May 2009
Advertising as failure →
At Burda’s DLD conference in Munich, talking with the Nokia Ideas Project, I first happened on the notion of advertising as failure. That is, the ideal relationship a company should have with its…
Link to the best →
After we had breakfast a week ago and talked about possible new roles for wire services in the new world, Wolfgang Büchner, who’s soon to take the top edit position at the Deutsche Presse Agentur…
Health-insurance stagnation →
America’s health care system - or lack of one - leads to a stifling of economic innovation and mobility. Consider:
* Daniel Taghioff argues that people are more likely to risk starting new…
WWGD? DC talk →
I didn’t even know that my Q&A at Google’s DC HQ was up on YouTube. Here it is:
Stop generating metadata and access the full... →
Many researchers advocate the use of metadata to help find or recommend content automatically. Metadata is certainly useful when aggregating content for human beings: I first read the titles of…
Trento is the capital of Economics from 29 May to... →
It is once again time for Trento Festival of Economics!!! The fourth edition of the Festival of Economics will animate the city of Trento from 29 May to 1 June.
Economists, legal experts,…
Trento is the capital of Economics from 29 May to... →
It is once again time for Trento Festival of Economics!!! The fourth edition of the Festival of Economics will animate the city of Trento from 29 May to 1 June.
Economists, legal experts,…
Danny Sullivan on Microsoft search →
Danny Sullivan has a couple great posts ([1] [2]) on Microsoft renaming its search engine to Bing, the new features and improvements in relevance coming along with the launch, and what it might…
Forcing your own paper out of business? →
Drivers at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune are threatening a strike.
I could see a few interesting unintended consequences for the drivers: (A) This forces the paper out of business. They lose…
Make your research papers easy to skim →
Claus Metzner asked us how often we read research papers in detail. He reads fully less than 1% of all research papers he comes across. This must be true of nearly everyone. We read a few titles,…
Strands to Sponsor USATF National Club Track &... →
The 2009 USATF National Club Track & Field Championships will be held at New York City’s Icahn Stadium on July 10-11. This marks the third time the championships have been held in New…
Book talk in Jersey →
thanks to Baristanet, I’m giving a book talk & signing at the Montclair Library Thursday, 7p. Details here.
Google Suggest and the right ad →
In “Google Kills a Sacred Cow”, Anders Bylund at the Motley Fool has an interesting take on Google’s decision to show advertising in their search suggestion feature. An excerpt:
You know how you…
Team Strands Weekend Recap: Bolder Boulder,... →
Team Strands athlete Jason Hartmann led Team Colorado to a sixth place finish in the Bolder Boulder International Team Challenge Monday morning. Hartmann finished 12th overall in 30 minutes,…
A paper on papers’ future →
Almost every day, I find another newspaper publishing another editorial or letter claiming that everything’s OK with papers or that society is not OK without them.
Now The Financial…
Papers kill papers →
There’s been a ridiculous and unproductive debate of sorts lately about who killed papers, Google or craigslist. Answer: neither. Papers will kill papers. James Fallows got a great email from…
Sharing as a civic duty →
Craig Newmark said that rating and reviewing online is tantamount to civic service. I agree and said in my book:
The ethics and expectations of privacy have changed radically in Generation G….
WWYD? →
I love it when people speculate in public about taking the tenants of What Would Google Do?, to a greater or lesser degree, into their worlds. A few recent examples:
* With nonprofits, Marc…
Title help, please →
I need your help, dear readers, with the title of what I hope will be my next book. I won’t summarize the whole thing but the essence of it is this:
There are three responses to change: (1) Resist…
The new news →
Josh Young writes a fascinating and nicely written essay about the shape of news and competition around it in the Google (read: internet) age, but I think it badly needs a clear lede summarizing…
A researcher’s garden →
I love gardening. I get good results too. However, my wife is very critical of my techniques.
While I work hard, my work is often obtuse. Who grows his perennials from seeds these days? The…
The start of transparent government →
The announcement of Data.gov marks an important shift in government, opening up our data to us and enabling collaboration and creation with government.
Jake Brewer of the Sunlight Foundation also
Nobody can be a newspaper →
Dirk Liedtke tweeted about a Newspaper Association of America ad defending newspapers (of course), which I didn’t see because I’m reading the New York Times on Kindle and iPhone and Mac these days…
CenterSpace Software: Willamette Angel Conference... →
Fellow Corvallis based company, CenterSpace Software, was recently chosen in a competition of over 40 Willamette Valley start-ups as the winner of the 2009 Willamette Angel Conference. Trevor…
Justin Young Selected to World Championships Team →
Team Strands athlete Justin Young has been selected to represent Team USA at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin this August.
Young was selected based on his breakthrough run in …
Links for 2009 05 20 →
Social Influence, Binary Decisions and Collective Dynamics by Dunia Lopez-Pintado, D.J.Watts.
In this paper we address the general question of how social influence determines collective…
Links for 2009 05 20 →
Social Influence, Binary Decisions and Collective Dynamics by Dunia Lopez-Pintado, D.J.Watts.
In this paper we address the general question of how social influence determines collective…
The journalism bubble →
When I decided to go into the news business, we took a vow of poverty, or at least acknowledged that we’d never be rich. I chose not to go to law school and instead transferred to j-school and did…
FTC to the rescue →
The Federal Trade Commission announced that it is holding hearings on the future of the news business and that made me scratch my head and so I called the head of the office of policy planning t…
The bigger MP scandal story →
I don’t think the U.K. scandal around MPs skimming tax dollars through their expenses has been getting nearly enough coverage here in the U.S. That’s not just because it is already causing …
What do you think? →
Will Wolfram Alpha beat Google by 2010?
Promoted to full professor →
At least in North America, professors are usually first hired at the rank of assistant professor. Your salary is poor and you have little job security. Once you get tenure, you become associate…
Happy birthday, Baristanet →
Baristanet, the queen of hyperlocal blogs, is five years old today.
I remember well the NJ.com Meetup we held back then to try to encourage locals to blog on our site. I learned an important…
LIVE Race Timing & AA Sports Limited →
There are many people involved in the planning, organization, and execution of a road race for thousands of runners, and we are excited to announce our association with AA Sports Limited, a race…
Eric Schmidt teaches the taught →
Pardon me, first, for a moment of paternal pride but I watched Eric Schmidt’s commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon with extra interest because in a few weeks, my wife and I will be driving our son…
A newspaper publisher lies →
Just for the record and what it’s worth, in his speech arguing that newspapers are OK - really, they are - Louisville Courier-Journal publisher Arnold Garson lies about me. He says:
Jeff Jarvis…
The datacenter is the new mainframe →
For a while, I have been planning on writing a post comparing large scale clusters with the mainframes of yore, a piece that would be full of colorful references to timesharing, scheduling and…
Reinventing university education? Practical ideas… →
Yesterday, John stressed that education is about helping people discover their passion. I have many brilliant students, but few passionate students.
Success is more a matter of hard work than…
The craigslist (read: internet) witchhunt →
The internet - in the form of the latest kerfuffle over craigslist - is exposing an anachronism of law in society.
I’ve seen reference lately to attorneys general and law-enforcement officials…
When CYA can BYA →
It’s lawyer day at Buzzmachine….
In this week’s kerfuffling on Twitter and blogs about the Wall Street Journal’s anti-interactive interactivity rules regarding Twitter et al, a New York Times…
First, stop the lawyers →
There’s some dangerously wrong-headed lobbying from media lawyers in today’s Washington Post arguing for new laws to protect old media from new technology. Bruce Sanford and Bruce Brown of Baker…
Who would buy a newspaper? Anybody? →
At Jim Collins‘ event for his new book at BusinessWeek last night, a former journalist turned business exec asked why no one was snapping up newspapers now that their market caps are worth…
Tick, tick, tick →
The Observer’s John Koblin reports that the NY Times is considering putting a meter on usage of its site and charging once you’ve read too much.
Incredible.
They’ve spent the last 15 years…
Zoila Gomez selected to World Championships Team →
Team Strands athlete Zoila Gomez has been selected to represent Team USA at the 12th IAAF World Championships in Berlin this August.
Zoila Gomez was selected based on her fourth place finish at…
WWGD? at Google’s DC HQ on C-SPAN-2 →
My What Would Google Do? interview at Google’s DC HQ will be on C-SPAN-2 Book Talk this weekend: Sunday, 3:00 PM; Sunday, 11:00 PM; Monday, 7:00 AM.
Bail schmail →
Washington State has given a 40 percent tax break to newspaper publishers.
How about giving a break to the entrepreneurs who will build the future of news?
Then again, it might all be show….
Missing the point →
The Wall Street Journal’s rules for Twitter and the internet rob the paper and its reporters of a few key benefits. Among the rules:
* Let our coverage speak for itself, and don’t detail how an…
Getting past newspapers’ past →
Dean Singleton’s memo decreeing his strategy for Medianews is unbelievable. I swear it could have been written - hell, I read it and wrote memos arguing against memos exactly like it - in 1996….
What (or who) is your value? →
I’ve had a half-dozen conversations lately with companies that want to answer the question, What Would Google Do? I start by asking where they think their company’s value is. One key answer is…
The social airline →
On this blog and in my book, I speculated about the social airline. A Dutch reader points me to Bluenity, a social network for AirFrance and KLM passengers. Neat.