Category: Internet

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Big Scary, Little Scary

Which of these images do you find the most frightening? Which the most beautiful? Which the most relevant to human existence?

Photograph of Epsilon15 Bacteriophage and the mould found growing under a computer monitor

On the left, the highest-resolution image of a virus ever taken. It’s the Epsilon 15 Bacteriophage (i.e. a virus which infects bacteria), and if you count viruses as being alive then it’s one of the most abundant forms of life on Earth.

On the right, a photo of what one guy found growing under his co-worker’s computer monitor. There’s a full image gallery. Hat-tip to Boing Boing.

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Note to Harvey Norman

Dear Harvey Norman: When you sell someone a new computer and tell them that “everything’s on there”, please explain that you’ve only dumped a copy of their old hard drive onto it, and that it’s still a few hours’ work to download and install software, put data in the right place and generally configure things. You might also like to explain that the “student and teacher” editions of Microsoft Office you’re trying to push aren’t actually able to be used by people running a commercial business.

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Thursday Reading, 6 March 2008, 2nd edition

Photography of Justice Michael Kirby

There’s just too much Good Stuff to read today! A speech by Justice Michael Kirby (pictured) to the Internet Industry Association last month, Law making meets technology, is a magnificent summary of the challenge facing legislators (and judges) in the face of rapidly-advancing technology. There’s also related news from Canada, where a bar was ordered to stop scanning people’s ID cards and keeping the data (hat-tip to Threat Level).

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All you need is 1000 True Fans

Diagram of The Long Tail, showing that you only need the top 1000 true fans to reach your financial target

“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author — in other words, anyone producing works of art — needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.”

So says Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, in his latest essay 1000 True Fans.

It’s worth reading the full essay to completely grok what he’s on about. But in brief, a “true fan” is someone who’ll purchase anything and everything you produce.

They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans…

Kelly’s point is that the Internet allows you to find and stay in touch with True Fans cheaply and easily — globally. He gives some useful numbers to help think it through, and points to some examples which are already working.

Continue reading “All you need is 1000 True Fans”