ICAN Joseph Barnes

2011-10-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

My new favorite Blog!

Friday, Friday, Friday Microsoft Company Meeting 2011!

It's my most favorite time of the year: Friday the 23rd is the annual Microsoft Company Meeting!

That's right: I pull up my sleeves and thrust out my arms out wide and say, "Shove in the Kool-Aid IVs to the left and to the right and keep it flowing!" Man I love it. It is one of my favorite holidays of the year.

Reminder: when it comes to comments, share your internal-only content enthusiasm over on OfficeTalk (especially via the otalk WP7 app) vs. trying to put it here.

A Story of Steve, Steve, and Steven

This year is one of those inflection points: Apple has been soaring with its excellent device results, blowing Microsoft away and cannibalizing our Windows powered device market. The Microsoft stock is horribly flat and there are calls all-around for Ballmer to be replaced. Now, several things are in play: Mr. Jobs has stepped down due to his health reasons, WP Mango is reaching release with Nokia devices to begin their flow, and Windows 8 has demonstrated a reboot to the Windows experience and development platform. With Windows 8, Microsoft has emerged with the talking points that the company is being re-imagined.

All I can say is that SteveB should give SteveSi the CEO Bacon Achievement award: exceptional results that saved the CEO's bacon. Oh, SteveB had to be so happy to have Windows 8 revealed at BUILD right before the Financial Analysts Meeting. "How ya like me n-O-w?!?!" Actually, big chops to SteveSi who not only has done the impossible organizational wrangling between Win7 and Win8 (and wherever it is leading with Win8+) but also did such a smooth job with BUILD that some bloggers dared to pass the Steve Jobs torch to SteveSi. Wow. Didn't see that coming.

(psst. Board. CEO ma-ter-ial. Uh-huh. There you go. Not that I'd probably work in a SteveSi CEO Microsoft, but ya could do a lot worse!)

One thing I'd love to see SteveSi do: give the same level of support to writing Windows8 apps as Microsoft afforded its employees for Windows Phone. I'm not expecting him to, but if he did, I'd relish having my Spock-meets-Spartan view of him rebooted.

The Big Check-in - How Are Things Going

I expect that Mr. Turner will do the big picture for us. I like thiscomment regarding one point of view of how things are going for Microsoft:

There are certainly some issues at MSFT but some of the people that post in this blog are just over the top in their pessimism and whining. As I see it right now, the good, bad, and ugly of MSFT are: The good:
XBOX Kinect blew it away this past Holiday, over 35M customers now pay for the priviledge of XBox Live
The enterprise business is strong, committed revenue is higher than it's ever been (MSFT has a global enterprise business that is really unmatched by anyone
Office365 and Dynamics both are rapidly growing businesses with a ton of upside
MSFT now has 11 distinct businesses that do over $1B in revenue - I can think of maybe one or two other businesses on the planet (GE, etc) that can say the same
Largely because of this diverse portfolio of businesses, MSFT was able to grow revenue, operating income, and net income in spite of *declining* PC sales (MSFT is not a one-trick pony any longer, if it ever was)
Even with weakness in the PC market the past couple of quarters, it's hard to argue with the success of Windows 7 with over 400M licenses sold
MSFT's Cloud offerings collectively are second to none
Bing has a long ways to go but has actually made some progress in the US search market against Google, which was once thought impossible
As an employee, unless you are a bottom 20% performer, the new comp plan is a win. If you don't think so, then you don't really understand the change
Say what you will about Ballmer, there are some senior execs at MSFT that are truly outstanding. Mattrick, Satya, KT, Qi Lu, PK, Lisa B - you won't find anyone better than these folks anywhere
The Nokia partnership will be instrumental in getting a WP7 device in a lot of people's hands
The bad:
As mentioned, PC sales actually declined in Q4
MSFT still hasn't figured out a way to win in India or China and doesn't seem to have a cohesive strategy for emerging markets
WP7 is a good product but as others have alluded to, MSFT is way late to the party in terms of highly functional / attractive UI / rich app eco-system smartphones. The Nokia deal only allows MSFT some hope at playing catch-up at this point
Employees will soon have to pay a contribution (and deductibles) for health care (thank you very much ObamaCare and the Cadillac Tax for bringing that to us)
Although there are talented people still there, a lot of talented folks have left MSFT senior leadership in the past 18 months or so - Liddell, Elop, Muglia, Bach, etc, etc. Although Elop was instrumental in getting the Nokia deal up and going
The ugly:
AAPL sold 20M iPhones and over 9M iPads in a quarter. In. A. Quarter. Let that sink in a moment
While MSFT has plenty of other viable businesses, none is as profitable nor as core strategically as Windows. Windows was once an impenetrable fortress, but in the past year, AAPL has penetrated it with a single product launch. MSFT is destined to play catch-up in slates, and it sounds like nothing serious is coming out until Windows 8 in another 12 to 15 months (maybe)
MSFT is still very strong in the enterprise but to the consumer, MSFT seems completely dead. MSFT has no consumer mindshare any longer
Yes, there are some interesting possibilities with Skype and Lync and XBox (etc), but it is still not at all clear that shareholders will reap anything close to $8.5B of value
GOOG still dominates search in the US and will for the foreseeable future. And their dominance is even greater internationally
OSD as an org continues to bleed money and will continue to do so for at least another couple of years
There it is, from a high-performing L63 employee in a broad-based business role, trying to lay things out in a truly fair and balanced manner. Take it or leave it.

I'm glad to see The Cloud in the somebody's Win column. When it comes to the Company Meeting, I personally am dreading anything that can be in the least bit tangled up with... sigh... THE CLOUD. Two things lost my respect to this force-fed-bubble-gum-on-my-shoe initiative: first, that using our cloud services is Alpha-Geek hostile: sorry, but there should have been upfront a free tinkering environment to go and write a whole bunch of real fun, heavy computational code. Second, that we started to slap THE CLOUD on crazy crap like home PC image editing.

Really.

So, I don't know, smuggle in a bunch of tequila and limes and whenever THE CLOUD comes up take another hit. That will at least make it palatable... in a numb, doesn't-seem-to-hurt-quite-like-it-did sort of way.

The New Review System and Hiring

Yeah, I think there's zero chance the Senior Leadership Team will go into much depth here. "Cheer if you like the new review system! ... Okay, there's 40% of you. How about the rest? Give me a 'Whoo?'" Want to wade in it? Pour yourself a three fingers of bourbon (and keep the bottle handy) and go through all the comments in the Mini-Microsoft Microsoft Annual Review 2011post. 1,200 comments at this point. Whew.

Strict stack ranking on a fixed curve is a tool brought in for a purpose that didn't exist in the previous review system. Having LisaB take a break from her sabbatical (and, btw, what happens to most people after their sabbatical?) to tell us it's being done because employees felt that the old review system was too complex is a load of greasy smoke up the keister.

I look at this system and, stepping back, it makes sense if you're preparing to do some major organizational slimming over, say, a three year period. For instance, if SteveB where going to leave, I imagine before he goes he would cut back huge parts of Microsoft versus leaving that task to the new CEO, who might make radically bad cut-back decisions (from the former CEO's point of view). Better to give over to the new leader a starving company ready to grow versus a fat pig you've got to go all Neutron-Jack on. Three more years. Three more years to drive down until today's lower 3s are FY2014's 5s.

Depending on who is being forced out or leaving, too, the new system might help with the Young up Microsoft initiative I hear whispers of.

Whoo-and-Hoo!

Didn't like your review? Ah, come on. You know when Ballmer runs around the field you're going to scream and shout (though, given the last Ballmer memo's authorship, maybe we'll see Frank Shaw run around first to warm things up). You're going to stand up. You're going to put aside all the depressing thoughts of those golden handcuffs never unfolding into a sparkling world of wonderment and retirement. You've got a job, a colorful CEO, perhaps a nice raise, and a company holiday to find out what's going on and to have some free grub with your work buds. Compared to 99% of the rest of the world right now, it's worth swigging the Kool-Aid for at least one day and cheering.

There's always the rest of the year for everything else.

Updated: impressions and follow-up

Overall: a very competent Microsoft Company Meeting. Polite applause. "Pip pip."

Other than the occasional video (heh heh, Inception) and the first one or two Train Dances, it was a low-on-humor meeting, for me. Everyone wondered if we were having a host this year. Hey, it was LisaB. Competent (and probably didn't piss people off like last year).

This year was demo-rama. I think the demos were good, it's just I had seen so much of everything being presented that there weren't too many surprises for me. I loved the fact that SteveSi ran one of his demos and then pointed out that everything he had just done was on an ARM slate. I regret how much money we're pouring into OSD (who pointed out that they are quite frugal - uh-huh) but I agree with a lot of what they are doing: they are not trying to out-Google-Google. They're Bing'ing Google upside the head. Go, Cosmos, go!

As for Mr. Ballmer: it was a surprise that he didn't come running and screaming out but rather had a surrogate fly around like a chimp on crack dusted with meth. Mr. Ballmer seemed more subdued this year. Love for Ballmer? People still stood up and cheered and clapped for him. Now then: someone please tell him, regarding his analogy of himself and Elop and Windows Phone sticking together, how Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ended. Yeah, they were together alright, but the result was a little bit different than jumping off a cliff into a river.

As for people leaving (as some of the tech bloggers have picked up): yeah, people were streaming out. In small numbers. No where near as bad as BillG's last company meeting where Ballmer started screaming at people to sit down. And, well, yes, I was one of those folks who wandered to the upper portion of the seats while Mr. Ballmer passed on his coachie wisdom from Friday Night Lights (BTW, I prefer coach John Wooden). I suppose if Microsoft had been serving beer and snacks after the meeting I would have managed to stay in my seat.

So for me: technically well executed. Pip pip. I feel good about what Microsoft has wrought and how many of the things we're doing are exactly the kind of big, cross-group bets folks used to complain how we never do. The Imagine Cup winners were great to see. Pip pip. As for the meeting... I'd like a little culture, too. Maybe less inspirational videos. And more crazy. Not burping game crazy or Craig Mundie dazed-crazy, but show we have some pizzazz... with less explosive volume. And I'm fine with a box lunch if it means I don't have to stand in an infernal line to get a luke-warm burger melded to its bun.

Mini-Microsoft Microsoft -- Comments

The Buffett Rule!

2011-09-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

President Obama speech this morning was only carried LIVE in Chicago on Fox. Very curious, what do you think? The Buffett Rule!

President Obama on Deficit Reduction - C-SPAN Video Library

President Obama make remarks on his vision for a balanced approach and his recommendations to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

- Comment -

A Canadian View of President Obma

2010-11-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

America - He's your President for Goodness Sake!

By William Thomas
Posted: Friday, October 1st, 2010

There was a time not so long ago when Americans, regardless of their political stripes, rallied round their president. Once elected, the man who won the White House was no longer viewed as a Republican or Democrat, but the President of the United States. The oath of office was taken, the wagons were circled around the country’s borders and it was America versus the rest of the world with the president of all the people at the helm.
Suddenly President Barack Obama, with the potential to become an exceptional president has become the glaring exception to that unwritten, patriotic rule.
Four days before President Obama’s inauguration, before he officially took charge of the American government, Rush Limbaugh boasted publicly that he hoped the president would fail. Of course, when the president fails the country flounders. Wishing harm upon your country in order to further your own narrow political views is selfish, sinister and a tad treasonous as well.
Subsequently, during his State of the Union address, which is pretty much a pep rally for America, an unknown congressional representative from South Carolina, later identified as Joe Wilson, stopped the show when he called the President of the United States a liar. The president showed great restraint in ignoring this unprecedented insult and carried on with his speech. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was so stunned by the slur, she forgot to jump to her feet while clapping wildly, 30 or 40 times after that.
Last spring, President Obama took his wife Michelle to see a play in New York City and republicans attacked him over the cost of security for the excursion. The president can’t take his wife out to dinner and a show without being scrutinized by the political opposition? As history has proven, a president in a theatre without adequate security is a tragically bad idea.
Remember: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
At some point, the treatment of President Obama went from offensive to ugly and then to downright dangerous.
The health-care debate, which looked more like extreme fighting in a mud pit than a national dialogue, revealed a very vulgar side of America. President Obama’s face appeared on protest signs white-faced and blood-mouthed in a satanic clown image. In other tasteless portrayals, people who disagreed with his position distorted his face to look like Hitler complete with mustache and swastika.
Odd, that burning the flag makes Americans crazy, but depicting the president as a clown and a maniacal fascist is accepted as part of the new rude America.
Maligning the image of the leader of the free world is one thing, putting the president’s life in peril is quite another. More than once, men with guns were videotaped at the health-care rallies where the president spoke. Again, history shows that letting men with guns get within range of a president has not served America well in the past.
And still the “birthers” are out there claiming Barack Obama was not born in the United States, although public documentation proves otherwise. Hawaii is definitely part of the United States, but the Panama Canal Zone where his electoral opponent Senator John McCain was born? Nobody’s sure.
Last month, a 44-year-old woman in Buffalo was quite taken by President Obama when she met him in a chicken wing restaurant called Duff’s. Did she say something about a pleasure and an honour to meet the man or utter encouraging words for the difficult job he is doing? No. Quote: “You’re a hottie with a smokin’ little body.”
Lady, that was the President of the United States you were addressing, not one of the Jonas Brothers! He’s your president for goodness sakes, not the guy driving the Zamboni at “Monster Trucks On Ice.” Maybe next it’ll be, “Take Your President To A Topless Bar Day.”
In President Barack Obama, Americans have a charismatic leader with a good and honest heart. Unlike his predecessor, he’s a very intelligent leader. And unlike that president’s predecessor, he’s a highly moral man.
In President Obama, Americans have the real deal, the whole package and a leader that citizens of almost every country around the world look to with great envy. Given the opportunity, Canadians would trade our leader, hell, most of our leaders for Obama in a heartbeat.
What America has in Obama is a head of state with vitality and insight and youth. Think about it, Barack Obama is a young Nelson Mandela. Mandela was the face of change and charity for all of Africa but he was too old to make it happen. The great things Obama might do for America and the world could go on for decades after he’s out of office.
America, you know not what you have.
The man is being challenged unfairly, characterized with vulgarity and treated with the kind of deep disrespect to which no previous president was subjected. It’s like the day after electing the first black man to be president, thereby electrifying the world with hope and joy, Americans sobered up and decided the bad old days were better.
President Obama may fail but it will not be a Richard Nixon default fraught with larceny and lies. President Obama, given a fair chance, will surely succeed but his triumph will never come with a Bill Clinton caveat – “if only he’d got control of that zipper.”
Please. Give the man a fair, fighting chance. This incivility toward the leader who won over Americans and gave hope to billions of people around the world that their lives could be enhanced by his example, just naturally has to stop.
Believe me, when Americans drive by the White House and see a sign on the lawn that reads: “No shirt. No shoes. No service,” they’ll realize this new national rudeness has gone way, way too far.

OCTOBER 2010 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE VANCOUVER & LOWER MAINLAND

2010-10-15T06:38:00.001-07:00

Free Angry Birds crashes GetJar site. Dear visitors, GetJar website is experiencing temporary technical problems due to a totally undexpected high demand for the new free game Angry Birds. Please visit the mobile site at http://m.getjar.com with your Android phone to get the game. We sincerely app-ologize for the problems. GetJar team

2010-05-12T12:14:00.001-07:00

Square Brings Credit Card Swiping to the Mobile Masses, for iPhone and Android OS Phones. http://bit.ly/a3LoRi

2010-01-20T21:07:00.001-08:00

SLAVES? http://bit.ly/2dAPbx Modern-day slavery. http://bit.ly/gB7SU There are 27 million people in slavery today including America.

2010-01-10T13:02:00.001-08:00

I'm not smarter than you but I may watch better programing! http://live.twit.tv/

Presently Reading

2009-03-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

Reading: "How I Made My first Million on the Internet and how you can too!" by Ewen Chia, I'll let you know. Not into Guru's, but I follow the $.

Chia is well known and respected and apparently practices what he preaches.t

I wanted to know more. Don't buy the book without the Bonuses!

I will report back soon.

No Excuses in 2009 - Best Blog Post of the Day! Week?

2009-01-05T08:55:00.000-08:00

No Excuses in 2009 - Here Are 7 Essentials To Start Your Internet Based Web 2.0 Business!
January 4, 2009 by Bill Sifflard http://budurl.com/9wpe

Have you been thinking about starting a new internet based Web 2.0 business, want to change your lifestyle, quit your current job, but always seem to have an excuse to either not start or not follow through on your dream? Do you have great concept, skill or passion that you want to run with, but you just do not know where to start? Well today, right now is the perfect time to follow your dream and get your business rolling. Stop making excuses and decide today that you are going to follow your passion and make 2009 a year to remember and not another one worrying about the economy, your jog security and paying the bills. Start following your vision and use these seven concepts to help guide you as your develop and grow your new entrepreneurial adventure.

1. Create An Ultimate Personal Vision
In an earlier post I wrote on New Enterpreneur Essentials I laid out the steps for Creating Your Ultimate Personal Vision “UPV”. Check out this post, use the tools and define your UPV. Even if you have an existing business or are just thinking about entrepreneurship, this is a great exercise to evaluate what you really want from your life.

2. Consistent Focus and Commitment
If you are going to go after this and take your life in a new direction, then you need to determine how much time you are willing to put into the project and commit yourself to it. If this is a part time venture and you need to keep your day job, that is fine. Just establish how much time each day or week you are going to commit to building your new business and stick to it. If you are going to go at this full time, then set specific goals and organize your time to focus on what will drive your business forward. You will hit road blocks!, You will get frustrated and discouraged! I do not know many entrepreneurs over the last thirty years who have not experienced those feelings. The difference is that the successful ones NEVER lose their focus and commitment to their UPV, where the unsuccessful ones LACK the focus and commitment letting a set-back or unforeseen challenge side-track their efforts and they give up.

3. Information Overload
Once you start surfing the web you can feel totally over-whelmed with the overload of information that is available. The key to being successful in the Web 2.0 era is “focus on your core“. If you try every idea that comes along, or try to read every post, tweet or email you receive with the next greatest idea you will accomplish nothing.
I am not saying that you do not want to continually learn and develop your knowledge and understanding of the market, you should always be learning. There are some great bloggers out there who you are going to want to read and learn from, but you can not read them all and you need to structure and set aside a reasonable amount of time for “feeding the mind”. You can not learn to ride a bike by reading the manual. I use to hire sales people who would want to sit in their cubicle for weeks reading about products and programs until they felt like they were an expert. I would kick them out the door and tell them they are never going to balance themselves on that bike of become an expert unless they get out there and fall a few times. You are going to fall and learn from it, but keep picking yourself up and get back on that bike.
What is important also is that you focus on your business plan and work it to success. I see to many people trying to juggle 2, 3 or 4 different projects at once and never really committing to the success of any of them. Your plan will evolve and change and you may decide to go in a different direction at some point, but what ever direction you go in…commit to it and give it your all!

4. Mastermind - Develop a Circle to Learn and Grow
If you think you can do it alone…you can’t! and more over why should you try to re-invent something that you can learn from others. I believe strongly in Napoleon Hill’s philosophy and vision regarding the development and use of a Mastermind Alliance or Group to develop both personally and professionally. To be a successful entrepreneur you need to align yourself with others who can contribute to your success, be able to share ideas, opportunities and challenges in a forum where all can contribute and benefit. It may be that you find a group with similar interests in your local area, meet up with a group on LinkedIn or Twitter or you may want to join a group that brings professionals together from across the country and around the world. To learn more about Mastermind Groups read The Secret Behind a Mastermind Group at the Bssential Small Business Solutions website.

5. Do Not Waste Your Time - Outsource
So many Entrepreneurs try to do it all themselves and waste their vital time and energy doing work that they can have done faster and better by others for a fraction of the cost. Your time is valuable and once you determine the value of your time you will realize that logos, websites, administrative duties, email campaigns can all be automated or handled by “Virtual Assistants” and other professional sourcing solutions, so you can focus on what will make you money. You can develop an effective Web 2.0 presence and not know anything about WordPress, widgets, themes or html. You just need to know how to delegate and establish the processes and proceedures you want in developing your site and your business.

6. Marketing the 80/20 Rule
Marketing yourself, your business and driving traffic to your site needs to be the primary focus of your attention. If you are not spending 80% of your time generating traffic to your site then you are not going to achieve the success that you desire. This gets back to outsourcing where you waste time doing things that will not help grow your business. Invest your time in learning developing your marketing skills from those who have been successful. You need to focus on learning how to drive traffic to your site, creating useful content that will draw readers to your site and utilize the tools that are out there to promote and get your site noticed by the search engines.

7. Build Your Community
Community and a follwing is critical to your success in building a internet based business. When I talk to brick and mortor retailers the first question I ask is “how big a database of customers they maintain and how often to they communicate with them and how?” I generally get a blank stare like I have 3 heads. Most businesses have no idea who their customers are and your primary focus is to reach out and create that list of subscribers to your site that you can establish and build a relationship with by getting them to opt-in to your blog post updates, email newsletter as well as buy products and services you offer. If you draw a visitor to your site, but do not get them to give you permission to communicate with them they are a lost customer. Develop a marketing strategy to offer something in return for their registration. The key is working to get a name, an email address and opt-in permission to contact them.
Follow Your Dream
Now is the time to follow your dream, stop making excuses and commit to yourself to change direction and set a new course in 2009.
To learn more about building your internet Web 2.0 based business join the Bssential Solutions Community and utilize the links, tools and services that you can find there.
There you can sign up for regular updates to the website and blog, register for the Bssential Small Business Solutions Newsletter and check out some of the courses and programs we offer to help establish and grow your business.

See Site?

2008-12-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else noticed a large number of new websites that can not be opened with Microsoft IE? Anyone know why? Is this a trend for 2009?

ISO Member Site

2008-12-25T17:57:00.001-08:00

2008-12-08T12:36:00.001-08:00

Microsoft Ready to Battle Google in Search (http://ping.fm/D8Tx2)

Ballmer Gets Microsoft Ready to Battle Google in Search

2008-12-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

Lu Hire Shows Ballmer Is Switching Tacks to Help Microsoft Battle Google in Search By Clint Boulton 2008-12-05 eWEEK

Industry analysts wonder what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's hiring of former Yahoo search guru Qi Lu will mean for Microsoft's Online Services group. Lu is a search engine engineering and advertising pro, implying that Microsoft is looking to capture some of Google's magic. Enderle Group's Rob Enderle, Forrester's David Card and IDC's Karsten Weide weigh in.
Industry experts treated Microsoft's Dec. 4 hiring of Qi Lu as president of the company's cursed Online Service Group, one of the company's few glaring red zones, with cautious optimism.After all, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has run plenty of business and advertising guys, such as Kevin Johnson, through the Microsoft Online Service gauntlet with no success.As Om Malik noted, Microsoft's online revenues were $770 million, up 15 percent from Q3 2007 in the last quarter. But the losses jumped 80 percent from the previous year to $480 million. That's staggering for a company of Microsoft's historic economic efficiency. Lu will attempt to boost Microsoft's struggling search and online ad efforts, as well all the company's online information and communications services, reporting to Ballmer. By hiring Lu, analysts see Ballmer as taking a page out of Google's playbook: Hiring an engineering heavyweight to do the heavy search ad algorithm lifting. This could be Microsoft's chance to combat Google on a more level playing field.
Some analysts, such as Forrester Research's David Card, aren't sure what to make of Ballmer's move. Card told eWEEK:
They could have gone for a media guy or a product guy and they went for an engineering manager. Does that mean that it is a more engineering focused, or is he just really a good manager and they don't think that they need an operations guy in charge because two or three of his lieutenants are going to be doing the product development, the marketing and the advertising sales? It's tough to get a read.
Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle told eWEEK in the wake of Microsoft's announcement the move represents a change in tactics for Ballmer, who in Lu is getting someone that is less likely to get involved with the meeting-room politics of everyone "sitting around, telling each other how brilliant they are" and proceeding to do something stupid.
"They made an attempt to buy the company and then they decided, 'What the hell, we'll cherry pick it'," Enderle said, alluding also to Microsoft's previous coup of hiring Sean Suchter, Yahoo's vice president of search technology at Yahoo, Nov. 20.

2008-12-08T09:15:00.001-08:00

FCC to Consider Free Internet, By Reuters 2008-12-04 ( http://ping.fm/D8Tx2 )

FCC to Consider Free Internet

2008-12-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

FCC to Consider Free Internet, Cable Issues Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is proposing that the agency auction off some airwaves, with a mandate that 25 percent be set aside for free Internet. By Reuters 2008-12-04

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. communications regulators will consider a controversial spectrum auction plan for free Internet and new rules governing disputes between cable operators and programmers at their December meeting, the agency's chairman said on Wednesday.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is proposing that the agency auction off some airwaves, with a mandate that 25 percent be set aside for free Internet.
To address concerns that finding the financing to build out the spectrum in a tough economic environment would be challenging, the plan includes a provision requiring the winning bidder to meet benchmarks by five years, or have the spectrum reclaimed by the agency.
"It will be use it or lose it," said Martin, a Republican whose chairmanship will likely end when the Obama administration takes office next month.
The plan also contains a provision to be voted on by the five-member FCC that any spectrum portion reclaimed be opened up for unlicensed use.
Martin, as he has done in the past, dismissed the concerns of Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile cell phone unit that the free Internet component would lead to interference with its adjacent spectrum, for which it paid $4.2 billion.
He said more protection to prevent technical interference are in place now than there were for a nearly $20 billion auction earlier this year, won in large part by Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. Verizon Wireless is owned by Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.
The plan also contains a controversial mandatory filter requirement for customers under the age of 18 years old, to address concerns about children getting access to pornography on the Internet.
Free speech advocates say that provision would surely be challenged in court.
A separate auction plan for a different slice of the spectrum, with a requirement that it be used in coordination with public safety officials, did not make it onto the December agenda.
Martin said there was no consensus among the commissioners on how to move forward with that plan.
CABLE ISSUES
The cable rules to be considered come as the FCC arbitrates several disputes between cable companies Time Warner Cable Inc and Comcast Corp, and content programmers such as NFL Networks.
The disputes involve what tier of service a content provider such as NFL Networks gets on a cable system and whether there is discrimination in that process based on other content the cable operator controls.The proposal would set up a resolution process for such disputes, giving the FCC six months to evaluate the claims and setting legal standards for when a programer can reasonably claim discrimination by a cable company.
Consumers groups lauded that idea.
"The FCC's proposed guidelines will accelerate a clear and evenhanded resolution of disputes between cable companies and TV programmers -- this reform should mean more diverse programing and lower prices for consumers," said Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst for Consumers Union.
The FCC is also seeking comment on a proposal from Cablevision Systems Corp related to contracts between broadcasters, other content providers and cable companies.
It would bar broadcasters and other content providers from demanding that cable or satellite companies put them on a certain tier, or reach a minimum number of subscribers, in exchange for being carried by the cable company.
Cable programmers say these requirements from broadcasters contribute to higher prices for consumers.
(By Kim Dixon, Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Andre Grenon)
© Thomson Reuters 2008.

2008-12-07T18:58:00.001-08:00

Federal Government Says; Payday Loans Cheaper Than Overdrafts. http://ping.fm/D8Tx2

Federal Government; Payday Loans Cheaper Than Overdrafts

2008-12-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

Payday Loans Cheaper Than Overdrafts: Federal Government Reported
12-07-08RTO Online - The rent to own industry's trade website

"The study concluded that a typical bank customer repaying a $20 overdraft in two weeks would incur a $27 overdraft fee (the survey median) at an APR of 3,520 percent."

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) published the results of a two year study on the use of overdraft programs operated by FDIC-supervised banks. The study found that a typical NSF check can result in overdraft fees and interest in excess of 3,500 percent APR. In addition, the study found that customers in low-income areas (median annual income of less than $30,000) were nearly twice as likely to incur these charges.
The FDIC study reinforces the payday loan industry's position that short-term cash advance loans are significantly less expensive than traditional bank overdraft fees. The study also found that, unlike payday loan companies that offer on-demand products, most banks (75.1 percent) automatically enrolled customers in overdraft programs that carry APRs and other fees far more expensive than the typical cash advance loan.
The FDIC study concluded that a typical bank customer repaying a $20 overdraft in two weeks would incur a $27 overdraft fee (the survey median) at an APR of 3,520 percent. A customer repaying a $60 ATM overdraft in two weeks would incur an APR of 1,173 percent and a customer repaying a $66 check overdraft in two weeks would incur an APR of 1,067 percent. Surprisingly, the study also concluded that the faster a customer repays an overdraft, the higher the resultant APR.
Consumer advocacy groups like the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) have lobbied to ban payday lending, leaving consumers with no option other than to pay overdraft fees to banks and credit unions. CRL and others recently led the charge to pass HB 545, a law effectively banning payday lending in Ohio. Rent-A-Center led a coalition of companies in an unsuccessful attempt to block HB 545 . In 2006, Ken Compton, CEO of Advance America, said, "Contrary to the CRL's spin, responsible uses of the payday product provides consumers firm footing to overcome unexpected financial circumstances,"

Other key FDIC findings include:
- 90 percent of banks surveyed allow NSF transactions to be completed without informing the consumer that funds are insufficient - even though the information is immediately available. Less than 8 percent of banks inform consumers that funds are insufficient before transactions are completed, offering the customers an opportunity to cancel the NSF transaction and avoid a fee.
- Consumer complaints about automated overdraft programs were received by 12.5 percent of banks that operated these programs.
- Almost 9 percent of consumer accounts had at least 10 NSF transactions during a 12-month period. 4.9 percent had 20 or more NSF transactions. Customer accounts with 20 or more NSF transactions were charged $1,610 per year in NSF fees on average.

Key findings from the survey of 462 FDIC-supervised banks are as follows:
1. The majority (86.0 percent) of banks operated at least one formal overdraft program, either automated, linked accounts, or lines of credit (LOC). Large banks (defined as those with at least $1 billion in assets) tended to offer a fuller menu of overdraft programs. The share of all banks offering automated overdraft programs was 40.5 percent, but large banks were also significantly more likely to operate automated overdraft programs (76.9 percent), suggesting that a significant share of customer transaction accounts operated under automated overdraft programs.
2. The number of FDIC-supervised institutions providing automated programs has grown rapidly over the past several years. Most banks (69.4 percent) initiated their automated overdraft programs after 2001. Large banks were more likely (55.4 percent) to have had an automated overdraft program in place in 2001.
3. Most banks (75.1 percent) automatically enrolled customers in automated overdraft programs, although customers were usually permitted to affirmatively opt out of the program. Survey comments indicated that in some cases, customers were not given the choice to opt in or out of the automated program.
4. By contrast, almost all banks (94.7 percent) treated linked-account programs as opt-in programs, requiring that customers affirmatively request to have accounts linked. In addition, customers have to apply and qualify for an overdraft LOC program, so these programs typically operate on an opt-in basis.
5. Most banks (73.0 percent) established credit limits for automated overdraft customers in written policies, consistent with the bank's lending program. Automated overdraft credit limits stipulated in these policies ranged from $85 to $10,000, and the median credit limit was $500.
6. Automated overdraft usage fees assessed by banks ranged from $10 to $38, and the median fee assessed was $27. About one-fourth of the surveyed banks (24.6 percent) also assessed additional fees on accounts that remained in negative balance status in the form of flat fees or interest charged on a percentage basis.
7. Fees assessed for linked-account and overdraft LOC programs were typically lower than for automated overdraft programs. Almost half of the banks with linked-account programs (48.9 percent) reported charging no explicit fees for the service. The most common fee associated with linked-account programs was a transfer fee; where charged, the median transfer fee was $5. The primary cost associated with overdraft LOC programs was the interest charged on funds advanced, usually accruing at an annual percentage rate (APR) of around 18 percent.
8. The majority (81.0 percent) of banks operating automated programs allowed overdrafts to take place at automated teller machines (ATMs) and point-of-sale (POS)/debit transactions. However, most banks whose automated overdraft programs covered ATM and POS/debit transactions informed customers of an NSF only after the transaction had been completed (88.8 percent of banks for POS/debit transactions and 70.7 percent of banks for ATM transactions). A minority of banks (7.9 percent for POS/debit and 23.5 percent for ATMs) did inform consumers that funds were insufficient before transactions were completed at these locations, offering the customers an opportunity to cancel the NSF transaction and avoid a fee.
9. A significant share of banks (24.7 percent of all surveyed banks and 53.7 percent of large banks) batched processed overdraft transactions by size, from largest to smallest, which can increase the number of overdrafts.
10. More than half of banks with automated overdraft programs (54.2 percent) reported that they relied on a third-party vendor to implement or manage the program. Small banks (those with less than $250 million in assets) were more likely to rely on vendors and third parties for automated overdraft program implementation and management. Most banks using vendors to manage their automated overdraft programs (70.6 percent) also reported that they paid third-party vendors a percentage of the fees generated by the program, typically 10 to 20 percent of additional fees generated.
11. The banks earned an estimated $1.97 billion in NSF-related fees in 2006, representing 74 percent of the $2.66 billion in service charges on deposit accounts reported by these banks in their Reports of Conditions and Income (Call Reports).3 Total NSF-related fee income accounted for roughly 6 percent of the total net operating revenues earned by the banks. Banks operating automated overdraft programs earned $1.77 billion in NSF fees in 2006, accounting for 90 percent of total NSFrelated fee income earned by the entire study population.
12. Banks that operated automated overdraft programs had higher NSF-related fee income (measured as a share of operating revenues) compared with other banks. In addition, banks whose automated program covered ATM and/or POS/debit transactions and banks that batch processed transactions largest-to-smallest reported higher fee income than those that did not have these features.
13. Consumer complaints about automated overdraft programs were received by 12.5 percent of banks that operated these programs, compared with consumer complaints from less than 1.0 percent of banks offering linked-account programs and 1.5 percent of banks offering overdraft LOC programs. Complaints about automated overdraft programs were more common for large institutions than for small institutions (21.7 percent versus 10.6 percent).
14. Automated overdraft programs operated by banks were characterized as either "promoted" or "nonpromoted." The survey results revealed important differences in bank marketing and disclosure practices between automated and nonautomated overdraft programs. However, in most cases survey disclosure results regarding automated overdraft programs applied only to promoted programs. Although banks that operated nonpromoted automated overdraft programs accounted for a minority (8.5 percent) of banks, these banks were typically large and accounted for more than half (51.7 percent) of the transaction account dollars held by all banks.

Complete Story: http://rtoonline.com/Content/Article/dec08/FDIC-Overdraft-Payday-Loan-Study-120708.asp

Analysis Report: http://www.rtoonline.com/images/FDIC-Bank-Overdraft-Report-Payday-Loan-120708.pdf

In States like Ohio who is the friend to the Consumer?

2008-11-30T19:46:00.001-08:00

3 Lessons in Reinvention http://ping.fm/lTaEA Good reading, thanks Problogger.

2008-11-29T14:57:00.001-08:00

Marketing in the World of the Web. http://ping.fm/D8Tx2 Marketing 3.0 is not only different from its predecessors, but actively undermines them.

Marketing in the World of the Web

2008-11-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

This article was sent to me by one of the Authors who is a Linked-In connection of mine.

NOVEMBER 29, 2008
Marketing in the World of the Web
Bemes, clouds and MySpace: Welcome to the brave new world of retail.
By TOM HAYES and MICHAEL S. MALONE

Retailers will eventually recover from the consumption tailspin that threatens this holiday season. But quite apart from the recession, there are other, profound changes underway in the retail sector. As the evidence mounts about the power of social networks to reconfigure individual behavior, the crucial question facing industry is: How to leverage this phenomenon into actual profits?
The second generation of Internet ("Web 2.0") companies such as MySpace, Facebook, Linked/In and YouTube exploded upon the scene three years ago. Today, MySpace and Facebook together have more users than the entire U.S. population; and the online community concept is already becoming a powerful tool for everything from creating customer loyalty, to assistance in product design, to a sounding board for company strategy.
Corporations from IBM to Toyota and Johnson & Johnson have been rushing to establish their own affiliated social networks and bind their customers ever more closely. There isn't a smart company today that isn't implementing some kind of online community, wiki or blog strategy.
But companies with millions of members of online communities are now asking: What next? How do we sell them products and services, or mobilize them into massive de facto R&D, manufacturing and sales departments? We have been studying the challenge and have concluded that very few of the traditional techniques of classical marketing (call them Marketing 1.0), or even of eCommerce (Marketing 2.0) will work in the world of social networks. A very different set of tools, concepts and practices is needed. Call it Marketing 3.0. Here are five:
- From loyalty to attention. Before you can win consumer loyalty, you have to capture and reward consumer attention. Old propositions -- network television's tired offer of 22 minutes of canned sitcoms in exchange for eight minutes of untargeted commercials -- won't cut it. Consumers are demanding a better deal.
Some brands are starting to flirt with better exchange rates: Virgin Mobile gives a minute of free phone time for every minute of advertising a customer accepts. Ryan Air recently announced it would offer $15 coach tickets from the U.S. to Europe, subsidized by passenger attention to advertising and in-flight sales pitches.
Smart marketers will of necessity become obsessed with customer attention in the way they once obsessed over customer loyalty. The shrewd brands will create elaborate attention-rewards programs, and incentives to break through the noise and make that critical initial connection.
- From crowds to clouds. Once you get that attention -- once you generate heavy traffic to your site, gather a large league of "friends" on MySpace, or spawn a dedicated following on Twitter -- how do you monetize the crowd?
Smart brands are turning their crowds into "clouds": organic, self-forming and often self-governing communities of interest. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Frito-Lay and Harley-Davidson use their clouds as feedback loops to get better faster by obtaining good, timely, often brutally honest customer insights. And the members of clouds can become true believers; they don't just watch your commercials, they make them.
Right now, few companies are emotionally equipped to wring the best benefits of a cloud, because the most valuable voices out there usually belong to the malcontents. In the old model, customer-service departments aimed to placate or jettison disgruntled customers. In the cloud model, the idea is to cultivate and reward them. That's not an easy transition.
- From places to spaces. Consumers are increasingly organizing themselves into new communities -- not just the big generic social communities, but myriad idiosyncratic slices of narrow, passionate interest (i.e., BlackPlanet, Inpowr and MomsCafe).
These new market spaces, or "meganiches," may seem small, even strange at first. But when they're efficiently targeted, they can be highly responsive, lucrative and loyal. Well-established meganiche Web sites include Gamefaq.com for video gamers, Dpreview.com for digital photography aficionados, and Howardchui.com dedicated to mobile phone zealots.
With this shift toward self-organization by consumers, national advertising campaigns as we know them will increasingly become a waste of time and money for many companies. The trick for brands is to cohabit social spaces with these consumers. Social media, and its verb form, "friending," requires entirely new forms of advertising: bottom up instead of top down, personal rather than public, and subtle rather than full frontal.
- From memes to bemes. In the Age of Broadcast, good advertising could occasionally manufacture memes of tremendous social impact. Think of "Where's the Beef?" or "I can't believe I ate the whole thing." If you can't recall an irresistible or effective turn of phrase of late, it's because it is exceedingly difficult to spread a meme in today's fragmented media environment. Marketing 3.0 is now the science of devising and managing directed business memes: call them bemes. Bemes are sent by members of social communities to each other and typically contain a reward or exclusive offer, which, when redeemed, also results in a reward coupon for the sender. This encourages members of social communities to propagate a "viral" ad. One well-documented beme was "The Subservient Chicken" from Burger King.

Brute force marketing won't work inside social networks. The best online marketing now takes place among people who know and trust each other. Consider how rumors work. Like a rumor, a beme is a bit of useful information that rewards each person who passes it along. Want to be a sensation? Create a beme that consumers willingly accept and share with others.
- From silos to simultaneity. Too many retailers today persist in believing that online shopping is merely a virtual extension of real world shopping. That is a big mistake.
Rather, online and offline need to coexist, and we need to rethink how they relate. For example, to their surprise, companies like BestBuy (which even encourages customers to shop the aisles but buy online from in-store kiosks) and Macy's are discovering that physical retailing is a perfect way to move units online. That is, the physical world has become the showroom for the virtual realm.
Retailers now must reimagine a world where consumers experience products in stores but ultimately buy them on the Web: Stores are for experiences, the network is for inventories. And what in turn prepares potential customers for what to look for in stores? Online communities.
All of this suggests that Marketing 3.0 is not only different from its predecessors, but actively undermines them. If your marketing program fails to adapt to this new world, it won't just become irrelevant -- it will actually work against you.
Mr. Hayes, a former vice president at HP and Applied Materials, is the author of "Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business" (McGraw-Hill, 2008). Mr. Malone, a columnist for ABCNews.com, is the author of the forthcoming book "The Future Arrived Yesterday."

Saturday, November 29, 2008
Opinion Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122792310060465901.html

2008-11-26T21:24:00.001-08:00

Free On-Line HD Movies & TV http://ping.fm/I0BB0 Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-11T22:43:00.001-08:00

Looking to expand my network and search for Guest Speakers for weekly Web Radio Broadcast.
http://ping.fm/zN9u4
LinkedIn, WEB2.0, Sales, Internet, Social and Affiliate Marketing. How did You get to 500+ , how long.

2008-11-05T10:09:00.001-08:00

God Bless America!

2008-10-28T09:13:00.001-07:00

Diwali Greetings! http://ping.fm/0zrEw To my Indian friends. May God bless us with wisdom, knowledge and skill to shape our future.

2008-10-25T17:29:00.001-07:00

Have a great weekend everyone!

Change

2008-10-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

2008-10-20T10:32:00.001-07:00

Ad Age 2008 Marketer of the Year? http://ping.fm/Py2dw Obama Wins!

2008-10-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

blogactionday ICAN is in: http://ping.fm/5SYWD

2008-10-13T17:29:00.001-07:00

Beautiful Idea - Project10 http://ping.fm/8ICve - Google project? Very Interesting!

2008-10-12T20:49:00.001-07:00

Free Offline Advertising - Blog, Website or Business!
http://ping.fm/Qngdr
Sorry for the broken link. Enjoy!

2008-10-08T11:34:00.001-07:00

Android G1 Phone Emulator T-Mobile http://ping.fm/6QJWo virtually sample the device's user interface. With the HTC-produced G1--the first commercial handset based on Google's Android mobile OS

Suspends Foreclosure Evictions

2008-10-08T09:03:00.001-07:00

Sheriff suspends mortgage foreclosure evictions Chicago http://ping.fm/D8Tx2 Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced Wednesday morning that he plans to suspend mortgage foreclosure evictions conducted by his officers। Dart said Wednesday morning that he is taking the action in the wake of the national foreclosure crisis. He plans to discuss the issue further at a news conference at the Daley Center at 11 a.m.

2008-10-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

2008-10-06T09:20:00.001-07:00

PUT YOUR CAR KEYS BESIDE YOUR BED AT NIGHT!
Tell your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your parents your Dr office, the check-out girl at the market, everyone you run across. Put your car keys beside your bed at night. If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies. This tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator.

2008-10-03T13:47:00.001-07:00

http://ping.fm/UHulu

2008-10-02T09:00:00.001-07:00

Join me at noon Today (Thursday) http://ping.fm/lBMfK pros and cons of creating and maintaining your own website mailing list..

2008-10-01T20:19:00.001-07:00

Please excuse me if I missed the announcement about channel 73 on Dish TV.
Barack Obama's Plan for America. Check it out! 24 hours a day.

2008-09-30T18:13:00.001-07:00

3 Steps to Save the Nation. Dave Ramsey appears to have a great deal of wisdom and insight regarding the current financial crises. It looks good to me. Take a look. http://ping.fm/9uJth

2008-09-30T08:47:00.001-07:00

Hole in Adobe Software http://ping.fm/QJ7Qz
Allows Free Movie Downloads from Amazon.com Inc's video streaming service. By Reuters

2008-09-26T17:58:00.001-07:00

Breaking News: Digium and Skype Announce Collaboration
Huge news out of Astricon 2008: Skype and Digium (News - Alert) are now collaborating, creating integration between phone systems based on Asterisk and the Skype network. Users can now treat Skype calls like any other protocol on Asterisk systems: calls can be forwarded, transferred, placed and received using Skype via an Asterisk phone system. In other words, this means native Skype trunking on Asterisk boxes.
http://ping.fm/wSKTR

2008-09-26T14:52:00.001-07:00

Best line of the day? National Review: "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."
http://ping.fm/92BTb

2008-09-25T09:13:00.001-07:00

On The Stump Markus Web Radio Show Now, http://ping.fm/lBMfK
Dial In: +1 724 444-7444 IP: 66.212.134.192 Show ID: 17477#

2008-09-24T00:15:00.001-07:00

FREE Michael Moore Movie!! New Please Spread It *Slacker Uprising*
http://ping.fm/3ne04

2008-09-21T20:35:00.001-07:00

Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes.
What leads to Success?
Passion, Work, Good, Focus, Push, Serve, Ideas, Persist. 3 minute video please watch. http://ping.fm/QPyOE

2008-09-17T22:47:00.001-07:00

I want one!
Fitbit http://www.fitbit.com/
automatically tracks your fitness and sleep
Did I get enough exercise today? How many calories did I burn? Am I getting good quality sleep? How many steps and miles did I walk today? The Fitbit Tracker helps you answer these questions. $99

2008-09-16T16:55:00.001-07:00

Did you know iPod was invented by a British in 1979
Apple has finally admitted that a British man who left school at 15 is the inventor behind the iPod.
Kane Kramer, 52, came up with the technology that drives the digital music player nearly 30 years ago but has still not seen a penny from his invention.
And the father of three is so hard up he had to sell his home last year and move his family to rented accommodation.

Good idea: Apple admitted Kane Kramer invented the technology behind the iPod
Now documents filed by Apple in a court case show the US firm acknowledges him as the father of the iPod.
The computer giant even flew Mr Kramer to its Californian headquarters to give evidence in its defence during a legal wrangle with another firm, Burst.com, which claimed it held patents to technology in the iPod and deserved a cut of Apple’s £89billion profits.
Two years ago, Mr Kramer told this newspaper how he had invented the device in 1979 – when he was just 23.
His invention, called the IXI, stored only 3.5 minutes of music on to a chip – but Mr Kramer rightly believed its capacity would improve.
His sketches at the time showed a credit-card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks – very similar to the iPod.
He took out a worldwide patent and set up a company to develop the idea.
But in 1988, after a boardroom split, he was unable to raise the £60,000 needed to renew patents across 120 countries and the technology became public property.

Look iLike: Kramer's prototype digital music player he invented back in 1979

Real deal: Apple sells 100 iPods a minute
Apple used Mr Kramer’s patents and drawings to defend itself in the legal wrangle with Burst last September and he gave evidence under fire from Burst’s lawyers.
Mr Kramer, of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, said: ‘I was up a ladder painting when I got the call from a lady with an American accent from Apple saying she was the head of legal affairs and that they wanted to acknowledge the work that I had done.
‘I must admit that at first I thought it was a wind-up by friends. But we spoke for some time, with me still up this ladder slightly bewildered by it all, and she said Apple would like me to come to California to talk to them.
'Then I had to make a deposition in front of a court stenographer and videographer at a lawyers’ office. The questioning by the Burst legal counsel there was tough, ten hours of it. But I was happy to do it.’
The dispute between Apple and Burst.com has since been settled confidentially out of court.
Mr Kramer said: ‘To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all.’
He is now negotiating with Apple to gain some compensation from the copyright that he owns on the drawings.
But so far he has received only a consultancy fee for providing his expertise in the legal case.
A staggering 163million iPods have been sold since the device was launched by Apple in 2001.
Every minute, another 100 are snapped up worldwide, earning Apple an estimated £5.5billion last Christmas alone.
But Mr Kramer, in contrast, last year had to close his struggling furniture design business and move with his wife Lorraine and children, Jodi, nine, Luis, 14, and Lauren, 16, into rented accommodation.
‘I can’t even bring myself to buy an iPod for myself,’ he said. ‘Apple did give me one but it broke down after eight months.’
Mr Kramer, who organises the annual British Invention Show, is now working on an invention he claims will be bigger than the iPod.
Called Monicall, it will allow people to have phone calls recorded and emailed to the various parties as an audio file.
He said: ‘It will speed up business deals and provide a low-cost third-party witness to conversations and agreements.
‘A deal will be done on the phone and that is it – an audio file gets emailed over within 30 seconds.’
Courtesy – Daily Mail

2008-09-16T13:09:00.001-07:00

101 Business Twitter Ideas, Tactics, and Strategies

Twitter me this, Twitter my business that. How many things can you Twitter? Like any platform or tool, Twitter is slowly finding more and more business application for a variety of industries. Rather than create a series of lengthy “how to guides” for Twitter, I am going to point you towards a collection of articles written by some niche experts on using Twitter. The first one worth reading is from Chris Brogan “50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business”, but I have included 12 more articles covering some other useful Twitter tactics and strategies.

Associated articles for using Twitter for Business:

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

Looking for tips on how to make Twitter work for your business? Here’s a quick fifty ideas from Chris Brogan’s blog. The tips are broken down into categories such as: first steps, what to tweet, and the Twitter-positive arguments to the most common Twitter cons you’ll come across. The post is a great primer for someone who’s itching to join the conversation and is looking for what to do to get started. Now go get twittering….

Using Twitter for Brands or Corporate Identities

As most of you know, we launched Shizzow last week, and we began using the Shizzow Twitter account with it. I’ve been doing most (but not all) of the tweeting from the Shizzow account, and I wanted to share some best practices for using …

The Poetics of Professional Tweeting

Let’s assume we’re on the same page that says Twitter is good for something. Now let’s romanticize it and equate to a modern limerick; let’s make it vulgar and call it Limerick 2.0. (The number of characters bars it from Haiku status—keep all that meaning under 30 characters and that’s serious art.) What should your little poem—the professional tweeter’s poem—say to the world?

Twitter how to intro: Getting started tutorial

http://ping.fm/aNAxS Twitter how to get started using Twitter to build your online following.

Three Easy Ways a Martial Arts School Can Use Twitter

If you don’t know what social media is all about, there are endless blogs, articles and various studies on how this effects society in general, business applications, etc. so I’ll save myself from getting side tracked on the latest “Web …

How To Use Twitter for a Home Based Business

What is Twitter? Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Using Twitter for Business - How to …

How to use Twitter for marketing

So you’ve read about Twitter & Tipping points, what it’s for and who uses it… so now’s the time to start using Twitter to effectively market and promote your offering. The sky’s the limit for how you can integrate Twitter into your …

The Risk in Using Twitter as a Public Utility

For example, I love how the Los Angeles County Fire Department is using Twitter for news distribution. Some have wisely suggested that utility computing is a potential business model for the micro-blogging service. …

Associations using Twitter

We avoid the broadcast model of using Twitter at the organizational level - as individuals, Holly and I incorporate organizational announcements, questions, and other communications into our personal professional Twitter updates - we …

Thinking About Search, Again

You can try it by using Twitter Search. On Twitter Search you can do a basic search via the search box on the main page. But, if you click on the Advanced Search you’ll find options that make for a much more powerful Twitter search. …

Guidelines For Brands Using Twitter

When the CEO of Zappos, whose Twitter presence boasts around 10k “followers” started using Twitter, the first thing he did was to start giving away stuff. Some of it was products—but much of it was customer service related. …

More evidence that Twitter is changing business

The main article covers a lot of the same ground that the New York Times and ABC News have done in the last couple of months, mainly how companies like JetBlue, H&R Block, Comcast and Whole Foods are using Twitter to monitor and respond …

CEO’s Who Twitter

My favorite CEO to follow onTwitter is hands-down Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com if you haven’t seen his Beginners Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter its worth a read. I also love the Tweets of Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency …

Courtesy - Barry Hurd, 123 Social Media

2008-09-12T15:37:00.001-07:00

Podcast Talk?
You have been invited by Rob White to join a live Community Call.
Date: Fri, September 12, 2008
Time: 08:00 PM EDT
http://ping.fm/KufTu
Dial: (724) 444-7444
Enter: 16829 # (Call ID)
Enter: 1 # or your PIN
Join from your computer:

2008-09-11T15:22:00.001-07:00

Web-Radio Show is about to begin, http://ping.fm/KWpS0
+1 724 444-7444
66.212.134.192 22279# 708 487 0014#

2008-09-10T12:54:00.001-07:00

Entrepreneurs are different from small-business owners
"Small-business owner" and "entrepreneur" are not interchangeable terms, says Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation. Entrepreneurs are innovators who generate one new idea after another, Fishback says, while small-business owners tend to develop one idea and then stick with it.
Mr. Fishback told a crowd at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers conference in Kansas City yesterday that entrepreneurs are those people who generate new revolutionary ideas, bringing them to the marketplace. Their ideas are innovative, making our society more efficient and often helping spur the U.S. economy by evolving into high-growth firms.

Once these dynamic “entrepreneurs” create one idea, they often move onto the next.

Small-business owners, by contrast, start a business and once they grow it big enough to support themselves and their families, they have no intentions of growing this much more. This might be the corner barber shop or the hordes of self-employed. Perhaps they were “entrepreneurs” when they first started their business or generated their idea, but they lose that title once they’re “settled” into the day-to-day running of a business. “Once they decide, ‘ok, I have enough’” to make a decent living for the family “they’re sort of shifting out of entrepreneurship,” Mr. Fishback said.

So why do we care who’s called what? Entrepreneurs are economic drivers that create jobs and bring new ideas into the marketplace. These entrepreneurs should be studied and fostered in the U.S. economy because they will help keep it vibrant into the future.

Small-business owners make a contribution to the economy, Mr. Fishback said, but not often to the same degree as entrepreneurs.

Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur? Should a distinction be made?

entrepreneur? or small business? which are you?

2008-09-08T22:22:00.001-07:00

Will PING.FM save the day?

Universial Communicator PING.FM

2008-09-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

Universial Communicator PING.FM what do you think?