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:

Self-Improving AI And The Future of Computing – Google Video. "This week, I decided to geek it up a bit, partly because we’re gearing up for this year’s Bitnorth with a theme of Human 2.0. So hold on to your tinfoil hats and say hello to Philip K. Dick and Skynet. Here’s a Stanford Colloquium video on self-improving artificial intelligence. While it’s more focused on software development and self-correcting complex code, it’s clearly a slippery slope from there to computers than create their successors." (Alistair for Hugh).
How To Control Your Dreams – Scientific American. "While this is certainly topical – given the popularity of Inception – it’s a timeless topic: we still speculate on why we dream, whether it’s to synthesize memories for long-term storage, to find patterns amidst the chaos, or just to give the mind a break. Dreams likely have a place in creativity, and being able to guide them can help spawn new ideas and discover hidden meanings." (Alistair for Mitch).
Mindf**k Movies – The Morning News. "New fathers don’t have time to watch movies – certainly they can’t go to the theatre to see the latest sensation, Inception. But they might be able to steal some time away to read about some classics." (Hugh for Alistair).
A Fourth of July Lesson in the Value of Editors – Writing For Digital. "Do you want to increase engagement on your website? Then hire a good editor. IBM did a month-long A/B studies of user engagement on high-traffic marketing web pages: one set edited, another unedited. ‘We got a 30 percent improvement on the desired call to action for the [edited] pages across the board.’" (Hugh for Mitch).
"Heroes" Creator Tim Kring on His New TV Series, Transmedia, Future of Television – Fast Company. "Transmedia and Digital Storytelling is a brewing topic in the Digital Marketing and creative space. If we are going to look at how to best be monitoring websites, we’re also going to have to start paying attention to how these fragmented stories all come together, what the analytics will look like, and how we’re really going to measure any semblance of engagement across the platforms. This article weaves the kernel of a story idea into many different media corridors." (Mitch for Alistair).
Design – Fearless QA. "Alex Bogusky is widely regarded as the Jesus Christ of the modern advertising industry. Just recently, he decided to leave the industry and take on new projects. One of those projects is this very interesting video Podcast called, Fearless QA. In this episode, Alex sits down to interview his father, Bill Bogusky, who is also a designer. This conversation is filled with insight on creativity, the craft of getting an idea right, passion and everything else we all stand for. This could well be one of the most fascinating online videos I have seen in years, and is the quintessential definition of the word ‘love’." (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.