Q: The only hesitation I have about switching to the Mac concerns Quicken. I have used that program on Windows for over 20 years. All the reviews on the Mac version are less than favorable. If I install Windows on the Mac, would I still be able to run my current Quicken program? A: Yes. When you install Windows on a Mac, using Apple’s Boot Camp utility, the Mac is turned into a full-fledged Windows computer, whenever you choose. So Quicken — or any Windows program — should work fine. If you install Windows in a virtual machine program, such as Parallels, you should also be…
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Most Topular Stories
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Windows Version of Quicken on the Mac
AllThingsD » Walt Mossberg21 May 2013 | 6:14 pm -
Phone Firms Sell Data on Customers
AllThingsD22 May 2013 | 8:30 amBig phone companies have begun to sell the vast troves of data they gather about their subscribers’ locations, travels and Web-browsing habits. The information provides a powerful tool for marketers but raises new privacy concerns. Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has long been considered particularly sensitive. Read the rest of this post on the original site » -
Let's start with "sorry"
Seth's Blog22 May 2013 | 2:43 amBy the time the phone rings, there's already trouble. When that manager is called or this department is reached, it's because someone is disappointed, angry or stuck. Illness, broken promises or a real urgency have led to this new conversation even taking place. So don't start with, "[Name of company] mumble mumble" as if there's a blank slate just waiting to be written on. There's already a lot of writing on that slate. Don't demand to know the record number or begin with doubt and an edge of dismissal. Be on our team. "It sounds like we've got a situation on our hands..." is a fine way to… -
Flickr to Pro customers: no change
Doc Searls Weblog20 May 2013 | 11:28 pmFlickr has updated its service. I knew it was coming and I had a few hopes for it: Better multiple account management Personal service, by human beings using their real voices Ability to make changes (e.g. of permissions or licensing) for thousands of shots in one move Finer distinctions than friends/family/private The updates, from what I can tell, offer none of that. What I got, as a Pro customer, appeared in the form of index page copy that began, Dear Doc, as a Pro member continue to enjoy the benefits of unlimited space, an ad free experience and stats. For non-paying users, there was… -
Responsive Marketing
Logic+Emotion19 May 2013 | 5:25 pmIn the beginning, there were products and services, and some were good. Fewer became trusted brands, but those that did enjoyed unquestioned loyalty supported by a simple yet effective marketing engines built to reach people in mass quantity. The formula worked for decades. An empire was built on the shoulders of Madison Avenue and expanded globally. It is an empire, which still exists today, though arguably it’s a diminished version of its former self. More recently, technology has had it’s own evolutionary process which it’s still going through. Well over a decade ago, when large…
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AllThingsD » Walt Mossberg
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Windows Version of Quicken on the Mac
21 May 2013 | 6:14 pmQ: The only hesitation I have about switching to the Mac concerns Quicken. I have used that program on Windows for over 20 years. All the reviews on the Mac version are less than favorable. If I install Windows on the Mac, would I still be able to run my current Quicken program? A: Yes. When you install Windows on a Mac, using Apple’s Boot Camp utility, the Mac is turned into a full-fledged Windows computer, whenever you choose. So Quicken — or any Windows program — should work fine. If you install Windows in a virtual machine program, such as Parallels, you should also be… -
Apps Raise the iPad's Aptitude for Real Work
14 May 2013 | 6:08 pmThere’s a popular myth that Apple’s iPad and other tablets are simply media-consumption devices, unsuitable for productivity applications. That’s just not so, and this week I tested a variety of office suites for the iPad for mini-reviews of their capabilities. In fact, I wrote and edited this entire column on an iPad using the most popular paid iPad app, the $10 Pages word processor by Apple. [ See post to watch video ] Not every productivity task is optimally done on tablet software, of course. Writing a plain text document like this one isn’t the same as creating a… -
A Printer for the iPad
7 May 2013 | 6:10 pmQ: We own an iPad and we would like to purchase a printer to use with it. We don’t know which to buy. A: Apple’s iOS operating system, which powers iPads and iPhones, can print decent-looking documents, using a built-in technology called AirPrint, which prints wirelessly. You don’t need to set up any drivers or other software on the iPad itself. However, AirPrint requires a printer that has Wi-Fi capability and is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your iPad or iPhone. In addition, the printer must be a model that supports AirPrint. All the major printer makers sell… -
Two Products for People Who Miss the Old Windows
7 May 2013 | 6:03 pm[ See post to watch video ] The face of Windows 8 — the tablet-like, tile-based Start Screen that comes up every time you start a new PC — is nicely designed and works well on touchscreens. But a lot of people hate it. They do almost all of their computing in the traditional Windows desktop environment, which has been demoted to secondary status in Windows 8. And they are annoyed that Microsoft has replaced the familiar Windows Start Menu with the Start Screen in Windows 8. That means when you want to launch a new app that isn’t pinned to your taskbar, you have to jump back… -
The 411 on Phone Discounts
30 Apr 2013 | 6:09 pmQ: You recently mentioned the HTC One as being priced at $200. I’ve just been on the phone with my carrier T-Mobile, which offers me the HTC One for $100 down and $20 a month for 24 months. They explain they “no longer offer discounted phones” under their new world order or whatever. Can you explain? A: In the U.S., carriers traditionally subsidize the price of mobile phones and then make back the money by requiring buyers to sign a two-year contract, so they don’t defect before the carrier has made back the subsidy from them. Under this formula, the HTC One is indeed…
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AllThingsD
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Phone Firms Sell Data on Customers
22 May 2013 | 8:30 amBig phone companies have begun to sell the vast troves of data they gather about their subscribers’ locations, travels and Web-browsing habits. The information provides a powerful tool for marketers but raises new privacy concerns. Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has long been considered particularly sensitive. Read the rest of this post on the original site » -
Xbox One Joins the Gamecasting Fray With Social Game DVR
22 May 2013 | 8:00 amGames were given second billing at Microsoft’s Xbox One unveiling yesterday, but one of the coolest new features of the new console is only for games: Xbox One will be a social-media-ready DVR for gameplay video recaps. Which means, in a nutshell, that developers will be able to tell their games to automatically record certain types of in-game events and achievements. For example, that amazing headshot you just made in Call of Duty: Ghosts? It will be auto-captured in all its gory detail, packaged and ready to send to your online friends. Which friends, specifically? Marketing and… -
Ushahidi's Juliana Rotich: The Greater Global Lesson Is Local "Context Intelligence" (Video)
22 May 2013 | 7:00 amAfter emerging from an ad-hoc group of technologists and bloggers around Kenya’s contentious and violent 2008 elections, the nonprofit organization Ushahidi now provides open-source tools for crowdsourced mapping that are used around the world. And that includes for Kenya’s largely peaceful 2013 election. Ushahidi is a small organization that has had a global impact, with more than 44,000 public crowd maps created so far around environmental monitoring, corruption, election and crises. Contributors come from over 159 countries, and the platform is available in more than 33… -
Amid Tech Slowdown, HP CEO Whitman Under Pressure to Show Progress
22 May 2013 | 6:45 amHewlett-Packard will report second-quarter results today after the markets close for trading in New York, and the pressure is on CEO Meg Whitman to show that she can keep the floundering tech giant on track toward a promised turnaround next year. At the outset, it seems a tall order. Name a significant line of HP’s business and its probably in the middle of one sort of fundamental decline or another. Whether it’s the historical decline in PC sales, a weak environment for server sales, a lousy market for printers, or ongoing difficulties with its enterprise services business, HP… -
Apple's Made-in-USA Mac Will Be Built in Texas
22 May 2013 | 6:00 amWalt Mossberg: Will there be an Apple product ever made again in the United States? Tim Cook: I want there to be. Walt: You what? Tim: I want there to be. Walt: You want there to be. – Apple CEO Tim Cook and Walt Mossberg at D10, May 2012 When Apple announced its intention to manufacture one of its existing Mac lines exclusively in the U.S. last December, the company didn’t say which line, or where in the country it planned to build it. Now, some five months later, the answer to one of those questions has finally emerged. During a Tuesday appearance before the Senate Permanent…
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Seth's Blog
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Let's start with "sorry"
22 May 2013 | 2:43 amBy the time the phone rings, there's already trouble. When that manager is called or this department is reached, it's because someone is disappointed, angry or stuck. Illness, broken promises or a real urgency have led to this new conversation even taking place. So don't start with, "[Name of company] mumble mumble" as if there's a blank slate just waiting to be written on. There's already a lot of writing on that slate. Don't demand to know the record number or begin with doubt and an edge of dismissal. Be on our team. "It sounds like we've got a situation on our hands..." is a fine way to… -
Levels of marketing magic, the placebo effects of desire
21 May 2013 | 2:45 amANTICIPATION: Before the product is released, the true fans are buzzing and speculating and waiting in line. The anticipation is self-reinforcing, a placebo effect of desire. UTILITY: The album is good, the software is useful, the book changes things. It works better than we hoped. Exceeding expectations pays significant dividends. REMARK: It's purple. Remarkable. Worth talking about. The word spreads. Ten people tell ten people and suddenly, it's abuzz. Not because of PR or hype, but because the remarkability is built right into the product or service itself. And more people enjoy things… -
You should buy the book
20 May 2013 | 8:33 amMitch Joel is a generous and perceptive blogger. Well worth the daily read. He has a new book. You should buy it. David Meerman Scott writes an essential blog, daily. His book is a classic. You should buy it. Tom Asacker writes a very thoughtful blog about marketing. Worth the read. He has a new book. You should buy it, too. Every day, Mark Frauenfelder and Corey Doctorow blog tons of goodness at Boingboing. They each have books. You should buy them and share them. Bernadette Jiwa's blog keeps getting better and better and you are probably already reading it. She has a new book on the way. -
No Signal
20 May 2013 | 2:00 amAt a party the other day, I saw a dead TV monitor. On the screen it said something like, "No signal... check power, cable and source selection..." It doesn't matter at all how hard the DVD player was trying to put on a show. It is irrelevant how good the show on cable was. If it's not getting through, no one sees it. All of us own our own media companies now. We each have the ability to speak up, to tell our stories, and if we're good and if we're lucky, to be heard. Too often, though, there's no signal. You may be pumping noise through your social media outlets, but noise isn't signal. It's… -
Learning by analogy
19 May 2013 | 2:36 amThe story of Hansel and Gretel is not actually about Hansel or Gretel. You are surrounded by examples and lessons and case studies that clearly aren't exactly about your project. There's never been a book written precisely about the situation you are facing right now, either. Perhaps one day they will publish, "Marketing Low-Cost Coaching Services to Small Businesses Specializing in .Graphic Design in the Upper Peninsula for Dummies" but don't hold your breath. Marketing, like all forms of art, requires us to learn to see. To see what's working and to transplant it, change it and amplify it.
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Doc Searls Weblog
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Flickr to Pro customers: no change
20 May 2013 | 11:28 pmFlickr has updated its service. I knew it was coming and I had a few hopes for it: Better multiple account management Personal service, by human beings using their real voices Ability to make changes (e.g. of permissions or licensing) for thousands of shots in one move Finer distinctions than friends/family/private The updates, from what I can tell, offer none of that. What I got, as a Pro customer, appeared in the form of index page copy that began, Dear Doc, as a Pro member continue to enjoy the benefits of unlimited space, an ad free experience and stats. For non-paying users, there was… -
What’s right with QR codes
20 May 2013 | 1:31 amI first heard QR codes called “robot barf” yesterday, when JP said it. Got a good laugh out of it too, because: yeah, if a robot could barf, that’s what it would look like. Digging back, it looks like the first source of the joke is Andy Roberts here, or Jon Mitchell here, both of whom posted on 27 October, 2011. Kevin Marks followed in the same vein with QR Codes, bad idea or terrible idea? on 28 January 2012. There Kevin wrote, among other things, “QR Codes ignore years of research and culture on how to communicate meaning in symbolic form designed to be captured… -
What can people do with data that companies alone can’t?
19 May 2013 | 6:00 amAfter six years on the VRM case, it seems obvious to me that individuals need to be the points of integration for their own data — and of data about them, held by companies. But it’s not yet obvious to the marketplace, since we still lack suppliers willing either to part with the personal data they already hold, or to provide easy-to-use tools that people can use to combine that data, analyze it and put it to use. So, to help with that, here are a few starters: Quantified self data. Right now all the data produced by your Withings scale, your Zeo sleep manager, your Nike+ sportwatch,… -
2013_05_19 link pile
18 May 2013 | 11:41 pmData The Man Who Turned Off Cookies In Firefox Doesn’t Care If It Hurts Advertisers Dynamic pricing vs./+ savvy consumers Mozilla stalls on privacy patch: ‘needs more work’ A shortage of privacy engineers, by Lorrie Faith Cranor and Norman Sadeh, both of CMU Big Data makes the movies Firms Brace for New European Data Privacy Law Little Data Makes Big Data More Powerful Executive Order — Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information VRM Vendor Relationship Management in Wikipedia ProjectVRM blog The About page The best VRM… -
Long-form never stopped working
14 May 2013 | 4:55 amFashions come and go. Verities do not. One verity respected by many old-fashioned writers and publishers is the simple fact that long-form pieces work better than short-form ones for the purpose of communicating in depth. If you want deep, and you’re writing prose, more of it will work better than less of it, given an equally strong work-over by a good copy-edit. Such has also been my ample experience at this game. Long-form has always out-performed short, even during the long dark period during which the common non-wisdom in online publishing was that short beat long. Some examples…
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Logic+Emotion
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Responsive Marketing
19 May 2013 | 5:25 pmIn the beginning, there were products and services, and some were good. Fewer became trusted brands, but those that did enjoyed unquestioned loyalty supported by a simple yet effective marketing engines built to reach people in mass quantity. The formula worked for decades. An empire was built on the shoulders of Madison Avenue and expanded globally. It is an empire, which still exists today, though arguably it’s a diminished version of its former self. More recently, technology has had it’s own evolutionary process which it’s still going through. Well over a decade ago, when large… -
Brands Who Used The Force on Star Wars Day #Maythe4thbewithyou
4 May 2013 | 12:05 pmBrands that insert themselves into relevant cultural events is now becoming a norm in marketing. Did you know that May 4th is considered Star Wars Day? These brands did, and they inserted themselves in the conversation by producing content which reflected it. Here's a few that went to the dark side: Pop Chips went the simple route and used an action figure to do the heavy lifting. Harrods did some subtle and clever Photoshop to go over to the dark side of marketing. PayPal traveled to a galaxy far far away and kept their branding intact ...while Red Bull played it safe and stayed closer to… -
Content as Currency and Other Thoughts From #Snowcial
1 Mar 2013 | 6:35 amI'm in Lake Tahoe this week combining some business and down-time and recently spoke at "Snowcial"—billed as "SXSW for the snow sports and hospitality industry, it attracts a really cool cross section of people who span marketing, technology and even journalism. If you love skiing or snowboarding and marketing/technology, it's worth considering for your event calendar. I kicked off day one yesterday with a short talk about content, convergence and connectivity. Below are a few themes from my talk: Content As Currency There's a good reason everyone is talking about the role of *content… -
Every Brand Will Need A Content Strategy
26 Feb 2013 | 8:18 amSomewhere in the debate to define what was hot or not as a worthy "real-time marketing" example during the Oscars, we lost sight of the bigger picture. We're not really talking about the benefits of marketing in a timely fashion as much as we are talking about the birthright of an organization or brand to produce, circulate and curate conversations around valuable content. I had to take a pause recently to remind myself of the bigger picture and consider other activations we have in play like working with the organization who represents the US Dairy industry. In this approach, we've gotten… -
How The Marketing Community Lost Last Night #OscarsRTM
24 Feb 2013 | 11:16 pmI'm not surprised, but that doesn't mean I'm not concerned. I witnessed something sad last night, while the Oscars were going down. As I anticipated, there was a great deal of activity by brands and their partners who took a shot at producing content connected to the Academy Awards. Some of the content was just OK. Some wasn't. And to be honest, some of it was pretty good even if not earth shattering. Because I had a feeling there would be a great deal of activity going on—I set up a simple hash tag, because I wanted a way to organize what brands would be doing. So, I set up #OscarsRTM…
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A VC
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The IPA
22 May 2013 | 3:34 amNo, I am not blogging about India Pale Ale, although I must say that I am a big fan of it. I am writing about one of the best patent hacks I have seen in the decade that I have been working to find relief from the ridiculous patent system in our country. Twitter came up with a concept last year called the Innovator's Patent Agreement (IPA) and put a draft IPA up on GitHub. They have gotten a ton of feedback and have iterated and improved the concept since then. The basic idea of the IPA is that it is a contract between Twitter and the engineer(s) and designer(s) who developed the IP. The… -
Native Advertising Event
21 May 2013 | 3:22 amThis Thursday from 1pm to 6pm, our portfolio company Zemanta is co-hosting a summit on native advertising here in NYC. I've written and spoken a fair bit about native advertising so regular readers will likely be quite familiar with this topic. However, from what I am seeing out there, native advertising is really hitting its stride as social platforms and mobile consumption become the norm. If you are a marketer or an entrepreneur working in the advertising/marketing space, you should be paying attention to this trend. I will be kicking off the event at 1pm with a brief talk and some… -
Success Has A Thousand Fathers
20 May 2013 | 4:41 amBack in the early days of AVC, I did a thing called VC Cliche Of The Week. There was an RSS feed of all of them powered by Delicious, but it is broken and most likely can't be fixed. You can find some of them on gawk.it. One of the cliches I posted about is "success has a thousand fathers." I thought I would re-run that post. Here it is. You can count on it - when a deal works out spectacularly everyone involved will take credit for it. This behavior is particularly annoying to the entrepreneurs who put the sweat, blood, and tears into the Company. They watch the VCs take credit for the big… -
Congratulations Indiana
19 May 2013 | 4:08 amWe talk a lot of NBA basketball in the comments but I don't post about it. This blog is supposed to be about startups and tech, for the most part. But the Knicks lost last night in Indiana and my season is over. I will root for the Grizzlies and the Pacers now but I doubt I will watch many games. This photo sums up the Knicks Pacers series. Actually it sums up the entire season for me. Carmelo Anthony is an incredible talent. He has upped his defensive game in the past year and he carried the Knicks as far as he could. But he doesn't have a second superstar at his side and he could not beat… -
Video Of The Week: SNL's Take On Google Glass
18 May 2013 | 5:22 amThis is pretty funny.
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chrisbrogan.com
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Be Open to Inspiration
10 May 2013 | 8:41 amI’ve been in a bit of a fog the last week or so. Nothing worth talking about, really. Depression stuff. But then it lifted. What’s interesting to me is how I found my footing and how I got back on track, and so there are two items I want to share with you from this: the actual learning, and more importantly, the realization of what got me there. Be Open to Inspiration Humans have this way they deal with too much information. They discard tons of inputs and keep what they feel is important. This is necessary, by the way. Can you imagine how busy your brain would be if you thought… -
Do Local Businesses Deserve Your Money?
7 May 2013 | 1:38 pmI sat at the counter at my local restaurant the other day and waited for over 7 minutes without anyone bothering to acknowledge that I was there. And then I walked out. And so did my money. For good. In fact, I drove to McDonalds, got some scrambled eggs and an iced coffee, and was in and out of the system within the same 7 minutes. (You can save your comments with disdain for McDonalds. If you’re a parent, you go there, unless you don’t. Either way. It’s not the point.) Now, before you try to defend this other place, no, it wasn’t busy. Yes, at least two employees had seen me, and… -
Why Use These Outlier Social Media Tools?
30 Apr 2013 | 4:21 pmWhy should you bother using tools like Vine and Instagram, and the like? That question was asked to me by Pam Vitaz, and she asked it somewhat in this context (my words not hers): Vine’s interesting, but you basically just shot a funny video. Why do that? Here’s the video she meant: Can’t see the video? Click Here. Can’t hear sound? Hover over it and click the little sound thingy. On the surface, it’s the kind of question you can answer with “why not?” But that’s not good enough. Why Use These Outlier Social Media Tools? First, it’s your… -
Can You Work at Being Fearless?
29 Apr 2013 | 7:03 amFear is at the heart of most of our worst choices. I read this facebook post by James Altucher and it really punched me in the stomach. But that’s just one punch in a series, because every time I question how I ended up somewhere, the real answer (underneath all the bull answers) is fear. It’s why most stupid things happen, why all bad things happen (when humans are involved), and is even worse than you think. I’m afraid of a weird collection of things. I’m afraid of sharks (ever since seeing Jaws at a very young age – because I pestered my parents tirelessly til… -
Sponsored Post – Mobile Productivity and the Future
24 Apr 2013 | 4:53 amCan you be productive while on the road? I say yes. In fact, I’m writing this from a hotel room before heading off to a meeting with a client. The following is sponsored by Cloud Powered Work, which is a project with IDG, LinkedIn, and Microsoft’s Office365. Everything in this post is mine, and my opinions are my own. I just produced an episode of my radio show from my hotel room, because I realized that an episode was due and I hadn’t done the work before I took off for the day. Last night, while I waited for my slightly delayed airplane, I cracked open SkyDrive pulled down…
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Everyday Sociology Blog
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The Myth of the Self-Made Person
16 May 2013 | 12:00 amBy Peter Kaufman What do the alleged Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have in common with Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, J.K. Rowling, Jimi Hendrix, and Ben Franklin? The answer: All of these individuals are said to have become who they are by their own individual means. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are said to have been self-radicalized. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and J.K. Rowling are all said to be self-made billionaires. Jimi Hendrix, named as the greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone, is said to have been self-taught. Ben Franklin is often invoked as… -
Honoring Parents
12 May 2013 | 12:00 amBy Sally Raskoff How do you spend the two days of the year that we honor the challenging and important job that parents do? Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are celebrated in the U.S. in May and June, respectively. Both days generate many family interactions, restaurant orders, greeting card sales, and phone calls. On the surface, these days appear to be equivalent and equally valued holidays that are meant to honor those who generate and raise children. However, the history and current practices highlight some differences in what mothers and fathers mean to our society. According to… -
Benefitting from Housing’s Burst Bubble
9 May 2013 | 12:00 amBy Karen Sternheimer I recently purchased a home in Los Angeles, something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to afford. When prices started skyrocketing in the mid-2000s, like many other people I chose not to buy and saved my money instead. I was glad I did, despite some acquaintances insisting that prices would only get higher. In 2005, the median price of a single family home in Los Angeles was about $529,000; by 2008 the median price fell to $340,000. (The median is the point at which half of all homes cost less, and half cost more). After watching prices and interest rates fall, I began… -
Thinking Critically About Statistics and Their Sources
6 May 2013 | 12:00 amBy Sally Raskoff In the sciences, we use theory and methods to empirically assess “reality”. While we can often play with data to explore the relationships between our concepts(our variables), it is important to frame what we’re doing with good theory. An interesting graph has made its rounds through social media lately. It shows a strong relationship between Internet Explorer market share and murders in the U.S. Source: http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-will-be-your-favorite-chart-today I first encountered this graph on Facebook when a friend sent it to me so… -
To ”Commit Sociology”
2 May 2013 | 12:00 amBy Jonathan Wynn Recently, when the Canadian Government arrested men suspected of planning a terrorist attack, Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned the media not to “commit sociology” by asking for their motives. (It’s a reference to a W.H. Auden poem.) Best not to think too much, apparently, about the world around you. In my Foundations of Social Theory class, we began the semester with the broad, big worldviews that many people often use unreflexively and to their own detriment: horoscopes, homeopathy, numerology, dousing, conspiracy theories, and the like. I hope you are equipped for…
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Holtz Communications + Technology | Blog
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The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #704: May 20, 2013
20 May 2013 | 4:51 amIntro: Quick review of Ragan ING conference, two more FIR podcasts from the B2B Huddle are up, FIR Book Review of Philip Sheldrake’s Attenzi is up; Quick News: Vines are shared four times more than online video, IABC’s CW magazine goes digital only, the state of social media advertising, first Quartz, then Defense One: Atlantic Media’s next venture with digital-only publications; Ragan promo; News That Fits: BYOD focus on policies, behaviours and what matters to employees; Yahoo board approves deal to acquire Tumblr; think that social media crisis from seven years ago is… -
Friday Wrap #51: Likes as speech, brands shrug off Google+, native ad results, new roles for ebooks
16 May 2013 | 11:16 pm(c) Can Stock PhotoThis week’s Wrap comes to you from Amsterdam, where I presented a session on crisis communications in the social media era at Ragan Communications’ PR/Social Media Summit. Fortunately, both the hotel room and the conference venue—ING House—have great WiFi. That matters, as you’ll see in one of today’s items, which I culled from my link blog at LinksFromShel.tumblr.com. Should your boss be able to fire you for who you like? Danny Carter worked suggestion that such communication has less than full constitutional protection would result in… -
FIR Speakers and Speeches: Doug Kessler on The Future of B2B Content Marketing at #b2bhuddle
16 May 2013 | 1:47 amWhen something as big as content marketing comes along and transforms an entire discipline, it creates a lot of anxiety. Change is scary and it can sometimes feel like you’re hopelessly behind everyone else. At The B2B Huddle on May 2, 2013, held at Oracle’s UK headquarters, keynote speaker Doug Kessler shone a powerful spotlight on the future of B2B content marketing, offering compelling ideas and suggestions on what the future will look like - for content, and for content marketers. With references to his frank messaging in Crap: Why the Biggest Single Threat to Content… -
FIR Book Review: Attenzi - A Social Business Story, by Philip Sheldrake
15 May 2013 | 3:48 amAttenzi - A Social Business Story is a novel that shines a light on social business that goes beyond the all too typical homages to social media. It’s a relatively short and easy read intended to help readers explore what social business means for their organization, marketplace, communities and career. With Attenzi, author Philip Sheldrake presents a sympathetic hero in the story-teller Eli Appel, newly-installed CEO of Attenzi, a fictional international company that makes and sells top-range kitchen equipment and services. The book tells a compelling and credible story of one… -
Which fail is better: Poland Spring’s silence or the real-time tweet from McDonald’s?
14 May 2013 | 6:54 amLast week, while attending a conference where I was the opening keynoter, I was interviewed by a reporter for one of the local TV affiliates. I saw the resulting story (which also featured other conference speakers, notably Lee Odden). I was struck by a comment the reporter made in during the segment. He called U.S. Senator Marco Rubio’s awkward off-camera grab for a bottle of Poland Spring Water “a miss” for the brand because they didn’t capitalize on it. The lack of a real-time missive from Poland Spring Water was widely criticized when it occurred in February. C|Net…
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Mind Hacks
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Did the eyes really stare down bicycle crime in Newcastle?
16 May 2013 | 2:33 amThis is the first fortnightly column I’ll be writing for The Conversation, a creative commons news and opinion website that launched today. The site has been set up by a number of UK universities and bodies such as the Wellcome Trust, Nuffield Foundation and HEFCE, following the successful model of the Australian version of the site. Their plan is to unlock the massive amount of expertise held by UK academics and inject it into the public discourse. My plan is to give some critical commentary on headlines from the week's news which focus on neuroscience and psychology. If… -
A world of swearing
15 May 2013 | 11:19 amThe Boston Globe has a short but fascinating interview on the history of swearing where author Melissa Mohr describes how the meaning of the act of swearing has changed over time. IDEAS: Are there other old curses that 21st-century people would be surprised to hear about? MOHR: Because [bad words] were mostly religious in the Middle Ages, any part of God’s body you could curse with. God’s bones, nails, wounds, precious heart, passion, God’s death—that was supposedly one of Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite oaths. IDEAS: Have religious curses like that lost their power as the culture… -
The ‘unnamed feeling’ named ASMR
13 May 2013 | 7:03 amHere’s my BBC Future column from last week. It’s about the so-called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which didn’t have a name until 2010 and I’d never heard of until 2012. Now, I’m finding out that it is surprisingly common. The original is here. It’s a tightening at the back of the throat, or a tingling around your scalp, a chill that comes over you when you pay close attention to something, such as a person whispering instructions. It’s called the autonomous sensory meridian response, and until 2010 it didn’t exist. I first heard about… -
Disaster response psychology needs to change
12 May 2013 | 3:54 amI’ve got an article in today’s Observer about how disaster response mental health services are often based on the erroneous assumption that everyone needs ‘treatment’ and often rely on single-session counselling sessions which may do more harm than good. Unfortunately, the article has been given a rather misleading headline (‘Minds traumatised by disaster heal themselves without therapy’) which suggests that mental health services are not needed. This is not the case and this is not what the article says. What it does say is that the common idea of disaster… -
2013-05-03 Spike activity
4 May 2013 | 5:41 amQuick links from the past week in mind and brain news: I can’t recognise my own face! In my case, it’s because the Botox has worn off but for person described in the New Scientist article it’s because of prosopagnosia. The Guardian reports that the UK Government’s ‘Nudge Unit’ is set to become a commercial service. Nudge mercenaries! A greater use of “I” and “me” as a mark of interpersonal distress. An interesting study covered by the BPS Research Digest. Pacific Standard has an interesting piece about gun registers, felons and…
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Edelman
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Competition or Cooperation
22 May 2013 | 9:13 amAt the 100th anniversary of Harvard Business School, Harvard President Drew Faust told a story of three stone-cutters. The first one worked an eight-hour day, did his job well but was content to collect his paycheck and go home. The second one talked about the magnificent cathedral that he and his fellow workers were building together. The third one was interested in the outstanding work he was doing in his part of the job. To paraphrase her conclusion, “Harvard Business School is turning out too many of the third kind of stone-cutters. We need more of the second kind for business to… -
Engagement On the Next Level: Health Care Professionals “Lite”
22 May 2013 | 7:31 amDo you remember the last piece of health information that you looked for? Most likely you have consulted “Dr. Google” or a real health care professional (HCP), like a doctor. But is that the case for less serious conditions, too? You might have discussed skin irritations with your esthetician, back pain with a physiotherapist or cold remedies for your newborn with your midwife. We call those experts HCP lite and we have enormous success engaging with mutual benefits. Of course, we all know that at a certain point their expertise doesn’t match medical education, but honestly we trust… -
Edelman Grant Supports San Francisco Wellness Center
21 May 2013 | 10:53 amSan Francisco’s Asian and Pacific Islander (A&PI) Wellness Center was the first place I called when one of my best friends found out he contracted HIV. Within 24 hours, the conversations he had with the experts at A&PI Wellness Center not only helped him navigate local resources and education available to him, they helped him believe in his life path. The organization gave him a second place to call home. You can imagine how thrilled I was to find out that the organization would receive an Edelman Community Investment Grant last month. I’m grateful for Edelman’s support of a… -
Five Things I Wish I Knew at 22
21 May 2013 | 8:41 amMy youngest daughter just graduated from the College of William & Mary. It was a weekend marked by extraordinary traditions, as William & Mary, chartered in 1693, is the second oldest college in the country. The contrast of tradition with the future-facing graduates was quite striking and for this Dad, more than a little bittersweet. My mother often told me: “the only constant in life is change.” As the rate of change accelerates, the graduates of 2013 — and the rest of us — have but one thing to do: embrace it. Fumbling for words of wisdom of my own to share with my daughter… -
Rebuilding Trust Through Employee Engagement
21 May 2013 | 6:21 amPerceptions of fraud, misaligned incentives and negative workplace environments are driving a deep distrust in business and leaders – a skepticism that extends inside organizations as well. Thus an organization’s values, integrity and ethical standards have become critically important to rebuilding trust. That’s the bottom line from a new perspective on the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer, A Question of Integrity: Engaging Employees and Executives as Storytellers on Corporate Values, Ethics and Integrity. Edelman’s Employee Engagement team explored this theme in greater detail and…
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Peter Shankman
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9 Twitterers Tell You How to Amaze and Astound Customers and Clients
16 May 2013 | 10:59 amI posted a very simple question the other day: What’s your one secret weapon to amaze and astound customers and clients? The responses were awesome. A lot of them are common sense things that no one bothers to do. (Remember, I always tell people that to succeed, you just have to be one level above crap,) but others are things I never even thought of. So here are 9 ways to amaze and astound your clients and customers today. Do these things. The results you’ll get will range from “cool” to “awesome” to “holy shit, I landed a million dollar account… -
My TEDx Times Square Talk is Live!
8 May 2013 | 7:02 amIf you happened to miss it live last month, my TEDx Times Square talk is finally live on Youtube. Feel free to share it if you like it! -
If Google Glass Fails, It’s Robert Scoble’s Fault
7 May 2013 | 7:56 am5/10/13 Update: Ah, yes… John Gruber called me a “blowhard,” and blew up my traffic. I’d call him a douche, but he has more traffic than me, so my insulting him won’t help him as much as him insulting me, so I’ll leave it at this: When I had my Segway in NYC, I was featured on the front page of USA Today. A two page spread in the Daily News. A two page spread in the NY Post. In NY Newsday. Etc., etc., etc. Why? Because it was new, and the media liked to talk about new geeky things. Problem was, I said all the wrong things to the media, JUST LIKE SCOBLE IS… -
How do I explain Today to my Unborn daughter?
15 Apr 2013 | 5:25 pmThis is a personal post. This isn’t about branding or advertising. This isn’t about social media or marketing. It’s about a guy who’s about to become a father for the first time in the next week to ten days, and his confusion – When my daughter is born, she’ll soon be old enough to understand what tragedy is, like the one today in Boston. What do I tell her when she asks why it happens? I ask people much more knowledgable than me – What do I say to her? When she’s old enough to understand that there are bad people out there who want to hurt good… -
Just Because You Can Firefight Using Social Media Doesn’t Mean You Should!
11 Apr 2013 | 12:39 pmApologies to those who work strictly in “social media,” but I’m about to blaspheme a bit. Imagine for a second, the following scenario: He works with, you know, social and stuff. You light a match to light a candle in your living room. After lighting the candle, instead of blowing it out, you drop it on the floor. After five seconds, the rug catches fire, then the fire spreads to the curtains, eventually engulfing the whole room. Only after the fire has spread throughout your entire house, do you call the fire department, and when they finally arrive and put out the fire,…
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Ethnography.com
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“1 + 1”: More than an Equation
20 May 2013 | 9:20 amby Amina Tawasil Schooling is supposed to either spark or augment IQ/cognitive ability which is then exhibited as ‘skills’. Thus, it only follows that schooling increases the chances of upward mobility for girls, women and people of color. And, for men and women in ‘small villages of ailing countries’, schooling is considered a pillar to a successful rural to urban labor migration. In short, schooling is supposed to guarantee financial security. If governments hold up the security and economic-progress end of the bargain, then its people are supposed to reap the benefits of having… -
The All-Time Stupidest Question to Ask a Language Learner: Did You Understand what He/She said????!!!!” (Repeated loudly)
18 May 2013 | 12:26 amI’ve been living in Germany for the last nine months. One of my goals is to improve my German skills, and guess what, I am getting better. But still my German is still far from perfect. Occasionally I will be in a conversation (ok more than occasionally) and I will try to guess about meaning. Sometimes I guess kind of right, which means that I will make a kind of odd response to a question. This situation tends to right itself in a normal conversation as your conversation partner realizes how stupid you are, and graciously guides you to what was meant. Or, if that… -
Does PCA Have Politics?
16 May 2013 | 2:58 pmThis morning, armchair scientist and noted fan of this blog, Razib Khan, decided it would be prudent to write about race. It comes by way of Khan issuing a corrective, of sorts, to Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Coates article is wonderful. He takes a historical look at how race has been deployed over the last 150 years. Along the way, he makes all the good points that can be made with the census, and some others as well. It is a nice reminder that far from being fixed, race is a potently flexible concept which can and has been use to classify (or cluster) humans based on any number of arbitrary… -
Test Scores, Inequality, and “Goodnight Moon Time”
16 May 2013 | 12:33 amHere is a recent article about test scores from the New York Times, “No Rich Child Left Behind.” They got through the entire article without connecting cognitive abilities to inherited intelligence. Instead, the connection is made to wealth, poverty, and early childhood development. Do middle/upper class things for a child at night (“Goodnight Moon time”), and they are going to fit into the academic world created by the upper and middle classes in the schools. Goodnight Moon time in turn is highly correlated with poverty. Note too that widening gaps between test scores… -
Inter-disciplinary Work Sounds Exhausting
14 May 2013 | 10:37 pmWe have had a good week on Ethnography.com grappling with the diffrerences between the Social Sciences, and the Cognitive Sciences. Last month it was the Social Sciences and Population Genetics. I am of course a Social Scientist, and much more in tune with what Michael Scroggins and Max Holland write. They are squarely in the traditions of the social sciences regarding the nature of culture, definitions, and interpretations of data. They are also well-read in the natural sciences, and trying to tie the two fields together, a difficult task. As several of Michael’s earlier posts…
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HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Blog
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22% of Salespeople Don't Want to Make Money
22 May 2013 | 9:30 am“Two roads diverged in the social media wood, and I, I took the one less traveled,” said 21.7% of salespeople. In a recent survey of 511 predominantly B2B sales reps and executives published on A Sales Guy Consulting, approximately 22% of salespeople claimed they didn’t use social media to close deals, while an overwhelming 78.3% said they had used social media to sell. Are you, or someone you know, part of the 22%? If so, it could be impacting your career, your business, and your paycheck. But there's good news -- there's still time to join the 78%! Allow me to try to make the case for… -
A Chat With an Internet Addict Who Was Forced to Go Off the Grid
22 May 2013 | 6:00 amMy fellow inbound marketer Sam Mallikarjunan is an internet and social media junkie -- always connected, always checking in, always tweeting, always emailing. He went on a cruise with no internet for a week, and had to leave his cell phone and computer at home. Here's how it went. Me: Hey Sam! Thanks for talking with me. You just got back from a vacation, so I know you're probably quite busy catching up on stuff. Where'd you go? Sam: Hey Corey! Took a cruise to the Bahamas. I needed the laws of physics to separate me from my phone. Me: Haha yeah, sooo, that's the reason I wanted to talk to… -
The Future of Inbound: Shel Israel Looks Ahead to the 'Age of Context'
21 May 2013 | 1:00 pmShel Israel writes The Social Beat blog column at Forbes.com and has authored four books about digital media's impact on business. He's now working on his fifth book, The Age of Context: How it Will Change Your Work and Life with Robert Scoble, due to be published in October. I got a chance to catch up with Israel to talk about the latest trends in marketing: context, personalization, and the debate over tracking cookies. Here's what he said. Q. Can you tell us a bit about your upcoming book, The Age of Context? What are some examples of "context" we… -
Only Marketing to the Top of Your Fundraising Pyramid Is Hurting Your Nonprofit’s Future
21 May 2013 | 9:30 amThe top of your fundraising pyramid is just that -- a small, concentrated piece of your whole universe, made up of older, rich donors who, though important, won't be able to add to the strong foundation of your future fundraising efforts. While they’re reliable for contributing large sums of money to help you reach your yearly goal, they are high risk, high reward from an investment of time and resources perspective. The question to ask yourself, your team, and those at the top of your organization is, “Do we have the base (occasional donors), and more importantly, the reliable core… -
Are People Stealing Your Content? How (and When) to Fight Back [SlideShare]
21 May 2013 | 6:00 amIf you're drinking the inbound marketing Kool-Aid and regularly publishing content online, there's a good chance you may have experienced content theft at one point or another. Many of us are all too familiar with the feelings that follow the discovery of content thievery: your stomach drops, quickly followed by thoughts of "Why me?" Then the anger sets in. You’ve spent hours (or even days) creating content you think your buyer personas would love, only to have someone else reap the benefits on their own site? Not cool. At your core, it feels very wrong to have someone benefit from your…
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AgencySpy
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Geico Reveals Hump Day Humor… on Hump Day
22 May 2013 | 5:27 amWhile you’re battling Wednesday workdays at the office, Geico has a new addition to their “Happier Than” campaign that gives a literal visual representation to Hump Day. Yes, a camel, with humps. The camel’s coworkers don’t look thrilled with their humped friend running through channels of cubicles and interrupting their productivity. Wednesdays should be a time of cautious optimism – by the end of the day, a majority of the week will be finished – but these guys look like they just got demoted. The Hump Day spot – created by the insurance… -
Deadpool Visits Marvel’s NY Office Because There’s a Video Game Coming Out or Something
22 May 2013 | 4:40 amDeadpool Meet Deadpool, a Marvel supervillain-turned-superhero who comic book fanatics regard as “awesome” and non-comic fans refer to as “who?” Deadpool came into existence during the early 90s, a time when a collector-driven mentality molded the industry into what some regard as the “Style Era.” With sales at an all-time high, comic books publishers made an effort to churn out as many different characters as they could, focusing more on pizazz (elaborate costumes, big muscles, and huge breasts) than actual storytelling. Many now regard the early 90s as a… -
Craven Has Also Resigned from KBS+
22 May 2013 | 3:50 amWell, we tried to put two and two together when we reported last week about DJ Pierce resigning from his position as executive creative director on the BMW account at KBS+. But alas, we unfortunately failed to mention what the status was with his partner-in-crime and fellow ECD on BMW, Michael Craven, who joined up with Pierce 15 months ago to work on the account. We’ve now received confirmation that Pierce and Craven actually resigned together, though no word yet on what either person’s next move is yet (we’re checking). Prior to KBS+, Craven served as a VP/creative… -
Wednesday Morning Stir
22 May 2013 | 2:56 am-Ewen Sturgeon will take on the expanded role of chief exec of DigitasLBi International. link -TPN Chicago and prodco Octane take square aim at AT&T’s “More is Better/It’s Not Complicated” campaign in a new spot for Cricket Wireless (above). -Former Intel social media strategist Ekaterina Walter has joined marketing firm Branderati as partner/chief marketing officer. -Entertainment-focused digital marketing agency Think Jam has appointed Jackie Turnure as VP of its L.A. office. -Culver City, CA/Vancouver-based VFX house Zoic Studios has welcomed Robert Moggach as… -
TEDx Recap: The Great Taste of Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney
22 May 2013 | 1:46 amTEDx Sydney 2013 was probably full of great ideas, speakers, and presentations, but it’s a two-and-a-half-minute video about babies and food that wound up stealing the show. “The First Taste,” created by Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney and Heckler, shows young children reacting to their first experiences with unusual foods like anchovies, gherkin, and Vegemite. Set to orchestral music and shot in slow-motion, the video somehow takes a subject that could’ve easily dipped into boring humor and turns it into a strange and compelling combination of food, art, and social…
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Adrants
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Twitter Launches 'Lead Generation Card,' Brings Landing Page to Stream
22 May 2013 | 9:36 amToday, Twitter has added the Lead Generation Card to its stable of Twitter Cards, a format that brings a rich media experience to the stream. The Lead Generation Card allows for the creation of an in-stream landing page on which the user, with one click and without having to leave Twitter, can request more information from the marketer. When the user clicks, their name, email and Twitter handle are sent to the marketer who can then add that information into their marketing automation process for further nurturing. The Lead Generation Card reveals itself in an expanded Tweet where the marketer… -
The Martin Agency Unleashes Wittiest Geico Ad Ever
22 May 2013 | 9:21 amToday, it's all about the hump. No, not that hump. Hump Day. As in Wednesday. Created by The Martin Agency -- on Hump Day -- and featuring a witty camel (you see where this is going now?), the ad is part of the brand's Happier Than campaign. -
Is Samsung's 'Evolutionary Husband' Ad Sexist?
22 May 2013 | 8:08 amIn an effort to tout Samsung's new Evolution Kit, some kind of device that makes your tired, old TV awesome and new, the brand has dipped its toe into the anti-objectification of women waters with Evolutionary Husband. In the ad, a wife, tired of her slovenly husband's burping, farting, Neanderthal ways, plugs the Samsung Evolution Kit into his back and, poof, he instantly becomes...a stereotypically 1950's housewife who effortlessly cooks, cleans, babysits and generally serves his wife's every need...much like the stereotypical 1950's housewife did for her husband. It's no surprise ads over… -
Drunk Girl Pukes Up Father in Disgusting PSA
22 May 2013 | 7:49 amIt's sort of expected drug-related PSAs will shock, disgust and make you squirm. After all, it's the whole scared straight thing, right? Here's one from Bungalow25 for the Spanish Foundation Against Drug Addiction that aims to prevent alcohol abuse among Spanish youths. In the ad, a girl begins to puke on the sidewalk. Then she REALLY begins to puke. And then the commercial turns into an Alien movie. And finally, the ad closes with "Every time you get drunk you separate yourself from the things that matter most." -
Nutella Retracts Brain Fart, Drops Cease & Desist, Life Goes On
22 May 2013 | 7:27 amYesterday, the marketing world was up in arms over Nutella sending a cease and desist to the brand's biggest fan, Sara Rosso. Seven years ago, Rosso created World Nutella Day which now has 40,000 followers on Facebook. Nutella claimed the page was an unauthorized use of their intellectual property and trademarks. Oh how quickly the tide turns for brands when they realize lawyers are clueless and consumers run the show. Following the kerfuffle, Nutella has dropped its cease and desist order and issued an apologetic statement to Italian news site Corriere della Sera which the Huffington Post…
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Being Peter Kim
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Lean In
20 May 2013 | 9:11 amI recently finished reading Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In. I've also researched and read many of the criticisms of the book. Some criticism is well-reasoned and some knee-jerk reaction. A growing meme of mockery is subtle in use of the phrase "lean in," and while this seems surface positive, it's not too difficult to see parallels to Linsanity that resulted in "a chink in the armor." Let me say this: it's easier to hate than to innovate. If you have not yet read the book, you can watch an executive summary in the form of Sandberg's 2010 TED Talk: In my experience, managers too…
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PR-Squared - Social Media Marketing and Public Relations
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7 secrets to a successful, enduring business
20 May 2013 | 5:29 amWhat makes an agency successful begins not with fancy corporate jargon or a client roster of well known brands, but with the people at it. Choosing who those people are and who they collectively can be is a daunting challenge overall, but impossible without knowing what you stand for. That’s why core values are so important. At SHIFT, our core values are part of employee reviews. They’re part of monthly team meetings, when team leaders recognize accomplishments by their team members aligned with each of the values. They’re part of our hiring process, and candidates are… -
Nibbling at the Apple
7 May 2013 | 4:22 amIt’s becoming fashionable to take a bite out of Apple. There was Jean-Louis Gassée’s scathing article in the Guardian. There was Jon Gruber (of Daring Fireball) damning Apple with faint praise: blaming the media for cherrypicking the news to weave a narrative about Apple’s slow demise. I expect the chorus to grow louder before it weakens. Blood in the water, and all that. Apple doesn’t do itself many favors. Its trenchant secrecy used to seem cool – and I daresay it would still be considered cool – if not for the fact that a) competitive technologies are legitimately “catching… -
Did you know 70% of Facebook users are mobile?
3 May 2013 | 5:56 am…at least some of the time. That’s the latest in our findings after reading through Facebook’s Q12013 SEC Filing. See what other surprises are on tap for marketers in our summary on the SHIFT Communications blog post. -
SHIFT Turns 10: Reflecting Back, Looking Forward
30 Apr 2013 | 5:55 amWhen we sat around a conference table and battled through the process of defining our values a few years ago, SHIFT changed as an organization – we now had criteria that helped us define what it meant to be a SHIFTer and helped guide us through decisions, whether it was about our people, clients or services. We had a roadmap in a way we never had one before – sure, the instinct had been there, but now it was tangible and the fact that those values have lived far beyond a poster on a wall, is something we all take tremendous pride in as an organization. Want to see what we did with those… -
Put out the fires with effective crisis communications
2 Apr 2013 | 5:41 amOver on the SHIFT blog, we’re looking at the strategy for extinguishing the fires when your brand is ablaze. Knowledge, speed, and ownership are the three keys that will help you get things under control quickly with effective crisis communications. Learn more and download the free infographic now!
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PsyBlog
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How to Pick a Winner: A Psychological Trick to Improve the Odds
20 May 2013 | 6:38 amDoes thinking too specifically about a bet make you more likely to lose? I'm not, as they say, a betting man; but if I were I'd put down the form book and spend my time studying a new paper by Yoon et al. (2013) published in Psychological Science. The Korean researchers are fascinated by the question of whether thinking more carefully about a bet can actually make you less likely to win. In their first test of the idea they looked at 1.9 billion bets placed on baseball and soccer through a Korean company called "Sports ToTo". They wanted to see how people did when betting just on who won… -
The Incredible Dating Power of a Guitar Case
15 May 2013 | 7:00 amWould you give this man your telephone number? (Don't let the guitar case influence you.) In France there's a psychologist, Professor Nicolas Gueguen, who roams the North-West, asking young women for their telephone numbers—or at least his research assistants and experimental confederates do. This isn't just to boost the national stereotype, but all in the name of science. The results they've reported over the years confirm some things we think we already know and a few new insights. His experiments often involve approaching random strangers (usually women) in the street and asking them for… -
How to Help Other People Change Their Habits
13 May 2013 | 4:46 amThree pointers on helping someone else change their habits. Having written a book on how to change your own habits, in interviews I was often asked: how can I change another person's habits? Say I want my partner to stop cracking his knuckles or get my daughter to put down her mobile phone at meal times or start someone else exercising: how do I do that? It's not something I cover in the book, which focuses mainly on how habits work, how much of our everyday lives they influence and how to change your own personal habits. Ultimately the same techniques apply; but when you are working on… -
Illusory Correlations: When The Mind Makes Connections That Don’t Exist
9 May 2013 | 5:38 amWhy do CEOs who excel at golf get paid more, despite poorer stock market performance? To see how easily the mind jumps to the wrong conclusions, try virtually taking part in a little experiment... ...imagine that you are presented with information about two groups of people about which you know nothing. Let's call them the Azaleans and the Begonians. For each group you are given a list of positive and negative behaviours. A good one might be: an Azalean was seen helping an old lady across the road. A bad one might be: a Begonian urinated in the street. So, you read this list of good and bad… -
Perform Better Under Stress Using Self-Affirmation
7 May 2013 | 5:37 amCan thinking about what's important to you improve your problem-solving powers? Have a look at the following list of values and personal characteristics. If you had to pick just one, which most defines who you are and what matters to you? Your family Being good at sports Belief in a higher power Your friends Your creativity Aesthetics Your job Perhaps what matters most to you isn't there (this isn't a comprehensive list!), in that case think about what does matter to you most. In the burgeoning series of experiments which use this type of self-affirmation exercise, participants are then asked…
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media/anthropology
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The diffusion of protests (2)
30 Apr 2013 | 5:36 pmExcerpts from the paper “Diffusion Models of Cycles of Protest as a Theory of Social Movements” n.d. by Pamela E. Oliver (University of Wisconsin) and Daniel J. Myers (University of Notre Dame), www.nd.edu/~dmyers/cbsm/vol3/olmy.pdf This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding social movements as interrelated sets of diffusion processes and explains why such a conception is broadly useful to scholars of social movements. [...] We begin with the fundamental observation that in social movements, actions affect other actions: Actions are not just isolated,… -
The diffusion of protests (1)
30 Apr 2013 | 5:35 pmExcerpts from Koopmans, Ruud (2004) ‘Protest in time and space: the evolution of waves of contention’, in David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 19–46. A simple repetition of past patterns of protest by dissidents is [...] unlikely to lead to such an exposure of political opportunities. Regimes have established ways of dealing with known types of protest and elite controversies are unlikely to emerge over how to respond to them. The possibilities for exposing political opportunities… -
E-seminar: Media and social changing since 1979
30 Apr 2013 | 12:37 amThis e-seminar took place some time ago (in December 2012) but I thought I’d repost the relevant information and links here from the Media Anthropology Network site for archival purposes. Media Anthropology Network European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) E-seminar 42 4-18 December 2012. John Postill (RMIT): Media and social changing since 1979: Towards a diachronic ethnography of media and actual social changes. (PDF, 230 KB) Comments: Brian Larkin (Columbia University) (PDF, 80 KB) E-Seminar on Media and social changing since 1979 (PDF, 220 KB) Abstract In this paper… -
Swarms need hives: Paolo Gerbaudo on the 2011 wave of protests
10 Apr 2013 | 5:37 pmExtracts from Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism London and New York: Pluto Books, 2012. p. 27-28 ‘If Castells… was the [late 1990s] social theorist of the rise of the World Wide Web, Hardt’s and Negri’s joint work, which came at a later stage, bears the stamp of the era of mobile media and the new forms of collective action their diffusion inspired. Compared to Castells’ discussion of networks, Hardt and Negri do recuperate an appreciation of the role of the body and its mobility… Yet they too fail to take into account the emplaced… -
The concept of affordances (in brief)
7 Apr 2013 | 6:35 pmA useful summary of the concept of ‘affordances’ found in Juris, J. S. (2012), Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation. American Ethnologist, 39: 259–279. In the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies, the concept of “affordances” was introduced as a way to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of technological determinism, on the one hand, which views new modes of social relations as actively caused by particular forms of technology, and technological constructionism, on the other hand, which views…
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BuzzMachine
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Selling ads by time, not space
15 May 2013 | 5:28 pmI just saw some mind-bending work Chartbeat is about to release about measuring the time users spend exposed to an ad online. As background, to quote Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile: “Chartbeat monitors activity by checking in with users every second and looking for signals (mouse movement, key strokes, etc) that show they are actively consuming the content in front of them. This means they can measure how long readers spend actively engaged on a page and what parts they’re reading. Because of this Chartbeat knows how long are actively reading while an ad is in view — both for an… -
Apologies
5 May 2013 | 9:52 amHoward Kurtz screwed up, yes, but he also just showed an admirable example of accountability in apologizing on his CNN show Reliable Sources — saying that as a media critic he should be held to a higher standard of media trust — and then submitting to grilling by David Folkenflik of NPR and Dylan Byers of Politico. The video is here. Our first mistake in journalism is to pretend that we don’t make mistakes. That hubris has gone before many a fall. Now, of course, our imperfection is no excuse, no cover to make mistakes. But knowing they will be made, the real question is… -
Advice
3 May 2013 | 5:09 amI didn’t know until this week’s Howard Kurtz kerfuffles that I was even listed as a member of the advisory board to his Daily Download. I did indeed give some advice to Kurtz and Lauren Ashburn a few years ago, before the site’s launch, in a half-hour phone call as I headed to JFK one day. I can’t even remember the topic. Since then, I think I was asked one question and emailed an answer. I know nothing more about the site. The same thing happened to me at Patch. Before it launched, I was asked to come in and give some advice. I was offered remuneration to join the… -
And now the news: Here’s what we *don’t* know at this hour…
22 Apr 2013 | 5:48 amI often tell my students that where they see a problem, they should find the opportunity. Well, we’ve been told over and over this weekend that we had a big problem with misinformation after the Boston Marathon bombing. Breaking news, haven’t you heard, is broken. So I see an opportunity, a big journalistic opportunity. I also tell my students this: * Journalism should add value to a flow of information that can now occur without media’s mediation — verifying facts, vetting witnesses, debunking rumors, adding context, adding explanation, and most of all asking and… -
A media attack
15 Apr 2013 | 6:35 pmThe attack on the Boston Marathon was designed to maximize media coverage: a popular event with cameras everywhere and a narrative that will be sure to follow about innocent enjoyment henceforth ruined by danger. For years, we’ve been told to fear this: an attack on a football game or at Disneyland or in a mall, someplace without fear before. Instead, it happened at the marathon. No matter who committed this crime, a precedent is now set for those that unfortunately will follow. Now every time there is a popular event with many cameras that is open — not easily contained like a…
