Month: November 2007

If you’ve been annoyed because you’re missing your daily dose of The Daily Show (like me) you might be interested in this video from the striking writers about what they want.

This is a good use of the medium. The video is short, snappy and lays the issues out in a clear fashion, with plenty of graphics to back up their points. Anyone looking for advice on how to put together a presentation that works should take note.

What I can’t understand is how the issues in this strike have been allowed to go on for so long. It was almost 20 years ago that the writers agreed to give up a significant part of their share of the home video pie, to help get the business going. Now, 20 years later, everyone agrees that what’s happened to them is unfair and should be fixed. But during all this time, the writers’ share of those revenues hasn’t changed. Why didn’t anyone from the big companies ever say “This is silly and needs to be fixed”? Seems like a no-brainer to me, but then, I often thing that common sense should prevail. Silly me.

If you support the writers, head over to UnitedHollywood.com to see their blog, or sign their petition.

Remember the Spinning Dancer graphic that I posted about a couple of weeks ago?

Well, it turns out that while it’s an interesting illusion (see the comments on that post), it’s scientific validity is in some question.

Some minds a great deal more learned than mine spent time on the illusion and came up with interesting results. It seems the linkages between which way the dancer appears to be spinning and which side of your brain is dominant are not so clear cut. In fact, they may be wrong.

Over at the Freakonomics blog, Steven Levitt used his readers to conduct some statistical analysis. His results would seem to indicate that the confusion might stem from the initial article mixing up the hemispheres — by stating right, when they meant left, or something like that.

As a follow-up, Levitt points to a post at Sciencline.org by Jeremy Hu, which goes into a lot more depth on the whole Spinning Dancer issue, and casts further doubt on the validity of the whole thing.

I’m not sure whether any of this is of value to us, but I am intrigued by what some very smart people can come up with when they look at an animated graphic on a website. Most of us look at it and say “cool” while they come up with a whole theory about what it might mean – or not mean. I guess that’s why I’m not an academic.

“Facebook is the ‘It’ company of 2007” says FastCompany magazine.

In their November, 2007 issue, now available online, writer Ellen McGirt takes a look at this rising tech company, which is certainly the darling of the moment. If you’ve been hearing about Facebook but you aren’t sure what all the fuss is about, give it a read.

Last week, Microsoft paid $240 million for just 1.6% of the company, which means (according to Microsoft) the value of the company is about $15 billion. Which is crazy, according to some (or maybe all) analysts, notably John Dvorak, who thinks Microsoft is nuts.

FastCompany (and I’m sure plenty of other sites as well) also has an interesting look at the relationship between Microsoft and Facebook and why they might have done this deal.

Whatever the true value of the company, there’s no denying how popular the social networking site has become. Heck, even I have an account there and a lot of my colleagues do as well. Although it started out as a place for college kids, its wide open now and being used by people of all ages.

What’s interesting is that unlike some other sites, such as MySpace, Facebook seems to have captured the imagination of business types, who are using it as a business tool.

But is Facebook really leading a revolution or is it just the flavour of the month, like Friendster or other social networking sites that have gone before it. They all ruled the roost at one point, but faded as new players came along.

Personally, I think there’s something different going on now. What’s happening is that these sites are starting to figure out how to work with each other, so that you don’t have to recreate yourself each time you join a new one. It’s early yet, but I think that the ability to follow the activities of people you know as they go about their daily lives is something that we’ll come to expect.

What about you? Are you using Facebook, or Twitter, or some other service that keeps you up to date with what your friends are doing, and let’s them know what you’re up to? Do you want to participate in something like that?

Whether Facebook or the other sites out there now are the ones that end up sticking is an open question. But what seems clear is that the connected world we’re living in today is a reality that isn’t going to go away.

By the way, you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook (membership required) or LinkedIn or Flickr or MyRagan (again, membership required) or…well, you get the idea.

See you online.
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