How Not to be a Key Online Influencer | David Henderson - author, journalist
http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/01/21/key-online-influencer/

by David Henderson - author, journalist - Story of Andrew James and a tweet that was misinterpreted by his client, FedEx

use of social media

A friend initially shared this story with me recently, and I have delayed posting it until confirmation. It’s a story about a PR account executive/vice president named James Andrews from Ketchum in Atlanta who flew to Memphis to visit FedEx, one of the agency’s biggest clients. Andrews’ mission was to — now, this is important — talk with the corporate communications people at FedEx about social media. Upon landing in Memphis, Andrews posted this message on the popular social media, mini-blogging service, Twitter, that’s widely followed by business people worldwide: James Andrews“True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.’”

It’s a story about a PR account executive/vice president named James Andrews from Ketchum in Atlanta who flew to Memphis to visit FedEx, one of the agency’s biggest clients. Andrews’ mission was to — now, this is important — talk with the corporate communications people at FedEx about social media.

unthinking use of twitter comes back to haunt someone

he top executives at the FedEx front office, and the company’s corporate communications staff. At that point, a person in the FedEx corporate communications staff apparently took umbrage to the post by Andrews and responded with this personal message to Mr. “KeyInfluencer:”

30 facebook apps for businesses

Here are over 30 Facebook applications to help promote, network, communicate, collaborate and accomplish more with your business.

Need to pop these on my list

「 2 」か「 9 」で割ってみる

知らなかったー

言われてみれば当たり前のことだけど、自分では全然考え付かなかった。こういうのを自然に発想できるのが数学のできる人なんだろうな。

これは勉強になる。

へー

HOW TO Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics & Luddites - Tips, Resources & Advice

"Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. This piece, and the knowledge I learned from the incessant hours invested, demonstrate why brands do belong on Twitter. No other medium gets you inside a business or brand quiet like Twitter."

A good overview of what's effective on Twitter, and how some brands are managing to have authentic conversations with the community.

We all know brands are using Twitter — whether or not you want them around. Some of them don’t quite get the medium and just tweet self-serving links or marketing speak, but you won’t find any of those brands here. We’ve handpicked 40 of the best brands experimenting with the micro-blogging platform, and asked them a few short questions about how they’re using Twitter.

Some really good examples

Extremely effective communication of complex information

presentations on complex subject

Business card design can be tricky if you're not familiar with the process. As you'll see in these tutorials, there are a number of different programs that you can use to create business cards, but setting up the layout properly and getting it ready to print can be the most challenging part. This selection of tutorials will show you some techniques for designing business cards, as well as give you all the information you need to get set up the right way to make the design a success. Design a Print Ready Business Card for Designers This tutorial from Chris Spooner will show you how to create a two-sided business card using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Getting people to say yes is the goal for any sales message. It's what psychologists call “compliance. However, my ...

Down economy?  Perfect time to start it up. Chris Brogan posted a great post on if he started in social media today, what he would do. It got me

Andrew Hyde's tips for starting a company today.

Check out our list of 10 ways to watch your competitors below, and share other methods or tools that you use in the comments.

10 Ways to Spy on Your Competitors

Check out our list of 10 ways to watch your competitors below, and share other methods or tools that you use in the comments.

SitePoint.com - » 10 Ways to Spy on Your Competitors

DOJ story on Google's failed attempt to do advertising with Yahoo.. and lawyer-ly intrique and microsoft scare tactics

An article on everyone's favorite search engine by the awesome folks over at Wired.com.

Google may not be evil, but it sure does have enemies.

Web解析を行っていると数字とにらめっこになるわけですが、そこで重要なのが可視化することだったりします。ここで紹介されている（最終的にはFlickrに遷移）チャートを選択するためのチャートは常にデスクに貼っておいても良いぐらい便利なものだと思いますよ。

s yo

Inspiration: Business Card Designs I know there is a lot of different kinds of business card now days but since abduzeedo is giving out some traditional cards prints, I focused on that and put up some great card designs by really good designers so you

abduzeedo cards

Pay pal and auto PDF enabled

a new clever approach to online invoicing. It's beautiful and simple-to-use interface makes producing professional looking invoices a very pleasant experience.

へー。やっぱ一流なんだなぁ。

どの面接もとてもうま

predictions about search engines and social networking sites

John Battelle's predictions for the coming year...

time

1

Whether you get to choose or not, there are aspects of management that you need to understand.

There will be drama. And there be those precious seconds when there is no one in your office wanting… something.

All about management in software dev companies...

世界のデザイン名刺を集めてみたサイト。

名刺

excellent post on power of twitter and transparency

Twitter GTD, reminder, todo, calendar

Here's a great post written by my friend Beth Kanter. Must read.

social media engagement methodology

A comprehensive guide to creating a social media strategy that incorporates a deep dive into the tactics and tools of social media. Check the links

In a battered economy, free goods and services online are more attractive than ever. So how can the suppliers make a business model out of nothing?

Free is not enough. It also has to be matched with Paid.

Twitter was born about three years ago, when @Jack, @Biz, @Noah, @Crystal, @Jeremy, @Adam, @TonyStubblebine, @Ev, me (@Dom), @Rabble, @RayReadyRay, @Florian, @TimRoberts, and @Blaine worked at a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc. in South Park, San Francisco.

Twitter was born about three years ago, when @Jack, @Biz, @Noah, @Crystal, @Jeremy, @Adam, @TonyStubblebine, @Ev, me (@Dom), @Rabble, @RayReadyRay, @Florian, @TimRoberts, and @Blaine worked at a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc. in South Park, San Francisco. The company had just contributed a major chunk of code to Rails 1.0 and had just shipped Odeo Studio, but we were facing tremendous competition from Apple and other heavyweights. Our board was not feeling optimistic, and we were forced to reinvent ourselves.

L'histoire du projet twttr qui est devenu ce que l'on sait. Je me souviens l'avoir découvert via Tara Hunt & Factory Joe lors d'un SxSW festival en 2007.

companies world map

More excellent insight from Fred Wilson about Internet startups, online business models, and revenue vs. cash. Important insight for anyone in business that needs to understand how next-generation economics are not what Wall Street was doing, but what the Web is doing today.

o a business is worth the sum of all of its future profits, discounted back to a net present value (buffet thinks this is the intrinsic value). its a lot easier to decrease costs than increase revenues. forget that ROE is so high for companies like craigslist. have a 1B company on 30 employees. any need to get big and grow.

Good article on Web based business profits, costs and revenues

Before the credit crisis, the world was awash with money. Now central banks are pumping in more than ever before and still everyone is short. Dan Roberts explains the illusion of wealth.

newsprint isn't just expensive and inefficient; it's laughably so.

I'm glad I'm not an old skool newspaper

The expense and waste of daily newspapers is probably one of the few things that make me froth with rage.

"Not that it's anything we think the New York Times Company should do, but we thought it was worth pointing out that it costs the Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead."

BuzzGain is an online service for discovering and engaging with the people who will help your business thrive in today's social economy - where attention is a precious commodity. It empowers businesses to identify the previously hidden communities who are actively defining and shaping its future, including blogs, Flickr, youtube, Twitter, and traditional media. Much more than a Social Media monitoring solution, BuzzGain reveals influential voices and corresponding conversations so that companies can listen, learn, and engage in the connection of mutually beneficial relationships. BuzzGain provides socially networked suite that connects companies to the conversations that will help foster valuable relationships, increase customer acquisition and loyalty, and garner invaluable market intelligence. It is ideal DIY solution for marketing, public relations, advertising, sales, and customer service.

nu ştiu ce contine

This exercise taught me that even the trickiest situations can be handled better and resolved faster by plain, honest speaking.

アカウント　有名人　ミュージシャン

Is it real people?!

1. Outcomes, not income. Dumb growth is about incomes - are we richer today than we were yesterday? Smart growth is about people, and how much better or worse off they are - not merely how much junk an economy can churn out. Smart growth measures people's outcomes - not just their incomes. Are people healthier, fitter, smarter, happier?

Outcomes, not income. Connections, not transactions. People, not product. Creativity, not productivity.

Difference between Content and Process

career marketing

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content.

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content. Content is domain knowledge. People you know or skills you've developed. Playing the piano or writing copy about furniture sales. A rolodex of movers in a given industry, or your ability to compute stress ratios in your head. Domain knowledge is important, but it's (often) easily learnable. Process, on the other hand, refers to the emotional intelligence skills you have about managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities, etc. This stuff is insanely valuable and hard to learn. Unfortunately, it's usually overlooked by headhunters and HR folks, partly because it's hard to accredit or check off in a database.

"..Before trying these tips, make sure you’ve filled out your profile and added at least twenty connections.." From: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/02/10-ways-to-use.html#ixzz=0654eW1eB

10 ways to use LinkedIn to Find a Job

Searching for a job can suck if you constrain yourself to the typical tools such as online jobs boards, trade publications, CraigsList, and networking with only your close friends. In these kinds of times, you need to use all the...

At the conference, Facebook asked a range of questions to its users around the world, before feeding the answers back to delegates within minutes. It selectively-targeted users in Palestine and then Israel with the same question about global peace, before debating the results at a discussion forum. It also asked 120,000 US members whether US President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package would be enough to save the US economy. Almost 60pc said it would not.

Facebook is planning to exploit the vast amount of personal information it holds on its 150m members by creating one of the world's largest market research databases. In an attempt to finally monetise the social networking site... it will soon allow multinational companies to selectively target its members in order to research the appeal of new products. Companies will be able to pose questions to specially selected members based on such intimate details as whether they are single or married and even whether they are gay or straight.

Market research company eMarketer recently cut its estimate of advertising spending on the social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, this year by £351m to £912m. It said US advertising spending on Facebook will fall by 20pc to £147m

...und bitte warum regt sich darüber keiner auf?

A veteran of a former turning of the e-book wheel looks at the past, present, and future of reading books on things that are not books.

CEOs who use Twitter

C Level Tweeters

Intressant om affärsmodeller i gratisekonomin.

save

Dear Sellers! Below you'll find a handy index of all the useful How-Tos about Selling on Etsy. We're calling it the Seller Handbook. We'll be adding all new how-tos for sellers to this index. You can also search the Storque tags for "Seller Handbook"...

The singular thing that distinguishes Twitter from blogs, RSS, IM, email, etc. is synergy

abreast

the months I spent suffering that fool 12 years ago would have been better spent building my portfolio and hustling to find better clients. All the time you spend working for an asshole is time you’re not spending to find a gig that will, in the long run, pay you better, teach you more, and make you happier.

"Nine times out of ten, the first impression someone gives you is exactly who they are. We choose not to see it because we need the money, or we want the situation to be different. But if someone rubs you the wrong way at the first meeting, chances are, it’s only going to get worse."

It can be very intimidating to turn down work, especially in these uncertain economic times. But the months I spent suffering that fool 12 years ago would have been better spent building my portfolio and hustling to find better clients. All the time you spend working for an asshole is time you’re not spending to find a gig that will, in the long run, pay you better, teach you more, and make you happier.

Crude advice, but very salient. We take the stick because we need the money, but the rude client ends up hitting us over the head with it.

"But the biggest lesson I learned? Don’t work for assholes."

パターンを同じにするのは状況によるので一概にこうすると出来ない気がする

Gotta love these lists

Another interesting blog. Mostly because it doesn't look like one! Really great use of categorization, images, and interactive elements (like polls).

So you’re a skilled developer or design freelancer who has established a handful of customers who pay your bills and provide you with an income. That’s great. You may wish to keep things just the way they are or you might want to build on this and build up your own small business. If you’re opting for the later then here are a few tips to help you ride the bumpy road from freelancer to fully-fledged small business.

from Mashable

Geinig artikel over hoe je designers moet behandelen.

Things a 'good web designer' would never tell you about choosing the perfect design.

wever it is no use if

Logistics Management Homepage

การจัดการการบริการและการขนส่ง

การขนส่ง อาชีพในอนาคต

ข้อมูลโลจิสติกส์

Interesting presentation at SXSW from Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple, who tried to assess how Apple can ‘get’ design when so many other companies try and fail. After describing Apple’s process of delivering consumers with a succession of presents (“really good ideas wrapped up in other really good ideas” — in other words, great software in fabulous hardware in beautiful packaging), he asked the question many have asked in their time: “How the f*ck do you do that?”

Apple vs palm

Apple vs. Palm: the in-depth analysis - Engadget

This is a terrific short video on hiring. Nelson explains how to see past the breadth of the resume to determine if someone is really going to make a difference for you. Found via <a href="http://www.kottke.org/">Kottke</a> and like him I especially liked the part about hiring interested vs. interesting people.

Depth, breath, (being interested rather than interesting), comms, collaboration (not just cooperation, which = not getting in each others way. Collaboration: interested in each other, bring separate depths to a given problem).

Pixar University's Randy Nelson explains what schools must do to prepare students for jobs in new media. Much of what he says applies to people working in other fields as well.

Brands on Twitter. @TheHomeDepot mentioned

Twitter, as used by some big brands. Marketing? Relation building? Who cares.

another good roundup of brands on twitter

Using caution when depending on Facebook or Twitter for business.

You've probably heard how much the micro-blogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social networking site Facebook can boost your company's profile. But what you might not have considered is the potential danger in over-relying on these startups that could go out of business, get bought out, or close your account if you aren't familiar with their Terms of Service.

Don't rely on third-party venture-funded companies to build a business model on. That's just stupid. (But fun!)

* ロジックツリー(抜け漏れを見る) * マトリックス(観点を見る) * プロセス(順番を見る) 先に取り上げたエントリのフレームワークのほとんどは、マトリックスでした。異なる観点をクロスさせることで、その中の検討軸を見いだし意味があるかどうかを判断する ロジックツリーの最たる例は、WBSです。基本ルールとして親タスクは子タスクの集合体で、かつその集合体は親タスクを100％満たすモノ 仕事を行うための必要条件 * 目的 * 担当者 * 期間 * インプット * アウトプット 「投資」「浪費」「消費」「空費」に区切って考えるやり方

MESE（モレ・ダブりがない）をよく使うなぁ。切り口の引き出しをたくさん持っていることが大切。

100 business books.

Create Twitter Coupons! Enhance your social media marketing by offering discounted coupons to the Twitter-sphere!

Enhance your social media marketing by offering discounted coupons to the Twitter-sphere

create twitter coupons for your business

The web has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to evolve and leave embedded franchises struggling or in the dirt. Prodigy, AOL were early candidates. Today Yahoo and Ebay are struggling, and I think Google is tipping down the same path. This cycle of creative destruction — more recently framed as the innovators dilemma — is both fascinating and hugely dislocating for businesses. To see this immense franchises melt before your very eyes — is hard to say the least.

Sure, the Twitter guys still have no idea how to make money off their fabulous invention. But for now they are living in a dreamworld of infinite possibilities, maybe the last one on Earth.

Yahoo! Finance looks at some big companies who are on the razor's edge.

Loehmann's Capital Corp. (Privately owned; about 1,500 employees). This clothing chain has the right formula for lean times, offering women's clothing at discount prices. But the consumer pullback is hitting just about every retailer, and Loehmann's has a lot less cash to ride out a drought than competitors like Nordstrom Rack and TJ Maxx. If Loehmann's doesn't get additional financing in 2009 - a dicey proposition, given skyrocketing unemployment and plunging spending - the chain could run out of cash.

blistering

s like Hadoop. All of these are mature, high capable, and new ways of tackling the enormous challenges that large-scale co

business for the economic

While some might look at the social aspects of things like Web 2.0 as marginal subjects when things get tough, nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the deeper implications of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Many of the more transformational aspects of the 2.0 era now have extensive groundwork laid for them, are available in genuinely enterprise-ready solutions/pilots, and many have just been waiting for the right situation; the driving need for businesses to change and transform in the face of radically different business conditions.

Business, it's a different story, some (harsh) points made about corporate websites.

The internet really is a revolution for the media ecology, and the changes it is forcing on existing models are large. What matters at newspapers and magazines isn’t publishing, it’s reporting. ...ja uskottava rahoituspohja, mutta se on eri stoori.

"Unfortunately for the optimists, micropayments — small payments made by readers for individual articles or other pieces of a la carte content — won’t work for online journalism. "

Clay Shirky tells us why micropayments for news will not work.

More money was spent on e-mail advertising last year than was spent on blog advertising—yet you don't see anyone touting e-mail as the next big billion-dollar media business. Technorati, a blog researcher, estimates that bloggers who run ads earn an average of $5,060 per year. Don't call the Ferrari dealer just yet.

To be sure, some blogs are little goldmines. Gizmodo, a gadget blog run by Gawker Media, had record traffic last month, with 98 million page views, and is "fantastically profitable," Gawker CEO Nick Denton says. Dooce, a personal-diary blog run by a husband-and-wife team, does between $500,000 to $1 million a year, according to Federated Media, which sells ads for the site. Arrington says TechCrunch did $3 million in 2007 and even more in 2008. He says he could sell the company today, albeit for a lower price than it would have fetched a year ago.

in.ee

Twibs is an index of businesses on twitter. You can search and browse businesses on twitter, both by alphabetical and tags for businesses using twitter. If you are a business on twitter, add your business to twibs today!

Listing of all businesses on Twitter!

Ja miksi?

when Web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, free felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings

999 free business ideas for possible brainstorming, journaling, etc. Possible crew activities?

Ideas are a dime a dozen. The money is in the execution. Need proof? For Seth Godin's Alternative MBA program, this week the nine of us came up with 111 business ideas each. But ideas are only valuable when someone (like you) makes something happen. What follows are our 999 business ideas, free for the taking. 1. Prepackaged school supplies based on the lists from the school districts 2. Incubator site providing office space, hosting, etc. for startups that are seed funded. 3. In-grocery store prep service (buy vegetables first and drop them off to be chopped to your specs - pick them up on the way to checkout) 4. A website that you can submit your design and work with vendors to manufacture your own clothes line. 5. Online discount brokerage that has no closing hours and provides access to all exchanges throughout the world and handles currency and legal issues automatically.

website

Stuck for ideas? Here's 999 new ones: http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html

from Chris Foo

LoL fight! fight ! My nerves. Twitter nerves run amok Reminds me of a few altercations on TBD!

Evidence that drama transcends character limits.

Take it easy dude!

Via @jdlasica - this is going to come in handy for some presentation or other

The quintessential "what not to do" for Twitter.

"sirdavid: @aprildunford hey april - fuck you. seriously. fuck you." Sometimes people just don't think

Business Resource

Personal Branding 102: How to Communicate & Maintain Your Brand Personal Branding PersonalBranding brand brandbrand

Personal Branding 102

Put on your personal PR hat and start to promote your materials. Before you go crazy with self-promotion, realize that the most successful people are able and trained to promote the work of others as well. Here are some proven personal PR tactics:

Pythonベースのスタイリッシュなプレゼンテーションツールです。KeyNoteまではいかないですが、パワーポイント以上のプレゼンができそうですよ。使い方も簡単です。

share

http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2009/2/aig-implodes-the-two-cows-version

در مصاحبه‌ای یکی از بینیانگذاران تویتر (بیز استون) به صورت ضمنی به این موضوع اشاره کرده

Companies using Twitter for commercial purposes may soon start getting charged for that activity, according to an interview British trade magazine Marketing (part ...

Twitter might start charging companies for advertising using tweets.

近々、Twitter が法人アカウントに課金を開始するという噂

Twitter beginners need to understand the rules of etiquette for the service. So before you stick a foot measuring 140-characters-or-less in your mouth, check out our advice on how to follow and un-follow, share politely, direct message appropriately, and more.

Google used to get 100% of my queries. Today, I bet Twitter is getting at least 10% of them. There are some things Twitter is just flat out better at for getting information than Google.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Flewmoorman.com%2Fgoogles-first-real-threat-twit

Author noted he does almost all searching in firefox search bar. Recently noticed that am changing the settings there frequently. Google used to get 100% of my queries. Today, bet Twitter is getting at least 10% of them.

Clever. "Twitter is building a human powered search indexing engine. It is an engine that will build better results than any rules based index and has gotten millions of people super motivated to contribute for free every day (even though they don’t know it)."

The article's overall argument is a huge exaggeration, but the notion that searching across Twitter is better than searching across the entire Web for certain types of information has some truth to it. Especially for product reviews, the search space on Twitter is much less clogged with manufacturers and third-party distributors trying to sell shit -- basically, because of the social culture of Twitter, mentions of any product you might search for will be described and discussed from a personal and social point of view. However, this only works insofar as people treat Twitter as a personal messaging and status update service. I'm sure the Internet was great for product reviews too before companies started making their own websites. So if Twitter monetizes by building platforms for corporations, then it will become far less useful for product information. I don't buy the other advantage (evaluating readership through links) at all, because Google does the same thing with PageRank.

The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?

"The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America's economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?"

EXPO WEB 2.0

The Death Of “Web 2.0″

Guy1Emanuel Rosen is the author of the national bestseller The Anatomy of Buzz (Doubleday, 2000) and The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real-life lessons in Word-of-Mouth Marketing (Doubleday, 2009). Prior to writing these books, he was vice-president of marketing at Niles Software where he was responsible for launching and marketing the company’s flagship product, EndNote. He holds an MBA from the University of San Francisco. In this interview he brings us up to speed on the techniques to generate buzz that every small business owner must master.

iPhone story

save

"The user must be given the option of whether to pay for a Web site's content (by financially supporting the site), or read it for free. I'm betting this one will be a tough pill to swallow for many industry executives with traditional media mindsets, but it's critical because it fits the culture, indeed the nature, of the Internet. Traditional micropayment schemes for online news content -- "pay up or go elsewhere" -- fight it, and thus are doomed to fail, in my view." Okei, en ehtinyt lukemaan tätä kunnolla enkä oikein ymmärtänyt, että mistä ne rahat tulevat. Mutta luen paremmalla ajalla...

Many people in the newspaper industry are already in full-fledged panic mode, and one of the recent responses has been a wave of calls to resurrect an online publishing business model that has not yet worked: micropayments.

Forget Micropayments -- Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizing Content While Time magazine and others claim the answer lies in asking readers to pay in small increments, that model will only hasten newspapers' death spiral. Instead, consider what may prove to be the solution: a California start-up called Kachingle.

While Time magazine and others claim the answer lies in asking readers to pay in small increments, that model will only hasten newspapers' death spiral. Instead, consider what may prove to be the solution: a California start-up called Kachingle.

Most guides on management are written for big bosses at big companies, not people starting something new who want their team to be as effective as possible. (Hi, startup founders!) So herewith, a guide to effective non-hierarchical management.

Vary responsibilities (not efficient, but unhappy = worse efficiency) * Delegate responsibility (develop the team... either manage or work, not both) * Competent people get things done anyway. Ineffective ones let the excuses pile up. * proactive as well. People tend to suffer quietly * Part of your job is helping people decide what to tackle first. * stop procrastination is to sit down with someone and come up with the next concrete step they have to take and then start doing it together. * people are much happier and more productive when they have control over the way they work. Never take that away. * And if people fight back, know when to step back and say “look, you’re the expert. I was just giving my two cents.” (Hint: It’s right after they start fighting back.) * not to dictate or micromanage, but to have a Socratic dialogue to help figure out what the best answer is. *

A better way to think of a manager is as a servant, like an editor or a personal assistant. Everyone wants to be effective; a manager’s job is to do everything they can to make that happen. The ideal manager is someone everyone would want to have.

Dubai threatens to become an instant ruin, an emblematic hybrid of the worst of both the West and the Middle-East and a dangerous totem for those who would mistakenly interpret this as the de facto product of a secular driven culture.

And so it goes, quite predictably too.... "As people scramble for the exits in Dubai, there is no ‘key mail’, like in America, where people can often mail back their house keys and walk away from a mortgage without the immediate threat of jail. People are literally fleeing this place, to date leaving 3000 cars stranded at the airport with keys still in the ignition. And the reason for this is that if you default on your Dubai mortgage, you can end up in a debtors prison. Perhaps Dubai will at least create a new Dickens?"

"people who have hundreds of millions or a billion in the bank are not going to change their lifestyles"

Info to check later

Sobering.

The problem with programming is that most of the time the resulting code should boring and simple, not "clever"

I DO ALL 15 WRONG :-)

Web 2.0 tools present a vast array of opportunities—for companies that know how to use them.

Video on TED.com

Yahoo Local & More | GetListed.org

See how your business is listed at Google, Yahoo, and other top local search engines

CloudContacts takes your business cards and puts them to work for you. Instead of storing your business cards in a pile on your desk or in one physical location, CloudContacts allows you to access your contacts at any time. You can import your business cards into many email applications and connect on most business social networks. Connect your contacts today with CloudContacts!

名刺を郵送するとデータベース化してくれるサービス

A bad reason to switch careers: You want to meet new people. (Try going to a bar, or Club Med. What you really want is to get a life. Pick up a hobby.) Lol ^^

twitter history

Sitting in the Flickr archives is a nearly 10-year-old document uploaded a couple of years ago by its author, Jack Dorsey (@jack), who started Twitter in 2006 along with co-founders Evan Williams (@ev) and Biz Stone (@biz).

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site's founding document. Part I

The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit my website here. or email me at: jonathan.jarvis@gmail.com

This short ten-minute video conveys the essentials of how the credit crisis occurred. It's a great example of information that is be explained using the smallest amount of words and images. It takes something both large and complex and personalizes/simplifies it for the lay audience. If you're looking for tips when putting together a presentation for non-scientists, this is a great resource to look toward for inspiration.

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated.

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world

Using social media to market your business is a good idea. Just don't plan on getting your whiz-kid nephew to do it for free

Business week tells us what to watch not to expect from social media.

For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social Web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn't putting itself out there, it ought to be. But before you take the plunge, bear in mind the many myths that surround social media.

orçamentos

via: http://twitter.com/NameCheap/status/1231825827

"So what about the actual business numbers? Namecheap's site traffic increased more than 10 percent in December, driving a 20 percent increase in domain registrations. In addition, Michelle says, "The increase in Twitter followers allowed us to see a 30 percent increase in traffic when we ran a Super Bowl promo on Twitter [in February]."

Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales: A Case Study http://bit.ly/L2fEm

The Big Picture - News Stories in Photographs from the Boston Globe

ingle resume and CV into a giant, OCR-scanned database; others merely search out candidates on job sites using specific word criteria. Either way, having the right words on your resume prevents being cut in the first round like some warbly-voiced would-be Idol contestant. On the other hand, the humans who actually read through your cover letter, resume, and ap

A podcast for those who design, develop and run websites.

Foxmarks

機能

Simple and free online bookkeeping software

Online accounting for small business

Simple online bookkeeping software

Online bookkeeping software for small businesses - track sales and expenses, pay estimated taxes on time at Outright.com

One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?

comparing a good presentation to

Tips on making a better presentation.

I’ve been thinking about the anatomy of presentations, and what we can do to improve how we’re doing what we do.

"In the mid-'80s, Wall Street turned to the quants—brainy financial engineers—to invent new ways to boost profits. Their methods for minting money worked brilliantly... until one of them devastated the global economy."

gawker huffington post

GigaOm

The Nobel winning formula

Found on Delicious with Ultimate How-To: Grow your social media network

i like it

make Web 2.0 work

reference about 2.0

save

nt”. 3. Ask for a discount for paying upfront vs. net-30 or ask for the standard 2% discount for paying net-10 instead of net-30. This can often be negotiated with

Negotiation Skills

long form documentary on the financial crisis. Audio editing/narrative is strong

How to get Retweeted

Forget imitation as the sincerest form of flattery—it’s as twentieth century as ripping off interfaces, songs, photos, and books. Today, the sincerest form of flattery is retweeting—the process of forwarding someone else’s tweet to your followers on Twitter. (I assume that you know about Twitter. If you don’t, take a minute and read this description at Answers.com.)

The reason that retweeting is so flattering is that every time people do it, they are putting their reputation on the line. If their followers don’t like the retweet, their reputation is reduced. So whenever someone retweets your tweet, they are expressing confidence that what you’ve tweeted is interesting and good. Thus, the best measure of someone’s quality as a Twitter user is not the number of followers but the amount of retweets.

A conversation with Marc Andreessen, co-founder and chairman of Ning and an investor in several startups including Digg, Plazes, and Twitter. Best known as co-author of Mosaic, and founder of Netscape. He is on the Board of Directors of Facebook and eBay

Fantastic interview -- gives a great overview of entrepreneurship, how Silicon Valley works, social networking, the current state of the economy, and where innovation is likely to come from in the future. Highly recommended.

How to Attract and Influence People on Twitter — The Ultimate Twitter Resource by Derek on February 24, 2009

There are hundreds of excellent Twitter resources all over the internet, but until now, they were hard to find and implement. This Twitter Resource Book introduces you to the best Twitter Tips and Twitter How tos… period. Each chapter contains several links to hand-picked blog posts that help you improve your Twitter skills and attract more Twitter followers today.

serious mega resource of anything & everything you could ever want to know about twitter - seo, business marketing, twitter's influence on blogging, etc

Those of us who run businesses, departments, or teams are faced with this question all the time. How can we distinguish the stars from the merely competent? Of all the candidates whose resumés we receive, how do we place our bet on the one who will stand out from the rest?

Tips For Students with a Bachelors in Computer Science

1143

rson whom auto salespeople want to persuade to buy an expensive car. You can afford something fancy ($35K+ car), but don’t do it. For one thing, ex

Inspiration

Cool Lego Businesscard

business card ever

乐高的名片

The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases

Probably the most important thing I've learned about dilution is that it's measured more in behavior than users. It's bad behavior you want to keep out more than bad people. User behavior turns out to be surprisingly malleable. If people are expected to behave well, they tend to; and vice versa.

Paul Graham on communities

addictiveness of games and social applications is still mostly unsolved || <is that w/ chiefdelphi? feels diluted to new members and forbidding?> to keep away bad people But this way gentler and probably more effective than overt barriers || Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you... || <again, transparency> it's important that a site that kills submissions provide a way for users to see what got killed || compare quality comments on community sites, average length good predictor. || <there's hope for me? 'cos I am always afraid my ideas are stupid> Prob stupidity more often ... having few ideas than wrong ones. || <so being able to make people laugh is not always admirable? hrm> put-downs are the easiest form of humor. || So the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of people it wants || <ouch> disaster to attract thousands of smart people to a site that caused them to waste lots of time.

Three things you need if you want more customers Seth Godin I går, 12:26 PM If you want to grow, you need new customers. And if you want new customers, you need three things: 1. A group of possible customers you can identify and reach. 2. A group with a problem they want to solve using your solution. 3. A group with the desire and ability to spend money to solve that problem.

You'd be amazed at how often new businesses or new ventures have none of these. The first one is critical, because if you don't have permission, or knowledge, or word of mouth, you're invisible.

Google is the dominant search engine, with over 63% market share. Aside from it being a place to discover product reviews and corporate information, it is the personal brand destination of choice.

some great links to social networks for major newspaper sites

productivity

great resources here. thanks tim. love the random generation and then checker

A rose is a rose is rose... but not with domain names. (Photo: nickwheeleroz) I am James Siminoff. I’m an ...

l dominance ov

http://mashable.com

Josh Freese has a special offer to his fans for his new album.

Raising money is never easy, but in a recession it gets even harder. Here's a quick guide to raising money in a down economy.

Start a business

Lean startups - a lesson in bootstrapping.

menu 3D flash

Last fall, Facebook launched a major site redesign that primarily impacted the profile page, home page, and application developers. With the redesign, the Facebook profile page changed from a “box-oriented” design to a “Wall and tabs” design to make sharing more prominent and viral. Now, Facebook is preparing advertisers and brand managers for a similar redesign to its Pages product for businesses that could launch as soon as sometime in the next few weeks.

Redesigned Pages for Businesses

"H：たとえば給料が20万だとして、家賃が10万円だとするじゃないですか、そうすると5万円会社負担になるわけですね。要は5万円天引きされたところが、給料の計算になるんですよ。しかも折半だと、その分は課税されないんですよ。経費扱いにできるので。15万円が支給されて、それが課税所得になるので。まあ15万だとほとんど課税されないと思うのですけど、丸々入ってくるじゃないですか。でも20万もらったら、ちょっとやっぱ課税されて十何万とかになって、中から10万払うから、実入りが少ないじゃないですか。だから準社宅の制度を作ったんですよ。"

http://culturedcode.com/things

個人の仕事売買マーケットプレイス

Recently, Britta Meyer of Eurekster, which makes an embeddable custom social search portal called a Swicki, posed a question on LinkedIn about how one

Innovation at Honda is fueled by a focus on engineering and problem solving and the proper levels of insight to enable spending and experimentation

Amazing javascript work. It's sure a heck lot of work unless there is a tool to make it really easily. Anyway here is an awesome javascript timing example.

watch Paul Graham type an essay

「Startups in 13 Sentences」の作成過程。文章の作成と推敲過程がよくわかる

I'm saving this for the next time I get that open-a-coffee-house/Mac-tech-shop urge.

"I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life."

There is a golden rule, long cherished by restaurateurs, for determining whether a business is viable. Rent should take up no more than 25 percent of your revenue, another 25 percent should go toward payroll, and 35 percent should go toward the product. The remaining 15 percent is what you take home.

EC 参考サイト。

ECサイトのメディア事業戦略の資料を作った

* リスティング広告はやがてパフォーマンスに限界が来る* アフィリエイト経由の売上構成比が高まると原価率を圧迫する* 専門メディアの価値が高まり、ECサイト自ら運営するケースも増える

Amazonの動きからも目が離せない！

Google首席经济学家：I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. ... The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids. I think statisticians are part of it, but it’s just a part. You also want to be able to visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it effectively.

The McKinsey Quarterly - Hal Varian web challenge managers - Strategy - Innovation

Hal Varian, professor of information sciences, business, and economics at the University of California at Berkeley, says it’s imperative for managers to gain a keener understanding of the potential for technology to reconfigure their industries. Varian, currently serving as Google's chief economist, compares the current period to previous times of industrialization when new technologies combined to create ever more complex and valuable systems—and thus reshaped the economy.

List of fees, upgrade costs, etc

There are three types of amateur entrepreneurs out there, and in my young life, I’ve been every single one of them. By coming to terms with my failures, I’m more prepared to classify which type of amateur entrepreneur I am, and thus preventing myself from failing in the same way again.

Type 1 Amateur Entrepreneur: All ideas, no implementation. Type 2 Amateur Entrepreneur: Lots of ideas and half assed implementations.

great article here! Google, twitter, social networking, and of course my favorite topic- entrepreneurship

1. Launch a scaled-back version 2. Notice sluggish competitors 3. You don’t need virality if your product is good 4. Follow your passion 5. Sometimes you have to go off on your own

* Responsible for（責任のある） * Experienced（経験豊富な） * Excellent written communication skills （書面での優れたコミュニケーション能力） * Team player（チームプレイヤー） * Detail oriented（細部にも気を使う） * Successful（成功した）

"We moved from thinking of ourselves as designers to thinking of ourselves as design thinkers. We have a methodology that enables us to come up with a solution that nobody has before." -- David Kelley

bio of IDEO's David Kelley. IDEO is a creative design and technology firm, an inspiration.

Ideo CEO David Kelley talks about evolving Ideo from a design firm to a "design thinking" firm.

Autofocus, an organization system designed by personal organization author Mark Forster, is available for all. If you're looking for a linear, list-based system to help you get things done, Autofocus stresses simplicity and speed.

The system consists of one long list of everything that you have to do, written in a ruled notebook (25-35 lines to a page ideal). As you think of new items, add them to the end of the list. You work through the list one page at a time: 1. Read quickly through all the items on the page. 2. Go through the page more slowly until one stands out for you. 3. Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so 4. Cross the item off, re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven't finished it 5. Continue the same page in the same way. Don't move to the next page until you complete the page without any item standing out 6. Move onto the next page and repeat the process 7. If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items. 8. Once you've finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.

Florian Kaps on a mission.

Love this.

Yay!

An Offset Printing Company using old methods to advertise new. A business card that quickly explains that the company can be found on the web.

Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies

Social media usage for B2B

great checklist of what is and isn't possible in social media

Using social media to market your business is a good idea. Just don't plan on getting your whiz-kid nephew to do it for free.

Social Media Marketing, non gratis non facile, non tanti esperti! L'articolo menziona BackType, un servizio molto interessante per tracciare i commenti

What's the bigger idea: social media as marketing stimulus or social media as a way to innovate business processes? It's both.

Rental moving boxes

"Available in 3 sizes and delivered direct to your door on our fleet of eco-trucks powered waste vegetable oil and bio-fuel. All you need to do is pack, stack and move. When the Recopack are empty, just call us and we’ll come over to your new place and pick them up."

Reusable plastic moving boxes for rent to replace cardboard cartons. Delivered to and picked up at your door by "eco-trucks" powered on vegetable oil, of course.

The First, Zero-Waste Pack and Move Solution in America!

Eco-friendly moving company

Six Valuable Things Web Design Clients Won’t Tell You

デザインパターンと java がさっぱりわからない。暇なときに java をいじくる。

One is that the financial press isn’t in the business of supplying useful information; it’s in the business of feeding people’s lust for predictions. “You keep buying the magazine regardless of how the forecasts turn out,” Wellington says, “and they’ll keep supplying the forecasts.”

Blaine Lourd got rich picking stocks. But then he realized that everything he thought he knew about the markets was wrong. And he's not alone.

As a group, professional money managers control more than 90 percent of the U.S. stock market. By definition, the money they invest yields returns equal to those of the market as a whole, minus whatever fees investors pay them for their services. This simple math, you might think, would lead investors to pay professional money managers less and less. Instead, they pay them more and more

Like a lot of people who end up on Wall Street, Blaine Lourd just sort of stumbled in. He'd grown up happy in New Iberia, Louisiana. His father had made a pile of money in the oil patch, and Blaine assumed that he too would one day eat four-hour lunches at the Petroleum Club, hunt ducks on the weekends, and get rich. His older brother, Bryan, had left Louisiana to make what seemed like a quixotic bid to become a Hollywood agent, but Bryan was gay, even if he pretended not to be. (He's now a partner at Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency.) Blaine was distinctly not gay and felt right at home in Louisiana—right up to the moment when, during his third year at Louisiana State University, the price of oil collapsed and took the family business with it. That was when he realized he had no idea what he would do with his life.

The markets are roiling, money managers & banks are posting disappointing returns, and people are beginning to wonder if they chose the wrong guy in Greenwich to take 2% of their assets and 20% of profits. But what if the problem isn’t the guy but the idea that makes him possible: the belief that the best way to invest capital is to hand it to an expert? As a group, professional money managers control more than 90% of the US stock market. By definition, the money they invest yields returns equal to those of the market as a whole less the fees investors pay them for their services. This simple math, you might think, would lead investors to pay professional money managers less and less. Instead, they pay them more and more. "If you put a thousand people in barrels and push them over Niagara Falls, some of them will survive. If you take those guys and push them over again, some of them will survive. And they’ll write books about how to survive being pushed over Niagara Falls in a barrel."

FTA: 'Blaine Lourd got rich picking stocks. But then he realized that everything he thought he knew about the markets was wrong. And he's not alone.' (note: Dec. 2007 issue!)

Below is a list of 30 business card inspirational websites, galleries and resources that will fulfill your every business card desire and provide inspiration for your next business card inspiration.

list de cartes commerciales ultra créatives

Next time you order a new pair of skinny jeans from Gap.com, you should know that you are helping welcome in the hive-mind robot overlords of retail. Warehouses run by

Boom. Now we begin. Watch the video.

All Work a New Look

Author David Allen's follow-up to his best-selling productivity bible Getting Things Done is called Making It All Work. In a series of excerpts published by tech site BNET, Allen discusses the two axes of self-management—control and perspective—and asks you to place yourself in the matrix. (Of course any personal productivity book is nothing without at least one matrix.) Are you a visionary/crazy-maker? Victim/responder? Micromanager/implementer? If things are going well, you've got the right mix of control and perspective, which puts you in the Captain and Commander seat.

Life at Wal-Mart

Wal*Mart isn't the devil? <gasp>

How about a different opinoin on those Wal-Mart jobs.

he seems surprised that the people who work at WalMart aren't ogres, and he completely ignores the fact that the writings about conditions at WM may have led to the improvements that he sees

streamlined user testing idea

26 Business Cards of Graphic & Web Designers

wikiHow article about How to Manage Geeks.

"Ausdrucken, wegfaxen"

• Create their own virtual store with an unlimited number of downloads, ringtones, CDs and merchandise items. • Sell directly to fans on any website, blog or social network on the web. • Have one central place to design custom products and manage all e-commerce. • Easily buy high quality, affordable CDs and merchandise with no minimums for live shows and events. • Focus on making music while Audiolife handles all on-demand manufacturing, distribution, customer service and accounting.

online music service

List of all kinds of things you can do with Twitter.

"Of 13 million tracks available, 52,000 - just 0.4 per cent - accounted for 80 per cent of downloads."

awesome read on the sociology of shopping

The long tail

do I agree? does this matter?

nt us towards more mainstream

Social psychologists know that one way to be viewed as a leader in any group is simply to act like one. Speak up, speak well and offer lots of ideas, and before long, people will begin doing what you say. This works well when leaders know what they're talking about, but what if they don't? If someone acts like a boss but thinks like a boob, is that still enough to stay on top? - "More-dominant individuals achieved influence in their groups in part because they were seen as more competent by fellow group members," Anderson and Kilduff write.

"Speak up, speak well and offer lots of ideas, and before long, people will begin doing what you say" - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Found at http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/presentation-research/speaking-enhance-career/

speaking up makes you look intelligent

Must-read Wired article about the new Chief Software Architect of Microsoft - Ray Ozzie. Bill Gates him one of the top 5 programmers in the universe. That's a compliment!

This makes me want to dig up that "Ozzie is trying to build that thing he's been trying to build for the last 25 years; nobody cares, still" article.

Get Wired's take on technology business news and the Silicon Valley scene including IT, media, mobility, broadband, video, design, security, software, networking and internet startups on Wired.com

Really interesting article about the issues facing Microsoft, Cloud Computing and other problems and possibilities for Microsoft.

The Future of Web Apps: 7 Things Companies Must Do to Succeed

News Flash: Web 2.0 is so over. Here are seven things web app companies will need to do to succeed in the future.

8 reasons why the music industry can't blame piracy alone for its decline in revenue.

During The Pirate Bay trial, the music industry placed the blame for the decline in their revenues squarely on the shoulders of file-sharers. Their logic is clearly flawed, but it could sway the verdict if no alternative explanation is presented. So, if piracy isn’t to blame, then what is *actually* killing the music industry?

Musikkbransjens motgang skyldes ikke bare pirater

http://www.fastcompany.com/node/54763/print fastcompany fastcompanyfastcompany NotoWal-Mart

""As I look at the three years Snapper has been with you," he told the vice president, "every year the price has come down. Every year the content of the product has gone up. We're at a position where, first, it's still priced where it doesn't meet the needs of your clientele. For Wal-Mart, it's still too high-priced. I think you'd agree with that. Now, at the price I'm selling to you today, I'm not making any money on it. And if we do what you want next year, I'll lose money. I could do that and not go out of business. But we have this independent-dealer channel. And 80% of our business is over here with them. And I can't put them at a competitive disadvantage. If I do that, I lose everything. So this just isn't a compatible fit."" A repost of an article doing the rounds a few months ago. Not saying nothing about Kindle.

There are a lot of parallels to Web design here.

"Wier traveled to Bentonville with a firm grasp of the values of Snapper, the dynamics of the lawn-mower business, the needs of the dealers, the needs of the Snapper customer, and the needs of the Wal-Mart customer. He was not dazzled by the tens of millions of dollars' worth of lawn mowers Wal-Mart was already selling for Snapper; he was not deluded about his ability to beat Wal-Mart at its own game, to somehow resist the price pressure. He was not imagining that he could take the sales now and figure out the profits later."

Jim Wier, the CEO of Snapper Mowers, flies to Wal-mart headquarters to tell them he no longer wants to offer Snapper mowers in their stores.

http://24ways.org/2008/charm-clients-win-pitches 24ways.org 24ways.org24ways.org

Over the years I have picked up a number of sales techniques that have lead to us doing pretty well in the pitches we go for. Of course, up until now, these top secret practices have remained firmly locked in the company vault but now I am going to share them with you. They are cunningly hidden within the following paragraphs so I’m afraid you’re going to have to read the whole thing. Ok, so where to start? I guess a good place would be getting invited to pitch for work in the first place.

Marc Andreessen discusses his new venture fund with Charlie Rose, as well as talking about why Twitter is a good thing

Pretty good list of options for burgeoning game developers.

save

Since 1993, people have been telling news executives that their business model is doomed.

<3 clay shirky

The price of information has not only gone into free fall in the last few years, it is still in free fall now.

what struck me, re-reading my younger self, was this: a dozen years ago, a kid who'd only just had his brains blown via TCP/IP nevertheless understood that the newspaper business was screwed, not because this was a sophisticated conclusion, but because it was obvious.

as the name says, wonder if i will be able to even get a dollar

"Photography is a hard business to break into, especially the upper brackets. But the internet does make it possible to earn a few dollars off of your photos — especially if you’ve found some great shots. More and more people have what amount to high-quality digital cameras these days and, if you’re one of them, at least a few of your photos may be able to make you a little money as stock photos. There are many sites that will allow you to upload your photos and sell them as stock photography."

Decades of psycho-social research on team work suggests that effective teams have both strong task-based behaviour as well as good social cohesion.

Decades of psycho-social research on team work suggests that effective teams have both strong task-based behaviour as well as good social cohesion. “A high-performance team works together to achieve mutual goals, recognizes that each member is accountable and committed to achieving team goals, communicates effectively with each other, shares the joy of achievement and the pain of not meeting goals, shares information, helps each other, and recognizes that the success of the group is dependent upon each individual”

LeadVine finds you new qualified sales leads and new customers to increase your sales and revenue. We crowdsource lead generation by having the community find you sales leads.

LeadVine is where you post sales leads you are searching for, list a referral fee, and have the community act as your sales force. * Increase sales * Outsource your sales process * Lower marketing, advertising, and recruiting costs * Did we mention all of this is free? Make money by giving referrals Do you come across information that is not valuable to you but valuable to someone else? Get paid for information that is at your finger tips. * Earn easy money * Leverage your existing network to help companies increase sales * Make money for information you have at your fingertips * Spend a minimal amount of time earning extra cash

Examples of how and how not to conduct email campaigns.

Several weeks ago, we took a look at the founders’ pie. I noted that frequently the founding team divides 100% by the number of founders. I also cautioned that this is the WRONG WAY! I then went on to identify the factors that should be considered when making these decisions. Since then, I have had several people tell me that while what I wrote certainly made sense, it wasn’t very helpful. They said that when it came to “rug cutting time,” absent an alternative method, equal shares was the only method that seemed to be “fair.” As a public service, I have “invented” a Founders’ Pie Calculator. As you will soon see, this calculator is not particularly profound. In fact, I’m sure I haven’t “invented” it, but, at the same time, I have never seen it before. [Caution: perhaps there’s a fatal flaw that I haven’t considered.] Its primary benefits are that it provides a way to quantify the elements of the decision making process, and that it appears to be logical and fair.

Equity Calculation between founders

The problem is that trying to copy one company's model is a fool's errand. It's hard to figure out which part of the Starbucks formula made the business a smash hit while so many of its rivals failed. Starbucks's success is the product of a combination of factors that came together in precisely the right way at precisely the right time. It's nearly impossible to isolate which one was the most important. You would probably have to look at the hundreds of small coffee chains that didn't make it big before you stood a chance of seeing what really distinguished Starbucks.

probably

A start-up requires patience: As in tuning a shortwave radio, you have to make a number of adjustments to get it just right.

Twitter will complement other forms of media, he said, the way that blogs and newspapers co-exist. “New media never kill old media,” he said. “It’s all part of an ecosystem.” Mr. Williams emphasized many times that, despite its buzz, Twitter is still a tiny, two-year-old company with just 25 employees. “It’s good that the expectations are high, but give us a minute,” he joked.

Throughout the talk, he mentioned several big projects that Twitter plans to tackle but hasn’t yet. One is moving its search function, which is hard to find, to the home page. Twitter also wants to make it easier for users to find their friends on the service, filter the people they follow and form groups so they can control which messages reach which of their followers.

potential merger of FB and twitter?

alerted when an invoice is overdue and numerous other features

Deciding to become a freelance worker can be a scary proposition. Sure there is an allure to picking what projects you work on, but it can also be stressful not knowing where your next paycheck will come from. Luckily there are numerous resources out there that not only help you find more work, but also loads of tools to help you do your job more efficiently with a professional edge.

TOOLS

The number one mistake most companies make is having the manager of the programmers writing the specs and designing the product. This is a mistake because the design does not get a fair trial, and is not born out of conflict and debate, so it’s not as good as it could be.

12 Excellent Tools for Picking a Domain Name - http://sixrevisions.com/resources/12-excellent-tools-for-picking-a-domain-name/

Business Card is a card printed or engraved with a person's name and business affiliation. Normally attach on it could be information such like title, address, telephone number and even logo of a company or private. Using Business card is useful in a way to promote yourself on other people. Are you planning to make your own business card but don't have any idea or some inspirations to start? Here's a showcase of 60+ Most Beautiful and Creative Business Cards Designs to enhance more your creativity and get inspired.

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60+ Most Beautiful and Creative Business Cards Design

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.

A good epitaph for the newspaper, by Clay Shirky. Now if only Elsevier would go bankrupt too.

Journalism has always been subsidized. Sometimes it's been Wal-Mart and the kid with the bike. Sometimes it's been Richard Mellon Scaife. Increasingly, it's you and me, donating our time. The list of models that are obviously working today, like Consumer Reports and NPR, like ProPublica and WikiLeaks, can't be expanded to cover any general case, but then nothing is going to cover the general case.

Oh, newspapers, please stick around. The revolution of the printing press was only, what, a few decades ago?

Here are the top 10 social networks for entrepreneurs. Each helps entrepreneurs succeed by providing them with the guidance and resources to setup their company.

resources for entrepreneurs

save

"It seems like a fool-proof plan: start up with a close friend. You’ll get along (obviously), and you’ll get to share the exciting, fantastic, scary experience of starting up with someone you care about. It’s not a bad idea, but there are a few caveats that you should be aware of before you proceed..."

Good advice on the early stages. This is targeted at friends starting up but also good for anybody starting with somebody else.

Interesting article about how to found a startup with friends.

lmost cost us our friendship. We got through this thanks to the help and mediation of anot

to understand the financial world crisis

37 Shopping Cart Options for Developers

The indispensable Michael Lewis reports from Reykjavík on the de facto bankruptcy of Iceland. An amazing story: the country's currency is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance. This was the result of a collective madness stunning even by US standards of financial insanity. Lewis asks how a 300,000 person fishing nation with one of the highest living standards in the world managed to turn itself into a national hedge fund? Lewis reports on an inbred country where, among other things, the men are largely nuts and the women seem to have completely given up on them, The result is the first lesbian head of state, an all-female political party, and the nation's only profitable bank run entirely by women. Like most of what Lewis writes about the intersection of people and large sums of money, this is another "drop whatever else you are doing and read this" article.

on the financial meltdown ef Iceland

Iceland's collapse. "One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it."

"Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown. "

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

Over the past few years Facebook has witnessed a dramatic rise in new user adoption and with that rise has come the opportunity for brands to interact directly with exis ...

There are numerous ways for brands to leverage Facebook but the overall branded experience is becoming increasingly integrated into a single offering as the new Pages product highlights. So what are the primary benefits and changes for the new branded pages?

Recently I made a post on BHW with this adsense screenshot and lots of people wanted to know how it's done. here's how it's done: I start with keyword lists from adsenseheaven dot com which guesstimates the most expensive keywords to bid on in the PPC AdWords side of the Google ad world. I generally ignore the top 1000, as they are very competitive and saturated. I am not concerned with the top payouts. I store this data every month in a mySQL database with the previous months data, and over time I am able to see which phrases are consistently in the lists and unlikely to disappear. I call them long term performers. I cross check each phrase with the number of pages currently indexed in google, to see how much competition there is for a each key phrase. It's usually easier to land a top 10 first page SERP position if there is less competition for the phrase. I also cross check each phrase with google trends data which has an RSS feed which is also collected and stored in a

share business cards via sms

mobile sms business cards

Really interesting article

The blog of a guy learning to survive in an uncertain world future. Interesting reading.

Tough economic times call for innovative approaches. An estimated 51 million people internationally are expected to lose their jobs in 2009, and with the unemployment rate on the rise, how does one find career opportunities fast? One great option is Twitter.

Twitter is evolving as another resource, in addition to traditional methods, for both job searching and recruiting.

Collaborating with clients you never meet face-to-face has become normal for most web workers. Ours is an industry where working remotely poses very few real

10 Tips for Working With Clients Remotely: Part 1

Facebook's new pages have gone live. The following is a guide for social media marketers.

Discusses Implications of changes in new Facebook layout for business profiles.

Look at the bright side of the new facebook changes.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stevenberlinjohnson.com%2F2009%2F03%2Fthe-following-is-a-speech-i-gave-yesterday-at-the-south-by-southwest-interactive-festival-in-austiniif-you-happened-to-being.html

There are dozens of interesting projects being spearheaded by very smart people, some of them nonprofits, some for-profit. But they are seedlings.

Johnson argues that journalism in the future will look a lot like how technology and politics are covered now because those two topics are the "old growth forests of the web", i.e. they've been covered long enough on the web that old media has had time to adjust, react, and in many cases, go out of business in the face of that coverage.

"That’s why the ecosystem of technology news is so crucial. It is the old-growth forest of the web. It is the sub-genre of news that has had the longest time to evolve. The Web doesn’t have some kind intrinsic aptitude for covering technology better than other fields. It just has an intrinsic tendency to cover technology first, because the first people that used the web were far more interested in technology than they were in, say, school board meetings or the NFL."

^^

I had a great time in design school, I was constantly learning and surrounded by lots of like minded people. However, after five years of freelancing as a graphic designer, I’ve learned many new things. The following list is the top ten things that I had to learn the hard way.

Insightful article about preparing for a career in design

At a dinner tonight with a friend the conversation turned to Twitter. He just didn’t get it, and he’s certainly not the first person to tell me that. Specifically, my friend didn’t understand the massive valuation ($250 million or more) that Twitter won in its recent funding. I told him why I thought it was more than justified: Twitter is, more than anything, a search engine. I told him what I thought of Twitter as a micro-blogging service: it’s a collection of emotional grunts. But it’s wonderful nonetheless. And enough people are hooked on it that Twitter has reached critical mass. If something big is going on in the world, you can get information about it from Twitter.

I don't want to think of it that way, but this is one of the best explanations I've read.

Internet Business Search

Business Card Inspiration

Business Card Design Inspiration

Some people were born to haggle, negotiate, cajole, whatever you call it. The rest of us need some guidance. Here are 10 great negotiating tactics to use next time you want to get more for less.

When we sold our startup in 1998 I thought one day I'd do some angel investing. Seven years later I still hadn't started. I put it off because it seemed mysterious and complicated. It turns out to be easier than I expected, and also more interesting. The part I thought was hard, the mechanics of investing, really isn't. You give a startup money and they give you stock. You'll probably get either preferred stock, which means stock with extra rights like getting your money back first in a sale, or convertible debt, which means (on paper) you're lending the company money, and the debt converts to stock at the next sufficiently big funding round.

nor tactical advantages to using one or the other. The paperwork for convertible debt is simpler. But really it doesn't matter much which you use. Don't spend much time worrying about the details of deal terms, especially when you first start angel investing. That's not how you win at this game. When you hear people talking about a successful angel investor, they're not saying "He got a 4x liquidation preference." They're saying "He invested in Google."

How to Be an Angel Investor

Notes from Paul Graham on angel investing. Actually pretty interesting. The key, as he describes it, is to pick the right companies... the terms you get when investing don't matter much and can even hurt your chances of success if you're strict enough.

Sprekende foto's over de financiele crisis

Another great entry from The Big Picture. #30: Unused newspaper racks clutter a storage yard.

1. Social media drives complete transparency 2. Social media drives quality product 3. Social media can be a great customer service channel 4. Social Media creates products that we want 5. You control the relationship 7. Big brands have interesting stories to tell 8. Users drive the content and conversation

See My Starbucks Idea Community Manager respond in the blog comments

i've had this tab open for a week now. i WILL eventually read this.

Great insights into the difference between getting your name in the news, and getting people excited about your products/company.

Excellent info about freelance contracts

Briechenstein's Popular Bookmark 12 Points to Include in my Design Contract-FreelanceSwitch-The Freelance Blogs

Social networking has clearly reached a tipping point. Sites like MySpace and Facebook boast hundreds of millions of members. Barack Obama's presidential victory demonstrated that platforms like YouTube and Twitter could transform electoral politics. Yet in corporations where such tools have been expected to bring profound transformations, there has been strong resistance to change.

Here's a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? My answer is almost always the same: don't. First off, what does it mean to launch? Generally, we conflate two unrelated concepts into the term, which is important to clarify right up front. 1. Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. (Marketing launch) 2. Make a new product available to customers in the general public. (Product launch) In today's world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. In fact, in most situations it's a bad idea for startups to synchronize these events.

Seth Godin's Blog

AdSense

TwitterJobSearch.com - the world's first job search engine to harness the power of Twitter. Search the hottest, most recent best paid jobs in the entire Twitterverse.

Iceland&#8217;s de facto bankruptcy&#8212;its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance&#8212;resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjav&#237;k, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

A beautiful piece by Michael Lewis about the Iceland economy which went bankrupt in 2008.

Effectively, Google's position was that it was above the law, and if not any law in particular, then at least the spirit of the law. Irked, I decided to find out if such a position was tenable.

"But it's not fair!" Google's paralegal protested. "What if everyone whose account was canceled sued Google?" It's a valid question. Yet until Google changes its policies to become more transparent, which might also reassure skeptics that AdWords and AdSense, which have oddly limited reporting capabilities, aren't just two sides of the same ponzi scheme (for why else would one want to terminate legitimate accounts with high monthly liabilities when they're supposed to be making money for Google on each click?)--I will give this answer: Maybe everyone whose account was canceled, should.

"But it's not fair!" Google's paralegal protested. "What if everyone whose account was canceled sued Google?"

Ms. Milani reiterated her previous arguments, but the judge didn't buy them. "I don't think I have the power here in Palo Alto small claims court to make you reinstate his account, but I think you owe this young man $721," he said finally. "I think there might be money in Google's treasury for that."

This is awesome.

Financial Times has developed a business search engine which searches news, magazine, television, radio, and expert commentary and allows users to focus their search on clusters

A business news search engine that provides semantic web features. For example, breaks the results into categories.

uche nach wirtschaftsartikeln

6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website

Every website has a bunch of web pages which get more search traffic than others. These pages are constantly visited daily by new visitors, people who have never seen the site in question before. I call these ‘money pages’ because they are a reliable source of immediate and future income. But they’re not just ‘money’ because they bring in revenue: they are one of the easiest ways to grow your audience without much work. If you learn how to optimize these money pages (its not hard to do), you’ll really improve your website in so many ways. More revenue, more members, more influence and authority. Doesn’t that sound good?

Important: worldwide scope.

Interesting take on social media marketing spend in downturn

Eagle ($250/month) – Users get 500 character limit, 1000 extra random followers, 3 celebrity followers of their choice, 5 hours on recommended list each month, Twitter Concierge for Tweeting while user is asleep or busy (and more), auto-spell check, "Fail Whale" tuxedo, custom "Fail Whale" page when service is down.

Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams today announced part of the company's long-awaited business model: Twitter Premium accounts.

HA!

… the Internet shatters all forms of advertising. “The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed,” …

tutorial works great for any company to explain any product or service. Think about all the crappy, long-winded, take-forever-to-load, seemingly-last-forever start videos you’ve seen a

The Art of the Tutorial

Examples of effective video product descriptions.

Inkd is more than a place to buy great design. It’s a real marketplace that brings together print designers and businesses. Our hope is to build the most important print portal for browsing AND buying. Thousands of professional print designs and brochure templates for download. That’s Inkd.

Buy and sell brochure template designs that include layouts, photos and vector artwork. Get graphic design ideas, download print templates, edit and print custom brochure designs in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and more.

Find and Follow Top Business Execs on Twitter

ExecTweets is a resource to help you find and follow the top business executives on Twitter.

Templates para Nesletter

Twitter has multiple business models to choose from I get asked over and over: “How do you think Twitter will monetize? What’s their business model?” While it’s clear their already experimenting with ‘house’ ads, ads that promote features of their service, I’m not sure that’s going to be the right direction for them. We already know that click through rates on social networks are low, why? because people are there to communicate with each other –not search for information like Google or on a media site. It’s possible they could turn on ads in the search tool, as people are seeking information. Yet all of these tactics have been done on other social sites, I think that Twitter has a unique opportunity to tap into the lucrative CRM space. Manually tracking a large brand within Twitter isn’t scalable It’s important to first realize that managing a large brand on Twitter isn’t scalable, with hundreds –maybe thousands of tweets about a marketplace a day, individuals will have a very diffic

This is a great article about where Twitter is going. It says they have a lot of thing going for them right now (like customers) but are lacking many things too. If they find the right tools Twitter could be big.

Twitter

This will be helpful sometime

Merchant account

test

Describe the pain of getting a merchant account with a bank. Give some tips on how to do it.

"guide to obtaining a merchant account, from the cash-strapped start-up’s point of view". chargebacks, 3D-secure, AVS/CV2, PCI-DSS. Start the process early; Apply to several banks; Exaggerate your volumes (realistically); Know all about fraud; Be serious to ensure the bank feels you’re a trustworthy business; Read the fine print and negotiate the terms.

a major American city could be left without a daily paper

Heavy debt has dragged several newspaper companies into bankruptcy. The industry’s dwindling revenues have forced some money-losing papers to close, and papers that are for sale are having trouble finding buyers. Experts say that before long, a major American city could be left without a daily paper. (Related Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/media/12papers.html)

an gi

Facebook's redesign, and why customer feedback shouldn't be the only driver of a product's development....

My former boss, Jim Fawcette, used to say that if you asked a group of Porsche owners what they wanted they’d tell you things like “smoother ride, more trunk space, more leg room, etc.” He’d then say “well, they just designed a Volvo.

"Losing control is a primary reason stated by brands who are unwilling to open themselves up to the conversation - and a major reason why most continue to use social media as little more than a brochure on the web. And yet the illusion of control is just that – an illusion." (Via @bentforkz)

Fin mikroguide til hvordan man skal agere som brand i sociale medier.

Interested ideas on how web2.0 changed how people think.

As a full-time freelancer and part-time geek, I like to play around and install applications on my Mac. In the following list I share some of the free Mac apps

E文本编辑器的作者应用开源原则将他的公司转变成一家开放公司

It used to be hard to imagine that anything serious could be build without the creation of large hierarchical organizations. But if one thing has really been shown in these recent years, it is that self-organizing groups in many cases can outperform traditional organizations. There is a lot of talk in the community about the various freedoms that open source confers. But beneath all this there is a titillating promise of an even more fundamental freedom. This is “the real freedom zero”

Twitter is growing in popularity by leaps and bounds lately. It seams like everyone is talking about Twitter. The neat thing is that everyone seems to use Twitter in their own unique way. Hundreds of Twitter applications can be found on numerous sites that offer cool tools to help you manage the way you use Twitter. If you use Twitter for marketing your small business, I sorted thru tons of apps to bring you the most helpful. Feel free to suggest other Twitter apps, for business owners, below in the comments.

Gartner released a report today that highlights the different ways that companies are adopting Twitter for business use. Although Twitter was originally intended for communication among individuals, a number of organizations have begun to actively participate on the platform. However, not all companies are using Twitter in the same way. Some are tweeting, some are just listening, and some really savvy companies are doing both.

Winner of 47 educational awards, Geography World lists 86 categories of the top geographical sites on the Net!

Winner of 47 educational awards! 12 years online!

usage of crowdsourcing wiki

Another listing of freelancing jobs in web design and web development.

ave the time. You are ready to work, but there’s one problem. You have no clients. The biggest struggle freelancers face is finding work. The

Top 20 Websites to Find Work as a Freelance Designer | Spoonfed Design - http://www.spoonfeddesign.com/top-20-websites-to-find-work-as-a-freelance-designer

Receive credit card payments on the iPhone

You set it up by linking it to your PayPal or Authorize.net merchant account, and then you can just hand it to a customer to type in their credit card number and amounts. I can imagine this being super-useful for all sorts of in-home service situations. [via @dthompson]

Transactions makes credit card processing away from the home or office effortless. Using two of the most popular payment gateways in the world Transactions allows anyone to easily accept credit cards. Great for delivery services, in home contracting or consulting, flea markets, garage sales, trade shows, or anywhere payments are needed away from a computer

http://www.boxuk.com/blog/monetizing-your-web-app-business-models boxuk.com

Business models for web applications

monetizing web apps

Seth on meetings, with some innovative ideas

Getting serious about your meeting problem Do you have one? Some folks are going to eight hours of meeting a day. At Ford, they used to have meetings to prepare for meetings, just to be sure everyone had their story straight. If you're serious about solving your meeting problem, getting things done and saving time, try this for one week. If it doesn't work, I'll be happy to give you a full refund. 1. Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length? 2. Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of realtime face time. 3. Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don't, kick them out. 4. Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious. 5. If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have...

Do you have one? Some folks are going to eight hours of meeting a day. At Ford, they used to have meetings to prepare for meetings, just to be sure everyone had their story straight.

Article about what OpenSource software generally lacks, and how to compete with them.

ever, users like know that there is someone who will be happy to help them out if they need it. That is the main purpose of offering customer support — decreasing the perceived risk of using your software by demonstrating that there is a safety net. (This is one reason you should write your support page with an eye to it being seen by someone who isn’t even using your software.)

2) Design OSS projects, particularly the 99% that are relevant to this discussion, routinely do not allocate resources to creating attractive designs. For whatever reason, opened source graphical work is still rather rare, most developers (myself included) have the artistic skill of inept mole rats, and the obvious pay-somebody-who-does-it-better solution runs into the problem that the typical OSS project has no budget and no patience to deal with “unfree” licenses, which are the only kind commercially available stock icons have.

" However, users like know that there is someone who will be happy to help them out if they need it. That is the main purpose of offering customer support — decreasing the perceived risk of using your software by demonstrating that there is a safety net."

Some good points, particularly on how OSS focuses on the software pitch too much (most folk don't think of their problem as a software issue)

But Not Until At Least 2011

I had a surprisingly candid lunch conversation last week with a big music label executive, and part of our talk focused on the future of music. I asked the usual question: Why are you guys so damned clueless? Your business is disintegrating before your eyes, and all you do is go for short term cash gains (lawsuits, mafia-style collection rackets from venture backed music startups, etc.). The long term costs are horrendous - an entire generation or two of young music lovers feel no remorse at outright stealing music. Particularly since most online streaming is now free, it’s hard to understand why downloading or sharing songs should be a crime. His response: It’s all part of a master plan. The labels fully understand that recorded music, streamed or downloaded, is going to be free in the future (we’ve argued this relentlessly). CD sales continue to decline by 20% per year, and the only thing that’ll stop that trend is when those sales reach zero. Nothing will replace those revenues.

I had a surprisingly candid lunch conversation last week with a big music label executive, and a good part of our talk focused on the future of music. I asked the usual question: Why are you guys so damned clueless? Your business is disintegrating before your eyes, and all you do is go for short term cash gains (lawsuits, mafia-style collection rackets from venture backed music startups, etc.). The long term costs are horrendous - an entire generation or two of young music lovers feel no remorse at outright stealing music. Particularly since most online streaming is now free, it’s hard to understand why downloading or sharing songs should be a crime.

"a search of "what's happening -- right now," and in Twitter's small but growing world, it is. While being a searchable database of what is being said at a particular time is unique, it doesn't take Twitter too far afield from Google, which is a catalog of the world's recorded knowledge. Google looks back at what documents have been produced and can be surfaced, while Twitter looks back at what was said on a given topic. "

"While being a searchable database of what is being said at a particular time is unique, it doesn't take Twitter too far afield from Google, which is a catalog of the world's recorded knowledge. Google looks back at what documents have been produced and can be surfaced, while Twitter looks back at what was said on a given topic. "Certainly there's an AdWords-like business there, but, as Mr. Chaffee told us, Twitter has another "wild card." "In the future, searches won't only query what's being said at the moment, but will go out to the Twitter audience in the form of a question, like a faster and less-filtered Yahoo Answers or Wiki Answers. Users would be able to tap the collective knowledge of the 6 million or so members of the Twitterverse."

from BF

Twitter sees lucrative opportunities in search, albeit a different kind of search than what Google offers, and, as co-founder Biz Stone told Ad Age recently, "we'll certainly be exploring those."

またもやFICCさんの自社サービス、制作事例から求人情報を探せます。

FICCが運営するクリエイターのための求人サイト☆さすがなつくり。 CBCNETより見やすくて親切。

制作実例から企業を探すことができる

1. Learn something. Become an expert. 2. Earn a following and reputation. Use social networking tools to connect to people for no good reason.

A lot of corporations have seen dramatic decreases in revenue and have cut back projects as well. In many cases, this is accompanied by layoffs, and so everyone is working far harder. But in other organizations, and for a lot...

1. Learn something. Become an expert. For free, using nothing but time, you can become a master of CSS or HTML or learn Python. You can hit the library and read the entire works of important authors, or you can borrow some books from a friend and master Analytics or discover case studies and corporate histories that will be invaluable in a year. You could learn to become fluent in Spanish...

What can you build over the next year that will take time now and pay off later? How can you invest the slack to build a marketing asset that you'll own forever?

Weil Papageien teure Geheimnisse haben.

From Box UK, a survey of business models used by the top Web apps, most of them variations of ad-supported Free and Freemium. In the chart below, the largest segment (ITA) is ad-supported, the second largest (ISV) is Freemium. After that is referral (ITR) and then the sale of virtual goods (IPV), such as the gifts in Facebook.

A public diary on themes around my books

check out link to top 100 web apps

Terrific survey of free business models online

"We take bridges for granted now, but back in the 1800s, bridges were in beta. They fell. One out of every four bridges… fell""We Are Defined By What We Build The Brooklyn Bridge was built from 1870 until 1883."

Rands posts a nice optimistic counter to current economic gloom, citing the Brooklyn Bridge and other 19th century NYC architecture.

History of the Brooklyn Bridge

Truly inspiring

We need a new version of ourselves and that’s going to involve bright, unexpected ideas from those we least expect them from, and they’re going to strike you as impossible. All you need to do to understand these terrifyingly ambitious ideas is to look back at what we’ve already done to understand what we can do.

So, my best advice is to say, "Today, right now, your contribution is worth 5% of the company and my creation of the company is worth 5%. The other 90% is based on what each of us does over the next 18 months. Here's a list of what has to get done, and what we agree it's worth..."

my best advice is to say, "Today, right now, your contribution is worth 5% of the company and my creation of the company is worth 5%. The other 90% is based on what each of us does over the next 18 months. Here's a list of what has to get done, and what we agree it's worth..."

Viral Marketing Guru

If you want it bad enough you'll make the time, regardless of your other obligations. Don't let yourself off the hook with excuses. It's entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come through.

“I’d love to start a company / become a great programmer / write an awesome blog, but there’s just not enough time in the day!” Bullshit. There’s always enough time, you’re just not spending it right.

Optimising for Twitter search

consigli seo per twitte

I think this article means "How to optimize your tweets for search results"

i suspect this'll be pretty big

From Angus

Hunch helps you make decisions and gets smarter the more you use it.

Over beslissingen en advies. Van een van de oprichters van Flickr. Nog niet kunnen uittesten, is nog in beta stadium, alleen op uitnodiging. Kan interessant zijn.

Shows cities on a innovation scale from McKinsey. The dynamic graphic is particulary good in making a comparion between Europe and the rest of the world.

What Matters, a blog about topics of global importance, curated by McKinsey & Company and featuring essays by respected experts in a variety of disciplines, including biotechnology, climate change, credit crisis, energy, geopolitics, globalization, health care, innovation, the Internet and organization.

Whether you're a freelance web designer or you own your own web design company, here are some web-based tools that will make your life easier, increase your professional image, and streamline your entire operation.

11 Absolutely Necessary Web-Based Tools for a Freelance Web Designer | CHROMATIC

Some nice tools for those running a webdesign shop

A decent list of applications for freelancers and small companies. List includes basecamp and backpack plus a few others I hadn't heard of.

Online tools for project (and business) management.

The Artist's Guide to Flickr

Selfpromote using Flickr and boost your viewer count

Kleine aber ganz nützliche Tipps um seinen Flcirk bekanntheitsgrad zu boosten

Great article on marketing online.

via Popego.com

I'd pay for analytics for the company

As expected, money to get corporations "more features" on Twitter -- no launch date yet.

생각을 열어보자구

A March 2009 snapshot of 12 pieces Jay Rosen feels capture the debate over the future of news.

Your one stop shop for recent blog think on the future of newspapers, some of which has already been linked to piecemeal here at TheBrowser

Па выніках месяцовай працы чувакі глядзяць, чыво будзе далей з ньсам

Rosen's Flying Seminar In The Future of News For March 2009. The pace quickened after Clay Shirky's Thinking the Unthinkable. Here's my best-of from a month of deep think as people came to terms with the collapse of the newspaper model, and tried looking ahead. I know these twelve links work. I tested them on Twitter. As the crisis in newspaper journalism grinds on, people watching it are trying to explain how we got here, and what we’re losing as part of the newspaper economy crashes. Some are trying to imagine a new news system. I try to follow this action, and have been sending around the best of these pieces via my Twitter feed. It’s part of my experiment in mindcasting, which you can read about here.

Jay Rosen;s month long analysis piece: "As the crisis in newspaper journalism grinds on, people watching it are trying to explain how we got here, and what we’re losing as part of the newspaper economy crashes."

Une banque de liens incroyables classés proprement au sujet de l'entreprenariat ... à garder sous le coude

Search for organizational charts with The Official Board. We provide constantly updated organizational charts of the world’s 20 000 largest corporations. A strong personal network is the key to professional success. The Official Board is constantly developed and updated by our members in real time. That means our members are the first to know. Free registration is required. Most of the information can be accessed for free by our members. Then, by adding to the database, they become allowed to search for deeper information in each organizational chart.

View the organizational charts of the world's 20 000 largest corporations.

Welcome to The Official Board. We provide constantly updated organizational charts of the world's 20 000 largest corporations.

org charts of companies

Ger information om företagets ledning. Wiki

org charts

"We provide constantly updated organizational charts of the world’s 20 000 largest corporations."

See also the techcrunch article.

Ultimately, though, every business needs revenues—and advertising, it transpires, is not going to provide enough. Free content and services were a beguiling idea. But the lesson of two internet bubbles is that somebody somewhere is going to have to pick up the tab for lunch.

the lack of any business model describes the Web 2.0 era

"Ultimately, though, every business needs revenues—and advertising, it transpires, is not going to provide enough. Free content and services were a beguiling idea. But the lesson of two internet bubbles is that somebody somewhere is going to have to pick up the tab for lunch."

"Now reality is reasserting itself once more, with familiar results. The number of companies that can be sustained by revenues from internet advertising turns out to be much smaller than many people thought, and Silicon Valley seems to be entering another “nuclear winter”"

How to price an iPhone app, or whether to charge at all and use ads instead.

iphone app developer

How To Monetize a Social Network: MySpace and Facebook Should Follow TenCent « abovethecrowd.com

Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric

一枚企画書の書き方

後で読む

本連載では、竹島愼一郎氏が提唱するインパクト抜群の「1枚企画書」をPowerPointで作る手順を全5回で紹介します。社会人になったらWordやExcelだけでなくPowerPointも使いこなせなくては、社内や取引先でのプレゼンに勝ち抜けません。しかし、ただ単に企画書をPowerPointで再現しただけでは、印象に残るプレゼンにはほど遠く、居眠りを誘う会議になってしまうことでしょう。 　「1枚企画書」の最終回として、本書が出版に至った企画書の実例を含む、「プレゼン力の高い企画書」を3種類ご紹介します。実際の成功事例を踏まえてPowerPointをフル活用すれば、皆さんの仕事もきっと成功に近づくはずです。

The challenge of building your product around breakthrough design is that the design has to in fact be a breakthrough. And that means spending far more time or money than your competitors who are merely seeking a positive return.

Return on design

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more **

Google Ventures seeks to discover and grow great companies - we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. We're studying a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care. We invest anywhere from seed to mezzanine stage and embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the garage to global relevance.

Venture Capital - by Google. We seek to discover and grow great companies - we fundamentally believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things.

"Oh, look. Here's the jerk who wrote the code that broke everything. A confession."

Further to what we were saying about iPhone apps.

Managing multiple projects can be cumbersome and chaotic if you don’t have some kind of system in place to keep track of everything. That challenge can be compounded when you add in multiple services, subcontractors or employees, and various team members on the client side. I have found that my business runs most efficiently when I have a system driving data collection, tracking tasks, and facilitating collaboration with all of the people that need to be in the know on a specific project. I’ve tried many project management applications in my search for the perfect system and came up with a short list of options that seemed to have the most potential for me.

SitePoint.com - » 16 Project Management Tools That Make Juggling Easy

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

But I must tell you, to IMF officials, all of these crises looked depressingly similar. Each country, of course, needed a loan, but more than that, each needed to make big changes so that the loan could really work. Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excess—exports must be increased, and imports cut—and the goal is to do this without the most horrible of recessions. Naturally, the fund’s economists spend time figuring out the policies—budget, money supply, and the like—that make sense in this context. Yet the economic solution is seldom very hard to work out. No, the real concern of the fund’s senior staff, and the biggest obstacle to recovery, is almost invariably the politics of countries in crisis. Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises.

"In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay."

A former head of the IMF offers an insightful and alarming look at how the United States has been hijacked by a cabal of rotten financiers.

Jacek Utko

Blog post, 5 lessons learned from YouSendIt.com

AIDA

In this post we’re going to look at a simple template you can follow if you need to create a design that “sells” - that is, creating a website landing page that intends to turn a viewer / user into a customer.

5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence

ways to fine-tune your profile for maximum affect. So here are five tips to optimize your activities on Facebook, including the right way to create profile and thumbnail graphics, how to show different content to Fans and non-Fans, creating DIY vanity urls, and how managing what and when you post can lead to greater success.

How to optimise facebook

transparent salary system - by Joel Spolsky The Fog Creek Professional Ladder determines your base salary.

nice

Business tips on how to stop wasting time. Create efficiencies.

Joel Spolsky on salaries

good tips by Seth Godin

start a business by finding ten people who are interested in what you're doing. They will find other people they can interest in your work

This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing. Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you... Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it,...

Twitter power users have many thousands of people following their tweets. Here are their tips and insight to gaining so many followers.

Yes, yes, we know it's not true. But what would be the implications if it were...

"Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we're just getting started. "

Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.

"Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter"

An interesting development in the rumors that Google could be acquiring Twitter...

It just seemed interesting to me. I have no school now and, I don't know, this article just interested me.

牛人文章

solidifies my arguments against college

Generous sharing of revenue numbers of a $5 game. Got slashdotted. Some interesting comments if you can wade through all the bile.

Dapple has sold 131 copies worldwide in the 24 days since it launched. I realise that I’m dealing with a very limited amount of data here, so I’m not going to pretend like I can make any kind of long term projections about how sales will be in a month, six months, or a year. However, what you can see is how far from my goal of 9,150 I remain. So…

Indie sales figures on iPhone

However, I haven’t had reviews yet from any of the “Big 3″ iPhone review sites (Touch Arcade, 148Apps, and AppVee). Those are the ones that I think might really affect sales.

How can we measure success and returns from social media campaigns?

teen sex analogy

Solid presentation on how to approach social media marketing from a quantitative perspective. Most interesting are the examples of different types of social media campaigns to drive different business goals. There is no one-size-fits all social media marketing campaign.

The book, Almost Perfect, was originally published by Prima Publishing in 1994. It is the story of the rise and fall of WordPerfect Corporation from my point of view.

The book, Almost Perfect, was originally published by Prima Publishing in 1994. It is the story of the rise and fall of WordPerfect Corporation from my point of view. The book sold a little less than 10,000 copies and is now out of print. The copy published here is almost identical to my original manuscript and does not contain Prima's edits. In this version, I have corrected two factual errors, fixed five typos, deleted a few pages at the end, and added a final paragraph. I welcome links to this site, however, I ask that you not reproduce this manuscript other than for your personal reading without written permission. If you prefer reading a PDF version, click here. I hope you enjoy the book. Thanks for stopping by.

Being an OfficePOD user will bring a positive change to life. A chance to cut down on commuting, to be more productive, to spend more time at home but at the same time keep your work separate. A major way to getting a better balance into your life. (Será?)

The ability to work from home is a trend that is here to stay. Technology allows it, legislation permits it and employers often now encourage it. An OfficePOD provides a working environment that is separate to home life. The hassle free OfficePOD service deals with everything from site survey and installation through to customer services and POD relocation in the case of moving house or employer.

Unresolvable

Pretty amazing outdoor office furniture designed to help the environment.

"While each customer on average experiences more unique products in Internet World, the recommender system generates a correlation among the customers. To use a geographical analogy, in Internet World the customers see further, but they are all looking out from the same tall hilltop. In Offline World individual customers are standing on different, lower, hilltops. They may not see as far individually, but more of the ground is visible to someone. In Internet World, a lot of the ground cannot be seen by anyone because they are all standing on the same big hilltop. ... Individual diversity and cultural homogeneity coexisting in what we might call monopoly populism. A "niche", remember, is a protected and hidden recess or cranny, not just another row in a big database." + http://www.noahbrier.com/archives/2009/04/diverselessness.php

"A "niche", remember, is a protected and hidden recess or cranny, not just another row in a big database. Ecological niches need protection from the surrounding harsh environment if they are to thrive. Simply putting lots of music into a single online iTunes store is no recipe for a broad, niche-friendly culture."

<cite>Online merchants such as Amazon, iTunes and Netflix may stock more items than your local book, CD, or video store, but they are no friend to "niche culture". Internet sharing mechanisms such as YouTube and Google PageRank, which distil the clicks of millions of people into recommendations, may also be promoting an online monoculture. Even word of mouth recommendations such as blogging links may exert a homogenizing pressure and lead to an online culture that is less democratic and less equitable, than offline culture.</cite>

is online culture lest diverse

プレゼンテーションのデザインパターン

Explorar en Twitter

So I set out to create a list of the people and organizations to consider following on Twitter if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of small businesses. In other words, who are the people on Twitter who regularly provide information by, about and for small businesses?

gregorylent - April 5th, 2009 at 9:12 am PDT

Chinese Social Networks ‘Virtually’ Out-Earn Facebook And MySpace: A Market Analysis

Social networks are taking off in China. The following guest post by George Godula. David Li, and Richard Yu explores how Chinese social networks are pursuing different business models than their American counterparts, relying more on micropayments and the sale of virtual goods.

Editor’s Note: Social networks are taking off in China. The following guest post by George Godula. David Li, and Richard Yu explores how Chinese social networks are pursuing different business models than their American counterparts, relying more on micropayments and the sale of virtual goods. George Godula is the co-founder of Web2Asia, an East Asian incubator and also a consultancy for Western startups trying to enter markets in China, Japan and Korea. David Li is a developer of social networking applications such as Growing Gifts, and he also was the developer of OnChat, an early in-browser graphical avatar chat system. Richard Yu is a Seattle native living in China, where he consults for Shanghai-based web startups while writing his blog.

George Godula. David Li, and Richard Yu

Mashable is exclusively announcing the 19 finalists in a European startup competition, selected by a panel including Amazon CTO Werner Vogels.

Silicon Valley isn't the only place that's a hotbed for social media and web entrepreneurship: Europe is filled with skilled entrepreneurs and successful

Mashable is exclusively announcing the 19 finalists in a European startup competition, selected by a panel including Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. It’s all part of the 2009 Next Web Conference in Amsterdam this month, which gathers together Europe’s tech community and brings it some well-deserved international attention.

hmm

Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.

If it's too good to be true...

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports

Excellent Article on Dubai: "Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history."

Let’s get this out of the way first: I used to have a BlackBerry, I loved it, and have nothing against it. I also think the Palm Pre will change the direction of phone software forever. However, the massive shift towards the iPhone and its application store is such a powerful movement, we can’t deny the power of what this combination can bring to people who rely on being mobile while working. Personally, iPhone applications have changed the way I live each day - from fun to productivity. This is true for many of us that work on the web. So, look at this both as a list of possible tools for current iPhone users, as well as a reference for other phone users to consider if they aren’t happy with the phone - and more importantly, the productivity system - they already have. Ideas & notes Usually the first part of any process, the idea, is lost in a fleeting moment of getting sucked in by a Slap Chop commercial. I mean, seriously, who doesn’t want to stop having a boring life of chopping

1. every Tweet has to be approved by legal - CLASSIC 9. you plan to track Twitter with Google Analytics - OMFG ;)

Mainstream media is in an orgiastic frenzy of coverage about Twitter. Everyone's Tweeting, from celebrities to CEOs according to CNN, The View, Today, the NY Times, the Wall St Journal and just about everyone else. Each of them covers Twitter like it's an overnight phenomenon that came out of nowhere, although Twitter has been gaining traction for three years and now has 9 14 million members. Should your company be on Twitter? Not necessarily. Top 10 reasons not to join Twitter: 1. every Tweet has to be approved by legal. Twitter is a social network where conversation is fast and interconnected. If you have to wait a day, or even a few hours for your 140 character Tweet to gain legal approval, Twitter will be the wrong platform for you. 2. you plan to use Twitter like a giant RSS feed, broadcasting nothing but headlines, deals. People follow people they find interesting. If all your Tweets are a one-way street: Block! 3. you think using Twitter is a social media strategy

"It's a tactic, a tool, not a strategy. It works if you already have an online following who'll view your Tweets as a way to interact with your company on a human level."

It was a hostile audience. It was June 2007, at a conference center in London, where newspaper and magazine publishers were hearing how a new industry-backed search engine rights standard called ACAP was coming along. The day ended with an "issues" oriented panel. The audience didn't seem that pleased with me telling them they were full of shit about how important they thought they were and how awful they thought they had it from Google in particular. I didn't phrase it like that, but that was the essence of my attitude. I'd rarely encountered so many people in one place with such a sense of entitlement. Worse, these were supposedly my own people. Newspaper folks, where I got my start in journalism. What an embarrassment. I'm not talking the rank-and-file of newspapers, however -- the reporters and editors doing the grunt work. This crowd was full of publishers or editors of a different type, not wordsmithing and story assignment but looking out for the business issues.

I also explained that unlike virtually all other publishers on the internet, newspapers were given extraordinary special status with Google. They were among the very select few to be admitted into Google News and receive the huge amounts of traffic it could send their ways. That many small blogs with excellent content struggle for admittance that these other publishers just got handed to them on a silver platter.

/via Perttu) Search Engine Land -verkkojulkaisun päätoimittaja sanomalehdille: Stop looking to blame Google for your failings. Figure out a better business model rather than blowing hot air about the privileged positions you occupy.

Dave, you might find this one interesting

How to monitor your social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and more in 10 minutes a day.

Social Media Presence

In large corporations, almost everything new is impossible. Try to do anything new, and typically you are met with dozens of reasons why it can’t be done. As a consultant (which I was throughout my time in the corporate world), however, you’ve been hired to get something specific done, so you don’t get to echo the “it can’t be done” line back to your client. Your job is, effectively, to do the impossible.

Questions to stablish some work references for projects.

Must read: RT @boagworld: the Web Designer Depot has released my article '5 Things Your Clients Should Know' (http://tinyurl.com/clyusu) [from http://twitter.com/everything_web/statuses/1407774725]

This is not a criticism of clients, however. There is so little information that clearly defines their role. Sure, there is no shortage of material on usability, accessibility, online marketing and copywriting, but who has the time to read all of it? The problem is that the client does need to have a very broad understanding (certainly more than can be communicated in a single article), however I have found that understanding certain key issues can make an enormous difference to the efficiency of a client. What follows is a list of the 5 things that I believe will have the biggest impact on a client’s site. At least they should, if the client understands them and chooses to implement them.

40 fine logos from smashing mag

Beautiful And Creative Logo Designs For Your Inspiration

アフィリエイトサイトやニッチキーワードサイトを作成してアクセスを集めるためにやるべき事のリスト…というかほぼマニュアル

これは自分自身のためのTo-DOリストとして作成しました。 ぼくがアフィリエイトサイトを作ったり、ネットショップのサテライトサイトを作ったりする場合に行っている事です。つまりぼくがやっていることはここに書いた程度のことです。ノウハウ的にはたいしたことありません。みなさんの参考になればと思いアップします。 アフィリエイトサイトを作ったり、ネットショップのサテライトサイトを作ったりする場合には、ニッチキーワードをメインキーワードとしてサイトを作成

Woody Lewis gives newspapers advice on how to remain relevant including developing alliances, finding a strong technology partner and taking full advantage of Twitter. Lewis argues that doing nothing is not an option.

Newspapers: 5 Ways to Avoid Extinction

An article on how major newspapers can use social media to avoid collapse.

Interesting article on Newspapers slow extinction and possible ways to battle this.

Merlin Mann talk about making money to do more art

We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies

"My muse for the session was this quote from Walt Disney: “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.” To me, that’s it. That’s the thing. / [...] / No one gets into something like this without an obsession, but if your obsession is with the money, and your revenue is directly correlated to page views, then rather than write or produce anything with any actual merit or integrity, you’ll dance like a monkey and split your articles across multiple “pages” and spend more time ginning up sensational Digg-bait headlines than writing the articles themselves. It’s thievery — not of money, but of readers’ attention." / [...] / The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient."

"There is an easy formula for doing it wrong: publish attention-getting bullshit and pull stunts to generate mindless traffic. The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient. Obsession times voice is a pretty good stab at a simple formula for doing it right."

Good article about a business plan, taking offers and for freelancers

I read all of these blogs. They all have incredibly useful archives. And they’re all written by people who teach and practice, so the advice is practical.

Classic mistakes in development and team leadership

#34: Overestimated savings from new tools or methods. Organizations seldom improve their productivity in giant leaps, no matter how good or how many new tools or methods they adopt. Be

ff

Some ineffective development practices have been chosen so often, by so many people, with such predictable, bad results that they deserve to be called "classic mistakes." Most of the mistakes have a seductive appeal. Do you need to rescue a project that's behind schedule? Add more people! Do you want to reduce your schedule? Schedule more aggressively! Is one of your key contributors aggravating the rest of the team? Wait until the end of the project to fire him! Do you have a rush project to complete? Take whatever developers are available right now and get started as soon as possible!

good UI for inline video

Nice and clean interface (of the gazillionst invoice app)

The easy way to send estimates.

Here is another great moment in A.P. history. In its quest to become the RIAA of the newspaper industry, the A.P.’s executives and lawyers are beginning to match their counterparts in the music industry for cluelessness. A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter warning from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from the A.P.’s official Youtube channel on its Website. See update below.

You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. affiliate and that the A.P. shouldn’t be harassing its own members. Apparently, nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos.

Educators would be wise to examine if these are some of the reasons email, admin blogging and other forms of social media (twitter) are failing to work/catch on in the public school systems. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2Farchives%2Fwhen_to_not_use_social_media.php

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/when_to_not_use_social_media.php

"According to a report by Credit Suisse, YouTube is on track to lose roughly $470 million in 2009....YouTube will manage to rake in about $240 million in ad revenue in 2009, against operating costs of roughly $711 million."

One thing is clear: YouTube cannot maintain its current course and remain a going concern. Google can continue to fund the experiment for a period of time, but at some juncture, shareholders will ask hard questions about why Google is sacrificing half a billion dollars to support a project whose chances of providing a return, at any point, is dubious at best. Advertising cannot solve the problem, at least not in its current form, and not in the near term. With a diminishing field of options, a massive, growing, cost center, and an economy in recession, Google will need to make some hard decisions about the future viability and business model of its prodigal child.

YouTube on track to lose $470 million in 2009.

The economics are hard to overcome. Assuming YouTube delivers the 75 billion streams that Credit Suisse projects for 2009, and assuming YouTube manages to slot an ad for every stream (which is practically speaking, impossible, given the nature of much of their content), YouTube would have to achieve a $9.48 CPM for every video impression shown. Presumably, the videos YouTube is already monetizing represent the best content available, with diminishing returns as they reach deeper and deeper into a repository rife with copyright violation, the indecent, the uninteresting, and the unwatchable. Hulu claims to be charging a $30 CPM, of which roughly 70% goes to the copyright holder. Averages for other proprietary content hover around the $10 CPM mark. CPMs for user-generated content, assuming you can attract the advertisers, tend to be measured in fractions of a dollar.

from SocialComputingJournal.com

new and hot bookmarks

mashable

Just in case you didn't see my Twitip post - please RT. Thanks so much! http://tinyurl.com/cvurj2

neat twit tips for EH interest?

A classic in the making of how Nicholas Carr got it completely wrong.

"What Google doesn't mention is that the billions of clicks and the millions of ad dollars are so fragmented among so many thousands of sites that no one site earns enough to have a decent online business. Where the real money ends up is at the one point in the system where traffic is concentrated: the Google search engine." One side of the Google, media deabate.

"Once the news business reduces supply, it can begin to consolidate traffic, which in turn consolidates ad revenues and, not least, opens opportunities to charge subscription fees of one sort or another - opportunities that today, given the structure of the industry, seem impossible. With less supply, the supplier gains market power at the expense of the middleman. The fundamental problem facing the news business today does not lie in Google's search engine. It lies in the structure of the news business itself."

Google as Wal-Mart. (via @cshirky and @timoreilly)

Here are one hundred characteristics and attributes of people who start companies—some born of experience, education or birth. Most can be learned by study and practice.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fbuilder.japan.zdnet.com%2Fnews%2Fstory%2F0%2C3800079086%2C20391421%2C00.htm

Hiring is always hard. The hardest thing to do at a company is the recruiting and hiring. It was really hard when the economy was doing well. Paradoxically, for certain industries (especially those reliant on innovation such as those in the tech space), it's even harder when times are tough. That's right ... hiring in tough economic times can actually be much harder than when times are good. In a downturn, the amount of resumes from C-Players massively increases while the amount of resumes from A-Players probably remains the same.

"It's harder to hire great people in a tough economy"

Send a telegram? Although it is not clear if this is a telegram or just mail.

ram they sent was a classic, something different to a greeting card, and it was so easy to do'

Surprise: there's never been a better moment to bootstrap your own Internet business. All you need is a laptop, a broadband connection and a great idea. Inside the new start-up boom

seneca

Each of these ideas is very simple to start, and most can be done as a sole proprietorship at first (meaning you don’t have to file any legal documents to get started, though you will want to do that if it starts to take off). Most of these can be done at home in your spare time in your spare space, too. Ready? See if there are any ideas below that fit you well. If you find an idea, seek out a guide on how to get started in that area.

Need to build a presskit? This guide is fantastic

Just to clarify, the use of “steal” and “stole’ is in the sense of “stole the game.” The point of this post is to explain how Google won, and not at all to suggest that they didn’t deserve to win. Google’s success is a direct reflection of how much value they create, i.e. A LOT — they solved a problem in the market that nobody else figure out how to solve or even recognized as the huge opportunity in the market. This post is also intended to help media companies understand better how Google works so that they can better compete in the web content marketplace, not to justify any feelings of “sour grapes.”

"If media companies want to compete with Google, they need to look at the source of its power — judging good content, which enables Google to be the most efficient and effective distributor of content. They also need to look at Google’s fundamental limitation — its judgment is dependent on OTHER people expressing their judgment of content in the form of links. Above all, they need to look at sources of content judgment that Google currently can’t access, because they are not yet expressed as links on the web."

不用品回収・パソコン廃棄処分・テレビ無料引取!連絡不要!送るだけ!

不要な家電製品を無料で引き取ってくれる会社。

不用品回収・パソコン回収・家電リサイクル・パソコン廃棄・パソコン処分・パソコンリサイクルのパソコンファームはパソコン回収・家電リサイクルが無料です。パソコン回収・パソコンリサイクルをしたい方は連絡不要で送るだけで処分完了

This article presents further principles and rules that will help your site convert. Among other things, we cover A/B testing, footnotes, testimonials, feature lists, the sign-up process and typography.

7 useful tips the help your site convert. A great article from Smashing Magazine.

HBPublishing: How to Revise an Email So That People Will Read It http://tinyurl.com/dggzyl [from http://twitter.com/dcouturepdx/statuses/1530523955]

OMG I'm such a failure because I don't have a "cool" business card.

Love this guy. He adds a third dimension to the discussion on business cards and make the arguments in the book (and film) American Psycho look... eggshell white.

Cue music. I took me 25 years to make this card. What do you do guaranteed?

"It doesn't belong in a Rolodex, because it doesn't FIT in a Rolodex!"

Freelance Web Developer

Following yesterday’s business card giveaway kick-off, I thought it would be appropriate to show some more beautiful cards from Card Observer. This time we’re going to look at those cards that are both minimal in color scheme and design elements. This minimalism in design is what makes these business cards so beautiful and effective. If you want to see more details about the cards, just click on the images.

The following 35 sites are broken down into 8 different categories and each site has an active community and can help you get exposure. These sites aren’t going to send you 50,000 visitors but they will send you targeted traffic & links (if you’re content is good).

Chris Winfield - Niche sites that will send traffic with good content

Last week I gave a presentation at SES NY and included a list of 35 niche social media sites that we participate in regularly. Lots of people have asked me for

Last week I gave a presentation at SES NY and included a list of 35 niche social media sites that we participate in regularly. Lots of people have asked me for this list so I decided to put it here. The following 35 sites are broken down into 8 different categories and each site has an active community and can help you get exposure. These sites aren’t going to send you 50,000 visitors but they will send you targeted traffic & links (if you’re content is good).

バナー広告をクラウドソーシング。

これはすごいね、使ってみようかな

10 principles to rebuild on.

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. 2. No socialisation of losses & privatisation of gains. 3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (& crashed it) should never be given a new bus. 4. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards. 5. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. 6. Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. 7. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. 8. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. 9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. 10. we will have to remake the system before it does so itself"

Taleb k současné krizi

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

a load of articles to help with the current climate - whatever that is

Working remotely long-term

Avoiding failure involves asking four questions before they leave: 1. Do they have the personality? 2. Do they have the right job? 3. Does the culture support it? 4. Do you have a remote friction detection and resolution policy?

But I’m still freaked because my first thought when anyone asks to work remote is, “This fine person is a year away from either quitting or being fired.” Why? Because they’re asking to leave the Pond.

So maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need "social media marketing" after all.

forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need "social media marketing" after all.”

The Rainbow company makes awesome stuff, has a great website (pretty damn slick all-CSS one at that), and helpful catalog materials (both online and off). They got on my radar when a friend dug up their details for a blog post, in a way no marketing budget could influence.

Clever words. Web Crisis Management 101

Thanks to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, the voices of all sorts of critics are amplified online. So what's a marketer to do when an online firestorm erupts?

Six tips for future amazons and domino's

"Do you want the people visiting this site to notice it?"

Great example of what sort of site a client would need.

De eerste vraag die een designer aan een klant moet stellen is, volgens Seth, "Wil je dat je site opvalt?" En dat is, hoe vreemd het ook klinkt een goede vraag die verschillend beantwoord kan worden.

Not for nothing, but I've been saying this for years.

ROI Interprise

From David @armano's Logic+Emotion

ner at Dachis Corp. This my

twitshirt this!

Twitshirt

デザイン系で色々と面白いネタを提供してくれるToxel.comだが、先日掲載された記事には少々意外さを感じると共に驚かされれた。モチベーション向上や勇気をつけてくれるような偉人たちの名言と称し、24の「やる気が出てくる名言」が並べられていたのだ。中には日本語訳されてすでに知られているものもあるが、せっかく目にしたこともあり、ここに翻訳してみることにした(【24 Motivational and Inspirational Quotes】)。

Tropicana's rebranding debacle did more than create a customer-relations fiasco. It hit the brand in the wallet.

About this talk Forget about the hybrid auto -- Shai Agassi says it's electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020. About Shai Agassi Shai Agassi wants to put you behind the wheel of an electric car -- but he doesn't want you to sacrifice convenience (or cash) to do it. Full bio and more links

Agassi's Agassi'sAgassi's electric-car http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html Shai Agassi's bold plan for electric cars | Video on TED.com Agassi's Agassi'sAgassi's electric-car ted.com

Show this to Danny at work.

Design To Sell Useful Tips To Help Your Website Convert

1. Subliminal Suggestion; 2. Prevent Choice Paralysis; 3. Show The Product; 4. Let People Try It; 5. AIDA; 6. Guide attention; 7. Always Provide Next Actions; 8. The Gutenberg rule

How to make money with a blog

How I replaced my day-job with earnings from this blog In less than 2 years I went from not knowing what a blog was to making more with one than my corporate desk job.

coolll

Guy Kawasaki: One of the great challenges for anyone who loves Twitter is to show other people why they should love it too. Often it’s like explaining something you find funny: “You had to be there.” The contextual, ever-changing, and high-volume nature of Twitter makes explaining it difficult. Here are ten tips to help you demo Twitter to your friends, family, and colleagues.

ten tips to help you demo Twitter to your friends, family, and colleagues.

One of the great challenges for anyone who loves Twitter is to show other people why they should love it too.

One of the great challenges for anyone who loves Twitter is to show other people why they should love it too. Often it’s like explaining something you find funny: “You had to be there.” The contextual, ever-changing, and high-volume nature of Twitter makes explaining it difficult. Here are ten tips to help you demo Twitter to your friends, family, and colleagues.

slide show about designing interaction.

You know you want to...

Great foresight from the guy who tried to beat the poker pros

While the nation's lenders ran amok during the boom, Andy Beal hoarded his money. Now he's cleaning up - with scant help from Uncle Sam.

Andy Beal, a 56-year-old, poker-playing college dropout, is a one-man toxic-asset eater--without a shred of government assistance. Beal plays his cards patiently. For three long years, from 2004 to 2007, he virtually stopped making or buying loans. While the credit markets were roaring and lenders were raking in billions, Beal shrank his bank's assets because he thought the loans were going to blow up. He cut his staff in half and killed time playing backgammon or racing cars. He took long lunches with friends, carping to them about "stupid loans." His odd behavior puzzled regulators, credit agencies and even his own board. They wondered why he was seemingly shutting the bank down, resisting the huge profits the nation's big banks were making. One director asked him: "Are we a dinosaur?"

Invite only ad network

pretty good targeted advertising for early adopters

ネントの裏企業Akamaiについて。世界のwebトラフィックの15%をさばく、ビジネス特許で独禁法回避、ISPにサーバ4万台、動的コンテンツキャッシュ->ユーザ行動監視。怖すぎｗｗｗ

Another good article on Mashable for companies trying to figure out how to leverage twitter

According a recent report by analysts at the financial-services company Credit Suisse, Google will lose $470 million on the video-sharing site this year alone. To put it another way, the Boston Globe, which is on track to lose $85 million in 2009, is five times more profitable—or, rather, less unprofitable—than YouTube. All so you can watch this helium-voiced oddball whenever you want.

Interesting article telling that not only the newspapers struggle, YouTube is suffocating as well under the enourmous costs of storing its content.

User-generated content may have changed the Internet, but sites like YouTube are suffocating under the costs of storing it.

for online business

The 10 Secrets of Selling Online

We're often asked, what is the secret of selling online? We're happy to tell you. We make tools that help you sell online. So we don't want these secrets to stay secret. We want you to succeed.

The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click -- whether on their site or someone else's. And that's nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: "It's my work he'd say, I do it for pay."

Bloggers for hire—more Americans are now making a living at blogging.

In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.

1. How will you reach a massive audience? - Every Net entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to one million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users. 2. What is your unique value proposition? 3. Will your business be capital efficient?

ages. How does a company rise above the noise to attract massive discovery and adoption? YouTube did it through existing channels like MySpace, which already reached millions. Yelp had strong SEO, which found them a mass audience searching for restaurants and nightlife. Facebook’s University-centric approach landed them 80% adoption across a campus within 60 days of launch. Every Net entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to one million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users.

How to make a story work for you

Why is the gang-initiation tale so irresistible to pass on? Notice a few things about the idea. It's emotional -- in fact, if you believe it, it's terrifying. The French psychologist Bernard Rimé has found that people almost compulsively share emotional experiences (both positive and negative), and the more intense the emotion, the more likely they are to talk about it. There's another emotional angle: When someone shares this legend with you, they feel like they're doing a public service. They might believe they're saving your life. And that's the second trait of viral ideas. It's often a small favor: "Hey, it's Free Breakfast Day at Denny's!" or "Dude, have you seen the video of that David kid who was drugged up after his dentist visit?" It feels good to save our friends money, or del

You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Jeffrey Zeldman “Taking Your Talent to the Web” の全文PDFを無料配布。

I wrote this book in 2001 for print designers whose clients want websites, print art directors who’d like to move into full–time web and interaction design, homepage creators who are ready to turn pro, and professionals who seek to deepen their web skills and understanding.

Jeffrey Zeldman'in kitabını indirin

Twitter

Business Center - PC World

Pioneers in Workplace Tweets suggest the most effective use of the microblogging technology.

Having trouble convincing your boss that Twitter isn't a waste of time? Then you might find it interesting to learn that social media evangelists across the U.S. federal government are blasting out Tweets several times a day to their constituents. Here are their suggestions for how to integrate new media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr into a large, old-fashioned bureaucracy:

ms increasingly obvious that it will. Aided by a new generation of sophisticated startups, ever cheaper creative tools and

This several weeks old, but still of interest. If you're a designer or design you student you should definitely read it.

ing industries-the spoils g

something for nothing?

business card

Two links to Berkun in one day! But there is a great axiom contained within: "Requirements is not Design."

The one book anyone working on requirements needs to read is Exploring Requirements by Gerald Weinberg. It points out most of the stupidity that goes on, explains avoidance tactics, and clearly expresses how requirements are part of the design process - that good problem solving techniques can quickly make your requirements documents better than ever.

Here’s a requirements list: Make a $5 car that goes 500 miles per hour, weighs 10 lbs, and is invisible. Those are very clear requirements. They’re also impossible.

"I don’t want an engineer working on something s/he thinks is stupid. How I can expect them to do good work on something they find stupid?"

1: Requirements is not Design. 2: Too Many Cooks. I like Berkun.

(1) Requirements may be impossible to implement. (2) Requirements writing is hard when no single person has the knowledge and authority.

This is a blog version of a book of mine first published in 1998. I am re-issuing it (two posts per week) unaltered on its 10th anniversary. Comments welcomed. ... The thesis of New Rules for the New Economy is that we are now living in an economy based on ideas and communication rather than energy and atoms. Further, this "new" economy has distinct laws or rules so it behaves differently than the previous industrial economy. To do well in the new regime, we need to grasp the new dynamics of information. I reduce the emerging principles to 10 guidelines, and suggest a few strategies for businesses based on each principle.

Kevin Kelly - Blog ver of book.

Whether you’re enrolled in a business school degree program or desperate for a review of b-school basics as you start your own company, it’s hard to pass up free study materials. These 100 ebooks on marketing, management, ecommerce, and finance are all free and worth checking out.

new and hot bookmarks

I saw these and thought of @shanebarrington. Via @TIFR

Jak zniechęcić pracownika ;)

to read

How Rich Countries Die

This is a book report on The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities, by Mancur Olson. There isn’t a whole lot about how nations pulled themselves out of their medieval stagnation (see A Farewell to Alms for that), so a better title for this still-in-print book from 1982 would be “How Rich Countries Die.”

Fragen des Webdesigners an den Kunden

How to Extract the Facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire It might not be possible to have a meaningful relationship with price shoppers, but it’s worth taking the time to learn what your potential clients want in a website. This article will help you create a prospect qualification questionnaire that can be used via telephone or Internet or in face-to-face meetings.

"take as much risk as you can as early as you can"

+ excellent quote: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” —Jim Rohn.

iPhone applications are hotter than ever. So how do these applications stand out and get noticed? One great way to do this is by creating a great website

This list also includes policies called; Staff blogging policies, enterprise social network guidelines, Employee Blogging Policies, Staff engagement in online communities, and so on.

Managing staff who participate in social networks. This list also includes policies called; Staff blogging policies, enterprise social network guidelines,

there are distinct competitive advantages for both individuals and businesses from a better understanding of the social web. This post provides specific advice from in-house social media marketers

The benefit from a firm grasp of social media for companies is impossible to ignore. Whether you work in marketing, advertising, public relations or interactive, there are distinct competitive advantages for both individuals and businesses from a better understanding of the social web.

The impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.”

Taylorism vs. Mayoism: Both management theories fail.

Most of management theory is inane, writes Mathew Stewart, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead. [Atlantic Magazine, June 2006]

This was on the del.icio.us Popular Booksmarks list. I've only read the first paragraph, but I am finding myself inclined to agree with the general thrust of this article. To be read in full later.

Startups, small business, marketing, and useful geekery from someone who's been there: Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software

It's not just a passing thing, it's not just for kids, and it's not OK to sit idly by, even though we don't understand it yet.

Duh.

Pirated Music is actually...good?

According to research, those who download 'free' music are also the industry's largest audience for digital sales

Pretty obvious: the more you get to listen, the more you eventually buy.

Piracy may be the bane of the music industry but according to a new study, it may also be its engine. A report from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don't. Everybody knows that music sales have continued to fall in recent years, and that filesharing is usually blamed. We are made to imagine legions of internet criminals, their fingers on track-pads, downloading songs via BitTorrent and never paying for anything. One of the only bits of good news amid this doom and gloom is the steady rise in digital music sales. Millions of internet do-gooders, their fingers on track-pads, who pay for songs they like – purchasing them from Amazon or iTunes Music Store. And yet according to Professor Anne-Britt Gran's new research, these two groups may be the same.

Growing your social network

What follows are ten successful network growing techniques and the 12 inspiring stories of the people who made them happen.

Not sure I'm the target audience for this, but the article does mention *many* interesting companies that I should probably be checking out

Brilliant!

Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing

Maybe you think “content marketing” means having a blog that makes money. Or that it’s about producing content for sites ...

へーへーへー

ほー

“Learn from the best, or die like the rest.” Sobering words for a freelancer! In this article we try to discover what separates the best from the rest. What are the world’s top freelancers doing that the rest of us aren’t? Some of the advice you read here might seem surprising or counter-intuitive. You may read hints you have never tried. The question is: Will you give them a go? 1. “End every prospect meeting or phone call with an agreed-upon next step.” - Ed Gandia Ed Gandia is a freelance copywriter with a lot of experience. Starting his business life as an entrepreneur at age eight, he spent eleven years as a sales professional and senior account executive before starting starting his copyrighting business which focuses on software and high-tech industries. This melding of sales experience and successful freelancing makes Ed a voice worth listening to. Ed’s advice could come straight from a David Allen “Getting Things Done” book. In his article “The Power of the Next Step“, Ed

News of Twitter's low user retention rate is hardly shocking, and those of us who've stuck with it aren't likely to miss those who don't.

"But eventually, for most of us anyway, it dawns on us that Twitter is a lot more than a worldwide stream of trivial, self-promotional text bombs. And when that happens, we begin to see the beauty in Twitter's simple, terse messaging system. Used in conjunction with a good client app like TweetDeck, Twitter becomes an active massively multi-user conversation to rival any other social medium. " Depends on the kind of conversation you want, I guess; I'm still mainly in the "don't get it" camp.

The point of Twitter? Or just another twit?

Pretty much on point.

7 Ways to Build Trust on a Portfolio Site

About your personal brand.

Five easy and initial steps you can take to start building your brand today. These will help you control your online identity, protect your future, centralize your digital assets, safeguard your brand from threats and more.

With a bad economy, more pressure at work and overwhelming competition, investing in yourself and your future is crucial. There are a lot of new trends and tricks that you can take advantage of now. Below are five easy and initial steps you can take to start building your brand today. These will help you control your online identity, protect your future, centralize your digital assets, safeguard your brand from threats and more. Tell us how you’ve taken control of your personal brand in the comments below.

K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s a mantra that always pops into my head when I’m looking at new startups. A lot of them seem to want to do a million different things because other companies have been successful at one of those things in the past. But that’s a bad idea. Way too many new products and services are too complicated. And I would suggest, often fail as a direct result of that.

A great article on simple design and how it just...works.

is that it was so much neater, cleaner — yes, simpler. But with an explosion in growth, came an explosion in features. And, in turn, an explosion in complexity.

K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s a mantra that always pops into my head when I’m looking at new startups

I liked this article -- particularly the part about Google Labs (so true about how to add new features)

Skype does not get the respect it deserves, because eBay not only publicly admitted to overpaying for it but is making a mess of its core business. Another reason may be that Skype flies in the face of conventional Valley wisdom that says it has to be all about social media. Or maybe the fact that Skype came from Europe, and we all know that Europeans are just lunch-eating dilettantes. Whatever the reason, a company that has $500 million in revenue, is profitable and growing, and has a shot at becoming the largest player in what is now a $2 trillion (yes, "t" for trillion) market, should get more respect.

10 Resons why Skype is here to stay.

Whatever the reason, a company that has $500 million in revenue, is profitable and growing, and has a shot at becoming the largest player in what is now a $2 trillion, should get more respect.

Earlier this week, we posed the question “Where has the old Facebook gone?” to address the frustrating experience that many users are having with the latest homepage design. The post attracted tons of feedback, most of which agreed with the sentiment that the new homepage is less personal, less informative, and less attractive to application users and developers.

YOU might not love the new Facebook, but brands should ~via @mashable http://bit.ly/gQdt [from http://twitter.com/sbeckham/statuses/1355500301]

brands should love new facebook

Earlier this week, we posed the question “Where has the old Facebook gone?” to address the frustrating experience that many users are having with the latest

Users aside though, there is one audience that appears to be benefitting greatly from Facebook’s new design: brands. Not only are Facebook Pages – the network’s competitive play against celebrity Twitter (Twitter reviews) users – revamped and more social, but their updates are taking up space on member’s homepages, and in turn, as our data shows, driving lots of traffic and engagement for brands.

WSJ: Firms Seek Profit in Twitter's Chatter &lt;paying users for right to sell ads in their tweets,Magpie&Friends,GlamMedia http://bit.ly/WoI7b [from http://twitter.com/frankhellwig/statuses/1406214635]

Companies are trying to profit from Twitter's users by experimenting with business models that incorporate parts of the free messaging service.

Companies are trying to profit from Twitter's popularity by experimenting with business models that incorporate parts of the free messaging service. So far no companies on Twitter have reaped a windfall.

Twitter business models...

Companies are trying to profit from Twitter's popularity by experimenting with business models that incorporate parts of the free messaging service.

effective-strategy-for-choosing-right-domain-names

Naming is linguistic design, and a good domain name is an important part of the overall design of a website. A name plays a prominent role when people discover, remember, think about, talk about, search for, or navigate to a website. It establishes a theme for the branding of a website before people even visit it for the first time. Coming up with a good domain name requires a combination of strategy, imagination and good linguistic design practice. You’ll find some basic pieces of advice all over the Web, and it’s worth mentioning those right away. Ideally, your domain name should be: * Short * Catchy and memorable, * Easy to pronounce, * Easy to spell, * Not too similar to competing domain names, * Not a violation of someone else’s trademark.

Author of mortgage backed security software.

http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=My+Manhattan+Project&expire=&urlID=35003522&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2F55687%2F&partnerID=73272--- manhanttan ManhattanProject

My Manhattan Project How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street.

I have been called the devil by strangers and “the Facilitator” by friends. It’s not uncommon for people, when I tell them what I used to do, to ask if I feel guilty. I do, somewhat, and it nags at me. When I put it out of mind, it inevitably resurfaces, like a shipwreck at low tide. It’s been eight years since I compiled a program, but the last one lived on, becoming the industry standard that seeded itself into every investment bank in the world.

Googleが提供する「ウェブサイトオプティマイザー」を使って、複数の仮説から最適解を導き出し、最大の効果を獲得する方法をご案内する。

Keeping up with online conversations can be a daunting task. As a freelance consultant, I not only need to keep up with what people are saying about me and my company, but I also need to monitor the latest industry trends to learn new skills and stay relevant. While wearing my blogging hat, I also have to keep up with conversations that would be interesting to web workers for this blog, or relevant for people building online communities for my own blog.

social media measurement, monitoring

Forget business models. Focus on ideals. Reconceiving value creation depends on new ideals. Ideals shape what we wish to achieve in the first place: freedom, peace, fairness, justice — all are ideals vastly more powerful than mere business models. That's because they are what ensure the value we are creating is authentic, deep, meaningful value — not just the shabby, threadbare illusion of value.

RT @timoreilly: New post from @umairh on why ideals are the new business models http://tinyurl.com/aeqewz [from http://twitter.com/NicMcPhee/statuses/1325558744]

Take your pick: newspapers, autos, mobile, solar — across the zombieconomy, boardrooms are sweaty-browed with the task of business model redesign. It's the worst downturn for the better part of a century: business model redesign — lower costs, greater efficiency, choosing the most profitable customers and revenue streams — should be every boardroom's first priority, right?

"Forget business models. Focus on ideals. Reconceiving value creation depends on new ideals. Ideals shape what we wish to achieve in the first place: freedom, peace, fairness, justice — all are ideals vastly more powerful than mere business models. That's because they are what ensure the value we are creating is authentic, deep, meaningful value — not just the shabby, threadbare illusion of value."

Twitter isn't just about finding out about plane crashes and what your best friend ate for lunch. Its uses are evolving, and big corporations are joining the fun. Some corporate accounts serve as a boring PR tool that spews press releases and follows everyone who tweets about their company. But others have found interesting, inventive ways to engage customers on Twitter. Some corporations, namely @Palm_Inc and @WholeFoods, have used the service to release news and answer questions. Others, such as @DellOutlet and @MotoDeals, have become a hot place to go to find great deals on merchandise. And not to be outdone, companies like @ComcastCares, and @HRBlock, have used Twitter as a new extension to customer service, allowing near real-time responses to difficult questions. We've compiled a list of 10 corporate Twitter accounts that can either help you in a jam or allow you to give instant product and service feedback to someone who will actually get the message. @Palm_Inc 1. @Palm_Inc –

conturi de companii

Charlie Rose interviews Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google.

There are roughly a billion more mobile phones coming online in the next three to three and a half years, that extra billion voices are voices we have never heard in languages we don’t speak. We have no idea what they’re going to tell us, but they’re going to be heard.

Via Michal's blog

People become freelancers for all sorts of reasons. Very few do it to get into business - that’s just a side effect. To be successful freelancers, we need to be savvy business people. Understanding business takes work - some light reading, some heavy ploughing though your government’s forms and requirements, maybe some serious study, and keeping up with business news and events. Material for small businesses and entrepreneurs will be especially helpful. Here is a reading list for you to pick and choose from: 40 Places Where Freelancers Can Learn More About Business. This list is a starting point.

Sources for business information for freelancers or self-employed persons.

at FreelanceSwitch - The Freelance Blog

How a Graphic Design consultant should operate.

Creativity breathes life into successful websites. However, creative ideas and solutions can sometimes seem like guesswork—and guessing is risky business. So what can designers do to show clients they’re using a solid strategy and have the best intentions? The following exercises are a great way to start discussing and documenting aspects of design to help clients shed their fear of creativity and encourage them to join the design process.

As businesses struggle to consider the uses of microblogging platforms such as Twitter in the workplace, Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the four ways in which organizations are using Twitter.

As businesses struggle to consider the uses of microblogging platforms such as Twitter in the workplace, Gartner, Inc. has highlighted the four ways in which organizations are using Twitter. "Despite the fact that Twitter is primarily aimed at individual users in the consumer market, many of those individuals work for companies and 'tweet' about business issues, leading businesses to explore how they could best use it," said Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner.

Because I've been thinking about business models.

-

1) What compelling reason exists for people to give you money? (or votes or donations) 2) How do you acquire what you're selling for less than it costs to sell it? 3) What structural insulation do you have from relentless commoditization and a price war? 4) How will strangers find out about the business and decide to become customers?

Here's how to strike the right balance when using this popular service to promote your business. (Hint: don't use it to spam everyone you know.)

James, I know how much you love Twitter. I think you should check this article out. It might give you more direction on how you should use your account.

A few neat tips on how businesses, not individuals, can use Twitter

The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.

According to the researchers, "short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days' work, and as a result, increased productivity." More importantly, "firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos, using social networking sites or shopping online under the pretence that it costs millions in lost productivity." Someone should let them know their logic is flawed.

ほー。iPhoneが待ち遠しい（まだ買ってないけど）。早く新しいiPhoneが出ないかなぁ。すぐに買うのに。

Interesting

freakonomics

Article about Google monopoly of the Web

One of the chief casualties of the web revolution is the newspaper business, which now finds itself laden with debt (not Google's fault) and having to give its content free to the search engine in order to survive. Newspapers can of course remove their content but then their own advertising revenues and profiles decline. In effect they are being held captive and tormented by their executioner, who has the gall to insist that the relationship is mutually beneficial. Were newspapers to combine to take on Google they would be almost certainly in breach of competition law.

"the destructive, anti-civic forces of the internet. " "newspapers are the only means of holding local hospitals, schools, councils and the police to account, and on a national level they are absolutely essential for the good functioning of democracy."

The ever-growing empire produces nothing but seems determined to control everything

Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it.

great design quotes

Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs. — Frank Chimero

Article from the Boston Globe.

Or: why setting the wrong goals fails. Or: why poor management fails.

Why setting goals can backfire

We “finished” and the launch came and went. We were not making as much money as we thought we would. We weren’t even getting as many signups as we anticipated. People demanded grandiose features we didn’t have the time to implement. Our cash reserves were running low and we soon needed to return to consulting. Which was always part of the plan, but I had hoped we’d be optimistic about FamSpam’s future when that time came. We were not.

keynote from Startup Riot 2009, about how to become successful - do what you want!

Text of Chris Wanstrath's from Github's keynote at Startup Riot 2009

the most amazing features imaginable would make us money. We had no data available on whether building features specifically to make money would work.

startupriot.textile

List of ways to change/think outside the box.

via @chaffey

Hi Lyle, this is a post you may have seen, but I want to suggest that you keep this note in the back of your mind for when you get stuck - and in business one often get's stuck. Cheers, Ian

Finally a new wave of those business card designs we can't get enough of! We're pretty sure you've been seeing the same designs over and over again so if you're

Finally a new wave of those business card designs we can’t get enough of! We’re pretty sure you’ve been seeing the same designs over and over again so if you’re looking for more creative inspiration, we hope this fresh batch will do the trick. See how you can have more fun with color, letterpress printing or simply play with the shape, cut or the material of your custom business cards. The designers responsible for these awesome designs are as indicated so feel free to browse their portfolios for more ideas.

While the details are still debated, the broad outlines of tomorrow's media are becoming clearer. Consumers must pay for more of what they read; publishers and the media buyers who purchase advertising must be given technologies that will make online display ads more competitive with the keyword ads that search firms sell. Some of the things that must be done cannot be done by the media itself; it won't be easy, and it might not happen, but it can be done.

By the publisher of Technology Review If media companies can't earn money, and everyone is a journalist, it follows that "amateurs" (Shirky) and "sources" (Winer) will be part of a "decentralized" media (Winer), whose stories will be distributed by "excitable 14-year-olds" (Shirky). This is all folly and ignorance. Shirky, Winer, and other evangelists know nothing about the business of media. Below is my prescription for saving magazines and newspapers.

If media companies can't earn money, and everyone is a journalist, it follows that "amateurs" (Shirky) and "sources" (Winer) will be part of a "decentralized" media (Winer), whose stories will be distributed by "excitable 14-year-olds" (Shirky). This is all folly and ignorance. Shirky, Winer, and other evangelists know nothing about the business of media.

various Twitter tip articles here -- see under RELATED on right side

CIO Magazine: How and Why to Launch a Business Presence on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/d54xbh (quoted) (via Twitter) http://ff.im/1vv44 [from http://twitter.com/FredericMartin/statuses/1326127701]

From an upstart airline to the cable company some people love to hate, organizations big and small have reaped success in improving customer service, receiving R&D tips, and marketing their products on Twitter. Here's expert advice on how and why your business should tap into Twitter.

George emailed me with an interesting question. Paraphrasing George, liberally, what's are some good ways to keep developers sharpening the saw - Covey Habit #7? There's been lots of talk about being a better developer, but what about the unmotivated masses? (Don't worry, we can talk about them, because, since they are unmotivated, they aren't reading blogs.) ;) The assumption being that for every totally-amped developer who is always striving to get better, there's at least 10 developers who are saying, "Hey, it's 5:01pm, I've just checked in massive changes, can I punch out?" Here's some ideas, some mine, some Georges. I'm interested in yours:

m, created diverse teams, and set them to work to design algorithms, define, write, document, and test some application. The application needs to have universal appeal, so sales and accounting can have fun. One year we did a Word Search (like the kind in the newspaper). Everyone participated and there were reasonably significant prizes.

Are you or someone you love dating a banker? If so, we are here to support you through these difficult times. Dating A Banker Anonymous (DABA) is a safe place where women can come together – free from the scrutiny of feminists– and share their tearful tales of how the mortgage meltdown has affected their relationships. So if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life, lighten your heart with laughter and email your stories to dabagirls@gmail.com. Warning all stories sent will be infused with our own special brand of DABA Girl humor.

Ladies dating an Investment Banker? Then this site is for you! (Hat Tip @sheffi)

Envy: Don’t be dissuaded by other people “doing it better than you.” I don't actually think it is Envy, but more of a lack of self-worth / perfectionism, at least among the Indies that I know. But I guess that wouldn't fit into a 7 Deadly Sins list.

Customer service can evoke some serious misgivings or negative emotions. Although customer support is designed to help the consumer, the pain of waiting for a phone representative and the impersonal emails can cause more damage than good for a brand. People are turned off by the term and companies have begun to use different terminology to describe their efforts.

If you’re feeling the pinch in your paycheck, you may or may not feel comfortable going back to school right now, even if it can help your career prospects in the long run. You can, however, visit iTunes U for free access to helpful courses that will enlighten you to the state of the economy, inspire you to start your own business, and give you a little more perspective on what you should be doing with your money. Economic Principles Review the basics of economics here. 1. What’s the point of economics?: Learn why the study of economics is still relevant today. [University of Cambridge] 2. Microeconomic Analysis: Learn all about resource allocation and price determination in this course. [UC Berkeley] 3. Trade and Economics: This lecture will teach you all about the role of trade in economics. [CSIS] 4. Principles of Macroeconomics: This lecture will help you understand the principles of macroeconomics. [Rose State College] 5. Statistics: This course teaches the funda

Entrepreneur Lectures from Oxford

The Entrepreneurs Handbook – 54 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs

"tagged startup business tips"

There are only three kinds of classic meetings: 1. Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it's primarily designed to inform. 2. Discussion. This is a meeting where the leader actually wants feedback or direction or connections. You can use this meeting to come up with an action plan, or develop a new idea, for example. 3. Permission. This is a meeting where the other side is supposed to say yes but has the power to say no.

Meetings are marketing in real time with real people. (A conference is not a meeting. A conference is a chance for a circle of people to interact). There are only three kinds of classic meetings: Information. This is a meeting...

"# Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it's primarily designed to inform. # Discussion. This is a meeting where the leader actually wants feedback or direction or connections. You can use this meeting to come up with an action plan, or develop a new idea, for example. # Permission. This is a meeting where the other side is supposed to say yes but has the power to say no."

見出しは大事ですな。

The panhandler's secret /Seth's Blog/ - When there were old-school parking meters in New York, quarters were ... http://tinyurl.com/dcm4ub [from http://twitter.com/jorgefsb/statuses/1257713242]

I love this story. Brief, worthwhile.

Great way to solicit donations. http://is.gd/l5kT [from http://twitter.com/davidwees/statuses/1303875101]

The panhandler's secret: "Do you have a dollar for four quarters?" and then "Can you spare a quarter?" Smart man.

linkedin tips

Ah, le vieux se lance...

Rupert ­Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ­"malfunctioning" business model. Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an "epochal" debate over whether to charge. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience," he said.

"Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an "epochal" debate over whether to charge. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience," he said. Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: "We're absolutely looking at that." Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin "within the next 12 months‚" adding: "The current days of the internet will soon be over." |||| What I don't get is how they plan to get people to start paying for content that they've become very, very comfortable with getting for free.

RT @davidakin: News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch http://bit.ly/dSI3S (back to future?) [from http://twitter.com/writelife/statuses/1726447940]

"The current days of the internet will soon be over."

Current days of free internet will soon be over, says media mogul

Stores are violating their contract with the credit card companies if they set minimum or maximum charges, or force you to show ID in addition to your credit card (with the obvious exception being for age-limited purchases). Depending on your state and your card issuer, surcharges or "convenience fees" may be banned as well. The best way to straighten these guys out is to report them to the credit card company. [US Info]

So awesome.

ant must not require, or post signs indicating that it requires, a minimum or maximum transaction ammount to accept a

Apparently it's against Visa's policy to require ID.

Apple's Twitter case study

Great video & slides from Davie McClure's talk at 'Presentation Camp SF' -

Over the years the appeal of freelancing has grown tremendously. Some are drawn to freelancing to enjoy the freedom of choosing their own work hours, some as a way to stay ahead during times of recession. Today, there are many individuals on the web pursuing their career as a freelancer. Bloggers, web designers, social media strategists and many others have found that freelancing is a great way to utilize their skills and sell their services through the wonderful medium we call the internet.

Over the years the appeal of freelancing has grown tremendously. Some are drawn to freelancing to enjoy the freedom of choosing their own work hours, some as a

A collection of tools for freelance writers and designers

Creative Business Cards

Check out some cool and imaginative business cards. Awesome..

weer een paar nieuwe, vooral de divorce lawyer is leuk!

cartoes de visita

Fast Company, Dec 2007

Writing code for the space shuttle.

Software engineering for the Space Shuttle

How NASA writes software: planned, persnickity, and perfect.

No time for pri-twos. In project parlance, a "pri-one" is a work item that is essential to the success of the project. Bootstrapped companies don't have any pri-twos. Once you determine that a task is a pri-two, forget about it forever. Sadly, this is why Urbanspoon still doesn't have "hours of operation" for our restaurants.

Recapture the web's brain-expanding potential with these free resources for educating yourself online.

Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education

Steve Brill

For a while I have been thinking about a way to take some of the contrarian thinking that made me try The American Lawyer and Court TV way-back-when and apply it to a new business model to save the New York Times and journalism itself. There are two reasons why, beyond my love for the profession: First, about eight years ago my wife and I endowed The Yale Journalism Initiative. The program is intended to get better people to go into journalism, train them, give them a leg-up credential without establishing a "journalism" major, and then find them careers. It now features seminars, workshops, supported internships, and even a full time career counselor. I also teach one of the seminars. (Plus Floyd Abrams, Adam Liptak and I now also teach at Yale Law.) The implicit and now-traditional part of the deal is that if you do all this and become a Yale Journalism Scholar, I will also get you a job...

Steven Brill's plan to save the NYTimes. interesting, if not Brill-iant.

Brill's secret plan to save the New York Times and journalism itself

Miten lehdistö säilyy elinkelpoisena?

How CEOs are using twitter

CEOs using Twitter.

From Digg's Kevin Rose to Sun's Jonathan Schwartz, 18 CEOs who tweet offer microblogging tips

Online resources to help manage money

Brilliant Statistically proven ways that work.

Devil’s advocate example works with large organizations. Leaders who consistently seek out dissenting opinions earn more respect, and generally have better agreement with people in the room than those who rule by lying the law and persecuting dissenters.

Work

Finding success as a freelancer requires a steady stream of paying gigs. Obtaining new business through referrals is great, but referrals alone won’t keep your schedule packed with paying jobs, especially when you’re just starting out. Online classifieds such as Craigslist and the FreelanceSwitch job board are great places to generate new business leads. In this economy, the competition for work is fierce. To stay ahead, you must combine two key elements in your approach: Quantity: The more jobs you respond to, the more potential leads you create. Quality: Present yourself well and stand out from the crowd. Here are some tools and tips to help you land more freelance gigs:

Excellent article on the future of newspapers. Good explanations on why micropayments will not work. Excerpts: To put it another way, the geographical constraints on the distribution of printed news required the fragmentation of production capacity, with large groups of reporters and editors being stationed in myriad local outlets. When the geographical constraints went away, thanks to the Net and the near-zero cost of distributing digital goods anywhere in the world, all that fragmented (and redundant) capacity suddenly merged together into (in effect) a single production pool serving (in effect) a single market...But we'll probably also end up with a supply of good reporting and solid news, and we'll probably pay for it.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.roughtype.com%2Farchives%2F2009%2F02%2Fmisreading_news.php

Nicholas Carr/Rough Type, Feb. 10, 2009. Why micropayments won't work, but controlling supply online and charging for it might.

Pizza joint uses exclusive Twitter promo to bring in 15% of the day's business -- now that's effective ROI!

Small business uses Twitter to increase sales, create awareness and start conversations.

New Orleans Pizza Joint, Chicago Yogurt Chain See Results From Promos on Microblogging Service

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that's hoping to go national -- Mark Cuban is a backer -- has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day's business.

Viral growth resolves at least part of the expensive and complicated headache of actually marketing your application, by getting the application to grow all by itself.

Everyone wants their application to “spread virally”. And why shouldn’t they? Viral growth resolves at least part of the expensive and complicated headache of actually marketing your application, by getting the application to grow all by itself. So, then, the question that forms on the lips of any entrepreneur is: “How can I make my application viral?”

TWITTER

If you want to use Twitter, but aren’t sure how to use it well, these process by using these 10 essential Twitter tools for business may help smooth the learning curve:

A reminder to use to the good old A/B split testing with a control group to not be fooled so easily by numbers and variation.

"The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions."

Actually, journalists deserve low pay. Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days. Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models.

The demise of the news business can be halted, but only if journalists commit to creating real value for consumers and become more involved in setting the course of their companies.

ervices that readers, listeners, and viewers cannot receive elsewhere. And these must provide sufficient value so audience

'A century and half ago, journalists were much closer to the market and more clearly understood they were sellers of labor in the market. Before professionalism of journalism, many journalists not only wrote the news, but went to the streets to distribute and sell it and few journalists had regular employment in the news and information business. Journalists and social observers debated whether practicing journalism for a news entity was desirable. Even Karl Marx argued that "The first freedom of the press consists in it not being a trade."'

Not sure I entirely agree with the sentiment expressed here, but it's interesting.

"…value is being severely challenged by technology that is "de-skilling" journalists. It is providing individuals – without the support of a journalistic enterprise – the capabilities to access sources, to search through information and determine its significance, and to convey it effectively."

Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic society, speaking truth to power, and comforting the afflicted.

Actually, journalists deserve low pay. Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days.

business cards

Say goodbye to business cards as you know it! Send a Twitter Business Card! To send a Twitter Business Card, simply add #twtbizcard to a @reply!

business card

Say goodbye to business cards as you know it! Send a Twitter Business Card! To send a Twitter Business Card, simply add #twtbizcard to a @reply!

Profitable boot strap Mock Up application

Regator.com

Startup Marketing Advice from Balsamiq Studio by Peldi Guilizzoni. August 5th, 2008 under Branding / Marketing, Company / Business — 12 Comments First off, the title of this post is a bit pretentious for my taste, but I wanted to pay homage to Mike Speiser’s excellent post on A/B testing using AdWords, and take advantage of his $10.87 investment while I was at it! ;). Mike is one of the brightest people I have ever met, and I highly encourage everyone to read his Laserlike blog. I say that the post is pretentious for my taste because I hardly feel like I am a marketing expert, in fact I consider myself a beginner at most things. Still, I can’t deny that Balsamiq has received a very good amount of coverage in the blogosphere: I am timing this post to coincide with the 100th review of Balsamiq Mockups (the full list is here), the website has received over 32,000 unique visitors and sales are exceeding all my expectations. For 6 weeks of operation, I can’t complain. ;)

Good advice and links for marketing a startup such as Balsamiq

Last October, Gartner unveiled a study that stated that by 2010, 60 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies with a web site will be involved in some form of online community that is utilized for customer relationship purposes. What the research also goes on to state is that 50 percent of those that set out and establish or become involved in these communities will fail in their efforts. That's about 300 Fortune 1000 companies that will fail at social media: a striking number, especially in light of recent economic pitfalls.

a prediction -- focused on failure. based on a study released in October 2008, the prediction was that by 2010, 60 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies with a web site will be involved in some form of online community that is utilized for customer relationship purposes. What the research also goes on to state is that 50 percent of those that set out and establish or become involved in these communities will fail in their efforts.

ces, and companies listeni

さーて、英会話でも始めようかなぁ。。

じゃ、フランス型で

日本はもう駄目だと思う

日本はもう立ち直れないと思うをカミングアウト。

> １）日本はもう立ち直れないと思う。だから、２）海外で勉強してそのまま海外で働く道を真剣に考えてみて欲しい。

When GraphicRiver started I was kinda surprised to see business card templates start appearing in the uploads since there was no specific category or instructions for them. A week later I was even more surprised to see them taking over our popular files page. Today GraphicRiver hosts almost 300 business card templates and they are a staple of the site. In this post we've rounded up 33 of the best to showcase some of the designs you can grab for just three or four dollars.

72 Stunning Business Cards That Will Blow You Away

simplified the data from the CIA World Factbook

As we discussed in yesterday’s post, whether the United States and China like it or not, the economic futures of both countries are intertwined. Everyone knows that China’s got more people and that its importance as an economic superpower has escalated in recent years. What you might not understand is how the differences between our countries, in economic philosophy, in population, in geography and in how the military is built and paid for ultimately play into the entire economic relationship. For many China remains something of a mystery. In order to help compare and contrast the economic differences, we have simplified the data from the CIA World Factbook. For the exact numbers in any category, check here.

China vs United States

I have a problem. I'm an introvert. I'm not shy. I'm not afraid of being in public. But I am horrible at chit-chat and gossip. If I spend an evening at a social

this bookmark brought from the different place.

a must read!

Most Creative People in Business

CreativePeople

ポータルサイト、公正値とGoogle調査値との比較TOOL

早く，インチキ広告代理店は廃業しますよーに．

Google Ad Planner

Gorgeous VeBusiness Cardscto

The mini-canvas of the business card doesn't leave much space to play with, but designers are constantly pushing the creative boundaries in their business card designs. Check out this collection of 60 gorgeous examples of great business card designs, all constructed with vibrant and crisp vector artwork.

The mini-canvas of the business card doesn't leave much space to play with, but designers are constantly pushing the creative boundaries in their business card

Vector Business Cards

Kuinka Googlen AdWords oikeasti toimii. Steven Levyn erinomainen juttu Wiredissa.

The economics behind the ads you see, and what they cost.

Article by Steven Levy (not: Steven Levitt ;-) ) on Hal Varian, Google chief economist and the application of auctions to all kinds of logistical, organisational or economic problems.

The problem with Google, from a design perspective

"The male brain, extreme or not, is compatible with visual design. It allows you to learn every font in the Letraset catalogue and work from a grid. In fact, the male-brain capacity for years-long single-mindedness explains why the heads of large ad agencies and design houses are overwhelmingly male. (It isn’t a sexist conspiracy.)"

Work at Google? (Via Daring Fireball: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/04/27/clark-google ).

ほんのすこし書き方に注意すれば、あなたのドキュメントはさらに分かりやすくなる！

There was a time when having a dotcom was key to your brand. The URL you pointed everyone to in all of your marketing. But with the emergence of the social web, and opportunities to engage with fans elsewhere, is that the right strategy?

VitaminWater Facebook campaign

social media making corp website irrelevant

) is Wired's editor in chief.

Get in-depth tech news coverage from Wired and read about how it is shaping culture, education, entertainment, communications and technology.

Article de Wired sur l'économie du 21ème sicèle

Making the choice to go freelance (or independent as I prefer to call it) is a tough choice, I wish I had more knowledge about the pros vs cons when I made the

Social Media: The Five-Year Forecast

The distinction between traditional and innovative marketing will become significantly more pronounced as the socially driven online communities continue to gain momentum, according to a Forrester Research report released today. "The Future of the Social Web," by Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester senior analyst, examines the monumental changes that have shaped -- and will continue to impact -- how consumers engage with each other. That engagement, Owyang writes, will affect the way each company reaches its customers -- and more important, their influencers. "The community will take charge," Owyang tells CRM magazine in a one-on-one interview, "and that's going to happen whether or not marketers or brands participate." Social networking, he adds, will only continue to facilitate the power shift toward the consumer.

> しかし一方で思うのは、4人というのはやはり大所帯だったということです

>しかし、プログラマーはやる気と集中力次第で生産性が（誇張ではなく）100倍ぐらい上下しますから、本当に心から面白いと思っているプロジェクトであれば、それは必ずしも大きな壁にはならないでしょう。

さらには、個人で開発するということは、意志決定の速さが格段に違ってきます。たとえば作っている最中で何かが根本的に間違ってるのでプロジェクトを中止したほうがいいと思っても、チームでやっていると中々言い出せず、ずるずる引きずって時間を浪費してしまうというようなことがあると思います。しかし、10発撃って1発当たるかどうかという世界で勝負していくには、そういう「見切り」の速さこそが命ではないでしょうか。

っていないということは、本人はどこか別のところで生計を立てられるだけの

それで、上記のようなもろもろで何を言いたかったかというと、この分野では「企業の競争相手が個人になる時代は目の前まで来ている」ということです。スタートアップ企業を作って数名で作るのと、一人の個人が副業で立ち上げるのとでは、最終的に出てくるモノの差がだんだんなくなってきており、単に「かかるコストだけが100倍違う」ということになりかねない、と思うのです。 さらには、個人で開発するということは、意志決定の速さが格段に違ってきます。たとえば作っている最中で何かが根本的に間違ってるのでプロジェクトを中止したほうがいいと思っても、チームでやっていると中々言い出せず、ずるずる引きずって時間を浪費してしまうというようなことがあると思います。しかし、10発撃って1発当たるかどうかという世界で勝負していくには、そういう「見切り」の速さこそが命ではないでしょうか。

maybe?

"The open, realtime discussions that occur on FriendFeed," he says, "are going to become a major new communication medium on the same level as email, IM and blogging." ... even more the *distributed* discussions via Twitter, me thinks.

"Paul Buchheit built the first version of Gmail in one day. Then, he built the first prototype of Google's contextual advertising service, Adsense, in one day as well."

The Man Who Made Gmail Says Real-Time Conversation is What's Next (The Future of FriendFeed) http://bit.ly/ZAjW4 [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/1671776888]

find deals acroos multiple websites

Stop comparing prices and let Woya find deals for you! Receive alerts when deals appear on Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, CNet, Shopzilla, Yahoo Shopping, PriceGrabber, and more! Woya is one of the best comparison shopping sites online.

m.don This has never happened to me, all clients are accommodating and understand the flexible and changing needs of all the factors, including market, technology and business priority.

"so you're gonna show us how we can make it on our own at home, k?"

Hilarious YouTube video

mini ecommerce app which lets you sell your photos from your own website

With CubeTree, employees can: share ideas across their organization get feedback from people with whom they wouldn't normally interact find thought leaders form ad hoc groups that cut across organizational boundaries

Email Address

Ilmainen facebook yrityksille

istograms, where labels and colors are minimally set by default. Their goal is to help develop a hypothesis about the data, and their audience typically numbers one or a small team. A second kind of data visualization are those intended to communicate to a wider audience, whose goal is to visually advocate for a hypothesis. While most d

The sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians… The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill.

parsing, and proofing one’s data before it’s suitable for analysis. Real world data is messy. At best it’s inconsistently delimited or packed into an unnecessarily complex XML s

Converting Clicks into Customers

SeeWhy Inc., an Andover, Mass.-based provider of real-time analystics on los ecommerce customers, has raised $4.5 million in second-round funding. Scottish Enterprise was joined by return backers Logispring, Pentech Ventures and Delta Partners

spam

see why you are losing your prospects this analytics tool helps you to identify landing pages,shopping carts abandonment

Herramienta para postear ofertas de empleo y buscar candidatos vía twitter

Create your Twitter Resume. Post a Job Opening!

Delicious

formation for the bot to put your event on it (I didn’t do that but that’s up to y

Micro-blogging platform Twitter has 32 million users, which is an increase from about 2 million a year ago, according to research mentioned in The Wall Street Journal. Some Internet measurement services show that figure increasing 50% to 100% month-over-month.

Twitter

full article

The notion of micropayments — a pay-per-click/download web model — is hardly a new one. But as a business model it hasn’t exactly caught fire, or even generated more than an occasional spark. Lately, however, the journalism community has become obsessed with the idea. This is what happens when an existing business model begins to collapse: alternative models are desperately invented, debated, attempted, rejected, etc.

'This is what happens when an existing business model begins to collapse: alternative models are desperately invented, debated, attempted, rejected, etc.'

What a Texas town can teach us about health care.

e locks and hotel room safes: These days, Tobias is attacking the lock famous for protecting places li

Get Wired's take on technology business news and the Silicon Valley scene including IT, media, mobility, broadband, video, design, security, software, networking and internet startups on Wired.com

Thinking like a criminal is Tobias' idea of fun. It makes him laugh. It has also made him money and earned him a reputation as something of the Rain Man of lock-breaking. Even if you've never heard of Tobias, you may know his work: He's the guy who figured out how to steal your bike, unlock your front door, crack your gun lock, blow up your airplane, and hijack your mail. Marc Weber Tobias has a name for the headache he inflicts on his targets: the Marc Weber Tobias problem.

"Marc Weber Tobias can pick, crack, or bump any lock. Now he wants to teach the world how to break into military facilities and corporate headquarters."

An article about someone with a gift for picking locks.

Tobias is laughing. And laughing. The effect is disconcerting. It's a bwa-ha-ha kind of evil mastermind laugh—appropriate if you've just sacked Constantinople, checkmated Deep Blue, or handed Superman a Dixie cup of kryptonite Kool-Aid, but downright scary in a midtown Manhattan restaurant during the early-bird special. Our fellow diners begin to stare. Tobias doesn't notice and wouldn't care anyway. He's as rumpled and wild as a nerdy grizzly bear. His place mat is covered in diagrams and sketched floor plans and scribbled arrows. His laugh fits him like a

Complete Brand Marketing on Facebook | Involver - http://involver.com/pages/index.html

"Complete Brand Marketing on Facebook"

Interesting look at the different elements of a web startup.

rate products; be a focus group;get paid (not much)

Learn how to construct a lean startup that focuses on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, instructor Eric Ries guides entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas of startup success: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy. You'll emerge with a clear plan to bring lean-startup thinking back to your company. Multiple Events: San Francisco, CA

A few weeks ago, I wrote that your organization should have a social media policy, and one of the things I heard among all the great comments was: “Okay, but what should it say?” There are generally two approaches to social media policy making. Some organizations handle social media in an evolutionary way. Chad Houghton, the director of e-media and business development at the Society for Human Resource Management, told me that he thinks, “it might be beneficial not to create some arbitrary rules without first seeing where the opportunities and risks really are.” Other organizations, meanwhile, feel more comfortable establishing a clear policy from the outset. IBM, for example, has published their social media guidelines publicly for anyone to read. It’s a great policy, though rather long. Whether you’re writing your social media policy from the get-go, or letting it develop organically in reaction to situations as they arise, here are 10 things you should definitely consider. These

10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy

Thirteen key characteristics of a great startup culture

Thirteen key characteristics of a great startup culture - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

Top 10 Reasons Why Employees Leave in IT, must read for every manager!!

babysit

Psicologia de los colores a la hora de hacer un logo.

Color Psychology in Logo Design - Free Logo Critiques - http://www.logocritiques.com/resources/color_psychology_in_logo_design/

ReadWriteWeb: Poll: Business People Say Twitter More Important Than LinkedIn. Poll conducted by LinkedIn. http://bit.ly/sMQbG [from http://twitter.com/dcouturepdx/statuses/1993300652]

Qu'est-ce qui a de l'importance dans les médias sociaux?

A LinkedIn poll of more than 3,000 business people showed that Twitter was deemed "more important" than LinkedIn.

"After all, if you can’t prove your skills on your own website then how can you expect someone to hire you?"

sweet iphone/touch app!

upload your data and turn them into interactive visualizations for the iPhone

Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media

In March of this year, National Public Radio (NPR) revealed that by the end of 2008, 23.6 million people were tuning into its broadcasts each week. In fact, NPR’s ratings have increased steadily since 2000, and they’ve managed to hold on to much of their 2008 election coverage listenership bump (with over 26 million people tuning in each week so far in 2009), unlike many of their mainstream media counterparts. Compared to cable news, where most networks are shedding viewers, and newspapers, where circulation continues to plummet, NPR is starting to look like they have the future of news all figured out. Or at least, they appear to doing a lot better at it than the rest of the traditional media.

In March of this year, National Public Radio (NPR) revealed that by the end of 2008, 23.6 million people were tuning into its broadcasts each week. In fact, NPR’s ratings have increased steadily since 2000, and they’ve managed to hold on to much of their 2008 election coverage listenership bump (with over 26 million people tuning in each week so far in 2009), unlike many of their mainstream media counterparts. Compared to cable news, where most networks are shedding viewers, and newspapers, where circulation continues to plummet, NPR is starting to look like they have the future of news all figured out. Or at least, they appear to doing a lot better at it than the rest of the traditional media. But what is NPR doing differently that’s causing their listener numbers to swell?

In March of this year, National Public Radio (NPR) revealed that by the end of 2008, 23.6 million people were tuning into its broadcasts each week. In fact, NPR’s ratings have increased steadily since 2000, and they’ve managed to hold on to much of their 2008 election coverage listenership bump, unlike many of their mainstream media counterparts. Compared to cable news, where most networks are shedding viewers, and newspapers, where circulation continues to plummet, NPR is starting to look like they have the future of news all figured out. Or at least, they appear to doing a lot better at it than the rest of the traditional media. But what is NPR doing differently that’s causing their listener numbers to swell? They basically have a three-pronged strategy that is helping them not only grow now, but also prepare for the future media landscape where traditional methods of consumption could be greatly marginalized in favor of digital distribution.

Freelancers are constantly searching for new resources. Sometimes these resources come in the form of browser plugins and other times as online tools to help us become more productive. There are countless tools, plugins, blogs, social networking sites and other resources out there that can be beneficial to freelancers.

Freelancers are constantly searching for new resources. Sometimes these resources come in the form of browser plugins and other times as online tools to help us become more productive. There are countless tools, plugins, blogs, social networking sites and other resources out there that can be beneficial to freelancers. You probably already know of a lot of these resources, but some of the quality ones may be hiding from you. Below you will find 30 sites (blogs, forums, and job boards) that I regularly use. Although there are more that I subscribe to, these are some that just can’t be missed.

You probably already know of a lot of these resources, but some of the quality ones may be hiding from you.

The place to find the hottest entrepreneurial work experience and full time roles.

"The place to find the hottest entrepreneurial work experience and full time roles."

could be a great place for Mindbox to find talent and cheap labor

In this Illustrator CS4 tutorial I'll show you how to create an Identity Package including: business cards, letterhead, and envelopes, all in Illustrator. In

"I'm going to talk about online auctions," says Hal Varian, the session's first speaker. Varian is a lanky 62-year-old professor at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and School of Information, but these days he's best known as Google's chief economist. This morning's crowd hasn't come for predictions about the credit market; they want to hear about Google's secret sauce

Google getta le basi per una nuova forma di organizzazione economica.

Why does Google even need a chief economist? The simplest reason is that the company is an economy unto itself. The ad auction, marinated in that special sauce, is a seething laboratory of fiduciary forensics, with customers ranging from giant multinationals to dorm-room entrepreneurs, all billed by the world's largest micropayment system. Google depends on economic principles to hone what has become the search engine of choice for more than 60 percent of all Internet surfers, and the company uses auction theory to grease the skids of its own operations. All these calculations require an army of math geeks, algorithms of Ramanujanian complexity, and a sales force more comfortable with whiteboard markers than fairway irons.

one for Neil Moodley

I’ve been working at start-ups and small businesses since I was 14 years old. My father and his father before him owned and operated their own small businesses. There’s something about the fight for survival for a small team that’s coded in my DNA. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy working at Undercurrent so much. We’re small and thus we’re nimble. We’re lean and thus we’re malleable. And our age and our medium demand both.

how to be happy in business - venn diagram

great manifesto for selling development projects and building an IT shop

Win without pitching

salary negotiations

There is such a thing as “Social-Business Protocol.” Not all of us in the startup universe are born with it, we can all learn it. So, here are my 10 tips for founders en route to the power-party circuit.

So you’ve got your engineering degree, and your marquee MBA, and a business-plan. You’re on your way. But at some point you’re going to have to ‘grace’ your way through an important networking or social event. How you handle this matters—probably more than you care to admit.

Good list.

Business Forms has an inventory of over 500 FREE business forms and FREE business templates available in Excel and Word formats

esse barra servirá para salvamos sites de nosso interrese. está lá em cima

A year ago, I wrote a magnum opus three-part post that attempted to chronicle some of the underlying changes happening in the economy and how this would impact ...

读写网对当前经济及其对互联网的影响，以及互联网的发展进行了归纳和展望

"A year ago, I wrote a magnum opus three-part post that attempted to chronicle some of the underlying changes happening in the economy and how this would impact web technology ventures. "Useful, but too long" was a recurring comment. So, here is a one-year update, much shorter. And hopefully a bit clearer, seeing as we are further into this transition."

Closed social-network sites cannot survive in their current form, and yet they are so dominant today. So the transition to open and pervasive will be a big and messy fight... which will be great fun for journalists to cover! - is this another way of saying there will be one big network? Advertising: Advertisers will adopt a barbell approach: CPM for branding, and CPA for direct-revenue generation (as soon as publishers figure out how to make money selling CPA). CPC will still be dominated by Google but will become less dominant as CPA gains traction. Google will play in CPA and CPM but won't dominate as it does in CPC. Publishers will sideline CPA because nobody will be able to compete with the CPC price set by Google

(no description)

So, if concepts from books are easy, what’s hard? Doing it. Picking up the phone, making the plan, signing the deal. Pushing ‘publish.’ Announcing. Shipping. We spent a lot of time on this area. Every morning, each person came in prepared to push someone in the group to overcome the next hurdle. This is what growth looks like, and it was energizing to be part of. We didn’t do this at all at when I was at Stanford. We spent a lot of time reading irrelevant case studies and even more time building complex financial models. The thing is, you can now hire someone to build a complex financial model for you for $60 an hour. And a week’s worth of that is just about all the typical entrepreneur is going to need. The rest of the time, it’s about shipping, motivating, leading, connecting, envisioning and engaging. So that’s what we worked on. It amazes me that MBA students around the world aren’t up in arms. How can schools justify taking $100,000 in cash and teaching exactly the wrong stuff?

The enterprise is a mini-world of rules in its own right and the freewheeling environment of the Web has to be combined in some workable way with the tighter constraints of the workplace.

Usare il microbloggng tra dipendenti in intranet: consigli e utilizzi possibili by Dion Hinchcliffe

Dion writes about enterprise microblogging tools, showing that there are some issues to solve if we want to use this for "real business" (tm) One of the things is Filtering, i.e. how to dig out the tweets that are relevant to your work and current context. This will in my mind make out hte difference - enabling microblogging to become the tool for knowledge workers, not only in communication with peers, but also for exploring and searching information.

Twitter on your intranet: 17 microblogging tools for business

analiza 17 herramientas twitter para entornos empresariales

Policy examples for companies planning to implement social media.

123socialmedia.com social list web2.0 socialmedia media article business Corporate socialnetworking legal policy guidelines examples policies strategy casestudy modelodepalavras

http://cyblog.jp/modules/weblogs/1486 cyblog.jp/modules/weblogs/1486 jp 3

SubEthaEdit面白そう←同時にテキスト編集 まぁ、screenでも良いのだと思うけど、手軽だし

But those of us who work in enterprise-level situations realize the momentum even a simple redesign must overcome, and not many, I’ll bet, are jumping on this same bandwagon. They know what it’s like. I'm referring to the new kind of brand, the one is formed by the entire experience of a customer's interaction. That experience gets branded into his or her memory and leaks into the buzz of modern culture. via Caitlin

UX guy reprints email and then attempts to address corporate culture issue; strong opinions follow but most compelling part is the insight from the AA.com UX guy himself (known as Mr. X) "But—and I guess here’s the thing I most wanted to get across—simply doing a home page redesign is a piece of cake. You want a redesign? I’ve got six of them in my archives. It only takes a few hours to put together a really good-looking one, as you demonstrated in your post. But doing the design isn’t the hard part, and I think that’s what a lot of outsiders don’t really get, probably because many of them actually do belong to small, just-get-it-done organizations. But those of us who work in enterprise-level situations realize the momentum even a simple redesign must overcome, and not many, I’ll bet, are jumping on this same bandwagon. They know what it’s like."

complain about a corporate website then get surprised to hear about how design under corporate politics work? hm.

"There's a common attribute that makes for good designers, good engineers, good employees, and good companies. For a long time, I couldn't figure out what it was. Was it practice? Was it skill? Was it innate ability? Turns out, it's none of those. It's taste."

日本ファルコム株式会社（以下、当社）のすべての楽曲を自由にご利用していただくことを目的とした宣言です。

太っ腹すぎ

日本ファルコム株式会社のすべての楽曲を自由にご利用していただくことを目的とした宣言です。

Twitter

Загрузить картинку отправить ссылку, указать комментарии к картинке

Easy to use tool for graphic annotations, that allows taking quick feedback about graphical content.

Outil de révision en ligne

Real Worth of Your Design Work

The value of a designers work is probably the hardest thing to estimate for any freelancer. Overestimate and you will probably lose the project. Underestimate

Evaluation de la valeur d'un site Internet

business innovation

AR Rahman ranked 47th !

While there may be commercial value for using Twitter to communicate with customers, the danger is that the Twitter community could turn against a marketer viewed as being too crass by being relentlessly self-promoting.

digg_url = 'http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/how-self-defeating-corporate-design-process-one-designer-finds-ou'; digg_skin = 'compact'; Designer Dustin Curtis was so disgusted with the American Airlines Web site that he redesigned it, and posted the results as an open letter to the company.

RT @LilianMahoukou: Online reputation management guide: http://bit.ly/18WIY9 (via @Adgenius) [from http://twitter.com/hvaudaux/statuses/1971066316]

The following Online Reputation Management Guide will show small businesses how to assess, build, track and monitor their online reputation. In most cases, you can follow these simple steps to easily grow your personal brand and/or small business. If you’d prefer, you can also download the ORM Guide as a PDF.

On Line Journalism

Good overview of fundamental changes in the news business

Jeff Jarvis and Clay Shirky rejoice: Article on the crumbling economic basis of commercial news distribution in the 21st century. Two extremely interesting points added here: 11. The Rise of PR, 12. Reputation as a currency.

Reduced cost of newsgathering and production

Always useful to know how best to co-erce money out of loved ones.

f a sign imploring people not to steal pieces of petrified forest from the park. One mentioned large amounts of petrified forest taken away on an annual basis, the other one simply asked the visitors not to remove petrified wood. The first one actually tripled t

Larry Cheng: So, here’s a more difficult than expected attempt at pulling together a global directory of blogs written by current VCs. To help put the blogs in some context, they are ranked by their # of Google Reader subscribers. In addition, some blogs despite having subscribers have not posted in 3 months and they are denoted by an *. This directory will be updated quarterly highlighting any new blogs and the movers/shakers based on subscriber growth. If you don’t have the time to sort through all of the blogs, I will write a bi-weekly summary highlighting the “best VC blog posts” from the VCs in this directory.

List of top VC blogs. Look through and add to my reader.

Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers

I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s? The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids. Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it.

t

Always ask what can go wrong (Porterfield);

very cool summary of important things you should learn in b-school but that people don't seem to anymore...

The App Store has created a gold rush for developers, and there are now over 50,000 applications for sale, making it harder to get a newly released app noticed by users.

If you haven't seen the dancing guy, yet, watch it. You can also read Derek Sivers analysis of the dancing guy. Seth Godin even took a stab at it. If you are really curious, watch a longer version of the dancing guy and listen to the comments from the camera drivers. His revolution was a long time in the making. I think it may have had a lot to do with the song itself, which is Santigold's Unstoppable. I had never heard the song before, but I love it and have listened to it at least 30 times since seeing Derek Sivers's post a few days ago at Hacker News. It's a great and inspiring story, even just the unfolding of this sensation itself, but that's not my focus here. Unstoppable doesn't mean you create a huge following, that's a consequence. The Dancing Guy wasn't thinking, "I want to get a huge dance party going." He was thinking, "I want to dance!" With that in mind, here's...

yet another follow-up to the dancing guy phenomenon .. this one more complete and personalized :)

The music industry does like to insist that filesharing - aka illegal downloading - is killing the industry: that every one of the millions of music files downloaded each day counts as a

David Lammy, minister for intellectual property, said: "Illegal downloading robs our economy of millions of pounds every year and seriously damages business and innovation throughout the UK. "It is something that needs tackling, and we are serious about doing so." Well, up to a point, minister. Ben Goldacre took apart the rather dodgy calculations behind the claims on Saturday. But it left me wondering. Why does the music industry persist in saying that every download is a lost sale? If you even think about it, it can't be true. People - even downloaders - only have a finite amount of money. In times gone by, sure, they would have been buying vinyl albums. But if you stopped them downloading, would they troop out to the shops and buy those songs? I don't think so. I suspect they're doing something different. I think they're spending the money on something else.

Yes, downloaders aren't spending money on the music industry, and in that way they are hurting it. But I'd argue that the true volume of "lost" sales is nowhere near the claims made. Assume that music couldn't be copied (as many games can't). I don't think that the volume of music sales would equate to all those downloads. At best, it would be £600m larger.

ocho maneras de creartarjetas de visita sin papel

8 Ways to Create Paperless Business Cards

What’s that, you’re still printing your business card on paper? That is so last year. These days, business cards are going all virtual and that’s a good thing. Not only are paperless business cards good for the environment, and easier to carry, they’re also unlimited — you’ll never run out when you’re networking at an event or conference. But there are a bunch of different ways to construct a virtual business card, which is right for you? Below are eight ways to build a virtual business card that you can use to send your information to contacts the next time you’re at a networking event. Please share any other services you use in the comments.

"Startup 101" is a serialized book about the thrills and spills of starting a Web technology venture. It will be a regular feature in our new channel ReadWriteStart, dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. Startup 101 is for first-time entrepreneurs who want to go through the whole startup life cycle - including raising money, building a valuable business, and making a lot of money by selling the venture or taking it public.

Getting Design Approval:

Nice list of online tools

Tailoring, tailoring-tailoring. Take the best suit money can buy, and leave off good tailoring and it'll hang on your body like a cheap suit. Buy a suit at Target and have it finely tailored ... ... and it'll look fantastic. It won't wear or dryclean great, but it'll fit you like a champ. I'm from the old school of suit wearing, allow me to impart my sage advice. ;) 1. Find a good local tailor, have 'em measure you. 2. Try on a few suit coats with said measurement, make sure they hang about right. Same with slacks. 3. Cuffs are good - contrary to belief they're never "out", and they have a functional advantage, they make slacks hang just right. They keep the pant legs from hanging getting caught in your shoes as well. 4. Dryclean the suit coat *and* the slacks at the same time. If you wear the suit on Saturday, get some gunk on the slacks, do NOT have just the slacks only cleaned. Even the best suit can fade a teeny tad with a cleaning, so keep the wear/fading even - clean both at th

buying suits

"Take Heed"

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Word Press and Automattic, manages a successful Internet business where everyone is working from home

"When you see an impending crisis, your body has a distinct natural reaction. In your consideration of the crisis, you take a long, deep breath. You often don’t notice this, but if I was sitting next to you, I would hear sigh. A sigh is associated with despair. We’re screwed. Sigh. My interpretation is different; this long, deep breath is one of preparation. Let’s break it down: Breathe in. Gathering your strength. Oh shit, how am I going to deal with this? Hold it. Hold it. Ok, breathe out. Ok, not sure what the plan is, but let’s roll. "

Management by crisis is exhilarating, but it values velocity over completeness; it sacrifices creativity for the illusion of progress.

Rands writes another brilliant article about how to manage humans. If you are managing a team, or part of a team, take 20 minutes and read this one from top to bottom.

A brief essay on how to get things back on track when they've gone off the rails. I find this sort of wisdom very attractive. Makes me want to do things.

"An obsessive meeting schedule is an investment in the boring, but by defining a specific place for the boring to exist, you’re allowing every other moment to have creative potential. You’re encouraging the random and random is how you’re going to win."

"I admit it. I love it when the sky is falling. There is no more delicious a state of being than the imminent threat of disaster. During these times, I’ve done great work. I’ve taken teams from “We’re fucked” to “We made it”. Yeah, we had to cancel Christmas that one time and there was that other time I didn’t leave the building for three days straight, but it was worth it because there’s no more exhilarating place to hang than the edge of chaos. We’re wired to escape danger."

How to Save Newspapers (Or, Why the NYT Should Acquire Twitter) - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org http://ow.ly/42Jn [from http://twitter.com/sasii/statuses/1625479259]

There's nothing more timely than Twitter. Twitter would provide the NYT with four key resources and capabilities.

How to Save Newspapers (Or, Why the NYT Should Acquire Twitter) - HarvardBusiness.org http://bit.ly/zmw7p What will Maureen say? [from http://twitter.com/JEBworks/statuses/1598590889]

Why the NYT Should Acquire Twitter

Sosiaalisen median ohjeita johtajille

Twitter article

Executives that have mastered Twitter have pioneered a new way for people to connect with the companies that want their business. Here are 5 habits of successful execs on Twitter.

"It took nearly two years to reach $2 million in Twitter-based revenue, and only six months to go from $1 million to $2 million." Can you make some twitter-exclusive offers?

t took nearly two years to reach $2 million in Twitter-based revenue, and only six months to go from $1 million to $2 million. Dell has since embraced social media on multiple accounts (http://www.dell.com/twitter). And as one of the first companies to successfully utilize Twitter as a business platform, it has been a trendsetter for other companies on Twitter like @JetBlue and @Zappos. We think it’s important to note that while $2 million is a lot of money, it still pales in comparison to the $61 billion in revenue that the entire company generated in 2008. Regardless, @DellOutlet still is fundamental proof that Twitter can be a lucrative platform for companies big and small. It’s a win-win for both the consumer (who get a great deal) and the company (who makes more money).

took 18 months to reap $1 million in revenue, then only 6 months to go from $1 million to $2 million

design tips

"Nice content - awesome presentation! What did you use to make it?!" That's what everyone who sees my BRITE presentation asks me. It's a new service called Prezi. And it's insanely great — the minute I saw it I had to have it, no questions asked. So, for the first time in half a decade, I found myself doing the unthinkable: paying for software.

"Yet, the best business model in the world is also the simplest: make stuff that's insanely great. Stuff that's insanely great does what Prezi does — amazes, enriches, and inspires. That kind of stuff doesn't need a hard sell, a new market, or a convoluted product range. It just needs to be."

Lately we’re seeing business card applications for mobile phones, SMS, and the web sprout up faster than we can follow. We’ve got 8 fantastic options for the iPhone, and a super simple SMS option courtesy of Contxts, and now there’s something even easier for us Twitterholics.

For those how make websites.

“la encuesta de la gente que hace sitios” que, con más de 30.000 encuestados

Interesting survey about developers in 2008

About this template This Cost Estimate and Scheduling spreadsheet provides a lightweight method for learning to estimate time to complete a web design project, and calculating cost for completion. The intended audience is individual freelancers or contractors who need to prepare proposals for potential clients. This may not be an ideal format for the calculation of project team estimates.

Excel sheet template for calculating schedule and costs

The best blog post ever

The Internet landscape has changed over the past few years, and the rules of online marketing have changed with it. In this excerpt from his latest book, Brandon spells out how to create and distribute an effective press release.

The cable companies will become dumb pipes, and they'll get disintermediated. The phone companies will remain dumb pipes. The wireless companies will become dumber pipes. The competition between the multiple dumb pipes will eventually, we pray, result in lower prices for consumers for the only thing we will really need: Ubiquitous high-speed Internet access.

ほかにも、タレコミによると購入者宛に自動送信される注文確認メールが店舗にも同報送信されており、送信者は楽天市場、宛先は購入者のアドレス、CCに店舗のアドレス、といった感じになっているため、ここから顧客のメールアドレスを手作業で取り込めば無料で顧客の情報を入手することも可能ですし、メールから受注管理を行うソフトなども存在しているため、リスト化することも容易です。

Has good business areas Twitter can address

rules of twitpitching

Slideshare presentation

IPAとかが頑張ってこういうのをまとめればいいんじゃｙ

Easy + secure group collaboration over email

Easy + secure group collaboration over email with a handy web archive.

Email is still the most prominent form of communication we have. Do you really need that fancy collaboration tool or do you just need to get tgethr?

也是一个在线协作办公的

Success and Motivation

"Should Print Out and Bound"

Excellent looking list of books to read

Stumbling on Happiness

Focus.com article on social marketing strategy.

But working with people in different cities and time zones with minimal face time presents a whole new set of challenges. While the tools available for working remotely are better than ever, it's how you use them that really counts. Constant and clear communication is the key to a good remote working relationship.

Over the past five years I've worked off-site and online for employers across the country using email, chat, and web-based collaboration apps. My work life has been the envy of my traditional nine-to-five friends. While they suit up in an office-appropriate outfit, grab the briefcase, and brave a commute every weekday, I get to work from home (and my employers get to save money on office space).

Está criando um site? Então aprenda a organizar o seu tempo.

Good reference

Akamaiについて全般的な話。おもしろい。有名どころ・ユーザが多いサービス＝トラフィックが多いってことでよく知られる企業が多く利用しているのね。　細かいことだけど「（インターネットは）冗長性を実現するために信頼性を犠牲にしています。」がちょっと気になった。その後に書いてある速度の話は信頼性に分類されるのかな。

みんなが知らずに使ってるAkamai

Potential startup founders are always looking for ideas to implement, when they should be looking for problems to solve. I see startups who are on the road to implementing an idea, but haven’t figured out what problem it solves – the business plan waxes on about how great the product/tech is, but never gets around to defining the problem (investors call it the “solution looking for a problem” syndrome). A related red flag in a business plan is a missing competitive analysis section or “this product has no competition.” My reaction is, if there is no competition, then there is no market demand for your product, so why are you building it? Luckily, many startups are smart enough to keep morphing their idea until it finally fits a real-world problem, and they can move forward in the marketplace. Unfortunately they could have saved themselves much lost time, money, and heartache if they had just focused on identifying the problem before they built a solution.

The Inside Scoop on Design: Ten Questions with Hartmut Esslinger

Nice design interview.

If a young person wants to be a great designer, what should he or she do? “Design” isn’t a clear-cut talent profession, but one of coordination and catalyst between human needs, science and technology, business and economy, as well as sociology and ecology. The artistic talent required is more of an enabler at the end of rational and emotional analysis as well as strategic conceptualization. Therefore, it is vital to learn and study as much as possible about business, technology and human nature. In the end, there are flavors in design which are more esthetic—see New York Times “Style Magazine”—but design is only relevant when it improves human lives by appealing both to the mind and the heart. Finally, a young person with the right talents needs to have infinite desire and never give up. I apply a simple test with young students: smash a teapot into pieces and then hand out the glue. Those who rebuild the teapot won’t make it, those who create phantasy animals will.

Guy Kawasaki interviews Hartmut Esslinger, the founder of Frog Design on his new book "A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business."

He purchased a Mail Boxes, Etc. mail box and paid a little extra to have it not show a P.O. box number. By keeping one mailing address (and consistent phone numbers through Google Voice) Jagger doesn’t have to reprint company stationary every time they move.

nice horizontal design

article on managing a startup and growing rapidly adapting to what users want

Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. Eric takes a different approach. He believes that many early stage startups are labors of learning. The customer is unknown, the product is unknown, and startups must be built to learn.

Desktop Share Share your entire screen with meeting attendees anytime, anywhere. Icon Hd High Definition Content Show videos, graphics and documents and other content in high-resolution – in total sync. Icon Fetch Fetch Meeting Attendees Bring an attendee straight into a live web or audio conference in one easy step. Icon Interface Easy, Intuitive Interface Beautifully simple. Web-based. No hardware or software to purchase or download.

y or may not want to reveal themselves as the Seer, a.k.a. Werewolf Enemy Number One). It’s not much to

We kill the quiet ones cause they aren't helping.

This was an amusing, insightful... overall a good read.

Seth's Blog: What kind of open are you looking for? http://bit.ly/5uFRE [from http://twitter.com/dcouturepdx/statuses/2254080263]

Why follow people on twitter

Paul is a Senate hopeful and the son of former presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul.

You can find just about anyone on Twitter, and leaders are no exception. Whether you’re looking for motivational speakers, authors, social media experts, or politicians, you can find quite a few interesting personalities. Read on to learn about 100 leaders on Twitter that you can learn from.

Protecting your family from financial disasters is one of the fundamental components of financial planning. Life insurance should be a core part of that planning process. This article is a basic primer on life insurance, which should introduce you to the concept and give you an idea of how life insurance works.

INSURANCE

This article is a basic primer on life insurance, which should introduce you to the concept and give you an idea of how life insurance works.

Writing exercise for Writing for the Web

Tee blogi artikkeli!

1. Create a Facebook Page Your Facebook Page should be the “hub” of your Facebook marketing presence. With a Facebook Page, Facebook users can become a “fan” of your company or product; when that happens, your name and logo will appear on their profile page and your name will appear in their profile feed. fbmarketingpages1In turn, more users will be able to discover your Facebook Page through their friends’ profiles and Facebook searches, and your Page can grow “virally” without you even having to do much work. Finally, Pages rank very highly in Google search results, boosting your SEO rankings.

オンラインツール32選

Luknąć

risk management in business

Facebook's long game. Written by former FB insider

Dresden Dolls - "why not tell people and do this in a warehouse instead of a hotel lobby or a blank studio? so i did. it cost me almost nothing. the fans were psyched." - prior exposure note the comments

Musicians making money really cool site

Good reading material

Whether you’re a victim of cutbacks, outsourcing or your own personal ambitions, your side business is probably more than just a hobby. And since you’re intent on growing your company into something respectable and profitable, you’ll need the tools and connections to help you project a professional image. Check out our list of 100 essential web tools for anyone who’s starting up a side business.

The most common question entrepreneurs ask me, is “how can I improve my marketing with no or little money?” With this in mind, I asked for help from the TPE community and here is what I got… 115 ideas. Skim them or read them in detail, but whatever you do make sure you go through the list. Just one of these ideas may trigger a marketing opportunity that you never considered before. Just one of these ideas may take your business to a whole new level!

When you want to know what's happening on the Web right now, Google won't cut it. These sites will.

Outils de recherhe sur Twitter

letters to the future

1、2、3、5だけでもやってあるとだいぶ違う

Speculation on opening status updates up to the public and making them available to trolling search engines.

Reading: The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public By Default http://bit.ly/18mi52 [from http://twitter.com/sandroalberti/statuses/2348881447]

Wow, Facebook profiles are going public by default.

One of the most anticipated days in the history of social networking site Facebook has finally come: the company announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user's approved friends.

One of the most anticipated days in the history of social networking site Facebook has finally come: the company announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user's approved

The Art of Branding | Small Business Marketing Guide - Brought to you by HP

In this Web 2.0, user-generated, Open-Source, social-networking world, it’s so easy to forget that just

In this Web 2.0, user-generated, Open-Source, social-networking world, it’s so easy to forget that just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. All branding, no matter whether it’s on a billboard, blog, website, or Twitter, should adhere to these simple principles. Here are nine keys to the art of branding

In this Web 2.0, user-generated, Open-Source, social-networking world, it’s so easy to forget that just because something can be done doesn’t mean it

Why are the self-interested motives of powerful companies being elevated to a philosophical principle? Gladwell owns Anderson by using an example from Anderson's own book.

Video of Tim Ferriss of Four Hour Workweek fame discussing how he built tests and changes his blog to grow readership. 50 minutes

blogs, blogging

Marketing ideas

Publishing

When incremental change doesn't cut it. "It’s true that stupidity and malevolence do sometimes play a role in the disruption of industries. But in the first part of this essay I’ll argue that even smart and good organizations can fail in the face of disruptive change, and that there are common underlying structural reasons why that’s the case. That’s a much scarier story.""The problem is that your newspaper has an organizational architecture which is, to use the physicists’ phrase, a local optimum. Relatively small changes to that architecture - like firing your photographers - don’t make your situation better, they make it worse.""The only way to get from one organizational architecture to the other is to make drastic, painful changes."An early sign of impending disruption is when there’s a sudden flourishing of startup organizations serving an overlapping customer need...organizational architecture is radically different..."

about scientific publishing disruption, and disruption in general

Scientific publishers should be terrified that some of the world’s best scientists, people at or near their research peak, people whose time is at a premium, are spending hundreds of hours each year creating original research content for their blogs, content that in many cases would be difficult or impossible to publish in a conventional journal. What we’re seeing here is a spectacular expansion in the range of the blog medium. By comparison, the journals are standing still.

The answer is "Yes".

Questions to ASK for your interview

Including: What are the criteria that you are looking for in the successful candidate for this position?

diseño tarjetas

Business Cards!!!!!

People will not pay for by-the-book rewrites of news that belongs to all of us. People will not pay for yesterday's news, driven to our house, delivered a day late, static, without connection or comments or relevance. Why should we? A good book review on Amazon is more reliable and easier to find than a paid-for professional review that used to run in your local newspaper, isn't it? Like all dying industries, the old perfect businesses will whine, criticize, demonize and most of all, lobby for relief. It won't work. The big reason is simple: In a world of free, everyone can play. This is huge.

I've never written those three words before, but he's never disagreed with Chris Anderson before, so there you go. Free is the name of Chris's new book, and it's going to be wildly misunderstood and widely argued about.

"By refusing to build new digital assets that matter, traditional publishers are forfeiting their future."

In a world of free, everyone can play. This is huge. When there are thousands of people writing about something, many will be willing to do it for free (like poets) and some of them might even be really good (like some poets). There is no poetry shortage. The reason that we needed paid contributors before was that there was only economic room for a few magazines, a few TV channels, a few pottery stores, a few of everything. In world where there is room for anyone to present their work, anyone will present their work. Editors become ever more powerful and valued, while the need for attention grows so acute that free may even be considered expensive. Of course, it's ironic that sometimes people pay money for my books (I view them as souvenirs of content you could get less conveniently and less organized for free online if you chose to). And it's ironic that I read Malcolm's review for free. And ironic that you can read Chris's arguments the most cogently by paying for them.

People will pay for content if it is so unique they can't get it anywhere else, so fast they benefit from getting it before anyone else, or so related to their tribe that paying for it brings them closer to other people. We'll always be willing to pay for souvenirs of news, as well, things to go on a shelf or badges of honor to share.

"by refusing to build new digital assets that matter, traditional publishers are forfeiting their future. ... People will pay for content if it is so unique they can't get it anywhere else, so fast they benefit from getting it before anyone else, or so related to their tribe that paying for it brings them closer to other people."

While a wiki can let project documentation grow organically as a project unfolds, it is like any tool and needs to be used the right way to get the most out of it. If you’re thinking about using a wiki in your team’s toolkit for the first time, keeping a few points in mind will help everyone get up and running without tripping over the changes that the wiki way brings to project documentation.

for web 2.0

hahah dude thats why kevin rose designed something and tim goes on tv for fun

Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose Discuss Their Top 5 Must-Read Books

If a client came to you with $1 million to invest in a single Internet marketing channel, which one would you choose? Obviously, the question is a bit ridiculous (given that there's no additional detail provided), but it's designed to elicit an "off-the-cuff" response to a challenging scenario. The answer, of course, is "it depends" - and therein lies the rub. On what does it depend? Well... That's what I hope to answer with this blog post. My goal is not to solve the issue for an individual campaign, but from a very strategic level - asking questions like "where is the company today and where does it want to get to?" then applying those answers to the selection of marketing opportunities. Let's start by defining the macro-level channels themselves, then examine how we'd reach the right conclusions.

"I was selling in the idea that social media is free, until the community manager headcount came in."

Social media involvement means having live people who actively participate in your initiatives. It requires people - therefore it's not free.

seeding, feeding, and weeding.

Most advice to entrepreneurs focuses on what they should do: build a great product, assemble a great team, provide great service. All are “duhisms.” Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t realize that there are things they should specifically avoid doing too. These are also duhisms, but somehow no one ever talks about them. Here is my list of the twelve most important things that entrepreneurs should not do.

HT: Chuck Smith

VC blogs

top venture capitalist blogs. One of which is Guy Kawasaki

A logo questionare for clients.

This article aims to show you how to attract users and make them hungry for more. Who is this post for? Anyone with a web site. Not all of the items listed below will apply to you and your business, but they are, at the very least, a source for inspiration.

The 3-click-rule is the Freddy Kreuger of web design advice. You think it’s finally dead and then it comes back and starts slashing up sensible debate about usable design. I’m hoping to convince you to stop talking about the 3-click rule. I don’t mean substituting it with the 4-click rule or the 5-click rule. You should stop counting clicks as a measure of usability altogether.

With the recent update to Facebook Pages, many brands and businesses will be left wondering how they can best take advantage of this upgrade. The Advance Guard has collected some ideas and tips into a white paper that can now be freely downloaded and shared under a Creative Commons license.

Central to the notion of effective social media participation is the ability to create, publish and share content. The sheer volume of information on the topic

The roles of leader

quality. Not over-celebrating a team’s heroic recovery when they could have avoided a problem altogether sends a message about prevention versus damage control. People take their cues about interpersonal values—trust, honesty, openness—from CEO’s actions as well. Capital allocation is the CEO’s #4 duty. The CEO sets budgets within the firm. She funds projects which support the strategy, and ramps down projects which lose money or don’t support the strategy. She considers carefully the company’s major expenditures, and manages the firm’s capital. If the company can’t use each dollar raised from investors to produce at least $1 of shareholder value, she decides when to return money to the investors. Some CEOs don’t consider themselves financial people, but at the end of the day, it is their decisions that determine the company’s financial fate.

excerpt from book by Jim Collins - How the Mighty Fall and why Some Companies Never Give In

Every institution is vulnerable, no matter how great. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall, and most eventually do. But all is not gloom. By understanding the five stages of decline we uncovered in our research for How the Mighty Fall, leaders can substantially increase the odds of reversing decline before it is too late—or even better, stave off decline in the first place. Decline can be avoided. The seeds of decline can be detected early. And decline can be reversed (as we've seen with notable cases such as IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Merck (MRK), and Nucor (NUE)). The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

overview of an upcoming book that analyzes the 5 stages to failure for a company or country.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, on how to spot the subtle signs that your successful company is actually on course to sputter—and how to reverse the slide before it's too late -- THE SILENT CREEP OF DOOM

-same as in PR

Establishing the look and feel of a site can be a point of contention. Web designers often become frustrated because they feel there’s a lack of respect for their expertise. Meanwhile, clients grow annoyed when their designer seemingly fails to listen to them.

# ays the best equipped to identify examples of good design—they tend to select sites based on their content rather than aesthetics. # Second, the qu

Establishing the look and feel of a site can be a point of contention. Web designers often become frustrated because they feel there’s a lack of respect for their expertise. Meanwhile, clients grow annoyed when their designer seemingly fails to listen to them. This confrontation inevitably leads to a loggerhead. On one hand we have a designer with years of design knowledge and experience; on the other, a client who knows his audience and business objectives. In this stare-off, sooner or later, somebody has to blink. Either the client will end up with a design that he is unhappy with that fails to meet his objectives, or the web designer will give in and produce a design that she believes to be less than optimal.

This week we saw the release of Chris Anderson's book Free and reviews from the New Yorker (Malcolm Gladwell) and the Financial Times. I'd like to talk a bit about the firestorm that freeconomics (fed by Chris' book) has unleashed...

"Earlier this week, we spoke to several sources who each have some insight into Facebook's financials (none of them know precisely). Taking the sources' input together, we'd estimate the company's expected 2009 revenue this way: * $125 million from brand ads * $150 million from Facebook's ad deal with Microsoft * $75 million from virtual goods * $200 million from self-service ads. "

link to audio book. "All this was possible because Alan Kay, an engineer at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s, understood what Moore's law was doing to the cost of computing. He decided to do what writer George Gilder calls "wasting transistors." Rather than reserve computing power for core information processing, Kay used outrageous amounts of it for frivolous stuff like drawing cartoons on the screen." - "By 1970s IT standards, Kay had "wasted" computing power. ... This is the power of waste. When scarce resources become abundant, smart people treat them differently.

Chris Andersons neues Buch "Free" kostet 27 Dollar - wenn man es im Buchladen kauft. Wer sich jedoch die Audiobuch-Version herunterladen möchte, bekommt sie geschenkt, ganz im Sinne des Buchtitels - "Kostenlos: Die Zukunft eines radikalen Preises".

Print page

Gladwell perspective on 'free'.

Here's an excerpt from Malcom's New Yorker piece pointing out the flaws in Chris's argument. Malcolm was paid to write the piece, of course. Handsomely. As was Chris for writing his bestseller: There are four strands of argument here: a technological claim (digital infrastructure is effectively Free), a psychological claim (consumers love Free), a procedural claim (Free means never having to make a judgment), and a commercial claim (the market created by the technological Free and the psychological Free can make you a lot of money).

Covers 'freemium' business model and more...

From everyone's favourite magazine editor...

Google apps free edition, bookmarked so they don't hide it again.

Interesting!

Once you get past the “should my company be blogging” hurdle and into the “okay, so now what?” part of the race, the next question you might find yourself facing is, “What should I be doing to marry my blogging to my business goals?” If you’re in charge of making blogs deliver a business value to your organization, here’s some thoughts to consider. (Note: this is a business-minded post. You can use blogs however you like.)

RT @chrisbrogan Strategic Blogging and Some Tactics to Nail It http://ow.ly/15Gukv [from http://twitter.com/ploked/statuses/2402798902]

l

TO READ

amazing story

Statistics show hope: interesting as a visualization and as a prediction that the recovery is starting. I'll schedule a check up in six months

Fantastic illustration of business cycles

Brilliant interactive graphics on the economic cycle

"Dear Old People Who Run the World, My generation would like to break up with you. Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences. ... What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s. Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government."

This may be the most accurate description of my generation I've seen, ever

to read

Small is beautiful, at least in economy...

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government.

CoTweet is a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter.

a time and budget management tool. One can create tasks, time their own work, run reports, and manage their money overall more efficiently.

Many of you guys using multiple computers that are located on different places. How about if your work computer, your home laptop, your Mac, your mobile phone devices live in multiple places. With Live Mesh, you can synchronize, share and access files with all of your devices, so you always have the updated copy of your files. It’s very simple and easy that you can now access your files from any device or from the web, easily share them with others, and get notified whenever someone changes a file. The best of all this service is powered

Over the past couple months, I've spent a bit of time looking at Flash gaming on web portals like Kongregate and Newgrounds. There are over 14,000 games spread across 30,000 portals with hundreds of new games coming out every month. The output alone is amazing. Let me cut to the chase. I think that you, Flash game developers, are some of the most talented and inspirational people working today in game development. Your passion for building games burns so incredibly brightly. Your ability to quickly make and distribute games is second to none. You hold immense potential to transform the future of games.

Ads are a really crappy revenue source For a recent game my friend Andre released, 2 million unique users yields around $650 from MochiAds. This yields an Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of only $0.000325 per user. Even when you back in the money that sponsors will pay, I still only get an ARPU of $0.0028 per user. In comparison, a MMO like Puzzle Pirates makes about $0.21 per user that reaches the landing page (and $4.20 per user that registers) What this tells me is that other business models involving selling games on the Internet are several orders of magnitude more effective at making money from an equivalent number of customers. When your means of making money is 1/100th as efficient as money making techniques used by other developers, maybe you've found one big reason why developers starve when they make Flash games.

In order to understand why this promising game platform is such a surprising dissapointment, we'll look at Flash games from three perspectives: * Chapter 2 - Making money: How do Flash developers currently make money. * Chapter 3 - Generating value: How Flash developers currently create 'valuable' game for their players? * Chapter 4 - Reaching customers: How developers currently reach their players. * Chapter 5 - Premium Flash games as a service: A mental model for understanding the new world of web gaming.

Why you should use wordpress too!

Wordpress is popular than you think it is. These brands include ebay, wired, sony, wsj and many more.

short but sweet bit of advice from Trent Reznor, applicable to all sorts of fields not just music.

Great thoughts by Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails.

e-business becoming social, new trend in marketing, web 2.0 marketing

Most Mashable readers have probably heard of the online retail company, Zappos. You may have learned of them via TwitterTwitterTwitter and count yourself among the 400,000+ people that follow the CEO, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay but who people refer to as Tony), or from a friend after she had one of the best customer experiences in her life. No matter how you heard of them, we wager to guess that you did so through word-of-mouth. And word about Zappos has been spreading. . . . They did $3 million dollars in gross sales the day before our recent visit, and surpassed $1 billion last year. They are one of the companies forging a new era of business that emphasizes, in their words, “making personal and emotional connections.”

Worth checking out -- they TRAIN their employees in Twitter?

Almost a year after A.I.G.’s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

News: The University of Melbourne

Surfing the net at work for pleasure actually increases our concentration levels and helps make a more productive workforce, according to a new University of Melbourne study. Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t. “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says.

Promoting the people most competent at one job does not mean that they'll be better at another, according to a new simulation of hierarchical organizations.

But is there a better way of choosing individuals for promotion? It turns out that there is, say Pluchino and co. Their model shows that two other strategies outperform the conventional method of promotion. The first is to alternately promote first the most competent and then the least competent individuals. And the second is to promote individuals at random. Both of these methods improve, or at least do not diminish, the efficiency of an organization.

"All new members in a hierarchical organization climb the hierarchy until they reach their level of maximum incompetence."

Person is good at job, person is promoted. Repeat until person ends up in job they're not good at.

Agent-based simulation of the Peter Principle

Following are excerpts from a symposium on the economic crisis presented by The New York Review of Books and PEN World Voices at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 30. The participants were former senator Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, and Robin Wells, with Jeff Madrick as moderator.

By Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, Robin Wells et al.

Excerpts from a symposium on the economic crisis presented by The New York Review of Books and PEN World Voices at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 30. The participants were former senator Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, and Robin Wells, with Jeff Madrick as moderator.

Anil Dash has an excellent piece about Google, about the potential differences in how the company (or those with in the company) see themselves and how those outside see the company. This is not one of those "Google is really evil" posts, but more a thoughtful commentary about how a now huge company can avoid becoming like every other huge tech company.

RT @timoreilly RT @anildash:Google has reached its "Microsoft moment" and is the last to realize: http://bit.ly/msmoment Interesting stuff [from http://twitter.com/theholodeck/statuses/2602344061]

Among the tidbits offered, the article suggests networking in person. Though perhaps intuitive and inviting for the more gregarious worker, this is an especially important step for the shy employee who may prefer to limit the crux of his communications to emails and IM chats. While both are important to establishing and maintaining a relationship, meeting up in-person is vital. The NYT bluntly says to force yourself to do so. Making a bee line to the bar or buffet, if there is one, is a classic way to get the ball rolling. The article also claims that being an introvert can even help your networking efforts. Introverts are intuitive and analytical. Use that skill. After you have been networking for a while, ask, "What is working? What isn't? Where do you get the most bang for your buck?"

From NYTimes.com, Paul B Brown. Networking tips

Wendell Potter explains exactly hoe the health insurance companies are fucking you.

With almost 20 years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform.

Wendell Potter

Wendell Potter, former executive at Cigna, talks about the power of the health care lobby and the way the industry manipulates congress to increase the fortunes of their shareholders, at great public cost.

great article on mashable.com

Great article on luxury consumers and social media.

Attività sui media sociali con marchi di lusso

Facebook has certainly garnered a lot of attention these past weeks- first with it’s new vanity URL feature and then with it’s changed privacy features. Facebook’s vanity URL feature - particularly for Facebook pages - is of particular interest to businesses. As Facebook continues it’s explosive growth heading towards 250 million active users, more and more businesses are hoping to leverage Facebook for serious business purposes. Facebook’s new feature allows businesses to create a custom url for their business page - something that wasn’t possible until now. (If you haven’t gotten your custom name, read Facebook expert Mari Smith’s post: How To Secure Your Facebook Username (Vanity URL).) Want to sharpen your skills and learn how to really leverage Facebook to grow your business? Below I’ve put together a comprehensive collection of resources, tips and advice on how to use Facebook for business purposes including: 1. General Guides, Tutorials and Help 2. Facebook Pages an

found on ClickZ via twitter (@rrabago)

iA is a strategic design agency in Tokyo, Japan. We analyze business goals and user needs, and develop interfaces that match.

number 1

Business aspects of design; pricing

I’m about to make a bold statement. The quality of a design and the monetary cost of producing or procuring that design have absolutely no relationship whatsoever. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, I know. Many of you are crying foul at this very moment, but hear me out. I’ll explain my radical position – and hopefully give you a few pointers about how to more effectively price and position your design business in this brave new, and uncorrelated, world.

Perhaps the best article on web design pricing I've ever read. This insightful story should be ready by every web designer.

Before you launch your startup, you should be thinking about how you're going to make money. Here are 5 ways social media startups can bring in some cash.

logos

40 logos creativos

I have always loved looking at well-designed logos and I like it even more when they feature great typography (hey, after all typography is sexy!) So, lately I’ve been looking for some inspiration for a new project and thought I’d check out some logo galleries to get those creative juices flowing.

Far from being interesting (unless you enjoy following mutually referencing bloggers who blog about blogging), social media is just an excuse. It is... the old marketing industry's latest excuse to waste more money on bad ideas and lazy thinking.

Artigo de Matt Jones no Advertising Age

many good points in this post , steal it for the script!!!

"In business, words are like fashion. You try a word on because important people around you are saying it and getting results, but you may not actually know what it means. Every group in the company has their own unique set of words and every group uses these words to verbally define who they are, what they know, and what they own. These words, these phrases, have value when everyone is in agreement as to what they mean, but used outside of your part of the organization, their value decreases, especially the closer you get to engineering."

This is you think you’re saying, but this is what we’re hearing. Corporate Crap.

Heads-up — “You’re screwed.”

海外のクリエイター名刺

There are no rules for creative card design. Custom shapes & cuts, spot UV, matte finishing etc are all playing factors but the crucial part is always an eye-catching design, whether it’s graphical, typographical or just simple great ideas.

Clay Shirky - a man who can tease out the issues that affect us in publishing with exquisite precision. change Journalism for Scholarly Publishing and you have the issues that face us today...

The hard truth about the future of journalism is that nobody knows for sure what will happen; the current system is so brittle, and the alternatives are so speculative, that there’s no hope for a simple and orderly transition from State A to State B. Chaos is our lot; the best we can do is identify the various forces at work shaping various possible futures. Two of the most important are the changing natures of the public, and of subsidy. As Paul Starr, the great sociologist of media, has often noted, journalism isn’t just about uncovering facts and framing stories; it’s also about assembling a public to read and react to those stories. A public is not merely an audience. For a TV show with an audience of a million, no one cares whether it’s the same million every week — head count rules. A public, by contrast, is a group of people who not only know things, but know other members of the public know those things as well. Both persistence and synchrony matter, because journalism is

This will not replace the older forms journalism, but then nothing else will either; both preservation and simple replacement are off the table. The change we’re living through isn’t an upgrade, it’s a upheaval, and it will be decades before anyone can really sort out the value of what’s been lost versus what’s been gained. In the meantime, the changes in self-assembling publics and new models of subsidy will drive journalistic experimentation in ways that surprise us all.

"This will not replace the older forms journalism, but then nothing else will either; both preservation and simple replacement are off the table. The change we’re living through isn’t an upgrade, it’s a upheaval, and it will be decades before anyone can really sort out the value of what’s been lost versus what’s been gained. In the meantime, the changes in self-assembling publics and new models of subsidy will drive journalistic experimentation in ways that surprise us all."

Get the key facts on a wide range of technologies, techniques, strategies, and skills with the help of these concise, need-to-know lists.

for Karl?

Welcome to the Awesome Foundation for Arts and Sciences We support people doing awesome things in the world. Every month we give out a grant. Information on how to submit follows. What is Awesome? Awesomeness is often overlooked by mainstream culture, which tends to rehash the same broadly appealing but mediocre creations. Thankfully, there is the web. Awesomeness is more the product of a creator’s passion than the prospect of audience or profit. Awesome creations are novel and non-obvious, evoking surprise and delight. Invariably, something about them perfectly reflects the essence of the medium, moment, or method of creation. Awesomeness challenges and inspires.

boston cambridge grants awesome idea foundation

Submit an awesome idea. If we pick it, we'll give you $1,000 in cash. Yup, $1,000. Cash. Maybe even in a brown paper bag. You'll also get access to coworking space at BetaHouse for the month of your grant. The only condition is that you be willing to tell us (and some of our friends) about what you did a month later. If we don't pick it, don't stress, we'll pick a new awesome idea next month.

Fascinating internal twitter docs - via Stefan

“If we had a billion users, that will be the pulse of the planet.

Twitter's strategy leaked by Arrington

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmusic%2F2009%2Fjul%2F12%2Fmusic-industry-illegal-downloading-streaming

Teenagers switching to streaming sites – survey • Spotify and YouTube lead the way as habits change

Collapse in illegal sharing and boom in streaming brings music to executives' ears

"Music fan Dominique Wakefield, 24, said she had stopped downloading music because of concern that it would infect her computer. "I didn't even realise it was illegal for a long time, until I heard that the government were trying to stop it. That did put me off, but one of the big reasons I stopped doing it was because I would get viruses, more pop ups on my computer."

• Teenagers switching to streaming sites – survey • Spotify and YouTube lead the way as habits change

"Teenagers switching to streaming sites – survey • Spotify and YouTube lead the way as habits change" Shows that Morgan Stanley intern was a bit wrong. about filesharing Not as wrong as the dullards elsewhere at Morgan Stanley who are apparently amazed by his ability to write down common knowledge.

Six Month Alternative MBA

The 6months MBA diary from the students of Seth Godin

Blog of Seth Godin's 'Six Month Alternative MBA' - some interesting thoughts on entrepreneurship and marketing.

You Think ‘Free’ is Only About the Price? It’s Not.

Unresolvable

Time and time again I see the discussion about free content, free services, free products, and how they're going to liberate/destroy/change the current economy,

In August 2008 we reported on 18 chief executives who use the microblogging application Twitter to clue customers in on new services, help them with questions about their products, and generally get a little bit personal with customers, business associates, and the public. Not even a year later, we bring you nearly 50 CEOs who find tweeting a personal and professional delight. Twitter's growth has been astounding. As of August, for example, Digg founder Kevin Rose had only 61,000 "followers"— people who sign up to view a certain Twitter user's tweets—but now he has more than 600,000. So read on to learn how Virgin Group's Richard Branson, Zappos.com's Tony Hsieh, and dozens more CEOs harness the simple powers of Twitter.

Dozens of CEOs who find Twitter to be a personal and professional delight. Here's how they use the service, and who they like to follow

In August 2008 we reported on 18 chief executives who use the microblogging application Twitter to clue customers in on new services, help them with questions about their products, and generally get a little bit personal with customers, business associates, and the public. Not even a year later, we bring you nearly 50 CEOs who find tweeting a personal and professional delight. Twitter's growth has been astounding. As of August, for example, Digg founder Kevin Rose had only 61,000 "followers"— people who sign up to view a certain Twitter user's tweets—but now he has more than 600,000.

website where you can publish your own game

Print-on-demand comes to game making. Quite a cool resource for rapid prototyping.

They make boardgames that you design.

self publishing site for diy board games

It is time you took that game you created and publish it.

Bantam - Red social en tiempo real

CRM with Live Social elements added

Very Interesting

Software Engineering: Dead?

Make your "tiny" portfolio online in which you'll be able to integrate your networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), a little about you and how to contact you. Choose between many nice skins and features.

If you’re a freelance graphic designer (or any profession for that matter) and do not have contracts or standard terms and conditions that you provide your clients to sign prior to starting a project… well let’s just say you’re silly. You WILL at some point need it to protect your business, as for the reason I am writing this is due to a recent incident in which my contract protected me. Building your own design contracts isn’t always easy—there’s much to include, but once it’s written and out of the way it’s as easy as hitting ‘attach’ and ’send’ in your email. Often at times, client’s ask specific requests so I can easily tailor mine to fit their project if need be. Instead of covering each and every angle of a design contract, below I have listed the basics and essentials to include in your standard graphic design terms and conditions or contracts. Feel free to add more in the comments below.

Below I have listed the basics and essentials to include in your standard graphic design terms and conditions or contracts.

phic errors, etc. Also if the client provides you materials to work from and they’re lost or damaged it must be accounted and compensated fo

LEGAL

Author: 10% (This in fact ranges between 8% and 15%, depending on the author's clout -- e.g. Stephen King does better than most. If the author has an agent, the agent's cut comes out of this. It is indeed tough for new authors.) Publisher: 30% (This ranges between 25% and 32%, again depending on the author's clout -- e.g. their percentage is less with Stephen King because the risk is lower too. Note: this is their net revenue, after deducting author royalties and printer fees.) Printer: 10% Distributor: 10% Retailer: 40%

ts containing links can automatically be encoded with Awe.sm, for users of that service.

A new study released by enterprise wiki provider Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group shows that the brands most engaged in social media are also experiencing higher financial success rates than those of their non-engaged peers. To determine this relationship, the study focused on 100 companies from the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands survey and the various social media platforms they used like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, and forums. Although it's difficult to prove for certain that the companies' involvement in social media has led to their increased revenues, the implication behind the new data is that it has.

La première étude qui montre qu'il y a un lien entre l'utilisation des social medias et les résultats financiers des entreprises. A montrer aux marques pour les motiver à s'impliquer dans la plateforme

Sigh. I think the mindless bookmarking of little lists masking at blog posts is pretty annoying, but I can't help doing it myself. Damnit. Here's one such article that contains some obvious, but practical advice for both start-ups and those seeking to work for them.

Good questions

He believes it’s because people are afraid if they click a link that says “Free Trial” then they’ll somehow automatically signup for something and be trapped. However, “See Plans and Pricing” encouraged them to explore, without the fear of commitment.

See Plans and Pricing

ThinkVitamin - Carsonified's blog about the web

Marketing Tips from a Six-Year Old’s Lemonade Stand | Webdesigner Depot

Don’t just offer lemonade. Put in that extra sprig of mint

By the end of the day, Sophia had made a whopping eight dollars at her “free” lemonade stand. When it was all said and done, I realized that although my original business lessons didn’t stick with my daughter, I learned a lot about marketing.

The other day my daughter, Sophia, announced that she wanted to set up a lemonade stand. Seeing as how I didn’t really want to spend the better part of my

- Tools of Change for Publishing

"Whether they realize it or not, media companies are in the service business, not the content business. Look at iTunes: if people paid for content, then it would follow that better content would cost more money. But every song costs the same. Why would people pay the same price for goods of (often vastly) different quality? Because they're not paying for the goods they're paying Apple for the service of providing a selection of convenient options easy to pay for and easy to download."

reading the Facebook rules regarding business accounts.

first bookmark

Facebookをビジネスで利用する32の手順

Interesting thoughts on why simple meetings blow the entire day's schedule for a programmer (via Justin Miller)

When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in.

If you can't actually avoid meetings, then at least try to schedule them so you can maximise your productivity. Rings true...

Paul Graham pitches 'flow' from a different perspective.

好印象を与えながら情報も得られる、就職面接で聞くべき7つの質問 : ガジェットなどを駆使し、スマートに楽しむ仕事術「Lifehack」。「ライフハッカー［日本版］」では、その言葉を広義に捉え、生活全般に役立つライフハック情報を日々お届けします。

and that stroke of luck propelled them to the top. Not to take anything away from their hard work, but lots of devs out there are working just as hard on games that are reviewed as well or better.

An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day - Peter Bregman - HarvardBusiness.org

Zappos email to customers & Amazon video about Amazon & acquisition. WOW!

Free shipping BOTH ways, 365-day return policy, 24/7 customer service. Millions of men's shoes, women's shoes, girl's shoes, boy's shoes, handbags, men's clothing, women's clothing, Uggs, Nike shoes!

business

A long but meaningful letter! I am so proud of them!

A mini site from Twitter explaining what Twitter is and why individuals and organizations may want to use it.

This is a great guide for twitters and business twitters!

a technique that uses information collected on an individual’s web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that customers.

Successful interactions have become genuine communication with near-instantaneous feedback. For example, PayScale allows users to retrieve real-time salary reports based on their job title, location, education, and experience-but only after they have contributed their own data. As the expectations of users change, firms must spend more time developing incentive systems that will entice more users to participate. Consequently, the online world is beginning to be ruled by the expectations of the users. No longer is it sufficient for a search engine to cough up some hotels across the world when a weary traveler is looking for a good deal in Bangkok! As these consumer expectations shift, companies that want to stay relevant have no choice but to accept the ideas of the consumer revolution as swiftly as possible. For users, switching costs are cheap

Successful interactions have become genuine communication with near-instantaneous feedback. For example, PayScale allows users to retrieve real-time salary reports based on their job title, location, education, and experience-but only after they have contributed their own data. As the expectations of users change, firms must spend more time developing incentive systems that will entice more users to participate. Consequently, the online world is beginning to be ruled by the expectations of the users. No longer is it sufficient for a search engine to cough up some hotels across the world when a weary traveler is looking for a good deal in Bangkok! As these consumer expectations shift, companies that want to stay relevant have no choice but to accept the ideas of the consumer revolution as swiftly as possible. For users, switching costs are cheap

In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008. Information overload is more serious than ever. What are the implications for marketing?

People trust people not advertising in product choices

In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008.

Supposedly humans will create more data in 2009 than in all time up to 2008. Not sure where that data comes from

You're in the elevator with the hiring manager of Dream-Job Corporation. As the door slides shut, you feel a combination of adrenaline and slight nausea: you've got 15 seconds, if that, to communicate your value as a potential employee in a compelling way — just 15 seconds to cram in a whole resume's worth of work and accomplishments and late nights and successes. There's so much you want to say, but your message has got to be crisp, tailored, to-the-point. Handle this one right, and you'll be the newest member of the Dream-Job team. Flub it up, and you're back to scanning listings on Monster.com. What are you supposed to say?

amazing read this

Want to know why we have a zombieconomy? Because the beancounters killed the incentives to create real value. ... That's the big problem behind the zombieconomy. We don't reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets. That 's not an economy: it's just a game of musical chairs. Hence, no new finance, healthcare, educational, auto, or, yes, music, industry — for decades.

No wonder everyone wants to be a banker, investor, or [insert beancounter here]. There's no money left in anything else. That's the big problem behind the zombieconomy. We don't reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets.

If the world's biggest pop star only made $12 million a year from his recordings, why would anyone make serious music? Where did the rest of the money go? Why, straight into record labels' pockets. Did they make better music with it? Nope — they made Britney and Lady GaGa. And that's how they killed themselves: by underinvesting in quality, to rake in the take.

Want to know why we have a zombieconomy? Because the beancounters killed the incentives to create real value.

BookFresh works like an online appointment book. It lets new and existing clients schedule with your business online.

Online Scheduling and Appointment Software

BookFresh helps your business take online appointments and much more: Easy online appointment scheduling Advertises your services locally Reminds clients of their appointments Notifies you by SMS text and email Connects to your website

“We don’t have 200k RSS subscribers because of my deliciously swirly hair” - a central question (asked also during the Q/A session): how on the earth did Basecamp and other 37signals products become so popular? All of a sudden, they emerged from nowhere! As David points out, it was not that ‘out of the blue’ as it looks like. When they started with Basecamp, they already had 2000 subscribers on their blog, Signal vs Noise, so they built a channel which through they could advertise themselves. This advice meshes with one of my favorite points from Getting Real which goes something like “Just start doing something”. Really. Start blogging. Creating/contributing to open source software. Get on twitter. Let your voice be heard! You probably won’t have thousands of listeners right away, that’s OK - it takes time. But you can start today!

Retweeting @TEDchris: I saw Seth Godin give the GEL talk just posted on his blog "This is broken". Funny, insightful. http://is.gd/tDwb [from http://twitter.com/nextyunus/statuses/1573958589]

This is broken /Seth's Blog/ - I did this talk about three years ago. I have to admit that very little in ... http://tinyurl.com/clhjvp [from http://twitter.com/jorgefsb/statuses/1573738938]

Define broken, categorize broken, and note that some things are broken on purpose as a filtering system.

Choosing a domain name for a new client is a difficult task. Domain names are the crux of a website’s existence. A bad name can create a negative impact on branding and the ability to strengthen the domain value. A good domain name is essentially priceless (tacky but true) in name, branding, ease of understanding, and catchiness.

Get Creative With Your Domain Name

Human Skills

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” – Robert A. Heinlein

A comprehensive guide to help you build your personal brand on LinkedIn.

Dan Schwabel/mashable

follow us @BGChamber - we will keep you updated with ribbon cuttings, ground breakings and news around the South Central Kentucky area.

As you already seen in 80 Corporate Website Designs that a perfect layout, A good design and nice resources can produce a creative output. Layout, textures and , Daily Resource for Web Designers and Developers.

Umair Haque gör det igen! Sätter nyhetstidningarnas problem i ett modernt affärsperspektiv och visar tydligt hur de ska göra för att utnyttja de krafter som är starka idag på ett positivt sätt. Betalmurar gör det inte...

Profitability can't be recaptured from a commodity. Newspapers used to be yesterday's most profitable industry. Warren Buffett made his fortune by investing in newspapers, yesterday. Yet, today, business model innovation, aka "monetization," is the surest, quickest path to self-destruction. Charging once more for the same old "content" — as argued for by David Simon, in an impassioned CJR article — will inevitably lead newspapers exactly where it led banks investment "banks" and automakers: into economic implosion. To reinvent the buying and selling of news, it's necessary first to reconceive the making of news. The AP's latest attempt at business model innovation, for example, is a heavyweight "rights management" system for the same old stuff. But protecting yesterday's "product" is exactly what prevented the music industry and Hollywood from rediscovering the art of value creation.

Journalists didn't make 20th century newspapers profitable — readers did

"A new generation of innovators is already building 21st century newspapers: nichepapers. The future of journalism arrived right under the industry's nose. Nichepapers, as the name implies, own the microniche. ... Nichepapers are different because they have built a profound mastery of a tightly defined domain — finance, politics, even entertainment — and offer audiences deep, unwavering knowledge of it." Good article. The term "niche paper" has been used previously, but I'm curious if Haque coined the compound word "nichepaper".

Compare and contrast with conventional 'news writing' opinion - McKane (on avoiding narrative), and Hicks (on delivering the latest, not last word)

Kevin: Umair Haque writes an open letter to 'newspaper magnates'. It's well worth a read. Just a taster: "20th century news isn't fit for 21st century society. Yesterday's approaches to news are failing to educate, enlighten, or inform. The Fourth Estate has fallen into disrepair. It is the news industry itself that commoditized news by racing repeatedly to the bottom. It's time for a better kind of news. A new generation of innovators is already building 21st century newspapers: nichepapers. The future of journalism arrived right under the industry's nose. Nichepapers, as the name implies, own the microniche."

Great site called Mashable - Social Media Guide with blogs and much more.

Please do not take the term literally. Living on instant ramen would be very unhealthy. Rice and beans are a better source of food. Start by investing in a rice cooker, if you don't have one.

Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. This is a different form of profitability than startups have traditionally aimed for. Traditional profitability means a big bet is finally paying off, whereas the main importance of ramen profitability is that it buys you time.

beschreibung, wie innovation bei apple funktioniert

When what you teach and develop every day has the title “Innovation” attached to it, you reach a point where you tire of hearing about Apple. Without question, nearly everyone believes the equation Apple = Innovation is a fundamental truth. Discover what makes them different. By Alain Breillatt

37 comments about having a business/startup

Fantastic E-Commerce Designs! Clean and Inspirational!

Are you on Manager or Maker time?

A list of not-officially-stated reasons for iPhone app rejection.

Unpublished rules and clarifications from Apple's App Review team that can cause your iPhone app to be rejected.

things that have gotten other people rejected from the app store

SOem tips on how to use youtube

http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/07/28/34-ways-to-use-youtube-for-business/ business socialmedia 11 youtube marketing entrepreneurship enpresa onlinemarketing social-media social 30

Federated Media - Rep Agency

Blog de graphisme dédié aux cartes de visite

I wouldn't mind doing some of these.

Homewiththekids.com

グTips - かちびと.net

1・サイトマップ送信 2･本来の相互リンク 3・無料ブログを使って人柄をアピール 4・Yahoo!のサービスを利用する

個人店等がWebサイトを使って収益を上げる為に行うブランディングTips

roll up analytic info from different _app stores_ for your app.

Distimo produces in-depth, analytical reports for companies interested in the mobile application ecosystem, and gives valuable insight into important trends happening within application stores including Apple's App Store, Google's Android Market and RIM's Blackberry App World. Distimo also offers a free analytics tool for mobile developers to monitor their applications and competitive applications across all app stores.

With all the mobile app stores that have sprung up in the past year, developers and brands have a raft of new ways to reach mobile users. As is so often true, however, opportunity brings new challenges, and in this case it's monitoring sales and performance across all those platforms. Enter Distimo, a Dutch startup that tracks prices and download activity on all the major app stores. description from Springwise.com

Free Web Resources Everyday - WebResourcesDepot

E-commerce has its own dynamics when compared to the standard shopping experiences. It: * is faster * requires collection of data * includes shipping more frequently * has different ways of supporting users * & more.. E-Commerce Tips If the product sold is not something unique, then it probably exists in 100s of other e-commerce websites. So, to differentiate your stores from others, here are 13 tips for a better e-commerce website:

Just as in Wall-e, "try blue, it's the new red" or is it?

This traffic is also very engaged — the click-through rate (CTR) on the "JK Wedding Entrance" video is 2x the average of other Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this newfound interest in downloading "Forever" goes beyond the viral video itself: "JK Wedding Entrance" also appears to have influenced the official "Forever" music video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last week.

So. When you actually try to monetize free, high quality, content, it works.

“People who love computers overwhelmingly prefer to use a Mac today. Microsoft’s core problem is that they have lost the hearts of computer enthusiasts.”

useful.

While there is no surefire on-the-spot way to sniff out dissemblers, there are some helpful tactics for uncovering untruths. Liars often give short or one-word responses to questions, while truth tellers are more likely to flesh out their answers. A liar provides fewer details & uses fewer words than an honest person, and talks for a smaller percentage of the conversation. Liars are often reluctant to admit ordinary storytelling mistakes. When honest people tell stories, they may realize partway through that they left out some details and would unselfconsciously backtrack to fill in holes. They also may realize a previous statement wasn't quite right, and go back and explain further. Liars, on the other hand, "are worried that someone might catch them in a lie and are reluctant to admit to such ordinary imperfections,"

Reid Technique

Liars often give short or one-word responses to questions, while truth tellers are more likely to flesh out their answers. According to a 2003 study by DePaulo, a liar provides fewer details and uses fewer words t

Everyone stretches the truth a little. Here's what to look for (and how not to get found out).

Great talk about how to market your product.

Seth Godin on why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department At last year's conference, Seth gave an inspiring talk on the title of "Why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department". Make sure you watch it until the end, where he gives a preview of his (then upcoming) Tribes talk.

via dst

With the bio in full bloom right now, it pays to take some time to write yours in a way that that reflects how you want to be perceived. Perhaps you want to show a sense of humor or wit. Maybe you want to show your technical prowess by delivering your bio in a video format. And while you're at it, why not let your bio accomplish some personal branding for you.

"Consider this a supplement to my latest report on “How Companies Should Organize for Social Computing“. I continue to get questions from clients, and have spent time with more large brands are connecting with customers. Diving in further, I’ve noticed that there are five ways that companies allow employees to participate."

Business cards

There’s a new phenomena of people declaring themselves social media experts. We’ve actually heard from firms who pushed someone to become their resident social media expert because the person was on Facebook. There is no endorsement or accreditation to set apart legitimate industry leaders from bandwagon opportunists. Social media is a hot topic. We get it. And we don’t want to see people getting scammed by self-touting experts ready to make a quick buck. There are very few people who could, or should in all honesty, be called social media experts. We’re sharing this list with our networks, including those not yet involved in the social media world to give them a helpful guide.

Funny list of what NOT to look for in a social media expert. My fav: "#11. Any use of the term “MySpace” unless you’re only targeting 14-year-old males, or independent bands."

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/07/three_instant_social_media_sol.htmlc social marketing socialmedia social-media socialmediastrategy Ideas business internet web2.0 web webdesign twitter network Networks strategy

I saved this because everything is about business. Do I sabotage myself over that, or practice my craft?

If you've got an experienced social media team, a solid budget and an appetite for innovation, you can create an original online presence that engages your customers or supporters in an entirely new kind of online experience. But many organizations lack the time, budget or experience to start from scratch. That doesn't limit your social media options to a generic corporate news blog or a standard-issue Facebook page. Here are three great options for robust social media presences that let you manage cost and risk by building on existing tools and established best practices.

Using Twitter for Business

Twitter may not be the sole driving source (no pun intended) behind the growth of street food vendors. But a growing number of street vendors have been leveraging Twitter in innovative and interesting ways.

"Ever since I’ve started blogging about technology a couple of years ago, I’ve been consistently growing an immense feeling of hate towards press releases, and it’s not getting any better. - It’s not that I dislike the PR industry in general, although I often wonder how so many of these firms continue to be in business when the large majority of them have been doing it exactly the same way for the past few decades, instead of evolving."

Ingen ansvarlig voksen ville idag bruge nogle af de ti ord in the first place.

"So instead of being arrogant, take every opportunity you get to learn new things. Whether it is from an experienced entrepreneur who has been around the block, or a 16-year-old kid, everyone can teach you something. You just have to learn what to take away from a conversation because there are going to be some things that are going to benefit you and others that won’t."

what's not to like about a piece of advice that says you don't have to be perfect to succeed?

"I don’t really read the NYTImes beyond the technology section. But I’m guessing that the top performers in the news room, say the best 5%-10% of the writers and editors, produce 50% or more of the real value of the newspaper. The hungriest reporters. The best writers. The most competitive and aggressive editors."

Like everyone else I've watched the print media world fall apart over the last few years. The poster child for that industry is ...

Like everyone else I’ve watched the print media world fall apart over the last few years. The poster child for that industry is the New York Times, of course, and their many missteps in recent memory have been well chronicled. In early 2008 Marc Andreessen started a New York Times Deathwatch, and the company’s financial performance has degraded since then.

He's so on point, it's ridiculous.

Trent Reznor of NIN tells indie musicians what to do in the new world of music.

Tent's got it

trent reznor's advice for new artists. interesting read

discussion of AppStores in the Guardian

Planet of the Apps. "Some 65,000 apps are currently available for Apple's iPhones from the corporation's App Store, which marked its first anniversary earlier this summer. But in that year, the apps industry has grown exponentially – the total number of Apple's App Store downloads recently passed the 1.5bn mark. The App Store's success is reportedly a surprise to Apple, but presumably an even bigger and nastier one to competitors such as Research in Motion (who make BlackBerrys) and Nokia (the world's biggest mobile phone maker). The App Store's staggering success has led nearly every maker of a smartphone operating system to mimic Apple's business model: make it very easy for smartphone users to buy or freely download software created by from third-party developers."

apple & att block google voice on iphone... assholes. 7/09

"What finally put me over the edge? It wasn't the routinely dropped calls, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an iPhone (and which drove my friend Om Malik to bail). I've lived with that for two years. It's not the lack of AT&T coverage at home. I've lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn't the lack of a physical keyboard, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the Google Voice debacle.... So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It's not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn't forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn't forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that's Google."

I have loved the iPhone, but now I am quitting the iPhone. This is not an easy decision.

number portability? -- really??? : ) (DelTweet)

do i pass?

Excerpt: "If you know more than 5 people, chances are you now know someone who declares themselves a social media expert. How can you tell if someone's claim of expertise is legit? Here's my quick quiz."

ROI

"We're getting to a point if you're not responding, you're not being seen as an authentic type of brand," says Mr. Brown.

A growing number of businesses are tracking social-media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to gauge consumer sentiment and avert potential public-relations problems. Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co., among others, are deploying software and assigning employees to monitor Internet postings and blogs. They're also assigning senior leaders to craft corporate strategies for social media.

FOR BLOG POST: Les cas d'une veille réussie

wing number of businesses are tracking social-media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to gauge consumer sentiment and avert potential public-relations problems.

coyote

"Michael Pollan, in an 8,000-word essay in the New York Times Magazine, took the expected swipes at animal agriculture. But his truly radical prescriptions had to do with raising of crops. Pollan, who seemed to be aware of the nitrogen problem in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, left nuance behind, as well as the laws of chemistry, in his recommendations. ... n his book, Pollan quotes geographer Vaclav Smil to the effect that 40 percent of the people alive today would not be alive without the ability to artificially synthesize nitrogen. But in his directive on food policy, Pollan damns agriculture's dependence on fossil fuels, and urges the president to encourage agriculture to move away from expensive and declining supplies of natural gas toward the unlimited sunshine that supported life, and agriculture, as recently as the 1940s."

"On the desk in front of me are a dozen books, all hugely critical of present-day farming.... To the farmer on the ground, though, a farmer blessed with free choice and hard won experience, the moral choices aren’t quite so easy. Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety. Are people who refuse to use them my moral superiors? Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons. The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river."

Twitter - das dürfte sich herumgesprochen haben, ist nicht nur das, was man darin sehen will, sondern auch das, was man daraus macht. Was für die Gegner Beschäftigungstherapie für Loser, ist für geschickte Kommunikatoren eine echte Perspektive für Networking und Marketing. Eine Liste auf den Punkt, was Twitter alles ist. vom Web Worker Daily, Meryl Evans.

Some suggestions on how to use Twitter for business.

Most of you know that Twitter can be used for much more than just announcing what you ate for breakfast. ...

Talks about employee retention, handling increasing complexity in the company, etc

Slide deck from Netflix outlines their employee strategy, how they do compensation, why they only aim for top performers, how their "vision statement" is different than Enron's, etc

LinkedIn can be an enormously valuable way to attract top talent to your company, especially if you use all of the options available to you.

create online store using google docs - no coding required

"The Google Checkout store gadget allows you to quickly and easily create an online store using a Google Docs spreadsheet."

The Google Checkout store gadget allows you to quickly and easily create an online store using a Google Docs spreadsheet

Designing for your worst client: yourself

Interesting presentation on setting company culture...

Internal Netflix document detailing culture and practice that is *very* different to almost everyone else. Some amazing and inspiring stuff. I hope they walk the talk.

The Matrix, but with money

Supercomputers pitted against one another in a high-stakes battle of attack and counterattack over a global network where predatory algorithms trawl the information stream, competing every millisecond to gain an informational advantage over rivals. It sounds like Hollywood fiction, but it's just an average trading day on the stock market.

The House hearings on rescission – the retroactive cancellation of individual health insurance policies – were over a month ago, but after its initial run through Daily Kos it seems to have waited a bit before popping up on Baseline and Slate. James Kwak at Baseline described the practice as rare, affecting only 0.5% of the population. The faint light bulb above my head began to flicker: could that be true…that’s not rare – that is amazingly common.

Rescission is not rare, if you happen to be sick.

rescission – the retroactive cancellation

The House hearings on rescission – the retroactive cancellation of individual health insurance policies – were over a month ago, but after its initial run through Daily Kos it seems to have waited a bit before popping up on Baseline and Slate.  James Kwak at Baseline described the practice as rare, affecting only 0.5% of the population.  The faint light bulb above my head began to flicker: could that be true…that’s not rare – that is amazingly common.

"The House hearings on rescission – the retroactive cancellation of individual health insurance policies – were over a month ago... James Kwak at Baseline described the practice as rare, affecting only 0.5% of the population. The faint light bulb above my head began to flicker: could that be true…that’s not rare – that is amazingly common."

But I will make this simple point in the hope some speechwriter pressed for a deadline picks it up: if a bank manager went to half of his highest net worth clients and said “sorry, you misspelled your address when you opened your account, I’m confiscating your balance,” he would be lucky to get himself assigned to minimum security

If, as I suspect, rescission is targeted toward the truly bankrupting cases – the top 1%, the folks with over $35,000 of annual claims who could never be profitable for the carrier – then the probability of having your policy torn up given a massively expensive condition is pushing 50%. One in two. You have three times better odds playing Russian Roulette.

eCommerce

Out of sight in Carol Stream, 42 people move 60,000 discs daily with quiet efficiency. But don't drop off your flicks there.

In this 30 minute video from the FOWA Tour, you’ll learn the key points you need to consider when deciding on the business model for your product or service.

Carsonified on thinking about models for your online business - when to, and when not to, consider freemium models and building up a viable paying customer base.

How to Choose a Business Model

very nice mapping of network & platform

Here are a dozen or so forms of communication, arranged on two axes.

Reason why webinars are so valued

nice way to understand why Broadband is key.

"Lots of big brands are embracing social media, but which platform is most popular? At least as far as Fortune 100 companies go, Twitter (Twitter) easily takes the top spot, according to a recent study from PR firm Burson-Marsteller. "

Lots of big brands are embracing social media, but which platform is most popular? At least as far as Fortune 100 companies go, TwitterTwitter easily takes the top spot, according to a recent study from PR firm Burson-Marsteller.

Lots of big brands are embracing social media, but which platform is most popular? At least as far as Fortune 100 companies go, TwitterTwitter easily takes the

Gritは知性とは関係のない「やり抜く力」。「1つのことに集中する」のが重要。引き出すには「よく頑張った」と取り組み方をほめる。「頭のよさ」ほめるとあきらめがち

「やればできる」は「やる」が大事なんだね。教え方も変えていかなきゃ。

"個人の中に挑戦的な課題を「やり抜く力」があるというのが Grit の考え方"

Some tips on Web 2.0 strategies

Here’s our list of top 10 Web-oriented tools, technologies, and ideas that promise to deliver the most value at the lowest cost.

WEB DESIGN

Polly Schneider Traylor pulls together a very nice summary list of quick and inexpensive ways to leverage the power of 2.0

The global rise of Facebook is nothing less than astounding. In the month of June alone it gained 24 million unique visitors worldwide, compared to the month before, for a total of 340 million unique visitors worldwide. It is now the fourth largest site in the world, trailing only Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo sites, according to comScore (see table below). Facebook itself only officially acknowledges 250 million active registered users (but you don’t have to be a registered user to visit some Facebook pages).

pkaiser

20 Rules All Freelancers Should Follow

Excellente liste des règles que les travailleurs autonomes devraient suivre.

GPL FAQ

Prissättning

Seth Godin sums up the sentiment that when it comes to the brand you work for, the buck always stops with you...even if the true responsibility for your brand's shortcomings arise from a different team/divison/location/etc.

Advice for both employees and employers

Sadly, @jasoncalacanis has it right. The whole ecosystem would be better if Apple opened their hardware/software. Not sure if it will keep the public at large from their move to MacBooks and iPhones.

Tien vuistregels voor bloggende bedrijven. De voornaamste is: ga uit van een langetermijn verbintenis en wees eerlijk.

Reuters

I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting. I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on the back of others’ original content, the parties should have a business relationship that benefits both.

Our news ecosystem is evolving and learning how it can be open, diverse, inclusive and effective. With all the new tools and capabilities we should be entering a new golden age of journalism – call it journalism 3.0. Let’s identify how we can birth it and agree what is “fair use” or “fair compensation” and have a conversation about how we can work together to fuel a vibrant, productive and trusted digital news industry. Let’s identify business models that are inclusive and that create a win-win relationship for all parties.

Chris Ahearn, who's President, Media at Thomson Reuters, provides an interesting counterpoint to Associated Press' aggressive anti-linking views.

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.

Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters: "I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on the back of others’ original content, the parties should have a business relationship that benefits both."

When you think of "working a crowd," you might think of entertainers at best, and shifty multi-level marketing salesman at worst. There are, however, non-jerky ways to meet people and benefit from casual networking.

Track how millions of fans interact with online music everyday.

mostra quando as bandas são mais ouvidas no last.fm, myspace e iLike

A pretty compelling article from someone who gave up the iPhone. Sounds like Google Voice is a better solution: You can have all your phones ring simultaneously. Does that work with landlines too? Screw having multiple numbers!

At the end of July I declared my intention to quit the iPhone and AT&T, port my mobile phone number to Google Voice and use any mobile device that I pleased (or lots of them at once) in the future. Like others, I will no longer blindly follow all things Apple. Today I’m pleased to report a status update on those efforts: complete. I am no longer a member of the Cult of iPhone. Porting my phone number to Google Voice was a three day process, which I was pre-warned about. The mobile carriers in the U.S. have made the porting process between them fairly easy, and it occurs over a couple of hours. But they are in no hurry to help customers move their phone numbers to Google Voice, and so it took a few extra days. Also, I’m one of the first people to port their phone number to Google Voice, and there are always a few hiccups when you’re a guinea pig.

buying the little guy ... more annoyence from FB?

キタコレ!

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (Updated) by Jason Kincaid on August 10, 2009. Includes interview.

Presumably FriendFeed will end up being incorporated into FB interface? At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates

"Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now. At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates."

Techcrunch: Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.

buildabrand.com is an online branding system that allows entrepreneurs, businesses and individuals to create, manage and apply instant and personalised branding to their business.

In continuing with my series of quick social media tips (check out 5 tips for LinkedIn) I’m covering some tips for business use of Facebook here. I’ve actually written about some of these tips in great detail before, but this can act as a quick primer for folks who like their info snack sized like this

In continuing with my series of quick social media tips (check out 5 tips for LinkedIn) I'm covering some tips for business use of Facebook here. I've actually

Presentations, Keynotes, and Interviews with 37signals

From Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang

Future of PR? When agencies represent communities, not brands: http://twurl.nl/p1js6t [from http://twitter.com/markivey/statuses/1418258374]

With communities in the driver seat over product, a shift will happen as communities can define the spec of future products and therefore multiple brands will bid for their business. As a result, we should expect the agency model to flip over, where PR agencies start to represent communities of customers –rather than brands.

Communities will continue to gain more and more power as they lean on each other to make decisions, support each other, and share their lifestyle. What happens to agencies that traditionally serve brands? With communities in the driver seat over product, a shift will happen as communities can define the spec of future products and therefore multiple brands will bid for their business. As a result, we should expect the agency model to flip over, where PR agencies start to represent communities of customers –rather than brands.

great presentation slides.. very valuable!

Presentation by Joshua Porter. "each part focusing on a specific problem in software. Each problem is a major hurdle in what I call the usage lifecycle, or the stages people go through as they use and adopt software over time."

Social Web Design by Joshua Porter

twitter socialmedia

Building a Twitter book

Social Web Design by Joshua Porter

Make the very best products. Business will follow.

Less B.S.

'Have someone cursing about your product? Talk to them and find out why they’re so frustrated. In the past we used to pay for focus groups, now we get real-world feedback for free. Quite a bargain, isn’t it?'

Companies should prepare now for the day when Web 2.0 morphs into Web 3.0.

New study: Deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance

Ask anybody why they use Facebook, and most people will respond with reasons like staying in touch with friends, or being able to share pictures. Rarely does one’s professional life ever get mentioned when describing the social network. When it comes to business networking, LinkedIn (LinkedIn) tends to take all the thunder, and Facebook (facebook) is generally written off as a place just for fun. Yet, perhaps that’s a mistake.

Ask anybody why they use Facebook, and most people will respond with reasons like staying in touch with friends, or being able to share pictures. Rarely does one’s professional life ever get mentioned when describing the social network. When it comes to business networking, LinkedIn tends to take all the thunder, and Facebook is generally written off as a place just for fun. Yet, perhaps that’s a mistake. Facebook, after all, has 250 million active users compared to about 44 million for LinkedIn, and even though the atmosphere is clearly not as focused on business, there are still a ton of opportunities for professional networking that business users would be remiss to pass up. Once you look beyond the obvious social features like sharing pictures and poking friends, there are plenty of ways to tap into the professional community on the world’s largest social network.

Social Media is not going away anytime soon!

social media marketing to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums.

Forrester estimates that $716 million will be spent on social media marketing in 2009, growing to $3.1 billion in 2014.

foresight into advertising revenue for online venturess

Social Media Marketing Spend to Hit $3.1 Billion by 2014

17 Tips for Designers on Starting a Freelance Business BUENO!!

Pretty sweet roundup of current thinking on how newspapers need to change their mindset to adapt to the web.

Gathering voices in the journalism industry and on the web to give some thought as to what newspapers should be considering in order to survive and evolve.

I'm not sure I fully agree with all the points, but the article is worth reading, poses some good questions and details challenges faces print newspapers industry in today's world.

Though there are countless articles and blog posts sprawled across the web about the dying newspaper industry, this will not be one of them...but those who think there is one silver bullet to fix the newspaper business are mistaken.

Under no circumstances should you...Write A Long Business Plan

# Who are you? # What is the problem you are going to solve? # What is your solution? # Why will the market accept your solution? # What does the competition look like? # Who are your customers? # What are the details of your product? # How will you acquire customers? # What is your best approximation for the financials of the business? # What are the risks/challenges? # What’s the timeline? # Bonus: What’s The Exit Plan?

While business plans are important, writing a long one isn't such a good idea. It makes sense really, especially for new businesses there is so much uncertainty that big complex models of revenue and cost projections can be nothing but farcical.

When you’re working with clients remotely it can sometimes be difficult to keep everyone happy and your project on track. Without the benefit of face-to-face meetings, it’s easy for a client to feel neglected or out of the loop. The key to successful remote work relationships is frequent and honest communication and trust between both parties. The tips below will help improve your everyday interactions with clients, no matter how far away they may be.

Curious as to exactly *why* they did. Excerpt: "Twitter released Twitter 101 for Business, a guide for getting started with using the Twitter service. It covers the basics of Twitter, how to get started, the lingo, and includes case studies. Here’s how Twitter describes its value to businesses on its new Twitter 101 website."

guide for business on twitter

super-interesting viz

Here are 10 things you must do to earn the trust of your online audience. While written from a crowdfunding perspective, this advice applies to anyone working in social media.

Lincoln once said, “With the public trust, anything is possible. Without it, nothing is possible”. Social media is now a daily activity that millions of people around the world consume and participate in. This is the first time in human history that anyone, no matter who you are or where you are has an opportunity to create, share, and prosper, and if you’re going to succeed and stand out in a heavily crowded social media ocean, you need to earn your audience’s trust.

ネットの手法があまりにも違うため、あまりいいサービスを提供できないことの多い総合代理店。彼らの「カンチガイ」を見事に象徴するお話です。数年前、Google大先生の下に、電通さんから打診が・・・

http://www.fallinstar.org/2009/07/google_6.html

何億あるかしらないキーワードごとのリスティング広告の1位に全部広告を出すつもりだったんでしょうか、電通さん。 でも、これこそがネットと総合の食い違いの象徴なのかも

これガチ？

電通はセカンドライフだけもちあげていればよいものを...

There are plenty of ways to make money online, here we'll take a look at 5 unique ways to start making money online, easily and right away!

Eso

Great presentation - great ideas

Köstlich

Herrlich!!

Betreff: Tweet #1 Freitag, 10:01 Uhr Lieber F., bezugnehmend auf unsere Besprechung von Montag letzter Woche,...

One of the best things I ever did was quit my day job and become self-employed. I’m so happy with it that I’m recommending it to everyone: my kids, my friends, my sisters.

Posted from: Mashable

The term "cloud computing" is being bandied about a lot these days, mainly in the context of the "future of the web." But cloud computing's potential doesn't begin and end with the personal computer's transformation into a thin client

The term "cloud computing" is being bandied about a lot these days, mainly in the context of the "future of the web." But cloud computing's potential doesn't begin and end with the personal computer's transformation into a thin client - the mobile platform is going to be heavily impacted by this technology as well. At least that's the analysis being put forth by ABI Research. Their recent report, Mobile Cloud Computing, theorizes that the cloud will soon become a disruptive force in the mobile world, eventually becoming the dominant way in which mobile applications operate.

mobile cloud computing to take off because....mobile already has

The first mobile apps powered by the cloud will likely be business-focused mobile productivity applications where collaboration, data sharing, multitasking, and scheduling are key factors. For consumers, though, navigation and mapping applications will be the most obvious examples of the trend. Plus, there are some specialty applications today which already function as mobile cloud apps - for example, Schlage offers a remote keyless entry system which lets you mobilely control your home from a distance. You can let someone into your house, manage your lights, your thermostat, your camera system, etc. There are also a few applications in the iPhone app store that let you remotely manage your PC and your DVR, too.

よく見るとHTML5。

a little too long and paginated (argh!) but the guy gets many key points right ... will little Artie Sulz who pays himself $4MM a year bother to read it? ... send to evan ... "(I worked for a household-name news organization whose top web editor told me the design of the site didn’t allow links in text. The assertion raised so many questions in my mind I was rendered speechless. It was almost like a Zen koan; the terrestrial equivalent might be of a newspaper whose pages were all glued together.)" I'M LAUGHING BUT IT'S WORTH A CRY ... "Let’s be honest: These papers deserve to die. " AMEN ... "If I were running a chain of papers, here’s what I’d do:" THE NINE SUGGESTIONS THAT FOLLOW ARE GREAT BUT OF COURSE WILL NEVER HAPPEN

One of the things the digital convergence is doing is exposing that fact. Newspapers have to understand that the value that they could as a consequence offer to advertisers just doesn’t exist any more. Another thing: since that delivery monopoly is gone, you can see how much of the production of the American newspaper was not only promotional, but redundant.

Splice Today: MUSIC : POP CULTURE : SPORTS : MOVING PICTURES : POLITICS + MEDIA : WRITING : CONSUME : ON CAMPUS : SEX : DIGITAL

"Press releases contain dated information, the release of which is valuable only to the companies involved; in most cases, they’d actually pay to advertise it, and in that sense it has a negative news value. But vast swaths of a typical American daily is filled with news whose primary source is a press release of one form or another, from entities governmental, political, or corporate. It was part of an unspoken but implicit agreement the papers had with advertisers—that the vast majority of what the paper printed would be complementary with the advertising. (It would be complimentary too, of course.)"

entrepreneurs on twitter

Treat your fan page like an online ad and optimize

11 Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program

Phew! This article ended up being much longer than I expected (I banged it out in one sitting, as I do most articles). I’m still not sure I ans

ubstantial cost to you. This problem is made even more acute by the fact that in a fair numb

Excellent advice for startups for pricing their Enterprise Software!

Discussion of Costs and Benefits of Companies Having a Social Networking Presence

A few ways to discover where your customers are on the social web include: * Participation * Social Media Monitoring * Logging existing traffic and behaviors to your web site from social media web sites. * Surveys of your existing customers * Referencing demographic information supplied by social media sites that offer advertising. * Third party data sources

In the course of providing consulting services and conducting training programs for companies on social media marketing & PR or a combination of SEO and

Ok, the evils of powerpoint are getting attention in the news. But why does Delicious recommend that I tag this "humour"?

good advice for powerpoint presentations

Aimed primarily at small and medium-sized businesses without an in-house development staff, Sweb Apps is a new startup that lets you build a simple iPhone application using a series of web forms. The upside is you don’t need any specific technical knowledge to build up an app quickly (the company touts “in as little as 5 minutes!”), but the downside is the app interface and functionality are relatively basic. Still, for companies, individuals, or artists looking to put out an iPhone app quickly and for relatively little cost as compared to hiring a developer, Sweb Apps is worth checking out.

Build Your Own iPhone App in 5 Minutes With Sweb Apps http://ow.ly/kBh7 [from http://twitter.com/10minuteexpert/statuses/3408668827]

One of the most revolutionary (and simple) inventions EVER in our history. He launched this only a few months ago, but you can be SURE that this will change the world dramatically.

Sistema que permite filtrar agua, eliminando bacterias y virus. Filtro de 20 nanometros.

I plan to use this video to inspire my students to be problem solvers. Prelude to the "We Can Change the World Challenge," maybe?

ciekawy zestaw porad dla freelancerów

The best part about being a freelancer is having the freedom to set your own schedule and make your own rules. This, however, can also be the worst part. Without the normal structure of an office environment, many would-be freelancers find themselves wondering at the end of the day where all their time went. Getting the most out of your workday can be tough. So, to help, we present some simple ways that freelancers can increase their productivity.

Collective Buying Power - Daily Deals

60+ Unusual Business Card

EXCELLENT business cards design

FastLane and FYI mentioned halfway down the page

無料で名刺を作れるツールやテンプレートをご紹介します。

Unresolvable

Read: 10 Reasons to Politely Decline a Web Design Gig http://tr.im/t7e7 [from http://twitter.com/peterto/statuses/2734607167]

RT @VECTORTUTS: 15 Creatively Cut Business Cards http://bit.ly/l2chJ [from http://twitter.com/DangerGranger/statuses/2195859041]

15 "cut" business card

diseños creativos tarjetas de visita

Great Twitter Applications for Small Business http://bit.ly/grAkS [from http://twitter.com/inti/statuses/3228223886]

Details the top ten Twitter applications for small business.

Okay, here’s a teaser for you. What kind of word can you come up with that incorporates some or all of the word “Twitter” to describe a useful business application, tool or service?

if your business is involved in affiliate marketing in any way, then you should check out Twist. See which trends are hot right now within a variety of searchable topics and niches.

Interesting points about demos, pricing infrastructure, release schedules etc

TIME MGMT

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more **

Just about everyone wants to do great work, look good in the eyes of their boss, and earn the respect of their peers.

Dell revenues from Twitter surpass $3m Ebay found in 2006 that participants in online communities spend 54% more than non-community users.

Telling your reluctant boss that social media is worth using because Dell made $3 million on Twitter, however, runs the risk of encouraging e-commerce broadcast as the model for engagement in conversation. Other, more conversational, examples of ROI make important additions to conversations about Dell and social media. (They also concern a lot more money.)

GReader share: Social Media ROI: Dell's $3m on Twitter and Four Better Examples http://ow.ly/dMKH [from http://twitter.com/webbstrategi/statuses/2136446718]

More on Dell's Twitter profitability

p your desk. Re-arrange furniture. Add some color to that space. Make the place where you work really enjoyable. So enjoyable that work there won’t be perceived as

Visual design is more than styling. It is function.

Importance of aesthetics

examples and rationnale of bad design ex: white font, black background; too large logo; bag photograph; flash intro; too much info on website

Using white text on a black background (for the web) is one of 5 most allday design mistakes all clients seems to want to have

Creating the “Perfect” Portfolio

Portfolio sites for designers & web dev houses

Sjikke hoofding

here are some terms included below that are needed in larger deals and which aren’t absurd for VCs to ask for. So both documents are highly relevant. Start with the Y Combinator docs for your first early angel round, an

If you're an entrepreneur thinking about getting funding, this is a must-read. It outlines very fair guidelines for a first-round term sheet. Often, first-time entrepreneurs only concentrate on the big terms of a term sheet (e.g. round size, valuation) and neglect the "smaller" but often equally important things like stock preferences and triggers.

Now, a lot of people, including prominent angel investors and venture capitalists, are starting to listen to him. Tomorrow Ressi will announce a new, basic term sheet for use by investors and founders. The goal is to protect founders and reduce legal fees, which average $50,000 or more per venture round. (This is an excellent idea. "Free" at work.)

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.

見積もり関連まとめリンク

Building brand equity is the most important concept !!! Veery nice article about finding work, building brand equity and charging more money :)

reglas de marketing para free lance

Freelancers have it hard. I mean, really hard. In theory, the idea of working for yourself, of being able to choose who you work with

As you already seen in our previous showcase of Corporate Website Designs that a perfect layout, A good design and nice resources can produce a creative output. Layout, textures and patterns are used more often than one may think but the outcome of different combination can result verity of excellent designs. However, When it comes to corporate website design you need to take care about many things which includes simplicity, readability, presentation and accessibility. In this presentation, you’ll find variety of highly-creative, beautiful and most importantly inspirational corporate designs which is easy to accessible and convenient to approachable. The main purpose here is to stimulate your creativity and to inspire your imagination to design or redesign your work site to show your skills to potential clients.

los 10 mandamientos de medios sociales

Great article and subsequent comments, 10 commandments of social media.

social media religion lol, the 10 commmand ments of social media

add this to the social media matrix and you have a recipe for life

For future classes as a case study on social media and twitter.

Sosiaalisen median koodit ks. linkit

Some basic insights into how big corporates can and are using social media...

This is an excellent article with a lot of resonance to our work.

We don’t have Craigslist around here, and looking at it makes me wonder that it works at all. But sometimes the sheer density of information can make the battle worth it. As does a lack of marketing blindness: How many times did marketing or ‚developing a business‘ actually improve products or the companies making them? From the POV of the user/customer, that is.

I Thought this was a very interesting read - the tragedy of craigslist

The Internet's great promise is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful.

The axioms of this worldview are easy to state. "People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day," Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.

Craig Newmark says that craigslist works because people are good, and he has stuck to this point of view without wavering. Whether you accept it as true will depend on your standard of goodness.

despite the initial focus on the irrelevant topic of CL's design, and the typical wired.com annoying writing, the article becomes quite good later: "These are technically sophisticated people who take pride in their work, and when we knock them down they don't just decide to go find something else to do. You could say we are breeding the perfect spammer."

"Craig Newmark seems to have discovered a new way to run a business. He suspects that it may be the right way to run the world."

What's wrong with America? Here's one thing...

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what&#39;s in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

Once registered, tweeting Best Buy employees from across all operations can send messages from the @Twelpforce account, and if they add the hash-tag #twelpforce, their messages will automatically show up under the twelpforce handle with a credit to their proper Twitter account. This is similar to how we handle the auto-posting of TechCrunch posts on our Twitter account.

Best Buy employees can use their company and Twitter ID to register for the service here, after which tweets from the lot of them will be displayed in a single stream on the same page. Once registered, tweeting Best Buy employees from across all operations can send messages from the @Twelpforce account, and if they add the hash-tag #twelpforce, their messages will automatically show up under the twelpforce handle with a credit to their proper Twitter account. This is similar to how we handle the auto-posting of TechCrunch posts on our Twitter account.

Brilliant: Best Buy transforms army of employees into helpful customer service Twits w/ @twelpforce http://bit.ly/VaxMa [from http://twitter.com/markivey/statuses/2804744718]

Great article on the problems with Craigslist as well as a good profile on the founder

The Internet's great promise is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful. So how come when you arrive at the most popular dating site in the US you find a stream of anonymous come-ons intermixed with insults, ads for prostitutes, naked pictures, and obvious scams?

Newmark's claim of almost total disinterest in wealth dovetails with the way craigslist does business. Besides offering nearly all of its features for free, it scorns advertising, refuses investment, ignores design, and does not innovate. Ordinarily, a company that showed such complete disdain for the normal rules of business would be vulnerable to competition, but craigslist has no serious rivals. The glory of the site is its size and its price. But seen from another angle, craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview.

"If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging." "During the company's first years, Newmark approved nearly every message on the list, and in the decade since he has spent much of his time eliminating offensive ones. Even by the most conservative accounting, he has passed judgment on tens of thousands of classified ads. Very few people could do this and thrive." "These all signal Newmark and Buckmaster's wariness about what humans, including themselves, might do if given the chance. There may be a peace sign on every page, but the implicit political philosophy of craigslist has a deeply conservative, even a tragic cast. Every day the choristers of the social web chirp their advice about openness and trust; craigslist follows none of it"

this is the anti-business

Put an amazing portfolio together In the freelance business, having a solid portfolio is important. While many employers will accept your résumé, your portfolio is the bit of you that stands out. It shows employers what you can do and what you have done. Make it as creative as possible.

If I were to tell you that Apple’s app economy was worth more than $2.5 $2.4 billion a year, you would laugh hysterically, shake your head and walk out of the room, yes? Surf on over to some other web site? But here I am telling you exactly that!

According to mobile advertising startup AdMob, there are some $200 million worth of applications sold in Apple’s iPhone store every month, or about $2.4 billion a year.

If I were to tell you that Apple’s app economy was worth more than $2.5 $2.4 billion a year, you would laugh hysterically, shake your head and walk out of the room, yes? Surf on over to some other web site? But here I am telling you exactly that! According to mobile advertising startup AdMob, there are some $200 million worth of applications sold in Apple’s iPhone store every month, or about $2.4 billion a year. Just to put that in context, Apple says about 1.5 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. In comparison, the Android marketplace brings in about $5 million a month or on a run rate to do $60 million in a year, AdMob says. I bet that number rises up sharply once more handsets come to market. As you know, Motorola is announcing its new Android handsets at our Mobilize 09 conference on September 10.

TIPs

Forbes canvassed scads of businesses and pricey social-networking gurus looking for honest answers.

An excellent article that @brendanhughes could have written.

great business article on Twitter from Forbes.

theKbuzz

18 questions to help on research for logo designing.

api analytics

Analytics and Protection for APIs and Mashups

If you're using Twitter for business, there will come a point when you, or those you report to, will want proof that your Twitter efforts have a tangible return on investment (ROI).

Quelques outils pour monitorer son activité sur Twitter. Je ne les ai pas encore essayés, mais ça à l'air pas mal.

A wealth of resources for business owners — videos, articles, blogs, and expert advice to boost your business, sponsored by American Express OPEN.

Lots Twitter measurement ideas here!

Yes, Twitter will start earning some income this year.

RT @PRNewswire: Twitter to roll out commercial accounts this year | VentureBeat http://ow.ly/l8bU [from http://twitter.com/WayneNH/statuses/3516508953]

What’s your role? Are you a designer who needs “real copy” for your comps? Maybe you’re an information architect trying to organize an experience, or a search engine marketer eager to influence your client with keywords they’ll actually use. Whatever your role, a content strategist can help you be more successful.

The Case for Content Strategy—Motown Style

"At a more thematic level, first working through the 'big issues' of content strategy, like communication goals and messaging, can help you hit the mark in your respective deliverables. "

Content strategy thoughts.

Changing Corporate Culture

d culture, instead of making the

"You change a culture with stories

# Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it. # Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.

中小だと前半部分がすっとばされてて、常に地雷原を歩いているスリルが味わえます！

営業面から見た業務フローと基礎知識

(1) 打合せ (2) NDA(秘密保持契約)締結(3) 情報開示(4) 条件交渉(5) 契約書雛形作成(6) 法務確認(7) 争点の交渉(8) 契約締結(9) 取引開始(10) 請求/支払(11) 契約更新 エクスクルーシブ (競合排除) 案件によっては契約の条件として、独占契約を条件とする場合があったりします。契約書には競合指定したサービスとの併用は不可と明記されたりしますが、一般的には「エクスクルーシブな契約」などと呼ばれ

Pricing is a task a lot of designers struggle with. I receive questions on a weekly basis to prove it. As much as I want to, I can’t tell you what you should be charging. The design pricing formula explains why.

Entire markets have been transformed by products that trade power or fidelity for low price, flexibility, and convenience.

But the experience taught Kaplan and Braunstein a lesson: Customers would sacrifice lots of quality for a cheap, convenient device. To keep the price down, Pure Digital had made significant trade-offs. It used inexpensive lenses and other components and limited the number of image-processing chips. The pictures were OK but not great. Yet Pure Digital sold 3 million cameras anyway.

The low end has never been riding higher.

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more ** Being able to work just about anywhere is a mixed blessing. If you're tired of dying batteries, lost receipts, absent files, and l

A wealth of resources for business owners — videos, articles, blogs, and expert advice to boost your business, sponsored by American Express OPEN.

It's quite easy for small business owners to become distracted by their day-to-day responsibilities. But in this competitive economy you can't afford to miss out on the newest business innovations. That's why we asked 50 of the top small business bloggers to share their best tips for small business owners. Their response was incredible. While some shared nuggets of wisdom, others gave us actionable tips you can use right away. Here's your crib sheet to the best business advice the blogosphere has to offer.

Great roundup of tips for small business by successful bloggers.

Printed 30/8

It’s a classic adage that we usually learn more from our failures than from our successes. I’ve find this line of reasoning with Enterprise 2.0 failures to be fascinating because of how very different it’s often turning out to be from traditional IT projects. For one, IT doesn’t seem to be in the driver’s seat nearly as much with Enterprise 2.0. In fact, the initiative is frequently coming from the business side. Two, as the latest case studies emerge and are analyzed, it is grassroots efforts that often end up being the most successful, bubbling up and then across the organization, only then to be formally adopted later. And three, many so-called Enterprise 2.0 projects are local, unblessed, informal uses of social computing software which — by their very nature — are less compliant with enterprise technology standards, legal/HR guidelines, and corporate policy. The point here is that many Enterprise 2.0 tools are often used widely in organizations without tacit approval.

IT doesn’t seem to be in the driver’s seat ...the initiative is frequently coming from the business side. Two, as the latest case studies emerge and are analyzed, it is grassroots efforts that often end up being the most successful, bubbling up and then across the organization, only then to be formally adopted later. And three, many so-called Enterprise 2.0 projects are local, unblessed, informal uses of social computing software which are less compliant with enterprise technology standards, legal/HR guidelines, and corporate policy. So, this seems to mean projects are more likely to fail due to seeming larger than usual lack of alignment and organizational backing. .... ...they were missing one or more ingredients to succeed. Occasionally some of them will hit on the right formula, reach a critical mass of participation, break out of their team or department, and begin drawing in the rest of the organization.

the smart strategy now appears to be to find and build upon the early successes stories; namely the internal but local efforts that are rising and have already hit upon the right mix of tools, participants, motivation, and content.

14 Reasons Why Enterprise 2.0 Projects Fail

In doing so we discovered Customer Development, a product development methodology formulated by veteran entrepreneur Steve Blank. Based on the premise that start-ups tend to fail through lack of customers rather than lack of technology or product features, customer development is a systematic way of identifying who the customer is, what it is they need and whether that need is sufficient to build a business on. One of my co-founders describes it as ‘an algorithm for building products users want and are willing to pay for’.

The crucial question in the survey is “How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?” Sean has benchmarked the results of that survey and found that if less than 40% of respondents say “Very disappointed” then your product doesn’t yet have sufficient traction to scale.

Hey- thought this might be useful to you as well, as a consultant/contractor.

Suggests that high production values, high quality products are not where the mainstream market is. Looks at digital video cameras, legal services, health care, and Web content. Made me think about legal publishing, where increased costs are justified by "value added" content, which gets very little use. At some point the "good enough" plateau will be reached so that lawyers and librarians will not continue to pay for improvements that go beyond what is valued.

Interesting article on how goods are increasingly becoming just good enough as opposed to high quality

Interesting article but sorely mistaken about the novelty of 'good enough'. This is an old phychological framework.

After some trial and error, Pure Digital released what it called the Flip Ultra in 2007. The stripped-down camcorder had lots of downsides. It captured relatively low-quality 640 x 480 footage at a time when Sony, Panasonic, and Canon were launching camcorders capable of recording in 1080 hi-def. It had a minuscule viewing screen, no color-adjustment features, and only the most rudimentary controls. It didn't even have an optical zoom. But it was small (slightly bigger than a pack of smokes), inexpensive ($150, compared with $800 for a midpriced Sony), and so simple to operate—from recording to uploading—that pretty much anyone could figure it out in roughly 6.7 seconds.

A few months ago I was tipped off to world of Steve Blank and customer development. Simply put, if you’re an entrepreneur understanding these concepts will likely mean the difference between success and failure. Steve personally has taken five companies through this process to IPO. Not a bad track record. While there’s a ton of great stuff about customer development on the Web I wanted to gather up all of the resources and put them together in one place. I’ll update this post over time as I come across stuff (please add any additional resources you find in the comments so I can add them to the post) so bookmark it and check back from time to time (or just subscribe to the RSS feed).

Customer Development: The Definitive Resource w/tons of links

We are focused on one thing — delivering the latest in new website launches to people that are interested in and passionate about them so their owners can get the feedback they need to succeed

Launch your website in a forum dedicated toward launches. How meta.

Explore and subscribe to their favorite sites in Google Reader, where keeping up with news and blogs is as easy as checking your email.

general excellen

powerreaders Want to know what journalists, foodies, and tech bloggers read? Explore and subscribe to their favorite sites in Google Reader, where keeping up with news and blogs is as easy as checking your email.

Even before I had a single customer, I "knew" it was important to look professional. My website would need to look and feel like a "real company." I need culture-neutral language complimenting culturally-diverse clip-art photos of frighteningly chipper co-workers huddled around a laptop, awash with the thrill and delight of configuring a JDBC connection to SQL Server 2008.

Why small companies should look and act like small companies instead of fluffing their feathers

ade $800,000 in their first year of operations, so don't tell me "big companies" need to hear garbage PR/marketing language. Balsamiq got 100 product reviews during their first six weeks of operation, so don't tell me "a couple of guys in a studio" isn't a good public persona.

- Blog - Startups + Marketing + Geekery

Chris Brogan tries (and succeeds) in offering a general primer on social media for business. A solid read

Recommendations from Chris Brogan on how businesses can and should engage in social media

review of a book

also contains info about the Thesis Theme for WordPress

TO READ

15 Great Free Online File Sharing Alternatives

Today's technology and machines (whether it's PC or Mac) are certainly capable of processing large original files like .PSD (Photoshop) and .AI

ふむふむ

お金をインセンティブにすると、効率とかクオリティが落ちることがある。

この成功報酬的な動機付け―If Then式に「これをしたら これが貰える」というやり方は、状況によっては機能します。しかし多くの作業ではうまくいかず、時には害にすらなります。

RUNmyERRAND.com is an online community of Errand Senders and Errand Runners joining together to get things done. Think of it as a Craigslist meets Ebay. Leveraging social networking concepts, we have created a Service Networking community to help people get errands done, while others can make money running these errands.

Great (intelligent) rant on the future of news (via @foraggio)

Among the good points made in this (long) post: "As more journalists are laid-off, the more potential expert bloggers there are..." (originally observed by @JustinNXT).

Top 10 lies Newspaper Execs are Telling Themselves from @Judy_Sims:

BA

iA is a strategic design agency in Tokyo, Japan. We analyze business goals and user needs, and develop interfaces that match.

When confronted with the necessity of offering news for free, editors are quick at pointing at the cost involved in news production. Which of course is beside the point. Information on the Internet is as common as snow in the arctic. You can’t expect Eskimos to buy a snowman. But, hey, wait; this is not just another rant with the usual talking points. After producing news site after news site for a wide range of customers, we actually have something to contribute:

the value of information

corporate social media policy

Nice suggestions for twitter use

good post- applies to us all

Muy completo

The heaviest users of Web 2.0 applications are also enjoying benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing. These benefits often have a measurable effect on the business.

"The heaviest users of Web 2.0 applications are also enjoying benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing. These benefits often have a measurable effect on the business."

heaviest users of Web 2.0 applications are also enjoying benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing. These benefits often have a measurable effect on the business.

In The Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler writes that AT&T is dying and dragging down the rest of us by overcharging us for voice calls and stifling innovation in a mobile data market critical to the U.S. economy.

It wouldn't be so bad if we were just overpaying for our mobile plans. Americans are used to that—see mail, milk and medicine. But it's inexcusable that new, feature-rich and productive applications like Google Voice are being held back, just to prop up AT&T while we wait for it to transition away from its legacy of voice communications. How many productive apps beyond Google Voice are waiting in the wings? The FCC better not treat AT&T and Verizon like Citigroup, GM and the Post Office. Cellphone operators aren't too big to fail. Rather, the telecom sector is too important to be allowed to hold back the rest of us.

With Google Voice, you have one Google phone number that callers use to reach you, and you pick up whichever phone—office, home or cellular—rings. You can screen calls, listen in before answering, record calls, read transcripts of your voicemails, and do free conference calls. Domestic calls and texting are free, and international calls to Europe are two cents a minute. In other words, a unified voice system, something a real phone company should have offered years ago.

Information about how blogging can affect your business

Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has: * 55% more visitors * 97% more inbound links * 434% more indexed pages

The data was crystal clear: Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has: 55% more visitors 97% more inbound links 434% more indexed pages

If you blog, you know that it's good for your business. But how -- and how much? To answer to those questions, I looked at data from 1,531 HubSpot customers (mostly small- and medium-sized businesses). 795 of the businesses in my sample blogged, 736 didn't.

blogging increases visitors.. write about this for VAnetworking. say it on John Jantzch's blog.

"Companies that blog have far better marketing results."

Companies that blog have far better marketing results

Twitter is a tool that all small business owners should use as part of their overall efforts to build a distributed social media footprint.

A good description of how twitter is being used in business.

20 Must Read Beginner Twitter Tips for Small Business Owners

5. Respond. This is the single biggest advantage you have over the big guys. Not only are you in charge, you also answer the phone and read your email and man the desk and set the prices. So, don't pretend you have a policy. Just be human.

2 1. Go where your customers are. Jacquelyne runs a tiny juice company called Chakwave. I met her in Los An

FreightRefunds.com - Provides freight audit for clients who ship cargo via ocean freight and the refunds are paid to clients directly from the service providers.If your company is not paid a refund, our service at Ocean Freight Refunds Inc. (OFR) is free of charge.

Werbeanzeige auf Facebook gestalten

There's something you won't see mentioned by too many advocates of cloud computing – the main attraction is making money from you

_"...the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free without having to give up the money or privacy..."_ - no kidding, "Sherlock":people/Cory_Doctorow? Took you long enough to figure out...

"There's something you won't see mentioned by too many advocates of cloud computing – the main attraction is making money from you"

Cory Doctorow: There's something you won't see mentioned by too many advocates of cloud computing – the main attraction is making money from you

If you’ve used Twitter (Twitter) for more than a couple of hours, you’ve probably already seen a tweet or two containing a word with the hash symbol (”#”) attached to it. That’s what Twitter users call a “hashtag,” and at any given time at least one of them can usually be found among the trending topics on Twitter. But what exactly is a hashtag? Hashtags are essentially a simple way to catalog and connect tweets about a specific topic. They make it easier for users to find additional tweets on a particular subject, while filtering out the incidental tweets that may just coincidentally contain the same keyword. Hashtags are also often used by conference and event organizers as a method of keeping all tweets about the event in a single stream, and they’ve even been used to coordinate updates during emergencies. In fact, hashtags were first popularized during the 2007 San Diego wildfire, when the tag #sandiegofires was used to identify tweets about the natural disaster.

twitter hastags explained

Great HashTag Article

Good reading, follow up on it!

operating

"...the idea that software should be priced low enough to pass the average user's "why not" threshold is a powerful one."

codinghorror application software pricing price discount appstore apple iphone coding horror

What I think isn't well understood here is that low prices can be a force multiplier all out of proportion to the absolute reduction in price. Valve software has been aggressively experimenting in this area; consider the example of the game Left 4 Dead: Valve co-founder Gabe Newell announced during a DICE keynote today that last weekend's half-price sale of Left 4 Dead resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales (in dollar amount) that beat the title's original launch performance. It's sobering to think that cutting the price in half, months later, made more money for Valve in total than launching the game at its original $49.95 price point. (And, incidentally, that's the price I paid for it. No worries, I got my fifty bucks worth of gameplay out of this excellent game months ago.) The experiments didn't end there. Observe the utterly non-linear scale at work as the price of software is experimentally reduced even further on their Steam network: The mass

One of the side effects of using the iPhone App store so much is that it's started to fundamentally alter my perception of software pricing. So many excellent iPhone applications are either free, or no more than a few bucks at most. That's below the threshold of impulse purchase and squarely in no-brainer territory for anything decent that I happen to be interested in.

"This pattern — “success” based on forecasted future success instead of current success — shows up all over the tech-business press. Instead of metrics like “they make more money than they spend” we see stuff like “user count growth” and “followers” and “impressions” and “friends” and “visits” qualify success. Whenever you see someone piling big numbers into made up metrics, it’s a diversion."

This pattern — “success” based on forecasted future success instead of current success — shows up all over the tech-business press. Instead of metrics like “they make more money than they spend” we see stuff like “user count growth” and “followers” and “impressions” and “friends” and “visits” qualify success. Whenever you see someone piling big numbers into made up metrics, it’s a diversion.

This pattern — “success” based on forecasted future success instead of current success — shows up all over the tech-business press. Instead of metrics like “they make more money than they spend” we see stuff like “user count growth” and “followers” and “impressions” and “friends” and “visits” qualify success.

The USA as the most interesting tech startup of '09, Anil Dash style.

was at 16 min in video... really interesting interview from US gov CIO/Wired

Ireland needs to reward govt APIs.

I think the most promising new startup of 2009 is one of the least likely: The executive branch of the federal government of the United States.

Each site has remarkably consistent branding elements, leading to a predictable and trustworthy sense of place when you visit the sites. There is clear attention to design, both from the cosmetic elements of these pages, and from the thoughtfulness of the information architecture on each site. (The clear, focused promotional areas on each homepage feel just like the "Sign up now!" links on the site of most Web 2.0 companies.) And increasingly, these services are being accompanied by new APIs and data sources that can be used by others to build interesting applications.

"Just as wikis solved the distributed document collaboration problem (that we used to use email for), this class of online tools solves our scheduling problem. Here's our rundown of the ten best scheduling apps to be found, in order of preference. Most of them operate on a freemium basis or are fairly cheap."

* ReadWriteWeb * ReadWriteEnterprise * ReadWriteStart * Country Channels o ReadWriteChina o ReadWriteFrance ReadWriteEnterprise

Creating your own products used to mean a significant up-front investment — purchasing a minimum amount of the product as dictated by the manufacturer, paying for warehousing, packaging, point-of-sale systems, and other overhead costs. And that was all before you even took a single order! Thankfully, for many types of products, print-on-demand technologies have made it possible for anyone to create and sell goods over the Internet with little or no up-front costs. Below is a roundup of 15 great print-on-demand sites that will help you create and sell everything from t-shirts to clocks, from books to skateboards, from board games to fabric. If you know of additional print-on-demand sites to make and sell your own products, let us know in the comments.

データをxslへ落っことすプラグイン

"... you can bypass this manual step and export Google Analytics data directly from within Excel! Once you've set it up, there's no need to visit the Analytics reports to view data in Excel."

with the Google Analytics API you can bypass this manual step and export Google Analytics data directly from within Excel! Once you've set it up, there's no need to visit the Analytics reports to view data in Excel.

Chris Anderson

Since Craigslist collapsed a multibillion dollar classified advertising business into a fabulously profitable $100,000,000 business, perhaps we should be talking about the potential deflationary impact of more "zero billion dollar" businesses.

. As the radical efficiencies of the web seep into more sectors of the economy, and participants in social networks exchange attention instead of dollars, will governments at all levels need to make do with less tax revenue? That's a scary thought in an era of high deficits unless traditional governments can learn from the efficent governance systems of social networks and provide more for less.

In a world where facts are readily available, from multiple sources, basic information will be commoditized. But the explosion of sources will create a real burden for the consumers of information. Raw information will become not just a commodity, it will be a nuisance. In that world, consumers will value scarce, relevant insight over abundant facts.

In a world where facts are readily available, from multiple sources, basic information will be commoditized. But the explosion of sources will create a real burden for the consumers of information. Raw information will become not just a commodity, it will be a nuisance. In that world, consumers will value scarce, relevant insight over abundant facts. Computer scientists have been working for years on algorithmic ways of mining text for insight with only modest success. It turns out that people still out perform computers at this task. Web services like Google, LastFM, and Facebook, succeed because they do a good job of harnessing the explicit or implicit input of users to sift through an overwhelming supply of information to deliver relevant insight. Google uses in-bound links to filter search results. LastFM uses other people with similar tastes to recommend music. Facebook filters information by the strength of relationships.

Freemium, Geschäftsmodelle

t

The SMART System When I first learned about the SMART system, I was very excited. It crystallized something in my mind, something I believe I always knew, but could never put my finger on. Having learned about it I was almost immediately able to pinpoint where I went wrong (or right) with some of my recent personal successes and failures. Let me share with you what SMART is all about. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Boxed. You apply the SMART criteria to any goal you wish to achieve and if it does not meet any of the five characteristics you clarify and adjust it until it does.

Dumb Little Man shares ideas to make the everyday person more productive in life. Expect to read tips on finance, saving money, business, and some DIY for the house.

Why this developer switched his bingo calculator from a desktop app to a web app and increased conversion; Why I’m Done Making Desktop Applications

StraighterLine is the brainchild of a man named Burck Smith, an Internet entrepreneur bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for the better part of 500 years. Rather than students being tethered to ivy-covered quads or an anonymous commuter campus, Smith envisions a world where they can seamlessly assemble credits and degrees from multiple online providers, each specializing in certain subjects and—most importantly—fiercely competing on price. Smith himself may be the person who revolutionizes the university, or he may not be. But someone with the means and vision to fundamentally reorder the way students experience and pay for higher education is bound to emerge

Luckily for Solvig, there were new options available. She went online looking for something that fit her wallet and her time horizon, and an ad caught her eye: a company called StraighterLine was offering online courses in subjects like accounting, statistics, and math. This was hardly unusual—hundreds of institutions are online hawking degrees. But one thing about StraighterLine stood out: it offered as many courses as she wanted for a flat rate of $99 a month. “It sounds like a scam,” Solvig thought—she’d run into a lot of shady companies and hard-sell tactics on the Internet. But for $99, why not take a risk?

This seems very interesting.. but its only basic math, writing, and econ.. bah...

The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities.

Innovation-works company

创新工场是一个全方位的创业平台，旨在培育创新人才和新一代高科技企业。

Designing of Portfolio is a quite difficult job for an artist as he needs to show his ability of design in it which leads him to get busy with new clients. The more time and effort you dedicate for a usable, eye-catching design and hitting your objectives, the higher are your chances for getting better account balance in the end of the month.

Google Domestic Trends track Google search traffic across specific sectors of the economy. Changes in the search volume of a given sector on google.com may provide unique economic insight. You can access individual trend indexes by clicking on the left-hand navigation.

Google Domestic Trends track Google search traffic across specific sectors of the economy.

8 Brilliant Freelance Job Boards to Help You Get More Clients | Freelance Apple - http://www.freelanceapple.com/8-brilliant-freelance-job-boards-to-help-you-get-more-clients/

8 Brilliant Freelance Job Boards to Help You Get More Clients

How come you can recognise the tune of the number one song of 1968 as being Hey Jude by the Beatles, but not the number two song? Why has the iPod had the success that the Zune has been denied?...

Joel Spolsky's talk at Business of Software 2008 on being number one

Ambition makes determination, and then determination makes wealth.

This feels like it needs some more fleshing out.

good blog on determination. Indeed, if you want to create the most wealth, the way to do it is to focus more on their needs than your interests, and make up the difference with determination.

Via <a href="http://www.crossmediaspecialist.nl/2009/09/07/de-60-banen-van-de-toekomst/"> Peter van Teeseling</a> kwam ik uit bij een glimp in de toekomst wat banen betreft. Netjes gerangschikt op categorie volgt een overzicht van 60 <em>job titles</em> die de wereld in de toekomst zullen veroveren. Volgens de auteur dan, maar het is zeker de moeite waard even doorheen te lopen

Vía reclutando.net

We know where the jobs are now… but where will they be ten years from now? Twenty? Some job descriptions will always be in need, but many others are evolving to fit the ever-changing course of technology and science. When the future of employment comes, will you be ready? Read on for some ideas of what to expect:

Content Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

This site shows some applications similar to what I am thinking of as well as some really cools stuff to get.

Monday August 31, 2009 | HarvardBusiness.org | David Silverman Tags:Business writing, Communication, Networking

Great and simple article on how to revive a lost relationship for a favor.

That brings us to the $2.4 billion question: how do you succeed on the App Store? We’ve spent the last few weeks trying to answer that question and have come up with a list of tips and tricks that’ll help you edge your way into App Store glory. Now, none of these will replace making a good product or compensate for a million-dollar advertising and PR budget, but they’ll likely help you get noticed or keep your current momentum.

Unresolvable

이커머스를 위한 웹2.0 소셜 기능

by Linda Bustos. [August 17, 2009]

Some good ideas for utilising Web 2.0 tools with examples.

Retailers often wonder what Web 2.0 / social media activities to be involved with, so this post ranks what I believe are the top 10 Web 2.0 activities for ecommerce based on their business impact.

Where is da Blank Applciation?

Dion Hinchcliffe on leveraging the convergence of IT and the next generation of the Web.

These days in the halls of IT departments around the world there is a growing realization that the next wave of outsourcing, things like cloud computing and crowdsourcing, are going to require responses that will forever change the trajectory of their current relationship with the business, or finally cause them to be relegated as a primarily administrative, keep-the-lights-on function.

Google's new ecommerce / micropayments platform. Must read. keep for ref.

Zach Seward at Nieman Journalism Lab looks at Google's proposal to use its Checkout system to manage micropayments for news content. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.niemanlab.org%2F2009%2F09%2Fgoogle-developing-a-micropayment-platform-and-pitching-newspapers-open-need-not-mean-free

So with that caveat, here is my list of ten traits I see in great companies. This is aimed at web/tech companies but I believe it can and should be applicable to all companies.

Interesting take on what makes a great company

Yesterday I got to do one of my favorite things. Our portfolio company Etsy invited me out to their new offices in Dumbo to talk to the entire team. Since they didn't ask me to talk about anything in specific,...

so much better than any of the other articles on this, especially "10 traits to look for when hiring a programmer"

The stereotypes that lump IT professionals together are misguided. It's actually the conditions that surround the IT pros that are stereotypical, and the geeks are just reacting to those conditions the way they always react -- logically.

Silicon Alley Insider has partnered with leading technology law firm Cooley Godward Kronish to explain common legal issues facing start-ups and provide sample legal documents that you can review and download.

An astoundingly, uncannily accurate description of how IT professionals think

Few people notice this, but for IT groups respect is the currency of the realm. IT pros do not squander this currency. Those whom they do not believe are worthy of their respect might instead be treated to professional courtesy, a friendly demeanor or the acceptance of authority. Gaining respect is not a matter of being the boss and has nothing to do with being likeable or sociable; whether you talk, eat or smell right; or any measure that isn't directly related to the work. The amount of respect an IT pro pays someone is a measure of how tolerable that person is when it comes to getting things done, including the elegance and practicality of his solutions and suggestions. IT pros always and without fail, quietly self-organize around those who make the work easier, while shunning those who make the work harder, independent of the organizational chart.

On managaging geeks and IT departments. This should be mandatory reading for every manager.

The stereotypes that lump IT professionals together are misguided. It's actually the conditions that surround the IT pros that are stereotypical, and the geeks are just reacting to those conditions the way they always react -- logically.

Geeks are smart and creative, but they are also egocentric, antisocial, managerially and business-challenged, victim-prone, bullheaded and credit-whoring.

productivity insights

o que fazer e o que nao fazer no design para aumentar uma marca sem aumentar o logo.

Ways to improve the way you work

Casey: We’ve got 430,000 registered users, in a month we’ll see 200,000 of those, about 135,000 in a week and about 70,000 in a day. We peak at 3.6 million pageviews per day. That’s registered users only (doesn’t include the very few pages that are Google accessible) and does not include the usual API calls, RSS feeds, AJAX. Actual requests that hit Rails per day is 10 million. 900 new users sign up per day. The forums are very active with about 50,000 new posts being written each day. Some various numbers — 2.3 million knitting/crochet projects, 19 million forum posts, 13 million private messages, 8 million photos (the majority are hosted by Flickr).

Some various numbers — 2.3 million knitting/crochet projects, 19 million forum posts, 13 million private messages, 8 million photos (the majority are hosted by Flickr).

This graphic is pretty awesome - added by harper reed's google reader

Amazon is bigger that one imagines.

There's a reason that Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world, it realises that if a rival firm is too much of a threat, instead of competing with them, just buy them!

"There's a reason that Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world, it realises that if a rival firm is too much of a threat, instead of competing with them, just buy them!"

Amazonの投資とM&Aの年別概略図

Stunningly Awful Demos: Five Things Not To Do in a Demo

“In 18 months I’m going to start my own company,” the problem with that sentence is the 18 months. What you’re really saying is, “I’m afraid.”

Omia tuotteita konsultoinnin sijaan.

> We’ve had a lot of things not work, and that’s OK too. If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, “What is your greatest failure?” I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!

Jim Coudal is a truly inspiring character. His company decided to shift from the standard model of selling their creative services to clients, to a model of creating products which they own and have full control over. And they’ve been very successful at it. Coudal Partners is proof that you can indeed create your own reality. (interview, article)

get out there.

The importance of focusing on the bigger picture.

3 Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don't feel confident outlining one unless we're sure it's going to work. And the 'work' part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, "I'm going to post this." If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)

"Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time" is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy... and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place. The next time you find yourself spending 8 hours on tactics and five minutes refining your strategy, you'll understand what's going on.

Periodically, bring a few key IT brains to the boardroom to observe the problems of the organization at large, even about things outside of the IT world, if only to make use of their exquisitely refined BS detectors. A good IT pro is trained in how to accomplish work; their skills are not necessarily limited to computing. In fact, the best business decision-makers I know are IT people who aren't even managers.

Awesome article that gives anybody (managers out there???!!!) some mega-insight into the psychology of a geek.

a simple social media tool for small businesses

putting some absurdly expensive item on the menu. Rapp doesn’t expect many consumers to buy it, but having it there makes expensive items appear cheap by comparison

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and found some ridiculously priced item on the menu? Of course you didn’t buy it — you’re no sucker. Or are you? This Today Show piece on Gregg Rapp may surprise you. Rapp is a menu engineer. He helps restaurants maximize revenue by hacking common flaws in human decision-making. For example, by simply removing “$” signs from prices, people are less intimidated by them. And he advises against listing items from least to most expensive, because that focuses the consumer on price. Instead he mixes up items, making it hard to find their price — thereby encouraging the customer to emotionally commit to something before finding out what it costs. But my favorite strategy of his is that of putting some absurdly expensive item on the menu. Rapp doesn’t expect many consumers to buy it, but having it there makes expensive items appear cheap by comparison. Think about it: How many times have you ordered a bottle of wine in the middle of the price range?

Interesting Article on the human mind and price from a "Menu Engineer"

Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes! Tactics are almost the cherry on top, but that's what people want: tips-'n'-tactics. Ugh. I can spot the ones who don't get it a mile away now that I've been speaking about marketing for a while. "TELL ME ABOUT TWITTER!!" Um, no. How about we talk about right behavior, and goals? And how about you get those squared away before I put you behind the controls of this howitzer. Which will be outdated, most likely, before you learn how to operate it properly.

The hierarchy of success I think it looks like this: Attitude Approach Goals Strategy Tactics Execution

"Most everyone has a style, and if you pick the wrong one, then all the strategy, tactics and execution in the world won't work nearly as well." "As far as I'm concerned, the most important of all, the top of the hierarchy is attitude. Why are you doing this at all? What's your bias in dealing with people and problems?"

Create an instant Groupsite to connect your association members online. Empower members to maximize their return on involvement by giving them a place to communicate, share and network

With Groupsites, people from a wide range of professional and social groups within companies, communities, non-profits, families and more are now able to instantly and easily communicate, share, network. Best of all, basic Groupsites are FREE to create and can be setup to be public

Groupsite.com is a self-serve platform for creating social collaboration communities called Groupsites.

really easy way of browsing popular news ... should be a nice addon for techmeme

Google Fast Flip : Latest Headlines in a Visual Way

Schön, wenns das auch auf deutsch gäbe, denn im Schnitt interessieren mich amerikanische Medien nicht so sehr....

"Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen. They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour."

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recession effects

Good article from the Daily Fail shock!

save

8. We would embrace the hyperlink in every possible way. Our website would include the most comprehensive possible listing of other media in our community, whether we were a community of geography or interest. We’d link to all relevant blogs, photo-streams, video channels, database services and other material we could find, and use our editorial judgement to highlight the ones we consider best for the members of the community. And we’d liberally link from our journalism to other work and source material relevant to what we’re discussing, recognizing that we are not oracles but guides.

Dan Gillmor's list of how to run a news organization.

Dan Gilmore presents us with some things he'd do if he ran the news, very progressive, community-involved ideas. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fmediactive.com%2F2009%2F09%2F12%2Feleven-things-id-do-if-i-ran-a-news-organization

(see comments on vetting audience participation)

Eleven Things I'd Do If I Ran a News Organization

"1. We would not run anniversary stories and commentary except in the rarest of circumstances. They are a refuge for lazy and unimaginative journalists."

Yep. This is why change management is important to understand.

Non-profits failing to engage with social media at their cost

A great post by Seth Godin

Basically, be open to change.

Discussing non-profits resistance to change and embracing new technology

Some issues about management and marketing for the non-profit: how do non profits organizations face changes? How do they use new technologies for their marketing purposes? How do they evolve?

Can 'Curation' Save Media?

'Curation is the sibling of aggregation, a word that the web has know for a while. Aggregation means gathering; finding all videos with the key words "Easter Supper" in them. But as more devices like cell phones are used to create content (video of a hotel room, a tweet from a rock concert, an audio post from a political protest) gathering no longer adds value. In fact, aggregation can equal aggravation.'

"Curation is the new role of media professionals. Separating the wheat from the chaff, assigning editorial weight, and -- most importantly - giving folks who don't want to spend their lives looking for an editorial needle in a haystack a high-quality collection of content that is contextual and coherent. It's what we always expected from our media, and now they've got the tools to do it better."

Curation is the new role of media professionals. Separating the wheat from the chaff, assigning editorial weight, and -- most importantly - giving folks who don't want to spend their lives looking for an editorial needle in a haystack a high-quality collection of content that is contextual and coherent. It's what we always expected from our media, and now they've got the tools to do it better.

Curation is the sibling of aggregation, a word that the web has know for a while. Aggregation means gathering; finding all videos with the key words "Easter Supper" in them. But as more devices like cell phones are used to create content (video of a hotel room, a tweet from a rock concert, an audio post from a political protest) gathering no longer adds value. In fact, aggregation can equal aggravation. ... But today curation is quickly becoming central to what many editorial teams are looking to embrace. The New York Times is curating blog posts from outside sources. And what the Times knows is that content that they validate with their brand and redistribution becomes more valuable, both to readers and to the content creators.

Redbeacon isn't like typical local search directories that simply return local business listings with ratings and reviews, leaving you to sort through dozens of entries. Instead, we notify businesses and professionals in your area that we believe can serve you best, and invite them to submit a price quote for your job.

Compare prices and book an appointment for any local service!

""this is good""

wonderfully written social media strategy checklist

Ten steps to building a social media strategy that delivers.

Outlines the basics of engaging with and getting the most of social media.

Run through this check list when I talk with Paul tomorrow

This is full of sense. Re-read this!

view this site

Time for everything

Sponsored Tweets is a new Twitter advertising platform that connects advertisers with tweeters. Advertisers can create sponsored conversations on Twitter. Tweeters can earn money for spreading the word. remember me Here's How It Works

Sponsored Tweets is marketplace that provides twitter advertising through twitter based sponsored conversations.

Recently on Twitter I’ve been posting short tips and tricks on various ways to become a better designer by setting up your computer and using various programs to their full advantage.

Recently on Twitter I’ve been posting short tips and tricks on various ways to become a better designer by setting up your computer and using various programs to their full advantage. Below are various techniques I use to keep my computer organized, accessible and favorable that help me be more effective, proficient and more informed designer.

non per il contenuto ma per il "drag & share"

Business Cards Produced Using Unusual Materials | Web Design Ledger - http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/business-cards-produced-using-unusual-materials

As many of you know, I also run Card Observer, which is a site that showcases beautiful business cards. A few weeks ago, I showed you some of the best

Innovation: it's the ultimate source of advantage, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the economic ring. Innovation is what every organization should be ruthlessly pursuing, right? Wrong. I'd like to advance a hypothesis: awesomeness is the new innovation.

"Let's summarize. What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That's a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics. I've talked to many boardrooms about awesomeness. Beancounters feel challenged and threatened by it, because it feels fuzzy and imprecise. Yet, it's anything but. Gen M knows "awesomeness" when we see it — that's why its part of our vernacular. It's a precise concept, with meaning, depth, and resonance."

Let's face it. "Innovation" feels like a relic of the industrial era. And it just might be the case that instead of chasing innovation, we should be innovating innovation — that innovation needs innovation. Why? When we examine the economics of innovation, three reasons emerge.

Yet another abstraction layer between you and people working for you. Managed crowdsourcing via outlets like MechanicalTurk

Fazendo uma Sala de Notícias para a empresa

Orrick's Start-Up Tool Kit is a comprehensive set of resources designed to aid start-ups and their founders on the journey from the "garage" to the global marketplace. Use our Start-Up Tool Kit to memorialize agreements with co-founders or potential investors, understand the terms and terminology of key legal documents, and network and learn business strategy and the latest industry news.

The core structure of the goals and challenges of a Web Strategist

Who’s a Web Strategist? In a company, they often are responsible for the long term vision of corporate web properties. At a web company where their product is on the web, they’re often the product manager or CTO. Regardless of role, the responsibilities are the same, they need to balance all three of these spheres, and make sure their efforts are in the middle of all three.

I hope this is one of those resources you print out pin to your desk, and share with others. This is the core theme of this blog, the balance needed for successful web endeavors in organizations. I originally posted this diagram in 2006, the

Relevant for nonprofits too: use plugins, integrate social media, keep the design simple but professional, host it yourself, and have a prominent "about us" section

We want this wiki to reflect the collective wisdom of you, the start-up community, regarding business resources you found useful. As such we want to avoid companies promoting their own resources (albeit free ones) because it wouldn't be in line with the purpose of this wiki. However, if you have a few startups who have happily used your resources then encourage them to contribute to the wiki!

Business Resources for Startups As startups are notoriously short on time we thought what better way to maximise their productivity than by providing them with the most relevant business resources all in one place! Even better, why not ask the teams involved in the startups themselves to share their good experiences with resources they ACTUALLY used? Us folks at Seedcamp have included each resource with a list of start-ups that have found them useful. If a startup cannot back-up a resource it should not be included here. Companies that have contributed to this wiki include: Atomico Ventures, Entrip, HyperNumbers, Speedsell, Stupelix, TAG, Toksta, TV Pixie, uberVU, Yoose, Wasabi Ventures, Zoombu

An excellent analysis of whether people actually pay for content -- a point I've made before. And colleagues look at me like I'm crazy.

"In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren't really selling it either."

"Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant. Book publishers, for example, set prices based on the cost of producing and distributing books. They treat the words printed in the book the same way a textile manufacturer treats the patterns printed on its fabrics. Economically, the print media are in the business of marking up paper. We can all imagine an old-style editor getting a scoop and saying "this will sell a lot of papers!" Cross out that final S and you're describing their business model. The reason they make less money now is that people don't need as much paper. "

When you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you're probably looking at a loser.

What about iTunes? Doesn't that show people will pay for content? Well, not really. iTunes is more of a tollbooth than a store. Apple controls the default path onto the iPod. They offer a convenient list of songs, and whenever you choose one they ding your credit card for a small amount, just below the threshold of attention. Basically, iTunes makes money by taxing people, not selling them stuff. You can only do that if you own the channel, and even then you don't make much from it, because a toll has to be ignorable to work. Once a toll becomes painful, people start to find ways around it, and that's pretty easy with digital content...What happens to publishing if you can't sell content? You have two choices: give it away and make money from it indirectly, or find ways to embody it in things people will pay for. The first is probably the future of most current media. Give music away and make money from concerts and t-shirts

google acquisisce DOUBLE CLICK e mo cambia tutto

Evony, thanks for showing us what it means to take advertising on the internet to the absolute rock bottom ... then dig a sub-basement under that, and keep on digging until you reach the white-hot molten core of the Earth. I've always wondered what that would be like. I guess now I know.

Advertising how bad can it go? How not to do advertising

Coding Horror progression of breast presence in Evony's internet ads boobs.

Gods, I remember seeing these a while back. Protip: If you ads make me feel like I need a shower after viewing them, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Apparently that ad didn't perform up to expectations at Evony world HQ, because the ads got progressively ... well, take a look for yourself. These are presented in chronological order of appearance on the internet.

クリックレートを追求いった結果のバナー

The (d)evolution of Evony.com's godawful, ridiculously sexist ad campaign.

This guest post was written by Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg. It is the first in a series of posts he's writing about the ...

From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

experience Entrepreneurship from Meebo founder

Focus on your immediate resources to make something plausible working as fast as you can rather than waiting for something allegedly genial to grow by itself. It never happened and it will never happen.

Creating a blog for your small business isn’t easy; it requires hard work and the ability to think creatively about your work. But if you avoid the five big mistakes laid out in this post, your chances of building a successful business blog will be much better.

Some of the most well known people I know never assume people they talk to know who they are. Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha, for example, introduces himself to me every time I see him, and asks if now is a good time to talk. I’ve known him since 2006, and it’s far from necessary. But I always appreciate how polite he is. Want to be like Roelof someday? A good start is basic business etiquette. Just because someone can’t register your face, name and workplace in less than the second it takes for you to say hello to them doesn’t mean they don’t want to help you out. Just help to avoid that awkward moment by giving them all the information they need. And then watch body language for your cue to wrap things up.

An article on business etiquette for conferences, etc.

Good advice from @arrington to startup CEOs everywhere http://bit.ly/VrM3e [from http://twitter.com/pkedrosky/statuses/4133209865]

It’s time for a quick primer on the proper way to interact at conferences and other business events. Since I just came back from one of those types of events, this is on top of mind for me. By Arrington

Best way to introduce yourself to a powerful person at an event or conference

Good practice on how to approach people politely during conferences, etc.

A very good article on how to be a social-media-friendly business

Trends in social media and how savvy businesses are adapting to the new era - circa Sept 2009

Read later

philosophically, advertising and social media are very different. Creatives, client services folks, account planners and the like are being asked to undertake a new method of communications that runs counter to everything they’ve ever been taught.

Also, some editing would help.

Detailed description on how pricing for web projects can be done. Important: calculate reasonable prices that can be broken down into several components. Communicate all your assumptions involved. Know your hourly rates. Make transparent what your customer will get.

Graphic Artist Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines

Using data on movie-rating patterns, new Wharton research challenges current thinking on the Long Tail effect

Using data on movie-rating patterns, new Wharton research challenges current thinking on the Long Tail effect ...

unread

Controversy about the long tail theory

Knowledge@Wharton

One side effect of $1mil Netflix prize was the treasure of data that was made public. Researches at Wharton use it to find out how valid is the Long Tail theory.

Hulu meets netflix

Currently in an invite-only beta; collaboration by three big-name studios to provide a subscription-based online movie rental (?) service.

Nieman Journalism Lab

Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.

Jamie Zawinski is what I would call a duct-tape programmer. And I say that with a great deal of respect. He is the kind of programmer who is hard at work building the future, and making useful things so that people can do stuff. He is the guy you want on your team building go-carts, because he has two favorite tools: duct tape and WD-40. And he will wield them elegantly even as your go-cart is careening down the hill at a mile a minute.

How Ravelry Scales to 10 Million Requests Using Rails

Interessantissimo articolo su un sito web fatto in rails (www.ravelry.com) che ha raggiunto volumi di traffico davvero ragguardevoli. L'articolo illustra come è nata l'idea per il sito (si tratta di un sito per gli appassionati di cucito e lavoro a maglia), come si è arrivati a quei numeri (10 million requests a day hit Rails, 3.6 million pageviews per day, 430,000 registered users. 70,000 active each day. 900 new sign ups per day), dell'architettura adottata, e delle lezioni imparate.

Tim Bray has a wonderful interview with Casey Forbes, creator of Ravelry, a Ruby on Rails site supporting a 400,000+ strong community of dedicated knitters and crocheters.

Another breakthrough idea from Seth Godin. Brands In Public should be huge. I'll keep an eye on it, that's for sure. Hopefully I'll have a business/organization/something that will need to use it.

You can't control what people are saying about you. What you can do is organize that speech. You can organize it by highlighting the good stuff and rationally responding to the not-so-good stuff. You can organize it by embracing the people who love your brand and challenging them to speak up and share the good word. And you can respond to it in a thoughtful way, leaving a trail that stands up over time.

"Squidoo has built several hundred pages, each one about a major brand. Each page collects tweets, blog posts, news stories, images, videos and comments about a brand. If your brand wants to be in charge of developing this page, it will cost you $400 a month. And once you take the page over, the left hand column belongs to you. You can post responses, highlight blog posts, run contests or quizzes."

h saying tha

twitterstorm. An idea (one that's negative to the brand)

This means job security for me. ;)

to the future of businesses on the web

If anyone ever wanted to understand my role in 'making websites' read this now!

The Guardian's Paul Carvill on the importance of front-end development. If you've ever found yourself trying to justify why you need more time to do your job and why it's not just 'pushing pixels', this opinion piece should give you plenty of ammunition.

Dear Mr. Architect: Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Spot on.

This is the future of journalism.

Kevin: Maria Schneider left mainstream publishing behind last year to start Editor Unleashed, a site covering writing, publishing and social media. She looks at five journalists and their start-up projects. She talks about costs, advertising and technology. It's a good brief overview.

Whether you prefer the clean minimalism of Steve Jobs and 37 Signals or the creative chaos of Tina Fey and Pixar, there&#039;s a lot to learn from the workspaces of the well-known. We present nine such spaces here for inspiration.

Lifehacker lists pictures of some peoples work places

Hilarious!

37 signals smartly mocks the new Twitter valuation and the hoopla surrounding it by valuing itself at $100 billion: http://j.mp/2yfvs [from http://twitter.com/JMaultasch/statuses/4367035641]

"you should see the spreadsheet models we’re making up. Really breakthrough stuff"

In order to increase the value of the company, 37signals has decided to stop generating revenues. “When it comes to valuation, making money is a real obstacle. Our profitability has been a real drag on our valuation,” said Mr. Fried. “Once you have profits, it’s impossible to just make stuff up. That’s why we’re switching to a ‘freeconomics’ model. We’ll give away everything for free and let the market speculate about how much money we could make if we wanted to make money. That way, the sky’s the limit!”

nice one

CHICAGO—September 24, 2009—37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1.

Leaders retire with $, but then get bored, then have to do something else. Should have stuck with it

As a MINT user, the only real question I had was whether I trust my data in the hands of Intuit. I have decided to take that chance until I learn something differently.

"As more great new companies are absorbed into big old companies, a whole new generation of change is lost. They can issue press releases saying how excited they are to be able to bring their product to a whole new world of customers, and how their new suitor will bring enormous resources to bear, but we know that’s usually not really what happens. Development slows, products stall, the staff that built the great stuff leaves, and mediocrity creeps in. Not always, but usually."

Leave it beh

"I've been having great success with a hybrid of the yellow legal pad and a printed presentation from Keynote (or Powerpoint). I use it during small meetings where more interactivity is useful, and where the group is too small for a laptop to be the best way to present slides (I think running a presentation says, "I talk, you listen...")"

Thinking of my almost unused Muji Chronotebook..

I love how Seth's brain works... while so many people are thinking of how complicated and hi tech they need to become in order to make points and get through to people, Seth works in the opposite direction in order to simplify things and challenge the status quo. I never would have thought of this had he not posted it.

That's a good idea! A new way to do presentations

stanford video

"The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset. The moment you earn your keep as a public speaker is when the room isn't just right or the plane is late or the projector doesn't work or the audience is tired or distracted. The best time to engage with an employee is when everything falls apart, not when you're hitting every milestone. And everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy."

Seth Godin: "it´s difficult to improve your performance in the downhills", lección aprendida andando en bicicleta. http://bit.ly/YL30f [from http://twitter.com/dariuus/statuses/2761368400]

Excellent article chock full of down-to-earth advice.

Despite the fact that the year isn't over yet, I have learned some valuable lessons that have helped me grow ...

Automates the trademark registration process.

Free Trademark Search Online | Protect Business Name | Interesting Name Ideas | Trademarkia

Una gran idea

Online advertising pros-and-cons and blog debate

Yes. Yes. Yes. Been talking about this idea with my friends for a couple years now. Traditional online ads are dead. Eye tracking shows they are largely invisible. Online ad people object, saying "they still work," "just depends on the creative." No. They're a distraction, an ask for attention that pays back very little to the consumer. Banners are the equivalent to flashing LED billboards on the side of the freeway: they're all about the advertiser, not the consumer. Next.

Just differentiate b/w the content writer & the content publisher. The publisher is stuck in the CPM/CPA world as it is now, trying to cover costs & make a return in an ever increasing universe of sites & pages. The writer is spreading his content/meme, in this case a reformer meme.

OK, Advertising Week just ended… does anyone else feel like the online advertising industry is the orchestra, playing on while the Titanic is sinking?

your site is chosen, it will be featured on the homepage and announced to their email list of over 150,000 subscribers.

tracking comment

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in

As part of our lead-up to The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit, which is just over two weeks away, in this post we're listing 50 leading companies of the Real-Time Web. Like any list, it is bound to be missing some worthy companies - so we invite you to list more in the comments. Our aim is to unveil the top 100 Real-Time Web companies at our event.

As part of our lead-up to The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit, which is just over two weeks away, in this post we're listing 50 leading companies of the ...

News, Current Events, Latest News and Worl

out being sustained by people who cared about experimentation and exploration. Sometimes these people were relatives, but sometimes they were neighbors, teachers or other influential adults. A number of the innovative entrepreneurs also went to Montessori schools, where they learned to follow their curiosity. To paraphrase the famous Apple ad campaign, innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).

How Do Innovators Think? 5:21 PM Monday September 28, 2009 by Bronwyn Fryer Tags:Creativity, Innovation, Leadership What makes visionary entrepreneurs such as Apple's Steve Jobs, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Ebay's Pierre Omidyar and Meg Whitman, and P&G's A.G. Lafley tick? In a question-and-answer session with HBR contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer, Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the "Innovators' DNA" works.This post is part of HarvardBusiness.org's Creativity at Work special package. Fryer: You conducted a six-year study surveying 3,000 creative executives and conducting an additional 500 individual interviews. During this study you found five "discovery skills" that distinguish them. What are these skills? Dyer: The first skill is what we call "associating." It's a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. The second skill is questioning - an abilit

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.

"Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on"

When we were building Flickr, we worked very hard. We worked all waking hours, we didn't stop. My Hunch cofounder Chris Dixon and I were talking about how hard we worked on our first startups, his being Site Advisor, acquired by McAfee -- 14-18 hours a day. We agreed that a lot of what we then considered "working hard" was actually "freaking out". Freaking out included panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn't have worried about, thinking about fund raising rather than product building, building too many features, getting distracted by competitors, being at the office since just being there seemed productive even if it wasn't -- and other time-consuming activities. This time around we have eliminated a lot of freaking out time. We seem to be working less hard this time, even making it home in time for dinner.

"Edison, of the "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" quote, tried thousands of materials looking for the right filament for the electric bulb. That might have been hard work, and the fact that he persisted through many failures is key to making something work, but he was also working on the right problem. So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard."

"So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard."

So true. I can think of a few people I think need to read this.

http://audio.sxsw.com/2009/podcasts/D2%20SXSW_PODCASTS/031409_PM1_BallA_OpeningRemarks_Simul.mp3

I'm into Tony now.

Great presentation about brand values, customer service, and motivation. Audio is available too in a link provided in the comments section

Slick Javascript Animation

Have a look at these beautifully crafted javascript animated vcard websites. It's simple, beautiful and simply inspiring!

Logos with Hidden Symbolisms

skryte symboly ve znamych logach

“Writing Wednesdays” Future “Writing Wednesdays” articles will be inspired by quotes from The War of Art.

Nobody wants to read your shit. There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too. What’s your answer to that? 1) Reduce your message to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form. 2) Make it fun. Or sexy or interesting or informative. 3) Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce. You acquire that skill which is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs: the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your imagined reader/gallery-goer/customer.

Nobody wants to read your shit.

Hat tip Michael. "Record £1.75bn online spend makes UK first major economy to spend more on web ads than TV, says IAB"

Record £1.75bn online spend makes UK first major economy to spend more on web ads than TV

Record £1.75bn online spend makes UK first major economy to spend more on web ads than TV, says IAB

Some invaluable resources for anyone preparing to start their own business.

Just as it is for big corporations, successful branding is essential to the success of a freelancing business and to just one self-employed web worker. It is

This is a fantastic read for any freelancer - Brand yourself

* 1 Oct The Art of Branding Yourself and Your Freelancing Business

The term ‘business card website’ has become widely associated with the popular style of website that has cropped up on the personal domains of designers and developers. The site is essentially a simple, single page design that displays personal information, contact details and links through to other social profiles, much like a traditional tactile business card is used to display basic information. Business card websites come in all shapes and sizes, but popular charactersitics include a compact, lightweight design, often small in size. Business card sites also tend to make use of Javascript to enhance the user experience and are commonly designed with a fresh take on the interface, taking inspiration from the clean style of Apple’s OSX. Let’s take a look at an inspiring collection of examples, each with an individual twist on the original business card idea.

The term business card website has become widely associated with the popular style of website that has cropped up on the personal domains of designers and developers.

The term ‘business card website’ has become widely associated with the popular style of website that has cropped up on the personal domains of designers and developers. The site is essentially a simple, single page design that displays personal information, contact details and links through to other social profiles, much like a traditional tactile business card is used to display basic information.

Inspirational Showcase of Business Card Websites - http://line25.com/articles/inspirational-showcase-of-business-card-websites

However, despite its negative connotation, criticism often presents an excellent opportunity to grow as a designer. Before you can respond effectively, you need to understand what those opportunities are.

o understand what those o

esson in humility Never underestimate the importance of humility. Although criticism can bruise the ego, it keeps you grounded, making you easier to work with and mor

reasons why companies are scared of social media

Is there such a thing as too founder friendly?

TheFunded.com: Complete Set of Founder Friendly Legal Docs

this is for when you have to write your own policy

業務時間外のWebサイト障害対応

ふむ

一定規模以上のWebサイトを運営しているエンジニアの方、業務時間外の障害対応ってどういう風にやっていますか？ ルールとか体制とかを中心に教えてほしいです。

数字の単位は丸暗記する

日本人が英語をしゃべるときに気をつけるべき７つのポイント

comments as well

There are really only a few times to use a cover letter: 1. When you know the name of the person hiring 2. When you know something about the job requirement 3. When you've been personally referred (which might include 1 and 2) Under those conditions, you can help your cause by doing some of the résumé analysis for your potential new boss. To illustrate, here's the best cover letter I ever received: Dear David: I am writing in response to the opening for xxxx, which I believe may report to you. I can offer you seven years of experience managing communications for top-tier xxxx firms, excellent project-management skills, and a great eye for detail, all of which should make me an ideal candidate for this opening. I have attached my résumé for your review and would welcome the chance to speak with you sometime. Best regards, Here's what I like about this cover letter: It's short. It sums up the résumé as it relates to the job. It asks for the job.

In my last post I talked about how to make your résumé more likely to catch the attention of a hiring manager. As a follow up, I'd like to discuss cover letters. Here's my basic philosophy on them: don't bother.

I have come to the conclusion, over the last three years, that working hard is overrated. This is an idea I have been kicking around for a while, but it was thrown into sharp relief by a blog post entitled The Only Alternative Is To Work Harder, by a gentleman named Paras Chapra over at Wingify. Paras and I have corresponded over email a few times, so I say as one analytics junkie to another: the notion that working longer hours is correlated to better business results is a pernicious social pathology.

Must read -

"What really happens in crowdsourcing as it is practiced in wide variety of contexts, from Wikipedia to open source to scientific research, is that a problem is broadcast to a large number of people with varying forms of expertise. Then individuals motivated by obsession, competition, money or all three apply their individual talent to creating a solution."

Does crowdsourcing exist as it is popularly conceived? Yes, it does, but it doesn't have anything to do with innovation. Jigsaw, the community-created database of 16 million business contacts, is crowdsourcing. Tens of thousands of people have added business contacts to Jigsaw's database so they can earn points and get access to business contacts entered by others. Jigsaw sells this data to companies, generating millions in revenue. Jigsaw is the only true crowdsourced business I know of. The other businesses mentioned in the crowdsourcing category, Innocentive, Threadless, Spreadshirt, iStockPhoto, are really versions of Wikipedia, that is, aggregations of the inventions of individual virtuosos. Other large projects, like Linux, Apache ( APA - news - people ) and GIMP, are virtuoso creations around which consortiums of experts have gathered.

What really happens in crowdsourcing as it is practiced in wide variety of contexts, from Wikipedia to open source to scientific research, is that a problem is broadcast to a large number of people with varying forms of expertise. Then individuals motivated by obsession, competition, money or all three apply their individual talent to creating a solution.

great article that most crowdsourcing is about broadcasting to people with training. however, this is challenged by pitting 100 semitrained folk against individual virtuosos. the 100 semitrained folk win.

"... in the popular press, and in the minds of millions of people, the word crowdsourcing has created an illusion that there is a crowd that solves problems better than individuals. ... There is no crowd in crowdsourcing. There are only virtuosos, usually uniquely talented, highly trained people who have worked for decades in a field. Frequently, these innovators have been funded through failure after failure. From their fervent brains spring new ideas. The crowd has nothing to do with it. The crowd solves nothing, creates nothing. What really happens in crowdsourcing ... is that a problem is broadcast to a large number of people with varying forms of expertise. Then individuals motivated by obsession, competition, money or all three apply their individual talent to creating a solution." Author: Dan Woods, Forbes.com, Sept. 29, 2009.

via journerdism.com

Google Has A “Moral Responsibility” To Help The Press

Is Google a newspaper killer? Not by a long shot, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Nor does he want it to be. In a long interview about his company's

Is Google a newspaper killer? Not by a long shot, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

bun pt wks - demo prin exemple, similar pt cirip

This is the set of links that were used to demo Twitter to the Surfing Industry Manufacturers Association. The purpose was to show consumer brands like Reef, Sector 9, and Sanuk how they could use Twitter as a tool.

In this video from The Future of Web Apps London (FOWA), Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, WeFollow and Revision3, shares 9 things he did to increase his users to 1,000,000 and beyond.

by Kevin Rose

A few months ago I wrote a brief article about graphic design contracts. You offered some excellent advice in the comments, and here I feature a select few of your contract tips.

19 Tips for Recruiting Great Developers

RT @rgbroitman: Some good Twitter stats here: http://ow.ly/sXKz [from http://twitter.com/cyberdad/statuses/4657457633]

From TechCrunch: Robert Moore - CEO and Co-Founder of RJmetrics provides highlights on Twitter usage.

***

Mark Zuckerberg

Priscilla Chan

Freelance Contracts: Do’s And Don’ts « Smashing Magazine

When you make the decision to go out on your own, you are faced with many choices. Should you work from home or rent a space? Bill hourly or by the job? What

50 Essential Web Apps for Freelancers – Web.AppStorm - http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/freelancing-tools/50-essential-web-apps-for-freelancers/

We’ve broken down the apps into larger categories, highlighted the best or most interesting in each category, and included the best of the rest. Click away — each image will take you to the app listed. Enjoy!

Photojojo

Photojojo has a great article exploring the pros and cons of starting your own photography business.

How much money to raise and what to do with it: using mint as a case study

In order to get that seed round, you'll need to understand your competition, and come up with projections. Everyone knows this will change...but you need to show your thinking around it anyway. As an example, MINT originally projected $30/user/year for lead-gen and CPA. (Aaron noted that the company is pretty close to this today. But this is the exception rather than the rule.) Know how the business model works. People do X behavior and it turns into $Y income, add up those $Ys and it's a $Z business. If you can walk people through these assumptions convincingly, you'll get that seed round.

The straight shot: Why should you raise money, and how much? * Step 1: When you're ready with an Idea: Raise $100K from friends and family, and use it to build a prototype. * Step 2: Once the prototype is done: Raise < $1M in seed capital, and get into market with an alpha launch. * Step 3: After that initial launch has traction: Raise $5-10M, and use it to prove/scale the model.

business

Last night I posted the video of Mint CEO Aaron Patzer’s 45 minute presentation on building startups from the ground up. If you are an aspiring startup entrepreneur, you’ll want to watch that more than a few times. The candid disclosures and advice he gives is rarely seen in Silicon Valley. Some readers requested to see the presentation deck as well, so here it is. Patzer shows how he raised and spent money, and generated revenue, throughout the lifecycle of Mint, from the very beginning to the $170 million acquisition. He also showed historical slides from early presentations to investors and compares those to the actual results.

Startups 101: The Complete Mint Presentation

Last night I posted the video of Mint CEO Aaron Patzer's 45 minute presentation on building startups from the ground up. If you ...

If you’re an entrepreneur who has been seduced by social media tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, you may ...

Useful information for business owners interested in using social media for their business

This tutorial will show you how to build the ultimate, customizable, job finding dashboard using iGoogle. Integrate job boards, twitter searches, and more.

As participation marketing continues to gain traction as the most effective way to market a website, niche social networks are emerging as a crucial part of that strategy. While Facebook and Twitter can play an integral part in social media campaigns, they don’t always have the best targeted users and groups. Whereas, niche social networks, like cork’d and Social Workout, provide highly targeted communities for marketers.

Sales and Opportunity Management Software for Small Businesses: Win more deals. Track your opportunities and deals in an effective and intuitive way so you can focus on winning more deals!

Summary: In Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steve Blank lays out a customer development process that complements a startup’s product development process. This post includes video and slides where Steve explains the ideas in his book.

★感動した。最後のオチもｗ

お客様本意のサービス設計をするときに重要なのは、お客様が本当に得をするかどうかではなく、どう感じるか、どう行動するかを想像することが重要だ。そのとき想像が具体的なほど、全員がそうじゃないので、対象となるお客様の人数も想像すべき。

via @neilperkin

Entrepreneurship video. Presentation by Digg founder, Kevin Rose on how to take your site from one to one million. Interesting strategies to attract traffic to youu website

The difference between an audience and a community is which direction the chairs are pointing

The difference between an audience and a community is which direction the chairs are pointing.

Brogan defines his views on audience and community

Sosyal medyanın işlerimizde de kullanılması

Social Media Explorer explores social media, public relations and marketing through commentary and analysis.

ways to convince colleagues to sign up to social media stuff

to be used for social media focal points at Eurocontrol

Ten Teen Entrepreneurs To Watch

business card - biglietti da visita

The business card is the first thing that is exchanged when meeting a new potential client or business contact. Even in new world of digital media, the business card is still an important piece of initial exchange in the world of commerce. Lately, I

Rupert Murdoch is going to battle against the Internet, bent on making readers actually pay for online newspaper journalism–beginning with his London Sunday Times. History suggests he won’t back down; the experts suggest he’s crazy. Is he also ignoring his industry’s biggest problem?

Wolff wrote a biography of Murdoch, and presumably knows the man. My take on this fascinating article is that the old guy simply doesn't understand what's happening online, perhaps because you can only truly understand the online world if you participate in it.

"[Rupert Murdoch] can almost single-handedly take apart and re-assemble a complex printing press, but his digital-technology acumen and interest is practically zero. Murdoch's abiding love of newspapers has turned into a personal antipathy to the Internet [...] In the Murdoch view, media only really works as a good business if it achieves significant control of the market—through pricing, through exclusive sports arrangements, through controlling distribution (he has spent 20 years trying to monopolize satellite distribution around the world). [...] Murdoch has a larger problem still. It is, after all, not the Internet that has made news free. News in penny-newspaper or broadcast (or bundled cable) form has always been either free or negligibly priced. In almost every commercial iteration, news has been supported by advertising. This is, more than the Internet, Murdoch's (and every publisher's) problem: the dramatic downturn in advertising."

"In one of my favorite Murdoch stories, his wife, Wendi, who had befriended the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, told me about how the “boys” had visited the Murdochs at their ranch in Carmel, California. When I marveled at this relative social mismatch and asked what they might have talked about, Wendi assured me that they had all gotten along very well. “You know, Rupert,” Wendi said, “he’s always asking questions.” “But what,” I prodded, “did he exactly ask?” “He asked,” she said, hesitating only a beat before cracking herself up, “‘Why don’t you read newspapers?’”

War is Rupert Murdoch’s natural state. When he launched the Fox Broadcasting Company, in October 1986, he went to war against the hegemony of CBS, ABC, and NBC. With Fox News he crossed swords with CNN’s Ted Turner. At Sky, his satellite-TV system in the U.K., he went up against the BBC. He’s battled China, the F.C.C., the print unions in Great Britain, and, recently, most of the journalism community in his takeover of The Wall Street Journal. He relishes conflict and doesn’t back down—one reason why he’s won so many of his fights and so profoundly changed the nature of his industry. Now he’s going to war with the Internet.

Excellent article about the Rupert Murdoch's apparent allergic reaction to the internet and the reality of the newspaper industry. If the internet is responsible for the downfall of FOX News, I will be so fucking giddy.....

Rupert Murdoch is going to battle against the Internet, bent on making readers actually pay for online newspaper journalism–beginning with his London Sunday Times. History suggests he won’t back down

"Like any social tool, Facebook needs to be worked in order to achieve specific marketing, event or fundraising goals." A practical primer on going about this

Author: Socialbrite website

모든 기업가들이 꼭 읽어야 하는 열가지 책

@newsycombinator: "Chile Wants Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses, Your Tech Entrepreneurs http://bit.ly/Jcm2n" (from http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/status/4762877839)

Looks like an awesome deal!

The world is rife with business opportunity, and nowhere more so than online. I often think of the web as something of a wild west frontier, awaiting anyone

shopping cart

The world is rife with business opportunity, and nowhere more so than online. I often think of the web as something of a wild west frontier, awaiting anyone intrepid enough to stake out a claim. But to start an online venture you first need to have an idea of what you want to do. For many would-be entrepreneurs ideas are many and easy to come by, but not everyone feels this way.

So let’s say I was setting out to start a new business tomorrow. I would sit down and think about what sorts of problems I have, both offline and on, and how I wish they could be fixed with an online solution. When thinking of solutions, I always ask myself whether I, myself would really use the solution if some other company magically brought it to market right now. It’s important to be honest and realistic with yourself because if you wouldn’t use the thing, chances are neither will others.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Ftechnology%2F3304496%2FBe-lucky---its-an-easy-skill-to-learn.html

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

[A decade ago, I set out to investigate luck. I wanted to examine the impact on people's lives of chance opportunities, lucky breaks and being in the right place at the right time. After many experiments, I believe that I now understand why some people are luckier than others and that it is possible to become luckier.] haha! coincidentally I was talking with Frank M about this just today..

Very interesting. I tend to dismiss "luck" as a silly non entity but would definitely file myself under "lucky" rather than "unlucky" if you made me choose. I agree entirely that being positive and dealing with what you actually have rather than what you'd like to have are useful attributes. On the intuition front I don't think most decisions matter that much - making them one way or another and getting on with it is more important than what the decision is. I guess thinking you can make things work out either way is a "lucky" kind of a thing.

A vCard is an electronic business card that uses a standard format. Some individuals have taken to creating simple, typically one-page, sites that center around their vCard. These sites contain minimal content, usually just basic information about the individual (i.e. job title) and contact information (i.e. mailing addresses and links to social media profiles). Designer and Blogger, Tim Van Damme, started this web design trend, and for a lack of a better term, I’ll call them vCard sites.

vCard collezione fantastica

America's Best Young Entrepreneurs 2009--via Yahoo! Finance (Congrats to @Shama!!!) http://ow.ly/uad5 [from http://twitter.com/allenmireles/statuses/4844559545]

It's almost a truism in the tech world that copyright owners reflexively oppose new inventions that do (or might) disrupt existing business models. But how many techies actually know what rightsholders have said and written for the last hundred years on the subject?

60 Resources for the Frugal Web Developer - http://webjackalope.com/frugal-web-developer/

Photo by s2photo With the economy reeling and VC’s spending less and less on startups, developers have had to adapt how they create sites. Because of the world’s economic state, we’ve had to change how we develop. Some may see this shift as a grim prospect. Change is hard, and change is essential to staying alive in these conditions. However, if you can cut expenses in your development process without cutting quality by using free methods and tools, then you may be able to develop without using any extra money.

Fully $350 billion a year could be saved on paperwork alone if the U.S. went to a single-payer system — more than enough to pay for the whole goddamned thing, if anyone had the balls to stand up and say so.

This article is an opinion piece writton the criticisms and downfalls of the healthcare plan. It is an important site, because the health care reform policy promotes itself, so it is important the the public is exposed to both opinions and both sides of the health care reform system. The article stresses the critical state of America's healthcare system and expresses its need for reform. However, the piece stresses that Obama-Biden health care reform policy will only hurt the health care system further.

Matt Taibbi, right on as usual (and rightly pissed off)

RollingStone

분야나 상활별로 리더십에 필요한것? 을 설명하고 있다 영어 해독- _ -;

criando portfolio sem cliente

Moiz Syed: Highly recommend this read to understand contemporary organizational structures: http://bit.ly/WcmwS

wow! MacLeod hierarchy. Sociopaths, clueless, and losers. Fascinating.

さて、どうやってこの問題に立ち向かおうか。

物を作る人にとって、ミーティングに参加するという事は「働くモード」を強制的に切り替えさせられることです。

Reference Guide on ourFreedom &amp; Responsibility Culture <br />These slides are meant for reading,<br />rather than pr

What we find particularly intriguing is the section on hiring and firing. They want every manager to ask themselves: “Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?” Anybody who doesn’t make that list should be offered a severance package right now so we can open a slot to find a star performer for that role. Another highlight: Netflix has no vacation policy! They don’t have a “rule” about 9 – 5 work - their rule is simpler: get your job done, and do it well. They realized if they didn’t track the hours employees worked, why would they track the hours they DON’T work? There is also no policy on clothing, but as of yet, no one has come to work naked (Patty McCord, 2004). The lesson: You don’t need detailed policies for everything. Here’s the part where they devalue training (you should probably stop reading here. . .)

This makes me want to work for Netfilx. No, wait. It makes me want to built the same values into meta4 so I never have to leave.

Having a keen understanding of Web Design Project Planning Process is unvaluable. With a clear organization, you'll be able to work better and more efficiently.

Disseny i planificació de webs

Great for client develpoment

Tipos de Clientes

great talk about value of perception...

Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value -- and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.

When you boil it down it’s about listening to your customers, being helpful by offering your knowledge and giving them interesting content to share and thereby advocate for you.

Social media isn’t complicated. When you boil it down it’s about listening to your customers, being helpful by offering your knowledge and giving them interesting content to share and thereby advocate for you. The IMS speakers shared several case studies (yes, too many of them mentioned Comcast and Zappos) on how organizations have embraced social media to connect with and built trust and affection among customers. None of the examples required hyper-specialized knowledge or technology for a company to connect with people.

Companies that can't talk about anything other than their products, or don't respond to their customers online are hurting their social-media efforts, Amy Mengel writes. Companies also need to make sure that their internal processes are in line with the technology and that the company culture is cut out for social media

“It’s not rocket surgery.” That malapropism became a bit of a mantra at last week’s Inbound Marketing Summit. Social media isn’t complicated. When you boil it down it’s about listening to your custo

In order to become a well rounded Graphic Designer, there are a variety of skills that are essential to handling a clients or employers tasks proficiently.

20 Social Networking Sites for Business Professionals - http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/07/28/social-networking-sites-for-business/

Many of us actively use sites like Twitter and Facebook to promote our businesses. And those of us looking to connect with more business-related contacts may turn to sites like LinkedIn to develop relationships with people we have worked with or may want to work with. With the growing use of social networking by business professionals, there is a growing number of social networking sites focused on business users and meeting their needs. Here is a list of 20 social networking sites for entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals that are worth a look.

要するに、重税社会というのは、貨幣システムの利用料がバカみたいに高くなる社会だ。

法人と違って、個人間での取引の場合、現金の受け渡し記録が残らないようにすれば消費税や所得税を課税するのはかなり困難だからだ。 もちろん、ヤフオクなどのように、支払い記録が残るようなシステムは使わない。そんなことをすると、税務署に把握されてしまうからだ。 基本的には、知り合

上に歪んだ政策あれば、下に歪んだ対策が必要になる。

As the author of Beginning Ruby, I make money for every copy sold in print and electronic formats (as well as some miscellaneous income I’ll cover later). It’s not much money – but that wasn’t the motivation for writing the book. In this post I’m going to show you how it all works from my point of view including sales figures, pictures of my royalty statements, information about my advance, and similar gruesome stuff. There’s even a section at the end about how Apress pissed me off a bit (though I don’t regret the experience with them) and why I’m happy with you pirating my book if you so choose.

Nice summary of why you shouldn't give up your day job to write a technical book. The guy is wrong however in thinking he would make more money in giving the ebook away for free. It would be better to give a chapter away for free.

Tools for Public Sector

one-stop shop of tips and tools for the public sector from Google

Most people reach government and other public sector websites by using Google and other search engines. This site is a guide to the tools and best practices that can help you reach, communicate and engage with your community. Most of these tools are free, so they can also help you do more with less.

Google: Tools for Public Sector Organizations. Make your agency website, and the information it offers, easier to find.

Fifteen ways to make a bad impression

avarice

Journalists vs. Bloggers

Then, later in my career, I started blogging, and then writing for ReadWriteWeb, and now I am COO of this news media business. So that got me thinking about the past, present, and future of journalism. Disclosure: I do not come at this from a long career as a journalist. This is a personal, blog-style view of the journalism profession by somebody who cares about the outcome.

redesign เปลี่ยนจาก design เก่า เป็น design ใหม่

Collection of exceptional examples of most creative typography based logo designs

A Print Portfolio Even though it is arguably more important to have a web portfolio, you can't neglect having a print portfolio! Many studios and companies want to look at a print portfolio because it can tell them more about you as a designer, es

This post is a little different than what you might be used to. Instead of talking at you, I would like to talk with you. I would like to propose a blogging outline, not actually blog on the given subject (yet!). First, allow me to explain myself. I have been under-utilizing my blogging privileges the last three months and I would like to try to make this up to you. I have made the ...

The music industry is really focused on the ‘industry’ part and not so much on the ‘music’ part. This is the greatest moment in the history of music if your dream is to distribute as much music as possible to as many people as possible, or if your goal is to make it as easy as possible to become heard as a musician. There’s never been a time like this before. So if your focus is on music, it’s great. If your focus is on the industry part and the limos, the advances, the lawyers, polycarbonate and vinyl, it’s horrible.

Why make one big website when you can create 100 little digital experiences?

I want to see a new digital agency model that sells a package of 100 small digital experiences, that can each be executed quickly and cheaply, instead of selling the 1 big digital experience

thoughts about how to behave as the a new model digital agency

A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece. At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot.

http://stealourideas.tumblr.com/

To discover great hacks, we must always be searching for the true nature of our reality

An interesting perspective on hacking and systems, particularly relevant to the Saving Game

In this article, we'll discuss seven things that often make the job of web designers difficult when dealing with unreasonable demands from clients.

30 แหล่งหางานฟรีแลนซ์

Freelance Work Websites and Resources You Should Know

Grey Hoy of Happy Cog describes some common pifalls in the early stages of a new contract and offers some top tips. I like the questionairre suggestion. There is also some good discussion in the forum.

Determining which prospects you want to work with is often considered a luxury. Dont think of it that way. Even if the economy is in the tank and you absolutely need the gig, you should be very critical of the prospects youre considering working with. These are the people who will become part of your immediate and potentially long-term future, and you want to make sure you dont spend that time drinking schnapps to get through the day or grinding your teeth at night.

jobsearch social media

細々と、でも地道にやってるブックオフオンラインのTwitterアカウントの運用でぼくが実際に使ってるツールを紹介します。 特に不自由はしてないのですが、「もっと便利なのがあるよ！」って場合はぜひ教えてください。

should have / will follow some of these tips

This post summarises what I feel Ive learned in those years and how you can apply the things Ive learned to your own site and strategy to succeed.

Blogging tips

hartas transparentes

Christian Muoz-Donoso is going to make this job pay, he's got to move quickly. He has a list of 10 videos to shoot on this warm June morning, for

The result is a factory stamping out moneymaking content. “I call them the Henry Ford of online video,” says Jordan Hoffner, director of content partnerships at YouTube. Media companies like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, AOL, and USA Today have either hired Demand or studied its innovations. This year, the privately held Demand is expected to bring in about $200 million in revenue; its most recent round of financing by blue-chip investors valued the company at $1 billion. In this industrial model of content creation, Muñoz-Donoso is working the conveyor belt — being paid very little for cranking out an endless supply of material. He admits that the results are not particularly rewarding, but work is work, and Demand’s is steady and pays on time. Plus, he says, “this is the future.” He has shot more than 40,000 videos for Demand, filming yo-yo whizzes, pole dancers, and fly fishermen. But ask him to pick a favorite and he’s stumped. “I can’t really remember most of them,” he says.

First, to find out what terms users are searching for, it parses bulk data purchased from search engines, ISPs, and Internet marketing firms (as well as Demands own traffic logs). Then the algorithm crunches keyword rates to calculate how much advertisers will pay to appear on pages that include those terms. (A portion of Demands revenue comes from Google, which allows businesses to bid on phrases that they would like to advertise against.)

Demand Media has created a virtual factory that pumps out 4,000 videoclips and articles a day. It starts with an algorithm. The algorithm is fed inputs from three sources: Search terms (popular terms from more than 100 sources comprising 2 billion searches a day), the ad market (a snapshot of which keywords are sought after and how much they are fetching), and the competition (whats online already and where a term ranks in search results).

the future is mechanical, cheap, shallow

Cory seems to understand the new publishing perspective from an author's point of view as well as anyone

Cory Doctorow kicks off a unique publishing experiment--and a monthly PW column

This makes Overclocked into a fine control for my little experiment. It is a good book. It sold well and was critically acclaimed. But it is solidly a midlist title, a short story collection published by a house turned upside down by bankruptcy. It will be the baseline against which I compare the earnings from With a Little Help. And those earnings will be diverse—like the musicians who've successfully self-produced albums in a variety of packages at a variety of price points (Radiohead, Trent Reznor, David Byrne and Brian Eno, Jonathan Coulton), I have set out to produce a book that can be had in a range of packages and at a range of price points from $0.00 to $10,000.

New publishing experiment by Cory @Doctorow http://tr.im/CxHw via @inkyelbows @bencrowder @1rick [from http://twitter.com/midnighthaircut/statuses/5046801028]

Social Media

Today, we are proud to launch Tracked.com, a new kind of business service. Tracked.com is the only website in the world where business information, communications and connections come together to enhance your business life.

By http://bit.ly/Tweets2Delicious

Utvalg grafer som viser hvordan iPhone har fungert som lokomotiv for mobilt internett. Grafene er hentet fra Morgen Stanley analytiker Mary Meekers årlige internettanalyse

The chart overlays the first 20 quarters of user growth for each product. Only eight quarters after launch, the iPhone and iPod Touch has more than twice as many users (57 million) as imode (25 million), five times as many as Netscape (11 million), and eight times as many as AOL (7 million) at a comparable points in their histories.

t AT&Ts monthly fees. Taken together, the adoption of the iPhone and iPod Touch is outstripping the early adoption the desktop Internet, as represented by AOL and Netscape in Meekers chart below. It is also outstripping the early growth of NTT Docomos imode, which was the most successful example of the first generation of mobile Web adoption in Japan.

The first one above shows the growth of data traffic on AT&T’s mobile network. It is 50 times higher than it was just three years ago. I added two arrows to show when the first iPhone launched in June, 2007 and the iPhone 3G in July 2008. AT&T saw massive pops in data usage following those two launches as consumers discovered the unadulterated mobile Web for the first time. And it is not just the iPhone. With the ubiquity of WiFi, the iPod Touch offers pretty much the same experience without AT&T’s monthly fees. Taken together, the adoption of the iPhone and iPod Touch is outstripping the early adoption the desktop Internet, as represented by AOL and Netscape in Meeker’s chart below. It is also outstripping the early growth of NTT Docomo’s imode, which was the most successful example of the first generation of mobile Web adoption in Japan.

Google & Bing adding Tweets to search results; http://bit.ly/1U27fr [from http://twitter.com/jcookaz/statuses/5052661578]

Google to index Twitter

Googleがtwitter内検索に対応する事になるって

twitterよりYammerのほうがよくないか？

Twitterの社内導入を検討する上で、非常に有益な記事。もう100回くらい読んでいます。

■この1ヶ月間で得られたTwitterの想定外の効果について 「飲み会で飲み過ぎて行方不明になったスタッフの捜索状況」

よく導入出来たな

Founder diagnoses why his startup failed. Good comments on traffic business models

Who are your users and are they really useful/real users?

With just one coat, IdeaPaint turns any surface into a dry-erase board.

One fantastic product.

Nice.

Since the Great Depression, presidents have frequently experimented with Keynesian economics to combat recessions. Three economists chronicle the history of government policy during past recessions and explain what worked and what didn’t.

Keynesian economics

A possible web page for International Finance of Princ of finance

One of the biggest challenges for small businesses who want to market using social media is capacity. crowdSPRING is a small business - there are only 10 people on our team - so we understand this challenge well. You must decide whether social media makes sense for your small business. There is no universal answer. In this two part series (part 2 will be published in a few days), I’ll offer 10 small business social media marketing tips. For each tip, I’ll discuss the basic strategy - for those who simply want to get their toes wet, and also the advanced strategy - for those who want to spend a bit more time and go a bit deeper in their social media marketing efforts. Where possible, I’ll point you to other excellent resources to help you execute your strategy. The tips are all based on my own experience leveraging social media marketing for crowdSPRING. I recommend only tools I’ve personally used - and third party references I trust.

.

"次期GFSが実装するマルチマスター構成は、Amazon DynamoやWindows Azureのキー・バリュー型データストア「Azure Storage」が採用済み。Amazon Dynamoはコンシステントハッシングというマルチマスター構成を採用し、Azure Storageはピア・ツー・ピア技術の基盤である「分散ハッシュテーブル」というマルチマスター構成を採用する。 　Amazon DynamoやAzure Storageは、データの主たる保存先をサーバーの物理メモリーとすることで、システムの応答性を向上するというアプローチを採用している。これまで、「データの永続化」とはハードディスクにデータを保存することを指していた。しかし十分な数の複製を複数のサーバーに作成すれば、保存先がメモリーでもデータの永続化が図れるというのが、Amazon DynamoやAzure Storageの発想だ。"

Googleのすごさ

やっぱりGoogleすげーや。

Business card / cartões de visita profissionais

free business card maker

creare biglietti da visita online e gratis

è il primo servizio gratuito della lista, molto completo e ben fatto, con tanti bei template da utilizzare (davvero belli). La registrazione è opzionale per poter salvare i dati. Il servizio genera un PDF da stampare con più biglietti da visita in un solo foglio. Anche questo in lingua inglese.

Here, you’ll find the 100 best blogs for economics students to read.

ib

An article on the difficulties and surprises in starting a startup.

Really good ideas and facts about starting a startup.

AWESOME SITE for Entrepreneurial Advancement!!!!

...we've taken chunks of data for the major newspapers, going back to 1990, and graphed it, so you can see what's actually happened to newspaper circulation.

Every six months, the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases data about newspapers and how many people subscribe to them. And then everyone writes a story about how some newspapers declined some amount over the year previous. Well, that's no way to look at data! It's confusing—and it obscures larger trends. So we've taken chunks of data for the major newspapers, going back to 1990, and graphed it, so you can see what's actually happened to newspaper circulation. (We excluded USA Today, because we don't care about it. If you're in a hotel? You're reading it now. That's nice.)

By http://bit.ly/Tweets2Delicious

annually on sales of virtual goods. Need a shotgun to do that next job on Mobsters? No problem. Pay with a credit card, paypal, or your mobile phone and it’s all yours. And people are obviously very willing to buy these virtual goods. Nothing new there.

Social media advertising

5 Ways to Attract and #Empower Your #Crowd http://ow.ly/oaRC [from http://twitter.com/schulezweinull/statuses/3819609045]

クレジットカード課金、審査OKまでの流れ

クレジットカード課金についての流れ

（個人や零細企業が）Webサービスでクレジットカード課金

Social media is a big place, and navigating the many networks and tools can be tough. Here are 10 great ways small businesses can make the most of social media.

What I can do!

We see at least a dozen new Twiter tools every other day. So I selected just 30+ Twitter tools that are most useful right now. Some of these tools have been around for a few months some have sprung up just recently. They have one thing in common: You must be aware of these tools in case you’re serious about Twitter participation.

more twitter tools

Real-time Web is becoming more popular.

Fun to play if you're bored. You get to be a pirate!!

Wired Magazine's game about the business of Somali pirating; see related article published in Wired, "An Economic Analysis of the Somali Pirate Business Model." Commentary at http://jag.lcc.gatech.edu/blog/2009/07/cutthroat-capitalism.html

"You are a pirate commander staked with $50,000 from local tribal leaders and other investors. Your job is to guide your pirate crew through raids in and around the Gulf of Aden, attack and capture a ship, and successfully negotiate a ransom."

See the latest multimedia and applications including videos, animations, podcasts, photos, and slideshows on Wired.com

You are a pirate commander staked with $50,000 from local tribal leaders and other investors. Your job is to guide your pirate crew through raids in and around the Gulf of Aden, attack and capture a ship, and successfully negotiate a ransom.

Here are 10 essential entrepreneurs from a variety of backgrounds to follow on Twitter.

"Working from home sounds like a very simple concept. But there are a lot of built-in structures and boundaries inherent in a going-to-the-office job that we often take for granted. Recreating those boundaries when our home and work is one and the same is a crucial part of achieving a work-life balance."

Working from home sounds like a very simple concept. But there are a lot of built-in structures and boundaries inherent in a going-to-the-office job that we often take for granted. Recreating those boundaries when our home and work is one and the same is a crucial part of achieving a work-life balance. The personal battle One common trap of working from home is allowing your personal life to bleed into your work. A lack of discipline and motivation as well as a myriad of temptations lurking in every corner of your home can affect your productivity big time. This is the most obvious situation (and the one most often addressed) when considering the pitfalls of working from home. But there is a lot of support and feedback (in fact an entire industry) for this problem, and can be remedied by a host of productivity tools and exercises.

Good article of collaboration

by James Manyika, Kara Sprague and Lareina Yee: Knowledge workers fuel innovation and growth, yet the nature of knowledge work remains poorly understood—as do the ways to improve its effectiveness. The heart of what knowledge workers do on the job is collaborate, which in the broadest terms means they interact to solve problems, serve customers, engage with partners, and nurture new ideas. Technology and workflow processes support knowledge worker success and are increasingly sources of comparative differentiation. Those able to use new technologies to reshape how they work are finding significant productivity gains. This article shares our research on how technology can improve the quality and output of knowledge workers.

Using technology to improve workforce collaboration

I know Leo and the TWiG gang talked about this a bit on Saturday, but this would be a great story for TWiT today. Plus there's a lot of good info in this story, it's very well written.

I then asked my friend, “so why would they ever use the Google (non open source) license version.” Here was the big punch line – because Google will give you ad splits on search if you use that version! That’s right; Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the “less than free” business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition. To compete at an equally “less than free” price point, Symbian or windows mobile would need to subsidize. Double ouch!!

less than free is better than free... whee....

story about ann arbor news losing a newspaper

24/7 Wall St. has created a list of the 10 major daily papers that are most likely to either fold or shut their print operations and only publish online

Wie sich Farmville

via cpalow, alok

Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success.

facebook economy

facebook users, beware

Interesting article on the spamming economics of Facebook and social media, straight from the horses mouth

Last night we wrote about the lead generation scams within social gaming networks. This is a guest post by Dennis Yu, the CEO ...

How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession

Etiquettes

Want to get the right people talking about you and your business in a flattering light? Read more: http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/how-to-influence-influencers-bloggers-tweeters-others/#ixzz0VinAj4AO

Perfect resource for WOM marketing, reaching influencers

How-To: Influence Influencers- Bloggers, Tweeters & Others

blogcuları etkleme ve kendin hakkında konuşturma sanatı

Surely it's a struggle to teach thoughtfulness, but I love this.

Interesting! My favorite: "If a table is not ready within a reasonable length of time, offer a free drink and/or amuse-bouche. The guests may be tired and hungry and thirsty, and they did everything right"

reek from perfume or cigarettes. People want to smell the food and beverage. 37. Do not d

With approximately 70 percent of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smartphones on the rise, it's likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices

uh oh...social media predictions for 2010 have started - a good article on Harvard Business

mobile

1. less social; 2. corporations scale up; 3. Social business gets competitive; 4. Everyone has a social media policy; 5. Mobile gets important for social media; 6. Sharing is now more than email

via @leebryant

Jason Fried hates lame meetings, tech companies that don't generate revenue, and companies that treat their employees like children. A peek inside his typical workday

37 Signals CEO/President writes about how he works

you end up dying with your customer base, because the software is too complicated for a newcomer. We keep our products simple. I'd rather have people grow out of our products, as long as more people are growing into them. We also get thousands of suggestions. The default answer is always no. We rarely have meetings. I hate them. They're a huge waste of time, and they're costly. Creative people need unstructured time to get in the zone. You can't do that in 20 minutes. Very rarely is a question important enough to stop people from doing what they're doing. Everything can wait a couple of hours, unless it is a true emergency. We want to get rid of interruption as much as we possibly can, because that's the real enemy of productivity. Everyone should read stuff on the Web that's goofy or discover something new. I

If you're worthy of entry, they'll give you an intro to someone else they deem cool.

Introductory service for geeks

Why the hell wouldn’t you want to make some money on the side while you’re building your freelance business?

A List Apart: Articles: Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients

It's hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you'd like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise.

pretty darn fascinating

@venturedig

Four Primary Business Models in the social networking space that I’ve experienced–they primarily are concerned with Facebook Applications.

As I was looking for bloggers to contact, I found some posts/articles that were extremely relevant to what I was doing. In other words, these are posts that people looking for a tool like mine would find and read.

Some useful stuff about blogger outreach

take it for what it is, a description of what I have done so far. Implement at your own risk! ;)

Startup Marketing Advice from Balsamiq Studio

Great marketing tips from Balsamiq, made much greater by the fact that his micro-startup has been awesomely successful.

There’s a classroom exercise that’s a part of the Stanford technology venture program hits its students with each year: If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible?

Selling presentation time is clutch. Lesson Learned: Think outside the box. No, actually, there is no fucking box.

Bicycle tires pump up

Six minute video of Stanford professor describing her 'make as much money as you can with $5 and 2 hours' assignment.

RT @featureBlend: Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad. http://j.mp/q0guK [from http://twitter.com/cyberdad/statuses/5427335635]

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says: * * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability. * * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel. * * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules t

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says: * * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability. * * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

For his new book, communications coach Carmine Gallo watched hours of Jobs' keynotes. Here he identifies the five elements of every presentation by the Apple CEO

Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no traffic.

Interesting

Article summarizing presentation by Facebook on some of their scaling challenges and solutions.

Ideas for how businesses can capitalize on the various tabs in Facebook. Different from normal Facebook usage. With examples.

how to grow your business via socialnetworking

I always thought that expanding my business at a steady pace was a smart move. Now I worry that it could potentially kill us

By Joel Spolsky

Interessante discussies in comments... But we do have to work closer to the limits of our abilities, we have to invest more of our profits in hiring more salespeople and software developers, and we have to focus relentlessly on winning more enterprise sales. We have to do that, because otherwise, we're going to end up being the company you've never heard of.

the answer is??

www.google.com/dashboard

20 great corporate websites made with WordPress

Awesome Corporate sites rocking Wordpress!

While Google may have its Google Checkout payment platform, it’s not really a player in the ecommerce space. Considering the billions of dollars being exchanged on thousands of retail websites every year, that’s a big market that Google isn’t monetizing. Perhaps that’s why we’re surprised that it took them this long to launch Google Commerce Search, a new search engine that online retailers can install on their websites to provide Google-style speed and efficiency for customers when they search for products.

Google Commerce Search is a powerful search solution designed specifically with online retail enterprises in mind.

New! Google Commerce Search is a powerful search solution designed specifically with online retail enterprises in mind. Improve your shopping experience with fast, intuitive Google search technology.

6 Must Read Posts about the ROI of Social Media

mit keynote-cartoon kombinieren

Reflexión sobre la figura del periodismo que, más allá de que estemos más de acuerdo o menos, creo que es interesante.

a newspaper story doesn't just have to be about text... the format also allows for a large image, for example, which may lend additional weight to the story. But hey, if that holds true for newspapers then what about the internet? An article online can include video, audio, image galleries, links to further reading, a direct response channel in the form of reader comments, and it can be read in any number of ways (online, RSS readers, mobile devices, etc).

Some food for thought as we rethink our web/print strategy

Mobile is a truly wonderful tool. It has never been easier to capture ideas, build out stories, and publish content. There are so many amazing mobile apps out there that will help journalists. Audioboo. Dictaphone apps. To-do lists. Workflow tools. Built-in cameras. Video capabilities. Notebooks. Mindmaps. Messaging. The mobile phone really is the journalist’s best friend. The iPhone is simply amazing (if your boss only knew he'd surely pay for it). Learn how to get the best out of your phone...

Stop wasting your time trying to find the right answer for your business questions. You’re not alone. We know you have business questions that need to be answered right now. That’s why we’ve put together a great team of Hosts composed of successful entrepreneurs, seasoned businesspeople, academics, advisors, and many more willing to give you a hand. Not only that, our community of users will be available to give you their best answer to any question you might have. With all these people ready to answer all your questions, it would be difficult to not find the answer to the business question that’s eating your brain. Don’t forget to give those that need help an answer, there’re plenty to go around, and more than likely you know the answer to a couple. At Startups.com you’ll find your business question answered within minutes. Useful answers, fast and free.

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fblog.scoutapp.com%2Farticles%2F2009%2F11%2F04%2Frunning-a-freemium-web-app-heres-a-big-reason-were-growing

Life at Twitter

But behind the calm, every-office exterior, lies the astonishing truth: the staff here are holding up the systems behind the world's hottest internet startup. They are responsible for a sprawling website on which 35 million people from all over the world fire out vast numbers of messages every second. This isn't just any normal office. This is Twitter.

The Best Adobe Air Apps to Increase Productivity

3. Getting Your Good Work Out There

"Social media has begun to play a key role in how companies shape their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and present themselves as good corporate citizens."

Although I noticed a link to a story about how Twitter is not good for business, this article from Mashable contends that social media is important for corporations, especially in adhering to Corporate Social Responsibility. I think it points out some good general tips that social technology can help with in creating a positive image for one's corporation. At the same time, it also show how helpful social media is in allowing corporations to connect to possible customers and making them feel good about their consumer choices.

Social media has begun to play a key role in how companies shape their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and present themselves as good corporate citizens.

Amazing chart to play around with.

Interesting dataset, but the population of all possible combinations of settings as a backdrop is a weird choice. It does make it easier to explore, but I'm not sure about it. Might be nicer to just show settings you've tried and build it up over time so it feels more like you're discovering the trends yourself? Also wish there was more granularity, but I guess you take what you can get from the labor statistics people.

Interesting graphic from the NYT. Graphs usually bore me, but this is engaging and relevant. Nice, subtle use of animation and background to add context.

A defining factor in any freelancer or agency’s success in gaining new business is their ability to market their skills effectively. In this three-part series, we will explore ways in which designers can strategically promote themselves to get new clients. Securing new business by approaching companies can be a very challenging process, full of pitfalls. Here, we will look at 10 steps to impressing potential clients and avoiding the most common mistakes.

Most established organizations put a vision statement on their website. This will give you key insight into a company’s values, history, growth and future direction. This information is invaluable because it will help you better understand how the business operates and, thus, how you can tailor your approach to it. For example, if the company has a progressive stance on sustainability and the environment, you could approach them with ideas for paperless advertising and communication.

the

Razorfish's new report on Digital Brand Experience

11/09

Razorfish research - via Paul RO

Ways to increase sales on ecommerce sites and increase sign-ups on service sites,

Read it. Do it. Awesome advice from Tog.

I'm about to give you a number of ways to increase sales on ecommerce sites and increase sign-ups on service sites, but first, raise your hand if you personally, when surfing the web, enjoy registering to use a site.

Everyone has to constantly educate themselves to keep ahead of the game and to improve their business, because of this I decided to share with you the 20 resources I use to learn, improve and get inspired. There are 1000’s of blogs that talk about blogging and internet entrepreneurship but to be honest, a lot are doing it completely wrong and quite a lot are teaching out of date information that will only slow down your chances of becoming a top blogger.

business models for journalists, courtesy of CUNY and Jeff Jarvis

CUNY: "We have developed four business models for a new news ecosystem. The question we attempt to answer: What happens to journalism in a top-25 metro market if a newspaper fades away. Can journalism be sustained? And how?"

We have developed four business models for a new news ecosystem. The question we attempt to answer: What happens to journalism in a top-25 metro market if a newspaper fades away. Can journalism be sustained? And how?

pretty cool list.

If you can’t sell music, sell something else. From soup cans to sonic Buddhas, there is life beyond the stream. Here are 10 of our favorites.

ndustry execs may fret about declining traditional sales, but some enterprising artists and labels have devised new ways to sell music that give fans something to collect, even in an age when the music itself can be infinitely duplicated for free. Or when the cloud makes the very idea of collecting and owning music seem quaint.

For reference.

influence or manipulation?

Good points, but you don't need to tell designers.

"What a logo does not have to be or do" http://j.mp/14WuMy

You're the owner of a local small business and you are trying to figure out the best steps to get on to Facebook to drive new customers. It can be a daunting task and with little extra time in the day, how can you be expected to spend time promoting your business on Facebook? I completely understa ...

Never reveal your prior salary, says Ramit Sethi. "It's just none of their business," Rather than answering, Sethi and others suggest steering the conversation into your worth (hopefully you've done your homework before the interview enough so you'll know how to discuss how valuable you are).

The most immediate revelation, of course, is that at some point next year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music.

Experiments in web journalism * Home * About Times LabsTimes Labs Blog Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see. It shows the fate of the three main pillars of music industry revenue - recorded music, live music, and PRS revenues (royalties collected on behalf of artists when their music is played in public) over the last 5 years.

Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing

As Larry Page astutely observes: "There is a pattern in companies, even in technological companies, that the people who do the work -- the engineers, the programmers, the foot soldiers if you will -- typically get rolled over by the management ... you end up kind of demoralized. You want to have a culture where the people who are doing the work, the scientists and the engineers, are empowered. And that they are managed by people who deeply understand what they are doing."

"Don't settle"

Google 10個の教訓

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罫線＆囲み枠

メルマガなどですぐに活用できる罫線や囲み枠を紹介していく。

メルマガ素材集 すぐに使える罫線＆囲み枠30選

Advanced game theory is exceptionally useful. Basic game theory is dangerous — because it assumes that you’re dealing with a bunch of rational “players”. It’s like trying to design a real car that’s going to be driven on a theoretically frictionless surface, with no air resistance and no idiots on the road.

ory is exceptionally useful. Basic game theory is dangerous — because it assumes that you’re dealing with a bunch of rational “players”. It’s like trying to design a real car that’s going to be driven on a theoretically frictionless surface, with no air resistance and no idiots on the road.

"No amount of strategic planning will ever substitute for managing your cash flow" - "There are always more things to do than there is time to do them" - "It helps not to call people “human resources”. They’re people. And, as it turns out, people like to be treated like people. Go figure" - "There’s a lot of value to being likable" - "Advanced game theory is exceptionally useful. Basic game theory is dangerous — because it assumes that you’re dealing with a bunch of rational “players”.

PLEASE READ

This article outlines how to promote and market a newly launched small-business website, in 3 months.

针对小企业的优化推广

Every startup needs to pick a major among three drivers of growth. It's simply too hard to focus on more ...

Your challenge is to find o

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Looking for examples of Corporate Social Media Policy? This template was vetted by top corporate lawyers. Save yourself a few hours’ worth of research and work!

Design webpage

5 Essential Document Templates for Freelance Designers - Freelance Web Design Belfast Northern Ireland - Lee Munroe

100 Ways To Measure Social Media - 11/17/2009

the majority of them weren’t using Twitter effectively to engage their followers, weren’t tweeting often, and didn’t display any personality in their tweets, according to the study.

It’s hard to express just how much settling those questions has galvanized Redfin to attack the monsters under our bed. Sure, we were dimly aware of those problems before, but we existed in a state of seething, unacknowledged tentativeness. Weeks of contemplating what it will take for us to win prepared Redfin to swallow the red pill, stuff the TaunTaun, hack the Kobayashi Maru. At very few moments in a company’s history does it makes its way so deliberately. Like the recovered patient who saw while sick everything she had always meant to do, we want to make the most of our new lease on life.

For me, the most important point is that whatever questions others ask about your business are worth recording, cataloguing and quantifying

" the questions VCs asked Redfin that changed how we think about our business."

E-mail writing

There is an almost overwhelming number of options on the social web for businesses to create and participate in communities. You hear a lot about Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter() communities, and even LinkedIn Groups; but businesses have another option when looking to build a community online that’s often overlooked despite having nearly 40 million users: Ning. Ning allows businesses to create their own off-site social network for their brand’s community, and participate in existing conversations with the communities they are looking to engage. Here are 6 ways businesses can put Ning to work.

So in honor of Dan Kennedy, who sometimes styles himself as the “Professor of Harsh Reality,” I thought I’d talk today about some of the not-so-kumbaya aspects of social media marketing. Harsh Realities

So in honor of Dan Kennedy, who sometimes styles himself as the Professor of Harsh Reality, I thought Id talk today about some of the not-so-kumbaya aspects of social media marketing.

Good read for those considering using social media to market or those of us in the thick of it.

So in honor of Dan Kennedy, who sometimes styles himself as the “Professor of Harsh Reality,” I thought I’d talk today about some of the not-so-kumbaya aspects of social media marketing.

Sur le ciblage comportemental chez Google.

Today we are launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view.

That's why Google has worked hard to create technology that makes the advertising on our own sites, and those of our partners, as relevant as possible. To date, we have shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment. So if you search for [digital camera] on Google, you'll get ads related to digital cameras. If you are visiting the website of one of our AdSense partners, you would see ads based on the content of the page. For example, if you're reading a sports page on a newspaper website, we might show ads for running shoes. Or we can show ads for home maintenance services alongside a YouTube video instructing you on how to perform a simple repair. There are some situations, however, where a keyword or the content of a web page simply doesn't give us enough information to serve highly relevant ads.

ここまで書かないとバリューは出ない

自分も今トレーナーだから参考になる。OJTって難しいよなー

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ググるなカス！

Good article on how Apple has got it all wrong re: the app store and more generally comments on software development versus hardware.

I don't think Apple realizes how badly the App Store approval process is broken. Or rather, I don't think they realize how much it matters that it's broken.

"I don't think Apple realizes how badly the App Store approval process is broken. Or rather, I don't think they realize how much it matters that it's broken. The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers more than anything else they've ever done. Their reputation with programmers used to be great. It used to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. The App Store has changed that. Now a lot of programmers have started to see Apple as evil…"

"Programmers don't use launch-fast-and-iterate out of laziness. They use it because it yields the best results. By obstructing that process, Apple is making them do bad work, and programmers hate that as much as Apple would."

Paul Graham explains why Apple's hostility towards iPhone developers is harming them in the long run.

And everybody else's mistake is to think that Apple is in software publishing.

I write quite often from the perspective of larger company social media and business communications. That’s because most of my clients are large companies. However, these social tools allow a small business owner a lot in the way of advantages, and I want to put together a little map of steps I might take if I were running a small business and wanted more sales.

Beautiful, professionally designed websites for you and your personal brand in a matter of minutes.

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Recurly handles all the complexities of subscription billing.

Recurly handles your subscription needs from end-to-end: recurring billing, upgrades and downgrades, cancellations and refunds, declined payments, sending receipts and past-due notices, and more. Recurly is a complete recurring billing system for your subscription needs.

Social media gets lots of attention these days. The NFL banned players from using Twitter. Bing integrated Twitter results into its search engine results pages (SERPs). When Michael Jackson died the site handled an estimated 5,000 tweets per minute and, proving Twitter's global reach, a state department official asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance due to the critical role the site played in the recent Iran elections.

Interesting...

It's easy to forget about your body's needs when you're deep into your work or the net&mdash;until your body offers a painful reminder. Save your physical shell some strain with these cheap, customizable ergonomic workspace upgrades.

Nt sure if it is true bt if yes then Yelp better hv an explanation.. http://tinyurl.com/cmach3 [from http://twitter.com/rohitharsh/statuses/1227620373]

...interviews with dozens of business owners over a span of several months, six people told this newspaper that Yelp sales representatives promised to move or remove negative reviews if their business would advertise

Several business owners likened Yelp to the Mafia, and one said she feared its retaliation. "Every time I had a sales person call me and I said, 'Sorry, it doesn't make sense for me to do this,' ... then all of a sudden reviews start disappearing." To these mom-and-pop business owners, Yelp's sales tactics are coercive, unethical, and, possibly, illegal.

♺ @themartorana Turns out, YELP is evil. Corroborated by a local Philly establishment. I feel lied to by YELP. http://bit.ly/YelpIsEvil [from http://twitter.com/inxilpro/statuses/1231965312]

Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0 Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site ... for a price.

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Here are a list of seven things you can do for every web design proposal you write in order to put yourself and your capabilities in the best possible light, and increase the likelihood you'll win the contract.

SitePoint Blogs: News, opinion, and fresh thinking for web developers and designers

Helpful industry pointers for designing and producing apparel

tion, and maybe Apple is working on other device APIs. That would solve all problems for the second category. Complex games will remain ve

10 Essential Online Tools for Your Startup - http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/11/23/essential-online-tools-for-your-startup/

Tools interessanti per lavorare

We’ve gathered up 10 of what we feel are the most essential tools for your business to use when you’re first getting started online.

Guy Kawasaki on His way of using twitter

@guykawasaki

so twittert Guy Kawasaki.

As a person in a service based industry, this email thread is something that you fantasize about from time to time, but never have the balls to actually do.

"Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For free."

Oh I have fantasized about exchanges like this.

To me, the most important element was actually testing everything as we went. By putting in a little extra work, we could quickly gauge which ad creative, landing page and advertiser was giving us the best results and react accordingly.

Video on Mashable to watch later... looks like it could be funny.

We talk a lot about how big brands are embracing social media as a mechanism to connect directly with customers. Still, it's much easier to talk about

Listening to Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon, is like going to startup school where you learn that failure is part of entrepreneurial growth. Whenever I have talked to Bezos in the past, the things that have stuck in my head have been his willingness to be wrong and his unflinching abhorrence of the status quo. At the Wired Business Conference in New York City, Bezos reiterated some of those points in a conversation with writer Steven Levy.

Innovation is hard for large companies because you need to be long-term oriented. And since the innovative projects are such a tiny part of a large company, there is tendency to be dismissive of the innovation. “You need a culture that high-fives small and innovative ideas and senior executives [that] encourage ideas,” he said. In order for innovative ideas to bear fruit, companies need to be willing to “wait for 5-7 years, and most companies don’t take that time horizon.”

Startups are often smaller with fewer resources, smaller staffs, less capital, and not enough time to get everything done. Here's how to simplify.

Startup businesses are often smaller than more established competitors, with fewer resources, smaller staffs, less capital, and not enough time to get everything done.

Non-consumer companies realize there are clear benefits to implementing a social media strategy, but what do they need to do to achieve success? The truth is, the social media strategy, processes, and principles, don’t really change much depending on your company type and size. Here are a few rules to live by when implementing your social media strategy.

10 Things You Must Do Before A New Site Or Blog Launch | Spyre Studios

Launching a new website can be an intense experience. Preparing yourself for the launch and making sure you’ve got all your ducks in a row will ensure that your launch is successful. Today, I want to discuss with you ten things you must do before a new site launch.

10 Things You Must Do Before A New Site Or Blog Launch

ISPs may not act for years on local complaints about slow Internet—but when a town rolls out its own solution, it's amazing how fast the incumbents can deploy fiber, cut prices, and run to the legislature.

"ISPs may not act for years on local complaints about slow Internet—but when a town rolls out its own solution, it's amazing how fast the incumbents can deploy fiber, cut prices, and run to the legislature."

Leet, leet, leet. Would have been awesome if they could prevail against TDS.

Minnesota town wants fast fiber broadband to the curb. Cable internet monopoly refuses. Town passes a referendum funding construction of a municipally owned network. Cable company sues town frivolously in order to delay construction of said network, and installs its own first. What a crock of monopolistic bull. This kind of crap is why we don't have fiber to the door.

Regional telco TDS Telecommunications last week issued a press release announcing a major milestone for the company: 50Mbps service over fiber optic cable to residents of Monticello, Minnesota. The Minneapolis suburb became one of the few non-FiOS communities in the country to experience full fiber-to-the-home deployment, and subscribers will all receive a free upgrade from 25Mbps service to the new 50Mbps tier

As with any project you start, gathering essential information upfront is not only beneficial to a successful deliverable but will also save you and your client plenty of headaches throughout the process and pave the way to a lasting and trusting relationship.

2010 is going to be an incredible year for marketing. Now, of course I don’t have a crystal ball (or do I...insert creepy music here) but the shift is unmistakable and can't be ignored. The days of hit and miss expensive marketing and advertisin

10 prediccions de Marketing pel 2010

2010 is going to be an incredible year for marketing.

Many of the strategies employed in competitive and recreational sports are applicable in business and our personal lives. One lesson I learned from alpine ski racing was the "40-30-30 Rule." During training, early on, I tried to go fast, and I also focused on not falling. On a ride up the ski lift, my coach told me I was missing the point. He explained that success in ski racing, or most sports for that matter, was only 40% physical training. The other 60% was mental. And of that, the first 30% was technical skill and experience. The second 30% was the willingness to take risks.

If you're not risking failure, you're not risking enough. Why pushing outside of your comfort zone is a crucial part of the creative process.

The 99 Percent

August 2009 stats for social media

Organização para designers