Tumblr nearly tripled unique US visitors last year, and is third largest web brand by time in US, after Facebook and Blogger.
via Nielsen Social Media Report: Q3 2011
(via emergentfutures)
randomshouts
An fantastic overview of the mobile technology landscape in Africa from the Praekelt Foundation.
Interesting facts:
- In 202 there were 49 million cellphones in Africa, now there are 500 million
- In South Africa and Gabon there are more active SIM cards than there are people
- In Africa 95% of mobile users are pre-paid subscribers
(Source: youtube.com, via emergentfutures)
Philip Greenspun's Weblog » How did the New York Times manage to spend $40 million on its pay wall?
Aside from wondering who will pay more than the cost of a Wall Street Journal subscription in order to subscribe to the New York Times, my biggest question right now is how the NY Times spent a reported $40-50 million writing the code (Bloomberg; other sources are consistent). […] What am I missing?This is really an important question, where the answer has huge implications for the future. The reason that traditional organizations spend so much on solving problems in general, and on IT solutions in particular, is what constitutes their main challenge. When small and young organizations, who is built on domain specific knowledge and bottom-up principles do something they are spending less resources by several magnitudes. And part from spending less resources on building the solution, the methodology and the lower threasholds to understanding the customer situation gives then a much higher probability of succeeding. They are simply closer to their customers and their problems. Modern organizations are not as hierarchical, mechanistic or has as many internal dependencies as traditional organizations and will never understand why it costs 40 million USD to build e g a paywall solutions. This is really the main challenge for traditional organizations like many newspapers publishers. And we haven’t even talked about if a paywall will really work or not…
(via emergentfutures)
(Source: radiateelovee, via inspiration1)
Caterpillar Cowboy: Mark Suster's ideas on entreprenuers
“I’m sure everybody has their own definition of the attributes of an entrepreneur. Some of the ones I would identify are:
* Not very status-oriented
* Doesn’t follow rules very well and questions authority
* Can handle high degrees of ambiguity or uncertainty
* Can handle…
(Source: TechCrunch)
A Drug That Could Give You Perfect Visual Memory
Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see.
Read more @ Mad Science.
(via emergentfutures)
What Your Phone Says About You
Paul Higgins: Loved this. Jo has a Blackberry and dinosaur is exactly how I view her on technology. I have a HTC Android phone and the graphic reflects Jo’s view (as well as my own secret view of myself)
“ Researchers have found several reasons to believe that bacteria affect the mental health of humans. For one thing, bacteria produce some of the same types of neurotransmitters that regulate the function of the human brain. The human intestine contains a network of neurons, and the gut network routinely communicates with the brain. Gut bacteria affect that communication. “The bugs are talking to each other, and they’re talking to their host, and their host talks back,” Young says. The phrase “gut feeling” is probably, literally true.
Bacteria ‘R’ Us | Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. Miller-McCune.
So apparently you talk to your poop.
(via ninakix)(via ninakix)
“ today anyone who is incapable of talking in the prescribed fashion, that is of effortlessly reproducing the formulas, conventions and judgments of mass culture as if they were his own, is threatened in his very existence, suspected of being an idiot or an intellectual.
theodor w. adorno, the schema of mass culture, collected in the culture industry (1991)
(Source: nosex, via notational)
