Eubie's notes

Calculated Risk: Fed: Household Net Worth Cliff Dives in Q4

ReadWriteWeb: Hitwise: Twitter Drives Traffic to Blogs and Social Networks, But Not to Retail Sites

VanityFair: Wall Street on the Tundra by Michael Lewis

Scripting.com: Why it’s time to break out of Twitter

TechCrunch: How Much Is A Suggested Slot On Twitter Worth? Jason Calacanis Offers $250,000.

Yelvington.com: Why didn’t newspapers try charging for online content? Well, they did …. —  All told, in 1995, Editor and Publisher reported there were 45 newspapers on paid platforms.

Michael Hyatt: Ghost Blogging and Twittering

Calculated Risk: What is a depression? — With 7 states reporting unemployment rates above 10% today the word depression is going to appear more often. But if the definition of a depression is Real GDP decline of 10 percent, we’re still far from that mark. The chart to the left is from Calculated Risk.

TechCrunch: Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere?

We are learning to publish and react to content in “Twitter time” and I’d argue that many of us are spending less time blogging, commenting directly on blogs, or writing blogs in response to blog sources because of our active participation in micro communities.

TechCrunch: The 50 Media Sites Bloggers Link To The Most

ReadWriteWeb: Newspaper Company Wants to Gain Back Readers By Printing Customized Papers — Reminds me of the suggestion that newspapers let readers print out coupons at their home on old thermal paper printers.

Wired: Times Editor Envisions Future of News — Nick Bilton, an editor in the New York Times research and development lab, doesn’t think much of newspaper. In fact, he doesn’t even get the Sunday paper delivered to his house.

WSJ: Foreclosed Houses Haunt Home Builders

NY Times: The Claim: Daylight Saving Time Can Affect Your Health — So this is why I’ve been drowsy all week.

WSJ: In Ads, 1 Out of 5 Stats Is Bogus also Numbers Guy blog: Advertisers’ Numbers-Based Slugfest

WSJ: Do Recession-Proof Small Businesses Exist Anymore?

CNBC: US Recession Could Last Up to 36 Months: Roubini — Among his solutions: fix the housing market by breaking “every mortgage contract.” Bernanke said 2010. No wonder Roubini is called Dr. Doom. For more on Roubini, see Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor.

All Things Digital:Social Networking More Popular Than Email, More Profitable Than…Er…Um

All Things Digital: Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend to the Troops: Keep Your Heads Up, and Your Expenses Down

Los Angeles Times: Average Cellphone Customer Pays More Than $3 Per Minute

Washington Post: More FHA-Backed Mortgages Go Bad Without a Single Payment — Many borrowers are defaulting as quickly as they take out the loans. In the past year alone, the number of borrowers who failed to make more than a single payment before defaulting on FHA-backed mortgages has nearly tripled, far outpacing the agency’s overall growth in new loans, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal data.

WSJ: How to Twitter

Puget Sound Business Journal: Foreclosure path started with mortgage after 2 bankruptcies — Puget Sound Business Journal follows some of the 172 families that were served foreclosure notices in Kings County during one week in December. Good reading.
TechCrunch: Robert Scoble To Leave FastCompany

ProPublica: GMAC, MetLife Among Banks Undergoing Stress Tests — Based on the criteria announced by the Treasury Department and publicly available data, ProPublica compiled a list of those 19 banks undergoing stress tests.

Banks on ProPublica’s list:

WSJ:Spitzer Is Back in D.C. — in Real Estate

WSJ: Those Who Are Still Working Spend Less, Deepening Gloom

WSJ: He Created T-Ball to Give Small Fry a Chance to Learn the Game

WSJ: ‘Rebalancing’ Your Portfolio Can Be a Tough Ride

WSJ: Poet of the Ordinary —  recalling the work of Horton Foote.

Dave Winer: Poor man’s email? — Includes Google’s interest in Twitter, how Pepsi established itself against Coke and how already established companies react to a successful upstart.

AdAge: 4A’s Media Conference Kicks Off Amid Tough Economy — now the ad agencies have joined the newspapers editors in canceling the annual conference. Also from WSJ: Industry Races to Rev Up Revenue — The recession is lumbering down Madison Avenue, leaving reduced fees and layoffs in its wake. Now, some agencies are finding ways to wring more profit out of the pain.

WSJ: CNNMoney Bulks Up in Video — CNNMoney.com is rolling out a bigger slate of business-video programs, as news outlets rush to satisfy marketers’ appetite for Internet video.

WSJ: Mortgage Bailout to Aid 1 in 9 U.S. Homeowners

Oligooply Watch: The coming Kindle monopoly? — Now comes the Kindle 2, and some have real fear that Amazon may soon both transform and utterly dominate. The Kindle 2, while not yet perfect, is a big step over its predecessor and is likely to grow exponentially.

Calculated Risk: Bank of America paid $1.2 billion to Merrill associates…

ReadWriteWeb: Google Docs “Power User” Appointed First US Gov CIO — Vivek Kundra became “web 2.0 famous” last Fall when as D.C. CTO he switched 38,000 District of Colombia government employees off of Microsoft Office and onto Google apps instead.

BoingBoing: Proposal to allow publishers to charge for access to tax-funded research — Larry Lessig has keen analysis and a call to action on Rep John Conyers’ plan to allow publishers to charge taxpayers for access to taxpayer-funded research.

Bloomberg: Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another $1 Trillion Bailout — Public pension funds across the U.S. are hiding the size of a crisis that’s been looming for years.

The Oil Drum: Is It Time For A Four Day Working Week? —  While the usual reason for adopting a shorter work week is economic, there is also an argument that working less hours reduces consumption and waste and can thus be justified on environmental and health grounds.

TechCrunch: Evan Williams Predicts That “Normal People” Will Use Twitter In Five Years

Variety: Twitter taking over D.C. — The social networking service Twitter has been around for a while, but it seems to have taken Washington’s political and media world by storm since the inauguration.

Dave Winer: Death of Journalism, part 3

The sources got blogs.

Or they’re using Twitter…

NY Times: Generation B: Boomers in a Post-Boom Economy — College grads are no longer the majority at job fairs as baby boomers are forced to start from scratch.

USA Today: Report: BofA CEO calls taking $20B from U.S. a ‘mistake’ —  Ken Lewis also said he would stay on as CEO until the bank pays back all of its $45 billion in government funding — which could take two or three years.

All Things Digital: Can Web Sites Make More Money Selling Fewer Ads?

Eventually, if online publishers are going to really increase the value of their advertising, they’re going to have to find ways to make their ads fundamentally more compelling. But in the meantime, expect to see them keep nibbling around the problem with gambits like this. In times like these, every bite helps.

NY Times: Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt

“A lot of news organizations are saying, ‘We’re not willing to accept the tiny fraction of a penny that we get from the page views that these links are sending in,’ ” said Joshua Benton, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. “They think they need to defend their turf more aggressively.”

NY Times: Bits: Google Explains ‘Atlantis’ Mystery

Footnoted.org: Bank of America’s gift to former MBNA CEO…

WSJ: Industrials Drop 300 to Below 6800, Dow’s Lowest Close Since April 1997

WSJ: Would a GM Bankruptcy Crash Its Suppliers?

TechCrunch: Why Social Networks Are Good for the Kids

Facebook makes me a more considerate friend because I now remember people’s birthdays. Over Geni, I stay in touch with my niece who I used to see once a year, but is now helping me map out our family tree. Via Twitter, my parents and in-laws know everything happening in my life so that when I call home, we have substantive conversations, not the awkward, “So…..whatcha been up to?” variety.

ReadWriteWeb: Boons for Clean Energy Tucked Throughout Obama Budget Plan

ReadWriteWeb: Honda Hits the Gas on Cellulosic Ethanol R&D

Washington Post: Paul Harvey dies. He was 90. In the late 1960s, he and Walter Cronkite were two of the most respected news broadcasters in the nation. I did not know he had opposed the U.S.’s involvement in the Viet Nam War and its escalation into Cambodia.

TechCrunch: Digg Is Working On a Toolbar To Go After StumbleUpon, TinyURL, and All The Rest — It is amazing that Twitter has single-handedly created this need for shortened URLs and that a relatively large player like Digg now wants a piece of that market.

Reuters: Berkshire net sinks; Buffett says economy in shambles — that not very cheerful. Also Buffett’s paper losses pile up

EU Observer: EU overflowing with unsold car

Faced with a shortage of storage space, Japanese car manufacturer Toyota is currently hiring a ship in the Swedish port of Malmo to store thousands of unsold cars the depressed EU market does not seem to want.

Wired:Newsday To Charge For Website, Online Cable Service

AP: Newspaper convention canceled amid industry woes — American Society of Newspaper Editors