Archive for the ‘Fluffy’ Category

Fluffy Links – Monday February 24th 2014

Monday, February 24th, 2014

Alan references a post I did years back, now his take years later. All things change, all things repeat. IBTS are still dicks about the gays.

Not evenly distributed. Newspaper club will not only print your newspaper on demand, they’ll be the paperboy too.

Maybe analysts could watch for takedowns to predict who is getting acquired. Handy signal from WhatsApp about their purchase by being shitty on Github.

Same thing with Testflight. Remove all support for Android and new users and oh yeah, they got acquired by Apple.

Clever prediction markets people could use this to place bets/buys on certain stocks.

On WhatsApp. Great talk on ideas that people thought were daft at the time and turned out to be highly lucrative

New user experiences, good and bad, from a variety of products

Roads do perfume, books and film. Interesting mix, would love to be a publisher if I had a tonne of money and not worried about making money from this area.

The 10 Stages of the Creative Process.

I love this website designed to sell a course on creativity.

Such an odd word. Pulchritudinous.

Best cover in a long long LONG time

Fluffy Links – Monday February 17th 2014

Monday, February 17th, 2014

Ivan has a nice site on data visualisation. Do check it out.

20 minute read. Gold in that read: Very very detailed piece on the revenue, sales numbers and dynamics of the e-book industryHugh Howey. Self publish seems to be the main takeaway.

David Hieatt on how to raise money for your idea.

I’m putting the band back together, no, I mean I’m putting together a list of Digital Marketing Trainers. Want to be on it?

Buzzfeed Style Guidelines. Handy doc, useful for writing on the web.

And in the same area, the Yelp Style Guide.

Great great detail on how the Crazy Egg website was optimised for conversions. Getting traffic to your site is one thing, getting commitments from that traffic is another.

Winged Victory for the Sullen have new music.

Make lollipops turn into superheroes with printed capes.

Fan generated Star Trek original series episodes. High production values. Above we see the self publishing revolution data, will self produced TV be on the way too and be profitable? Also what’s interesting is pirate websites are giving this content a push. If Netflix can do it…

Dear Fellow Employees of Paypal. Use our app or leave. Why aren’t Paypal staff using the Paypal app is a good question.

Whiteboards. Great for displaying your passwords to TV crews.

Fluffy Links – Monday February 10th 2013

Monday, February 10th, 2014

Make others successful. Love this very short slide deck from Ideo on their values. Print off every slide!

Writing was always that torturous, we all just think we’re so fucking special.

Interview with Choire Sicha, founder of The Awl and the author of “A Very Recent History”.

Some actual context for how big Facebook as a social network is. Compare it to Twitter and the others.

Allen curve. The more you see someone face to face, the more you’ll communicate with them via other channels like post, phone, email.

The rider for a professional public speaker.

Hidden data in everyday things. Decoding GPS coordinates from a youTube video.

The Gap by Ira Glass, done to a video.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” –W.B. Yeats

via Richard Hearne. Great piece on landing page optimisation with links to a whole lot of resources.

It was good til the very end and it went all “Twitter, Facebook wah wah wah pay”. Two teens, an ocean apart and how their History in Pics Twitter account is a juggernaut.

Julia Kent is playing Cork on March 1st. Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh is support. Yes and yes.

Fluffy Links – Monday February 3rd 2014

Monday, February 3rd, 2014

We can’t come off looking like we think technology is the answer to every question. Technology is part of the answer but people are obviously part of the answer, as well.

Steve Case (Remember him from AOL) on tech companies and responsibilities. The tech world he alludes to is also the one where people feel good that they teach homeless people to code. And insist if everyone learned to code the world would be so much better. I’m sure some kid in Asia can unstarve themselves by learning python in their slum that doesn’t have electricity. Is there an Uber for getting a clue?

Brian Eno on a strategy to being creative again.

Launching a startup is easy. The launch bit. The hard work has yet to start though.

via Glenn There’s a guy in West Cork making very professional drones and exporting them.

Mac user? Trouble sleeping? This will help. Flux.

Fake U2 single uploaded to YouTube, it’s actually some other band. Got played by Dave Fanning. If this was guerrilla marketing by that band, I’d be slightly praising it.

Dodgy “guest” blog posts are going to get a hammering by Google. If Matt Cutts blogs about it, that’s a confirmation.

Praise kids for their effort, praise them for being smart, the ones praised for effort work harder and do better.

I forgot I uploaded this, the Art of the Handshake, taken from Primary Colours. Oh Bill er John.

Be the artist, not the canvas

Fluffy Links – Monday January 27th 2014

Monday, January 27th, 2014

“We are depriving ourselves of every opportunity for disconnection.”. Get yourself some downtime and start deep thinking. Some tips.

Twinned with the above really. Some handy tips for getting better sleep. With more faces stuck in screens, a much busier work and home life, our sleep is being affected.

This from Google blew me away. The evolution of music over a long long time. Interactive. Pretty. This is how you present data. Paying attention media types?

“As someone that bought books from Malcolm Gladwell before and as someone that binge buys, we know you are going to buy this so we went ahead and shipped it already.” This almost seems like pre-cog or something. Amazon making educated guesses about what and where to ship before people buy.

Want to get rid of the location data embedded in your phone photos? Unsure do they have them? If you don’t know, then they do.

So how’s Jelly doing after week 1? My phone software is too old to run it. Boo. I won’t upgrade to ios7!

BBC trials doing video news headlines in Instagram.

Facebook is tweaking with your head! More text updates from friends = more of their friends will do updates. So they made that happen and it resulted in 9M more updates a day. Possibly helping the time on site and engagement metrics.

Somewhere. Show off your work.

Ad that doesn’t take the brand too seriously

I have no idea

Fluffy Links – Friday 24th of January 2014

Friday, January 24th, 2014

Saw a sign for this yesterday. Cork Literary and Science Society. Some great talks. First time hearing about them. Look at the talks! I know I’m getting old but what great talks!

And on the same area. Kinda. Old Photos of Cork blog. Super stuff.

Michael D speech on Ethical Memory. Wonderful stuff.

Beautiful examples of use of punctuation in classic novels. *Steals some ideas*

A list of misquotations. Many I have used had the wrong attribution it seems.

Where “Screw the Pooch” came from.

The story of the Cord Taco. Simple idea that came from a request from someone else. From zero to selling in the Apple Store in a year. From the writing though you can tell this guy has his strategy and managed this very well. The product is great, the execution is where the greatness is.

New book from Dave Hieatt. Crowd funded. Go on.

“Startup culture” demotivational posters.

Always keep a diamond in your mind

Fluffy Links – Monday January 20th 2014

Monday, January 20th, 2014

Dylan Collins writes his kid tech predictions for 2014.

Working from home? You really need structure. This post more than most has helped me a lot with changing my consume it all routine at home. Not there yet but on the way.

Everpix shuts down but shares their data to others can learn. And some people made lovely reports on the data. Maybe EI require this for companies they’d invest in? Hah.

Via Walter: A conference on side projects. Why didn’t I think of that? Great idea.

via Swiss Miss. Famous movie quotes in chart form.

Toast is trendy in San Fran so it will infect all the hipster joints worldwide. I remember the tea and toast crowd at Electric Picnic. As the article says, toast is a form of comfort and gives some the feeling of home. Irish bread brands should hone in on that. However, this article is about how a café is saving a girl’s life. Worth the read.

Realex are doing an event on February 6th. 6pm to 8pm. Free. Covering how to grow your online presence and generate traffic to your site.

Handy Chrome plugin to get access to the likes of BBC iPlayer.

UK Police totally infiltrated by criminal gangs.

Glen has a nice post on cases for the iPhone that mod the device for aiding with surveillance, survival.

Drive Away – Thomas Newman

Fluffy Links – Monday January 13th 2014

Monday, January 13th, 2014

The Cool Tools book, based on blog posts was projected to sell an ok amount. Cos you know, why have it in book form when you can get it online? Then it sold out. Then there was another print run. Then…

Do one thing (the same thing) each day for 100 days. Someone uses a chair for a task, a different task each day. Someone else makes a poster each day. Some highly creative things in this.

Best way to get customers to open your email? Tell them you’re shutting down. Shut em shut em down.

Rick’s Reads for 2013. A lot of books.

Arena gave a glowing review of Nuala Ni Chonchuir’s Dublin and Other Stories. Here’s another. Book only available on Amazon it seems.

Of course our paper is willing to take your ad money and misquote one of our own journalists in the ad.

A Soft Murmur. Create your own ambient sounds. Can sometimes help those that have issues relaxing/sleeping. Or stop looking at a screen before bed!

via BoingBoing. Kronos Quartet on Sesame Street.

John Kelly played this on Friday on Lyric FM. Cantus Arcticus. Beautiful.

Fluffy Links – Tuesday January 7th 2014

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

Trust breeds magic. Do Lecture talk by Tina Roth Eisenberg.

A mug you can build your Lego on. James might like this.

Netflix categorised all of Hollywood movies and TV shows. Big data but totally reliant on humans too. Raymond Burr is at the centre of all things TV it seems.

Meaning well can do harm. James points out the destruction a suicide awareness campaign can do. Naturally the “RT to cure suicide” types are furious. They remind me of those who sent their kin to Magdelne Laundries.

Louis CK and Jerry Seinfeld episode of Comedians in Cars.

How to use your startup advisors by Dylan Collins. Why not have advisors for your existing business too? Always solicit advice from good people.

Sorsed. Track how accurate a rumour is.

Song Exploder breaks down “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight”.

Via Paul Watson, Love this idea with the Yahoo sports app that allows you to create your own GIF from their footage. Yes!

Just say no kids, well just say no more often. I like this rejection card from Edmund Wilson.

Dave Letterman when he was really on fire. Via Victor Barry

Fluffy Links – Friday January 3rd 2014

Friday, January 3rd, 2014

Get Running with the Irish Times. Online course to help Irish Times readers to get into running in 2014. I like this idea of trying to be a core part of the lives/routines of their readers and not just a random part now and then.

Tape over your camera on your laptop and phone too if you are very paranoid. They’re remotely switching them on.

Griel Marcus’ commencement address for the 2013 graduating class of New York’s School of Visual Arts on high versus low culture and the false division. He rallies against this kind of bullshit:

As to whether the new, DiCaprio-ed edition of “Gatsby” would be socially acceptable to carry around in public, Mr. Cassem of McNally Jackson offered a firm no. “I think it would bring shame,” he said, “to anyone who was trying to read that book on the subway.”

Everyone going ape that people like Mrs Brown’s Boys and it beat Doctor Who in the ratings. High brow, low brow. Low brow low brow really. And in a similar vein:

People bitching about the Apple teen stuck in a phone ad seem to forget that most people that watched it, enjoyed it. And the ad is the perfect example of why advertising still works. As Ken Segall puts it:

There are tens of millions of people who will stop in their tracks at this commercial and wipe a tear from their eye. As a result, they will feel slightly more attached to Apple, which is the marketing purpose of this spot.

James Franco on selfies. Well written piece and valid points.

The different types of Snapchats.

Particle: Nice tech tool to track articles being spread online.

collecting data about the promotion of articles on Twitter, Facebook, Webpages, and RSS feeds

Everyone needs some Diana Vreeland quotes.

“Unshined shoes are the end of civilization.”
“There’s only one thing in life, and that’s the continual renewal of inspiration.”
“To be contented—that’s for the cows.”

OK Computer