Social spume

• It's Thomas Midgeley day
  Today would be his 124th birthday. A fine occasion to think about the effects of industrialization, and what happens when short-term profit-taking meets marketing. Midgeley is responsible for millions of deaths. Not directly, of course, but by, "just doing his job," and then pushing hard to market ideas he knew weren't true—so he and his bosse […]
  Seth Godin
• App Delivers 'Virtual Placebo' to Improve Your Health
  Researchers from PlaceboEffect.com are raising funds through Indiegogo to create an app that administers a virtual placebo. No pills, no doctors — just pictures. Here's how it works: You begin the experience by choosing which lifestyle aspect you'd like to change — say, quitting smoking or decreasing stress — before scheduling an alarm-like reminde […]
  Eric Larson
• Learn About Overfishing With This Interactive Web Aquarium
  The human race has had a profound effect on the planet. Unfortunately, it hasn't always been positive. One of the overlooked issues we've caused is overfishing. By fishing too much, we have diminished the population of fish in a way that, according to many scientists, can even threaten oceanic ecosystems To highlight this issue, which is often poor […]
  Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
• Manager Uses Urban Dictionary to Defend UFC Fighter's Gay Twitter Slur
  This isn't exactly your textbook bit of damage control PR UFC fighter Nate Diaz (above) was suspended by the mixed martial arts body on Thursday night for earlier in the week using a gay slur against another fighter. That's typically where a manager or someone else would step in and get the athlete to apologize and talk about the perils of using in […]
  Sam Laird
• Report: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Mull $1.1 Billion Tumblr Purchase
  Yahoo looks to be very seriously eyeing a Tumblr acquisition, according to a report from AllThingsD The tech blog is reporting that the Yahoo board plans to meet Sunday to mull a $1.1 billion all-cash bid for TumblrATD cautions that the deal could fall apart, but was on track as of Friday evening. If the board votes in favor of the deal, it could be announce […]
  Todd Wasserman
• Nintendo Will Get Revenue From All YouTube Videos Featuring its IP
  Nintendo will collect revenue from fan-made YouTube videos that feature content from its games, according to a statement by the company. That means any time someone uploads a walkthrough or "let's play" video — a popular format where players demo the first 10 to 30 minutes of a game — Nintendo will be able to collect royalties on it. "For […]
  Chelsea Stark
• Wi-Fi Network Breaks Speed Record
  Think your network is fast? Getting a gigagbyte-sized movie over your local wireless network to your hard drive in a few seconds is old hat. Now there's a network that can push a 2-hour, high-definition movie to a computer a mile away in less time than it takes to read a single word. At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, a new record has […]
  Discovery News