dan collier

Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden delivers the first in a series of Gapcasts: Health, Money & Sex in Sweden. In this 7 minute video, he demonstrates the Trendalyzer application in a discussion of the economic and social development of Sweden over the last 300 years, and compares it to the various levels of global development today. Professor Rosling’s talk “New insights on poverty and life around the world” from TED 2007 is also interesting and funny. I’ve posted about Gapminder before.

Why Blog – A video by Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame and a Professor of Economics at University of Chicago. This short video is part of the Freakonomics blog being absorbed by the NYTimes. This video and Levitt’s post titled “If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?” are interesting examples of the interaction between new and old media. Levitt writes an Opinions piece centered on eliciting user ideas in the comments and posts a home-made video on the pages of the New York Times. Also Terrorism, Part II.

---

Storytelling – A video interview with Ira Glass from the radio and TV show This American Life about the art of telling stories for radio or video broadcast. Tim O’Reilly’s Radar has a good synopsis.

---

The Book Business – This is an interesting exchange of letters between the largest bookstore chain in Australia and the CEO of one of their suppliers at a not-so-big publishing house. In essence, the bookstore wants the publisher to pay for shelf-space. The publisher is not so keen on that idea. Booksellers and publishers are on the long list of industries with major issues to work out as they’re dragged into the digital millennium.

---

The 150 Top Media and Marketing Blogs – According to Adertising Age. Lots of links.

Dogen Sangha International is a virtual Buddhist community created by Master Gudo Wafu Nishijima, an 87 year old Japanese monk. He gives advice to reader submitted questions recently, and previously he wrote about Buddhist philosophy and zazen. Sensei Nishijima recently appointed his successor. There was some grumbling in the community. It turns out the new leader writes for soft-core porn site Suicide Girls (soft core porn possible on last two links). The old Master responded.

Master Dogen quoted a Chinese poem, which was composed by a Chinese man called Cho Setsu, who was a mandarin in the Chinese Government. The poem says;

Brightness is serenely illuminating the whole sands-of-ganges world.
All souls, common and sacred, are my family.
When not one image appears the total body manifests itself.
If the six sense organs are slightly moved [the mind] is covered with clouds.
By eliminating disturbances we redouble the disease.
To approach the Truth intentionally is also wrong.
In following worldly circumstances there are no hindrance.
Nirvana, and living-and-dying, are just flowers in space.

Who’s Minding the Mind – An interesting article from the New York Times about the role our subconscious plays in decision-making. The article reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink (excepted at that link) in which he describes these instantaneous and imperceptible decisions across a range of scenarios.

---

Craigslist as Business Model – The interview in the preceding link is Craigslist’s CEO Jim Buckmaster answering reader submitted questions. You may read it and think “Another CEO that knows what his customers wants to hear”. But if you watch this interview with Craig Newmark (the Craig of craigslist) on Charlie Rose, you’ll see a non-cynical business leader that pretty convincingly believes what he says. As part of the discussion, Craig Newmark has some interesting commentary on craigslist’s suspected effect on the shrinking newspaper business.

I admire the way Craigslist is managed, not guided solely by financial considerations, but also by what makes it’s principal owner happy or proud. CL is an advertising site that doesn’t blind you with unrelated ads, it is a user-based content site that removes content only on user-suggestion and even then relatively rarely, and it is an online marketplace not interested in (a cut of) the financial transaction. The space for online advertising sites may be full, but the business strategy behind craigslist seems rewarding and endlessly renewable.