Curated Stories Feb. 27 and 28, 2010

AFP – Toyota’s bungled global recalls has badly damaged its brand image, but while the carmaker faces its biggest-ever crisis, analysts and experts say its reputation is by no means beyond repair.

It was the fortnight when Queenslanders saw Facebook’s dark side.
It began with the posting of sickening pornographic images on a site set up to pay tribute to slain schoolboy Elliott Fletcher.
Read the rest of…

Paul Krugman of the NYT (and left wing) enjoys what he’s seeing in the cross-town (right wing) paper:
Brad DeLong and Felix Salmon both point to evidence that the Murdoch effect is degrading the Journal’s new…

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Numbers are powerful, but only if they provide context to the changes in our life. This above embedded video (if you don’t see it, click here t…

Does influence on Twitter matter? And, if it does, what is the best way to measure it? On the first question it seems reasonable to say influence only matters if all or part of the reason you are …

User Experience Aggregator worth subscribing to – #UX – http://uxurls.com (via @konigi)

According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Data data everywhere and possibly too much to drink?

We love the two-second t-shirt folding technique we featured a few years back, but if you’re more of a hanger than a folder, home blog Apartment Therapy’s got a few pointers to help you speed up getting your sh…

We’re really rocking the blog development lately. Yesterday, I showed you how to point a domain to one of your blog categories.
Today, we’re going to create a life stream page, on your blog, using Postero…

Pam Hoelzle has developed what she calls a “visual and quick outline to aid in business and organizational storytelling.” Especially given the nifty graphic she’s developed to go along with the outline, I…

Ultimate guide to table UI patterns – Valuable resource worth bookmarking – http://bit.ly/doPHkq (via @jankowarpspeed)

New York Times:
6 Months, $90,000 and (Maybe) a Great Idea — THE print hanging behind the receptionists desk at Foundation Capital screams, “Our greatest thrill is to loan you money” — in chunky,…

As the ISMA team prepares for the Tuesday, March 2 teleseminar, “Leveraging LinkedIn: 5 Power Strategies to Stand Out and Be Sought Out,” with Barbara Rozgonyi, we were naturally researching Barbara’s int…

This tutorial is going to share with you how to transfer songs from an iPod to iTunes. Difficulty: Moderately Easy Instructions Step 1 Plug your iPod into your computer with the USB that came with your iPod. If…

This debate continues to rage and will continue for a while yet.
Do you automate some of your messages on Twitter or not? How much automation should you be using, if any at all?
There are essentially three camp…

Time was, companies knew how to keep track of their important customers.
First, they set up loyalty programs: computerised systems that tracked the monetary value of everyone who shopped in their stores or flew…

Evolutionary history shows us that doubling-down on your defenses is effective against predators but useless against environmental change. Newspapers locking up their content in paywalls and trumpeting loudly…

by Dr. Charles
“I’ll be back in a little while, Hon’. Will you be okay without me?” the frail old woman asked of her husband. She was standing at the front door and breathing heavily.
“I’ll be fine,…

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients — Twitter appears to be on the verge of some big changes to its website if a tweet that Twi…

One of my long-time and oft-stated problems with all of the so-called social networks is the brand and attention dilution that occurs when content producers cast their content across numerous networks, sending…

…its driven by the same old media love affair with distribution lock in. Ive been on about this ever since I studied Google in 2001: Media traditionally has gained its profits by owning distribution. Cable ca…

Now this is what I would call some master whittling.
These incredible wood sculptures are done by Mike Rea and should give anyone who thinks they are a master of chisel and hammer to think twice. Mike’s extr…

According to figures from January 2010, there are more than 14.8 million unemployed Americans, that’s a rate of nearly 10 percent. A staggering figure. Unless of course, you compare it to the rapid rate of d…

[Posted by Augie Ray]
Three months after starting at Forrester, my first report for Interactive Marketers is now available: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid. Forrester subscribers can click…

Originally published in HCPLive.com
by Owen Dahl and Altamash Rahman
“Her MA is very rude, uncompassionate. Dr. ABCD doesn’t return phone calls. They’re not helpful and not good with following up with the…

Late Friday, the US Department of Defense released its official policy covering new media and social media. With some three million employees, …

I love to analyze shopping carts because of the immense variety of designs and design elements that different companies and clients employ to try to “get the cash.” Some elements work better than others, and…

(Here’s my latest FoxNews.com column–this one’s my attempt to compare PCs and Macs for non-geeks.)
Want to start a fight between computer geeks? Bring up one simple question: PC or Mac?
Windows advocates…

Stephanie Rosenbloom / New York Times:
Cellphones Let Shoppers Point, Click and Purchase — Shoppers will soon be able to stand outside the designer Norma Kamalis boutique in Manhattan, point a phone at…

Read the rest of this story »

…. Well, with Facebook anyway. I’ve written about many forms of Twitter storytelling, but Snipisode is the first storytelling app I’ve come across for Facebook. Snipisode, developed Agency Zen, lets you t…

A Guest Post by Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing.
No matter how big their blog is, every blogger loves and wants comments. When you’re just starting out, there are few bigger thrills than writing so…

Organizations and businesses that don’t dedicate resources to social media can face risks that have a ripple effect well beyond the marketing department, …

By PAUL LEVY A conversation with a reporter yesterday helped me clarify my thoughts about federal health care legislation. In my view, the most effective role of the federal government would be to provide natio…

On social media sites, people are using geolocation to flag where they are and what they’re commenting about. (To have your location identified you must …

Doctors will soon be wagging the reform dog. Look at it this way. Expansion of insurance coverage to the 31 million more Americans, as envisioned in the current reform bill, will require more doctors to care…

Our 9th annual ‘10 Issue’ hits newsstands this week. To celebrate, here’s an article from last year’s edition.
By Maggie Koerth-Baker
Get ready for a little kiss and tell. From the smooch that changed…

Read the rest of this story »See Also:Facebook’s PayPal Killer Now Accepts PayPalPayPal To Open Platform To Third Party DevelopersPayPal Founder Peter Thiel’s Hedge Fund Blows Up

Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. It has nothing to do with winning a Nobel prize in physics or certain levels of schooling. Its about using human insight and initiati…

I have a lot of people ask me where I went to school, and what I studied in order to set myself up for the career path I have now. So it’s time for me to come clean with my dirty little secret:
I don’t have…

When I was growing up, it was sometimes dark all day.
Because of my Dad’s job, we lived in small, isolated communities, including the Canadian Arctic. When you’re an active kid, it’s 50 below, pitch dark…

Yesterday’s post argued for the importance of a story’s theme. As the screenwriter Barry Levinson said, a theme is useful because once you understand what your theme is, it helps you decide where your story…

A common decision that college seniors must make is whether to continue on to graduate school or to look for a job in the field they wish to pursue.
With the economy slowly recovering, it’s no surprise that…

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The serie…

A new policy released today by the Pentagon has reversed multiple bans on social media websites and tools, effective immediately. This policy includes YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google Apps, and oth…

A few weeks ago, tensions between Adobe and Apple rose to all-time highs after Apple prominently left Flash off of the iPad. A lashing by Steve Jobs, calling Adobe lazy and Flash buggy didn’t help matters a…

For years we’ve tried to explain the difference between ideas and execution, and how lots of people have ideas (in fact, many have the same ideas entirely independently), but without good execution, those ideas…

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber wrote what I thought was a good response to my post about Apple’s App Store sexy app policy. While I noted that one of the reasons Apple’s policy was silly was because each i…

Last week at Socia Media Breakfast, I learned that ATT has 15 Customer service reps and a full-time analyst dedicated to Twitter. This got me thinking about how businesses organize, scale and man…

NOTE: This post was originally published on the AMEX Open Forum website, where I write a weekly piece on marketing advice for small business owners. Whether you believe in karma or not, using social media suc…

Lots of businesses are confused about how to measure the ROI of their social media campaigns.
According to a recent article in Social Times, a survey conducted by Marketing Sherpa revealed that the most commonl…

I recently had to write an essay for Ogilvy about what pervasive creativity could mean. Here are some of my first insights.

As Zygmunt Bauman says, we live in the era of liquid modernity.
Befor…

UPDATE February 27, 2010 at 11:00 — I just published an updated article on this for the Huffington Post US Department of Defense Ahead of Most Companies with a New Social Media Policy

++++++
Just an hour ago…

One of the most powerful features in Firefox is also one too few people know about: the ability to create and use more than one profile at the same time. Here’s how to streamline and reap the benefits of multip…

If you’re a new blogger or a do-it-yourselfer, I have a couple of recommendations for you. Part of my job, as I see it, is to stay on top of blogging resources and tools to make things easier for you. As you pr…

Looking for ways to make your company more productive, make your team more creative, and make your operations more efficient? If so, then check out these 25 strategies, which range from thoughts on leadership t…

Our goal seemed simple enough. Create a roadmap for promoting your company using social media. Well, nothing’s simple in the wild and wooly world of social media. However, I think we made a good start.

With…

Let’s face it: Nobody really enjoys making cold calls. But the fact is that cold calling remains a part of life whether you are a business owner, a job seeker, or even a volunteer looking to raise money for y…

Twitter fundraising has steadily been on the rise in the last two years. Twitter has been used to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities and charitable causes, and has been used to spread awaren…

What characteristics comprise good stories used in the job search (in resumes, cover letters, portfolios, personal branding, interview responses, and, as discussed in yesterday’s entry, networking communicati…

5 Billionpieces of content were shared on Facebook per week during February, according to data released by the company. This is up big from 2 billion per week only five months ago in September 2009.
A study…