Quiet

Been busy and quiet lately. Here's what's been keeping me and some things I've been paying attention to.

Things have been, and will probably continue to be, a bit quiet around here for awhile. Here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to (with some links and commentary thrown in for good measure.

I've been:

• Moving (to Brooklyn)
• Planning a wedding (in May)
• Traveling (a lot)
• Reading Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime
• Giving presentations (including one on innovation, with a focus on marketing agencies, that I just posted on SlideShare)
• Reading about the iPad. Come on, who hasn't? Favorite comments so far: come from (1) Stephen Colbert and, slightly more seriously, (2) Cory Doctorow who argues that the closed nature of the device holds us users in contempt. It's interesting to me because he's an interesting dude, but also because I had read it slightly differently. To me, the move to iPad/iPhone is further down the road of technology we can't break. For those of us that grew up with videogames, this is a perfect evolution. In those games we never read manuals, we just picked up the games and figured it out, because the worst thing that could happen is you died and started over again. With the iPhone/iPad it's becoming impossible to break your technology (without dropping it of course), which could also mean that people are less intimidated by innovations and more likely to dig deeper/learn more. Not saying I know the answer to what the future will look like, just offering a different read.
• [On this topic, what would happen if Firefox or Google wanted to release a browser for the iPad. Could Apple prevent them? Couldn't they be taken to court and lose on the same anti-trust grounds as Microsoft a decade ago? Anyone know the answer to this?]
• Thinking about The New Rules of War thanks to a very good Foreign Policy article by John Arquilla (who also wrote Cyberwar is Coming in 1993 [download link at the bottom], which I highly recommend).
• Thinking a lot about serendipity. I'm really fascinated by the role of serendipity in the 21st century. Terry Heaton, one of my favorite media thinkers, linked to a Jeff Jarvis post about the topic: "What is serendipity? It's not a story from left field. It's not, I think, 'the opposite of what you normally consumed.' There's a reason we find value in the supposedly serendipitous. When I started Entertainment Weekly, I said that our features had to satisfy a curiosity you didn't know you had -- but you end up having it. When we read a paper and find a good story that we couldn't have predicted we'd have liked, we think that is serendipity. But there's some reason we like it, that we find it relevant to us. Maybe that relevance is the unknown but now fed curiosity, maybe it's enjoyment of good writing or a certain kind of tale, maybe the gift of some interesting fact we want to share and gain social equity for, maybe it's a challenge to our ideas, maybe an answer to a question that has bugged us. In the end, it has value to us; it's relevant."
• Other stuff that I can't think about right now.

Anyway, apologies in advance for the slowdown. Will at least try to do some catch-ups once-in-a-while.

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Top 10 of 09

My most-visited posts of the last twelve months.

Inspired by Alan Wolk (who was inspired by BBH Labs), here are my top ten posts of the year (at least by number of pageviews):

1. Why Did Tropicana Redesign?: Yet another voice in the debate on Tropicana's redesign (which was pulled off the shelf after the post). I argued the other side ... That maybe it wasn't so bad (minus the usability issue). I still stand by my generic point, but clearly the usability issues won out.
2. Steve Eisman and Betting on Collapse: To be honest most of these top posts were because of Google (and who says that all traffic comes from Twitter?). The post is mostly a giant link to Michael Lewis's portfolio piece from last year.
3. T-Mobile Class Action Lawsuit: I think the title pretty much explains it.
4. Abandoned Detroit: Pictures of Detroit's decline.
5. A Rant on Branding: With all the Pepsi/Tropicana excitement I needed to get out a full-on rant about why rebranding isn't really that important (and why it's really about a giant media buy).
6. Rating Systems and Personal Rules: This post can be summed up in just a few words: Everyone has a different definition of five stars.
7. Ekin: Nike Brand Evangelists: Ekin is Nike backwards and apparently it's also the name the company gives its "official storytellers."
8. Diverselessness: Is the web actually a diverse place? Discuss.
9. Neuroscience and the Creativity of Connections: A link and a few quotes from my favorite article of 2009 on neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran.
10. Apple's Television Advertising Barrage: My answer to all the folks who hold up Apple as an example of product as marketing. (Basically, they spend a shitload on television advertising.)

Great. Will try and do a better year-end wrap-up with top links of the year in the next two days.

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Comment(ary)

Bubbling up three fine comments from the last two months.

I've had this idea for awhile that I should feature some of the finer comments from this site in its own entry. Well, this afternoon I remembered the idea and went about digging through some old entries for the fine comments. I've decided to go with three so as not to make things overwhelming.

Whether or not you're featured below, I can't thank you enough for all the intelligent things you have to say around here. I am constantly amazed at the level of dialog on the site and that's entirely because of all of you. So pat yourself on the back and accept my sincere gratitude.

So, without any further ado, some recent comments (with responses by me).

On Pearls of Creativity, Robin had this to say about the idea of creating a curriculum for teaching kids to make things on the web:

Love this notion. Take one part LOGO, one part IDEO, one part Y Combinator, and make a fifth-grade class out of it.

For what it's worth, I actually think the technology angle is important. I could imagine some sort of problem-solving/design-thinking curriculum built around physical materials, or even simple hardware hacking or whatever, but pixels on the screen have two advantages:

1. Super gratifying. There's no set of tools anywhere that lets you get something working faster.

2. Easy to share. One of my beefs w/ school is that so much the work is intended for a tiny audience (too often an audience of one) and then never seen or heard from again.

So instead, imagine a website brimming over w/ all the little projects made by these kids -- a showcase of problems solved (or at least valiantly attempted).

826 Valencia for design, code & problem-solving!

ytmnd.com for good, not evil! (OK, maybe that's a stretch.)

I absolutely love the connection to 826 Valencia (for those that aren't familiar it's the writing center started by Dave Eggers that is "dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the writing"). I'm going to be writing a bit more about this idea in the coming weeks, I've put a lot of thought into it and have been casually trying to find some funding to help put it together for real. Stay tuned.

In response to the idea of a physical API, Sriram had this to say:

That sounds like an amazing idea. Optimizing between economies of scale, standardization on one side and individuality and local on the other. It is not very far from what franchises are today, but I think there'd be a world of difference pushing the toggle towards the individuality side for a balanced mix. With modern IT, CRM it is more possible now than ever before. For the same reason I like how "chapters" work for organizations.

I have SO MUCH to say about this (in fact before I started writing this comment post I was going to write a physical API post). Basically, and I will comment on this more fully in a longer post, I swear, this has exactly been on my mind since we started likemind. If I knew then what I know now I would have created a very specific infrastructure for the franchises to thrive. I think this is a big idea as more and more organizations go decentralized. To be honest I can't figure out why franchising isn't huge outside the fast food space. What gives? Why haven't other companies leant their brands to start new chapters in other places? Anyway, much more to think about here.

In response to economic insights from Felix Salmon (specifically on what caused the financial crisis), Taylor had this to say:

Perhaps the widespread notion that "markets failed" is mistaken, that the problem is that "communities failed". Perhaps our communities have failed to evolve as fast as networks and markets. Meaning, as people (individuals and groups) we have been unable to keep up with the pace of change in communicating and exchanging information.

Honestly I've been trying to unpack this one in my head since I read it and I haven't gotten there yet. It's a very interesting notion, but I don't know where to begin. Still pondering.

And, so as not to leave anyone out, thanks to everyone who has commented since June 1st (would have extended longer, but as it is this is a pretty big list): Maura, Alan Wolk, Diablo, mils, Arthur Perschino, Rob Day, Kimberly Crawford, Sriram Venkitachalam, Anjali, Scott Rafer, Eric, Ana Andjelic, Abe Burmeister, Marci Ikeler, Denise Lee Yohn, Taylor Davidson, Josh Klein, Eugene Lin, harris, Robin, Steven Kalifowitz, marie young, Joe Barry, Alex Baum, Dennis Demori, Tim Walker, barbara, Matt Daniels, Steve Ames, Benton, Burt, michael tabtabai, amber, Joey, Michael Critz, Wayne, Michal Migurski, Julie, Charles, Randall, kyle schafer, steve, Peter, Adam Nelsen, Marc, Kelly Eidson, @robotsoul, Steven Kalifowitz, Matt, eric pakurar, Jared Gruner, Mike, rikin, Bud Caddell, Max Kalehoff, Elenor, Kristal, Andy, Natasha Acres, lee, Joakim Vars Nilsen, Russel Adams, FOSTER, Gina, andy, Michael galpert, Will, Wesley Verhoeve, Mike Maddaloni - The Hot Iron, Janet S. Payne, Ian , Drew Weilage, Adam Crowe, Adam Singer, Camiel, Robert Auguste , @ryost, Brian Morrissey, faris, J. Nordberg

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Recommendations, Networks, Etc.

Just some random things I've been thinking about lately (and an apology for the lack of long-form posts).

Partly because I haven't written anything of any length in awhile and partly because I've been thinking about a bunch of different stuff lately, I've got an entry chock full of random thoughts.

So, where to begin ...

Paying for Recommendations

I've been turning this idea over in my head lately that all these sites fighting for rights to media are nice and all, but the real play might be to bypass all that stuff and just charge for the recommendations. I would pay a few dollars a month for Netflix access without any movies or anything just to get the recommendations and the queue. Not totally sure what to do with that yet, but it's a thought.

Networks Popping Up

I recently went back and found this quote from a Wired piece Bruce Sterling wrote a few years ago called Dispatches from the Hyperlocal Future. In it, Sterling imagines the world in 2017 and writes:

The best thing about being a top-tier geo blogger is that everyone knows where you are. When the buddy list tells folks you're in town, they ping to offer you dinner and invite you to sleep on the couch. They're my homies in a world where the entire planet is home. I love all you guys! (Shout-out to my driver, Leo, who's putting me up tonight. And his wife: You haven't met me yet, Sue, but thanks.)

While he was imagining eight years from now, that's actually pretty close to now. I know many folks who have exactly this experience (including myself): As soon as you land in a place you let the world know, via Twitter or Facebook that you've arrived, which of course many knew since you're connected on Dopplr and then you find yourself sitting in a bar with three folks who you've mostly not ever met before and best of all they've never met either. It's kind of an amazing thing to watch a network coalesce in a new place (as I did in Hong Kong) and even more amazing to feel as though you've left things slightly more connected than when you arrived (I introduced three people in Hong Kong who had never met and I hope will stay in touch). That's a good feeling.

Desire Lines

So I'm still playing around with my desire line idea and I feel like I'm constantly edging closer to a definition and description I really like. Watching things like the naturally forming dance party I posted a few weeks ago, which was essentially an opportunity to see a mass behavior from a scale we seldom see in person, was the basic idea. The big thing that separates the web, and the opportunity for us as people, is the ability to observe this sort of herd behavior constantly from the helicopter view. We can look down and watch how people move and adapt to their environments that was all but impossible before this. I think this accounts for the fascination in data visualization (the desire to chart this newfound angle on the world), behavioral economics (the recognition that when you watch things from this angle everything works a little differently than you might have expected) and ... Well, maybe that last one was a stretch, but I'm still working on this one, so sue me.

That's it for now. Also, I've been thinking about writing a short post about public speaking but must admit that I feel a bit embarrassed about it because it just feels kind of douchey. If you're interested let me know and I'll go ahead with it.

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What I've Been Thinking About

Four things that have taken up some of my headspace over the last few weeks.

Some of these might turn into full posts later, but this is just a quick rundown of some things I've been thinking about lately.

Counterintuitive

This morning I was thinking about two things I've posted lately, about anti-drug messages and spammers building better artificial intelligence, and realized that as a category the things I find the most interesting are the counterintuitive. Not sure why this is important, but I figured I'd share it anyway.

Remind Me

I think I'm going to write an article/entry about this, but I've been thinking a lot lately about the how everything you can buy that's not out yet should have an easy email reminder service. For instance, today I heard about a new St. Vincent album coming out in like two weeks. I went over to the site to see if I could pre-order (which I couldn't find) and I also couldn't find a giant box to put my email in so they could remind me when it's actually released. All I got was the regular mailing list (which I signed up for). Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if the album was available for download on file sharing sites, and of course it was. It should not be easier to download an album for free two weeks before it comes out than to get reminded the day it comes out (and hopefully have a link in the email to go direct to the place to buy it). It's simple and I think you can apply the principle across the board. (As a side note, NPR is streaming the album, but it's still not easy enough!)

Trolls

Alan wrote a piece about trolls in the advertising industry and specifically mentioned some comments in a piece I was interviewed for in Adweek. While I appreciate the support, I generally think that there are trolls everywhere and the very worst thing to do about them is to let them bother you (especially if they don't even comment with their real name). I also thought a bit about the way this frames the problem of trolls. The fact is for me, the vast majority of the comments I receive are good and thoughtful (thanks guys) and I don't really like the idea of the world thinking otherwise. Just like telling kids to not do drugs by making them think all their peers are doing it, talking about people being nicer to one another by making them think all their peers are going around making terrible comments anonymously is probably the wrong way to go. (Just as a side note, I haven't discussed this with Alan and don't mean to single him out, it's just been top of mind. Hope I cause no offense Alan, I appreciate what you were doing.)

Disappeared

I was having a conversation over beers the other night with Ryan and we started talking about the amount of stuff that actually disappears on the web. While the popular trope is that "everything on the internet lives forever" the reality of the situation is probably the opposite: Since we're creating more data today than at any other time in history it would make sense that we're also losing more data than ever before. Now most of this stuff doesn't matter (I wrote about this a little in a post over at GE Adventure), but still, The Internet Archive can't possibly save everything.

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Playing Catch Up

Finally getting to a week's worth of internet reading. Glad to see things keep moving while I'm gone.

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 ...

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Linkolicious

Just a bunch of links and random thoughts.

Over the last few weeks I feel like I've been running into way more interesting stuff than I could post over in the sidenotes. So, I figured maybe it was time for one of those wonderful link drop posts ...

• To get things started, Google's got a new site that analyzes flu-related searches to help alert people of the bug in their area. The Times reported that tests of the site "suggest that it may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
• Another quote from that same article makes me think of an idea I've had for awhile: "But the data collected by search engines is particularly powerful, because the keywords and phrases that people type into them represent their most immediate intentions. People may search for “Kauai hotel” when they are planning a vacation and for “foreclosure” when they have trouble with their mortgage. Those queries express the world’s collective desires and needs, its wants and likes." Why couldn't Google create some kind of fund that bought and sold stock based on people's searches? Seems like there must be some collective intelligence in the data, right? Would that be legal?
• Yet another New York Times story (I feel like all I read is the Times these days) is about the guy behind the rumor that Palin thought Africa was a country not a contient and how he pulled it off. Reading the article I kind of felt like the guys who did this are culture hackers: Recognizing a vulnerability in the system and letting the world know by cutting it open for all to see.
• Great XKCD comic that speaks perfectly to a project I've been thinking about for awhile: Mapping out "the city." I've always been amazed how if you're in Silicon Valley the city is San Francisco but if you're in Connecticut it's NYC. Would love to poll the country and map "the city" ... Some time, some time ...
• The government owns a lot more land than I thought it did (including 45 percent of California and 84 percent of Nevada).
• Google has a really great SEO starter guide (PDF download here). Who knew?
• "Tumblrs are like bedrooms, and we’re teenagers spending idle hours postering them with pictures and magazine cutouts." - Zach Klein (via Mike)
• Ryanair is going to start £8 flights to Europe soon.
• MIke told an awesome story he heard about the value of lots of ideas: "A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece. At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot."
• Why did 52% of voters who make over $250,000 vote for Obama?
• Facebook's value looks more like $4 billion at the moment (as opposed to the $15 billion valuation Microsoft invested on). I still contend that if the company were to sell it would go for around $10 billion, though, because Google and a bunch of other players would bid it up and Microsoft would finally end up spending more than it wanted to.
• "'Monkey Tennis' is a British pop culture phrase, first used in the late 1990s and popular throughout the 2000s. Originating as a joke in a television sitcom, it has come to be commonly used as an example of the hypothetical lowest common denominator television programme that it is possible to make. Programmes believed to have been poorly-conceived or of particularly low quality, especially within the reality television genre, are sometimes compared with the "Monkey Tennis" idea in media coverage and popular discussion in the UK." Who knew?
• Last but not least, The Smoking Gun has an amazing collection of artist riders. Good for hours of fun.

That's it for now. Off to beersphere.

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Quotes on a Plane

Lots of links before I get on the plane.

I'm working on a longer entry on simulacrum and the current status of the world, which I hope to finish on my plane ride home from Germany. Until then, though, I figured I'd throw some links up on the good old interweb for your enjoyment. I'm going for a quote edition this time to switch things up a bit, hope you all enjoy.

What I found most striking, though, were the stats on email. About 180,000 emails are received each day at the school (which has around 1,600 students), and 94% of those emails are spam. The storage required for the emails received last year equaled the total storage required for all the emails received in the preceding five years combined. And 95% of email storage now goes to holding email attachments rather than the messages themselves. Email has become everyone's personal data warehouse. [Nicholas Carr]

Nicholas concludes the entry saying that it's no surprise more institutions are handing email duties over to Google and the cloud. Mostly, though, I just find this astounding. The amount of money being wasted on spam must be extraordinary. Is there any other communications medium that deals with 95% waste?

It turns out that in real life there's a reason you should repeat, or at least there used to be. In the 1950s, when shampoos began to be mass-marketed, we didn't wash our hair all that often--once or twice a week, as opposed to five times a week as most of us do now. Also, we used a lot more goop in our hair. [Fortune Magazine]

As I was showering this morning I got to wondering, how did the whole "later, rinse, repeat" thing come about. Mostly I was curious to know if it was some tricky marketer who figured if you repeated you'd use your shampoo up twice as fast (and therefore need to buy twice as many). Turns out, though, that there was actually a real reason (or so the story goes).

In honor of our 10th birthday, we've brought back our oldest available index. Take a look back at Google in January 2001. [Google]

For a month only, Google is allowing people to search it's 2001 index. It's good fun. I, like most geeks, went first to see if there were any results for my name. Only two turned up: One for an old web development company I had called Nextworx (now long defunct) and some student thing. Any results are show in the Wayback Machine when available. Anyway, it's good fun.

Our economy and putting it back on the world. No, I've worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life until I had kids. I was able to go back and forth. We we do about it. No way, not Americans. We do not have to second-guess what their efforts would be if they believe that it is about doing a lot of other senators and representatives did for us. I can help the ticket, if you go back and forth. We we do it's very important when you consider even national security issues Let me speak specifically about a credential that I have the confidence in that Washington establishment, where, yeah, they've had opportunity to do this with you. [Interview Palin]

Amazing site that puts together Palin-esque answers to political questions. It's funny, the first thing I thought of when I saw it was the Turing Test which pits computers against humans and asks the human to decide whether he is speaking to a silicon or flesh. Also, in case you missed it, this is in reference to Palin's answer to a question on the economy which was equally brutal and inspired this editorial from Fareed Zakaria suggesting this is no time for games and pushing McCain to drop Palin. (The original quote is in the Zakaria article.) Oh, and in case you prefer video, here's Zakaria making his point on CNN.

David Brooks is right that the failure to pass the bailout represents a massive failure of American governance and leadership, most of all at the Congressional level. That's true even if you think, for other reasons, that the bailout was a bad idea. (Can any hero be cited in this debacle?) Andrew Sullivan (and others, including myself) was right that early versions of the Paulson plan bypassed checks and balances and gave far too much power to the Executive Branch. So Congressional oversight was needed. [Marginal Revolution]

That's in reference to David Brooks' scathing Times editorial where he said, "This generation of political leaders is confronting a similar situation, and, so far, they have failed utterly and catastrophically to project any sense of authority, to give the world any reason to believe that this country is being governed," amongst other things. Wherever you fall on the bailout, it is fairly amazing that they let a bill like that fail without more thought/plan around how to deal with the fallout.

Awesome. [Me]

That's in reference to seeing this extraordinary demoscene video called Texas by Keyboarders. The whole thing is a 4k executable. Holy crap.

With influence-tracking, Google could follow this group of fans' shared interests more closely, see which other fan communities they interact with, and—most important—learn which members get the most attention when they update profiles or post pictures. [BusinessWeek]

Apparently Google is working on a system that follows groups interests so that advertisers can better target their ads. While this sounds interesting (and potentially problematic from a privacy perspective), I wonder how effective it will be. For the most part, I think that kind of socializing that happens on social networks, specifically Facebook, is more around friends of shared context/space than interest. This is the opposite, of course, to blogs, where there is a shared interest. The thing about the friends you make in college, for instance, is that you often have completely different interests. Anyway, I'm sure it will cause a big hubbub, but I don't know that it will be all that effective in the end.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. [The Nation]

Pretty self explanatory.

Okay, that's it, time for my plane. See you soon.

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Another Day, Another Link

Some more linkage.

You know the drill. Lots of links to stuff ... Hope you enjoy.

• 17.1 percent of US households have dropped their landline. Or, as Mike reblogged: "17% of the American public are not reflected in polling data because Federal law prohibits autodialing devices to be used on cell phone numbers. I wonder if the data from this survey could be combined with existing polling data to give a more accurate picture of the state of the race?" After a bit of searching it looks like Pew did a poll with cell phone users and found minor differences (48% Obama, 41% McCain with cell phones and 46% Obama, 41% McCain without them). They also found that "cell-only respondents are significantly more likely than either the landline respondents or the cell-mostly respondents to support Barack Obama and Democratic candidates for Congress this fall." Which isn't overly surprising.
• Copy Paste Character has all those random characters you need sometimes but can never find. I'm bookmarking it right now. (Via swissmiss)
• SEE stands for Stanford Engineering Everywhere. In their words, "For the first time in its history, Stanford is offering some of its most popular engineering classes free of charge to students and educators around the world." That's rad.
• I just posted this over at The Barbarian Group blog, but does anyone have opinions on those social media buttons that show up on every blog and media site? Have you seen any research on their effectiveness? Thanks.
• The story behind the Palin email hacking. As soon as I read all that stuff about her using her personal email for state business that she didn't want recorded I knew someone would get in there ... Was just a matter of when. (via Waxy.org)
• Rex wrote a quick post about Google's new audio search engine called Gaudi last week. Thought this was an interesting insight: "this could be enough for you to soon create supercuts like Jon Stewart's last night, which obsessed about the word 'blink.' This technique is usually considered Stewart's strongest rhetorical device, but does anyone else think it's starting to tire? And is it just format fatigue, or has the wonderment become less mystical as technology makes the ability to cull clips across years more common?" Not sure I have something to add, just thought it was interesting.
• While we're on the topic, though, is there a company in the world with more incentive to nail voice recognition than Google other than governments? Seriously, it's an arm race. Google needs it because it's a whole new way of serving ads and thus a new market for them to move into. The government needs it for other reasons. Who will win? (Unless the government already has and we don't know about it yet. Which is also possible.)
• How Things Work is a site that "explains the physics of everyday life." I love it. I have tons of question just like this and am so excited there is someone out there answering them. Some of the ones answered on the site: "My eight year old daughter asked me, 'If light is the fastest thing in the universe what is the second fastest thing in the universe?'" and "How do glasses work and the physics behind them?" It's even got an RSS feed. Sweet. (via swissmiss again ... she was on a roll this week)
• Back on politics, the latest New York Times/CBS poll results were pretty interesting. Mostly things are back to where they were pre-conventions/Palin: 48 percent Obama, 43 percent McCain. This was the most interesting part for me: "But the Times/CBS News poll suggested that Ms. Palin’s selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among women in general. White women were evenly divided between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama; before the conventions, Mr. McCain led Mr. Obama among white women, 44 percent to 37 percent."
• Video time: Ninja cat makes me smile and Richie Hawtin's DJ setup is awesome.
• Last but not least, some New Yorkerness: Maybe the funniest thing I've read about Sarah Palin and a fascinating look at the ants that live in New York's medians.

That's it for now. Hope everyone had a great time at likemind today. Sorry I missed it.

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Ephemeratic

Just another post full of random thoughts and links.

So once again, I don't necessarily have enough to put into a "proper" entry, but I have lots of random thoughts and links I've been collecting over the last few weeks. I really do swear at some point I'll get back to the regular blogging schedule, but it's probably going to have to wait a bit until things slow down.

• The Barbarians and I are having a party on Friday in NYC. You should come.
• More Americans watched Obama's closing-night DNC speech "than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final "American Idol" or the Academy Awards this year." (Seems like ages ago now, I know.)
• Someone decided the world needed a Twitter marketing agency.
• Fascinating look at the links between Wikipedia entries. The center of Wikipedia: The aggregate article for 2007. "It takes on average 3.45 clicks to get to any of the 2111479 articles reachable from it." Interestingly the most central non-aggregate entry is actually the one for the United Kingdom, followed by (and there's no chance you were thinking this), Billie Jean King.
• Fake following just might be the "most important feature in the history of social networks". Seriously. FriendFeed implemented it and basically to the person you're following it looks like you're paying attention, but in reality you're not. Fits in nicely with my opaque friend management idea, which is basically that it's easy to not "friend" someone in real life: You just go to the bar and go get a drink. But in the binary world of social networks, this process is a whole lot trickier. Fake following is a step in the right direction. (As is friend groups on Facebook, which I've just started messing around with.)
• Speaking of Facebook, I've been playing with it much more lately and been running into an unbelievable number of interface quirks. When you spend enough time on a website, as many do on Facebook (including me), little UX issues start to magnify quickly.
• A computer virus infected International Space Station laptops. We were just having a conversation the other day about how being a rocket scientist isn't necessarily the highest level of intelligence anymore ... I believe when I forwarded this along I included the note "virus author > rocket scientist" ... For whatever that's worth.
• TechCrunch had a good piece on how NBC screwed up the Olympics web strategy. (Wow, I really need to start writing more often than once every two weeks. These were all interesting in a world before Palin.)
• Zara is a super fascinating company. On the occasion of their taking the crown of world's largest retailer away from The Gap, The Telegraph has a nice profile of just how they made it happen.
• Open source is all the rage: Laconica is an open source Twitter (finally) and Opentape is an open source Muxtape. (I haven't played with either yet, so use at your own risk.)
• My friend Charlton is a professor at NYU and writes a blog about race and politics. Not surprisingly, his blog has been of fire lately with interesting insights. Check out Breaking News: Republicans Support Affirmative Action (Sorta) and Preview of Republican National Convention.

Hmmm, really thought I had collected more links than that over the last few weeks, but I guess not. I'm sorry that I haven't had more time to write and think here, but I've just been totally crazed with work and other stuff.

It's also kind of odd, I just haven't had that much of an urge to write anything substantial (I've been keeping up on the "quickies" entries pretty well lately ... those are the ones on the right). Not sure why that is, but I feel like it is some kind of reaction to my recent desire to just make stuff. I feel like I've been fairly productive as of late, turning out Is the internet awesome? and my silly little iPhone ringtone. While these things don't seem like much, they feel like small wins: Part of some larger portfolio on internet ephemera that I'm quite proud of (for the record included in there is How Much Does it Buy? and Holy Crap! Facts).

Anyhow, it's late and I'm rambling a bit. Have a great night.

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