Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #38

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:

Shell energy scenarios to 2050 – Shell. "Peak Oil is a scary thing. When someone like Shell Oil paints a bleak picture, it’s even more frightening. This study describes two scenarios of an oil-addicted world going through the sweats and shakes of rehab: ‘scramble’, where we ignore the future; and ‘blueprint’, where we plan for it. Neither is particularly nice to our comfy Western way of life." (Alistair for Hugh).
Cultural Exchange: A porn star at 76 – Los Angeles Times. "In a country where the elderly get some respect, Shigeo Tokuda gets more than that — he’s a geriatric gigolo, a septuagenarian sexpot, a late-live lover, a… okay, I’ll stop now. Anyway, this LA Times piece looks at the life and work of a Japanese porn star with more experience than most." (Alistair for Mitch).
Why Angry Birds is so successful and popular: a cognitive teardown of the user experience – Pulse UX Blog. "What is it about Angry Birds, that all-pervasive tablet/smartphone game? Fluke? Or something more? Consider: ‘The total number of hours consumed by Angry Birds players world-wide is roughly 200 million minutes a DAY, which translates into 1.2 billion hours a year. To compare, all person-hours spent creating and updating Wikipedia totals about 100 million hours over the entire life span of Wikipedia (Neiman Journalism Lab)…’ Charles Mauro deconstructs the Angry Bird experience to figure out just why it’s so addictive." (Hugh for Alistair).
Mother Jones web traffic up 400+ percent, partly thanks to explainers – Nieman Journalism Lab. "In this confusing media era, its always nice to read about companies that are doing well." (Hugh for Mitch).
Forgotten 80s Nintendo Games – College Humor. "A great idea/video like this could never have been made prior to the Internet. As a teen during the eighties, there is no chance that this little clip won’t put a smile on your face. I’m also impressed with the ideation behind it: what inspired it? That kind of thinking, creativity and the drive to execute it really does fascinate me. A side tangent: I miss the simplicity of the video games of yore." (Mitch for Alistair).
Latest Geminoid Is Incredibly Realistic – Automaton. "While it’s not quite Blade Runner, you have to see these robots to believe it. What makes us – as a society – so interested in creating non-human versions of ourselves? It is videos and articles like this that are both creepy and truly inspiring. Technology continues to disrupt… I just didn’t expect it to be knocking on my front door and asking to borrow a cup of sugar this quickly. I can’t imagine what would happen in mixed IBM‘s Watson with these Geminoids." (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.