Last year, over 3500 people pledged to support Ada Lovelace Day, the international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Over 1200 people added their link to our map mash-up and we got lots of coverage in the national press and even appeared on the BBC News Channel. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We wanted you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, and you did. Thank you!
But our work is not yet done. This year we want 3072 people to sign up to our pledge and to write their tribute to women in tech on Wednesday 24 March. We have 197 signatories so far, we just need another 2875, which is where you come in. Please sign the pledge and let all your friends know about it.
It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, if you do text, audio or video, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited to take part. All you need to do is sign up to this pledge and then publish your blog post any time on Wednesday 24th March 2010. If you’re going to be away that day, feel free to write your post in advance and set your blogging system to publish it that day.
In Eggs-actly what ARE the chances of a double-yolker? Hanlon points out that young hens tend to produce more double yolks than older hens, and that flocks tend to be of the same age, so six double-yolkers is not an unusual occurrence for a young flock. Further more, double-yolkers are heavier than single yolked eggs, so when the eggs are sorted by weight they will tend to wind up in the same box. So really, a box of six double-yolkers isn’t that much of a surprise.
The second was from WNYC’s RadioLab, a great radio show and podcast from NPR in the States which has now become a must-listen for the gym. I love RadioLab – they cover science stories in an engaging, entertaining and though provoking way. Their programme from Sept 9 last year was called Stochasticity, “a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness”. The first two sections should be compulsory listening for every journalist:
A Very Lucky Wind Laura Buxton, an English girl just shy of ten years old, didn’t realize the strange course her life would take after her red balloon was swept away into the sky. It drifted south over England, bearing a small label that said, “Please send back to Laura Buxton.” What happened next is something you just couldn’t make up – well, you could, but you’d be accused of being absolutely, completely, appallingly unrealistic.
On a journey to find out how we should think about Laura’s story, and luck and chance more generally, Jad and Robert join Deborah Nolan to perform a simple coin-toss experiment. And Jay Koehler, an expert in the role of probability and statistics in law and business, demystifies some of Jad and Robert’s miraculous misconceptions.
And then the first half especially of:
Seeking Patterns Fine. Randomness may govern the world around us, but does it guide US?? Jonah Lehrer joins us to examine one of the most skilled basketball teams ever, the ‘82 – ‘83 ‘76ers, and wonders whether or not the mythical “hot hand” actually exists.
Then we meet Ann Klinestiver of West Virginia, an English teacher who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991. When she began to take a drug to treat her disease, her life changed completely after one fateful day at the casino. Jonah discusses the neurotransmitter dopamine and the work of Wolfram Schultz, whose experiments with monkeys in the 1970s shed light on Ann’s strange addiction and the deep desire for patterns inside us all.
Statistics is something that you constantly see journalists getting wrong. The Bad Science forums are rife with examples of statistics abuse. It’s not surprising, because it’s actually very easy to get statistics wrong: Probability in particular can be very counter-intuitive and assumptions that seem to be common sense are frequently just our brains playing silly buggers with us. Personally, I think that all journalists should have to study statistics, even the freelances, because it’s so easy to get it wrong and so useful when you get it right. But, in the meantime, I’d settle for more people listening to shows like RadioLab and reading blogs like Good Math, Bad Math, Bad Science, or Junk Charts.
Internal competition is common at great companies. It can be wisely encouraged to force ideas to compete. The problem comes when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence. It’s not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft’s music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.
Brass predicted that unless Microsoft was able to overcome this dysfunctional corporate culture and regained “its creative spark” that it might not have much of a future. In highlighting Brass’ piece, Steve wrote in his tweet:
Every behavior that’s killing Microsoft, I’ve seen at a newspaper company. http://bit.ly/9W30W8
As a geek and a journalist who often covers technology, I pay attention to the gigabytes and gigahertz that most people don’t. To be honest, in the era of giga-computing, the average user can’t really tell the different between a dual-core computer running at 2.3Ghz or 3.2Ghz. It does whatever they need it to.
The tech [...]
For your reading pleasure this week, from The Social Enterprise:
Social media and productivity
Privacy is not dead
Melcrum survey reveals widespread use of social media behind the firewall
Making the case for internal community managers
Customer outreach doesn’t trump genuine change
Enjoy!
Last night I went to a great talk by Christian Crumlish about the Yahoo! Pattern Library and social design patterns. Christian has a book, co-authored by Erin Malone, out at the moment on O’Reilly, Designing Social Interfaces, from which part of this talk was drawn.
Brief history of patterns
Design patterns – concept of a pattern language [...]
One of the stumbling blocks for media companies looking to create sustainable digital business models is that the economic models differ in fundamental ways from the predominant models of the 20th Century.
Look at the media models of the 20th Century, and they are all based to some extent on scarcity and monopoly. Printing presses are [...]
Patrick Smith, recently of paidcontent.co.uk, has a post about the economics of regional newspapers in the UK and he makes the case (again) that the challenges facing British regional newspapers come down quite simply to economics.
This is not about the quality of journalism – this is about economics: The web is simply more effective for [...]
Suw Charman-Anderson is a social software consultant and writer who specialises in the use of blogs and wikis behind the firewall. With a background in journalism, publishing and web design, Suw is now one of the UK's best known bloggers, frequently speaking at conferences and seminars.
Kevin Anderson has been an online journalist since 1996, designing, editing and writing websites for both broadcast and print media. In 1998, he joined the BBC and became their first online journalist based outside of the UK, covering the US for its award winning news website. After coming to the UK in 2005, he developed a blogging strategy for BBC news, helped launch a programme on the BBC's 5Live covering weblogs and podcasts and was on the team that launched the interactive radio programme World Have Your Say on the BBC World Service.
Kevin is now the Blogs Editor for The Guardian, where he is responsible for management, strategy and 'leading by doing' for Guardian Unlimited blogs.
3. Live-update map from large spreadsheet (Fusion Tables Talks) Kevin: How to use Google Fusion Tables (Google Spreadsheets for large files) to update a map from a large spreadsheet. (tags: google maps tutorials) Is online news just ramen noodles? What media economics research can teach us about valuing paid content » Nieman Journalism Lab Kevin: My takeaw […]
Free video site Hulu explores premium pricing – USATODAY.com Kevin: US streaming video site Hulu marks a milestone, having served 1bn stream. Now, it will be exploring paid models with offering of a $4.99 to get rid of the ads or $14.99 for seasons of shows and a back catalogue. (tags: hulu tv video freemium internet streaming) MediaPost [...] […]
Google v. China: the view from the Middle Kingdom Kevin: There isn't a lot new in this report regarding Google's threat to quit China if it's nto allowed to operate an uncensored search engine. However, it does add some perspectives from inside of China. That's always useful. (tags: china google internet) 6 Great Approaches to Public Sp […]