Resource Roundup: Things Agencies Should Know About

I was away last week and yet the internet kept sending me stuff! Don’t worry, I took care of the filtering for you and have collected only the good, essential stuff right here in this post. As usual, I’ve got some Google for you, some social media, future of the news, cellphone short films, and some more Google… Like I said, the good stuff.

The official Google blog came out swinging against the litigious chaos of the mobile marketplace today in a post titled, When Patents Attack Android. This kind of thing is one of my big complaints against the apps paradigm—in my article from May on The Future of Mobile, I made my first charge in my case against apps “economic oligarchy.”

Giovanni Tiso, author of the weekly blog Bat, Bean, Beam published a very thoughtful piece this week on identity, names, and how social media interacts with personhood. In True Names, he writes captivatingly on the tendency for the internet to reframe the person–especially when companies of unprecedented size and scope have a vested interest in digitizing and monetizing personhood.

Seth Godin questions whether the rationalization to do free work, It Will Be Good Exposure, holds out under scrutiny.

The Economist published an interesting piece on how technology might enable a successful approach to Reinventing the Newspaper.

This is the best thing I read last week: James Gleick, author of The Information wrote a wonderful piece for The New York Review of Books called, How Google Dominates Us.

By the way, if you happen to be looking for good sources of content, here’s one you might not follow: The Six Pixels of Separation blog does a weekly links post called, Six Links Worth of Your Attention.

If you’re more into listening/watching stuff, here are a few audio/video links worth your time:

Gulp is the world’s largest stop-motion animation shot on a Nokia N8 (a cellphone). Creatives, take note: the tools are cheap and everyone has them! But honestly, I found the making-of video more interesting…

Designer Kevin Slavin’s TED talk on How Algorithms Shape Our World is a great example of unique thinking—and only 15 minutes long. Watch it at lunch with your colleagues!

Then, watch this video of Alain de Botton’s TED talk on his A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success. I love this man.