Miscellaneous

1. From geek.com, the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock App for iPhone. This app monitors oscillations between "awake", "dreaming" and "deep sleep" using the accelerometer in the iPhone. Apparently it's better to wake up in a phase of "light sleep".

2. Economists have examined the allocation of time to sleep. Recent evidence suggests that nearly 25% of U.S. adults (47 million) suffer from some level of sleep deprivation. But maybe we're getting more sleep in the recession? Up to 22 minutes more per day?

3. "The Art of Labormetrics" by Daniel Hamermesh. I'm surprised that this has escaped my attention until now: it's a NBER-WP from 1999. Appropiateness and cleanliness of data are considered, as are problems of extreme observations and interactions. Also covered are IV, natural experiments, selection and unobserved individual effects. The meaning of results and the clarity of presentation are also discussed. This is the most comprehensive review that I have seen about doing empirical micro research.

4. Randomizer.org: This site is designed for researchers and students who want a quick way to generate random numbers or assign participants to experimental conditions. Since its release in 1997, Research Randomizer has been used to generate number sets over 9.6 million times.

5. The ESRI's 50th Anniversary. Anniversary events include two Geary lectures in 2010, the first of which will be given by Professor Richard Breen (Yale) on the topic of 'social mobility and education'. Registration is now open: here.

6. A matter of life and death: a TEDTalk about the importance of using personal location data to gauge health history. "Bill Davenhall wants to improve physicians' diagnostic techniques by collecting each patient's geographic and environmental data, and merging it with their medical records."

7. A look back on the App Economy of Facebook in 2009. "We’d like to look back at some examples of startups and established companies, including those from Facebook's own fbFund program, that built their businesses on Facebook Platform and with Facebook Connect, and made significant strides in funding, acquisitions, and creating new jobs in 2009."

8. Inon: the UK's leading provider of behavioural software. Using behavioural economics to help companies provide more value to customers and increase their revenues.