Outstanding Infographic: Fatalities vs Miles Driven

NYTimes has a gorgeous graphical display that plots auto fatalities per 100K people against vehicle miles driven per capita - and annotations that tell a story behind the curve shape. Wow - way to move away from the standard time trended line graphs on two axes. 

The Inception of Adaptation

Susan Orlean's piece from the New Yorker that was the basis of the book The Orchid Thief which was the basis of the movie Adaptation which is one of my favorite movies. The site has a number of her other pieces too - stellar writing.

Meeker Report '12

The always informing and entertaining Mary Meeker strikes again - and in her target this time around: Mobile.

Mobile - yet another mountain to climb for publishers.

A ongoing saga of disruptions - first the web, then smartphones, and now tablets. A very typical (and accurate) case.

The Portrait of a Doctor as a Conflicted Immigrant

Under the uber-sensationalist title of "America is Stealing the World's Doctors", a prototypical immigrant story - frustration, opportunity, guilt, rationalization.

Cue ... Action ... Reward! How marketers use purchase data and psychology to "Target" advertisements.

Turns out while Walmart is out there optimizing logistics and cutting costs to the bone, Target has been busy building predictive analytics to figure out when to send you coupons - and hide what they know about you.

This is the new marketing - there are mountains of data and statistical tools out there that allow companies to figure out what you are up to. The new challenge is to how to use that data to drive your purchase decisions without violating your sense of privacy and fairness.