This is actually the craziest chart about Apple following their insane earnings today.
There is exactly one company on that entire list that is not an oil and gas company. And they’re not that far from the top.
(via dpstyles)
Temporal art found on Crosby and Spring in NYC
A well-organized, well-funded, well-connected, well-experienced lobbying effort on Capitol Hill was outflanked by an ad-hoc group of rank amateurs, most of whom were operating independent of one another and on their spare time. Regardless where you stand on the issue — and effective copyright protection is an important issue — this is very good news for the future of civic engagement.
Beautiful cross section illustrations by Stephen Biesty
BRYCE DOT VC: Conditioning Company Culture
Last week, Renee and I dropped by Facebook to grab lunch with a friend of hers who has been at the company for a little less than a year. After the obligatory tour and oohs and ahhs over the new campus, we settle into lunch at the cafeteria. As we talked of his transition into a new company…
I love the idea of honing circuits.
The new “getting started” with gadgets
Getting started with gadgets has changed. It used to be that each electronic gizmo, phone, or device required a quick registration and understanding of their proprietary system.
Now however, you are greeted with ever familiar OAuth prompts for services you probably already have an account with. This happens with more than just web services. Unboxing a new TV you are asked to install widgets for Facebook and Twitter. Setting up a digital picture frame you are asked to OAuth with Flickr. Certain sites and web services can even benefit from handshaking with foursquare too.
This is somewhat of a realization of BizDev 2.0, showing that the openness of these APIs is making life easier for first time customers.
Even in the latest iPhone, there is a deep iOS 5 Twitter integration, that makes for sharing to that service very easy. Creating a prompt from photos and more gives you easy access to an already established social network that you want to share to anyway. Some may think this means that the kings are decided in this arena, but I think that is hardly the case. Folks like Twitter may have a stronger foothold, but there will always be room for people to break out beyond the constraints of the social networks of today.
Back to my original thought, getting started with gadgets, you now have a much higher chance of an interconnected device. The so called “internet of things” is coming, highlighted most recently by Twine raising over 500K on Kickstarter.
This shows a world of interconnected devices, that starts with the initial OAuth handshake.
Do you think you will be able to have a device in the future that doesn’t require a sign in?
moar personal tracking! iDoneThis.com
With the new year comes a flurry of new years resolutions from everyone - myself included. I am giving iDoneThis a try at the recommendation of two friends. Its a simple a lightweight way to track what happened each day, and build momentum for the next entry.
Their system emails you when you want (mine come at 11pm) and you simply reply back with whatever you want for that day. I am using this as a personal “snippets” of sorts to see if I get value. I am trying to stay on top of it, and I am proud to say I have so far been great at it (yup, almost all 10 days of the new year). Anything that integrates into an already existing behavior is much easier than many of the personal tracking/diary type apps I looked into. iDoneThis uses email, which I live in daily.
Outside of work recaps or snippets of the week there is a lot going on and it was recommended to me that getting everything written down/journaled would be a decent attempt at tracking everything. We will see how it goes.
I am already using foursquare for where I go, and this should be a nice example to fill in the blanks on what goes on.
What are some other great personal tracking / quantified self tools are out there?
hello Homeland and the #screwcable problem
I have been thinking about cable tv and the future of video for what seems like forever. Much has been written here about tv in general, boxee, and the future of television (remember Joost?).
Tonight I finished watching Homeland from Showtime - and tweeted about it (really great show by the way!)
To my surprise it set off a flurry of responses from friends and colleagues who were at various stages of being either interested in starting to watch it, in the middle of it, or interested in more. Â This presents a “hello Homeland” situation for many of my friends who want to see the show from this tweet, heard about it elsewhere, or maybe just have an interest and want to sample it. Â But right now they can’t do that.
Some friends even started watching it right away based on or tipped into watching it from my recommendation.
This is the part I find extremely fascinating (and no, I am not looking for a pat on the back). Â Everyone is looking to cut their cable, and stop paying large cable co’s for service, or switch to an a la carte model. Â The problem is that this does not mesh well with the behavior that we currently follow. Â Its extremely hard to change peoples behavior, and although the complaints are real, the bills are high - the benefit of cable to solve this need/desire to consume things as they are broadcast is a real benefit.
This all got me thinking about Fred Wilson’s #screwcable post in which he says:
I’ve long believed that piracy is largely a business model problem not a human behavior problem. If you give people a legal way to consume the content they want, they will pay for it.
So what business model supports the current behavior? Affiliate links and capturing attention.
Currently there are different models that could support this type of behavior. Â The simplest is affiliate links. Â More difficult is capturing attention. Â If I could have linked out to two (or one if they were smart) types of content, I bet I could have generated direct sales, or possibly even subscription sales for Showtime via Homeland. Â Afterwards, there is interest and intent around the show - just waiting to happen online.
Affiliate links
The first, and simplest method would be to allow someone to deeplink to content that only subscribers have access to. Â Meaning a Showtime subscriber could link to an extended viewing of Homeland to their social network, attributing the longer viewing and following episode sale or subscription sale to their account.
The second, would be driving views to content (read: ratings) via my recommendation. Â This attention could be monetized by ads, and because it comes from a trusted source (me) my friends and colleagues may sit through advertising supported video for their first viewing of the show. Â Subsequent purchases and subscriptions would also be attributed to the original seeder (again me).
Capturing attention
This method has been tried for years by many startups. Â I have personally seen many companies that have promised solutions, but never delivered. Â A real time chat room or re-played chatroom next to video content isn’t what anyone is really looking for. Â They want to share their thoughts about something when its over with their friends in real time. Â This is today solved by Twitter and Facebook - usually in a hard to follow thread of comments.
The real time (somewhat solved by Twitter today) and post watch need for a watercooler is very prevalent.  Some friends even wanted to chat about it as soon as they were done watching.  Why can’t Showtime (or someone else for that matter) give us a place to have this conversation.  I am much less excited about this opportunity, but if it offsets the cost of all-you-can-eat cable and gets us to the a-la-carte model faster than so be it.
The problem with an immediate consumption based behavior means that only true a-la-carte cable pricing would suffice. Â This would mean an ever growing firehose of video on demand, available at a clicks notice. Â Since this is not going to happen anytime soon, this affiliate model would work quite well.
Based on the reactions of some of my various friends, its clear this would have resulted in views of Homeland from a single tweet, which in an affiliate model would have ultimately been good for the show, good for me, and great for Showtime.
best description of a planet i’ve ever read.Jupiter is the motherfucking badass of the entire goddamn solar system. Think it’s just some giant, useless gas planet with a dopey red spot? Fuck that noise. Jupiter is the reason you’re alive right now. Show some respect.
Turns out, there’s a hell of a lot more space debris out there that should be hitting us: asteroids that would wipe out life on Earth if given half a chance. The reason they’re not vaporizing us is because Jupiter. Without it, the rate of impacts on Earth would be something like 1000 times higher than it is now. It’s so large, with such a massive gravitational field, that as it sweeps through its orbit it guards us like a protective big brother. It sends most space rocks that even look at the inner solar system funny flying out into the void of space. Jupiter has our fucking back.
Recently, within our lifetimes, an asteroid started to enter the inner solar system that was big enough to repave the surface of the Earth in fire and death if it had hit us. Jupiter caught it, tore it to pieces, and then ate the pieces.
Jupiter X Earth: BroTP.
luv u jupiter
(via dpstyles)
