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POPSAnd we spend our time and money on these guys!? We know that losing a few games isn't comparable to the World Trade coming down... but thanks for the freaking enlightenment. I continue to lose my passion and interest for professional sports as players continue to act like complete jerks. I mean, i know Dwyane Wade didn't mean this to be offensive or belittling... but at the same time, that these words can even come out of his mouth is ridiculous.
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POPSThe problem with LeBron James and athletes in general My entire life I've been a huge sports fan - both watching and playing. And while my love for playing is still there, my love for watching has waned. I actually find myself feeling stupid for caring whether my team wins or loses when it's become so apparent that many of the players care less than me. The whole idea of why we get so passionate about the teams we root for has always been a curiosity for me. But to spend my time and energy caring about a team that's comprised of self-centered, money driven athletes just doesn't sit well with me.
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POPSAmerican Cheese I'm thinking there is something odd about that fact that a cheese named after America does not actually meet the legal definition of cheese. Couldn't we pick an authentic cheese to call American?
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POPSA call for instant replay I truly find it offensive to fans and players that any major sport would choose not to have instant replay. I think it speaks to a lack of intelligence on the part of the people running the league. In my opinion there is no justification for choosing a system that allows incorrect calls to stand over correct ones. And the argument about a slippery slope happening once you start to have instant reply in some circumstances but not others ignores the fact that human beings were blessed with discretion and reason.
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POPSKevin Costner did what!? Ok, perhaps i'm way late to this story, so if you all knew this already, forgive me. But I just read this for the first time and all i keep thinking is that with the zillions of dollars that go into drilling for oil, how was Kevin Costner... Kevin freaking Costner... the one who built machines that could effectively clean an oil spill in the ocean!?! Truth really is often stranger than fiction.
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POPSWhat's cool about Twitter's new ads (via @marshallk) A good point here regarding Twitter's new use of ads in their trending topics feed. There is definitely something quite novel about advertisers paying to drive people to a message that they have very little control over. In some ways, it reminds me of the saying "all publicity is good publicity." Will advertisers pay to drive people to conversation about their brand, knowing that that conversation will be different at any given time? I think they will. There is a potential slippery slope here, where Twitter could go too far in enabling advertisers to control/influence the conversations they sponsor. Hopefully it won't go there.
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POPSCould this get ugly? I'm far from an expert on international relations, but the tension between North and South Korea seems to be building in a way that is going to be hard for either side to back down from. Anyone have thoughts on how this plays out?
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POPSInteresting approach to a pay model by the New York Times This makes me wonder if they made the decision to go to a pay model before they realized just how much traffic they would get from social web referrals. If that's the case... and all they end up doing is charging their most loyal readers, i wonder if they ultimately pull the plug on the whole pay model idea.
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POPSThe biggest problem I had being a student (via @ SteveBorgman) The clip below speaks to how I felt about 90% of the homework I did as a kid. When I was in school, so much of the homework I did and tests I took seemed like busy work. I now look back and feel that the entire process from elementary school through high school was primarily aimed at getting me into a good college. I really wish that hadn't been the case. I wish it was aimed at teaching me about interesting things, opening my mind and making me think.
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POPSWall Street is no longer about investing, it's about trading. via @mcuban I agree with Mark Cuban about this wholeheartedly. For over a decade I was active in the stock market. I looked at is as an opportunity to invest in the future. But over that period I felt that it consistently became a game that was less about investing and more about trading. I think CNBC is partially to blame for this as it created a culture where people were watching stock movements and counting their money (and other people's money) every day. I no longer have any interest in the stock market and don't expect to again until it gets back to being about investing, not trading.
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POPSSeeing the forest through the trees (via @georgedearing) I thought this was an important bit of perspective from George Dearing on an earlier Amp he posted. I highly recommend clicking through to the source page for some good insight on how publisher's perceive the roll of social media and search engines as sources of traffic.
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POPSSocial sharing is a sociological phenomenon (per @armano) Those of us active in social media probably already have thought about and agree with the points that David Armano makes in this blog post. But for the many who still look at social media as a fad, this is a very important article that speaks to the current and long term implications of social media and clearly articulates why it's not a fad. I completely agree.
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POPSWhat does baseball have to do with politics? The Major League baseball player's union issued a statement condemning Arizona's new immigration law. In response, Sandy Alomar Jr., a coach for the Cleveland Indians issued the statement below. I find his statement to be very ignorant. In my opinion, the beauty of the United States stems largely from the fact that it's citizens are allowed and even empowered to speak their mind and criticize their government. If we all just shut up and worry about our own particular jobs, while leaving politics to the politicians, this country and all of the people in it will be much worse for it.
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POPSEveryone on Twitter needs... I disagree with the idea that "everyone needs better information to find the tweets they need." Quite honestly, i don't even support the idea that there are Tweets people "need". Though it clearly propelled them to stardom, i think Twitter is making a mistake continuing to position their platform as one where the many follow the few. I don't think passively following Tweets will ever become mainstream to the extent Twitter expects.
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POPSIs Twitter about to say "thanks, now don't let the door hit you on the way out" to app-makers? Tough words by Fred Wilson here. If i could paraphrase this post, it seems that Fred is basically saying that the apps people created on top of twitter were nice and everything, but now that Twitter is all grown up and fully funded, they don't really need you anymore - they'll just do it themselves. Will be truly fascinating to see if Twitter goes into direct competition with the many services that helped them become popular.
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POPSThe state of Clipmarks I have received several messages asking if we are letting Clipmarks go, due to an increase in the amount of bugs people are experiencing. First, we have absolutely no intention of winding Clipmarks down. Second, we are having a very hard time pinpointing what is causing these problems. Usually, if there is a problem, we can either replicate it ourselves, or our servers detect it and alert us to it. In this case, we are being told of errors but have not been able to replicate them or detect them on our servers. The problems I am aware of are: 1) Unable to save clips. If you are having this problem, please paste the error message you get into a comment below. 2) Unable to post comments. We know about this but have not been able to figure out what's causing it yet. 3) Unable to login. If this is happening to you, please let me know. Any others? Please, no feature requests here. Just trying to get to the bottom of the bugs for now. I am very sorry to you all abou
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POPSCould the Facebook bubble ever burst? I can't help but wonder if we've moved from a housing bubble to a Facebook (and twitter?) bubble. Will there come a time (are we already there?) when the enormous growth of today's social media giant(s) will fizzle because the quality of the relationships people have on them is diluted by the quantity of their relationships. Recent musings of some of my friends suggests to me that this is possible.
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