November 2006 Archives

Christian Science Monitor: In Britain, wind turbines offer homespun electricity -- Miniature windmills are the latest 'must have' eco-accessory for green-minded urbanites.

Silicon.com: Apple: Cool enough for your granny: Silver surfers biggest Mac owners

In its latest batch of adverts, Apple painted the Mac as the young, cool face of desktop computing. But now research has found it's the silver surfers who have a yen for Cupertino's goods - while the kids are opting for cheap Windows machines.

According to a report from industry watchers MetaFacts, nearly half of Mac owners are 55 and older - that's almost double the share for average home-PC users.

For the digital youth, high-street box shifter Gateway is the brand of choice, taking the number-one slot among PC buyers aged between 18 and 25.

A spirited discussion on Slashdot: Apples are for Grannies and original release of study on Lost Remote.

NY Times: Flexible Hours, Using Your PC and Never Leaving Home -- Online volunteering, long thought of as more superficial than on-site volunteering, has entered a new, smarter phase. Sites mentioned: onlinevolunteer.org and VolunteerMatch.org.

I missed this when it came out, but thanks to Steve Yelvington here is Pew Internet & American Life Project report: Riding the Wave of "Web 2.0".

I agree the charts are the best part of the report.

I like Six Apart, run by Ben and Mena Trott. I use MoveableType here and I'm enjoy my Vox site. Here's an Economist story about Vox and here are links to other stories about Vox. Others are more visible at the front of "Web 2.0" but Six Apart and the Trotts seem to be as key in its development as the others.

NY Times: A Smarter Computer to Pick Stocks: Traders’ quest for a competitive edge has led some of them to look at the outer frontier of trading: computer programs that use artificial intelligence.

NY Times (AP story): An Early-Warning Army of Foot Soldiers -- A diverse group of organizations has started a long-term project to monitor the Appalachian Trail for environmental problems.

NY Times: Personal Health: Keeping a Winter's Worth of Temptation at Bay -- By adopting a sensible eating strategy and factoring exercise into your daily routine, you can survive winter without gaining weight.

Silicon Valley Watcher by Tom Foremski -- Updated: (Thanks to Mitch Ratcliffe!) The most important rules for today's workforce bar none

My three rules of today's workforce:
--Carry and use your own cell phone/number for business
--Carry and use your own email address even at work
--Carry and use your own health insurance
To Tom's rules, I'd add:
Incorporate and work on contract rather than as an employee.
Carry and use your own hardware, building tech expenses into your compensation.

Washington Post: Newspaper Firms Join With Yahoo in Advertising Partnership -- Years of rivalry between newspapers and the Internet portals that are siphoning their local advertising dollars gave way to a new partnership yesterday, as seven newspaper companies announced a wide-ranging deal with Yahoo. Also NY Times: 176 Newspapers to Form a Partnership with Yahoo and NY Times: Advertising: Google Mapping an Offline Course -- Major Internet sites are showing a growing interest in the advertising business, and traditional ad firms are starting to worry.

NY Times: In Web World, Rich Now Envy the Superrich -- Envy may be a sin in some books, but it is a powerful driving force in Silicon Valley, especially with talk of a second dot-com boom.

NY Times: For Wallflowers, a Time to Dance -- Clear Channel is the latest media company to be swept up by private equity, in a trend that could raise new regulatory concerns.

Wired News: Kevin Mitnick's Security Advice -- The hacker-turned-security consultant shares his best tips for securing your desktop against internet villains.

NY Times: Step 1 in Starting a Small Business: Hire a Lawyer -- When starting a business, even the most sophisticated of businesspeople find that they need a lawyer to guide them through the most basic of decisions.

NY Times: Stolen Lives: Identity Thief Is Often Found in Family Photo -- Though most victims never learn who stole their identities, half of those who do say the thief was a family member, a friend or neighbor.

Washington Post: Caught in the Web -- A few months ago, it wasn't unusual for 47-year-old Carla Toebe to spend 15 hours per day online. She'd wake up early, turn on her laptop and chat on Internet dating sites and instant-messaging programs -- leaving her bed for only brief intervals. Her household bills piled up, along with the dishes and dirty laundry, but it took near-constant complaints from her four daughters before she realized she had a problem....

For Toebe, the "addiction" ended when she found others, including a boyfriend.

NY Times: Health Disparities Persist for Men, and Doctors Ask Why -- From diabetes to flu to AIDS, almost every disease kills men sooner than women, causing some to ask: Is men’s health getting short shrift?

NY Times: As Older Students Return to Classrooms an Industry Develops -- Continuing education — noncredit classes taken after formal education — is booming among the older set and is now a $6 billion business.

Also: Free educations classes -- Yale Video Lecture www.yale.edu

NY Times: Brands Produce Their Own Shows -- More marketers are creating their own TV shows in the hopes of endearing viewers to the brands behind them.

MediaWeek: Time Mag: Buy by Audience or by Slashed Rate Base -- Time magazine announced late today that it will implement sweeping changes to the way it sells advertising. Rather than the standard sale of ad pages by circulation, the newsweekly will offer media buyers either a dramatically reduced rate base of 3.25 million (a drop of 750,000) or an audience-based model (of 19.5 million readers per issue) that emulates the television selling process. The magazine will be the first publisher ever to make use of MRI’s new Issue Accumulation Study as a foundation for this new sales approach.

Wired News: Gannett to Crowdsource News -- The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.. Also Editor and Publisher: Gannett to Revamp All Newsrooms for New Age and Washington Post: Gannett To Change Its Papers' Approach

Wired News: Six Apart Leads With Vox -- Of all the contenders promising to up the ante on MySpace, few sites have emerged as serious threats. But a new offering from Mena Trott's Six Apart might have what it takes to become the biggest player in social networks.. Good piece about Vox, which moved out of beta last month. I'm a fan of Six Apart and I'm enjoying Vox.

NY Times: Mars Rover Visits Crater, Then Poses for a Picture -- Scientists said that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had photographed the golf-cart-size rover sitting on the side of Victoria Crater on Mars.

Washington Post: Google to Try Selling Advertisements for Newspapers -- Google Inc. is expanding its footprint as an advertising broker with a test program that will allow businesses to click to Google and buy ad space in The Washington Post, the New York Times and other papers, sources confirmed last night. NY Times: Newspapers to Test Plan to Sell Ads on Google -- The three-month test may open up new revenue to hurting papers, but would risk making Google even stronger.

From Rexblog:

Here’s what I think: As I wrote over and over when Google was trying out the same model for magazines (it hasn’t worked so far, but one day, I believe Google will figure that market out also), this business model is an old and easy-to-understand role in the publishing industry: it is called “independent sales rep.” If Google finds a way to aggregate advertising and sell it for newspapers (probably, the classified variety) and keep a 20% commission on the transaction, then they can rearrange the market share of advertising sales brokering — and be a threat to some independent and in-house advertising sales folks. But it should only be a net positive for newspapers, who spend that much already in sales-related costs.

Newspapers sure as heck were never going to figure it out on their own.

Scott Karp: Handing the reigns over to Google’s efficient direct response advertising machine will only hasten the realization that the Web is much more efficient than print at driving action and response.

Another from WSJ: Papers Aim to Widen Ad Base With Google -- When 50 daily newspapers begin selling their ads through Google's site this week, they'll be confronting the Achilles' heel of their industry: It is too hard for small advertisers to buy ads.

NY Times: What’s Online: Reading Between the Lines -- There’s no question the newspaper industry is “under siege,” as some say. But how bad are things, really?
and
(N)ewspapers still haven’t figured out how to make a healthy profit from Internet readership. Cluttered, hard-to-navigate newspaper sites proliferate. And many sites force readers to register, which Internet types say is counterproductive, when those readers can so easily go elsewhere for their news. In terms of the content itself, Louis Hau of Forbes.com thinks he has the answer: Look to New York City’s dueling tabloids, The Post and The Daily News. Even as most other papers had circulation declines, both tabloids picked up readers. The gains, Mr. Hau said, can be attributed to the fact that both papers “emphasize local coverage,” “offer stories you can’t get anywhere else,” “keep it short,” and present the news with “attitude” and “a point of view.”

Journalism.org: A Closer Look at Plunging Circulation -- (F)ully paid circulation is typically falling even faster than the overall totals reported this week. Apparently, newspaper companies trying to bolster the numbers either pushed deeply discounted introductory offers at readers or extended discounts they were already offering many subscribers rather than trying to convert them to fully paid.

Journalism.org: Not Much Good News in the New Circulation Numbers -- Confirming speculation that 2006 has been a difficult year, the six-month statistics from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC)—from March 30 to Sept. 30—reveal the steepest average decline in at least 15 years.