Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #90

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:

Three Little Pigs – The Guardian. "The digital-first newspaper pushes the envelope on many fronts, from its data journalism to its interactive reporting. This ad takes a familiar fairy tale, and pastes it atop the lurid, often controversial, and always inflammatory surface of today’s media world. Brilliant." (Alistair for Hugh).
L’Odyssée de Cartier. "I’m going to suggest two commercials this week. The first, from Cartier, shows just how far we’ve come in filmmaking. Better than most big-budget trailers, this is a fantastical journey through wild, glamorous landscapes. The best branding I’ve encountered in a long time, it speaks volumes without saying a word." (Alistair for Mitch).
Warner Bros. Embarrasses Self, Everyone, With New “Disc-to-Digital” Program – Public Knowledge. "We digital denizens complain a lot about about the slow embrace of the realities of pixels from mainstream media, but here is a case of a media company really forging ahead into the future. Warner Brothers has a new way to help you get your DVDs into digital format! Just bring your DVD to WB-approved store, who will take your disc, and charge you a small fee to convert it to a digital format … which you can load onto your digital devices. Brilliant!" (Hugh for Alistair).
How Print Design is the Future of Interaction – Mike Kruzeniski. "Title says it all, and I think this is an important innovation: as books get more webby, the web and digital is going to get more booky." (Hugh for Mitch).
I’m Being Followed: How Google–and 104 Other Companies–Are Tracking Me on the Web – The Atlantic. "I’ve been very vocal this week about online advertising and how our Internet and mobile usage is being tracked – by more sources than most people realize (you can read that here: The Do Not Track Button and here: The Paradox Of Choice And Advertising). It’s a problem… a big problem, that we have to start dealing with immediately. We’ve said for decades that there is gold in the data, but now that we’re finally mining it, it seems like the public is in an uproar. My challenge would be that an uproar is both fine and needed, but both sides need to come to the table to better understand exactly what is being tracked and why. Until that happens, we’re confusing tracking with a breach of privacy. While that may sound like a salacious statement, I would argue that consumers would prefer relevant ads instead of mindless ones and the only way to deliver that is by tracking. There’s also a world of difference between tracking usage and tracking an identifiable human being." (Mitch for Alistair).
Taking the long view – The Economist. "I’m a massive fan of both Amazon and Jeff Bezos. There are few entrepreneurs I respect as much as Bezos. So much so, that I had the chance to sit next to him at the TED conference last week and I found myself acting like a moron fanboy (it happens). This beautiful piece looks at Bezos and how he doesn’t pander to Wall Street and quarterly results, but instead focuses on the long view. Say what you will, it has worked out magnificently well for the company. They’ve come a long way from selling books online." (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.