Monday links and the “Desperate Stupidity” of crowds?

# “Web 2.0 is for complete twonks” Best anti web-2.0 screed I’ve read in at least a week. As only the Inq could put it “The whole product of the people shows how desperately stupid the average web user really is…” I still wonder though, if crowd filters could be more effective, even productive, should they were an enterprise or industry-specific user base rather than, say, an editorial base heavily skewed to dorm rooms packed full of male, adolescent linux aficionados? (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

# Damnit, I wish wordpress had an autosave feature like Gmail.

# I don’t normally link to Guy, he of the business guru 101 self-same 10-20-30 business plans, today I really do feel that he hit an important nail straight on the head with, er, a rhetorical hammer or whatever. Basically, he’s hitting the point “it’s all about the distribution, stupid”. Less we forget, just because your new web-fangled crowd-content-enabled-purple-cow-2.0-what-have-you-product could, almost costlessly, reach out to millions of potential customers, doesn’t mean that it will. at least, just left to its own devices. Distribution is hard. Even if every product these days doesn’t need old-school distribution with trucks, warehouses and branch offices etc. is still a challenge. Getting out of the local echo chamber and actually registering in the mindshare of the mass-market is nontrivial, especially given today’s crowded media space. This is why I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the distribution problem for my own nascent startup. In fact, if you think you might be able to help, please do drop me a line 😉

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Wish list

# OMG, how cool is this watch?

# Have you been this excited for a James Bond movie since you were 14? If the film is half as good the trailer, could be worth your $13. Watch the trailer, do you agree?

# thanks for all the feedback on dead media (both inline and off), I’m touched 🙂 And, for those of you … I never said the loss of certain media wasn’t more lamentable (poetry, pneumatic tubes) than others (disco music…) =)

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Dead Media

Shel Holtz was in town yesterday to talk about blogging and social media and one of the things he had to say was “social media is changing everything” the other thing he had to say was something along the lines of “[don’t worry] new media never completely kills old media”. Of course to say that old media forms never get killed is a pretty strong statement. Historically, there must be tons of dead media. Help me make a list!

Dead Media!

  • sheet music
  • poetry
  • the fax machine
  • 8 tracks
  • town criers
  • overhead projectors
  • letter writing
  • floppy disks
  • mixed tapes
  • papyrus
  • illustrated manuscripts
  • dotmatrix printers
  • VHS (and Beta)
  • Oral history
  • Latin
  • Morse code (and telegrams)
  • Typewriters
  • Clay Tablets
  • Disco Music
  • Hieroglyphics
  • The Oracle of Delphi
  • Nailing people to crosses (ouch)
  • The Spanish Inquisition
  • Wood block prints
  • Handbills
  • Parchment
  • MS DOS
  • What else can you think of?

BONUS: For your enjoyment, 15 years of songs about Dead Radio:


“we ask for too much I guess, cause all we get is dead disco, dead funk, dead rock ‘n roll…”

“hang the dj, hang the blessed dj, for the music that they constantly play, says nothing to me about my life…”

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