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, Year One Labs, 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, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (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:
- Dig – Kiwis By Beat. "I don’t know what to say about this, other than that it’s a beautiful, weird, ink comic about life and our place in it." (Alistair for Hugh).
- Watermelon Collisions – ouch – Dot Psychics. "One of the things I love about the Internet is augmentation. And this is a great example. A reality show contestant fails a challenge, slingshotting a watermelon into her face (she was fine; still–ow). But then someone decided to analyze the velocity and forces involved. Tragedy becomes science lesson, FTW." (Alistair for Mitch).
- Roubini: Next Year Could Be A Global Perfect Storm–Much Worse Than 2008 – Business Insider. "Enjoying a relaxing summer? Sunshine? A bit of holiday? Here’s some dark clouds to spice things up! Nouriel Roubini, or ‘Dr. Doom’ as he is sometimes known, was one of the few voices predicting financial collapse in the run-up to the 2008 financial collapse. He’s back at it, and he says: this time it will be worse. Worse because government policy tanks are empty: interest rates have been near zero for years now, there isn’t much more capacity for stimulus spending, Europe is near collapse. China’s economy is slowing down, hard, along with Brazil, Russia, and India. Oh, and there will probably be war a with Iran. Have a happy summer!" (Hugh for Alistair).
- Transfer of Value – Monday Note. "A look at why it is that newspapers are getting their lunch eaten by The Huffington Post et al. It’s simple obvious stuff in a way, but the answer is, roughly: Newspaper websites are optimized to publish the stuff newspapers print, onto the web. Whereas Huffington Post’s website is optimized for traffic and comments. This means: headlines optimized for SEO, and story pages optimized for engagement. Again, simple stuff, but only if you commit to it. Which newspapers don’t seem to be doing." (Hugh for Mitch).
- Fast food workers of Reddit, what is the one menu option at your employment that you would recommend people never eat? (Because of cooking safety, cleanliness, unhealthy, etc) – Reddit. "When the news broke this week that DIgg would be sold for about $500,000, it kind of depressed me. For years, I saw Digg as one of the most modern ways for Infovores to consume, comment and share the news. Not the headline CNN stuff, but the really interesting stuff. That being said, I’ve also been following Reddit since it was introduced to me by our friend, Julien Smith, many years back. In trying to figure out how Reddit beat Digg in terms of building a viable community, look no further than this piece as an example. Is this real news? Probably not. But, it’s super-interesting and probably contains tons of content that will inevitably be spun off into more traditional news pieces once those traditional media outlets catch on to the amazing content and community that Reddit has." (Mitch for Alistair).
- 6 Strategies For Stealing Customers Away From Amazon – Fast Company. "My fascination with retail continues to grow. Yes, Twist Image works with brands like Walmart and watching Amazon is part of the gig, but beyond that, it’s hard to not be impressed with how Amazon defines retail. They act as a technology company, an affiliate, a distributor and even a media company. This article is less about how a brick and mortar company can compete with Amazon and much more about customer relationships and their value. Beyond retail, I think every brand can learn a ton from how Amazon acquires, keeps and engages with their consumers." (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.