Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
It’s 8 on a Wednesday morning in January, and David Carroll’s Brooklyn apartment, a sunny, wood-beamed beauty converted from an old sandpaper factory, is buzzing. His 10-year-old daughter, dressed in polka-dot pants, dips out the front door and off to school, Jansport backpack slung over her shoulders. His 5-year-old son darts into the living room…
Earlier this week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and the tech journalist Kara Swisher conducted a full 90-minute interview entirely on Twitter. The interview was meant to be an old-school “Twitter chat,” and users were instructed to follow along using the hashtag #KaraJack. It was a disaster. Attempting to follow a public conversation happening on Twitter is…
Subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | Anchor For many, digital media’s ills are down to broken ad tech and the system propping it up. Adam Zucker-Scharff, director of ad tech at the Washington Post, says it’s more complicated than simply fixing the plumbing: Advertisers are going to have to work at making ad…
For a 25-year-old coffee brand in Maine, the cannabis compound CBD is more than just a trendy ingredient. It’s a trademark. Mary Allen Lindemann and Alan Spear opened Coffee By Design in 1994, selling coffee and espresso in an area of Portland once known as a “porn district.” Within a few years, the coffee shop had a nickname…
Photo: Alex Wong (Getty) George Mason University professor Tyler Cowen, a plutocratic bootlicker who once argued that rich people should be allowed to speed because their time is more valuable than the rest of us hoi polloi, is worried. He’s worried about billionaires—specifically, their feelings. You see, according to Cowen, the term “billionaire” has become…
If you re-read the first few chapters of The Innovator’s Dilemma and you insert “Apple” every time Clayton Christensen mentions “a company,” a certain picture emerges: Apple is a company on the verge of being disrupted, and the next great idea in tech and consumer electronics will not materialize from within the walls of its…
For years, BuzzFeed seemed to be leading the journalism industry toward a brave new future. Now that it has stumbled, the way ahead looks more old-school than ever. The digital publishing industry took a big hit in recent days, when more than 1,000 employees were laid off at BuzzFeed, AOL, Yahoo and HuffPost. Vice Media…
Facebook orchestrated a multi-year effort that duped children and their parents out of money, in some cases hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and then often refused to give the money back, according to court documents unsealed tonight in response to a Reveal legal action. The records are part of a class action lawsuit focused…
Google’s AdMob launched playable ads for their gaming partners last May, and Facebook launched them in August. In both cases, the ads were mostly used by game developers, but playable ads have potential for other industries. “It’s leveraging the fact that users like to play games,” said Ari Brandt, executive vice president of strategic development…
Our phones’ GPS and location capabilities are a key part of what make them magical — enabling them to speed our commutes, hail rides, and find the devices when we lose them. These capabilities are also ground zero for the looming fight over defining the boundaries of privacy and acceptable uses of our personal information….