Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #166

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:

The Histomap – David Rumsey Map Collection. "I hadn’t seen this epic map until a Slate article by Rebecca Onion explained its history. It’s a gigantic, unified map of history–a four-thousand-year cheat-sheet. While it was first revealed nearly a century ago, it seems strangely modern, full of potential for a navigable, interactive application or life-feed." (Alistair for Hugh).
Slow Ideas – The New Yorker. "Some notions spread like wildfire; others take decades to catch on. In this The New Yorker piece, Atul Gawande considers why. I love the contrast between anesthesia (fast) and antiseptic (slow) and it’s an example I will likely us often; I’m sure that someone as interested in how messages disseminate as you are will find it equally useful." (Alistair for Mitch).
There’s a Hole in My Bucket – Wikipedia. "In which Wikipedia wins the award for the most pedantic page on the Internet, for the week of August 24, 2013." (Hugh for Alistair).
Ballet dancers in random situations – Leenks. "With the NSA spying on everything we do on the Internet, Egypt falling to pieces, UK spies smashing newspaper hard drives, Syria falling to pieces, journalists’ partners getting detained under terrorist laws, Fukushima leaking radioactive water, fracking, Quebec sinkholes, bankrupt exploding railways, prorogued parliament, for starters, I’ve had my fill of shitty news this summer. Instead: ballet dancers in random situations." (Hugh for Mitch).
What Is Medium? – The Atlantic. "I was speaking with Anil Dash this past week at HubSpot‘s Inbound 2013 summit in Boston and we somehow got on the topic of Medium. Medium is a new publishing platform founded by two of the people who created Twitter. It’s all the buzz now. I was curious as to what Anil thought it was, and if there was any merit to it (he actually blogged about it right here: What Medium Is). Sure, the content is stellar, but what makes it anything more than WordPress or The Huffington Post? Is the hype there simply because of who created it or is there something more… creeping beneath the surface that isn’t so obvious? The Atlantic investigates (and, make sure to read Anil’s piece too!)." (Mitch for Alistair).
Then and Now: Photos of Real Places Mentioned in Fiction – Flavorwire. "I love features like this. They hunt down the moments and real spaces that took place in some of fiction’s greatest work and show us what it looks like today. As a marketing professional, I’m all about the modernization of our world (and I love technology), but it can be jaw-dropping to see just how much change has transpired in a few short years." (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.