CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2012-05-30 13:59:08 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

2012-04-11 23:37:22 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

I like this here #newgoogleplus look. Not sure if it'll make a huge difference, but it's nice to have a better-looking product.

2012-02-27 02:22:49 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

Hey, they redesigned the G+ interface in Gmail. Looks better.

2012-01-27 15:29:36 (1 comments, 4 reshares, 9 +1s)

I love this from +Becca Rosen . Crowdsourced photographs of the aurorae caused by the solar storm that hit earth this week.

2011-12-05 22:30:00 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Woof. Came back here to upload a video of my niece and then share it with some people. So not intuitive. So hard to make basic stuff work they want you want it to.

2011-11-14 23:09:07 (9 comments, 8 reshares, 19 +1s)

I've been thinking a lot about magazine brands. Here, I lay out the data and I'm looking at and suggest the following definition for brands.

"Brands are probabilistic now. The primary power of a brand is to increase the probability that someone clicks on, upvotes, or links to a story associated with your brand."

2011-11-02 18:49:38 (11 comments, 5 reshares, 21 +1s)

+Sarah Rich and I voyaged to the west edge of Louisiana to profile Moonbot Studios, a wild and wildlly talented group of animators who are building the narrative iPad apps of the future. This is a serious #longread, weighing in at 5,000 words, but we promise it's worth it.

2011-09-26 21:37:47 (7 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

"It has to do with freedom." I love +Stewart Brand 's frame for what kinds of spaces boost inventive output. "Low Road buildings are low-visibility, low-rent, no-style, high-turnover," Brand writes in an essay that's being reprinted in the new Steven Johnson-edited book, The Innovator's Cookbook.

I remember back in 2007, Facebook was housed in a Low Road building in Palo Alto. Ethernet cords dangled from the ceiling onto temporary desks. The lighting was terrible, but the monitors were huge. It was a place made for work, the startup aesthetic be damned.

What I'm looking for is examples of other Low Road buildings. Could be your garage. Could be your company's office. Could be institutional like Brand's favorite, (the now demolished) Building 20 at MIT.

2011-08-12 16:41:57 (35 comments, 18 reshares, 18 +1s)

Hey, we're trying to see how people's Googling strategies differ. If you've got a minute, take this quick survey for us, eh?

2011-08-12 12:59:44 (6 comments, 8 reshares, 13 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech+

Since people seemed to like the journalism process post from yesterday, I'm going to stay in that vein today.

Well, OK, I'm going to steal sorta from myself for this edition. Last night, I gave an extemporaneous talk about my thoughts on interesting tech tools. O'Reilly's +Alexander Howard (and new AT contributor) was in the audience (front row!) and wrote it up. I am 100% sure his summary is more useful and better than the talk was:

http://digiphile.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/new-digital-journalism-tools-and-platforms-to-connect-present-and-inspire/

A couple key links from the talk.

Backend stuff:
http://SubMishMash.com
Google Forms (http://docs.google.com)
http://www.homicidewatchdc.org

Front-end inspiration:
TIME's new slideshow tool
http://domusweb.it... more »

2011-08-11 13:11:57 (19 comments, 16 reshares, 44 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech+
a special edition about research process

So, I want to use this space this to talk a little bit about a story that I really loved writing yesterday: The Many Failures and Few Successes of Zany Iceberg Towing Schemes.

My initial motivation for writing about iceberg towing is that a Frenchman long involved in the iceberg towing community ran some computer models that showed towing the ice from Antarctica to Africa made sense. A series of credulous headlines followed: http://bit.ly/qFnToV Fox News, for example: "Iceberg Harvesting Can End Third World Drought, Scientist Says."

Now, because I keep an eye on big, crazy schemes in history (I am a lover of wave motors, after all), I knew that I'd seen iceberg towing mentioned for decades and decades. I also knew that "iceberg towing" was a unique phrase that could be pumped... more »

2011-08-09 13:32:46 (15 comments, 7 reshares, 20 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech+

-- The whole team is looking at a bunch of things related to the London riots, none of which I'm quite ready to talk about yet. Suffice to say we're looking at several different angles on surveillance including prevalence of CCTV, DIY face recognition, other riots in other cities, and several more. We don't really know what's going to pan out, but at least a couple of these will.

-- I'm also going to do a history of The Idea of Towing Icebergs to Dry Parts of the World based on this: http://fxn.ws/nbWzoz

-- And expect a wonderful stepback from +Alexander Howard on e-government to go up a little later this morning.

-- If you missed it, squirrels are a menace to the future!
http://bit.ly/p4BhJR

Around the Webs

Wired has up their most excellent IUD feature story about how the... more »

2011-08-08 13:31:40 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech+

We're looking into the London riots and a lot of the random info floating around the web right now about Blackberry Messager usage's role in the civil disturbance. The key difference between Twitter/Facebook and BBM? BBM is private-ish.

--+Becca Rosen is going to look at the excitement that builds around The Next Tallest Building in the world.

-- +Nicholas Jackson will look at the history of bridging the digital divide, pegged to Comcast opening up $10/month Internet. And, of course, media hound that he is, he's looking at http://beta620.nytimes.com ...

--I'm also going to look into this swallowable perfume: http://bit.ly/pZIr0Y Yes, you read that right.

Around the Webs

*+Rob Walker * has a monster piece in the New York Times Magazine about Kickstarter. http://nyti.ms/nsu9OH "The Trivialities... more »

2011-08-04 14:39:16 (6 comments, 8 reshares, 22 +1s)

The Atlantic Video Channel is now live.
* http://www.theatlantic.com/video/ *

A couple of notes for media nerds here. First, this channel was just an idea a few months ago. We came up with a real strategy, hired +Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg , and, you know, built the whole thing in just a few months. I think it's the slickest thing we've ever produced (the new iPad app is good competition). On the backend, video creators can upload a video, which feeds through to both Brightcove and a Django backend. That Django system then populates the video page and interfaces with the Moveable Type system on which the rest of TheAtlantic.com runs. And it works!

Another thing to note: Vimeo, YouTube, and Brightcove integration is seamless. You're watching one of our videos, you click somewhere and a Vimeo video pops into the top slot. There is no difference for the user.... more »

2011-08-04 13:28:12 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech+

So, sorry to be absent these past couple days. I was up to this: http://two.longshotmag.com ... Hope you like it!

In AT news, +Nicholas Jackson continues with his awesome Shark Week coverage, looking at the shark of tech, including BRUCE, the mechanical animal from JAWS. Check it out: http://bit.ly/nkd7rZ

This is a bit of a special edition of the AT+ because I need your help to help my Dad out. And this help requires your knowledge of the current state of augmented reality.

+John Pavlus recently posted about an AR app that lets you see baby-style. http://bit.ly/p3vwAR. That's nice and maybe helps you understand the baby better, but I've got a better use case.

My father, +Salvador Madrigal has glaucoma in one of his eyes, which reduces the contrast of things that he sees. He's wondered aloud to me whether a pair of... more »

2011-07-30 01:44:10 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Thinking about having a quick Google+ hangout as a kind of "office hours" for people working on @LongshotMag stories. Would that be interesting for people?

2011-07-29 13:55:41 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 12 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech+
a daily experiment in real-time news

+Nicholas Jackson and I are up in New York for @LonghshotMag, which is an occasional experiment in creating a magazine in 48 hours. This time around, the good people of Gawker are hosting us at their Manhattan digs. I'm working on a post about the free tools that we use to build our pop-up infrastructure. We unveil the theme today at 3pm Eastern. After that you'll have 24 hours to submit work. You can find out more at http://www.longshotmag.com

All that to say, this is a bit of an abbreviated AT+.

Around the Webs

The Telegraph has a nice lens for what happens when a successful site gets knocked off by a swarm of imitators. "The Crowdfunding Cargo Cult"
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/adrianhon/100006763/unbound-the-crowdfunding-cargo-cult/
... more »

2011-07-28 18:08:14 (2 comments, 5 reshares, 13 +1s)

Here's the new @TheAtlanticTech longreads page:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/category/longreads/

If you want to subscribe to the RSS feed for our longer form stuff, +Tim Maly built this handy RSS feed:
http://feed43.com/atlantictechlongreads.xml

2011-07-28 16:18:48 (8 comments, 11 reshares, 17 +1s)

My long-promised piece on gravestone technology, particularly the application of lasers in the death industry is complete.http://theatln.tc/n7FLZm It begins at Washington Cemetery, pictured here.

2011-07-28 13:19:58 (16 comments, 3 reshares, 2 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech+
a daily experiment in real-time news

So, I'm considering some changes to this roundup, focusing more on the most stories from the top sites, rather than the ones they feature up top. Of course, that would turn this into a different kind of service, less about "top" news and more about my niche news.

For example, Wired is leading with a story about the FBI training manual (http://bit.ly/qlOWkF). But I'd probably post a link to their piece about MoMa's Talk to Me exhibit (http://bit.ly/nEmllh).

Or Techmeme has a hint about the new shape of next iPhone via some silicone cases (http://techme.me/BqVo). But I'd probably go with the Wall Street Journal story on Google running up against the limits of the city of Mountain View (http://on.wsj.com/qMQFYM).

So, what do you think? I'm going to leave... more »

2011-07-27 13:59:22 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 2 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech+
a daily experiment in real-time news

-- +Becca Rosen leads us off today with a story about data furnaces, a Microsoft research concept to hook small cloud server rooms directly into residential heating systems.

http://bit.ly/pQF4I7

-- She'll also be looking at a Tiny House project at Northwestern, which recruits kids to come up with energy (and life) efficiency solutions through building a very small house.

-- +Nicholas Jackson has some great stuff coming. First, he's going to look at the IBM Selectric, which turns 50 today. Then, he might turn to a brief history of the fax machine pegged to Adobe buying EchoSign. And maybe at some point this week of the steps required to prep Atlantis for display.

-- I've got a Built in America gallery going up about a historic carousel. I'm also going to gather up some... more »

2011-07-27 13:25:11 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

I really wish G+ saved posts. I just lost a complete Atlantic Tech Plus.

2011-07-26 13:51:51 (12 comments, 6 reshares, 3 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech PLUS
an experiment in real-time news

As always, we want to know what you think is important to cover. So, feel free to tell us what you think we should be writing about!

Netflix got crushed in afterhours trading as bad guidance offset the company's nice earnings performance. You probably should know about that. It probably makes sense as the company had a price-to-earnings ration of something like 60:1. You only get that kind of crazy number if you're seen as a high-growth company, and Netflix's growth is clearly slowing down.

But if you want something good to read, check out +Nicholas Jackson 's piece on the new race to the bottom of the Mariana Trench! Branson! James Cameron! Some dude from Florida!
http://bit.ly/nZPTLT

-- +Becca Rosen is going to write about THE FACT THAT THE FOUNDER OF THE CRYONICS MOVEMENT... more »

2011-07-25 20:08:17 (20 comments, 12 reshares, 15 +1s)

You knew it had to happen.

2011-07-25 13:35:46 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 6 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech PLUS
a daily real-time news experiment

We've got a bunch of great stuff coming up this week.

-- +Nicholas Jackson has a piece on the race to the be the 2nd person to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Richard Branson vs. James Cameron vs. some other guy. He's also looking at iPad and Nook sales for magazines. Everybody is building these expensive iPad apps, but just straight PDF magazines are selling well on other platforms, Nick says.

-- +Becca Rosen is back in the saddle. She's going to be looking at some of the proposals for new toilet technology submitted to this new Gates initiative to reinvent the modern human waste disposal mechanism. There's a new issue of Google's Think Quarterly out this morning, too, and she's going to review that as well.

-- +James Somers , one of the most talented young writers out... more »

2011-07-25 02:18:15 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

+Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg made a quick little video of +Garance Franke-Ruta , +Derek Thompson , and me trying to cook eggs on the Watergate's roof.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/is-it-hot-enough-to-cook-an-egg-on-the-watergate-roof-yes/242459/

2011-07-22 14:08:56 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 15 +1s)

The Atlantic PLUS
a daily experiment in real-time news

We lead this morning with +Nicholas Jackson 's piece on speculation that Apple will buy Hulu with its (ridiculous) pile of cash. If they do, Netflix should worry, he argues. http://bit.ly/pwgnqD

-- I've got a piece based on an amazing video of Nytimes.com frontages screens hotted over a year. Thanks to +Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg for bringing that in.

-- And I'm still working on my gravestone tech piece. It's a kraken! Look for it Sunday night all done up feature style.

-- +Nicholas Jackson is looking at G+'s user numbers. Are they really all that impressive? He's also writing about that sick Google doodle today, the first in HTML5 (I think).

-- +Garance Franke-Ruta are going to cook eggs on the Watergate roof around high noon. No, I am not kidding. We have... more »

2011-07-22 15:35:20 (27 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Pop quiz! Without looking, which country is the top granite exporter to the United States?

Per +Alexander Howard 's suggestion, I have to tell the answer is Brazil.

2011-07-21 17:08:01 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

I am learning a ton about the monument industry. And the stone industry. And the laser industry. Gravestone tech!

2011-07-21 13:33:51 (1 comments, 3 reshares, 4 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech PLUS
Our daily experiment in real-time news

I'm still getting used to Lion, so today's early edition will be a bit truncated. I'll fill in our look around the webs soon.

Our lead story today is on Larry Page's first 100 (ok, technically 107, days) as Google chief. The catchphrase is "more wood behind fewer arrows." He wants a more focused, more potent Google.
http://bit.ly/nj6VMU

-- +Nicholas Jackson will be finishing up his series on the Shuttle, now that it's down to Earth for the last time. He's also going to look at Float, the supposed Netflix+Instapaper thing from Scribd.

-- I'm looking at Lion, of course, and trying to finish up my gravestone tech piece. You know that no one has ever written a history of gravestone technology? Crazy, right?

-- +Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von... more »

2011-07-20 13:56:10 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech PLUS
our daily experiment in real-time news

Apple reported robust earnings last night on all-around good sales, including 20 million iPhones. Worth noting that far more Android phones are being activated now (something like 50 million a quarter, I remember +Marshall Kirkpatrick saying, based on estimates of more than 500,000 activations per day) but that experience is far more fragmented than Apple's. One note of caution: the company issued "below expectations" guidance for the fourth quarter. Slow holiday season expectations, erosion of Apple's business by competitors, or early headfake? Dunno. Take a look yourself: http://bit.ly/ohjk2j

-- In other news, +Nicholas Jackson and I will be looking at the first 100 days of the Larry Page administration.
-- Graveyard tech is still in the works. Apparently, laser etching first took off in... more »

2011-07-19 14:55:22 (11 comments, 5 reshares, 13 +1s)

A friend just asked for recommendations on the history of nuclear energy. Here's what I got:

Too Cheap to Meter by Steven Cohn is obscure but indispensable. As an economist writing just after the collapse of the nuclear industry, he really lays out the cost problems that stalled the industry.

The First Nuclear Era by Alvin Weinberg is a firsthand account of the rise of nuclear power that really gives you the flavor of the engineers and scientists who created and supported the industry.

America's Electric Utilities by investment banker Leonard Hyman pretty clearly explains why Wall Street isn't interested in nukes most of the time.

"The Breakthrough That Wasn't" is my take on the rise and fall of nuclear power. I look at a lot of the social context about how nuclear advocates framed the energy problem so that only their technology could... more »

2011-07-19 13:57:11 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech PLUS
our daily experiment in real-time news
-- I've got two stories coming. One on space colonies (thanks +Tim Maly) and the other on gravestone technology. (Yes, you read that right.) Both are a little longer and deeper, so expect them later today.

-- +Nicholas Jackson is going to look into Zynga's new S-1 SEC filing, which at 619 pages is bound to have some interesting stuff. And he's going to have a Toolkit on moving your Facebook photos over to Google Photos (aka Picasa).

-- We've got an outside piece from +Scott Rosenberg on the NYT corrections policy in the Internet age. It is way more interesting than you'd expect a story about a corrections policy could be.

-- Oh, and if you're looking to pitch us, I'm actively looking for someone to write a dictionary of emoji. With the right tone, that story will... more »

2011-07-18 20:17:42 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

So, I was tooling around old books about space settlement plans from the 1970s and I stumbled across this vintage Stewart Brand intro. It's a gorgeous frame, I think, for how to think about "news" these days.

Most of this book is Used Information. It is reprinted from various issues of The CoEvolution Quarterly, a California-based peculiar magazine.You can look at that news two ways. If you operate by the Bread Model of Information, it's terrible news. You've been gypped - stale information.On the other hand if you view information as something fundamentally different from bread, there's the possibility of good news. Having lived longer, the information here may be wiser, more co-evolved with the world. It may be more refined, having cycled complexly through the minds and responses of 40,000 CQ readers. And it's been through two editorial distillations; the... more »

2011-07-18 19:44:58 (16 comments, 8 reshares, 12 +1s)

My new opus on the evolution of pizza box technology, which breaks down into two eras: Before Corrugation, After Domino's. http://bit.ly/pHjiir

2011-07-18 13:51:00 (12 comments, 4 reshares, 14 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech PLUS
our daily experiment in real-time news

You'd think it was a slow news day when the machine at Techmeme leads with Adobe's acquisition of the e-signature platform, EchoSign, and Google's news algorithm's top sci-tech story is "Astronauts load storage bin on last space shuttle." But actually, we've got some exciting stuff.

-- I've got pieces cooking on the design of pizza boxes and NASA's groovy space station architecture from the 1970s. Just check out the picture attached for a glimpse of that glory.

-- We may also write something about MySpace co-founder +Tom Anderson 's
post wondering whether social is in Google's DNA. Anderson is back.
http://tcrn.ch/rd9D3s

-- +Nicholas Jackson 's got a gallery of photos from Instagram's offices shot using... Instagram. He'll... more »

2011-07-15 14:44:02 (9 comments, 5 reshares, 15 +1s)

The Atlantic Tech PLUS
our daily experiment in real-time news

Our Lead Stories
--+Becca Rosen gives you "4 Reasons Artists Are Loving Google."
http://bit.ly/pYInBT
It connects people like Twitter but is better for sharing art, and doesn't come with the "friend" baggage of Facebook.

-- I look at Google's new strategy, "Google's Social Carrot and Search Stick."
http://bit.ly/qFfaBM "In the Internet business, the search engine is like Lola: whatever the search engine wants, the search engine gets."

Around the Webs
Techmeme is leading with Google's 2Q earnings. They brought in more than $9 billion of revenue and net income of $2.5 billion. That beat expectations, so the stock popped 14% in afterhours trading.+Tom Foremski spots an interesting mystery about the numbers.... more »

2011-07-15 03:01:10 (18 comments, 13 reshares, 14 +1s)

Love this by +Joanne McNeil : This ever present anachronism has made it so that almost all literary fiction is science fiction, a thought experiment as to what life might be like if we weren’t so absorbed in our iPhones but instead watched and listened to the world around us at a moment’s rest.

2011-07-15 01:13:13 (11 comments, 5 reshares, 13 +1s)

So, people are hitting Google is serving the +1 button 2.3 billion times a day, and people are sharing a billion items a day. This is my take on one reason for their success.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/googles-social-carrot-and-search-stick/241978/

2011-07-14 19:08:01 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Hey, I'm in a live chat with +Eli Kintisch and +Maggie Koerth-Baker . Come join!

2011-07-14 18:49:24 (0 comments, 5 reshares, 12 +1s)

This is an awesome two-minute visual history of spacewalking by +Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg from Gemini's first steps to yesterday's final EVA.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/video-a-twominute-visual-history-of-the-spacewalk/241954/

2011-07-14 15:32:00 (22 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Calling all historians of technology. I'm making a circle for SHOT types. Let me know if you want in! (Thanks for the idea, +Maggie Koerth-Baker )

2011-07-14 14:39:01 (50 comments, 26 reshares, 14 +1s)

That is one damning graph. You get what you pay for! Who would pay $45,000 a year to get Cs?

2011-07-14 13:01:10 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 5 +1s)

Re-post for new, incoming Google+-ers: I'm starting a new circle. If you are a professional scientist (academia or industry) or involved in other branches of research, please let me know. I'd like to make sure you get sorted in there.

2011-07-14 00:02:05 (10 comments, 2 reshares, 11 +1s)

Story done, now I can indulge myself in that lamest of pleasures: running to the Philosophy Bites podcast! Up for this run: Peter Adamson on Avicenna.

Seriously, I can't recommend this podcast highly enough.

2011-07-13 23:38:41 (10 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

We just learned about Bradley Manning and how his conscience was forged.

2011-07-13 21:57:51 (10 comments, 6 reshares, 11 +1s)

My friend (and fellow male Alexis) +Alexis Madrigal inspired me to finally share this observation after seeing him discuss it yesterday.

G+ is no threat to facebook at the moment (though hopefully a great lesson in the value of privacy) because too many are still using the latter for managing their digital farms or creeping on photos of cute people they met in class. Switching over for good involves a high switching cost.

But what about Twitter?

I'd wager G+ is going to take a big bite out of that little blue bird. It's a social platform (not unlike reddit) where a vast majority of content is produced by a minority of the userbase. You've heard of the 80/20 rule before. Turns out it's not just about beer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

The platform thrives because of big celebrities (Hollywood-style, like hipmunk.com investor +Ashton... more »

2011-07-13 20:54:41 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

These Manning chat logs, just released in full by +WIRED . are tough to read. Manning was in serious emotional turmoil for a variety of reasons, but also comes across as having actually thought deeply about was doing from a political perspective. But then take all that and filter it through the strange conventions of online chat... It's surreal.

2011-07-13 18:42:55 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Interested in energy, how it got the way it is, and where it's going in the future? Then you should join me, +Alexis Madrigal and Eli Kintisch tomorrow at 3:00 Eastern for an interactive web chat sponsored by Science magazine. http://bit.ly/nDn5ak