Category Archives: Business

Steven Levy writes about Nick

Steven Levy writes about Nick Denton and Gawker Media in Wired magazine. Writers are typically paid $1500 a month (contract, not full time) and build a reputation good enough for a traditional publisher. Levy estimates Gawker Media nets $80,000 per blog per year. “Denton’s move to professionalize blogs bestowed instant credibility on an unknown single-writer Web site.”…

NY Times: Workplaces in malls and cafes

Matt Richtel of the New York Times writes about Cisco, Microsoft, and I.B.M.’s test market for public work spaces. Mobile workers want a structured environment to work, but also the opportunity to meet others. Target the small business workers and the artists and you will have a nice place to work, meet, and consume. “[T]he essential factor in luring office workers was to give them the aura of freedom; there was no pretense that they are in an office, even though they might be working intensely for hours”…

Women increase productivity in single gender groups?

Alex Tabarrok writes in the Marginal Revolution weblog about competitive differences between males and females. His writing is based on an article in the August 2003 issue (Vol. 118, Issue 3) of The Quarterly Journal of Economics written by Uri Gneezy, Muriel Niederle and Aldo Rustichini. Very interesting implications for sports as well as business. [I]n the single-sex tournaments the women’s performance improves considerably relative to both their performance in the piece rate system and to their performance in the mixed tournament. Women do like to compete just not against men!…

Is equity based compensation a good thing?

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge columnist Stever Robbins addresses equity-based compensation as a motivator. You want people emotionally invested in the company’s success. You can get that investment by giving them meaningful work in service of a worthwhile goal. Hire people who believe in what you’re doing and match them to jobs. If you want to reward their commitment, then give them stock, but make it crystal clear you’re rewarding their innate involvement, not trying to buy it. Stock ownership is also bestowing title upon key employees. You are becoming a partner in the business, however small your partnership stake…

Change in RSS 2.0 feed

Today I changed my RSS feed from excerpt to full text. I did not realize this was the default MovableType setting, but I do appreciate full text in other people’s feeds, especially for offline viewing. I would like to follow the best practices of blogging and incorporate any community tools that are out there, so please let me know if there is something I should be aware of….