Eubie's notes

The Business Review in Albany published this list of self-improvement books recommended by Kenneth Rawley who is director and marketing for a hospital in the area.

The recommendations aren’t the latest published books but books such as “The Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck’s and “The Power of Now” by Eckhardt Tolle.

Highlight: “Over the years, I have consistently sought out books to further my personal quest to learn how I can better manage my feelings so I can enjoy my life more. I rely on a core group of what I consider the very best books on emotional issues. These books can help anyone handle emotional challenges and live enriched lives.”

EBay has become an economic indicator. USA Today recently reported that the overall economy may be cooling because of the items such as Gucci, BMWs and Prada have fallen in Ebay search requests to less luxury items such as Ford and gold (viewed as a hedge against bad economic news). EBay is also a good indicator of what’s hot, such as WiFi home equipment which has seen big growth on EBay.

EBay has also become a way for entrepreneurs to launch their business, but it’s not magic bullet. Hawaii Business has a story about entrepreneurs using eBay to sell everything from Hawaiian shirts and Tiki statues. It is interesting that some sellers found that higher prices on eBay meant higher sales. Price becomes a proxy for quality.

Atlanta Business Chronicle covers lawsuits by BellSouth against public service commissions in the states it provides local telephone service to cut regulation over pricing broadband services. BellSouth wants to keep its broadband pricing bundled with other telephone services, which the PSC vetoed. BellSouth says that if it has to split the bundle, it will raise broadband access prices until it recovers its costs.

Variety reports on the “challenges” facing network TV. Article says that while the money is still rolling in, the tide isn’t as high as it used to be. It’s nothing immediate, but the changes will evolve over the next five to 10 years. Tip from IWantMedia.

Poynter Q& As Mac Tully who becomes Knight Ridder’s vice president of operations. He was at the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald. High points of the Q&A are the way Bradenton improved its business and reputation, the need for more stories to show readers that news is being covered, and the belief that daily newspapers need to fight back to regain the market share they’ve lost over the years.

It’s a good comparison read to the Penguin Q&A with Ken Auletta, author of “Backstory: Inside the Business of News” which Penguin publishes. Auletta: “I feel both hopeful, and depressed. Hopeful because technologies like digital cable and the Internet offer so many more choices for consumers of news. Depressed because, increasingly, journalistic divisions are part of giant companies who demand profit margins and ?efficiencies? that often war with good journalism, which is expensive.” Tip came from JD Lasica.

Brian Chin at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer says blogs make a difference in their reporting.

“They flesh out our coverage, adding both nuance and context that you can’t pack into the inverted pyramid structure of traditional newswriting.”

“They’ve also made SeattlePI.com more participatory, sparking lively discussions and debates between readers that’s sometimes more interesting than what we have to say.”

Bloggers must be feeling the stress of the holidays and the year-end things needing attention. Dave Pollard offers Time-savers for Bloggers. Read his The blogging process and you can see why he might need to save time. His posts are better than average, but he says he spends up to 3 hours a day working on his blog.

Down in Tom Mangan’s entry “Gushing stroke piece alert” is “Blogging: a reality check Or, what the hypesters never tell you.” He concludes “blogging is worth doing well, it’s just not especially easy to do well.”

He’s among those (Romenesko, Jarvis, Lassica) reacting to USA Today’s Dec. 30 front-page article Freewheeling ‘bloggers’ are rewriting rules of journalism Objectivity? Not here — and the masses eat it up.

With cheap cell phone rates, people may be tempted to drop the traditional telephone. Jim Lynch, writing in ExtremeTech Opinions, tried it, but found he still needed a landline phone.

The experience of others of doing without their landline phones are included in the comments after the article. Tip from Smart Mobs.

Next year the issue won’t be landline or cell. It will be landline or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Telecos and ISPs offering VoIP now. The Charlotte Business Journal reports on a bank in a small town outside Charlotte, N.C., that switched to VoIP.

OSHA does little to police businesses which operate hazardous work sites beyond civil penalties, according to a Dec. 22 article in the N.Y. Times.

Last February, Atlanta Business Chronicle had a series “Risky Business” which focuses on the dangers to customers at Home Depot.

Anil Dash writes on how New York Invented Christmas.

I’ve always wondered how our Christmas traditions would be different if Currier & Ives had lived in Florida? Those winter images are so deep in our culture that Floridians feel compelled to start fires in their fireplaces, but then must turn on the air conditioning because the house gets too warm.

If Currier & Ives had lived in Florida maybe our traditions would be caroling in shorts, enjoying a round of golf on Christmas and hanging Spanish moss from our crepe myrtles. The Christmas feast would be eating seafood or having a picnic of hamburgers and hot dogs.

Also people in Australia wonder if they shouldn’t have traditions more suitable to a Christmas summer?