January 2012
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“Finnish mobile giant Nokia today released its fourth quarter financial results,...”
– Matt Brian, Microsoft Paid Nokia $250m for Windows Phone Use via TNW
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Form Letter Template For Acquired Startups
By panicsteve via Github
Dear soon-to-be-former user, We’ve got some fantastic news! Well, it’s great news for us anyway. You, on the other hand, are fucked. We’ve just been acquired by: [ ] Facebook [ ] Google [ ] Twitter [ ] Other: _________________ As you are aware, we’ve always provided a free service, and have never even tried offering a for-pay option. This means...
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“@sandymaxey: Anil Gupta defining grassroots: “Minds on the margins are not...”
– January 21, 2012 at 04:45AM via http://bit.ly/yokhHr
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“@stoweboyd: Doree Shafrir of Rolling Stone to oversee culture coverage at...”
– January 21, 2012 at 03:07AM via http://bit.ly/zJkoS6
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A Momentary Flow: Study shows that kids, unlike... →
wildcat2030:
Via Scoop.it - Knowmads, Infocology of the future Growing up with the Internet gives today’s children a very unique view on the way the world works — one that is vastly different from that of older generations. These kids, the ‘digital natives,” are raised with modern technology deeply…
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“The unwillingness of Facebook and Google to share a public commons when it comes...”
– - John Battelle, Search, Plus Your World, As Long As It’s Our World
Once again, Google steps in a pile of doodoo with its maladroit efforts in trying to absorb the social web. Unwilling to simply index things and offer them up as search results, Google wants to ‘socialize’ search. What...
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“@ballardian: Swedish cities could connect via bike superhighway:...”
– January 17, 2012 at 08:47AM via http://bit.ly/Ae0NOQ
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“To pivot is, essentially, to fail gracefully. While the term has been in the...”
– - Jenna Wortham, For Some Internet Start-Ups, a Failure Is Just the Beginning - NYTimes.com
The use of the term ‘pivot’ in startupland is the corollary to the now commonplace notion that you may have to fail in order to learn a life lesson. While this has become conventional wisdom, startup...
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“@joshsternberg: RT @hueypriest: “Hollywood’s right to make bad business...”
– January 18, 2012 at 05:31AM via http://bit.ly/y2EJi0
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“@stoweboyd: 30% of teenagers who were regularly online had shared a password...”
– January 18, 2012 at 04:52AM via http://bit.ly/y8RC3K
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Military technology: Magic bullets | The Economist →
The US military is now using a rifle that reads like a science fiction novel: each bullet has a computer chip that calculates trajectory and then blows up when it is near its target, killing the enemy with shrapnel:
via The Economist
The XM25, as the new gun is known, weighs about 6kg (13lb) and fires a 25mm round. The trick is that instead of having to be aimed directly at the target, this...
Internet 2011 in numbers - Social Media →
courtenaybird:
2.1 billion – Internet users worldwide.
800+ million – Number of users on Facebook by the end of 2011.
225 million – Number of Twitter accounts.
100 million – Number of active Twitter users in 2011.
70 million – Total number of WordPress blogs by the end of 2011.
39 million – The number of Tumblr blogs by the end of 2011.
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Jerry Yang (Finally) Leaves Yahoo
Jerry Yang has left Yahoo, a few weeks after Scott Thompson took the reins as CEO. I looked back and found this from 2008, a rumor that Yang would be leaving the company as part of an acquisition by Microsoft. That deal — for $47B— fell through, and the company is now worth less than half that. As I said then, Yang fumbled the future at Yahoo, and should be shown the door. Now, he...
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‘Open Science’ Challenges Journal Tradition With... →
A great overview of how online, communitarian, open science sites are transforming the wold of science journals, and research.
Thomas Lin via NYTimes.com
The system is hidebound, expensive and elitist, they say. Peer review can take months, journal subscriptions can be prohibitively costly, and a handful of gatekeepers limit the flow of information. It is an ideal system for sharing...
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“@stoweboyd: 2 out of 5 new CEOs fail in their first 18 months on the job - HBR...”
– January 17, 2012 at 05:10AM via http://bit.ly/zfIfqD
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“@TechCrunch: Former First Round Capital VC Charlie O’Donnell Launches New...”
– January 17, 2012 at 04:29AM via http://bit.ly/A2K0dM
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“@davewiner: Fred Wilson wants to bring developer conferences to NYC. ...”
– January 17, 2012 at 04:08AM via http://bit.ly/wJQ2mp
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Network Rail offers temporary office space for... →
Network Rail, the owner and operator of Britian’s railway infrastructure, is getting with the ‘work anywhere’ movement:
Business travellers thwarted by train delays need look no further: Network Rail is laying on temporary office space at five London stations from next year.
Beginning in Paddington in mid-2012, workers on the move will be able to access working areas with ...
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“@stoweboyd: 40% of Americans as Independents in ‘11, highest since Gallup...”
– January 16, 2012 at 07:04AM via http://bit.ly/z7MQPY
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Why (The King Of Love Is Dead) - Nina Simone
Once upon this planet Earth, Lived a man of humble birth, Preaching love and freedom For his fellow man.
He was dreaming of the day Peace would come to Earth to stay, And he spread this message All across the land.
“Turn the other cheek,” he’d plead. “Love thy neighbor,” was his creed. Pain, humiliation, death he did not dread. With his bible at his side, From his foes he did not hide. It’s...
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“@stoweboyd: ‘Social networks are intricate things of beauty.’ 1st...”
– January 12, 2012 at 05:42AM via http://bit.ly/w64Ga0
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Re: Sara Horowitz #Rethink Mutualism talk
My friend Paul Higgins (@futuristpaul) saw the comments about a way for Freelancers to bank money pretax to be able to draw down when work is scarce, and offered this about the Australian Farm Management Deposits program:
I owe Sara a short precis of what her ‘New Mutualism’ might do for us, might offer us: an elevator pitch to make it clear and easily understood. But, consider...
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Twitter Interactions On Mac Client?
When will Twitter make an API with ‘interactions’ — their new take on social gestures? Must be a severe disadvantage to all other clients. Or is that the point?
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Google Buys Katango To Solve The Labor Of G ... →
What’s wrong with this picture?
Jon Mitchell via ReadWriteWeb
Ever since we broke the news about Google’s circles, it seemed like a necessary new social networking feature. The ability to selectively share with the right groups of people is an important part of being oneself on the Web. But the effort required to maintain G circles is discouraging. Facebook’s smart lists...
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“As far as I can tell, every person that I know who is going to CES views it as...”
– - MG Siegler, For The 5th Year In A Row, Apple Wins CES. Before It Starts. Without Showing Up. via TechCrunch
Why I don’t go to CES.
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Announcing Arc: a new magazine about the future...
arcfinity:
February 2012 will see the debut of Arc, a bold new digital publication from the makers of New Scientist. Arc will explore the future through cutting-edge science fiction and forward-looking essays by some of the world’s most celebrated authors – backed up with columns by thinkers and practitioners from the worlds of books, design, gaming, film and more. Arc 1.1 is edited by Simon...
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Getting To Trust: Better Swift Than Deep
Venessa Miemis is trying to get a group of ‘change agents’ to collaborate, and is finding it hard going:
Venessa Miemis, How Will We Collaborate if We Can’t Trust Each Other?
The next few years are going to be defined by a culture of learning and interactivity that involves more trust, and so naturally, more risk. If we’re going to go beyond just sharing links with each other to ...
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Cut the working week to a maximum of 20 hours,... →
If we were rational about the new world of work, we would accept the idea that people should work less, since productivity has climbed so much in the past few decades. But will that be accepted doctrine of Western countries? Can we shift to a 20 hour work week?
Heather Stewart via The Observer
A thinktank, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), which has organised the [recent London] event with...
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Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World... →
Robert Neuwith thinks 2/3 of the world’s workers will be part of ‘street economies’, operating in the gray or black markets.
Robert Capps via Wired
Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players. But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become. In his new book, Stealth of Nations: The Global...
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“@stoweboyd: Of the 50 cities in the world with the fastest Internet service, 38...”
– January 08, 2012 at 05:13AM via http://bit.ly/x3jI84
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“Between 2005 and 2010 employment in New York’s high-tech sector grew by nearly...”
– Economic diversification: Reimagining the future (via caro)
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“@stoweboyd: Top 1% of mobile users generate 50% of all traffic, top 10% generate...”
– January 06, 2012 at 11:47AM via http://bit.ly/xaD932
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“The smartest person in the room is no longer a person but the room itself.”
– What the Internet Means for How We Think About the World (via courtenaybird)
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"Tectonic Shifts" in Employment →
gravity7:
The United States faces a protracted unemployment crisis: 6.3 million fewer Americans have jobs than was true at the end of 2007. And yet the country’s economic output is higher today than it was before the financial crisis. Where did the jobs go? Several factors, including outsourcing, help explain the state of the labor market, but fast-advancing, IT-driven automation might be...
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What China Can Teach Europe - Daniel Bell via... →
Daniel Bell tells us that we shouldn’t think of China as a conventional Westphalian nation-state. It might be more profitable to think of China as a network of competing — and cooperating — semi-autonomous cities. And these cities might be a harbinger of what other cities elsewhere need to become:
Daniel Bell via NYTimes.com
[…] when it comes to economics, China is more...
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“I hate Google . Can’t stand it. It is agonizing to use. The stream is so...”
– - Jon Mitchell, Google Is Going To Mess Up The Internet
Mitchell’s got a series of points regarding the way the Google+ works that is creating a new social layer on top of the web of pages, and making it hard to find things and share things in more ‘traditional’ ways. And he...
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Distribute control to adapt
johntropea:
One of the most difficult challenges companies face today is how to be more flexible and adaptive in a dynamic, volatile business environment. How do you build a company that can identify and capitalize on opportunities, navigate around risks and other challenges, and respond quickly to changes in the environment? How do you embed that kind of agility into the DNA of your company?
...
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“As Twitter continues to thrive as the communications tool of choice amongst...”
– - Zachary Wolff, Twitter: To log or not to log: Is that the question? via the dialog
Wolff goes on to discuss the #NOLOGS policy being promoted by WikiLeaks and other groups concerned with publicy. I can’t say this is a concern for privacy since twitter messages are in general public.
MY bet is...
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Stymiest Looks to Be "a Lock" for RIM Chair - John... →
Looks like RIM’s board is (finally) pushing out the co-founder co-CEOs, a move that is so overdue it is laughable. But the new chair is a Royal Bank of Canada exec, which makes it sound like a sale is planned, not a turnaround:
John Paczkowski via AllThingsD
Research In Motion’s 2011 was about as ugly as they come. And with few indications that 2012 will be much better, the company is...
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Can you have a private city? The political... →
Andrew Comer and Kerwin Datu via The Global Urbanist
According to UN-HABITAT’s State of the World’s Cities 2008-2009, 510 new ‘small’ cities, 132 new ‘intermediate’ cities and 52 new ‘big’ cities emerged between 1990 and 2000, with a combined population of 254 million.
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“Innovation from above tends to be orderly and dumb; innovation from below tends...”
– Curtis Carlson
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This Is Not How It's Supposed To Work
I use Remember The Milk to manage my personal task list, and I really like how the product works, mostly. But RTM notes associated with task are pretty inaccessible: you have to click through three or four levels of the UI to get there. I also wondered about various third party apps mentioned on the site, many of which no longer seemed to be supported.
Since I am a pretty committed user, I...
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