Helping the COVID-19 fight

I have almost 15,000 photos under Creative Commons license on my Flickr account.  It’s always fun to see who uses them and how.  So far, they’ve made their way into hundreds (if not thousands) blog posts, articles, presentation slides, and videos.  Heck, they are even on more than a thousand of Wikipedia pages.  The last claim to fame was with the blog post on Forbes.

A couple of days ago, a friend shared with me a link to this YouTube video, where the same (sick?) photo of myself was used (around 26th second).  With more than 2.2 million views, I guess, that’s my contribution to the COVID-19/Coronavirus fight.

How I asked EVERY countrys embassy for flags [119 packages]

Here’s one of the best YouTube videos I’ve seen in a very long time.  In fact, I love is so much, I’ve decided to take in effort beyond just sharing it.  Watch it first, and then I’ll share a list of reasons why I love it.

So, here we go with my own personal reasons of why I love it.  In no particular order, as always.

  1. It’s not about COVID-19/Coronavirus.
  2. It’s positive, nice and kind.
  3. It’s funny.  Not like stupid funny, or stand-up funny.  But it still is.
  4. It has substance.  It’s not a video for the sake of video.  It’s a video about a rather long and complex project, which took a lot of effort.
  5. It bridges the real world and technology, and shows how one helps the other.
  6. It’s very personal, yet very global.
  7. It demonstrates one of my strong believes, that even simply asking for something, even from total strangers, has merit.  Not everyone will respond.  Not everyone will respond in the way you want them to.  But overall you’ll get more than you thought you would.
  8. Cyprus made it high up the recognition list.
  9. Political neutrality.   A lot of the countries mentioned in this video, have a long, complex, and often violent relationship with each other.  Yet, that doesn’t matter for this particular project.
  10. Free stuff.  Who doesn’t like free stuff.
  11. Production of the video.  It’s not over the top professional production, yet it’s not an amateur talking head, filmed on the mobile phone in the car.
  12. Maps.  I love maps, and especially checking them off on the global map.  Bonus points for more than one color for checked out colors.
  13. Flags.  Even though I don’t collect or study flags, I love flags and their designs.
  14. It’s work and family friendly.  Easily shareable with everyone I know.
  15. Bonus point: it just makes me feel good about the world.

Joe Rogan Experience #1368 – Edward Snowden

All episodes of Joe Rogan Experience podcast are nearly three hours long, so I usually just watch the highlights. But this chat with Edward Snowden was well worth the full length watch.

Edward Snowden is one of the brightest and bravest people of our generation, and his story is fascinating. I think that this lengthy podcast episode provided a good channel for him to tell it. It’s not a tweet or a blog post, and it’s not strictly framed corporate media.

I also think that Joe Rogan is one of the finest interviewers today. In this episode, he shows that very well, but remaining silent for almost all duration of the show, with an occasional steer of the conversation.

I wish there were more content like this online.

Oh, and just for the record, “Permanent Record” is the book that Edward Snowden has written and is heavily referencing in this talk. I’ll definitely be buying a copy.

Internet Trends 2019 (Bond Report)

Internet Trends 2019 report is the most comprehensive, detailed, and research document that I have ever seen on what’s going on with the Internet, web, mobile, social media, marketing, and security.

This year’s report spans 333 pages and is full charts, graphs, statistics, insights, and references. And if you are feeling nostalgic, there is an archive of the annual reports going all the way back to 1995.

It’s difficult to pick a single fact from such a huge document, but if I had to, I’d go with this:

51% of the global population, or 3.8 billion people, were Internet users last year.

Wow. That’s quite a crowd.

Via Slashdot.