Linkology: The Best of the Internet for 12/17/10
This is the first year that I have completed my holiday shopping completely online – I have not set foot into a store and actually purchased something on my list from said store.
What’s more, I cranked out my shopping in about 40 minutes – 25% of which was me screwing around looking at things that I found interesting (curse Amazon’s suggestion/CRM engine) – from my couch using my iPad. I found good deals via Groupon, and a few helpful things from FatWallet, but mainly everything I got flowed through Amazon and its affiliates.
(Think about all the money malls spent this year in decorations, signage, promotions, carolers, creepy elves and Holiday Piano-Playing Guys. Not a single dollar of that influenced shoppers like me. Yet, on the web side of things, nearly no investment has been made except to roll out some holiday deals and maybe some more festive colors for banners and buttons. The infrastructure was already there and imminently flexible.)
I wonder how long it will be before most shoppers do what I did this year: shop from home, never setting tire into traffic, and getting everything done in under an hour. Imagine if retailers didn’t need to go nuts with redecorating their stores and instead just focused on a smart web experience during the holidays? How much money would they save? How much lower could the overall cost-of-sales be?
Anyway. Enough about me sitting around on my couch in Adidas trackpants while I look up crazy things like Fitbit on Amazon when I should be ordering GT5. Let’s get on to the links.
Ninjas unbox a Nexus S smartphone. Amazing work (albeit in Flash). Make sure you grab the nunchuks at the bottom of the comments and destroy the page after the video ends.
The 10th Annual Year in Ideas is up on the NYTimes, and it’s amazing. Especially interesting are the picks from the last nine years that have come to fruition over the course of a decade.
A man has been cured of HIV due to a stem cell transplant.
Filmography 2010. A mashup of clips from 270 films that were out this year put into a wonderful, actually coherent, stream. Says its creator: This year’s movies have legitimately transformed my idea of what is creatively possible. To commemorate, I’ve remixed 270 of them into one giant ass video.
Michael Mace (CEO of Cera Technology) on what’s wrong with RIM. For those of you who think the company is doing just fine because of its recent financial performance, you need to read this article and understand what’s going on behind the curtain.
Finally, here’s the long-awaited (at least by me) trailer for The Tree of Life, due next year. It’s described as a 1950s period piece, but it’s also about the loss of innocence, dueling life perspectives, and the value of the human soul and unselfish love. Can’t wait.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
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