July 2011
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“Low-quality panels at tech conferences are not a male-female issue.”
– Mana Ionescu
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Non Traditional Book Publishing by Jana Bradley,... →
Non–traditional book publishing, prospering on the Internet, now accounts for over eight times the output of traditional publishing. Non–traditional publishing includes books published by their authors and books representing the reuse of content, most of it not covered by copyright. The result is an heterogeneous, hyper–abundant contemporary book environment where the traditional mixes with the...
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Slow Fashion and Stealth Luxury
I was reading Suzy Menkes on In Praise of Slow Fashion, and I had just wrapped my head around that concept, although I had to look outside that article to have it explained concretely. Merkes seems so inside the industry — and writing for the industry — that her use of terms is barely gestural, and not at all explanatory.
Tim Holt, Is the time right for Slow Fashion?
Slow Clothing surfaced in...
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You Have To Go Slow To Go Fast
There is a saying in martial arts: you have to go slow to go fast. It means something different that what it sounds like. The idea is that you have to be relaxed — untense — to move as quickly as you are capable of.
There is a similar angle to the the newly in vogue ‘slow science’, which is that certain sorts of constructive thought and interaction require time, or better,...
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Why The Atlantic joined up with Pulse — and what... →
These stats don’t surprise, but just confirm:
[…] one clear trend is the difference in the reading patterns on the iPhone vs. the iPad. On any given week, Pulse users on smartphones open the app twice as often as people on the tablet version. But all told, tablet users spend more time on Pulse, and their sessions are twice as long as those of iPhone users. What’s also interesting is...
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The newsonomics of Netflix and the digital shift -... →
Ken Doctor via
The print world ends not with a bang, but with price increase after price increase.
These economics of transition have a second, big piece for publishers that Netflix doesn’t have to worry about: advertising. With advertising accounting for 70 percent of newspaper revenues worldwide, the huge question for publishers is how much ad revenue they can make from purely digital...
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Google+ U.S. Visitors Spend Less Time on Site Last... →
parislemon:
Hardly surprising after the massive initial surge. If my own stream and usage is any indication, it’s significantly slowing down.
Now begins the true test of the network.
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Cohuman To Be Acquired, Shutting Down Operations... →
Work media start-up Cohuman announces sale and 31 August shut down of the service.
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Learning From The Google+ Experiment: Operating...
As part of the chorus singing about Google+ (see Armano’s insightful The Social Layer: Six Thoughts On Where Google Plus Is Going as just the most recent example), let me make a few observations:
It’s very hard to separate foundational concepts of Google+ from what might considered features or apps. Foundational elements would include identity, following, streams, and sparks. But...
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“The enemy is not the innovators. The enemy is the idea of not doing anything,...”
– - Nate Weiner, cited by Lois Beckett in Instapaper, Read It Later, Byliner: Platform founders on the pageview economics of time-shifted reading. Weiner is also the guy who calls time-shifted reading ‘Tivo for the web’.
How to balance the desire of readers to filter ads with the desire...
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Jyri Engeström →
Jyri takes a philosophical view to the Google+ names hoohaw:
Jyri Engeström
A service that aims to become the default arena for online social exchange globally should allow pseudonymity (which is really what we’re talking about when we talk about anonymity) and, in some cases, even encourage it. No one should be booted off the system just because they are using a made up name. It’s...
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Google Responds #plusgate
gracemcdunnough:
From Bradley Horowitz:
We’ve noticed that many violations of the Google common name policy were in fact well-intentioned and inadvertent and for these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing. So we’re currently making a number of improvements to this process - specifically regarding how we notify these users that they’re not in compliance with Google policies...
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Google , Facebook and Online Reality - Virginia... →
Heffernan thinks Google+ has all the attractiveness of a weekend at a dude ranch: empty and sort of fake. And she ends up suggesting that Facebook has changed the meaning of ‘real’ — as in real friends — and we are complicit. Somehow we went along with the trickery of web pages becoming social contexts, even though we are just staring at computer screens.
This straddle...
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Trust Is Trust, Online And Off
Recent Pew research that shows that those that use the web more, trust people more:
The typical Internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted,” with regular Facebook users the most trusting of all. “A Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other Internet users and more than three times as likely as...
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“Technology is everything that emerged after you turned thirteen. What was around...”
– Jamais Cascio, The Future Of Work Tour video
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Ad Hoc Talent Networks – Neil Perkin →
The future of work will be based on much more fluid and short-lived working arrangements, as Neil Perkin points out:
Relentless digitisation and the recession have combined to create an environment in which the value of much of what we have known is depreciating, and which increasingly requires a culture and a pace of innovation that is consistent with start-ups. Organisational value is shifting...
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“That’s really what it’s about, money. That’s why they want you to use their...”
– Dave Winer - Why Google cares if you use your real name Yup x 2 (via kirklove)
[emphasis mine]
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“In the past you were what you owned. Now you are what you share.”
– Charles Leadbetter
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Using Light to Send Data Across the Room -... →
Light-based data transmission technology is attractive because it allows wireless communication without the use of radio gear, which can be dangerous in places like oil platforms (where it can cause sparks) and underwater (where the salt conducts electricity), or on planes (where it can interfere with other radio equipment). In addition, transmissions can be stopped simply by blocking the light,...
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“[…] there’s still the giant hurdle of the social network’s user retention....”
– George Gallette, cited by Austin Carr in Circles Fatigue: The Dark Side Of Google+
(h/t mediafuturist)
As I wrote recently (see Is The Juice Worth The Squeeze?):
I am not a fan of Twitter lists, for example, but others use them productively to subset their Twitter experience. So I suppose the...
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Flipboard Big Ad Push →
parislemon:
One of the things I’ve always hated about ads on the web is just how little attention is paid to the way they actually look. Instead, ads are shoved in any and all available white space. This makes both the ads and the content look like shit.
Flipboard will take a different approach. Ads will only be full-screen, and will reside in between stories, like a traditional magazine.
...
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“Faced with the undeniable global and personal anxieties that characterize our...”
– - Jason Gots, You Are Not an Equation
Cites Emanuel Derman, a quant, who coined the term pragmamorphism:
our tendency to define people in terms of inanimate things – IQ tests, magnetic brain scans, income. Pragmamorphic thinking, says Derman, is dangerous because it creates a...
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Debt crisis triggers rallying call:... →
Good coverage of the #fuckyouwashington spasm.
I would really like to see a spontaneous day of rage: a general strike of the entire country, demanding that our elected officials do their goddam jobs.
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7 Things to Know About Asana: Facebook... →
Asana, the much heralded work media start up, is in limited beta, and still stirring up buzz:
Asana is a company created by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Googler Justin Rosenstein. Its aim is nothing short of reinventing how we collaborate. It’s a lofty goal, especially with so many Enterprise 2.0 tools aiming to do just that. But it has deep pockets, high profile advisers, a...
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T-Mobile looks to go back-to-back, offers Angels... →
Another example of the phenomenon I call ‘a world, not a wall’. Here Angles fans will gat an augmented experience at the game with more-or-less standard Android tablets that will be pushing stats and closeups. But augmented reality is perfect for settings like the ball park.
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“The psychological profile of a compelling leader — think of tech pioneers like...”
– David Linden, Addictive Personality? You Might be a Leader
Leaders get off on the dopamine that surges with the unpredictable: risk, exploration, indiscreet sex, and invention.
(Sounds like me, actually.)
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Zygmunt Bauman - Liquid Modernity →
Just discovered Zygmunt Bauman, who is using the term ‘liquid’ in a way quite similar to me:
In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a ‘heavy’ and ‘solid’, hardware-focused modernity to a ‘light’ and ‘liquid’, software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human...
Anonymous asked: Where did Peter Drucker write or say this?
"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."
"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."
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Facebook and Twitter are broadcast design models;... →
John Tropea takes a pass at explaining how sharing works on Google+ (Google Plus):
John Tropea
How is it different to Facebook and Twitter?
As an online relationship model; Facebook is symmetric, Twitter is asymmetric, and Google Plus is asymmetric
Twitter
Follow (asymmetric) - enables you to follow people (those people don’t have to follow you back in order for you to see their content in...
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Why changing Twitter’s 140-character limit is a... →
Mathew Ingram refutes the growing chorus of early-adopter types (or former friendfeed types, like Scoble) who are taken with the shiny new Google Plus, and now think of Twitter as stale beer. In particular, Mathew smacks down Farhad Manjoo’s suggestion that Twitter should double the number of characters in Tweets to 280:
The point the Slate writer [Manjoo] misses (or hints at, and then...
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The Decline and Fall of Facebook - Cringely on... →
Cringely heard a talk by Roger McNamee in which McNamee cites the now-conventional tech viewpoint: Facebook has won.
Again, I’m not saying he’s wrong, but what I took away from this speech was first an image of Microsoft as the Roman Colosseum being mined for marble after the barbarian invasion, and second a sense that while Facebook is certainly a huge social, cultural, and business...
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“Theirs is the customary human reaction when confronted with innovation: to...”
– - Marshall McLuhan
McLuhan’s 100th birthday was 21 July.
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Twitter Poised to Close a Two-Stage $800M Funding,... →
Kara Swisher reports on a soon-to-be-transacted funding for Twitter based on an $8B valuation, raising $800M, with $400M to be used to cash out employees and earlier investors.
Kara Swisher
This is more than double what Twitter was valued at when it got $200 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins in December at a $3.7 billion valuation.
Once the latest investments are complete,...
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Google Acquires Y-Combinator Social Groups... →
Looks like the Google Plus team want Fridge’s smarts about group sharing.
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Future Of Facebook Project
Some snippets from my interview at the Future of Facebook project are online. Go take a look. One of the memes: ‘Facebook is the new AOL.’
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Watch
Reimagining Urban Design Ford Foundation Visionaries Award Receipitent and Architect Teddy Cruz tells the story of his work to transform the poor and overlooked neighborhoods of the Tijuana-San Diego border region.
Cities will be the wellspring of the next world, where we apply what we know about human society, and accelerate our reintegration based on a new liquid foundation. Cruz...
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“The city is where we humans create culture.”
– Joan Clos i Matheu, Building better cities so people can have better lives
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“I profess ignorance and I use that as a tool. I can assess market...”
– Fred Destin, The Ignorant VC as counterpart to the Ignorant Entrepreneur
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Twitter drives 4 times as much traffic as you... →
Because we are moving from a web of pages to a web of flow because of the rise of liquid media, Twitter’s impact is beinf significantly underreported by referral-based analysis tools:
Jonathan via
Referrers are a poor way to attribute traffic from social sharing.
Referrer analysis is based on the outdated metaphor of the web as a network of links between static pages that could only be...
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How Technology Makes Us Better Social Beings |... →
Megan Gambino via
Keith Hampton, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, is starting to poke holes in this theory that technology has weakened our relationships. Partnered with the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, he turned his gaze, most recently, to users of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
“There has been a great deal of...
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“We have always looked to political ideology to bring about change in our...”
– Peter Gabriel, And Through The Wire - Peter Gabriel
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“Talk about the power of APIs: other media companies should learn from this - how...”
– Twitter’s Ecosystem Now Includes 1 Million Applications (via mediafuturist)
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The Meaning Of Work, Connectives, And Swift Trust
I attended a truly great presentation earlier this week, where Simon Sinek spoke. Sinek is the author of Start With Why, and he gave a casual, rambling, and still deeply inspiring talk about, among other things, how hard it is for businesses to be purpose driven. I won’t steal too much of his pitch, except to restate some of his themes.
Traditionally, businesses that are great to work for...
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Netflix Introduces New Plans and Announces Price... →
Leaving aside the new plans (which are window dressing), Netflix has announced that they are breaking the streaming and DVD services apart:
[…] we are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into separate plans to better reflect the costs of each and to give our members a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan or the option to subscribe to both. With this...
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“I have to say, though, that I’m disheartened by your decision to indefinitely...”
– Simon Dumenco (via soupsoup)
HuffPo has gone too far. 