[Editor's Note: This is volume 2 in my year end link wrap up. Volume 1 was published on December 22nd.]
Alrighty, let’s jump right in . . .
Good Magazine published a fascinating piece on Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, an NYU professor who uses game theory to predict future events. His methods for prediction are best described this way, “In the foreboding world view of rational choice, everyone is a raging dirtbag.”
Turns out Wine Critics are not nearly as objective as you would be lead to believe: “What these experiments neatly demonstrate is that the taste of a wine, like the taste of everything, is not merely the sum of our inputs, and cannot be solved in a bottom-up fashion. It cannot be deduced by beginning with our simplest sensations and extrapolating upwards. When we taste a wine, we aren’t simply tasting the wine.”
All year, Seamus McCauley’s Virtual Economics was one of my favorite blogs. Of everything he wrote, though, I most enjoyed his entry on the value of satirical news. To quote him: “To overcome rational ignorance we need more Onions, more Daily Shows, more Sunday Sports – diverse cultural forms that treat the news as entertainment, reach every section of society and reward individuals for taking the trouble to keep themselves informed.”
Below you’ll see the Moby Quotient, which is an equation that “determines the degree to which artists besmirch their reputations when they lend their music to hawk products or companies.” A brilliant piece of link bait from the Washington Post.
Since we’re onto visuals, here’s one of the most oddly beautiful things I saw this year (via Kottke):
Everyone always uses Apple as an example of a good brand, but few explain how they got there. Basement.org does a great job with 10 things we can learn from Apple.
I would be amiss if I left Terry Heaton, one of my favorite bloggers, off the list. His essay on Postmodernism’s Greatest Gift, is a fantastic explanation of postmodernism. To put it simply, “Postmodernism’s great gift to humankind is this challenging of assumptions, and this is an important matter for our new century. Why? Because in every walk of life, our failed institutions are rooted in assumptions that need challenging, if we are to progress as a culture.”
The Wall Street Journal had a great peice Daniel Henninger that uses packet switching as a metaphor for our current culture: “Packet-switching could hardly be more different [than the a to b connections of switchboards]. Information departs point A but then breaks into pieces, or packets, and bounces around a shared network almost randomly, then somehow arrives together at point B. The packet is a bundle of electrons, but “packet” is an apt metaphor for how the technology has changed us. Rather than sit still to fully absorb a copper-wire’s stiff stream of information, we flip through screens, sorting fragments of data into a final thought or solution.”
For the last few years, “many more tourists [35 million] … travelled to the pyramid-shaped Luxor hotel in Las Vegas than to Luxor itself” and Egypt has decided it’s had enough with everyone else making money off its image. Egypt is “planning to pass a law that would exact royalty payments from anyone found making copies of the country’s ancient monuments or museum pieces, including the pyramids.”
Interestingly enough, the pyramids are not the only landmarks you have to pay to use. Ever wonder why you see the Empire State Building in a lot more movies than it’s much more beautiful neighbor the Chrysler Building? Well, turns out the Chrysler Building (along with the facade of the New York Stock Exchange and the lions at the New York Public Library) are actually trademarked. Explaining why the Empire State Building isn’t trademarked, a representative said, “The Empire State Building belongs to everyone …The last thing I’d want to do is restrict the use of the building. I know it’s kind of diminished when it’s got a thermometer stuck inside. But we love to see the building everywhere.”
Queen Elizabeth delivered her address on both television and on YouTube this year. In fact, the Monarchy has set up The Royal Channel, which, according to the header, is “The Official Channel of the British Monarchy.” I don’t think the specific address is a huge deal, as she still used TV, however, the fact they set it up on YouTube, rather than using their own site, only goes to show the power of the site (it’s also linked off the British Monarchy homepage).
[Editor's Note: Volume 2 was published on December 31st, 2007.]
This is one of my very favorite things of the year. It’s my annual links roundup (2006 volume 1 & volume 2). Basically it’s my chance to point to some of the amazing stuff I read this year . . . [Editor's Note: Halfway through this sentence I looked back at last years entry and realized I had written almost the same thing: "This is one of my very favorite entries to write. I get to pull all the great stuff I read all year and throw it into one post for your reading enjoyment. Hopefully this will be a fun way to fill some of that extra holiday time." . . . I'll go with that.]
Since they’re top of mind, here’s my favorite flash game of the year: Chain Factor. (For the record I managed to get 268,511 points, a feat I haven’t come close to since.)
Network theory and power laws were a big theme for me this year, which made this Duncan Watts article on Justin Timberlake’s success especially interesting. The crux of Watts’ thesis is “when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called “cumulative advantage,â€? or the “rich get richerâ€? effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still.”
I don’t know much about Christianity (or religion generally really), but I found this to be a very interesting take on what Jesus would believe in were he alive today: “I believe that if Jesus lived today, he would be a secular humanist and would reject Christianity, just as he “rejected” Judaism and inspired Christianity. Christianity was once the vehicle for the boldest and most honest thinking about reality, the brotherhood of man, and the human condition. I think in light of the advances in science and our exposure to other religious traditions, it is time again to humanize further our understanding of “God” (or the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty) and come to a more universal understanding of religion.”
The always brilliant Grant McCracken wrote about the importance of noticing: “Notice everything and pay attention to things that puzzle. Pay attention to things that demand your attention and then refuse your understanding. Pay attention to the failure of attention.”
Sorry to be super geeky, but another power law article made the cut this year. This one comes from John Hagel and is called The Power of Power Laws. It’s fairly dense and super geeky, but it’s as good a peak at how this stuff works in the real world as you’ll get. (If it’s not obvious enough, power laws were my shape of the year. For a little more explanation, here’s a presentation I gave on them which I swear I will record a voiceover for soon.)
Anyone who works in marketing has likely said they need to “own” something (as in a color or event). Well, my coworker Jared gave the idea a nice smack-down over at the Naked blog. In it he writes: “Overstock.com doesn’t own the letter O – though I appreciate the way they not-so-subtly link shopping to female orgasms. Verizon doesn’t own the color red (nor does Target) – though using visual cues to aid your brand is important. And despite one former client’s dreams, their snack could never own July 4th, no matter how much they spent (budget was roughly $2 million). Because only one thing owns July 4th, and that’s fireworks.” It’s something everyone who works in the industry has though about saying but hasn’t had it in them to actually come out with.
This is more about an idea than an article. Wired wrote about how science should release it’s “dark data”, or the stuff from the experiments that weren’t successful. The justification: “In this data-intensive age, those apparent dead ends could be more important than the breakthroughs. After all, some of today’s most compelling research efforts aren’t one-off studies that eke out statistically significant results, they’re meta-studies  studies of studies  that crunch data from dozens of sources, producing results that are much more likely to be true.”
And the last link for Volume 1 . . . The coolest presentation, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demoing photosynth. And since you’re probably tired of clicking, here’s the video:
Thanks for reading and look out for Volume 2 . . . Have a great holiday.
According to a recent Harris Poll, “more people [in America] believe in the Devil [62%], Hell [62%] and angels [74%] than believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution [42%].” In fact, evolution only barely beats out ghosts [41%], creationism [39%] and UFOs [35%]. That’s amazing.
Radiohead on releasing their album early and letting consumers pay whatever they wanted: “The way we termed it was “our leak date.” Every record for the last four  including my solo record  has been leaked. So the idea was like, we’ll leak it, then.”
Pantone has chosen the purplish-bluish “Blue Iris” as their color of the year. The explanation is the real kicker: “Combining the stable and calming aspects of blue with the mystical and spiritual qualities of purple, Blue Iris satisfies the need for reassurance in a complex world, while adding a hint of mystery and excitement.”
Sorry for another addictive game, but I can’t help myself. This one apparently comes from the guys at area/code. The basic idea is to clear as much of the board as possible by dropping a numbered disc into a row or column with that number of total discs in it. Sounds confusing, but it’s really not (though there’s certainly more nuance to it than that).
The whole article is an interesting look at how everyone says the same thing whenever a new technology comes around. However, this was the kicker for me: “When the telephone appeared in the 1870s, people worried about receiving calls from people to whom they had not been properly introduced. And what should one say when picking up the receiver? Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, suggested “Ahoy, ahoyâ€?. But as in many other respects, his ideas lost out to those of Thomas Edison, who preferred “Helloâ€?, an expression that was rarely used before the telephone but is now ubiquitous.”
I think I’m going to start answering the phone with “Ahoy, ahoy.”
Update (12/19/07): As Jarrett pointed out in the comments, Mr. Burns from The Simpsons answers the phone with “ahoy ahoy” (listen to it here). Also, here’s a bit more on hello from Wikipedia.
Anil Dash wrote a great piece on the problems Google faces. He has articulated many of the ideas I’ve been trying to express, explaining the potential issues as an issue with Google’s lack of understanding of how other’s view it (which he expresses through theory of mind, which happens to be one of my favorite psychological theories).
In one example, Anil explains that “Connecting PageRank to economic systems such as AdWords and AdSense corrupted the meaning and value of links by turning them into an economic exchange.” As Clay pointed out in the comments a few days ago, Google also realized this problem when they were doing their thesis, noting, “advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.” Anyway, go read Anil’s whole piece, it’s quite good.
Until the end of the year the One Laptop Per Child program is giving allowing regular folks to buy the laptop as long as they donate one as well (the program has actually been going since the beginning of November I believe). While many have questioned the program and it’s hit some significant bumps in the road, it seems to be doing better. Although the non-profit has seen recent competition from for-profit manufacturers, as Grant McCracken rightly pointed out, that’s not such a bad thing.
To quote Grant, “We could argue that Intel and Microsoft are rushing this market precisely because they were terrified that the first one in could own it. And this is a way of saying that Negroponte almost certainly moved up the Intel and Microsoft participation by, what?, a couple of years. Now we have a robust market, with real choices, competitors with deep pockets, momentum, urgency; not philanthropy, but that beast called capitalism.”
To be completely honest I’m not sure where I fall in the debate. While I understand Pier’s point that “People in developing countries already have a low price portable computer – it just has a smaller screen and makes a ringing noise,” however, there’s a lot I like quite a bit about the $100 laptop. For one, they’ve managed to catalyze corporate interests to drop prices and think about a market they otherwise would have likely ignored. They also completely rethought the interface: “While traditional computer interfaces are modeled on the desktop metaphor, Sugar places the individual user at the center of the interface.” (Idiocentricity?) And of course the computer is loaded with open source software and tools for building new stuff.
Read about this over the weekend in the Times and thought it was too good not to share. Turns out the CIA has a Venture Capital firm called In-Q-Tel. It was started in 1999 and “The “Qâ€? in its name is in homage to the weapons designer Q in the James Bond novels”. According to the article the fund is making money, though the numbers they quote are from 2005 . . .
That’s about as good a summation of my internet strategy as I’ve ever read. It’s the reason own 50+ domains (many of which have nothing on them) and buy new ones at least once a week. What’s more, though, is that I’m pretty sure this is becoming increasingly true in the rest of our lives. Sure it costs more to produce physical goods, but as costs drop, the possible return of going on a whim makes it worth trying.
After reading about Brits coming to New York to shop I got to thinking about the economics of New York City. What interests me is how diverse the cities revenue stream must be. Clearly finance is a major contributor (according to Wikipedia is accounts for 1/3 of the city’s GDP), but tourism must play a large role as well. As the strength of the dollar decreases, the strength of New York City as an international tourist destination increases. Clearly this isn’t enough to make up for lost revenues, but it’s kind of a fascinating idea to me nonetheless.
Anyhow, in the course of looking for sources of revenue for the city (which I wasn’t able to find and would really appreciate it if someone could track down), I did manage to uncover NYCdata (which has lots of good stats about NYC) and this New York Times article from 1913 which breaks down how the city made it’s $197.7 million.
Google’s announcment of Knol, it’s Wikipedia killer, sits rightin-between a bunch of stuff I’ve been writing/thinking about lately. Clearly Google’s motivation in this is the lost advertising dollars as Wikipedia searches show up near the top of many popular searches and the resulting pages display no Google ads. Or as Nick Carr put it, “I’m guessing that serving as the front door for a vast ad-less info-moshpit outfitted with open source search tools is not exactly the future that Google has in mind for itself. Enter Knol.”
The question remains, is this really a need (after all it sounds a lot like some combination of Wikipedia/blogging) or is Google only spreading it’s wings where the money is?
Not to beat a dead horse, but I’m going to talk about motivations again. In the past few weeks I’ve given quite a bit of thought to what motivates Google and now I’d like to talk about a few other web services and how their decisions are not necessarily in line with what’s actually good for their customers.
It’s not really a new story for web properties to put money or customers. Myspace has been doing it for years. Their site is so clearly optimized for pageviews over customer experience it’s sickening. The number of unnecessary steps in every action is just incredible. But they’re not alone, anyone who has received an eVite and been annoyed by the fact that you had to click through to find out the location/date/time will know what I’m talking about. (For those uninitiated in the ways of online advertising, the reason eVite won’t send this information in an email is that they only make money on showing ads and they can’t show you ads in an email — or at least they haven’t figured out how).
Anyway, when I read about how Drew had been kicked out of LinkedIn, I just had to write about it. You see, he had included the name of his company, Renegade, in the name field on his LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn doesn’t like this type of behavior because many people who include extra words in their name field are actually including their email to work around LinkedIn’s pay system. For instance, I might list my name as Noah Brier (nb@noahbrier.com), so that if someone wanted to get in touch with me from the site they wouldn’t need to a) ask for a “LinkedIn introduction” or b) pay for LinkedIn’s premium service which allows someone to send as much “InMail” as they’d like (that’s code for LinkedIn user-to-user messages).
Facebook on the other hand, took the opposite approach recently by opening up their messaging. Now when you receive an email notification letting you know someone has messaged you on Facebook it actually includes the body of the message in the email (a feature which I, for one, am damn happy about). While in the short term this may cut down on visits to the site, in the long term this kind of customer-first strategy seems like the only way to go.
I’m quite interesting in how monetization needs end up driving product design in directions other than what’s best for customers. Ultimately this is a byproduct of publishers addiction to online display advertising.
Finally, Google releases a way to sync your Google calendar with your Blackberry. Awesome. Get started here.
Update (12/13/07): It’s not quite as easy as they make it sound. I assumed it would be included in the “Download All” package they offer, but it turns out it’s not. You actually need to scroll down the page on the link (http://mobile.google.com) they send to your mobile phone and choose “Google Sync”.
A bit of New York City graffiti archeology: “A large mural that was created by some of graffiti’s earliest pioneers was discovered recently in a 10-story limestone building in SoHo just as developers were converting it into luxury condominiums.” It’s from the 70′s and includes original work from pioneers like futura 2000. It’s going to be unveiled tonight as part of a graffiti show at a new gallery called Gallery 151 on Wooster and will run until mid-February. (Thanks Dave)
My favorite bit of the interview with Viral Factory is their explanation for what people like on YouTube and therefore how they came up with the video: “They like cute little stories and something that shows a little homemade effort. They also like stickmen and stop motion. So we threw all that in a pot . . . “
This is just nutty. The list includes an exorcism, a ridiculous soprano who hits a note that sounds more like whistling than signing, the last 30 minutes of the Jonestown Massacre and the only recording of a castrato (admittedly I didn’t listen to most on the list as I didn’t think I had the stomach for it).
A bit more on the castrato recording: Apparently it was recorded in 1902 when Alessandro Moreschi was 44 years old. According to the BBC, “In 17th and 18th Century Italy, about 4,000 boys were castrated each year, from the age of eight upwards, with the aim of making a fortune as opera singers and soloists with choirs in churches and royal palaces . . . By 1870, the Italian government had banned such castration in the cause of art.”
The basic idea of the game is to locate a city as quickly as possible. A few lessons I’ve learned in about 10 minutes of playing: My China geography is seriously lacking, I have no idea where Uruguay is (now I do) and African geography is not my specialty. Be careful, it can be quite addictive.
One of the fun side effects of this Quickies column has been seeing what people comment on. Thought at first I thought I’d be able to predict and only leave open ones that I felt like were good for commenting, I’m quickly realizing that its the ones I least expect that yield the best results.
With that said, after I wrote about supersonic flight the other day I got an email from my friend Vikram with info on the Tupolev Tu-144: Russia’s answer to the Concord. According to this site, it was “Built as a competitor to the Anglo-French Concorde from modified plans stolen from the French it was the first supersonic commercial aircraft beating Concorde by two months.” Althought it wasn’t very successful (three crashes between ’73 and ’85), it certainly had the best nickname for an airplane with “Concordski.”
A few months ago I bought the URL SneezingPuppies.com after a conversation with a coworker about how puppies sneezing may be the cutest thing on the planet. Well after posting a few videos we found over at YouTube, we’ve decided to expand the empire with Snoozing Puppies. I actually think this site may have some merit, as there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of photos of cute sleeping puppies. And who doesn’t love that?
A company called Weblo is helping Facebook members sell ads on their profile pages. This apparently is against the rules because Facebook doesn’t want profile pages to become “a free-for-all.â€? As the article rightly points out, “Weblo gets to the heart of a question of ownership that will generate more debate as more people spend more of their time looking at content created by other ordinary people. When users post reviews of restaurants on a media site, for example, should they get to share in the ad revenues generated?”
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I’ve thought for a while ad revenue sharing is a huge opportunity in the social networking space.
Was having breakfast this morning with my friend Noah from GoMobo and we both commented on the fact that the urinal in the bathroom was filled with ice. Neither of us came up with a particularly good reason for it, so I decided to do some research when I got home. The best hypothesis I read is some combination of the ice acting as a “slow continuous flush” and help contains the smell (for those that have never seen it here’s some evidence).
While we’re on the topic of urinals (a strange one, I know), Noah and I also chatted briefly about fly decals in urinals (especially airports). He rightly pointed out that these help keep bathrooms cleaner by giving men a place to aim. As this site points out, “The interesting feature of these urinals is that they’re deliberately designed to take advantage of this inherent human male tendency.”
Been playing around with Hulu, the new video venture of NBC and Fox. It’s actually pretty amazing and a testament to the importance of quality. There’s a ton of content on there already (over 100 shows and movies including a bunch of stuff I’ve been wanted to check out like 24, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, Heroes and Tin Man). What really surprised me, though, is that they included embedability of partial and entire clips. To test out the functionality I posted a few minutes from an episode of Family Guy over on my Tumblr as well as the full first episode of Tin Man.
You can sign up for the beta at Hulu.com (if I had any invites I’d offer them up).
Last night I got into a conversation about how amazing it is that commercial flight has actually devolved in the last 20 years (with the death of the Concorde). Anyway, I read an article a while back somewhere that talked about companies trying to reignite supersonic travel, but couldn’t dig it up. (If anyone can find it, that would be awesome. It talked about two different approaches: Save fuel over land and dampen the sound.) Anyway, in the course of looking for the article I did come across some interesting stuff. Aerion, a private company making a supersonic business jet, just sold it’s first one to Sheikh Rashid Bin Humaid Al Nuaimi of Ajman for $80 million. As the article puts it, “Sheikh Rashid will become one of the first world leaders to routinely fly above the speed of sound.” Good to know.
Also uncovered, two Wired articles on the subject and the New York Times farewell to the Concorde, which opens with: “The long but ultimately sterile era of commercial supersonic transportation will come to an end today, when the last scheduled Concorde flight, by British Airways, is scheduled to leave Kennedy International Airport for London.”
As I was sitting down with my friend John the other night and discussing my question about Google’s overall motivation (“Google doesn’t have any real motivation for improving search results because the worse the results are, the more likely you are to click on the ads.”), John brought up a point that made even more sense. Imagine a situation where Google continues to improve their results. Eventually their engine becomes so good that you immediately click the first result (which it’s close to) or you begin to just skip the results altogether by clicking “I’m Feeling Lucky”. If that happens, all of a sudden the money printing machine Google’s created stops running. Of course this is an overstatement, but does illustrate a point: From a financial motivation perspective, clearly Google is only motivated to improve it’s results to a point that they continue to grow their customer base (which is less based on quality at this point and more based on momentum and partnerships like the one they have with Myspace or Firefox).
So what does all this mean? To be honest I’m not sure. I just think it’s interesting. I don’t necessarily believe that Google is making decisions this way, however, it does pose some potential issues.
Second, let’s talk a little about PayPerPost. I don’t know if I’ve written about it here before, but basically it’s a service that pays bloggers to write about websites, companies, products and other stuff. When they first launched around a year ago (at least I think that’s when it was) there was an uproar in the blogosphere. People were up in arms that this wan unethical and disgusting. More recently Google cracked down on the service as a paid link scheme, assigning PageRanks of 0 to those that took part. This, of course, has reignited the debate around the ethics of the program (many were happy to see users punished) and I wanted to add my two cents.
I have never seen a problem with PayPerPost. I know this isn’t a popular stance, but my feeling is that your reputation is yours to ruin and if you chose to promote a product that sucks and you get found out, you got what you deserved. As for the full disclosure part of it, I don’t really care that much. Paid editorial is the worst kept secret in the advertising/publishing business: You don’t get editorial space if you’re not running advertising. (Obviously this isn’t completely true, but it’s an accepted fact.) So what’s the difference between PayPerPost and what’s going on everywhere else in the media universe?
I guess I mostly am writing this to stir things up a bit (though I really do believe in both points of view). Not sure why I’m feeling contrarian today, but what the hell, it’s a fun way to be.
I heard about VectorMagic a few weeks ago, but didn’t really try it (I think it first came from Aaron). After finally giving it a shot I can officially say it’s amazing. If you need to vectorize an image, it’s the place to go. (Having it in vector format allows you to shrink and expand it without losing any quality.)
With the release of Letterbox for Leopard (a plugin that gives you vertical mail windows instead of horizontal ones), my two favorite Apple Mail tools are now available (the other is Mail Act-On, a plugin that files emails away with keystrokes). It’s part of my mighty OS X trifecta (completed by the always amazing Quicksilver).
Two very good friends of mine are both hiring director level positions at their companies and I figured I’d pass along the info for anyone interested.
GoMobo is a very cool mobile ordering platform that allows you to skip lines at restaurants and pick up your order on the fly. The founder, Noah Glass, was named one of America’s best young entrepreneurs and is one of the best/smartest guys I’ve ever met. He’s got a rare combination of brilliance and humility and I have no doubt he will build GoMobo into a force to be reckoned with. They are looking for a Director of Marketing (see the full description at Craig’s List).
Clickable is an online app that helps small/medium sized businesses manage their search buys more effectively. My friend Max Kalehoff started there recently as VP of Marketing and is looking for a Director of Customer Acquisition (see the full description at LinkedIn).
If either of these interest you, drop me a line or leave a comment and I’ll hook you up with either Noah or Max.
I read two New York Times articles about shorting stocks this weekend: “The Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs” and “Short Seller Sinks Teeth Into Insurer”. Afterwards I got to thinking about how the internet can really alter the way this part of the market works (here’s some more info on shorting). Because it’s so much easier to get a message out, you can pump negativity and then short the stock, thereby betting on the downfall you’re helping to create. I don’t imagine this is new at all, but since it’s easier to reach mass audiences, I’m guessing it happens more often.
Was reading this article on who is actually clicking on ads and it got me thinking about something slightly problematic: Google doesn’t have any real motivation for improving search results because the worse the results are, the more likely you are to click on the ads. Obviously this is oversimplified, but it’s not something I’d thought of before.
While I’m on the topic of questionable Google motivation, I really don’t agree with their paid link policy. Call me crazy, but I don’t see the difference between a paid link and a non-paid one and overall it screams to me of Google squashing AdSense competition. Pete made some good points on this. (For the record, I think this needs to be a full entry.)
I was having a conversation last week with my friend Jonathan (sadly blogless) about the state of news. The conversation went in a bunch of different directions, but the one I’ve been meaning to write about is the importance of RSS. Not so much the technology, but the effect it’s had. The most important of these effects is showing the world the power of an irregular news cycle: Instead of coming out with new stories based on some deadline an editor came up with, most blogs publish whenever they damn well please. They can do this because they know that many of their readers have subscribed to the site and will receive updates whenever they come out. (For the record, I know that RSS adoption is still quite low. My point with this isn’t so much about the actual subscriptions, but rather how the advantages of publishing this way will eventually spill over into the mainstream.)
Blogs, unlike newspapers and magazines, don’t have to fill pages on a regular basis. If I don’t write here daily I see no drop in readership (in fact, I often see a rise if I take a week off . . . but that’s another story). That means, unlike newspapers and other media outlets, I don’t ever have to create news. The vast majority of my readers are subscribed and they (you) will receive my writing when it happens thanks to RSS (which is the technology behind the email subscription as well in case you’re wondering).
I guess in reality this is just a continuation of my “Nothing to Lose” piece (recap: big media fighting bloggers is kind of like fighting the crazy guy in the bar who doesn’t care about getting hurt). My motivation is fundamentally different than a media outlet. I don’t care about time-on-site or pageviews, I just want to put out consistently interesting information so that I can attract as much feedback as possible on my ideas.
Not really sure where else to go with all this, just though it was something worth throwing out there.
While I’m on the subject, here are some other thoughts I have on the news:
I’ve been quoting this Virtual Economics entry on the power of satirical news quite a bit lately. The basic idea is that “To overcome rational ignorance ["rational ignorance tells us that our votes can't possibly affect the outcome of an election"] we need more Onions, more Daily Shows, more Sunday Sports – diverse cultural forms that treat the news as entertainment, reach every section of society and reward individuals for taking the trouble to keep themselves informed.” As Seamus writes early in the entry, that’s because “Unless you’re actually a politician or a lobbyist, knowledge of current affairs is pure indulgence. It follows that the people who know about the news are following it for fun.”
I really do believe that a look at the front page of The Onion gives you a better idea of what’s important in the world than just about any other publication.
We mostly read news for the social currency it offers us (you don’t want to be on Wall Street and not have read the front page of The Journal). With that in mind I think we’ll see more and more pre-chewed news like Talking Points on Current TV.(video below)
Okay, that’s it for now. Have a good Monday.
Updates (12/2/07): In retrospect, this episode of Talking Points is really not any good. The idea behind it (“Knowing about current events isn’t nearly as important as appearing to
know about them”), however, is the part I really dig.
According to Google spam is flat for the first time in years. While this Wired article suggests this may not be the case, it did get me thinking about how Gmail’s spam filter manages to work so well. A bit of Googling uncovered this video featuring Brad Taylor, Google’s spam czar. Anyway, as I expected, every time you hit the “Report Spam” button in Gmail it sends the message to some central database which then ensures that message is marked as spam for others.
That got me thinking, if Microsoft (with Hotmail), Yahoo! and Google (with Gmail) all got together and created a giant spam database couldn’t they basically knock out spam completely? Why, other than the competitive advantage a company’s spam technology offers them, wouldn’t they do that for the good of humanity?
Hi, I'm Noah. I am the co-founder of Percolate. I like writing on, thinking about and making stuff for the internet. I'm responsible for a few internet experiments like Brand Tags, likemind and My First Tweet. On this site I write about media, marketing, culture, technology and randomness. I like it when people email me.
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The drip denotes a curated post from Percolate. The comment is mine, the content on the other end of the link is not.
Q: What is this site all about?
A: I think Michael Bierut explained it nicely a few years ago in response to people asking him why he didn't write more about design on Design Observer: "But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be." Replace "graphic design" with "media/marketing/technology" (or whatever you'd like to call my field) and you've got my deal.
Q: Where else do you live?
A: Good question. All over the place as a matter of fact. On Tumblr for more randomness, Twitter for short bursts, Dopplr for places I'm going, Delicious for things I'm reading, last.fm for music I'm listening to, Flickr for photos I'm taking and Facebook because I don't really have a choice. (Oh, and Amazon for stuff I want people to buy me.)
Q: I meant that literally. Where do you live?
A: Oh, sorry, Brooklyn, New York is where I call home at the moment.
Q: Any other side projects you'd like to tell us about?
A: As a matter of fact, yes. There's How Much Does it Buy?, a calculator for the rest of us. Holy Crap! Facts (and accompanying Twitter feed) which is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Da' Bears Blog is, in my opinion, the best Chicago Bears blog on the web (I don't write it, I just helped it get off the ground) and Tweemail is a little PHP script I wrote for getting Twitter updates by email. I'm also always working on a few other things and will let you know when they're ready for public consumption.
Q: Um okay.
A: Yeah, that's a fake question mostly so I can throw in this one other quote I like that I think sums up some of what I try to do here. This one comes from Albert Einstein (or at least the internet says so) and goes something like, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Words to live by.
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