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, Bite-Sized Edits, 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:
- Self-Improving AI And The Future of Computing – Google Video. "This week, I decided to geek it up a bit, partly because we’re gearing up for this year’s Bitnorth with a theme of Human 2.0. So hold on to your tinfoil hats and say hello to Philip K. Dick and Skynet. Here’s a Stanford Colloquium video on self-improving artificial intelligence. While it’s more focused on software development and self-correcting complex code, it’s clearly a slippery slope from there to computers than create their successors." (Alistair for Hugh).
- How To Control Your Dreams – Scientific American. "While this is certainly topical – given the popularity of Inception – it’s a timeless topic: we still speculate on why we dream, whether it’s to synthesize memories for long-term storage, to find patterns amidst the chaos, or just to give the mind a break. Dreams likely have a place in creativity, and being able to guide them can help spawn new ideas and discover hidden meanings." (Alistair for Mitch).
- Mindf**k Movies – The Morning News. "New fathers don’t have time to watch movies – certainly they can’t go to the theatre to see the latest sensation, Inception. But they might be able to steal some time away to read about some classics." (Hugh for Alistair).
- A Fourth of July Lesson in the Value of Editors – Writing For Digital. "Do you want to increase engagement on your website? Then hire a good editor. IBM did a month-long A/B studies of user engagement on high-traffic marketing web pages: one set edited, another unedited. ‘We got a 30 percent improvement on the desired call to action for the [edited] pages across the board.’" (Hugh for Mitch).
- "Heroes" Creator Tim Kring on His New TV Series, Transmedia, Future of Television – Fast Company. "Transmedia and Digital Storytelling is a brewing topic in the Digital Marketing and creative space. If we are going to look at how to best be monitoring websites, we’re also going to have to start paying attention to how these fragmented stories all come together, what the analytics will look like, and how we’re really going to measure any semblance of engagement across the platforms. This article weaves the kernel of a story idea into many different media corridors." (Mitch for Alistair).
- Design – Fearless QA. "Alex Bogusky is widely regarded as the Jesus Christ of the modern advertising industry. Just recently, he decided to leave the industry and take on new projects. One of those projects is this very interesting video Podcast called, Fearless QA. In this episode, Alex sits down to interview his father, Bill Bogusky, who is also a designer. This conversation is filled with insight on creativity, the craft of getting an idea right, passion and everything else we all stand for. This could well be one of the most fascinating online videos I have seen in years, and is the quintessential definition of the word ‘love’." (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.