Playing Catch Up
Alrighty, so I pretty much spent the whole week away from the internet and I’ve been using my Friday night to make up for lost time. What that means for you is that I’ve got a whole bunch of links/thoughts and I figured I’d just drop them all into a post. So here it goes …
- Lots of data on adult social networking site usage (that’s adult as in people who are not young, not like porn). (Via Mike)
- Good quote from Robert Rubin’s 2001 Harvard Commencement: “From the guidance of this gentle professor, and from all my other experience at Harvard, I developed in the core of my being the view that there are no provable absolutes, and that, with the absence of provable certainty, all decisions are about probabilities – that is, all decisions are about the respective probabilities, of each of a number of possible outcomes actually occurring. Moreover, recognizing that all decisions are about probabilities rather than certainties should lead us to uncover and engage with the full array of complexities around making the best decisions.” (Via Kareem)
- I totally missed doing a year end wrap up thing, sending out a New Years email and doing anything else like that. Think it’s too late? Can I still do it? Is there a statute of limitations on that kind of stuff?
- David Brooks embraces behavioral economics in one fell swoop.
- This is totally crazy: A 13 year old girl was suspected of carrying prescription strength ibuprofen so the school strip searched her. The case is going to the Supreme Court. (Via Metafilter)
- YouTube is going to do video downloads.
- As part of it’s v5 release, Tumblr launched a Trends site similar to Google Trends.
- Back in August it was announced that Alex Bogusky, of CP+B fame (agency behind Burger King and Dominos) was going to write a diet book called The 9-Inch Diet
. Anyway, apparently the book was covered in a recent issue of people magazine featuring none other than photos from McDonalds (Burger King’s chief rival) as well as Starbucks and 7-11 (which it looks like are just photos from the book). Interesting, very interesting.
- Awesome New York Times visualization/animation showing what happened with the plane that crashed into the Hudson.
- I’ve been thinking about going into my folder of half-finished blog entries and posting them a few at a time. Is that interesting to anyone? Are you still reading even?
- I was interested in this story of Federated Media shifting money from display advertising as I’ve been working on a story about the tough times ahead for the format in my head for awhile. Chief Revenue Office Chas Edwards explains, “As an ad network, FM is a failure. We’re not organized to sell a lot of broad-based banner campaigns across zillions of sites. The approach we take is more of a publisher with a portfolio.” I can’t say I blame them. Display just kind of sucks. (More to come on this as soon as I get some more time to properly put my thoughts down. I made a few of my points back in November.)
- I so wish I came up with this idea. (It’s the one where Ben and Russell take a bunch of blog posts and turn it into a newspaper.)
- A kind of surprising list of the most popular Google subdomains.
- Finally, a quote from me in an article about Karl Rove’s Twitter account: “Does Karl Rove really have a tarnished brand? I mean I guess it depends on who you’re talking to. I think for a lot of people on the left he’s seen as an evil genius–genius being an important word–and for people on the right he’s the dude who got Bush elected.” (I was also referred to as “fellow web pioneer”, which made me blush a bit, especially since Kottke was the guy quoted before me.)
- Oh, and Rex put up his always awesome year end most notable blogs list. Always worth a read.
Well, that’s it. I’m off to bed. It’s been a pleasure (and very nice to get something up on this site for the first time in quite a while). I’ve felt like I haven’t had anything productive to say for quite some time, so maybe this is a return to reasonable levels of brain activity …
Hi, I'm 
This post I didn’t read. But the half-finished blog entries I intend to ;)
Would love to see your half-finished posts. I often find that these are the most-charged, most-interesting of all, if only because they’re often the ones we want to get right.
I’d totally read the half-finished posts.
I don’t think there’s a statue of limitations on year-end wrapups. Or I hope not, at least, because I haven’t gotten to mine yet. Just pick a day and do it, and start your own tradition.
The printed blog posts newspaper-style is a very appealing idea. But why? Newspapers are on the wrong side of a business cycle, so what makes taking online content and putting into an offline medium so cool? Is it just because it’s different?
@Blaiq, Ian and Eric: Thanks. Will totally start putting up last-years half finished posts. Maybe that will even be my year-end wrap-up.
@Drew: Don’t think there’s anything revolutionary about the idea or anything, just think it’s fun and beautifully designed.
Would really like to hear your thoughts about why display sucks.
Cheers from Boston,
Andy
Two answers to your questions:
1. I think that people get overly tied to the year-end-ness of wrapup posts, just like they get overly tied to New Year’s resolutions. If you need to lose weight, start saving more money, etc., it makes just as much sense to start on a random Thursday as on January 1. So I say go for it. (One amusing twist: tie it to whatever happens to be on the calendar for that day. For instance, Wikipedia tells me that today is the 57th anniversary of the first jet airliner’s coming into service.)
2. Yes, flush out those half-done post ideas. A challenge: give yourself a set amount of time on each one (15 minutes?) and then just do whatever you can with it against the clock. Leave each one with lots of open-ended questions.