Tired of being tuned out by someone who is busy following Ashton Kutcher’s tweets,
sexting their latest Plentyoffish catch, or bidding on a Virgin Mary fish stick on eBay  …?

If you want some insight into why people feel it’s OK to text/Twitter/Google/Oogle/etc.
while talking, while at dinner, while on the can, while giving birth … or doing any number of other things,

Yes, these guys are texting while free-falling

this book might have something to say about it:

The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

Read the New York Times book review.

Read the New Republic book review.

(Has Carr gone too far? You decide.)

The title of this post is taken from a line in the New Republic article: “We turn into what the playwright Richard Foreman called ‘pancake people—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.’”

I think “crepe people” is more accurate, because crepes are thinner than pancakes.

(That pretty much sums up my point of view.)

Crepes

Here’s an opinion piece in the New York Times that disagrees with Carr.

Mind Over Mass Media – Steven Pinker

Is Pinker a stinker? You decide.

Whatever you decide, I think we can all agree that texting and sexting, Googling and oogling, while ignoring those who are trying to engage or interact with you in the real world, is the height of rudeness, to borrow an expression from Jemaine Clement.

So stop doing it. Stop being a crepe.

How many windows are open on your screen right now? Do you have TweetDeck or HootSuite, or some other Twitter tool? How many times a day do you check your email/Facebook/text/etc? Can you even guess? I know I can’t.

Lately there has been a lot of attention given to our ever increasing divided attention. Can we actually multitask effectively? How is social media affecting our writing skills? Mr. Shirky and Mr. Carr recently threw into the ring their very different opinions about the internet and intelligence. This is clearly a subject that deserves much discussion and investigation, but I’m not even going to try and venture into that sort of topic right now. Today is about self tests that we attention-scarce multitaskers can actually devote a few minutes too. (more…)

This nifty little tool from Marcel Salathé lets you see the hierarchy of tags on websites. More proof that code is beautiful.

(more…)

The Internet is filled with secrets.  Who killed JFK, cheats & hacks, how to extend your penis size by 12 inches or discover your long lost lineage connecting you to the Royal Court of Louis XIV.  So it goes without saying when Google this week finally released it’s revenue sharing agreements with other Non-Google sites & properties a lot people attentively listened.

Google revealed that it’s partners get 68% of revenue for ads placed alongside articles/partner content.  For on-site complimentary partner search, Google offered it’s partners 51%.  These generous percentages have been in place between 2003 & 2005 respectively.  Financially impressive numbers flow along with the figures.  The numbers show hefty profits for Google to the tune of over $7 Billion dollars, which compliments the $15.7 Billion dollars it made off of it’s own sites and services.

Sharing this long held secret also showed that Google is starting to become more expressive & social in the way it deals with the outside world.  It is demystifying itself , it is moving away from a monolithic giant…slowly but surely.

I remember for a long time Agencies, especially Media Agencies saw Google as an industry killer.  I never shared that belief.  There are many reasons I did not believe this,  but for the purpose of this post I will stick to culture/outlook.  One reason I personally was not afraid of Google:  they were just to focused on building, on complete automation and it was a company that was driven & populated by Engineers immersed in an insular culture.   Google has always felt a little impersonal, this despite it’s best efforts to deliver increasingly more and more social tools, gadgets and platforms.  Additions like Youtube and the attempts to become more socially relevant through platforms like Wave have been big catalysts for change within Google (externally the jury is out on Wave).   With these changes have come new people and new ways of thinking.  These additions, are helping balance a culture born out of  automated ad systems and the cold an impersonal world of Search that was embedded deep into Google’s DNA.

As someone who deals with Google and watches Googles tact’s and movements very carefully, I think that this is a continuing sign of change @ Google.  A change that will make the company even stronger (not without growing pains).  A change that will empower a new relationship with Media Agencies and hopefully better services and functionality for consumers.

Only time will tell.

This is an awesome blast from the past. CBC’s first report on this new thing called, INTERNET (I love that they didn’t call it THE internet back then). It’s just a good reminder of how we used to live before we were constantly wired.

The best part is that they claim INTERNET is mostly free from “cursing, swearing and scrutiny”. My how things change.

thanks Michael Lebowitz