Four short links: 30 June 2011

1. Networks Blocking Google TV — the networks are carrying over their old distribution models: someone aggregates eyeballs and pays them for access. In their world view, Google TV is just another cable company. They’re doubling down on this wholesale model, pulling out of Hulu and generally avoiding dealing with the people who ultimately watch their shows except through ad-filled shows on their corporate sites. (via Gina Trapani)
2. The Web Is Shrinking (All Things D) — graph that makes Facebook look massively important and the rest of the web look insignificant. It doesn’t take into account the nature of the interaction (shopping? research? chat?), and depends heavily on the comScore visits metric being a reliable proxy for “use”. I’d expect to see other neutral measures of “use” decreasing (e.g., searches for “school holidays”) if overall web use were decreasing, yet they don’t seem to be. Nonetheless, Facebook has become the new millennium’s AOL: keywords, grandparents, and a zealous devotion to advertising. At least Facebook doesn’t send me #&#^%*ing CDs.
3. How to Fit an Elephant (John D. Cook) — for the stats geeks out there. Someone took von Neumann’s famous line “with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk”, and found the four complex parameters that do, indeed, fit an elephant.
4. Sketching in Food (Chris Heathcote) — a set of taste tests to demonstrate that we’ve been food hacking for a very long time. We started with two chemical coated strips – sodium benzoate, a preservative used in lots of food that a significant percentage of people can taste (interestingly in different ways, sweet, sour and bitter). Secondly was a chemical known as PTC that about 70% of people perceive as bitter, and a smaller number perceiving as really really horribly bitter. This was to show that taste is genetic, and different people perceive the same food differently. He includes pointers to sources for the materials in the taste test.

Four short links: 14 June 2011*

1. The Key To Community and Change Management: Engage your Ecosystem – I seem to only want to blog about emails at the moment, which I guess is OK. One of the mails I have in my hopper comes from the SAP Community Network (SCN). It’s an invitiation from Chip Rodgers, SCN vp and COO, to a call about a forthcoming platform migration for SCN.
2. Facebook’s Growth Slows – Facebook‘s growth has become a thing of legend, but a recent report suggests it may have lost ground in parts of North America.
3. RIM’s mobility management intentions – Research In Motion said recently that it will extend some of the secure mobile device management (MDM) capabilities of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) to other mobile platforms later this year, starting with Apple iOS and Google Android.
4. No end to innovation – The recent Interop show in Las Vegas was awash with big ideas and the latest and greatest technologies, a healthy sign that IT is alive and well and the industry is brimming with innovation.

*Original format by O’Reilly Radar

Four short links: 12 June 2011*

1. Harvard Business School Changes Its Class Profile – Harvard Business School’s incoming class will have a substantially smaller percentage of finance professionals than in previous years. Instead, a higher number of students will have manufacturing and technology backgrounds.
2. TEDTalks : Janet Echelman: Taking imagination seriously (2011) – Janet Echelman found her true voice as an artist when her paints went missing — which forced her to look to an unorthodox new art material. Now she makes billowing, flowing, building-sized sculpture with a surprisingly geeky edge. A transporting 10 minutes of pure creativity.
3. Acting With Incomplete Information in a Startup – As a fledgling entrepreneur in the midst of a growing startup, I try to read quite a lot around the subject. I’ve been deeply involved in startup culture for around two years now and I often find myself reflecting on my learning and relating it back to articles I have previously read.
4. The Dawn of Politics: Francis Fukuyama goes back to the beginning – It’s possible that Francis Fukuyama does not take unmixed pleasure in his fame as the author of The End of History and the Last Man.

*Original format by O’Reilly Radar

Four short links: 7 June 2011*

1. Worried About Cars Killing People? Eric Ulrich Says “Get a Life” – On June 2, New York City Council Member Eric Ulrich, the same guy who had the bright idea to introduce a new licensing system for bicyclists, tweeted his own “random observ” about bike lanes.
2. The SEO Business Guide – The SEO Business Guide will take you on a journey from knowing little or nothing about SEO to understanding and implementing essential strategies and techniques, keeping you ahead of your competition.
3. Has iTunes Been Hacked? – “Betanews has a series of articles talking about an apparent hack in iTunes that has resulted in fraudulent charges for some users involving Sega’sKingdom Conquest game.
4. Airbus May Build Souped-Up A350 as Boeing Reviews Rival 777 – Airbus SAS may boost the performance of its planned A350 jet with enhancements including more thrust, seeking to outflank any revamped version of the Boeing Co. 777.

*Original format by O’Reilly Radar

Four short links: 3 June 2011*

1. Google to abandon older browsers – People who use older versions of web browsers could see services start to malfunction as Google and others drop support for them.
2. Hackers attack another Sony network – Sony has been hit by a second massive data breach, hackers claim, another potential embarrassment for a company that is struggling to restore its image following the loss of millions of credit card numbers through its PlayStation Network.
3. What do you consider is your work? – In the most recent Productive Living, David Allen asks why so many knowlege workers don’t consider processing their inbox to be part of their work. It’s as if they consider processing their inbox to zero to be a luxury reserved for those who don’t get much input or don’t have anything better to do.
4. 10 ‘What were they thinking?’ managerial moments – Even the best managers sometimes have a bad day — or a bad moment. Alan Norton shares some of the confounding, over-the-top managerial behavior he’s seen through the years.

*Original format by O’Reilly Radar

Four short links: 1 June 2011*

1. Google 2015: what will it look like? – I worked at post-DOJ-spanked Microsoft. I saw firsthand how wimpy Bill Gates got (I had a lunch with him and Mike Arrington where we talked about whether Microsoft would let us acquire interesting new companies. “No way” was the basic answer. Funny that back then they could have purchased Skype for $2 billion, not listening cost them $6.5 billion).
2. Scrubbing Calculator — clever UI for solving equations without needing to know how to solve equations. Imminent death of mathematics skill in the US predicted, film at 11. (via Dan Meyer)
3. Ensuring your information is safe online – The Internet has been an amazing force for good in the world—opening up communications, boosting economic growth and promoting free expression. But like all technologies, it can also be used for bad things. Today, despite the efforts of Internet companies and the security community, identity theft, fraud and the hijacking of people’s email accounts are common problems online.
4. The Three Essential Ingredients of Great Collaborations – Not long ago, people in Chrysler’s headquarters joked that four strangers in an elevator qualify as a “team.” So it goes with collaboration these days. No one works any longer, they collaborate. Collaboration leads to (of course!) innovation, engagement, creativity, and fulfillment. Good managers don’t direct, they “facilitate collaboration.” It makes the world go ’round.

*Original format by O’Reilly Radar