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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #18

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Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Rednod, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for each other (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

  1. A Family Resemblance of Obsessions – Snarkmarket. "Matthew Ingram pointed me at Snarkmarket recently, and I felt dumb for not having been reading it sooner. It’s chock-full of long, chewy, thoughtful posts, and you may well already have seen it; but I’d be remiss in not pointing it out… A recent post looks at the nature of language, and points to author Tim Carmody‘s Bookfuturist Manifesto. Okay, by now I’m downright certain that this is one of those links I’d recommend over lunch and you’d nod at me politely, so as not to make me feel like a laggard. So thanks for that." (Alistair for Hugh).
  2. The Value Every Business Needs to Create Now – Harvard Business Review. "Umair Haque is one of the best writers I’ve come across recently on creating new kinds of value. In this piece for the Harvard Business Review, he distinguishes between thick and thin value – thin value is a zero-sum game, while thick value adds something sustainable and meaningful. The piece is full of links worth checking out, and there’s a good video with more detail on the concept." (Alistair for Mitch).
  3. Fractals – The Color of Infinity. "Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, died this past week. Here is Arthur C. Clark‘s documentary about fractals, and the Mandelbrot set, some of the most thrilling and significant mathematics of the past century." (Hugh for Alistair).
  4. Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs. "Bloomberg TV‘s documentary on Steve Jobs." (Hugh for Mitch).
  5. Twitter Mood Predicts The Stock Market – Technology Review. "Can Twitter predict the future? What if Twitter could not predict the future, but it could predict what will happen in the stock market… up to six days in advance. This doesn’t come as a shock/surprise to me. With all of this sentiment and input being put into 140 characters (or less) by millions and millions of people, the raw data is crunchable enough to pull trends and observations out of it. Take a read… and look into the future of data and trending." (Mitch for Alistair).
  6. ABI: Five Billion Mobile Users Worldwide – MediaPost. "We are all very impressed with the fact that there are over two billion people on the Internet currently (and over 500 million of them are also on Facebook). If that stat drops your jaw, check this one out: ‘a new study by ABI Research today confirms that mobile subscriptions worldwide passed the 5 billion mark in the second quarter.’ Do you think that number is going to go up or down in the next little while? When we talk about Web and Mobile strategies, maybe we should really just be concentrating on mobile… and nothing else. It might sound dramatic, but mobile is double-plus the size of the online world… and that’s today." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now, it’s your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

6 comments

  1. This post by Andy Senovitz and the slide show from Netflix about is the most thought provoking post I read this week.
    “Adequate performance gets a generous severance package”. As Andy points out – this is very uncomfortable. Would I make it there? Would I want to? What parts of their philosophy would I want to borrow? I haven’t answered those questions yet but I have given them a lot of thought.
    I do admire their very clear values and how they link that to who they want as employees.
    http://www.damniwish.com/2010/10/what-if-you-fired-all-the-average-performers.html

  3. There was a great article in Fast Company a ways back on the Netflix culture. It’s worth reading. No vacations. You can come and go as you please as long as your job gets done. I like this, in principal, I just can’t imagine the logistics around meetings and client presentations. It must be nothing short of a nightmare.

  4. Thanks Mitch – I will find that article. My reaction is like yours – how do you schedule?
    I’m an accountant and in some ways I can see this working in an administrative function like accounting. As long as people have their work done by established deadlines, then does it matter if they are there every day? But what about serving customers who call with a question about their invoice? What about serving the internal customer who has a question?
    Then there are the parts of their approach that make total sense – like ensuring you keep your great performers. Not every company does that.
    Bottom line -this one is in my Evernote with a few tags. I think I will come back to it a few times.

  5. I think idea is less about the tactical and more about the spiritual concept of trusting your employees to always do the right thing by not putting up any roadblocks. We seem to be a society based based on rules and conformity and the idea here is to let people act like adults… and hope it goes well 😉

  6. Most people are too busy in the world. Please consider the following global monthly searches:
    FaceBook – 923,000,000
    YouTube – 338,000,000
    Google – 68,000,000
    Twitter – 13,000,600
    Jesus – 301,000
    truth – 33,000
    That’s all fine – each to their own.
    One thing that inspires me is a Twitter tool which is simple; effective; and helps add something to the Twitterverse which is of real and lasting value – the Word of God.
    Most readers will be familiar with the bible verse of the day from their local newspaper. Even the the smallest snippet from the word of God – as found in the bible – can enrich and strengthen our lives.
    In this spirit, I nominate http://www.jesustweeters.com as one link worthy of your attention.
    As Jesus Christ – Yeshua the Messiah said: But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Matthew 4:4

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