Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #36

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, 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 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:

Amount of profanity in git commit messages per programming language – Andrew Vos’s Blog. "Both of my links this week are slightly NSFW. I know you’ve come to expect nothing less from me. As we marinate in data, analysis is everywhere. Recruiters are using developer activity in the community code tree Github to try and identify promising candidates based on their behavior. Here’s a slightly different look at the data: How much people swear based on the programming they use. Spoiler alert: C++ and Ruby are pottymouths." (Alistair for Hugh).
The Man Who Conned The Pentagon – Playboy. "The second link is NSFW for the ads. It’s a piece of investigative journalism done by Playboy that documents an almost comical suspension of disbelief by people who should know better. Claiming to have found a way to extract terrorist instructions encoded in Al Jazeera broadcasts, a self-proclaimed scientist took the US military on a merry ride that reads like the screenplay twin of The Informant." (Alistair for Mitch).
Computers Double the Number of Americans Involved in the Arts – ReadWriteWeb. "From the time I realized that I could Blog without learning HTML or figuring out how to host a website, I saw a bright future. One where anyone who had an idea and the willingness to share it could do so for free, and had the potential to reach the world, with the push of a ‘publish’ button. Since that moment, sometime in 2004, I’ve spent my working days toiling around this idea, always with a bent to the literary world (my particular interest). So I was heartened to see this study, which underlines how I have always thought of computers and the Internet: as the greatest tool ever for those who like to create and share what they make." (Hugh for Alistair).
Marketing – AVC – Fred Wilson’s Blog. "How can I resist sending to Mitch a Blog post with the following premise: ‘Marketing is what you do when your product or service sucks.’ From no less than VC wizard Fred Wilson. While this is a provocative statement, the underlying message is critical for anyone building a business with the Web in mind: in the Internet age, if your product (start-up, web service, publishing business) does not sell itself – through people talking about it to their social network – then you are in for a very hard time. There are ways to help this happen, but in the end, the thing that matters is that people love what you do enough to tell other people about it. If you get that sauce right, then marketing is just what you do to help people talk about how much they love your stuff." (Hugh for Mitch).
US Gov. Software Creates ‘Fake People’ on Social Networks – Examiner. "This could well be one of the more depressing news items I have read all week. Here’s the gist: ‘The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage ‘fake people’ on social media sites. Private security firms employed by the government have used the accounts to create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues. The contract calls for the development of ‘Persona Management Software’ which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by Internet activist last week.’ Depressed, angry, confused? Me too. I doubt this is what we really have in mind when we talk about the future of online social networks. My personal hope is that this news item is false." (Mitch for Alistair).
Chris Anderson talks TED on Charlie Rose – TED. "The annual TED conference takes place next week in Long Beach. I was supposed to be there in person, but can’t make it. In looking forward to what will be another amazing gathering of some of the smartest minds, I was both enthralled and captivated by this conversation between Chris Anderson (the head of TED) and Charlie Rose. TED is a fascinating business case study because it’s both a closed and exclusive group in one sense and one of the most open and sharing organizations on the other hand. Just listening to Chris Anderson talk about the values of TED and the power of the TED Talks is enough to make anyone want to take a shot at changing the world. Why? Because now anyone with a laptop and connectivity actually can." (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.