As part of their plan to see if they can make people do stuff by making it more fun, Volkswagen transformed a set of stairs into a piano. As people walked up the stairs notes would play. As a result, 66% of the people took the stairs rather than the escalator right next to it.

This and the Worlds Deepest Trashcan are part of Volkswagen’s thefuntheory.com, a site “dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better”.

I was just doing some late night youtubing and noticed the YouTube logo flicker in the corner of my eye. When did they change it? It’s been straight red for as long as I can remember. Now it’s an animated gif and actually quite annoying.

Facebook is planning to update the facebook homepage with a new design next week.

The three big changes are probably these:

• News Feed now “real-time” format vs the current 10-15 minutes updates.
• Improved filtering options make it easer to see content from specific people.
• Changing Pages format to look more like profiles.

Plus a minor layout change.

I think a lot of people are going to complain about the new design cause they won’t be used to the change, just like the last time facebook redesigned the site. Some guy will make a group called “NEW FACEBOOK SUX!!!11!” and everyone will join cause that’s what people do. But facebook won’t do a thing about it. Eventually everyone will get used to it and stop complaining, just like last time.

I, for one, welcome our new facebook overlords.