Sports: Basketball NBA: Jeremy Lin, Harvard grad, NY Nicks star, on Twitter sensation — USA and China

refWrite comment:  I'm quite impressed by this basketball star who's come up, apparently, from nowhere (well, he graduated from Harvard where he did play varsity basketball).  But where Pindar sang his Odes to ancient Greek Olympian athletes, still there seems something unseemly about mags like Forbes who draw "lessons" from the achievements of people who don't exist for and don't excel to become object lessons for Chief Executive Officers of megacorps who need jazzed-up examples of leadership from other spheres of life.  That takes nothing away from Lin. More power to him.  It does inquire, however briefly, about the ethics of rhetoric used to movtivate or scintillate or titilate the jaded worthies of industry and commerce. Update:  I had seen the headline of the second article (in Christian Post which has improved itself immensely in the last year or so) — below -- before I actually cawt up with its interesting comment.  I offer both articles for your comparative analysis.  I'm wondering if the two different sources reflect a serious difference in worldviews, not that I'm proposing any litmus test since the purpose of the two different magazines is co-determined according to the sphere-specialization of each. Still, what do you think? — EconoMix

2nd Update (Feb16,2k11):  Chinese censorship of "Lin-sanity" — see bottom of page

10 lessons Jeremy Lin 

can teach us before we 

go to work 

Monday morning

Lin-sanity has swept up the NBA over the last week.  Now it seems like the phenomenon has gone worldwide.

Friday’s 38 point performance by Harvard grad Jeremy Lin for the New York Knicks against the LA Lakers was his greatest performance yet as a starter, since he burst on to the scene and propelled the team to 4 straight wins.

Lin now has over 200,000 followers on Twitter.  He’s got over 800,000 on Weibo – including 200,000 new ones in the 24 hour period after beating the Lakers.   ...

The Jeremy Lin story is incredibly popular because we can all see a little bit of ourselves in this man’s struggles and now successes.

What can all of us learn from this young man — and how can we apply these same lessons to our own lives when we go back to work on Monday morning?

1. Believe in yourself when no one else does.


2. Seize the opportunity when it comes up.


3. Your family will always be there for you, so be there for them.


4. Find the system that works for your style.


5. Don’t overlook talent that might exist around you today on your team.


————————————————
Forbes magazine (Feb11,2k12)
by Eric Jackson
— Article intro and 10 point summary posted here by EconoMix, refWrite Frontpage economics & business columnistFollow @Owlb
genereal editor, refWrite Frontpage
-------------------------------------------------


6. People will love you for being an original, not trying to be someone else.
Lin says:  "Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."


7. Stay humble.


8. When you make others around you look good, they will love you forever.


9. Never forget about the importance of luck or fate in life.


10. Work your butt off.


===================================
Christian Post (Feb15,2k12)
— Article reposted here by Owlb

Jeremy Lin is the new Tim Tebow

by Jim Denison , Christian Post Columnist

February 15, 2012|10:49 am

"Linsanity" is sweeping the nation. Jeremy Lin is the point guard for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. He has skyrocketed from obscurity to stardom, leading his team to six straight victories. Last night he scored the final six points of the game, making the winning three-point shot with half a second to play. He finished with 27 points and 11 assists, his sixth consecutive game with at least 20 points. He scored 38 in a recent victory over the Los Angeles Lakers.

Lin's parents emigrated from Taiwan to the United States in the mid-1970s. Both are 5 feet 6 inches tall. Lin somehow grew to 6 feet 3 inches tall and found basketball. He was named player of the year in California as a senior. He also graduated with a 4.2 average.

He received no scholarship offers, so he chose to attend Harvard University. There he made the All-Ivy League First Team twice and graduated with a degree in economics. No NBA team drafted him. He was signed as a free agent and then released by two teams before signing with the Knicks. There he rode the bench and was so unknown that stadium security guards mistook him for a team trainer.

The team was about to release him, but put him in a game after injuries to other players. He promptly scored 25 points in leading his team to victory and has been in the starting lineup ever since. As one of the very few Asian-Americans to reach the NBA, he will have millions following his story. College campuses are buzzing with talk of his "Linderella story."

Fans are snapping up his jersey, TV ratings of Knicks games have skyrocketed, and shares of the team reached an all-time high on Monday. Lin's response? "I'm just thankful to God for everything. Like the Bible says, 'God works in all things for the good of those who love him.'"

He is the son of godly parents who insisted that he attend worship each Sunday morning, even after late games on Saturday night. His Twitter account description is, "to know Him is to want to know Him more." His Facebook page quotes Colossians 3:23, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men."

Financial Times (Feb16)

Breaking News

Chinese censors face ‘Lin-sanity’ conundrum

China is facing a conundrum over the “Lin-sanity” phenomenon that is sweeping the world of basketball with the sensational rise of Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks player. Mr Lin, 23, has gone from obscurity to the world’s most-watched basketball star in under a week. His story – an unwanted player who shines when given a chance – has the right mix of adversity and success to captivate the US, but it poses a problem for the media in basketball-mad China. http://link.ft.com/r/5F39HH/YBXBWZ/EM781/JE339M/HYHYKA/6C/h?a1=2012&a2=2&a3=15

Technics: Internet: How Pinterest got mimicked by Pinspire (aka Pin Spire)

TECH

 

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1/22/2012 @ 2:49PM |4,584 views

"Parasite" Phenomenon - 

Radical Copycatting of 

Pinterest

+ Comment now

Many successful websites and apps spawn a cluster of imitators.
After Instagram caught fire, mobile apps with various effects
and filtering techniques flooded the Apple and Android markets.
Some of them are quite innovative and cool – particularly
PhotoForge 2 and Wordfoto. None came close to matching
the Instagram growth juggernaut.

But perhaps the most brazen – and amusing – case of radical
copycatting I have ever seen is the way Pinterest has been
mirrored by an aggressive “parasite” over the past two months.
Pinterest is perhaps the biggest web phenomenon of this winter.
The site hit 11 Million unique users during one December week
alone. Alexa now pegs it as the 32nd most popular website in
the United States. Visitors spend more than 11 minutes on the
site daily, crushing Twitter on this metric by more than 50%.

----------------------------

Forbes (January22,2k12)

Tero Kuittinen, is a Forbes Contributor

He covers mobile hardware, software and gaming. 
Twitter: @teroterotero

+ Follow on Forbes

— Reposted here by Techknowlb

Follow @Owlb

 general editor, refWrite backpage

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Pinterest is pure catnip for mature women. Wedding tips, babies 

in funny poses, mason jar decoration ideas, cake recipes and 

exercise slogans drive the site. The runaway success of 

Pinterest probably demonstrates how much most mainstream 

websites cater to male visitors. 
There had been some kind of 

unmet demand for a site 
combining hair-braiding advice 
with hedgehog babies in rubber 
boots. Pinterest filled this 
vacuum 

highly effectively.

And as the highest 

form of flattery, 

Pinterest is now 

shadowed by one 

of the purest parasites ever. Something called 

Pinspire copies the look, feel and functionality of Pinterest almost perfectly.

There is even what seems to be a very carefully calibrated
guerrilla marketing campaign – many of the new Pinterest
posts are now followed by a polite, complimentary note:
“Absolutely adorable! Can I pin this on my board at
pin spire .com?” These notes flatter the original pinner,
while directing traffic to Pinspire. They appear to be crafted
to land just on the right side of the line defining raw spam.
The spelling of these notes recently changed from “pinspire”
to “pin spire”, indicating possible evasion from
countermeasures.

And they are driving healthy growth of Pinspire. Alexa now 
ranks Pinspire as roughly the number 13’000 site in America, 
up from being number 100’000 in early January. This matches 
the ranking of established, high-quality niche sites like Silicon 
Investor, Gamerankings or Calculated Risk – sites that took 
years to build and required vast amounts of content to claw their 
way to the middle.

Pinspire rocketed to this level in less than three months – and 
requiring little or no original design or content work. Judging 
from the latest wave of Pinspire redirect notes on Pinterest 
right now, the parasite just might stage another growth burst 
in coming months. The youth of Pinterest is probably what 
enables the parasitic competition – many consumers are only 
now discovering Pinterest and thus do not have much brand 
loyalty. It will be interesting to see where this saga is heading 
next.