Author (#1)December 2006 Archives

USA Today: Wanted: Nobody

Fed up with rising labor costs, a new generation of entrepreneurs is launching millions of tiny companies differing from business in the past: They don't want employees.
The trend, building since the late 1990s, hit a milestone this year when the number of these microbusinesses reached 20 million — one for every six private-sector workers, a new analysis of government data shows.

Wired News: Loves Linux, Runs Windows -- Europe is struggling to kick the Windows habit. Eurocrats make a lot of noise about moving to Linux, but the actual migrations are few and far between.

MercuryNews.com: Web news opposites: Newstrust.Net, Digg.Com: Two Visions Of What Online Readers Want

Two years ago, the inspiration for creating a Web site for news junkies hit two men with vastly different ambitions. One hoped to make boat-loads of money. The other dreamed of enriching American democracy by identifying trusted news sources hidden in the deluge of information available online.
Fabrice Florin, a successful technologist and a veteran of Apple Computer, launched the beta version of NewsTrust.net last month after turning 50 and deciding it was time to give something back to society.
Meanwhile, Kevin Rose, 27-year-old host of an obscure cable TV tech show, lost no time in launching Digg.com in October 2004. Rose's site lets people give a thumb's-up or a thumb's-down to stories other users had found on the Web and submitted to Digg.

USA Today: Scared about saving enough for retirement? Chill, author says

Fear not, financial guru Jonathan Pond brings glad tidings of great joy just in time for holiday shopping season.

The man best-known for dispensing money advice on PBS stations nationwide has a new book, You Can Do It! The Boomer's Guide to a Great Retirement. His book attempts to reassure boomers spooked by the specter of living out their retirement years in abject poverty unless they meet their much-ballyhooed "number" — the magical sum of cash, usually $1 million or up, they'll ostensibly need before calling it quits in the workplace.

Stop the hand-wringing, says Pond. The "number" is largely a creation of members of the financial services industry, who have a vested interest in scaring you into sending them more money.

NY Times: 04 Income in U.S. Was Below 2000 Level -- The income Americans reported to the tax collector in 2004 totaled $7.044 trillion, down from more than $7.143 trillion in 2000.

Since 2004, the Census Bureau has found, the income of the typical American household has grown along with the rise in average incomes but at a slow pace that, until recent months, had barely kept ahead of inflation.

Christian Science Monitor: Facebook: A campus fad becomes a campus fact -- The social-networking website isn't growing like it once did, but only because almost every US student is already on it.

USA Today -- Vets get help starting their own businesses: More than 200 companies nationally are providing benefits, discounted fees or special financing to help honorably discharged U.S. military veterans purchase franchises and receive training to operate their own businesses.

NY Times: The Media Equation: Not Boasting, Even Though He Could -- Donald E. Graham’s financial engineering has allowed The Washington Post Company to remain invested in journalism in a way that few other media companies can afford.

NY Times: Small Business: In Life’s Second Act, Some Take on a New Role: Entrepreneur -- More retired people are rejecting unfettered leisure in favor of starting up small businesses.

A majority of 800 workers surveyed last year for the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University indicated in their responses that traditional retirement was obsolete. Two-thirds expect to work after 55, and about 15 percent wanted to start their own business after they retired, the survey found.

NY Times: At Lunch With Sid Kirchheimer: Calling All Cheats: Meet Your Enemy -- From a working family, with no tolerance for a swindler.

Inside Higher Ed: A Primer on Electronic Communication -- A bit wordy, but several good suggestions including:

1. Write a clear and descriptive subject line.
2. Address the person politely.
3. State your reason for contact.
4. Read your letter (before sending).
5. Get in touch again in a week if you receive no response.

Also, NY Times: ‘Yours Truly,’ the E-Variations -- There's lots more to ending an email than Sincerely,.

It's a bus-only lane, but some drivers just have to see if they can get through the lane in time.

Online Journalism Review: Easy Web publishing utilities for journalists -- New York Times online producer Jonathan Morgan shares a utility bag full of nifty tools for budding journalists to add pop to any Web content. Article covers blogging, multimedia, generating RSS feeds, forum and HTML and CSS.

NY Times: Lure of Great Wealth Affects Career Choices looks at how Wall Street is so lucrative that doctors, lawyers and others are leaving their primary professions to receive the huge rewards there.

A decade into the practice of medicine, still striving to become “a well regarded physician-scientist,” Robert H. Glassman concluded that he was not making enough money. So he answered an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine from a business consulting firm hiring doctors.

And today, after moving on to Wall Street as an adviser on medical investments, he is a multimillionaire.

Washington Post -- U.S. Army Battling To Save Equipment: Field upon field of more than 1,000 battered M1 tanks, howitzers and other armored vehicles sit amid weeds here at the 15,000-acre Anniston Army Depot -- the idle, hulking formations symbolic of an Army that is wearing out faster than it is being rebuilt.

USA Today: 'Little Book' delves into value investing -- There is something heartening about a serious investing book that is sharply written, gets you fired up about buying stocks .... Book is The Little Book of Value Investing by Christopher Browne, managing director of Tweedy Browne Co. Browne begins by sharing the history of Tweedy Browne, founded by his father, Howard Browne, in 1945. Two of the brokerage's early clients: Benjamin Graham, who essentially created the discipline of value investing, and his young associate named Warren Buffett.

Seattle PI: Employers limiting the comforts of drone -- Far fewer American office workers personalize their work spaces today than did so a decade ago.

Washington Post: A Newspaper Chain Sees Its Future, And It's Online and Hyper-Local -- Gannett is testing mobile journalists -- reporters with laptops, digital audio recorders and cameras -- who spend their days traveling around their cities filing stories for the web, and sometimes the print editions, too. The journalist's goal is to generate fresh content throughout the day for the web and push the publication's focus to more local coverage. In Fort Myers, Fla., Gannett expects to have 30 mobile journalists on staff by the end of 2007 -- all working without offices. The Fort Myers
News-Press has also turned to citizen experts, such as retired city officials, to help with investigations. While the paper's print circulation has fallen, traffic to its web site has more than doubled in the past year.

This is a follow-up to Gannett's news experiement.

NY Times: Advertising: Shorthand for a Holiday: Ralphie, the BB Gun and the Flagpole -- In the last decade, the movie “A Christmas Story” has become a cult classic that has made it a holiday gleam in the eyes of advertisers.

Wall Street Journal: How Wal-Mart Influences Rivals and Inflation -- Wal-Mart plans to cut prices aggressively through the end of the year -- a strategy that could force other discounters to respond. That could have a noticeable effect on the U.S. economy as it weathers the housing slump.