

Making the Glif: Rundown of an atom-based startup - benjaminfox
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/10/small-scale_production

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hugh3
I'm confused by the title, what does this have to do with atoms, apart from
the rather undistinguishing fact that its product and indeed its founders are
made from them?

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benjaminfox
I think it's jargon to distinguish the Glif's niche from the usual 'startup'
fair (software development, etc.)

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mattmillr
Yep. Consider January's Wired magazine feature titled In the Next Industrial
Revolution, Atoms are the new Bits."

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution>

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listic
Now I'm getting tired of those cliches e.g "X is the new Y" and the like.
Where can I get some journalism that doesn't fall for this?

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chc
Fall for what? The temptation to express ideas using common memes? Good luck
finding any publication where no writer ever gets lazy and uses cliched forms
of expression. (Also, if you're looking for really engineer-friendly technical
writing, Wired is probably not the place to turn.)

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jw84
I kicked in $20 when the link first hit DaringFireball. It was $5k at the
time. By the end of the day it hit $30k. Now that it has $70k I'm ecstatic.
But at the same time sad.

I think equally cool is this project to start the first avocado farm in Iran:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/943051402/irans-first-
av...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/943051402/irans-first-avocado-farm)

It's far, far, far from its $10k goal. Is the problem that people care more
about a plastic dongle versus avocados? Or that marketing at the end of the is
the difference maker in making differences in the world?

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pchristensen
The avocado farm needs people interested in giving away money to help other
people.

The dongle people only need people interested in buying something that they
benefit from.

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bhiggins
reminds me of MoviePeg (which does not have an iPhone 4 version available yet,
but they do have an iPad version): <http://www.movie-peg.com/>

