Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #25

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, Rednod, 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, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for each other (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:

GPS addict? It may be eroding your brain – MSNBC. "Is GPS eroding our brain? When you get in a taxi, you can tell the driver where to go, or how to get there. Navigating by destination is more complex and involves more of the brain than simply going turn-by-turn according to instructions. But that may be what the GPS has done to our brains. In November, McGill researchers showed that how we navigate today may affect how well our brains work tomorrow." "(Alistair for Hugh).
Google Zeitgeist 2010. "It’s been said that you’re never more honest than in your search bar. If that’s so, then our collective searches are our collective consciousness, and each year, Google plays it back to us. Here’s Google’s 2010 edition of what we searched and how we spent our time online. Given how much time you spend at the Googleplex, I’m sure you know all this – but it’s still full of interesting insight." (Alistair for Mitch).
“Be Someone or Do Something”: Innovation and the new world of post-competitive business – Unfinished Business. "What is the relationship between innovation and competition? What is the difference between a brand-driven business and an innovation-driven business? Here is a sketch of a hypothesis." (Hugh for Alistair).
David Mamet’s Master Class Memo to the Writers of The Unit – Movie Line. "If you communicate for a living – and who doesn’t – then it’s worth taking time, once in a while, to absorb the advice of some masters. For instance, I read Orwell‘s ‘Politics and the English Language‘ at least once a year, to remind myself of the importance of clarity. Here’s playwright and screenwriter David Mamet‘s memo to the writing staff of the TV series, The Unit, explaining how to write drama." (Hugh for Mitch).
Letter From Canada: Why Is America So Furious About Wikileaks? – TechCrunch. "I tried to avoid the whole WikiLeaks story for the past little while on my Blog. In following the story and reading a lot (but not all) of the commentary, I came up with a Blog post that did not look at the legal or moral aspects of WikiLeaks, but rather the important lessons that businesses and marketers can learn from the events that continue to unfold (you can read that Blog post here: 7 Lessons That WikiLeaks Teaches Us). Wouldn’t you know it, the comment flow immediately went to the moral, political and legal opinions of the individuals. I know the Blogger (Jon Evans) behind this TechCrunch Blog post, and it’s not only an interesting (and political) perspective, the comments following his post add a ton of differing perspective and insight. The point? We’re all over the map on WikiLeaks… and the story is not over yet." (Mitch for Alistair).
Social media invades book world – Financial Post. "Kobo is rolling out a new service called, Reading Life, to make books more social. Hugh constantly argues that it’s not about the device or the app… it’s about the content… the real information in the pages, and the company that will win the ebook wars will be the one that is not all that focused on the hardware, but the one that makes the content as readily available as possible for the most reasonable price. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Can a Social Media app change the ebook landscape? What will Amazon, Apple and the big book retailers do to play along or catch up? The good news is this: people are still reading and people are still buying books." (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.