second brain

fly little birdie, fly

Well, I'll be darned if this ain't the cutest thing I've seen this year:



Strategically it's quite interesting too - they're targeting people's sense of altruism rather than going straight for the selfish jugular. Or at least, slightly more cynically, the selfish sense of gratification we get when we're able to do something nice for someone else. Though actually that's not cynical at all - it's what makes the world go round.

meerkat magic

What a brilliant, unforgettable, deliriously silly idea. My campaign of the year for 2009 so far - and it might still be by the year's end.

coping strategies

Amongst the industries struggling to navigate a path through the age of digital disruption are newspapers, and porn.

Slate's Jack Shafter ponders the possibility of iTunes for newspapers here.

The Atlantic's Tom Johansmeyer surveys the recent travails of the adult entertainment industry and glimpses the future: iPorn. Handy.

Relatively small, fragmented, and unaccustomed to outside investment, the U.S. porn industry (which generated roughly $12 billion in 2007) is some­what buffered from today’s credit crunch, but it has its own problems. Video sales have been falling by 15 percent a year since 2005, and online content doesn’t deliver the returns it used to, now that Web sites such as RedTube and PornHub basically give it away. Struggling companies need investors to help right their operations, and those that are thriving in a brutal market need funding for growth.

Enter Koenig and AdultVest. He sees the porn downturn as temporary and believes that technological improvements will trigger a turnaround. One example: iPorn, a start-up in AdultVest’s portfolio that is developing an application to deliver porn to the Apple iPod. “The industry’s not going anywhere,” Koenig says. “You’ve got 6 billion people on the planet,” he laughs, “and they’re all horny.”