June 2011
66 posts
2 tags
5 small steps journalists can take to build a... →
Some good ideas here to leverage social media around a story, its sources, the competition and any followups that the audience may be interested in. Very smart stuff.
May 2011
59 posts
6 tags
3 tags
“Dogs and daughters, two of the greatest forces for entropy in the universe.”
– Me, after spending significant portions of the holiday weekend reimposing some modicum of order on the chaos caused by both.
4 tags
5 tags
NASA, yes, launches Slideshare channel →
Love that NASA will have its own channel (or whatever Slideshare is calling the dedicated presence for all NASA-related material on the site) on this platform. Slideshare is a great site for finding all kinds of often hugely useful presentations (here’s a link to the most recent thing I posted of my own, a rundown on state-of-the-art integration of social media, traditional media and other...
6 tags
BRYCE DOT VC: Entrepreneurship's Odd Future →
I just finished the lengthy and fascinating New Yorker piece on Odd Future and then ran across this equally stimulating look at some of the more pertinent business implications of the Odd Future collective and its ineluctably, even unconsciously tech-savvy approach to a shattered music business (which the New Yorker points out is otherwise particularly hard-hit in the rap space, and still these...
4 tags
Holiday Weekend Reads
theatlantic:
For many of us here at The Atlantic, long weekends are a great opportunity to catch up on pleasure reading and peruse long form that we may not always have the chance to browse during the work week. If you’re looking to do the same, try Conor Friedersdorf’slist of nearly 100 fantastic pieces of journalism.
What are you reading and browsing this Memorial Day weekend?
4 tags
7 tags
BBC News - Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red... →
Infrared satellite technology locates 17 “lost” pyramids, hundreds of settlements in Egypt. And the researcher says these are just the ones close to the surface. More may be found buried more deeply under the silt of the Nile.
5 tags
Flavorwire » The Flavorpill Mixtape: Arcade Fire,... →
Flavorpill doesn’t put out its mixtapes of free, cool songs as often as it used to, but when they do, as with this one, they always have some gems.
This list of downloads includes an “Obscurity” from the fabulous Stephin Merritt, the better of the bonus tracks from Arcade Fire’s sublime new album, a remix of a track from the interesting Austra, and something off the new...
5 tags
Biden sees Bin Laden raid, Ryan budget as... →
Hard to disagree completely with the Veep on this, particularly with the so-far desultory reaction of Reeps to their declared list of candidates. Someone certainly will emerge from the morass to take a run at Obama, but the GOP seems to have lost leverage it previously seemed to be building.
Throw in $1 billion in campaign funds (and Karl Rove’s hyperbolic expectation that Obama will run...
5 tags
4 tags
Magazine Editors Are 100% Sure Tumblrs Are Driving... →
Pretty interesting look at the way magazines are beginning to grok the subtle differences in audience and voice needed to project their brands across Tumblr, at least compared to their websites and print platforms.
There’s a big opportunity here for print publications to find new (as in younger) audiences and connect in different and compelling ways. Good to see that Tumblr hired a Newsweek...
2 tags
6 tags
6 tags
“I believe, at a very fundamental level, that words are electrical. The...”
– I know I’m late to the Deadwood game—six years late, I guess—but this 2005 New Yorker profile of the berserk genius David Milch is incredible. Quoted above is his explication of scene that is mostly two dudes yelling “cocksucker!” at each other’s faces. (via mcnallyjackson)
6 tags
How Companies Are Using Data from Foursquare -... →
Some meaty real-world examples of how Foursquare’s rich data on where its users are checking can be turned into money-making marketing offers for businesses.
It’s less clear how companies without a physical retail presence (consumer packaged goods or media, for instance) can leverage this in quite the same way, but even here, the story suggests some modest opportunities that probably...
5 tags
Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments... →
A previous study suggests that U.S. Senators trade common stock with a substantial informational advantage compared to ordinary investors and even corporate insiders. We apply precisely the same methods to test for abnormal returns from the common stock investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives. We measure abnormal returns for more than 16,000 common stock transactions made by...
8 tags
TribecaFilm.com | Future of Film | Can Data Save... →
Nice piece by my friend Nick DeMartino (quoting some other folks I know), looking at the potential impact on Hollywood if it ever figures out how to truly leverage the vast oceans of data now washing in on the Internet.
The Warner deal to buy Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes has a lot of potential, he points out, because the two sites and their Facebook presence generate a TON of data about what...
5 tags
5 tags
“My name is Barack Obama of the Moneygall Obamas and I’ve come home to find the...”
– Barack Obama, obviously, in Ireland and stopping by the ancestral home in small-town Ireland.
Hilarious.
5 tags
Gamasutra: Radek Koncewicz's Blog - L.A. Noire's... →
Interesting comparison of the complex conversational system used by the hot new game “LA Noire” for interrogating witnesses, a key part of the gameplay.
I picked it up yesterday for my son and he’s been completely absorbed in its extremely challenging gameplay.
Interestingly, in seeing how my son plays the game versus how the blog writer did, when my son makes a bad choice in...
6 tags
4 tags
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels won't run for president... →
A rough weekend for the Reep field: Mitch Daniels is out, Herman Cain is in and Newt is in disarray.
5 tags
A Long-Wave Theory on Today’s Digital Revolution →
And, in writing today about the shift to e-books and the quick shift on gay marriage, I also ran across this long piece by a theorist looking at long-wave shifts in communications technology/societal organization and the implications for business and the economy. There have been six such shifts in the history of man, she says, and yes, we’re in the middle of another big one.
7 tags
This Is Your Brain on Twitter - NYTimes.com →
NYTimes tech writer Nick Bilton explains why his boss, Bill Keller, can be a fusty, fogey-fied moron. Keller jokingly responds that he’s fired. Nah, just kidding. But those two security guards are bringing an empty box by your desk, Nick.
To his credit, Keller clarifies: “What I said in the column is that we pay a price for progress, and we should pay it wittingly rather than have it...
6 tags
For First Time, Majority of Americans Favor Legal... →
On a par with the rapid uptake of e-books comes the rapid shift in societal support for gay marriage, now to a slight majority (53%) for the first time ever, according to Gallup. As the story’s graphic shows, just 15 years ago, U.S. sentiment was considerably more than 2 to 1 AGAINST gay marriage. Now, it’s enough in favor to be a tad beyond the margin of error for the survey....
6 tags
Amazon Selling More Kindle Books Than Print Books... →
I should have linked to this yesterday, but got caught up in a million other things. The key, to me, is how quickly these numbers have gone from “Amazon selling more e-books than hardbacks” to “Amazon selling more e-books than paperbacks” to “Amazon selling more e-books than books.” It’s really only been about six months for that progression to happen,...
6 tags
The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The... →
A terrific profile of the “philosopher king of infographics,” Edward Tufte, and his approach to portraying the vast seas of data assaulting us daily in ways that make the numbers comprehensible to mere mortals.
4 tags
The Celebrity 100: Social Media Over- and... →
Entertaining little look at the delta between Forbes list of top celebrities and the list of people who are most heavily followed on Twitter.
Athletes, comedians, actors (and Stephen King) are overachievers, a bunch of directors and a surprising number of fusty talk-show hosts are underachievers. Interesting, interesting.
4 tags
4 tags
4 tags
“…reading is to writing as listening is to talking — and someone who talks...”
– Felix Salmon (via soupsoup)
This.
(via thepoliticalnotebook)
Great concept, and another example, if companies are paying attention, about how they might use social media to better understand the people they’re considering hiring. Here, it’s using a candidate’s linking to...
5 tags
“China has by far the strongest interest in purchasing tablets, with consumers...”
– A whole generation of Chinese consumers who have only know computing as mobile phones are going straight to tablets. Imagine how free they will be to reimagine computing never having used a keyboard or mouse.
The post-PC world is shaping up to be a very interesting one.
Link
(via brycedotvc)
...
5 tags
Slavery: I do not think it means what Rand Paul...
ilyagerner:
For the love of a good quote:
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
“Could slaves free themselves by changing professions? Do doctors in Switzerland get taken away at gunpoint? To treat the analogy with technical seriousness, even setting aside (as if you could) the colossal weight of America’s most lasting...
4 tags
4 tags
“It was like the Jetsons teaching the Flintstones about military tactics.”
– Patrick Rodriguez, now a biz dev/public information guy with the Small Business Administration, but formerly a journalist within the US Army who interviewed troops about the challenges they faced training Iraqi soldiers after the second Iraq invasion. This is what troops told him as he gathered oral...
5 tags
Literary journalism finds new life with Byliner,... →
The rise of new online-only outlets for serious, long-form journalism is heartening for me. I’ve suggested, for instance, that one pair of my clients, co-authors Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, look at the kinds of pieces they might be able create on the Arab Spring and Millennials ahead of the publication of their book on Millennials due this fall, for publication in an outlet such as...
3 tags
4 tags
Infographic: How Often Are the Talking Heads... →
Good magazine has an entertaining (if not fully explicatory) graphic looking at which pundits from 2008 were most often “right.” Interestingly, coming from the right seemed to mean you were more likely to be wrong in that bad year for the GOP, according to this analysis (though moderate conservative David Brooks was among those in the “good” category).
4 tags
The 5 must-knows about how readers navigate news... →
Lots of good data here from a Pew Center study of what people do when they’re on news websites, and where they go when they leave. One takeaway: they don’t go to ad sites. There’s a reason those CPMs are so bad for display ads on the Internet. No one clicks through. Better use ‘em for brand awareness and figure out a different metric than clickthrough rates, because your...
4 tags
Political spending: Obama could force disclosure... →
This is an interesting approach, using an executive order to compel federal contractors to disclose their spending on political matters. I’m a big fan of full disclosure of political spending, especially by corporations, particularly in a world where they’re permitted to spend as much as they’d like in the area. This might actually be a way to throw a spotlight on some of the...
4 tags
AP/WashPo: Gingrich in for presidential run →
Newtie will make it official on Wednesday, AP reports. He’s running for President. Hard to see how such a polarizing figure will have much real chance of winning the nomination, never mind the presidency. Add to that his somewhat advanced age, 67, and it seems an uphill battle. But Newt has never been anything if not ambitious and self certain.
6 tags
Condé Nast will offer $2 iPad magazine issues |... →
This makes me very happy. I greatly enjoy reading the New Yorker on my iPad, buying copies as I have time to read them, instead of having piles of physical copies stack up in the corner waiting for me to read them.
But I’ve gritted my teeth at the $5 individual copy prices even as I’m receiving Conde Nast subscription offers for a year’s worth of the magazine for...
2 tags
This Spring’s Epochal Upheaval in the Global... →
This piece is painfully written (what, Forbes can’t afford to copy edit its contributors anymore?), but the larger point is key: the videogame business is undergoing a crunching upheaval as new markets emerge on Facebook and iPad while traditional hardcore game companies and studios try to figure out what their future is.
It’s a particularly big question for young game developers...
4 tags
“That afternoon in Oaxaca comes back to me like a charm on a bracelet, a bell...”
– Writer Kate Christenson, in a piece in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, recalling a rain-soaked moment many years ago with her then-boyfriend (now ex-husband) during a Mexican vacation. Good advice for living, I think.
5 tags
Congressional Republicans: GOP finding it hard to... →
The challenges of Big Boy government: when you move past Just Say No and actually win, you have to pull together a workable option that preserves your winning coalition and can actually become reality. It’s not enough to say no anymore.
Amusing that the story’s Claremont McKenna College professor, a former GOP consultant, quotes Saul Alinsky, of all people, about the challenge Reeps...
3 tags
Pinching those lips 'til it hurts...
I’m sitting in a Starbuck’s near my home, and one of the fellow patrons puts me in mind of the sainted Molly Ivins, writing back in the 1980s about the wave of Republican insurgents who came into office in the wake of Reagan’s victory, and had allied themselves with the Conservative Opportunity Society, led by folks such as Newt Gingrich and Connie Mack.
So many times when she...
3 tags
“It was a moment of great pride for me to see our capacity as a nation execute...”
– President Barack Obama on the Bin Laden raid (via soupsoup)
For once, the term “military precision” earned its keep. Pulling it off, with the hundred thousand things that could have gone wrong (including the malfunctioning helicopter that had to be destroyed and left behind) was a truly... 