Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #37

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:

A Declaration of Cyber-War – Vanity Fair. "This long Vanity Fair piece reads like a Tom Clancy novel. It’s the most accessible, complete narrative I’ve found on the Stuxnet virus, from its initial detection through to speculation on who wrote it and why it was discovered at all. Author, Michael Joseph Gross, calls Stuxnet the Hiroshima of digital warfare, and while it may all happen in the murky depths of cyber-space, the things these new weapons can attack — power plants, currency systems, medical equipment — may be all too real." (Alistair for Hugh).
These Are The Controversial Satellite Photos That Set Off Protests In Bahrain – Business Insider. "The democratization of information technology means that the average person has access to things undreamed of by the military a few decades ago. Case in point: satellite imagery. These two images from Google Maps showed Bahrain’s ruling class living in opulent estates the size of entire slums, contributing to unrest and uprisings. It’s not just Twitter and Facebook that makes nations stand up in protest — it’s the great (and uncomfortable) equality of ubiquitous computing." (Alistair for Mitch).
Dyatlov Pass incident – Wikipedia. "Nine mysterious deaths in 1959 of a group of university students on a mountain-climbing expedition in Russia’s Ural Mountains. Creepy stuff! Written by masters of the horror genre – the many writers of Wikipedia." (Hugh for Alistair).
The Apple strategy tax – ars technica. "Apple‘s rise in the last decade has been astounding. They went from being an also-company that made artsy alternatives to Microsoft machines, to… well making great and increasingly popular computers, but also completely changing two totally different businesses: music distribution (iTunes/iPod) and mobile phones (iPhone). Next came the iPad, which for my money was radical in that it brought the innovation of the iPhone to a much less tech savvy crowd, and, I think, has altered our expectation of interaction with computing machines. Apple has done amazing things in the last decade, but they’ve shown what I think is the first sign of trouble ahead: their new(ish) requirement that all content transactions that happen* on an iPad or iPhone will be subject to a 30% fee. John Siracusa examines this move, and borrowing from Joel Spolsky, calls this move evidence of a ‘strategy tax’… where internal competition within a company starts forcing decisions that are bad for long-term health; in effect, when the company starts putting itself before its customers. (*Previously developers could just send transactions through the browser to avoid the 30% fees for in-app purchases; now they must allow in-app purchases)." (Hugh for Mitch).
50 Years of Making Fuzz, the Sound That Defines Rock ‘n’ Roll – The Atlantic. "Sometimes, I just gotta rock. I know how much Alistair loves the quirkier sides of popular culture, well this may well take the cake (as the saying goes). There would be no history of rock n’ roll music without an in-depth history of distortion. There has been a clear evolution of distortion and what that sound effect has done to make guys bang their heads and make woman weak in the knees (and vice-versa). You may be surprised to read how much the wailing distortion of a Jimi Hendrix riff reminds us of our humanity." (Mitch for Alistair).
Hey Jimmy Wales, What Do You Think of Content Farms? – Fast Company. "The conversation around Google, content farms and the success of Demand Media‘s IPO is still a hotly contended topic. What’s Google to do? If people are looking for specific content and Demand Media is leveraging this information to create targeted and relevant articles, where is the problem? It all boils down to our definition of ‘value’ and our definition of the words ‘relevant’ and ‘valuable’. In this fascinating piece of web content, Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, talks shop. If you’re interested in content and the new media, this will fascinate you." (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.