Jan 30
2008
Wow, the first photos from the "Where the Wild Things Are" movie look amazing. It's being directed by Spike Jonze and written by Dave Eggers (of McSweeney's fame (and, of course, is based on the book by Maurice Sendak).
Tags: movies, photography
Jan 30
2008
He's a skateboarder. He does things people shouldn't be able to do on a skateboard. (And even more things people shouldn't because able to do on a skateboard.)
Tags: skateboarding, video
Jan 30
2008
Tickets for the PSFK Conference New York just went on sale. It's Thursday, March 27th and speakers include: Adam Stotsky - NBC Universal (SciFi), Andrew Hoppin - NASA, Eric Ripert - Le Bernardin, Graham Hill - Treehugger, Greg Verdino - Crayon, Jeff Staple - Staple Design, Johnny Vulkan - Anomaly, Josh Spear - Undercurrent, Marc Schiller - Electric Artists, Mike Hudack - Blip.TV, Noah Brier - Likemind, Sascha Lewis - Flavorpill & Steve Rubel - Edelman.
Yup, I'm in there. I'll be talking on a panel about Social Media, here's the description: "In a 'new guns' versus 'marketing gurus' debate, Marc Schiller & Steve Rubel join Josh Spear & Noah Brier to discuss how social media will change in 2008 and how companies can leverage this digital phenomenon in the most rewarding way. "
Tags: nyc, socialmedia, trend
Jan 29
2008
Big old Economist article on the latest iteration of Virgin Galactic's fleet and how they plan to launch the business (no pun intended).
Jan 28
2008
I don't often do book reports around here, but I just got through Duncan Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodds' paper, "Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation" [PDF] and thought it might be worth sharing some quotes and thoughts (especially since it's 36 pages of fairly dense material).
As I wrote recently their basic thesis is that so-called "influentials" are not all their cut out to be (especially by people like Gladwell and Keller). Though as they explain in the conclusion, "Our main point, in fact, is not so much that the influentials hypothesis is either right or wrong, but that it's micro-foundations, by which we mean the details of who influences whom and how, require very careful articulation in order for its validity to be meaningfully assessed." While Watts and Dodds' own work leaves me with some questions, this seems like a hard assertion to argue with. To come up with a true theory of influence, the details of influence need to be universally defined and understood.
In fact, I don't know that Watts and Dodds go far enough themselves, mainly because influence is so hard to pin down. Observationally, who influences whom and how can change on a daily basis and greatly depends on things like topic & relationship (as well, I'd argue, on outside factors like how busy the recipient is at time of influence). Watts and Dodds do acknowledge these factors, however, suggesting that "large scale changes in public opinion are not driven by highly influential people who influence everyone else, but rather by easily influenced people, influencing other easily influenced people."
This, in and of itself, doesn't seem particularly controversial. If you go with the idea that 10% of the population is influential, that leaves 90% of the population that's not. Then if you assume that, especially in the current media/advertising landscape, the influential 10% is hardest to reach because they are the most overexposed (and thus have their attention stretched the thinnest), it seems that your effort may be much better spent thinking about options. What's more, according to Watts and Dodds' research, while "influentials have a greater than average chance of triggering critical mass, when it exists ... [their effect is] only modestly greater, and usually not even proportional to the number of people they influence directly."
As they explain in their conclusion, the simplest way to understand this is to look at natural analogues such as forest fires:
Some forest fires, for examples, are many times larger than average; yet no-one would claim that the size of a forest fire can be in any way attributed to the exceptional properties of the spark that ignited it, or the size of the tree that was the first to burn. Major forest fires require a conspiracy of wind, temperature, low humidity, and combustible fuel that extends over large tracts of land. Just as for large cascades in social influence networks, when the right global combination of conditions exists, any spark will do; and when it does not, none will suffice.
Upon reading that I was immediately brought back to something I wrote about last year. My thesis in that entry was that the marketing paradigm of leading with a single message was outdated and your better bet was to create a huge array of messages (sparks) hoping that one would ignite a cascade effect (forest fire). Especially in a digital context, where message production costs are significantly lowered, why not throw lots against a wall and see what sticks (after all, measurement and fast iteration are possible).
With all that said, there is one major issue I have with Watts and Dodds work, which they admit to in the paper: They are examining interpersonal influence, not media influence. While they admit that the distinction is a bit blurry, especially in the eyes of things like blogs, they continue on with the assumption (which doesn't seem to be grounded in any research) that "the influence of the blogger seems closer to that of a traditional newspaper columnist or professional critic, than that of a trusted confidant, or a even casual acquaintance." Now I don't want to harp on bloggers, but I don't know that I agree with this thesis.
Part of what makes blogs such a fascinating communications medium is the combination weak and strong ties that can constitute a readership. While large readership blogs (like BoingBoing for example) most likely reflect a more journalistic relationship, smaller blogs like this one act much differently. Of the thousand-plus readers who frequent this site I would guess that a significant portion constitute what I would consider a weak tie (we have emailed back and forth) and a smaller portion constitute strong ties (family and close friends). This, I would assume, is significantly different than the average "newspaper columnist or professional critic" who tend to live in another realm. In other words, the availability of bloggers may change how and when their influence functions.
This, of course, is a major critique I have of most communications theory. As my sister, who is getting her undergraduate degree in communications can attest to, I get incredibly upset when interpersonal communications disregards mediated communications. In our current age, the boundaries between interpersonal and mediated communications is hard to pin down. That's because the same technologies (email, blogging and even text messaging) can be used for both broadcasting and interpersonal communications. Therefore, it's left up to the recipient to decide whether the communications is interpersonal or not. Prior to that, interpersonal communications was done entirely via one-to-one media (things like face-to-face and phone). While I'm not sure how to resolve this, it does create a major issue in all influential research because it leaves the researcher with an incredible amount of variables to contend with.
Finally, I think a discussion of engagement is probably relevant as I think it's directly correlated to influence (and when combined with reach may change things slightly). When we launched Street Mining we got two links from largeish sites, one with a very large, but more casual readership and one with a smaller, more dedicated one. While the larger site drove more clicks, the smaller site drove more signups. This, I believe, is the simplest explanation of engagement/influence I have seen: Clearly the smaller site's readers were a better audience for the message than the larger site. (Of course the lack of control in this experiment means that it's impossible to say whether it was these factors that led to additional sign-ups.)
This is an interesting paradox that I think relates to this whole influential debate and is often a stumbling block. Influence and reach are two entirely different things. While the two can be related (and historically have been), on the internet they're not necessarily. For example, we've all heard about the "Digg effect" when I site gets to the front page of Digg and is hit with a deluge of traffic. What's interesting about this traffic is that it often doesn't result in much additional long-term interest, as the audience is a large and varied one. Therefore, while the site may be considered influential from a pure mass perspective, it's influence seems much more superficial (I don't have data to back this up, but have read many discussions on the subject). I would say that while Digg has a large reach and high influence (causing the influx of visitors), the engagement of that audience is low (meaning that they visit the dugg site once and don't return). (Engagement is a bad word for this, but I'm having trouble thinking of another at the moment. If someone has a better way to describe it, please let me know.)
My argument would be that on many smaller sites the influence is deeper since those relationships tend to be stronger. This creates an interesting dynamic. While I don't know that it's statistically relevant, I do think it's worth exploring some more. Blogs and other associated media do allow people to amplify their voices to more strong and weak ties than ever before, allowing people to have journalistic-sized audiences with relationships that more reflect interpersonal communication.
I think that's about it. I hope I haven't bored you to death (I can only imagine if you've actually made it to the bottom that I haven't). Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback (on both Watts and Dodds' paper and my thoughts). Thanks for reading.
Jan 26
2008
I've been doing a lot of reading (and thus thinking) lately. What follows will hopefully hang together, but it may very well turn into a bunch of random ideas. So goest the dangers of blogging.
Okay . . . let's begin with something Adrian wrote a few days ago about the digital divide: "I now often get the sense that the real digital divide is not so much around fluency or access to technology. Instead it is around ways of thinking and ways of seeing the world." This is something I've been trying to articulate (hopefully effectively) for some time. Digital is not just the underpinnings of new technology, it is also a change in how the world operates.
Two simple examples: Scarcity goes away with losslessness and complete control goes away with the multiple entrances and exits digital technology can provide (think fast-forward and rewind on the tape player versus skip on the cd . . . or even better, just choosing a song in iTunes). What comes out of these is a shift (that I would call postmodern). Here's some more from Adrian's post (who I hope won't mind me reposting this graphic without permission).
What these leaves us with is a world where we need to reassess how things work. Traditional business and economic drivers (such as scarcity) don't really work any more. Or, as Terry Heaton wrote, (quoting Ian Rogers), "Losers wish for scarcity, winners leverage scale." I love Pixel Qi as an example of this. As I wrote last week, "Pixel Qi ... is a spinoff from OLPC that hopes to sell the technology developed for the OLPC in a for-profit way, thereby helping the OLPC (and other firms) get the scale they need to lower the prices on the laptops. Basically: The more customers Pixel Qi gets, the cheaper kids around the world can get their hands on this technology."
It's almost laughable to think about that strategy in the face of OLPC's whining about competition (yes, I know, much of it is fair complaints about unfair competition). Another great example of this is Google's killing of domain tasting. I think Umair's words about Google also work for the OLPC (although they haven't chosen this path): By selling the technology and allowing more competition the ecosystem flourishes and "everyone is better off in the long run." In other words, openness leads to higher returns for everyone and better products for the people.
Now for a slight diversion (since I'm not quite sure how it ties together yet).
In this new landscape everyone is competing with everyone. We see this in the media environment now, where "there are lots and lots of non-commercial alternatives that are free and quite good." Just take the advertising landscape. As Terry Heaton wrote in his latest essay, what's so interesting about this new media world is that advertisers are now competition (and that competition will only increase). Advertisers everywhere are creating sites with content and games that rival what you can find on the rest of the web because they realize that's what they have to do. This is dangerous for media companies because advertisers have a completely different revenue stream than they do and is once again a case of fighting the crazy guy in the room who has nothing to lose (at least not in the media space). Throw in bloggers and the rest of the layfolks who are media owners with an entirely non-monetary revenue stream and you've got a recipe who knows what.
The question I have then, is what happens next. If we play this out to its conclusion and assume that what we are seeing in the media world will manifest itself everywhere what happens?
Jan 26
2008
Interesting video and comments by Edward Tufte on the iPhone. A few choice quotes from the video: "The content is the interface" (referring to the iPhone's brilliant lack of "computer administrative debris" like toolbars) & "To clarify add detail ... clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information, fix the design." (I really love that last one.)
Tags: design, interface, visualization
Jan 26
2008
If everyone else has seen this, sorry, but The Gapminder World is an amazing visualization of international statistics. The program lets you program the x and y axes (as well as color and size) to correlate to different statistics (like per capita income, birth rate, life expectancy or percentage of women in the work force). What you get is an amazing look at how the world has changed and a really cool way to surface historical insights. Apparently Google bought it last year and you can watch Hans Rosling, the director, talk about it at TED.
Tags: statistics, visualization
Jan 26
2008
Really great piece by the Freakonomics guys that asks, "What do a deaf woman in Los Angeles, a first-century Jewish sandal maker and a red-cockaded woodpecker have in common?" Turns out they were all on the short end of laws meant to do good.
Jan 26
2008
Holy Crap! Facts is another semi-stupid idea that's turned into a small side project that may or may not survive. Basically it's a Twitter feed we (Joe and I) plan to update with crazy facts like "Shaquille O'Neal spends $23,000-per-month on gas for his cars" and "There are three times as many tanning salons as Starbucks in America" (which was the original inspiration for the site and came via Chet).
Got any facts to add?
Tags: twitter
Jan 25
2008
Duncan Watts explains why he thinks Gladwell et. al are wrong about influencers. His thesis is that a trend can come from anyone and depends much more on the willingness of the masses to accept the trend than the "influence" of the individual. I think the core of the problem with influencer theory is that it's often confused with reach, in other words, those who are considered influential are actually the ones with the most reach within a given community.
For those interested, here's the PDF of Watts' full paper: Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation (which I plan to read on my plane ride home).
Tags: culture, marketing, networks
Jan 24
2008
I was in a vendor presentation yesterday when the topic of WalMart came up. For anyone working in the marketing industry, this isn't a rare occurance, and in fact that was just the topic of conversation. "WalMartians," as the presenter referred to them, were the clients who had superstore tunnel vision. Eventually something in the realm of "WalMart has ruined culture" was uttered, to which I responded, "or WalMart has become culture."
Now I'm in no way here to defend the shopping giant, however, people make choices in their lives and things happen for a reason (or at least I believe they do). And while I certainly don't agree with or even like everything WalMart does or the way its changed towns and cities, I don't blame it. The way I see it, throughout the ages there have been any number of cultural forces that have "ruined things" and most of the time they haven't really.
Not sure what any of this has to do with anything, but I thought it was a worthwhile anecdote.
What's funny is that earlier in that meeting the same group had said something that I thought was quite brilliant (and in fact I thought they, a as a whole, were great). It was good to be an anthropologist, they explained, because "cultural models were always changing, but business models hardly ever were." What's so amazing about the WalMart story is it's one where the business model actually changed the cultural model. WalMart is not just a business institution in America, it's a cultural one. For whatever you want to say about them, they're the largest employer in America with 1.3 million employees (just over 1 in 300 people work for them), they've used their size and clout to lower generic drug prices and people do things like travel across the country sleeping in their parking lots. The argument to me is not whether they're good or bad, because like most things that kind of binary approach no longer works. Rather the more interesting question or observation is one around how they're using their power.
I guess the bottom line for me is that sure the world is changing, however, I don't really believe the change is any more drastic than the change in any other generation. As Rob Walker pointed out recently every generation goes through huge unprecedented change that it thinks is more huge and unprecedented than any other generation before it. In the end, however, everything settles into place and each generation is left with a handful of events and inventions that truly change the course of history.
Before I finish this semi-rant, I feel it necessary to add one caveat that may contradict everything I've said previously: I actually think digital is fundamentally different. Digital, in many ways, is a new kind of DNA or atom. I really believe it's on that level. Digital technology is the fundamental building block for most of the change we will experience in the coming years and it's unlike anything we've dealt with in this past (though to be honest, it's not even really from this generation). Previously, communication (and life for that matter) mostly revolved around analog signals: Things degraded over time and rearranging pieces involved glue. For the vast majority of humanity we have only dealt with the physical (the telegraph was invented less than 200 years ago) and now we are living in this strange world where, for some of us, the majority of our time is spent manipulating pixels. It's an amazing transition that's happened fairly quickly in terms of human history.
However, I don't feel nostalgia. Maybe I'm a techno-determinist, but I don't necessarily agree with Russell Davies when he says that we're not equipped for the world that we're going to be living in. On the contrary I think we (and Russell is a great example of this) are more equipped than ever to deal with this new world. We are adapting to a universe where knowing how to do something is less important than knowing where to find out how to do something. That's not a good or a bad thing in my mind, it's just a thing like anything else.
While lots of people are worrying about the kids staying in all day playing with their computers and their video games, I find hope in it. I believe that what we'll get is a generation more curious and prepared to deal with knowledge and information in whatever form they encounter it. I think entrepreneurialism will run rampant in the coming years as kids who grew up with Google as their door to the world believe they can build a better mousetrap.
As an anecdote, I often explain to people my domain buying justification: At $10 it's the cheapest way in the world to provide myself a spark to make an idea happen. If one of the 50 comes to life, the $500 was worth every penny. It's a world where "trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it". If there's ever been a better incentive for entrepreneurialism I can't think of it. And while I have no idea whether this makes any sense at this point because I'm ready to go to bed, I do know that it's a good thing.
Jan 24
2008
I'm trying to collect links to videos that provide good explanations of the digital world for a project I'm working on. I'm thinking stuff like Michael Wesch's Digital Ethnography videos ("The Machine is Us/ing Us" and "Information R/evolution").
Anyone have some other good ones?
Tags: technology, video
Jan 24
2008
Fabulous, though fairly creepy, photographs of teddy bears inside out by Ken Rogowski (who also published the photographs as a book).
Tags: photography, toys
Jan 24
2008
I didn't know this, but apparently the Leopard feature "Quick Look" supports plugins for additional document types. There's one to let you peek inside folders and another for zip files. Here's a fairly comprehensive list of Quick Look plugins.
Jan 22
2008
Wired feature this month is 33 Things That Suck, explaining why annoying things are the way they are.
A few highlights: DVD sound ("Basically, DVDs are just too lifelike for the living room. Their dynamic range  the continuum of sound levels they're capable of reproducing  is more like the real world, where exploding cars and hails of gunfire really are a lot louder than casual conversation."), plastic packaging ("Factories are loath to invest in new equipment, and most companies don't want to pay a single penny more per item, even if doing so would keep your sanity  and fingers  intact.") and air travel ("If anything, flying doesn't cost enough: The average domestic fare in spring 2007 was $326. That's $50 less than a decade ago, after adjusting for inflation. During the same period, fuel costs nearly tripled.").
Tags: explained
Jan 22
2008
A catalog of wonderful oddities.
Jan 19
2008
A group that includes 20 nobel prize winners, 10 congressmen and women, 25 university and college presidents and a ton of other incredibly qualified and prestigious people, are calling for the addition of a presidential science debate. The explanation: "Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy."
I just signed the petition.
Jan 19
2008
While I love the new format of the blog (with much more of an emphasis on links), I also feel as though it's allowed me to be a bit more lax than I might like to be on my more serious writing. I imagine over time I'll find a way to balance things slightly better (ideally I'd get back to writing 2 or 3 long-form entries a week).
Anyway, now that the apology is out of the way, what I am hoping to do is kind of catalog a bunch of the themes and thoughts of last year/2008. What I expect it to be more or less is a look into what I think some of my themes of the year will be.
Call it whatever you want (metadata, attention data), but the basic idea is that if you record the digital footprints people leave behind and organize them you can extract and return an incredible amount of value. Rather than reply on people to actively take part in a system, you can allow them to opt-in their data and organize it for them. When I wrote "Fixing Business Software" I used the example of the Naked Aggregator, "Rather than forcing people to constantly update the Naked blog with full entries, why not pull from the content they're creating anyway? So it pulls in content from del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter and other people's blogs and inserts it right into houseofnaked.com." The idea being let the software do the work rather than the people. Basically, what's the point in recreating the wheel if the wheel already has an API?
This isn't a new idea, just one I think people will continue to struggle with. Your "good" self and your capitalist self no longer need to exist in separate spheres. More and more companies are finding ways to balance the two. I found Google's announcement of investing in finding a renewable fuel source than coal a perfect example. As I wrote in November, "Google is not doing this for completely altruistic reasons: They believe this initiative will save them a lot of money in the long run and be good for business. With that kind of motivation I expect them to get more done." Another great example of this is Pixel Qi which is a spinoff from OLPC that hopes to sell the technology developed for the OLPC in a for-profit way, thereby helping the OLPC (and other firms) get the scale they need to lower the prices on the laptops. Basically: The more customers Pixel Qi gets, the cheaper kids around the world can get their hands on this technology.
I don't know about everyone else, but I've been finding a ton of inspiration in math, science and economics. It's just another reminder of how important it is to move beyond one's comfort area/focus. I don't know a ton about any of these, but I hope to learn.
I don't know that this is a big theme, more just something that's been on my mind lately. I know many of the people that read this site are planners (as am I, I guess). Anyway, I believe blogs are most helpful to a profession like planning, where your output is basically your thinking. The problem was in the past there was no way to show your thinking/skill off. Designers and copywriters had portfolios, but planners just had to say they were "naturally curious" or something equally BS-sounding. Now, you can just click through the entries of a planners blog and get a real sense of how they think and approach the world.
So, I guess that's it. A bit of a hodge-podge, sure, but at least I just needed to get some of these thoughts out. Have a nice weekend.
Jan 19
2008
We all know they dress up fast food for the ads, but it's amazing to see the side-by-side comparison (I think the Subway sandwich, the Whopper and the Egg McMuffin actually look better than the picture I think).
Tags: advertising, fastfood, photography
Jan 19
2008
Holy crap, MTV's Rock Band sold 2.5 million songs in 2 months (most popular song: Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero").
Tags: music, videogames
Jan 17
2008
Feed43 lets you make RSS feeds from any content on the web. I just made one for the Marketplace of Ideas section on the home page of American Magazine (which is a great magazine about economics I highly recommend subscribing to.)
Tags: rss
Jan 17
2008
An unbelievably disturbing article about an unbelievably disturbing show. The show, if you haven't seen it, lures men to a house to meet an underage person to have sex with and then ambushes them with cameras and eventually a police take-down (which is alway much more violent than it needs to be). The strangest part of the show is when men have seen it and acknowledge they're on the show and will be taken down by police when they get outside. It's like some alternate universe.
Tags: crime, journalism, law
Jan 17
2008
Slate article from three years ago about athletes getting LASIK surgery and better than 20/20 vision.
Jan 17
2008
Stephen Colbert convinced the National Portrait Gallery to hang his portrait. "His portrait was hung Wednesday at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington for a six-week showing in what the museum considers an "appropriate place"  right between the bathrooms near the "America's Presidents" exhibit. Museum officials stress it's only temporary."
Jan 16
2008
Looks like Sun is acquiring the open source database MySQL for $1 billion. Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, explains the rationale over at his blog.
Tags: database, internet, opensource
Jan 16
2008
Great list from last year of Gridskipper's favorite spots in the East Village for drunken eating. Found it while putting together my own map of some of my favorite NYC spots. Any suggestions on additions to my (admittedly unfinished) map?
Jan 15
2008
Great article on how the NBA grew to prominence from one of my new favorite magazines, The American. Beyond lots of info on the marketing decisions the NBA made and is making in it's global expansion, these two basketball facts stood out:
"Even abroad, howÂÂever, American players typically attract the most fans. Yao’s teammate, Tracy McGrady, sells more jerseys in China than Yao or anyone else."
&
"When James Naismith invented the gameâ€â€hanging a peach basket on a YMCA wall in 1891â€â€basketball experienced its first great stroke of fortune. The Y’s missionaries spread the sport globally and nationally. They brought basketball to France, India, and China, and the game came to dominate the gyms in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and other cities."
Tags: basketball, marketing, sports
Jan 15
2008
In an effort to shame sites into proper password storing practices, Greg has launched Plain Text Shame.
Jan 14
2008
Every year, Nicholas Felton releases his own personal annual report. He just finished up 2007 and it's just as fantastic as years past.
For the record, I wish I could design like this.
Tags: design, inspiration, visualization
Jan 14
2008
Marketing Charts is just that, "charts and data for marketers in web and Excel format." Just in case you ever need some data to justify an idea.
Jan 14
2008
Looks like New York has finally gotten some public restrooms. According to Newsday, "The self-washing, wheelchair-accessible toilets cost 25 cents for 15 minutes before the toilet doors automatically open and a 60-second cleaning cycle begins after each use." Cemusa, the same company responsible for the new bus shelters, designed the toilets.
Tags: nyc
Jan 13
2008
Yesterday I went snowbaording up at Hunter Mountain. Beyond learning an important lesson about snowbaording on ice (which has left me bruised, battered and slightly numb), I was amazed by the number of helmets I saw. Now Hunter is a bit of an exception in that they give free helmets with rentals, but I would guess about 90 percent of people on the mountain had them. Got me thinking about a few things that I'm not sure all amount to anything, but I felt like sharing anyway.
Anyway, like I said, I'm not exactly sure where this was meant to go except to say it's an interesting case study in adoption of safety gear.
Back to icing my wounds now . . .
Jan 13
2008
Satish had a great post on the Naked blog about how Bombay convinced people to keep the city clean: "See, about five years ago, when Bombay was just starting the process of cleaning up, it encountered one major issue. People were not respecting the walls, and that meant random spitting and urination (yes, I said it) on every corner wall across the city . . . [So . . . ] the Bombay Municipal Corporation decided to put up pictures of gods and goddesses on all walls, so that people think twice before doing their dirty deeds."
Jan 11
2008
Been thinking about this possibility a bit lately. Seems to me that there's a real danger of Twitter becoming a spammers paradise. There are very few safeguards in place (other than a captcha during sign up). People could easily @reply and direct message you until the service got so annoying you had to leave . . . Am sure the guys over at Twitter have given this though, and it doesn't seem to be an issue at the current size, but as with anything internet, the spammers are never far behind the trends.
Jan 10
2008
A bunch of interesting theories on why the pollsters were so far off in New Hampshire. One theory is called The Bradley Effect, where white voters say they will vote for a non-white candidate and then end up not. As Andrew Sullivan explains, New Hampshire was "the first primary - not a caucus. People get to vote in a secret ballot - not in front of their largely liberal peers, as in Iowa. They may have told the pollsters one thing about voting for a black man, but in the privacy of the voting booth, something else happens."
Another interesting theory from the article: The order of the names listed on the ballot. The random starting letter was 'Z' and therefore Clinton showed up much higher than Obama did.
Tags: politics
Jan 9
2008
Funny enough I was having a conversation about just this at breakfast today. Looks like yesterday Facebook, Google and Plaxo joined the DataPortability Workgroup. The Workgroup sounds quite a bit like what AttentionTrust was trying to do. As explained on the homepage, the group's mission is "To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community."
Jan 9
2008
All Newsgator Individual Products for RSS reading have gone free. Now this wouldn't be all that exciting (as I really like Google Reader), except Newsgator has a mobile app that syncs with NetNewsWire and Newsgator Online.
Jan 9
2008
Dapper looks like a super-slick screen scraping app that automatically creates RSS/XML (amongst other things) for you (the demo is quite nice). While clicking around the site I ran into a few other cool looking things: Swivel (a data sharing site I had seen a while ago, but not looked at since), Particls (looks a bit like Twitterific for more than just Twitter) and Mashery (out of my league for current projects, but a good thing to know about).
Tags: api, mashup, technology, web2.0
Jan 9
2008
A few things worth clumping together here. First up some beautiful Phillip Glass segments from Sesame Street (via Mike). For something a little newer, Party In My Tummy from the Nickelodeon show Yo Gabba Gabba! (via Charles). Finally, a discovery while checking out that Phillip Glass video: Muppet Wiki (exactly what you think it is).
Tags: television, video
Jan 9
2008
Wow, why didn't anyone this of this before? "The Lippi Selk'Bag is a revolutionary new sleeping bag system which allows you the maximum mobility you need whilst keeping warm. This new concept retains the functionality of the traditional sleeping bag; it's FUN, COMFORTABLE and MOBILE!"
It's a sleeping bag suit. Simply amazing . . .
Jan 8
2008
This is crazy stuff. In 1983, at the age of 61, Cliff Young won the 543 mile Sydney to Melbourne race which some apparently call the toughest in the world. When I first read this I was slightly suspicious it wasn't true, however, after doing some more searching I've turned up references to the win on Parliment of South Wales website and an obituary from the Sidney Morning Herald. Apparently Cliff won the race in part because he didn't know all the other runners were sleeping for 6 hours a night.
Jan 8
2008
The iPhone and product placement. He certainly has no shortage of opinions . . . And if you haven't seen it, he does the weather report every day on his website.
Jan 7
2008
A very interesting New York Times piece on whether the government has a right to search your laptop. Clive Thompson picked it up because one judge said that computers were extensions of our brains (similar to the argument Thompson makes in Your Outboard Brain Knows All). The judge explained: “Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory ... They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound."
Tags: brain, memory, politics, privacy
Jan 7
2008
Just posted this over at the Naked Communications blog and thought it would be fun to share here as well. It's a bit of a riddle I heard over Christmas vacation: "One or more monks live in a monestary. One day God comes down and says to the monks that he is going to place dots on one or more of their heads. If they are sure they have a dot on their head, when they retire to their room that evening they must kill themselves. The catch: They may not speak to each other and they may not look in a mirror. How many days does it take for all the monks with dots to kill themselves?" Answer to come later, leave your guesses at HouseOfNaked.com.
Update (1/7/08): Greg is the winner with his lengthy and correct response.
Jan 7
2008
Glassbooth, the site that helps you choose a candidate based on your political opinions, just made a deal with Dish Network to create an interactive version of the app for Dish subscribers. If you want some more info on Glassbooth, Wired wrote about it last week. Nicely done Alex.
Tags: politics, television
Jan 7
2008
Very interesting post from Rob Walker that looks at the last 100 years in 25 year increments and catalogs the "big changes" from each era. It's interesting to see how the changes of earlier eras puts our current shifts in perspective.
Tags: change, innovation, technology
Jan 6
2008
Two gadgets I ran into lately that I want: Wacom Cintiq 12WX, a pressure-sensitive Wacom tablet with a screen for $999 that Engadget called, "probably the best peripheral I have ever tried." The other is BUG (which just announced its pricing): A programmable/hackable gadget platform that looks like you can make do just about whatever you want (has optional camera, GPS and motion sensor modules).
Tags: gadgets, technology
Jan 6
2008
First off, I found out the $100 laptop allows you to view source in any program you're in. The whole thing is programmed in Python and you can even edit the code. Considering this is how I learned all the HTML I know, I think it's brilliant. In related news, looks like Intel has dropped out of the program after OLPC asked them to "stop supporting other efforts in emerging markets." The New York Times reports things are not quite as cut and dry as Intel spokespeople would lead you to believe: "A frail partnership between Intel and the One Laptop Per Child educational computing group was undone last month in part by an Intel saleswoman: She tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country’s commitment to buy a quarter-million of the organization’s laptops in favor of Intel PCs."
Still not sure how this thing will play out, but I say let them all keep competing and driving the prices down. The Times article also reports that the "'Give One, Get One' charitable promotion had generated $35 million and sold a total of 167,000 computers, half of them to be distributed in the developing world." That's not too shabby (even though just over 83,000 will actually get into children's hands).
Tags: charity, programming, technology
Jan 5
2008
I think this is pretty awesome. Stockholm Central Station is going to take the heat of the hundreds of thousands of people who pass through each day and use it to heat water which will then be used to heat a nearby building. According to the article, "This is old technology, but used in a new way. It's just pipes, water and pumps, but we haven't heard of anyone else using this technology in this way before."
Tags: green, sweden, technology
Jan 4
2008
After reading the New Yorker piece on parkour from last year I hopped over to YouTube and watched a few videos of David Belle (who invented parkour) that were worth sharing: a short "best of", his most famous fall (which is described in the article) and a BBC commercial he did.
Tags: sports
Jan 3
2008
Great definition from an article Steve Jobs wrote in 2000: "In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service... This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it."
Jan 3
2008
When I read Stephen Jay Gould's "Evolution as Fact and Theory" it wasn't just his explanation that impressed me. I was also quite taken by Karl Popper's explanation of the primary criterion of a science. As Gould explains:
Philosopher Karl Popper has argued for decades that the primary criterion of science is the falsifiability of its theories. We can never prove absolutely, but we can falsify. A set of ideas that cannot, in principle, be falsified is not science.
The entire creationist program includes little more than a rhetorical attempt to falsify evolution by presenting supposed contradictions among its supporters. Their brand of creationism, they claim, is "scientific" because it follows the Popperian model in trying to demolish evolution. Yet Popper's argument must apply in both directions. One does not become a scientist by the simple act of trying to falsify a rival and truly scientific system; one has to present an alternative system that also meets Popper's criterion  it too must be falsifiable in principle.
After reading that over a few times I decided to read Popper's "Science as Falsification" from 1963 in which he explains his theory in more detail. The story behind it is that he was trying to figure out why Marx's theory of history and Freud's psycho-analysis didn't sit right with him when Einstein's theory of relativity did. In digging into his own mind, he finally came to the conclusion that he believed in Einstein's theory because it was the only one that was proven by an experiment that could have easily shown it to be wrong. In other words, when Einstein's theory was proven in 1919 (by an eclipse photographed by someone named Eddington apparently) it could have just as easily been proven wrong. This stands in opposition to pseudo-science which can bend results to prove their point no matter how they turn out.
In the end this led popper to these seven conculsions for differentiating science and pseudo-science (or whatever else you want to call it):
1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory  if we look for confirmations.
2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory  an event which would have refuted the theory.
3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")
7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers  for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")
Popper sums things up like this: "the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability." All of this got me thinking what a sham so much of marketing (and almost any business research) can be. Unfortunately I've found that very little of the research marketing (and business generally) does is for anything other than supporting their current stance. There's no science behind it and that which disproves hypotheses is simply thrown away for "better" results. Don't want to go off on a whole rant here, but just think that it's important to draw the distinction between market research and science.
As a side note, this makes me think some more about the need to release science's dark data.
Jan 3
2008
Just read a great piece on evolution vs. intelligent design by Stephen Jay Gould from either 1981 or 1994 (has two citations at the bottom). Gould is one of the evolutionary biologists behind the evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium, which basically states that evolution happens in quick bursts rather than gradually.
Anyway, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" has a great explanation for why calling evolution unproven is bull: "Evolutionists have been clear about this distinction between fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theoryâ€â€natural selectionâ€â€to explain the mechanism of evolution."
It reminded me immediately of a Clive Thompson piece from Wired about the need to change the way people think about the word theory.
Jan 3
2008
This script by Damon Cortesi makes me wish I used Twitter more. Here are my charts.
Tags: charts, statistics, twitter
Jan 2
2008
I was planning on holding off posting this, however, Google has locked me out from sending emails after I sent out a massive New Years note last night (if you want to go back to the other posts, here is my best links of 2007 volume 1 and volume 2). So for those of you that have written me back, I will respond as soon as I'm allowed to send mail again. For those that I didn't get to send to before the lockout or whose emails I don't have, here's the "card" I included . . .
I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank those of you who commented on the site. I got about 800 this year and I wanted to personally thank every one of you. It means an incredible amount to me when someone finds something interesting enough to add their own two cents. It still blows me away that I can put some half-baked thoughts out there and get such amazing responses. So without further ado . . . (in chronological order from the first time they commented in 2007)
Vaspers, Michael, Max, CK, Alex, Adrian, Liz, Justin, Jeff, El Gaffney, Candice, Joe, Michael, Josh, Johanna, Nate, Mike, David, Barbara, Andrew, Abe, Adam, David, Bonnie, Chris, Shana, Aaron, Charles, Arienna, Gregory, Kevin, Marc, David, Charles, Jason, Paul, Russell, Amber, Josh, Range, (The Other) Noah, KG, Chris, Harris, Chet, Erik, Karl, Jarrett, Christian, Devin, Shobita, Paul, Mark, Peter, Akhila, Debbie, Ed, Jack, Tad, Steve, kt, Drew, Ori, Eric, Phil, Ronnie, Clay, Bb, Martin, Herb, Kim, Kathy, Scott, Christina, Tyson, Minic, Brian, Dino, Joey, Kyle, Ryan, Onika, Scott B., Brian, David, Sarah, R, Michelle, Matt, Brad, Stephen, Sokratis, Dave, Oakie, Jeck, Ian, Lebbonee, Leah, Andy, Tiffany, Jamie, Adam, Philip, Lon, Mark, George, Bryce, Amanda, Ben, Chartreuse, Sonali, Stephanie, Ari, Sarah S., Satish, Eric, Michelle, Heron, Scott, Headphonenaught, Athur, Jeff, Christina, Pam, Damiano, Erin, Evan, Silvia, Rebecca, Katie, Rob, Michael G., Tim, Christian, James, Miguel, Dan, Mike A., Johnny, MJM, Antonio, Jamie, Brian, Paull, Ross, Dave A., Matthew, Courtney, Michael, Ryan A., Dan, Orli, Fraser, Esther, Ray, Nichelle, Jamie, Mark S., Monica, Joe, Michael, Florian, Pieter, Carmen, Amit, Meba, Benton, Tangerine Toad, Rashmi, MC, Diana, Lindy, Wes, Nandhu, Angus, Seni, Joshua, Dave, Ryan G., Jay.
A huge thanks to each and every one of you. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the feedback and support. You're all great. For anyone I missed, I'm sorry. For anyone that didn't comment last year and felt like it, why not give it a try now? Or just email me and say hi.
Jan 2
2008
In case you don't have anything to do on your first day back at work, Kottke has been kind enough to post his best links of 2007. (This is where I got the idea for my own two part series.)
A few favorites after looking at it for a few minutes: Line Rider masterpiece, Feltron's personal annual report (which should have made my list), desktop tower defense (a game I know I should try but am incredibly scared I will become addicted to) and the website for Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You. Two I'm especially looking forward to reading: New Yorker piece on David Belle inventor of parkour and the greatest long tracking shots in history.
Jan 2
2008
Uni Watch, a blog devoted to sports uniforms, has an excellent (and very long) breakdown of logo creep in sports. It's specifically addressing the the kind of branding that Reebok has on NFL jerseys (a logo on the upper chest) rather than the more ostentatious branding in something like Nascar. I'm not entirely sure where I fall on this debate, as I see the merit to both sides (teams/leagues have an opportunity to capitalize on their audience while fans pay quite a bit in money and attention to watch their favorite team.
I found this analogy especially troubling: "Let’s say American Express offered to give the state of Illinois a huge sum of money targeted for the state’s school system  but in return, the AmEx logo would have to be printed on the statehouse dome, AmEx ads would have to be posted throughout state facilities, and the state itself would have to be renamed “American Express Presents Illinois.� Would that be a good idea?"
To be honest, I'm not sure I'd be against any of it . . . At least I could easily argue both sides.
Tags: branding, logo, marketing, sports, uniforms
Hi, I'm Noah. I like writing on, thinking about and making stuff for the internet. I work for The Barbarian Group and am 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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Mostly random thought (from Twitter): Wow, I am now getting Ground Zero Mosque comment spam ... I don't know whether to be impressed or disturbed. (31 August 2010, 11:54 am)
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.
Q: What sites do you like?
A: Well that changes all the time. At the moment I've been digging clusterflock, Beyond the Beyond, Bobulate, Barking up the wrong tree and The Awl.