Frontline: the persuaders

Du tout médias au medium rien Cette manie de prétendre tout mettre dans tout… Le journal dans le téléphone, la télé dans l’ordinateur et le petit commerce dans la boîte à musique… L’exercice n’est plus réservé aux acteurs du machin numérique : pour ne pas se laisser tondre, les vieux médias se sont résolus à recycler leurs produits diversement recyclables. Avec des fortunes diverses. Le truc à la mode, et qu’avaient vulgarisé sur Inter, en leur temps raccourci, Didier Porte et Stéphane Guillon, c’est la radio filmée. Soit, dans le poste, le chroniqueur chroniquant, dans la lecture, non de son prompteur, mais de son petit papier du jour. Face à lui, une caméra fixe qui tourne toute seule ; dans son dos, comme chez le footeux faisant pour ses sponsors l’aumône d’un commentaire en langue à crampons, le mur autopromotionnel du studio de la station ; hors champ, dans l’agitation d’une régie qu’on devine, la voix off d’un comparse pour une «relance» téléphonée. Ces coulisses, on devrait ne jamais les dévoiler.

The Rise of Digital Multitasking [STATS] More Americans than ever are multitasking while they watch TV, according to a new survey from Deloitte. Between September 10 and October 8, 2010, Deloitte polled 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 14 to 75 on their digital habits. Unsurprisingly, it found that Americans are plugged in. TV is still king, though; 74% of U.S. consumers still watch TV primarily on their TV sets, and a full 59% of U.S. households now own flat-screen TVs. The TV-watching experience is changing, too. The survey also addresses the decline of print media. We're a bit surprised to see that print magazine subscriptions haven't dropped off like a cliff in recent years, but they are definitely falling, and it's forcing publishers to make hard choices.

American Thinker: The Story of the Egyptian Revolution My apologies for the length of this article, but I see it as extremely important to tell the whole story as it happened. The Story of the Egyptian Revolution One week ago, Egypt was a stable authoritarian regime, prospects of change were minimal and every expert in Washington would have betted on the endurance of its regime. Today, Egypt is in a state of chaos. The regime, even after using its mightiest sword is not able to control the country and the streets of Egypt are in a state of utter lawlessness. As the world stands in awe, confusion, and worry at the unfolding events, perhaps it is important to write the evolving story that is happening in Egypt before any reflections can be made on them. Contrary to pundits, it turns out that the Egyptian regime was neither stable nor secure. For two weeks calls were made using new social media tools for a mass demonstration on the 25th of January. But beneath that, things were very different. The internet was cut off in Egypt. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Midem 2011: How Music is changing. Long live the hackers! » Article » OWNI.eu, Digital Journalism I’ve attended @Midem for the last 12 years and there’s one thing that’s still the “same”, Cannes has super vibes around entertainment and music and spending 2-3 days there is always cool. The sun helps and I love running on the Croisette early in the morning. This year’s vibes were especially amazing. I’ll try to explain. I attended very few panels; they tended to be boring rehashes of things we already know. Obviously I was really happy to have been invited to participate in the session called “How to License Your Music Business Worldwide.” But the coolest part of the entire Midem, hands down, was the MusicHackDay. Companies such as Soundcloud, Last.fm, The Echonest, Bmat, Extension.fm, 7 Digital, SongKick, Musescore and musiXmatch participated in the all-nighter and delivered an amazing showcase of apps. You don’t believe me? Artists and writers deserve to get paid for their awesomeness. Therefore, this is my dream and the winning equation: Long live the music! Max Ciociola

The Scale Every Business Needs Now - Umair Haque by Umair Haque | 10:43 AM January 20, 2010 Beancounter 1: “Our new widgets business — we think it’s amazing”. Beancounter 2: “We’ve ridden the learning curve, the product mix is optimized, the supply chain’s streamlined, the market’s tightly segmented.” Beancounter 3: “But we’ve got a burning question for you, Umair — will it scale?” UH: “You know what doesn’t scale? The point. Beancounters 1, 2, and 3: (enraged, attack UH with pitchforks). That’s what happened to me not so long ago in one of the anonymous boardrooms of the universe. Here’s what the economic historians of the 23rd Century are going to say about the 20th. “They built giant, globe-spanning organizations, that employed tens of thousands of people working around the clock, to produce… sugar water, fast food, disposable razors, and gas guzzlers. The old scale was about stuff. Everything scaled in the 20th Century except what mattered most. In the 21st century, “stuff” is a commodity. From whence, then, ambitionlessness?

Pierre Omidyar: Separation of Mosque and State There is a growing tide of opinion in this country that religion and government should be intertwined. This view tends to be most widely held by evangelical Christians, who believe that society would benefit if Christianity played an official role in government. A recent Honolulu Civil Beat poll found that 11 percent of likely voters in Hawaii believed Christianity should play an official role in government. Those who hold this view have begun questioning the Constitutional principle of separation of church and state. Despite its name, the separation of church and state applies equally to any religion, so it could also be called the "separation of temple and state," or the "separation of mosque and state." This important principle derives from the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which reads, in its striking simplicity and brevity: Ask the Christians who live in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Shhhhh! The Next Really, Really, Really, Big Thing Is... Greg Satell has an interesting and entertaining post entitled, The Next Really, Really, Really, Big Thing. He begins: Everybody should be excited about the next big thing. And why not? If you don’t want to get left behind, you’ve got to hop on this right away. He then runs through some of the previous “really big things” that didn’t turn out to be so big after all, including eCommerce, search and social media. Greg’s suggestion for “the next really, really, really, big thing that will last" is, hold your breath: Getting really smart, driven people to work together well That's the next really big thing? Greg's point is that if you can get a group like that together and sustain them, they will be able to generate any number of really big ideas. According to Greg, the elements to accomplish this include: In-House TrainingFocus On Intrinsic MotivationBest Practice ProgramsCoaches and MentorsFiring Nasty PeopleA Community of Purpose Some needed ingredients to sustain it To learn more

The mysterious disappearance of billions of bees could mean us losing a third of the food we eat By Valentine Warner Updated: 22:30 GMT, 12 February 2011 Bees fan: TV chef Valentine Warner says that a world without bees would have an effect on the food we eat Just four years. That’s how long Albert Einstein reportedly said the human race would last in a world without bees. For the master of relativity, the equation was relatively simple: no more bees = no more people. And while there is debate over whether the great physicist made the claim, no one disputes that we would be in serious trouble were bees to disappear. I feel a particular affection for bees. I had no idea then that these extraordinarily productive creatures, whose very name is a byword for busyness, whose hives are synonymous with ‘industry’, do far more than just make honey. Bees are vital to the success of about 90 crops worldwide. But bees are now in danger of dying out. Honeybees sterilise their hives by coating all surfaces with propolis, a resin they produce. So we need to do all we can to help them.

iPad 2, Xoom, TouchPad: The tablet age is upon us. - By Farhad Manjoo Last week, John Gruber of the blog Daring Fireball wrote that "the next six months are going to set the foundation for the future of personal computing." Gruber argues that the rise of tablet computing marks the beginning of the "post-PC era." He makes a compelling case. The iPad is less than a year old, but it now accounts for 17 percent of Apple's revenue —nearly as much as the company brings in from the Mac. Apple's rivals are rushing to catch up. Finally, there was news from Finland. Taken together, these developments show that mobile operating systems are sweeping the computer business. But these announcements also suggest a period of uncertainty for the tech industry and for consumers. Your purchasing decision won't be so obvious in the next generation of computers. All of this sounds obvious: I'm describing the iPhone, iPad, and devices like it. This sort of uncertainty is the hallmark of a platform war. This doesn't hold true in the tablet world.

Email Etiquette for the Super-Busy In a recent blog post, venture capitalist Fred Wilson talked about his ongoing struggle with email management and the various solutions he’s tried, concluding: “Every time I make a productivity gain, the volume eventually overwhelms me.” It’s a familiar problem. We’re all extremely busy, and we all get too much email. So what to do? It’s time for a more mindful approach, one that fully embraces a “less is more” strategy. To help you get started, we’ve assembled a cheat sheet of our email best practices. 1. Do you like getting long emails? 2. It’s standard practice to begin an email by summarizing what happened at a meeting or during a phone conversation, then following on with any “action steps” that emerged. 3. This is Email 101. A good rule of thumb is to strive to keep emails to one line or less. 4. Emails that offer nothing but a “What do you think about X…?” 5. Some people think that handing out deadlines can seem dictatorial. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. What’s Your Approach?

Lessons Learned