Source: Kevin Maney's USAToday blog

Kevin Maney says that it turns out that simple really is better...that is if you go by the recent profit numbers for Sony and Nintendo as reported by the New York Times. Apparently the Nintendo Wii is doing much better than the Sony PS3. "It seems folks would rather have something interactive than something really pretty and rich, graphics-wise." I can vouch for that, in my household Wii rules.

Related:
Not a wee Wii launch

Source: CNET Missing Links blog

Originally uploaded by joshhough via Flickr

Can't make it to the holy land in person? An Israeli startup called POIP (Pray Over Internet Protocol) makes it possible for you to broadcast your prayers over the Internet. The company sells phone cards that allow you to record your prayers in your own voice and then send them via Internet phone and webcam speakers to places like the Western Wall or the Sea of Galilee. The company's chairman says it's a better deal than buying a lottery ticket. "It's just $5 or $10, and you get eternal life."

Source: 37signals blog

Originally uploaded by Kevin Labianco via Flickr

Among other things, 37signals makes easy-to-use web-based software that does project management, chat and calendars. On the company's popular blog they claim that people are always asking them "How do you get so much done with such a small team?" To which they answer that pouring tons of money, resources and people at a problem "is like using a jackhammer to break out of jail." Instead 37signals says they put a few smart people on a problem, embrace constraints, don't try to solve the wrong problems, focus on precision and take the time to get things right. So instead of using a jackhammer to break out of jail, they use a spoon.

Source: CNET

Tomorrow Nickelodeon will launch Nicktropolis, a virtual world aimed at 6- to 14-year-olds. Kids can go there to play games, watch TV and interact with animated characters like SpongeBob. Kids choose and personalize an avatar, with various hairstyles and clothing. They can also create their own 3D room and decorate it with items bought with Nick points. (Members get points by joining the world and playing various games.) So kids get to watch and interact with SpongeBob and hang out with friends. No ads yet. But you can bet they're coming.

I wrote last week about Generation We...and how my son chooses to watch SpongeBob on his PC. I have no doubt Nicktropolis will take off. They have incredible marketing power online and on TV and they’ve got SpongeBob and Jimmy Neutron. Powerful stuff.

Illustration by James F. Kraus

Source: Web Worker Daily

I'm on teleconferences several times a day. They're either great or a mess. Some people don't know how to start one, other times there's no one in charge of moving the call forward or there's no agenda. Sometimes you don't know who is on the call. Save yourselves! Here is a great set of guidelines that help to ensure that you don't have a botched call. They cover everything from freeconferencecall.com (my fav) to how to prep and behave on calls. They even include this key advice: "an audible toilet flush is never acceptable, so if you feel you must take a bio-break during the call without missing a single comment, make sure your BlueTooth headset and mute button are functioning properly."

Illustration by James F. Kraus

Source: Scoble Show

Intel claims that they are fabricating new chips that will put them two years ahead of the competition. How? Because they are getting rid of "Silicon Dioxide dielectrics." Robert Scoble knows that regular people have no idea what that means. That's why he's created a video (below) that gives you a sneak peek into Intel's new 45 nanometer chips which use High-K dialectrics. The net-net? These new processors generate less heat, take less power, and have more transistors than previous chips...bringing you 20 percent more performance.

Take a tour of the new fab:

Source: CNET

A new study from Nickelodeon on families says that the TV is used as a relaxation tool, family bonding device and babysitter. Deprived of the Internet and TV? Families may be exasperated, but they miss TV most (it’s their way to kick back). A full 25 percent of parents believe it's no longer necessary to spell well, reference printed dictionaries or read the newspaper and 20 percent of parents don’t think reading a map is important. While mobile phones (electronic leashes for kids) and MP3 players are key converging them into one device isn’t compatible with how they’re used. One is "used for checking in and the other is for tuning out." Get this. More parents (68 percent) use game consoles, compared with 58 percent of 8- to 14-year-olds. Welcome to the digital family.

For the record, I have a "digital family" and there's no way I'm raising kids that can't spell or read a map.

Generation We
Illustration by James F. Kraus

Super Bowl ad winner
Scheduled to death?
SixDegrees.org
Firing the CEO
Greenwashing

Source: Ars Technica

When Google bought YouTube last fall you may have wondered, what happens to Google Video? Well here's an answer. Go on Google Video today and do a search and you'll get both Google and YouTube videos in your search results (often mostly YouTube). Google is aiming to make Google Video be the place you'll go to "search for the world's online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted." Ars Technica says it's only a matter of time before GooTube tells copyright holders "Hey, why don't you sell your video on the same pages as these uploaded clips." Instant upsell.

Source: USAToday

33 year old Gino Bona from Portsmouth, NH is going to the Superbowl. He's the winner of the NFL's "Pitch your idea for the best NFL Super Bowl commercial ever. Seriously." His (very funny) pitch, now made into an ad, will be aired at the Superbowl next Sunday. I'm betting Bona's had a number of job offers. Bona is a Bills fan, and since I share his affliction, it's great to know that a Bills fan is experiencing some kind of victory.

Source: Fast Company expert blogs

Donna Karlin blogs that even before the era of the Blackberry, people used to work 10 hour days. Now, we often work 12 - 14 hour days, if you count work at home on weekdays and weekends. Blackberries make it worse. When you're off, we're "on." Each day is an interruption interrupted by an interruption. The problem? It's not sustainable. You have no life. You never finish anything. Companies should focus people on their top 3 priorities. Us? We need to de-schedule and de-commit. Create a sustainable pace.

Source: PaidContent

The Los Angeles Times has announced what, for a newspaper, amounts to radical changes. First step: move the business editor to "the new post of innovation editor responsible for remaking the LAT into a 24/7 news operation." 2nd step: Implement a crash course to teach reporters how to post to the web. They're also launching a new travel site and renewing their quest to make their Calendar section pay off online as a destination for personal entertainment choices.

Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus comments: "It's long overdue. We all know that if we are going to survive and continue to be able to produce journalism of the quality we are known for, we are going to have to succeed online."

Related:
USA Today: A meeting of the newsrooms

Source: CNET Missing Links blog

Kevin Bacon figures if you can't beat it; exploit it...for the greater good. He's launched SixDegrees.org, a play on the remarkably long-lived "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game based on the actor's career. It's a social-networking site aimed at motivating people to be more charitable, because we're all only a few degrees of separation from each other. Go there and donate to celebrity charities, get a badge to display on your blog or create a charity badge of your own. SixDegrees tracks donation totals in real time. So far they've raised over $70,000.

Related:
Boston-area non-profit tech expert Beth Kanter used one of these badges and raised over $50,000 for Cambodian children.
Do it yourself microfinancing

Source: Business Innovation Insider

This year Wells Fargo will switch the format of 825 ATM machines in California so they no longer require envelopes. Eventually they'll do the same for 6,750 ATMs across the U.S. Here's how it's supposed to work: You stick up to 30 bills or 10 checks into the ATM machine at a time, and it will recognize all of them, and show you a digital image of the items received. Plus you can get instant access to the cash. We're a long way from the pony express, people.

Source: CNET

My 10 year old son looks up information on Wikipedia and other sites all the time. Last night he watched an episode of SpongeBob...on his PC, when he wanted to. Network TV? WAY too 1.0 for him. He's the product of two cusp-y GenX'ers who aren't scared of technology. We're not clueless about it either. This new crop of kids has been dubbed Generation We. They're tech-savvy and comfortable with having virtual access to friends, family and the world at large. As such, they have a much more global outlook. Think about it. They don't remember NOT being able to Google or Wikipedia or map any thing or any place they have on their mind.

I'm betting my 10-year old would prefer to be called Gen Wii.

Source: BusinessWeek

Greater board accountability is leading to a higher rate of CEO turnover. And boards of directors faced with firing a CEO must first come to terms with their own attachments. Some directors have friendships with the CEO. Others identify with him/her, as CEOs themselves. Some can't admit they might have been mistaken when they supported (or even hired) him/her. Kerry J. Sulkowicz, M.D., a psychoanalyst and advisor to executives on psychological aspects of business says "it can take months of moving through denial, guilt, and anxiety before there's agreement that the boss has to go." While the ordeal is emotionally draining, get through it and be liberated.

Related:
Boardroom brain drain
Recipe for a good board
The art of the board

Source: Gapminder via Andrew Sullivan

As you may know, I love maps. Here's a new one that visually and dynamically maps world population, life expectancy and per capita income over time. It's created by a non-profit venture based group in Sweden that is developing information technology for the provision of free statistics in new visual and animated ways.

Found this through Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog. The news is, by the way, that Sullivan will now become Senior Editor at The Atlantic and move his daily blog there.

More maps:
Maps go encyclopedic
What's Google Earth really up to?
Maps as fundamental strategy
Pop vs. Soda map
Building a macroscope
Google traffic map
Real-time maps of cities
Visualize websites

Source: PSFK

Greenwashing is a term used to describe the activity of brands and corporations that portray a green image, but skip the green practices. Greenwashers can utilize lies of omission, misleading labels, empty mission statements, partial disclosure and arbitrary sponsorship of green causes and events. Why do they do it? To get green...money. Green is a big business. But greenwashing doesn't defer those "inconvenient truths," so we should probably start facing up to the idea that, for example, "car companies that produce one hybrid car and 20 different models of SUV are not green."

Source: Logic + Emotion blog

David Armano posts another insightful graphic, this time of what he calls the "Second Lifecycle." According to David's graphic we're right on the heels of Second Life bashing and just a few minutes away from not obsessing over news from Second Life.

Source: getafirstlife.com via MIT Advertising Lab

Unlike Second Life the over-hyped virtual world, First Life is a 3D Analog World. Tagline: "Your World. Sorry About That." Go Outside - membership is free. Total residents 6,553,628,382. No server lag. First great parody of 2007.

Second Life links:
Outing Second Life
Second Life's first millionaire
Big media gets a Second Life
Second Life going mainstream
Trendy clothier gets Second Life
Virtual world makes the cover
Naughty virtual neighbors

Source: MIT Advertising Lab blog

Many social networks, like MySpace, go with the wisdom of crowds except in one area - ads. They just plaster them all over the place. But Ilya Vedrashko blogs that Bebo (MySpace's British competitor) has a different idea. They now let users fine-tune what banners they see on the site. Bebo is betting that putting users in control of what ads they see makes them more likely to stay. That's why they're also rolling out Ad Widgets...little ad-supported games or other content they can add to their pages. What's the buzzword for this? "Engagement marketing."

Source: Slate

Originally uploaded by Diane Duane via Flickr

The most shoplifted item in American grocery stores is not analgesics, razor blades or baby formula - though those are close. It's meat. So who's doing the five-finger discount? By and large it's hardworking people (most likely employed women between 35 and 54), their carts brimming with groceries, who feel "entitled to have steak instead of hamburger on occasion." Thus millions of pounds of largely luxury meats disappear from grocery stores in coat pockets. Stores often put expensive meats near cheap cuts in the hopes of enticing impulse buyers. While they could use anti-shoplifting techniques, they find that the impulse buyers outweigh the meatlifters - so the problem remains.

Source: Don Dodge's blog

Don Dodge from Microsoft touts the completely redesigned version of Microsoft Office that is now available. (David Pogue at The New York Times calls the redesign "radical") Apparently all of those laborious, confusing drop-down menus have been replaced by a contextual "ribbon" that displays all the features applicable to what you are doing at the time. And, for the first time (or at least the first time in my recent memory), they are offering a free trial download of Office so you can try it out before you shell out the $400+.

The following Business Filter posts ran in today's print Boston Globe...

Adults are the new kids
Illustration: James F. Kraus

Multitouch genius
Curse of knowledge
Newspaper blogs gain
How Yahoo blew it
Affluenza

Source: Inc.com

A new survey of entrepreneurs and small biz owners by accounting software maker Quick Books found that 43 percent of entrepreneurs admit they were loners as kids. 25 percent said they were nerds, 20 percent say they were seen as clowns and 11 percent were jocks. Only 1 percent were bullies. That would be payback for all those years when the bullies and jocks made your life miserable in school...

"People who have the personality and motivation to be the leader and start something on their own are more inclined to feel like they aren't part of the social structure," said Mark Rice, Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Babson College. "Entrepreneurs by definition are different," Rice added. "They are doing something on the fringe."

Source: Lee Ann Prescott's Hitwise blog

Do you use a feed reader to read the Web? I use FeedDemon. Others use web-based feed readers. Hitwise data shows that Bloglines is by far the most popular feed reader, with a market share three times larger than their nearest competitor, Rojo. If you have no idea what a feed reader is, you're not alone. This chart compares three of the most popular blogs in their respective verticals at the top, and the dinky lines on the bottom represent market shares of the web-based feed readers.

Lee Ann Prescott at Hitwise concludes:

"1) RSS usage, while growing, is still a niche activity and mainstream adoption is still a ways off, and 2) the most successful blogs are being consumed in the standard Web 1.0 fashion - by visiting the websites."

But there's more...did you notice that PerezHilton.com (the pink line) skyrockets past everything? Clearly people don't need feed readers to feed their guilty pleasures.

Source: Fast Company

Jefferson Han may be one of those random geniuses who can "conceive of a technology so powerful that it can plow under the landscape and remake it in its own image." Han has invented a multitouch display that uses both movement and pressure from multiple inputs to direct a computer. So instead of using a mouse or key commands, you use your fingers and gesture and in the process navigate data, maps, photos and more. Han built his own laser at age 12. Now he's about 31 and Lockheed Martin, Pixar, CBS News, and unnamed intelligence agencies are in talks with his startup Perceptive Pixel.

Here's why...watch the video.

Related:
Jeff Han's 10 min talk at the 2006 TED conference

Source: Businesspundit

Robert May blogs about the conundrum of the "curse of knowledge," meaning that "once you know something, it's difficult to imagine what it is like to not know it." This dramatically affects communication. We think that co-workers or customers know something, when really they either don't or they think of it differently than we do. This is compounded by email. Studies show that "readers don't pick up on sarcasm and other tonal aspects of writing as much as the writer believes they will." While difficult to fix, the best advice is to create a culture that is open to questions. If you're not getting it? Ask, ask, ask.

Source: The Blogging Times

New data from Nielsen/NetRatings indicates that newspaper blogs are a hit. Web traffic to the blog pages of the top 10 online newspapers grew 210 percent year over year in December and the overall unique audience to these papers was up 9 percent from last year. Carolyn Creekmore of, Nielsen/NetRatings says "It makes perfect sense for online newspapers, where responding to a blog posting is like writing an instant letter to the editor."

Lots of blogs here at Boston.com.

Source: Seth Godin's blog

In one morning Seth Godin observed a single adult buying Sprite, oreos, white bread, Jif, Welch's, Fritos, and a $6 chocolate bar, a fifty year old man doing card tricks for a clerk, and dozens of $65K+ cars on the street. To which he concludes that adults are kids, "but with (even more) money." Godin may have observed what New York Magazine called "grups," affluent, urban adults that stymie the generation gap by enjoying the good parts of being a grown up (money, family, career) without, you know, actually growing up.

Related:
Forever youngish

Source: GigaOm

Local company Brightcove, an online video platform and destination start-up has raised a whopping $59.5 million in new funding from investors that include The New York Times and Transcosmos. Existing investors such as Allen & Company, AOL, and Accel Partners participated in the round. This will be a big year for online video as Brightcove and others, including new upstart Joost, will be going after established media companies in battle with Google-YouTube.

By the way, Barak Obama announced his "Presidential Exploratory Committee" yesterday via this Brightcove video. Beet.TV says that Obama's agreement with the company includes "ongoing publication of campaign videos, the creation of an Obama "channel" on Brightcove and a syndication function which will allow bloggers and Web sites to have campaign clips published directly on their pages."

Related:
The anti-YouTube
The TiVo-Brightcove endrun
Brightcove serves up the Times
Future looks bright

Source: Wired

In 2001 Terry Semel, a Hollywood dealmaker who didn't even use email, was brought in as Yahoo CEO to rally the company. And he did it spectacularly...except for the part about losing SEARCH and now social networking. A fateful misstep? In 2002 Semel offered to buy privately-held Google for $3 billion, but Google wanted $5 billion. Semel passed and went for plan B - acquire a search company and an search ad company. At the time it was shrewd, but then Yahoo "fumbled, bungled, and mishandled its execution at every step." Wired relates the whole story and concludes: "At Yahoo, the marketers rule, and at Google the engineers rule. And for that, Yahoo is finally paying the price."

Source: Forbes

Originally uploaded by K Kay via Flickr

If a recent trip to Silicon Valley by 85 students from MIT’s Sloan School of Management is any indication, the valley is awash with economic health. Students "enjoyed a whirlwind of introductions and sneak peeks. They talked with executives of fledgling start-ups and toured companies with market caps in the billions. They chatted with venture capitalists. And of course, they lunched at Google." While start-ups are also a big draw, 42 percent of the Sloan students were hot on summer internship prospects at Google and 26 percent would consider a full-time job at the Googleplex.

Update 1/17/07:
Comment from Bill Ross: "...and, last I heard, 100% of the people over 40 who'd love to work for Google can just fuhgettaboutit!"

Related:
Tour the Googleplex

Source: PSFK

Britain's innovative grocer, Tesco, is planning to build accommodations for its workers when it builds stores. Frustrated by the escalating cost of living and high turnover rates for employees, the flats will be offered first to its employees but also to others in need of affordable housing. Workers can retain the right to live there even when they leave the company. The first prototype will be in London. The last time I was there the high costs were truly breathtaking.

Related:
The next Brit invasion
Lean retail

Source: New York Times

A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that "older teenage girls are far more likely than younger girls, or boys of any age, to use social-networking sites like MySpace or Facebook." But while older girls use these sites the most, only 46 percent say they make new friends through them, while 60 percent of older teenage boys say they meet new friends. Older boys are more than twice as likely to use the site to...flirt. Shocking, I know.

Regarding my recent post "Teens are tribal, not stupid" I received a notable comment from Dr. Elizabeth Englander, Professor of Psychology & Director, Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center Bridgewater State College:

"I direct an academic Center and we do a lot of education in schools around MySpace and similar sites. Teens consistently cite to us the "privacy" of their profile, as you did in your "blog" (article) - but I feel compelled in the interest of public education to set the record straight.

First, even if you set a profile to "private," the default picture and some of the information will still be available to anyone.
Second, there are a number of websites which continually look for "exploits" - security weaknesses which permit individuals to see any profile, including a "private" one. If someone does a fairly simple google search, they can locate information about how to see any profile, including private ones. This doesn't mean that kids shouldn't set their profiles to private, and it doesn't mean that privacy brings with it no added security; it's simply that no one should put anything on the internet - even on a "private" profile - that they're not prepared to have everyone read (including their mother, their clergyperson, their teacher, etc.)!

A word to the wise."

Source: Telegraph.co.uk via comments on Blogspotting

British psychologist Oliver James says that many of us are suffering from affluenza, a middle-class virus brought on by material envy. "Nearly all of us want bigger and better," he says. "We define our lives through earnings, possessions, appearances, celebrity, and it's making us more miserable than ever before." The anti-affluenza vaccine? "Stop thinking you have got to have more and start concentrating on getting on with your real life, your personal relationships, work that interests you, rather than work motivated by greed." From a Brit standpoint his advises, "go back to being British and stop being American."

James' book Affluenza is due out in hardcover January 25. For more on the topic, try Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic(2002).

Source: BusinessWeek Blogspotting

Stephen Baker blogs that in our "privileged nook of the industrialized world, most of what we buy only enhances or updates what we already have." We have TVs, cars, and vacations, but we could get better ones. He cites David Sifry of Technorati who says that money as an economic measurement simply divides the "have-loads" from the "have-mores." Instead we should measure time. "In the Attention Economy the breakthrough innovations will either give us the gift of time, or they will help us squeeze a dose of high-living into our spare minutes." Google, for example, allows us to find facts in an instant. Unfortunately the world adjusted to it, so instead of getting more time, we just get more productivity.

Photo originally uploaded by DeAlma via Flickr

Source: Guardian Tech blog

The Guardian notes that Todd Bishop at the Seattle Post Intelligencer ran the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs keynote speeches through UsingEnglish.com and a Tag Cloud Generator. What gives? Gates' sentences are twice as long as Jobs' and Jobs' language is significantly easier to understand. Born techie vs. born marketer.

Compare and contrast via Presentation Zen's analysis...

Related:
The 10-20-30 Rule
Top 10 lies of marketers

The $2.5 billion Idol juggernaut
Illustration: James F. Kraus

Airport security bin ads
Apple's wireless effect
Bullish on Whole Foods
Teens not so stupid
Eat your terabytes
Never miss a discount

Source: New York Times

On Monday it won't be Cingular anymore. It'll be AT&T. Cingular, the biggest mobile carrier in the US will rebrand itself AT&T now that the big AT&T - Bell South merger is completed. The New York Times calls it the biggest de-branding in advertising history. AT&T isn't saying what the budget is for the campaign, but a campaign last year to promote AT&T as the new brand name of SBC Communications cost an estimated $1 billion.

Source: BoingBoing

Neuroscientists at Stanford University report that they can use brain scans to predict whether someone looking at a product will actually buy it or not. Images of 40 objects were placed in front of 26 people undergoing brain fMRIs. The scientists analyzed which parts of the brain lit up, and were able to forecast what the person's purchase decision would be before he or she vocalized it. Excessive prices activated one part of the brain and deactivated another.

If we could harness that activated brain energy, maybe we could power our iPods by simply browsing BestBuy's Home Theatre and TV department.

Tangentially Related:
Carolyn Y. Johnson of the Globe has a nice piece on wireless power transfer today.

Source: Forbes via adland

The next time you're waiting in line with your shoes, jacket and liquids in hand and your laptop bag gouging your shoulder, glance down at the plastic bin you're loading your stuff into. SecurityPoint Media is a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based company that is supplying bins covered with ads to the Transportation Security Administration. It saves the TSA money on equipment, advertisers reach affluent frequent flyers and the airport gets a cut. You? You're the captive eyeballs. That's why SecurityPoint's website calls it "unavoidable media."

Source: Rough Type

Nicolas Carr observes that Steve Jobs' style is the antithesis of Web 2.0, "which is all about grand platforms, open systems, egalitarianism, and the erasing of the boundary between producer and consumer." Just like the iPod, the iPhone is a veritable fortress ruled over by "King Steve." The iPhone is Steve's. We are "free to gain admission by purchasing a ticket for $500, but we're required to remain in our seats at all times while the show is in progress." Forget the wisdom of crowds, Jobs "is not interested in amateur productions"...or sticking to stock option dates. But we do get "exquisite tools."

Related:
How Steve Jobs does it

Source: BusinessWeek

Now that the iPhone is out from under wraps one thing is clear...Apple is likely to have "a big effect on how cell phones are designed and distributed, shaking up handset makers and the network operators that generate upward of $100 billion a year in service sales." Some analysts estimate that Apple could sell 5 million phones in 2007. That's 0.5 percent of the global handset market. Could it be? Will Apple have us at hello just like that? Time will tell. "Taking on the wireless industry will prove a tall order, even for Apple. But before any iPod phone hits the shelves, the assault is well under way."

Source: The Viral Garden

Mack Collier blogs about starting up his new podcast, Mind the Gap. The show, which is a weekly look at companies and their communities and the gap that exists between the two, looks good, but the process of creating it was anything but pretty. He got the whole thing up and running in...months...thanks to process of researching equipment, creating and editing the episode and figuring out hosting. Now that Collier has tried podcasting, his conclusion? Given that anyone can be blogging in 5 minutes, "podcasting won't see any explosive growth until the entire creation process is made MUCH simplier."

Related:
Simplexity
Podcast reality check

Though, the pain might be worth it if you goal is to get funded:
Podcasting meets the elevator pitch

Source: MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog

Ann Handley wonders if Second Life has peaked. Gartner recently predicted a drop-off in Second Life hype, followed by a stablization and eventual trend toward sustainable growth. Whether you call Second Life a metaverse, a virtual world or a geek outpost, bloggers are "debating whether Second Life is so... well, 2006." Need a tour guide to "get it?" Tomorrow MarketingProfs is hosting a virtual seminar called "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Metaverse: Second Life for Marketers." Pay $99 and tune in.

Related:
Second Life's first millionaire
Big media gets a Second Life
Second Life going mainstream
Trendy clothier gets Second Life
Virtual world makes the cover
Naughty virtual neighbors

Source: Slate

Whole Foods stock may be down 40 percent but Daniel Gross thinks it's on the verge of big success. While same store sales have dipped this year, they were still healthy. But the biggest case for being bullish on Whole Paycheck?

"Slowly but surely, Americans are trading in iceberg lettuce for arugula, mache, and mesclun, Wonder Bread for baguettes, Crisco for lardo. And as much as the culture of food snobbery may seem advanced in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, it is still in its relative infancy in the vast spaces in between the coasts."

The PBS set are now not the only ones buying organic. And Whole Foods is a destination for new "luxury trading-uppers," sophisticates who pinch pennies on staples but splurge on items such as Meyer lemons and bresaola. Not to mention, Whole Foods is opening its first store in London, mate.

Related:
Here come the Whole Foods spas
Illy out-elites Starbucks

Source: GigaOm, Engadget

...and chances are, you're going to want one.

Photo: Engadget live from CES

The thing is one giant screen. You touch it to use it. There are NO BUTTONS. So you can change the interface at any time and for any purpose. It runs Mac OS X. Make calls. Use the Internet. Watch movies. Download music. Due out June 2007. $499 for 4G model, $599 for 8GB. Exclusive deal with Cingular. Forget Apple Computer, Inc. They are dropping the word Computer. Now they are just Apple, Inc.

Jobs says it's a revolution all over again. Apple>iPod>iPhone.

Source: Terry Heaton's PoMo blog

Originally uploaded by Feuillu via Flickr

While a new Pew report says 55 percent of online teens have created a personal profile online and used sites like MySpace or Facebook, the really interesting stat is that two-thirds of teens who have created a profile say it's not visible to all internet users. In other words, you have to be invited into their network in order to view their profile. While some see social networks as "seething hives of treachery and evil," Terry Heaton says this stat "screams that teens want and respect privacy" and that the vast majority are using social networks to support each other, share their lives with each other, and grow together.

Heaton goes on to say:

"This is textbook postmodernism: people crafting their own "tribes" and turning to each other instead of trusting institutions. And if they do this as teens and young adults, those habits will become lifetime habits, and what does that say about our culture? ... Volumes, methinks."

Source: AdAge.com

Here it comes. January 16th is the launch date for the next American Idol. AdAge is calling the show a juggernaut and aptly so. With a franchise valued at $2.5 billion, American Idol brings in $500 million a year in TV ads and has over 40 licensees. Get ready for Idol chocolate, ice cream, Monopoly and even an Idol theme-park attraction. This year sponsors are focusing on interactivity with Coke inviting viewers to submit questions for contestants and Cingular allowing downloads of specific performances. In fact, the entire program will stream online after each episode airs in an attempt to keep the heat. Last time executives checked, YouTube had about 32,000 Idol clips - all illegal.

Source: Forbes

The other day I emailed my editors at Boston.com asking them to add MyBlogLog to the side column of Business Filter. It's a very cool little community-builder that enables readers to leave information about themselves here on this blog, thus creating our own little Business Filter network. Because I don't have comments on this blog, I'm hoping MyBlogLog will highlight all of my smart readers, and allow them to link back to their own blogs and make it easy to link off to each other.

Mybloglog also looks at reader behavior inside the blog, like what is being read and where readers go next, delivering information that makes it easier to target ads.

Well today MyBlogLog hit it. They were purchased by Yahoo! for an undisclosed sum (sources are saying it was north of $10 million). I really like this service. It's like virtual breadcrumbs. Who's been here? Who's digging the content?

Related:
The Networked Self

I know your 2006 will just not be complete without knowing the top 10 most-read posts of 2006 here on Business Filter...or as we call it here in Boston, Da Filtah. So without further ado...

The top 10 most-read posts of 2006 were:

#10 How many Segways have been sold?
#9 Could XM and Sirius both lose the satellite radio wars?
#8 Forever youngish
#7 Monopoly cashes out
#6 YouTube is it
#5 IE 7? Not so much.
#4 Welcome to hell, Dell
#3 Satellite kills Stern?
#2 Microsoft has sense of humor

And the #1 most read post of 2006 was this vitally important biz/tech/innovation story...

#1 Solve Sudoku every time

Source: ZDNet

A terabyte is a trillion bytes, or a million megabytes or 1,000 gigabytes. It's a lot. Hitachi is showcasing (at CES, 'natch) a 3.5-inch-diameter 1 terabyte drive for desktops. Due out in Q1 2007, it will be followed in Q2 with 3.5-inch terabyte drives for digital video recorders, bundled with software called Audio-Visual Storage Manager for easier retrieval of data, and corporate storage systems. Who needs that kind of storage? In theory, you and I will when we start accumulating a lifetime worth of photos, videos, movies and music. It will cost $399 when it comes out.

Source: Guardian Tech Blog

Microsoft just announced something very cool at CES (CES is back, again with keynotes galore - get ready for the press onslaught). It's a Windows Home Server based on Vista. Apparently it will be wireless and will support Windows XP and Vista machines, Linux PCs and Macs. Backups are taken automatically, including a PC hard drive image every night. The little black box is the size of a fat book and would "live in your closet and simplify your life."

I'll certainly wait until the "kinks get ironed out" but if it works, sign me up. We have 5 PCs on a wireless network in our house alone, plus external hard drives holding music and movies. We learned how fragile the balance is when one of our laptops took a rather bad fall down the stairs, croaking the hard drive in the process. Nothing like a boatload of unrecoverable data to make you want a little black box to fix all your problems...

Related:
CES 2007
Digital Nirvana

Source: Guy Kawasaki's blog

Guy has made another great top 10 list, this time on LinkedIn. I made it my New Year's resolution to update my LinkedIn page and invite contacts. As a result I've spent more time with the site and discovered just how powerful the system really is. As a result I'm not at all surprised by this stat from Guy:

"People with more than twenty [LinkedIn] connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five."

While most people use LinkedIn to "get to someone" in order to make a sale, get a job or form a partnership...Kawasaki warns against underutilizing the network. Remember that LinkedIn also increases your visibility and connectability. You can even create LinkedIn email signatures that link back to your profile so people can easily "check it" and see who you are. LinkedIn helps you improve your search engine results, do background checks and scope out the competition. And with new LinkedIn Answers you can broadcast business-related questions to both your own network and the greater LinkedIn network.

Get busy LinkingIn, people.

Related:
LinkedIn or left out

Source: MarketWatch

You're probably sitting on a bunch of discounts you can use in your everyday life - and you don't even know it. Did you know AAA members (all 65mm of them) can get a 10 percent discount at Target.com? Or that you can save 10 percent when you use your Amex card Overstock.com. Who knew? Well DealMine.com is on the scene to help you get what's rightfully yours. They track discounts and rewards from AAA, AARP, American Express, Visa, Upromise, Ebates, Delta SkyMiles, American AAdvantage and more, and match them up to price comparisons. Search for Samsung HDTV or Cashmere Sweaters to see how it works. Very cool.

Thanks for the tip Deb!

Simplexity
Illustration by James F. Kraus

Chief Beer Officer
Drowning managers
Brand abstinence
The networked self
Cars that stop drunks

Source: Media Daily News

Not all of the new ad mediums are digital. This one is as analog as it can get. AdPack USA puts your ad on boxes of Kleenex...er...tissue. Actually they also offer moisturized tissues, washcloths and towelettes to serve all your on-the-go wiping needs. In an effort to generate awareness for the idea, they are offering a cash prize and a free trial to any ad agency that designs the most creative tissue campaign. AdPack launched their tissue advertising in 2004, and while it's new to the US, tissue pack marketing has already gained critical mass in Japan, where an estimated four billion packs with branded messages are distributed each year. Ah! Choo.

Related:
Advertising in lost wallets
Eggvertising

Source: Forrester's Marketing blog

Peter Kim blogs about the steep expectations that face a $1m+ Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) position and the daunting set of qualifications required for success. You need: "Leadership - influence and impact. A track record of results - no excuses. General management and P&L experience. Innovation experience." OK so given the aggressive career run-up it takes to get there, Kim advises you to do a gut check and figure out WHY you want to be CMO. The average CMO tenure is about 23 months (that's almost half of CEO tenure). The tendency for companies is to look at this role as the one who will solve everything...and we know how well that can work out.

Source: Business Innovation Insider

Sheraton's Four Points hotel chain has been looking for a Chief Beer Officer for the past two months. The job? Travel the country testing out beers at beer festivals and oversee the hotel's new beer program, Best Brews, as a part-time gig. In addition, the Chief Beer Officer would be responsible for checking out Oktoberfest in Munich. Over 5,000 applicants from 31 countries have applied for the unpaid position, but Sheraton has yet to fill it. I'm sure the marketers over at Sheraton are laughing it up over a few beers. This is a great publicity stunt that will keep on giving even after they hire the CBO.

Photo originally uploaded by Fellowship of the Rich via Flickr

Related:
Brewing a new image
This woman knows beer
iPods overtake beer
Beer is #1 again

Source: TechWeb

Originally uploaded by Orbit via Flickr

A new report says that middle managers are swamped by useless information and spend about a two hours a day looking for the data they need. And often, once they obtain the data, half of it has no value to their jobs. Part of the problem is companies keep information in departmental silos. But since eighty-four percent of middle managers collect and store information on their own hard drives or in e-mail accounts, and fail to share data that might be relevant to others, they're also part of the problem. Companies should develop clear rules and processes about how and when information is shared and consider using technology like SOA and Wikis to centralize information. Stop drowning and start building a raft.

Related:
Ditch your email

Source: Wired

We all use Wikipedia, the non-profit encyclopedia created by the wisdom of crowds. Now Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, is hoping we'll also use and help to build Search Wikia, a for-profit search engine project that will begin early this year. Google uses algorithms that determine how many links a page receives to determine page rank. The problem? It can be gamed and hacked. To solve that problem Search Wikia will rely on community volunteers, this time to re-rank search results and tweak open-source search codes for better results. Wales predicts it will take a few years of open-source tinkering before Search Wikia rivals Google. But have no doubt that that is the goal.

When asked how human-powered ranking will work, Wales replies that they don't know...yet. No one thought Wikipedia would work either. Now it is in the top 15 websites used worldwide.

Wales on not committing to a priori thinking:

"A lot of the earlier social search projects fell apart because they were committed a priori to some very specific concept of how it should work. When that worked in some cases but not others, they were too stuck in one mold rather than seeing that a variety of approaches depending on the particular topic is really the way to do it."

Related:
The Great Wikipedia Debate
As good as Brittanica
Colbert takes down Wikipedia
WikiRoast

Source: PSFK

Christmas shipping at Amazon UK by Getty Images via BoingBoing and Cool Hunter

Piers Fawkes predicts that 2007 will see a rise in "brand abstinence," a trend caused by a mix of ethical consumerism and brand disappointment in which consumers will develop apathy for new product purchases. Some companies will try to offer us guilt-free purchases (ex: products made from recycled materials, the Prius) but Fawkes believes a rising number of consumers will simply recycle, re-craft or maintain and retain products instead of buying new ones. When eco-conscious products are not available more and more people are saying, "Why should I replace my phone so often? Why upgrade my PC, my car?" When everything ends up in landfills in China, do we really need this stuff? More people are even practicing DIY...check out MAKE and CRAFT.

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