Source: Mediapost Research Brief

Look at this competitive intelligence from Hitwise. Yes, you read it right. MySpace has a nearly 80 percent market share for all social networking sites. And two years ago? It was virtually unknown.

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Source: Fortune

Photo by TheCoco via Flickr

Nationwide local groups are forming to fight against big box stores like Wal-Mart. The groups cite the "de-globalizing" effects of rising energy costs, inefficiencies of global distribution, consumer desire for personalization and the growing loyalty of workers to small, local firms. But it's a balance. Too much localism could lead down the slippery slope of protectionism…"slamming the door on exports from poor countries and hindering their efforts to grow." And "buy local" doesn't work so well when you want to buy a TV or an iPod or use Google. But it sure does work for food. Go buy some local tomatoes.

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Source: Forbes

Wal-Mart figures that everyday low prices in small-town America can only take you so far. In an effort to kick-start a share price that has lost a third of its value since early 2002, Wal-Mart is now focusing on urban and upscale suburban markets. First step? Create a feel-good ad campaign aimed at politicians. Why? The anti-Wal-Mart movement doesn't faze Wal-Mart's core rural customers, but it does affect liberal politicians that have the power to keep Wal-Mart from building in cities. Next step? Test out organic food, high-end jewelery and plasma TVs in a few suburban stores. Hmmm...will you fall for it?

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Source: Fresh Inc. blog

Janine Popick, CEO of Vertical Response, an email marketing company, was not convinced about blogging for business until she tried one and the experience changed her mind. Now she thinks it's necessary to blog and gives 5 reasons why. The top three? First, even though it takes time, there's no better way to create a voice for your business. Second, it's a time saver by consolidating comments and answers so everyone gets the same message. Third, what better way is there to interact with customers and generate ideas.

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Source: Mobile Guerilla

63 percent of parents who use text messaging believe that it improves their communication with their children. And 65 percent of parents who text message say they communicate more frequently with their children when they are away from home and that texting made their kids easier to reach. Having a teen I can attest - texting "BGood" is less likely to end in an argument than saying "Be good" either in person or on the phone. And just the fact that Cingular commissioned this study and wrote this texting guide for parents means that they get that texting is a profitable cultural force.

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Source: Textually.org

After years of lagging behind Europe and Japan in the adoption of mobile text messaging, U.S. cell phone users are finally catching up. A total of 48.7 billion text messages were sent in the last six months of 2005, that's up 50 percent from the first six months of '05. Today 40 per cent of American mobile phone users do text messaging. That's up from 25 percent in 2003 but still lags way behind the 60 percent plus of all European mobile users. Cingular exec Jim Ryan attributes the change to greater consumer awareness thanks to American Idol text voting.

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Source: Business 2.0

I know this will come as a shock, but Boston's Logan Airport did not make Business 2.0's best airports for business travelers list. Boston notwithstanding (and isn't it always a good day when you can use 'notwithstanding' in a sentence?), other airports are finding there's goodwill to be earned - and money to be made - by providing road warriors with Internet connections, well-stocked business centers, and even "hypercharge" power stations that juice up cell phones in minutes.

The best airports to be stuck in are:
Minneapolis-St. Paul International
Charlotte Douglas International
Denver International
San Francisco International
Dallas-Fort Worth International

Get me power, a net connection and a cappuccino and I can sit for hours.

Share your airport purgatory stories.

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Source: FC Now blog

It worked for them last year, so this year rock band OK Go tried it again. They breathed new life into their year-old record through another homemade video which I assume has gotten lots of play thanks largely to YouTube. This time it's a video of the quartet dancing on treadmills and it's landed them appearances on the Colbert Report, Letterman (tonight) and they're even performing it on the MTV Video Music Awards this Thursday. I love it. So that record company isn't giving you the marketing you deserve? Have your sister choreograph a dance (that's what one of the band members told Colbert when I watched it), grab some treadmills and...go.

Here's the video:

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Source: Techmeme

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has joined Apple's board and speculation is running high. Don Dodge (who works for Microsoft) calls it a Barney Agreement...You know..."I love you, You love me..." which rarely amounts to anything until, that is, money changes hands and things get serious. He says the best partnerships happen when there is pent-up demand for two separate companies to work together seamlessly. So even if Apple and Google do find synergies, will there be demand? Om Malik on the other hand, says that this could signal trouble for anyone with digital media ambitions...Microsoft and others. Rob Hof makes the safest bet. That these two famously secretive and private companies will not so easily share their talents. "Battle lines are getting drawn in as a new world of digital media emerges, but only in chalk." Time will tell.

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Source: Discovery News

Just because the Kennedy's don't want a wind farm in their backyard, doesn't mean you don't want one in yours. A small, affordable wind turbine available for the first time this September promises to help homeowners fight the rising cost of energy. The Skystream 3.7 stands 35 to 100 feet tall - depending on the location - and costs about $10,000 to $12,000 installed, which is half that of conventional turbines currently available. The developer says the system could save the average homeowner $500 to $800 per year on electricity.

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Source: CNET News.com

Greenpeace says that until the use of harmful substances is eliminated in the production of electronics, it is impossible to secure 'safe,' toxic-free recycling. So rather than focusing on recycling, customers wanting to buy green should follow Greenpeace's new Guide to Greener Electronics. Who's greenest? Nokia for eliminating the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in 2005, and Dell for setting ambitious targets for cutting PVCs and brominated flame retardants (BFRs). At the bottom? Apple and Lenovo. Both companies dispute the ranking. As for me, the more focus we can put on this topic the better. We're all guilty. Let's come clean about who and what is green.

Read more about this topic:
Where computers go to die...and kill
Portraits of the "effluent of the affluent"
Greener electronics
Standard will identify "green" computers

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Source: Technology Review

What if Massachusetts gave each of us a fixed monthly toll "credit" and then only charged us out of pocket when we exceed our monthly allotment? It's like Fast Lane gone large. New research shows that making drivers pay higher tolls at peak times and tracking their location with RFID or GPS technology can eliminate traffic jams. Drivers would pay mileage-based and location-based tolls on a sliding scale paying more if driving through bottleneck stretches at the busiest times. Computer models of Dallas-Fort Worth show that this could result in a 25 mph increase in average vehicle speed on certain stretches of road at rush hour. Nothing shapes behavior like money.

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Source: Business Ticker

I've been covering the Apple Store in Boston for a while...and I just realized that while I was on vacation, The Boston Redevelopment Authority released a rendering of the proposed Boylston Street store that met with preliminary approval from the Back Bay Architectural Commission. That'll spice up Back Bay.

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At last someone has put AOL on notice for their download process. StopBadware.org, is sort of a Neighborhood Watch aimed at notifying people about badware...you know, hateful stuff like pop-up adware and spyware. Funded by Google, Lenovo and Sun and run out of Harvard's Berkman Center and the Oxford University Internet Institute, we've talked about them here before.

AOL 9.0 is now on StopBadware.org's "Open Inquiries" list with a warning not to install because of deceptive installation practices, making changes to other software without the user's permission, and failure to uninstall completely. Here, here! I have outlawed AOL at home because of the stuff it's done to our computers at home.

AOL is in the midst of a big transition. They've opened up their services and even launched a movie and music downloads. "However, if they keep shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to their reputation, consumers may begin avoiding AOL and their properties in droves."

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Source: Thomas Hawk's blog

Last week I talked about Zooomer's location tag feature. Not to be outdone, Flickr just launched location tags too. Click here to find photos taken around Boston. You can tag any of your own photos or explore photos by map. Very cool. Very addicting. Even Thomas Hawk of Zooomer admits it's pretty impressive.

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Source: Amanda UnBoomed

Amanda Congdon, formerly of video blog Rocketboom, has hooked up with Popurl. Popurl is a good place to check out the latest, most popular links at hot spots all around the Web. At the end of September Amanda will remix the best of popurls every weekday in her own section on the site.

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Source: Wired

By 2013 a new generation of supersonic private jets could trigger a boom in luxury high-speed flight - without the sonic boom normally associated with breaking the sound barrier. Lockheed Martin is designing a 12-seat passenger jet that would travel at 1,200 mph but which would produce only a whisper of the annoying crack once emitted by the retired Concorde. The first QSST aircraft is being designed at an estimated cost of $2.5 billion. Designed for exec/diplomatic travelers, you can bet the tickets won't be priced like JetBlue.

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Source: Anil Dash's blog

Today Techmeme is having a flood of Google Office-Microsoft Office coverage. So in case you haven't heard yet, Google just launched the badly-named Google Apps for Your Domain, a package of free programs targeted at small-medium sized businesses that includes Google email, calendar, IM and a web page creator.

Anil Dash says "Feel free to poke someone in the eye if they say this version represents a competitor to Microsoft Office." "There are only 500 buyers of Office that Microsoft cares about." The Fortune 500. But Google is competing with Microsoft Office Live. I agree with Dash, though, that the small to medium sized business owner who is not tech-savvy is likely to be confused by both offerings. They might think Microsoft Office Live is a free version of Excel and Word - which it's not. And they may never even think of Google Apps for Your Domain because they only know Google as a search company.

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Source: Geek VC blog

I'm always harping about how technology needs to be simple-simple-simple. So I'm heartened that Boston-based VC David Aronoff agrees. "Despite great advances in consumer technology and true affordability, very few companies "get it" with respect to building true consumer-ready digital goods." Aronoff says it's all about TTE - the time to enjoyment. How long does it take to link up to WiFi, to use your home entertainment system, to figure out your remote? The world would be a better place if more companies used TTE as a metric. Put regular people in a room and clock how long it takes them to figure out your product and then enjoy it successfully. How many would have a TTE rating of 4 hours or 1 week or never? And what's the TTE breakpoint...when do people just give up?

I look forward to tracking David's new blog. He's a General Partner at IDG Ventures working with Jeff Bussgang.

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Source: Ad Age

Reports that the antioxidant-rich cocoa flavanols in dark chocolate can be heart-healthful have sent dark chocolate through the roof. Sales are up a 40 percent this year and 25 percent of all U.S. households have dark chocolate in the cupboard. Chris Baldwin, senior VP-president of Hershey's U.S. commercial group, whose sales of Special Dark chocolate have climbed 37% this year says "There are underlying benefits with the consumption of cocoa that give consumers the permission to enjoy chocolate." I'm in. Plus who needs anti-depressants when you've got chocolate?

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Source: Wired

The future of the music industry, according to Terry McBride CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, isn't selling records. It's selling music "in every form imaginable." McBride, who represents Bare Naked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan has his artists set up their own independent label and then becomes "the management company, the publishing company, and the record company rolled into one" - for a 20 percent cut. Since the bands own the songs they own the profits and can sell the music any way they want - think open source. McBride sees a future where the value of a band is measured like a stock, receiving capitalization in expectation of future earnings. "At that point, even a band selling 100,000 units a year becomes profitable." Roll out the music NASDAQ.

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Blog your art
Illustration by James Kraus

Learn from pirates
Is plasma doomed?
I want my iTV
The $100m giveaway
Must-have skills

Welcome to the post-vacation edition of Da Friday Link Harvest.

Photo by TheCoco via Flickr

In the real world it's my favorite time of year. I harvest tomatoes. And eat them every day.

Taking two weeks off from blogging was just terrible. I mean, how much porch sitting, book reading, beaching, and road tripping can a girl handle? At last - at long last - I'm back in my natural habitat.

Steve Garfield sent a nice welcome back and chastised me for not linking to my entire Flickr Photostream. Well, I did publish a few shots from vacation. But you people don't really want to see my family photos, right? Or maybe you do. Hey, I can see where Steve's coming from. He's gone all in.

He and his wife Carol do The Carol and Steve Show videoblog. They do things like taste wine out of a box and try to figure out if there's an animal in the refrigerator. Things you wouldn't think I'd watch.

And in his latest Vlog Soup, which highlights videoblogs all around the web, he focuses on collaboration. It will give you a great taste of the creative explosion going on out there, now that video technology is democratized.

Blogs are like reality TV. They're about regular people and all the ordinary and extraordinary things they do. It's surprisingly involving.

Speaking of Flickr, Yahoo! just announced on their blog that they will be adding Flickr photos into Yahoo! search results. The blog posting is headlined "It's a Flickr Moment!"
Now, in my post about Flickr this week, I mentioned that my grandfather worked at Kodak his whole life. So yeah, he'd probably be quite surprised to learn that the Kodak Moment has been usurped by the Flickr Moment. But it's true. I don't own any Kodak cameras, I don't use their photo service and film is a distant memory.

As for Flickr photos being searched in Yahoo!, it was only a matter of time according to Thomas Hawk who really knows how to take some beautiful shots. Hawk works for Flickr competitor Zooomer. Click here to see how Zooomer uses geotagging so you can see where photos are taken.

Boston is losing the talents of Andy Carvin who blogs that he's moving to Washington D.C. to take a job at NPR where he will be the one responsible for bringing Web 2.0 to that venerable institution.

Andy is the founding editor of the Digital Divide Network, an online community of more than 9,000 educators, community activists, policymakers and business leaders in over 130 countries working to find solutions to the digital divide. I've covered him on the Filter here and there. Honestly, I don't know what I'd do without NPR. It will be great to see what Andy will bring to it.

Louise Grisdale writes to tell about LongTermClients.com a greeting card fulfillment service for professionals. Love your clients? Send 'em a cahd.

Harrison Wise emails about the maiden launch of the Blogmobile. To help spread the word about celebrity blog portal ChatWithAStar.com, the Blogmobile rode around NYC on August 7th allowing fans stop in and blog with their favorite celebs or pro-athlete.

Bryan Person writes to remind everyone that PodCamp Boston is happening at Bunker Hill Community College September 9-10. It's a FREE meetup for podcasters and listeners, bloggers and readers, and new media types of all stripes. Register now.

Jill Totenberg writes to remind me that CFO magazine is the only business magazine left in Boston.

Tom Curran points to the RSStroom. Don't waste that time in the bathroom ever again. RSS feeds printed right on your toilet paper. Funny. And let's hope it's a hoax.

Stephanie Norton links us to Radiosherpa, a real time audio and visual guide to HD radio. Stephanie was one of the first employees at the original Napster and the other founders are two MIT Media Lab grads and a former venture capitalist. Radio is being fragmented like crazy out there. Sirius, XM, HD, etc. It's crumbelieveable as Stephen Colbert says.

In my Daily Candy Boston this week I noticed Cambridge-based Hindsight Media was featured. They produce high quality videos that document and celebrate the lives of individuals, families, and organizations. Sounds like a good service idea. I mean we all can do this stuff ourselves...except we don't have the time.

For those of you that have been following my iPod problems, here's an update. I took my dead iPod to the Apple Store. And they pronounced it dead indeed. And they gave me a new one on the spot. If it had died after it's one-year birthday, I would have had to pay $49 I think. For now, I'm a happy customer. But iPods are still on notice for me.

At least my new Dell laptop wasn't subject to the battery recall leaving me safe to assume it won't suddenly burst into flames and burn my whole house down.

Source: BusinessWeek TechBeat blog

Amazon's not messing around. In March they launched an unlimited data storage service and yesterday they launched a test version of what they call the Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2. The service is basically computer power on demand over the Internet. So what? Well it lets developers set up in minutes or hours, instead of days or weeks, and quickly add or subtract capacity based on their needs. That means they can create and test new services almost instantly, with no capital costs. It costs about 10 cents an hour to run the custom server, plus data and bandwidth charges. Remember when Amazon just sold books? Now they're gunning for the likes of IBM.

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Source: Red Herring

When celebrities turn weird, a new breed of web sites turns pro. Why wait for Star or USWeekly when you can hop on PopSugar.com and read about the split between Paramount and Tom Cruise two seconds after it happens? Old school tabloids will doubtless join the fray, but for now momentum is on the side of new upstart sites. Since gossip magazines depend on subscriptions and newsstand sales for revenues, some investors won't back a site that's pure celebrity dish. But PopSugar reportedly received $2.5 million in venture funding fueled by its 12 million monthly page views and its addicted community of 1.3 million.

Want to see what all the celebrity dish sites are serving? Go to automatic dirt digger WeSmirch.com. It's part of the TechMeme, Memeorandum family of sites.

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Source: MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog

Ann Handley has a nice post-vacation post about how fly fishing is like marketing with social media. The old adage "Fish where the fish are" is possible in a whole new way with blogs, word-of-mouth and social networks. Sometimes though, you cast your fly and it lands in surprising places, so be prepared and try not to control things too much. After all, you can't fish without getting wet. Just look at what happened to Dell.

"But the most dynamic, interesting and ultimately successful companies are those led by people who take risks, who have some fun, and wade into unknown waters. Those companies reap the largest rewards of customer loyalty and, ultimately, ROI."

Well put, Ann. Though with fishing, if you don't get the trout, you still have a great day. Casting into the river of social media is a bit more stressful. Sigh. Can you tell I'm in a wistful post-vacation mode, too?

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Source: Guy Kawasaki's blog

Guy Kawasaki says that it may be OK in school where people have plenty of time and no money, to create long papers, emails, and presentations. But in the real world people mostly have money, but no time. Guy challenges colleges to teach the 10-12 things that are necessary for the real world. Like how to talk to your boss, how to run a meeting and how to have a conversation. How to write the all-important one-page report and five-sentence email. My favorite? How to explain something in thirty seconds. Now get back to school and learn something useful.

Photo by koalie via Flickr

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Source: Business 2.0

Howard Schultz (of Starbucks fame), Vinod Khosla (of Juniper Networks fame) and 18 other top investors have shared their best startup ideas with Business 2.0. But that's not all. They're putting up a collective $100 million to the entrepreneurs who can make them happen. Ideas run from next generation lithium ion or ultracapacitor batteries to implantable wireless devices to monitor diseases to a better database or game and more. These investors are so serious they even published their emails.

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Source: O'Reilly Radar

Web 2.0 logo via Web 2.0 Logo Generator

I posted this version of the Web 2.0 B.S. Generator in May and it still gets a bunch of clicks. But Tim O'Reilly linked to an new and vastly improved version yesterday - so for your B.S. pleasure, here is Bullshitr.

And for you hard core geeks...Tim also mentioned this quiz. Can you determine which is Web 2.0 and which is a Star Wars character?

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Source: CNET News.com

The German version of Wikipedia is testing a new way to protect articles from being vandalized. The new system would mean that anyone would be able to make edits, but it "would take someone who has been around Wikipedia for some yet-to-be-determined period of time - and who, therefore, has passed a threshold of trustworthiness - to make the edits live on the public site. If someone vandalizes an article, the edits would not be approved." This would make it possible for Wikipedia to re-open its front page to public editing for the first time in five years.

And while on the subject...The September issue of The Atlantic has a great piece on Wikipedia written by Marshall Poe.

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Source: TechWeb

Photo by saisiv via Flickr

Wikipedia's page on vandalism was vandalized. That's just like when my article on plagiarism was plagiarized.

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Source: The Guardian

Sticker from CafePress

A new study says that online pirates chart the future markets for digital products by showing what people want, and in what form they want it. Not only are pirates early adopters of music, games and software, they even invented the means to nab the files (Napster, BitTorrent), which gave rise to the legit forms of downloading used today. Hey, piracy is the ultimate evolutionary test of a product. "How many pirated versions of Corel Draw you see compared to those of Adobe Photoshop - and which is the market leader? Or how many BitTorrent copies of Pirates of the Caribbean you can find compared to The Seventh Seal?"

More about BitTorrent here and here.

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Source: Wired News

Bob Dylan will release his first CD in five years next Tuesday but that doesn't mean he likes the way it sounds. He tells Rolling Stone that the quality of digital recordings is "atrocious" and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc. Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway." As usual, Dylan says something short and terse and now his comment will launch a thousand stories and comments leading to more people buying that stuff he calls crap.

Ah well. Wired also reports that music makes your brain happy, presumably even if it's digitally recorded and bundled in C.R.A.P.

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Source: Blogging Times

ZDNet once described Web 3.0 as the delivery of a new generation of business applications but Duncan Riley boils it down more. Rather than looking at the things we will make, he looks at how we will make them. He points to this movie of Voice Recognition in Windows Vista really working (as opposed to this one in which it didn't) and Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express which allows users to easily make their own games. Tools are emerging which allow many to create where previously only few could. "What we are doing now will only become easier." I hope Riley is right. It can be surprisingly hard to make interfaces simple...simple is hard especially when geeks define "easy" and for the masses it's, um, not.

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Source: USA Today

Artists are using their blogs to change the way they make and sell their art. Forget dealers and galleries, who command 50 percent commissions, Duane Keiser goes right to buyers with his blog A Painting a Day, where he links to auctions of his work on eBay. "If Keiser sells five paintings a week at an average of $250 each, for 48 weeks a year, that's $60,000. Plus, he has plenty of time to work on larger, more expensive paintings." While blogs like Keiser's are a mere blip for galleries who cater to deep pockets, it changes the game for artists. If record companies no longer control what's hot in music, painters and sculptors can't be far behind.

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Source: TechCrunch

Well, there may have only been six Web 2.0 startups acquired so far this year all likely sub-$25 million, but the over-populated online video space is another matter. Sony Pictures just acquired Sausalito, California based online video startup Grouper for $65 million in cash. Sony says they will use Grouper’s technology to share lower quality Sony videos online, distribute DVD quality video by P2P and allow users to create mashups of select Sony media properties. TechCrunch speculates that the $65 million figure would put YouTube's valuation at $2 billion.

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Source: VC Ratings blog

Amid speculation over whether we're in the midst of another bubble, Joshua Jaffe notes that "only six Web 2.0 startups have been acquired in the first seven months of 2006." They were Measuremap, Sketchup, Writely, Orion, Meedio and Lightningcast. And those were likely to have been sold for less than $25 million. "To give you an idea of how low these M&A statistics for Web 2.0 companies are; boring old online flower retailers (Provide Commerce, Interflora) have been the targets of two acquisitions this year worth a total of $598 million." But he says that's "destined to change in the final five months of the year."

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Source: Slate

Not only are TVs now too complex to buy, once you actually choose one, they and all the other components that connect to them are far too complex to use. Why? Stupid devices. No network. No standards. Your TV doesn't know anything about your DVD, DVR or cable box and your various family members can't consistently operate the equipment so it's a nightmare. But plug a digital camera into your USB port, and your computer knows you're attached to a camera and it usually manages to launch a photo management application too. Steven Johnson of Slate makes a great pitch that Apple could solve this problem and build an iTV.

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Source: Ars Technica

At the beginning of the month, Ars Technica reported on a study that found that three-quarters of American women would prefer a plasma television to a diamond solitaire necklace. But this week Ars Technica says plasma may be doomed. Remember VHS vs. Beta? Well, a new battle between incompatible, competing technologies is emerging - LCD vs. plasma. LCD TVs used to be smaller, so if you wanted a big, sexy and flat, it was all plasma. But now LCDs are shipping in sizes up to 46 inches, picture quality is getting better, and the price gap between plasma and LCD TVs in the 40-43" range recently fell below $300. Some manufacturers have even stopped making plasma to so they can concentrate on LCDs. And LCDs last longer.

I've felt for a long time that it's now way too hard to buy a TV. Too many options. Makes my head hurt. Diamonds, however, have never made my head hurt.

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Source: The Guardian Tech blog

In addition to checking your Technorati ranking you can also see how you rank on SocialMeter.

John Battelle also writes about Blotter, a new service that graphs link stats over time based on Technorati data. Right now the trend for Da Filta (above) is flat-lined because it just started being tracked. Over time, it will trend, hopefully, upward.

Fun. With. Numbers.

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I took a blog break for the last two weeks and it took a while before it felt OK to just get up without powering up FeedDemon. I was so used to checking in on the state of the moment every moment, it was hard to, you know, actually live in the moment.

But not that hard.

Being a blogging girl, though, I brought a camera everywhere and captured as many moments as I could. Like this one...

Remember when we used film? It was so resource-intensive, you conserved your shots. And it was so expensive and complicated to get high-quality shots, most of us didn't try. Now we take pictures of everything. And then we tag them and share them on Flickr.

My grandfather worked his whole life for Kodak. If he were alive today, it would make his head spin at how fast the whole business has changed. He'd get a kick out of how we all live in the moment...with cameras.

Source: Mercury News

YouTube launched in May 2005 with no traffic at all. But according to comScore Media Metrix it had 16 million unique U.S. visitors in July, a 20 percent increase from June, that puts it in the top 50. But they have yet to truly cash in on their success. So today YouTube is trying participatory video ads that aim to keep its opinionated audience happy while giving advertisers a vehicle to reach them. Each day will bring a new video ad to the home page for users to vote on, comment on and share. First off? Paris Hilton.

No one's saying how much the home page real estate costs, but one agency that bought ads on Paris promo said "How much money do you think advertisers would pay to get 3 million people to see and comment on your advertising?" For YouTube's sake, hopefully a lot. Analysts speculate that their "monthly bandwidth bill is at least $300,000 to $400,000."

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Photo by Tellumo via Flickr

I've started prototyping Business Filter last summer and it launched in October 2005. And while I have taken a few days off here and there, it's time to take a real vacation for a few weeks. So until August 22 I'm going to force myself not to blog. This will be really, really weird for me. You see, now I instinctively blog as if I'm a rat in a maze.

So, rather than blogging until my paws bleed as Skinner's rats would do, I'm going to take Stephen Baker's advice and turn off the computer...go outside.

This crazed rat illustration is by none other than James Kraus, the official Business Filter illustrator, who also happens to host a great radio show on WZBC 90.3 on Fridays from 10am-12pm. So please do tune in.

But even as I write this, I'm twitching to spend a few more hours and blog about these items, which I never got to today:

Like how Salesforce has evolved (over 20 versions) to be a Web Office platform

or art that changes to match the mood of the person who is looking at it

or the incredible disappearing sysadmin

or whether long lines at Starbucks are hurting its stock price

There's Mark Hurst on how the "Wow Factor" is not what keeps people coming back to websites

And even, how having a bad day can affect performance at work

But I won't.

However, I will post what people have been sending me and talking to me about this week:

Boston.com and The Boston Globe have been very responsive to my posting last week on allowing comments on Da Filta and to the great comments left on the Boston.com Message Board. Saying that they're ready to give it a try, they are currently thwarted from launching comments due to some internal technical issues. But they will keep me posted...and I will keep you posted.

Tim Courtney writes in support of my coverage of women on Business Filter, which was questioned by a reader on last Friday's Link Harvest. He works at CDW-G "and one of our magazines, EdTech - Higher Education, just published an article called "No Girls Allowed," that features five women CIOs at Boston-area universities.

"Of note to me was the tidbit that the number of women employed in the IT industry is decreasing, and a very small percentage of CIO positions are held by women."

Rick Catino writes to say he's started a new business in Amesbury called LeadBridge Partners offering virtual short-term sales service and support to tech companies.

Wikimania is coming to town August 4-6 and I'm bummed I won't be able to make it. I really wanted to attend the Citizen Journalism/Newsblogger session. If only I could be in two places at once.

CEO Ranah Edelin writes to announce the launch of SingShot Media, a new Online Karaoke site. Add that to Bix which I posted about here and that makes two "Web 2.0" karaoke startups. Om Malik wonders just how big is online karaoke? And could it possibly support two startups?

Carole White from isellboston.com writes an great rant about my enthusiasm for Zillow.

"Zillow's main goal at this point seems to be to convince members of the press, such as yourself, that it provides accurate home valuations, rather than actually doing it. If you would conduct just a little investigative effort into researching how accurate Zillow's zestimates are, you would find that in most cases they are completely inaccurate. But don't take my word for it, see for yourself.

Here's how: Pick any neighborhood in Boston and find residential home sales that have closed in the past 60 days. Check the actual sales price of these comps against Zillow's value estimate. I've conducted this simple test on over 40 different properties and have found that Zillow is rarely accurate--and in some cases grossly inaccurate.

So, I ask you, Maura, how do you arrive at value? By seeing the facts as presented by what the market says value is, or by listening to the Zillow hype spun by a marketeer whose only real concern is increasing Zillow's value. Please check the facts for yourself. It should only take a few minutes of your time. Your reports can only benefit from this experiment and perhaps add real journalistic objective value and integrity to the news."

Carole, you make excellent points and that's probably why if I were buying or selling a house today, I would definitely use a broker. But that doesn't detract from Zillow. You're right, it's not a wholly accurate value estimate, it's a zestimate™ - a ball park number. It lets me know if a neighborhood sells in the 600's vs. the 1 million's. And that's way more information than I had before Zillow, when I had to call and talk to a realtor for the same information.

Today Zillow is the kind of site people noodle around on when they're thinking about home values, buying or selling...or when they want to spy on their neighbors. And Zillow will likely get better over time and acquire better data. They certainly are acquiring the capital. So yes, I still think they give realtors the Zillows.

Tarangini Suresh of TiEBoston checks in and I notice that the TiE has a full schedule of events in August covering topics such as social entrepreneurship and software as services.

Michael Chmura writes that people interested in start-up tips should visit the entrepreneurship blogs from a trio of Babson undergraduate students:

Start-Up Guide By Dan Marques
Voice Of A Student Entrepreneur By Matthew Lauzon
A Day In The Life Of A New-Age College Entrepreneur By Jason Reuben

Fran Granville writes about the tagline for Business Filter (in the banner at top of the blog), "A Daily Catch of Stories You Don't Want to Miss."

It's a "cache" of articles, not a "catch." This is not baseball. Cache: a place for safekeeping of valuables, a store of goods. I am surprised that the copy editors let you get away with this one.

Well, here's what it's supposed to mean. Pretend Business Filter is the net catching the stories - a "daily catch" like catching fish or the daily catch special on a menu. The weekly catch is then rolled up in the paper on Mondays. Perhaps it's not the best metaphor. Perhaps it smells like fish wrapped up in last week's Globe.

And just a few moments ago, I was accused of being anti-Wikipedia by a reader responding to my post about WikiRoasting by Stephen Colbert and The Onion. Actually, I'm a big fan. I even almost attended Wikimania coming to Boston August 4-6.

Speaking of Wikipedia, on my vacation I plan to read the new story in September Atlantic about Wikipedia called "The Hive"

And finally, I want to end with a great video taken at the BlogHer conference last week of one of my favorite bloggers, Millie Garfield. I interviewed Millie for this story on Women and Blogging for the Boston Globe.

Millie and her son Steve Garfield got around.

See you AUGUST 22nd!

Source: The Onion

You know Wikipedia, the reader-edited encyclopedia that's had its share of heat about accuracy, has made it into the cultural lexicon when it's the butt of jokes. We've already covered how Stephen Colbert's vision for a new "Wikiality," where the masses create the facts they want to believe in, crashed the site and caused Wikipedia to lock down 20 elephant related Wikipedia pages. Well, last week The Onion led with this headline: Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence: Founding Fathers, Patriots, Mr. T. Honored.

The article "quotes Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales: "According to our database, that's 212 years older than the Eiffel Tower, 347 years older than the earliest-known woolly-mammoth fossil, and a full 493 years older than the microwave oven."

What's a few inaccuracies, right? It certainly doesn't stop most of the people I know from using Wikipedia all the time...

Note: The last time I put The Onion in Business Filter, I got an irate letter from a reader who felt The Onion didn't belong in a distinguished paper/site like the Boston Globe/Boston.com. But let me also direct your attention to the current #1 most-emailed story on Boston.com:

Dog destroys Elvis' teddy bear at museum

Hey at least the stuff in The Onion (mostly) isn't true. It's human nature. People just love weird news.

UPDATE 3:07pm EST: I've had an interesting reader response. The conclusion seems to be that because I've written about people making fun of Wikipedia, I'm anti-Wikipedia. For the record, I have great respect for Wikipedia and have pointed to how it has been thought to be just as accurate as Encyclopedia Brittanica (which, by the way, Brittanica refutes) and said that I feel it has made good compromises as it's developed.

And I still find Wikiality and The Onion thing funny.

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Source: The Guardian

Sounds impressive, right? But really it's just a bet between two high-profile bloggers about whether people will get paid for submitting content to sites like Digg and Flickr. Nicholas Carr, a former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review says social media has existed outside the price system because the market is just emerging. "We couldn't see the talent for the crowd." But money will follow the talent. Yochai Benkler, a professor of law at Yale University and author of The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, says that in two years a survey should reveal that a majority of social media sites will be peer-based, not for pay. Carr says it'll take at least 5 years to prove out whose right.

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Source: New York Daily News via Media Daily News

More magazine shifts - this time for Ziff Davis, owner of PC magazine and Computer Gaming World. They are reportedly exploring the option to sell and analysts say the transaction could fetch upwards of $300 million. The publishing company has shifted its focus toward Web sites and technology enthusiast events after the Internet cut into readership levels and advertising, effectively lowering its value. In 2000, it was bought by principal owner Willis Stein & Partners for $780 million. Ziff Davis is headquartered in New York and has an office in Woburn.

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Source: BBC

First there was eggvertising. Now there's a new hi-tech ink that perfects egg boiling. After cooking begins, an invisible, temperature-sensitive thermochromic print appears in black to indicate when an egg is soft, medium or hard-boiled. No surprise this technology was developed by the Brits, where everyone uses egg cups. What could be next? Boiled egg sponsorships?. Soft boiled eggs brought to you by Google. Hard boiled eggs brought to you by Microsoft.

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Source: CNET News.com

Thanks largely to broadband, AOL has lost nearly 30 percent of its subscribers since September 2002. Meanwhile, Google is minting money with online ad revenue. So today AOL announced they will give away e-mail, software and other Web services for free to broadband users in a bid to boost online ad sales. AOL will be looking more like Yahoo but it will retain its dial up business. Dial up may be shrinking rapidly but as Jupiter analyst Joe Laszlo says "As long as millions of people are satisfied paying AOL $25.90 a month for dial-up, it doesn't make sense to kick them out the door."

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Source: Slate

Daniel Gross says that Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, and AOL may have risen from the ashes of the 2001-2002 crash wounded, but not destroyed and flourished when the market recovered. But recently, at a time when online advertising and e-commerce are enjoying strong growth, all four have pulled up lame. Why? Each find profit margins slipping as they try to diversify and each has reached back to tried-and-failed ideas of the dot-com era for salvation. Amazon recently launched a grocery store? Skype brought $44 million in sales this quarter for eBay, but it cost $2.5 billion. Yahoo! has failed to turn great content into short-term profits. And take AOL. Please.

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Source: Forbes

Forbes says that the top-paying jobs in the U.S. tech industry are in Montgomery, Alabama, Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Fort Worth, Arkansas. Huh? Greg Garcia works at the Air Force 754th Electronic Systems Group, which handles high-tech support for Air Force logistics. Oracle, BAE Systems and Dell have offices in Montgomery to support the group. "It's great," Garcia says. "For the price of a house in Boston, you'd get three in Montgomery." Yeah, but you're in Alabama.

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Source: CinemaTech

The Globe's Scott Kirsner moderated a panel discussion on The Future of Movies last week and it's now available as a free podcast. Tune in to hear about digital 3-D projection, video iPods, release windows, HD DVD and Blu-ray. Panelists include Bob Lambert, Sr. Vice President, Worldwide Technology Strategy for The Walt Disney Company and Todd Wagner, CEO, 2929 Entertainment, the company he co-founded with Blog Maverick Mark Cuban.

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Source: Ad Age

Ad dollars are heading to the Web and teen magazines are following suit by dropping their print editions and going all Web. While TeenVogue and CosmoGirl are still both in print and online, Teen People went all online last week, following ElleGirl earlier this year. Advertisers are following teens who not only view themselves as 15 going on 25 (forget TeenPeople, they're reading People) but who also view magazines as mainstream. Print teen dollars are heading more toward niche plays like College Bound Teen magazine.

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Source: Boston Globe OnSite blog

The Globe's Hiawatha Bray, Kim-Mai Cutler and DC Denison are Onsite, blogging SIGGRAPH, the conference and expo for interactive and computer graphics, this week. The job fair sounds like a must-do for anyone in the biz. Over 40 companies including Disney, Google and Linden Lab, and local companies Turbine, Blue Fang Games and Mad Doc Software, are headhunting for talent. Bray says, " To judge by the recruitment efforts here, anybody who can write a little C++ software, or draw a respectable stick figure, will never be out of a job again."

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Source: TechDirt via Techmeme

Click play to see how Stephen Colbert takes on Wikipedia and discusses his vision for a new "Wikiality," where the masses create the facts they want to believe in. In the segment, Colbert instructs his audience to find the Wikipedia entry on elephants, and edit it to say that "the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months." Not surprisingly, that call to action took down the site temporarily and caused Wikipedia to lock down 20 elephant related Wikipedia pages. A great reality hack from the grand master of reality hacks, Stephen Colbert.

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Source: BusinessWeek

Illycaffè is a 73-year-old Italian family-owned company that's rolling out hundreds of licensed cafés called Espressamente across Europe, Asia, and temporary locations in New York City. Illy bean sales at upscale U.S. markets such as Whole Foods and Williams-Sonoma are growing at 30 percent annually and with 7,000 U.S. restaurants and hotels brewing Illy espresso the company says it's only a matter of time before Americans will want Illy cafés. If Starbucks is all about community, then Illy is all about elegance and elitism. This fall the company will open a temporary three-floor "coffee galleria" in the Time Warner Center in New York, combining a coffee bar with art exhibits. Miami and Los Angeles could be next.

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Source: Online Media Daily

Jeff Taylor, founder of jobs mega-site Monster.com yesterday launched a much-anticipated site for boomers called Eons.com. With ambitions to go beyond a MySpace for the senior set, Eons wants to help people over 50 lead fuller lives. With content areas that range from money to health and wellness to love and fun, it's clearly aiming to be a resource center packed with big name advertisers. Harrah's sponsors the games page and Liberty Mutual sponsors the site's money section. The site asks members to list the top 10 things they want to do before they reach 100 and then promises to help them accomplish their goals.

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Source: ArsTechnica

As the Globe's Robert Weisman reported yesterday, Boston has a unique approach to municipal WiFi. Eric Bangeman calls it a glorious undertaking for The People's Republic of Cambridge, er, Boston. While city WiFi projects are hot, no big city has actually managed to create a working, city-wide WiFi network yet. But unlike other cities which are subcontracting the work to outside vendors, Boston is creating a nonprofit corporation to deploy and manage the network. The nonprofit hopes to raise $16-20 million from local companies to get the WiFi network up and running. Once built, the nonprofit will not offer access itself, but will allow other companies to offer services on top of it. You can bet cities around the country are watching this one.

Photo: jeremyclarke via Flickr

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Source: Newsweek

Photo from Fazoom via Flickr

This fall an estimated 1.5 million kids will face MealpayPlus and ParentOnline.net at the cafeteria cash register. Parents prepay for the food and go online to track their kid's purchases. Schools love it because lunch lines move quickly and, for some, they're free. MealpayPlus doesn't charge for its system; it makes money on fees when parents put money on kids' accounts. Parents love having a watchful eye and not scrounging for lunch money in the morning. Kids? They'll probably do what they've always done. 73 percent of 8- to 12-year-olds throw out part of their lunches at least once a week and 36 percent trade them. MealpayPlus is used in Barnstable, Stoughton, Westwood and Whitman-Hanson public schools.

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