A close friend of mine shared with me an article entitled ‘Two Young Creatives of Equal Talent’ by David Lubars. In it Lubars offers sage advice to anyone on the pursuit of creativity. I will highlight a few passages.

Fallon account manager Rob Buchner says, “Stamina is a constant virtue I see in the best creative people; emotional and intellectual stamina. Without perseverance, their talent surrenders to the uglier dynamics of the business.”

A truism.

Another Fallon partner, Rich Stoddart, says, “The successful creative is totally objective about his or her own work. If it’s not working, if it isn’t right, they just move on. Bad creatives only think ‘protect, protect, protect.’”

There is little in this world that irks me more than those who refuse to even entertain the possibility of ‘better’ . This is the most accepted and troublesome of all characteristics, watch out for those who...

Yesterday I climbed Killiney Hill, one of Dublin’s most beautiful attractions. This was a great opportunity to snap a few shots and so I did, with Instagram, naturally. Subsequently, I shared one of these photos on Twitter.

A few minutes later I was asked for the location info, I remembered geotagging the photo so I couldn’t understand why he asked, perhaps he missed it. Either way, this got me thinking about the growing expectation of geographical context. I feel that as we proceed into a new era of predominantly mobile personal computing, geographical information will be as ubiquitous as timestamps. Your phone is beginning to understand your habits and personality, in many ways it allows you to accurately represent who you are. Despite what you’ve been sold in the past, the computer is personal for the first time.

A number of years ago I would have taken a photo, waited until I was...

Zuckerberg needs to know more about us to serve us better media and addict us deeper.

ROBERT SCOBLE

If it wasn’t already obvious, I’ve never sought to be an addict of anything in this life.

This is a good move by Google. The redesign is unoriginal but it’s encouraging to see they’re not afraid to kill their darlings.

Last month I wrote:

… how well positioned Google were and still are to do something amazing with social. I imagine they’ve gone back to the drawing board to rethink their approach. I’m expecting an overhaul or redesign at some point in the near future.

It’s not easy to admit when you were wrong. Admirable even. Yet I have to wonder, how many times can you be wrong before people lose faith?

Yesterday I tweeted this:

If Zuck was wise – which I’m sure he is – Facebook would focus on mobile and use it as an opportunity to right many of their wrongs.

Today Mark Zuckerberg announced this:

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram [for $1 Billion] and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

Job well done, but $1 billion?

I have to wonder what affect this valuation of folly will have on the industry. Enter the legions of misguided overnight entrepreneurs and VCs, both out for a piece of the pie. For those out of the industry (or rather, yet to enter) we are turning the industry into some kind of slot-machine spree; whereby a few lucky players hit the jackpot, inordinate jackpots. Add to this decadent soup a reality show and it’s hard to deny that a crash of some description is increasingly probable.

Whatever the case, $1...

Note: I wrote this piece on 31 Dec 2010. It was a response to Why isn’t the human race advancing faster? by Dustin Curtis on his Posterous blog which is now offline.

You had a thought, so you wrote it up and instantly shared it with over 20,000 people. I read your thought and decided to respond. You are now reading my thought on your thought, all the while we are thousands of miles apart. Dustin, I think the human race is advancing faster than you or I can comprehend.

To contextualise what you said, I can pull a device out of my pocket, press my finger on it a few times, and be in contact with practically any person in the world, instantly. I can access any book ever published, within 20 seconds; and I can ask it any question I can think of and get the correct answer within 30 seconds. The human race has advanced very quickly indeed.

However it is only over the last ~20 years...

I did not tell her that. (… Someone else told her)

I did not tell her that. (… You said I did. or… but now I will)

I did not tell her that. (… I did not say it; she could have inferred it)

I did not tell her that. (… I told someone else)

I did not tell her that. (… I told her something else)

This is what I love about the English language.