- scribbles and lies – Signpost Says: "Welcome to the 21st Century"
Here's an interesting read: the currency of Iceland is basically worthless. The artificial currency of a computer game created in Iceland, however, still has value. In fact, it has more value then the "real" currency.
- A Whole Lotta Nothing: This is how Social Media really works
I propose holding anyone that describes themselves as an "e-marketer" (or anything remotely similar) down and beating them with sticks until they agree to tell all future prospective clients this simple truth from th above article: "instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products"
- 20×200 : Get Excited And Make Things
You! Yes, you! Visit this link, and buy a copy of Matt Jones' "Get Excited And Make Things" poster. Then hang it some place where you will see it often. It will be morally uplifting for you, and the proceeds from the sale will benefit Creative Commons, which is a tremendously excellent thing to do.
Tag: business
Bookmarks for April 3, 2009
- John Thackara – Designing for Business as Unusual – Core77
He starts out spelling how we're fucked on an economic and environmental level. And then he gets in to what we're doing about it. Some of this shit is fascinating – a set of tools for a completely new system of economics.
- 19.20.21.
By the end of the 21st century, there are predicted to be 19 cities with a population of over 20 million. London is one of them, currently has a population of around 7-8 million, and large parts of it's infrastructure are creaking at the seams. We urgently need more thinking on how we will cope with the supercities of the near future, and I'll watch this project with interest.
Bookmarks for April 1, 2009
- The Problem With Music
Steve Albini's breakdown of exactly how much a band can expect now to earn in a normal record industry contact. Figures would need to be adjusted for inflation, but I bet they're still proportionally the same. I've seen this a few times over the years, I just wanted to log it in case I need to refer to it again.
- Micro scope – The Engineer
Some notes about the practicalities of nanomachinery in the body – both the propulsion/navigation, and the means by which they might operate on us.
- Blood powered fuel cells.
Good to know that my future cybernetic implants aren't likely to need batteries.
- Jacek Utko asks, Can design save the newspaper? | Video on TED.com
After the links the other week, here's a talk about how they newspapers might yet be kept alive: by making them beautiful objects.
- Ramachandran on synesthesia, creativity and metaphor
A fascinating talk on the some of the possible neuroscientific explanations for some of the more remarkable and ill-understood operations of the brain.
- wrongcards
I shall be sending these in future. Well, maybe not, but there are a few things in here that made me laugh.)
- Anki – friendly, intelligent flashcards
This could be a really useful little learning tool.
Bookmarks for March 16, 2009
- Multicolr Search Lab – Idée Inc.
Very pretty means of searching Flickr.
- Tim Berners-Lee on the next Web | Video on TED.com
Sit down, shut up, and listen to the greatest living Englishman.
- Innovation Forum: Conferences Redux (The Sense Loft, 4th Floor, 68/70 Wardour Street, London W1F 0TB)
I think I may have to get along to this.
- Heroku
A little slice of the future that will be incomprehensible/irrelevant to most of you. It's an app hosting environment for RoR developers that pushes the apps out into a computing cloud rather than relying on single/multiple servers. If there was a PHP version, that was as easy to set up, I'd be signing up right now.
- Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky
Yes, it's true. Newspapers are fucked. Hardly radical thinking, but a very cogent summary of exactly why they're fucked, and what we might, maybe, get instead. But here's the key bit: "When someone demands to be told how we can replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution." You could replace "newspapers" with "the music business", "the TV industry" or even just plain old "copyright" and still be on the money.
Bookmarks for March 6, 2009
- Twitter = YouTube. – John Battelle's Searchblog
Clear analysis of why Google's might wish to acquire Twitter, and an interesting note about the likelihood of them being able to acquire the microblogging platform.
- Robots – The Big Picture – Boston.com
Stop whining about your lack of a fucking jetpack. Take a look at this lot, and tell me we're not living in the future.
- World Builder on Vimeo
Very pretty short film – a simple plot description will not do it justice, so just go watch. It's ten minutes out of your life, and will make your day better.
- Graphic Journey Blog: From Caveman to Spray Can
An address given in 2005 to the RSA about design and the world we live in. No earth shattering insights if you've read a lot of the design stuff I've linked to before, but some excellent commentary, interesting examples and nice turns of phrase.