August 2011
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Tumblr, That Thingamablog, Keeps Exploding
Trumblr keeps growing astronomically, but meanwhile even the tech mavens don’t have a clear niche defined for Tumblr.
Jennifer Van Grove, Tumblr Tops 13 Million U.S. Uniques in July
Tumblr, the simple sharing service and blog alternative, continues to attract a record number of visitors each month.
According to comScore, Tumblr scored 13.4 million unique visitors in the U.S. in July — up...
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“On August 16, we celebrated the first birthday of Virb’s new website builder. To...”
– Team Virb: Happy Birthday!
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Social Commerce: The End Of The Beginning
Adrian got me thinking about the fall of deals a la Groupon and Living Social:
Adrian Chan, End of daily deals, or are social deals still ahead?
As Mashable reports, daily deals may be at the end of an era.
The daily deal space was bound to contract. Retailers and marketers know that deals do not loyal customers make. And their novelty has worn off for both customers and retailers.
But most...
Top 50 Social Media Blogs of 2011 →
My blog, stoweboyd.com, has been identified as one of the Top 50 Social Media Blogs of 2011 (#20) by Evan Carmichael. I’m not sure if I deserve that, but it’s a good group to be included with, folks like Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis and We Are Social.
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“In retrospect, the debates about whether schooling dulls the brain or whether...”
– A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook. - By Vaughan Bell - Slate Magazine (via steph)
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Looking Good: How Attractiveness Plays In Business
There is mounting economic evidence that being better-looking than others translates to making more money. Note that having a higher income translates to a long list of other characteristics in the world of business: more autonomy, more say in business activities, and a greater likelihood that others report to you.
Daniel Hamermesh wrote about this recently, in stark economic terms:
Daniel S....
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After Irene, Upstate New York Farmers Suffer in... →
The Hudson River valley’s farmers have been hard hit by hurricane Irene, and while the level of damage is not yet fully known the impacts are going to be long-term:
Lisa Foderaro via NY Times
From the Hudson Valley to areas farther north, along the Mohawk River and Schoharie Creek, New York growers, many of whose farms have been in the family for generations, were dealt a devastating blow by...
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More Fallout From Irene
via Facebook
No CSA distribution this Wednesday - Hurricane destroys New Paltz area farms by Bed-Stuy Farm Share on Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 6:41pm
I am writing with some very unfortunate news from Hector Tejada, the farmer at Conuco Farm. While Hurricane Irene made its pass through NYC with little harm, it has and continues to wreak havok on the Hudson Valley. Conuco Farm, your ...
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“Bureaucracies are subject to the halting problem. That is, when facing a new...”
– Daniel Lemire, Ten things Computer Science tells us about bureaucrats
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“Here’s the solution: spin it off. Slate doesn’t deserve to be slowly whittled...”
– Paul Smalera, How to reboot Slate
I concur. Which probably means it won’t happen, and Slate will instead die the death of a thousand cuts.
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“My story is by no means unique. It has long been a rite of passage in our...”
– - Dalton Conley, Cell Phone Weighs Down Backpack of Self-Discovery
I have written a bunch about the need for solitary time as a cost of being a creative — to gain mastery of complex skills, to think deeply — but Conley’s demonization of cell phones is too narrow.
It is the...
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Waidi Ren and Hukuo: The Two-Tiered Society in...
Waidi ren, or ‘outsiders’, are the rural unskilled who migrate to China’s booming cities illegally, and are forming a permanent underclass:
Andrew Jacobs, China Takes Aim at Rural Influx
According to the Beijing Bureau of Statistics, more than one-third of the capital’s 19.6 million residents are migrants from China’s rural hinterland, a figure that has grown by about 6 million just since...
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“Attention blindness is the fundamental structuring principle of the brain, and I...”
– - Cathy Davidson, Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age
(ht wildcat2030)
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H-P's One-Year Plan - Al Lewis →
Lewis skewers HP for its misadventures, which looks like the most spectacular train wreck in tech history.
I still think there is an angle with webOS, but it might have to become open source outside of HP first.
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Apple is working on a television for 2012, sources... →
Tweney does a good job pulling together the rumors about Apple making a television, to be released in 2012. It’s obviously the next step in Apple’s battle for the living room.
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Why AirPlay is the Next Big Thing - David Frampton →
A pretty well-reasoned argument as to why Apple’s infrastructure - Airplay, Bonjour, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad - is going to have a big impact on games in the living room.
Anonymous asked: what is it that Gabler is so worried about?
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Why Political Coverage is Broken- Jay Rosen →
Three impoverished ideas:
1. Politics as an inside game.
2. The cult of savviness.
3. The production of innocence.
Just go read it. Jay Rosen shows why political reporting is broken.
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“The clarion call for open data heralds an era where people around the world will...”
– - Raka Banerjee, Open Data Is Not Enough
(via foodtechlinks)
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“Dozens of United States diplomatic cables released in the latest WikiLeaks dump...”
– - Mike Ludwig, New WikiLeaks Cables Show US Diplomats Promote Genetically Engineered Crops Worldwide
The policies of the US government is one of the many reasons that changing the food system is incredibly hard. Here, newly leaked cables show that US officials have been working on behalf of...
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An Open Letter To Ken Kleinpeter, Mid-Hudson...
I received an email from Judith LaBelle, president of Glynwood Farms:
Dear Stowe, HOW COULD NEW YORK STATE SUPPORT THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY OF THE MID-HUDSON REGION? If you have specific suggestions or recommendations, now is the time to put them forward! Governor Cuomo recently created ten Regional Economic Development Councils to develop plans for the use of nearly $1 billion in state...
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“To be sure, some people are never going to be readers. We used to feel sorry for...”
– Rogue Columnist (via azspot)
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Tumblr Investment Values Start-Up at $800 Million... →
Tumblr is about to raise a serious round with a serious valuation:
The New York-based company is poised to raise $75 million to $100 million in venture capital, an investment that will value the company at $800 million.
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Making The Act Of Good Scalable
from Amy Jo Martin, 5 characteristics of Twitter that will make the act of good scalable
Accountability and transparency spin narcissistic acts into selfless acts.
The rate of committing acts of good is only bound by the speed of technology.
The peer-to-peer nature of the open network pushes value to the top.
Participation is easily justifiable.
Accessibility and lack of boundaries create...
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Bloody Thursday: Google Deadpools All Slide... →
So Google has is shutting down Slide after spending $200M last year. Another proof that you can’t buy social juju, and graft it onto a monster company that is socially blind? Or maybe Google doesn’t need internal competition to Google+, or teams building iOS apps?
MG Siegler
Because we needed more big tech news this week. Yes, it’s true that Google has just brought the hammer down...
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bijan:
Metric - The End Has No End
great cover...
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“Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the...”
– Justice John Paul Stevens
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How They Got There: A Q&A With Rooftop Farmer... →
Q: Are you starting a revolution? Will I look out in ten years over Greenpoint and see rooftop gardens there and there and there?
A: I think what we are hoping to inspire is just the spread of green roofs in general. Whether or not the green roofs produce food is something that is individual to the building owner and the people involved. Certainly, this is a city that needs more green roofs....
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Jux: Built For A Tablet-Only, Asocial World?
The ‘post-pc’ phrase has gained a lot of traction, by which most mean a world awash in tablets and ‘genius’ phones, and in which PCs are also supported as a sort of umbilical back to the pre-tablet past.
Personally, I think its the wrong term. We are moving to a world of liquid media, which is the confluence of a number of trends (ubiquitous connectivity, genius devices,...
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“Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.”
– John Gruber (via bijan)
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Facebook Places Is Nowhere
Gizmodo reports Facebook Just Killed Places, the competitor to Foursquare that was supposed to destroy the upstart start up. It’s still on the Facebook site, but the company has announced plans to disable the functionality in its mobil clients.
Remember all the folks saying that Foursquare was going to be crushed, that Facebook was the 800lb gorilla in any niche it wanted to move into? I...
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Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO - Reuters
2105:
breakingnews:
Letter from Steve Jobs: To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board,...
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Seems Like Architects Are Like Restaurants
Both industries are notoriously bad at websites:
Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, Herzog & de Meuron Launched Their First Website Today
We’ve complained often about how badly designed architect’s websites often are, and we’re not the only ones. Too many options, too much flash, too many pop-ups, and way, way too much helvetica. Architects tend to be good at designing things other than...
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A Glut Of Farmer's Markets?
The rise of farmer’s markets seems to leading to contradictory economics. Some farmers says that the increased number of markets forces them to spread out over more markets to get the same sales as before, while new farmers feel forced into creating new markets because they are blocked from existing ones.
Katie Zezima, As Farmers’ Markets Boom, Some See a Glut in the Making
Farmers in...
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The Architecture Of Cooperation
The world of business is being re-contoured by the new realities, like ubiquitous connectivity, genius phones, Air/iPad, and the rethinking of ‘offices’.
Alison Arieff, Rethinking the Office Workspace, Part Two
Herman Miller is still selling cubicles, to be sure, but can also read the writing on the wall (or on the dry-erase board, as the case may be). While they’re not quitting...
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Secrecy - A Sanctuary in a Transparent World -... →
Buried in an editorial about playwright Wendy Wasserman’s secrecy-laden life:
Implicit in Mr. Rich’s lament and my own pursuit of Wasserstein’s essential truths is the notion that secrets are inevitably harmful and the desire for privacy somehow suspect, and neurotic, if not downright nefarious.
[…]
BUT maybe secrecy and privacy have become too easily conflated when they are, in fact, quite...
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“More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and...”
– Marc Andreessen on Why Software Is Eating the World - WSJ.com
(via smarterplanet)
I think that all of the most successful companies of the next 20 years will be software-driven, and will act like software companies, not like energy, media, or finance companies of the last economic era.
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Time For Facebook To Buy WebOS From HP For A... →
I completely agree with Nicholas Carlson’s analysis: Facebook should acquire WebOS and make it FacebookOS.
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Prediction: Tim Armstrong Will Be Sacked,...
Just thought I’d do this before I go on vacation because, who knows.
The AOL hemorrhaging isn’t over, and a good housecleaning — shutting down Patch, selling off the web access business — could immediately follow his going.
It’s just a matter of time, since no one has figured out hyperlocal media — if there is such a thing to figure out — by Ariana...
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'Cyberloafing' At Work Boosts Productivity,... →
infoneer-pulse:
Bosses may have it all wrong when they assume that funny cat videos and FAIL slideshows are a drain on the workplace. Some new research finds that a moderate amount of mindless web surfing actually makes workers more productive at their jobs.
And the more mindless the surfing, the better.
“Employees who browse the web more end up being more engaged at work, so why fight that...
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School Districts Rediscover Value of From-Scratch... →
Kirk Johnson via NY Times
Colorado, which has been the least obese state in the nation since federal health measurements of American girth began, is a leader in the back-to-scratch [cooking for schools] movement. Of the 100 or so districts nationally that have worked with Cook for America, a group that trains school cooks in healthier lunch-ways and ran Greeley’s boot camp, more than half...
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SXSW 2012 - The connected company: an inventory of...
I am happy to say that the SxSWi panel that Dave Gray asked me to join is available for your reveiw (and vote!) on the SxSW PanelPicker here.
I think the panel is phenomenal. I’ve known Dave only a few years, but he is a big picture thinker, now at Dachis but the founder of XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Thomas is an old dear friend, the man who concocted ‘folksonomy’. I’ve known JP...
