Many people reach their conclusions about life like lazy school children. They copy the answers from the back of the book without troubling to work out the sum for themselves.
-Soren Kierkegaard
From Niches to Riches: Anatomy of the Long Tail An Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday." A niche of one: Cold River
Media Dragons: worst of times, best of times Fooled by Randomness of Exile Life
This columnist has more guts than his wussy liberal colleagues at the Daily Telegraph and I'm not saying this because I happen to be Bohemian.
The book says that you can't predict anything—that when things happen, you try to construct a narrative around what happened, and that narrative is almost always wrong. Why is the market up today? Because home sales did such and such. It's almost never why, but we need to have an explanation. If managers can check themselves from making those all-too-tempting efforts to construct narratives, fundamentally they will have an advantage over the rest of us.
• Matthew Prior telss us - Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual ; [The "Airport Effect in blogging The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference; The Long Tail is safe from Google. On Google, the link-rich don't necessarily get richer. ]
• · The number of libraries participating in the Google Book Search Library Project just got a whole lot bigger with today's addition of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The July 2007 Book Sense Picks & Notables Preview ; Oprah Picks Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex Next Cold River ;-) The Age of Turbulence ; Author Adichie wins Orange Prize
• · few simple keystrokes may soon turn blather into books. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered a way to enlist people across the globe to help digitize books every time they solve the simple distorted word puzzles commonly used to register at Web sites or buy things online Researchers turn Web blather to books ; Dogged by questions from the EU over Google’s data retention and privacy policies, Google say they’re following the rules Google takes care of its privates
• · · Australian companies are starting to twig that Web 2.0 isn't just the latest trend for designing web pages - it can be a vital business tool. It's web take 2.0
• · · · Once upon a time NIDA actors, or any actors, were in a position where they could turn down work they regarded as too commercial, The Sydney-based National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) is adjusting its practices to a changing world.