Sun

Feb 4
2007

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly

Superbowl Sunday Reading Link List

Since most of you are not likely to be gearing up for the superbowl, you've got time on your hands, right? Here are a few worthwhile postings I've come across in the past few days:

  • Identity Theft Not Down, It's Different. 27B Stroke 6 comments on the recent report (conveniently funded by Visa, Wells Fargo and Checkfree) -- that found that identity theft was down in 2006. It turns out that there's another study, by Chris Hoofnagle at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, that "says the study is dead wrong, both in its methodology and its conclusions." Hoofnagle says that identity theft has shifted from outright copies of existing identities to new "synthetic identities" made up from elements of many individual entries.

  • Building the Perfect Board Package. Paul Kedrosky passes along some "guidance on the subject from a sales-guru colleague" for the kind of financial metrics that should appear a board package. It's oriented towards an enterprise software company, but some of the tips and tricks, such as how to measure sales rep expected productivity against norms, will apply to other types of companies with feet on the street, and in any event, the way he talks about giving context to any numbers is great. If you're not a sales-driven company, you can still think about what metrics can be used to cross-check each other, and what metrics provide insight rather than just filler. Useful reading for the entrepreneurs among you.

  • Why Embed Code Matters. Fred Wilson points to "a great post about politicians and how blog savvy they are". He adds: "[John Mahoney] points out that all of them have video on their websites, but only a few have videos with embed code on them. Why is that important? Because embed code is what makes video go viral. I didn't need to visit Obama's website to get this video. I got it from John's blog. Wake up Hillary." (And I got it from Fred's. I haven't figured out who to get behind yet, but I include the video below to emphasize Fred's point.)

  • Library of Congress Gets Book Digitization Grant. With the help of a $2-millon grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and using technology from the Open Content Alliance, the Library of Congress is going to "digitize thousands of public-domain works, with a major focus on at-risk "brittle books" and U.S. history volumes." The LOC has done lots of digitization before, but it's good to see them working with the OCA. As readers of this blog know, I believe book digitization is a good thing. But I also believe that book search should work like web search (that is, all of the digital book repositories should be searchable by others, not just those who assembled the archive.)

  • A Green Winter: A Citizen's Take on Global Warming. Sarah Rich at WorldChanging points to James Franke's visual blog of a snow-free Canadian winter.


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    Comments: 2

      Scott [02.05.07 04:33 AM]

    Just because I'm a programmer doesn't mean I don't like sports. Don't stereotype...

      Tim O'Reilly [02.05.07 07:23 AM]

    Sorry, Scott. I ended up watching about half of the superbowl myself. I'm sorry that you were offended. I debated whether or not to make the joke, and let it slide.

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