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... after seeing how his book is being used. Don't laugh. In 2015 there will be an iPad here instead.

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Isn’t there two things – the self, which is almost a mysterious thing, or the soul, of a person; and the life he leads, and the life that he leads is to a certain extent made of the other people that he has experienced. 

- John McGahern

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Ok, so I am comparing a media presentation with an insights presentation (so perhaps this is my response to data deluge).

However, all I am saying is, more thought & analysis please:

And less 'data set against an epic soundtrack' please:

Will Self uses the phase 'paradigms of imaginative experience' within about 10 seconds of the start of this thought piece (which is one of four). But don't let that put you off (he mentions Buffy later). This is the good stuff. It's interesting that Self suggests the web is fragmenting, rather than unifying, which opposes the view which evangelists tend towards.

I also love his note: "people upload their imagination to the web". That to me seems very true (for reference, please login to Facebook).

As an aside, this kind of commission is a clever, appropriate approach to promotion for the English National Opera's production of Two Boys.

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I was recently talking with a forthcoming graduate from a 3rd level technology course. He was telling me that he had an offer to join a back office with a large financial institute, to work on 'internal systems'. 

Don't do it my friend.

I advised him to join an agency instead. Why? Because I still think agencies offer a great experience opportunity for graduates. Ok, here's the sell.

1. Exposure through variety: in a nutshell, agencies win and carry out project work for a roster of clients. That means variety. Depending on the agency, this could be research, planning, tactical campaigns, or technical initiatives like apps, direct marketing drives or events. At this stage in your career, you need variety, not a subsidised staff canteen. You'll get the opportunity to try various projects. That's important.

2. Setting the pace: Agencies are pacy. That is not short code for "disorganised" (if it is, you're in the wrong agency). What it means is that you'll be challenged to think and act quickly. In time, this will help you spot and take opportunities, such as being alive to creative or commercial ideas which need decisive and quick action now. No matter where you are in the future, learning this will stand to you. By comparison, larger organisations struggle with implementation and by necessity need to set up 'accelerating frameworks' like innovation labs (Google's 20% time project is a good example).

3. Meritocratic values: if you do see an agency you're interested in, contact someone in there and ask to meet them. Ask about their culture. Ask how they generate ideas. The best agencies are meritocracies, where the best idea has primacy, not the biggest ego (hint: if you don't hear back from the agency you contact, that tells you everything you need to know).

4. The opportunity in the challenge: Agencies, like everyone else, are caught in a value challenge at present. This means focusing on doing work which is valuable, and making that value clear to clients (through quantifiable, measurable, valuable impact). On one side, ad agencies have shed people since 2008, with some estimates putting employment in the industry down up to 30%. On the other, a glance at prosperity.ie will give you a flavour of the types of roles which are in demand. Why does this matter? It matters because getting involved at a time of change is an opportunity to make a difference.

5. Mixing the work: As a new recruit, you'll likely be involved in a mix of project and ongoing / maintenance work. This will provide you with a flavour of what it's like to deal with legacy issues (implementing someone else's plan, working with existing frameworks) as well as what's required during the earlier phases of a project (discovery, planning). If what you're offered looks like little more than an opportunity to 'maintain' someone else's old work, look around; you should be able to do better.

I'm being necessarily vague about the types of graduates I'm talking to here, because I think the media / advertising / marketing industry needs a mix of skills. 

Also by agency, I mean communications agencies, research agencies, media agencies, digital agencies and to some extent production specialists who create across digital, television, radio, mobile and social platforms.

Anyway the above is just my take. Perhaps it's better to specialise in the long term. But for graduates, exposure and experience is surely what's needed during these early days?

(Image credit: Olaf Blecker for the NYT - used because I have no idea what is going on in this photo, but it is entertaining)

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"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - Paul Krugman

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Algorithms are neat; they also build huge companies. Google's pagerank algorithm is the most obvious example, providing value to billions on a daily basis. It's the Coke recipe of our time.

Another mainstream example? Amazon recommendations. An algorithm which literally extracts value for that company by analysing buying behaviours and reflecting personalised insights back to users (now with Facebook integration).

Demand Media (just fresh off a big IPO) delivers content to match searches, using an algorithm to predict not just popular search topics, but those with high advertising potential (amusingly, I think of it as a form of algorithmic parasite organism, dependent on Google as a host; if the GOOG changes, it has to evolve also).

As data volumes & complexity increase, it's becoming clear that algorithms which automate insights and reveal patterns are not just currencies. They are more like creators of currency.

Creating algorithms which allow people to extract value from data, or to combine two data sets, can be within the reach of even normals like you and I. A while back, I worked with a couple of friends on our idea to rewrite Wikipedia as Mickopedia (creating a 'mickified' version of the site), creating a script which used an algorithm to apply 'linguistically warp' the target data. It's crude but it works, providing what is theoretically, in the words of one of my colleagues on the job "an infinite humour generator".

On the '100 Monkeys' Algorithm

But here is Philip Parker, the guy who has a patent on an algorithm which automates content creation. Yes: it writes books automatically. Number published? 200,000+. Even better, number of digital poems written... over 1.3 million.

On the 'Algorithmic Corporation'

Others are going even further. Here is John Clippinger of Law Lab (who sounds like a kind of amoral polymath) describing how corporations can be created 'on the fly', by algorithms.

These don't just automate the company incorporation and mathematically determine how best to configure legal entities, but in time could actually create the corporation automatically in response to a market need.

So, the future? No wars. It will just be a bunch of algorithms doing battle.

Note: for more on Google's algorithm, you should know the awesome Matt Cutts. Unless you're a search geek you've probably not heard of this guy. He is awesome and if you google and get a result, you owe him. He is basically the wizard who wrote the fireball spell.

Further reading
Demand Media's Planet of the Algorithms", Bloomberg Business, Jan 2011
Algorithms take control of Wall Street", Wired, Jan 2011

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"Within 45 seconds, a microprocessor computes your systolic and diastolic pressure... has an LCD readout, and it's cost effective - less than one visit to the doctor. So what's on your mind kimosabe? Why am I listening to you?" - Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), explains how his automatic blood pressure monitor works

Matters of life and death tend to accelerate technological innovation. So it was with the longbow, the Gatling gun and Arpanet; and so it is now with biomedical advances, where some incredible examples of a new wave of ubiquitous computing can be found.

In this interview (held at the World Economic Forum in Davos), tech blogger Robert Scoble speaks with Andrew Thompson, CEO of Proteus Biomedical. He offers some insights on healthcare, personal medicine, the democratization of technology and regulatory challenges.

The mind-blast of this interview however are Proteus' ingestible sensors, designed to track drug data from inside your body.

The devices are called 'ingestible event markers (IEMs). They are a body-powered ingestible technology, the size and consistency of a grain of sand. Activated by your stomach fluids, IEMs communicate with a parent device, worn as a skin-patch. That device, in turn, can connect with your smartphone and so integrate with virtually anything; healthcare apps, remote reporting processes, medical histories, and user-customisable reminder and alert functionality.

Working ingestible devices are actually not that new. Astronauts, NFL players and firefighters have been ingesting technology in pill form, to monitor heart rate, hydration and body heat for almost two decades. But IEMs are an entirely new prospect. 

The interesting commercial aspect is the creation of a new ecosystem. Proteus are planning to create and own the software/hardware ecosystem (their Raisin and Chipskin platforms) for the delivery of medicines, in the same way that Apple created a new ecosystem for the delivery of music.

As medicines come out of patent and their efficacy is continually assessed, and in an age where people have taken ownership of our health, assistive technologies which empower and inform will be increasingly important. 

Alvin Toffler effectively described this third wave economy, where "the central resource – a single word broadly encompassing data, information, images, symbols, culture, ideology, and values – is actionable knowledge".

Increasingly that knowledge is being generated through embedded, implanted systems such as Proteus' Raisin, with data as an active ingredient.

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I think of this talk frequently; it has so many applications.

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A quality selection of some of the best ideas brought to life in 2010.

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Here's an infographic created by my good friend Oliver, trying to put some context on the cost of the bailout for Ireland - €45 billion.

Numbers like this make little sense without context, so this tries to make some sense of the comparative scale.

As usual Wikipedia has an excellent summary of the Irish financial crisis and bailout.

I'm not sure the above gives the best possible context though. If you've got better comparison figures, drop them in the comments below?

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So there are a lot of problems facing news organisations these days. But some of them are easily identified and solved. Here is one in the Irish Times.

In today's edition, Liam Toland has a column on Ireland facing the All Blacks in Dublin tomorrow (watch the game - Ireland to record a first ever win).

In the article (see image), Liam uses a youtube link and it's an ungodly URL.

The Times can very simply improve this my integrating a URL shortening service into its subediting process. This can be automated so it spits out nice, memorable brand-related URLs such as www.itim.es/d45dd or even simply www.irishtimes.com/245er. Using a service like Bit.ly pro, this is not a sweat (nice guide by mashable here: http://on.mash.to/929yUD).

Making these links simpler is going to make it more likely that I'll see that secondary content. In addition the Irish Times will be able to track traffic and quantatively assess if readers are jumping from print page to link (and see what platforms they're on like mobile, and track backlinks from social media platforms - but that's a bigger question).

Also a properly integrated process for URL inclusion in articles will ensure the URLs are actually hyperlinked when articles like Liam's column are brought online (I hope they have fixed this; non-clickable links are a real irritant).

Down the line, some simple tagging at the subediting stage can serve to aggregate all of the links Liam has referenced, and expose them to readers.

The point - this kind of simple stuff integrates print and online. The times has a great print product and a great website. But bridging in simple ways like this will make both better.

Maybe this is a detail orientation thing. But I think so much work goes in editorially that it deserves better. News is in the middle of a process revolution, but some of the steps are really this simple.

(Prediction - Ireland 27-25 New Zealand)

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"Stop this yelling and screaming about what's your Facebook strategy [...] make absolutely certain that you have a great product or service. Make absolutely certain that you have great customer service. Those are the first two rules of so-called advertising in this world. If you don't have those, don't pay any money to anyone to do anything."

- Rishad Tobaccowala (Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Vivaki), from What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

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"All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level." - William Bernbach

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I've noted before that the real excitement in online advertising is about platforms (reminder: the GOOG is an advertising platform). 

Back in 2008 (yeah, I was there before they were cool, etc.) I noted that contextual display wonks Dapper were on to a thing and would be acquired soon. Well it only took two years. Yahoo has picked them up. 

Eran Sher, who founded Dapper with the mission statement "to put the right content, at the right time, in front of the right user", has a great blog post outlining the thinking behind Dapper and the acquisition. Dapper video below summarises.

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An ingenious approach to online advertising over at Solve Media. Instead of having to type out those Captchas, you reproduce a strapline from an ad instead. Ad copywriters rejoice! Ye shall be read, and recalled. Obligatory illustration-based video follows.

Online advertising really is a platform game. By that I mean, the people owning the platforms, like the Solve Media guys, are the ones holding the real value.

The above might prove to be a gimmick. But right now this is looking a lot better than an interruption-model leaderboard ad splattered across article template pages. Oh, and there's the 40% recall rate for people who typed in the ad phrase.

Found via the WSJ.

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