Eubie's notes

WSJ: ‘Tweeting’ Carefully to Avoid SEC Ire — More companies are using blogs and “tweets” to communicate with investors and customers, but risk running afoul of SEC regulations.

Gawker: Inside Fort Polio: A Former Staffer on What Went Wrong

With today’s news on Pontiac (GM shuts Pontiac, widens cuts), it’s worth spending a few minutes on Wikipedia’s List of defunct United States automobile manufacturers.

WSJ: Entrepreneurs Cut Own Pay to Stay Alive

Places to test connection speed: Digital Landing, 2Wire and McAfee.

ReadWriteWeb: The State of the Smartphone: iPhone is Way, Way Ahead

WSJ: Pontiac Headed for Junk Yard

NY Times: Subprime Loans, Corporate-Style, Will Fuel Defaults

So it went with the subprime mortgage crisis. And so it is now going with corporate loans and bonds. It appears that defaults on leveraged loans and corporate bonds will soon rise to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

NY Times: Gadgetwise: How to Manage Your Reputation Online

TechCrunch: Venture Capital Down 50%. It’s Not Just the Recession, Folks. — greentech VC also down

ReadWriteWeb: The State of the Smartphone: iPhone is Way, Way Ahead

WSJ: Pontiac Headed for Junk Yard

NY Times: Subprime Loans, Corporate-Style, Will Fuel Defaults

So it went with the subprime mortgage crisis. And so it is now going with corporate loans and bonds. It appears that defaults on leveraged loans and corporate bonds will soon rise to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

NY Times: Gadgetwise: How to Manage Your Reputation Online

TechCrunch: Venture Capital Down 50%. It’s Not Just the Recession, Folks. — greentech VC also down

ReadWriteWeb: Nobody is Making Money Online from Susan Boyle Video (Yet) — While 100 million are viewing the video, YouTube and ITV bickered over what  type of ads to run.

So how much money did ITV lose so far? About $1.87 million according to the Times Online’s Dan Sabbagh …

ReadWriteWeb: GeoCities Closure Signals End of an Era – Will Others Survive on Freemium Model? —  I think I may still have some pages there.

ReadWriteWeb: Nielsen: Online Video Continues to Gain Momentum

TechCrunch: Android Catches Up To Palm In Mobile Ad Market Share. IPhone Still Blows It Away.

AllThingsDigital: Newspapers Desperately Burnish Traffic Stats [MediaMemo]

Dave Winer: What I learned about being rich

Interesting piece in the NY Times magazine about Twitter and how connectivity is for poor people. I learned about this when I made enough money in the late 80s to realize what wealth buys — distance. Then it took a few years to learn that distance is not what I wanted, in fact I don’t think it’s human to crave distance. People are built to want to be among others, at least I was.

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.