Alicia Keys

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Alicia Keys
Keys performing at Pavilho Atlntico in Lisbon, Portugal on March 19, 2008
Background information
Birth name	Alicia Augello Cook
Also known as	Lellow
Born	January 25, 1981 (1981-01-25) (age 29)
Origin	New York City, New York, United States
Genres	R&B, soul
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, record producer, actress, music video director, author, poet
Instruments	Vocals, piano, keyboards, cello, synthesizer, vocoder, guitar, bass
Years active	1985present
Labels	Columbia, Arista, J
Website	www.aliciakeys.com

Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American recording artist, musician and actress. She was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began to play classical music on the piano. She attended Professional Performing Arts School and graduated at 16 as valedictorian. She later attended Columbia University before dropping out to pursue her music career. Keys released her debut album with J Records, having had previous record deals first with Columbia and then Arista Records.

Keys' debut album, Songs in A Minor, was a commercial success, selling over 12 million copies worldwide. She became the best-selling new artist and best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album earned Keys five Grammy Awards in 2002, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for "Fallin'". Her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys, was released in 2003 and was also another success worldwide, selling eight million copies. The album garnered her an additional four Grammy Awards in 2005. Later that year, she released her first live album, Unplugged, which debuted at number one in the United States. She became the first female to have an MTV Unplugged album to debut at number one and the highest since Nirvana in 1994.

Keys made guest appearances on several television series in the following years, beginning with Charmed. She made her film debut in Smokin' Aces and went on to appear in The Nanny Diaries in 2007. Her third studio album, As I Am, was released in the same year and sold six million copies worldwide, earning Keys an additional three Grammy Awards. The following year, she appeared in The Secret Life of Bees, which earned her a nomination at the NAACP Image Awards. She released her fourth album, The Element of Freedom, on December 15, 2009. Throughout her career, Keys has won numerous awards and has sold over 30 million albums worldwide, establishing herself as one of the best-selling artists of her time. On December 11, 2009 Alicia Key's was ranked as top R&B artist, the fifth top overall artist and the second top female artist (behind only Beyonce) of the 2000-2009 decade by the Billboard Magazine decade end chart. ^[

When the folks at Netbook Navigator first asked me to write about the company's new 9 inch tablet PC I had a hard time getting past the high price tag of nearly $1200. But that price was for an early model that packed 3G capabilities and was intended for early adopters. Now Netbook Navigator has updated the pricing for the Nav 9 tablet and the base model costs just $799. Yeah, that's still enough money to pick up 2-3 netbooks, but here's what you get for the money:

• Display: 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel multitouch display
• CPU: 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU
• Graphics: Intel GMA 950
• Storage: 16GB SSD
• RAM: 2GB
• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
• Connectivity: 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, LAN, optional 3G HSDPA or CDMA
• I/O: 3 USB ports, MiniSD card slot, SIM card slot, port replicator w/VGA/LAN adapter, 1.3MP webcam
• Battery: 3 cell, 1700mAh (2.5 hours max)
• Dimensions: 10 x 6.6 x 0.8
• Weight: 2 pounds
• Other: car charger

The 3G module will cost you extra, as will a higher capacity battery which is good for up to 4 hours of run time. You can also get the Nav 9 with a 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB SSD. The most expensive unit will run you $1399, but the $799 starting price is certainly much more appealing than the $1200 the company was charging earlier.

Netbook Navigator has also put together a handy chart comparing the Nav 9 tablet to the upcoming Apple iPad and the already-on-the-market Archos 9 tablet. The long and short of it is that the Nav 9 supports multitasking, supports USB peripherals and SD card expansion, and comes in more varieties. Oh yeah, it can also run most Windows applications. On the other hand, it's thicker and heavier than the other tablets.

Post from: Liliputing

Netbook Navigator's Nav 9 slate PC gets affordable, guns for the iPad

• Aldiko: outstanding e-book reader (better than Kindle on the iPhone in terms of feature set; obviously the book store is not quite as good, but the integration with free eBook download sites is a plus). Currently reading Makers by Cory Doctorow.
• Amazon: search the full Amazon catalog (can use barcodes or photos in addition to typing or speaking your query), track orders in my account.
• APNDroid: useful if you want to disable your phone's cellular data connection (useful if you're often on WiFi and want to turn off your EDGE or 3G data connection)
• AppReferer: builds a QR code (a 2D barcode) that makes recommending an app to another Android user in person a one-click affair.
• Battery Graph: shows a nice chart (exportable, even) of battery usage, which is helpful if you're trying to isolate when the battery started to drain.
• Coin Flip: silly app that lets me flip a coin. Use it mostly to settle disputes between the kids. :)
• Congress: built by Sunlight Labs, a phenomenal "pocket Congressional directory" that includes contact info, committee memberships, news, and YouTube vids of every Senator and Representative.
• DroidLive Lite: Streaming radio (via Shoutcast) from 1300 radio stations around the world.
• Facebook: news feed, photos and profile info for friends
• Fandango: Order movie tickets from movie theaters so I can bypass lines at the ticket counter.
• Finance: Google Finance app
• Flashlight: turns screen bright white to use in dark rooms
• Foursquare: app for playing Foursquare, also has a nice widget for my home screen
• Gmote: turns my Nexus One into a touchpad remote (when paired with a computer running the Gmote server software). Handy for giving presentations, or just doing something nerdy and cool.
• Google Goggles: search Google by taking pictures.
• Google Sky Map: the one app that consistently blows people away. Load it up, turn your camera toward the night sky and you'll get a real-time view of which stars, constellations and planets are above you. An awesome accompaniment to a telescope.
• Jewels: Bejeweled-like game.
• Layar: Augmented reality app that displays info on screen in realtime through your phone's camera.
• Locale: very sophisticated app for scripting events to happen based on certain triggers. (When I'm at home, disable the data connection and connect to my home wifi access point. At 11pm, turn off the sound and put the phone to sleep; at 6am turn the sound back up; when I'm at work, put the phone in vibrate mode; etc.)
• Metal detector: actually works.
• Movies (aka Flixster): Lots of info/trailers/reviews about new and upcoming movies, also integrates with Netflix for DVDs
• My Tracks: built by some Googlers, great app for keeping track of runs/bikes/ski runs you've done; captures altitude, distance, etc., then uploads to Google Maps My Maps.
• OpenTable: make restaurant reservations from the phone.
• Owner: adds my contact info to the unlock screen ("If found, please contact Rick Klau...")
• Pandora: streaming music channels.
• PapiJump: great little game using the phone's accelerometer.
• Pintail: monitors your phone's SMS messages for a message that says "locate" (plus a PIN); once received, activates the GPS and replies with the phone's location. Helpful if you've got a lost phone.
• Robo Defense: addicitve game.
• Scoreboard: Tracks scores of your favorite teams, with realtime updates and notifications as score changes.
• Seesmic: Great Twitter app.
• Shop Savvy: grab a barcode, find out who sells it and for how much.
• TiVo Remote: works with any TiVo HD unit over WiFi.
• TripIt: phenomenal itinerary manager for all travel info.
• Voice Recorder: does exactly what it says it does.
• Yelp: Local reviews.

Quite possibly in popular vernacular or in the agency world, yes. I'm not sure that people have meant to do it but it is happening.

comScore released a small set of data from a survey that they performed about holiday this year online. Not surprisingly, it is up compared to previous years. The surprise comes in the form of how this data is displayed in a Social Media Influence table.

I think somebody pulled up in a semi truck loaded with hype.

Or, maybe, it is that the respondents now identify social media simply as talking with friends. Have a look at the table:

At face value, 28% of online Holiday shopping being influenced by social media is believable and insanely large number. Good for all those social media experts out there! But looking a the rest of the data in the chart, which covers every major form of social media Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Fan Pages, Blogs and generic status updates, something is missing.

Did the respondents want to feel cool by responding yes to this? Were all the respondents extremely dialed in to social media? Does standing around the water cooler talking about Lego sets equate as social media?

I raise these questions because the subsequent percentages that have taken this type of action based on social media doesn't add up to me. I fancy myself a stats guy but these numbers sound like they are missing something from this public release. It sounds like a lot of hype.

It may not be, and I am not doubting that comScore performed a valuable and accurate survey. I'm just not sure that this data is being represented to its fullest due to missing information. Or a cultural shift to think of word-of-mouth as social media.

Does this sound accurate to you?

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• Holiday shoppers turning to Facebook, Twitter to chose gifts (seattlepi.com)
• Introducing Social Media Pro (ducttapemarketing.com)
• The chain reaction within social media (slideshare.net)
• Dealing with negative WOM online (heidi-miller.com)

Is Social Media Taking Over Word of Mouth? is a post from: TechStartups.com

I've been following what I think is one of the great stories for 2009 that will shape the future of the internet for a few weeks on this blog. That story is the release of linked data resources from the New York Times. What they are calling Linked Open Data.

Essentially, what the Times has done is release the glue that they use internally to create a structure for the way that words their context, sentiment and definition relate to one another. This is some powerful stuff. Once developers get their hands on this stuff they start to link content together in new ways. Many of them meaningful ways that can allow publishers to write better content due to discovery of similar content. Others have value in search and topic recommendation.

For example, say you wanted to create a chart for the public sentiment regarding an individual or a business over a span of time. Where would you get that data? From a semantic engine that speaks a structured language that knows where and how to group linked open data. The deal is that the internet is full of it. The problem is that most of it is not structured, or glued to keep this thing going, in a way that lends itself to linking content together very well.

Enter the New York Times to release their own internal structure and namespaces that they have been building for decades. They use it with a wealth of content day after day when journalists add their stories to the Times' corpus. It is the mechanism for creating order from the chaos that is language.

Today, Evan Sandhaus (@kansandhaus), Semantic Technologist for the NYT, released another iteration for their Linked Open Data to the public. It consists of URL updates, explanations on changes (changelog) and some future enhancements to the RDF structure and beyond:

1. New York Times namespace documentation
2. More mappings from subject headings to dbpedia and freebase
3. Sample applications of data

Sandhaus points out at the end of this release that most of the changes are community driven. So if you're interested in the semantic web and want to have a say in how this great project rolls on get involved.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

New York Times Iterates Linked Open Data is a post from: TechStartups.com

It is usually a pretty simple equation to find success for startups be first or be awesome. When you bring in an outlier like luck, however, you can be neither first or awesome and find your sweet spot. A recent post on the Drake Direct blog makes this point with charts and math. Yippee!

Perry Drake and his wife Rhonda, have taken on the topic of Google vs. Facebook. In doing so they have applied some forecasting algorithms to current site traffic and unique visitor for both. The results are a bit surprising.

According to their work, they feel confident to predict that Facebook will have more visits by the end of this year than Google. Pretty amazing.

What leads to such a prediction?

Ship shape mathematical modeling for one. And for the other, the number of unemployed Americans has been increasing steadily. I'm sure you see where this is going. Especially if you have friends that go to an office and spend all day adding updates to their wall, your wall and sending you updates for the 2,485th quiz they have taken about the mob.

Perry and Rhonda have taken this data and put it into some handy charts to show that the increase in Facebook pageviews and traffic have increased right along with the unemployment curve.

Kudos to these two for proving that luck exists and that it can be equal to awesomeness. Because Facebook wasn't the first social networking site and it wasn't the awesomest if you liked animated gif's of glittering unicorns.

Maybe Google could use some better SEO?

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

When Luck Is As Good As Awesomeness is a post from: TechStartups.com

Getting started with the site is quite easy, because Outright has recently partnered with a number of financial services: you can import invoices from Freshbooks, receipts from Shoeboxed, your PayPal transaction history, as well as your credit card transactions through a deal with Expensify, which supports 94% of US credit cards. You only have to do this once once you've linked your account, they'll keep automatically updating until you unlink them.

Once you're done with the initial setup, everything on Outright is fairly self-explanatory (which is sort of the idea). The home screen presents you with a chart pitting your costs against your income to give you an at-a-glance look at your business's health. At the top of the screen you'll see tabs for Income, Expenses, Taxes, and Reports, where you can hone in on the transactions you're looking for. Transactions are automatically sorted into different categories (for example, the site knows that your airline's tickets belong under the Travel' category), and you can also generate reports on a per-customer basis, which would be helpful for eBay sellers. Beyond that the application helps with taxes by offering reminders when a deadline is coming up and an estimated amount that you'll have to pay.

Outright isn't as robust as some other financial services out there, but if you're looking to keep things simple it's certainly worth a look. The company was formerly called GoBoostrap.com, but changed its name in conjunction with news of its $2 million funding in February.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Most of Creately's diagram and illustration tools, ranging from dead-simple flowcharts to circuit diagrams, are free for signed-up users and allow sharing, embedding, publishing, commenting, and other collaboration tools for up to five people on publicly available works (paid accounts get more shared users and private postings). Like so many web tools, it strips down the interface of desktop offerings like Visio and makes it easier for first-timers to get a grasp on things. Click on a shape or line in your Creately chart, and a context menu offers all the options of moving, reshaping, resizing, or whatever else you can do with it.

We might ask for a more updated look than the steel-gray toolbars of yore, but the end productsstamped with a subtle Creately logo, unless you fork outare what really matter. Creately is free to sign up for and use.

I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything.

He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life.

He said, People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let's look at a few examples.

He drew an empty grid on the board, like this:

Time moves from left to right. Happiness from bottom to top.

He said, Let's look at a very common story arc. The story of Cinderella.

It starts with her awful life with evil stepsisters, scrubbing the fireplace. Then she get an invitation to the ball! Things look up. Then the fairy godmother makes her a dress and a coach. Even better! Then she goes to the ball, and dances with the prince! This is great! But then it's midnight. She has to go. Oh no. Sadness. Back to her humdrum life scrubbing the fireplace. But it's not as bad as before, because she's had this encouraging experience. Then, the prince finds her, and the happiness factor is off the chart! Happily ever after.

People LOVE that story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.

He wiped the board clean and said, Now let's look at another popular story arc: the disaster.

It's an ordinary day in an ordinary town. But something horrible happens! A child falls down a well! The whole town gathers to save her. Old grudges surface, but are belittled in the light of this tragedy. Rifts are bonded as people work together. The child is saved, and all is well. But notice it's a little better than it was before, now that this incident has brought them all closer together.

People LOVE that story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.

But the problem is, life is really like this...

Our lives drifts along with normal things happening. Some ups, some downs, but nothing to go down in history about. Nothing so fantastic or terrible that it'll be told for a thousand years.

But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think are lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.

That's why people invent fights. That's why we're drawn to sports. That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.

We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale.

Neale S. Godfrey, author of the book Money Doesn't Grow On Trees, writes: "Kids don't get it if you don't talk about." Mr. Godfrey is talking to people like me, and if I don't start listening, I'm going to have a big problem on my hands. My four year old daughter is a born shopper. And, as the Co-Founder of a company fighting everyday to bring sensible saving back into the public consciousness after decades of absence, I often worry that I enable her in the very habits I'm encouraging SmartyPig customers to break.

Like most couples these days, my wife, Sara, and I have been engaging in serious discussions regarding money. How we spend money. How we save money. How we use credit. We are pretty normal in that these conversations, while productive, aren't all that much fun. That said, we force ourselves to sit down and talk about money and we are pretty diligent about maintaining healthy attitudes about spending and saving. But when it comes to how we use money with regard to our daughter, all common sense flies out the window.

Our daughter has a piggy bank. And while it's our pocket change that goes into it, she understands the value of what we put in it and that she is rewarded when it fills up. We also require that she perform simple tasks around the house for which, when a series of days are filled in as "complete," she gets a reward. If she plays her cards right, does as she's told, and is patient, she usually ends up with a "treat" every few weeks or so. Problem is she never stops wanting or asking for the most trivial things, and we end up like this episode of Dr. Phil - indulging her whims, rather than being responsible parents who model fiscal fitness.

I tell my wife, "It has to stop." Then I tell her again the next time and the next. But I'm just as guilty as she is. From my perspective, these little treats are almost immediately disregarded and considered "junk." If I sound frustrated, it's because I am. Our unplanned spending on small gifts for our daughter has gotten totally out of control. But it's easier to just go with it than to say no. Who doesn't want a smile and the baby blues? But what are we doing to her as a result? What kind of habits are we teaching her? Every other aspect of her life is meticulously dissected. We are completely focused on turning this healthy, intelligent, productive kid into a healthy, intelligent, productive adult. Why can't we be the same when it comes to teaching her about money?

A recent issue of Better Homes & Gardens offered us three easy tips to begin the process of taking control:

1. Don't Forget Who's In Charge - Marketing machine or not - and good God if there isn't a Disney princess on everything! - You can say "no."
2. Talk About Spending Decisions - Don't lie and say, "I can't afford it." Explain priorities - even to four-year-olds.
3. Hand Some Over - Give your kids the power. Let them make the transaction. Let them see the difference between need and want.

So, can Sara and I do this? Do we need a chart that we make an "X" on every day we don't wimp out and take the easy road? From time to time, I'm going to let you know how it's going. And, of course, time will tell. We at SmartyPig are spending a lot of time these days discussing money and children and families. And while I pride myself on being a good listener, this is one conversation I'd really like to begin truly contributing to.

And I'd like you all to contribute as well. I'd love any tips you might have or anecdotes about your successes or failures in teaching your kids smart savings habits, just send them here jgaskell(at)smartypig(dot)com. We may even feature your ideas or stories on our blog. Thanks!

As digital cameras have become ubiquitous, and cheap (or free) photo websites plentiful, more people than ever are using images in presentations. Images are not appropriate for every kind of talk, but even when images are appropriate (such as keynote/ballroom style presentations), people are still making the same common mistakes. So here are some things to keep in mind if you use images in your next talk. (Get a larger version of the "slides" image here.)

Case study: a single slide
Let's imagine you are preparing a presentation for a large audience on current issues in Japanese education. One issue facing schools and universities in Japan today is the decreasing number of potential students due to fewer children being born. So our sample slide touches on the low fertility rate in Japan in this context. You could either use a full-bleed image like the one on the left below or a smaller image of a photograph of a school yard in Japan as seen on the slide on the right below. If you chose the slide on the right you could also have a simple line chart fade in as you talk about the declining rate as a long-term trend.

The common mistakes
For our sample here we'll use the photo on the left above as a starting point. How many different ways could we use the same image (at different resolutions) inappropriately or use a different image in a way that is less effective than the one on the left? Here are eleven common mistakes:

(1) Image is too small
You do not have to go full bleed with an image, but this particular image does not work at a such a small size (The slide is 800x600, this image is 183x152.)



(2) Image is placed randomly on slide
The image may be large enough now to be seen easily, but it's put willy-nilly on the slide. Usually this results in the text getting lost in the background (though in this case the text is still legible). Looks accidental.



(3) Image is almost full-screen but not quite
Again, nothing should look accidental. This looks like they were going for the full-bleed background image effect but just missed. Now the software background template can be seen just enough to become a bit of noise



(4) Image is of poor quality (pixelated)
This is all too common. This happens when you take a low-rez jpeg (from a website, for example) and stretch it out. Oh, the humanity!



(5) Image is of poor quality & contains watermark
Even worse is to take a free comp from a photo website and stretch it out. This introduces distracting visual noise (and says you are either cheap, lazy, or both). If you cannot afford images (or do not have a camera, etc.), then it's better to use none at all.

(6) Image is stretched horizontally & distorted
This is all too common. This occurs when people stretch out an image to make it "fit."



(7) Image is stretched vertically & distorted
This becomes a distraction and looks odd. Are young Japanese students really 8-feet tall these days?

(8) Presenter tiles image
Just because the software lets you tile an image, does not mean you should use this feature. Now the background image has too much salience (even if it did not have watermarks).

(9) Clip art is chosen
Avoid off-the-shelf clip art (though your own sketches & drawings can be a refreshing change if used consistently throughout the visuals).



(10) Image is lame & has nothing to do with content
Not sure what two guys shaking hands in front of a globe has to do with the fertility rate in Japan. Yet even if we were talking about "international partnership" the image is still a clich.



(11) Background image has too much salience (text hard to see)
Sometimes the image is actually a pretty good one but it just needs a bit of editing so that the text will pop out more. The slide on the left below is not horrible but the balance is off and the text does not pop out as much as it could. For the slide on the right below, the image is cropped for better balance, giving more space for the text to breath (and a transparent box is added to help the text pop out a bit more, though there are other ways to do this).



Text & images
Text within images is but one way to use text/data and images harmoniously. As always, much depends on the topic and the context. Images can be very powerful and effective if used with careful intention. The question is not do you have too many? or too few? but rather what's your intention? You can give a good presentation without any images at all, but if you do use images in slides, try to keep these eleven tips in mind.

There are clearly more than eleven ways to use images inappropriately, what are some of the ones that you have observed over the years? Would love to hear your stories.

Source- Graphjam

Yesterday's Progress Report had an excellent rundown of why the House's proposed surtax is a reasonable and responsible proposal. You should read the whole thing for yourself. But the big points are that it's a modest tax, that it's narrowly targeted to the richest 1%, and that tax law has been very kind to this slice of the population in recent years.

On the last point, the numbers are pretty amazing. The top 1% has (1) seen their after-tax income rise by 256% from 1979 to 2006; (2) seen their effective tax rate fall significantly since the mid-1990s; and (3) received a lot of money from Bush's tax cuts ($518K/household). In short, they can afford it. In fact, the House is asking for only a fraction of those tax cuts back (not all of them) to help insure 40 million people, among other things.

All that said, I'm not wedded to the surtax. If Congress adopts other ways to raise revenues, fine. A dollar is a dollar.

But what's really disturbed me has been the political reaction to the surtax, particularly in the Senate. It's only been out a few days, but already Nelson and Grassley and Collins are all but calling it dead. And Pelosi seems to be backpedaling a bit too.

This is my worry: If this type of tax -- which is narrowly applied to only the very richest people -- isn't viable, what kind of tax is? I mean, it's hard to imagine any of these people accepting any tax at this point. And that's a problem given our country's pressing needs.

In sum it's just another data point to support the conclusion that the politics of our nation's tax policy is in a very harmful place at the moment (see also California -- which isn't exactly cutting "waste" in its deal).

If you can't follow price action, and economic figures are clouding your headit won't hurt you to do less.

Here is a chart from @keithshepard that will show you what I like to see.

The breakouts and price action I am seeing that confirm what I am looking at on that chart.

To make money in good markets, you can't think. It feels like we are upon one. I don't have price tragets to give you. I have no idea where the markets or individual stocks can/will run too. When I enter a position, I have a stop in mind. It will slowly move up if the stock continues to move up after I buy it.

The chart shows you that there is no rush to get long. If we are truly entering a good market, they tend to last a while.

DO NOT rush in. Let good breakouts and price action slowly get you invested.

Here is a list of all-time higs:

$TKLC, $ARO, $HTS, $ARST (own it), $STEC, $HMSY (own it), $SWKS, $MVL, $CLW, $MJN, EW, $MGEE, $AAP, $ROST, $OPTR, $ULSM, $MV, $MFE, $BPSG

HERE is a list of stocks to remind you that trends end and stops are important:

$ABK, $MNI, $CORS, $CIT, $GFG, $MDTL, $MPG, $PEIX, $HSWI, $DRL, $AMFI, $LEE, $NCT, $CHB, $CRBC, $CNB, $QRCP, $CT, $MBHI, $FTBK, $YRCW, $EGT, $FTK, $LCC, $WNC, $SRZ, $FMD

No shortcuts.

Some fans objected to Reznor's claim that Topspin Media (video interview) got it right with its re-release of the Beastie Boys album Ill Communication, which offers a wide array of merchandise in just about every conceivable format at a wide variety of prices. It's become a well-worn criticism of the independent distribution model that fledgling bands need a helping hand in order to make it in the music business. Not so, says Reznor. According to him, giving away digital music while charging for scarce, premium edition is the best way forward for artists of all stripes not just Radiohead and his own band, Nine Inch Nails.

Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales, wrote Reznor on his message board. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY [as DRM-free MP3s] Collect people's e-mail info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods.

It's a play straight out of Anderson's playbook (and, in fact, Anderson cites Nine Inch Nails as an example of a business that understands Free).

To put it into practice, Reznor advises that bands distribute through Amazon, TopSpin or Tunecore; set up a simple, Flash-free site outside of MySpace (which he says is dying and reads as cheap / generic); never abuse their mailing list; use free tools from Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube and SoundCloud; and give people a reason to keep coming back to their site (Reznor's own forums are an example of this strategy).

However, Reznor says the strategy of giving away music in return for e-mail addresses, then marketing pricey box sets and other premium goods to those e-mail addresses only makes sense if a band wants to keep all its money and stay in control of its image.

If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake), your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days, you'll need old-school marketing muscle, and that only comes from major labels.

Good luck with that one.

See Also:

• Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
• TopSpin Lets Bands Ape Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails
• Video Interview: Ian Rogers, Topspin Media
• SoundCloud Threatens MySpace as Music Destination for Twitter Era
• Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson on the Future of Free
• Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead Dominate Amazon MP3 Chart
• It Just Got Cheaper To Sell a Song on iTunes
• MySpace Music: What Went Wrong, and What's Being Done About It

Photo: Andrea Veraart

The new browser wars on on. More than a decade after Microsoft killed off Netscape with Internet Explorer, competition in the browser market has never been stronger. Just last week, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5, which has now been downloaded nearly 14 million times. Earlier in June, Apple released Safari 4. In March, Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 8, and Google came out with a speedier beta of its Chrome browser.

Some early data is coming in showing relative market share and how fast people are upgrading. If you look at the chart above from Statcounter, it indicates that since March Internet Explorer has lost 11.4 percent market share to other browsers. That is the combined market share of IE8, IE7, and IE6. Certainly IE8 (the light blue line) has been growing strong since its release last March, capturing 16.7 percent of the market as of July 4. Those strong gains make up for most of the drop in IE7's market share from 49.1 percent in March to 30.1 percent yesterday, indicating that Microsoft is doing a good job of getting existing IE7 users to upgrade at a steady pace. And in mid-June, IE8 finally surpassed IE6, which still stubbornly holds a 7.6 percent share. Add those three up, (IE6+IE7+IE8), however, and IE all together holds only a 54.4 percent market share versus the 65.8 percent combined share in March, 2009.

In just over three months, Internet Explorer has seen its overall market share erode by 11.4 percent. Where did that go? It went to Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Nearly 5 percent of that, or about half, went to Firefox 3.0, which currently has 27.6 percent market share. That doesn't count last week's upgrade. See the dotted line just below the light blue IE8 line? That is a combined set of other browsers and appears to include Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Chrome 2.0.

If you look at a 30-day version of that same chart, it shows Safari 4 with 4 percent market share and Chrome with 3 percent market share. It doesn't yet break out Firefox 3.5, but if you assume that makes up the bulk of the remaining dotted line which jumped to nearly pass IE6 in the past week, you can figure out more or less which browsers are taking share from Microsoft. (I've used data from the most recent daily chart in this post, but embedded the monthly chart below which has data as of June 30).

As I said, this is early data from one source. Net Applications, another commonly cited source for browser market share, is currently reviewing its June numbers, but I have a feeling they will show similar trends. (This Wikipedia page shows other browser market share sources, most of them haven't been updated since March). It is difficult to make any firm conclusions at this point, since market share is shifting so rapidly as every major (and minor) browser tries to convince users to upgrade.

But we are in the midst of a major upgrade cycle simultaneously across IE, FireFox, and Safari (with the Chrome wild card thrown in). When all is said and done, we might see a major shake-up in market share and almost definitely will see leadership pass from IE7 to another browser. The question is will that be IE8 or Firefox? Whichever one wins, the good news is that IE6 is finally dying.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Version Market Share

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1. Has anyone noticed that its impossible to trust a single word uttered about coaching changes, the draft, trades and even celebration parties these days ?

Bloggers, sports websites and even the print media have gotten so desperate they seem to have come to the conclusion that fabricated stories, passed off as rumors, are a better way to drive traffic and create awareness of a website or blog than actual reporting.

Unfortunately, ESPN and local newspapers, radio and TV media have become the patsies of bloggers. If some random blogger reports that he has heard that a trade of Joe for John is being discussed, then the traditional media, as they have told me many times is requested by their editor to run it down and see if its real. Its almost like a sad joke. How do you make an ESPN reporter jump ? Make up something and put it on your blog. Somewhere a bunch of sports bloggers are playing a drinking game. Chug if the other guys made up trade rumor makes the ESPN crawl.

How to stop it ? ESPN.com puts up a page of blacklisted blogs and websites who's posts they wont comment on or report on in any way. It will create a short term surge of traffic for those sites, but then they will go away as the proprietors of the sites realize that being discredited is not a good thing.

2. I did a quick and dirty interview with The Motley Fool. They asked me about Buy and Hold for Stocks. My answer was simple.

Buy and hold is long dead. It has always been a sucker's bet. Proponents point to charts of index performance over the long term; unfortunately, things like house repairs, kids, and college tuition don't follow the same chart.

Buy and hold is a great marketing slogan for funds that want to take your money. Nothing more or less.

Then they had John Bogle ,founder of Vanguard and creator of the Vanguard 500 comment on what I had to say. I'm glad to say that Mr Bogle made my point. In what should have been a simple answer for him, was not. Plus he managed to take a few shots at me. Hey, if you can't counter a point, slam the messenger ! Here is what he had to say. Notice all the qualifiers.

Cuban embargo is what we need after those silly statements.

Of course buy and hold is a sucker's bet where individual stocks are concerned (just ask the guys that bought and held Mark's own company!)
And while buy and hold for all of American business (a stock index fund) may produce long years of plenty interrupted by years of famine, putting equity capital to work in that way will be great so long as America is great.
And as a group, all investors, by definition, are buy and hold investors! Not complicated! And mathematically, those who themselves are buy and holders (without costs) will not might outperform those who trade back and forth with one another, who capture the same market return but let all those croupier costs destroy their returns.

Finally, if buy and hold refers not to stocks or the stock portfolio but to one's aggregate investment portfolio, reducing the stock commitment as age takes its toll, it is the most certain way to wealth that exists in our uncertain world.

He's right about the marketing slogan except when it is applied to the strategy described in the immediately preceding paragraph.

I stand by what I had to say. Buyer beware.

ShareThis

Never underestimate the power of first-mover advantage, especially when being one of the first movers gets you bought by Google. Back in August, 1999, Pyra Labs launched Blogger. LiveJournal had launched six months before and Open Diary in October of the previous year. But it was Pyra Labs which was acquired by Google in February, 2003, and the rest was history. Now, nearly ten years later, Blogger is still the dominant hosted blogging platform. In May, 52 million individual people from the U.S. visited a Blogger blog, almost twice as many as the 28 million who visited a blog hosted by Wordpress.com (comScore). Six Apart properties, including Typepad.com, attracted 14 million.

Millions of bloggers still use Blogger because it is easy. However, Wordpress.com is making steady gains and growing its aggregate audience in the U.S. at more than twice the annual rate of Blogger (40 percent versus 14 percent). These numbers don't count all the blogs that host Wordpress on their own servers, such as Techcrunch.

The vast majority of Blogger traffic comes from outside the United States, where its annual growth rate is 38 percent compared to Wordpress.com's 59 percent. On a worldwide basis, Blogger blogs have a readership of 267 million people a month, compared to 143 million a month for Wordpress (comScore, April, 2008). The biggest countries are, in order:

1. U.S.
2. Brazil
3. Turkey
4. Spain
5. Canada
6. U.K.

From a business standpoint, Blogger is good for Google because it creates millions of sites which can show AdSesne ads. It creates more inventory for Google. Only recently has Google bothered to start showing ads to the users of Blogger itself every time they publish a post.

Can Blogger keep its lead indefinitely, or will Wordpress eventually catch up? Or will something else entirely overtake both of them?

Today, two of the people behind the original Blogger, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, have another little service that is capturing people's attention. It is called Twitter, you may have heard about it. In May, Twitter.com had 17.6 million unique U.S. visitors to its Website alone, making it bigger already than Six Apart.

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Embed RSS Feeds in Web Pages

Go to this page, replace the feed URL with your own feed, use the default color scheme or change it to something else and then click Get Code. You'll get a JavaScript snippet that can be easily placed in the sidebar of your blog.

If you like to embed feeds from multiple sources, merge all of them into one using Yahoo Pipes and then pass the combined feed to the Google Gadget. You can also use RSS widgets like WidgetBox or YourMinis that are done in Flash and not JavaScript.

Embed MP3 music and other Audio

If you like to embed audio files like songs, podcasts or interviews in your web pages, use Yahoo! Media Player - its a free Flash music player that automatically detects all links to MP3 files in the current web page and turns them into a music player. Another alternative is the Google MP3 Player.

To embed other audio formats like 3GP, Midi, Real or Windows Media, it may be a good idea to convert these files into MP3 using Zamzar so that they play on almost any web browser.

Embed Flickr Photos and Slideshows

To embed an individual Flickr photograph in your blog, click the "Share This" link (available next to the photo title) and choose embed it. Flickr requires that the embedded image should link back to Flickr and this built-in embed option automatically takes care of that requirement. (see example)

To embed a Flickr photo slideshow in your web page, open any Slideshow in a new page (see example) and choose "Customize HTML" from the embed option (see example). Here you can specify a custom size for your Flash slideshow so that it fits just right into your web page.

Embed High Quality or HD YouTube Videos

To embed a high resolution version of YouTube clip in your web pages, first make sure that Watch in High Quality or Watch in HD link exists next to the YouTube player as most videos are only available in standard format.

Next copy the YouTube embed code and append &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 (for high quality) or &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 (for 720p High Definition) to the URL value of the movie parameter (both instances).

Embed Picasa Web Albums

When you open a photo album inside Picasa, click the link in the right sidebar that says "Link to this album" and choose "Embed Slideshow". You can use the same approach to embed individual photographs that are available inside Picasa.

Embed Events from Google Calendar

Click the drop-down arrow next to any Google Calendar and select Calendar settings. Open the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper program by clicking the customize button and choose elements that you want to display or hide in the calendar.

Embed Very Large Photographs

To embed really large images in your blog, you may either use Deep Zoom or the Google Maps viewer. These programs break your photographs in small tiles and you can even pan / zoom across these images very similar to the default interface of Google Maps.

Embed Charts and Graphs in Web Pages

My personal favorite is Zoho Sheet any chart created inside Zoho Sheet can be published as an external image without exposing the full spreadsheet. If you are interested in creating charts with low volume of data, use Google Charts.

Embed GIF Animations and Screencasts

GIF animations (see example) are a perfect way to embed short screencasts in web pages as they require no plugins and auto-play inside feed readers. You should upload GIF files to your Flickr account as it preserve all the frames while lot of other image hosting website will drop anything after the first frame.

Embed Word Documents

Upload your document to Scribd and they'll give you the embed code in Flash. Scribd supports both doc and the new Office 2007 docx format in addition to Open Office documents. Even Barack Obama is using Scribd to upload his public documents and upcoming plan.

Embed PowerPoint Presentations

While the popular choice is Slideshare, you should also consider using Issuu (best web application) for presentations that are either large or formatted in the form of magazines or catalogues (see example). The only downside is that Issuu accepts PDFs so you need to convert the presentation before uploading onto Issuu.

Embed Spreadsheet Data

Both Zoho Sheet and Google Docs allow you to publish a range of cells from a spreadsheet into a web page but the embedding process in Zoho is less complicated - select a range and choose "Publish" from the contextual menu to embed that range into your web page.

Embed Adobe PDF Files

To embed PDFs in a web page, you can either use Issuu (for magazine style PDFs) or Scribd for PDFs has either have lot of text or have a top-to-bottom reading layout similar to Word documents.

Embed Flash (SWF) or Flash Video (FLV)

The best option to embed Flash content is via swfobject. It improves the overall user experience by providing alternatives in case Flash is missing and your Flash content also becomes more searchable. This tutorial has all the files and other details to help you get started with SwfObject 2.

Embed LinkedIn Profile

If you wish to display your LinkedIn profile in the sidebar of your blog, try LinkInABox. People (site visitors) can read a summary of your LinkedIn profile without leaving the site.

Embed Google Maps in Web Pages

Embedding a Google Map in your website is now almost as easy as adding an image just open the Static Maps wizard, search for location that you want to embed and specify the dimensions of your map. They'll provide a simple URL that actually points to a static image of that map.

Embed Another Webpage in your Blog

If you like to embed another website into your web page, your best bet is an IFRAME tag also known as an Inline Frame. Just set the SRC value to the address of the web page that you want to embed into your current HTML document. You could try IFRAMEs for inserting live search results from Google into your web page without having to worry about APIs.

Embed Windows Media or QuickTime movies

While it is possible to embed mov or wmv videos in web pages directly using the OBJECT tag, I recommend that you put these videos onto blip.tv and then embed them in web pages as Flash video. That's because your visitors can then play the video without extra plugins and two, they always have the option to download the video in the original format from blip.tv servers.

Embed Other Fonts in Web Pages

Most web pages use universal fonts like Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana since they are installed on most computers and hence your web pages will render correctly. If you want to try something different and render pages in fonts like Microsoft Calibri or Adobe Garamond Pro that are only available on some machines, all you need is sIFR it lets you use almost any font for your web pages using JavaScript + Flash and is perfect for writing newspaper style headlines.

Embed your Lifestream in a Web Page

You have a presence on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, Facebook, Amazon and a dozen other online places. It can get really tough for friends to track you at so many places so what you should do is create an account at FriendFeed, import all the different services that you use and then use the FriendFeed Badge to embed your lifestream activity on your main site.

Related tutorial: How to Embed Video in PowerPoint

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website - Digital Inspiration

more graph humor and song chart memes

Nine companies are saying "yes," having recently launched Enterprise 2.0 offerings that integrate with SharePoint technology.

If there's one thing that any I.T. pro knows it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run, technology they use, or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T. purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully considered, and, if worthy, purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T. infrastructure. SharePoint is no exception.

Why SharePoint?

One of the Microsoft Server products that businesses worldwide run is SharePoint. For those not from the I.T. community, SharePoint is thought of as a more robust version of Google Sites, but that's a poor comparison. Yes, both tools allow for team site creation and collaboration, however the similarities start and stop there.

For many companies, SharePoint is the portal for all their business data - and not just docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs, but also browser-based forms that interact with built-in workflow technologies which add business logic to sophisticated online applications.

Other tools allow for the addition of business intelligence enabled dashboards and reporting centers, enterprise search, and application templates that can be downloaded and customized to quickly set up internal web sites and services that provide everything from online help desks, to groupboard workspaces, to knowledge libraries, vacation scheduling tools, project tracking workspaces, sales pipelines, and much more.

In other words, businesses won't necessarily be ditching SharePoint anytime soon just to run the latest and greatest "Enterprise 2.0" technologies. However, that doesn't mean they're not interested in running Enterprise 2.0 apps - it just means that they'll be more likely to "maximize their investment" in SharePoint in order to do so.

This week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, several vendors are demonstrating their social-computing business tools, and a good many of them are tools that integrate with SharePoint technologies. Here's a look at who these companies are and what they offer:

Awareness Inc.

Just yesterday, Awareness announced their new platform that allows for the creation of Web 2.0 communities that connect people and content through social networking technologies and Awareness-powered widgets that can be ported to any third-party services from Facebook to MySpace.

With the new platform from Awareness, Microsoft SharePoint integration is built-in, letting I.T. admins use SharePoint's scalable and searchable back end to tie together internally-facing SharePoint environments with externally-facing social networking/Web 2.0 communities.

This integration also includes the packaging of Awareness's Web 2.0 widgets as SharePoint Web Parts that let users monitor and contribute content, display user details and status, search content, and view metrics. Awareness also integrates with SharePoint's Identity Management to allow for SSO (single sign-on), which makes using both platforms together a seamless experience.

NewsGator Technologies

Yesterday, NewsGator announced the launch of their new SharePoint add-on, Social Sites 2.0. This tool brings new social capabilities to SharePoint Server 2007 including community pages, which are ad hoc communities formed around projects, interests, or locations, and social networking capabilities that let employees better collaborate and share knowledge. Social Sites also includes tools for tagging, search, customized recommendations, and a discussion component that includes email integration. Users are provided with social graphs based on both explicit and implied connections, making it easier for them to find their colleagues and content in an easier way than before.

Atlassian

Atlassian, makers of Confluence, an enterprise wiki creation tool, announced its integration with SharePoint through an embedding function that lets the Confluence wiki appear to be a part of the SharePoint site, complete with an edit button for making changes. The wiki lets users add charts, diagrams, image galleries, maps and database content within their pages.

WorkLight Inc.

Yesterday, WorkLight announced its new WorkLight for SharePoint, which lets SharePoint Server users securely view and update information from SharePoint Server through familiar consumer tools like Windows Vista gadgets, Facebook applications, personalized homepage gadgets, RSS, mobile devices, and more.

blueKiwi Software

Last month, blueKiwi Software announced their integration with both Microsoft Office and SharePoint. With their new SharePoint connector and blueKiwi OfficeAssistant, their social software suite easily integrates with a company's SharePoint Server to provide social networking tools and capabilities that include blogging, user profiles, conversation trackers, tagging, social search, and more.

Connectbeam

Yesterday, Connectbeam announced their new Spotlight Connect for SharePoint, a bookmarking and tagging add-on module for their enterprise social search-and-discovery application that brings social content, collaboration, and bookmarking tools into SharePoint via a special add-on module available this July.

Telligent Systems

Telligent's Community Server Evolution platform uses its REST API, mail gateway, shared authentication and single sign-on, to integrate with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft Active Directory. Their social-computing platform offers enterprise blogging tools, social networking, social streams, forums, media galleries, and business analytics through detailed reporting.

Leverage Software

Leverage Software announced integration with SharePoint Server, enabling users to interact with external-facing internet communities of their partners, customers, or corporate alumni, while maintaining the security needs of an enterprise.

Tomoye Corp.

Tomoye's Ecco software, which lets you get answers, network, and collaborate across the enterprise, is now offering a SharePoint-ready solution. This capability lets users publish documents from SharePoint to Ecco and supports SSO between applications.

Twitter, like anything, can be a little addictive as we look to reach out and communicate with all our friends and followers. Xefer has pulled together an interesting mashup which leverages Yahoo Pipes and Google Chart API to plot the usage of twitter of a specific user. So of course, I had to plug the somewhatfrank twitter id in and chart it.

Give it a try here for your twitter username.

Dunder Mifflin Scranton Branch Org Chart

(via)

By sharing my statistics openly, it will now be obvious to the world how little real traffic I get, opening me to ridicule. The emperor has no clothes, it could be said. Also, maybe the traffic I receive isn't seen as "quality" traffic? I still get a lot of visitors from Google image searches looking for R-rated material in vain. Maybe I don't want everybody to see that, and, therefore, take the site less seriously?

By sharing my statistics openly, it could be shown we're bragging, highlighting traffic, growth, and the trends. Smaller bloggers just getting started might see the data as unattainable and could throw potshots.

Just as it makes sense to visit Salary.com and determine what other people with your title in your geography are commanding, viewing other's statistics can give you a reference point for how you are performing against your peers.

One of the most interesting things I find from my statistics are where people are coming from, in the referral logs. It's likely that those people caring enough to send a link my way might be interested in the same topics I am, and, using the transitive property, my readers would be interested in what they are as well.

Despite one's best efforts, not every single story gets the same amount of solid traffic. There are peaks and valleys. Making this data public could better give guidance to other writers as to what topics are most interesting, might get the most engagement, or views.

Whether the total number of unique visitors, page views, referrals is in the hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands, by establishing that data publicly, your traffic now becomes part of the conversation, relative to yourself and relative to others, so you'll need to come to terms with this in advance.

A good blogger who knows their statistics can get used to specific readers. With a good combination of MyBlogLog, and location-based visits, I have a good idea of who the most frequent visitors are, and I think I know what stories they read, if I get the time to look it up. Maybe others could be as aggressive and figure out the same information. Some visitors might not like having this potential to be snooped expanded to the masses.

It's one thing to post data at your peak when things are going well. But if you have a slow week or months, and your numbers collapse, there's no hiding it. You can't undo a number once it's out, so that too would be a risk.

In the brain, heroin is converted to morphine, an opioid painkiller. Morphine acts by signaling through a receptor encoded by the gene OPRM1. Different versions of the OPRM1 gene are thought to affect how much morphine one needs to feel a given effect. This study of 139 heroin-addicts (primarily Swedes) and 170 non-addicts found that people with one or two copies of the G version of the SNP rs1799971 have almost 2.9 times the odds of being a heroin addict.

DNA Traits Comparison: David Ewing Duncan and Kevin Kelly

^{All Traits are from 23andme.com, except:
*Also on deCodeme.com
**Not on either site}

Next week (the fourth and final part of this series): Why the online genetic testing companies are important.

Content as infrastructure

I say the notion of persistent ubiquitous content. And when I say content - I mean all sorts of content - movies, TV shows, music and books - blog posts, links, RSS feeds, wikis - ideas, statistics, directories, memes, stories, articles, lists of links, concepts and most importantly personal expression byproduct.

What I mean by being persistent is that this content gets stored up on the web and is always there. And by ubiquitous - I mean its everywhere. So always there and everywhere.

What's important to keep in mind when building the mesh is that everything starts and ends with the user, the customer, the human being who's using the stuff. That's why every one of these blog series' posts will have the user's ID (profile page) at the center of the drawing. Then by overlaying any or all of these domain' drawings on top of each other, we'll be able to get an idea of what the mesh will actually look like - which I'm betting will be a hodge-podge and distributed mesh' of inter-connecting pieces - loosely coupled together.

No one vendor will be able to dictate exactly how the mesh will evolve. It'll be a hybrid combination of open and proprietary standards, all driven by market factors, latest trends and a gradual education of the mainstream populace as to the benefits of all this stuff.

You'll also notice that I'll put an RSS icon and the words - DataPortability and Interoperability on each chart - as well. Think of these things are portals or rabbit holes between each of the domains' I'm writing about.

Some of the connections between the components and domains of the mesh - will be based upon open standards, like RSS, OpenSocial or OpenID while others connectors' will be proprietary APIs, like Microsoft Windows Live Contacts APIs or MySpace APIs. And just so we're clear - the purpose of these blog post series is to map out how these various kinds of domains will all exist unto themselves as their own unique dimensions connecting to humans and providing unique functionality for us all - moving forward.

If we (software developers) can all agree upon standardized constructs, such as an RSS feeds, shared public servers, user profile pages or groups - then we can have disparate implementations, techniques and solutions - while at the same time - provide a comprehensive, loosely coupled meshed architecture which anyone can contribute to and benefit from - just like the web.

This mesh doesn't have to get LED by Microsoft or Google, but they can contribute to it - for sure. But I just wanna remind everyone that this all started with RSS and RSS readers - and the fact that no one (despite some efforts) owns or controls RSS. And even though HTML has it's own little governance and political world surrounding it - it also is not controlled' by any one entity or constituency.

Over the years I've given up thinking that there's one way to build the mesh, or that one set of altruistic standards and solutions will fit all.

As long as there is time - Microsoft will do it their own way. As the dusts of time accumulate we'll see that Google is also it's own world - unto itself. And there's no way in hell you're ever gonna tell Steve Jobs how to do soemthing, he's always gonna be his own man.

So now the questions are: will Facebook continue to innovate, extend and grow - or just become a puppet aligned with Microsoft? I'd also like to see if MySpace will continue on it's own path, or will it become subservient to Google? And thank god for the Evan Williams' of the world!

Politics aside - from a technology POV this is all possible, but it's gonna take cooperation, devoid of ageism, sexism or capitilism to make this all work. Yes we all need to make money, but NO you don't get to lock my balls up in YOUR vice. Ain't gonna happen.

The little guys needs to live off the crumbs left behind by the behemoths and this whole thing needs to work around the world - evenly.

So as user's behavior patterns shift and migrate and as vendors smarten up and start thinking of the user FIRST - in the center of all universes, I believe that the market trends and pressures from users will define the mesh. This series of blog posts simply lay out SOME of the domains, standard constructs and APIs - that will make up the mesh. it is by no means complete or exclusive.

Technology solutions today enable users to assume that we can buy music (and soon) movies through the web just as easy as going to Virgin Megastore or Wal-Mart. Customers are getting over Blockbuster and are choosing NetFlix instead. Because of separate regional rights and languages - we're seeing music and movie downloading and rental solutions pop up around the world.

End-uers are getting used to the notion of storing their files (text, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.), their media libraries (images, music, videos, etc.) and their user generated content' (blog posts, reviews, etc.) in storage facilities or storage lockers (as they're sometimes referred to) - on the web. On-line storage is an entire market category, though it's gonna be hard for small guys like Box.net and Omnidrive to compete with the likes of Amazon's S3, AOL's XDrive or both Microsoft and Google's storage offerings (Live drive and GDrive.) But god bless them - they are alternatives to the bug guys.

But storing files you own and control is only part of what ubiquitous and persistent content is all about.

What I MOST excited about is when we can rely upon old news reels, stock photo libraries, statistics libraries, biographies and documentaries - from places like the BBC open project and the Internet Archive. Wikipedia is also morphing towards this sort of on-line knowledge dissemination and availability.

Pioneered by Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive - the idea of backing up the web' was so outrageous that I just couldn't believe it when I first heard of it.

You mean they're going to backup - the entire web - how many times? Forever?

And then when I heard about the BBC Open project - my head did a similar thump you mean the entire library of everything the Beeb has ever done will be available -on-line forever? (Of course we've found out later that its not quite everything and that it's gonna take YEARS to get all the rights clearances - but at least they got the right idea!)

Soon after the Beeb announcement Pathe also made their catalog on-line BUT they were charging for it - and it was minuscule compared to what the Internet Archive and the Beeb have.

We tried to to do a storage play for bloggers, podcasters and vloggers called ourmedia.org (back then) - as a UGC front-end to the Internet Archive. But the same month we launched - YouTube launched. So we know what happened with that scenario.

Now persistent ubquitous content is available for everyone. Your great American rock video, novel, soap opera or viral video - can be stored up in YouTube (or blip.tv.meta-cafe, Revver, whatever [insert 40 brand names here.]

If you step back and think about content as infrastructure you can take a different attitude towards stock photos, soundtracks and beats, 3D models, 3D city models and all sorts of reusable digital content assets. You can bake historical references, sports statistics, background on diseases and weather trends into your blog posts and software. You can make collaborative hypermedia a dream come true.

A mesh which has ubiquitous persistent content in it - as a key construct - is a mesh that can provide health information, small business knowledge and courseware for all ages - free and built into word processors, email, spreadsheets or browsers.

A mesh which has ubiquitous persistent content in it - can enable entirely new kinds of record labels, movie studios and book publishers - which have a fighting chance of surviving. By lowering distribution, development and www costs - we can enable the Long Tail to at least cover their costs and pay the rent and feed themselves.

A mesh which has ubiquitous persistent content in it can seamlessly tie into other domains like the Live Web or Tools- and seamlessly mesh' with other constructs like micro-content, aggregators or collections.

Persistent ubiquitous content is an idea who's day has come.

I'm hoping that in all the billions of dollars of revenues, greed and exploitation of users, we can make sure to get enough content on-line and available for free - that new kinds of educational tools, knowledge bases and learning environments can evolve - to make our kids even smarter than we are.

Persistent ubiquitous content is a domain which can mesh into any other domain, construct and API. Here's a chart outlining some of the ways I think of this:

all sorts of opinions - threadsML, message boards, stored conversations, IM transcripts,

Action Items in this domain include:

- MORE free content - we'll never be done, they'll never be enough!

- APIs for content infrastructure - not sure what two-way APIs would be here - but they'r eimportant!

- standards for content infrastructure - hmm - I wonder what that would look like?

- educational objects' - that's an idea that's been bantered around for a while!

- persistent conversations - which are re-entrant and annotatable. That's what ThreadsML was all about.- and (of course) we need to continue to educate end-users onwhat the hell it is we MEAN by persistent ubiquitous content!

Action Items in general include:

- make sure that ALL the open standards continue to rise in popularity, that all implementations are compatible with each other and that more open standards get created

- testing and compatibility labs - a place where we can guarantee that everything works together. Building a COMPATIBLE mesh will be a challenge - and it won't ever happen if things break or don't work.

- two-way APIs - until we can write back into systems and services as easily as we can get data from those services we won't have a symmetrical architecture and a successful mesh environment

- establish OutputThis as a standard for content producers to list all of the destinations they'd like to route their content - to. SEE Dataportability.

Summary of persistent data repositories discussed here:

Box.net, Omnidrive, S3, GDrive, Live Drive, XDrive, Wikipedia, Revolution Health, Stats Inc., Freebase, Twine, DMOZ, Technorati, Hulu, iTunes, Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, all sorts of wikis I didn't even bother to put down. All the micro-content places - I'll cover in the next post!

Major players and people to watch and listen to:

Brewster Kahle, J.D. Lasica, Ross Mayfield, Brad de Graf, Jon Lebkowsky, Harold Gilchrist, Susan A. Kitchens, Mike Linksvayer, Mary Hodder, David Weinberger, Howard Rheingold, Stephen Downes, B.K. DeLong, Brian Dear, Marc Eisenstadt, Christopher Allen, Aaron Swartz, Paolo Valdemarin, Jamie Faye Fenton, Bernard Goldbach, Jeremy Zawodny, Larry Lessig, Joi Ito, Jimmy Wales

Major organizations and advocacy groups:

BBC, Internet Archive, ourmedia, mediaventure, Creative Commons,

Final NOTE: This is my second post in this series - I ain't done yet! Next up - #3 - micro-content.

Editor's Warning: This article contains adult content and it not suitable for children. If you are under age please navigate away from this article immediately. Thank you.

It is no secret that sex sells. I have previously highlighted the work of GOOD Magazine in creating this video explaining the porn industry and its financial success. That said, pornography generates interest and revenue both online and off and it was only a matter of time before Web 2.0 principles were applied to online porn. Zivity is one startup doing some interesting things in the space by enabling anyone to create and post their own videos, photos and other content and generate revenue for doing so. My friend Orli Yakuel has also previously pulled together an article showcasing a number of Porn 2.0 services. Fantasti.cc aggregates online video content from many of the video sites she listed.

Fantasti.cc offers ratings, comments and Digg-like voting to determine the hottest videos. It has other social features so users can create profiles and connect with one another. Fantasti.cc aggregates content from a bunch of different sources making it a one stop shop for all your free porn video needs. It also leverages 'folksonomy' or user tagging to help organize and categorize site content. In addition to videos Fantasti.cc also offers streaming real-time web cams.

I am not advocating viewing, creating or selling pornography I just wanted to point out that Fantasti.cc takes a very Web 2.0 approach to its video site by leveraging other site's content and incorportating social features to create an online pornographic video community. It's no wonder Fantasti.cc has seen its traffic grow significantly over the past year as shown in the chart (below).

[With apologies in advance to Martin Nisenholtz, who I believe is genuinely fighting the good fight, and who will no doubt end up with a great job at some fine Internet company.]

The hiring of Bill Kristol was the last straw.

I can't take it anymore.

I hereby inaugurate my New York Times Deathwatch, which will continue until the last Sulzberger has left the building.

Recent dispatches that are fit to print:

Leading the way [in terrible end-of-year news from the newspaper industry] was The New York Times Company, where total [quarterly] revenues fell 1.7% to $865.8 million, due mostly to a 4.1% drop in ad revenues... Advertising revenues at the news media group in particular fell 5.6%.

Source: Media Daily News.

Actually, that's being perhaps overly fair, since it takes into account an extra week last year. The straight year over year performance was:

[F]ourth-quarter revenue totaled $865.8 million, down 7.1% from $931.5 million a year earlier. The decline included a 9.1% drop in advertising revenue and a 4% fall in circulation revenue... [T]he company had an extra week in the final quarter of 2006, which boosted the year-earlier quarter's revenue by $50.8 million and its pretax income by $14.3 million.

Yes, we are dealing with a business where missing a single week means the difference between revenue falling 1.7% and 7.1%, and advertising revenue falling 4.1% and 9.1%. Go figure.

Source: Forbes.

Now, normally, beating up on someone like this isn't very much fun. But we are talking about a profession that specializes in passing judgment, often snide, on everyone else. And so, onward...

Turns out that December 2007 was particularly bad, and things may be getting even worse:

Separately, the [New York Times] reported that December ad revenue dropped 25.2%. Excluding an additional week in December 2006, ad revenue declined 12% for the month.

...[W]eakness across several national [advertising] categories including health care, books, technology products and transportation hampered results in the month. Classified ads, the traditional lifeblood of newspapers, saw steep declines in help-wanted, real estate and automotive sales. [Craig, you bad bad boy...]

"To date in January, the percentage decline in advertising revenue is trending similar to that of December..." said Janet Robinson, chief executive of New York Times...

As they say, sometimes it's darkest right before it goes pitch black.

Source: Marketwatch.

How are the company's other papers doing?

The [New York Times-owned] Boston Globe will soon announce cutbacks at the newspaper, including hundreds of layoffs, and an increase in the per copy price of the paper to 75 cents as of Feb. 1...

The Globe saw a nearly 7 percent decrease from 386,417 to 360,695 in its daily circulation between Sept. 2006 and Sept. 2007, according to numbers released in November by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That report showed the paper's Sunday circulation down about 6.5 percent...

When you have an obsolete, inconvenient physical product that nobody wants in an era of universal online access, the appropriate strategy is clearly to raise the price.

Source: Metro Boston, which amusingly itself is 49 percent owned by the Boston Globe, which is owned by the New York Times.

How about revenue at the Globe?

At the New England Media Group, which includes the Boston Globe, ad revenue fell nearly 16%. Circulation revenue fell 7%.

Source: Marketwatch.

How about the company's smaller newspapers?

The company's regional-media group, including papers in medium-sized markets such as Wilmington, N.C., and Santa Rosa, Calif., saw ad revenue decline almost 17%, while circulation fell 7.4%.

Source: Marketwatch.

Meanwhile, the Times faces its second assault from a major hedge fund in the last two years:

A hedge fund manager who acquired a stake in the New York Times Company and is pushing to gain seats on its board sent a letter to the company on Sunday in which he criticised directors as "ineffective" and called for it to shed more non-core assets.

Scott Galloway, founder of Firebrand Capital, who sent the letter, has joined with another hedge fund, Harbinger, to try to put forward their own nominees for the four independent seats on the media company's 13-member board at its meeting in April. The funds have amassed a combined 4.9 per cent stake in Times' shares.

Source: Financial Times.

An ineffective board? What could they be talking about?

Hmmmmm. That's not the direction you want to see those things go.

Well, given that the Internet is the central force dismantling the company's business, I'm sure that by now they've stocked their board with noted Internet experts. Let's see:

• Brenda C. Barnes -- CEO of Sara Lee; noted snack cake expert
• Raul E. Cesan -- former CEO of Schering-Plough; noted Levitra expert
• Daniel H. Cohen -- president of DeepSee LLC, "an oceanic exploration and submarine leasing company"; noted Jacques Cousteau expert
• Lynn G. Dolnick -- former head of exhibits for the National Zoologic Park in Washington DC; noted marsupial expert
• Michael Golden -- current publisher of the International Herald Tribune; former head of the company's Women's Publishing Division; noted sundress expert
• William E. Kennard -- former head of the FCC; noted "seven dirty words" expert
• James M. Kilts -- former CEO of Gillette; noted smooth, smooth shave expert; prior to that, unindicted coconspirator at Philip Morris; noted expert on your grandfather's hacking cough
• David E. Liddle -- here I have to take a pause as I actually know this one; based on what's happening at the company, it could be reasonably asked whether he's actually attending the board meetings.
• Ellen R. Marram -- former CEO of Nabisco; noted Oreo expert. Oh, wait, she actually ran an Internet company: "From 1999 until 2000, Ms. Marram was president and chief executive officer of efdex Inc. (the Electronic Food & Drink Exchange), an Internet-based commodities exchange for the food and beverage industry." Ooh. I wonder if that ended well.
• Thomas Middelhoff -- former CEO of Bertelsmann; noted expert on complicated family politics -- well, that's probably coming in handy...
• Janet L. Robinson -- current CEO of the New York Times Company; noted expert on horrific business implosions
• Doreen A. Toben -- CFO of Verizon; noted 30-year debenture expert
• And finally, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. -- the Big Kahuna -- the Man -- the Guy In Charge -- the chairman and scion -- the dude with the cojones to actually defend Judy Miller. Not noted Internet expert.

So, if you want to issue bonds to pay for FCC-approved snack cake manufacturing in a submarine on display at a national park by a sundress-wearing cigarette-puffing Levitra-popping Judy Miller, you're pretty much set.

Go team!

Last election cycle, a politician's own ill-chosen words became a viral video that cost him his candidacy. This November, will a politician get undermined by an ill-conceived viral video made by his own supporters? That's the thought I had after watching Yes We Can, a new YouTube video currently storming The Viral Video chart. It's a putative tribute to Senator Barack Obama's stirring words after the New Hampshire primary, directed by Jesse Dylan with music by will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas. (Who's better known for his stirring words, Whatcha gonna do with all that junk inside your trunk?)

The video was made without the Obama campaign's participation or permission, according to ABC News, which is a good thing, because it's an appalling exercise in celebrity self-congratulation, reducing the Senator's soaring plea for optimistic unity into an opportunity for some popstars to preen in front of the camera. (While Obama's image is shunted aside, an unidentified brunette hottie actually flips her hair; Scarlett Johansson giggles. It's like Obama Girl without irony.)

Here at NewTeeVee, we like to keep things non-partisan, but whatever your personal inclinations this election, it's easy to see how this clip's growing popularity can't be good for the Obama campaign: after spending months fighting the criticism that their candidate has great rhetoric but little experience, here comes a viral video that seems specifically designed to derail their efforts. And unlike Obama Girl, Yes We Can is so highly polished, any protests that it's not actually part of their campaign will fall on deaf ears. I can already picture Fox News commentators deceptively using it to dismiss the Senator as an MTV candidate. (Nice beat, as blog star and Clinton supporter Jeff Jarvis puts it. But can you lead to it?)

Memo to politically active celebrities: if you actually want your candidate to win, how about coming up with viral videos that actually serve his campaign, and not yourselves? And always remember: when it comes to choosing the person who gives the 101st Airborne their marching orders, few care what the star of The Nanny Diaries has to contribute.

Share This

I have been slacking a little over the last month on the updates, so time to play catch up.

First of all some big news, Blogcatalog has now surpassed MyBlogLog in traffic levels, if you believe Alexa data. They are in exactly the same niche, and share plenty of users, so whilst I don't trust Alexa data extensively, this is a significant achievement considering it wasn't long ago when people had trouble differentiating the two services.

If you switch to a 7 day view, you will see that Blogcatalog overtook MyBlogLog 24th January.

The observant will also note when looking at a 3 year chart that MyBlogLog had much more explosive growth over a short 3 month period, were purchased by Yahoo, and since that time has been a little bit in decline which is a shame because I still love MyBlogLog, and if I have a choice between MyBlogLog and Google Analytics for stats checking, I am more likely to have a glance in MyBlogLog than Google Analytics.

BlogCatalog has had a much more gradual growth, working to differentiate themselves by introducing lively discussion forums and member groups, and bringing bloggers together to support good causes with Bloggers Unite.
The growth has been viral, "grass roots" growth, with from memory one mention on Mashable, one mention on Marketing Pilgrim, and very little if any coverage on large technology blogs. Blogcatalog would be a great example of what Guy Kawasaki was talking about yesterday.

Forget A-list bloggers. Lousy reviews by them cannot tank your product. Great reviews cannot make it successful. Focus on big numbersany Technorati 1,000,000 blogger can be a channel to reach people. If enough people like your product, the A-list bloggers will have to write about you.

Some key recent enhancements (click through to see working examples on some of these widgets)

Blogcatalog Discussions & Groups

Discussion Forums and Groups

There are frequent enhancements to the features in the various discussion areas, the latest one being a new widget for the discussion groups you have joined - other features include practical enhancements to the discussion features, in many cases making them more useful than Facebook, where it is very hard to track discussion in the groups you join.

BlogRank Buttons (just released)

This was announced just a few hours ago

BlogCatalog ratings are based upon various metrics including votes using a widget on your site, voting on the site, visits from Blogcatalog to your blog, and overall Blogcatalog activity in various forms.

Communities Widget

This is a way to display your profile on other social media sites introduced in December. Quite simple, and useful if you don't want to give juice to the sites for reputation management.

On this one I am not sure who got there first, as MyBlogLog also launched a similar widget in December

There actually seems to be some bugs in the code generated, or maybe it is just my laggy connection, but I couldn't seem to get a version that displayed both the names of a service, and icons next to them.

BlogCatalog API

I am not that great a programmer but I have managed to play around with the Blogcatalog API and create some simple applications (still to be released) by combining data from Blogcatalog with data from other APIs. Blogcatalog has had their API available for some time.

MyBlogLog should have had their API launched months ago by my reckoning, and it finally entered beta a week ago. It seems like it might have more features than the current Blogcatalog API, but once you have opened up, opening up a little more isn't too difficult.
With wider adoption (the tech bloggers have been wooed by MBL in the past) the new MBL API is being greeted as the possible saviour of Yahoo.
Sure, it is possible MyBlogLog have more data stored, I am not sure what data Blogcatalog collect, have a wider audience, and MyBlogLog have the "social starfish" available via API, but it isn't much more work for Blogcatalog to allow access to that data.
MyBlogLog have however been working on infrastructure heavily for the last 12 months - I would hope their API is now ready for some heavy usage.

I would love to have seen some cool apps made with the Blogcatalog API by now

Support For Wordpress.com, Myspace, or Yahoo! 360 Blog?

This is something that MyBlogLog have had for some time, Blogcatalog announced support for Wordpress.com, Myspace and Yahoo! 360 yesterday.

Who knows, maybe you can even see my recent visitors in a feed reader, in fact that would be an interesting addition.

Tagging & Reading

Quite a few months ago I wrote about Blogcatalog parsing tags from your feed itmes and then listing your content on varous tag pages, just like Technorati. At the time they only offered support for a few blogs, using a specific format for tags and categories. I noticed a couple of months ago that they now have my blog being picked up and fed into tag feeds

In addition on your profile pages it is now possible to read the feeds of the blogs you have added to your neighborhood

Ok now for the big one

Blogcatalog SezWho Partnership

Blogcatalog today have just announced a partnership with SezWho, who provide special plugins to integrate with Plugin Systems on various blogging and discussion forums.
The good things from my perspective:-

• SezWho doesn't require any form of browser plugin
• This doesn't replace the existing comment system, thus a blog owner retains the content on their site, and if they choose, can remain dofollow. That isn't true of other replacement comment systems with similar features.
• No browser plugin is required - I often had problems using various browser based comment tracking with incompatibilities, and I also had problems with their plugins, though I must admit I haven't retried with cocomment recently, maybe that situation has improved. Comment tracking that required me to click a button was always awkward, and subscribing to RSS feeds for comments on individual posts just became a chore - we will see how this works in the long run
• Comment ratings - this could be likened to the thumbs up / thumbs down on SEOmoz where you gain points, but this is a distributed rating system that means you gain in reputation for leaving high quality comments across multiple blogs - I am not sure whether this gets gamed heavily, but Ihope that it will encourage better commenting, especially on dofollow blogs.

Warning:- I may be more inclined to just delete a URL from a spam comment rather than deleting them totally, so that other readers can also vote your comment down
yes, sometimes there is a little evil in me

Negative points?

• Only support for Wordpress self-hosted and Moveable Type - in many ways I would look on this as a plus, as it might encourage more people onto their own hosting, though I hope they can come up with a solution for my many blogging friends on Typepad.
• Installation is a little complicated for a novice, though there is a WordPress widget (regular readers know I don't like Wordpress Widgets though for SEO reasons)

I should also point out that as I am writing this I haven't tested the integration on this blog with the threaded comments, but I don't expect there to a problem, and by the time many people read this I will have everything up and