The Longest Run

Most of you know I love to read and share articles. While the web has made sharing a lot easier (no more cutting out an article, photocopying, etc.) it's still not a totally seamless process (do I share on The Longest Run? via email? on facebook?). A few weeks ago the New York Times launched a new community feature - called Times People - which enables readers to 'recommend' articles - you can find a recommend button in the box which usually appears on the top right hand side of articles on the web site (with buttons to print, email, save, share, etc.) as well as at the bottom of articles. There's an extensive FAQ on the NYT site - ( see: Times People FAQ ) - which describes the feature in detail as well as how to use it. I'm enjoying the feature so far, though it's far less interesting if others aren't using it as well (few are seeing my recommendations and I'm not seeing recommendations from many others). I'm set up as aweber9 for those of you who...

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site , interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles , MySpace profiles , IMDb profiles and Amazon products , display inline videos , RSS , MP3s , photos , stock charts and more . Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not. Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

I've had a great day in Stockholm; very busy and very thought-provoking.  The theme of our conference is growth through innovation. We started the morning with a presentation by Bertelsmann's CEO, Hartmut Ostrowski, who talked about why innovation and growth are important for Bertelsmann. Following Hartmut, there were presentations on managing innovation (by a professor from HBS) and on the evoluton of the web from Web 2.0 to Web 'New Generation' (by a board member from Nokia). Following lunch and some breakout sessions, we had two more terrific presentations, both of which addressed how technology is totally disrupting media businesses and forcing the development of new business models. Though I didn't hear anything fundamentally new, the presentations were interesting as they confirmed a lot of the ideas and issues we've been discussing in our day to day work. As I've written about before, we're in the middle of a transformation of how media busi...