tom willerer . com

"It’s an amazing phenomenon but I have no idea how they can monetize it. No one monetizes the..."

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:56:14 -0700

“It’s an amazing phenomenon but I have no idea how they can monetize it. No one monetizes the Web today to any extent other than search.”

- Murdoch on Twitter

BBC: Giving up my iPod for a Walkman

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:17:28 -0700

BBC: Giving up my iPod for a Walkman

Inspiring Ideas, From a Few of Britain's Best Design Students

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:30:39 -0700

Inspiring Ideas, From a Few of Britain's Best Design Students:

The Royal College of Art is currently putting on its Graduate Show, of work by departing students.

Why are European designers so much better than Americans? The profession has pondered the…

Inspiring Ideas, From a Few of Britain's Best Design Students

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:54:55 -0700

Inspiring Ideas, From a Few of Britain's Best Design Students:

The Royal College of Art is currently putting on its Graduate Show, of work by departing students.

Why are European designers so much better than Americans? The profession has pondered the…

On a Jonah Lehrer kick.

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:16:55 -0700

On a Jonah Lehrer kick.

knowing what to ignore

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:07:45 -0700

Knowing what to ignore is and will become one of the most important skills for people to be effective, efficient, and creative in business and in life.

And, I would guess that this key skill is one that most of us (myself included) are terrible at. We pay attention to things that should be ignored and ignore things that need our attention. This only gets more difficult as our involvement in social media (and media more generally) increases.

I have no “solutions”, except trial and error and awareness or what neuroscientists refer to as Metacognition (term introduced to me by Jonah Lehrer).

"Andrew Bird (born July 11, 1973) is an American musician. He was born in Illinois and resides in the..."

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:06:06 -0700

“Andrew Bird (born July 11, 1973) is an American musician. He was born in Illinois and resides in the Chicago area. Bird is a singer-songwriter, a violinist and, since 2004, a guitarist. He also is an accomplished whistler.”

- Andrew Bird’s bio on last.fm

You know you’ve made it when you are considered an “accomplished whistler”. Even though it sounds silly, he is one heck of a whistler.

Photo

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:29:21 -0700

"Anyway, we’re in a world where the mainstream social networks want any and all people to boost..."

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:18:20 -0700

“Anyway, we’re in a world where the mainstream social networks want any and all people to boost user numbers for the big selloff and are not concerned with the quality of experience.”

- Part of Trent Reznor’s rant on Social Media and why he’s “signing off”. I agree.

"While much of the “new IAC” relies on advertising revenue, Diller declared at the..."

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:52:39 -0700

“While much of the “new IAC” relies on advertising revenue, Diller declared at the conference that strictly relying on advertising as a business model is not sustainable. “I absolutely believe that the Internet is passing from its free phase into a paid system,” he predicted (though, keep in mind, Diller did say he doesn’t like to predict). “Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid. Not every single thing, but everything of any value. Again, take commodity away from it.””

- news.cnet.com

Peter Schiff, one of the most sensible economists, on Jon...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:29:46 -0700

Peter Schiff, one of the most sensible economists, on Jon Stewart. Worth a listen.

More relevant now than it was when the talk was given...

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:29:20 -0700

More relevant now than it was when the talk was given (‘05).

Key quote: the secret to happiness is low expectations.

"Like Mrs. Nichols, many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave..."

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:19:26 -0700

“

Like Mrs. Nichols, many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?

….

Judging from conversations with retired bloggers, many of the orphans were cast aside by people who had assumed that once they started blogging, the world would beat a path to their digital door.

”

- NYT Fashion & Style

My opinion: most blogs are abandoned because most people have unrealistic expectations for what their blog will achieve.

Found in The Hub magazine. Written by Landor Associates

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:57:17 -0700

Found in The Hub magazine. Written by Landor Associates

This picture is from a recent flight of mine. I loved that the...

Tue, 26 May 2009 12:02:00 -0700

This picture is from a recent flight of mine. I loved that the airline offered a place to plug in my laptop as well as on screen entertainment.

"In filmmaking and many other kinds of complex product development, creativity involves a large..."

Sun, 24 May 2009 12:43:56 -0700

“In filmmaking and many other kinds of complex product development, creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many inherently unforeseeable problems. The trick to fostering collective creativity, Catmull says, is threefold: Place the creative authority for product development firmly in the hands of the project leaders (as opposed to corporate executives); build a culture and processes that encourage people to share their work-in-progress and support one another as peers; and dismantle the natural barriers that divide disciplines.”

- HBR.com

"If there is any error in iTunes’ ways, it is their initial belief that people will want to own..."

Sun, 24 May 2009 12:12:12 -0700

““If there is any error in iTunes’ ways, it is their initial belief that people will want to own movies the same way they want to own music,” said Russ Crupnick, NPD analyst. “It might have been successful on the TV side. But with movies, it’s turning out to be much more of a rental.””

- videobusiness.com

"Using popularity rankings to make decisions, however, has downsides. These online rankings are..."

Wed, 20 May 2009 13:22:36 -0700

“

Using popularity rankings to make decisions, however, has downsides. These online rankings are public, creating a positive-feedback loop. The more popular something becomes, even if just from a random burst of interest, the more likely it is to grow ever more popular. And that has troubling implications about the effects of all sorts of popularity rankings, from bestseller charts to election polls.

Frequently, popularity rankings speak less to the merits of what’s being observed and more to the fact that crowds are observing it. In other words, peer pressure. “If you see a crowd around a building, you pop over and see what everyone is looking at,” says Jimmy Leach, editorial director for digital at the Independent newspaper in the U.K.

”

- WSJ.com, ironically I found this on Techmeme, which is described as “Techmeme spotlights the hottest tech stories from all around the web on a single page.”

If you haven’t checked out Wolfram|Alpha yet, it’s...

Tue, 19 May 2009 06:00:00 -0700

If you haven’t checked out Wolfram|Alpha yet, it’s worth 15 minutes. The website describes it as such:

Today’s Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer

As anyone would do when checking out a new search engine, I conducted a vanity search only to realize it can’t “compute” my name, but it can compute my first name, which is what is pictured above. Apparently my name was more popular pre-1960 and supposedly there are ~99k people alive with the name Tom.

I’m not sure how that helps me, but it’s interesting to know. And that’s my take on Wolfram|Alpha: it’s interesting, but I’m not sure how it helps me as of yet. It’s like the Rain Man search engine.

"Stone said on Monday that Twitter would remain free for consumers and businesses, and that the..."

Mon, 18 May 2009 19:44:32 -0700

“Stone said on Monday that Twitter would remain free for consumers and businesses, and that the company’s main focus at the moment is developing new features for commercial users, such as “lightweight analytics” and a directory of commercial accounts that would verify that businesses on Twitter are legitimate.”

- reuters.com