Slidecasting by Slideshare.net

How to Change the World: Reality Check: Slidecasting by Slideshare.net: "Slidecasting by SlideShare.net enables you to synchronize PowerPoint slides and audio files. To create a slidecast, you upload slides to SlideShare.net. The audio file is hosted anywhere on the web. Then you link the slides and audio by using an online synchronization tool. When you play the slidecast, the audio is streamed from its location and plays with the slides. The service is completely free."

Thanks Guy!

How to Draw a Giraffe

WHOLPHIN DVD � Film: How to Draw a Giraffe

16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools

16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools: "From navigating the Web in entirely new ways to seeing where in the world twitters are coming from, data visualization tools are changing the way we view content. We found the following 16 apps both visually stunning and delightfully useful."

What are you reading?

A comment by chap got me curious: What are you reading? I am especially interested in magazines and books.

Please share your favorite magazines, most recent books you have read/enjoyed, and if you don't mind, your job title -- I imagine that if you're a CTO you might be reading different things than if you are a product manager.

I'll start: I've been reading Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. My favorite magazines are Business 2.0 and the Economist. Job title: CEO.

Also I'd appreciate your vote:

If Time Inc. does shut down Business 2.0, which magazine(s) should we seek to partner with, so we can continue to publish visual explanations of business technology issues?

Visual communication - an interview with Dave Gray

I was recently interviewed on the User Experience Podcast:

Visual Communication - an Interview with Dave Gray

"Dave talks about giving ourselves permission to draw, about how the printing press led us to communicate in a particular way, and about how that can limit our communication in a digital environment, about how PowerPoint can be both inhibiting and comforting, and about how where we are with video today is where we were with PageMaker 20 years ago."

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Time Inc. threatens to shut down Business 2.0

The next generation of search engines, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

As many of you may know, XPLANE has worked with Business 2.0 magazine since its initial launch in 1998. Over the last nine years we have worked closely with the magazine to develop visual explanations of technology and business issues. I believe it's a truly special publication and I have never seen another magazine quite like it.

If you want a trip down dot-com memory lane, I have posted a few of my favorite Business 2.0 XPLANATiONs here.

Time Inc., the parent company, is about to drop the axe on Business 2.0 magazine because of a decline in ad revenue. Actually, according to a recent New York Times article, this is largely due to a recent move by Time to consolidate the sales forces of its finance and business publications:

Aside from the overall downturn in the magazine business, current and former Time Inc. employees point to what appears to have been an ill-advised move this year to combine the advertising sales teams of Time Inc.’s finance and business publications, which include Fortune, Money, CNNMoney.com, Fortune Small Business and Business 2.0.

Consolidated under a single banner, Time Inc.’s Business and Finance Network (or Tibfin, as it is known inside the company), Time sales representatives stopped pitching the distinct appeal and audience of Business 2.0 to focus on the larger titles like Fortune.

That often turned Business 2.0 into an afterthought; big advertisers like Microsoft and Intel were offered discounts on other Time Inc. business titles if they would also buy pages in Business 2.0.

Adage reports a grassroots movement to save the magazine, and today readers started a Facebook group to convince Time Inc. to reconsider:

Please join the fun and let's see if we can save the magazine! Join the Facebook group here.