Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #298

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:

LiarTown Postcards – Tumblr. “Warning, this has a bunch of Not Suitable For Work stuff in it. I don’t even know where to begin. This is what happens when a subversive jester is really, really good at Photoshop. From View-Master discs that never existed, to fake record albums and childrens’ books, there’s something here to offend everyone. Also, it’s amazing. It has been a long time since something literally made me laugh out loud, and gasp in shock, this much.” (Alistair for Hugh).
Painter of light: my awkward adventures in virtual reality art – The Verge. “I’ve been spending a bunch of time digging into VR lately. The HTC Vive, which just shipped, is astonishingly good. From the Valve-authored demo in the Portal universe, to dozens of other applications, it’s perfect, and convincing. But perhaps the first true VR app is this one, which lets you paint in 3D. We don’t realize how much we take 2D for granted until we walk behind our drawing and realize it has depth. This is the future, explained.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Random couscous snaps into beautiful patterns – Steve Mould – YouTube. “Couscous + a giant metal square + a violin bow + math/physics = I love science.” (Hugh for Alistair).
Sinking In Alberta 1923 – 1959 – Mashable. “Some truly fantastic pictures from the mountains of Alberta, and skiers of, in the days of black and white film.” (Hugh for Mitch).
Doing a TED Talk: The Full Story – Wait But Why. “One of the standout TED talks this year was Tim Urban from Wait But Why. It was all about procrastination and creativity (mostly about procrastination). It was insightful, it was funny, it was painful, and he presented it all in a well-packaged way. This is not easy to do. He made is look casual, when – in reality – he probably beat himself up over it for months. Well, in typical Wait But Why fashion, here he is dissecting the experience (and just how hard it was). It’s a brilliant lesson for anyone who has to stand up in front of an audience and give a presentation… which, is most of us!” (Mitch for Alistair).
Snapchat Video Traffic Has Caught Up With Facebook – Fortune. “We toss around the word ‘billions’ now like it’s normal. It’s not. Whether you’re talking about money, users or even views. A billion is a lot of numbers! This is one of those moments that should stop us all – dead in our tracks. And yet, news like this comes across our radar, we ‘like’ it on Facebook and just move on. Snapchat‘s video traffic is now at 8 billion daily video views. That’s more than five times where it was a year ago. That’s now at par with Facebook. Remember when Snapchat said ’no’ to being acquired by Facebook for $3 billion back in 2013? Imagine if that deal had gone through. These numbers are just staggering.” (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.