Best Links week 25

You Are Solving The Wrong Problem (link)
"What’s the take-away? When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem."

WSJ Profile: Reid Hoffman (link)
"Hoffman believes social networking will remain the dominant platform on which to build new apps and services and looking ahead (yes, Web 3.0 is already being discussed) sees data—especially personal data derived from people's activities online—as fueling the next boom. Privacy, he claims, is primarily an issue with old people."

Why Google Health Really Failed—It’s About The Money (link)
"As reported on TechCrunch, Google shut down its medical records and health data platform. Since then, there’s been a lot of bits spilled offering explanations, but they all missed the most critical item. Money. Or in the language of healthcare—Reimbursement."

IDEO’s Tom Kelley on Innovating for Growth (link)
"In thinking about growth through innovation, Kelley kept it simple saying there are really two big lessons: 1. Become an anthropologist. 2. Think verbs not nouns."

Forrester: Tablets And Mass Customization – A Match Made In Heaven (link)
Apple’s iPad (and other tablets) will help popularize mass customization further. Tablets rank high – along with smartphones and Xbox Kinect – on the list of disruptive electronics devices that product strategists should use to promulgate their mass customized offerings.

Haptics Adds New Dimensions to Touchscreens (link)
"The bottom line: Startups specializing in technology that adds tactile sensations to gadgets are racing to develop killer apps for tablets and smartphones."

J.K. Rowling to Release Harry Potter E-books Herself (link)
Disruption ahead: "Rowling's site will be the exclusive sales channel for the Potter e-books, bypassing traditional e-book stores like Amazon's Kindle store, Barnes and Noble's Nook store and Apple's iBookstore. The Harry Potter series will be published in the open-source e-Pub format, which is compatible with any electronic reading device, including the iPad."
Related: BI quick analysis, The Future of the Textbook?

Groupon S-1: Mind The Ratios (link) (tip thanks to @bjornjeffery)
"When evaluating company documents and filings, a hedge fund manager friend of mine has a simple mantra: "read the footnotes".  So when the Groupon S-1 was posted last night, I was eager to pour over it and find a few hidden nuggets that might explain the company's success and provide some indication of what the future might hold. /.../ All the numbers are growing, which is terrific.  But what matters in these situations is the ratios of growth, not just the absolute growth."

Google’s SOE–Strategy of Everything (link)
"Google’s one and only goal is to sell advertising. The path to this goal requires ‘‘radiation pressure’’: Google wants to make sure we don’t escape their ads. They want to insert themselves into all aspects of our lives, to find out much as they can about as many aspects, activities, and relationships as possible. In Eric Schmidt’s memorable Freudian slip at the D9 conference a few weeks ago: We know where you live…"

Studying the Link Economy (link)
A new research project at CUNY’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. "The hypothesis: There are two creations of value in media online: the creation of content and the creation of a public—an audience*—for that content. Online, content with no links to it has no value because it has no audience. It gains value as it gains links. Thus something of worth is created on each side of a click."

Everywhere! (link)
"Digital is not print. You do not choose your platform. The platform chooses you! /.../ There is nothing wrong with creating an app if it extends what you do for your core readers. But don't limit yourself to an app or a specific device."

The Celebrity Moment (link)
"The mass distribution aided by technology has redefined the concept of celebrity — Being attractive is no longer enough, and you actually have to be intellectually engaging via text on these platforms. /.../ Former Twitter engineer and newly minted Foursquare employee Benjy Weinberger puts it best, “People now expect more from celebrities than just passively reading about them in magazines. Cultivating a direct relationship with your fans over the web is fast becoming the way not just to maintain fame but to create it in the first place.”
Related: Baby’s Got Traction: Sir Mix-A-Lot DJs Live On Turntable.fm

FarmVille Meets the Hollywood Tie-In (link)
"Hollywood studios' latest promotional vehicle: social games. Mature themes may broaden the apps' appeal."

Afghanistan's Amazing DIY Internet (link)
"FabFi has brought a scaleable model of low-cost broadband Internet access to one of the most war-torn regions of the world. Networks of the type created by FabFi operate independently of government control and can be deployed by anyone anywhere where local infrastructure will not permit a conventional network. What works in Afghanistan can also work elsewhere."

/j