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:
- Envisioning the future of education technology. "The Internet fundamentally rethinks teaching. For centuries, education has solved a distribution problem — getting someone in the village smart enough to teach the children. With distribution free and easy, education is changing and teachers are flipping around homework and schoolwork. In this infographic, Envisioning Technology shows how education tech might evolve." (Alistair for Hugh).
- Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth (Part One) – The New York Times. "In this ingenious pair of posts, Errol Morris suggests just how easy it is to sway us. I won’t spoil it for you. But given the results, just how much can we trust our collective opinions?" (Alistair for Mitch).
- Château Sucker – New York Magazine. "A good old fashioned caper about the great counterfeit wine scandal, and the young guy who fooled the experts into spending thousands on bottles of sub-par cru." (Hugh for Alistair).
- Pussy Riot Closing Statements – n+1. "I have no idea how this is playing out in Russia, but you couldn’t invent better headlines: feminist punk band Pussy Riot sentenced to two years in prison for ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’… for staging an impromptu ‘concert’ in an Orthodox Church, singing a song urging the Virgin Mary to oust Russian President Vladimir Putin. The trial has been seen as a travesty, at least in the West. Here are the final statements (all thoughtful) from the three women, just prior to sentencing." (Hugh for Mitch).
- A Startup Asks: Why Can’t You Resell Old Digital Songs? – Technology Review. "One of my first jobs – a long ways back – was working in a used CD store. While that may not seem like such a big deal, this was one of (if not the) first one of its kind in my city. And, to be honest, the government didn’t know how to deal with it (they called it illegal). This little retail venture was sued and threatened with legal action on a constant basis. Why? Because the owner would buy the CD and then rent it off (and yes, it was fairly obvious that people were copying the music to cassettes). Well, what are we going to do about this new situation? I have tons of songs that I bought from iTunes that I don’t listen to. Why am I not allowed to sell them? It’s a fair question and it’s one that we all need to pay attention to. Why? Because if I buy a book on my Amazon Kindle, why can’t I share it or give it to someone else when I’m done? See, digital makes everything an original (there are no copies). Traditional economics, meet modern technology. Modern technology, meet antiquated business models." (Mitch for Alistair).
- How Bestseller Lists Work…and Introducing the Amazon Monthly 100 – Tim Ferriss. "Tim is one of those fascinating characters who likes to hack the world. Whether it’s the work week (The 4-Hour Workweek), the human body (The 4-Hour Body) or even learning and cooking (The 4-Hour Chef), he seems to dig down deep and be able to unravel and explain a lot of things that have mystified the rest of us. Well, in this blog post, he hacks the bestseller lists for books. Yes, I’m a massive nerd and I’m very curious what it takes to crack The New York Times bestsellers list for books. On top of that, anyone who can get their book to rank – at one moment in time – on Amazon (because their bestsellers ranking is in near-real-time) may now be challenged by Tim, who is also launching an Amazon Monthly 100 ranking to show which books are selling over time (not just in the moment). By the way, I sent this over to my literary agent and he says everything in this blog post is accurate (no surprise)." (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.