GregHay.com

Very good read about the state of book publishing and Amazon’s stake in it. I hope they crush it.

http://pco.lt/xrWGkM

“In November 1997, on a night of pounding rain in midtown Manhattan, Rupert Murdoch threw a party for Jane Friedman, the new chief executive officer of News Corp.’s HarperCollins book division. The luminaries of the publishing business, such as Random House’s then-CEO Alberto Vitale and literary agent Lynn Nesbit, crowded into the Monkey Bar on 54th Street, with its red-leather booths and hand-painted murals of gamboling chimps. Trudging six blocks through the downpour from the Time & Life Building, Laurence J. Kirshbaum, then the powerful head of Time Warner Book Group, brought a guest: a young online bookseller named Jeffrey P. Bezos, whose ambitions would eventually end up affecting the lives of everybody at the party. “It was one of those moments in your life where you remember everything,” Kirshbaum says. “In fact, I think Bezos still owes me an umbrella.”

“Informationally, we are becoming lard-asses. In the pageview and ratings driven media economy, too much of the content these days is designed to be just like junk food to quickly boost quantifiable viewership. If you make content that is the intellectual equivalent of gummy bears, your site will appear to grow quickly. Advertisers reward size, and growing fast is expected in most places I’ve seen. Last month I visited Xeni Jardin, my blog-sister from Boing Boing and she said to me, “Only cancer and bullshit websites grow fast.” It’s happened to TV with reality shows, radio with clear channel, and it’s happening to words online. I’ve never seen a world-class sized publication that was founded in the past decade do world class quality work. It’s not because the people running them are dumb–it’s because they don’t have enough time to think their work through because there’s no short term incentive to. There’s an excuse there aren’t enough resources to go around, but that’s bullshit. It just takes a little confidence in the long game.”

Fantastic take on how technology makes us happy by @blam.

I think he’s really onto something with Wirecutter. There is a real value in putting passion ahead of PVs, I just hope the economics of the web catch up to match. Perhaps we’re in a yellow journalism phase of the web with everyone’s paper boy on each corner yelling about Apple’s earnings and startup exits, in time hopefully it will shake out and alleviate us from some of the chaff that is “journalism” online today.

http://pco.lt/AvwmUA

UX’s most sensational caper (to be revealed so far, at least) was completed in 2006. A cadre spent months infiltrating the Pantheon, the grand structure in Paris that houses the remains of France’s most cherished citizens. Eight restorers built their own secret workshop in a storeroom, which they wired for electricity and Internet access and outfitted with armchairs, tools, a fridge, and a hot plate. During the course of a year, they painstakingly restored the Pantheon’s 19th- century clock, which had not chimed since the 1960s. Those in the neighborhood must have been shocked to hear the clock sound for the first time in decades: the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour.

Totally awesome!!!!!!

http://pco.lt/zGMCB5

By examining the process of putting someone under with anesthesia, scientists are starting to understand the heirarchy of the brain.

http://pco.lt/zMq5vj

Probably the first WSJ article I’ve read about crime and drugs that involved banner ads and Goog. Interesting though, especially since Google is held liable for allowing advertising for products that are illegal in the States. By this same logic, shouldn’t National Geographic be liable for showing me how to build a drug sub? But I digress, it’s a good story and worth the read.

http://pco.lt/ApVOfj