August 2015
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Dig the Aurora
Here’s what the current geomagnetic storm looks like right now, data-wise: The visuals are in the sky, in the form of brilliant auroras, visible all over Canada and as far south as Michigan. The near-full moon doesn’t help, but the show is there to see. (Alas, I’m in North Carolina, so it’s a longer shot.) Continue reading
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The greatest western I’ve ever read
Update on 20 January 2026: This post is getting action, so I should add that my son and I visited Love Ranch two years after I posted it. Here is a gallery of photos, all captioned. And the title one: — is John McPhee‘s Rising From the Plains. It’s one book among five collected in Continue reading
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Apple’s content blocking is chemo for the cancer of adtech
The tide of popular sentiment is turning against tracking-based advertising — and Apple knows it. That’s why they’re enabling “content blocking” in iOS 9 (the new mobile operating system that will soon go in your iPhone and iPad). Says Apple, “Content Blocking* gives your extensions a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, Continue reading
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Separating advertising’s wheat and chaff
Advertising used to be simple. You knew what it was, and where it came from. Whether it was an ad you heard on the radio, saw in a magazine or spotted on a billboard, you knew it came straight from the advertiser through that medium. The only intermediary was an advertising agency, if the advertiser Continue reading
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What should we call the selling of our digital body parts?
In a provocative OuiShareFest talk titled You Are the Product, Aral Balkan says this: I think we are at the point where we have to ask ourselves the very uncomfortable question: What do we call the business of selling everything else about you, that makes you who you are, apart from your physical body? And why, if this Continue reading
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What’s the best way customer love can help a brand?
In “Cool Influencers With Big Followings Get Picky About Their Endorsements,” Sydney Ember of the NY Times writes, The more brands that use influencers for marketing campaigns on social platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, the less impact each influencer has. At the same time, many influencers, who once jumped at the opportunity to endorse Continue reading