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07
Feb 10

Daily Links for February 6th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Gargoyles – Glorious Gruesome Grotesques | Quazen – Gargoyles – they are strange, bizarre, unpleasant or just plain ugly. They have been hovering around our towns and cities for centuries, for so long that it can be forgotten that they have meaning and purpose. Take a tour of the weird world of the gargoyle.
  • No We Can’t : Rolling Stone – The decision to shunt Organizing for America into the DNC had far-reaching consequences for the president's first year in office. For starters, it destroyed his hard-earned image as a new kind of politician, undercutting the post-partisan aura that Obama enjoyed after the election. "There were a lot of independents, and maybe even some Republicans, on his list of 13 million people," says Joe Trippi, who launched the digital age of politics as the campaign manager for Howard Dean in 2004. "They suddenly had to ask themselves, 'Do I really want to help build the Democratic Party?'"
  • Toyota’s Brake-Safety Crisis: Made in Japan – WSJ.com – It is not surprising that Toyota's response has been dilatory and inept, because crisis management in Japan is grossly undeveloped. Over the past two decades, I cannot think of one instance where a Japanese company has done a good job managing a crisis. The pattern is all too familiar, typically involving slow initial response, minimizing the problem, foot dragging on the product recall, poor communication with the public about the problem and too little compassion and concern for consumers adversely affected by the product. Whether it's exploding televisions, fire-prone appliances, tainted milk or false labeling, in case after case companies have shortchanged their customers by shirking responsibility until the accumulated evidence forces belated disclosure and recognition of culpability. The costs of such negligence are low in Japan where compensation for product liability claims is mostly derisory or non-existent.
  • Blame Toyota’s Disaster On Japanese Corporate Culture – Jeff Kingston of Temple University in Japan thinks the entire Toyota disaster has its roots in Japan's deferential corporate culture. Essentially, design problems weren't sufficiently challenged and critical information wasn't relayed properly to management due to Toyota's traditional Japanese corporate culture.
  • ‘I’m Not Saying Your Mother’s a Whore’: How Fox News Censored Jon Stewart vs. Bill O’Reilly – Jon Stewart – Gawker – If by "fair cut" O'Reilly means "cut in a manner that left some of Stewart's best lines, most effective arguments, and most convincing evidence out of the interview and hidden from the broadcast audience," then he's absolutely right.
  • The Future of Web Content – HTML5, Flash & Mobile Apps – Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of Brightcove. Prior to Brightcove, Jeremy founded Allaire Corporation which was subsequently acquired by Macromedia due to the success of their web development tool ColdFusion. At Macromedia, Jeremy helped create the Macromedia MX (Flash) platform. You can see a recent interview of Jeremy here. As one of the guys who helped build the Flash Platform, we asked him to weigh in on the recent HTML5 v. Flash debate.

    The recent introduction of the new Apple iPad has stirred the discussion over the future of web content and application runtime formats, and shone light onto the political and business battles emerging between Apple, Adobe and Google. These discussion are often highly polarized and irrational. My hope in this post is to help provide some balance and clarity onto this discussion.

  • Innovators Use Bing – The findings indicate that the search engine consumers use to find a brand's website may influence not only the perception they have of that brand but, more important for marketers, the decisions they make while on those sites. The study found different degrees of consumer engagement, from visiting to purchasing, based on the search engine used and the brands and vertical categories studied — automotive, travel, retail and wireless.
  • No-Flash iPad vs Netbook – May be Apple is too lazy to make iPad capable.

    • Continue reading →

Daily Links — Comments Off
11
Jan 10

Daily Links for January 8th through January 11th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Anderson Analytics — Social Networking Service User Typing Tool – The segmentation model above is based on several variables from our recent research study. However, we have selected just a couple of the variables from the model above which do a fairly good job at predicting someone's membership in one of the segments. If you would like to try the simpler typing model to see which of the segments you are closest to you may do so here.
  • Social Media Today | The Business of Social Media: B2B and B2C Engagement by the Numbers – Business.com recently conducted a study that evaluated Social Media activities of those in B2B and B2C. In its report, “2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study,” Business.com found that North American companies focused on B2B were much more rigorous in the world of social media than those in B2C. As you’ll see, B2B leads the fray across the entire regiment of campaigns and programs.
  • sleeping alone and starting out early: smacking down Jaron Lanier & ‘World Wide Mush’ – Normally, I wouldn't take on such a revered, well credentialed authority as Jaron Lanier,* but his recent Wall Street Journal piece on why the movement toward collectivism, collaboration, and openness is doomed to failure leaves him cruising for a bruising.
  • A Peek Into Netflix Queues – NYTimes.com – Examine Netflix rental patterns, neighborhood by neighborhood, in a dozen cities. Some titles with distinct patterns are Mad Men, Obsessed and Last Chance Harvey.
  • The Decade in Management Ideas – Our Editors – Harvard Business Review – Tis the season for "year's best" lists — and even, this year, for "decade's best" lists — and who are we to resist the urge? A few of us HBR editors (Gardiner Morse and Steve Prokesch helped especially) took the opportunity to look back on the past ten years of management thinking and are ready to declare our choices for the — well, why not say it — most influential management ideas of the millennium (so far).
Daily Links — Comments Off
08
Jan 10

Daily Links for January 3rd through January 8th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Then vs. now: How prices have changed since 1999 – During the subsequent decade, the stock market made us rich as kings, then poor as church mice. We've taken a look back to see how the years have affected the price of 50 things we buy, or wish we could buy. Thanks to inflation, it takes around $1.30 to buy what $1 bought in 1999.
  • UNHsocialmedia.pdf (application/pdf Object) – The study found no correlation between heavy social media usage and grades. There was no
    significant difference in grades between those considered to be heavy users of social media and
    those considered to be light users. For example, 63 percent of heavy users received high
    grades, compared to 65 percent of light users. Researchers found similar results with lower
    grades. While 37 percent of heavy users of social media received what were defined as lower
    grades, 35 percent of light users received fell into that same category. There also was no
    correlation between grades and the social media platform used. For example, almost the same
    number of heavy and light users of both Facebook and YouTube received the same category of
    high and low grades.
  • How Social Media Has Changed Us – Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen social media galvanize thousands over politics, create as many industries as it has destroyed, and offer an abundance of visual and audio entertainment. But has all this incredible change actually changed us, or just the world we live in?
  • 100 Years of Consumer Spending | Visual Economics – A look at the changes in consumer spending habits over the last century.
  • The Big Picture » Blog Archive » Guide to 2010 Outlooks – THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO 2010 INVESTMENT PREDICTIONS AND OUTLOOKS[.] We’ve compiled many of the very best outlooks from various analysts, gurus, hedge funds and investors. We hope you find the list helpful in mapping your successful 2010[.]
  • The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs –
  • Social Media Glossary | The Social Media Guide –
Daily Links — Comments Off
07
Oct 09

Daily Links for October 4th through October 7th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

Daily Links — Comments Off
19
Sep 09

Daily Links for September 18th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Daily Number: A Scarcity of Car Lovers – Pew Research Center – Americans' romance with the automobile seems to be cooling off a bit. A Pew Research survey conducted in 2006 found that just 23% say they consider their car "something special — more than just a way to get around," barely half of the 43% who felt this way in 1991.
  • Social Networks Pressuring Traditional Email, IM Channels – People are spending less time on communication sites that are focused around email and instant messaging, according to an analysis released today by the Online Publishers Association, a trade organization, a decline it attributes to the rising popularity of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Indeed, posting photos and videos to social networks is an easy way to engage people in your social graph and show them what’s going on in your life, and many feature their own built-in email and IM capabilities. And Facebook’s internal user engagement numbers back up the OPA’s findings; it claims some 1 billion chat messages are sent each day and 2 billion photos are uploaded to the site each month.
  • 14 Best Times to Make Major Purchases – When it comes to major purchases – like cars, computers, airline tickets – simply buying them “whenever” rarely get you the best deal. The top bargain hunters strategically delay these purchases until off season sales or manufacturer discounts kick in. Applied consistently across all of one’s major spending, this technique delivers savings that many shoppers are completely oblivious to. Furthermore, knowing with certainty when these items can be bought for less takes the annoying guesswork out of endlessly hunting for sales. Here are 14 examples of big purchases and their ideal buying times to get you started saving cash.
  • Flip And Pop My Collar Like The Fonz – Ta-Nehisi Coates – But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study–and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness–and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date–and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West–the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.
  • What to do when all else has failed to change your kid’s behavior. – By Alan E. Kazdin and Carlo Rotella – Slate Magazine – You know your child is physically capable of doing what you're asking because he has done it on occasion, but he will not do it with any regularity. In fact, he actively opposes you. Your intense—OK, desperate—interest only seems to inspire more opposition. The more you need your child to do what you want, the less likely it is to happen. You're stuck and frustrated, and you don't know what to do.
  • Mint Map: America’s Most Frugal Cities | MintLife Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice – An infographic displaying the most frugal American cities based on discretionary spending, and shows which cities spend the most in given categories. Philadelphian Mint-users apparently spend the most on electronics gadgets.
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