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:
- Paul Lewis: Met told us to ‘lay off’ Tomlinson story – PressGazette. "I’m feeling a bit bleak this week, so here are some sobering links. First: Reporter Paul Lewis refused to let a story die. When Ian Tomlinson died during G20 protests, Lewis dug in. This brief account (and the March 2010 piece) serve as a reminder that corruption and cover-ups are all around us. Tomlinson’s death only came to light when a hedge fund manager decided to share some security camera footage." (Alistair for Hugh).
- It’s the Inequality, Stupid – Mother Jones. "As I get older and more jaded, I’ve come to realize that most economies are experiments in income disparity. Too small of a gap between the rich and the poor, and nobody strives. Too big of a gap, and the poor become wage-slaves to a controlling elite. Hey, nobody said these links were all fluff — next week I’ll post some cats. In the meantime, here are eleven charts that sum up the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots. As I think I’ve said before, the next election will be fought with infographics." (Alistair for Mitch).
- Anatomy of a Mash-Up – Definitive Daft Punk. "A visualization of a mash-up of Daft Punk tunes." (Hugh for Alistair).
- Man tracks stolen laptop hundreds of miles away, calls thief – Storify. "I watched this all happen on Twitter a few nights ago, and it was thrilling, and while this *actually happened*, it revealed a really exciting possibility for new forms of live, participatory story-telling: Sean Power had his laptop stolen in NYC, but had to return to Montreal. He had a bit of software on the laptop (Project Prey) that can be activated to start recording what’s going on on your laptop, including taking webcam pics of whoever is using it, and broadcasting to you what’s happening on your computer in real time. Sean Tweeted about the stolen laptop, then activated Prey. Clues were immediately revealed, a picture of the thief! (Tweeted) Then the thief logged into Skype – we had a name (Tweeted)! Logged into Gmail! We had an email address! (Tweeted). Using Prey, Sean could also locate his laptop – at resto called Cantina Latina in NYC… a woman Sean doesn’t know, but who follows him on Twitter, went to the resto – Sean called the cops… It was a pretty exciting bit of real-life story-telling, and it shows some wonderful hints about how we might use tools like Twitter for creating new kinds of fiction (an interest of mine)…This link is to a Storify collection of the event." (Hugh for Mitch).
- Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says – The Galactic Empire Times. "I know what you’re thinking, Alistair: you don’t believe that Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead unless you see the body. The Empire really shouldn’t be giving aid to Tatooine… the people there must have known where he was hiding. This has to be one of the best written pieces of content I’ve read online in a long time (especially the comments). We live in a crazy world and we often forget that the Web is a publishing platform: it works equally as well for the mass media as it does for the conspiracy theorists. Now, the Star Wars nerds are getting in on the fun." (Mitch for Alistair).
- How Social Media Creates a Rough Draft of History – GigaOm. "Mathew Ingram wrote this fascinating Blog post that looks at how breaking news and reporting news moves from fragmented pieces of content to details and into a ‘final’ product. Social Media now creates a rough draft of history that slowly – over time – starts morphing into both facts and different perspectives in many different pieces. The difference between now and what used to happen is that it’s an open space that is not only highly fragmented, but distributed in real-time to the palms of our hands." (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.