Dr. Thomas Whitley and Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the how apocalyptic religious movements become religions, insider and outsider language, the uniqueness of christianities, their ongoing personal revelations about privilege, and the intertextuality of Trump.
The post Thinking Religion 71: Something About Easter? appeared first on Thinking.FM.
“In case there was any doubt that messaging apps were the future of communication in the mobile-first era, a new study released this morning puts some solid numbers behind their traction – and their increasing dominance over email, among today’s youngest users. According to a report from App Annie, email is effectively dying among this crowd. Those aged 13 to 24 now spend more than 3.5 times overall usage time in messaging apps than those over 45 years old, while the older users still default to apps that replicate desktop functions, like email and web browsers.“
Source: Email is dying among mobile’s youngest users
Forget building out an iPhone or Android app for your group, organization, or church. We’re (re)entering the age of messaging. If you want to remain (or become) relevant, you’re going to have to have a presence there.
Fear not, there are some great services out there such as AppyPie or Chatfuel to help you configure your messaging app (currently only works with Telegram but coming soon to Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Kik, Viber, and Slack).
But yes, messaging is the next iteration of social networking / SMS / email / web communications as we transition rapidly to a mobile-first computing environment… old conventions such as web browsers or email clients aren’t going to be the center of that experience, and neither will traditional “one size fits all” apps. Or as Chatfuel’s site says, “Chatbots are the new apps.”
“Here’s a sure sign of spring, and that Facebook is changing the way marketers create ads… The whole idea is in keeping with the idea of silent movies becoming the future, or at least a future, of advertising. Folks who want to stick around and turn on the sound will get to see and hear steak sizzling. DDB San Francisco is the agency.”
Source: Kingsford’s Facebook Ad Will Reward You With BBQ if You Keep Watching – Video – Creativity Online
Brilliant.
“We haven’t had this kind of transformation since television came in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s,” says Marc Pritchard, the marketing boss at Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser. Grappling with these challenges, however, may spur a shift in the industry’s structure. There will always be startups, particularly because technology changes so quickly. But on the whole, power is likely to move to fewer, larger companies.”
DocStoc is now dead, which I knew was coming. What I didn’t realize is that I had linked to so many pages there (including a few of my own like a paper on Julian of Norwich that had around 3,500 views last time I checked a few months back. I’ve got a plugin configured here to alert me when something I’ve linked to either changes url’s or goes away. I’m getting more and more of these lately. Linkrot / Webrot is real and sad. Thanks, Facebook.
Developed by Microsoft’s research division, Tay is a virtual friend with behaviors informed by the web chatter of some 18–24-year-olds and the repartee of a handful of improvisational comedians (Microsoft declined to name them). Her purpose, unlike AI-powered virtual assistants like Facebook’s M, is almost entirely to amuse. And Tay does do that: She is simultaneously entertaining, infuriating, manic, and irreverent.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/microsoft-introduces-tay-an-ai-powered-chatbot-it-hopes-will#.ytYzABj6o
Chromecast is dead. Name-wise, at least. Thankfully. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE(d) Chromecast, now Google Cast. Great decision, Google.
“Holistic local SEO campaigns are the best for providing long-term value because the results won’t disappear immediately if you stop working with the agency. They also offer an element of education that you could argue is the most valuable of all.
While these services can seem a bit costly, they’re worth their price in every aspect. They’re highly targeted campaigns run by thoughtful local SEO technicians who know how to focus on getting results. The investment into these campaigns typically ranges from $899 to $ 1,999 per month depending on the company, their specific offerings and the business’s overall goals.”
Source: Why costs for local SEO campaigns vary
We work with a number of businesses, organizations, and even churches on what can be defined as “holistic” SEO programs to increase their site’s effectiveness at reaching desired potential customers or interactions at the local level.
There are some great “automated” services where you can “set it and forget it” and pay a monthly fee to do your search optimization as the article points out (Moz Local, Synup, Yext etc). We’ve steered a few of our clients in that direction given their budget, goals, or scope of demographics. The same goes with building a site… there are great solutions such as Squarespace or even WordPress.com for building your own website on the cheap, and sometimes that’s a better solution (I’d stay away from Wix or Weebly because of the way those site generators perform in Google searches, but that’s just me).
However, if you want the real trifecta of successful results, you have to hire an expert (which is what we do):
You simply can’t get that with DIY programs.
I often see advertisements for website builders or newsletter delivery solutions or business card designers / makers that promise “ease of use” and “success” for small businesses or organizations working on shoestring budgets. It’s tempting to consider using those, especially when you are starting out or looking to make the jump to the next plateau. Sometimes, that’s a wise move. More often than not, you realize a few months into your endeavors that it would have been better to “hire an agency” or an expert to help you both clarify your goals as well as implement a site or newsletter or business card design that is both professional and custom to your needs.
Don’t discount the education component of marketing. I don’t expect my clients to run out and pass a Google Search Exam after a few months or years, but nothing makes me happier than when a client understands the value of their marketing investment and starts brainstorming with our team or even wants to learn more about how web design really works.
I’m a teacher at heart, I guess.
Granted, these stories are all data-driven and lack literary flair, so human journalists still own deep reporting and analysis—for now. Narrative Sciences predicts that work written by its program will earn a Pulitzer Prize any day now, and that computers will control 90 percent of journalism in roughly 15 years. If you’re dubious about robo-journalism, check out this quiz by the New York Times to see if you can distinguish between human and robot writing.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/20/the-next-picasso-is-a-robot.html
Source: Ignite Social Media
Interesting.
By eating less meat and more fruit and vegetables, the world could prevent several million deaths per year by 2050, cut planet-warming emissions substantially, and save billions of dollars annually in healthcare costs and climate damage, researchers said.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/diet-fitness/vegan-eating-would-slash-cut-food-s-global-warming-emissions-n542886
“I’m here to manage a team, not make rules,” Maddon said. “I learned my lesson from that.”
http://m.cubs.mlb.com/news/article/168278928/cubs-joe-maddon-talks-policies-with-leaders
“On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking [terrorist Syed] Farook’s iPhone,” federal prosecutors said in a filing Monday afternoon. “Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple Inc. (“Apple”) set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/feds-move-to-cancel-iphone-hearing-221062
The era of the fact is coming to an end: the place once held by “facts” is being taken over by “data.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/the-internet-of-us-and-the-end-of-facts
How many writing projects are you working on? Elisabeth and Merianna talk about their joint writing project, individual projects, and ghost writing projects and how to keep them all going at the same time. They also ask the question, “Can you make it as a loner writer?” No!
So, join Elisabeth and Merianna for the first ever Thinking Out Loud Writers’ Conference.
The post Thinking Out Loud 104: Yours, Mine, and Ours appeared first on Thinking.FM.
Dr. Thomas Whitley and Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the religion of college football, Rip and Dip vs Common Cup vs Shot Glasses, Rubio’s odd theological farewell speech, the power of professing God’s Will, and why the Republican Party enabled Trump.
The post Thinking Religion 70: “And you never ask questions when God’s on your side” appeared first on Thinking.FM.
“Because now you have designers, who instead of being encouraged to come up with their own, new, crazy ideas, are being encouraged to do the things that have been proven by the data to deliver results. A lot of times, in thriving marketplaces, a lot of ideas come from the bottom up. You see new consumer behaviors, and then you go, “Oh my gosh, look at what these kids are doing.” But as you end up with more predictable, controlled consumers, you end up with a less innovative society.”
Source: Doug Rushkoff Says Companies Should Stop Growing | FiveThirtyEight
Don’t you wonder sometimes, ’bout sound and vision?
Be weird. Be different. Don’t let your own expressions be drowned out by “what has worked in the past” or be restricted by “the data.”
Round pegs, square holes and all that.
Will I be able to afford groceries this month? Elisabeth and Merianna talk about the peaks and valleys of the publishing and writing world and how it’s hard to predict what each month or each day is going to look like. How exciting!
The post Thinking Out Loud 103: Feast or Famine appeared first on Thinking.FM.
“We believe that a computer that can read and understand stories, can, if given enough example stories from a given culture, ‘reverse engineer’ the values tacitly held by the culture that produced them,” they write. “These values can be complete enough that they can align the values of an intelligent entity with humanity. In short, we hypothesise that an intelligent entity can learn what it means to be human by immersing itself in the stories it produces.”
Source: Robots could learn human values by reading stories, research suggests | Books | The Guardian
Our stories are important. Our ability to have, interpret, and produce intuition is seemingly something very human. However, we’re finding out that’s not necessarily the case.
There’s a very subtle but very real history behind Siri (and Google Now and Amazon Echo’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana) having a female voice and persona…
“But because the creatures in these myths are virtually identical to their creators, these narratives raise further questions, of a more profoundly philosophical nature: about creation, about the nature of consciousness, about morality and identity. What is creation, and why does the creator create? How do we distinguish between the maker and the made, between the human and the machine, once the creature, the machine, is endowed with consciousness—a mind fashioned in the image of its creator? In the image: the Greek narrative inevitably became entwined with, and enriched by, the biblical tradition, with which it has so many striking parallels. The similarities between Hesiod’s Pandora and Eve in Genesis indeed raise further questions: not least, about gender and patriarchy, about why the origins of evil are attributed to woman in both cultures.”
Source: The Robots Are Winning! by Daniel Mendelsohn | The New York Review of Books