Monday’s cornucopia
Haven’t done this in a while, so here are a bunch of interesting links to go check out:
Funny/amusing
Frisbee still flying high after 50 years – U.S. Business – MSNBC.com – interesting piece that talks about the history of the Frisbee and the fact that it was almost called a “Pluto Platter”. Hard to imagine calling it that now.. I wonder if the name would have had a major impact on its success over all this time.
Phantom cell-phone vibrations - ever felt like your phone was vibrating, reached for it and then found out it wasn’t? Turns out you’re not crazy. Even better, this piece does a brief discussion of how easily habits are formed, the perceptual learning process and neuroplasticity. I love this piece because it makes me think about how I can take this knowledge and then create circumstances that allow me to program myself with good habits. For example, how could I use this knowledge to train myself to get more sleep? Is that possible?
The mad ramblings of Howard Stringer - And people wonder why Sony seems like it’s wandering in search of a strategy.. This interview made my head hurt to read.
Deeper / worth the read
It’s all about outcomes - Short and right to the point. Many folks confuse activity with outcomes, believing that if they’re busy, they must be making progress. Of course, that’s not true. But, look around you. Don’t you see people making that mistake often? Overcommitted, too busy to eat, to visit friends, to “think about the long-term plans for the business”? If you find yourself breaking your back to keep up with the pace of your life and occasionally look up, wondering where the years have gone without much change, this might have some insight for you. Stop running just to go nowhere.
The WSJ picks up on social shopping - I’ve written about this several times (this one remains one of my favorites ). Now the WSJ gets into it a bit and talks about some of the business model experiments (*cough* huge mistakes *cough*) that are in play at the moment. Of course, they have more readers than I do so the fact that they’re late to the party isn’t really an issue 
Ad Age groks the aggregation strategy - As others have already commented, Ad Age is a bit behind some of the other folks in the press here already, but then again, they’re way out in front of the WSJ (should we expect this to be coming in 3 to 6 months??). I found it interesting that the Jupiter Analyst’s view was that most people only have one or two profiles at the most. There’s a pretty big problem with this conclusion, can anyone else spot it ?
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