Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #88

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, PressBooks, 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:

• Objects Come to Life With Photographer’s “Bent” Sense of Humor – Wired. "Nothing grim or pithy here; just some great pictures. Digital photography is really helping us be creative at scale." (Alistair for Hugh).
• iPass away – do my digital downloads die with me? – Which Conversation. "Streaming content and click-to-buy music is awfully convenient. But there’s a wrinkle we should probably think about: because we’re buying a license, not a tangible good, we can’t pass it on to others. You can’t inherit a content license (in fact, it’s explicitly written that way)." (Alistair for Mitch).
• Research, no motion: How the BlackBerry CEOs lost an empire – The Verge. "I picked this story in part for the brilliant title. I’m also interested by the format – a long-form web article structured with a table of contents. But the content is great too: an exhaustive look at the rise and fall of a once-dominant tech giant." (Hugh for Alistair).
• Meet the Yahoo Boys: Nigeria’s email scammers exposed – NewScientist. "Nigeria generates a large percentage of those email scams – you know: ‘My Dearest, I am the daughter of the Vice President of the International Bank of Commerce, who has been wrongfully imprisoned, resulting in $18 million in a bank account for which I need the help of a foreign national to access it.’  Here is a look at the lives of the people behind those scam/spam emails out of Nigeria. (A sidenote: my father used to get *letters* from Nigeria offering vast sums of money for some financial help now… exactly the same as our current crop of email scams)." (Hugh for Mitch). 
• Lessons I Learned Reading Over 200 Books – In Over Your Head. "While Julien Smith is a close friend (and co-host on Media Hacks), he puts so much effort into his Blog posts in the past short while that he deserves the attention (I’ll do my best to put nepotism aside here). In this post (and trust me, I’m honored that my book, Six Pixels of Separation, made the list) he looks at a personal self-development program that he has been working on for the past five years straight. He reads a book every week. Yes, 52 books a year. In this retrospective Blog post, he looks back on what he took away from each and every one of them. Not only is this list exhausting, it makes me realize that as much as I read, there is still so much more to learn. While that may scare some people or intimidate them to not even try, it actually fuels my thirst for self-education. With this link, I hope it inspires you to grab a book (or 50) from Julien’s list that you may have not read. Beyond that, what does it say about us when we can’t even get through a Blog post this long, but Julien spent the time to actually read each and every book. It is a (somewhat) sad indictment on our 140-character society." (Mitch for Alistair).
• Who the Hell Is Bob Lefsetz? – Wired. "I spent over a decade in the music industry and I wish that when I was there, there was someone like Bob Lefsetz around. He’s become an icon by simply raging against the music industry and pushing new thinking out there. He’s not an industry insider. He is not a music label executive. He’s not even a musician. He’s a fan. That’s it. A fan with an opinion. His frequently issued Lefsetz Letter is passed around like a 16-year old body surfing at an All Time Low concert. This feature looks at who he is and what, exactly, gives him the right to have an opinion that is admired by everyone in the music industry? It’s an opinion that tends to piss off everyone from Gene Simmons to Kid Rock. I love this guy and I’m open to adopting him… even though I think he may be old enough to be my dad." (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.