July 2004 Archives
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Jul30
Google IPO site is live
Google's IPO site is now live. You can access the prospectus, watch the management presentation (27 minutes 6 seconds), and request a bidder ID. -
Jul30
Kazaa 2.7 promotes user weblogs
Users of Kazaa 2.7 (currently in beta) can promote their weblog or Web site within search result and traffic panes. Once you enter your Web address through the options menu your user name will be hyperlinked in the search results and traffic display. Interesting feature and it adds accountability. I am guessing this feature will be more useful to distributors than end-users. Independent music distributors can direct users to their Web site for more bands or a rich media presentation. Vendors can offer sample clips on Kazaa and link to their sites where a full-length clip is available for purchase. -
Jul30
How to legally distribute cover songs
CD Baby put together a summary of copyright considerations when releasing a cover song as a download or on a CD. More simple than I thought. The toughest part is identifying who to contact.- Identify the publisher.
- Send a letter of intent.
- Pay royalties.
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Jul28
We the Media introduction
This Friday is the official launch of Dan Gillmor's first book: We the Media. The text will be available under a Creative Commons license.
Currently only the book's introduction is online. I thought it would be cool to have an audio version of a portion of the book available by the Creative Commons party this Friday.
Tonight I am happy to make available to the online community my reading of the introduction to We the Media by Dan Gillmor in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis audio formats. My reading lasts 19 minutes and 6 seconds. If you are interested in contributing an audio chapter please let me know through comments, trackback, or e-mail; I would like to setup a RSS feed with enclosures containing audio for each chapter.
[Update 8/12: I created a collection for the audio book on the Internet Archive.]
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Jul28
MailFrontier tests phishing
MailFrontier showed 1,000 consumers examples of phishing e-mails as well as legitimate e-mails. The respondents fell for the phishing message 28 percent of the time. Take the sample quiz and see how you score. (via Slashdot) "About 20 percent of the Web sites devoted to stealing information are hosted in South Korea; another 16 percent are in China, and 7 percent are in Taiwan." -
Jul28
Weblogging about work
I received an e-mail this morning from an executive from my company asking I remove all references to my current employer (Callan) from my Web site. Thanks to Lawrence Lessig, Wendy Seltzer, and Robert Scoble I am already aware of some of the issues at play with branding and trademarks. Someone came across my blog by doing a Google search on Callan. I assume it was someone inside the company because this was passed along to Callan's legal representation (Cooley Godward LLP) and then I was contacted. The first mention of my Web site within search results for Callan Associates points to my résumé. I rarely mention my company in this space and when I do it is related to personal experience and does not communicate any non-public information. Standard stuff. Has anyone else had similar experiences and would like to chime in? Should I block my company's IP addresses from accessing my site? -
Jul27
Corporate branding on New York subways?
New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is exploring selling naming rights to its subway stations, bus lines, bridges and tunnels. Mayor Bloomberg has also proposed selling naming rights to the city's parks. What's in a name? -
Jul26
iTunes on your cell phone
Motorola and Apple announced a partnership to transfer songs from iTunes to a Motorola phone via a USB or Bluetooth connection. Before Steve Jobs made the announcement Ed Zander held up an iPod and a Motorola phone and said "It would be great if we could just figure out a way to bring these two devices together." The start of something bigger? -
Jul26
Jürgen Klinsmann named head coach of German national team
Jürgen Klinsmann is the new head coach of the German national team under a two-year contract. Holger Osieck will be an assistant coach with a general management role and Oliver Bierhoff will be an assistant coach focused on training.
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Jul26
Re-recruit employees instead of focusing on retaining employees
Todd L. Pittinsky of Harvard University and Margaret J. Shih of University of Michigan wrote Knowledge Nomads: Organizational Commitment and Worker Mobility in Positive Perspective, featured in the February issue of American Behavioral Scientist. Mallory Stark of Harvard interviewed Pittinsky about knowledge nomads and approaches to turnover in the July 26 issue of HBS Working Knowledge. I like the conclusions from the studies. More managers need to understand motivation and commitment rather than hours and salary.Turnover is a symptom, not a problem. Change your mantra from "attract and retain the best employees" to "attract and re-recruit the best employees." By re-recruiting employees you build their commitment. Retention will follow, when appropriate. Focusing on turnover can be counterproductive, focusing managers on the wrong things.
We split a cohort of managers of a large business organization, and later a large government agency, in half. Half the managers were asked to identify the steps they would take to retain a valued worker. The other half were asked to identify the steps they would take to elicit commitment from a valued worker. The two groups came back with very different action steps.
The managers who were asked to identify ways to retain workers came back with action steps like "increase salary" and "change his or her title." These are small changes, with little payoff. They may keep an employee in a company for a couple of months, but they will not hold an employee for long, and little productivity will be gained. The managers we asked to identify ways to elicit commitment proposed deeper and more individualized action steps, like "find out what challenges make him or her tick" and "provide opportunities for learning on the job."
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Jul23
San Jose Earthquakes moving to San Francisco?
San Francisco Chronicle: "Mayor Gavin Newsom confirmed Thursday that he has met with Quakes president and general manager Alexi Lalas and other team representatives to talk about moving the Major League Soccer squad north from San Jose." A soccer-specific stadium in China Basin was discussed. Kezar Stadium or SBC Park could be temporary venues until the new stadium is constructed. -
Jul23
Fortune: Money Machines
Ellen Florian wrote an interesting article in Fortune magazine about the history of the automatic teller machine as well as the changes in human-machine interaction they pioneered. (via Slashdot) -
Jul22
Crosby Nash 2004
David Crosby and Graham Nash have come up with a clever way to market their new CD: structure a Web site and weblog like a presidential site. Watch the weblogging world get a hold of the story and you have a very cheap marketing campaign. (via MetaFilter) -
Jul22
Military perk: free cosmetic surgery
Karen Schaler writes about free cosmetic surgery for members of the United States armed forces in the July 26 issue of the The New Yorker.
[P]ersonnel in all four branches of the military and members of their immediate families can get face-lifts, nose jobs, breast enlargements, liposuction, or any other kind of elective cosmetic alteration, at taxpayer expense. (For breast enlargements, patients must supply their own implants.)
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Jul22
Wired News: Open Arms for Open-Source News
Daniel Terdiman of Wired News reports on Bakersfield's The Northwest Voice newspaper giving its readers control of its content through online article posting. "36 percent of the content is photographs, while 13 percent is school news, 11 percent is community events, 7 percent is youth sports and 2 percent is church news. Ten percent of coverage is columns written by locals selected by Fulton for their expertise on things like horses, cars, schools and outdoor life." -
Jul20
Dave Matthews Band free concert
Dave Matthews Band will play a free concert at the Polo Fields in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on September 12. "The concert will benefit Bay Area community charities addressing issues of homelessness among single adults, youth and families, pediatric AIDS and other terminal childhood maladies, Bay Area park improvement and music education resources." -
Jul20
Fast Company on Whole Foods
Charles Fishman writes about Whole Foods in the July 2004 issue of Fast Company. The management insights are very interesting. Every new hire has to win a two-thirds yes vote from their team before being permitted to join the staff permanently. (via Jason Kottke)Every four weeks, individual work teams (there are roughly 10 per store) are assessed for productivity, and profit sharing is awarded in every other paycheck.
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Jul20
BBC expanding its search offerings
In an interview with the Guardian, Ashley Highfield of the BBC mentions their new push into search as alternative to U.S. based companies such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. "[A]s the market came to be dominated by US sites - the most popular of which is Google - there was value in investing licence fee payers' money in a UK-centric search engine." The BBC's current search offering uses Inktomi but optimizes results for a UK audience. -
Jul19
IBM alphaWorks aDesigner
aDesigner is a disability simulator that helps Web designers "test the accessibility and usability of Web pages for low-vision and blind people." Only available on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. -
Jul19
Jason Cook's Atom and RSS optimization guide
Jason Cook wrote a optimization guide for Atom and RSS and it is now available on Webmonkey. GZip compress, use conditional gets, and validate your feeds. A good use of statistics to drive the point home. -
Jul17
Los Alamos National Laboratory shut down
Wired News: " Los Alamos National Laboratory director Pete Nanos shut down the country's leading nuclear weapons lab on Friday, after a set of classified computer disks disappeared and a student was hit in the eye with a powerful laser beam -- all in the space of a week." -
Jul15
McKinsey Quarterly on the business of sports
The July 2004 issue of McKinsey Quarterly does a good job breaking down what makes sports successful and what hinders large scale success. Tekla V. Back, Philippe Blatter, and Jacques R. Bughin authored "Playing to win in the business of sports" and focused on tennis and golf as two case studies. Some interesting facts:- The 2002 FIFA World Cup accounted for 8% of global television-rights revenues in 2002 (about the same as the NBA and NASCAR combined).
- In the United States the average golf or tennis TV viewer has an income of more than $100,000 a year.
- Professional tennis is fragmented. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) handles Olympic tennis events, the Davis Cup (men), and the Fed Cup (women). The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) runs the men's circuit, and the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) runs the women's circuit.
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Jul14
MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! to interoperate on instant messaging software
News.com reports Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005 will allow corporate users of AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger to communicate. Microsoft will pay AOL and Yahoo a royalty for connecting to Live Communications Server. -
Jul14
Major League Soccer expands to Salt Lake City
Major League Soccer announced Salt Lake City as the site of the league's newest expansion team. The team will be owned and operated by Dave Checketts' Sports Capital Partners. The team will play at the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles stadium for its first two seasons. Rice-Eccles stadium is the home of the United Soccer League's Utah Blitzz and was the site of the 2002 Winter Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. The playing field is synthetic Field Turf, not real grass. -
Jul12
Kodak Plus Digital Film
Kodak has new 35mm and Advantix film named Plus Digital Film. Take your 35mm camera, pop in the 35mm and I am sure most consumers will think they have just upgraded to digital photography. What is digital about this product? If you process your photographs using Kodak's Perfect Touch processing service they will return your prints with a free CD. In case you regularly forget to check the box on the envelope indicating you would like a scan of your photographs on CD, your film's packaging lets the photo lab know you would really like a CD with your prints.
Very bad idea. I can see the Wal-Mart shoppers thinking they have just upgraded their camera with this canister of 35mm film.
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Jul12
John Battelle interviews Tony Scott, CTO of GM
John Battelle interviewed Tony Scott, CTO of GM, in the July 2004 issue of Business 2.0.When you go to a gas station now, you can stick the nozzle into the gas tank and it works. But in the early days of the auto industry, there were 2,000 car companies, nothing was standardized, and demand far exceeded supply. In that early era, you could do whatever you wanted. The tech industry has by and large been in that same mode. But that's now changing.
Today in the typical car, and it doesn't matter whether it's a GM or a Honda (HMC), electronics and software represent roughly about a third of the cost of the car, more than the labor or the steel. They're the single biggest cost in a car today -- and rising.
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Jul12
HFS+ and Spotlight
John Gruber of Daring Fireball takes a closer look at Spotlight and Dominic Giampaolo's modifications to HFS+ which enable the rich desktop search.
Some interesting issues.
[T]he new Tiger version of Mail stores each message as a separate file that allows Spotlight to effectively return individual mail messages as search results. No other major mail client uses a one-message-per-file storage format.
Importers are fired on every file the moment it is created, saved, changed, or moved, including when files are made available through a newly mounted drive.
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Jul12
Google S-1/A Filing
Google filed a S1/A with the SEC this morning. Among the changes are a list of subsidiaries (exhibit 21.01). Applied Semantics, Kaltix, Neotonic, and Orkut are listed as subsidiaries. -
Jul12
Roomba Discovery
The Roomba Discovery is the second version of iRobot's robotic vacuum cleaner. Twice as powerful, quicker charge time, self-charging home base, intense cleaning mode, and larger dust bin are just some of the new features. $250 from the iRobot Store. There is also a special page for current Roomba owners.
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Jul11
Procter & Gamble creates Cover Girl music label
Procter & Gamble has partnered with Atlantic Records to create a Cover Girl music label. CG Vibesplans to promote itself on social networking site Tickle.com. In need of a targeted sell, a consumer staples company decides to use the online world to target women and help sell more makeup. -
Jul09
W Ketchup
If your choice of ketchup makes you feel like a Democrat buy some patriotic W Ketchup today. Dedicated to Ronald Reagan. Made from the finest California tomatoes using ketchup techniques passed down through American generations. Made in Ohio. "You don't support Democrats. Why should your ketchup?"
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Jul07
NY Times on Microsoft's MSN search changes
David Pogue of The New York Times looks at the new search offerings from MSN and compares the experience and the result to Google and Yahoo. "MSN Search couldn't look more like Google if you photocopied it." -
Jul07
Technorati tracks 3 million weblogs
Technorati broke past the 3 million weblog mark last night. "On an average weekday, we're seeing over 15,000 new weblogs created per day. That means that a new weblog is created somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds." Technorati pulls new weblogs from sources like weblogs.com and blo.gs. You could of course ping Technorati directly, but I would like to see a more stable what's new service with the traffic and hosting burdens shouldered by the industry. -
Jul07
Bloglines introduces clip blogs
Bloglines revealed a new user interface last night, as well as a new feature for adding an item to your "clippings" and posting to a blog. The clipping service uses the link and the title element. -
Jul06
Pickberry vineyard's wireless sensor network
BBC News: "Pickberry in Sonoma County is using a wireless net to gather data from sensors in its fields that monitor key conditions such as temperature, humidity and soil moisture." -
Jul01
Summer's best and worst album covers
Whitney Matheson created a list of 10 best and 5 worst album covers of the summer for USA Today. (via Jason Kottke) I am so disappointed when I buy a CD with bad liner notes or none at all. Keep the good stuff coming and I will place the work on a shelf in addition to my hard drive. Pearl Jam's Vitalogy was an early work to buck the trend of plastic conformity. -
Jul01
Selling a Google Gmail account is a prohibited action
Google updated their Gmail program policies as of June 28, 2004. Users may not "sell, trade, resell or otherwise exploit for any unauthorized commercial purpose or transfer any Gmail account." -
Jul01
Why soccer is more American than baseball.
Daniel Gross writes about the capitalism of soccer and the protectionism of American sports in Slate.. "American sports are virtually all socialistic while the European soccer leagues more closely resemble the entrepreneurial capitalism we Americans fetishize."
