Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #304

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:

Here are all the Facebook Messenger bots we know about so far – Engadget. “Facebook announced a lot of stuff at its annual developer conference this week; it’s widely accepted that chat is the new app store, and bots are the new apps. But what apps are out there today? Here’s a nascent list. And for the next few weeks, this feels like ordering at In-n-Out: where’s the secret menu? And what’s the next book publisher? ;-)” (Alistair for Hugh).
How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell – Fusion. “Imagine that when someone blocked their caller ID, instead of it saying nothing, it said, ’John Smith.’ Well, if you were John Smith, pretty soon you’d have a bunch of people hating you. Software developers use default values a lot. There’s a reason your computer’s calendar goes back to January 1, 1970; or that the Y2K bug happened. Often, old protocols and systems aren’t updated for new uses. Well, here’s an example taken to the absurd. At Coradiant we relied on the MaxMind database to look up where you were from the IP address you used — basically the equivalent of caller ID. It was an imperfect science, at best. And yes, there’s a default. It’s a farm in Kansas. And it sucks to be them.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Remote Control – Motherboard. “Those illegally crossing the border between Mexico and the US used to follow a guide (commonly called a coyote), through the inhospitable mountain terrain to ‘safety.’ These days, many are crossing on their own, with a burner phone as a guide, with someone safe in Mexico guiding them by voice only.” (Hugh for Alistair).
I wrote an essay about working overnights – Peter Nickeas – Medium. “Former night beat newspaperman (murders, etc…) writes (beautifully) about the toll it took, still takes, on him.” (Hugh for Mitch).
A man accidentally deleted his entire company with one line of code – Business Insider. “Who hasn’t had a bad day at the office? You start making your way home, trying to figure out how to separate how you dealt with work contrasted against how you’re going to explain to your family why you’re in such a bad mood. After a while, that emotion dissipates. The sun goes down. The sun rises. A new day of challenges are ahead. That bad day seems to fade into the distant past. That is, unless, you pull a move like this? Ouch. I didn’t even know this was possible…” (Mitch for Alistair).
Amazon’s Kindle Oasis: The Highest-End High-End Kindle So Far – Fast Company. “I have a small, private, metaphorical landfill somewhere with many of the e-readers that have come out since their inception. I have tried them all. I have failed to adopt them seriously, time and time again. I read almost every book that I own using the Kindle app on the iPhone. It has served me well. Still, one look at this new Amazon Kindle Oasis and all I can think to myself is this: just take my money!” (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.