Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention

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, Rednod, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, Bite-Sized Edits, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for each other (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:

The Thomas Paine Affair – Bogsource.com. "There’s a lot of noise in the US about the constitution and God. So, I found this biography of Thomas Paine (from Bogsource) fascinating: it shows a face of the founding fathers as deists, and the life of a man who variously pissed off the church, Robespierre, the King of England, and Federalists. It also reminds us of an earlier attempt to marry church and state, filled with ‘huge, days-long tent revivals were held where speakers pounded their Bibles and preached fire and brimstone against the non-Christians.’" (Alistair for Hugh).
RSA Animate – First as Tragedy, Then as Farce – RSA Comment. "RSA’s animated videos are the other TED. I know you’re a big fan of thought provocation. Until last week, I hadn’t heard of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. It’s the original Smart Person’s Conference, featuring proto-geeks like Franklin, Darwin, Bell and Hawking. It’s over 250 years old, and their presentations are unique: a cartoonist illustrates the talking points live." (Alistair for Mitch).
Facing The Heat – Stanford Magazine. "I have a personal rule for this link-picking exercise: I don’t allow myself to pick articles that appear in the Editor’s Picks list from Instapaper, because that is just too easy. I had *two* articles lined up, and *both* later turned up in Editor’s Picks. Anyway, I read some other great things, one was this refreshingly candid interview with climate scientist Stephen Schneider, about the strange, frantic state of the climate debate. Stephen Schneider died on July 19, 2010 after suffering a pulmonary embolism." (Hugh for Alistair).
Analysis: What are the Web’s Top Sources of Referral Traffic? – ReadWriteWeb. "This one is for both of you, though maybe you guys already know it, given how much of your businesses revolve around analytics. But if you want to know how to get traffic to websites, it’s important to know: where does all the traffic come from? An analytics company, Woopra (great tool, by the way) has sliced and diced their numbers and the answer is: Facebook, Stumbleupon, YouTube, and, of course, Google." (Hugh for Mitch and Alistair).
Will Zynga Become the Google of Games? – The New York Times. "The Internet is going through another massive shift with the soon-to-be-launched Facebook Credits. With over 500 million accounts, it looks like Facebook is set to launch their own economy, and they’re starting with their own monetary system. Zynga – the online social gaming developers – have made tons of cash with both Farmville and Mafia Wars in Facebook to date, and their evaluation is pretty insane. Social gaming companies, virtual goods and online credits look to be the next big thing (if they aren’t already), and this fascinating article takes you a couple of scratches beneath the surface." (Mitch for Alistair).
No Secrets – The New Yorker. "The breaking news this week surrounding WikiLeaks is just another example of how journalism, mass media, freedom of information and open networks are colliding and creating new constructs of what is news, how it is edited and how it is curated. This is a long (and fascinating) article about Julian Assange – the man behind WikiLeaks. Too many people are trying to vilify him without really understanding what the platform is and how it can change democracy, media and our own interpretation of the news. Who knows maybe this will re-ignite interest in Data Libre?" (Mitch for Hugh).