93Is 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 Reddit Cost Me My License Plate – BuzzFeed. "Want a great example of the end of privacy? Try this. Get a meme-worthy license plate, then drive it around a city full of hipsters prone to over-sharing. See how long you last." (Alistair for Hugh).
- China: Crowdsourced Tax Enforcement – Bunnie Studios. "China has a distributed population, with a hugely varied lifestyle – inland farmers, coastal engineers, and everything in between. How do you fight corruption and keep taxation simple? Turns out game theory works well: they create a second currency for tax transactions, then make that currency valuable by turning it into lottery tickets. A brilliant hack on a massive scale, it smacks of the kinds of mechanics that make a modern startup go viral." (Alistair for Mitch).
- Playboy Interview: Steven Jobs (1985) "Interview with Steve Jobs, 1985." (Hugh for Alistair).
- The Google We Lost – Andrew Badr. "Andrew Badr takes a dim view of Google‘s recent major push away from its strength (data), and towards something it doesn’t seem very good at (social)." (Hugh for Mitch).
- Just the Facts. Yes, All of Them – The New York Times. "How often do you learn about someone in your space that you never heard of (but should have), who is doing something truly spectacular (to the point where you wonder if it’s even a business)? This is one of those articles. It’s not just about big data… it’s about facts. What would the world be like if we had a Google that was filled only with facts? I’ve often said that the news is less about facts and much more about opinions. The social web is also a place where opinions trumps facts and it’s hard to tell fact from fiction. This is one of the more fascinating projects I’ve seen in a long time." (Mitch for Alistair).
- Clay Shirky on Internet Issues Facing Newspapers – The Berkman Center. "I had the pleasure of having dinner with Clay Shirky at this year’s TED conference. Sadly, we didn’t really get a chance to chat that much. We were at a private dinner with ten people, but we were seated at opposite ends (it was probably done to balance out the baldness!). Still, Shirky makes my brain melt. He’s just that smart. I’m a massive fan of both of his business books (Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus). I’m not sure how this video from 2009 came across my desk, but it’s mesmerizing to watch Shirky dissect both what digital media has brought and how painfully slow traditional media has been to catch up. The content is just as relevant today as it was ground-breaking in 2009. So much has changed, and yet it’s three years later and this thinking is as fresh as can be." (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.