Eubie's notes

Following up on WSJ: America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire, ReadWriteWeb writes:Bad Stats: Are There Really Almost As Many Professional Bloggers As Lawyers? — Mark Penn wrote the article for WSJ and ReadWriteWeb takes issue with the high income estimates of pro bloggers.

Actually, once you read the Technorati post, you can see that Penn ignores the fact that this number is based on the average income of bloggers who had 100,000 or more unique visitors, and that the median annual income for pro bloggers was only about $22,000 (in comparison, the median income for U.S. households is about $50,000).

WSJ: Why Planes in the Desert May Boost Fares

WSJ: Leaner Laptops, Lower Prices

WSJ: Where Fan Mail Gets Answered

WSJ: Mark Twain’s New Book: A collection of unpublished works reveals musings on dentists and the devil

ReadWriteWeb: Jimmy Wales: Social Web Marketing – Good for Some, Not for All

“There is a lot of advice about how brands should be interacting [online] But, unless your brand is information dense, this highly interactive marketing is both expensive and useless.”

ReadWriteWeb: Sunlight Foundation Funds Six “Apps for America”

WSJ: New Military Command to Focus on Cybersecurity. Given the news earlier in the day WSJ: Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project. and from earlier this month — WSJ: Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated By Spies — the position should have been filled earlier. The Fighter-Jet story was also the most-read story of the day on WSJ.

WSJ: Student Loans: Default Rates Are Soaring

WSJ: Sultans of Sock: Stirrups Hang On in Minor Leagues: Baseball Players Wear Them Under Orders; Fashionable Pelicans

TechCrunch: Google Similar Images First Look

How much news can Twitter generate?
From NY Times
April 19: Tweeting Becomes a Summer Job Opportunity — Pizza Hut creating intern position called Summer Twinterns
April 19: The Parody Tweets That Went on Too Long — Tweets in a parody of Twitter users by Garry Trudeau ran afoul of the service’s 140-character limit.
April 17:With Oprah Onboard, Twitter Grows — Now everyone knows about Twitter
April 16:The Medium: Let Them Eat Tweets — it’s embarrassing. You subscribe to the yawps of a bunch of people; they subscribe to your yawps; and you produce and consume yawps for the rest of your days.
April 13: Putting Twitter’s World to Use — includes some serious uses of Twitter, such as short medical messages.

WSJ: America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire — 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, firefighters or even bartenders.

Mashable: Top 10 Social Networks for Entrepreneurs — Dan Schawbel lists his top 10 social networks for entrepreneurs.

Each helps entrepreneurs succeed by providing them with the guidance, tools and resources they need to setup their company and gain exposure.

1. Entrepreneur Connect
2. PartnerUp
3. StartupNation
4. LinkedIn
5. Biznik
6. Perfect Business
7. Go BIG Network
8. Cofoundr
9. The Funded
10. Young Entrepreneur

WSJ: Spain’s Bullet Train Changes Nation — and Fast

WSJ: Why a Big Meal Makes You Hungry —  In his book “The Skinny,” Louis J. Aronne makes the best case yet why what you eat and when you eat it can make a big difference in appetite.

WSJ: Older Borrowers, Out in the Cold

Wired: As Smartphone War Heats Up, Google Phones Still MIA

Earth2Tech: GM, Segway Team Up On Tiny Electric Vehicle

ReadWriteWeb: Twitter Vulnerability: Mutating Fast and More on the Way

TechCrunch: Does Google Really Control The News?

Yes, Google makes money from other ads shown besides any searches where TechCrunch posts shows up as results. But the money Google makes from those ads does not detract from our revenues. Quite the opposite. Those searches send a considerable amount of traffic to our site, where we have our own ads. The more people who see those ads, the more we can charge for them. It’s all good.

Michael Hyatt: When Less is More — Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson publishers, says following the practice of “less is more” is a good way for companies to beat the recession.

The recession seems to be accelerating a drive toward simplicity. Many are realizing that complexity is inefficient and expensive.

We are currently focused on eliminating complexity in four areas:

1. The number of meetings.
2. The size of our teams.
3. The value of our processes.
4. The use of acronyms.

Question: What else needs to be challenged in your organization to make it less complex and more efficient?

Yelvington: Don’t underestimate the importance of small talk — Small talk is a mechanism for opening channels of communication. It’s a tool for establishing social/conversational norms and overcoming our inbred distrust of anyone outside the tribe.

WSJ: For Boston Globe, an Ultimatum — The New York Times Co. said it is prepared to close the Boston Globe within a month if the unions representing the paper’s employees do not agree to significant concessions.

WSJ: Credit Woes Hit Entrepreneurs — Small-business owners are facing a credit-card crunch, hurting the personal finances of some.

WSJ: ‘Insider’ Entrepreneurs — Become an intrapreneur by developing a new process, product or service within the context of your larger organization.

Wired: Are Google, Yahoo Copyright Thieves? — Media magnate Rupert Murdoch says Google’s and Yahoo’s aggregation services are stealing the news media’s content. While the search engine’s news sections are commonplace, whether they violate U.S. copyright law is unclear.

Boing Boing: Why URL shorteners suck — One reason I don’t like them is that they remove the “trust” factor of a URL. I’m not sure where I’m going on shortened URLs, but I do know with a wsj.com, nytimes.com or bizjournals.com

TechCrunch: Twitter Wouldn’t Sell For $1 Billion, Says Source — Google/Twitter deal

WSJ: AMC Shakes Up Marketing

ReadWriteWeb: Facebook is Growing Up Fast: Number of Users Over 35 Doubled in Last 60 Days

New York Times: Sun-Times Files for Bankruptcy

New York Times:  Ad Sales Up On Internet, But ’08 Pace Was Slower — Internet advertising in the U.S. rose in 2008, according to a report, but the growth is starting to flatten.

NY Times: Planning a Retirement Without Dividends — Dividend-paying stocks or funds have long been a favored investment strategy for retirees, but other approaches may be less risky.

Wired: D.C. Restaurants Become Credit Card Cloning Hotspots — Patrons of high-end restaurants near the White House are hit with $750,000 in fraudulent charges in a year-long credit card skimming caper that will surely lead to legislation.

Wired: March 31, 1999: The Matrix Hooks Us

Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism: Online Journalists Optimistic About Revenue and Technology, Concerned About Changing Values

These online news people also believe that the Internet is changing the fundamental values of journalism—and more often than not for the worse.

AllThingsDigital: Mark Cuban’s Twitter Bill: $510 a Word — Loved his response on Twitter — “can’t say no one makes money from twitter now. the nba does”

AllThingsDigital: Is a Shorter Web Address Worth Big Money? bit.ly Raises $2M

Perk Watch on NY Times: As Banks Flounder, the Perks Play On — BofA’s Hugh McColl and Wachovia’s (formerly First Union) Ed Crutchfield still doing well with their retirement agreements, many years after the retirement.

TechCrunch: The Wounded U.S. Newspaper Industry Lost $7.5 Billion in Advertising Revenues Last Year
And here are figures for annual newspaper advertising revenues for the past five years.  The newspaper industry is still huge, but the print portion is just getting decimated. Meanwhile online revenues still account for less than 10 percent of the total (8.3 percent, to be exact), and even those are facing challenges.

NY Times: When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking — Wow! some people use ghost writers for their tweets

Calculated Risk: Default Rate Rises for Student Loans

NY Times: Advertising: 8 Hours a Day Spent on Screens, Study Finds

TechCrunch: California May Ban Black Cars — to save energy.

Eat All About It: P-I Websites — websites, blogs, and other online work from other staff members from the former Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper.