Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #134

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 (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik) 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:

• How Obama Won The Internet – BuzzFeed. "There’s no doubt the Obama re-election campaign had its ups and downs. But one thing you can’t fault it for is how it handled social media. This behind-the-scenes look at reddit‘s biggest-ever AMA is heartening, not just because it was actually fairly genuine, but because I believe crowdsourced, unfiltered threads of discussions are our best hope of improving today’s hopelessly flawed representative-democracy model. Hat Tip to Tara Hunt for pointing me at this." (Alistair for Hugh).
• The Daily Routines of Famous Writers – Brain Pickings. "I don’t know why I haven’t been reading Brainpickings for longer. They’re a beacon of long-form writing, digging through the past and finding surprisingly current answers. This post looks at what writers did to get themselves organized. I’m nearly finished writing a book with Ben Yoskovitz, and I actually locked myself away in a hotel in Santa Clara for a couple of days to focus. I envy these literary curmudgeons and their ability to turn off the world, embrace their quirks, and get stuff done–in a connected world, ADHD feels like a career." (Alistair for Mitch).
• Vodafone Africa Becomes Profit Machine via Banking – Bloomberg. "UK-based Vodafone is one of the big mobile communications companies in the world, with business in Europe, the UK, the United States, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. Africa is poised to become their most profitable region in the next couple of years." (Hugh for Alistair).
• America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead – Mother Jones. "This might be cheating, since I got this link from a Twitter post Alistair made the other day… But it’s probably the most interesting science story I’ve seen in ages. There is a puzzling thing in violent crime stats in the US (and elsewhere): a huge increase in violent crime from 1960 to 1990… and then a precipitous drop in violent crime from 1990 to today. No one really knows why, but here is a compelling theory: the introduction of leaded gasoline in the 1930s, and its phase out in the mid-seventies. There is a 20 year time-shift in the data, representing babies exposed to leaded gasoline growing up. The implications are huge, especially for parts of the world where leaded gasoline is still used, or places like Africa, where it was phased out only in 2006." (Hugh for Mitch).
• Boy writes letter to LEGO after losing minifigure, gets awesome response – Yahoo. "When choosing my weekly picks for Hugh and Alistair, I tend to go to the fringe. I try to find something that is both very different from my usual reading selections and something that hasn’t made its way throughout the zeitgeist (and back again). This week, I may be breaking my self-imposed rules, simply because I think this is so warm and perfect. For decades, I’ve encouraged brands to think about real interactions between real human beings (this is where businesses can truly win some lifetime value). LEGO is a brand unlike many others (it sits in the pantheons with Apple and Google, in my books). Read this exchange between LEGO and a customer. Now, make a list of the simple things you can do with your business to make yourself this awesome." (Mitch for Alistair).
• The Winners’ History of Rock and Roll, Part 1: Led Zeppelin – Grantland. "My close friend, Heath, turned me on to Grantland. I’m not a sports guy, so it took me a while to find my footing with this online publication. What I love about it, is how they dissect pop culture in a way that I have not seen in quite some time. This is one of those magnificent pieces of content on rock and roll. It will leave you with a fuzzy feeling that good journalism will certainly survive the disruptions that are shaking the newspaper and magazine industry. Behold this quote: ‘When my brother handed me a cassette of Led Zeppelin IV for my 13th birthday, I did not know John Bonham had been dead for 10 years. Now he’s been dead for 33 years, and I’m still not 100 percent certain that it is the correct prognosis. This is why Led Zeppelin belongs in the first chapter of the Winners’ History of Rock and Roll. Every time you put on a Zeppelin record, the time-space continuum turns into the Washington Generals.’ There’s also a deep thought in here, and it’s scary how true it is: Nickelback could well be our generation’s Led Zeppelin. Before you starts throwing tomatoes in the comments section below, take a read on this." (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.