Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #404

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, Pandemonio, and ResolveTO, Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another: 

Statistics Canada on GitHub. "I've been working more closely with the Federal government of Canada lately, in part because of a digital government conference I launched last year. It's been encouraging: For example, with Minister Marc Garneau, an astronaut, in charge of transportation, the department is really trying to understand emerging tech and ready itself for change. Another good sign: Statistics Canada published interactive charts on income, population, and occupation on Github, along with code and version history. It's one thing to be pro Open Data; it's another to deliver information along with the tools to analyze it. Click in a couple of times and play with the charts." (Alistair for Hugh).
Epic Games shows off amazing real-time digital human with Siren demo - Venture Beat . "When developers and designers try to make things look real, they stumble across what's known as the Uncanny Valley -- humans that look not quite real enough and creep us out. But tech is getting better; here's a video that looks almost perfect. The teeth are still a bit weird. More interestingly, this can be rigged up to an actor to record everything, rather than having to animate the virtual human. Within a couple of years, veracity will be a scarce commodity." (Alistair for Mitch).
I Made My Shed the Top Rated Restaurant On TripAdvisor - Vice . "Is it possible to game TripAdvisor (etc...) ratings? Here's how to get your restaurant rated #1 in London UK on TripAdvisor, even though your restaurant doesn't exist." (Hugh for Alistair).
Netflix Created a Clean, Custom Font That Could Save the Company Millions - AdWeek . "There are companies that design and license fonts, and in the web world, the licensing fees are often charged by impression. So, Netflix designed their own font. Here's the skinny." (Hugh for Mitch).
Virtual influencers - JWT Intelligence . "This caught my attention on our internal platform. As part of WPP and JWT, you get to see some cool stuff. Then, I realized that JWT Intelligence had shared this article externally. Kinda creepy. Kinda interesting. Influencers and influencer marketing is all the rage these days. Well, how about this? What if your influencer of choice isn't even a human? Does an influencer have to human to be cool AF?" (Mitch for Alistair).
Amazon considering buying brick and mortar Toys "R" Us locations - Axios . "Would this be the definition of irony? If it isn't, am I evil for wondering if this is a viable business tactic? Is it possible that Amazon decides, 'hey, we want to be in the toy business.' So they focus and focus on toys, and it winds up being a contributor to the demise of one of the largest toy retailers in the world. Then, instead of just watching that 800 pound gorilla fall, Amazon swoops in and pays a fraction of it's value for whatever is left? Silly? Not so sure..." (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Tags:

advertising

advertising agency

adweek

algorithm

alistair croll

amazon

brand

business blog

business model

content

content marketing

digital government

digital marketing

digital marketing agency

digital marketing blog

disruption

epic games

facebook

flash forward

font

github

influencer

influencer marketing

innovation

j walter thompson

janelle shane

jwt

jwt intelligence

link

link exchange

marc garneau

marketing

marketing agency

marketing blog

mirum

mirum agency

mirum agency blog

mirum blog

mirum canada

mirum in canada

mitch joel

mitchjoel

netflix

open data

six pixels of separation

solve for interesting

statistics canada

strata conference

tilt the windmill

toys r us

transportation

tripadvisor

twitter

typography

venture beat

vice

video

video games

virtual

virtual influencers

virtual reality

wpp