Link Drop Today

While I recognize that it is still too soon to talk about the influence of the iPad when it has yet to come out, the post Books in the Age of the iPad is worth spending a lot more time with than the conspiracy theories of whether the iPad will ship with a camera or not.

There’s so much I could block quote, but that would be a disservice to not actually reading the whole post. But I will post this bit…

When people lament the loss of the printed book, this — comfort — is usually what they’re talking about. My eyes tire more easily, they say. The batteries run out, the screen is tough to read in sunlight. It doesn’t like bath tubs.

Important to note is that these aren’t complaints about the text losing meaning. Books don’t become harder to understand, or confusing just because they’re digital. It’s mainly issues concerning quality. One inevitable property of the quality argument is that technology is closing the gap (through advancements in screens and batteries) and because of additional features (note taking, bookmarking, searching), will inevitably surpass the comfort level of reading on paper.

The convenience of digital text — on demand, lightweight (in file size and physicality), searchable — already far trumps that of traditional printed matter.

The formula used to be simple:
stop printing Formless Content; only print well-considered Definite Content.

The iPad changes this.

What I like about this post from Matt Daniels is passes along some hilarious info about guys and credit card interest rates and fees. Apparently a women’s photo had as much impact in response as dropping the interest rate by five points. As sad as that seems the post also goes into behavioral economics. Sometimes when I read about a more scientific method for planning I want to put my head through a wall. Irrational humans can’t predict things they’ve never encountered before but I also flip to looking at my stats to see what grabs people attention. So what’s the happy balance between tipping your hand to overwhelming evidence for something obvious and possibly crass and doing the opposite of what is expected an reap bigger rewards?

I’m not sure if there was any single example that made crowdsourcing in vogue aside from cheap tech, people that had time on their hands, there were no budgets to pay people to come up with ideas and/or the misguided idea of following a crowd is never a mistake (think focus groups). But with that said in the post Crowdsourcing: Art vs Model there’s a lot to consider. Who actually benefits from such an exercise, the people organizing the system or those participating? And down the road what does it mean for those creating the system…

What I like about this post is that Young & Brilliant has contrasted the more typical sports athlete (with an old management team) and contrasted her with another athlete in the same field that by the looks of it has grown her voice and image with the same social media tools everyone has.