Our first attempt devoted much of the homepage to a continually updated news briefing. We are dispensing with that briefing today to try something else. Homepages, it turns out, aren’t dead so much as reborn.

The development of the VR industry is not solely based on wearable devices launched by major hardware vendors... growth drive also comes from independent developers ... making apps does not have a high entry barrier

a new wave of “homeless” media companies that don’t require a home page; their sole purpose is to syndicate content.... With native content consumption on third-party platforms growing, will it still be relevant for media companies to invest significant resources on running and maintaining their websites and mobile apps?

blogs and Twitter drive two-thirds of content flow. Mainstream media has become a catalyst that blogs and Twitter drive. Responsive Experience Tops Responsive Design: ... preparing for 10 types of customers ... you know who they are via their search terms ... content changes to meet their needs. We must know who they are and start building…

Circa is indeed returning, but it won’t be the Circa its users remember.... “an independent digital news site aimed at the new generation,” building on the “intellectual property and technology of Circa News.”

the notion of functionality lifting itself out of app silos and being made available as services.... pieces of micro-content and micro-functionality surfacing as cards... a constellation of screens, regardless of whether it’s a desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, watch, or whatever ... an app-based channel for cards... your conversations and the f…

if business needs are met, it generally doesn’t matter whether the intranet is involved or not, so long as the solution is effectively integrated into an organisation’s digital workplace... In trying to make an intranet essential, we lock ourselves into starting with a solution and then looking for the problems... Sometimes the outcome of this ch…

Being surrounded with ready-made solutions to problems can inhibit our creative growth... Given a problem with scarce resources, the human mind will twist and mull until it has a solution. This creativity is probably our species most important feature.

On Thursday night, as part of its ongoing coverage of the shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., The New York Times highlighted reader comments in one of its most prominent digital spaces: The top of its homepage... While Times journalists interact with readers on social platforms, the paper also makes an effort to bring the conversation back to …

What determines whether the ideas we generate are truly creative? Recent research of ours finds that one common factor often gets in the way: we tend to undervalue the benefits of persistence.

taking us towards what an American legal scholar, Frank Pasquale, has christened the “black box society”... subtitle – “the secret algorithms that control money and information” ... it’s not just about money and information but increasingly about most aspects of contemporary life... we know that Facebook algorithms can influence the moods and t…

When EU tried to create its own platforms directly, “it was spectacularly bad. It tried to create its own version of Google, called Quaero... Going head-to-head with Google with a project involving well-funded, energetic entrepreneurs would be foolish. Attempting the same with a multigovernment collaboration is beyond description.”... there a…

while authority can compel action it does little to inspire belief. Only leadership can do that... That’s why change management efforts commonly fail. All too often, they are designed to carry out initiatives that come from the top. - To Create Real Change, Leadership Is More Important Than Authority | Digital Tonto

If there was an idea that could ‘fix’ democracy, it would have been thought-up already... When I started working on GovTrack, I thought I was building an accountability tool. If only the American public had more information they could head-off failures in government by voting more effectively in elections. ... I was wrong. The world is complic…

So, optimistically, I guess, we build a new independent media on a bedrock of explaining and celebration and condemnation, with a side of antagonistic reporting (or hopefully more) and infinite essays and personal narratives bubbling underneath it all (and occasionally breaking through). - Access Denied - The Awl

most politics coverage is about politicians, not the things I care about and the actions I could take... Political journalism could imagine the audience as agents, people who act. Political journalism could be genuinely empowering, if it started from the concerns of the people it’s supposed to serve and not the spectacle of elections... In t…

this couple will seal their union not before a priest or a judge, but on the almighty blockchain, a distributed global computing and data storage technology. BitNation... has established itself as the first virtual nation... has been building a set of tools and services that together may one day allow people to replace their national identity w…

Over 40 new resources ... some great longreads to enjoy as the nights grow long, the productivity tips you’ll need to find the time to read them, and a free set of steak knives. The Christmas season, after all, is almost upon us.

Back when she was a member of SEAL Team 6—Kristin Beck liked to grow her beard real long. But as disguises go, that was nothing compared with the life she lived as a man. What’s it take, and how does it feel, for a paragon of masculinity to travel so far to find her true self?

true artificial intelligence, if it is realized, might pose a danger that exceeds every previous threat from technology—even nuclear weapons—and that if its development is not managed carefully humanity risks engineering its own extinction... Bostrom is arguably the leading transhumanist philosopher today... bringing order to ideas that might o…

Ray is a brilliant technologist, futurist, and director of engineering at Google focused on AI and language processing... of the 147 predictions that Kurzweil has made since the 1990's, fully 115 of them have turned out to be correct, and another 12 have turned out to be “essentially correct” (off by a year or two), giving his predictions a stunni…

While the platform has long been a bastion of visual storytelling, it has also been historically lax with its limitations on gratuitous writing and hashtagging. That all changed today... An epidemic of hashtag fatigue is coming... The first step was de-prioritizing the hashtag in discovery feeds. The next step is burying it in yours... To e…

Imagine taking a team of highly creative people and sticking them in sterile, lowest-cost-per-square-foot spaces, and expecting them to achieve the best work of their lives?... we've been focussing heavily on the design of our work spaces... Chaining people to their desks (or cubicles) is a sure-fire way to kill great ideas and creativity. -…

The brain’s craving for novelty, constant stimulation and immediate gratification creates a “compulsion loop”... we need more and more to get the same effect. Endless access to new information also easily overloads our working memory. When we reach cognitive overload, our ability to transfer learning to long-term memory significantly deteriorates.…

I am done with attending badly run meetings and if you have any sense so should you be... running a good meeting comes down to the following: - I am done with bad meetings — Medium

Some people might be satisfied just to let each theory be used for what it is good for and to worry no further. But people like that do not become theoretical physicists. - The most beautiful theory | The Economist

The GDS was set up to improve online public services but disagreements with the top brass over its ambitions have seen four leaders abruptly resign - Why are senior staff fleeing the Government Digital Service? | Public Leaders Network | The Guardian

Authors and publishers use Leanpub to publish amazing in-progress and completed books.

Making ‘a net positive contribution to people’s lives’ doesn’t necessarily satisfy investors... it’s possible to imagine regulation that actually expands users’ choices. It doesn’t need to be especially invasive or dramatic, and it would be designed to give users more control over their experiences online... Here are three things we could do…

For Jay Rosen... Blogging is doing your work in public… For me it’s slightly different – this is where I do my thinking in public