Its ironic that spending your days running a content marketing organization makes you less likely to write on your own blog, but I suppose one needs to step away from the keyboard now and then. Regardless, I’ve actually found myself scribbling down lots of bits to share over the course of the month, and promised I would at least get out one post to share some of the cool things I stumbled upon in January.
Overtone
For musicians who are also technologists, Overtone (http://overtone.github.io/) has got to be one of the most amazing discoveries that I’ve made. Thanks to a ThoughtWorker named Chris Ford, I’ve started dabbling with it, and in the process started learning Clojure, the programming language that makes it possible.
Bitcoin
Whether you think Bitcoin will be a massive success or not, is irrelevant. It does seem to signify that momentum around digital currencies is really starting to increase. This month’s great editorial by Mark Andreessen in the NY Times, Why Bitcoin Matters (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters ) and the response by the Economist’s Glenn Fleishman in Medium (https://medium.com/the-magazine/23e551c67a6 ) were just great reads that dive into the mechanics of what makes currency systems work.
There has just been quite a bit of tremendous writing on the topic of Bitcoin over the last year, and the more you ready the more you find, including this one from Reuters’ Felix Salmon in Medium, The Bitcoin Bubble and the Future of Currency (https://medium.com/money-banking/2b5ef79482cb ).
Best of Presentations and Predictions for the coming year
So many great recap and fast forward posts during the last month that your eyes can start to glaze over just thinking about them, but there were several standouts, many of which were filled with parallax awesomeness.
Looking back
- Best of Kickstarter 2013
- Our team put together a fun timeline called the ThoughtWorks 2013 Year in Review
- Spotify Best of 2013 – Full of parallax goodness
- America in 2013 as told in charts by the NYT
Looking forward
- Predictions for Journalism in 2014 by Nieman Journalisim Lab, including The Blog is Dead by Jason Kottke.
- Frog Design’s Tech Trends 2014
Super useful tools
I consume lots of great resources shared with me by others, so its only fair I pass them along. Here’s a few:
- I started a new Bit.ly bundle of Digital Marketing Essentials which is a gift to all of you.
- For those like myself who always need a command line reference, Conquering the Command Line rocks and is free online: http://conqueringthecommandline.com/
- Buzzsumo (not to be confused with the awesome, Buzzstream) is an outstanding app to assist with online outreach or even general content marketing research, and its currently free while they work on their application and business model. It’s super powerful and I love it for seeing what headlines are viral and who influencers around a topic are. I almost don’t want to share it, it’s so good.
- For nonsense names, Wordoid cannot be beat, and once you get one, the Squarespace Logo tool is a great way to make yourself known.
New reading and whatnot
It’s always nice to find time to read for enjoyment. I still try and fit my triage of Prismatic into my daily routine, devour my Latest from Dave Gray and NextDraft newsletters, and stuff any random things I find into Instapaper for commute fodder. In December and January I came across a number of new bits:
- A friend introduced me to James Bridle (http://booktwo.org/).
- I recently finished books:
,
, and
- Just last week I started tuning into the new podcast series by Copyblogger called The New Rainmaker. It’s good stuff.
Otherwise, it’s been a tremendous month that started with family, a nice New Year’s celebration, time off and fun with these guys. One of whom just turned one year old, and the other who is just about to start pre-school. Lots of fun stories to come, no doubt.
