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Technology / Webculture — 1 Comment
19
Feb 11

Content as Commodity

Google has itself in quite the pickle.  On one hand, as an advertising company, more content – even if its worthless content – in more places for ad placement and revenue opportunities.  On the other hand, content that was scraped or source from a content farm devalues search results and may lead to user defections.  I can’t help but think that Google’s multiple projects (Apps, Android, TV, and Chrome OS) has been at the cost of the search index.

My simple solution would be semantic index where only the first/best result is shown with the rest clustered behind a “similar results” link.

Economics / Government / Politicking — Comments Off
04
Feb 10

Teabagger’s Promised Land

It will be very, very interesting to see how the “Government Free Lite Zone” of Colorado Springs, CO plays out.   The Denver Post via Sadly, No!:

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops ” dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled. Continue reading →

Business / Journalism / Organizational Dynamics / the Great Disruption — Comments Off
03
Nov 09

The Iron Paywall?

Saul Friedman, an 80-year old print veteran at Newsday, hops over the paywall (via BoingBoing):

Customers of Cablevision, the cable and Internet provider that owns Newsday, and people who subscribe to Newsday in print will still be able to browse Newsday.com unfettered. But Newsday recently announced that everyone else will have to pay $5 a week to see much of the site, making it one of the few newspapers in the country to take such a plunge.

That did not sit well with Mr. Friedman, a freelancer who wrote Gray Matters, a weekly column on aging. He explained his departure in a note to Jim Romenesko’s media blog. In an interview, Mr. Friedman said, “My column has been popular around the country, but now it was really going to be impossible for people outside Long Island to read it.  That includes him; living outside Washington, he is not a subscriber to Newsday or Cablevision.

Mr. Friedman, who is 80, said he would continue to write about older people for the site timegoesby.net, but he called his decision an end to more than 50 years in newspapers. He wrote for Newsday for more than 20 years, including several years as a staff writer in its Washington bureau.

Meanwhile, the Examiner expands out into 160 more cities (including Philadelphia):

Quality writers wanted: Join us!

We’re seeking people like you who have in-depth knowledge about a particular topic, a passion about that topic and a desire to share related insights with others.

Join others across the country as they provide a wealth of local information, insider perspectives, helpful resources, and a view into a variety of events and activities within their cities.

I suspect that as newspapers start culling and cutting the more expensive talent, more than a few excellent writers will leave for new venues (such as the Daily Beast, True/Slant, or HuffPo) or hang out their own shingle.   The paywall cure may be just as painful as the disease.

Daily Links — Comments Off
13
Jul 09

Daily Links for July 11th through July 13th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Seth’s Blog: The CPM gap – Here's the thing: advertisers treat prospects online as targets, as victims, as people to subject to interruption. Conferences treat attendees as royalty, as paying customers who invested time and money to be there.

    And that's the difference. As long as your site is about something else and the ads are a distraction, you'll see CPM rates drop. As soon as you (or the advertisers) figure out that creating online communities aligned with the advertising, where attendance is a choice by the consumer, then you're creating genuine value.

  • Think Progress » Inspectors General Confirm Bush Admin Carried Out Massive Illegal Surveillance, More Than Previously Known – A congressionally-mandated report by Inspectors General of five separate intelligence agencies confirms that the Bush administration carried out “unprecedented,” massive surveillance activities beyond the warrantless wirteapping program that had previously been revealed.
  • U.S. Inaction Seen After Taliban P.O.W.’s Died – NYTimes.com – After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations.
  • Six Things That Could Still Send the Economy Down the Tubes | Financial Infographics – Some analysts say that the worst is over and the end of the recession is in sight, while others are predicting that we haven’t seen the half of it. The following infographic shows a few things that could realistically still go wrong, postponing the return to the economy’s previous state for a little while longer.
  • Want to keep your wallet? Carry a baby picture – Times Online – When faced with the photograph of the baby people were far more likely to send the wallet back, the study found. In fact, only one in ten were hearthearted enough not to do so. With no picture to tug at the emotions, just one in seven were sent back.

    According to Dr Wiseman the result reflects a compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations. "The baby kicked off a caring feeling in people, which is not surprising from an evolutionary perspective," he said.

    Scientists argue that it would be difficult to genetically code for feeling empathy exclusively towards your own child and much easier to code for feeling empathy towards all children. If you find a baby alone, there is a good chance it belongs to you, making it an effective evolutionary trait, said Dr Wiseman.

Daily Links — Comments Off
22
Jun 09

Daily Links for June 22nd

  • Small Businesses, and their Savior: Cutting Business Taxes | Young Philly Politics – Ooops. That is right. IF you are a small business, you may a few bucks less in taxes… but you will instead pay for your services, in the form of a $500 flat fee for trash pick up. And, remember that point above, about what makes the GRT so evil- that you pay whether you make a profit or not? Oh, yeah, you pay this whether you make a profit, too. What a sweetheart deal! Comcast, Cigna and others get a huge tax break every year and taxes are lowered. Small businesses get a tiny tax break, and then immediately give that tax break back in a trash fee. And as a byproduct, when Comcast and friends (and Coca-Cola and Exxon) no longer pay, the city’s treasury is further shrunken, preventing the city from providing other services.

    Small businesses, like the majority of people in the city, have been sold a false bill of goods with respect to tax cuts. If anything can show what this has really been all about- breaks to big corporations- it is this.

  • Google Tests Ad Unit That Would Heat Up Competition With Amazon.com (GOOG, AMZN) – Unlike normal Google search ads, Google Product ads include pictures and "individual offers with product information directly in the ad itself."

    Instead of charging per click, Google will charge advertisers for Google Product Ads based on the amount of inventory vendors sell through the ad.

    If the unit makes it out of beta, it will put Google in closer competition with Amazon (AMZN), which makes a nice buck listing third-party vendors' products amongst its own.

  • States Turning to Last Resorts in Budget Crisis – NYTimes.com – With state revenues in a free fall and the economy choked by the worst recession in 60 years, governors and legislatures are approving program cuts, layoffs and, to a smaller degree, tax increases that were previously unthinkable.

    All but four states must have new budgets in place less than two weeks from now — by July 1, the start of their fiscal year. But most are already predicting shortfalls as tax collections shrink, unemployment rises and the stock market remains in turmoil.

  • How to Write a Good Business Plan – WSJ.com – In what follows, I will expose the deal-killers found in the five most commonly rejected types of business plans, and share tips for creating plans that should get you invited back for a second meeting and, if all goes well, raise some capital and attract some initial customers.
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