Topics
Media & Internet
Scaling the Pitfalls of Silicon Valley
Co-founder, 37signals
The tech capital of the US is gushing with venture capital money. The problem? Many start-ups develop too strong a penchant for “free” and never actually become businesses. Jason Fried explains why not having money is the best way to create profit.
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The Importance of Loose Connections
James Surowiecki gives tips on how to use the Internet to stay competitive without a job. Watch
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The invention behind the popular video game began with guinea pigs Yo-Yo Ma and Penn and Teller. Watch
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How The Onion keeps its front page funny. Watch
Related Blogs
Novel Copy
February 7, 2010 — 5:48 PM
A Diet of Facebook and Twitter
That’s what five French journalists have been living on for the last five days as they were holed up in a farm house in the south of France. The journalists were taking part in an exercise in conjunction with Radio Canada to see how informed people could be—or perhaps how informed many people are—if they were to only read posts on Facebook and Twitter. The results demonstrated the good and the bad of both social media platforms. Read more
Mind Matters
February 7, 2010 — 9:51 AM
A couple of hours after my last post about the battle over ebooks pricing, word emerged that Amazon and Macmillan had ended their feud. The day before, another giant publisher, the Hachette Book Group, joined Macmillan in switching to the "agency model" for ebooks. The New York Times says Harper Collins is planning the same move. Details of the Macmillan-Amazon peace treaty aren't public, but it certainly does appear that publishers have broken Amazon's control over ebook prices. Read more
Latest Ideas
Google News: Rise of the Aggregator
Since its beta launch in 2002, the Google News aggregator has become one of its company's most successful innovations. In the process, and perhaps inadvertently, it started making headlines of its own. Most famously, NewsCorp's Rupert Murdoch complained that Google is just plain stealing his content and threatened last November to make it invisible to their search crawlers. Others, too, have accused Google of violating its motto, "Don't be evil" (and not just in the news domain, either). In his Big Think interview this week, Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager for Google News, responds. Read More
February 6, 2010
From the carefully developed Google Wave to improvised adjustments to the Twitter phenomenon, Josh Cohen reveals what’s next for the search giant. Read More
February 6, 2010
Google vs. Murdoch: Who’s “Being Evil”?
Or is neither side in the wrong? A Google News exec fields the most common criticisms leveled at his company. Read More
February 6, 2010
Google Exec to Murdoch: “There Is No Silver Bullet”
Josh Cohen suggests how old media companies might successfully repackage their content, but warns that easy fixes are unlikely. Read More
February 6, 2010
Who wins or loses if publishers like Rupert Murdoch start walling off content from Google News? Read More
February 6, 2010
How Google News was born, how it’s grown up, and what it’s still learning. Read More
February 6, 2010
An inside look at the Google News search algorithm and how it differs from its more famous parent. Read More
February 6, 2010
Google’s mission is to organize all the world’s information. If new media walls go up, will they have to compete to organize as much of it as possible? Read More
February 6, 2010
Big Think Interview With Josh Cohen
A conversation with the senior business product manager of Google News. Read More
February 6, 2010
Why Two Heads are (Sometimes) Better than One
It started with an ox. New Yorker staff writer James Surowiecki tells the old story involving the British scientist, Francis Galton, who assembled a diverse group of people to guess the weight of an ox. Turned out the group's average was on target. It's a testament to the wisdom of a crowd, right? But are crowds always wiser than individuals? Surowiecki explains. Read More
February 5, 2010
Daily Ideafeed
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Booked!
Literary Justice -
Google's controversial plan to create a digital library has been dealt another blow by the Justice Department, which has criticized the plans for having "significant legal problems" despite recent rewrites.
February 5, 2010
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Climate Change
“Skulduggery” -
The beleaguered chairman of the UN’s Nobel Prize-winning climate change panel, Rajendra Pachauri, has defended the panel’s credibility, calling climate skeptics’ criticism “skulduggery”.
February 4, 2010
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Depression
Net Misery -
British psychologists have discovered that people who spend a considerable time online are less likely to be happy than those who don’t, claiming there’s “a dark side” to web surfing.
February 3, 2010
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iPad
Not Flashy! -
Audience members present at its launch have noticed something missing from Steve Jobs’ latest Apple offering – apparently the iPad touch screen notebook won’t play flash video.
February 1, 2010
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China Vs US
Cyberwarfare -
China has accused America of “hypocrisy and initiation of cyberwarfare against Iran” in response to criticism by Hillary Clinton of countries that censor the internet and engage in hacking.
January 26, 2010
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Virtual Travesty
“Orphan Accessories” -
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s adopted children have been made into “fashion accessories” in a new online game which also encourages young children to administer contraceptives.
January 26, 2010
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Game Target
Warcraft Hacked! -
World of Warcraft gamers are being encouraged to upgrade their Adobe Flash players after a glitch was discovered that could make their accounts vulnerable to hackers.
January 25, 2010
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Liberal Talk Radio
Off the Air America -
Meant to be the liberal answer to conservative talk radio, Air America will soon go off the air after having promoted its stars like Al Franken and Rachel Maddow to national political prominence.
January 23, 2010
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Digital Learning
Apple University -
Apple is reportedly in discussions with the school text book publisher McGraw-Hill to put its books on the forthcoming Apple tablet computer expected to have e-reader capabilities.
January 23, 2010
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Plugged In
Media Daze -
A new report says young people spend nearly eight hours each day on one media platform or another, up one hour from five years ago, which is more time than they go to school or even sleep.
January 23, 2010
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Haiti Aid
Tweet Rescue -
Text messages, Tweets and other web postings are assisting rescue workers in locating survivors of the Haitian earthquake still trapped under the rubble.
January 22, 2010
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Censorship?
Clinton Rebuffed -
The row over Chinese hackers illegally accessing the emails of human rights activists has escalated to global proportions with high profile officials exchanging a war of words.
January 22, 2010
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Hush Money?
Gag Order -
Former “The Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien has been given a whopping $45 million settlement to walk away “gracefully” from NBC which means keeping his mouth firmly shut.
January 22, 2010
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Microsoft
IE Patch Job -
Microsoft will patch a hole in its widely used browser Internet Explorer amid fears that the weakness in the system allowed Chinese hackers access to human rights activist’s emails.
January 21, 2010
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Bill Geek
What A Twitter -
Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates is finally living up to his computer-aficionado status and has joined Twitter – attracting 2008 followers per minute on his first day.
January 20, 2010
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China
Blocking Avatar -
China has banned showing James Cameron’s Golden Globe winning fantasy and CGI-fest Avatar and has instead opted for a patriotic biopic on the life of Confucius.
January 19, 2010
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Apollo 11
Restored Footage -
To commemorate the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moonwalk NASA has released partially restored video of a series of 15 memorable moments from the expedition.
January 19, 2010
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Joker Backfires
Twitter Terror -
A British man has been arrested under the Terrorism Act and given an airport life ban after he used Twitter to vent his anger about disrupted travel plans caused by bad weather.
January 18, 2010
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Publishing
Global Kindle -
Amazon has expanded its Kindle self publishing platform, otherwise known as the Digital Text Platform, to allow authors worldwide to push out their content.
January 18, 2010
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Digital Relief
Red Into Green -
A Red Cross fundraising campaign for Haiti raised record amounts via text messages after a campaign on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
January 17, 2010
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Internet Politics
Yahoo! Speaks -
Yahoo! is being criticized now that it has sided with Google against China after keeping quiet about former hacker attacks it had full knowledge of.
January 17, 2010
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Microsoft Explorer
Open Window -
The German government has warned web users that Internet Explorer is insecure after its role in the Google hackings in China.
January 17, 2010
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Social Media
Twitter Detractor -
Ricky Gervais closed his Twitter account six weeks after joining to promote the Golden Globes calling the service “pointless” and users “undignified”.
January 16, 2010
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Couch Happy
Wii Unfit -
“Owners of the Nintendo Wii can finally stop waving their video game controllers in the air and sink back onto the couch,” writes The New York Times.
January 13, 2010
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Face-Off
Google Vs China -
Search giant Google is threatening to pull its operation out of China after discovering a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on its infrastructure there.
January 13, 2010