Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #98

93Is 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:

• Valve: How I Got Here, What It’s Like, and What I’m Doing – Ramblings in Valve Time. "Michael Abrash is a brilliant architect and game developer behind some of the best games around today. He works for Valve, which has almost single-handedly disrupted the distribution channel for games by, well, not being jerks. Valve’s CEO is famous for responding to emails directly, and they generally solve for making stuff that works and paying creators well. In this post, Abrash explains how he came to work at Valve, years after it launched. Valve gives workers an unprecedented amount of latitude in what they work on — relying on peer accountability to keep everyone busy — so he wound up working on wearable computing simply because it was an interesting problem." (Alistair for Hugh).
• Don’t work. Be hated. Love someone – Half & Half. "I’ve been on vacation (sort of) for three weeks, and I’ve spent a bunch of time trying to decide what to do. So, my links this week are two posts that seem relevant to that concern. This commencement speech by Adrian Tan is reminiscent of Baz Luhrman‘s Always Wear Sunscreen, or Bud Caddell‘s How To Be Happy In Business. Tan’s list is simple: not trying to please everyone, not working on things you hate, and figuring out how to adore at least one other person. Good list." (Alistair for Mitch).
• The social cell – New Statesman. "The parallels between biological cells and obscure cultural practices, as explored by Daniel Dennett." (Hugh for Alistair).
• Cuckoo – New York Magazine. "On the pressure that culture has put on our internal clocks." (Hugh for Mitch).
• Why You Can’t Get a Taxi – The Atlantic. "A beautiful piece about a great little start-up called, Uber, that allows you to use your smartphone to hail a town car. That’s right, instead of standing on the corner and hoping that a cab will stop, accept your destination and not give you an anxiety attack during the drive as they whisk through traffic, you can use this service. While it may cost more than a cab ride, Uber solves a problem for many business people (and those who would prefer a ride with a little more class). A friend of mine, Aidan Nulman, has a similar startup (Hire Winston) that works great too. As someone who travels a lot, I can not only appreciate startups like this, but I admire the inventiveness of the idea – to serve a specific niche and solve a specific challenge. Not all great ideas have to an Instagram or Facebook sized one." (Mitch for Alistair).
• The Flight From Conversation – The New York Times. "It’s strange how much time I have spent thinking about the message of Sherry Turkle from both her TED talk this past year and her book, Alone Together. In this piece for The New York Times, Turkle provokes with gems like this: ‘At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives text during board meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates. My students tell me about an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact with someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it can be done.’ What have we become?" (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.