Life Break: Go See “Take Me To The River”

It’s rare I write about things not directly related to the Internet industry, but the film Take Me To The River, a multi-year project helmed by my friend and colleague Martin Shore, is certainly worthy of a detour. If you love music, any kind of music, this film is a must.

Martin first told me about this project more than five years ago, back then, it was going to be an album bringing together R&B legends with emerging rap artists from the Memphis area. But as he began to produce the tracks, a film emerged, one that not only tells the extraordinary musical stories, but also the story of America itself, an America that still struggles with issues of race and inequality.

Read More
Leave a comment on Life Break: Go See “Take Me To The River”

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

A Big Day For The Internet

sbodsearchblog

Today scores of big companies are taking symbolic action to defend the essential principles of an open Internet, and I support them. That’s why, on your first visit here today, you’ll see the “spinning ball of death” up on the right. For more information about the Internet Slowdown, head here.

2 Comments on A Big Day For The Internet

Early Lessons From My Mobile Deep Dive: The Quickening Is Nigh

chiclets
Do you really want to eat them one at a time? Me, I prefer mashing ’em up.

Recently I began a walkabout of sorts, with a goal of ameliorating my rather thin understanding of the mobile marketplace. If you read me closely, you know I’ve been more than frustrated with what I call the “chicletized world” of disconnected mobile apps. It’s rise was so counter to everything I loved about the Internet, I’m afraid as a result I underestimated its impact on that very world.

My corrective starting point – the metaphorical bit of yarn upon which I felt compelled to tug  – was the impact of “deep linking” on the overall ecosystem. The phrase has something of a  “dark pool” feel to it, but it’s actually a rather mundane concept: Developers tag their mobile apps and – if relevant – their complementary websites – with a linking structure that allows others to link directly into various points of entry into their applications. This is why, for example, you can jump from a Google search for “Tycho” on your phone to the “Tycho” page inside your Spotify app.

Read More
8 Comments on Early Lessons From My Mobile Deep Dive: The Quickening Is Nigh

We’re Innumerate, Which Is Why We Love Visualizations

matrix-code

This weekend I reviewed my notes from a few weeks of late summer meetings, and found this gem from a  conversation with Mike Driscoll, the CEO and co-founder of data analytics firm MetaMarkets. MetaMarkets helps adtech firms make sense of the reams of data they collect each day (hour, minute, second…). Most of this data is meaningless without some kind of pattern recognition and interpretation, Driscoll told me. He then used a great metaphor, one that resonated given my post earlier last week that Writing is Code, Reading Is Visualization.

When we read, Driscoll noted, we both ingest the words and simultaneously “see” a story. Stories, of course, are how we understand the world. Reading pre-supposes that a story is being told – we don’t read texts full of random words and letters, literate texts are formed so as to impart knowledge. Reading presupposes literacy. We read the text and, assuming the writer is reasonably skilled, we “see” what the author intended – a narrative story is delivered and received.

Read More
4 Comments on We’re Innumerate, Which Is Why We Love Visualizations

Else 9.2.14: Don’t Worry, The Robots Are Our Friends. But the People?

Blade-Runner_610
“All these moments…will be lost in time…”

Else is back after an extended summer hiatus – thanks for taking the time off with me. I wasn’t sure if I was going to return to this newsletter, but its a good ritual for me to condense and annotate my daily and weekly reading habits, and enough of you have subscribed that I figured you might be missing the updates. I kind of was.

 Like this newsletter? Sign up! 

Read More
Leave a comment on Else 9.2.14: Don’t Worry, The Robots Are Our Friends. But the People?

“Facebook Is a Weatherless World”

enhanced-buzz-10580-1366730524-14(image)

This quote, from a piece in Motherboard,  hit me straight between the eyeballs:

Facebook…will not let you unFacebook Facebook. It is impossible to discover something in its feeds that isn’t algorithmically tailored to your eyeball.

“The laws of Facebook have one intent, which is to compel us to use Facebook…It believes the best way to do this is to assume it can tell what we want to see based on what we have seen. This is the worst way to predict the weather. If this mechanism isn’t just used to predict the weather, but actually is the weather, then there is no weather. And so Facebook is a weatherless world.”

– Sean Schuster-Craig, AKA Jib Kidder

The short piece notes the lack of true serendipity in worlds created by algorithm, and celebrates the randomness of apps (Random) and artists (like Jib Kidder) who offer a respite from such “weatherless worlds.”

Read More
Leave a comment on “Facebook Is a Weatherless World”

Writing Is Code, Reading Is Visualization

http://video.pbs.org/viralplayer/2365315496

Yesterday I stumbled onto a fascinating PBS Newshour interview with book designer Peter Mendelsund, well-regarded for his cover treatments of titles ranging from George Dyson’s Turing’s Cathedral to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Mendelsen argued that when we read, we visualize the text, each of us creating a different reality in our minds. Those co-created images – created by both the author and the reader – are unique and vital to the process of reading – and by extension, to our ability to imagine and to create.

Read More
2 Comments on Writing Is Code, Reading Is Visualization

NewCo New York 2014: My Chairman’s Picks To Visit

newcony

Last week I created my schedule for NewCo San Francisco, and wrote about them here. What many folks don’t know is that there are now nine confirmed NewCo festivals around the world. Three weeks after San Francisco, nearly 100 New York companies will be opening their doors and welcoming festival goers in our second annual NewCo New York, Sept. 30th-Oct. 2nd. If you live in NY, or are going there for Advertising Week this Sept.29-October 3rd, please register and visit some of your favorites.

With that in mind, here are my picks for New York.

Read More
Leave a comment on NewCo New York 2014: My Chairman’s Picks To Visit

AdTech Is Alive and Well: I’ll Have the Full Stack, Please

National-Pancake-Day-at-IHOPReading The Information’s piece on Facebook’s reported re-introduction of the Atlas ad-serving technology, I wondered – Does the market really need six or more full stack adtech solutions?

Google is the undisputed leader in the field – it’s spent nearly ten years stitching its own technology into acquisitions like DoubleClick (the original ad server), AdMeld (supply side platform), AdWords (search), AdMobs (mobile), Teracent (targeting), Invite Media (demand side platform),  spider.io (anti-fraud), Adometry (attribution) and many others.

So why would anyone want to challenge Google’s dominance? Because if you’re a major Internet player, you can’t afford to hand Google all the leverage – both financial as well as data and insight. If you have hundreds of millions of logged in customers (all of whom create valuable data), you need to be able to understand their actions across multiple channels and offer those insights to your marketing clients. And that means you need to own your own ad stack.

Read More
3 Comments on AdTech Is Alive and Well: I’ll Have the Full Stack, Please

Why I’m Watching Deep Linking In Mobile

first web page
The first ever web page, created by Sir Tim Berners Lee to explain, naturally, the WWW.

We are at a turning point in the mobile app ecosystem where deeplinking is becoming a priority and not just a feature. – URX blog

This week marks the beginning of a journey I’m taking to understand “deep linking” in mobile. I’ve kept one eye on the space for some time, but it’s clearly heating up. Last Spring three major mobile players – Facebook, Google, and Apple – all announced significant developments in deep linking. Twitter has also fortified its deep linking capabilities of late, as has Yahoo.

Read More
4 Comments on Why I’m Watching Deep Linking In Mobile