A couple of friends commented on her post, on Facebook and on her blog. My favourite comment was on facebook from our friend Rahim, who said:

“When babybee is in your position, there will be no books. There will be a cloud and there will be an access device. Some of which you will have to pay for, a lot of which will be free. Is the business model of the past suitable for digital? No. Is the business model being formulated at present going to work in the future? Probably not. Do people read as they do now as they did in the past? No. They consume their time differently. But books, in some form will remain, information will remain and time will remain. The book is dead. Long live the book..”

I loved this comment. But I disagree, slightly.

The thing is it’s hard to be social, tactile and share an electronic experience with an ebook, regardless the format. We’ve bought books for friends and their kids to share that have “touch experiences”. I’ve enjoyed reading with the kids of my family and my friends, and I can’t wait to open up a book with my own kids and read, and ask questions and share their experiences while discovering books.

The social experience of books with children is totally different from the social experience with music and film. Which is why I can’t see the book totally disappearing.

Don’t get me wrong, I think people will use ebooks, especially on vacations, especially for text books, and business books. And I don’t buy the serendipity argument, well get discovery through different channels (like Amazon book lists, people who bought this book also bought suggestions and things like facebook applications). More and more books will be read and discovered electronically, and this isn’t a bad thing, in fact – at least from an environmental perspective – it’s probably a pretty good thing.

Electronic books will just mean we’re able to read more, we’re not limited to what we can carry, and if things go the free route, what we can afford. But as long as we read and have shared experiences with our kids about books, our kids will continue to have positive thoughts and feelings about books. So while we embrace technology and new business models regarding books, don’t write off the book just yet.

I hate this list.

I think everyone has different criteria for what makes a place liveable and most of the cities in the Monocle list would not make my short list. My criteria would include:

Don’t smoke in my face. Any city that doesn’t have a ban on smoking in public enclosed places would automatically fall off my list.

Be tolerant almost to a fault. Any city that doesn’t allow/recognize gay relationships wouldn’t make my short list. Not just because I think all people should be allowed to be happy and have equal rights. Also because as Richard Florida‘s research has shown, wealth follows the pink crowd – I’m paraphrasing, but the point is basically that.

For the most part be courteous – I would take a stroller with a child or my 8 month pregnant wife around the city and see if anyone offers her/us a seat.

Solid public transport – I want to be able to get to work, entertainment and the airport all without needing a car or a cab, easily.

Other people – I love knowing that the city has produced great thinkers, great artists, and attracts other people with big ideas. Being attractive to other migrants and having a history of big thinkers is important to me.

Traveling to other places – I want to live in a city where adventure is a short hop away. Whether it’s in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin or North America, knowing that I can experience different cultures within a couple of hours (max 4).

Think six criteria is enough of a start, the list will probably change when we have kids, but for right now that’s my list. There’s other important stuff as well, like can family travel there easily, can we travel back to our family easily, but these are deal breakers. What are your criteria for where you live or want to live?

With the new first puppy;

There’s a ton of others, Obama with a basketball tossing a football in the oval office etc. Lots of great pictures. I love this for two reasons:

One – the access that we have to this White House is unreal, unmatched and really unbelievable.

Two – it reminds me of a great TED video on play by Stuart Brown (below) discussing the impact of play on cognitive development.

I love the thought that play contributes to development and progress. People need to be imaginative and playful to be able to think laterally and develop new ways of doing things. Which is why I’m really looking forward to being a dad, think it will give me an excuse to play more. Not that I need one, but at least when I play with my child the Bee won’t look at me strangely for being stupidly playful.

What’s NBC doing? Well one of my many feeds yesterday had embedded the short clip from Saturday Night Live featuring Justin Timberlake and Beyonce. It was one of the funniest things (that didn’t involve Tina Fey as Sarah Palin) I had seen on SNL for a while. The problem is I embedded the YouTube video on this blog at about 5pm and at about 9pm I was showing the Bee the video when I got a “This video is no longer available message” and when I did a search on YouTube I got a message saying that NBC Universal had claimed copyright and YouTube had to take down the video.

So, I looked around the NBC Universal site for the clip, with no luck, found another clip of Timberlake on SNL that I wanted to check out and I got a message saying the clip wasn’t available in my region. It’s fair enough that NBC doesn’t want their video on the YouTube site, but make sure there is an alternative that’s easy to check out and view for people who want to see it.

The thing is the community is smarter then the company. So I found the video on Vimeo instead. I don’t know if NBC has someone monitoring YouTube for their copyright content, but if they do that person is a cost without any return. The return of letting more people see the video clips is distribution and a raise in interest in the product so more people might possibly want to watch the show and see what else they do. This could help them get distribution deals in Europe and other places where SNL is not popular at all. Silly move by NBC Universal and if I was running it I would have done things differently.

At Yahoo! we have pool, foosball and ping pong tables and though I rarely get the chance to play these days it’s good to know they’re there. I’ve had some good conversations about life, work, philosophy and politics around these tables. One of the best times I’ve had at Yahoo! has been when we went out to play golf in the middle of Soho, not only was the golf fun but in winning the closest to the pin competition I’ve been inspired to play more golf. There was also some great work-related conversation that evening in a relaxed non-traditional environment.

And then I read about the Google Games (hat tip: Brad Feld) where students from MIT and Harvard came in and played various physical, mental and just plain fun games. Great recruitment technique if you ask me.

Last week I came across an article in the London Business School Business Strategy Review regarding the role of play at work. It’s weird but I’ve always felt that having a playful outlet was important to being able to work effectively. And this article makes that case.

If/When I start my own company I think play will play an important part in recruitment, engagement and strategy. If for no other reason then the fact that its fun and we spend way too much time at work not to have fun there.

Unofficially, this series of videos with actors/singers and atheletes is pretty funny. This is B Diddy in short shorts while Cool it Now by New Edition plays in the back (facebook readers you might need to view the original post on the blog). In a word hilarious.