Will we react to the problem of plenty by becoming highly selective

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:19:00 +0530

Will we react to the problem of plenty by becoming highly selective:

“Will we react to the problem of plenty by becoming highly selective and taking our hyper-personalized media consumption habits into how we shop, live and behave?”

Social doesn't just mean friends — it means society.

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:43:55 +0530

Social doesn't just mean friends — it means society.:

“Social media needs to enlarge its blinkered, myopic perspective on what the social really means. Trivialization, dehumanization, enslaved by the promise of a point, a badge, or a trophy, another friend, follower, or fan — that’s the very definition of antisocial.

…

Social is significance. The real promise of social tools is societal, not just relational; is significance, not just attention. You’ve got to get the first right before you tackle the second — and that means not just investing in “gamification,” a Twitter account, or a Facebook group. It means thinking more carefully how to utilize those tools to get a tiny bit (or a heckuva lot) more significant, and starting to mean something in enduring terms. The deepest test of a 21st century business isn’t just whether it glitters, but whether it can create thick value, that endures, benefits, and multiplies: whether it matters.”

The iOS and Android App Economies

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:48:01 +0530

The iOS and Android App Economies:

“The differences between the iOS App Store and Android Market are a microcosm of the differences between Apple and Google. Apple is a retailer, a purveyor of well-crafted goods that people will line up to purchase. Google is an advertising company that builds popular services that command large audiences.”

Dealing with WikiLeaks: The Right Reaction

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:45:20 +0530

Dealing with WikiLeaks: The Right Reaction:

“For the American government, prosecution, not persecution, offers the best chance of limiting the damage and deterring future thefts.” …

“The big danger is that America is provoked into bending or breaking its own rules, straining alliances, eroding credibility and—because it will not be able to muzzle WikiLeaks—ultimately seeming impotent. In recent years America has promoted the internet as a menace to foreign censorship. That sounds tinny now. So did its joy of hosting next year’s World Press Freedom Day this week. Chinese and Russian glee at American discomfort are a sure sign of such missteps.

The best lessons to bear in mind are those learned in such costly fashion during the past decade of the “war on terror”. Deal with the source of the problem, not just its symptoms. Keep the moral high ground. And pick fights you can win.”

WikiLeaks: Moving Target

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:29:28 +0530

WikiLeaks: Moving Target:

“”You can’t burn down the Library of Alexandria any more— it will respawn in someone’s basement in Stockholm, or Denver, or Beijing.”

WikiLeaks, Amazon and the new threat to internet speech

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 19:15:00 +0530

WikiLeaks, Amazon and the new threat to internet speech:

“What is troubling and dangerous is that in the internet age, public discourse increasingly depends on digital spaces created, owned and operated by private companies.”

Great op-ed by Rebecca MacKinnon on CNN

Your stature on Twitter influences how a page ranks in web search

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:57:24 +0530

Your stature on Twitter influences how a page ranks in web search:

Danny Sullivan explains how Google and Bing are incorporating social signals from Twitter and Facebook for regular web search. Indicates how social is becoming all-pervasive, and how authority ranking - so-called PersonRank - is already in place.

Internet Apps And Native Apps: Why Neither Is Going Away, But The Coming Years Will See A Tremendous Power Shift

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:36:00 +0530

Internet Apps And Native Apps: Why Neither Is Going Away, But The Coming Years Will See A Tremendous Power Shift:

“They’ll always be a place where Apps are better than the native web, but the increasing importance of the browser, both because it’s the one platform that ties everything together, and because the increased fragmentation the smartphone market will have as time goes on, will make Apps less important than they are now”.

Lessons From The Media Apocalypse That Never Happened

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:49:41 +0530

Lessons From The Media Apocalypse That Never Happened:

“An anarchic worldview coupled with brilliant code doesn’t travel as well as you’d think in the bean-counting world of legitimate commerce. Good code empowers users by giving them choices and options, but empowered users aren’t necessarily good for business. What you need to hit it really big in legitimate commerce is an authoritarian sensibility that limits users to doing what you want them to.”

…
“It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy. Napster, Gnutella and BitTorrent never attained the user-friendliness that Apple products have, and nobody vets the content on file-sharing networks, so while the number of files on offer is enormous, the files are rotten with ads, porn, spyware and other garbage. When Jobs offered us the easy way out, we took it. Freedom is overrated, apparently — at least where digital media are concerned.”
From TIME: The Men Who Stole the World

The Algorithm + the Crowd are Not Enough

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 09:50:01 +0530

The Algorithm + the Crowd are Not Enough:

“…I do think there’s an opportunity brewing for entrepreneurs, websites and companies to add editorial components to the algo-crowd paradigm.”

The world doesn't need more entrepreneurs. It needs more people for entrepreneurs to hire.

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 17:27:00 +0530

The world doesn't need more entrepreneurs. It needs more people for entrepreneurs to hire.:

“Many large companies in emerging markets such as Russia and India train their own employees, because college graduates often lack the requisite skills. That’s good for large companies, but it leaves behind smaller companies that can’t afford to train the middle ranks or compete for the best. This misalignment of incentives stifles many economies.

Countries that want to be successful overall, rather than merely to play host to a couple of billionaire entrepreneurs who eventually will decamp to a tax haven, must focus on building a strong educational system for all their citizens. That is where the notion of the entrepreneur as hero can be helpful – by inducing more young people to study math and science, which will help them in many ways even if they pursue a nontechnical career.”

Information overload, the early years

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:04:55 +0530

Information overload, the early years:

“In many ways, our key methods of coping with overload haven’t changed since the 16th century: We still need to select, summarize, and sort, and ultimately need human judgment and attention to guide the process.”

"Most people will say that Facebook Connect handle the whole “people” thing for any new social..."

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 08:09:02 +0530

“

Most people will say that Facebook Connect handle the whole “people” thing for any new social product. I would argue that Facebook Connect is a start but if you can’t quickly show someone a new relationship dynamic or similar people in your social product in a way that is unique to your application, the value of people interacting in your new product will accrue back to Facebook and not you.

For example, I’ve found that on most new social applications I join I have the same 10 Facebook friends – typically my most prolific friends on Facebook already – on this new service too. In most cases, because these new social applications are just an extension of the things I’m already following them do on Facebook, such as sharing photos, events, lists, and videos, I don’t have a reason to come back to this new application a second time.

For a new social product, you need to think about how your social product expands, deepens, and changes the relationships people have today online and in the real world. This isn’t easy to achieve. The best example of a social product doing this well is Quora.

”

- Gina Bianchine, Founder of Ning, makes a good point. You can leverage Facebook Connect without being subservient to it.

"A hundred years ago this month the first volume of Whitehead and Russell’s nearly-2000-page..."

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 21:41:51 +0530

“A hundred years ago this month the first volume of Whitehead and Russell’s nearly-2000-page monumental work Principia Mathematica was published. A decade in the making, it contained page after page like the one below, devoted to showing how the truths of mathematics could be derived from logic.”

- Stephen Wolfram Blog : 100 Years Since Principia Mathematica

"And once reporters learned that Berners-Lee did not turn his creation into a company but instead put..."

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:23:23 +0530

“And once reporters learned that Berners-Lee did not turn his creation into a company but instead put it out there as a tool for the good of humanity, he was asked time and again, “Why didn’t you get rich off the Web?” Meaning, “You fool. You could have been a billionaire.” Now you can understand why Berners-Lee isn’t keen on interviews.”

- Observations: The Web is (not) dead…if you believe Scientific American , not Wired

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:20:29 +0530

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality:

A must-read for any tech enthusiast.

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