Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #158

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, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) and I decided that every week 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:

A Class Divided – Frontline. "In 1968, a teacher thought of a novel way to teach racism. This resurfaced online recently, and it’s a fascinating lesson in just how easily our inherent tribalism can be tweaked. To me, Jane Elliott‘s unorthodox teaching is up there with Milgram and the Stanford Prison Experiment in terms of uncomfortable, but brilliant, social manipulation. This link to the PBS Frontline episode has the full video, and some history and context." (Alistair for Hugh).
A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter – Above The Law. "It’s great to see a lawyer with a sense of humor." (Alistair for Mitch).
Organized Chaos Makes the Beauty of a Butterfly – Nautilus. "Chaos and harnessed randomness in biology. From a feature in Nautilus magazine called: ‘Facts so romantic on biology’ (!)." (Hugh for Alistair).
C.S. Lewis On Writing – Letters of Note. "C. S. Lewis, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, got reams of fan letters, many from young aspiring writers. Apparently he tried to answer all of them. Here’s one response he sent, filled with good advice for a young correspondent from Florida." (Hugh for Mitch).
Why does everyone except Google want to build a reader? – GigaOm. "Word is that Google Reader is going away. It has many of us digital media nerds up in arms, but I’m not sure why? On one hand, I love Google Reader. On the other hand, I can’t remember the last time I looked at it. Strange how that works, isn’t it? Well, since Google announced that they would no longer be developing the platform, it seems like everybody else is suddenly jumping on the RSS reader bandwagon. As is always the case, Om Malik, writes a poignant piece about the reader that everyone claims to want. So, what’s going on here? Google – obviously – knows that either fewer people are using a reader, or they can’t figure out how to make any relevant money from it. Whatever the case, we’ll soon see if there’s any relevant traffic, revenue and usage for all of these newer readers." (Mitch for Alistair).
78 Tools for Writing and Previewing Markdown – Mashable. "Originally, I had just bookmarked this page and figured that I would get to it eventually. I left this article open in my Google Chrome browser and was reading it on a flight this week. My only thought was, ‘I bet Hugh would get a kick out of this,’ before quickly realizing that anyone who writes a blog… or e-book… or book would probably really dig this. I’m a massive fan of Scrivener, but still there are some gems on this list that I’ll be sure to grab and check out." (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.