Category Archives: Business

Reading List October 18, 2005

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  • Quote of the Day (Blog on the Run) – "… by refusing to ridicule the ridiculous, by watering down every
    criticism into a mannered circumlocution, we have created an
    environment where idiots thrive unchallenged." — PZ Myers
  • The Times Speaks, Kinda, Sorta (Blog on the Run) – Lex Alexander, a fine journalist in his own right, takes the New York Times to task for their handling of their own story – the journalist who was held in contempt in the Plame case.  Basically he says they screwed the pooch.
  • Thinking of Joining a Startup? (A VC) – Fred Wilson points to a checklist of questions you should answer to determine if joining a startup is right for you.
  • Rethinking Reed’s Law (A VC) – Some really smart business people talk some serious math re. network effects and make my brain hurt.
  • While Boomers Were Busy Watching Their Retirement Accounts (Matt McAlister) – An interesting look at the differences between the Boomers’ form of rebelliousness and Gen X’s form of rebelliousness.  Actually it’s more a comparison of what they rebelled against.

Reading List October 17, 2005

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  • All the News That You Can Use. And More. (New York Times) – A new service called Inform aims to be a better Google News.
  • ADPrentice (Feld Thoughts) – A venture capitalist spends a little time giving back to his fraternity at MIT, and it was a lot more than beer.  I think it’s a useful template for how any of us can create ways to give back to the groups that helped form us.

Reading List October 14, 2005

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  • CNN Seeks Blog Guru to Work with Blitzer (Micro Persuasion) – Everything about this potential gig sounds interesting, and I was seriously considering it until I read the part that says the blog guru will be working out of the DC bureau.  I just escaped D.C. and there’s no way I’m going back, even if it was working with a short guy named Wolf.
  • Grassroots Journalism: Actual Content vs. Shining Ideal (Online Journalism Review) – A review of "10 citizen journalism sites" including Greensboro101.com.
  • Why Google Wants AOL (Business 2.0) – It’s all about IM, installed user-base, protecting search territory, and…oh hell, just go read it.
  • Getting Flat, Part 1 (Linux Journal) – Doc Searls looks at Tom Friedman’s "The World is Flat" from the open-source software point of view.
  • Getting Flat, Part 2 (Linux Journal) – A must read.  Doc continues what he started in Part 1, and here’s just one of many good excerpts I could pull: "I can save Microsoft a pile of time and money by reporting a fact no school wants to admit, one that will
    flatten the world far more than any other factor: pretty much everybody is smart. What’s more, they’re all
    smart in their own ways."
  • For Future Journalists, It’s Cash, Not Causes (Cleveland Plains Dealer) – An opinion piece on the shocking news that today’s journalism want to make real money.
  • "Journalists Have to Get Smarter About Business" (Manship School of Mass Communication) – In a speech Peter Copeland, Editor and GM of Scripps Howard News Service, says that journalists have to get better at business in order to survive and thrive.
  • The Open Source Business Model (Moore’s Lore) – Dana posits that it isn’t enough to provide relevant space to advertisers, you also have to show them how to communicate with your audience. He says a lot more than that, but you get the gist.

Reading List October 13, 2005

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Reading List October 12, 2005

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  • Corante is Not Second Class Journalism (Moore’s Lore) – Should First Amendment protections be restricted to media companies?
  • Cramer Gest Prechterized (Moore’s Lore) – A loud Wall Street bull is starting to growl like a bear. which can’t be a good thing.
  • Online Search Company Taps Bloggers, Celebrities to Endorse Products (PR News) – The Rollyo story.
  • Who’s Connected? Companies that have their own website (bookofjoe) – Joe found some data in Financial Times that compares European countries by the percentage of companies with 10+ employees that have their own website.  France is at the back of the pack with just 26.3% of companies with their own website.  Joe then provides some background on why the French lag behind and compares them, unfavorably, with Argentina.  Of course I could have told Joe that the reason that France is lagging is because the French are so, well, French.
  • Banned Books Week – ‘Of Mice and Men’ Ranked #10 – (bookofjoe) – Here’s the money quote from this post: "She remarked that when she was a girl her mother was extremely unhappy with Winterson’s love of books and reading. Her main complaint? ‘You just can’t tell by looking at them what’s in them.’"
  • Sourcing, verification, bloggers and the Times (The Editor’s Blog – John Robinson) – John, the Editor of the Greensboro News & Record is asking some good questions of himself and other media folk.  If a major story came across his screen via a trusted blogger, but without sourcing would he go with the story?  Probably not.  But his paper did go with a major story based on a New York Times report that was also unsourced, even thought the Times has had credibility problems of late.  More credit to John that he’s willing to think about this.

Reading List October 10, 2005

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Reading List October 6, 2005

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  • Point Solutions vs. End to End Solutions (A VC) – Fred Wilson asks some hard and interesting questions about the future of "Web 2.0."  Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in things like blogs, Flickr (photo sharing), wikis, etc.
  • Should WiFi Be Public Infrastructure (A VC) – Google’s launching a free WiFi service in San Francisco and Fred thinks Verizon and company should be very worried.  I hope he’s right.

Reading List October 5, 2005

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  • Napster: The Inside Story and Lessons for Entrepreneurs (The Next Big Thing) – Don Dodge was a VP at Napster (he now runs Microsofts emerging business unit) and he gives a brief inside look at what happened to Napster in 2000 and lessons that entrepreneurs can learn from that experience.
  • Medical Data Wants to Be Free (Business 2.0) – Business 2.0 points to Fred Wilson’s blog (A VC) where he states that "[I am] convinced that we are on the cusp of a revolution in the way
    medical information is collected, shared, and used…We
    need control of our data so we can secure it, put it in a place where
    it will be available in a crisis like Katrina, so that we can continue
    to get the care we need. The public doesn’t understand this yet. But
    some people do. . . . So my bet is that medical data is about to start
    moving out of the hospitals, doctors offices, and health care plans,
    into the hands of consumer and the intermediaries they authorize to
    handle their data for them. This is a big opportunity."
  • The Economics of Peer Production (Business 2.0) – Erick Schonfeld writes a very interesting "Future Boy" column about the emergence of peer production as a replacement (complement?) for companies and markets as an organizing structure in the information realm.  Example of peer production: Wikipedia.
  • Yahoo! Print (Business 2.0) – Yahoo1 is taking a different tack than Google when it comes to indexing and searching books.  For one thing they’re concentrating on books already in the public realm.
  • Networking (New York Times) – This piece ties in nicely with the "Economics of Peer Production" piece.  Basically it says that the next wave of productivity improvements in business will come from the collaborative information environments (distributed networks) that businesses are investing in.
  • ‘Folksonomy’ Carries Classifieds Beyond ‘SWF’ and ‘For Sale’ (New York Times) – This article focuses on three web services that allow people to self-organize based on their interests.
  • The Long Tail of Social Software (The Long Tail) – New services like Ning and JotSpot offer opportunities to expand the web’s application explosion.

Reading List October 3, 2005

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  • Geeks and the Technology Feedback Filter (The Post Money Value) – Geeks have a hard time communicating in laymen’s terms, and that’s a problem.
  • The Tower of Babel Has Fallen (Moore’s Lore) – Is the internet about to be broken up into "alternate, regional, and national authorities, replicating the
    stupidity of the old monopoly telecomm system, and preventing all but
    the elites of various nations from reaching one another?" Dana thinks so.
  • Internet War Begins…in the US? (Moore’s Lore) – A private company has established its own DNS root server for a proprietary domain name.  Apparently this is bad, and is a bad omen for the internet in general.  I’m not smart enough to know, but I trust Dana’s judgment on this one.
  • Business Blogging != Executive Blogging (The Long Tail) – If you think business blogging is all about the CEO writing missives then you’ve got it all wrong.

Reading List September 30, 2005

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