Money Making

languagehat, this is a giant derail, so I it's going to be my last post in this thread. Your "trying to appear cool" remark was to me so off the wall that I actually had trouble even understanding what you were getting at - now that you've elaborated, at least I think I now understand what you were getting at (it's not the reading of history per se that's trying to "appear cool", but your belief that expressing a lack of surprise in this case is something of a pose because being unsurprised is somehow cool(?!) - I'm still not 100% sure I'm getting it right, it's so bizarre).



On the substance - being grief-stricken is not the same thing as being surprised, at least in my book (of course, my book may not be cool). If I heard my friend/spouse etc. was killed, I'd be grief-stricken. And I'd be *shocked*, but in the same way as any sudden dramatic news is shocking - it's akin to being startled. Yet, being startled is not the same thing as being surprised. I'm startled by a noise, I'm not surprised by it. I'm startle to hear my friend was killed in an auto-accident, I'm not surprised that he died. If he was abducted by aliens, I'd be surprised. If he was killed by a car, while meditating in a remote monastery (the car dropped from a cargo airplane hit the monastery). But killed in traffic? Shock, grief, but no surprise. Do you understand the difference? I say this in good faith, illustrating the differences. Of course, if all you are interested in is exploring how I must be motivated by trying to appear "cool", then I guess we'll part ways.



Same here. I'm not surprised in the least - anti-establishment movements are deeply penetrated by intelligence services. That's not surprising. A high ranking member is compromised - it's not surprising. These organizations are targeted relentlessly. The FBI had a multi-year operation to penetrate a knitting circle (I think that actually happened with the Los Angeles police intelligence unit investigating some anti-war person or another) - color me surprised.



Anyhow, at the risk of appearing cool - or is it uncool - I'm now signing off from this thread, with my surprised face.
posted by VikingSword at 1:05 PM on September 14

The Birmingham <b>News</b> Pink Edition: Supporting the fight against <b>...</b>

Reports on the work being done in our community to fight the disease and sharing the stories of breast cancer survivors.

CBS <b>News</b> Reporter Arrested for Growing Pot | PopEater.com

Police arrested CBS News correspondent Howard Arenstein and his wife, along with reporter Orly Azoulay, Saturday for drug possession with intent to di.

Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/4/10 - Mile High Report

Your daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee....Horse Tracks!

eric seiger eric seiger
















languagehat, this is a giant derail, so I it's going to be my last post in this thread. Your "trying to appear cool" remark was to me so off the wall that I actually had trouble even understanding what you were getting at - now that you've elaborated, at least I think I now understand what you were getting at (it's not the reading of history per se that's trying to "appear cool", but your belief that expressing a lack of surprise in this case is something of a pose because being unsurprised is somehow cool(?!) - I'm still not 100% sure I'm getting it right, it's so bizarre).



On the substance - being grief-stricken is not the same thing as being surprised, at least in my book (of course, my book may not be cool). If I heard my friend/spouse etc. was killed, I'd be grief-stricken. And I'd be *shocked*, but in the same way as any sudden dramatic news is shocking - it's akin to being startled. Yet, being startled is not the same thing as being surprised. I'm startled by a noise, I'm not surprised by it. I'm startle to hear my friend was killed in an auto-accident, I'm not surprised that he died. If he was abducted by aliens, I'd be surprised. If he was killed by a car, while meditating in a remote monastery (the car dropped from a cargo airplane hit the monastery). But killed in traffic? Shock, grief, but no surprise. Do you understand the difference? I say this in good faith, illustrating the differences. Of course, if all you are interested in is exploring how I must be motivated by trying to appear "cool", then I guess we'll part ways.



Same here. I'm not surprised in the least - anti-establishment movements are deeply penetrated by intelligence services. That's not surprising. A high ranking member is compromised - it's not surprising. These organizations are targeted relentlessly. The FBI had a multi-year operation to penetrate a knitting circle (I think that actually happened with the Los Angeles police intelligence unit investigating some anti-war person or another) - color me surprised.



Anyhow, at the risk of appearing cool - or is it uncool - I'm now signing off from this thread, with my surprised face.
posted by VikingSword at 1:05 PM on September 14

The Birmingham <b>News</b> Pink Edition: Supporting the fight against <b>...</b>

Reports on the work being done in our community to fight the disease and sharing the stories of breast cancer survivors.

CBS <b>News</b> Reporter Arrested for Growing Pot | PopEater.com

Police arrested CBS News correspondent Howard Arenstein and his wife, along with reporter Orly Azoulay, Saturday for drug possession with intent to di.

Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/4/10 - Mile High Report

Your daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee....Horse Tracks!

eric seiger eric seiger

Start Making Money

Up to this point this dramatic expansion of the U.S. monetary base has not caused that much inflation because U.S. government borrowing has soaked most of it up and U.S. banks have been hoarding cash and have been building up their reserves.

However, this situation will not last forever.  Eventually all this cash will make its way through the food chain and into the hands of U.S. consumers. 

But what is even more troubling is the dramatic spike in commodity prices that we have seen in 2010. 

Wheat futures have surged 63 percent since the month of June.  Wheat has recently been selling well above 7 dollars a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

But wheat is far from alone.  In his recent column entitled "An Inflationary Cocktail In The Making", Richard Benson listed many of the other commodities that have seen extraordinary price increases over the past year....

*Agricultural Raw Materials: 24%

*Industrial Inputs Index: 25%

*Metals Price Index: 26%

*Coffee: 45%

*Barley: 32%

*Oranges: 35%

*Beef: 23%

*Pork: 68%

*Salmon: 30%

*Sugar: 24%

*Wool: 20%

*Cotton: 40%

*Palm Oil: 26%

*Hides: 25%

*Rubber: 62%

*Iron Ore: 103%

Now, as those price increases enter the chain of production do you think that there is any chance that they will not cause inflation?

Do you think there is any chance at all that producers and retailers will not pass those costs on to consumers?

It is time to face facts.

Those cost increases are going to filter all the way through the system and your paycheck is soon not going to stretch nearly as far.

Inflation is coming.

Many savvy investors understand what is going on right now.  That is one reason why gold and silver are absolutely soaring at the moment.

The price of gold set another record high on Friday for the sixth straight day.   

Silver has also experienced extraordinary gains recently, and the U.S. Mint has officially raised their wholesale pricing above spot on American Silver Eagles from $1.50 to $2.00.

Meanwhile, there are even more rumblings that the Fed wants to print lots more money.  On Friday, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William Dudley, stated that the high unemployment and the low inflation that the United States is experiencing right now are "wholly unacceptable"....

"Further action is likely to be warranted unless the economic outlook evolves in such a way that makes me more confident that we will see better outcomes for both employment and inflation before long."

During his remarks, Dudley even mentioned what the effect of another $500 billion increase in the Fed’s balance sheet would be.

Now keep in mind, this is not just another "Joe" who is making these remarks.

This is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - the most important of all the regional Fed banks.

In recent weeks it is almost as if you can hear Fed officials salivate as they consider the prospect of flooding the economy with even more money. 

Up to this point, very little has worked to stimulate the dying U.S. economy.  The Federal Reserve and the Obama administration are getting nervous as the American people become increasingly frustrated about the economic situation.

So will flooding the economy with even more money and causing even more inflation do the trick?

Well, no, but what inflated GDP figures will do is enable Obama and the Fed to say: "Look the economy is growing again!"

But if a flood of paper money causes the value of goods and services produced in the U.S. to go up by 5 percent but the real inflation rate is 10 percent, are we better off or are we worse off?

It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

So don't get fooled by "economic growth" numbers.  Just because more money is changing hands doesn't mean that the U.S. economy is doing better. 

In fact, many American families are going to be financially shredded by the coming inflation tsunami. 

Just think about it.

How far will your paycheck go when a half gallon of milk is 10 dollars and a loaf of bread is 5 dollars?

Already, it is incredibly difficult for the average American family of four to get by on $50,000 a year.

So how much money will we need when rampant inflation starts kicking in?

And do you think that your employers will actually give you pay raises to keep up with all of this inflation?

Not in these economic conditions.

In fact, median household incomes are declining from coast to coast all over the United States.

Earlier this year, Ben Bernanke promised Congress that the Federal Reserve would not "print money" to help the U.S. Congress finance the exploding U.S. national debt.

Did any of you believe him at the time?

Did any of you actually believe that the Federal Reserve would act responsibly and would attempt to keep the money supply and inflation under control?

The reality is that the entire Federal Reserve system is predicated on perpetual inflation and a perpetually expanding national debt. 

Whatever wealth you and your family have been able to scrape together is going to continue to be whittled away month after month after month by the hidden tax of inflation.

And unfortunately, as discussed above, inflation is about to get a whole lot worse.

So is there any room for optimism?  Is there any hope that we will not see horrible inflation in the years ahead?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

Marc Hedlund, co-founder and former CEO of personal finance company Wesabe, has penned a refreshingly honest and open take on why he thinks the startup lost to rival Mint.

The latter launched later than Wesabe (and won the top prize at the TechCrunch40 conference back in 2007) and was later acquired by Intuit for $170 million, while Wesabe had a less stellar exit and hit the deadpool last June.

Hedlund takes the blame, but also counters some of the things that have been cited as reasons for Wesabe’s demise for being myths, such as the fact that Mint was first to market, that the company wasn’t making any money and that it boasted an inferior name and design.

An excerpt:

I am, of course, enormously sad that Wesabe lost and the company closed. I don’t agree with those who say you should learn from your successes and mostly ignore your failures; nor do I agree with those who obsess over failures for years after (as I have done in the past). I’m hoping that by writing this all out I can offload it from my head and hopefully help inform other people who try to start companies in the future.

You’ll hear a lot about why company A won and company B lost in any market, and in my experience, a lot of the theories thrown about — even or especially by the participants — are utter crap. A domain name doesn’t win you a market; launching second or fifth or tenth doesn’t lose you a market. You can’t blame your competitors or your board or the lack of or excess of investment.

Focus on what really matters: making users happy with your product as quickly as you can, and helping them as much as you can after that. If you do those better than anyone else out there you’ll win.

What we’ve got here, ladies and gentlemen, is a must-read.

Good discussion about the post over at Hacker News.

ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...

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Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!

Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101

Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.

bench craft company rip off
bench craft company rip off

ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...

Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report

Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!

Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101

Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.

bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off

Up to this point this dramatic expansion of the U.S. monetary base has not caused that much inflation because U.S. government borrowing has soaked most of it up and U.S. banks have been hoarding cash and have been building up their reserves.

However, this situation will not last forever.  Eventually all this cash will make its way through the food chain and into the hands of U.S. consumers. 

But what is even more troubling is the dramatic spike in commodity prices that we have seen in 2010. 

Wheat futures have surged 63 percent since the month of June.  Wheat has recently been selling well above 7 dollars a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.

But wheat is far from alone.  In his recent column entitled "An Inflationary Cocktail In The Making", Richard Benson listed many of the other commodities that have seen extraordinary price increases over the past year....

*Agricultural Raw Materials: 24%

*Industrial Inputs Index: 25%

*Metals Price Index: 26%

*Coffee: 45%

*Barley: 32%

*Oranges: 35%

*Beef: 23%

*Pork: 68%

*Salmon: 30%

*Sugar: 24%

*Wool: 20%

*Cotton: 40%

*Palm Oil: 26%

*Hides: 25%

*Rubber: 62%

*Iron Ore: 103%

Now, as those price increases enter the chain of production do you think that there is any chance that they will not cause inflation?

Do you think there is any chance at all that producers and retailers will not pass those costs on to consumers?

It is time to face facts.

Those cost increases are going to filter all the way through the system and your paycheck is soon not going to stretch nearly as far.

Inflation is coming.

Many savvy investors understand what is going on right now.  That is one reason why gold and silver are absolutely soaring at the moment.

The price of gold set another record high on Friday for the sixth straight day.   

Silver has also experienced extraordinary gains recently, and the U.S. Mint has officially raised their wholesale pricing above spot on American Silver Eagles from $1.50 to $2.00.

Meanwhile, there are even more rumblings that the Fed wants to print lots more money.  On Friday, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William Dudley, stated that the high unemployment and the low inflation that the United States is experiencing right now are "wholly unacceptable"....

"Further action is likely to be warranted unless the economic outlook evolves in such a way that makes me more confident that we will see better outcomes for both employment and inflation before long."

During his remarks, Dudley even mentioned what the effect of another $500 billion increase in the Fed’s balance sheet would be.

Now keep in mind, this is not just another "Joe" who is making these remarks.

This is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - the most important of all the regional Fed banks.

In recent weeks it is almost as if you can hear Fed officials salivate as they consider the prospect of flooding the economy with even more money. 

Up to this point, very little has worked to stimulate the dying U.S. economy.  The Federal Reserve and the Obama administration are getting nervous as the American people become increasingly frustrated about the economic situation.

So will flooding the economy with even more money and causing even more inflation do the trick?

Well, no, but what inflated GDP figures will do is enable Obama and the Fed to say: "Look the economy is growing again!"

But if a flood of paper money causes the value of goods and services produced in the U.S. to go up by 5 percent but the real inflation rate is 10 percent, are we better off or are we worse off?

It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

So don't get fooled by "economic growth" numbers.  Just because more money is changing hands doesn't mean that the U.S. economy is doing better. 

In fact, many American families are going to be financially shredded by the coming inflation tsunami. 

Just think about it.

How far will your paycheck go when a half gallon of milk is 10 dollars and a loaf of bread is 5 dollars?

Already, it is incredibly difficult for the average American family of four to get by on $50,000 a year.

So how much money will we need when rampant inflation starts kicking in?

And do you think that your employers will actually give you pay raises to keep up with all of this inflation?

Not in these economic conditions.

In fact, median household incomes are declining from coast to coast all over the United States.

Earlier this year, Ben Bernanke promised Congress that the Federal Reserve would not "print money" to help the U.S. Congress finance the exploding U.S. national debt.

Did any of you believe him at the time?

Did any of you actually believe that the Federal Reserve would act responsibly and would attempt to keep the money supply and inflation under control?

The reality is that the entire Federal Reserve system is predicated on perpetual inflation and a perpetually expanding national debt. 

Whatever wealth you and your family have been able to scrape together is going to continue to be whittled away month after month after month by the hidden tax of inflation.

And unfortunately, as discussed above, inflation is about to get a whole lot worse.

So is there any room for optimism?  Is there any hope that we will not see horrible inflation in the years ahead?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

Marc Hedlund, co-founder and former CEO of personal finance company Wesabe, has penned a refreshingly honest and open take on why he thinks the startup lost to rival Mint.

The latter launched later than Wesabe (and won the top prize at the TechCrunch40 conference back in 2007) and was later acquired by Intuit for $170 million, while Wesabe had a less stellar exit and hit the deadpool last June.

Hedlund takes the blame, but also counters some of the things that have been cited as reasons for Wesabe’s demise for being myths, such as the fact that Mint was first to market, that the company wasn’t making any money and that it boasted an inferior name and design.

An excerpt:

I am, of course, enormously sad that Wesabe lost and the company closed. I don’t agree with those who say you should learn from your successes and mostly ignore your failures; nor do I agree with those who obsess over failures for years after (as I have done in the past). I’m hoping that by writing this all out I can offload it from my head and hopefully help inform other people who try to start companies in the future.

You’ll hear a lot about why company A won and company B lost in any market, and in my experience, a lot of the theories thrown about — even or especially by the participants — are utter crap. A domain name doesn’t win you a market; launching second or fifth or tenth doesn’t lose you a market. You can’t blame your competitors or your board or the lack of or excess of investment.

Focus on what really matters: making users happy with your product as quickly as you can, and helping them as much as you can after that. If you do those better than anyone else out there you’ll win.

What we’ve got here, ladies and gentlemen, is a must-read.

Good discussion about the post over at Hacker News.

bench craft company rip off

ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...

Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report

Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!

Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101

Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.

bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off

ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...

Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report

Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!

Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101

Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.

bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off

ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...

Denver Broncos <b>News</b> - Horse Tracks - 10/02/10 - Mile High Report

Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee .... Horse Tracks!

Small Business <b>News</b>: Management 101

Is management ability something you're born with or can it be learned through careful study? Just as there can be many kinds of small business owners and many.

bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off

Making Money Web

Interactivity is a key element when it comes to successfully spreading web content, which is why the ARG or transmedia experience — which works across platforms to create a narrative that the user has to discover on his or her own — has become a much more visible part of the landscape. Enter a recently launched ARG created specifically for the web series community, one that celebrates it.

Created by producer Jenni Powell and No Mimes Media, Webishades launched earlier this month via an article posted on Tubefilter. That article included a link to the Webishades website, which had secrets to be unlocked with phone calls, emails and ads on websites for series including The Guild, Squatters, Compulsions and The Temp Life. “It was a lot insidery, but that was part of the fun of it,” Powell said via phone.

To be honest, I completed the Webishades challenge in about ten minutes, because I cheated. And while I cheated — with some help from the ARG forum Unfiction, where previous players have documented the complete path to victory — that low level of commitment is deliberate.

Webishades is part of No Mimes’ recent string of 10 Minute ARG projects, which are created to be self-sustaining in perpetuity. “People don’t do stuff when we want them to, necessarily,” No Mimes managing director Benham Karbassi said via phone. “So we want to give them the opportunity to do it when they want to.”

So far, by Karbassi’s estimations, “a few thousand” people have checked out the Webishades website, with “a few hundred” following up on the phone call. But every component of the Webishades experience is automated, and as long as the participating web series don’t remove the clues from their websites, the game will be playable for the foreseeable future.

Not that there’s a lot there, to be frank — Webishades doesn’t have much in the way of story, instead operating as a promotional engine for the shows involved, and the reward is relatively Spartan. “It’s not as narrative as other ARG games,” Powell said. “It’s very different because it’s advertisement-based: ‘Here’s this fun fake product, let’s talk about it.’ That’s more of the game. We could have blown this out more, but it was just a fun way for us to work together.”

One of the complications is that Felicia Day, who in the project’s original iteration played a much larger role, was cast in a multi-episode arc on the SyFy Channel series Eureka this summer, meaning that her involvement had to be scaled back dramatically. “As you go, you have to be really flexible — that’s why ARGs are so fun to design,” Powell said. “You have to be on your toes the entire time.”

No money exchanged hands in this project, with everyone instead donating their time to put the elements together (with the exception of performance fees for actors in the Webishades commercial). That’s because Webishades isn’t intended to be a moneymaker; in fact, a Crackle representative, during a call with Powell and the No Mimes team, directly challenged No Mimes as to why they were doing this project — because it was just going to cost them money.

Karbassi’s reply at the time was that it would be great advertising for them, and also give them access to the web series community. Which seems to have paid off, at least in regard to the latter point: The number of series which participated in the project does represent an impressive range of the talent currently making web narrative. And while the numbers are low on players who have fully engaged with the project, those Webishades ads do remain on all the respective sites. The game is still on.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Shattering the Fourth Wall To Find Web Audiences

*To the devs in this room, anyway

(L to R: Mark Kvamme (Sequoia Capital), Albert Cheng (ABC-Disney Television), Jessica Steel (Pandora), Gordon McLeod (WSJ Digital)

 

My day at the inaugural AppNation conference has mostly been spent remembering what big business apps are. Not that I ever forgot that, but since my job mainly revolves around phones - and not the apps they run - spending a day or two at an event like this really immerses me in the reality that the development, marketing, selling, promoting, and reviewing of apps is huge business. Huge.

 

The question that I keep coming back to when I think about apps is this: We all know there's plenty of money in Apple's iOS App Store, but what about on the other platforms? Is anybody making money - real money - developing for Android? And BlackBerry and Windows and webOS, do developers see opportunities outside of the Apple-Google War?

 

The answer I heard today was a pretty resounding, "Nope."

 

Bear in mind that what I witnessed was a very informal straw poll taken in a room of maybe 250 people, so don't take this as a necessarily representative cross-section of mobile developers worldwide, let alone any sort of scientific proof. But, when Mark Kvamme (a partner at VC heavyweight Sequoia Captial) asked the audience at the opening roundtable what platforms most interest them, the response was pretty clear: Only two of 'em matter.

 

After asking the roundtable panelists "If you had to pick only one platform to develop for over the next two years, what would it be?" and getting the predictable non-answers, Kvamme asked for a show of hands from the crowd to answer the same question. Android and iOS each got close to fifty-fifty shares, with Android looking to have a small lead. BlackBerry? Zero hands in the air. Windows Phone 7? Maybe five or six. "Is anyone interested in what HP is going to do with Palm and webOS?" Five hands.

 

I'm still looking for Android developers who are making the kind of money folks are earning selling iOS apps, but the utter lack of interest in virtually any other platform came as a total shock to me. Granted, this is a small conference and I have no idea what the ratio of devs to execs to media types was in that room this morning. But nobody raise their hand for BlackBerry. Wow.

 

What say you, especially the developers and/or mobile businesspeople reading this? Are their opportunities beyond iOS and Android, or is the combination of Apple's App Store mojo and Android's sheer volume of devices too much to ignore when it comes to focusing your efforts? BlackBerry, WinPhone, webOS, Bada, Symbian, Meego ... is anything else worth developing for at this point?

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Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.

bench craft company rip off
bench craft company rip off

Feds Sue Fox <b>News</b> Over Reporter Catherine Herridge&#39;s Charges Of <b>...</b>

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities are suing the Fox News Network for allegedly retaliating against a reporter after she complained about unequal pay and job conditions based on her gender and age. The Equal Employment Opportunity ...

Reese Schonfeld: Third Quarter Cable <b>News</b>: Bad <b>News</b> for All <b>...</b>

Could it be that the decline in news viewers is symptomatic of a general and genuine disgust by news viewers who are just fed up with the kind of news being fed to them?

Evri Expands Mobile Offerings Beyond Tech <b>News</b> to Sports, Music <b>...</b>

Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.

bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off

Interactivity is a key element when it comes to successfully spreading web content, which is why the ARG or transmedia experience — which works across platforms to create a narrative that the user has to discover on his or her own — has become a much more visible part of the landscape. Enter a recently launched ARG created specifically for the web series community, one that celebrates it.

Created by producer Jenni Powell and No Mimes Media, Webishades launched earlier this month via an article posted on Tubefilter. That article included a link to the Webishades website, which had secrets to be unlocked with phone calls, emails and ads on websites for series including The Guild, Squatters, Compulsions and The Temp Life. “It was a lot insidery, but that was part of the fun of it,” Powell said via phone.

To be honest, I completed the Webishades challenge in about ten minutes, because I cheated. And while I cheated — with some help from the ARG forum Unfiction, where previous players have documented the complete path to victory — that low level of commitment is deliberate.

Webishades is part of No Mimes’ recent string of 10 Minute ARG projects, which are created to be self-sustaining in perpetuity. “People don’t do stuff when we want them to, necessarily,” No Mimes managing director Benham Karbassi said via phone. “So we want to give them the opportunity to do it when they want to.”

So far, by Karbassi’s estimations, “a few thousand” people have checked out the Webishades website, with “a few hundred” following up on the phone call. But every component of the Webishades experience is automated, and as long as the participating web series don’t remove the clues from their websites, the game will be playable for the foreseeable future.

Not that there’s a lot there, to be frank — Webishades doesn’t have much in the way of story, instead operating as a promotional engine for the shows involved, and the reward is relatively Spartan. “It’s not as narrative as other ARG games,” Powell said. “It’s very different because it’s advertisement-based: ‘Here’s this fun fake product, let’s talk about it.’ That’s more of the game. We could have blown this out more, but it was just a fun way for us to work together.”

One of the complications is that Felicia Day, who in the project’s original iteration played a much larger role, was cast in a multi-episode arc on the SyFy Channel series Eureka this summer, meaning that her involvement had to be scaled back dramatically. “As you go, you have to be really flexible — that’s why ARGs are so fun to design,” Powell said. “You have to be on your toes the entire time.”

No money exchanged hands in this project, with everyone instead donating their time to put the elements together (with the exception of performance fees for actors in the Webishades commercial). That’s because Webishades isn’t intended to be a moneymaker; in fact, a Crackle representative, during a call with Powell and the No Mimes team, directly challenged No Mimes as to why they were doing this project — because it was just going to cost them money.

Karbassi’s reply at the time was that it would be great advertising for them, and also give them access to the web series community. Which seems to have paid off, at least in regard to the latter point: The number of series which participated in the project does represent an impressive range of the talent currently making web narrative. And while the numbers are low on players who have fully engaged with the project, those Webishades ads do remain on all the respective sites. The game is still on.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Shattering the Fourth Wall To Find Web Audiences

*To the devs in this room, anyway

(L to R: Mark Kvamme (Sequoia Capital), Albert Cheng (ABC-Disney Television), Jessica Steel (Pandora), Gordon McLeod (WSJ Digital)

 

My day at the inaugural AppNation conference has mostly been spent remembering what big business apps are. Not that I ever forgot that, but since my job mainly revolves around phones - and not the apps they run - spending a day or two at an event like this really immerses me in the reality that the development, marketing, selling, promoting, and reviewing of apps is huge business. Huge.

 

The question that I keep coming back to when I think about apps is this: We all know there's plenty of money in Apple's iOS App Store, but what about on the other platforms? Is anybody making money - real money - developing for Android? And BlackBerry and Windows and webOS, do developers see opportunities outside of the Apple-Google War?

 

The answer I heard today was a pretty resounding, "Nope."

 

Bear in mind that what I witnessed was a very informal straw poll taken in a room of maybe 250 people, so don't take this as a necessarily representative cross-section of mobile developers worldwide, let alone any sort of scientific proof. But, when Mark Kvamme (a partner at VC heavyweight Sequoia Captial) asked the audience at the opening roundtable what platforms most interest them, the response was pretty clear: Only two of 'em matter.

 

After asking the roundtable panelists "If you had to pick only one platform to develop for over the next two years, what would it be?" and getting the predictable non-answers, Kvamme asked for a show of hands from the crowd to answer the same question. Android and iOS each got close to fifty-fifty shares, with Android looking to have a small lead. BlackBerry? Zero hands in the air. Windows Phone 7? Maybe five or six. "Is anyone interested in what HP is going to do with Palm and webOS?" Five hands.

 

I'm still looking for Android developers who are making the kind of money folks are earning selling iOS apps, but the utter lack of interest in virtually any other platform came as a total shock to me. Granted, this is a small conference and I have no idea what the ratio of devs to execs to media types was in that room this morning. But nobody raise their hand for BlackBerry. Wow.

 

What say you, especially the developers and/or mobile businesspeople reading this? Are their opportunities beyond iOS and Android, or is the combination of Apple's App Store mojo and Android's sheer volume of devices too much to ignore when it comes to focusing your efforts? BlackBerry, WinPhone, webOS, Bada, Symbian, Meego ... is anything else worth developing for at this point?

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Feds Sue Fox <b>News</b> Over Reporter Catherine Herridge&#39;s Charges Of <b>...</b>

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities are suing the Fox News Network for allegedly retaliating against a reporter after she complained about unequal pay and job conditions based on her gender and age. The Equal Employment Opportunity ...

Reese Schonfeld: Third Quarter Cable <b>News</b>: Bad <b>News</b> for All <b>...</b>

Could it be that the decline in news viewers is symptomatic of a general and genuine disgust by news viewers who are just fed up with the kind of news being fed to them?

Evri Expands Mobile Offerings Beyond Tech <b>News</b> to Sports, Music <b>...</b>

Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.

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Feds Sue Fox <b>News</b> Over Reporter Catherine Herridge&#39;s Charges Of <b>...</b>

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities are suing the Fox News Network for allegedly retaliating against a reporter after she complained about unequal pay and job conditions based on her gender and age. The Equal Employment Opportunity ...

Reese Schonfeld: Third Quarter Cable <b>News</b>: Bad <b>News</b> for All <b>...</b>

Could it be that the decline in news viewers is symptomatic of a general and genuine disgust by news viewers who are just fed up with the kind of news being fed to them?

Evri Expands Mobile Offerings Beyond Tech <b>News</b> to Sports, Music <b>...</b>

Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.

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Feds Sue Fox <b>News</b> Over Reporter Catherine Herridge&#39;s Charges Of <b>...</b>

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities are suing the Fox News Network for allegedly retaliating against a reporter after she complained about unequal pay and job conditions based on her gender and age. The Equal Employment Opportunity ...

Reese Schonfeld: Third Quarter Cable <b>News</b>: Bad <b>News</b> for All <b>...</b>

Could it be that the decline in news viewers is symptomatic of a general and genuine disgust by news viewers who are just fed up with the kind of news being fed to them?

Evri Expands Mobile Offerings Beyond Tech <b>News</b> to Sports, Music <b>...</b>

Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.

bench craft company rip off

Companies Making Money

Yet Another Study Shows Musicians Making More Money

from the well,-look-at-that dept

We've made the argument repeatedly that saying unauthorized file sharing is hurting the music business lacks evidence. Instead, what we've seen, over and over again, is that more money is pouring into the music business, more music is being produced and (most importantly) that more musicians who embrace this new world are doing better than they would have otherwise. Now, we've pointed to research in the UK, Sweden and the US that have all shown aggregate growth for the music business, with some of the numbers suggesting more money going directly to musicians, rather than gatekeepers.



The latest study, highlighted by TorrentFreak takes a similar look at the Norwegian music market to show very similar findings and (of course) that musicians are, indeed, benefiting:



Like the UK and Swedish studies, this study, covering Norway, found that the aggregate amount going to the industry is up slightly (4% in real terms), mostly thanks to live shows more than making up for the decline in music sales (it's important to note that these researchers appear to have modeled their research on both the UK and Swedish studies, and made only slight changes, which they explain (and justify) in the report. The key finding is that musicians appear to be making significantly more these days than in the past:

Total artist revenues have gone from NOK 208 million in 1999 to NOK 545 million in 2009, which is an increase of about 162%. Excluding state subsidization, the income from 1999 to 2009 has increased with NOK 229 million, or 147%....



According to this, Norwegian artists have seen an increase in all four of their income sources during the past eleven years. This goes contrary to the common belief that artists have seen a decline in income because of the digitalization of the industry.



The loss of record sales because of consequences of the digitalization of the industry has not affected the Norwegian artists in the same brutal way as it has the record companies. Artists earn in general 20% or less from record sales, and a decrease in record sales would most likely be compensated by an increase in one or more of the other three income sources.

Now, it's worth pointing out -- as I learned when I attended Nordic Music Week last year -- that the Norwegian music industry is heavily subsidized by the government, which is one of the four revenue streams discussed above. However, that only represents about 30% of artist revenue in 2009. The largest single component -- again similar to what we've seen elsewhere -- is live revenue, which continues to grow. Even if you exclude state subsidies, the report found that Norwegian artists doubled their income in the past 11 years:

Adjusted for inflation, total artist revenue has gone from NOK 255 million in 1999 to NOK 545 million in 2009, an increase of about NOK 290 million or 114%. Excluding state subsidizations, the increase has changed from NOK 192 million to NOK 386 million, which is an increase of NOK 194 million or 101% This goes to show that the artists themselves, as a group, have seen tremendous more growth than the industry as a whole.

And, yes, there are more musicians out there to split the pie, but the growth rate in the industry has increased more quickly than the growth in musicians.

Since the total number of artists in 1999 and 2009 are available to the authors, it is possible to calculate an average income from music for artists in Norway. With 3200 artists in 1999 the average income from music would be about NOK 65 000. With 4100 artists in 2009 the average income from music is about NOK 133 000, creating an increase of NOK 68 000 or 105%. Adjusted for inflation the income has increased with from about NOK 80 000 to NOK 133 000, an increase of NOK 53 000, an increase of 66%.

Overall, the results, like those in Sweden and the UK, seem to clearly debunk the repeated claims from recording industry folks (and some musicians) that artists are somehow suffering under this new setup. Now, there may absolutely be cases where artists who fail to adapt are struggling, and there's no doubt that some labels that failed to adapt are struggling -- but there's increasingly little evidence that the overall music industry or artists as a whole are suffering. All of the evidence seems to suggest that it's not file sharing that's a problem at all. More money is going into the music business. The only problems are from those in the industry too stubborn or too clueless to adapt to capture the money that's flowing in.

27 Comments | Leave a Comment..

innovation, funds, startups

University of Michigan Social Venture Fund Comes Out of Stealth, Aims to Invest in Companies at the Nexus of Public and Private

Erin Kutz 9/27/10

“Social shouldn’t be viewed as soft,” says University of Michigan finance professor Gautam Kaul. “Unfortunately, soft and social tend to go together in people’s perceptions.”

But Social Venture Fund, a new investing vehicle out of the University of Michigan that came out of stealth mode just last week, is taking a hard look at social inequality—and is out to prove that investments targeted at ameliorating it can make money. “We want to use rigor in measuring social impact and making investments that are real,” says Kaul, the managing director of the fund.

A handful of students approached him a year and a half ago with the idea for a social venture fund, as a new business model to help solve real-world problems, he says. He made the team formally pitch the idea to him (much in the same fashion entrepreneurs present to investors), to prove the concept went beyond a philanthropic idea, and had the potential to also generate returns.

Social Venture Fund’s team, which is now expanding and could reach a total of 30 students, has been working over the past year to develop the vision for the project and the types of companies it will invest in, Kaul says. The fund adds to the university’s group of student-run funds—the Frankel Commercialization Fund and Wolverine Venture Fund, which has had four successful exits, including an IPO. Unlike the other student-run funds at the university, Social Venture Fund didn’t start with money, Kaul says. “We felt that this was too important to wait on trying to raise money for something.” The 2010 MBA class at the school has already pledged its gift to the Social Venture Fund, which is also working on a big fundraising push.

Broadly, Kaul’s team envisions its investments falling into a handful of sectors: education, food and nutrition, health, finance, the environment, and urban revitalization. He says the team is particularly interested in looking at companies that fuse the latter two concepts, and work on solving problems that are often left to the government.

“We want to create a new type of organization that does not worry only about money making, but worries about policy and impact on society,” he continues. To do that, Social Venture Fund is looking at companies that …Next Page »

Erin Kutz is an Assistant Editor for Xconomy. You can reach her by e-mail at ekutz@xconomy.com or by phone at (617) 252-0700.

3DS Super Monkey Ball out next year 3DS <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

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Media companies invest in <b>news</b> startup, Ongo - Lost Remote

The New York Times, Washington Post and Gannett have each invested $4 million in a yet-to-launch startup called Ongo, described as a “consumer service for reading and sharing digital news and information from multiple publishers.” ...

Murata Seisakusho Robot Learns New Skill « Akihabara <b>News</b>

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3DS Super Monkey Ball out next year 3DS <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

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Media companies invest in <b>news</b> startup, Ongo - Lost Remote

The New York Times, Washington Post and Gannett have each invested $4 million in a yet-to-launch startup called Ongo, described as a “consumer service for reading and sharing digital news and information from multiple publishers.” ...

Murata Seisakusho Robot Learns New Skill « Akihabara <b>News</b>

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Yet Another Study Shows Musicians Making More Money

from the well,-look-at-that dept

We've made the argument repeatedly that saying unauthorized file sharing is hurting the music business lacks evidence. Instead, what we've seen, over and over again, is that more money is pouring into the music business, more music is being produced and (most importantly) that more musicians who embrace this new world are doing better than they would have otherwise. Now, we've pointed to research in the UK, Sweden and the US that have all shown aggregate growth for the music business, with some of the numbers suggesting more money going directly to musicians, rather than gatekeepers.



The latest study, highlighted by TorrentFreak takes a similar look at the Norwegian music market to show very similar findings and (of course) that musicians are, indeed, benefiting:



Like the UK and Swedish studies, this study, covering Norway, found that the aggregate amount going to the industry is up slightly (4% in real terms), mostly thanks to live shows more than making up for the decline in music sales (it's important to note that these researchers appear to have modeled their research on both the UK and Swedish studies, and made only slight changes, which they explain (and justify) in the report. The key finding is that musicians appear to be making significantly more these days than in the past:

Total artist revenues have gone from NOK 208 million in 1999 to NOK 545 million in 2009, which is an increase of about 162%. Excluding state subsidization, the income from 1999 to 2009 has increased with NOK 229 million, or 147%....



According to this, Norwegian artists have seen an increase in all four of their income sources during the past eleven years. This goes contrary to the common belief that artists have seen a decline in income because of the digitalization of the industry.



The loss of record sales because of consequences of the digitalization of the industry has not affected the Norwegian artists in the same brutal way as it has the record companies. Artists earn in general 20% or less from record sales, and a decrease in record sales would most likely be compensated by an increase in one or more of the other three income sources.

Now, it's worth pointing out -- as I learned when I attended Nordic Music Week last year -- that the Norwegian music industry is heavily subsidized by the government, which is one of the four revenue streams discussed above. However, that only represents about 30% of artist revenue in 2009. The largest single component -- again similar to what we've seen elsewhere -- is live revenue, which continues to grow. Even if you exclude state subsidies, the report found that Norwegian artists doubled their income in the past 11 years:

Adjusted for inflation, total artist revenue has gone from NOK 255 million in 1999 to NOK 545 million in 2009, an increase of about NOK 290 million or 114%. Excluding state subsidizations, the increase has changed from NOK 192 million to NOK 386 million, which is an increase of NOK 194 million or 101% This goes to show that the artists themselves, as a group, have seen tremendous more growth than the industry as a whole.

And, yes, there are more musicians out there to split the pie, but the growth rate in the industry has increased more quickly than the growth in musicians.

Since the total number of artists in 1999 and 2009 are available to the authors, it is possible to calculate an average income from music for artists in Norway. With 3200 artists in 1999 the average income from music would be about NOK 65 000. With 4100 artists in 2009 the average income from music is about NOK 133 000, creating an increase of NOK 68 000 or 105%. Adjusted for inflation the income has increased with from about NOK 80 000 to NOK 133 000, an increase of NOK 53 000, an increase of 66%.

Overall, the results, like those in Sweden and the UK, seem to clearly debunk the repeated claims from recording industry folks (and some musicians) that artists are somehow suffering under this new setup. Now, there may absolutely be cases where artists who fail to adapt are struggling, and there's no doubt that some labels that failed to adapt are struggling -- but there's increasingly little evidence that the overall music industry or artists as a whole are suffering. All of the evidence seems to suggest that it's not file sharing that's a problem at all. More money is going into the music business. The only problems are from those in the industry too stubborn or too clueless to adapt to capture the money that's flowing in.

27 Comments | Leave a Comment..

innovation, funds, startups

University of Michigan Social Venture Fund Comes Out of Stealth, Aims to Invest in Companies at the Nexus of Public and Private

Erin Kutz 9/27/10

“Social shouldn’t be viewed as soft,” says University of Michigan finance professor Gautam Kaul. “Unfortunately, soft and social tend to go together in people’s perceptions.”

But Social Venture Fund, a new investing vehicle out of the University of Michigan that came out of stealth mode just last week, is taking a hard look at social inequality—and is out to prove that investments targeted at ameliorating it can make money. “We want to use rigor in measuring social impact and making investments that are real,” says Kaul, the managing director of the fund.

A handful of students approached him a year and a half ago with the idea for a social venture fund, as a new business model to help solve real-world problems, he says. He made the team formally pitch the idea to him (much in the same fashion entrepreneurs present to investors), to prove the concept went beyond a philanthropic idea, and had the potential to also generate returns.

Social Venture Fund’s team, which is now expanding and could reach a total of 30 students, has been working over the past year to develop the vision for the project and the types of companies it will invest in, Kaul says. The fund adds to the university’s group of student-run funds—the Frankel Commercialization Fund and Wolverine Venture Fund, which has had four successful exits, including an IPO. Unlike the other student-run funds at the university, Social Venture Fund didn’t start with money, Kaul says. “We felt that this was too important to wait on trying to raise money for something.” The 2010 MBA class at the school has already pledged its gift to the Social Venture Fund, which is also working on a big fundraising push.

Broadly, Kaul’s team envisions its investments falling into a handful of sectors: education, food and nutrition, health, finance, the environment, and urban revitalization. He says the team is particularly interested in looking at companies that fuse the latter two concepts, and work on solving problems that are often left to the government.

“We want to create a new type of organization that does not worry only about money making, but worries about policy and impact on society,” he continues. To do that, Social Venture Fund is looking at companies that …Next Page »

Erin Kutz is an Assistant Editor for Xconomy. You can reach her by e-mail at ekutz@xconomy.com or by phone at (617) 252-0700.

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3DS Super Monkey Ball out next year 3DS <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our 3DS news of 3DS Super Monkey Ball out next year.

Media companies invest in <b>news</b> startup, Ongo - Lost Remote

The New York Times, Washington Post and Gannett have each invested $4 million in a yet-to-launch startup called Ongo, described as a “consumer service for reading and sharing digital news and information from multiple publishers.” ...

Murata Seisakusho Robot Learns New Skill « Akihabara <b>News</b>

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3DS Super Monkey Ball out next year 3DS <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

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Media companies invest in <b>news</b> startup, Ongo - Lost Remote

The New York Times, Washington Post and Gannett have each invested $4 million in a yet-to-launch startup called Ongo, described as a “consumer service for reading and sharing digital news and information from multiple publishers.” ...

Murata Seisakusho Robot Learns New Skill « Akihabara <b>News</b>

To pursue its growth Akihabara News is seeking for several more editors via an intership program for 6 to 9 months. Please send us a mail @ jobs@akihabaranews.com. Message. We are moving away from Feedburner, please update your RSS ...

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3DS Super Monkey Ball out next year 3DS <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our 3DS news of 3DS Super Monkey Ball out next year.

Media companies invest in <b>news</b> startup, Ongo - Lost Remote

The New York Times, Washington Post and Gannett have each invested $4 million in a yet-to-launch startup called Ongo, described as a “consumer service for reading and sharing digital news and information from multiple publishers.” ...

Murata Seisakusho Robot Learns New Skill « Akihabara <b>News</b>

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managing your personal finance

A lot of people are unemployed in this country, 14.9 million as of the latest BLS release a couple of days ago, and for some of those people, this has become what is coyly referred to as ‘the entrepreneurial moment’, the ‘ah-ha’ light-bulb realization that if they don’t create a job for themselves, there will be no job, no income, no mortgage payment, no groceries, no light, no heat, no gas for the car, nuthin’. Since 2008, over 5 million jobs have been lost, many of which will never, ever come back.

Welcome to Labor Day, 2010.

Some of these ‘lost’ jobs have been outsourced overseas. Some have just been cut. Some companies are using their cash to invest in technologies which will insure that they will never have to hire these folks back, at least not with the skills that they had when they were given a cardboard box and five minutes to empty their desks and get out the front door.

If there are people out there who have or are considering building their own ‘life raft’ it would surprise absolutely no one; though for some folks, entrepreneurship is so scary, they can’t imagine anything other than hiring on to someone else’s deal, no matter how horrible it is.

Sometimes, though, you don’t have any choice. One thing to remember, is that many of the most successful entrepreneurs in this country have not invented fuel cells, high tech photovoltaic films, high speed transit, a cure for cancer (or the common cold), or the answer for peace in our time. They are cleaning houses, making pizza, fixing computers/ipods/iphones/cars/furnaces/plumbing/household electric, managing other people’s systems, giving advice, making clothing for people who are outside the common size ranges in the stores.

Not exactly operating a basement boiler room financial situation, doing crazy financial stuff, or stirring up the pot on international finance.

At its most basic, it’s local; at its most interesting, it might even be regional. But it is still person to person; it’s still me doing business with you. Face to face. My hands and brain doing stuff to help you. Some of this is amazingly low tech – some of it is almost medieval.

This week’s fascinating story comes from the New York Times about a family of knife sharpeners who have thrown a new curve on this ancient of trades by providing two sets of knives to butchers, restaurants, food services (in Yankee Stadium, for heaven’s sake), and calling on a weekly basis to pick up the used set and providing the newly sharpened set.

Anyone who does any real work in a kitchen at all knows that your most important tools are a good set of knives and a good frying and sauce pan. With those three things, you can do almost anything (and yes, I have made cookies in the bottom of a frying pan; thank you for asking), but if your knives are dull, cutting anything becomes horrible work and you can injure yourself badly. “Every week, the company visits more than 800 clients and collects more than 8,000 knives to be replaced with freshly sharpened blades. The service costs $2.50 to $3.50 per knife.

The business started servicing mainly butchers and meatpackers, in territories handed down from father to son. To preserve the business for his children, Mr. Ambrosi expanded it to restaurants and even Yankee Stadium, in some cases deviating from long-held tradition. Many cooks and chefs take personal pride in their knives and their ability to maintain them, and would hesitate to release them to anyone else’s care. But sharpening a knife takes time and skill — and not every chef has both.”

Having a skill and honing (sorry) that so that you can provide something that someone else can not (or will not) do, whether it is being an electrician, a plumber, a welder, a knife sharpener, a shoe repair shop, a hair dresser, whatever it is – can make the difference in today’s international economy between being able to make a living for your family and holding your head in your hands. One of America’s biggest mistakes as far as education is concerned (and others might just argue with me) is that we “jumped the shark” in terms of absorbing people coming out of colleges.

Since the 1980s, kids coming out of college have had fewer and lower level opportunities. Jobs which absorbed high schoolers, now require a 2 or 4 year degree; job that required a college degree started to require a masters degree; some jobs which required a college degree and some internal training, now require advanced degrees – I even know of jobs that now require a legal degree to be hired which 30 years ago required a college degree and passing a test. So much emphasis was placed on going to college – and vocational training and the trades were so downgraded and derided that any family with a kid with two brain cells to rub together would not even THINK of encouraging that kid to go into the trades, unless the family was already in the business.

We’re now at a situation where companies, which shot themselves in the foot by sending skilled jobs overseas and now want to bring them back because costs overseas have risen and/or they are tired of their intellectual property being stolen and sold to others, can’t find the skills they want. Not to put too fine a point on this – those same companies have not done any training themselves; nor are they willing to do so. They got into the habit a long time ago of pushing the investment in training off on others. The government for one.

The other, which has willingly and consistently provided training in the trades for years are the unions. Organized labor. The Great Satan of the industrial world. The guys everyone loves to hate. The organizations which, according to many employers, stand in their way of succeeding in business.

But still, the organization which has kept skills alive in this country despite outsourcing, overseas sourcing, attacks from business and government, and general antipathy from great swaths of the American population in certain parts of the country.

So. On this frankly very sad Labor Day, 2010, I’d like to thank the American Labor Movement for remembering what America and Americans do best and what we need to do on an increasing basis if we are to put people back to work – or if we are to have businesses to call our own: Do stuff with our hands.

Thanks folks. You’re not perfection, but you’re willing to invest in Americans.

Happy Labor Day

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Understanding the Forbes redesign « Talking Biz <b>News</b>

Dvorkin had founded True/Slant, an online news network. Previously, he had been executive editor at Forbes magazine, where he spearheaded an earlier redesign, managed the annual Forbes 400 Richest Americans list and created the ...

Arab move to censure Israel stymied at UN meeting | Updated <b>News</b>

LATEST NEWS � Plane off runway in Sicily, 20 slightly injured � Arab move to censure Israel stymied at UN meeting � Small-town mayors targeted by Mexican drug gangs � Fla. bank robbers strap bomb to abducted teller � Belgian skydiver on ...

<b>News</b> - Lindsay Lohan Going Back to Jail Until Oct. 22 - Celebrity <b>...</b>

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elden S. Fox revokes her probation for failing at least one drug test.

Understanding the Forbes redesign « Talking Biz <b>News</b>

Dvorkin had founded True/Slant, an online news network. Previously, he had been executive editor at Forbes magazine, where he spearheaded an earlier redesign, managed the annual Forbes 400 Richest Americans list and created the ...

Arab move to censure Israel stymied at UN meeting | Updated <b>News</b>

LATEST NEWS � Plane off runway in Sicily, 20 slightly injured � Arab move to censure Israel stymied at UN meeting � Small-town mayors targeted by Mexican drug gangs � Fla. bank robbers strap bomb to abducted teller � Belgian skydiver on ...

<b>News</b> - Lindsay Lohan Going Back to Jail Until Oct. 22 - Celebrity <b>...</b>

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elden S. Fox revokes her probation for failing at least one drug test.

big white booty

Understanding the Forbes redesign « Talking Biz <b>News</b>

Dvorkin had founded True/Slant, an online news network. Previously, he had been executive editor at Forbes magazine, where he spearheaded an earlier redesign, managed the annual Forbes 400 Richest Americans list and created the ...

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If you walked into the average bookstore, you'd think that women rule the roost when it comes to personal finance. From Suze Orman's now-classic Women and Money to the more recent (and more colorfully titled) Bitches on a Budget, there's no shortage of do-it-yourself financial advice tailored to women.



Apparently, though, when women make the momentous move from self-help to seeking professional advice about investing and retirement, things go rapidly downhill. A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group revealed that women perceived themselves as receiving wealth management services at a level of quality that is inferior to that received by their male counterparts.



According to the study, women are the key decision-makers when it comes to 27% of the wealth worldwide: that's $20 trillion! But despite the massive chunk of power they wield, 55% of the women surveyed in the study said they felt their wealth manager could do a better job of advising them. Almost a quarter of the respondents said private banks needed "significant improvement" in the services they offer to women.



"The dissatisfaction stems from the unshakable perception that men get more attention, better advice, and sometimes even better terms and deals," according to study co-author Peter Damisch. "We heard this sense of subordination time and time again in our interviews."



This perceived disparity in service arose from several key disconnects in the relationships and communications between women and their financial advisers. Manisha Thakor, Chartered Financial Analyst and women's financial literacy advocate, offers some steps savvy female investors can take to avoid being under-served by their wealth managers and investment advisers:



1. Find your adviser and get your financial education from women-run resources.



The financial services industry is dominated by males and therefore the "DNA is structured around the male experience," Thakor explains, adding that she sees many firms making an effort to change this. Most financial advisers are men, who may not inherently understand the whole-life nature of the average woman's financial plans and needs. They also may have very different communication styles than their women clients.



Thakor recommends women use women-created resources like LearnVest and DailyWorth to educate themselves in order to avoid the intimidation factor when talking about investment products with their advisers. She also encourages women to consult Garrett Planning Network, founded by Certified Financial Planner Sheryl Garrett, to locate a local certified financial planner who works on an hourly-fee-only basis. Taking these steps, Thakor explains, may alleviate the concern expressed by many women in the BCG study that they were not being taken seriously or talked to on the same level as male clients by their financial advisers.



2. Expressly state your ideal career trajectory, then ask how you should alter your investment plans accordingly.



In the BCG study, women stated that their investment advisers fundamentally misunderstood what was actually important to them, and recommended a too-narrow range of inappropriate investment vehicles as a result. Many said their advisers assumed they had a lower risk tolerance than they actually did, or that their advisers focused on short-term results and disregarded their long-term goals, which often included time out to care for a child or parent.



Thakor offers women a script of sorts to remedy this communication disconnect. "Go in and say: "I want to be a mom and I may take X amount of time out of the work force," she advises. Then ask, "How do we adjust how much I need to save and how I should invest to compensate for this?"



3. Start saving early.

Behold: the most profoundly pessimistic attack ad of 2010. Meg Whitman has delivered unto us a masterpiece of dirty politics.

What is most striking about this already-infamous ad isn't the boldness of its mendacity--though it certainly has that--but the cynicism of its timing. It's the sort of unabashedly nasty hit that one would expect just days before an election, and even then only from an outside interest group. Yet here it is, delivered to us in early September with Meg Whitman's name right there on the card. By not only producing so brazen a piece of misinformation but also airing it with more than enough time to effectively rebut, Whitman is betting the house on the politics of personal animosity.

If you live in California or happen to be a political junkie, you've no doubt seen it already and can skip the next paragraph. But for those of you who have avoided it (probably due to a weak stomach or some lingering, endangered shred of personal or political optimism) here's a recap:

Bill Clinton, in a 1992 debate, sits face-to-face with Jerry Brown. Brown looks at Clinton like a kid called to the principal's office. Clinton blasts Brown as a tax-raising liar: "CNN, not me, CNN says his assertion about his tax record was, quote, 'just plain wrong.' He raised taxes as Governor of California. He doesn't tell the people the truth." That's two levels of surrogate Whitman is hiding behind, for those of you keeping track. On its own, the ad is devastating.

There's just one little problem: That CNN report turned out to be "just plain wrong," and Whitman's campaign--like all interested parties--has been fully aware of that for some time. From what the San Jose Mercury-News has been able to piece together, the CNN report used the wrong years both in determining the base of comparison and in identifying the budgets Brown had control over. This made it seem Brown was responsible for a sizable tax increase during Reagan's last year in office and failed to give him credit for tax cuts later in his tenure. The LA Times and California Department of Finance also revisited the numbers and found them to be outright wrong, for the same reasons, in the same ways. Brown was telling the truth. He had cut taxes as Governor of California.

Whitman knew full well that the story was a lie, but she wanted to repeat it all the same. The excuse her communications director offered the Mercury-News: "Bill Clinton, not me, said Jerry Brown 'doesn't tell people the truth.'" Sound familiar?

But this ad is so much more perverse than any simple repetition of untruths. It practically baits a popular former president into entering the fray on the side of Whitman's opponent, yet rests comfortably on the belief that personal grievances and misgivings will trump ethics and ideology to prevent any serious intervention by Clinton or one of the nation's most popular fact checkers.

Yes, in case you missed it, there is yet another personality being ironically misused by this ad. Brooks Jackson, the reporter responsible for this particular "oopsie," now heads FactCheck.org. If you didn't already know that, give yourself a moment to let it sink in: The man whose erroneous report is still fueling factually-incorrect campaign advertisements nearly two decades later is also the guy we all run to when we question the veracity of claims in a political advertisement.

For his part, Jackson acknowledged the error on FactCheck.org in a manner only slightly more embarrassing than admirable. Unlike other political ads targeted by FactCheck, the correction has yet to warrant an actual article on the site. Jackson did, however, post a blog entry on the topic on one of the site's secondary pages. It fails to even mention the Clinton ad and generally reads more like a lengthy rationalization than a correction. He even works in the astonishing insinuation that Prop 13 was a reaction to Brown's high taxes. (Prop 13, patently a reaction to soaring property values and their impact on property tax rates, was not included in the figures used to correct Jackson's report.) After muddying the waters for seven paragraphs, he concludes that state taxes "increased during four of Brown's eight years, and during six of those years they were higher than before he took office. But they were lower during his final two years."

The Mercury-News, State Department of Finance and Associated Press see things a little differently. By about $16 billion in tax cuts during Brown's first seven years in office, and $4 billion in savings per year between 1978 and 1982. Not counting the savings from Prop 13. So much for a gentleman admitting he was wrong.

Not that Jackson matters much to Brown's campaign. Both Brown and Whitman know that only one man can make this ad backfire on Whitman: former president Clinton. Whitman is betting (perhaps unwisely, given Clinton's general election campaigning for Barack Obama,) that 18 years after their bitter battle for the Democratic nomination, Clinton still hates Brown so much that he will refuse defend him with any real conviction.

Exactly how acrimonious was the Clinton-Brown contest? The clip in Whitman's ad might be called one of its more friendly exchanges.

In what was widely taken as an allusion to Brown's onslaught of attacks on Clinton's character, Jesse Jackson opened one debate by chastising the candidates for getting too caught up in "attacks and counterattacks." It didn't slow Brown down. Later that evening, he accused Clinton of racial insensitivity for playing golf at a whites-only country club and using black prisoners as campaign props.

At the final debate, when Brown (not without his own, similar conflicts of interest,) accused Clinton of "funneling money to his wife's law firm," Clinton shot back, "You're not worth being on the same platform as my wife."

The highlight (or low point) of that debate was when Clinton said, "I feel sorry for Jerry Brown... He asked me to support him for President once." When a moderator asked if he did, Clinton didn't miss a beat before shooting back, "Of course not." Footage circulated from the night appears to show gathered reporters roaring with laughter. Whitman probably has that ad already in the can.

In an email blast from Brown's campaign the morning the ad came out, Brown was quick to let Clinton off the hook. The former president had "later learned" that the numbers were incorrect, according to the letter to supporters. But it's a lot easier for Jerry Brown to play nice for the sake of his own campaign than it will be for Bill Clinton, who doesn't need any favors, to come riding to Brown's rescue.

Is Clinton still unable to put the past behind him?

Pundits have pointed to his early support for Gavin Newsom over Brown as proof that he still holds a grudge. But was Clinton's support of Newsom the result of his decades-old feud with Brown, or of a more recently developed loyalty? Newsom was a very vocal, enthusiastic supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primaries.

Ironically, that support might have been born out of the former San Francisco Mayor's own feud with another Democratic president. In 2007, Newsom implied to Reuters that Obama, "As God is my witness, will not be photographed with me, will not be in the same room with me." At issue was Newsom's having granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The Obama-Newsom feud was verified in early 2008, when Willie Brown (backed by several Newsom staffers) gave a much more detailed account of the disputed incident to the San Francisco Chronicle. Obama's campaign denied the accusation, telling Politico that the incoming president was so "pissed" over the stories that the new administration "may give San Francisco to Canada."

Newsom might well have supported Hillary Clinton just as enthusiastically regardless of his personal feelings about Obama. Still, it's tempting to imagine that his feud with the current president might have, just as much as Bill Clinton's animosity toward Jerry Brown, circuitously earned him the former president's support. In politics, there is seldom a single reason for anything, and with so many personal feuds and vendettas driving the nation's politics, it's more than a little difficult to keep straight which one is motivating whom and when.

Will Clinton step in? If he wants to keep that "team player" image he so carefully rebuilt during the 2008 general election, he'll have to. But will he do so looking like an angry, misused Brown supporter or a fellow Democrat forced by party allegiance to go through the motions? I don't know.

What I can say with certainty is that Meg Whitman doesn't even take seriously the possibility that Bill Clinton would rather campaign for Jerry Brown than be seen as the man responsible for costing Democrats the California governor's mansion.

Update: Around the time that this posted, stories about Brown's remarks about Clinton at a campaign event Sunday were beginning to spread. So it seems that Whitman was probably right. "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." - Lily Tomlin.

And another update: Clinton issued a statement to several news outlets today. In it, he endorsed Brown, said that the CNN report had been inaccurate and specifically cited Gavin Newsom's support of Hillary Clinton as a reason for his having received Clinton's early primary endorsement.

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