Source: Businesspundit

Robert May blogs about new research "that implies that if you want to be a better manager, you should become a parent." Parents, it appears - at least the kinds that are committed to family life - perform better at the office, according to a study of 347 managers and execs. After all, managerial skills include multitasking, ability to make compromises, listening, being a leader, and having patience. Sounds like raising kids to me.

Source: BBC

South Koreans are hardcore techies and utilize some of the fastest broadband and mobile networks in the world. A recent survey of 3,500 Korean tech experts gives a peek at their view of the future. By 2012 they foresee mobile phone batteries that last for two months before recharging. By 2015 they think the web will deliver smells via peripheral fragrance devices and that soldiers will wear bullet and waterproof gear that can change chameleon-like to match its surroundings. The topper? By 2018 they say robots "will be routinely carrying out surgery." Yow! Who wants to be in the surgery beta program?

Other stories related to Korea:
From ads to avatars
Avatar bling
You're indicted
The new MADD
Small world after all

Source: WiiToob

Ever tried surfing the web with your Nintendo Wii? Well Ryan Jones over at MIT has anticipated a need and launched WiiToob, a site that is optimized for use with the Wii controller. It uses large fonts and full screen videos and provides links to the most popular YouTube videos. It's a safe bet that content providers will consider launching Wii-optimized versions of their web sites going forward.

Thanks Eric!

Source: Inc.com

Why do some startups fail and others don't? A new study finds that success depends largely on "the owner's ability to convince potential employees or customers that the nascent company is operational" - meaning that people are more likely to work with you if you appear to know what you're doing. Ever worked in a startup? It's a lot like a game of chicken. Never let them see you sweat.

The study also found that education, the previous experience of the founder, or a business plan were not indicators for success. Instead, flexibility and the collective experience of people on the team matters most.

Source: 93 South and Cymfony blog

Just wanted to give a nod out to Watertown-based Cymfony. The company was acquired by British company TNS Media Intelligence for an undisclosed amount yesterday. Cymfony tracks and analyzes consumer sentiment and trends on blogs and social media. Now the combined company can analyze both traditional media and social media. "CMOs will at last have a truly holistic view of how all their communications are working to shape their brands' and company's place in the market."

Source: TIME

Bill Saporito rants against Starbucks saying he doesn't have "15 minutes to wait to purchase a simple cup of black coffee." He says the place is understaffed and trying to run with too few espresso machines. He also rants against all the retail items and the WiFi squatters. While Saporito says founder Howard Schultz worries that Starbucks is losing its ambiance and coffee smell, the real problem, Saporito thinks, is throughput. "More machines, more sales terminals. You want us to smell the coffee, just grind some."

Good point. I have personally walked out of two Starbucks in the last week because of the line.

Source: Ars Technica

New research shows that if you have wireless Internet at home, you check email and read the news online more often than if you don't, "suggesting that wireless access offers 'relentless connectivity' that might change a person's online behavior." No! You think? I was surprised that only 19 percent of Internet users have WiFi at home. Those who do tend to be younger (18-49) than the majority of Internet users (30-60) and more male (56 percent) and probably can't imagine life without WiFi.

Ironically, while posting this entry, my cable modem died. It was like losing life support. Forget email addiction, I guess I'm web-addicted.

Source: BusinessWeek

The most successful Ford dealership in the world is in...Moscow. Ford may be flagging in the US, but it's the #1 foreign car in Russia because of a strategic gamble the company made in 1999 when they built a $150 million plant near St. Petersburg. Local production allows Ford to sell cars for as little as $13,000 - that's about $3,000 less than similar imports. The other American innovation Ford has imported? Consumer credit. "Ford offers two- and three-year car loans at interest rates of just 4.9 percent, or a bit more than half the current [Russian] inflation rate of 9 percent."

Smart car reservations
Illustration: James F. Kraus

Family un-friendly
Horn tones for your car
BlueTube
Personal black box
Hope for email addicts
Scientists' big problem

Source: Green Tech blog

That plastic water bottle could be bad for your health. At least that's what startup Green Harvest Technologies says. Recent studies show that petroleum-based plastics can leach chemicals and additives into foods and beverages. Green Harvest wants to sell toxin-free plastic bottles that cost about the same as today's "bad" plastic and they're looking for investors.

Source: Fortune via GigaOm

We've been hearing about the possibility of Google taking aim at uber-dominant Microsoft Office for a while now. And here it is. Google just launched a paid version of its documents, spreadsheets, calendar and email programs. 100,000 small businesses are running a trial of this package, including General Electric and Procter & Gamble. What will it cost? $50 per account per year and with that you get 10 gigabytes of storage and phone support. Yeah, I'd say that's competing with Microsoft.

Source: Inc.com

A new study finds that along with Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland, and Papua New Guinea, the United States does not guarantee pay to new mothers. While U.S. employers are required to give time off, we do not show mothers the money by law. Among the 173 countries studied, 168 countries that offer paid leave and 98 of them offer 14 or more weeks. Overall, the study ranks US family policies as "weaker than those in all high-income countries as well as many middle and low-income countries."

Source: MIT Advertising Lab

Ilya Vedrashko blogs about the Horntones FX-550 system. It's "the first mobile audio system that allows you to customize the sound of your vehicle’s horn function using virtually any standard audio file." OK so what happens to that classic Boston road rage when someone blasts you with "Go ahead, make my day" or a foghorn noise, or God help us, "this horn brought to you by...?" This will make cell phone distractions seem like a cake walk.

Source: Buzzmachine

Jeff Jarvis blogs about how David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue, went to YouTube to bring his message to customers. Neeleman apologizes for the cancelled flights and promises to do better. "It’s quite unpolished but that’s part of the appeal. The guy has circles around his eyes; he’s stressed; he’s trying, and that’s what comes across. He’s using YouTube to speak directly to his customers and putting himself at their/our mercy."

Related:
JetBlue gets it

Source: Between the Lines

The RoadBOX is a black box for your car. It's a windshield-mounted videocam that "can sense sudden decelerations – as when you brake hard or hit something." It then saves the previous 14 seconds of tape and 6 seconds afterwards. It's another piece in the trend toward video surveillance. Ed Gottsman muses about a cell phone version of this with which would monitor our lives. If the camera is on, would it curtail gossip, mean people, violent crimes? He decides " the strain of all this enforced kindness will be acute and probably unhealthy." Read 1984. That's what it would be like.

Source: CNN

Alcoholics aren't the only ones who need twelve step programs. An executive coach has devised a program to help people manage their email addiction. The first step? "Admit that e-mail is managing you. Let go of your need to check e-mail every ten minutes." There is a growing concern that email is costing us untold millions in lost productivity. "On average, workers who receive an e-mail take four minutes to read it and recover from the interruption before they can resume working productively."

Source: AutoWeek

Smart Car, now available in Europe, is coming to the US in 2008. The ultra small car may sell for under $15,000 and get 50 plus miles to the gallon on unleaded - even more on diesel. Interested? Soon you can send Smart Car a $99 deposit. But here's the rub - it won't actually guarantee you a car, but it will buy you the chance to name the colors and options you would ultimately want in the car...if you could buy it. So the company is basically making you pay for their market research and brand awareness. That's one way to keep the cost down. The fee can ultimately be refunded or applied to purchase. Smart car, indeed. As for me, I can't wait until these are on the market.

- Thanks Tom Curran!

Source: CNET

Photo: CNET

Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, told the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference that they have big problem. Marketing. "Virtually all economic growth (in the world) was due to technological progress. I think as a society we're not really paying attention to that." Page urged scientists to be proactive. Get entrepreneurial. Run for office. Get the word out. Spend a portion of their grants on marketing and make their research available digitally. In other words, give Al Gore a hand.

Source: New York Post

We've anticipated this for a while but The New York Post is reporting that Sirius and XM are hammering out the details of a merger plan "with an eye to going public." Signs are that it would be structured as a merger of equals, "but given Sirius' higher enterprise value, shareholders in the Mel Karmazin-led firm will likely come away with a larger percentage of a combined company."

Related:
Sirius-XM merger?
Could XM and Sirius both lose the satellite radio wars?
Howard Stern for free
Oprah vs. Howard
Satellite kills Stern?

Global soul
Illustration by James F. Kraus

The pay-optional cafe

Fly Big Brother

Power shifts

Of memes and bemes

Hyperaggregation

Source: Guy Kawasaki's blog

Here's a revealing map created by Adrian G. White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester who did a meta-analysis of more than 100 different studies around the world that queried 80,000 people worldwide on issues relating to health, wealth and access to education. The US is the 23rd most happy country. The Danes are the most happy. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe and Burundi are the least happy.

I love maps:
Mind the gap map
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: The Wall Street Journal via Online Media Daily (Sorry, it's behind a pay wall)

Yahoo Games features "casual games" such as pool, word games and puzzles. How popular could that be? Well, the site attracted 21 million unique users in January...that's just about as big as YouTube. And the people playing the games may not be who you think. Nearly half of all casual gamers are aged 30 to 59. Media companies like Hearst are starting to add games to drive their traffic. Seventeen and CosmoGIRL launched games a few years ago and now their games represent 5 to 10 percent of their overall traffic.

On Yahoo Games, my guilty pleasure is Word Racer.

Related:
Quietly booming casual games
Hardcore, but casual
$1 million casual gamer tournament
Nintendo or Nintendon't?

Source: Ars Technica

A new national survey says that Blackberry and Treo owners may be split on whether the devices "chain you to work more than they liberate you," but one thing is for sure...owning a Blackberry means you are more likely to work longer hours and make more money. Average household income of Blackberry owners was nearly 50 percent higher than the national average, at about $94,000. But 19 percent worked more than 50 hours a week, (while just 11 percent of the general population does) and 53 percent feel they didn't have enough personal time (compared to 40 percent of the general population). Insert your crackberry wisecrack here.

Source: Reveries

The Terra Bite Lounge in Kirkland, Washington has no prices on the menu and gives away free WiFi. "It’s up to the cafe’s customers to decide how much to pay, or whether to pay at all." Founded as a non-profit by Ervin Peretz, a Google programmer who says he's in the business of "good karma," the goal? To "finesse the largesse of well-off latte lovers to cover the tabs of the less fortunate." So far they've served 80 customers a day, who pay an average of $3. He says he needs about 100 a day to break even.

Source: Engadget

Scientists from the UK and Germany are investing about $49 million on a project aimed at monitoring airline passengers for suspicious behavior. The system will embed small cameras and microphones in every single seat in order to "detect rapid eye movements, excessive blinking, twitches, whispers or other symptoms of somebody trying to conceal something, and check the data against individual passenger profiles" to try to ID potential terrorists. Umm...so we all lose our privacy and then what happens when the shifty character is ID'd and we're all in the air? British Airways response? Perhaps the money is better spent preventing terrorists from boarding in the first place.

Boston-based videoblogger Steve Garfield has a created a how-to on videoblogging as part of the MIT New Media Literacies Media Producer Profile Series. Check it out.

Here are the videoblogs I have bookmarked:

Ze Frank
Rocketboom
Steve Garfield
Drive Time
Ask a Ninja
Wallstrip

Source: Oxford Analytica via Forbes


Photo: NASA

A recent report says that "increasing market liberalization and the development of European Union and Asian capital markets are undermining New York's position as the premier provider of global finance." In recent years, London has been attracting more business and generating more financial sector jobs than New York. There is increasing evidence that the US is losing ground due to "increasing legal and regulatory constraints and restrictive immigration laws." But even reforms can't turn back the clock. We're shifting to a more global economy.

Source: Bloggers Blog

We've talked about memes and meme tracking before. A meme is when a piece of cultural information gets transmitted from one mind to another. Now we're hearing of another kind of meme - it's called the beme. A beme "is a turbo-charged meme made possible entirely by the existence of the network affect." Tom Hayes says that while a meme takes off by accident (early SNL sketches), a beme is by design (OKGO on treadmills). While a meme can take years to surface, a beme can take hours - consider Steve Jobs' anti DRM statement. Hayes calls the people who create and spread bemes bemerz.

Source: Business 2.0

VodPod is a new startup that addresses the growing need in online video to "find just the good stuff and skip the junk." Go to VodPod and gather together video clips from any video sharing site and create a channel (they call it a pod). Then, like a wiki, anyone can view the channel and anyone can add clips to it. "If aggregation is what we've seen so far on YouTube and Flickr, hyperaggregation is aggregating the aggregators."

Source: Strawberry Frog blog via PSFK

Scott Goodson of the creative agency Strawberry Frog blogs that the world has moved from mono- to multi- to transculturalism, giving rise to what he calls the Active Mosaic. "Existing culture meets emerging culture, they exchange and mutate characteristics - creating an ever-evolving mosaic." Examples? Film allusions and homage. TV remakes and exports. Food and drink fusions. Musical genre-blending. Think of James Brown influencing Hip Hop, then Hip Hop influencing other music genres, and then James Brown and Hip Hop influencing sports. Goodson calls on companies to tap into the Global Soul - the universal mindset of the people and ideas circling the globe.

Source: Antonio Rodriguez' blog

Antonio Rodriguez is the founder of Cambridge-based Web 2.0 startup Tabblo. He responds to new operating system releases like Vista with the observation, "Who gives a crap about the OS anymore?" Even the Mac OS is less relevant than iTunes. Why? Because "all of the interesting things you can do with computers now (outside of specialized content creation like programs, video, music, etc.) has little to do with the OS itself unless you count the bits required to run a fast (and standards-compliant) web browser."

He links to this great video created by Michael Wesch, an anthropology professor. "After watching it, I'm sure you will come away thinking that the real innovation these days is as far from a shrink-wrapped box of device drivers as internal combustion is from a barrel of feed."

A few green-conscious readers have referred some sites I thought I'd pass along:

Andy points us to Greendisk, a site which solves the major problem of what to do with the old computer components, CDs, disks, ink cartridges, etc. that we stack up in our closets - or (even worse!) throw away.

James Kraus points us to Green Options a blog that keeps you up to date on the latest green news and some tools that help you figure out how to go get greener.

Source: Inc.com

Originally uploaded by Michael L via Flickr

Americans now spend more than $13 billion on Valentine's Day. What do we buy? Last year 62 percent bought at least one card. 47.1 percent bought candy and 42.1 percent paid for a night out on the town. "And, unlike most holidays, men tend to spend nearly twice as much as women on gifts, while 45-54 year olds top all other age groups, spending $128.78, on average, in 2006." Small retailers, florists, and Vermont Teddy Bear do particularly well. Last year a staggering 189 million roses were sold.

Source: The Atlantic

Joshua Green has an article in The Atlantic that covers Unity08, a new movement with the goal of using the Internet to assemble a viable third party platform and candidate for the 2008 presidential election. It's worth reading. Think on this...

"The Internet is a "disruptive technology," meaning one that upsets an existing system in the way that cars replaced horses and digital images are replacing film" and "in the case of the Internet, the disruption occurs in two distinct phases. In the first, the technology mimics a function that already exists, only faster and better (accountants can work from home). In the next, it transforms that function outright (accounting moves to India)."

George Vradenburg, a former general counsel for America Online who is advising Unity08 suggests how this might apply to politics:

"Howard Dean showed that the Internet can be a great tool for fund-raising and organizing - existing functions performed in a political campaign. The next step is rethinking entirely how you go about the whole functionality you’re talking about. That’s what’s happening here: How do you transform the entire nominating process?"

Can the Internet democratize our democracy?

Source: CNET

Originally uploaded by Bob Rosenbaum via Flickr

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen joked that when he and his peers started in the field 20 years ago they were all considered "weirdos." But now, "design is starting to change who succeeds and who fails." Human-computer interaction experts are the new "it" position and schools are realizing they need to train engineers to understand "the capabilities, limitations and desires of humans." Jeff Han remarks…"In general, technology's become so good that it's not the differentiator between products. User interface [UI] is becoming a huge differentiator."

Related:
Jakob Nielsen: Stages of usability
Jeff Han: The multitouch genius

More on simple:
Simplexity
Time to enjoyment factor
The chasm between Web 2.0 geeks and the masses
Easy is the new hard

Tangentially related:
How many easy buttons have been sold?

Candy is the new cigarettes
Illustration by James F. Kraus

Say everything
Cheap problems
Can Nike do it?
Piping the web
Jaypodding
Kodak keeps on

Source: Seed magazine via popurls

Virgin's Sir Richard Branson, with the help of Al Gore, has launched what he called "the world’s biggest prize to inspire innovators to develop a way to remove greenhouse gases from the earth’s atmosphere." The $25 million Virgin Earth Challenge will go to the "individual or group able to show a commercially viable design resulting in the net removal of man-made atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least 10 years, without harmful side-effects."

Every year an estimated seven billion tons of carbon dioxide are dumped into the atmosphere. Some of it right from Virgin Airlines jet engines. Branson's goal? To "get every young, creative, innovative thinker, every inventor and every scientist" to invent a technology that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. I love this. Time to get real and think BIG.

Related:
Greenwashing

Source: New York Magazine

New York Magazine observes that many of us, um, older people look upon the 55 percent of 12-17 year-olds who reveal their private lives online and think, "Why would anyone do that?" But perhaps younger people are the only ones who get that "a truly private life is already an illusion." The article reviews three changes that set the younger generation apart from the older one: They "think of themselves as having an audience." They have "archived their adolescence." And "their skin is thicker than yours."

"In essence, every young person in America has become, in the literal sense, a public figure. And so they have adopted the skills that celebrities learn in order not to go crazy: enjoying the attention instead of fighting it—and doing their own publicity before somebody does it for them.

Source: Webware

Speaking at the MIT Enterprise Forum's Brave New Web event this week, Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire advised startups not to solve cheap problems. Rafe Needleman reports that Allaire relayed the message that "if you can start a business on your Visa card, somebody else can too, and they can compete with you directly and immediately." Then again, it's easy for a serial entrepreneur like Allaire to raise money. As Needleman points out "Digg launched at a cost of $2,000."

Related:
Brightcove: $59.5m and Obama
The anti-YouTube

Source: BusinessWeek

Nike's new chief executive, Mark Parker has an ambitious plan to grow revenues by $8 billion in five years. Some analysts wonder if the plan is too bold. It "would mean revenues would need to rise 53 percent over five years, or average about 9 percent a year." To get there Nike is reshaping management and adding 100 new company stores worldwide. But "Nike's boldest bet is on the consumer." Parker says digitally-driven "consumers have never held as much power as they do today." As such Nike will undertake "new efforts to tailor products to individual consumers."

Source: Between the Lines

Yahoo! just launched a new service called Pipes and the tech blog echo chamber is going wild. Larry Dignan says it's a "hosted service that lets you remix RSS feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment." Huh? Well if you know what I'm talking about you're intrigued. If you don't, the big take-away is that Yahoo has established a leadership role in "turning the web into a programmable environment for everyone," as Tim O'Reilly commented. It means that web sites and feeds can simply be viewed as data sources that can be piped together visually like, well, tinker toys. It's also a big deal because Yahoo is actually doing something before Google does.

Source: Mary Wehmeier's blog

"Own a piece of guerilla art history!" That's how one eBay listing puts it. Mary Wehmeier blogs that "less than 24 hours after the Cartoon Networks guerilla marking campaign of plastering various cities around the US, shut down the City of Boston for hours, Mooninite signs are beginning to show up on Ebay."

- Thanks Stan!

Source: Engadget

New York State Senator Carl Kruger is reportedly set to introduce legislation that would ban the use of MP3 players, cellphones, and any other electronic device while crossing the street in New York City or other "big cities" in the state. The proposed ban comes on the heels of two recent pedestrian deaths, one of which involved a person listening to an iPod.

Engadget asks "if police can't enforce jaywalking laws in NYC, how could they possibly enforce this?" I run with my iPod, and I'm very paranoid when I cross streets. So it's good to raise awareness. But, banning them? What's next? Running with scissors?

Photo originally uploaded by fernando via Flickr

Source: Marketing Daily

In what appears to be a first for a food marketer, one of the biggest global advertisers, Masterfoods, the makers of Mars, Snickers, Skittles and Starburst has decided to end marketing to children under 12 by the end of the year. Masterfoods claims this "will impact magazine and TV advertising in the U.S.," but that it represents less than 5 percent of their ad buy. Hmm, while this is a start...some analysts are wondering how meaningful the ban will be? How do they define the ban? We talked about greenwashing. Is this healthwashing?

Related:
Kentucky Fried Coronary reform?
Disney goes healthy
No fast food for you
Mac and cheese me
Tastes like "chicken"
"Meat"
Evil goldfish
Big mother is watching
McDonalds, yoga and Philip Morris no smoking tips
The fat market

Source: Apple

In a open letter on the Apple website, Steve Jobs basically tells music companies to drop dead on digital rights management (DRM). That would be the code that makes the music you buy off iTunes only work in iTunes. He says Apple would wholeheartedly embrace DRM-free music if the big four music companies' licenses would allow it. Jobs says "DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy." Apple gets a lot of heat for DRM - Jobs is trying to turn consumer fury over to the music companies and away from iPods...which, he reminds us, play all music - DRM or no DRM. Classic Jobs power play. Will it work?

Related:
iPod in a blender
Liberating iPods in Cambridge
Learn from pirates
Power to the musicians
Music stock exchange
Bob Dylan: digital is crap
Putting iPod on notice
My name is Maura and I'm a crap addict
DRM side effects

Source: Red Herring

Yahoo began implementing a big overhaul to its search engine this week, activating a new ad system, code-named Panama, that it hopes will make it more competitive against the behemoth Google. Some analysts think that this changeover has the potential to increase Yahoo's revenue from search by 50 percent. Where its last ad system was based on an auction model, Panama will rank search results based on historical click-through rates and keywords, putting advertisers on a more level playing field.

Related:
How Yahoo blew it
Yahoo's People Manifesto
The peanut butter leak

Source: USAToday

Originally uploaded by strph via Flickr

I grew up in Rochester, NY and my grandfather worked at Kodak his whole life. It's no secret that Kodak is struggling in the post-film era - they lost $600 million in 2006. But they have a trusted brand and they are scrappy. Here's there new tack. They're launching a new line of inkjet printers aimed at getting digital camera users back on Kodak paper. The pitch? Cheap ink. Buy a Kodak printer and pay just $25 for ink. Other printers? More like $60 - $80. I'm rooting for my home town team.

Here's my vote. And it was an ad created by a consumer.

I had high expectations for this other consumer-submitted ad. Last week I wrote about the pitch the guy made to win the ad spot. Here's how the ad turned out:

But, somehow I liked the pitch better:

From: Inc.com

Google Maps

The Corporation for Enterprise Development says Connecticut and Delaware have the best economic climate for entrepreneurs and business. Both Delaware and Connecticut earned straight As on the group's 20th annual report card of state economies for 2007, based on business vitality, performance, and development capacity. Massachusetts also scored high grades in all categories. Last year, Connecticut produced more revenue per worker than any other state. On the down side, the state has a low average homeowner rate and the worst air pollution in the country.

Source: A VC blog

Fred Wilson blogs that just because LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman has hired a CEO to run the company, it doesn't mean it's a demotion. Rather than saying Hoffman has stepped down as CEO, we should say he "stepped up" as Chairman and President of Products. Wilson says "stepping up is hard. But it's often the right thing to do." Timing is key. "It's generally not a smart thing to "step up" before the product/service and business model is figured out. Entrepreneurs are better at the tinkering style of management that is required to get the product/service and business model right. Hired managers are often better at executing it once the plan is set."

Photo originally uploaded by haydnseek via Flickr

Don't blow that teleconference
Illustration by James F. Kraus

Painful but necessary
Wii trumps PS3?
Prayer over IP
Spoon vs. jackhammer
Nicktropolis
Intel's Special K

Source: Slate

Bill Gates on The Daily Show pumping up Vista. John Stewart tries to guess Gates' password..."

Paul Boutin says that after playing around with Vista and Office for the last few weeks, he can condense his thoughts into one sentence. "Upgrading to Vista is mostly painless but not necessary, while upgrading to Office 2007 is painful but inevitable." While we were all inundated by the Vista launch, Boutin notes that Office is Microsoft's real monopoly. Is there anyone out there that doesn't use some combination of Word, Excel, Powerpoint or Outlook? Because they changed everything in this release of office, he calls it "the most annoying computer upgrade since Windows 95."