Author Archives: Tim Cohn

Google Robert Noyce Microchip Doodle

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Google features a doodle honoring the birthday of Robert Noyce, the co-founder of Intel and the co-inventor of the integrated circuit or microchip.

Google Robert Noyce Microchip Doodle

Google Robert Noyce Microchip Doodle

Noyce co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957, the company that pioneered transistor and integrated circuit manufacturing.

Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit using germanium in 1958 and later received a Nobel Prize for his work. Noyce’s breakthrough, which replaced germanium with silicon, came a half year later, but solved some practical problems in Kilby’s design and laid the foundation for all modern computer chips.

Together with Gordon Moore and Arthur Rock Noyce co-founded the even more influential Intel corporation in 1968.

Intel was the first company to start successfully manufacturing microprocessors, which in turn made it one of the world’s preeminent technology companies.

 

The Attention Span Theory

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I was thinking about the average American’s capacity for attention this morning when I posted the following:

At the time, I also thought there was a correlation between Attention Span and Moore’s Law.

After further thought I think there is a correlation.

As a result, I suggest the following: as Moore’s Law states “the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years” the Attention Span Theory posits the average American’s attention span shrinks by 200% approximately every two years.

The Gamification Of News

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I suggested last week via Tweet that gamification of the news may be the only way to engage younger readers with written news.

Have you seen a teenager listen to a complete song? Imagine how much of a newspaper story they consume let alone comprehend.

Google and The New York Times have since launched a trial version of news gamification -  “a Google a Day”.

From Media Bistro:

The New York Times has partnered with Google to launch A Google A Day, a trivia game that actually encourages you to use the search engine to solve one question per day.

According to Google, the questions will post about the crossword puzzle each weekday in the Times, as well as on the site. Just like the Times crosswords, the questions get more difficult as the week goes by.

To avoid accidentally finding the answers, players are told to use the Google search on the trivia game’s site. The answers are revealed the next day in the paper and on A Google A Day.

It’s a pretty cool idea. Try and find the answer to today’s question (above) without using Bing which would totally be cheating so no we didn’t just do that.

With the state of print news media in protracted decline, the gamification of news may be one of only a handful of ways publishers can capture the imagination let alone attention of younger audiences.

a Google A Day

a Google A Day

Microblogging Vs. Macroblogging

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I was recently quoted in a blog post about the “SEO is Dead” debate.

The quote pulled wasn’t from a lengthy thought piece but instead a short microblog like post here in WordPress.

So instead of writing long form macroblog posts going forward, I have decided to make and post short points here.

Aren’t insights by definition short and to the point anyway?