- Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian’s Digital Death Not Moving People – DesignTAXI.com
On the one hand: I'm sorry that the fundraising hasn't been as as successful as they hoped, because it is a good cause, on the other, surely a child of six might have thought that while people *like* having celebrity drivel as part of their Twitter/Farcebook experience, it's not something people would actively *miss* if it went away – whichever marketroid through the campaign up is clearly not very good at their job, especially as the campaign ensures it's own silence – they can't remind people that they're not there in order to drive donations without violating their pledge. (No, I'm not donating via said campaign. Show me a cause where I can get celebrities to stop Twittering/Facebooking for good by pledging, and I'll get the chequebook out.)
- Falling out of love (Phil Gyford’s website)
More grist to my mill in re: getting rid of books as physical objects: cheap POD books, which is where we're heading for book-as-physical-object (unless you want current bestsellers, which I almost never do) tend to be shoddier things. A good POD book is just as good as a regular book, but I've seen some very shoddy examples in the past, where I would definitely rather have had the ebook.
Tag: marketing
Bookmarks for January 20, 2010
- Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report — Rogozov and Bermel 339: b4965 — BMJ
Ever wondered what it would be like to perform surgery on yourself? No? Why not? Well, anyway: here's a description of what it's like to have to give yourself an appendectomy. In the Antarctic. With next to no help.
- A Rant About Women « Clay Shirky
Clay Shirky opens up a serious can of worms, noting that women do not push themselves forward in the way men do. Part of me wants to say "well, *duh*". Shirky suggests that if women behaved in a more self-aggrandising manner, they'd get more equal treatment. I'm just not sure that I want to encourage any more people to behave like some of the self-promoting male pricks I've met.
- plasticbag.org: Should we encourage self-promotion and lies?
Tom Coates identifies some of the problems with what Shirky is suggesting – the problem isn't just that women don't push themselves forward, but often that the wrong people do, and what we should be focusing on is ensuring that everyone correctly advertises their own level of experience and ability – that those that *do* self-promote heavily while they can be useful, can just as often be a total pain.
- apophenia: whose voice do you hear? gender issues and success
Danah Boyd's repose to Shirky and Coates is excellent reading.
- Mass Photo Gathering – I'm a Photographer, not a Terrorist
Trafalgar Square at noon on Saturday. Anyone interested?
Bookmarks for April 8, 2009
- 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.
Bookmarks for February 23, 2009
- The history of the smiley face symbol | Art and design | The Guardian
A short history of one of the most recurrent and widely used design motifs of the last 50 years.
- Former NiN Drummer Takes Album Promotion A Step Further
Are you paying attention, music business? This is clearly the future of album promotion. I really, really hope someone take him up on one of the more stupidly expensive ones. And that he goes through with it. After all, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing in the most stupidly over-the-top manner possible.
- The Demon-Haunted World
"Or the past and future of practical city magic." Look, just go read it, because it's a clever man talking. It is not mysical, it is futuristical, and I'll give good odds that a lot of what he's talking about will come to pass. And it reminds me that I must dig up and revise something I wrote years ago on digital shamanism.
Bookmarks for January 28, 2009
- Immortal jellyfish swarming across the world
"Stars nearly aligned" says Professor Angell. On the other hand, maybe this will finally give us a leg up all becoming young and thin and energetic again. Or turn us into a race of degenerate fish-men, I guess. Either's good by me. Ia! Etc…
- Everything you know about ARGs is WRONG
Ding! Correct! This, right here, is why I have never played an ARG. And why I would love to get paid to write one.
- alexyoung's ico
Former colleague's JS graph library. Looks handy.
- Switching from scripting languages to Objective C and iPhone: useful libraries :: Hackdiary
About to start an Objective C/Cocoa spare time project. Don't know if I'll need any of these tools, but it can't hurt to have a reference to find them.
Bookmarks for March 10, 2008
- Google Contacts API
A safer means of allowing websites to access your contacts/addressbook data without having to give them your gmail password. Not that I know anyone who’d be stupid enough to do that, right?
- 3753 Cruithne – Wikipedia
Wikipedia article on “Earth’s second moon”. I was dimly aware that earth had more than one satellite, but this is so much cooler than I had first thought when I heard about it…
- @ETech: Matt Webb’s Tour of a Fictional Solar System
I love his perspective on the world, and really, really must get to a talk by him at some point.
- File this one under holy crap! It starts with (kottke.org)
OK, you can’t draw an exact cause-and-effect line, but that line to a history of “Hallelujah” that I posted the other week did the rounds (I think I got it off Waxy), and suddenly, Jeff Buckley’s version of the song is the top selling track on iTunes.
- ‘I fell in love with a female assassin’
An astonishing account of a photojournalist that did, well, exactly what he says, while covering a story in Colombia. Utterly compelling and thought provoking.
- Photon – High performance Mac OS photo browser, sorter and viewer
I love Lightroom for working on images and library mangement, but it doesn’t half take ages to impport stuff. If I can use this for a first-pass step, it might be quicker…
- Curvy Cross Processing in Photoshop CS3 | Layers Magazine
I suspect this will also work in Lightroom, which is handy, because the current cross-processing filter I have in LR is for shit, so instead, I shall build my own.