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:
- How, Exactly, Did You Get Elected? – Literally Unbelievable. "The Onion is funny. But nobody would take it seriously, right? Turns out, plenty of people — including the occasional congressman — do, frothing with righteous indignation all over Facebook. Hilarity ensues. What the Internet needs is a healthy dose of skepticism." (Alistair for Hugh).
- Retro design is crippling innovation – Wired. "Clipboards, recycling bins, and those little floppy disk icons that mean ‘save’: all skeuomorphs, vestiges of our atomic past that act as metaphors, but ultimately constrain what we do and how we design. In this Wired UK piece, Clive Thompson reflects on just how we limit ourselves." (Alistair for Mitch).
- Is GPS All in Our Heads? – The New York Times. "What is GPS doing to our brains?" (Hugh for Alistair).
- Hit Record – Open Salon. "Salon starts doing 30% fewer stories (but spending more time on them, and doing longer pieces), see traffic go up 40%." (Hugh for Mitch).
- Research chat: Dan Ariely and Malcolm Gladwell on writing about social science – Journalist’s Resource. "I remember thinking to myself, ‘wow, the world has really changed,’ when I saw Malcolm Gladwell‘s books being sold at HMV many years ago. As someone who spent a ton of time being a music writer covering the rock music beat, it’s somewhat humorous to me that the real rock stars in our society today are now people like Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, etc…) and Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality). Marketers and business leaders seem to have adopted Gladwell and Ariely as their own, but the stuff that they write about is less of a business book and much closer connected to the social sciences. What’s it like to write about the social sciences? Check this out…" (Mitch for Alistair).
- Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level” – Ryan Holiday. "I grapple and grind my way through books about math and science. I usually quit. I also struggle with books that are too academic. I’m beginning to realize that while I love to consumer books, I’m grazing much more than I am deep-diving into the content. Is there a right way or wrong to read a book? How should I prime myself to read a book that has me boxing out of my weight class? This wonderful post is filled with ideas and techniques to get more people reading better material. By the way, this Blog post is from 2007… so, long live The Long Tail." (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.