Here are today's must-reads:
1. Spotify and the Problem of Endless Musical Choice:
We seem to have created an environment in which wonderful music, newly discovered, is difficult to treasure. For treasures, as the fugitive salesman in the flea market was implying, are hard to come by—you have to work to find them. And the function of fugitive salesmen is to slow the endless deluge, drawing our attention to one album at a time, creating demand not for what we need to survive but for what we yearn for. Because how else can you form a relationship with a record when you’re cursed with the knowledge that, just an easy click away, there might be something better, something crucial and cataclysmic? The tyranny of selection is the opposite of freedom. And the more you click, the more you enhance the disposability of your endeavor.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, over the last half decade, very few new albums have stuck with me—I just don’t spend the time with them anymore. Sure, I’ve enjoyed lots of stuff, but I lose interest after a couple listens, bowing to my waning attention span, my anxiety that there’s too much to listen to, and not enough time to take it all in. It’s like going to a large foreign country for a week, and, instead of getting the feel for one glorious city, trying to hit all the sites so you can prove you saw them. And this is, I think, one downer of the digital revolution: the Internet frees up cultural treasures while simultaneously eroding the mechanisms that endow them with value. But hey man, “Whatever you prefer.”
2. How the world's first webcam made a coffee pot famous:
Computer technology now moves so fast it's hard to remember life before the internet. But just 19 years ago at the beginning of the nineties, the fledgling world wide web had no search engines, no social networking sites, and no webcam.
The scientists credited with inventing the first webcam - thereby launching the revolution that would bring us video chats and live webcasts - stumbled upon the idea in pursuit of something far more old-fashioned: hot coffee.
3. The Banner Has Been Unchanged for 18 Years. That’s the Issue.:
Even today, in 2012, there is a debate about pricing in mobile banners that misses the point - why are we still running banners? And why are we trying to shoehorn an 18 year old ad product onto a platform that didn’t exist 5 years ago?
The publisher problem is not digital advertising; it’s the specific product.
And so when we hear that many publishers are struggling to grow and thrive with digital advertising, it occurs to me that that statement in and off itself is an overstatement. The statement should actually be: many publishers are struggling to grow and thrive with banners as their ad product.
It would seem that before resorting to paywalls, ipad editions, and ecommerce, publishers should look first to innovate in what has been an incredible source of sustaining and high margin revenue for hundreds of years: advertising.
These are some of the other things I've been tweeting about over the past few days:
- "The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)" http://pjblack.me/S6ibji /via @mattyjcompton
- "Will George P. Bush Be the Next Republican Star?" http://pjblack.me/V03SLS
- a profile of justice keane: "Keane in off the long run for states' rights" http://pjblack.me/Yi7D5t #auspol #lwb242
- a debate over a "civility clause" in a psychology course syllabus: "Brute students brought to heel" http://pjblack.me/V1j4Io #higered
- one of our nobel laureates says australia's research grant system is more cumbersome than those overseas http://pjblack.me/V1iVVy #highered
- "Academic 'golden age' a lazy privileged men's club" http://pjblack.me/Yi0UII #highered
- a consortium of 10 top-tier american universities will soon offer fully online, credit-bearing courses http://pjblack.me/Yi0LVS #highered
- twitter executives arrive in australia this week: "Twitter flies in to meet leaders" http://pjblack.me/V1ggLy
- "How Do Porcupines Mate? Very Carefully: Their stark, night-piercing shrieks aren’t just about the quills" http://pjblack.me/V01GUx
- "The Man Who Invented Scrobbling and Changed the World" http://pjblack.me/UZU1pf
- "MTV's Catfish: The Digital Pen-Pal Syndrome" http://pjblack.me/UZTTWG
- "Spotify and the Problem of Endless Musical Choice" http://pjblack.me/YfnYrA
- "Are algorithms auto-completing us into censorship?" http://pjblack.me/UZJCKi
- "From Coffee to Condoms, Now There's a Subscription Service for Everyone" http://pjblack.me/UZJcDH
- "Petraeus/Broadwell: It's the technology, stupid" http://pjblack.me/Yf5reZ
- an unlikely friendship forms after a man's only grandson murders another man's only son: "The Heart of Darkness" http://pjblack.me/UZABAX
- a history of the grateful dead, as told through its concert recordings: "The Vast Recorded Legacy of the Grateful Dead" http://pjblack.me/UZA022
- how the rapidly consolidating beer industry could change the way america drinks: "Last Call" http://pjblack.me/YeO1PO
- i like this idea: "Concept: how Jony Ive should redesign iOS alerts" http://pjblack.me/UZWyje
- "Anonymous and MTV: trying to protect kids online" http://pjblack.me/UZJ4Ei
- "Against the odds - A band of rebels fights to save health care" http://pjblack.me/YePMMS
- a star linebacker in college, struggles for a shot at the pros: "The Hard Life of an N.F.L. Long Shot" http://pjblack.me/YeNduf
- from the @nytimes: "Cellphones Reshape Prostitution in India, and Complicate Efforts to Prevent AIDS" http://pjblack.me/UZwULz
- "For me, Instagram isn’t the new Twitter. It’s a more functional Path" http://pjblack.me/YeBR9x
- what is the world coming to?: "Gangnam Style Is YouTube's Most Popular Video With 804 Million Views" http://pjblack.me/YeBM5P
- "Despite Hype, Obama’s Email List Won’t Be a Second-Term Game-Changer" http://pjblack.me/Yd3C28
- "Call a truce, before centuries of free speech are brought to an end" http://pjblack.me/UYIuGE
- "The Banner Has Been Unchanged for 18 Years. That’s the Issue." http://pjblack.me/Yd3v6Z
- "Did the Lomo camera save film photography?" http://pjblack.me/UXSoIP
- "Galaxy Poll shows Newman Government scandals hurting LNP popularity, but Campbell Newman avoids the fallout" http://pjblack.me/Yd0mUt #qldpol
- "Knives are out for Gillard" writes peter hartcher http://pjblack.me/Yd0djS #auspol
- "#Susanalbumparty: Top five Twitter hashtag PR disasters" http://pjblack.me/YbK12k
- i love this story: "How the world's first webcam made a coffee pot famous" http://pjblack.me/YbJMVg
- from @TorrentFreak: "Police Raid 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl, Confiscate Winnie The Pooh Laptop" http://pjblack.me/UXRLyR #lwb486
- "Empathy Deficiency — On Doctoring" http://pjblack.me/UXOnE3
- but can it compete with spotify?: "http://pjblack.me/Y8Bygq: A Totally (Ad) Free Music Streaming Service" http://pjblack.me/Y8BvRY
- an interesting idea: "New website helps viewers see how news is skewed" http://pjblack.me/Y8BrBF
- "The copyright study that Hollywood doesn't want you to see" http://pjblack.me/UWfhfD #lwb486 #lws008
- australia is ranked 114 out of 151 countries: "Map: Where the Emotionally Challenged Live" http://pjblack.me/TftiZo
- what would you pick as the word of year?: "Inside the Search for 2012's Word of the Year" http://pjblack.me/UKpcV9
- "Twitter Suspends Beloved Account @NYTOnIt After Trademark Violation Claims From The New York Times" http://pjblack.me/Y8Fvlf
- "The Angriest People In Online Dating" http://pjblack.me/XHIvpX
Follow me on Twitter @peterjblack.
And you can get my latest links anytime on my Rebelmouse social media front page.
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