I was honored to be named to InBusiness Magazine’s annual 40 Under 40 list. As usual, it was a talented class, which includes two of my friends and other acquaintances of mine.
In late January, InBusiness contacted all the recipients, and in mid-February, we each had a private photoshoot. It was fun being on the other side, meaning that instead of giving direction, I was receiving direction.
I’ll probably order a plaque to commemorate the achievement.
If you are not one of the millions of people that have watched the video, “Kony 2012,” chances are you’ve at least heard about it. The 30-minute video about Ugandan rebel leader, Joseph Kony, has created huge buzz in the social media sphere, dominating Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.
Visible Measures, a leading Internet measurement firm, reported today that the Kony 2012 campaign has garnered well over 100 million views in just 6 days, making it the most viral video in history. Coming in #2 on the list of most viral videos is “Susan Boyle: Britain’s Got Talent” at 100 million views in 9 days and at #3 “Lady Gaga: Bad Romance” in 18 days. Check out the full list of viral videos here.
Recently there has been a lot of backlash surrounding the Kony 2012 campaign. Criticisms center on the funding of the charity that made the video, Invisible Children, as well as the fact that the video oversimplifies many of the issues presented. Setting this debate aside, Kony 2012 is an amazing example of the power of digital activism in the increasingly connected society that we live in.
While we don’t yet know the real impact that the campaign will have on its goal of capturing Joseph Kony by the end of 2012, I think the global popularity of the video will only further fuel calls for digital activism in the future. As the Arab Spring also demonstrated, social media is a powerful tool for promoting change, and governments around the world can no longer afford to ignore the voices of their people.
The folks at Visible Market invited me to try their new app called StockTouch, available for $4.99 in the Apple App Store. Its unique premise is that it “brings the power of data visualization and financial information together.”
I myself use E-Trade not only to buy, but for research. E-Trade gets the job done for the latter point, but StockTouch takes it to the next level.
From its graphic interface, you can see how the top 100 US and Global companies are doing in nine sectors (e.g. health, tech, etc.) over any given period of time (e.g. one day to five years).
I tested the app on an iPod Touch. I venture to guess that the interface would be better had I used an iPad, which I don’t own. For example, the main screen shows all nine sectors. After you tap on one of the sectors, that sector itself takes up the whole screen, but to show all of the companies at once (represented by little rectangles), each one is very small. If you have larger fingers or don’t have a stylus, you may find it hard to choose the company you want.
Still, the display is what makes StockTouch a keeper. I can’t think of a better way to quickly see how a stock is doing in the market. The color-coded system (green=gains, red=losses) shows you how a stock is doing based on its price, volume, against the S&P 500 or against its peers.
As weird as this sounds, I actually felt smarter using the app. It’s wonderful to be able to interpolate and even extrapolate trends in a stock’s performance. Plus, you can get all the latest news about the stock.
One other thing: you can also mark stocks as favorites, so that they are highlighted in each sector. In a future update, I’m hoping that you can just view all your favorites together at once.
Here’s a video from the StockTouch website: