Egos

Robert Scoble
Why Google Chrome OS has already won

Robert Scoble

20 Nov 2009 | 12:03 pm

Today InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy says that Google’s Chrome OS will fail. What he is missing is he’s looking at the wrong field. Google is playing a different game. Google Chrome OS is NOT about killing Microsoft or Apple. What is it about? Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. See, what happens if the world goes to Microsoft’s Silverlight, the way that Seesmic did this week? Google is locked out of such a world. Google is in a war over developers with Microsoft. Google wants developers to build for the open web. Microsoft wants developers to…
Twitter to turn on advertising “you will love” (here’s how: SuperTweet)

Robert Scoble

20 Nov 2009 | 10:22 am

Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo, today, at the TechCrunch Real Time Crunchup (live video of the conference is live now on building43, there will be lots of news all day long from this event), told the audience that Twitter is, indeed, going to turn on an advertising model. This is a huge shift in what Twitter is saying publicly. But advertising isn’t something many people love. So, how will Twitter make advertising you love? By building a SuperTweet! How can they do that? Well, yesterday, I talked with Likaholix co-founder Bindu Reddy about just that. You can watch our video we…
In search of the perfect Facebook and Twitter client

Robert Scoble

17 Nov 2009 | 11:57 pm

I use Twitter and Facebook a lot. Probably more than 99.9999% of people in the world. I am in search of the perfect client that will help me use Facebook and, particularly, Twitter (which I use a lot more than Facebook because that is the best place to network with other technology professionals). I am still looking. The perfect client does not exist. First, I use my iPhone (and now my Droid) for Twitter a LOT. My wife, @maryamie, uses Facebook on her iPhone all the time. So, I must have the best possible iPhone client. This week? That’s Tweetie 2.0 for an app and Dabr for a Web page…
Ray Ozzie is wrong about smartphone apps

Robert Scoble

17 Nov 2009 | 1:59 pm

Microsoft exec Ray Ozzie, at a lunchtime session with bloggers at its PDC conference told the bloggers that apps won’t be a differentiating factor on smart phones. He is wrong. Totally wrong. Why is Mike Arrington so passionate about his Droid (we argued about it for 39 minutes on the Gillmor Gang last week and then we went to the beach together on Sunday and argued about it some more in private). I’ve talked about this before. Most of what we argue about is apps. Droid is better than iPhone because Droid has Google Voice, Arrington says. iPhone is better than Droid, I say,…
What is Twitter for? Pimping your blog!

Robert Scoble

14 Nov 2009 | 1:30 pm

At the Blog World Expo a few weeks ago someone asked what Twitter is for and I answered “pimping your blog.” Hey, it works for TechCrunch and Mashable, why not you? Or me. So, I’ve finally figured out that I was clueless because I didn’t have a Twitter account for my blog. When people say they are unfollowing me because I’m too noisy these feeds are the antidote. scobleblog is for following ONLY my blog. I won’t put anything else on that feed. scoblemedia is for following ONLY when either I post video or am on someone else’s video or audio shows.

Dave Winer
An open letter to Google

20 Nov 2009 | 1:01 pm

I had an interesting but somewhat disturbing exchange with a Google guy on Twitter today. It reveals a bunch of disconnects, that I'm going to try, in this post, to address. 1. Please take these statements at face value. 2. I am just a person, I am not in competition with Google. 3. I am a Google user. My primary email account is on GMail. I just bought a Droid, and started a Droid blog to help other people get started. I like it primarily because it connects so well with Google services. 4. I am a former Google shareholder. I made a shitload of money from my Google investment. Thank you. 5.
Where is RSS?

20 Nov 2009 | 11:33 am

I watched the morning session of TechCrunch's second realtime conference, including the half hour interview with Dick Costolo, the COO of Twitter. Of course Mike Arrington asked him the "Is RSS Dead?" question, and thankfully Costolo didn't want to go there. It would be ingracious of him, of course, because he made $100 million with RSS. He said RSS had been "pushed down" the stack, and it was now a protocol like SMTP or HTTP. In a way I agree with him, but only so far. RSS was never anything more than a protocol like SMTP or HTTP. So it hasn't gone anywhere. It's still exactly where it has…
Coolest software of the decade?

19 Nov 2009 | 12:48 pm

Everyone's asking questions about the decade that's coming to a close, I'd like to ask what's the coolest software you used this decade? For me, it might be Dropbox. I keep thinking of new uses for it. For a guy with a huge number of computers (I don't even want to count them), it's not only a lifesaver but an idea factory. I've already built utilities on it. The basis: polling a folder is incredibly low-cost. You can do a lot of it without impacting the performance of your machine. That was true in 2002 when we made Radio do upstreaming. It's even more true today. Because Dropbox wires…
The new Retweet is cool!

19 Nov 2009 | 10:35 am

I sort of understand why people don't like the new retweet, but I like it very much, and probably for many of the reasons they don't like it. If you follow me on Twitter you know that a lot of my tweets are links to stories on the web. I would probably forward other people's links more if there were a way to give them credit for the link without adding all that overhead to the text. I find that once you add a bit of text to a tweet you dilute its meaning. Do it two or three times and its a confusing mess. I don't know who said what. Worse, often the meaning of messages are reversed when…
Journalists as ski instructors

19 Nov 2009 | 10:11 am

One of the cool things about riding on a train is that you meet a lot of people. There are Europeans who are visiting the US and have the train riding habit from home. There are people who remember the golden age of trains and can tell you how this or that is a shadow of its former self. And there are people who are afraid of plane travel and prefer trains to buses. There are also people like me who had a cross-country train trip on their bucket list, and found that the fantasy was better than the reality. (Partially because this trip follows the route of I-80 and I-70, which for me is…

Guy Kawasaki
The 19 bloggers Inc. thinks you should read

GuyKawasaki

6 Nov 2009 | 6:20 pm

Inc. named 19 bloggers that you should read. We’ve aggregated them all in one place: Inc19.alltop.
How to Get Found

GuyKawasaki

4 Nov 2009 | 3:29 pm

The reality is that people and technology is getting better and better a blocking out unwanted interruptions—aka, “marketing.” Brian Halligan is the CEO of HubSpot, and he explains in my post on the American Express Open Forum “how to get found.” It’s all about creating great stuff and letting Google et al do what they do: find great stuff.
How I tweet

GuyKawasaki

2 Nov 2009 | 8:47 am

By popular demand (and some complaints), I’ve done a FAQ with myself about how I tweet. Hope this helps you use Twitter for your business too. I explain how I use ghostwriters and why I repeat my tweets among other “unusual” practices.
Current Twitter Demo Script

GuyKawasaki

28 Oct 2009 | 2:26 am

This is the set of links that I used to demo Twitter by going down through this list to show why Twitter is such a valuable marketing tool. Introduction Home page Profile page Monitor Search Guy Kawasaki or Alltop Starbucks VIA introduction Search for “Prius” or “Civic” Sell Dell Outlet Kogi BBQ Support Comcast Cares Engage JetBlue Virgin America Fandango Prospect Camaro Camaro near Palo Alto Advanced searches Surfing or skateboarding (shows how to eliminate extraneous results such as “surfing the web” How I Tweet - Find Alltop MyAlltop helped me find this.
How to Avoid Twitter Cluelessness

GuyKawasaki

26 Oct 2009 | 4:24 pm

Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I explain how to not look clueless on Twitter. The first five ways are: Don’t tell other people how to tweet. Don’t tell the world that you unfollowed someone. Don’t ask people why they unfollowed you. Don’t constantly tweet mundane updates and babble. Don’t use a small picture for an avatar. To read all ten and why they impugn your intelligence, click here.

Kara Swisher
Hey, Hey, Hey, Twitter! Here's the Real "What's Happening!"

Kara Swisher

20 Nov 2009 | 2:16 am

BoomTown was intrigued when Mind-Your-Own Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter, penned a blog post yesterday about the microblogging service changing its prompting question. Now, above the little Twitter box, it reads, “What’s Happening?” and not the original tweet query, “What are you doing?” “The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates,” wrote Stone. “Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things,…
AOL Layoff Package: You Stay, You Pay

Kara Swisher

19 Nov 2009 | 12:25 pm

BoomTown has learned that AOL is offering those who “volunteer” to leave the company now a departure package that ranges from three to nine months of pay, compared to one to four months for employees laid off in the first quarter of next year. It’s a depressing rock-and-a-hard-place choice. An AOL spokesperson confirmed the offer, which is part of a massive layoff of 2,500 of its 6,000-person workforce. Earlier today, AOL said it would be letting go a big chunk of its staff, a third of its payroll, in a regulatory filing. As reported by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka: The…
MSN Head Greg Nelson Moves to MicroHoo Integration Role (Yahoo Picks Morrissey)

Kara Swisher

19 Nov 2009 | 11:03 am

Greg Nelson (pictured here), who has had the thankless job of running MSN for Microsoft, has left that position and been given the even more thankless task of running the integration of the complex search and online advertising partnership struck by the software giant and Yahoo. Microsoft (MSFT) sent out an internal email to staff about the move for the GM of MSN’s Global Media Group, which has already taken place. MSN U.S. head Scott Moore is now reporting directly to MSN Corporate VP Erik Jorgensen. So will Brett Wayn, who has been working under Nelson on international coordination…
AOL Also Likely to Eye Sale of MapQuest–Is Microsoft a Possible Buyer?

Kara Swisher

19 Nov 2009 | 12:23 am

Yesterday, BoomTown wrote about AOL’s efforts–including hiring investment bankers–to sell its ICQ instant-messaging unit. But that’s probably not going to be the end of the shedding of assets at the online site. In fact, according to sources inside and outside AOL, one of the next candidates for sale could be its MapQuest online map service. Purchasers of the service that provides mapping and directions, sources said, are likely to be other mapping giants, especially Microsoft (MSFT). But it is not clear if the software giant or anyone would fork over a huge sum of…
Yahoo Hires Amber Allman as New D.C. Director of Public Affairs

Kara Swisher

18 Nov 2009 | 9:18 pm

Earlier today, BoomTown reported that Yahoo was poised to name a few new top execs at its Silicon Valley HQ. But the company has also hired a new director of public affairs in the nation’s capital. After I queried the company, Yahoo (YHOO) confirmed that it has tapped Amber Allman, a vice president at 463 Communications, for the job. She has extensive tech experience. “We are very pleased that she is coming on board,” said Nina Blackwell, senior director of global public affairs, who will be Allman’s boss. “She will be a very valuable member of the team.

Seth Godin
The amateur scientist (that's us)

Seth Godin

20 Nov 2009 | 2:41 am

Many people buy a car (probably their single biggest discretionary purchase) based on slamming a door, kicking a tire and judging the handshake of a salesperson.We choose a surgeon based on the carpeting in his office and a politician by his hair cut.During the first week of swine flu vaccines in New York, most parents (more than half!) chose to keep their kids out of the program.Interviewed parents said things like, "I'm not sure it's safe," and "I wanted to see if it affected other kids..."No mention of longitudinal studies or long-term side effects. No science at all, really, just rumors…
Embracing lifetime value

Seth Godin

19 Nov 2009 | 2:46 am

If you walk into a company-owned cell phone store to sign up for a contract, what are you worth?Given the huge gross margins at AT&T and Verizon and the standard two-year contract, I think it's easy to figure on more than $2000 in lifetime value.If you ran a business where a customer represented an additional $2,000 in profit, how would you staff? How long would you make someone wait? If staff costs $25 an hour, how long would that extra person take to pay off?Few businesses understand (really understand) just how much a customer is worth. Add to this the additional profit you get from a…
Some books for November

Seth Godin

18 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Random thoughts from all over for those of us hungry for new ways to think. This month's list is here. The previous list was blogged in September.
The reason they want you to fit in...

Seth Godin

18 Nov 2009 | 2:03 am

is that once you do, then they can ignore you.
Breakthroughs and drips

Seth Godin

17 Nov 2009 | 2:25 am

There are only two ways to win in the market.You can create a breakthrough. A promotion so powerful that people can't help but engage. An innovation so remarkable, people can't help but talk about it. A pricing strategy or ad campaign that breaks the mold and is worthy of attention. This takes huge guts and substantial investment.Or you can win with consistent benefits, delivered over time. You win by incrementally earning share, attention and trust. This might take years.Almost all marketing attempts to do neither of these, and of course, fail. Painless and quick are rarely associated with…

Jason Kottke
A blind wine tasting with Robert Parker

Jason Kottke

20 Nov 2009 | 2:22 pm

Robert Parker, the world's foremost wine taster, tasted a bunch of bottles from Bordeaux 2005 (a great year for Bordeaux) and couldn't tell which one was which and ranked them differently than he had before. Blind tasting removes preconceptions about wines while maintaining the ability to rate wines in a peer group setting. Wednesday night, Parker upended the order of his published ratings of the wines and, in the process, could not correctly identify any of these wines. In print, he awarded L'Eglise Clinet, a Pomerol, a score of 100 points. While he did call it his second favorite wine of…
Caricature map of Europe, 1914

Jason Kottke

20 Nov 2009 | 12:38 pm

Britain is an militaristic lion with a Roman Imperial italic-type helmet. It sits upon a mound of riches gathered from its Empire. Drawn by Keith Thompson...prints are available if you like. (thx, zoe) Tags: Keith Thompson maps wwi
Trabant refresh

Jason Kottke

20 Nov 2009 | 10:40 am

The Trabant 601, 1963: Wikipedia notes of the Trabant: For advocates of capitalism it is often cited as an example of the disadvantages of centralized planning as even refueling the car required lifting the hood, filling the tank with gasoline (only 24 litres), then adding two-stroke oil and shaking it back and forth to mix. Pollution, poor construction, and lack of availability were also issues with the East German auto. Trabant nT concept car, 2009: Here's the official site; plus more photos. BBC News has an overview of the project: A German consortium is developing a slick, updated version…
Second thoughts about carbon offsets

Jason Kottke

20 Nov 2009 | 9:35 am

This article in the NY Times fits nicely with my belief that carbon offsets are bullshit. "The carbon offset has become this magic pill, a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card," Justin Francis, the managing director of Responsible Travel, one of the world's largest green travel companies to embrace environmental sustainability, said in an interview. "It's seductive to the consumer who says, 'It's $4 and I'm carbon-neutral, so I can fly all I want.'" Offsets, he argues, are distracting people from making more significant behavioral changes, like flying less. (via @daveg) Tags: Global Warming
Idea enemies

Jason Kottke

20 Nov 2009 | 7:49 am

From advertisements for a Portuguese independent film group, several ideas and their enemies. (via heavy backpack) Tags: advertising

The Altimeter by Charlene Li
Saleforce.com integrates social with Chatter launch

charleneli

18 Nov 2009 | 6:21 am

At its Dreamforce conference, Salesforce.com announced the launch of Chatter Collaboration Cloud. On the surface, it may look like merely Twitter integrated deeply into Salesforce.com’s offerings, but it’s really a social platform that can integrate multiple inputs that will accelerate the opening up of enterprise applications. I was pre-briefed about the announcement, so will walk you through major highlights and also discuss a few implications. Overview Chatter Collaboration Cloud reflects a recent expansion in Salesforce.com’s offering, continuing where Sales Cloud 2,…
Altimeter’s Crew: Sales, Research, And Support

charleneli

16 Nov 2009 | 6:07 am

At Altimeter, we take great pride in the people we work with. So I’d like to take a moment and introduce members of the team outside of the four partners. Some of them are new and others have been with me from the start, but each of them is essential to our growth. And boy, are we growing! We’ve added over 25 new client relationships since August 2009, with more on the way. David Stanley will be joining us as Vice President of Business Development and Sales, where he will be responsible for expanding Altimeter Group’s market share through direct sales engagements globally, as well as…
Wanted: Your opinion on book titles (Part 2)

charleneli

27 Oct 2009 | 11:16 am

Previously, I asked for help in naming the book, and we’re done to the wire in terms of finalists. I’m hoping you can take two minutes to complete a very short survey on our title possibilities. I realize that asking an audience of people who are pre-disposed to being open is probably not the most scientific way to do this! So taking a page from Tim Ferris, I’m also running the title possibilities against specific search keywords to see which ones get the most clickthroughs. I’ll post the results from both the survey and the search engine test shortly. Book Title…
International examples of “open” organizations and leaders needed

charleneli

27 Oct 2009 | 10:51 am

I’m wrapping up work on my next book “Open” and am in need of a few examples of organizations and leaders outside of North America. In particular, I’m looking for examples of organizations that have put in place more open information sharing or decisions making processes or technologies, and as a result, have seen substantial business impact. In particular, I’m interested in learning how they went through the journey of letting go of control, and in the process, transformed the relationship they have with customers and/or employees. Here are a few examples: -…
Social Search: Customers Influence Search Results Over Brands

charleneli

22 Oct 2009 | 9:42 am

This post was collaboratively written (in real time) on a wiki by Charlene Li who maintains a focus on Leadership Strategy and Jeremiah Owyang, who maintains a focus on Customer Strategy. Together, we’re covering the convergence of emerging technologies at the Altimeter Group Twitter brokers a deal that offers search engines Microsoft Bing and Google Search access to their real time data streams. Also, Facebook, offers up public status updates to be searched and served up to Microsoft’s Bing. This trend towards micro media requires companies to pay attention to the real time and…

John Gruber
★ Maybe Instead of Two Cars, You Just Need a Car and a Bicycle

John Gruber

20 Nov 2009 | 4:48 pm

One thing that strikes me about Chrome OS and Litl is that neither bother trying to do everything Windows or Mac OS X can do. Not even close. I don’t think either even bothers trying to serve as one’s primary computer. The idea that they’re designed to serve as secondary computers is a big part of the opportunity I see for new Web-focused OSes. I think that’s one of the implicit factors that define what people call “netbooks”. How many people use one of those as their one and only computer? If you start with assumption that a computer will be a secondary…
Gameloft Says It’s Cutting Back on Android Development

John Gruber

20 Nov 2009 | 3:45 pm

Alexandre de Rochefort, finance director of French game developer Gameloft: “We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android.” ★
Yours Truly on iPhone OS Private API Usage

John Gruber

20 Nov 2009 | 2:34 pm

Apologies for the self-link, but I’ve gotten a few questions today from readers asking, honestly, just what the problem is with private APIs. This piece I wrote last year addresses it. As an addendum, I think there are many developers, especially those who aren’t coming to the iPhone from the Mac, who don’t understand how seriously Apple takes its public APIs. When Apple publishes an official API, it’s a serious commitment that says how something works and will continue to work in the future. Private APIs are subject to change or go away. The idea that something marked…
Amazon.com Has the Droid for $150

John Gruber

20 Nov 2009 | 1:36 pm

Requires a two-year service contract with Verizon, of course, but that’s $50 lower than Verizon’s price. Even cheaper: Dell is selling it for just $120 (again, with a contract), at least in certain areas. ★
The Geography of the U.S. Recession

John Gruber

20 Nov 2009 | 1:35 pm

Animated time-lapse map of county-by-county unemployment rates in the U.S. since January 2007. Jarring. ★

Michael Arrington
Choosing between Buddy and a buddy.

Mike

15 Nov 2009 | 11:54 am

A couple of weeks ago Loren Feldmen put on the Audience Conference in New York. We supported the conferece, first announcing it and then writing more posts and tweets to help with ticket sales. I also committed to speaking at the event. About a week before the event I was asked if I could foster care for a very sick dog named Buddy. Buddy is a two year old yellow lab who was having some trouble finding a new owner because of hip dysplasia affecting his back legs and two deformed elbows messing up his front legs. He likely needs four leg surgery to be able to walk at all later in life, which…
Foo Camp 2009

Mike

31 Aug 2009 | 4:23 am

Just back from Foo Camp 2009. You don’t see a ton of stuff on the Internet about Foo because it’s mostly off record. Here are my notes From Foo Camp 2008. This year I decided to do something a little different and created an Animoto show with their new video product. Cool stuff.
Paul Carr: An open letter to Sam Sethi, on the occasion of him completely losing his mind

Mike

5 Aug 2009 | 10:26 am

If you’ve been following the whole Sam Sethi/TechCrunch lawsuit debacle (see here and here and here), you’ll want to read this post by Paul Carr as well, where he prints emails from Sethi sent on record. I’m also reprinting below, these things have a tendency to disappear when lawsuits strike: An open letter to Sam Sethi, on the occasion of him completely losing his mind August 5th, 2009 Note: this post was originally written for – and subsequently spiked by – the Telegraph. This followed attempts by Sam Sethi to harass my editor both by email and phone. Dear Sam, For…
Enterprise Hacks Opining On The Law, And Other Blogging Tragedies

Mike

4 Aug 2009 | 1:04 am

Ok, the reasoned low key approach didn’t work. Now it’s time for some more truth. The ridiculous Sam Sethi dispute has gone on for far too long, and far too many have continued to be sucked into his web of confidence only to be spit back out the other end angry, bitter or worse. The complete history of Sam Sethi is all in detail here. Every factual statement is backed up by evidence, and I’ll stand by those words forever. Anyone who takes the time to read it can’t possibly walk away thinking this is a decent human being. A key paragraph from that post, reprinting words…
Update On Sam Sethi Litigation: We Decline To Participate

Mike

3 Aug 2009 | 2:58 am

Update to our June post on the…absurd…Sam Sethi litigation. Our lawyers sent a letter letting them know that we have no intention of submitting the the jurisdiction of the UK courts, although we’d be happy to litigate his claims here in California. Sethi obtained a default judgment on July 30 and is now messaging people “fyi won my libel case against arrington last thurs. News to break today thought I would tell you first. pls keep mum for now.” By “won” I guess he means we didn’t show up, as we previously stated, and so the court had no choice…

John C. Dvorak
Google Voice: Free Calling Has Arrived

16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

Free phone calling is finally here, and Google is leading the charge.
The State of Open Source on Firefox's Fifth Birthday

9 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

Mozilla's success had demonstrated open source's potential. Pay attention, Microsoft.
Don't Fear the GPS Revolution

3 Nov 2009 | 2:22 pm

Today's GPS devices are only the beginning. Upcoming products will soon make them—and privacy concerns—a distant memory.
Lost Productivity Lament

31 Oct 2009 | 9:50 pm

BlackBerry users are glued to the screen 24/7 looking for new e-mail from anyone as if life and death depended on it.
Windows 7 is a Winner, Mostly

26 Oct 2009 | 10:00 pm

Win 7 is good, but it has factors working against it—including Microsoft's track record

David Armano
KeepVid: Download videos from Google, Youtube, iFilm, Putfile, Metacafe, DailyMotion! [del.icio.us]

darmano
Tweeting at the Speed of Scale

David Armano

15 Nov 2009 | 7:59 pm

Originally posted on the CollaboratoryFrom a holistic perspective, we talk about the need for organizations to become more socially calibrated—able to adapt and respond to changes both externally and internally. The three areas where emergent outcomes can manifest are, participation with your customers, collaboration between your employees and optimization in the interactions/transactions between your business and its partners. Digging into customer participation, it’s clear that in a networked economy customers demand engagement, information, support and ultimately, value and ecosystems…
Overcoming The Obstacles To Social Business

David Armano

13 Nov 2009 | 8:06 am

Originally published on Harvard BusinessWhile social media often commands favorable media attention, the less often told story is that successful initiatives are rare to come by and that there are still a number of organizational roadblocks that managers need to overcome in order to make progress. Still, we are seeing signs of progress in the form of new efficiencies, more direct ways to connect with customers, and ways to make products and services better. From my experience working and talking with people in large, complex organizations, here are a small sample of obstacles to look for with…
7 Visualization Groups On Flickr to Find Inspiration | FlowingData [del.icio.us]

darmano
How Google Helped Save A Life

David Armano

9 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

When my eight-year-old (Max) complained that he wasn't feeling well, we kept him home. On the next afternoon, when he complained about stomach pains, I told him to lie down. Later that day, when the stomach pains persisted and I had left the house—Belinda turned to Google for help. Mother's intuition told her to search for information—specifically where the appendix is located. And after doing so she went up to Max's room and pressed down on the right side of his abdomen. When he winced in pain, she decided to call the doctor. The doctor said go to the emergency room. The ER said, get a…

Jeremiah Owyang
Social Impacts Every Customer Touchpoint

jeremiah_owyang

20 Nov 2009 | 12:58 pm

Forbes CMO Network, An Insightful Resource For Marketing Leaders I’m serving CMOs by teaming up with the Forbes as a regular contributor. My goal? To guide marketing leadership on how to leverage disruptive technologies and meet business goals. At a more detailed level, this blog will continue to aim at providing nitty-gritty breakdowns, frameworks, and insights. Use these two resources in tandem to both develop strategies, and then implement best practices across the organization. [Companies Must Develop A Holistic Strategy, As Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint]…
Matrix: The Four Social Support Strategies

jeremiah_owyang

18 Nov 2009 | 8:44 am

At the Altimeter Group, I cover Customer Strategy, which encompasses not only marketing, but also support, expect our discussion to grow as social technologies impact the whole enterprise. The Social Support movement is afoot (see opportunities), and more companies will be connecting existing marketing and support systems with the social web. Many companies, like Comcast, Wells Fargo, Intel, BestBuy, JetBLue are responding to customers and in some cases, supporting them in near real time. The challenge is that these teams are unable to scale, even a support team of ten full time folks at…
Breakdown: Lego’s “Digital Box”, an Augmented Reality Kiosk

jeremiah_owyang

16 Nov 2009 | 3:51 am

Augmented Reality provides brands with an engaging experience that merges both the digital and the real world. This 30 second video shows how a 3D animation on the product box enabled me to understand the assembled product. Lego’s “Digital Box” Provides Customers with an Interactive 3D Digital Experience This weekend, I went to the local Lego store here in Silicon Valley (Hillsdale) to see a practical version of Augmented Reality. I was previously briefed by Metaio, the technology vendor that empowers the software for the Augmented Reality kiosks called, Digital Box. This…
Personal Goals and #OperationBluewater

jeremiah_owyang

15 Nov 2009 | 7:58 am

Most people miss out on life because they don’t have a strategy around personal goals. Most Lack a Personal Goal Strategy Let me lay out some the observations I’ve noticed from some of the smartest folks I’ve watched achieve success in their lives. Often they first tell me about the challenges, that most people don’t even have a personal goal strategy. 1) Most people don’t even have personal goals, seriously try it, ask folks you work with: “What’s your personal goal?” 2) Most people think the end goal is a at 65 and do all their…
Is Your Company Trusted or Do You Have a Digital Comb Over?

jeremiah_owyang

13 Nov 2009 | 7:15 am

Many companies are entering the social/green/community space, with hopes of impressing customers, yet despite their best intentions, they could come across as inauthentic, and be damaging their own brand. Companies should first take a self-assessment of their brand to see if they’re ready before they decide to enter the social space. Companies should first assess their culture and ask: Is the company ready to talk about the good –and bad– with the market? Is the internal culture ready to embrace customers on their own terms? Is the culture ready to make changes based on…

Tara Hunt
Oldie: Embrace the Chaos

Tara Hunt

19 Nov 2009 | 9:53 pm

[originally posted August 8, 2006] “Everything was going to plan, then we added people to the mix” – anon Murphy’s law: if anything could go wrong, it probably will vs. Citizen Agency’s law: if anything could go wrong, it probably will, but it will be something you never thought of…so stop worrying about it and embrace the chaos. I’m reading an amazing new book by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstram, The Starfish and the Spider, which discusses what I believe is the future of business: leaderless, decentralized organizations. We’ve seen, first hand,…
Don’t Worry, Be…Healthy!

Tara Hunt

19 Nov 2009 | 9:35 pm

According to Victoria Stern in an article titled, “Why We Worry” in November/December’s Scientific American Mind, not only does stress and worry do nothing to help us control our situation, but it can also make us LESS prepared for the worst case scenario. Although it is our natural tendency to fret – or feel negative thoughts about a future event – too much of it can actually hinder cognitive processing, lead to cardiovascular issues and even (at its extreme) cause permanent damage to one’s body. The article also points to an article that says a small…
Win A Social Media Library!

Tara Hunt

16 Nov 2009 | 11:58 am

Steve over at Polar Limited is doing a networked social media book giveaway. Steve has convinced these seven authors Mitch Joel, Tamar Weinberg, Chris Brogan + Julien Smith, Gary Vaynerchuk, Avinash Kaushik, John Jantsch, Beth Kanter and me to offer up free copies of their books. You can win a this set of books, signed and personalized by the authors that will teach you how to be human through your computer, generate tons of social capital, and be a social media virtuoso – plus have some great books to curl up with during the holidays. Here’s how you win: Leave a comment below…
Who Wants to be an Entrepreneur?

Tara Hunt

12 Nov 2009 | 1:13 pm

Who Wants to be an Entrepreneur? View more documents from Tara Hunt. Presentation I gave at AZEC09. It was a barrel of fun. I called a poor, unsuspecting entrepreneur on stage and put him on the hotseat.
Relationships are Important – even if you’re Don Draper

Tara Hunt

10 Nov 2009 | 3:05 pm

[Please don't read this if you haven't seen the season finale of Mad Men - serious spoiler alert] For three seasons of Mad Men I watched in frustration as Don Draper seemed to get away with anything and everything. A handsome, well-dressed, privileged, tall white guy that could take everyone in his circle for granted, lie to them, cheat on them and treat them like garbage, yet continue get everything he wanted. It was a frustrating parable for me, a woman who spends a big part of her daily routine trying to make the world a place where people like Don can’t get away with murder. But…

Scott Adams (AKA Dilbert)
Picking Paint Colors

19 Nov 2009 | 8:06 am

People warned me, but I didn't believe that picking paint colors would be the hardest part of building a home. For the exterior color, we drove around until we found a new home that was exactly the color we wanted. We queried the owner about what paint he used and asked our builder to duplicate it. Easy, right?That's when we learned that paint changes color if you put it on an "imperfect smooth" stucco versus the original home's bumpy stucco. With the bumps, the color becomes subtle and textured and beautiful, albeit different, in every light. On our home it turned…
The Long Dilbert Tail

18 Nov 2009 | 10:50 am

You're probably aware of the Long Tail concept. The idea is that technology makes it economical for companies to sell items for which there are only a handful of buyers in the known universe. The trick is to sell lots of different items to lots of different buyers. And if those items are manufactured with special features for each buyer, it's called mass customization.The new Dilbert Store is a good example of both the long tail and mass customization. You can search for any Dilbert comic ever made, find the one that speaks to your own bizarre sensibilities, and in a few days a…
Worst Finder Ever

17 Nov 2009 | 8:01 am

Now that I'm married, one of the questions I fear the most is "Can you look in the X and see if you can find the Y?" Oh, I try. But my wife refuses to learn that I will never succeed.X and Y might represent, for example, the special cheese hiding in the fridge, or the "good pillow" hiding in the bedroom, or the yellow folder hiding in the kitchen. There are a variety of reasons I will not succeed in finding the desired item. About 25% of the time the item is not in the room, or pile, or container where it should be. Another 25% of the time the item is inadequately…
Hunter Becomes the Prey

13 Nov 2009 | 9:40 am

Shopping is broken. In the fifties, if you wanted to buy a toaster, you only had a few practical choices. Maybe you went to the nearest department store and selected from the three models available. Or maybe you found your toaster in the Sears catalog. In a way, you were the hunter, and the toaster was the prey. You knew approximately where it was located, and you tracked it down and bagged it. Toasters couldn't hide from you.Now you shop on the Internet, and you can buy from anywhere on the planet.The options for any particular purchase approach infinity, or so it seems.Google is nearly…
The Happiness Genie

12 Nov 2009 | 11:52 am

Suppose a genie appears and gives you two choices. The first option is that he will give you $10 million dollars, but everyone else you know will get $20 million apiece.Choice two: You get $5 million, but no one else gets anything.As a bonus, the genie offers to erase your memory of having made the choice, so guilt will never be a factor. You will simply wake up the next day in the new situation.Which option do you choose to maximize your personal happiness?This might seem like an easy choice. You take the $10 million and your friends will get $20 million each. Everyone wins. Unfortunately, I…

Doc Searls
Swelling ground

Doc Searls

16 Nov 2009 | 4:41 am

Two posts worth noting over at the ProjectVRM blog. The first is Intention Economy Traction, which riffs off David Gillespie’s illustrative and wise 263-slide narrative Digital Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet). Both of us see The Intention Economy as pretty much inevitable. The second is Advertising In Reverse, which riffs off (Dilbert cartoonist) Scott Adams’ Hunter Becomes the Prey, a post in which he suggests “broadcast shopping,” by means which VRM folks have been calling by the dull name Personal RFP. In fact, I’m ready to…
Let me re-repeat

Doc Searls

12 Nov 2009 | 11:20 pm

[Note: Jump to the bottom first, to see how this went... and may keep going.] So I called SuperShuttle to book a ride to the airport in Denver. The first thing the robot voice said was that I could also book this on the Web. So I thought, cool, I’ll do that. It’ll probably go faster, and I can copy the confirmation information directly onto my calendar. No luck there. I had to register, and the registration never went through. I’d fill out the form, click to make it go, and my browser window would say,…
Happy Birthdays

Doc Searls

12 Nov 2009 | 1:03 pm

– to Colette Searls, JP Rangaswami, Chris Locke, Neil Young. Two of whom will join me on stage at Defrag shortly.
Colors of salt

Doc Searls

12 Nov 2009 | 10:00 am

Before the salt in evaporating sea water turns white, it goes through stages of color that range from jade green to brick red, with variations of orange, yellow and other colors. From above the salt ponds around San Francisco Bay look like giant panes of stained glass. The shot above is from my latest set, shot on approach to SFO last week. Here’s another series.
Beyond Social Media

Doc Searls

11 Nov 2009 | 7:06 am

Consider the possibility that “social media” is a crock. Or at least bear with that thought through Defrag, which takes place in Denver over today and Thursday, and for which the word “social” appears seventeen times in the agenda. (Perspective: “cloud” appears three times, and “leverage” twice.) What prompts the crock metaphor is this survey, to which I was pointed by this tweet from Howard Rheingold. (I don’t know if the survey is by students of Howard’s Digital Journalism Workspace class, though I assume so.) While the survey is…

Fred Wilson
The Story Of My Avatar

Fred

20 Nov 2009 | 2:39 am

I saw this tweet when I got up this morning:hey @fredwilson - whats the story behind ur avatar? While longtime readers know it, I figure many of you don't. So here it goes. Starting about four years ago, Howard Lindzon started commenting actively on this blog. He was funny, he was smart, and I enjoyed our banter in the comments. One march vacation, our family made a short stop in Phoenix, where Howard used to live. He emailed me and offered my son and me two tickets to the Suns game. We took him up on that and that's how we met for the first time. It turned out Howard was hatching an idea…
Anatomy Of A Big Day On AVC

Fred

19 Nov 2009 | 2:30 am

I generally take a quick run through audience stats every morning. I saw this chart and thought "hmm, big day yesterday, why is that?" So I went to google analytics, which confirmed the big day.And then I went to the makeup of the traffic:Like most big days on AVC, it was referring traffic that caused the bump. Search and direct traffic are very consistent at about 2,500 visits per day. But referring traffic can be as little as 1,000 visits on a slow day or as much as 5,000 visits or more on a big day. Yesterday was such a day.Here's where it came from yesterday: The twitter traffic is…
Ten Meetings Per Day

Fred

18 Nov 2009 | 3:45 am

I was explaining how I go about finding deals yesterday to a friend of mine and I thought I ought to explain it to everyone.I write this blog. It's like a broadcast channel of "what is interesting to me." I market it every way I know how and I get somewhere between 70k to 100k unique readers of it every month between web, rss, and mobile.As a result, I figure entrepreneurs and others have a pretty good idea of what I want to see and what I don't. And I believe they can self select. And for the most part, they do a great job of that.Given that dynamic, I take meetings, as many as I can. I went…
APIs In The Late Afternoon

Fred

17 Nov 2009 | 3:06 am

After our weekly team meeting yesterday afternoon, I hopped into a cab to the far west side of manhattan to attend the Business of APIs conference. In the cab, I opened socialscope on my blackberry to check into twitter and saw this tweet from my partner Albert:Love APIs -- so excited about @foursquare's announcement http://bit.ly/1Zswju As I sat down with Quentin Hardy to talk about APIs, I wasn't sure where the conversation would go. Fortunately Quentin is a good interviewer and we had a great chat. We talked a bit about the foursquare api, and I mentioned that I am most excited about cool…
The Power Of Instant Approval

Fred

16 Nov 2009 | 3:51 am

Back in the early days of web video, it wasn't clear who would win the competition for video upload to the web. There was YouTube, Vimeo, and the big dog was Google Video. I tried all of them. YouTube was by far and away the best experience.Google Video required you to wait for days to see the video you uploaded. It was so annoying that I wrote this post exactly four years ago today (how's that for a coincidence?). This line sort of sums it up:Posting stuff to the Internet has to be instantaneous. What if wrote this post on Tyeppad and it took me 10 minutes to see the result? What if I…

John Battelle
"WuzUp?"

http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

19 Nov 2009 | 2:34 pm

From Biz' post on Twitter's shift: Twitter helps you share and discover what's happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. "What are you doing?" isn't the right question anymore—starting today, we've shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, "What's happening?" Well, regardless of spin, this is a major shift, to my mind. Semantics matter, *a lot*, when your entire business is, well, semantics. Language is how we encode that which is essential to who we are. And there is a world of difference between "What are YOU doing" (emphasis mine) and "What's…
I Love It When...

http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

18 Nov 2009 | 1:48 pm

You imagine something out loud in a book, and then it starts to happen.... I am sure many of you have heard of RedLaser, but I hadn't until today. I love it! Here's the text from my blog post, written in 2004 (pre iPhone, so I used a Treo...) which I rewrote into the book: What to do? Not to worry, you’ve got Google Mobile Shop installed on your phone. You whip out your Treo 950, the one with the infrared UPC reader installed, and you wand it over that bottle of 2001 Clos Du Val now lovingly cradled in your arms. In less than a second a set of options is presented on the phone’s screen…
Thanks For Flying With Us. Please Give Us All Your Money.

http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

15 Nov 2009 | 10:04 pm

Today I had quite an experience with United Airlines. It has very little to do with much of anything I usually write about here, save one key element: I have posited that to succeed in what I've been calling the Conversation Economy, companies must learn to have conversations with their customers at scale. (And to do so, they will need to leverage open platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc. and, of course, change the way they instrument their business. But more on that later). Well, here's a tale of one company failing miserably at doing just that, even while, in the end, due to my own…
Why Did Google Buy AdMob?

http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

10 Nov 2009 | 6:58 pm

Look. Sure, it's a mobile ad platform, and sure, Google wants to play there, more than they already are. OK. Fine. But really. What's the play? Droid. Data. Droid. Iphone App Data. Droid. K? Data. Just to be clear. Data. About what works, on iPhone apps, so they can leverage it...for Droid. K.
Hey Mr. Murdoch: It Doesn't Have to Be Black and White

http://fmpub.net/contact.php?to=jb

9 Nov 2009 | 12:54 pm

Sheesh. Just give Google summary text and headlines to index (like the WSJ does now). Then do your best to convert would be readers to your paid model. That's it. What's the big deal? The rest is bluster.

37signals
I'm a tailor

Jason F.

20 Nov 2009 | 6:33 am

When people ask me what I do all day I have a hard time summing it up. I design, I edit, I think, I review, I suggest, I teach. Some things I mess up, some things I fix up. But what I really do most of the time is trim, tuck, iron, cut, press, and fit. I’m a software tailor. And I’m starting to think that’s my perfect role. My team is incredible. I don’t need to tell them what to do. If there was a fantasy software league, I wouldn’t trade my team for anyone. But there are times during the development and design process where the things we make just don’t…
Unicorns and projections

Matt

19 Nov 2009 | 7:53 am

“Off the Chart” talks about how recent unemployment rate predictions turned out to be way off the mark. The reason: “Reality has produced numbers of its own.” And that’s the problem with projections. Reality is a terrible collaborator. No matter how much you try to work with it, it has a mind of its own. And it never listens to you. Plus, it’s easier to be a cheerleader than a doomsayer — especially when you have a vested interest in the outcome. That’s how people wind up in an overly optimistic fantasy world. No one ever submits a business plan…
QUESTION: If you had to give it up, which subscription

Jason F.

18 Nov 2009 | 6:37 am

If you had to give it up, which subscription would you miss the most?
Design Explorations: Basecamp To-dos with Due Dates

Jason Z.

17 Nov 2009 | 11:32 am

We’ve just posted another article in our series of Design Explorations. This installment shows our process for adding a new feature to Basecamp: Add due dates to to-dos. We’re excited about this new feature and anxious to share this latest peek at our design process. Read the full Basecamp to-dos design exploration.
[Podcast] Episode #2: Tech company valuations

Matt

17 Nov 2009 | 10:35 am

Download MP3 | Time: 24:10 Like this episode? Please share it with your friends: 37signals worth $100 billion? Start time: 0:37 The story behind the mock press release claiming 37signals is worth $100 billion. The press should be more critical in covering valuation stories. Eyeballs aren’t the only thing that matter. The valuation dance Start time: 8:45 Was the press release a shot at Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube? Why was the sale of Mint to Intuit disappointing? Where will the next great generation of companies come from if they keep selling early? Also, VC money is a time…

Chris Brogan
The Serendipity Engine – Web 2 Expo Speech

chrisbrogan

20 Nov 2009 | 1:33 pm

This is my favorite keynote speech yet. It’s just 10 minutes long, and I feel pretty good about it. You’ll recognize bits of my storytelling from the last several conferences tucked into here in a new way, I hope. Enjoy this video. (Can’t see it? Click here)
How Much Time Should I Spend On Social Media

chrisbrogan

20 Nov 2009 | 5:33 am

How much time should you spend on social media? In some ways, the answer is: “how long is a piece of string?” And yet, you can set up some simple guidelines. They might be a bit different than you think. By the way, I’m writing these from a business perspective, but remember that I think of religion and nonprofits and all kinds of other applications as business-related, too. Here’s how I look at it: Social Media Time Management The way I’d do it is to break it up into 4 chunks, and then you decide the amount of hours to devote (2 hours a day is a minimum for MOST…
Start a Moving Business – Overnight Success

chrisbrogan

18 Nov 2009 | 7:30 pm

In this episode of the Overnight Success series, I’ve got an idea about what makes one successful: moving. But it’s not what you think. If you can’t see the video, click here. What do you think?
Stop Humping My Leg

chrisbrogan

18 Nov 2009 | 9:13 am

Dear people trying to sell me on something new: stop humping my leg. You know what I mean. You’ve seen dogs do this, right? That’s what it feels like when you jump on me breathlessly to share your new product or service when you don’t really much know whether I’m the right guy for your services. I was recently leg-humped at Web 2.0 Expo, by someone I like, and who I think is smart and has a lot of good potential. The thing is, I politely declined a demo, and he persisted. Immediately, I shifted to my back foot. I felt defensive. I rolled up my interest and tucked it…
Prioritize Your Social Media Efforts

chrisbrogan

17 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

There aren’t enough hours in the day for all the chores that social media puts in front of us. The best writing I’ve found on how to manage your time in social media is via Amber Naslund’s social media time management series. Her efforts in crafting this should become a little ebook that you hand around to everyone. If you skipped over that link, go back, click it to open a new tab/window, and then read it when you’re done with this (or skip mine and read Amber’s- it’s that good). If you’re still with me, here’s what I want to say on the matter.

iJustine / Justine Ezarik
Farmville Carnival

ijustine

20 Nov 2009 | 10:38 am

If you haven’t logged in yet to harvest or plant your crops.. then you probably haven’t seen that there are all kinds of new decorations and buildings!!! The best part about the launch of this carnival is they also allowed barns and tool sheds to act as storage. Have a few extra fences or lawnmowers laying around? You can now toss them in there to use later! Woo!! I hate you Farmville for ruining my life. I’m also just assuming that all of you already know what this is.. in case you don’t it’s a facebook game
Twitter username tshirts

ijustine

19 Nov 2009 | 9:06 pm

My sisters and I were driving past a screen printing shop and I made them go with me to get twitter user name tshirts!!! So. Awesome!
GIMME YO FILES!!!!

ijustine

17 Nov 2009 | 1:13 pm

Recently
VLOG AFTER DENTIST

ijustine

17 Nov 2009 | 10:31 am

Yeah.. so I went to the dentist yesterday and this was a little video I made right after it. lol.. I spent most of yesterday in pain but today I am magically all better I really hate going to the dentist even for a cleaning. It freaks me out! What about you??!!
STATUSFACTION

ijustine

16 Nov 2009 | 12:13 pm

Okay.. so let’s just get this out of the way.. I KNOW I SUCK AT SINGING BUT YOU PROBABLY DO TOO SO SHHHH!!! …moving right along This definitely isn’t a song I probably wouldn’t have normally spoofed because since I am so bad at singing, this was a rough one. But.. Michael from totallysketch had a great idea of doing a parody of me taking my music video making way too serious. ..which leads us to this video where I am like you’ve never seen before. A completely crazy director. Don’t worry, I am still Disney and Ketchup

Joel on Software
Upgrade your career

5 Nov 2009 | 5:34 am

Do you like your job? Do you enjoy the people you work with? Would you want to have lunch with them? Every day? Alex Papadimoulis thinks that FogTyler Griffin Hicks-Wright Creek’s free lunches are “cultish,” but everyone at Fog Creek loves them. Maybe it’s the mandatory brain implant we install in each new worker, but I like to think that we just enjoy eating together because we genuinely like each other and like spending time together. If you can’t imagine eating lunch every day with your coworkers, I hate to break it to you: you might not like them. Is it OK to spend most of your…
Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death?

3 Nov 2009 | 4:50 pm

My new Inc. column is up. “For a guy who wrote a book on how to hire great programmers, it’s mortifying how incompetent I’ve been at enlarging the sales team, which, right now, consists of one terrific account executive and a dog. (I’m just kidding. There’s no dog.)” Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
Figuring out what your company is all about

1 Nov 2009 | 1:51 pm

What is your company about? Recently I got inspired by Kathy Sierra, whose blog Creating Passionate Users and Head First series of books revolutionized developer education. She kept saying the same thing again and again: help your users be awesome. Kathy taught me that if you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users. What’s your tagline? Can you fit it into that template? It took us nine years, but we finally worked out what Fog Creek Software is all about, which I’ll tell you in a moment, but…
Adam Bosworth on standards

31 Oct 2009 | 9:50 pm

Adam Bosworth: “All successful standards are as simple as possible, not as hard as possible.” Required reading. Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
Capstone projects and time management

26 Oct 2009 | 5:36 pm

It is amazing how easy it is to sail through a Computer Science degree from a top university without ever learning the basic tools of software developers, without ever working on a team, and without ever taking a course for which you don’t get an automatic F for collaborating. Many CS departments are trapped in the 1980s, teaching the same old curriculum that has by now become completely divorced from the reality of modern software development. Where are students supposed to learn about version control, bug tracking, working on teams, scheduling, estimating, debugging, usability testing,…

Dooce
Rivalry

dooce

20 Nov 2009 | 8:41 am

Chuck has put up with Coco's constant badgering, I think because he feels sorry for her that she's so nuts. But the other night he was sitting in the living room minding his own business when she ran up and tried to mount him, and DUDE SMACKED HER DOWN. Like, I AM DONE. And Jon and I gave him a standing ovation. click image above to see the photo on dooce.comby dooce in Daily Chuck© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Rivalry. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.
Stragglers

dooce

20 Nov 2009 | 8:02 am

These are the remaining leaves on the tree right outside the window to our office. It boggles my mind that it's the middle of November when it seems like just minutes ago that Jon had to use both feet to push my massive pregnant body out of bed, back when I couldn't wait for summer. Winter, here we come. click image above to see the photo on dooce.comby dooce in Daily Photo© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Stragglers. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.
Call for submissions

dooce

19 Nov 2009 | 8:18 am

I am in the process of putting together a holiday gift guide, one for women like myself, one for geeky husbands, one for infants, and one for five-year-old girls who think life is totally unfair. Maybe just some coal for her. I'm looking for handmade goods, products from small businesses, and would love to see unique things from independent artists. If you've seen my style section and think I'd like what you have to offer, please send me a link to your stuff at style at dooce dot com. Note, I do not accept compensation for featuring products on this website, I truly just want to introduce my…
The most adorable pajamas ever

dooce

18 Nov 2009 | 12:33 pm

Marlo is almost busting out of these pajamas, and when the day comes that she can no longer wear them we are all going to moan in despair. Because when she wears these we fight over who gets to hold her. These were a present from Cynthia Wise, owner of the Hello World Clothing Company, and what makes them so cool is you can unzip them from both ends. Best part: the feet OMG. click image above to see the photo on dooce.comby dooce in Daily Style© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as The most adorable pajamas ever. This post…
Mario

dooce

18 Nov 2009 | 10:44 am

That's what Leta loves to call Marlo, because she heard us talking one day about how when Marlo's insurance card came in the mail it said, "Mario Iris Armstrong." And it took some time to fix. I think we have unknowingly given her a life long problem with that L in her name being mistaken for an I because several people have written to me and said YOU NAMED YOUR DAUGHTER MARIO?! click image above to see the photo on dooce.comby dooce in Daily Photo© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Mario. This post cannot be republished…

Matt Cutts
Live-blogging the Google Chrome OS event

Matt Cutts

19 Nov 2009 | 9:50 am

I’m sitting in a room at Google waiting to hear more about Google Chrome OS. You can watch the webcast along with me if you like. For starters, here’s what Google announced about Chrome OS back in July. At that time, Google called out “speed, simplicity and security” as the key ideas behind Chrome OS. Google released Chrome a little over a year ago with a novel idea–a comic book to describe the features and design decisions behind Chrome. Looks like Danny Sullivan is live blogging too. Google OS just noticed that the source code for Chrome OS is available. (Maybe…
State of the Index, November 2009

Matt Cutts

17 Nov 2009 | 7:26 pm

Last week I was in Las Vegas for PubCon, a conference for publishers, and I wanted to share the slides from my main presentation: When I get a chance, I’ll also re-create the talk on video and share the video with you, but in the mean time Lisa Barone did a nice live write-up and coverage of the Q&A. It’s always nice to see SEOs and webmasters that I’ve gotten to know from search conferences. For example, one night featured the traditional SEO Werewolf game, except with blackhats as the werewolves and whitehats as the villagers. Somehow in the middle of that party, we…
Expect Caffeine after the holidays

Matt Cutts

10 Nov 2009 | 7:47 am

Back in August we mentioned a developer preview of Caffeine, which is new technology that improves our indexing infrastructure. The feedback on Caffeine has been very positive, so we’re ready to move from the developer preview to the next stage of the roll out: going live with Caffeine at one data center. This means that a small percentage of Google’s users will benefit from the technology behind Caffeine in their regular searches. I know that webmasters can get anxious around this time of year, so I wanted to reassure site owners that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after…
Gaping hole costume for Halloween 2009

Matt Cutts

31 Oct 2009 | 3:49 pm

This year for Halloween I tried to do a see-through hole in your body costume: It worked okay, but not great. The biggest problem was that I didn’t have a gadget lying around the house that could output live composite video. Both my normal video camera and my digital camera had exhausted batteries that wouldn’t recharge, which is a gadget fail on my part. And while my Flip video camera is tiny and it can output pre-recorded video through a composite cable, it can’t output live video (?!). Lame. I didn’t care enough to buy a new battery-operated gadget that could send…
Export your Google Docs data

Matt Cutts

25 Oct 2009 | 8:56 pm

One of my favorite personal blog posts is about not trapping users’ data. In late 2006, Eric Schmidt declared “We would never trap user data.” Many of the major Google properties (search, Gmail, Calendar) make it trivial to export or download your data. In the past, Google Docs would let you export a single doc at a time, but Google Operating System runs down exactly how to batch export your Google Docs. For each type of document (text document, presentation, spreadsheet, etc.) you can choose what file format to get. I had about 81 personal docs (~13MB) and it only took…

Bob Sutton
The Tension Between Getting it Done and Getting it Right

Bobsutton

20 Nov 2009 | 1:11 pm

I just went for a rather lovely long bike ride in the rain and was in a contemplative mood because I seem to be just a couple days from finishing my next book (I will tell you much more about it in a couple weeks when the powers that be agree with me that it is done). When I got back, I had received an email from Randall who gave me feedback that, in my forward to 40th Anniversary edition of the The Peter Principle:"I am disappointed that your forward did not mention what I believe to be the core insight in the book. Without this particular insight, the rest of the book…
Leaders get the behavior they display and tolerate

Bobsutton

20 Nov 2009 | 9:38 am

I was at a gathering of HR managers and executives yesterday held at Pixar, and one of the participants made this observation at one point. Frankly, there were a lot of people and we kept rotating among groups, so although I write it down quickly so I wouldn't lose it, I got so lost in thought about it that by the time I looked-up, we were all rotating to different groups and I lost rack of who said it. I will try to figure out who it was -- yes, it is an oversimplification, but one of the most compelling ones I've heard. I especially like that word "tolerate"…
Oh, So That Is God's Work

Bobsutton

18 Nov 2009 | 9:01 am

Today's New York Times has an encouraging article about the things that Goldman Sachs is doing to cleanse its image as a greedy and destructive force in the U.S. economy and society. Apparently Warren Buffett is teach their senior team a bit of humility, or at least how to feign it. This is all old news, but I can't stop thinking about the comparison between how the Rolling Stone described Goldman versus how CEO Blankfein did (a statement that got him in big trouble, by the way).In July, a story in the Rolling Stone called "The Great American Bubble Machine" started out:The…
Testosterone Levels, Top Dogs, and Collective Group Confidence

Bobsutton

16 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

My favorite behavioral science website, BPS Research Digest, posted a summary of an amazingly weird and rather troubling psychological experiment. The upshot is that people --- both men and women --- vary in testosterone levels and (no surprise), when people with high testosterone levels aren't in leadership positions, "they can find it stressful and uncomfortable when denied the status that they crave." A bit more surprising is that the reverse is true as well, that "people low in testosterone find it uncomfortable to be placed in positions of…
How Can You Help Your Boss Succeed?

Bobsutton

15 Nov 2009 | 12:29 pm

Many of the posts and comments on this blog focus on either how to be an effective boss or how to deal with a lousy boss. No doubt, all this talk about dealing with lousy bosses is fueled by The No Asshole Rule. But there is another theme that I believe deserves more attention here and elsewhere: How can people help their bosses be more successful? After all, when your boss succeeds, not only does he or she gain a better reputation, so do you, and it also usually means your team is doing better work. I was reminded of this last week when a I gave a talk to a…

AE on the Verge
Check your expiration dates

11 Nov 2009 | 8:41 pm

It's not just food that has expiration dates. Check out these association expiration dates, so you don't learn them the hard way .... 1. Conference call dial-in numbers: Found out my "use anytime" dial in and passcodes expired when I didn't use for 6 months. Learned it when dialing in 2 minutes before everyone else. If you use the same conference call numbers all the time, find out if something makes it expire.2. Batteries on smoke/carbon monoxide detectors: Change them as often as you'd change the ones at home.3. Vendor contracts: Especially if you inherit contracts you didn't execute, might…
Buying your way into a community (aka, tweets for sale)

1 Nov 2009 | 1:11 pm

Just about everything in the meeting biz is open for sponsorship. But should Tweets be for sale?I've been reading about "sponsored tweets" - where someone on Twitter will "sell" their willingness to talk about your product to their own community - that is, to their own blog and/or Twitter readers/followers. May just be for personal financial profit (or to get what they "talk about" free) - or may be part of a sponsorship package like getting paid to put a company's name on a sign. Trouble is, does the reader know it's a paid advertisement or endorsement? SHOULD the reader (also known as "the…
Conferences: A Helpful Ribbon

30 Oct 2009 | 4:14 pm

Ever go to a conference and not know how to easily identify members from your own state? A colleague has ribbons made with the state name that he sends to state attendees in advance (to insert in conference badges). He can identify them, they can identify each other, and it lets others know where they're from.
Building Leaders: 6 Skills to Develop (or Have)

26 Oct 2009 | 7:27 pm

Can an engineering school also build leaders? A Boston Globe article relays the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has added leadership training to its undergraduate engineering curriculum - to help its students with superior technical skills succeed in the workplace environment.MIT takes engineering students who may be introverted and/or acutely aware of their analytical/technical excellence - and teaches them leadership and management skills aren't "silly", time-wasting or out of reach. MIT's engineering leadership program identifies the following skills, among others, to…
How to Not Ruin Black Pants

25 Oct 2009 | 12:46 pm

As someone who doesn't like to travel with more than just a computer bag, it's a sad situation to completely ruin a favorite pair of black pants that didn't wrinkle and fit better than any others.Real Simple magazine (Nov. '09) has these tips for black pants: (for those who don't want the time and cost of eternally dry cleaning)1. Don't wash them as much. Wear 4-5 times between washings.2. Turn pants inside out to minimize color loss.3. Choose a short, delicate cycle.4. Use specialized detergent for cold water loads, such as Tide Coldwater. Chlorine in tap water is apparently…

Jason Calacanis
REPORT: PerfectPitch 2009 Winner didn’t get funding?

Jason Calacanis

20 Nov 2009 | 10:07 am

Just got this tip: ———- Forwarded message ———-Date: Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:04 AMSubject: Fwd: Note from PerfectPitch 2009 WinnerTo: Jason Calacanis Jason, I thought you might find this interesting (if you haven't already heard.) The "winner" of Richard Branson's Perfect Pitch conference DIDN'T get funded. How is that for winning? Here's a conference that charged people hundreds of dollars to attend and the "winner" didn't even get funding. What a crock. This just reinforced my reasons for NOT participating. …
My boy @joesebok at @realannieduke poker tourn at @commercecasino

Jason Calacanis

19 Nov 2009 | 7:57 pm

Sent from my iPhone, but I’d rather be using my blackberry frankly.
Assassin’s Creed 2 Walkthrough on Mahalo!

lonharris

19 Nov 2009 | 12:51 pm

We’re working now on some videos and walkthrough info for the new game “Assassin’s Creed 2.” Keep an eye on our progress as we play through this week’s hottest new title.
First couple of angel investors have signed up for Open Angel Forum – Los Angeles!

Jason Calacanis

19 Nov 2009 | 11:31 am

Matt Coffin of LowerMyBills http://www.crunchbase.com/person/matt-coffin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Coffin Sky Dayton of Earthlink, Boingo, etc. http://www.crunchbase.com/person/sky-dayton Bill Woodward of Anthem VP http://www.anthemvp.com/?page=team&mod=detail&vid=1 If you know of anyone qualified and interested–from any city–do let me know!
I called the Google OS in January of 2006. Didn’t have inside information… really. ;-p

Jason Calacanis

19 Nov 2009 | 10:48 am

Ze Frank
pain pack

19 Nov 2009 | 12:25 pm

if you make music - please consider helping me with this project :: http://www.zefrank.com/pain_pack/
yet again - a stop motion piece that re-invents the medium

17 Nov 2009 | 12:37 pm
procrastination :: beautifully done

11 Nov 2009 | 8:44 am
wait for the awesome!

11 Nov 2009 | 7:26 am
challenge 1 :: shadow letters

2 Nov 2009 | 5:05 am

i'm facilitating a series of three challenges for samsung mobile which will ultimately result in donations to architecture for humanity and the nature conservancy! the first challenge is live! click below for details :: would be great if you could help!

John Jantsch
QuickBooks 2010 Expends Beyond Accounting

John Jantsch

20 Nov 2009 | 8:59 am

QuickBooks 2010 Expends Beyond AccountingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing The latest version of QuickBooks is a big step outside the box for the leading small business accounting software. Building on Intuit’s Connected Services Strategy announced last year, QuickBooks connects to several new online services that enable small businesses to extend the power of their information already in QuickBooks QuickBooks Pro and Premier 2010 feature the all-new Intuit App Center, providing users access to scalable, Software-as-a-Service business applications directly from within QuickBooks.
What the Heck is Integrated Marketing Anyway?

John Jantsch

18 Nov 2009 | 7:07 am

What the Heck is Integrated Marketing Anyway?This content from: Duct Tape Marketing When I first started my business, several decades ago, I was determined to tell people that, mine was an integrated marketing firm. To which, I generally received polite nods and the occasional more truthful – “What the heck is integrated marketing anyway?” Well, c’mon I would mutter, “everyone knows it’s a management strategy and meta-discipline focused on the organization-wide optimization of unique value for stakeholders[1].” Right, see the problem with the term was…
Is Social Media Changing Selling?

John Jantsch

17 Nov 2009 | 8:44 am

Is Social Media Changing Selling?This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Mike McLaughlin (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes Social media has certainly changed marketing, but few people are addressing just how dramatically it’s changed sales. In this interview we hit that subject pretty head on. My guest for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is Mike McLaughlin. He’s the author of Winning the Professional Services Sale, which offers professional service providers, business development managers, and…
3 Tools to Make Twitter Lists Even More Useful

John Jantsch

16 Nov 2009 | 7:37 am

3 Tools to Make Twitter Lists Even More UsefulThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’m a big fan of the newish Twitter List function. I wrote about it last week – 5 Reasons to Use the New Twitter Lists Feature Now that I’ve you pumped up about using lists, I want to talk about a few tools that I think can make the feature even more useful. Twitter List Widget - (example above) this is a homegrown Twitter feature that’s pretty well hidden. Scroll to the bottom of your Twitter homepage and look for the link called Goodies. Then click Widgets, MyWebiste, ListWidget.
Winner of the Social Media Library

John Jantsch

15 Nov 2009 | 6:02 am

Winner of the Social Media LibraryThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing In case you missed my post on Friday I offered one signed copy of One these seven books: Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg, Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel, Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik, Duct Tape Marketing by well, me, Whuffle Factor by Tara Hunt and CrushIt by Gary Vaynerchuk to the person that most creatively answers the following: I get the biggest return for my business using social media when I [fill in the blank] – Here’s the original…

Malcolm Gladwell
Letting Igons be Igons

malcolmgladwell

18 Nov 2009 | 12:51 pm

From "Blowing Up," by Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker, April 22,2002
More on Quarterbacks

malcolmgladwell

18 Nov 2009 | 7:37 am

A few more thoughts on quarterbacks: There are two separate issues with respect to quarterbacks. The first is whether, historically, NFL teams have done a good job of predicting which college quarterbacks will succeed in the pros. Dave Berri and Rob Simmons’ paper in the Journal of Productivity Analysis (that I relied on in the essay “Most Likely to Succeed” in my new book “What The Dog Saw”) proves pretty convincingly, I think, that the answer is no. One of the best parts of that paper is how Berri and Simmons demonstrate how much NFL teams tend to irrationally…
Pinker on "What the Dog Saw."

malcolmgladwell

17 Nov 2009 | 11:29 am

Steven Pinker reviewed my new book "What the Dog Saw," in the New York Times Book Review this past Sunday. I sent the following letter to the editor in response: It is always a pleasure to be reviewed by someone as accomplished as Stephen Pinker, even if—in his comments on “What the Dog Saw” (Nov. 15)—he is unhappy with my spelling (rightly!) and with the fact that I have not joined him on the lonely ice floe of IQ fundamentalism. But since football has been on my mind these days, I do want to make one small observation about his comments. In one of my…
Underdogs

malcolmgladwell

13 May 2009 | 5:22 am

My latest New Yorker piece, on how David beats Goliath, is here. I've been very pleased with the reaction. I did want to respond, though, to a number of comments that have been made about the parts of the piece dealing with Rick Pitino and college basketball. (Nothing is quite as fun as arguing about sports,) Since most of the commenters make the same arguments, I'm going to pick a post by Ben Mathis-Lilley, over at New York magazine's blog. He writes, in part: The truth is that almost every team tries to make its opponents work for all 94 feet in some fashion, and not every…
Brooks on Outliers

malcolmgladwell

17 Dec 2008 | 2:05 pm

David Brooks wrote a very thoughtful column in the New York Times yesterday on "Outliers." Much of what he said was very flattering. I have just two comments in response. 1. Brooks argues that I "slight the centrality of individual character and individual creativity" by focusing so much on the cultural and contextual determinants of success. Successful people, he says, must begin with two beliefs--"that the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so." I completely agree. The chapter on lawyers, for example, is devoted to the…

Ray Kurzweil (and Ramona)
Medibots: The world's smallest surgeons

19 Nov 2009 | 10:50 pm

Advances in robotics could revolutionize healthcare, pushing the limits of what surgeons can achieve, from worm-inspired capsules to crawl through your gut, and systems swallowed in pieces that assemble themselves inside the body, to surgical robots that will soon be ready to embark on a fantastic voyage through our bodies, homing in on the part that's ailing and fixing it from the inside. Swimming camera capsule (The Royal College of Surgeons / Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna) (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427351.100-medibots-the-worlds-smallest-surgeons.html)
IBM scientists create rapid disease diagnostic chip

19 Nov 2009 | 10:26 pm

IBM scientists have created a fast, one-step point-of-care-diagnostic test, based on a silicon chip that uses capillary forces to analyze tiny samples of blood serum for the presence of disease markers. It requires less sample volume, is significantly faster, portable, easy to use, and can test for many diseases, including cardiovascular disease -- a small sample of a patient's serum could be tested immediately following a heart attack to enable the doctor to quickly take a course of action to help the patient survive. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news177880059.html)
The Emerging Field of Biophotonic Communication

19 Nov 2009 | 10:15 pm

Sergei Mayburov at the Lebedev Institute of Physics in Moscow suggests that optical communication is a natural process in many cells of body, closely related to photosynthesis. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24425/?a=f)
On Your Last Nerve: Researchers Advance Understanding of Stem Cells

19 Nov 2009 | 9:55 pm

North Carolina State University researchers have identified a gene, FoxJ1, that tells embryonic stem cells in the brain when to stop producing neurons. The research could lead to new treatments to replace damaged or diseased brain tissue. (Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091117102034.htm)
A Central Nervous System for Earth: HP's Ambitious Sensor Network

19 Nov 2009 | 9:32 pm

HP Labs has announced a project that aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth" (CeNSE): a R&D program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of tiny accelerometers that detect motion and vibrations, and later, ones for light, temperature, barometric pressure, airflow and humidity. The nodes could be stuck to bridges and buildings to warn of structural strains or weather conditions and along roadsides to monitor traffic, weather and road conditions. Other uses include in everyday electronics, tracking hospital equipment, sniffing out pesticides and pathogens in food,…

Chris Messina
The death of the URL

Chris Messina

16 Nov 2009 | 12:20 pm

Prelude You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember — all I am offering is the truth, nothing more. In the Matrix, Morpheus presents Neo with a choice: he can take the blue pill and continue his somnambulatory existence within the Matrix, or he can take the red pill and become free from the virtual reality that the machines created to enslave humanity. As you can see from the clip above, Neo chooses the red pill, severing his…
Don’t make me a target

Chris Messina

13 Nov 2009 | 12:56 pm

The augmented reality view in Brightkite’s mobile app. Brightkite, a location-tracking service, recently launched version 2.0 of their service after merging with Limbo and taking $9M in funding this past April. In recent months I’ve found myself using Foursquare more and more, though I still update Brightkite from time to time since it powers the location status on my personal homepage. In some ways, Foursquare is to Brightkite what Twitter was to Jaiku: a more personal, streamlined experience that builds on a core activity and dispenses will all other distractions. And, through…
New microsyntax for Twitter: three pointers and the slasher

Chris Messina

8 Nov 2009 | 4:25 pm

Image based on Kevin Van Aelst’s original. Since it’s apparently all the rage to design your own features for Twitter now, I figured I’d build on my success with the hashtag and crank out a few more. All of these are simple conventions for adding more standard metadata to a post in a specific, uniform way. The Slasher First, I’ve decided to migrate from encapsulating my metadata in parentheses to using a slash delimiter (”/”), which, for shits and giggles, we’ll call “the slasher”. This saves you ONE character, but hey, those singletons…
Open source design and the OpenOfficeMouse

Chris Messina

7 Nov 2009 | 6:47 pm

I admit that my initial reaction to the OpenOfficeMouse (to the right in the above graphic) wasn’t … positive. After all, I’ve been acclimating to my new Apple MagicMouse (seen on the left above) for the past week and really like it, especially in comparison with the previous model with the stubby and malfunctioning nipple (called the “Mighty Mouse” before Apple lost a trademark dispute). To me, the OpenOfficeMouse seems like such a typical product from the open source community. The press release waxes on about the features, implicitly presupposing that more…
A conversation with Ville Vesterinen about standards and the open social web

Chris Messina

7 Nov 2009 | 10:39 am

I sat down for a conversation with Ville Vesterinen (@vesterinen) — co-founder and editor of the ArcticStartup blog — last week while he was visiting from Helsinki. Following up on the post that Jyri Engeström and I wrote on the web at a new crossroads, we discussed the need for more open standards to create the underpinnings of a web-wide platform for building more personal social applications. At one point in our discussion, I suggested that an HTML tag for a person might make sense — with the ability to include a person’s face or list of friends — without the need for…

Pam Slim
10 ways to stimulate the economy with your brain

Pamela

5 Nov 2009 | 10:58 am

I don’t know about you, but I get mighty tired of reading newspaper articles and blog rants about the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of stimulus money on our economy. What makes me frustrated is that we waste hours a day fighting with each other about things outside of our control, instead of using our own brains to do something about our local economy. So here is my list of 10 things you can do, right now, to stimulate a small corner of your local economy without spending a dime: Mentor a new business owner. If you know how to build an effective website or display goods more…
Spreading the addiction of the TED conference one city at a time

Pamela

30 Oct 2009 | 2:24 pm

There are few things that get me fired up late at night like watching TED videos. For the uninitiated, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and is a conference that takes place once a year. The videos from TED are shared free on their website, and the talks are enough to get you standing up with your fist in the air, clutching your heart with tears streaming down your cheeks, or doubling over with laughter. TED is undertaking a new initiative which is to encourage local communities to sponsor their own events, called “TEDx.” We are hosting ours here in Phoenix,…
Last chance to attend live Escape from Cubicle Nation workshop in 2009

Pamela

28 Oct 2009 | 4:20 pm

The fabulous and enthusiastic crew from last week’s Escape from Cubicle Nation Workshop in London. Photo by the handsome and talented TMSRuge. I communicate on Twitter so frequently that I just realized some blog readers may not know that my last live Escape from Cubicle Nation workshop will take place on Wednesday, November 4 at the Hotel Belamar in Southern California. I will be joined by the fabulous and talented Colleen Wainwright, otherwise known as Communicatrix, who is an amazing resource for branding and social media. This will be my last workshop of the year, and the last…
Response to Chris Brogan about Overnight Success

Pamela

25 Oct 2009 | 4:05 pm

Sitting in the Dallas airport after having spent the weekend speaking and participating in Milana Leshinsky’s Coaching Millions Super Summit, I watched Chris Brogan’s 3-part video series on Overnight Success and felt my heart melt. I related to so much of what he talked about, since I have spent so much time this summer on the road, promoting my book. Getting out in front of people is critical, spreading the message of hope and connection through entrepreneurship is imperative, and creating a powerful business model that serves people well and provides well for my family is a…
The beauty of dirty laundry

Pamela

19 Oct 2009 | 2:38 pm

At the management conference I attended in Pärnu, Estonia last week, we had a speaker from Denmark, Morten Lund, a long-time entrepreneur who had, among other things, made good money investing in Skype. As he launched into his presentation, he said: “I have founded over 88 startups. And at the moment, I am bankrupt.” Due to a failed investment in a newspaper business in his native Denmark, he had lost a lot of money. But, he said, he actually was feeling quite good. He was spending lots of time with his four kids, whom he obviously adored. And he remained passionate about…

Shel Israel
Social Media & Government

shel

20 Nov 2009 | 2:53 pm

I had a chapter in Twitterville about government in Twitter. My research for the book took place in about February. At the time I saw great promise in government using social media to get closer with constituents, mostly in the day-to-day conducting of government government business and information distribution. Two examples of this that I used in Twitterville were the San Diego Metro Transit System, which is one of many public transit systems using twitter to giver passengers real time information about delays, snags and changes. I also liked Newcastle [UK] City Council's whose…
Social Media, Power & Metcalfe's Law

shel

16 Nov 2009 | 12:26 pm

The question was: " What do you think is more important for attaining power: followers or who you follow?" It was directed at me as I sat on a panel at the Social Media Summit, produced by London-headquartered Lewis PR. It took me by surprise and one live tweeter accused me of skirting the issue and not understanding about power. I disagree with his assessment but that's besides the point.It took me by surprise because most people who follow me know that I see social media as all about the conversation; not power. It involves personal and corporate branding issues, but not…
So, Just who's a Social Media Expert?

shel

14 Nov 2009 | 3:54 pm

I get uncomfortable whenever I get introduced as a social media expert or guru. First off, whenever I hear someone else called that, I have a tendency to fold my arms and think, "Oh Yeah?" I find myself poised to pounce if that person makes anything close to a mistake.When people call themselves either of those titles, my inclination gets amplified.Judging by the surplus of Twitter and blogs shots being taken at those marketing themselves as coaches, gurus and experts, it appears that I am not alone in my inclinations. But that does not make us right.I think this controversy has…
Book of Kells: Not Available on eBook

shel

8 Nov 2009 | 3:52 am

It's been my week for hallowed halls of academia.First, I spent a couple of days in the Harvard Faculty Club at the 4th SNCR Symposium, then hopped a red-eye to Dublin where I start a three-city book tour with a pub-based tweet up tonight. Yesterday was my jet lag recovery day and I used the afternoon to walk a strip of this city of 1.4 million. The highlight was my 2nd tour of Trinity College, Ireland's top-rated University, where Jonathan Swift, Samuel Becket, Oscar Wilde and many other giants went to school. First Harvard. Then Trinity. Had I applied for admission to either of…
Some Social Media Department [SMD] granularity

shel

3 Nov 2009 | 9:41 am

I am heartened that I've received some comments and thoughtful questions that indicate I am not alone in thinking the time has come to establish social media departments in the enterprise. This follow up post offers a few thoughts on just what this department would--and would not--do. And I need to start with a disclaimer. I do not think this new department should own social media in the enterprise. That is as bad an idea as one department owning email and deciding how it should be used, or the telephone and so on. Social media encompasses a set of tools that improve communications by…

Home
Giving up Facebook or Twitter?

Jessica Smith

15 Nov 2009 | 11:33 am

This morning I asked my friends on both Twitter and Facebook, the following question... "if you HAD to give up one of the following two, which would it be? Facebook or Twitter?"
Cloudy with a Chance of...Drama?

Jessica Smith

11 Nov 2009 | 7:20 pm

So this past weekend I had two speaking engagements and I managed to spend some time with my family. You're probably reading the title of post trying to figure out where I'm going to go with this. This Saturday afternoon, I went to see the movie "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" with my husband and son. It was a really great movie about a boy who, despite an entire town of nay-sayers, realizes his dream of inventing something very cool. His invention gives hope to his town, a town that happens to be in need of some major economic development. What happens though, is that as he wins the…
My National Novel Writing Month Alternative: HaNoWriMo

Jessica Smith

1 Nov 2009 | 9:06 am

Every year since 2003, I've attempted to complete NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month). The way I see it, NaNoWriMo participants have been using the Tweetup format for years before Twitter was in existence. What do I mean? People all over the world meet up in cafes, coffee houses, libraries, and other locations to write together after convening and connecting online. One of my the items on my bucket list is to write a novel. If it's one of yours too, I definitely recommend giving NaNoWriMo a shot. For ten years they've had everything we love about connecting via social media…
Being Humble is the New Black

Jessica Smith

24 Oct 2009 | 3:48 pm

I'm observing a pretty consistent trend that's risen at about the same velocitous rate as the social media platforms we use. Being humble. And while people have gotten their fifteen minutes of fame or power from creating a Twitter mob against a company or a company spending inexorbitant amounts of money to garner someone a million followers...those receive a flash of lightening of attention. However, they don't earn long-term returns with regard to respect, loyalty, or retention. At the influencer level, very few get and stay where they are by bringing down those around them, through sense of…
Kidpreneurs: Review

Jessica Smith

19 Oct 2009 | 8:59 pm

It probably comes as no surprise to many of you that when I was growing up, I always wanted to start a business. I had a lemonade stand, tried to start a neighborhood newspaper, and had my first summer job working for an hour a day for a neighbor's small business. That's why, when Adam Toren, co-author of the book Kidpreneurs: Young Entrepreneurs with Big Ideas!, offered me a copy of the book to review I enthusiastically agreed.

Bob Parsons
Bob's Birthday Tribute to the U.S. Marine Corps

10 Nov 2009 | 4:13 pm

Watch Video BlogPlease join us this November 10th in raising a toast to the finest fighting force the world has ever known. Happy 234th birthday, Marines! Semper Fi! - Bob Parsons
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With CashParking, ads on your domain's parked page generate revenue. So take advantage of the most competitive revenue sharing in the industry - save 10% now at GoDaddy.com. Includes membership to Go Daddy Auctions'. Offer expires 12/16/09.

Mark Cuban
Google, Murdoch, Madoff

markcuban

13 Nov 2009 | 2:58 pm

Hows that for a title. Just thought it would be a fun day to rehash some old posts that made me look a little prescient Today the feds arrested 2 programmers that worked for Madoff. I wrote this in January: Jan 18th 2009 10:11AM Im taking a flyer here, but if they were to put me on the case, the first people I would talk to are the software developers. Somewhere along the line there was a software program written or modified that allowed Madoff to enter the numbers he made up, who they were paying out cash to and would print the checks and statements. Its very unlikely that it was off…
Rupert Murdoch and Google Part 2

markcuban

10 Nov 2009 | 1:05 pm

Im going to simplify this as much as possible. I probably should have just included this in the first post. Here are the best and worst cases of Newscorp opting out of the Google Index 1. Best Case: They opt out and see an increase in revenues and commitment to their sites because people choose to go directly to their sites. For those sites behind a paywall, they generate more revenue than when the site was free. Other sites notice their success and copy Newscorp, choosing to opt out of the Google index. The opt out choice turns out to be the better business move for any and all sites…
Rupert Murdoch to Block Google = Smart = Twitter has changed it all.

markcuban

9 Nov 2009 | 8:40 am

Rupert Murdoch has said that his Newscorp sites are going to block Google indexes. Of course, all the netizens freak out when this happens. Which I love. I love to tweak all the internet information must be free bigots. They get so damn religious about information on the net that they lose what little objectivity and awareness of the real world they had in the first place. First a little enlightenment for all of you that think Murdoch is making a mistake. This is not 1999, nor is it 2004, nor is it 2006, nor is it 2008. The calendar is about to turn to 2010. What worked and made sense…
Adding Facebook and Twitter Followers – A Little One on One ?

markcuban

6 Nov 2009 | 8:39 am

I was thinking of ideas on how to add twitter and/or facebook fan page followers. I dont have a real need to have to do so. I was just curious about ways to do so. Think of it as one of those things my minds wanders off to while Im working out. One thing that poppedup as what I thought was a decent idea was the idea of rewarding those who refer and/or generate followers to my pages on twitter (@mcuban), or on FAcebook (/markcuban) a unique page where they were the only person approved to have access and for some period of time, they would have exclusive access for questions and answers. So…
Keyboards, Phones and NetBooks

markcuban

6 Nov 2009 | 8:23 am

Some people wondered why I stayed with my Sidekick despite still not getting my contacts back and all the troubles the network had. The answer is easy. They keyboard is so above any beyond any other phone, I can type a good 50 words per minute on it. (Its amazing how fast my thumbs are on this thing) Which in turn allows me to answer emails quickly and accurately. I dont lose any productivity when Im on my Sidekick compared to sitting in front of my desktop or full sized laptop. To me, thats money in the bank. Thats not to say I never stray and try new phones and alternatives. I do. …

Tom Peters
Leadership as a Sacred Trust

Shelley Dolley

20 Nov 2009 | 10:44 am

In the latest installment of The Little BIG Things video series, Tom describes leadership as a sacred trust. He says that the decision to lead is the decision to be responsible for the growth and development of your fellow human beings. You can find the video on the top of the right column here on the front page of tompeters.com, or by clicking here. If you'd like to see previously posted videos in the series, be sure to visit our Video page (direct link to TLBT video series).
My Heart (and Body) Are in San Francisco, God's Gift to City-hood!

19 Nov 2009 | 5:53 am

I spoke at an Inc. magazine event last night in San Francisco, commemorating the winner of an entrepreneur-to-be contest with a hearty financial prize. Incidentally, in the name of Chinese ubiquity, much on our minds these days, the event is sponsored by the powerhouse Chinese B2B outfit—Alibaba. In preparing, I put together a list of ten key factors that I believe characterize entrepreneurial excellence ... Entrepreneurial Excellence TEN "Insane" Passion for and commitment to the idea. Can explain the idea in Simple English and Excite others about its Uniqueness in ONE MINUTE (or…
Cool Friend #144:Bob Waterman

17 Nov 2009 | 1:13 am

If you're a fan of Tom's first book, In Search of Excellence, don't miss reading this interview with his coauthor, Bob Waterman. We're glad to add Bob as a Cool Friend, and we all enjoyed working on this interview. (Yes, he does share a few secrets about what went on during the writing of the book.) I think the most fascinating aspect is examining another path taken from the same jumping-off point. Bob was no less successful than Tom, just not as publicly. He describes to Erik how ISOE/In Search came to be and what he's been up to since then. Bob also talks about his involvement with the…
Excellence Slides: Press Ganey

17 Nov 2009 | 1:02 am

Today, Tom met with about 2,000 health care senior execs, mostly from hospitals and hospital systems in National Harbor MD, right outside of Washington D.C., hosted by Press Ganey, researchers and consultants who provide solutions and resources to their clients to help them provide high quality health care. Press Ganey is significant because of their focus on this one industry. As their website states: "Health care is a unique industry in which success is not measured simply by financial returns. The most successful health care organizations act upon the needs of all customers [doctors,…
Excellence Slides: Seminarium Ecuador

16 Nov 2009 | 8:10 am

The slides I'm posting are for an event that took place last Wednesday. Tom's been all over the world and had Internet access, but the mountains of Ecuador proved too big an obstacle. We hope he enjoyed several days of being out of touch. In a scenic location. Sounds good to me. The event was the Seminarium Ecuador in Quito, short for San Francisco de Quito, the capital city. Be sure to look at google maps, wikipedia, and other websites to learn more about this fascinating place. It's in the same time zone as Boston, but worlds away. If you attended the Seminarium, please give us your…

Dave Taylor
Interview with PR expert Deirdre Breakenridge

12 Nov 2009 | 1:51 pm

I recently had the pleasure of listening to Deirdre Breakenridge talk about the future of public relations, and was quite impressed. The co-author of the book Putting the Public back in Public Relations, she's smart, accessible and has a great, pragmatic view of social media, marketing, customer service and public relations. I asked her if she'd mind answering a few of my questions and, well, she's a writer, so we've ended up with a nice novella. Please enjoy, and if you have further questions for Deirdre, please feel free to post them in the comments. -- Dave Discuss your background and…
My upcoming speaking gigs Oct, 2009

20 Oct 2009 | 12:29 am

Me speaking on a panel at SXSW '09 earlier in the yearI can't believe how many speaking gigs I have coming up, really. Wondering what's on my agenda? Here's the list: Aren't we all just wasting our time with social media? Thurs, Oct 22 at 7pm I'm speaking as a representative of Boulder Digital Arts at the Goozmo open house in downtown Boulder. This is a free event, and you're definitely welcome to show up for my thirty-minute talk / discussion. More information: Goozmo Open House What's the Point of Social Networking? Friday, Oct 23 at 9am-11am This is a two-hour breakfast discussion /…
Worried about the FTC going after your blog?

16 Oct 2009 | 4:05 pm

One of the big discussions both here at Blogworld Expo and in the blogosphere in general is the implication of the new Federal Trade Commission's new regulations for online advertising practices from the Bureau of Consumer Protection. The regulations seem to address the issue of disclosure: if I give you a copy of my book and you write about it, you have to let your readers know that. If I buy you dinner and then you write about my book or reference my site, you have to disclose that. And so on, and so on. Problem is, this FTC guideline has gotten more and more onerous in the echo chamber of…
Twitter "virus" via video, I don't think so!

14 Oct 2009 | 9:27 am

I don't get it. Are people really this clueless in the social media world? I woke up this morning to boldface warnings New virus on Twitter! Don't click on video links in DMs! Of course, it didn't take long for me to get one: Being the reckless tech guy I am (and running on a Mac, not PC, so far, far less susceptible to viruses), I clicked on the link anyway, and got this: Ah, okay, so, duh. Here's an easy rule of thumb: Never share your social media credentials with other sites! Surely you, dear reader, aren't so daft that you'd click on a link to see a video and then blindly log in to what…
Why DVD rental is such a tough biz: it's a commodity, stupid

12 Oct 2009 | 9:22 am

I'm all for supporting local mom-and-pop businesses, and this evening, on the enthusiastic prompting of my girls, we went into a local video rental place (though 95% of what they rent, of course, are DVDs). After much deliberation on their part, they selected the Disney film Tinkerbell. Okay. Last few times I've paid for a rental it's been through Redbox and that's $1/night, so inexpensive that you can forgive the tiny selection in the box. At the local video rental place, however, it was $4.95 for a rental, and due in four days to boot. Five bucks? Seemed kinda steep, and when I got rave…

Valeria Maltoni
Twitter and Google Reader Aren't at War

Valeria Maltoni

20 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am

There have been conversations recently about abandoning RSS readers, and specifically Google Reader in favor of using Twitter as a human filter for information. The idea is that if you follow smart people, they read good material and will pass that along to their network - you. Part of me says, maybe. Somehow I think that if you come across a really good post filled with juicy information that will make you look good when you implement it, you'll probably keep that more to yourself. Maybe use it to build on when you write on your own blog. How far off am I? Others, are in favor of continuing…
What is Your Purpose for Blogging?

Valeria Maltoni

19 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am

Personal Branding In A Wired WorldView more presentations from Valeria Maltoni. That is the first thing you need to think about if you're planning to be strategic about your blog. Then, instead of focusing on success, focus on the path that will keep you on purpose. Why? Because success changes and stays in the future - be honest, you keep upping the ante. While the path, part of which is a process that will help you stay productive, is the here and now - the decisions you need to make tonight, every day and every week. Dan Pink quotes the recently departed Russell Ackoff (emphasis…
Architects, Meet Collier Ward, Content Creator

Valeria Maltoni

18 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am

As an architect, he writes, I believe that, even in the current economy, there are institutions, firms and individuals which could benefit from professional architectural consulting and design services; even if only to be poised for the next construction cycle.Collier Ward is a member of the architecture and author community - and of this community. He shared his thoughts on the About You page and returns with us for a more in depth conversation__________ Why are you online? Collier: Being online maximizes the number of meaningful connections a person can make. I took the opportunity of being…
Is Social Media a Marketing Thing?

Valeria Maltoni

17 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am

In the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about leveraging content to start or continue a conversation with your customers or prospects. Offering something of value in exchange for attention towards a mutually accepted goal or direction goes to the heart of communications. There is still plenty of unrealized opportunity for B2B companies to unlock this value through social media. That's because the greatest value to the organization that gets involved in social media is not the cool promotional glitz. We talk about customer support regularly. What about customer acquisition and real…
Customer Contributions Build Preference

Valeria Maltoni

16 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am

During our conversation at the Inbound Marketing Summit, we talked about writing engaging content for the next web and the socializing of information. One of the slides in my deck visualized the customer contribution part of content, which we said gives you permission to connect. I stack ranked the ideas in order of complexity - with the simplest being a "like" button.I think many companies are not implementing that on their Web sites because they're somewhat anxious that nobody will like their pages. So why, oh why, is the site still static and displaying the same stale content? What if you…

Brian Williams
Hey Virginia, what's the deal?

Daily Nightly Editor

20 Nov 2009 | 2:16 pm

Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor It struck us as fundamentally wrong that the Postal Service would no longer accept or deliver letters from kids written to Santa at the North Pole—but we, along with others, reported last night that the program was being halted. Apparently the good folks in North Pole, Alaska (Santa's helpers...the good people of that town who have been volunteering since 1954 to read and answer children's letters) have met to alleviate the crisis, and we will read their response on the air tonight. Believe me, when stories involve Santa (or similar topics), I…
We've been here before

Daily Nightly Editor

19 Nov 2009 | 1:51 pm

Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor Our own Andy Franklin did some digging and came up with this, from the last time mammograms were in the news this heavily. It’s fascinating viewing, and we'll air a portion of it tonight. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the EconomyMy thanks to everyone at the Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State, and at our NBC Station KPNX-TV in Phoenix -- I am honored beyond my ability to express it. It’s the greatest honor of my professional life. We're back in New York and I hope you'll be watching tonight.
Sebelius steps back

Daily Nightly Editor

18 Nov 2009 | 2:40 pm

By Ann Curry, NBC News anchor HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today the independent panel that made the new breast cancer screening recommendations "do not set federal policy" and that "our policies remain unchanged...my message to women is simple. Mammograms have always been an important life-saving tool..keep doing what you have been doing for years." Her statement appeared to fly in the face of the panel's dramatic recommendations this week delaying when women are advised to start getting regular mammograms to 50, and questioning the usefulness of self-exams. Just a few moments ago, I…
Mama told me not to ride

Daily Nightly Editor

18 Nov 2009 | 12:57 pm

By Anne Thompson, NBC News chief environmental affairs correspondent Growing up, motorcycles always seemed so cool. They looked like the ultimate expression of motorized freedom. My mother thought they were frightening. I had a romantic vision of seeing the world from a bike, the wind blowing through my hair. She saw broken bones, trips to the hospital and worse. In high school, a lot of the guys had bikes, but I could never ride with them. Mum said no. I obeyed and never rode… until this story. Producer Kelly Venardos heard about electric…
The desert news

Daily Nightly Editor

17 Nov 2009 | 1:55 pm

Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor If it’s Tuesday, it must be Phoenix. We are here on the campus of Arizona State University for an awards ceremony—I had a great time with journalism students this morning, and there's more planned for later in the day. It’s an emotional experience being here, at an institution that bears the name of Walter Cronkite.My email is getting flooded with the personal stories of women, many of them our viewers between ages 40 and 50—telling their personal stories. We are going to take on the breast cancer guidelines again…

Roger Von Oech
10,000,000 Yards Swimming This Decade!

Roger von Oech

20 Nov 2009 | 3:53 pm

If you asked me how this decade went for me, I'd say: "Swimmingly!" Why? I'll share a personal swimming milestone with you.This week, I passed the 10,000,000 yard mark for yards swum this decade (2000-2009). (9,144 kilometers, or approx. 5,700 miles.)This started with an innocent remark that a teammate (Jim Merchant) made to me in January, 2000. He said: "I've had a couple of million-plus yard years." I thought, "That would be a fun goal." I ended 2000 with 1,177,000 yards. All-told, I've had six million-plus yards years this decade: 2000-2003, and 2008-2009. The most yards was 2008 with 1.2…
Kenneth Clark's Series, Civilisation

Roger von Oech

17 Nov 2009 | 8:50 pm

For the past two weeks, I've watched the 1969 thirteen-part BBC series, "Civilisation" which was written and narrated by Kenneth Clark. This series --which focused on western art over the past thousand years -- was quite popular when it first appeared four decades ago. I greatly enjoyed it then, and I feel that it holds up pretty well now!
The Best Thing About "2010"

Roger von Oech

15 Nov 2009 | 11:12 am

I think the best thing about about the year "2010" is that most people will call it Twenty-Ten. Nice and simple. Only three syllables! [Not, God forbid, two thousand and ten. Ugh!]This means a return to calling the first two digits of the year one number, and the last two digits another number. For example: 1948 is nineteen forty-eight.I think that most of the years of this decade have been ponderous to pronounce, e.g., 2007 was two thousand and seven — and that's too many syllables. Twenty oh seven would have been just fine by me.Hello Twenty Ten! Happy to see you!
Carbon Credit Humor

Roger von Oech

15 Oct 2009 | 9:28 am

The Internet makes many new enterprises possible. For example, I recently ran across this example. Hooray for human ingenuity! The guy in the bed has used the Internet to combine his sloth (sleeping in) with environmental concern (people wishing to offset their carbon use) and clever marketing ("having an environmentally friendly day"). Made me laugh!
Tomato and Asparagus Synergy

Roger von Oech

12 Sep 2009 | 12:30 pm

Here's some amazing synergy!Gardeners know that when tomatoes and asparagus are planted together, they have a beneficial effect on one another.• Asparagus roots exude a chemical that kills many of the nematodes that either feed of tomato roots or carry diseases to the plant.• Tomatoes repel the asparagus beetle.Both plants do better when planted together!What other examples can you think of?

Ann Coulter
At the End of the Day, Diversity Has Jumped the Shark

19 Nov 2009 | 10:31 am

It cannot be said often enough that the chief of staff of the United States Army, Gen. George Casey, responded to a massacre of 13 Americans in which the suspect is a Muslim by saying: "Our diversity ... is a...
Muslim Suffers Bruised Ego in Fort Hood Tragedy

11 Nov 2009 | 8:00 pm

The massacre at Fort Hood last week is the perfect apotheosis of the liberal victimology described in my book "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America." According to witnesses, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan...
Election 2009: Change I Can Believe In!

4 Nov 2009 | 6:50 pm

MSNBC, Aug. 31, 2009, Keith Olbermann on Robert F. McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor of Virginia:"In (McDonnell's master's thesis), he described women having jobs as detrimental to the family, called legalize
I'll Pass on "Opting Out"

28 Oct 2009 | 3:35 pm

The Democrats' all-new "opt out" idea for health care reform is the latest fig leaf for a total government takeover of the health care system. Democrats tell us they've been trying to nationalize health...
The Grating Communicator

21 Oct 2009 | 3:23 pm

The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston's Playgirl...

Jeffrey Zeldman
A Design Apart Q&A

Jeffrey Zeldman

19 Nov 2009 | 12:11 pm

“Content informs design; design without content is decoration. Content has the same relationship to design that product has to advertising. Good ads are based on the product; good designs come from and facilitate the content. This is one reason we bring content strategy to every design assignment, and one reason we insist on working with real content, not lorem ipsum (placeholder) content. Nothing is sadder than a beautiful design that works great with lorem ipsum but doesn’t actually support the real content.” A Design Apart: Q&A with Jeffrey Zeldman | Sparksheet
As we were

Jeffrey Zeldman

18 Nov 2009 | 9:11 pm

Title images from the early years of A List Apart “for people who make websites” are now available for your viewing pleasure. Were we really ever that young? NAME THAT FONT! Here’s a nice rainy-day activity for ya. Visit the ALA historical header images collection on Flickr and name the fonts used in individual images. Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=3035
FontShop Fonts on the Web

Jeffrey Zeldman

18 Nov 2009 | 1:08 pm

FontShop announces that they are ready to deliver their font library as web type: [S]tarting today, Typekit users can pick from dozens of FontFonts, including FF Meta, FF Dax, and FF Netto. Plus, the Typekit service lets you test any of those FontFonts on your page before you publish. And tomorrow? Typekit is just one piece of a holistic strategy for FontFonts on the web. The library should be licensable in a more traditional way too. That’s where WOFF fits in. … Soon anyone will be able to license and download for their website the same professional quality FontFont they use in desktop…
More Web Fonts

Jeffrey Zeldman

18 Nov 2009 | 4:46 am

Ellen Lupton and Jeffrey Zeldman talk about web fonts, part 2. That is all. This has been a belated part of Web Type Day.
Web Type: Lupton on Zeldman

Jeffrey Zeldman

17 Nov 2009 | 8:01 am

Today in Print, Ellen Lupton interviews Jeffrey Zeldman (that’s me) on web typography, web standards, and more. Part one of a two-part interview. Ellen Lupton is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City and director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. She is the author of numerous books and articles on design, a frequent lecturer, and an AIGA Gold Medalist. This has been a nutritious part of Web Type Day. Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2932

Marc Canter
More November blogging ‘09

marc

18 Nov 2009 | 6:16 pm

Congrats to the Open Web Foundation on launching version 1.0 of Open Web Foundation agreement. Anil Dash’s new incubator sounds awesome. Maybe he’ll be interested in our Digital City project. Here’s the video I of the speech I did in Malmo, Sweden this month. A swine flu of stupidity I’m thinking of switching to Rackspace because of posts like this. I wonder if Scoble can get me “a good deal?” The Mayor of Real-time COMCAST Cares - uh huh, I believe that alright! The Do’s of Streaming Music - Brian Zisk Pivot,
Big Ideas…. Nov ‘09

marc

18 Nov 2009 | 6:08 am

Tim O’Reilly - laments over the ‘war for the web’. Indeed we’re in an on-going battle. I just hope Tim doesn’t try and trademark “War 2.0″. Chris Messina - FactoryJoe has some insights into the death of the URL. As the NEO said - it’s all about ‘choice’. Lev Gonick - CWRU’s CIO informs us a major effort he’s been working on for six years. Gigabit networking into the community, connecting education, health, security and energy services together. This is one of teh projects I’m getting involved with here in…
Mid-November blogging ‘09

marc

13 Nov 2009 | 9:51 pm

Meanwhile…… It’s nice to see Arrington finally name Mark Pincus….. as the slimeball du jour. But some of us have known that about Mark - for awhile. Episode #40 - a new one from theSocialWeb.tv boys…… Open Government Data Poster Flow Chart - thanks Ton! This is totally coolio! U.S. Cyworld R.I.P. - I guess we were right, the U.S. DIDN’T go for their interface! 3 Pointers and the slasher 10 most common API pitfalls Rasmus Lerdorf, the inventor of php - has finally left Yahoo. Go, Factual, Quizipedia, CodeIgniter, Love Machine,
The Beta Block class

marc

13 Nov 2009 | 8:09 am

I’ll be teaching a new class at CWRU in January called ‘the Beta Block’ class. Its based upon a program CWRU is deploying into 104 apartments and homes on Hessler St. in Cleveland, directly adjacent to the Case campus. The program will provide free fiber optic connectivity to the residents of Hessler street and our class will make sure that there is compelling content, user interfaces and gateway to a series of free services. Here’s the class syllabus Here’s a general outline of the project. The class is being sponsored by CWRU. More details to follow.
“How to build a Digital City” keynote - Aarhus ‘09

marc

9 Nov 2009 | 6:08 am

The video is choppy, but the content is real. I even sing a little ‘Recitative’ to begin.

Donald Trump
Five Things I Do Every Day

19 Nov 2009 | 1:18 pm

by Thomas M. Schmitz Engage Mine would not be much of a career if I didn’t engage in actual work. Like attorneys and doctors, I approach my profession as a practice and I strive to give every client my best effort. The nice thing about working is that it gives you experience. Every new task, project or client helps me to accomplish even better work. Learn I go out of my way to learn something new every day. While it's easy to think in terms of learning practical applications such as new skills or techniques, gathering industry information is important too. Keep up with your…
Shaking Hands, Turning Pages

18 Nov 2009 | 12:15 pm

by Donald J. Trump I’ve always been against shaking hands as it’s a great way to pass along millions of germs. The other offense is when people lick their fingers before turning pages--that’s a fingerprint full of germs just waiting for the next person who picks up the paper. In this day and age, people should think about that. It’s not only unnecessary, it’s unhealthy and disrespectful of other people. People are surprised when I shake their hands, and it’s only because it’s a custom (a bad one) that I do it, but I will always wash my hands…
State Landlord and Tenant Acts - Do You Know Yours?

17 Nov 2009 | 1:36 pm

by Tina Merritt The thought of reading through a lengthy legislative act is painful to many of us; however, for a real estate investor, this is one that is a necessity. Your State's Landlord and Tenant legislation is something investors must be familiar with and have on hand at all times. Why? Because this legislation dictates how many properties one must own before coming under certain rules and regulations. It talks about what happens when a lease expires and the landlord/tenant have a verbal agreement to extend. It dictates the procedure for eviction and tenant…
Thanksgiving Time

16 Nov 2009 | 7:25 am

by Donald J. Trump We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases. --Harry S. Truman When the Thanksgiving season comes around, it makes me think about how we should always be in a season of thanksgiving. There’s always a reason to be grateful. We’ve had some challenges the past couple of years and we’ve seen some improvement, and things will continue to improve. There are silver linings to situations that may appear less than positive. The important thing is to approach each day with a sense of victory. Are you big…
What is a Good Deal?

13 Nov 2009 | 10:41 am

by Tina Merritt What defines what the investor considers to be a "good deal"? Well, that depends on the goals of the real estate investor. In order to determine what a good deal is, you need to know your expenses, your plans and your time frame. There is no magic formula. Each real estate investor must create their own definition of a good deal. For a buy-and-sell investor, the "good deal" is defined by many things: holding costs, length of time needed to renovate, cost of renovations, cost of contractors, cost of financing, anticipated market time, etc. For the…

Andy Sernovitz
How Coca-Cola empowers fans all over the world — live with Adam Brown

Andy Sernovitz

20 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

We’re bringing together an all-star group of word of mouth marketers for Word of Mouth Supergenius: The “How to be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing” Conference on December 16 in Chicago. We’ll feature 12 how-to classes, 12 real-world case studies, and 6 brilliant authors. You’re going to learn practical, hands-on techniques to get people talking about you the next day. Our lineup of speakers includes word of mouth supergenius and Coca-Cola Group Director, Digital Communications, Adam Brown. Here Adam shares a few tips based on the case study he’ll be presenting:…
Microtesting: Sell it before you build it

Andy Sernovitz

20 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

Before you build a product, test it by offering it for sale on your website. If no one responds, you’ve just saved tons of time and money. If the responses include suggestions, you’ve just improved the product before you even started. If people give you money — bingo! This sort of testing is faster, cheaper, and more informative than any generic study or focus group. From Inc. Magazine: Consider the method used by TPGTEX Label Solutions, a Houston-based software company that specializes in bar codes and labels for manufacturers and chemical companies. Like many companies,…
How Starbucks used fan feedback to help launch VIA — live with Matthew Guiste

Andy Sernovitz

19 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

We’re bringing together an all-star group of word of mouth marketers for Word of Mouth Supergenius: The “How to be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing” Conference on December 16 in Chicago. We’ll feature 12 how-to classes, 12 real-world case studies, and 6 brilliant authors. You’re going to learn practical, hands-on techniques to get people talking about you the next day. Our lineup of speakers includes word of mouth supergenius and Starbucks Social Media Manager, Matthew Guiste. Here Matthew shares a few tips on using fan feedback based on the Starbucks case study…
Newsletter #757: The “Inspire People” Issue

Andy Sernovitz

19 Nov 2009 | 8:15 am

[Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I Thought of That Email Newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.] It’s more rewarding to work at a company that does its part to make the world better. You can do it without pushing an overly-political agenda or getting ultra-hippie; here are three ideas to get you started inspiring people: 1> To help local communities 2> To be eco-friendly 3> To do awesome things 4> Check it out: Oddly Specific 1> To help their communities Give your…
Will It Blend? Our 4-part series on creating content people love to share

Andy Sernovitz

18 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

As a preview for Word of Mouth Supergenius: The “How to be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing” Conference here in Chicago on December 16, we’re dedicating a full week to our halftime celebrities from Blendtec’s Will It Blend? video series on our Word of Mouth Marketing Blog. We’ve long been big fans of Will It Blend’s simple, cheap, and brilliant formula for creating content people love to share, and we’re thrilled to have Blendtec’s VP of Marketing and Sales, George Wright, join us for our big event next month. Installments to check out in our…

Paul Kedrosky
The Rise and Fall of Empires

pk

18 Nov 2009 | 6:39 pm

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo
Everything is Viral -- Even the Things That Aren’t

pk

17 Nov 2009 | 11:59 am

With virality continuing to be all the rage, whether it’s swine flu, happiness, or Internet services, it’s worth considering whether many things that seem viral actually are. Here is a 2008 BMJ paper on the subject that deserves wider attention: Detecting implausible social network effects in acne, height, and headaches: longitudinal analysis Results Significant network effects were observed in the acquisition of acne, headaches, and height. A friend’s acne problems increased an individual’s odds of acne problems (odds ratio 1.62, 95% confidence interval 0.91 to 2.89). The likelihood…
Readings: Zero, Forgeries, Yeast, and Climate Change

pk

17 Nov 2009 | 10:05 am

Coxe on the power of zero (ZeroHedge) Vermeer forgeries and AD shocks (Money Illusion) The Fate of the Yeast People (Kunstler) Climate change catastrophe took just months (Times)
Research Roundup: Debt and Innovation, Short-selling, Creativity, & Subways

pk

16 Nov 2009 | 2:14 pm

A debtor-friendly bankruptcy system is better for innovation (Review of Financial Studies) Short-selling bans around the world in 2007-09: All bad (CEPR) How Creative Should Creators Be To Optimize the Evolution of Ideas? A Computational Model (arXiv) On the Efficiency of Underground Systems in Large Cities (arXiv)
Readings: Chocolate, Trends, Trade, and Roger Federer

pk

16 Nov 2009 | 10:34 am

U.S. Import Trends for chocolate (Panjiva) The World in 2010: forecasting the year ahead (Economist) South African gold on final deathwatch as top grade scientist finds residual gold is more than 90% less than claimed (Mineweb) Roger Feder on loving winning vs. hating losing (Times)Tear down this wall: The Berlin Wall as a natural experiment in trade (Voxeu)

Thomas Dolby
Fierce storm

TMDR

14 Nov 2009 | 6:09 am

There’s a big storm in the British Isles today. I just measured a wind gust of 81mph! It is rocking the Nutmeg to her foundations…. er, bilges. Small domestic animals flying past the windows. No ships to be seen on the North Sea, which is unsurprising seeing as the waves look to be about 12ft. I just finished a remix for Interscope/Geffen. It took me five full days, which is what I budgeted to get it done. I thought it would be a welcome break from work on my own album, provided it went smoothly. The biggest ‘gotcha’ was if the label wanted changes. Fortunately I heard…
Prefab Sprout’s new album

TMDR

1 Nov 2009 | 4:08 am

A belated note about the latest Prefab Sprout album, ‘Let’s Change The World With Music’, which was released a few weeks ago. It has a curious history. Paddy McAloon wrote the songs at the beginning of the 90s, intending to make a follow-up album to 1990’s ‘Jordan: The Comeback’. As he liked to do, Paddy made demos of all the songs in his home studio, and sent them both to me and to the band’s record company, Sony. I immediately fell in love with the songs, especially ‘Ride Home To Jesus’ and ‘I Love Music.’ I was keen to…
'Gig' announcement!

TMDR

19 Oct 2009 | 10:19 am

Announcing: THOMAS DOLBY AND FRIENDS: Circumnavigating ‘The Flat Earth.’ Union Chapel, Islington, London Feb 28th, 2010 The other night I met up for a drink with my friends from the Flat Earth live band I took with me on my world tour in 1983-84–Justin Hildreth, Lyndon Connah, Matthew Seligman, and Lesley Fairbairn. We thought it would be fun to get back together and play for one night. It was great when Matthew and Kevin Armstrong joined me onstage at the Academy a couple of years ago, and this would be the full touring band. A quick email round to Chucho Merchan, Debra…
Now THAT's what I call a birthday cake.

TMDR

13 Oct 2009 | 1:01 am
Simone

TMDR

12 Oct 2009 | 8:03 am

About fifteen years ago, a new song popped into my head. It had a title, a melody, and a handful of lyrics. It had a faintly Brazilian feel to the rhythm and the harmonies. The title was Simone. It seemed to be about a woman who left her partner and escaped to some exotic location. But the chorus was lacking a punchline. If I was going to sing her name several times, I needed to tell Simone something. There was no message to give her. The atmosphere was certainly there; yet to keep it from lapsing into it ‘lounge’ territory, it needed an ironic twist. And every time I tried to sit…

Darren Rowse
Speech Recognition for Bloggers – The Ultimate Guide

Darren Rowse

20 Nov 2009 | 5:45 am

Speech recognition technology has come a long way in the last few years – in this in depth, informative and inspiring video which Jon Morrow (Associate Editor of Copyblogger and Co-founder of Partnering Profits) shares his first hand insights into speech recognition for bloggers. Jon does all of his blogging via speech recognition so he seemed like the logical guy to ask to cover the topic – in the video (I’m glad he agreed). In the video Jon makes recommendations of software, hardware (the hardware is key) and even demonstrates how he uses them in his everyday blogging. The…
Review This Blog – Man vs Debt

Darren Rowse

19 Nov 2009 | 5:46 am

Last month here on ProBlogger we ran a community review on a reader’s blog. I posted a link to a blog with some comments from the blogger and then opened it up for readers of ProBlogger to review it. The response from the post was great. 120+ comments were left including some great advice. I also had a lot of emails from readers saying that they learned a lot by reading the suggestions of others – many wanted to see these reviews done regularly. As a result I’m going to try to do these reviews on a monthly basis – today we have another one. As a little bonus to…
Warning: Watching This Video May Lead to Work! [But It'll Also Improve Your Blog]

Darren Rowse

18 Nov 2009 | 5:55 am

What’s your blogging Vice? Most bloggers that I know have at least one – whether it be compulsively checking blog stats, constantly tweaking template designs, obsessing over plugins and widgets, spending hour after hour ‘networking’ on Twitter, becoming preoccupied with SEO and… even allowing ourselves to become consumed by learning about blogging…. and not doing much of it. The reality is that as bloggers there are many tasks that compete for our attention. Many of them are important and can bring a lot of life to our blogs but most of them can also become…
13 Ways I Get Back into Blogging after a Vacation

Darren Rowse

17 Nov 2009 | 5:49 am

Yesterday was my first day back at blogging after a 10 day vacation with my family and on Twitter I commented that I was finding it a little hard to get my brain back into blogging mode. @Mikeachim responded by suggesting I write a post on the daily rituals that I use to get my mind into gear. I thought I’d take his suggestion and jot down a few notes – both as a way of getting my head back into blogging but also because looking at the tweets I received this morning it’s a problem many bloggers face. As my head is a little scattered today (as I readjust) I’m going to…
Email Marketing is Not Dead

Darren Rowse

16 Nov 2009 | 10:07 am

While at Blog World Expo recently I recorded this video interview with Abby Johnson from Web Pro News. We covered a variety of topics including why email marketing is not dead – internet marketing for smart people – the new FTC regulations and touched on a new project I’m working on with Brian Clark and Chris Brogan. Read other recent email marketing posts on ProBlogger: 6 Reasons Why You Need to Consider Email as a Communication Strategy on Your Blog How I Use Email Newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger. Email Marketing is Not Dead…

Evan Williams
Why Retweet works the way it does

Ev

10 Nov 2009 | 6:29 pm

This week on Twitter, we're rolling a feature we've been working on for a while out to a lot more users. (If you don't have it yet, you will soon.) That feature is our native version of Retweet, which Biz posted about on the Twitter blog a couple months ago.I'm making this post because I know the design of this feature will be somewhat controversial. People understandably have expectations of how the retweet function should work. And I want to show some of the thinking that's gone into it. I've been a big proponent of this particular design internally at Twitter, because, while it won't serve…
A new email system?

Ev

10 Mar 2009 | 10:40 pm

I'm looking for a system that will work with Gmail and do the following:Make it easy to maintain a white listAuto-respond to and forward every email from someone not on the white listBonus: the forward goes to to different address, depending on contents of email(I realize I can accomplish the above with Gmail filters and the new canned responses. But maintainability is key. Editing the white list from from: -address is hard and seems like it likely (?) has a limit well below the hundreds I'd need.)Does this exist? If so, @ev me.
What Blogger Should Do

Ev

3 Dec 2008 | 11:12 pm

I was recently asked about the "death of blogging" for this article in The Economist. I didn't get back to the reporter in time, though, so my comments ended up, ironically, on his blog. (Conclusion: I don't believe blogging is dying, but...it's complicated. Like in most healthy ecosystems, new species are breeding. Whether or not they're called "blogging" is a question perhaps best left for scientists, but there are many new forms that are undeniably part of the blogging genus.)Last night at the Churchill Club, I was quoted as saying that Twitter "will dwarf Blogger." I do believe that, but…
Just a story.

Ev

3 Dec 2008 | 7:59 pm

While being interviewed on stage last night at the Churchill Club, mentioning how I hardly ever blog anymore because of Twitter, my wife texted me, saying: "You should blog more, it is what gathers your big ideas!"She's right. She then texted: "You really shouldn't check your phone while on stage."Which is also true.This is not a big-idea post. Just a story.
Starting a company is like landing on the shore of a deserted island

Ev

20 Oct 2008 | 6:16 pm

(Photo: Aaron Escobar)You have a certain amount of provisions, which you have to make last until you find a way to make the island sustain life—or convince someone to send you more. You don't know how big the island is at first or what predators lie in wait. There's always a chance someone else will raid your island if it looks fruitful, so you need to shore up your defenses. Eventually, if you're successful, you'll be king of your own prosperous world. If not, you'll die—or, at least, have to go home.Either way, it's a fun adventure (until you get eaten by a tiger).

Walt Mossberg
Intel Makes Leap in Device to Aid Impaired Readers

Walter S. Mossberg

18 Nov 2009 | 6:03 pm

Despite all of the advances in digital technology, too few high-tech products have emerged to help the blind read books or other paper documents, or to make reading such texts easier for people with impaired vision or language-related learning disabilities. A few years back, a breakthrough was made with text-to-speech software that could be installed on a specific mobile phone, but with limitations due to the phone’s small screen and buttons, and restricted processor power. [ See post to watch video ] Now, Intel (INTC), the giant chip maker, is attacking this problem with a new product:…
Time Capsule Alternatives, Windows 7 and Using Droid in Europe

Walter S. Mossberg

18 Nov 2009 | 2:38 pm

We’ve got two Apple iMacs. I planned to buy the Apple Time Capsule to back them up until I read online reports that some seem to just die after 18 months. Can you recommend another backup solution for a home Apple environment? A: The built-in backup program in your iMacs, called Time Machine, doesn’t require Apple’s Time Capsule product to work. It will work with almost any brand of directly connected external hard disk. For instance, I back up my home iMac to a Western Digital drive that’s connected to it via a cable. As for hard-drive life, it’s my experience…
Palm Pixi Needs a Dusting of Speed

Katherine Boehret

17 Nov 2009 | 4:52 pm

Since the debut of the Palm Pre in June, Palm has talked about the value of the device’s webOS operating system, which offers fast responsiveness, multitasking, universal search and smart synchronization. These features are accessed using delightful multitouch gestures like swiping with a fingertip. So it makes perfect sense that Palm would want to expand its family of products running this great mobile operating system. [ See post to watch video ] This week, Palm (PALM) introduced a second device with webOS: the Palm Pixi (palm.com/pixi). This is a stripped-down version of the Pre and…
Price Is Heavier, but These Laptops Are Very Sleek

Walter S. Mossberg

11 Nov 2009 | 6:03 pm

PC makers this fall are trying to get consumers who want small laptops to move up from low-profit netbooks to larger, costlier models called “ultrathin” or “thin and light.” These models are lighter and thinner than many regular laptops, but they have bigger screens and keyboards than most netbooks do. The slim portables tend to start at around $500 and many fall into the $600 to $900 range. You can easily find bigger, heavier laptops for less. But the manufacturers are hoping mobile consumers will be willing to pay a premium for sleekness and long battery life. [ See…
Droid Memory, Palm to iPod Touch, and iMacs for Older Users

Walter S. Mossberg

11 Nov 2009 | 2:22 pm

I have read that the Motorola Droid from Verizon has a limited amount of memory for storing third-party apps, no matter how much total memory you add to it. Is this true? A: That’s right. It’s a characteristic of Android, the Droid’s operating system made by Google, and it’s something I noted as a weakness when I reviewed the first Android phone over a year ago. Even though the Droid comes with 16 gigabytes of memory, in the form of a removable card, apps can’t be stored on this memory card. They must be stored in a special area of internal memory, which in the…

Ben Edelman
Deception in Post-Transaction Marketing

19 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am

Post-transaction marketers have attracted criticism for solicitations that tend to deceive consumers. Offers often promise a savings or discount while actually charging customers on an ongoing basis. Offers often appear while customers are finishing the checkout process at trusted e-commerce sites -- a time when few users expect unrelated offers from third parties. Furthermore, post-transaction marketers obtain consumers' credit card numbers from partner sites (without consumers providing their card numbers to the companies that actually post charges). I summarize and post key documents…
Towards a Bill of Rights for Online Advertisers

21 Sep 2009 | 5:00 am

I offer five rights to protect advertisers from increasingly powerful ad networks -- avoiding fraudulent charges for services not rendered, guaranteeing data portability so advertisers get the best possible value, and assuring price transparency so advertisers know what they're buying. I explain the need for these rights by presenting specific practices causing particular concern.
How Google and Its Partners Inflate Measured Conversion Rates and Increase Advertisers' Costs

13 May 2009 | 5:00 am

I present four examples of Google and its partners interceding to grab users already on (or headed for) advertisers' sites -- spyware/adware popups, tricky toolbars, typosquatting, and Chrome browser autocomplete. In each instance, Google charges advertisers for pay-per-click traffic they would have otherwise received for free.
In Support of Utah's HB450

9 Mar 2009 | 5:00 am

I analyze Utah's HB450, which would prohibit certain deceptive online advertising. I consider the bill's effects, and I explain why I support its approach.
False and Deceptive Display Ads at Yahoo's Right Media

14 Jan 2009 | 4:00 am

Yahoo's Right Media ad marketplace features widespread ads exactly designed to deceive. I present ten examples of these deceptive ads, and I critique their unwelcome characteristics. To estimate the prevalence of deceptive tactics, I examine Right Media's own analysis ad characteristics -- finding that by Right Media's own admission, deceptive ads total 35% or more of Right Media's advertising inventory.

Brian Solis
The Social Media (R)evolution: Your Time is Now

brian

20 Nov 2009 | 4:23 am

Source: ShutterstockThe Future of the Social Web is here today and we’re learning that engagement is not a matter of if or when, but to what extent, how and what value can we deliver and derive from it. The Social Web is much more than a window into information and interaction, it is a completely transformative medium that is changing how we forge relationships, interact with one another, and distribute and discover information. In many ways, the online social revolution is reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution.Access to free and expansive media platforms and distribution channels has…
On Twitter, What Are You Doing Was Always The Wrong Question

brian

19 Nov 2009 | 10:18 pm

What are you doing?Perhaps, Twitter asked the wrong question all along.In all honestly, who cares…it was really never about “what you were doing” that inspired your network to stay connected nor was it the siren for attracting new followers. We chose to follow you because you moved or encouraged us to do so – with every update.For many of the users on Twitter, the question that engendered a response and also also aroused a cultural movement was, “what are you doing?” It was a prompt that, for the most part, was taken quite literally. Its answer served as…
On Twitter and Social Networks, Brands Benefit from Conversations

brian

19 Nov 2009 | 4:40 am

Source: ShutterstockA recent study revealed 20 percent of tweets published are actually invitations for product information, answers or responses from peers or directly by brand representatives. Now we learn that Twitter users are actively paying attention to brands on the popular information network.According to research conducted by Performics and ROI Research, about half of Twitter users who were introduced to a brand on Twitter were compelled to search for additional information.The companies studied the activity of 3,000 users of social networks in the U.S. Of those polled, 70% use…
The Golden Triangle

brian

18 Nov 2009 | 4:11 am

Source: ShutterstockPrior to keynoting the PACA conference in Miami, Maria Kessler, president of the PACA Association, asked me if I had read a recent post by Fred Wilson entitled “The Golden Triangle.” We were deep in conversation as I was seeking an alternate title for my next book that identifies the divide between brands, information, and consumers and how we can, as social architects and engineers, build the bridges between people, contextual relationships, and technology. While “The Golden Triangle” isn’t a contender for the name of the next book, it did get me thinking.In…
With Klout Comes Influence: How To Find Influencers on Twitter

brian

17 Nov 2009 | 8:20 am

This is the uncut version of my latest post on TechCrunch…Measuring individual influence in Social Media is as coveted as it is elusive. While many tools claim to calculate authority, it is the definition of influence that requires clarification in order to grasp the relevance and differences of existing tools and services.For the sake keeping this discussion on track, let’s define influence. According to Merriam-Webster, influence is having the power or capacity to cause an effect.San Francisco-based Klout is no stranger to measuring influence on the Social Web. The company launched…

David Weinberger
Cory Doctorow in support of copyright

davidw

20 Nov 2009 | 7:51 am

In this edition of Radio Berkman, Cory Doctorow argues in favor of copyright … the part of copyright that protects the rights of readers to own (and not just license) books. It being Cory, the discussion covers topics such as the way in which books are like dogs and his sentimental attachment to his digital collection.
Two long posts well worth reading

davidw

19 Nov 2009 | 3:36 pm

Ethan Zuckerman ponders what good is knowing if it doesn’t lead to effective action…and he isn’t asking this rhetorically. You want to read this because Ethan himself is an extreme knower, an extreme care-er, and a full time agent of change. I found that this post caused me to have an internal dialogue in which I kept interrupting myself. The world is just so hard to change, even when the need is so obvious and urgent, and yet we can’t let ourselves believe that knowing and caring can make no difference at all. What’s at issue here (at least in my internal…
Legal advice for online journalists, bloggers, and other webby creators

davidw

19 Nov 2009 | 11:54 am

The Berkman Center has announced the Online Media Legal Network that networks lawyers willing to provide free services with online journalists and other creators of online works who need legal advice for free or for cheap. It could be anything from helping to legally create a company to representing you in court when you are accused of infringing someone else’s tender copyright. This builds on the work that the Citizen Media Law Project at the center. If you need some legal help, go to the OMLN.org website. If you are a lawyer who wants to volunteer to help, sign up at the website.
[berkman] Samuel Bowles on property rights in the information age

davidw

17 Nov 2009 | 11:25 am

Samuel Bowles is giving a Berkman lunchtime talk called: “Kudunomics: Property rights for the information based economy.” He wants to look at how institutions are likely to evolve in the “weightless economy.” NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other people’s ideas and words. THIS TALK WAS ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT for me and certainly contains howlingly wrong misrepresentations of SB’s…
Cory: No, three strikes and you’re out

davidw

16 Nov 2009 | 8:04 pm

I’ve posted a video interview with Cory Doctorow at Broadband Strategy Week. Cory talks about the disproportionality of “three strikes” laws that take away Internet access from those who have been thrice accused of copyright infringement. Perhaps, he suggests, we should also take away Internet access from rightsholders who inaccurately accuse people of infringing copyright. The six minutes are a string of wonderful Cory paragraphs. Cory’s new book is Makers. His explanation of why he Creative Commonses his books is classic Cory. Which is a very excellent thing. BTW,…

Dan Pink
Are you ready to, uh, Drive?

Dan Pink

20 Nov 2009 | 12:34 pm

Truth be told, writing a book doesn’t yield many moments of exhilaration. But for me at least, there’s always one: When you see your baby for the very first time. That moment always makes me giddy. (And believe me: giddy is an instrument rarely heard in my emotional orchestra.) So here, for your viewing pleasure, is the very first copy of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us to roll off the presses. As you see, the truth really is surprising. If you’re in the mood to be surprised yourself, go ahead and pre-order from this link or the ones to the right. You can also read…
Quote of the Day: Right and wrong

Dan Pink

17 Nov 2009 | 6:34 am

Management theorist Russell Ackoff passed away late last month, leaving behind a lifetime of memorable insights. Here’s one of my favorite, reprised in a good WSJ story about Ackoff’s life and legacy. “All of our social problems arise out of doing the wrong thing righter. The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter! If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better!”
Factoid (and peeve) of the day

Dan Pink

15 Nov 2009 | 11:56 am

During last year’s presidential campaign, both McCain and Obama endlessly broadcast ads that promised “good middle class jobs.” And whenever an ad intoned that phrase, up popped an image like the one below, which comes from an Obama campaign stop: burly, 50-something (mostly white) guys wearing dirty uniforms.What drove me crazy about these ads is that this isn’t what “good middle class jobs” look like in this country — and hasn’t been for about 30 years. For the latest confirmation, check out this report on union membership issued by the Center…
Emotionally intelligent subway signage

Dan Pink

14 Nov 2009 | 10:01 am

Rodney Martin send this example of emotionally intelligent signage from — of all places — the New York City subway. Instead of simply issuing an edict about block doors, the sign tries to explain the reason for the rule and maybe stir a few molecules of empathy.I’m not convinced, this will be effective in the hothouse of underground New York. But as they say, if emotionally intelligent signage can make it here, it can make it anywhere.
Factoid of the day: No (work)place like home

Dan Pink

10 Nov 2009 | 1:17 pm

Home-based entrepreneurs “account for more than half of all U.S. businesses and employ more people than venture-backed companies. Jointly, homepreneurs employ one in 10 private-sector workers, or a total of 13 million people.”(Source: Emergent Research via the Kauffman Foundation)

Craig Newmark
Big news from Washington that everyone misses

Craig Newmark

20 Nov 2009 | 9:01 am

Hey, Beth Noveck is working at the White House getting really serious about giving all Americans a serious voice in running our Federal government.She talks about how this is happening at city and state levels in Open Government Laboratories of Democracy:Inspired by the President’s call for more open government, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts launched its data catalogue, following in the footsteps of Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere around the country (as well as cities in Canada and the UK), to provide public access to information by and about government. What…
Kids and computers in Nablus, West Bank

Craig Newmark

20 Nov 2009 | 7:15 am

Hey, the folks at Tomorrow's Youth Organization are doing a great job.I made a minor contribution for systems, looks like they're getting the job done.Photos: Annie Escobar
Two observations from fourteen years of customer service

Craig Newmark

19 Nov 2009 | 7:04 am

Customer service done in good faith is public service. Customer service anchors you to reality.
Turning around the Federal battleship

Craig Newmark

18 Nov 2009 | 7:34 am

You've heard how government rank and file workers are working together, throughout the US and with citizens, to provide increasingly better public service. Their dedication has been consistently impressive, particularly during some bad years.I've been chatting recently mostly with Federal workers, though the following is true of all large organizations, including private industry as well.The Federal government is like a big battleship, hard to turn around and head in the right direction.In previous years, well, I can see that the battleship was adrift, heading toward…
Indiana University menaced by Very Large Squirrels

Craig Newmark

17 Nov 2009 | 2:23 pm

I had been warned, but really wasn't prepared for squirrel-related terror.This one's one of the smaller beasts, and the photo doesn't show, but it's about two foot long, maybe thirty or more pounds.If we do drive ourselves to extinction, the Squirrels are Ready.

Andrew Sullivan
Email Of The Day

Andrew Sullivan

20 Nov 2009 | 5:02 pm

A reader writes: I just received my order of six Window View books (paid the initial price of $29.95) and then ordered 75 once I saw them (at the new price of $16.25). I’ve seen mixed results from self-publishing places in the past, so I wanted to see a real example before I ordered many as gifts. I would imagine that there may be others like me who will order one for themselves and then order more for friends/family and business clients at Christmas once they see how impressive it is in real life. Well: 75 is a lot. But I'm glad the reader sees just how beautiful the book turned out.
Face Of The Day

Andrew Sullivan

20 Nov 2009 | 3:45 pm

Haydar Khalil, a Praham market trader spits a cherry pip out of his mouth as he takes part in a cherry pip spitting competition at the launch of the 2009 Victorian Cherry Season at Prahran Market on November 20, 2009 in Melbourne, Australia. The competition was won by Khalil who spat his cherry pip 15.97 metres. By Scott Barbour/Getty.
Out Of Touch, Ctd

Andrew Sullivan

20 Nov 2009 | 3:21 pm

John Sides throws a few handfuls of salt at that PPP poll. Sager tries to understand what the poll means:Both 2000 and 2004 were close enough to justify some amount of paranoia. Now, perhaps, the Republicans are paying back the Democratic conspiracy mongering of the last decade with their own childishness. ACORN is the GOP’s Diebold, maybe. “Barack Obama is illegitimate,” is the Republicans’ version of “George W. Bush is going to suspend elections in 2008 and seize power as a dictator.” The difference, though, would seem to be how widespread this stuff is. I haven’t seen good…
Is Crist Toast?

Andrew Sullivan

20 Nov 2009 | 2:43 pm

A new poll shows a 43 percent swing against him in ten months. Why? Among other things, he believes Obama is a legitimate president. Moulitsas suggests:If I'm Charlie Crist, I realize that I'm toast in the Republican primary. I note that a three-way race is a coin flip at best. But as a Democrat... switching parties and making an earnest transition on the issues would be the cleanest path to a Senate seat. It's clear that he's no longer welcome in his own party. And he has a choice to make -- remain as a hated interloper in his existing party, or try to find a more…
Subsidizing Debt

Andrew Sullivan

20 Nov 2009 | 2:13 pm

Surowiecki wants to reform the tax system:A debt-ridden economy is inherently more fragile and more volatile. This doesn’t mean that the tax system caused the financial crisis; after all, the tax breaks have been around for a long time, and the crisis is new. But, as a recent I.M.F. study found, tax distortions likely made the total amount of debt that people and companies took on much bigger. And that made the bursting of the housing bubble especially damaging. So encouraging people to take on debt qualifies as a genuinely bad idea. The clearest hurdle to these changes may be political,…

Jessica Gottlieb
Because I Have No Self Control: I Scratch My Crotch

Jessica Gottlieb

19 Nov 2009 | 10:53 pm

Whenever I get a little too much sun, a cold or overtired I get a blister on my lip. I like to call it a blister, but sadly the rest of the world calls it Herpes. Gah. So I have this amazing Doctor and I run in sobbing, “My lip is going to explode,” and before I have the sentence complete they’re handing me samples of Valtrex. This is a miracle, I can feel the burning and the lump under the skin slow down within the first few hours, and I’ve got a day’s worth so I can amble into the pharmacy for a refill whenever it suits me. That was the plan anyhow. The plan…
Tony Hawk Ride Giveaway: The Blackmail Saga

Jessica Gottlieb

19 Nov 2009 | 1:53 pm

I noticed that a lot of you were looking for reviews of the Tony Hawk Ride. I loved it, my kids loved it and I predict that it will be impossible to find right before X-Mas. Right now I’m giving away a X-Mas Tree. What good is a Christmas Tree without a gift to put under it? Tony Hawk has a fantastic Gaming peripheral that’s just come on the market. The Tony Hawk Ride behaves like a skateboard would attached to your gaming system. Activision kindly let me and the kids have a preview of The Ride, and we loved it. In fact, I loved it so much I asked them if I could have one for a…
Live X-Mas Tree Giveaway

Jessica Gottlieb

19 Nov 2009 | 11:59 am

Every X-Mas my family goes to someone’s home to enjoy their X-Mas party. We love the scent of the pine trees, the decorations and we really love the candy canes. What I don’t love is seeing X-Mas trees all over the streets waiting for trash pickup at the New Year. I am not alone, the folks at The Living Christmas Company felt the same way, and they’re out to change the way California celebrates X-Mas. This year you can rent a living X-Mas Tree. That’s right, rather than chopping down a tree to celebrate, you can borrow a living tree, decorate it in your home and later…
An Amazing Day

Jessica Gottlieb

18 Nov 2009 | 4:24 pm

Today I was lucky enough to film yet another Dr. Phil episode. I will be sure and update everyone about the air date, and when it does air I’ll give you a little more detail. I am absolutely exhausted, so I want to tell y’all a few quick things. Dr. Phil and his staff are consistently lovely. Robin Mc Graw is otherworldly, when I think of a Southern Belle I think of a woman like her. Strong and solid, no bullshit, and OhMyGawd is she put together. I think the show went well, and I love that they follow up with guests who appear to need help. Menschen. Unfortunately our sweet…
How Much Money Do Mommy Bloggers Make? Tech Talk Tuesday

Jessica Gottlieb

16 Nov 2009 | 11:01 pm

Last night there was a ridiculous fascinating discussion on twitter about how much Mommy Bloggers make. Well, if you want to sponsor a post my rates are public over at Social Spark. Note, that I’ve taken exactly one sponsored post with them thus far, why? Because even with cash being flung my way, I’ve got to believe in the business. I’m mostly a business atheist. Kelby Carr believes that Mom Bloggers deserve to get paid. I mostly agree with Kelby. Kelby and Gwen Bell then went on to have a twitter discussion about how much money Mom Bloggers make. One mom went so far as to…

Andrew Baron
jamiew:Know Your Meme: Auto-Tune goes Internet Platinum!

18 Nov 2009 | 4:40 pm

jamiew:Know Your Meme: Auto-Tune goes Internet Platinum!
“Weird Al” Yankovic rehearsing for Know Your Meme Stay tuned...

29 Oct 2009 | 10:47 am

“Weird Al” Yankovic rehearsing for Know Your Meme Stay tuned for a special guest.
Be the (internet) sensation of any Halloween party with Know...

14 Oct 2009 | 8:51 am

Be the (internet) sensation of any Halloween party with Know Your Meme’s Hallow-meme Costume Builder. Our internet scientists have crafted easy-to-follow costume recipes for your favorite memes, from Afro Ninja to Zombie McCain.
How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design

7 Sep 2009 | 2:35 pm

Do you know how to use the twitter logo? My guess is that you are far from able to navigate the Twitter website in general, and that in particular, you can not explain the why’s and wherefore’s behind the intricate and complex functionality that exists behind the Twitter logo. Don’t feel bad. I have used Twitter daily for years and I still can’t figure out how the Twitter website works either.Even Steve Rubel, THE super-duper-duper-user of Twitter was trying to figure out the most simple aspects of who can see what and unfortunately, I didn’t know. I’ll bet you didn’t know the…
A Timeframe for TV's Future?

30 Aug 2009 | 11:38 am

Printed today in The Guardian: “The TV industry has as little as two years to create viable digital businesses or face a version of the “iTunes moment” that saw the music business cede the online future to Apple, according to Ashley Highfield.” With regards to the various threat levels to traditional media, the TV and Film businesses are converging and it’s much more complex to transition online. More than two years will almost for sure be needed. Rocketboom has been around almost five years now and there is almost no difference in terms of non-technicalogical support. Consider the…

bijan sabet
So my daughter wants a mobile phone

20 Nov 2009 | 5:34 am

This morning, like most Fridays, I take my daughters to breakfast before school (the boy hangs at home with mom. No preschool on Fridays) My oldest is now 10. And these days she is selling me hard on why she wants a phone. This morning was no different. I’m not ready to give her one yet. And i gave her my reasons. Then she asked “dad, when did you get your first phone?” I replied, “I didn’t get one until I was 22” She laughed “hey, tell me the truth!” I say “I am. Really” She pipes back “I’m gonna ask grandma when she first bought you a phone” I then say “look,…
Google Health

20 Nov 2009 | 3:02 am

I just set up my profile on Google Health. I added my basic vitals (birthdate, weight, height) plus the date of my recent flu shot, my allergies as well as past surgeries. I shared my profile with my wife so she now has full access. A few weeks ago I had a routine physical including blood tests to check on my cholesterol. I still don’t have the results. It’s on my todo list to call my doctors office to get the data but thats a hassle. I wish there was an easy & automatic way to get that data into my profile. As I’ve said before, the family tree is missing medical history. And while…
Age of Consent - Kevin Drew I was sitting in the lobby of the...

20 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

Age of Consent - Kevin Drew I was sitting in the lobby of the Standard in NYC the other day and the original New Order version of this song came on. One of my favorites.
whitneymcn: Joe Strummer (via dontforgetthecoffee...

19 Nov 2009 | 5:08 pm

whitneymcn: Joe Strummer (via dontforgetthecoffee + fuckyeahrocknroll) joe strummer pic = automatic reblog. everytime.
A very cool upcoming event: Boxee Beta

19 Nov 2009 | 3:49 am

Our portfolio company Boxee is hosting a free event on Monday, December 7th in Brooklyn. At the event they are going to show the new beta version of Boxee which has an overhauled user interface and a number of awesome new features. The team worked very hard on the beta and it shows. Last year Boxee hosted a similar event and over 600 people showed up. I know Avner, Boxee’s ceo/founder, and the team were grateful to the Boxee community and so they decided to do it again. I love these events. It’s a nice way to meet the founders and see the people that are building Boxee. It’s a great way…

Brent Simmons: Inessential.com
Notes from Mac programming class guest lecture

17 Nov 2009 | 9:44 am

Last night I gave a guest lecture at Hal Mueller’s Mac programming class at the UW Extension. The idea behind the lecture was to talk about what makes a great Mac app. I took that as an excuse to talk about everything from work habits to UI to marketing. In other words, I threw in just about everything I know — which, it turns out, only takes about an hour to deliver. :) It goes chronologically — getting to 1.0, releasing 1.0 and the follow-through, on to working on 2.0. I don’t actually have time right now to write it up properly. But, at least, here are my notes: Road to 1.0 More…
AppHistory app idea

8 Nov 2009 | 2:04 pm

I’ve often wished I had a little app that just tracks the history of apps I write. On what day was Whatever.app 2.0.3 released? On what day was MyiPhoneApp 3.0 sent to the App Store for review? On what day was it approved? Etc. I don’t keep track of these things too well, but I always mean to. Seems like it might make a nice little app. There would be standard actions (initial beta, released, uploaded, appeared on App Store). Maybe add things like URLs to reviews on the web, so you could go back to them later. Maybe have a free text option too, or the ability to define events. (Don’t…
Last day of NetNewsWire introductory pricing

31 Oct 2009 | 10:52 am

In a nutshell: the price of the for-pay, ad-free versions of NetNewsWire for Macintosh and for iPhone will go up at midnight tonight. If you were thinking of buying, please don’t miss out. (Last day to save $5 on the Mac version and save $3 on the iPhone version.) See the sale ends today post on ranchero.com for more detail. Use the money you save to buy other cool iPhone apps! A few I recommend are Pickin’ Time, Postage, and Word Spin.
Vaccines

29 Oct 2009 | 4:46 pm

An interesting link on Daring Fireball today has me thinking about vaccines. I’m still living with the effects of the chicken pox I had in third grade. There was no vaccine then. Every kid just got it. It swept through school, and nobody tried too hard to prevent the spread, because every kid would get it, and it was better to get it when you were young. It was just a thing. We thought we were modern because it was just chicken pox — not polio or smallpox or one of those scarier diseases that had been conquered. But now there is a vaccine, and I wish like crazy there had been a vaccine…
Code relationship between TapLynx and NetNewsWire

14 Oct 2009 | 10:22 am

The code behind TapLynx and NetNewsWire for iPhone are similar — there is plenty of overlap — but they’re not the same. Database engine TapLynx is the engine I originally wrote for NetNewsWire 2 for iPhone. But then, in a decision that’s easily second-guessable, I wrote a new engine for NetNewsWire for iPhone. The TapLynx version is mature: the one in NetNewsWire for iPhone is much less mature. TapLynx was originally an iPhone OS 2.x project: it uses SQLite (via FMDB) instead of Core Data. But when I went to write NetNewsWire 2, Core Data was newly-available on the iPhone, and I was…

John Robb's Weblog
The China Myth

John Robb

16 Nov 2009 | 8:02 am

In truth, China is more vulnerable that the US is. Yves has some good stuff on this today. Here's more from the FT's Abrose Evans Pritchard: It is fashionable to talk of America as the supplicant. That misreads the strategic balance. Washington can bring China to its knees at any time by shutting markets. There is no symmetry here. Any move by Beijing to liquidate its holdings of US Treasuries could be neutralized – in extremis – by capital controls. Well-armed sovereign states can do whatever they want. If provoked, the US has the economic depth to retreat into near autarky (with NAFTA)…
No interest in governing

John Robb

9 Nov 2009 | 3:42 am

Krugman misses the point. There's no interest in governing on both sides of the isle.
Day Labor

John Robb

9 Nov 2009 | 3:37 am

Lining up outside home depot.
Taibbi: Obama is a tool

John Robb

25 Oct 2009 | 11:13 am

To the point.
KNOW YOUR ENEMIES ;->

John Robb

24 Oct 2009 | 9:13 am

Here's T Boone Pickens lamenting the fact that China is winning oil contracts in Iraq etc. and leaving the US in the cold. That kind of "nationalist" approach used to work. However, things have changed since the world globalized (and I'm far from alone on this view). Frankly, I see little difference between "Chinese" oil companies and "US" oil companies or super weathies like T. Boone. They both are aggressively antagonist to your and my future prosperity. So, if push came to shove and I had to decide, I think…

Lance Knobel
The ecosystem dilemma

Lance Knobel

20 Nov 2009 | 8:43 am

My latest column for Reuters compares the ecosystem approaches of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android mobile operating systems. My conclusion: For an ecosystem to succeed it will need the best developers. Apple’s policy of near-tyrannical control ensures certain quality and standards, but it also risks scaring off the best talent. I also wanted to include an absolutely perfect xkcd cartoon. Not sure why that didn’t pass muster, but here it is:
Why use McKinsey — or any of the other guys?

Lance Knobel

13 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

Jay Rosen has a plaintive tweet: I don’t get why managers hire McKinsey. Aren’t they supposed to be able to manage? What am I missing? Jay’s question comes on the heels of news that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has hired McKinsey & Company to run its slide rules over the operations of the Wall Street Journal. Magazine group Condé Nast and Time Warner have recently come under the gimlet eye of McKinsey consultants. The question on why engage the very expensive services of McKinsey, Bain, BCG or any of the other big strategy consultants is a long-running one in…
Talking to Brad DeLong

Lance Knobel

14 Oct 2009 | 9:27 am

Sometimes my work on Berkeleyside intersects with my interests here at Davos Newbies. If you’re a Brad DeLong reader you’ll probably find my chat with him worth reading. It ranges from Erasmus to Tolkien to the future of higher education.
My new Berkeley site

Lance Knobel

13 Oct 2009 | 10:31 am

If any readers of Davos Newbies were following InBerkeley, it’s no longer being updated. I’ve started a new hyperlocal site for Berkeley, Berkeleyside. It’s day one, but come have a look.
Financial Times’ new low

Lance Knobel

10 Oct 2009 | 12:39 pm

I’ve lamented the US political coverage by the Financial Times’ Edward Luce before. And the other day Felix Salmon picked up the theme. But I think today may mark a new low. Luce provides political analysis on the award of the Nobel peace prize to president Obama. He takes the church of the savvy line that the prize will reinforce the view that Obama is all talk, no action. Given that Luce has never found a conservative take on conventional wisdom that he doesn’t like, that’s unsurprising. But he plumbs the depths with his language. Rush Limbaugh, the talk radio host,…

Michael Gartenberg
5 Things Missing from the Droid

Gartenberg

8 Nov 2009 | 9:41 am

Lots of buzz about the Droid over the weekend as more users got their hands on a device. My first take is posted over on SlashGear and it’s mostly positive. If, however, you’re thinking of getting one, here’s a list of five things that you should know about before you buy. 1. Applications. Despite the 10,000 apps in the the marketplace there’s too much stuff still missing, especially in terms of entertainment. That means a real lack of good games, no eBook readers like Kindle or Noook, no Slingplayer etc. Even worse, Android 2.0 still has a limit of 256mb for…
Sonos S5 well, just rocks

Gartenberg

4 Nov 2009 | 9:14 am

I’ve been a Sonos fan since they first introduced their first products years ago and it’s been fun watching them evolve the line, tapping into new trends and offering new services and values. The latest in the line is the Sonos S5, a standalone device that’s designed to be used with an iPhone as the controller (of course, it also plugs into the rest of the Sonos family and can use any Sonos controller). It’s a simple concept and I’m surprised that no one has thought of it before. First, let’s see what the S5 isn’t. It’s not a speaker dock to…
The Two Ballmers

Gartenberg

21 Oct 2009 | 7:25 pm

I’ve spent most of the day wandering around, meeting with a lot of folks and the topic that kept coming up was Microsoft and the Windows 7 launch and how Microsoft will do tomorrow. Matt Buchanan summed it well tonight. The most interesting news this week so far in tech was a new mouse. Tomorrow Steve Ballmer will take the stage in NY. It might be the most important product introduction for Microsoft. Ever. It’s not whether Win 7 will be a success. It will. It’s whether Win 7 will be relevant. Reviews have been good so far but Win 7 is only as good as the hardware it runs…
New Macbook shows Apple is avoiding the race to the bottom

Gartenberg

20 Oct 2009 | 9:04 am

Apple’s new lineup of products today show that they’re largely ignoring the advice of analysts, journalists and other pundits and who keep suggesting Apple’s strategy must include lower priced $599-$799 laptops as well as enter the netbook market. Instead, Apple’s revamped the lonely white Macbook with core elements of the pro line including a uni-body design (Polycarbonate not metal), LED backlit display and a non removable battery with up to 7 hours of battery life and the now signature glass multi-touch trackpad. Coming less than a day after Apple revealed stellar…
New iMac line is aspirational tech at its best.

Gartenberg

20 Oct 2009 | 9:03 am

Yes, the new bumps to the Mini are interesting and expected (and the new Mini based server will be a most interesting product to watch, keep an eye on that on) It’s the new iMac line that’s worthy of attention. The latest incarnation of the new all in one desktops is nothing short of breathtaking. While the design is familiar, the new aesthetics make it look more like something from an Apple concept lab than a commercial PC. Available in just two sizes, 21 and 27 screens, it’s the 27″ model that will stand out, there’s no doubt that when many customers walk into…

Naked Jen
you turn me into somebody loved

nakedjen

17 Nov 2009 | 3:11 pm

every time i start to feel better, i just end up feeling much worse. it's like two steps forward seven steps backwards. or something like that.
Every Day Is Ice Cream and Chocolate Cake

nakedjen

11 Nov 2009 | 1:43 pm

She’s peppering me with questions about The Outlaw. The previous evening I had chosen him over her, choosing Indian food and a naked Friday soak in the hot tub instead of a cultural outing to a Mark Twain play production. I know she’s more than curious about this new paramour.
I Wish That Your Hair Was Orange

nakedjen

6 Nov 2009 | 10:11 am

We all know I'm a girl that's all about the words. If you can use words well, I might just follow you anywhere.
A Magic Bus of An Entirely Different Color

nakedjen

5 Nov 2009 | 5:06 pm

I do love with abandon, it is true. I always have. If I love you, I give you everything I've got and I never hold back. I sparkle with it, shine it on you, beam it all in your direction.
And Sometimes You Get An Award!

nakedjen

3 Nov 2009 | 7:15 am

Sometimes, you just get an award for your blog for no particular reason at all. I'm all about coming in first. My sisters will tell you that since I'm the oldest of the three children in our family, since I'm...

Rebecca Mackinnon
China isn't happy with the IGF

Rebecca MacKinnon

19 Nov 2009 | 12:33 am

On the final day of a four-day meeting, most government representatives expressed support for renewing the Internet Governance Forum's five-year mandate which ends next year. China did not. Chen Yin, the head of the Chinese delegation to the Internet Governance Forum, said yesterday that the IGF's mandate should not be continued without reforms. Below is the full text of his statement, taken from the official transcript here (PDF). Video (with bad-quality audio in Chinese) can be found on YouTube here. I've added a few links so that the acronyms will make more sense to…
Muzzled by the United Nations

Rebecca MacKinnon

18 Nov 2009 | 2:41 am

The Internet Governance Forum is winding down today in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. There have been a lot of very constructive conversations in workshops and panels over the past four days about how to advance security, privacy, child protection, AND human rights and free expression on the Internet. Unfortunately, the biggest headline coming out of the forum so far has been an incident on Sunday in which a poster promoting a book about censorship by the Open Net Initiative was removed by U.N. security. See reports by the BBC, the Associated Press, and the ONI's FAQ on the incident. Also see a…
Chinese BloggerCon 2009: Micro Power from the mouth of a cave

Rebecca MacKinnon

13 Nov 2009 | 10:04 am

Twitter is blocked in China. Even so, a large and growing community of Chinese people are using it every day to trade news, ideas, and increasingly first-hand information about things that people are experiencing or witnessing. Several people have reported their detentions or "chats" with police live on Twitter. Others recently used Twitter to mobilize postcard-writing campaigns to get friends released from jail. If you want to keep abreast of the most interesting liberal-leaning social and political commentary on the Chinese Internet, Twitter is the most effective way.
Happy Internet Human Rights Day!

Rebecca MacKinnon

9 Oct 2009 | 8:06 pm

Today is the 98th anniversary of the 1911 Wuchang Uprising which led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and founding of the Republic of China in 1912. (I wonder how the 100th anniversary will be celebrated in the People's Republic two years from now?) To mark the occasion, 15 Chinese intellectuals have issued a Declaration of Internet Human Rights, suggesting that netizens of China and the world celebrate October 10th to be Internet Human Rights Day. C.A. Yeung at the blog Under the Jacaranda Tree has done a great public service and posted a translation. I've made a few small…
Obama administration disappoints on civil liberties

Rebecca MacKinnon

9 Oct 2009 | 1:49 am

On Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to renew all of the powers granted to the U.S. government by the USA PATRIOT act - passed hastily in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks - that were set to expire by the end of this year. The committee rejected changes that would have strengthened the protection of Americans' civil liberties and privacy while still retaining expanded power to conduct anti-terrorism investigations. They also voted to approve Republican-sponsored amendments - most of them recommended by the Obama administration - that removed remaining civil liberties…

Rex Hammock
Wikis can be maps, too

Rex Hammock

17 Nov 2009 | 11:29 am

Longtime readers of this blog (and the two of you know who you are) are aware that I love maps. I’m on record as saying the greatest software ever is what is now Google Earth. In presentations about social media, I always emphasize that the way in which people “express themselves” on the internet is often not in blog posts or tweets or sharing-photos or video. For some people, expressing themselves is more about making lists, or bookmarking websites, or helping out on wiki mapping project. A wiki mapping project? (In this case, I’m using the term “wiki” to…
Wikipedia is running its first banner ad

Rex Hammock

13 Nov 2009 | 8:25 am

I had a minor jolt seeing a big banner ad across the top of Wikipedia this morning. However, the “ad” (actually a few are rotating) is a link to a message from Jimmy Wales encouraging users to donate to the WikiMedia Foundation. Part of the pitch: Wikipedia will stay ad-free forever. Sidenote: If you’re a registered user of Wikipedia, check out the new “Beta” look of the site. I’m assuming it will launch around the first of the year. It’s a part of the “Wikipedia Usability Project. Sidenote 2: We recently moved to what is the Wikipedia…
If ‘advertising’ is your middle name, your surveys will always suggest the solution is …

Rex Hammock

12 Nov 2009 | 11:31 am

I have a theory that goes something like this: If the name of your organization is Interactive Advertising Bureau, any study of the needs of internet marketers is going to suggest that “advertising” is the solution. According to my theory, such a study will focus on how media companies should involve getting a salesforce of “category experts” and interactive marketing gurus who can help develop more “engaging options and formats.” So, having this theory, I’m not in the least bit surprised that a new study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and…
Always grateful

Rex Hammock

11 Nov 2009 | 7:22 am

One of the magazines Hammock has the honor to publish is Semper Fi, the national magazine of The Marine Corps League, a congressionally-charted national auxiliary organization founded in 1923 that promotes and preserves the spirit and traditions of all Marines who serve in, or who have ever served in, the U.S Marine Corps. Today it is veterans day in the U.S. I think of the hundreds of Marines (once a Marine, always a Marine — there are no “former Marines”) we have featured on the pages of Semper Fi when I thank veterans — Marines, and all veterans of the U.S. military…
Google, I salute you (for free airport wifi)

Rex Hammock

10 Nov 2009 | 4:30 am

Long-time readers of this blog know that I’m a fan of airports that provide free wifi to travelers. I think wifi should be like air conditioning or rest rooms — part of the convenience infrastructure, not a profit center. Airports can profit from the service in a number of ways: Letting travelers know about the airport shops and restaurants within a few hundred yards of them, for example. Secondly, free wifi allows passengers to go online to self-manage travel changes should bad weather or other factors arise. Well, I’m getting my wish: At least between today and January 15.

Sylvia Paull
Blast from the Past: Weather Underground at Green Fest

Sylvia Paull

16 Nov 2009 | 8:07 am

Green Festival in San Francisco, an annual event celebrating all that is green (from at least twenty different kinds of organically grown chocolate to recycled cashmere sweaters and bathroom appliances) reminded me of a Moroccan street fair in southern France in which I suddenly was surrounded by swarms of people and realized there was no way out. It's organized by Global Exchange and Green America and abounds with hundreds of vendors touting publications like Ode and Mother Jones to Cliff Bars, Strauss dairy products, and electric folding bicycles. Raines Cohen, cofounder of the…
More Responsible Journalism

Sylvia Paull

4 Nov 2009 | 9:19 pm

Scott Rosenberg, cofounder of Salon.com, a former theater and movie critic, and author ("Say Everything" and "Dreaming in Code"), says his writing lately has been about mistakes. In software jargon, mistakes are called bugs, and that's why Rosenberg's latest venture, Mediabugs.org, modeled after the way open source developers solicit testers to report bugs in their programs, offers a way for readers to report bugs they find in media and give reporters a chance to respond.Rosenberg received a grant from the Knight Foundation Challenge, which dispenses $5 million…
Google uber Alles

Sylvia Paull

28 Oct 2009 | 8:05 pm

Today's (Oct. 28) lecture at UC Berkeley's iSchool by Hal Varian, former iSchool dean and now chief economist of Google (as if they are a nation unto themselves), seemed like a variant of Gary Vaynerchuck's paean to the powers of the Internet. Instead of focusing on the Web's promise of economic success and personal expression, Varian argued the Internet is the mothership of creativity in the 21st century.Varian -- who oversees new ways of increasing ad revenues through Google search -- attributes the "huge innovation on the Web in the last fifteen years" to what he…
Digital Dale Carnegie: Gary Vaynerchuk

Sylvia Paull

27 Oct 2009 | 3:28 pm

As part of the Berkeley Arts & Letters series, and promoted by the Berkeley Cybersalon, an irregularly occurring event I've hosted for more than a decade, Gary Vaynerchuk, Belarussian-born, New Jersey-raised entrepreneur and author of NY Times #2 bestseller "Crush It," spoke at the Hillside Club in Berkeley October 25. The audience drew a modest fan following from Modesto as well as non-tech locals who want to know how to use social media tools to make money, enjoy work, and share their passions with the world.Vaynerchuk speaks in sound bites. He was made for social media…
NY Times Seems Clueless, Still

Sylvia Paull

21 Oct 2009 | 8:53 pm

Curious about the NY Times mindset, I went to hear Greg Winter, editor of the foreign desk covering Africa, Latin America, and the United Nations, speak at the UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism series tonight on the Future of Journalism in American Society. Winter is also a 2000 graduate of the J School and friends with the new dean, Neil Henry, who was a former professor.Winter was trained as a 20th century journalist to research a story thoroughly, fact-check every bit of information, and work on a single story-per-day deadline. The Internet, he says, "has fundamentally…

Hugh MacLeod: Gaping Void
scotland cartoon

Hugh MacLeod

20 Nov 2009 | 12:16 pm

[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
liberation

Hugh MacLeod

20 Nov 2009 | 12:15 pm

[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
coming through town

Hugh MacLeod

20 Nov 2009 | 12:14 pm

[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
i want to believe

Hugh MacLeod

20 Nov 2009 | 12:12 pm

[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
what people say

Hugh MacLeod

20 Nov 2009 | 12:11 pm

[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Limited Edition Prints. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview. Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]

GerardMcLean
The death of “click here” has been greatly exaggerated

Gerard

4 Nov 2009 | 12:32 pm

I received a call from someone who pulled my phone number from the Whois record of a client. He was having trouble signing up for some services on a Web page because he didn’t know where to go next. In his mind, the page simply ended without any direction. When I went to the page in [...]
How social media is failing social media… and business

Gerard

2 Nov 2009 | 10:41 am

The Center for Media Research sent out their email Research Brief today about how small business are not into social networks for leads. As a small businessman myself, I agree with them. Kinda. I can’t recall the last lead I got twittering out my latest status or a coupon deal or where I am going [...]
My resume Wordle.net cloud

Gerard

29 Oct 2009 | 7:19 am

Just for fun and visual cognition, I made a Wordle Cloud from my résumé. I think a lot of hiring managers would benefit a lot by running résumé through a word cloud so see the major words and concepts show up quickly. Maybe some already do. What does your résumé word cloud say about you? Would [...]
Nobody in the railroad industry knew who Orville and Wilbur Wright were either

Gerard

28 Oct 2009 | 4:04 am

I was talking with a colleague of mine this morning about how Social Media is taking shape and changing the world, and that it would be good for people in business to know who the movers and shakers are. People like Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Danny Brown, David Armano, Robert Scoble, Hugh Macleod, Shannon Paul, [...]
Sometimes more is just really darn confusing

Gerard

27 Oct 2009 | 7:12 am

Some time back, Kroger decided to “dress up” the packaging of their private label sour cream. Instead of plain white containers, they decided that they were going to show a photo of the product in use. And that is when they started confusing me. Take a look at the container above. Is the sour cream plain, [...]

Franklin McMahon
Is Your Brand Just a Technical Service or is it Emotionally Compelling?

Franklin McMahon

19 Nov 2009 | 7:11 am

There is a big difference between a brand and a service, a brand is more of a story and a service is more of a task. So when you do networking with potential clients, how do you describe yourself? Do you stick to talking about the task? I have always disliked the term “freelance”, I always prefer that people position themselves as a company, even if it is just them. But freelancers, especially when they are just starting out, often stick to just describing the tasks they do. For example if they do web work, they will mention they can do all the coding, host the site on a server…
Sharpening the Saw - Close the Web Browser and Open Your Mind

Franklin McMahon

11 Nov 2009 | 6:08 am

We’re all busy, we all have lots of tasks, projects, things going on. We are focused on growing our career. This could mean networking, gaining new clients, making things happen. But what about you personally? What about your skill set? Your talents? Self-improvement and self-growth? Author Stephen Covey covered this in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, in fact it’s the 7th Habit, sharpening the saw. You are the saw and you are always engaged in keeping things improving, growing and sharper. This could cover many areas including your mind, spirit and physical body.
Black Belt Mindset - Interview with Franklin McMahon on PowerPOD Podcast

Franklin McMahon

9 Nov 2009 | 7:55 pm

This week I was a guest on PowerPOD, the podcast hosted by Jim Bouchard, which focuses on inspiration and motivation by having a black belt mindset. We talked about a large number of topics, including my karaoke skills, Media Artist Secrets TV, producing podcasts for a living, celebrity marketing, social media, being in the “beam” of the spotlight with marketing and lots more. A lot of fun! Check it out: Listen on the web Listen in iTunes JimBouchard website - Black Belt Mindset Share on Facebook
Are You Ready To Perform The “Is This Helping Me Grow My Business” Experiment?

Franklin McMahon

4 Nov 2009 | 6:05 am

Are you ready to try an experiment? It can be fun and it can show how effectively you may be running your own business. The truth is too often we pour enormous amounts of energy into items with little to no payoff. Take a look at your to-do list and then examine your next week, next month and someday to-do list. Chances are you may have hundreds of items. You’ll sort and analyze them at some point, but how you do that can be the difference between stagnation and success. If you look at successsful people who run their own successful company, and then review their to-do list, you’ll see…
Interview with New Media Producer Franklin McMahon on Meetings Podcast

Franklin McMahon

29 Oct 2009 | 1:12 pm

This week I was on the Meetings Podcast and host Mike McAllens and I talked a lot about my career, video production, podcasting, photography, Media Artist Secrets, Rumor Girls, social media, Willard Beach TV, acting, Millimeter Magazine, Maine and lots more. We also went over some of my career development tips and how to be a rock star for your business. If you get a chance check out additional episodes of this podcast, very informative and Mike has great guests such as digital marketing guru Mitch Joel of Twist Image and Six Pixels of Separation. Lots of fun, enjoy! (click the play button…

Ted Murphy
Happy 10th Birthday MindComet!

Ted Murphy

17 Nov 2009 | 6:07 am

Last month I had the pleasure of joining the crew from MindComet on their 10th anniversary cruise (if you are into corporate culture be sure to click on that link!). It is hard to believe that it has been ten years since I started the company. I haven’t been active in day to day operations since I founded IZEA, but the organization remains a big piece of my heart. I have always seen MindComet as an engine for innovation and creativity, it was clear that these value remain when I had the opportunity to speak to new team members I had not met before. I would like to give a huge shout out…
Show Me Your Cans!

Ted Murphy

16 Nov 2009 | 6:47 am

Support Rock for Hunger It’s hard to believe but Thanksgiving and Festivus are right around the corner. While the holidays are a time of celebration and full, bloated bellies for most they are a time of struggle for others. Way too many people don’t have food to put on the table year round, let alone the holidays. I am supporting Rock for Hunger again this month with a mini canned food drive to build up their reserves. My goal is to collect 200 cans of food this week to donate to this wonderful organization. 10 Cans for the hungry = 1 Burrito for You I will be at the downtown…
I call #bullshite

Ted Murphy

12 Nov 2009 | 4:24 am

One of the arguments that I hear from people when they talk about Sponsored Tweets is that you will lose followers if you participate. It’s total #bullshite from people who have no real experience with sponsored conversations. They make assumptions about how things work and how people will react without taking the time to try it for themselves and perfect the practice. These are not “social media experts”. Experts have actual experience with the tools and concepts they speak about. These are social media donkeys, following the herd blindly through the echo-chamber that is…
Don’t Advertise in Phone Books!

Ted Murphy

10 Nov 2009 | 10:57 am

Last November I wrote a blog post titled Stop leaving me phone books. In it I explained that I haven’t had a home phone in (5) years, yet I continue to get phone books. My friend Alli pointed me to a site that was supposed to stop the madness… but one year later I came home to two phone books sitting on my porch. Why would the phone company continue to deliver expensive phone books to me? One reason. Advertising dollars. Phone Book Circulation is Crap Credit : funkeemunkeeland The phone company sells advertising to local businesses largely based on the circulation of phone books.
Join Me and Tony Hsieh

Ted Murphy

9 Nov 2009 | 8:52 am

I will be speaking at the B.I.G. (Business Innovation & Growth) Summit on Thursday, November 19th at the Hilton Orlando. The summit is a big departure for the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce and I am happy to see some spunk coming out of our local business community. Instead of suits and ties thing jeans, t-shirts and flip flops. This is a business conference designed for today’s creative workforce. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh will be keynoting the event. His session is titled “Building a $1 Billion Business”… hells yeah! Sign me up! I will lead a workshop on…