Innovation Research Center

Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:51:45 +0100

I’m sure you split stories like this into two pages for a good reason: to save my bandwidth. After all, the remaining 3,126 characters of the story’s body (1,530 bytes as transferred with gzip compression) would have increased the page’s total size by 0.32%.

No, I’m just yanking your chain. I know you’re double-charging your advertisers for the same story by artificially inflating your pageview count. It’s just like the old auto-frame-refresh trick, but this one’s better because most of the ad networks haven’t banned it yet. That’s their problem, right? Why should you leave money on the table? You’re a business.

But it doesn’t really work as well as you had hoped because only a tiny percentage of viewers will actually read page two. You know that, but you don’t care, because you won’t give up a chance to make a few extra cents. Who cares if it annoys the crap out of that tiny slice of your audience? Who are they, anyway? The people who actually read your content thoroughly instead of skimming the headline and moving on? That can’t possibly be your most important audience segment — they’re just the most involved and attentive. Repeat customers. You already have their “eyeballs” that you can sell to your real customers. And these dupes get their eyeballs double-counted. What a steal!

Keep up the great work, publishers.

The Darwin Experience

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:07:22 +0100

I got the opportunity to visit the recently opened Darwin Centre this weekend. Read more about why it’s a bit special here. It certainly involves an interesting mix of physical objects, touch screens with the website and a bar code card acting as your very own harddrive of the experience.

Thanks to Max and Molly for taking me along.

"A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences,..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:17:59 +0100

“A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. Those are good things. But a mind is blown when something you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge.”

- - Michael Chabon on Storytelling for kids

(via @eovemar)

dubliner: juliasegal: When Jay-Z gets hungry… Yup, there’s...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:45:32 +0100

dubliner:

juliasegal:

When Jay-Z gets hungry…

Yup, there’s more than my yearly salary in one food receipt.
A YEAR’S SALARY.
FML.

"…as Edson explains his world. Carbon-fiber angels watching the city by day and night, never..."

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:56:41 +0100

“…as Edson explains his world. Carbon-fiber angels watching the city by day and night, never ceasing, never hasting. Universal arfid tagging and monitoring where clothes on your back and the shoes on your feet and the toys in your pocket betray you. Total surveillance from rodovia toll cameras to passersby’s T—shirts or I-shades snatching casual shots; only the rich and the dead have privacy. Information not owned but rented; date stamped music and designer logos that must be constantly updated: intellectual property rights enforceable with death but murder pay-per-view prime time entertainment and pay-per-case policing. Every click of the Chillibeans, every message and call and map, every live Goooool! update, every road toll and every cafezinho generates a cloud of marketing information, a vapor trail across Sampa’s information sphere. Alibis, mulitple identities, backup selves - it’s not safe to be one thing for too long. Speed is life. She will be trying to work out how she can exist - must exist - in this world of Order and Progress, with no scan no print no number, a dead girl come back to life. As he is a dead man, driving west through the night traffic.”

- from Brazyl, p. 179

thedailywhat: Flow Chart of the Day: “Never put off until...

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:37:00 +0200

thedailywhat:

Flow Chart of the Day: “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” — Mark Twain.

[via.]

Throwing in some market research as well.

"Interestingly, a good novel likewise pulls me from myself. But it does so in a completely different..."

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:36:28 +0200

“Interestingly, a good novel likewise pulls me from myself. But it does so in a completely different way. A good novel brings me up against, or into, a fully imagined otherness. A single—transitive—otherness. I read about Prince Andrei dying on the battlefield and I am sharpened inside myself. I am given a single measure of experience and I hold it alongside mine, and when I mark the page and close the covers I am as full of singular existing as I have ever been. I have not found that, even a hint of it, in my online reading. I think it’s because the one reading encounter directs me into myself, the other sends me outward in widening spirals. Which is not always unpleasant—it’s just not gratifying from the point of view of these ultimates I invoke for myself.”

- Sven Birkerts, online vs offline reading experiences.

Seems like a good start.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:14:49 +0200

Seems like a good start.

Wanted: superpowers

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:41:19 +0200

Wanted: superpowers

Object Sexuality

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:53:22 +0200

Object Sexuality:

bestofwikipedia:

Objectum sexuality is a pronounced emotional desire towards particular inanimate objects. Those individuals with this expressed preference may feel strong feelings of arousal, attraction, love, and commitment to certain items or structures of their fixation. For some, sexual or even close emotional relationships with humans are incomprehensible. The term objectum-sexuality was coined in the 1970s by a woman named Eija-Riitta Eklöf Berliner-Mauer from Liden, Sweden, who was married to the Berlin Wall. (via @tvsexdeath)

Eija-Riitta Eklöf Berliner-Mauer

"In the Taylorized world, something has been lost and, until it’s found, adding a few case studies to..."

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:50:26 +0200

“In the Taylorized world, something has been lost and, until it’s found, adding a few case studies to the curriculum at Harvard Business School probably isn’t enough. Neither unions nor businesses have lived up to Brandeis’s optimism. “If the fruits of Scientific Management are directed into the proper channels,” he wrote, “the workingman will get not only a fair share, but a very large share, of the industrial profits arising from improved industry.” Lately, that share has been going to shareholders and C.E.O.s. Home and work, separated since the first stirrings of the Industrial Revolution, have been growing back together again: BlackBerry on the nightstand, toaster in the photocopy room. Efficiency was meant to lead to a shorter workday, but, in the final two decades of the twentieth century, the average American added a hundred and sixty-four hours of work in the course of a year; that’s a whole extra month’s time, but not, typically, a month’s worth of either happiness minutes or civic participation. Eating dinner standing up while nursing a baby, making a phone call to the office, and supervising a third grader’s homework is not, I don’t think, the hope of democracy.”

- Jill Lepore, Not so Fast

My ficitional colleague this evening. Running for 3rd time...

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:39:41 +0200

My ficitional colleague this evening. Running for 3rd time straight while working, good company.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:09:07 +0200

tedr:

bradofarrell:

ZDNet:

This is according to a post on the Iranian Students Solidarity (Farsi) blog. My sources indicate the information comes from a group of resisters who have infiltrated the administration and are leaking out important information. These sources say that Yahoo representatives met with Iranian Internet authorities after Google and Yahoo were shut down during the protests and agreed to provide the names of Yahoo subscribers who also have blogs in exchange for the government lifting the blocks on Yahoo.
If this is true, Yahoo is ensuring human beings die in exchange for ad sales. Uh, great.

To the Audience

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:56:43 +0200

stephthirion:

Often insomnia would strike in, and I would ask aloud, to the darkness of the room, “will anyone appreciate this”? (My girlfriend had by that time developed the habit of using earplugs). And then in a spectacle of light rays and stars, the Fairy of Reason would appear to me and speak tenderly: “good hearted child, if you love it, some people, who have things in common with you, will too”. And then, on my knees, holding my hands together, tears shaking on the corners of my begging eyes, I would ask, “what if I’m just a freak and no one is like me?” And then she’d say, in her soothing voice: “Well, it’s true that you do some weird shit. Do you always have to do the dishes with gloves on?” And then I’d reply: “I don’t like detergent, my hands get all dehydrated and”. But the Fairy of Reason would not wait for me to finish: “Do you really need four duvets, in springtime?” And me: “Look, I get chilly when I sleep. Can we get back to my game?” And then, just as she appeared, in a beautiful glow of white color, she was gone.

(via Snarkmarket)

bjornjeffery: rap represented in mathematical charts and...

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:37:00 +0200

bjornjeffery:

rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs

And this one.

And so on…immensely fun.

"Sidney Reilly has the strongest claim on the title of the “real James Bond”. For decades historians..."

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:34:00 +0200

“

Sidney Reilly has the strongest claim on the title of the “real James Bond”. For decades historians have tried to unpick the knotty threads of his life but much of it remains tangled in legend and mystery. Born in 1873 in Russia with the name Rosenblum, Reilly found himself in London having: a) stowed away on a British ship bound for Brazil after faking his own death when the Russians fingered him as a revolutionary, later winning a British passport after saving the life of a visiting intelligence officer during an attack by natives; or, b) fled a suburb of Paris where he and an accomplice called Voitek acquired large amounts of cash from two Italian anarchists later found stabbed to death.

In London, where he ran with the first story, Reilly quickly ingratiated himself into high society, satisfying his weakness for casinos, women and fast living. With a new identity and passport, the debonair playboy returned to Russia, where he spied for Britain and Japan.

In 1909, Reilly learned to weld and, disguised as a Baltic shipyard worker, found employment at a German weapons plant. He strangled a foreman who caught him stealing weapons plans before feeling the country with the designs. In the same year, according to one biography, Reilly posed as a pilot at the Frankfurt Airshow and removed a sophisticated magneto (generator) from a German plane. With an accomplice, he made detailed drawings of the device before replacing it.

Reilly’s biggest triumph came in 1918 when he plotted to depose the Bolshevik Government and assassinate Lenin. When men loyal to the communist leader infiltrated the scheme, Reilly fled back to Britain via Finland and Sweden and was sentenced to death in absentia.

In 1925, he was lured into a bogus anti-communist group run by Russian agents. One later said of Reilly: “His dark eyes expressed something biting and cruel; his lower lip drooped deeply and was too slick – the neat black hair, the demonstratively elegant suit ? Everything in his manner expressed something haughtily indifferent to his surroundings.” Reilly, known as the “Ace of Spies”, was shot and killed, leaving behind a string of wives who unsuccessfully pursued MI6 for compensation. They included an actress by the name of Pepita Bobadilla.

”

- Top Secret: A century of British espionage

benjaminpalmer: software that magically transforms a doodle...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:47:11 +0200

benjaminpalmer:

software that magically transforms a doodle into a beautiful photo composite.

Video demo if you click through.

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage « Ming-Ming Cheng （程明明）

(via @quikness)

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:43:06 +0200

(via @quikness)

"Now that the medium is evaporating, publishers have nothing left to sell. Some seem to think they’re..."

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:44:13 +0200

“Now that the medium is evaporating, publishers have nothing left to sell. Some seem to think they’re going to sell content—that they were always in the content business, really. But they weren’t, and it’s unclear whether anyone could be.”

- Post-Medium Publishing (via marco)

Rafer sez:
Content is like technology. The people specifically in charge of producing it mistake it for enterprise value whereas the value is always in sales and distribution.

(via rafer) (via mikehudack)

"Since its first round of funding and at its current $1 billion valuation, Twitter’s worth has grown..."

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:31:09 +0200

“Since its first round of funding and at its current $1 billion valuation, Twitter’s worth has grown by $1,223,990 per day. If you start with the day of Twitter’s inception (the first tweet from Twitter’s Inventor and Chairman, Jack Dorsey), then Twitter’s worth has grown by around $772,797 per day.”

- and other fun stats related to Twitter’s recent funding from Mashable. (via brycedotvc)

That puts things in perspective.

(via caterpillarcowboy

)

I hope that this leads people to call bullshit. I love Twitter but I don’t believe that it’s created $1.2mm of value per day since its first round of funding closed. I believe it’s created an enormous amount of value. Just not that much. Venture math doesn’t have to reflect reality, though. The only time reality has to come to Twitter’s valuation is when it either sells or floats on the public markets.

(via mikehudack)