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After striking deals with Lionsgate, MGM and Sony Pictures in the US and UK movie service Blinkbox, YouTube launched a free new movie service with an initial catalog of 400 full-length movies available on-demand.

Simply entitled “Films”, the new section has its own YouTube URL and offers mainstream releases, classics and also Bollywood hits. At the time of writing, the front page offers a couple of Jackie Chan films, Ridley Scott’s Life In A Day YouTube project and a number of independent films.

YouTube head of video partnerships, Donagh O’Malley spoke to The Guardian:

“This is one of many efforts to ensure that people can find all the different kinds of video they want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to full-length films and TV shows.

We hope film lovers enjoy the range of titles in this free library, whether catching up on a mainstream hit or delving into the vast archive of classic films from decades past.”

YouTube’s deal with Blinkbox sees around 165 of it’s films, normally priced at $1.99 and upwards, available for free. These films will have advertising incorporated into the films, I noticed a trailer for a 3D film on one of the videos I viewed.

via http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/08/27/youtube-launches-dedicated-full-lengt…

This is really awesome.

Based on a recent poll done by IBM with 1500 CEOs across 60 countries, creativity was identify as the most important leadership competency.

The Harvard Business Review identified the six fundamental moves companies need to make to “transform an organization” into an innovation driven culture.

1. Meet People’s Needs. Recognize that questioning orthodoxy and convention — the key to creativity — begins with questioning the way people are expected to work. How well are their core needs — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual — being met in the workplace? The more people are preoccupied by unmet needs, the less energy and engagement they bring to their work. Begin by asking employees, one at a time, what they need to perform at their best. Next, define what success looks like and hold people accountable to specific metrics, but as much as possible, let them design their days as they see fit to achieve those outcomes.
2. Teach Creativity Systematically. It isn’t magical and it can be developed. There are five well-defined, widely accepted stages of creative thinking: first insight, saturation, incubation, illumination, and verification. They don’t always unfold predictably, but they do provide a roadmap for enlisting the whole brain, moving back and forth between analytic, deductive left hemisphere thinking, and more pattern-seeking, big-picture, right hemisphere thinking. The best description of the stages I’ve come across is in Betty Edward’s book Drawing on the Artist Within. The best understanding of the role of the right hemisphere, and how to cultivate it, is in Edwards’ first book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
3. Nurture Passion. The quickest way to kill creativity is to put people in roles that don’t excite their imagination. This begins at an early age. Kids who are encouraged to follow their passion develop better discipline, deeper knowledge, and are more persevering and more resilient in the face of setbacks. Look for small ways to give employees, at every level, the opportunity and encouragement to follow their interests and express their unique talents.
4. Make the Work Matter. Human beings are meaning-making animals. Money pays the bills but it’s a thin source of meaning. We feel better about ourselves when we we’re making a positive contribution to something beyond ourselves. To feel truly motivated, we have to believe what we’re doing really matters. When leaders can define a compelling mission that transcends each individual’s self-interest, it’s a source of fuel not just for higher performance, but also for thinking more creatively about how to overcome obstacles and generate new solutions.
5. Provide the Time. Creative thinking requires relatively open-ended, uninterrupted time, free of pressure for immediate answers and instant solutions. Time is a scarce, overburdened commodity in organizations that live by the ethic of “more, bigger, faster.” Ironically, the best way to insure that innovation gets attention is to schedule sacrosanct time for it, on a regular basis.
6. Value Renewal. Human beings are not meant to operate continuously the way computers do. We’re designed to expend energy for relatively short periods of time — no more than 90 minutes — and then recover. The third stage of the creative process, incubation, occurs when we step away from a problem we’re trying to solve and let our unconscious work on it. It’s effective to go on a walk, or listen to music, or quiet the mind by meditating, or even take a drive. Movement — especially exercise that raises the heart rate — is another powerful way to induce the sort of shift in consciousness in which creative breakthroughs spontaneously arise.

 

Basically the idea here is, the more socially connected you are, the faster news will reveal itself to you. Although Twitter and robust RSS feeds are not mass-adopted technologies, they offer a faster stream of news and access to more headlines, thus are larger circles. Facebook can obviously replicate this, but that depends widely on how a person uses Facebook. My assumption is that most Facebook users do not fill their stream with news content, although memes most likely do appear commonly.

Just some random thinking inspired by a question from Patrick Chaupham

Finally, an urban dictionary for business jargon.