Eubie's notes

TechCrunch: Twitter To Start Charging Companies For Having An Account? — No big surprises there, as this is often cited as one of the most obvious moves Twitter could make to start generating revenue, although many are expecting more from the startup who has become notorious for its lack of an apparent business model even after nearly 3 years of existence.

NY Times: Offering Free Investment Advice by Anonymous Volunteers — Following the model of Wikipedia, a new Web site is building a database of user-generated investment information on popular stocks.

Paid Content: Consumer Mags Struggle Online And Post Worsening Newstand Sales

Wired: Steven Levy on the Burden of Twitter — The latest source of my dilemma is Twitter, which lets you spit out real-time reports about what you’re thinking and doing. It’s fun to track the digital ejaculations of selected Twitterati. But a couple thousand people signed up unsolicited to follow my tweets. And I feel guilty when not serving this hungry crowd—remorseful when I am.

Portfolio: Why Micropayments Won’t Work for the NYT — This is in response to Stephen Brill’s “secret” memo Brill’s secret plan to save the New York Times and journalism itself published on Poynter last November, which advocates micropayments and other ideas to counter the ad-supported model that aren’t generating enough revenue to cover the costs and especially online revenue that isn’t covering the loss of print revenue.

NY Times: You Try to Live on 500K in This Town

To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

Related from NY Times: Bailout Needs Some Strings Attached to Limit Pay

WSJ: Hong Kong Feng Shui Masters Gain New Cachet With Bank Clients

NY Times: A Site Chronicles Ways to Adapt in the Downturn — Two editors who were laid off from Condé Nast Portfolio have hitched their wagon to the downturn by starting up a Web site, Recessionwire.com.

ReadWriteWeb: What Are You Looking At? Google Details Results of Eye Tracking Study

NY Times: Drilling Down: Not All Ad Clicks Are Created Equal

Econbrowser: Will a Home Purchase Tax Credit Help Boost House Prices? — from Kash Mansori, senior economist for Jefferson Wells International: If my hunch is correct, then all the house purchase tax credit will do is to modestly increase the number of houses sold each month… with no noticeable impact on house prices.

Washington Post: Plug Pulled on Md. Legislature’s Facebook, MySpace for Fear of Viruses

Calculated Risk: Fed’s Yellen: Economic Outlook and Community Banks

NY Times: Wall Street’s New Pariah Status

WSJ: Loopholes Sap Potency of Pay Limits — Some compensation professionals already are pointing out potential holes in the rules, including tactics such as changing executives’ titles or rearranging pay packages. Just as past attempts by the government to restrict executive pay largely backfired, these people warn, the new curbs also may have unintended consequences. Any Econ 101 student could have predicted this.

Washington Post: Treasury Overpaid for Bank Assets in Bailout, Oversight Panel Says

USA Today: Worried about inflation in the future? Consider TIPS

BoingBoing: Mystery maple syrup stink of New York revealed —  The mysterious, vexingly delicious smell of maple syrup that has been terrorizing New Yorkers for years, wafting about on its mysterious errands, has been run to ground. It is fenugreek, emitted from a New Jersey perfume plant.

WSJ: In Merrill Deal, U.S. Played Hardball — Bank of America’s Ken Lewis: This Merrill Lynch deal stinks, can we get out of it? Feds: No. And if you bring this up again, we’ll fire you.

WSJ:More Web Ads Improve Their Aim — As marketers scale back their ad budgets, some new technologies that make it easier for marketers to track the impact of their online advertising are gaining ground.

WSJ: Young Australian Puts a New Spin on Bowling: He Throws Two-Handed — YouTube clip

WSJ: Mr. Clean Takes Car-Wash Gig — car wash franchises from P&G.

WSJ: Internet Killed the Video Star — The recession may be accelerating a structural shift towards free or low-cost Web video — either TV or movies — and away from traditional delivery methods, such as cable TV or DVDs.

TechCrunch: Current TV Cancels $100 Million IPO

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

WSJ: Obama Links Bailout to Caps on Pay

NY Times: Vital Signs: Behavior: $1? No Thanks. 100 Cents? You Bet. — Researchers have found that people are often lured into making decisions by numbers that seem bigger than they really are.

NY Times: Daschle Ends Bid for Post; Obama Concedes Mistake

NY Times: Dark Days for Green Energy — After years of blistering growth, installation of wind and solar power is plummeting due to the credit crisis and the broader economic downturn.

NY Times: The Media Equation: When Even Condé Nast Is in Retreat — The recent closing of Domino magazine shows that even Condé Nast’s legendary patience to turn a profit is now meeting the pull of economic gravity.

NY Times: Why the Sting of Layoffs Can Be Sharper for Men

Michael Hyatt: The Gift of Validation — Validation. Everyone needs it. Hardly anyone gets it. Yet it is the very thing that most people crave. Reminds me of Stephen Covey’s point about choosing to do things that are important.

The Daily Beast: How Newspapers Once Survived Near Death: Fifty years ago, when newspapers were dying, Barney Kilgore, the inventor of modern journalism, provided words for them to live by. Now, his advice is more relevant than ever.

Today’s newspaper should be about tomorrow’s events, not yesterday’s. This was probably Kilgore’s greatest insight, and it was one he first stated as a columnist in the Journal at the age of 23

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Technologizer: The Loneliness of the Early Adopter —  Being an early adopter means that sometimes I’ve been left in the lurch when a product or service I adopted early failed or was pulled inexplicably from the market. Were you also a user of Pownce, Yahoo Photos, or Google Notebook? Everything has a natural lifecycle, of course, and I have to expect that some of the products I (perhaps too eagerly) embraced will not survive.

All Things Digital: Time Inc.’s Ann Moore Makes the Case for Magazines–And Is Glad She’s Not in Newspapers

Adweek: Superbowl Ads — Site also includes the famous 1984 Macintosh ad. See also Wired: The 4 Worst Super Bowl Ads by Quarter.

ReadWriteWeb: Who’s Online and What Are They Doing There? — According to Pew’s research, Generation X is most likely to shop, bank, and look for health information online, but boomers are just as likely as Gen Y to make travel reservations online. Even the older Silent Generation is competitive when it comes to email, although that could point to the fact that email is an activity that is trending older.

BoingBoing: US Airways bumps Flight 1549 survivors up to super-elite status for a year

BoingBoing:Life at Wal-Mart

Calculated Risk:GDP Declines 3.8% in Q4

WSJ: Option ARMs See Rising Defaults

WSJ: GOP’s Atwitter About the Net

NY Times: Rising Acidity Threatens Oceans

NY Times: $200 Laptops Break a Business Model

Lifehacker: Coffee Better Than Napping for the Sleepy Driver —  an old entry that resurfaced

Calculated Risk: Philly Fed: Activity Declined in Every State in December — Here is a new record that will never be broken! The Philly Fed index shows – for the first time ever – declining activity in all states in December.

WSJ: Where Financial Gurus Put Money — Financial experts are facing the same retirement-planning headaches as ordinary investors

WSJ: Retiree Hell Isn’t as Bad as You Think It Is

WSJ.com: The Numbers Guy: Why Quarterbacks Often Become Super Bowl MVPs

Wired: Fannie Mae Defuses Logic Bomb, Averts Weeklong Shutdown

Rich Karlgard (Forbes.com): Can Small Business Lead The Recovery? — Does anyone in Washington have Obama’s ear on the matter of small-business health? Small businesses don’t need bailouts. They need flowing credit and reasonably low tax and regulatory barriers. That is all. Innovation and pluck will do the rest.

TechCrunch: The Canary At The New York Times Grows Larger As Internet Advertising Keeps Dropping — One factor that might be contributing to the decline in online advertising for the New York Times is a 17 percent drop in U.S. visitors to its flagship site, NYTimes.com.

NY Times: Times Co. Hires Goldman to Sell Red Sox Stake — Newspaper and baseball teams are parting company. Also: St. Louis Business Journal: Post-Dispatch owner Lee sells stake in Cardinals and Sporting News: Some advice for the prospective Cubs ownership group.

WSJ: After Madoff, Ponzi Cases Proliferate — the poor investing market caused new money into the funds to dry up which exposed the true nature of the funds.

ReadWriteWeb: 10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2009 — Meaning and connection — two key anchors of all things social media — are corroding by the day as people’s ability to organize their experiences and find the relevance of their networks declines. Social media, in essence, is bumping up against its own ceiling, no longer able to serve the needs of those living within its walls; and for these reasons, social media as we know it is changing course.

TechCrunch: Stories From The Tell-All MySpace Book

Get Rich Slowly: How to Decide If You Should Become an Entrepreneur

Get Rich Slowly: Why I Drive a 13-Year-Old Car —  I might still be driving that old Accord, except for the wreck. Old cars do “total-out” so easily.

Get Rich Slowly: The Motley Fool’s David Gardner Talks About Stock-Market Investing