POTD | The Erosion in The Paid Media Pyramid

December 3rd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

The media business is changing — and fast.

As Seth Godin notes, just about anybody can produce almost anything digital these days and the lines between free and mass content are blurring dramatically. The traditional definitions of content (packaged assets like article, song, or show) have blurred with the rise of social media and the remix/mashup economy.

The Erosion in the Paid Media Pyramid

At the same time, the massive increase in connected distribution means that producers can reach consumers with bespoke or limited content ways never seen before.

The likely winners in all of this: those producers or aggregators that can capture consumer attention and move beyond the selling of mass digital assets to providing either limited goods or marketing ongoing entertainment experiences.

Roomba Light Art

December 3rd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

My kids love our Roomba. Who knew it had an artistic side?

IBR Roomba Swarm in the Dark IV

Roomba Art by Tobias Baumgartner, Marcus Brandenburger, Tom Kamphans, Alexander Kroeller, and Christiane Schmidt

Now, if it could only code HTML5…

Shaped Brick Wall By Henry Moore

November 27th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Great photo of the wall sculpture by British artist
Henry Moore at the Bouwcentrum in Rotterdam.

Exposed brick wall by Henry Moore

Photo by Reinier de Jong

I’m very fond of exposed brick and studied in Rotterdam; hence, it’s appeal.

Cleaning Out The Attic

November 27th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Every few months, I clean out the digital attic
and purge old, tired content sources.

I read quite a bit daily (usually at the crack of dawn and late at night), so curating my digital sources keeps me from going insane. I’ve added a few new online sources of information, including some sources of personal design and blogging inspiration, plus a few new sources of industry and professional information.

Here are a few new additions to the blogroll.

From the business side:

Bryce 
Bijan Sabet
Bill Gurley
Anthony Tjan
Venture Hacks

From the design side:

Design Milk
Ministry of Type
Cooperdotcom
Weburbanist

I’ll probably add a few more in the coming days.

POTD | 10 Years of Blogging

November 27th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Om Malik provides a nice perspective on a decade of blogging.

I’ve been tied up with a bunch of family activity and work-related stuff, but his post inspired me to recommit to posting at burdseed again.

Convos | New Section Added

August 21st, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

I’m still testing out a few more tumblelog-like site features.

One is a pretty basic feed of current social conversations. Right now, this has my twitter feed (with pretty lame styling), but I’m hoping to add in Google+ at some point soon and improve the general look and feel.

POTD | Software is Eating the World

August 20th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

“We are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy,” wrote Marc Andreessen in the Wall Street Journal.

He’s absolutely correct and I agree that over the next decade we will continue to see tectonic shifts in the way that companies produce, and people consume, goods and services. Much of this will be due to software, but enabling the software is the massive proliferation of semiconductors and connectivity. It really is becoming an always on, always connected world and software benefits from this. Well worth reading.

POTD | Creepy New Orleans

August 2nd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

I stumbled across this site with images of post-Katrina, abandoned Six Flags New Orleans.

Katrina killed the clown

Photo by Keoni Cabral

It’s strangely haunting and beautiful at the same time.

The Growing Threat of Malware

July 28th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Malware and attacks on non-PC devices will only continue to increase, particularly as devices get smarter and more complex with browsers and app stores.

Rip Empson:

Larger malware networks have begun swallowing smaller malware entities, and they’re now serving up their web landmines at astonishing rates. Apple even seems to have reached the tipping point, with enough market share that malware networks have begun targeting Apple OSes. It’s not quite the “explosion of malware on Macs” many forecasted, but it’s still a much larger problem than it was a year ago. And it’s not just desktops and laptops that are affected, malware has gone mobile, too. Android appears to becoming more vulnerable, as security firm, Kaspersky Lab, identified 70 different malware on Google’s mobile OS in March.

Some device manufacturers are better positioned to manage security issues like these than others.

POTD | New York Times Redux

July 27th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Today’s post of the day is actually a series of posts from earlier in the week about the design of news sites.

The New York Times Mobile Site

Photo by Robert Scoble

Andy Rutledge, a designer, published an analysis of the layout of New York Times web site, along with some hypothetical changes, and used it as an example of the design challenges faced by today’s news sites. This sparked a bunch of conversation on Twitter, including from current and former designers at the times. Om summarizes the discussion nicely.

Although Rutledge missed a bit with his comments about the Times and with some of the elements of his redesign, the essence of his message is correct: many news sites desperately need to be redesigned for the modern web. This problem is not limited to news, but extends to many first-generation web portals and sites in areas such as sports, entertainment, and finance. It’s also true for many of the early web 2.0 sites. Use of the web is changing and is increasingly being driven by social, devices, video, and living room or mobile use cases. Less is more in most cases.

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