Weekly blog posts (weekly)

• My Selfie, Myself – [NYTimes.com] | Things I grab, motley collection

  RECENTLY, I came across a great find in a Vermont antiques store: an old black-and-white photograph of a female pilot on a mountaintop, her aviator glasses pushed up on her forehead, revealing a satisfied, wind-burned face, the wings of her plan…

• States Want Kids To Learn A Lot — Maybe Too Much [npr.org] | Things I grab, motley collection

  Jean Leising admits she’s no expert on brain development, but she still hopes to do something about the way kids learn. Leising serves in the Indiana state Senate. Last month, she convinced her Senate colleagues to pass a bill that would restor…

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Weekly blog posts (weekly)

• The English empire [economist.com] | Things I grab, motley collection

  YANG YUANQING, Lenovo’s boss, hardly spoke a word of English until he was about 40: he grew up in rural poverty and read engineering at university. But when Lenovo bought IBM’s personal-computer division in 2005 he decided to immerse himself in …

• A note to the staff of Libération in France: Yes, your paper needs to be a social and cultural hub | Things I grab, motley collection

  Originally posted on Gigaom: Earlier this week, a fight between the staff and shareholders of the legendary French newspaper Libération — which was founded by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1970s — broke out into the open when the employee…

• How France’s Open Data Team Is Modernizing The French Government Through Data | Things I grab, motley collection

  Originally posted on TechCrunch: A small team of 10 people called Etalab recently released a brand new version of Data.gouv.fr, France’s open data platform. Etalab essentially acted like a startup within the French government, utilizing its op…

• The emergence of Global Culture | Things I grab, motley collection

  Originally posted on Julian Stodd’s Learning Blog: I’m facilitating some workshops this week around Community Management in Social Learning spaces. One of the Russian delegates mentioned that in her culture it’s ok for the moderator to tell pe…

• Wearable bands are booming. Better get in shape for all that fitness tracking | Things I grab, motley collection

  plerudulier: Better get in shape ?? Isn’t it the purpose of such bands to help one get back (or stay) in shape ? Originally posted on VentureBeat: Wearable bands — both basic ones and smart ones — are seeing dramatic sales growth, according t…

• What You Learn About Tech From Watching All 456 Law & Order Episodes [theatlantic.com] | Things I grab, motley collection

  Sometime soon after Netflix’s streaming service launched, Jeff Thompson found himself watching episode after episode of Law & Order. It was so easy. An episode would end and he’d click “next.” We’ve all been there. You can watch a lot of Law & O…

• Market research can no longer predict what consumers will like | Things I grab, motley collection

  Reblogged from Quartz: In 2007, 10,000 people around the globe were asked about portable digital devices. It was part of a study conducted by the global media company Universal McCann. One of the hottest topics at the time was the first iPhone,…

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

 

Weekly blog posts (weekly)

• “Veep” for Geeks! Here’s the Teaser for HBO’s Upcoming “Silicon Valley.” | Things I grab, motley collection

  Reblogged from Re/code: On April 6, HBO will debut a new half-hour comedy show that takes on the high-tech world, titled “Silicon Valley.” It’s a rainy Friday in winter, so let’s all pick our heads up from our smartphones, take a look deep wit…

• Occupy Wall Street leader now works for Google, wants to crowdfund a private militia | Things I grab, motley collection

  Reblogged from PandoDaily: Remember Justine Tunney? The OWS-anarchist-turned-cultist-Google-employee who bashed my reporting on Google’s for-profit surveillance? Well, today she hit the big time. Over the last few days, Tunney has been causing…

• Sharing Is Caring, Unless It Costs You Your Job [NYTimes.com] | Things I grab, motley collection

  For travelers trying to economize, the ability to rent someone’s spare bedroom is a real breakthrough. Cities like New York, London and Paris are easier to visit than they have been in many years. But for those who actually work in the hotel in…

• The Two Silicon Valleys: One of Haves, One of Have-Nots [NYTimes.com] | Things I grab, motley collection

  Silicon Valley is booming. Job growth is so strong that the recession is a distant memory. Average incomes are up, and the levitation of technology stocks and a pipeline of initial public offerings promise more wealth to come. “The economy is s…

• The Disruptive Nature of the Sharing Economy: Finding the Next Great Opportunities [wfs.org] | Things I grab, motley collection

  We’ve all become stuffaholics, addicted to more, more, and don’t-stand-in-my-way because I want more! When it comes time to get rid of our stuff, we suffer from another affliction, separation anxiety. When it comes time to say goodbye to our st…

• Huge Misconceptions About Communism and Capitalism [alternet.org] | Things I grab, motley collection

  As the commentary around the recent deaths of Nelson Mandela, Amiri Baraka and Pete Seeger made abundantly clear, most of what Americans think they know about capitalism and communism is arrant nonsense. This is not surprising, given our country…

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

 

Weekly blog posts (weekly)

• Trouble on the fringes: How the cloud will commoditize the upper middle class | Things I grab, motley collection

  Reblogged from Gigaom: During the Great Recession of 2008, companies looked to slash costs in every area possible. Organizational headcount bore the brunt of this cost cutting, with over 7.9 million jobs lost, many to never return. A recent th…

• Latin America and Spain: Shoe on the other foot [economist.com] | Things I grab, motley collection

  After two decades in which Spain amassed assets worth €145 billion ($200 billion) in Latin America, last year was the first in which Latin American companies spent more on acquiring their Spanish counterparts than the other way around (see left-…

• Valley of the Blahs: How Justin Bieber’s Troubles Exposed Twitter’s Achilles’ Heel [blogs.nytimes.com] | Things I grab, motley collection

  Twitter seems to have reached a turning point, a phase in which its contributors have stopped trying to make the service as useful as possible for the crowd, and are instead trying to distinguish themselves from one another. It’s less about drif…

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.