Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #246

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 Great Knowledge Box Showdown: Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – Stone Temple Consulting. “We’re building prosthetic brains. It’s about time for an IQ test. Eric Enge put Google’s Now, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana to the test to see which one of the upgrades will work best.” (Alistair for Hugh).
The Work Of Julien Rivoire. “I don’t know why I like this, but I do. Maybe it’s because it’s what art looks like once 3D rendering is commonplace and our feeds are full of animated GIFs.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Data Monopolists Like Google Are Threatening the Economy – Harvard Business Review. “That ’data is a strategy’ won’t be news to Alistair, who has been running a conference (Strata) for a few years now, dedicated to helping companies understand and use big data. Still, I hadn’t heard the term ‘Data Monopolist’ before (I guess Alistair has). Kira Radinsky at the Harvard Business Review thinks maybe it’s time for an Anti-Trust act for data.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter to Shareholders. “Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha, is the world’s most successful investor, with an unrivalled track-record dating back to the mid-60s. He’s also a wonderful writer, and his yearly letter to shareholders is always filled with nuggets of wisdom, thoughts on the state of the world of business, and, if you are interested in selling your company, the best invite to contact a giant of finance you are likely to see. This year’s letter is particularly interesting, because it contains a section: ’ he Next 50 Years at Berkshire’… Mr. Buffet is in his mid eighties, so chances are he won’t be around for all of them!” (Hugh for Mitch).
10 Mind-Boggling Stats from Mobile World Congress – Ad Week. “There was a lot of news this week about the Mobile World Congress. Most of it was surrounding the fact that Facebook‘s Mark Zuckerberg was going to speak. I tend to shy away from click-baity and Buzzfeed-ish articles like this, but it’s just too juicy not to share. Each stat in this article could be an epic blog post unto itself. The first one sets the pace: mobile subscibers will jump by a billion people in the next five year.” (Mitch for Alistair).
How Music Hijacks Our Perception of Time – Nautilus. “The other week, I was in a terrible mood. Instead of my usually nightly routine of writing, I decided to watch some videos on YouTube. Out of the corner of my eye, was a suggested video. It was Van Halen playing the now-infamous US Festival back in 1983. This was one of the first concerts that got me into music in big way. As I watched, I closed my eyes. I just wanted to hear the band play. It was dark in my room. The music took me somewhere. It made me feel like that teenager again. The excitement of new things. The unknowing of what will come of my life. Does that girl in my class like me? What are my friends and I going to do on the weekend? I was time travelling. Music is power. There’s a science to it. Here it is.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

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.