Shift Market

One of the things I like about every end of the year is “best of” lists. Here is my own.

Best album: Kanye West - Graduation (PitchforkMedia review, Amazon page). Without any doubt, this album comes up as a clear winner. Kanye musically dominated the year for me, starting with the infamous “mixtape” in spring, carried on with the release of the actual album, and then the leak of a live recording, “Late Orchestration.” Radiohead’s In Rainbows is unfortunately and suprisingly a relatively distant second, followed by Daft Punk - Alive 2007. A notable mention also goes to Beirut -The Flying Club Cup, Burial - Untrue, Common - Finding Forever, Fields - Everything Last Winter, Gogol Bordello - Super Taranta, and UGK - Underground Kingz.

Best movie: After The Wedding, although technically it was released in Denmark in 2006 it got here in 2007. I probably missed a lot of movies out there as this is the year when I almost did not go to the movie theatres.

Best TV series: Dexter. The only series that eased off the pain of losing The Sopranos. Brilliant writing, gripping acting, gruesome action — everything a good series needs. To paraphrase the catchphrase — I can’t believe it’s not HBO.

Best new web service: Tumblr.

Best new magazine: Monocle. Business Week has a fair write-up about the magazine here. For fear of not rendering is justice I will refrain from describing the publication. But it’s awesome.

Best new word: Vajayjay

English Russia

Considered as the apogee of capitalism, people flocked to see what the fuss is all about.

Dashboard Spy

indexed: He looks very tired.

Indexed a neat blog, to say the least. I’ve been plastering my walls with charts like this in the past, very happy to find a blog that shares my… passion

A couple of Wisconsin University graduate students decided to create a Starbucks branded application. The funny thing is that they don’t event work for Starbucks. So far approximately 50,000 people have added this application and it is growing steadily.

College Students Create Branded App - The Unofficial Facebook Blog

Marketing Charts

Radiohead is essentially screwing the music business. What they would call "disintermediation" is actually putting music business people out of work. Jon Pareles’ "middlemen" are real people with real jobs and real families. However much Radiohead might hate the "exploitative" labels, it’s hard to see the real benefit here for the music business.

The Great Seduction: Pay what you want (and screw the music business) (Andrew Keen, the author of "The Cult of The Amateur - How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture", in a post praising socialism

Revenue Science has filed a patent that will take it a step beyond the behavioral targeting network model, into a platform that connects advertisers with publishers, according to ClickZ.

The patent allows Revenue Science to serve behaviorally targeted ads to the highest bidding advertisers.

Revenue Science Patents Behaviorally Targeted Ad Exchange - MarketingVOX

The simple secret to energy drinks’ reviving effects, then, is a lot of caffeine (and sometimes a lot of sugar, too). The caffeine content of energy drinks ranges from 72 to 294 mg per bottle. But a much smaller amount—30-35 mgs, which is comparable to what’s in most sodas—is probably enough to give you a jolt.  The good news is that consuming up to 400 mg of caffeine a day doesn’t cause harmful health effects for most people.

Psychology Today: Liquid Perk-Me-Ups

 

Netherlands: 31.9 percent, Denmark: 35.9, Germany: 59.2, Belarus: 70.9, Japan: 71.6, France: 74.7, United States: 77.2, Canada: 77.6, India: 88.8, China: 94.5, Puerto Rico: 97.5, Vietnam: 99.3.

Based on these and other numbers, I tentatively conclude that wealth breeds parental disrespect, being Asian brings greater respect for parents, and having a strong welfare state is correlated with disrespect for parents.

Marginal Revolution: In which countries do kids respect their parents the most?