Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #120

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

Mind Control – Decoded DC. "With party politics on everyone’s mind, this podcast on the neuroscience of party politics is both informative and depressing. Hosted by former NPR reporters, it’s a smart episode of an even smarter site that tries to get behind the scenes of Washington, DC." (Alistair for Hugh).
The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains (part II) – Empirical Zeal. "Do the names we give things affect how we think of them? In this fascinating piece on color and naming, it turns out the answer is sort of yes. Researchers looked at our ability to distinguish colors based on whether we had names for them. Makes you wonder: what other names have the side-effect of making us treat the world differently?" (Alistair for Mitch).
Marc Andreessen – Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Investing in Rap Genius – Rap Genius. "Andreessen Horowitz (one of the most famous web VC funds) is putting $15M into Rap Genius, a site used for annotating rap lyrics. A strange choice, explained in detail by Mark Anderseen on the awesome Rap Genius platform itself." (Hugh for Alistair).
It’s Not About You: The Truth About Social Media Marketing – Tim O’Reilly. "Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media talks about marketing: don’t market your products, he says, but instead: help people do great things (with your products), and then find ways to amplify their voices, and help them connect with other people who want to do great things also." (Hugh for Mitch).
An Experimental New Starbucks Store: Tiny, Portable, And Hyper Local – Fast Company. "We tend to forget how dramatically business has changed. I’m currently reading, Makers, by Chris Anderson (editor for Wired Magazine and the author of The Long Tail and Free). Makers is about the new industrial revolution that isn’t coming out of traditional manufacturers, but our of our collective basements. The Makers Movement is large and getting larger, so when I see stories like this, it makes me realize how much more dynamic big business can be in a world where both bits and atoms are getting easier for all of us to create and manipulate." (Mitch for Alistair).
Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing – Brain Pickings. "I love posts like this. I love posts like this even more when they are about people like Neil Gaiman. Some people see Gaiman as a science fiction writer. Others see him as a comic book writer. I see a true renaissance man… in every sense of the word. He’s smart. Scary smart. But, beyond that, Gaiman is a shining light of someone who is not only following their muse, but comfortable in publicly sharing the journey. This isn’t just for writers. It’s for everyone. We would all be better people if we were all a little more like Neil Gaiman." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it’s your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.