- What the Goldman Sachs Facebook investment really means
Yes. This. I do not believe that "ad supported" will keep Facebook running forever, or even much past the end of this year. The user engagement metrics just don't support it. They need some actual revenue streams, and that's where the wheels are going to come off their wagon, I suspect.
Links for Tuesday January 4th 2011
- Kieron Gillen’s Workblog » Tracks of The Year 2010
Mr Gillen's tracks of the year are always worth a listen. Well, some of them are, but you have to listen to them all to find out which. But more importantly, the list is a fun read.
Onwards!
I feel bad saying this, because I know a lot of my friends have had a bad year, and can’t wait for 2010 to be over, but in all honesty, I’ve had a great year. Absolutely superb.
So, rather than look back and look smug, I shall do what I prefer to do at this time of year, and look forward (and smug).
So, coming up in 2011:
Creative projects a-go-go. Really want to get back on the writing horse this year. Have plan. Plan will go off the rails within a week, but the plan includes this eventuality. Also need to bring 365Bullets to a (semi-)successful conclusion, and probably invent a new photo project.
Health and fitness extravaganza. Back to gym, specific plan in hand. Yes, yes, we all make the resolution. I kinda need to keep it this year. I did very badly at it in 2010, and if I don’t pull my finger out, I’ll never be ready in time for the Olympics.
What?
Social-Life-a-palooza. Erm. I am aware that I have seen much less of a number of very dear friends in 2010 than I did in previous years. I wish to do something about this. Exactly what, I am unsure, especially given that the top two items there are going to eat spare time at a rate, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.
So, thank you and farewell to 2010, and here’s hoping we all have an awesome 2011.
Links for Wednesday December 29th 2010
- The Blast Shack
Catching up on some of links I turned up over the break. This one pre-dates it by a few days, but I only had the time to read it once work stopped, so here it is – Bruce Sterling on Assange and wikileaks. Absolutely required reading on the subject. - Hacker Culture: A Response to Bruce Sterling on WikiLeaks | Atlantic Mobile
And here's the best of the responses I've seen to Sterling. Contains talk of the forthcoming OpenLeaks projects, which I strongly encourage you to learn more about, as I think it points to where the movement toward a more transparent society might usefully go (there are links withing this article, if you are interested). - Facebook vs Twitter: By The Numbers [Infographic]
Interesting breakdown of some numbers around the two. Facebook is more popular, and more frequebtky used, but Twitter's users are more engaged with the entities they follow. Which is about where my intuition was, but it's nice to see numbers. - Royal Pingdom » The most reliable (and unreliable) blogging services on the Web
Another one with no big surprises, but nice to see numbers. Tumblr's very clearly in the midst of it's difficult second album, but I still reckon it's currently the best blogging service on the market, and once the growing pains are over, I look forward to seeing where it goes. - The Perfect Vodka Martini
I'm not sure the gents at Dukes (my favourite place for Martinis) would agree with everything here, but this is a man who’s clearly put time and effort into producing his version of perfection, and I can respect that. Will have to give his recipe a try myself.
Links for Thursday December 23rd 2010
- When’s the Best Time to Publish Blog Posts?
Some useful numbers on blog posting for optimum circulation. Short version: publish in the morning to get the regular readership, and tweet notifications in the late afternoon for maximum activity boost/retweet value. Publish a minimum of one post per day, ideally more, in order to build an audience. - Comic Sans Criminal – There’s help available for people like you!
I am going to send this to anyone I catch using Comic Sans inappropriately. Anyone continuing to misuse that sodding font after reading this is actively evil, and should probably be removed from the human race for the good of all.
Links for Monday December 20th 2010
- A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m An Atheist – Speakeasy – WSJ
Yes, it's a rehash of the same old pro-atheism arguments we've all heard time and time again. But it's eloquent, witty, and surprisingly warm and kind, and I liked it. - notes on "how to clone delicious in 48 hours"
This made me laugh with recognition. After all, delicious doesn't go anything complex, does it? It's got all of three different blobs of data – users, who have links, which have tags. (And some optional text, but that's trivial). How had can that be to throw together? And one one level, that's true. I could roll my own personal delicious in a weekend. But I couldn't make it available to anyone else without months of work.
Links for Friday December 17th 2010
- Insipid
Self hosted delicious clone. Might move to this if I get time to play with it a bit. - 2010 in photos
The Big Picture's pictures of the year are out – this is a link to part 1 – you'll find links to parts two and three below the picks. Beautiful, alarming, saddening, touching, all the usual. Well worth a squint. - Giving better deign feedback – I would like it if anyone who ever commissioned agency work was made to sit down and read this until their eyeballs bled. "The Client Doesn't Like It" should, essentially, be irrelevant. You don't hire people to produce things you like, you hire them to produce things that work.
RSS
Could anyone reading this blog (NB: I’m talking about my blog, not the mirror of it’s content on LJ) via RSS reader either leave a comment or drop me an email (instructions in the website footer) if they see this post? For some reason, my own RSS reader will only show new posts if I delete the feed and re-create it, despite the fact that viewing the source of the feed in my browser shows me an up to date feed. I just want to be sure that this problem isn’t affecting other people. Ta!
Links For Wednesday 15th December 2010
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Here's an interesting thing to think about, particularly in light of the fact, that at my company, for example, I often get certain tasks because I know the code better, and can therefore accomplish the same task faster. Yet, we charge by the hour (well, actually by the ten-minute block). This essentially means that exactly because I've got more experience than some of my colleagues, clients pay less for my services. Yet the company has far more cash and training time invested in me. The obvious solution would be to charge more for my time than for some of my less experienced colleagues, but obviously, that's a hard sell to clients, not least because they lack the skills and knowledge to correctly evaluate whether it's better to get me, or someone else, on a given project. Especially when for some projects, I will work faster, and for others, I will be slower, because it's code I don't know so well, but one of my colleagues might know better.
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Hmm. This sounds like the good business to me. At some point in the not *too* distant, I need to get to grips with iOS development, and I like that there's now a simple Cloud-based DB that I can use for storage/sync.
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Naomi Wolf produces a far clearer, far more on the nose, summation of the point she was articulating when she got leapt on but the left wing blogosphere last week. It is not a defence of Assange, it is a condemnation of the current rate of international prosecution for crimes far worse than what Assange is accused of. It wasn't a defence of Assange when she wrote it last week, but plenty of people out there got distracted by about seven words in amongst a much wider point, and her real point got lost. So she's restated it, and you should read what she has to say.
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This is interesting. I've been trying to find numbers/commentary on wikileaks from a feminist perspective that isn't focused on Assange and the allegations against him, and failing. I'd like to produce an article on the real-world effects of wikileaks as regards women and/or social justice, but it's proving very hard to find even vague commentary in that vein, never mind hard numbers. This is the closest to useful commentary (that isn't about the allegations) I've found thus far.
Links For Monday 13th December 2010
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For very real and serious: if you have *ever* left a comment on a Gawker blog (or if you're not sure if you might have or not), you need to check whether any email address you might have used is in this spreadsheet – instructions on how to do it are there in the right hand column, I'm happy to explain more if people need me to – and if it is, and you've used the same password anywhere else (and if you can't remember, assume you have) then you need to change it right now, as that email address and password are now out in the public domain.