twitter messages: status updates, @replies and direct messages.

With status updates you can answer the question “What are you doing?” However many users go beyond this simple question and use status updates to share links to interesting content, photos, videos or music on the web.

An @reply is a public Twitter message directed at a specific person. An @reply is a tweet with @username at the beginning. Your message is understood as being intended for that particular person, although others will be able to see it. However, @replies won’t show up on your followers timeline unless they are the intended recipient.

To send direct messages (DM) enter d username message (e.g. d RainerFalle How are you?) These are private messages that only the named contact will see. Direct messages appear in a special Twitter inbox. You can only send direct messages to people who follow you.

To send Twitter messages you can use the Twitter web site, instant messaging, your mobile phone or a third party applications like SharedMinds Desktop. In all these cases, your "followers" will see your tweets on their own timelines immediately.

Sharing Web Links

Since you have only 140 characters for a Tweet every character counts and nearly everyone on Twitter uses a URL shortening service like http://bit.ly. For example the URL  http://bSix12.com/put-first-things-first/ can be shortened to http://bit.ly/1AX7Pw. Most Twitter clients like SharedMinds Desktop support URL shortening.

Sharing Images

Twitter doesn’t have built-in support to attach images to its 140 character messages. However there is a large number of third-party services to fill that need. Image sharing services like TwitPic and YFrog let you attach a photo and include a shortened link to that photo. Twitter clients like SharedMinds Desktop have integrated support for various image sharing services.

Retweeting

When you see a tweet you really like, you can "retweet" it. Retweeting is when you take the twitter message someone else has posted, and resend that same message to your followers. In this way the message is magnified, and may go viral.

The syntax of your Retweet should start with "RT" or "Retweet" followed by the username of the person who tweeted it and then finish with the content of the actual tweet (e.g. RT @KathySierra: Lovely post on design, simplicity, user experience: http://twurl.nl/61z016)

Originally Retweets where not part of the Twitter’s core features. It was started off as a pure convention between Twitter users. Due to it’s popularity Twitter added native support for Retweets.

Twitter clients like SharedMinds Desktop have a "Retweet" button that allow you to retweet as an orignial “old-school” Retweet or as a new style Twitter Retweet.

Twitter Search

To find out what people are talking about right now you can use Twitter Search. Take a look at the trending topics – the most common phrases appearing in messages right now. They are visible in the right-hand column of your profile page. Click on a trend to see the real-time search results for this trend.

Twitter Search is a very powerful tool to find out what is happening right now. There are many ways you can search and filter Twitter messages: by trending topic, search for #hashtags, keywords, phrases, people, language etc.

Watch the following CommonCraft video, which explains Twitter Search in Plain English:

#Hashtags

On Twitter a topic with a hash symbol (”#”) at the beginning is called a #hashtag. For example if you see a tweet like “Having fun at #mix09” then #mix09 is a #hashtag. You can use #hashtags to categorize or tag content so that related tweets can be grouped together. If everyone agrees to append a certain #hashtag to tweets about a certain topic, it becomes easier to find that topic in twitter search. The #hashtag is a favorite tool at conferences and events that allows you to talk about the event in real time and to connect to other people more easily.

Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists are a new way to organize the people on Twitter. It’s a way for you to group together other users on Twitter so that you can get an overview of what they’re up to. Lists can be public or private. Public lists will be visible in your public profile and other users can follow your public lists.

Watch the following video to learn more about Twitter Lists:

Twitter Clients.

Although many people use the Twitter web page to write and receive their tweets, there are other more convenient ways to do this. For instance, you could use a Twitter desktop client like SharedMinds Desktop, TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. Those clients make it easy to organize, view, reply and retweet Twitter messages and to share links and photos. They all come with integrated Twitter search and support a lot of advanced features like multiple Twitter accounts.

Further Reading

• The Twitter Book – A Sneak Preview
• Twitter Glossary
• The Twitter Guide Book
• Twitter Reading List
• Twitter 101 – A special guide
• 10 Stunning (And Useful) Stats About Twitter
• The 11 Types of Followers on Twitter

• Top 6 Tools to Support Knowledge Sharing in Your Organization
• Top 10 Tools for Learning
• Story Power! Tools to Create Engaging Content
• SharedMinds Desktop – The Ultimate Twitter Client for Windows
• SharedMinds Desktop – Quickstart

What is Microsoft Surface?

According to Microsoft, “Surface is the first commercially available surface computer and turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or small groups to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world. In essence, it’s a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more. Soon to be available in restaurants, hotels, retail establishments and public entertainment venues, this experience will transform the way people shop, dine, entertain and live.”

That’s pretty cool! Now after watching the original marketing video watch the parody. Very funny!

"The future is here. If its not an iPhone, it’s a big ass table. Take that apple."

• Project Natal
• Watch Matt Dancing Badly Around The World
• Saving the Planet!
• Bobby McFerrin Hacks Your Brain with Music
• What’s Easier? To Change Yourself or the World Around You?

Project Natal is the code name for a new technology developed by Microsoft to allow advanced gesture recognition, facial recognition, and voice recognition. It is the base for a "controller-free gaming and entertainment experience" for the Xbox 360 video game platform. It enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller through a natural user interface using gestures, spoken commands, or presented objects and images.

Johnny Lee, well known for his amazing Wii remote hacks (also featured on this blog), now joined Microsoft to work on Project Natal. "The 3D sensor itself is a pretty incredible piece of equipment providing detailed 3D information about the environment similar to very expensive laser range finding systems but at a tiny fraction of the cost.", he explains on his blog.

He goes on to explain that the 3D sensor and camera vision are well ahead of what computer vision is capable of. "The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I’ve seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product," Lee writes.

“We would all love to one day have our own personal holodeck. This is a pretty measurable step in that direction.”, he goes on.

If you haven’t seen the vision video for Project Natal go check it out. It’s amazing!

• Microsoft Surface Parody
• UI Platforms: Which One Would You Pick?
• What Everybody Ought to Know About Twitter?
• Wear Sunscreen
• Watch Matt Dancing Badly Around The World

You may love or hate the new Office Ribbon user interface. Microsoft was very brave to dramatically change the user interface for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Co. It means that more than half a billion people need to learn the new interface. That’s a huge impact – and not everybody is happy about that. However from a usability point of view it is amazing how much research, prototyping and usability testing went into the redesign of the Office 2007 user interface. The main goal was to drastically improve the productivity of the end user.

At Microsoft’s MIX08, Jensen Harris from the Office 2007 design team told the behind-the-scenes story of how the 2007 Office Ribbon user interface was imagined, designed, and validated.  He showed never-before-shown early prototypes and talked about mistakes and lessons learned during the design process.

This presentation is a must see for anybody interested in user experience design. The original full presentation is available here.

• UI Platforms: Which One Would You Pick?
• Designing the ULTIMATE Twitter Client
• SharedMinds Desktop – Quickstart
• The World’s First Computer Bug!
• Shu Ha Ri: The Stages of Learning to Mastery

Watch Matt dance with people all across the Globe. The latest of the Where the Hell is Matt videos is showing people of different nationalities and cultures getting together to dance with Matt:

Here’s the second of the Where the Hell is Matt videos. Matt traveled for 6 month and took 76 flights to produce this one:

Here’s the original. Made in 2003 and 2004. Posted in 2005:

• Saving the Planet!
• Microsoft Surface Parody
• Bobby McFerrin Hacks Your Brain with Music
• What’s Easier? To Change Yourself or the World Around You?
• Wear Sunscreen

Born with no arms or legs, Nick Vujicic is a preacher, a motivational speaker and the director of Life Without Limbs, an organization for the physically disabled. If you never heard of Nick watch the videos below. Truly inspirational!

If I fail, I try again, and again, and again…
If YOU fail, are YOU going to try again?

It matters how you’re going to FINISH…
Are you going to finish STRONG?

- Nick Vujicic

Nick is thankful for what he has.
He’s not bitter for what he does not have.

Nick gives an inspiring testimony about overcoming circumstances in one’s life.

• Extreme: Lewis Gordon Pugh swims the North Pole
• Wear Sunscreen
• The Inspiring Story of Rick and Dick Hoyt
• Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
• Man on Wire

Many times in life you have to overcome big challenges. It’s like standing in front of a giant wall and you have no clue how to get over it… You try everything you can to cross that wall but sometimes this is not enough. You might not have the abilities and experience to do it yet. Sometimes a little help from the outside is needed. Do not run away – appreciate that help and figure out how to make that jump!

Watch the inspiring video about a big squirrel and a baby squirrel. Will the baby squirrel manage to get over the wall?

• Wear Sunscreen
• The Inspiring Story of Rick and Dick Hoyt
• Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
• Nick Vujicic – A Man With No Arms, No Legs And No Limits!
• Juggling Five Balls Of Life

Dost thou love life?  Then do not squander time,

for that is the stuff life is made of.

- Benjamin Franklin

The more time you create for yourself, the more time you have to live. Setting goals, priorities and planning is important.

To waste your time efficiently follow the guidance shown in the following video:

To get most out of your time follow the advice Randy Pausch gave in his entertaining talk on time management:

Randy’s Slides

Randy gave this talk after his famous “Last Lecture”. He discusses the following topics:

• Goals, Priorities, and Planning
• Avoid wasting time
• The 80/20 Rule
• To-do Lists
• Covey’s four-quadrant
• Interruptions
• Bosses & delegation
• Specific skills and tools
• Work-Life Balance
• Meetings
• Stress and procrastination
• Managing Email

Further Reading:

Tip: You can save time by listening to the audio versions of the above books while doing other things like driving to and from work, cycling, jogging and so on…

Time is all we have. You may find one day that you have less than you think.

- Randy Pausch

• Put First Things First
• Wear Sunscreen
• Top 10 Tools for Learning
• The Inspiring Story of Rick and Dick Hoyt
• Shu Ha Ri: The Stages of Learning to Mastery

On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire and illegally rigged between the New York’s twin towers. After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released. This documentary complies Petit’s footage to show the numerous extraordinary challenges he faced in completing the artistic crime of the century.

Those interviews of middle-aged daredevils, reminiscing about their greatest caper, were as intense for me as the dodgy accomplishment of the adventure. It was literally the end of a love affair with life for all of them, something "too hot not to cool down," an overture too overwhelming to be followed by a mere opera. When Petit’s boyhood friend broke down in tears at the waning of their friendship, when Petit’s wife-the-love-of-his-life felt the reality that his life no longer needed hers, the whole social cost of Petit’s obsession moved me also almost to tears. Hey, I might have cried if my heart had slowed down to twice normal. I felt an urge to grab my son and hug or shake him, saying "don’t let your art be more to you than your life."

- Giordano Bruno

I think the most fascinating aspect about this story, was the lengths that Petit and his co-conspirators went to plan, train, and carry out this unauthorized feat. It’s all here in vivid detail. And even if you didn’t bother to read the text in this book, the photographs are amazing and breathtaking by themselves. This is a captivating memoir that captures the excitement, triumph, and joy of Petit’s stunning achievement. Now that the towers are, sadly, gone, it’s all the more important as a part of the towers history. I more than enjoyed this memoir, I was fascinated by it. It is certainly a positive and enlightening ray of hope for those who dream of the impossible!

- Joe Hanssen

• Validation
• Wear Sunscreen
• Nick Vujicic – A Man With No Arms, No Legs And No Limits!
• Maximus
• Extreme: Lewis Gordon Pugh swims the North Pole

What would you tell your kids if you knew you are going to die within a small number of month?

Randy Pausch was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University. He gave his "Last Lecture" titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams on September 18, 2007.

In this moving talk, Randy talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to his kids and students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals:

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
- Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch died on July 25, 2008.

• Wear Sunscreen
• The Inspiring Story of Rick and Dick Hoyt
• Nick Vujicic – A Man With No Arms, No Legs And No Limits!
• Juggling Five Balls Of Life
• Fly like a Penguin!

This video shows the inspiring story of Rick and Dick Hoyt (Team Hoyt):

When I am running, my disability seems to disappear. It is the only place where truly I feel as an equal. Due to all the positive feedback, I do not feel handicapped at all. Rather, I feel that I am the intelligent person that I am with no limits. I have a message for the world which is this: To take time to get to know people with disabilities for the individuals they are.

- Rick Hoyt -

What I’m doing is loaning Rick my arms and legs so he can be out there competing like everybody else. There is nothing in the world that the both of us can’t conquer together.

- Dick Hoyt -

• Wear Sunscreen
• Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
• Nick Vujicic – A Man With No Arms, No Legs And No Limits!
• Juggling Five Balls Of Life
• Fly like a Penguin!

Johnny Lee a PhD. Graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute.:

Since the Wiimote can track sources of infrared (IR) light, you can track pens that have an IR led in the tip. By pointing a wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays. Since the Wiimote can track upto 4 points, up to 4 pens can be used. It also works great with rear-projected displays.

An improved version of Johnny Lee’s original whiteboard demo is described in the following book:

• UI Platforms: Which One Would You Pick?
• Project Natal
• Microsoft Surface Parody
• Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote
• Find What You Love

Johnny Lee a PhD. Graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute:

Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space.

• UI Platforms: Which One Would You Pick?
• Project Natal
• Microsoft Surface Parody
• Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wiimote
• Find What You Love