Written by Steve Kovach

Image: Dan Frommer, Business Insider

There are so many options when it comes to choosing an Android phone. With the release of the Motorola Atrix, every major U.S. carrier has at least one premium Android device to choose from.

Despite the large variety, there are still several common factors in choosing that most Android phones have that could be reason enough to choose one over an iPhone or other competitor.

We found some of these reasons from Unplggd, and included a few of our own based on our experience with various Android phones.

Get a larger screen

Image: Gizmodo

With iPhone, you have one option for screen size: 3.5 inches. But several Android phones such as the Atrix, Droid X, HTC EVO, and Nexus S offer screens 4 inches or larger. That extra space is excellent for users who like to watch movies, play games, or view full web pages on their phone.

Customize your home screen

Image: Dan Frommer, Business Insider

Android phones give you a ton of options for customizing your home screen. You can add live widgets that receive constant updates on weather, RSS feeds, and Facebook or Twitter updates. You can also bookmark your favorite contacts directly on the home screen so you can dial them with just a tap.

Use a camera with more power

Image: Gizmodod

Many Android phones like the Droid Incredible and the HTC EVO 4G have 8 megapixel cameras and shoot 720p HD video. While the iPhone 4 can shoot HD video, it only has a 5 megapixel camera.

Play HD video on your TV

There are many Android devices that offer HDMI ports for playing HD video on your big screen TV. Since it’s unlikely the iPhone will ever have a port other than the standard iPod connector, you’ll never be able to watch true HD on your TV by plugging it in.

Expand your storage

Image: Tested

Most Android phones will allow you to expand and swap your storage with a removable SD card. This is useful for those who want more space for music, video, and apps than their phone allows out of the box.

Enjoy faster processor speeds

Image: Tested

Starting with the Atrix, we’re beginning to see Android phones sport dual core processors that can offer amazing speed for your phone. We put one through its paces and were impressed with the results. The downside? All that processing power will kill your battery.

Take advantage of 4G data speeds

Image: Verizon

There’s a huge wave of 4G Android phones hitting the market this year. And that’s on top of the handful that are already available from Sprint and T-Mobile. The consensus seems to be we won’t see a 4G iPhone until 2012 at the earliest.

Bonus: Awesome note left on my truck after after lunch.

Written by Anne Merritt

Photo by velvettangerine

When it comes to skills like penmanship and manual driving, mom and dad have got us beat.

My love of baking has always made me feel geeky, a bit granny-ish. In recent years though, Generation Y’s cool kids have all started baking blogs. They also knit, crochet, and grow vegetables in community plots. I once met a very urban couple my age who proudly admitted to making their own cheese. Cheese!

While twentysomethings are often painted as gadget-obsessed, we’re known as a nostalgic bunch too. These homebody hobbies are proof. Some babyboomer skills, however, aren’t trickling down through the generations. Below is a list of things our parents did: talents and hobbies that, however useful, have fallen out of fashion.

1. Driving a Stick

In 1950, half of the cars being bought in the United States were manual transmission. By the start of the millenium, more than 90% of cars purchased were automatic. Our parents may hold onto their manual cars, but as younger generations hit the road, the stick declined in popularity.

Why (pardon the pun) the shift? When the automatic car was first introduced, it was more expensive than manual, and the new technology was met with skepticism from car lovers. Now, automatic cars have levelled out pricewise and won our trust. Parents often feel automatics are safer for their children, as they’re easier to drive and run no risk of burning out the clutch.

People usually drive whatever kind of car they used when learning. My father learned how to drive standard from his dad, but preferred automatic. When it came time for my driving lessons, he hadn’t driven stick in decades.

Photo by Rachel from Cupcakes take the Cake

2. Cooking from Scratch

My father likes to tell me a burn he heard once between gossiping wives, thirty years ago. “She’s the type of woman who would serve a store-bought dessert!”

I love this line for how telling it is of our generational differences. My peers wouldn’t bat an eye at bakery cupcakes or baklava at a dinner party. They’d probably cheer. We may watch Masterchef and sign up for weekend Thai cooking classes, but on average Generation Y cooks less than our parents did.

What’s more, when we do cook, we use more ready-made ingredients than the baby boomers. I’m not just talking brownie mix and instant pudding, but staple items that, in our parents’ day, would be cooked up from scratch. I mean the chicken stock, tomato paste, and ready-made pie crusts that even self-proclaimed foodies keep in their cupboards.

3. Soapmaking

If you made your own soap in middle school, you’ll remember how surprisingly easy it was: lye, water, and animal fat or oil. The cost? Pennies. While past generations would whip up large batches at home, the practice is almost obsolete today.

I remember my granny’s homemade bars of soap: cloudy-looking cut slabs with pointy corners. It was a world apart from the smooth, milky Dove bar in my bathroom today. The humble bar of soap has been branded many times over into a luxurious, multitasking product. Now, commercial soaps have added properties that aren’t easily replicated at home. You can buy a bar that is non-irritating, antibacterial, exfoliating, moisturizing, shaped like a kitty-cat, and smells like Clinique Happy. Even the fancy bars are still fairly cheap.

Photo by soundfromwayout

4. Simple Carpentry

My parents built their dining room table over thirty years ago.

My dining room table is a previous tenant hand-me-down. The one before that? A $70 Ikea number assembled from a box with an Allen key, and sold online when I moved.

Simple carpentry has declined in popularity, and not just because college kids have figured out how to build bookshelves with milk crates and 2x4s.

Furniture is now mass-produced like never before, making it cheaper and easier to replace when redecorating or moving house. Secondhand furniture, which used to mean shabby hand-me-downs from grandparents, has gained chic through fleamarkets and and popularity Craigslist. We can kit out an apartment for cheap without taking to the saw and hammer… though that Ikea Allen key is in the drawer, ever-ready.

5. Knife Sharpening

At a dinner party, an older and ever-practical friend pointed at my knife and asked, “Why don’t you sharpen it? It’s become dull.”

I nodded. “You’re right, I should.” I knew he meant to sharpen the knife myself. He knew I meant paying a professional to do it. Knife-sharpening is (I was told) a simple skill, but definitely on the decline.

With Gen Y-ers eating our more and cooking less, it makes sense that our knives don’t dull as quickly as our parents’ knives. A lot of knives today have no-dull guarantees or free sharpening included in their warranties. Large home supply stores sometimes offer free knife-sharpening too.

As for the Ikea or Target knives that most of my friends have in their kitchens? We don’t mind swallowing the $9 loss and just buying a new one.

Photo by Alyssa Nicole

6. Home Maintenance

Sure, our generation can install an antivirus system and disable a firewall. I’m sometimes called to do so on my parents’ computer, while they eye their PC with wariness and distrust. They call me “handy,” and I know they’re just being nice. I call constantly for advice on banal home issues like replacing fridge lightbulbs.

When it comes to household maintenance, though, it seems we’re not nearly as handy as our folks. Faced with a leaky pipe or a door fallen off its hinges, Generation Y is more inclined to call a professional for help (or… our dads).

In the 1970s, over 70% of men learned basic home repair skills from their fathers. Now, the number is at 40%.

Why the decline? While our parents bought houses in their twenties, ours is a generation ofrenters, subletters, and condo dwellers. If something breaks, we can (and do) get a landlord to fix it.

7. Mending

My mother’s sewing supply kit takes up a full dresser drawer. Mine is a Ziplock bag of complimentary thread-and-shitty-needle packs, pocketed from hotel rooms. Even sadder? My “kit” gets borrowed a lot. I’m the prepared one among my peers. Yikes.

Most baby boomers can alter hemlines, sew on buttons, and mend rips in their clothing. Generation Y, not so much. Though many twentysomethings learn the basics of sewing from parents or in school, they’re rarely put into practice.

With the rise of cheap clothing retailers (H&M, Primark, Target), fashion has become a disposable, replaceable commodity. Our penchant for picking up cheap secondhand clothes affirms this too.

When we do have a piece that needs tailoring, we take it to a professional. Also, some people just get their moms to mend their clothes. You know who you are.

Photo by kpwerker

8. Cursive Writing

I’ve been conscious of penmanship ever since, two years ago, a Japanese student asked to see me write in “beautiful” cursive. I took my pen to paper, and only after a few blushing tries could I finally remember how to do it. “I’m sorry,” I told her, “I haven’t written like this since I was a child.” I’m sure that even my third grade self would have done a nicer job.

It turns out, most of Gen Y is in the same boat, Our parents learned penmanship as a valuable art, practicing it with hand-written essays and letters all through their lives. For my peers and I, the penmanship skills we learned in school have faded from lack of use. Our technophile generation rarely writes by hand, except for scribbling notes to ourselves. Though we can email, text and tweet more easily than our parents, mom and dad would smoke us when it comes to neat handwriting.

Cursive writing, according to teachers, helps muscle control and hand-eye coordination. Funny, my students say the same thing about the Nintendo DS.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

What are some skills you admire in your parents? Are there talents you wish you had learned? Are there skills you hope to pass on to your children? Share your thoughts below.

Bonus: Ice Cream Honey

Collected by alice

Natsumi Hayashi is a sweet-looking Japanese girl who, one day, decided to take self-portraits..of herself levitating. She can be spotted in and around Tokyo, equipped with her SLR and her self-timer. When she feels the moment strike, she presses the shutter button down and then, quite literally, “jumps” into place.

What I love most about her shots is that they don’t feel forced. Natsumi has a way of making us feel as though she naturally levitates throughout life.

When I asked her how others react to her jumping around Tokyo, here is a funny story that she shared. “One day, when I was jumping at a famous sightseeing spot in western Tokyo, workers at a souvenir shop were frightened by how I was jumping. They were whispering things like ‘Is the girl mentally ill’ and ‘Do we need to call the police?’

“So I stopped jumping and apologized to them by saying, ‘I am taking jumping photos for my wedding party’s slide show.’ Their faces turned bright red, and they said things like ‘Oh dear!’ and ‘Congratulations!’ and even ‘Keep jumping!'”

“Then, I took one of the best levitation shots of the entire series.”

“We are all surrounded by social stress as we are bound by the forces of earth’s gravity,” Natsumi says when asked why she took on the series. “So, I hope that people feel something like an instant release from their stressful days by seeing my levitation photos.”

Natsumi Hayashi’s website

via [NotCot]

Collected by Matt Stopera

• 1. On sex before marriage: “I don’t think you should have sex with anyone unless you love them.I think you should just wait for the person you’re…in love with.”

• 2. On health care: “Canada’s the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you’re broke because of medical bills. My bodyguard’s baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby’s premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home.”

• 3. On abortion: “I really don’t believe in abortion. It’s like killing a baby?”

• 4. On abortion in cases of rape: “Um. Well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I guess I haven’t been in that position, so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.”

• 5. On politics: “I’m not sure about the parties. But whatever they have in Korea, that’s bad.”

• BONUS! On homosexuality: It’s everyone’s own decision to do that. It doesn’t affect me and shouldn’t affect anyone else.

Justin Bieber Shot and Killed on CSI

Written by by Mario Zelaya

Recently, Facebook rolled out a major overhaul of their Pages. We studied the new design extensively to see what was new and improved. In this guide, we will go through the Facebook page changes and their impact, from a design, usability and web development perspective.

Design Changes

Let’s go over some of the major design changes to the new Facebook Pages.

No More “Standard” Tabs

The standard tabs that we’re used to seeing in the top area are now gone. They’re accessible on the left hand side, under the profile picture. The brand page designs and interface is now in sync with the personal user profiles where tabs are accessible under the user’s profile photo.

Note: the new tabs will appear in the form of a list (there will be a maximum of 6 above the fold).

New Photo Strip

Like the new Facebook profiles, the new pages will have a Photo strip above the Wall (with the most recent photos you posted or tagged). When another brand or individual tags your company in a photo, that photo will appear in this section, giving your brand less control of the images shown. The downside: It’s now more essential to have someone monitor your Facebook Page regularly for inappropriate photos of your brand.

Profile Picture

The maximum size for the profile picture has been reduced from 200x600px to 180x540px.

User Interface Changes

Here are some functionality and interface changes on the new Facebook Pages.

Admin View of Wall (See Hidden Posts)

Users can now select the “Admin View” option (below the profile photo) and viewHidden Posts. In the example above, someone had spammed our wall with a magical diet post, which we then hid (we were also able to ban the user). To do this, on your own Wall, click the “X” at the top right corner of any post and select the option from the drop down that comes up.

Post as Your Brand

With this new powerful feature, you can now post on other Facebook Pages using your company’s Facebook Page. On the right-hand side, you’ll see a link that says, Use Facebook as [your brand name]. Click on that to start using this feature. You’ll then get this modal window:

Here’s an example of a wall post made by the Majestic Media Facebook Page on theSix Revisions Facebook Page Wall:

This can be beneficial in driving traffic to your Facebook Page, but be careful not to abuse this, as the other Facebook Page moderators can block your post and ban you from their wall (and we assume that if that happens enough times, your Facebook Page might be closed down by Facebook). Keep conversations meaningful!

Your Brand Can “Like” Other Pages

You’ll notice, in the screenshot above, that your Facebook Page can “Like” other pages.

Note: your Likes will show up in your Facebook Page, and when you go to your home page (while logged in), your newsfeed will populate with feeds from the brands you’ve Liked.

Fans Count Has Changed

If you’re an admin of the Facebook Page, you’ll be able to click and see the names of the people who “Like” the page. From what we can tell, it’s in order from most recent “Likes”. That is to say, the first person that shows up on that list was the last person to click “Like” on your Page.

The most important change that we see is that non-admin users will not be able to view the username/profile of those who “Like” that particular brand. This functionality will only be made available to the administrators of the Page.

Categories

Now displayed on Facebook Pages is your organization’s category (which can be adjusted). We recently changed ours from “Local Business” to “Internet/Software”.

Development Changes

Let’s look at some web development/web technology related changes to Facebook Pages.

Facebook iframes Now on Tabs

From a web developer’s standpoint, this is the biggest and best change Facebook has rolled out. What does this mean? No more Facebook Markup Language (FBML)!

Any Facebook app developer will tell you about the challenges of using and learning FBML. It’s limited, choppy and doesn’t allow you to build those fully customized Facebook applications within a Facebook Page tab.

Functionality is limited in the Facebook Page tab because of FBML, which usually means anything robust will have to be developed as a full-blown Facebook application.

The most recent example is the one we created for HomeSense (that we couldn’t previously do on a Page tab). During the planning phases, we were hoping to rollout this app within a Page tab, but Facebook had delayed their iframe rollout from Q4 2010 to Q1 2011, so this type of app wasn’t possible within the Facebook Page. Today, it can easily be implemented thanks to the iframe rollout.

To use iframes, you need the most up-to-date layout. First and foremost: in order to use iframes, the page must be using the new Facebook Page layout. If you’re an admin of a Facebook Page, you can check the status of your page. It’ll look something like this:

Custom HTML and JavaScript

We conducted tests and found that HTML and JavaScript work flawlessly without restrictions on the iframes. More specifically, we were able to confirm that jQueryworks perfectly as well.

However, we noticed some issues in the iframe display.

The iframe window height cannot be bigger than 800px. It seems that Facebook hard-coded this value (we viewed the Facebook HTML source code). When the iframe content is longer than 800px height, scrollbars show up in the iframe.

This also causes issues on some browsers, and adds another scrollbar on the main window (see below).

Facebook API for Facebook Pages

In the initial request parameters, they send us the following data:

• page id: to know the source page where the tab is installed
• locale: to know the viewing user language so we can show Spanish only or French only content to these users, rather than creating a new tab or making a bilingual tab
• country: to know the viewing user’s country
• Liked?: if the viewing user Liked the page; if not, we can show a “pre-like” conversion page encouraging them to hit the “Like” button to get access to page content
• Admin?: to know if the viewing user is an administrator of the Facebook Page

Saving User Sessions

This part is important if you’re running contests or creating applications that are user specific. In our initial research, we found that we can save sessions without any problems. So when the user enters the Page tab and authenticates itself, he/she can return (in the same browsing session) again and we will not need to authenticate. This is something we couldn’t do before using FBML.

Summary

What does all this mean to you as an account manager, digital account representative, freelancer or social media expert? Likely, fewer blank stares from clients and a greater overall sense of control over their brand on Facebook.

With the changes scheduled to take full effect March 10, 2011, you should now be ready to take full advantage of the changes.

Here’s the summary of changes:

1. Profile photo now has a max size of 180x540px.
2. Display page category.
3. Photo strip shows most recent tagged or posted photos. They are randomized. Watch out for inappropriate photos tagged with your Facebook Page. The dimensions of thumbnails are 96x67px.
4. Admin view.
5. Filter wall posts by your Facebook Page only or by everyone.
6. Tabs are now on the left (under the profile photo) in the form of a list (maximum of 6 above the fold). Also, switch to Admin View to see hidden posts.
7. If you’re an admin, you can view the people who have “Liked” your brand. We noticed it’s in order of most recent Likes. If you’re not an admin, you can no longer view those who have “Liked” the brand page.
8. Your brand page can Like other pages. They’ll show up on your brand page.

Other changes not shown in the image above:

• You can see a Newsfeed of updates from Liked Pages on your home page when using Facebook under your Facebook Page name.
• Pages now support iframed tab applications.
• Email notifications when users post or comment.

Bonus: This is what I think every time I go though airport security…

Via: Online MBA Programs

The ingredients of the drink, created by John Pemberton, a medicinal pharmacist in 1886, have always been a mystery.

However, Thisamericanlife.org claims to have discovered a list in a photograph in a newspaper article giving the ingredients and exact quantities to make the drink.

The Feb 8 1979 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a photo of someone holding open a book with a recipe claimed to be an exact replica of Pemberton’s.

The recipe reportedly contains the exact measures of all the different oils needed for Coca Cola’s secret ingredient, Merchandise 7X.

Despite making up only one per cent of the drink’s total formula, Merchandise 7X is thought to give the popular soft drink its unique taste.

The official recipe is said to be guarded 24-hours a day in a vault in Atlanta, Georgia.

Note: All of these ingredients can be bought online. In a day or two we’ll post full instructions.

Download PDF

The This American Life team enlisted experts and ordinary citizens alike to taste-test the original formula. It was pretty close — some people couldn’t differentiate it from the real thing — but the radio show couldn’t hit the nail on the head. And no matter what, they’ll never quite achieve the level of marketing that has made Coca-Cola so beloved.

For 125 years, Coke’s secret recipe has remained one of the most heavily guarded trade secrets in the world. Now a group of accidental soda sleuths say they’ve stumbled across a list of its ingredients.

Producers of the radio program This American Life came across an article on the history of Coca-Cola in an old copy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Coca-Cola’s hometown newspaper. Published on page 2B on February 18, 1979, the article received little attention at the time. But, producers say, that’s because no one realized the photo used to illustrate the story is a hand-written copy of John Pemberton’s original recipe, jotted down by a friend in a leather-bound recipe book of ointments and medicines, and passed down by friends and family for generations.

The long story of Coke’s secret formula begins with Pemberton, a veteran from Georgia who emerged from the Civil War with a morphine addiction. Hoping to cure his ailment, he dreamed up Pemberton’s French Wine Coca, a brew that included kola nut and coca wine. But in 1886, as Atlanta passed prohibition legislation, he reformulated the drink without alcohol, renamed it Coca-Cola, and began selling it in Georgia pharmacies.

Asa Candler, an early president of the Coca-Cola company who bought the formula in 1887, worried rivals would obtain the recipe so insisted no one ever write it down again. Staff removed all labels from ingredient containers and identified them by sight and smell only. Candler even went through the company mail so he could shred invoices that employees might attempt to sell to other drink makers.

If the radio program’s producers are right, Candler and other executives were too late: the book of remedies with the copy of the Coke recipe had already started its travels. This American Life tracked down the book to a widow in Griffin, Georgia, who says her husband was fishing buddies with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer. It’s now in a bank vault, too.

And while companies like Pepsi have deduced the general ingredients on their own, none have unlocked the “Merchandise 7X flavoring” that gives Coke its unique taste and bubbly burn. “The company has always said, and as far as I know it’s true, that at any given time only two people know how to mix the 7X flavoring ingredient,” Mark Pendergrast, historian and author of For God, Country and Coke told This American Life. “Those two people never travel on the same plane in case it crashes; it’s this carefully passed-on secret ritual and the formula is kept in a bank vault.”

Source: 1 2 3

Written by Paula Szuchman

This Valentine’s Day, skip the chocolate, lingerie and jewelry. Instead, practice talking less, doing the dishes and putting out. Romantic? Maybe not. The secret to a life of wedded bliss? Quite possibly.

A little background. I just co-wrote a book called “Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage & Dirty Dishes,” in which I take some well-established ideas from the dismal science and use them to show couples how they can improve their marriages. One of the first things people say when they hear about the book is something to the effect of, “Isn’t that kind of unromantic?” Well, yeah. But what’s romantic about dishes, laundry, diapers, bills, mortgages, in-laws, TiVo, company picnics, circular arguments, BlackBerries, hamsters, PTA meetings, and all the million other little things that go into a marriage and detract from the actual romance between two people who once loved each other so much they decided to keep each other company for the rest of their lives?

All that stuff is the business side of marriage, and to navigate it successfully, you don’t need chocolate hearts. You need sound reasoning. You need to be practical and efficient. You need to allocate your scarce resources wisely and make smart trade-offs, so that at the end of the day, you can enjoy the company of that person you promised to have and to hold until death (death!) do you part.

Herewith, five somewhat regressive, not very romantic, yet extremely effective lessons from economics for a happy marriage with long-term prospects:

1. Talk less.

Well okay, talk all you want about your dreams, ambitions and Egypt’s future. But when it comes to nagging reminders about what your spouse still has to do after a long day working for the man—take out the recycling, walk the dog, write a thank-you letter, defrost the chicken, fix the stereo—keep a lid on it. Economists talk about “information processing costs,” or the costs incurred from processing, absorbing and filtering information. When information processing costs get too high, we tend to become paralyzed. Like when we get to the kitchen-cabinet department at IKEA, and we’re so overwhelmed that we decide to skip the whole thing and just have a plate of meatballs at the café then head home for a nap.

Overloading your spouse with what you consider to be perfectly valid information is a bad idea. One thing at a time, friends, and the most important thing first. Same rule applies when you’re arguing. Stick to the point—he didn’t call to say he was running late—and don’t tick off the long list of sins he’s committed since last Tuesday.

2. Lose weight.

Married people exercise less than single people do. I know this because married couples have told me so—56% of people we surveyed said they gained weight after they got married. Everyone has their excuses: They’re too busy with their demanding jobs, too exhausted by their demanding children, too lazy to get off their demanding couches. But the real reason is moral hazard, or the tendency to take more risks and behave more irresponsibly when there are no consequences. Moral hazard is one reason the country’s biggest financial firms bet the house on subprime mortgages—they knew if worse came to worst, Uncle Sam would be there to bail them out.

Similarly, why bother working out and staying fit when you’ve already snagged your man—or woman—and you’ve got a license from the state to prove it? After I got married, one of my single friends told me I was lucky because I didn’t have to go to the gym anymore. I was no longer “posin’ to be chosen.”

So go ahead, challenge your own moral hazard and try losing that post-marriage weight. While you’re at it, don’t wear sweatpants around the house all the time.

3. Do the dishes.

Here’s where I’m really going to get skewered by my sisters for setting women back 50 years: Do the dishes because you just might be better at them, and faster, and less likely than your spouse is to leave them out overnight. You might think a 50/50 marriage is the way to go, but if you’re like so many other couples in the year 2011, your quest for egalitarianism means you’re more likely to pick a fight when you sense things are getting into the 60/40 range—or worse.

Better to have a system where each of you specializes in what you do best, relative to other chores. It’s a system based on the notion of comparative advantage, which (as every Wall Street Journal reader knows) is the foundation of free trade. And what’s marriage, if not a union between two trading partners? So if you really are better at the dishes than remembering to call the in-laws, then that should be your job. It’ll take you less time than it’ll take him, and it’ll take him less time to have a quick chat with mom than it would take you, which means in the end, you’ve saved quite a bit of collective time. Use that time for fun stuff, like, for example, sex.

4. Put out

Which brings me to my fourth point: Put out. I know, it seem ridiculous to tell married people they should have sex (with each other)—but then why do so many people seem to forget this is a key part of the job of being married? Some 54% of married people, according to our research, wish they were having more sex, and the people who are doing it more also report being happier in their relationships. Not saying one causes the other, but there’s a definite correlation, for what it’s worth. The #1 reason people say they don’t do it more: They’re too tired.

The only solution to this problem is to wake up and do the job—the same way you wake up every morning and go to your actual job. No reason why you can do one and not the other. In “Spousonomics,” we suggest people lower the costs of having sex in order to up demand. Keep it simple, fast and fun. Some people even say the more they get in the habit of doing it, the more they want to do it. Kind of like flossing.

5. Scheme

And finally, start scheming, or thinking strategically. Being strategic might sound cold and calculating, but it’s something you probably already do with your spouse, whether you admit it or not. For example, if your friends invite you for a weekend away, no spouses, and you want to go, you naturally start thinking about how you can make this happen with minimal fuss, what you can offer your spouse in return, how to bring it up, when to bring it up, and what type of flowers to present as graft when you’re in the midst of bringing it up.

Thinking ahead, learning from past experience, putting yourself in your spouse’s shoes—these are all strategies straight from the game-theory playbook (game theory being the study of behavior in strategic situations). In fact, if you think like a game theorist, you’ll find that marriage is really just a two-person repeated game. In the game, each person is trying to achieve the best results possible, given the limitations that there’s another person involved. Think of that other person and you’re being strategic. You’re also being pretty romantic.

Bonus: Best Wedding Cake Ever!