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by JESSICA ENGLISH, Coffee Party USA
Our Facebook page alone reaches more than a million people every day. It's an honor and a dream come true to connect with so many people using 99 Percent Media (media that most Americans can afford). It's a lot of fun too! But most of all, it's a huge responsibility. To compete with One Percent Media, we need more people like you to get involved.
We're not asking you to do anything you don't do already. Only now, when you go online, and find something that you think other people should read, you can share it with a larger community waiting to engage with you directly. Help us "be the media" by signing up and or registering for an upcoming strategy call that will teach you how to help us operate one or more of our social media platforms. [MORE] Via Coffee Party USA By THE WHITE HOUSE – Office of Management and Budget The Digital Government Strategy sets out to accomplish three things:
Operationalizing an information-centric model, we can architect our systems for interoperability and openness, modernize our content publication model, and deliver better, device-agnostic digital services at a lower cost.
Learning from the previous transition of moving information and services online, we now have an opportunity to break free from the inefficient, costly, and fragmented practices of the past, build a sound governance structure for digital services, and do mobile “right” from the beginning.
We must enable the public, entrepreneurs, and our own government programs to better leverage the rich wealth of federal data to pour into applications and services by ensuring that data is open and machine-readable by default. [MORE] 
From The Economist print edition: SOUTH KOREANS take romance seriously. Lovers are expected to swap sweet nothings many times a day and woe betide the clod who forgets a “100-day anniversary”. Some pairs dress in “couple style”, in the same garish red sweater and blue jeans combo, for instance. Small wonder that a Korean firm has created a social network for couples. VCNC’s app is called “Between”. It creates a private space for two people, in which they can share photographs and special memories, chat in real time and exchange any number of cute “emoticons”: smiley faces, winks, hearts and so on. Though revolting to singles, Between is a hit. Since its launch in November, more than 560,000 Koreans have fallen for it. This comes despite VCNC spending virtually nothing on marketing. Park Jae-uk, the firm’s boss, claims another 200,000 users abroad, divided between China, Japan and North America. [MORE] 
Healthy information consumption habits are about more than productivity and efficiency. They're about your personal health, and the health of society. Just as junk food can lead to obesity, junk information can lead to new forms of ignorance. The Information Diet provides a framework for consuming information in a healthy way, by showing you what to look for, what to avoid, and how to be selective. In the process, author Clay Johnson explains the role information has played throughout history, and why following his prescribed diet is essential in today's information age. With this book, you’ll learn:
Grab Your Copy and Start a Healthier Diet 
by JOHN CONSTINE, Tech Crunch Facebook is nearing a billion users, but what could topple the big blue giant? Government intervention, the shift to mobile, and a loss of “cool” all have the power to violently disrupt the social network, or at least cause it to lose its strong grip on the market. Here’s a look at the four things that could ruin Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of a single site that connects the world. The thread that runs between all these pitfalls is their potential to make Facebook irrelevant. If you can’t access it, its overrun by ads, there’s something better, or it’s simply uncool, Facebook could fade away. It’s size, network effect, and wise leadership could protect it from these threats, and honestly, I think Facebook has the potential to be successful for a long, long time. But if you had to bet against Facebook, here’s what you’d be betting on. [MORE] 
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status to "married" on Saturday. Zuckerberg and 27-year-old Priscilla Chan tied the knot at a small ceremony at his Palo Alto, Calif., home, capping a busy week for the couple, according to a guest authorized to speak for the couple. The person spoke only on the condition of anonymity. Zuckerberg took his company public in one of the most anticipated stock offerings in Wall Street history Friday. And Chan graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, on Monday, the same day Zuckerberg turned 28, the person said. The couple met at Harvard and have been together for more than nine years, the person said. [MORE] 
by ALEXIS MADRIGAL, Senior Editor at The Atlantic "The unlikely story of a company that built a business selling the recent torrent of digital photos. ..." The stock photo company Shutterstock has grown tremendously as companies of all sorts realize that they're in the media business. And if you're in the media business, you need visuals. The incumbents in the stock photo space, like Corbis and Getty Images, get expensive if you need to illustrate hundreds of pages on a website. So, Shutterstock came along with an all-you-can-eat subscription model and said, "Here, use tons of photos from this library of 19 million images." Some of the images are cheesy, but they serve the role that clipart used to: filling a space that you know needs an image with something vaguely topical (see above). Now, after doubling revenue growth over the last two years, the company is preparing for an IPO. It's an interesting game that Shutterstock is playing. Individual customers pay an average of about $3 per image. That's dirt cheap, but they make up for it on volume, bringing in $120 million of revenue in 2011. On the producer side, my read of their SEC filing is that they paid out $39.3 million in royalties to 35,000 contributors. So the mean contributor is making something like $1,100 a year by posting their work on the site. (I don't know exactly what the distribution looks like; we only know that no entity received more than 10 percent of the royalties paid out.) [MORE] By Robert M. Groves, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau Our country faces important Federal funding challenges linked to the current recession and its aftermath. On the Census Bureau’s part, we have been striving to cut administrative costs, reengineer our survey processes, and find innovative ways to squeeze every cent of taxpayer money we get. This is an important duty, I believe, we have as public servants, and I am proud of the hard work of my Census Bureau colleagues on this score. It is also my duty to inform the country of the impact of budgets on the scope and quality of the nonpartisan statistical information the Census Bureau provides. This blog post provides information about the implications of the recent budget passed by the House of Representatives. The Appropriations Bill eliminates the Economic Census, which measures the health of our economy. It terminates the American Community Survey, which produces the social and demographic information that monitors the impact of economic trends on communities throughout the country. It halts crucial development of ways to save money on the next decennial census. In the last three years the Census Bureau has reacted to budget and technological challenges by mounting aggressive operational efficiency programs to make these key statistical cornerstones of the country more cost efficient. Eliminating them halts all the progress to build 21st century statistical tools through those innovations. This bill thus devastates the nation’s statistical information about the status of the economy and the larger society. [MORE] INTERESTED? SIGN UP HERE and/or Register for Sunday May 20th strategy call by JESSICA ENGLISH, Coffee Party USA Our Facebook page alone reaches more than a million people every day. It's an honor and a dream come true to connect with so many people using 99 Percent Media (media that most Americans can afford). It's a lot of fun too! But most of all, it's a huge responsibility. To compete with One Percent Media, we need more people like you to get involved. We're not asking you to do anything you don't do already. Only now, when you go online, and find something that you think other people should read, you can share it with a larger community waiting to engage with you directly. Help us "be the media" by signing up and or registering for an upcoming strategy call that will teach you how to help us operate one or more of our social media platforms. [MORE] Via Coffee Party USA 
Here are a few tips to help you make a smooth transition from a dull, boring office worker to a cool, hip and highly motivated entrepreneur. So you’re tired of working 9 to 5? You’re tired of being stuck behind your desk, staring at the computer, doing absolutely the same thing, day in and day out? And you’ve come up with a brilliant solution. You’re going to become an entrepreneur. While the idea sounds tempting, hold your horses for a quick minute. Leaving your day job is a massive decision and starting your own business is even more massive. You need to be prepared for long hours, extreme stress and a bumpy ride. If you’ve already mentally prepared for these nuances, then you’re almost ready to make that giant leap of faith. Here are a few tips to help you make a smooth transition from a dull, boring office worker to a cool, hip and highly motivated entrepreneur. [MORE] Via Chris Franks 
by Scott Gerber, Read Write Start
Approaching investors for the first time is a daunting exercise for any startup. Regardless of whether you’re raising venture capital, approaching angels or still trying to figure out where to get started, it’s critical to stay level-headed about what you’re really pitching - and what it’s actually worth. The best way to do that is to leverage the hard-won experience of real-world startup. So we asked a panel of eight successful young entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) about their startup funding successes (and failures) and the lessons they learned. Turns out that while every startup is unique, they share some common difficulties in trying to find just the right strategies and tactics for funding their companies: 1. Ask for what you need – and nothing more. “Funding is an exhausting experience, but worth it. My biggest failure during this experience was that I did not trust my instinct. I relied on someone who convinced me they had more experience, and by their advice, I asked for too much money from the start. This made things difficult because it puts you in a place that is hard to backpedal after you realize that you need to be realistic.[MORE] 
by Mark Wilson, Fast Company IT’S A SUBTLE, SMART MANEUVER THAT JUST MIGHT WORK.
SoundCloud is a platform for 15 million users who share audio--everything from music, to rants to news reports. They’re working hard to “unmute the web,” and are the first to point out that “we have this little computer in our pockets, and we all recognize that it has a camera, but it also has an amazing microphone .[MORE] |
Mike Stemple, CEO of Mosoro Inc., discusses his process of Trendmapping in order to identify future trend convergeence. Many say this is the best four minutes of Starto to date. Via Eli_Regalado by ERIC BYLER, Starto Social entrepreneurship expands opportunities for crowd-funding and building a customer base because consumers care about America, care about humanity, and care about the earth. In this "Drawing Board" segment from Starto.tv, educator and entrepreneur Tiffany Espinosa points out that the major technological challenges facing humanity have been plaguing us for decades if not hundreds of years, and they aren't being solved by existing organizations. In the 21st century, We the People will have a say about what companies get funded (see Starto Episode 2), and what goals these companies seek to achieve. Profiteers seeking to maximize profit at the expense of all else, and politicians seeking to consolidate power at the expense of all else, have proven to be a formula for disaster. What now?
Facebook
The Coffee Party use of facebook is OK, but I wonder if it would be possible for the coffee party to start its own Plus or Facebook-like program? —Jim Coleman 
by TAMARA KEITH Every word members of Congress say on the floor of the House or Senate is documented in the Congressional Record. The Sunlight Foundation took the entire Congressional Record dating back to the 1990s and plugged it into a searchable database. Lee Drutman, a political scientist at Sunlight, took all those speeches and ran them through an algorithm to determine the grade level of congressional discourse. "We just kind of did it for fun, and I was kind of shocked when I plotted that data and I saw that, oh my God, there's been a real drop-off in the last several years," he says. In 2005, Congress spoke at an 11.5 grade level on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. Now, it's 10.6. In other words, Congress dropped from talking like juniors to talking like sophomores. Flesch-Kinkaid equates higher grade levels with longer sentences and words with more syllables. For example, just one sentence from the member of Congress with the highest grade ranking, Rep. Dan Lungren, a Republican from California, goes on for 62 words. (That sentence: "This Justice Department, in my judgment, based on the experience I've had here in this Congress, 18 years, my years as the chief legal officer of the state of California and 35 or 40 years as a practicing attorney tells me that this administration has fundamentally failed in its obligation to attempt to faithfully carry out the laws of the United States.") Lungren's grade level during this session of Congress: 20. Overall since 1996: 16. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Georgia Republican Rep. Rob Woodall registers the second-lowest grade level: 8.01. [READ MORE] 
Our Facebook page alone reaches more than a million people every day. It's an honor and a dream come true to connect with so many people using 99 Percent Media (media that most Americans can afford). It's a lot of fun too! But most of all, it's a huge responsibility. To compete with One Percent Media, we need more people like you to get involved. We're not asking you to do anything you don't do already. Only now, when you go online, and find something that you think other people should read, you can share it with a larger community waiting to engage with you directly. Help us "be the media" by signing up and or registering for an upcoming strategy call that will teach you how to help us operate one or more of our social media platforms. 
Activism is important. In some cases it’s the only way to change things and move people in the right direction. In the past, we’ve seen how movements like STOP SOPA can affect decisions and how people from around the globe can join forces to ensure the greater good. Although petitions and campaigning can sometimes work, as geeks we need to find more effective ways to inspire people and help them act against the problems of our society. There is a new kind of activism and we call it geektivism (add it to your vocabulary, it’s going to be huge!). Geektivism is what geeks do when they are fed up with the current status of their environment. Drawing from their resources, they find ways to tackle problems in a creative and engaging way (of course this usually involves games…). In our search for geektivists, we came across five new projects that can really make a difference. Both trying to solve important problems, they turned to gaming and technology to inspire people and help them do something, rather than just complain or click on a form. [READ MORE]
STARTO.tv Celebrates Launch with Party at Breckenridge Brewery
Web Series Described as Half ‘Daily Show,’ MAY 15, 2012, DENVER — The startup behind “Starto,” a new web series about entrepreneurship and technology, will mark their one month anniversary with a Saturday night shindig at Breckenridge Brewery starting at 8 PM. And you’re invited.
The Starto Loft at ICOSA Media is fast becoming the talk of Denver’s startup community. The first season of the show will include appearances by tech legends such as Phil McKinney (Hewlett Packard) Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Steve Wozniak (Apple), Guy Kawasaki (Apple), and Rick Marini (BranchOut). But it’s the creative and collaborative environment that keeps people coming back to the Starto Loft. Kerianne Leffew of Innovation Pavilion has volunteered as a crew member and hostess for Thursday night tapings. “One way to know a good TV show is when it makes fun to learn,” she said. “I feel like I’m getting a graduate degree in business, only it’s more fun and more relevant because we map the trends in real time. And the wrap party after each show is like a who’s who for the Denver/Boulder startup community.” Co-founder Eli Regalado opens the Episode 1 with kung fu kicks and disco moves while announcing an ambitious aim: to connect academia, business, community and government — and create a virtual and actual space for startup innovation, not just for the Denver area, but for the country. With a modest travel budget and affordable web technologies like Skype, they’ve checked in with exciting innovators around the U.S., from Lori Cheek in New York City, to Christian Renault in Cedar Rapids, IA, to Carolynn Duncan in Portland, OR. They’ve also interviewed local success stories such as Tech Stars graduate Bart Lorang (Full Contact), Steve Katsaros (Nokero), and Mike Stemple (Mosoro) who was voted World’s Best Mentor in the Founders Institute. Now ICOSA Media would like to write a Cinderella story of their own. They see unlimited opportunity in new technology and new legislation, with an unprecedented number of people taking the leap and start a new company. Founder and financier Gayle Dendinger (CAP Logistics) points to the bipartisan JOBS Act, signed by President Obama April 6, which clears the way for crowdfunding of startup companies. “This law has the potential to transform American entrepreneurship in the 21st century. I founded ICOSA Media to accelerate the process, and help make sure that Denver is right in the middle of it.” To host the show, Regalado recruited Chris Franks whose stage/screen presence, and his passion for the subject matter carry the show. The two first met in February. “I love starting companies, but even more than starting companies, I love talking about starting companies,” Franks said. “I love the fact that our studio audience and viewers at home are learning right along with me, and then applying what they learn to their work. That’s what we do too. Our startup is a show about startups, how cool is that?!” In March, Regalado recruited the final piece of the puzzle: award-winning film director Eric Byler (who screened two films at the Starz Denver International Film Festival in 2006, and returned in 2010 with 9500 Liberty). Byler drove to Denver from Northern Virginia with a car full of gear and a track record for doing a lot with a little. Byler and Regalado first teamed up in 2010 to found the social media democracy movement, Coffee Party USA, which now has a network of half a million people. Byler sees Starto as an opportunity to help a friend realize his dream. “The democratization of media is making it possible for everyday Americans to participate in our democracy like never before. Now, democratization of startup capital will allow us to play a much bigger role in identifying problems, innovating solutions, and choosing a way forward for this country,” Byler said. “My new slogan is ‘entrepreneurship is patriotic.” The ICOSA Media team plans to offer summer courses on film production and social media, and hopes to make the jump to cable television this fall. Regalado summed up the mood at the Starto Loft: “We’re riding an unstoppable wave of new ideas and new technology into power echelons that were way beyond our reach just a few years ago. It’s an incredible feeling. That’s why we want to share it with everyone in Denver Saturday night, and everyone in America during the coming year.” Starto shoots live every Thursday at 6 pm at ICOSA Studio. Tapings are open to the public and followed by a networking party. However, this Thursday May 17 the studio will be dark. Catch up with Chris, Eli, Kerianne and the Starto crew on Saturday night at 8 pm at Breckenridge Brewery, or next Thursday May 24 at ICOSA Studio, 4100 Jackson St. just west of Colorado Blvd. #### 
Despite the hype as it prepares to launch its IPO, the giant social network still has plenty to prove The Economist, Editorial OUTSIDE Facebook’s vast new headquarters in Silicon Valley is a huge sign with an image of a hand on it giving a thumbs-up sign. A tiny digital version of the same hand sits on millions of websites and invites Facebook’s 900m or so users to click on it to share content they have found with their pals. Now Facebook is hoping to get another big thumbs-up when it stages its eagerly awaited initial public offering (IPO) of 12% of its equity on America’s NASDAQ stockmarket on May 18th. Assuming all goes according to plan, the flotation will be the largest yet undertaken by an internet company. On a roadshow across America to promote the listing this week, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 27-year-old boss, and other executives were treated like rock stars. Long queues snaked out of hotels where they were holding meetings, as investors lined up to hang on their every word. Hordes of photographers rushed to take pictures of Mr Zuckerberg, in his trademark hoodie, as he and his colleagues were whisked off to waiting limousines. This frenzy is further proof, if any were needed, that Facebook has become a global internet idol. Facebulls reckon the flotation, which could raise almost $12 billion (with about half going to shareholders selling up), will help transform the social network into a web powerhouse in the same way that Google used the riches from its 2004 IPO to spread its tentacles across the web. And they confidently predict that Facebook’s shares will start trading well above the range of $28-35 that the firm has set for them—a range that would value Facebook at $77 billion-96 billion. ( According to press reports, Facebook has increased the price range to $34 to $38 a share. At the upper end of that range the company would be worth $104 billion.) [MORE] Via Kerianne Leffew 
Josh Constine, Tech Crunch If you’re sick of interrupting your news feed reading to open and load photos, you’ll like a new Facebook mobile site, iOS, and Android app redesign rolling out today that makes photos three times larger. Shares of single photos now look a lot like Instagrams, as they appear full width so there’s less need to stop and open them. Meanwhile the bigger previews of photo albums will help you instantly assess whether to dive in or breeze past. As Facebook’s user base shifts to mobile where it can’t show as many ads as easily, it will need to keep mobile session length and return visit frequency high. Making the news feed less tiring to browse should keep us scrolling for longer as we ravenously peer into the lives of our friends our friends. Here’s the before and after photos…of photos.[MORE] ... How do we consume data? At TED@SXSWi, technologist JP Rangaswami muses on our relationship to information, and offers a surprising and sharp insight: we treat it like food.
by Jorden Crook, Tech Crunch A new app has just taken the App Store by storm — a colorful, rainbowful storm. It’s called Color Text Messages+ and the idea is relatively simple, but clearly appealing judging by the app’s popularity. The app is so popular, in fact, that Facebook Messenger, Facebook, and Twitter have all just dropped down a spot to make room for the new kid on the social block. In essence, you can now send your friends customized color text messages, complete with backgrounds and various fonts. Yep, a huge chunk of Samsung’s Galaxy Note campaign around personalizing communication on smartphones just went down the drain courtesy of a free app. But that’s not the point — the point is that you can now send a Comic Sans text message inside a colored (or butterfly-themed) bubble. It’s glorious. [MORE] Via Kerianne Leffew 
By Alex Knapp, Forbes Staff “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.” Earlier this week, i09 featured a primer, of sorts, by George Dvorsky regarding how an artificial human brain could be built. It’s worth reading, because it provides a nice overview of the philosophy that underlies some artificial intelligence research, while simultaneously – albeit unwittingly – demonstrating the some of the fundamental flaws underlying artificial intelligence research based on the computational theory of mind. The computational theory of mind, in essence, says that your brain works like a computer. That is, it takes input from the outside world, then performs algorithms to produce output in the form of mental state or action. In other words, it claims that the brain is an information processor where your mind is “software” that runs on the “hardware” of the brain. [MORE] |
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