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I am so proud of my sister Mimi (and her colleagues like danah boyd) today. Her work funded by the MacArthur Foundation was released today and is getting a lot of coverage in the press. It's the result of a three-year study of the the way young people use digital technologies and media and provides rigor in an area that is cluttered with anecdotal and often misguided notions about what kids do and what's good for kids.
The New York Times
Teenagers' Internet Socializing Not a Bad ThingGood news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.
"It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it's on MySpace or sending instant messages," said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, "Living and Learning With New Media." "But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They're learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page."
You can download the report from the project page. The report is CC licensed of course. ;-)
Stack Overflow Podcast episode 30 is up, with special guest Richard White of UserVoice.
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Abendblatt: Wie groß ist die Kinderporno-Szene in Deutschland?So wichtig die Bekämpfung der Kinderpornographie ist, hier wird der falsche Ansatz gewählt. Schon jetzt gibt es einen rechtlichen Rahmen und natürlich ist Kinderpornographie verboten. Sperrlisten für Websites bringen erst einmal gar nichts, vor allem weil sicherlich der meiste Traffic im Bereich Kinderpornographie über Peer2Peer-Netze ablaufen wird. Da kommen gerne dann Zensur-Phantasien auf, die nicht nur zeigen, dass es ein wenig ausgeprägtes Verständnis vom Internet gibt, sondern auch der Ruf des starken Staates als das Heilmittel geht. Frau von der Leyen will eine Art große chinesische Firewall für Deutschland, natürlich alles nur, um Kinderpornographie herauszufiltern.
Von der Leyen:Es gibt eine riesige Dunkelziffer. Es wird immer mehr über kommerzielle Websites verbreitet. Da werden Millionenbeträge verdient. Pornografische Videos, auf denen Kinder gequält und gefoltert werden, werden allein in Deutschland bis zu 50.000-mal im Monat heruntergeladen. Die Bandbreite reicht vom Pädokriminellen bis zum User, der wahllos sucht und ignoriert, dass er sich gerade die Einstiegsdroge besorgt.
Abendblatt: Was unternimmt die Regierung?
Von der Leyen: Das Allerwichtigste ist, dass das BKA wie bisher Täter ermittelt und gezielt Quellen schließt. Das reicht nicht. Ich will einen Damm bauen gegen die Flut der Bilder, indem wir den Zugang für den Kunden blockieren.
Abendblatt: Heißt konkret?
Von der Leyen: Wir schließen die Datenautobahn der Kinderpornografie. Das BKA erstellt Listen der kinderpornografischen Websites. Jetzt sollen die Zugangsanbieter gesetzlich verpflichtet werden, die Listen zu beachten und solche Websites unverzüglich zu schließen. Der Kunde klickt an und läuft ins Leere - kein Anschluss unter dieser Nummer. Das ist technisch möglich, und es ist rechtlich möglich.
Make money: not by building an internet company, but by using the net as a tool to create value and get paid. Use the internet as a tool, not as an end. Do it when you are part of a big organization or do it as a soloist. The dramatic leverage of the net more than overcomes the downs of the current economy.
The essence is this: connect.
Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value.
Some examples? I think it's worth delineating these so you can see that the opportunity can be big, if that's your taste, or small if you don't want to invest heavily just yet.
Connect advertisers to people who want to be advertised to.
Dani Levy did this with Daily Candy, a company she recently sold for more than a hundred million dollars. Daily Candy uses simple email software, there's no technology tricks involved. Instead, it's a simple permission marketing business... hundreds of thousands of the right people, getting an anticipated, personal and relevant email every day. (Note! This only works if you earn true permission, not that sort of fake half and half version that's so common).
Connect job hunters with jobs.
My friend Tara has made hundreds of thousands of dollars (in good years) working as an executive recruiter. But what did she actually do all day? She stayed connected with a cadre of people. She kept track of the all stars. She connected with the right people, invested time in them that her clients never thought was worth it. So, when it was time to hire, it was easier for them to call Tara than it was for them to start from scratch. The best time to start a gig like this is right now, when no one in particular wants to connect with and help out the superstars. Later, when the economy bounces back, your position is extremely valuable. (Note! This only works if you have insane focus and the people you interact with are the true superstars, not just numbers).
Connect information seekers with information.
At a large scale, this is what Bloomberg did to make his fortune. Spending $$$ on a Bloomberg terminal guarantees a user at least a fifteen minute head start on people who don't have one. But consider how many micro markets where this connection doesn't occur. Michael Cader offers it to book publishers and does quite well. Which industry needs you to channel and collect and connect?
On a micro level, there are now people making thousands of dollars a month running their pages on Squidoo. That's almost enough to be a full time job for a curious person with the generosity to share useful information.
Connect teams to each other.
How much is on the line when a company puts ten people in three offices on a quest to launch a major new product in record time? The question, then, is why wouldn't they be willing to spend a little more to hire a team concierge? Someone to manage Basecamp and conference calls and scheduling and document source control to be sure the right people have the right information at the right time... I don't think most organizations can hire someone to do this full time, but I bet this is a great specialty for someone who is good at it.
Connect those seeking similar.
Who's running the ad hoc association of green residential architects? Or connecting the hundred CFOs at the hundred largest banks in the US? It's amazing how isolated most people are, even in a world crowded with people. I know of a guy who built an insanely profitable business around connecting C level executives at the Fortune 500. After all, there are only 500 of them. They want to know what the others are doing... (Consider this example)
Connect to partners and those that can leverage your work.
Freelances had no power because they depended on the client to hook them up with the rest of the team that could leverage their work. But what if you do that before you approach the client? What if you, the graphic designer, have a virtual partner who is an award winning copywriter and another partner who is a well-know illustrator? You could walk in the door and offer detailed PDFs or other high-impact viral electronic media in a turnkey package.
Connect people who are proximate geographically.
We all know that newspapers are tanking. Yet news, it appears, is on the rise. This paradox is an opportunity. Who is connecting the 10,000 people in your little community/suburb/town/zip code to each other? One person who spends all day at school board meetings, breaking stories about a dumping scandal, profiling a local business person or teacher? If you did that, and built an audience of thousands by RSS and email... do you think you'd have any trouble selling out the monthly cocktail party/mixer? Any trouble finding sponsors among local businesses for a media property that actually and truly reaches everyone?
Connect organizations spending money with ways to save money.
During the last recession, plenty of entrepreneurs scored by selling businesses on doing a phone bill audit. They took 30% of the first year's savings and did the work for free. Today, there are countless ways businesses can save money using technology and outsourcing, but few take full advantage. You can train them to do this and keep a share of the savings.
Connect like-minded people into a movement.
We've seen plenty of headstrong bootstrapped entrepreneurs turn a blog into the cornerstone of a multi-million dollar empire. The secret: they don't write their blog for everyone. Instead, they use the blog as the center connecting point for a niche, and then go from there. It's easy to list the tech successes, but there are literally 10,000 other niches just waiting for someone to connect them.
Connect people buying with people who are selling.
Sure, you know how to use Craigslist and eBay to buy and sell... but most people don't. How about finding people in your town with junk that needs removing, items that need selling, odd jobs that need filling... and then, for a fee, solve their problems using your laptop and these existing networks? Imagine the power, just to pick one example, of building an email alert list of 500 garage sale bargain hunters. Every time you email them, they show up. Now, you can walk into any home in any town and guarantee the biggest garage sale success they've ever seen... and you have the photos to prove it. As long as you protect the list and do for them, not to them, this asset increases in value.
The best time to do any of these projects was five years ago, so that today you'd be earning thousands of dollars a week. Too late. The second best time to start: now.
Tomorrow is the WITNESS Gala and we will be honoring WITNESS' partner Comissão Pastoral da Terra for its work to end slave labor in rural Brazil.
We just met Silvano Lima Rezende at the WITNESS Board Meeting. Silvano will be representing the CPT tomorrow at the Gala.
Here's a video of their work.
Over at the American Express OPEN Forum, I posted an article explaining “The Art of Laying People Off.” Actually, I hope you don’t have to read it.

Creative Commons BlogCampaign Exclusive: Custom USB Drives & Unreleased Jonathan Coulton Album
The ever innovative Brooklyn-based singer songwriter Jonathan Coulton has teamed up with Creative Commons to release his greatest hits compilation "JoCo Looks Back" on a 1gb custom Creative Commons jump drive to help support our 2008 campaign. If that weren't enough, JoCo and CC have also included all of the unmixed audio tracks for every song on the drive. That's over 700mb of JoCo thing-a-week goodness. Since all of JoCo's music is released under our Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, this is an incredible opportunity for the public to remix and reuse his fantastic music. Song files are in 320kbps MP3 and unmixed audio tracks are in 256 VBR MP3.
We'll be offering the drives exclusively at our $50 dollar donation level (and above) until December 31st. Also included are a CreativeCommons.net account, an OpenID identity, and a 2008 campaign sticker.
Creative Commons Blog Commoner Letter #3: Jonathan Coulton[...]
It's hard to overstate the degree to which CC has contributed to my career as a musician. In 2005 I started Thing a Week, a project in which I recorded a new song every week and released it for free on my website and in a podcast feed, licensing everything with Creative Commons. Over the course of that year, my growing audience started to feed back to me things they had created based on my music: videos, artwork, remixes, card games, coloring books. I long ago lost track of this torrent of fan-made stuff, and of course I'll never know how many people simply shared my music with friends, but there's no question in my mind that Creative Commons is a big part of why I'm now able to make a living this way. Indeed, it's where much of my audience comes from - there are some fan-made music videos on YouTube that have been viewed millions of times. That's an enormous amount of exposure to new potential fans, and it costs me exactly zero dollars.
When you're an artist, it's a wonderful thing to hear from a fan who likes what you do. But it's even more thrilling to see that someone was moved enough to make something brand new based on it - that your creative work has inspired someone to do more creative work, that your little song had a child and that child was a YouTube video that a million people watched. A Creative Commons license is like a joy multiplier. The art you create adds to the world whenever someone appreciates it, but you also get karma credit for every new piece of art it inspires. And around and around. This is my favorite thing about Creative Commons: the act of creation becomes not the end, but the beginning of a creative process that links complete strangers together in collaboration. To me it's a deeply satisfying and beautiful vision of what art and culture can be.
[...]
Thanks so much for this Jonathan and thanks for all of the great thoughts and kind words in the commoner letter.
Why do banks spend so much money on marble lobbies, high ceilings and yes, $400 million to name a baseball stadium?
Why do marketers buy TV ads that don't increase sales in the short run?
Why have a receptionist and not just a house phone where you can call the person you came to see?
For the same reason that so many people have a green front lawn.
It's organized waste. Profligate spending designed to communicate confidence and just a bit of hubris.
Do you really want to invest money at a bank run by a guy with nothing but a bridge table and a cheap suit? Probably not. At some level, we like the confidence that we get from that big lobby. We are more likely to perk up when the reporter has her cameraman aim a huge black video camera (with lights!) at us, even though the little hand held camera might work just as well...
In times of financial stress and bailouts, the obvious solution (eliminate all the waste!) is not the one that works. In fact, in these times, we're more likely than ever to be nervous about the status of the organization we're working with.
I'd replace the expensive sponsorships and buildings with something more valuable, quicker to market and far more efficient: people. Real people, trustworthy people, honest people... people who take their time, look you in the eye, answer the phone and keep their promises. Not as easy to implement as writing a big check for the Super Bowl, but a lot more effective.
Michiko Kakutani reviews Malcolm Gladwell's latest book in the New York Times: “Much of what Mr. Gladwell has to say about superstars is little more than common sense: that talent alone is not enough to ensure success, that opportunity, hard work, timing and luck play important roles as well. The problem is that he then tries to extrapolate these observations into broader hypotheses about success. These hypotheses not only rely heavily on suggestion and innuendo, but they also pivot deceptively around various anecdotes and studies that are selective in the extreme: the reader has no idea how representative such examples are, or how reliable — or dated — any particular study might be.”
This review captures what's been driving me crazy over the last year... an unbelievable proliferation of anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works. Whether it's Thomas Friedman, who, it seems, cannot go a whole week without inventing a new fruit-based metaphor explaining everything about the entire modern world, all based on some random jibberish he misunderstood from a taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur, or Malcolm Gladwell with his weak theories on tipping points, crazy incorrect theories on first impressions, or utterly lunatic theories on experts, it all becomes insanely popular simply because the stories are fun and interesting and everybody wants to hear a good story. Spare me.
Friedman and Gladwell's outsized, flat-world success has lead to a huge number of wannabes. I was really looking forward to reading Simplexity, because it sounded like an interesting topic, until I settled down with it tonight and discovered that it was chock-full of all those amusing bedtime stories about the map of the cholera plague in London in 1854, which I've heard a million times, and then suddenly I noticed (shock!) that not only was the author a journalist, not a scientist, but he was actually an editor at Time Magazine, which has an editorial method in which editors write stories based on notes submitted by reporters (the reporters don't write their own stories), so it's practically designed to get everything wrong, to insure that, no matter how ignorant the reporters are on an issue, they'll find someone who knows even less to write the actual story. Panicking, I began to flip through the book at random. There's that story about Don Norman and complicated user interfaces. Here he is reading Nassim Taleb. I've heard all these anecdotes! Stop, already! I threw the book away in frustration.
This is the third one of the day. My business partner Jeff Atwood was busy extracting himself from the flamewars he started by writing an article on, of all things, NP-completeness, which is, actually, something that it's possible to know something about, because it's not a vague sociological hypotheticoncept like simplexiflatness or blinkoutliers, it's actually a real, important result from Computer Science, with a rigorous definition and lots of published papers, and poor Jeff got himself in something of a pickle by writing a book review when he hadn't read the book, and fortunately, he has comments on his blog, so his readers called him out on it.
Now, I am not one to throw stones. Heck, I practically invented the formula of "tell a funny story and then get all serious and show how this is amusing anecdote just goes to show that (one thing|the other) is a universal truth." And everybody is like, oh yes! how true! and they link to it with approval, and it zooms to the top of Slashdot. And six years later, a new king arises who did not know Joel, and he writes up another amusing anecdote, really, it's the same anecdote, and he uses it to prove the exact opposite, and everyone is like, oh yes! how true! and it zooms to the top of Reddit.
This is not the way to move science forward. On Sunday Dave Winer [partially] defined "great blogging" as "people talking about things they know about, not just expressing opinions about things they are not experts in (nothing wrong with that, of course)." Can we get some more of that, please? Thanks.
Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
[This post is cynical. You've been warned.]
If you think that's a friend of yours on twitter, don't be so sure.
If you wonder why your boss sent such an insane email to you, don't be so sure.
If you get a chance to invest online, think twice.
Don't buy anything from an inbound phone call.
That email you sent in confidence... probably won't be read that way. And that photo, yes, it's going to show up in the digital world where you least want to see it...
In your little village, where you see your neighbor every day for ten years and the person in the next car might be the local constable, the rules are very simple and obeyed by all. In an electronic world, it's trivial to impersonate, hack and otherwise annoy.
Online, rely on direct, personal interactions to be sure you're seeing what you think you're seeing. Trust, but verify.


Just finished a trip to Abu Dhabi and Dubai to attend and speak at the Electronic Media conference organized by the Higher Colleges of Technology. (Conference program) The request came through Ambassador Hatano and the Japanese Embassy. Thanks for the referral Ambassador!
The host was Sheikh Nahayan, a very popular Sheikh who is the Chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology and the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research. They call him the "People's Sheikh" because he has an open door policy where anyone can visit him at his residence without an appointment and meet with him if they're willing to wait. This system reminds me a bit of Edward Hall's P-Time.
The conference was a lot of fun. All of the speakers were really great.
The general themes of the meeting were how the Net was affecting publishing and journalism. We also discussed Arab media and media in the UAE.
While we had some different perspectives of the role of amateurs in journalism, there was much more agreement considering the diversity of positions represented. We had wide spectrum of traditional journalists and publishers. The discussion was more constructive than any I've had recently with such a diverse group and we really focused on the mechanics and metrics of various business models for the future of journalism. One great example was Vidar Meisingseth's presentation about VG News Portal, a Norwegian news site that gets a huge percentage of its revenue from online and a substantial amount of news from amateur photographers and "tips" that come in via SMS, phone and email.
Alexandra Pringle, the Editor in Chief of Bloomsbury talked about the book publishing business and mentioned Bloomsbury Academic that Frances Pinter is running which will have Creative Commons licensed books available for download with print on demand for those who want to buy a printed version. They will be publishing Lessig's Remix in May.
We discussed the topic of censorship although it wasn't on the program. Many of the visiting speakers talked about the importance of freedom of speech. There was a very interesting comment from a student in the audience who said she had discussed this with her other friends there and represented their view. She said that often foreigners come to the UAE and criticize online censorship, but that she thought it was fine. She said that most of the citizens respected the rulers and that blocking certain sites was not necessarily a bad thing. Citizens of Abu Dhabi represent only 20% of the population or so. It would be interesting to find out what the rest of the population thinks.
According to the Access Denied report on the UAE: "The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) pervasively filters Web sites that contain pornography or relate to alcohol and drug use, gay and lesbian issues, or online dating or gambling. Web-based applications and religious and political sites are also filtered, though less extensively. Additionally, legal controls limit free expression and behavior, restricting political discourse and dissent online." If you look at the chart on the page, it looks like the social stuff is the focus of the censorship however.
One thing that I've found in my limited travels in Jordan and the UAE is that there is quite a diversity of positions among the young people with respect to social and religious practices. Samr Husain Al Marzouqi explained how he worked very hard at MTV to make it cool but still respectful of the various positions including those kids who adhere to somewhat conservative beliefs.
I talked about a number of topics including amateur vs professional, Creative Commons, blogs, micro-blogging, mobile and the need to allow people to use video remix as a form of political expression. I talked a bit about the success that the Communist Party of Japan have been having using Nico Nico Douga. (Takeshi Natsuno talked about this at the DG New Context Conference. There is a good article by Chris Salzberg on Global Voices about this as well.)
Some photos from the trip are on Flickr.
I just met with Eduardo Elsztain founder of Irsa and Cresud (stock symbols in NY, IRS and CRESY). The meeting was around 90 minutes long. Eduardo has put together the largest office building, land, hotel, residential and shopping mall company in Argentina that is made of three holding companies Irsa, Cresud and Alto Palermo. Unfortunately he has assembled a complicated ownership structure in which some of his companies own parts of his other companies making the whole thing very confusing. Having said this there´s no doubt that the properties that are owned by this real estate holding companies are prime and that Eduardo is probably running the real estate company with the smallest debt to equity ratio in the world. As opposed to other real estate companies who are all struggling to refinance their debts Eduardo´s companies have very little debt (3 times cash flow) and they do not need refinancing. This is a short post and I don´t have time to explain why I felt that his shares were a good buy in detail but I did. Considering that these shares are 80% down and trading at probably 20c on the dollar in terms of asset value at current Argentine market prices I do think they are a steal and I will buy some. But I am convinced is that the way to get the most value over time for Eduardo is to start selling all the properties he owns and pay the cash proceeds to himself and his shareholders. It is clear that the market, at least now, gives a deep discount to his ownership structure.
Join me, Andy Sernovitz, Pam Slim, and Rich Sloan for a Reality Check teleseminar today (11/18/08). 2:00 pm Pacific time. Sign up here.
You hear yourself saying:
"First, let me apologize for the lighting. We tried very hard to make the screen brighter, but we failed. Before I start, I want to thank seventeen people by name... Now, on this third slide, we see the dynamic effects of our incendiary marketing strategy... Just a few more minutes here... I'm sorry, I don't know why the web connection isn't working quite right... For those of you that remember my talk two years ago... As I was saying to Sir Reginald..."
What the audience hears:
"Blah, blah, blah... interesting tidbit... blah, blah, blah... exciting insight... blah, blah, blah, etc."
My suggestion is that you eliminate all the blahs, eliminate the apologies, eliminate the thank you's, eliminate everything except two interesting tidbits and all the exciting insights.
No audience member, in the history of presentations (written or live) has ever said, "it was exciting, useful and insightful but far too short."
Ob ich es will, oder nicht, Xing ist eines der größten Social Networks in Deutschland. Und wenn ich wissen will, was ich bei NoseRub den Leuten bieten muss, um diese freie und offene Alternative dem geschlossenen und teurem Xing tatkräftig entgegenstellen zu können, muss ich mich darin bewegen.
Schön, dass die alte URL noch gilt :-) xing.com/profile/Dirk_Olbertz
Natürlich auch auf meinem Identoo.com-Profil zu finden…
Als nächstes kommt dann noch ein StudiVZ-Account dazu… Schüttel
That's the current motto of the folks over at Motrin. There's been a ton of buzz the last two days about a botched ad campaign they ran, but this post isn't really about that. It's about being a human being and feeling pain.
After running an ad that offended some people, Motrin decided to take it down. This is what they put up on their website:
This isn't a honest note from a real person. It's the carefully crafted non-statement of a committee. What an opportunity to get personal and connected and build bridges...
Read down to the fine print. It says, "Why you can no longer find Children's MOTRIN® Chewable Tablets". This obviously has nothing to do with the apology, it was always there. Click on it. It takes you to their FAQ, so you have to read through all the questions to find the one to click on. Click on it again. Read through the text until you find this: "Children's MOTRIN® Chewable Tablets have been temporarily discontinued."
Oh!
Thanks for telling us.
TV demands that you broadcast. TV demands that you talk at us. It's the only possible solution.
The web, on the other hand, doesn't respond as well to that. It responds extremely well to moments of honesty and candor. Real people feeling our pain.

Zum dritten Mal findet am 20. November 2008 die Firmenkontaktmesse GROW im Lichthof der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München statt.
Nach zwei erfolgreichen Kontaktmessen im vergangenen Jahr stellen sich auch am Donnerstag, den 20. November, eine Menge junger Start-ups vor. Interessierten Studenten aller Fachrichtungen wird die Möglichkeit geboten, Einblicke in deren Aktivitäten und Besonderheiten zu gewinnen.
Unter anderen sind dabei:
AllMyShots
Käuferportal
Landwärme
MindGlobe Solutions
Pay.On
Stylight
Die GROW bietet Besuchern die Möglichkeit, eine interessante Auswahl an Unternehmen auf einmal kennen zu lernen und sich in ungezwungener Atmosphäre mit Gründern und Wegbereitern auszutauschen. Hierbei werden insbesondere konkrete Praktikums-, Werkstudenten- und Einstiegsoptionen vermittelt.
Vor allem an den Münchener Universitäten entstandene Start-Ups suchen auf der GROW den Dialog mit Studenten und unterbreiten ihre innovativen Geschäftskonzepte. Erfolgreiche Jungunternehmen wie beispielsweise Abitero, Amiando, MyHeimat und Cleversoft präsentierten auf der vorjährigen Veranstaltung die Realisierungsmöglichkeiten studentischer Gründungsvorhaben und diskutierten mit den Besuchern zudem deren individuelle Einstiegsmöglichkeiten.
Veranstaltet wird die Kontaktmesse von Studenten des CDTM (Center for Digital Technology and Management), einem Kooperationsprojekt von LMU und TU München.
Die GROW findet am 20. November 2008 von 10-16 Uhr im Lichthof der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1) statt; der Besuch ist kostenlos.
Weitere Informationen über die Innovative Start-Up-Messe gibt es unter
[grow.cdtm.de ]
Vor allem verschweigen die DFB-Mitteilungen Entscheidendes: zwei gerichtliche Beschlüsse zu meinen Gunsten - den Beschluss des Landgerichts Berlin vom 9. September 2008 (der anschließenden Beschwerde des DFB wurde ebenfalls nicht stattgegeben) und den Beschluss des 9. Zivilsenats des Kammergerichts Berlin vom 10. Oktober 2008, das die Beschwerde ebenfalls zurückgewiesen hat. In anderen Worten: Mit der Wahrheit belästigt der DFB weder per Email noch per Pressemitteilung.Nun könnte man geneigt sein, die Auseinandersetzung zwischen dem DFB und einem Sportjournalisten einfach als Petitesse anzusehen, aber wenn man dann in dem Newsletter des DFB weiterliest, steht dort:
Festgehalten ist, dass wir es auch nicht in - mehr oder weniger anonymen - Internetblogs hinnehmen können, dass Persönlichkeiten des öffentlichen Lebens grundlos diffamiert werden. Betroffen im konkreten Fall war unser DFB-Präsident Dr. Theo Zwanziger, morgen aber kann dies schon wieder jemand anderes sein.Das muß man sich erst einmal auf der Zunge zergehen lassen. Der DFB kommt vor Gericht nicht durch, redet hier weiterhin von Diffamierung des Theo Zwanziger und holt im Gegenzug die grosse mediale Keule heraus und versucht den betreffenden Journalisten und noch dazu gleich jeden, der Blogs nutzt, pauschal zu diskreditieren.
I had lunch (a big lunch) with a college student last week. An hour later, she got up and announced she was going to get a snack. Apparently, she was hungry.
By any traditional definition of the word, she wasn’t actually hungry. She didn’t need more fuel to power her through an afternoon of sitting around. No, she was bored. Or yearning for a feeling of fullness. Or eager for the fun of making something or the break in the routine that comes from eating it. Most likely, she wanted the psychic satisfaction that she associates with eating well-marketed snacks.
Marketers taught us this. Marketers taught well-fed consumers to want to eat more than we needed, and consumers responded by spending more and getting fat in the process.
Marketers taught to us amplify our wants, since needs aren’t a particularly profitable niche for them. Isn't it interesting that we don't even have a word for these marketing-induced non-needs? No word for sold-hungry or sold-lonely...
Thirsty? Well, Coke doesn’t satisfy thirst nearly as well as water does. What Coke does do is satisfy our need for connection or sugar or brand fun or consumption or Americana or remembering summer days by the creek...
People don’t need Twitter or an SUV or a purse from Coach. We don’t need much of anything, actually, but we want a lot. Truly successful industries align their ‘wants’ with basic needs (like hunger) and consumers (that’s us) cooperate all day long.
Think you could live without the $1800 a year you spend on cell phone service and $1200 a year you spend on cable TV? Of course you can. You did ten years ago. But now, that high-speed, always-on connection to the rest of the world is so associated with your basic need of connection that you can't easily divorce the two.
As discretionary corporate and individual spending contracts, what’s going to get cut first? The obvious wants. The corporate dining room or the big screen TV for Christmas. What’s interesting to watch are the things that we can’t live without, the things we think we need, not want. Those things won’t get cut, yet most of them aren’t needs at all. That’s because the industries that market these items have done a brilliant job of persuading us that they are needs after all.
If you truly believe in what you sell, that's where you need to be, creating wants that become needs. And if you're a consumer (or a business that consumers) it might be time to look at what you've been sold as a need that's actually a want.

Ray Schraff is the person who convinced me to start a blog. He found this email (note the date!). At the time, I was running a mailing list for my book, Rules for Revolutionaries. Three years later I started my blog with this post and a brief history of mine. So much for me being an early adopter!
Mir ging es dabei keineswegs um Zensur, sondern schlicht um eine wahre Tatsachen-Darstellung. Der juristische Weg hat sich dafür insoweit als problematisch erwiesen, als durch die Struktur von Wikipedia die anderen Userinnen und User in Mitleidenschaft gezogen werden. Das war nicht meine Absicht. Gemeinsam mit Wikimedia e.V. werde ich nach anderen Wegen suchen, um den offenen und freien Charakter von Wikipedia so weiter auszugestalten, dass Persönlichkeitsrechte gewahrt bleiben.Ach ja, erst einmal mit völlig untauglichen Mitteln aus vollen Rohren schiessen und dann die Zusammenarbeit anbieten wollen? Das ist ja wohl die miserabelste Art und Weise der Konfliktlösung. Ich rate Herrn Heilmann erst einmal, einen VHS-Kurs zu besuchen, damit er die Funktionsweise des Internet ansatzweise versteht. Derartig bescheuerte Vorgehensweisen braucht niemand und das negative Medien-Echo hat sich dieser sog. Volksvertreter auch ordentlich verdient.
Dozens of volunteers, working together, put together this ebook:
Yours to share or print or email, but please don't sell it or change it.
Not only is there a juicy insight on every page, but I'm comfortable saying it's the best designed PDF I've ever seen, worth making into a template for your next project.
Enjoy it.
Der Geist des Widerstands gegen die Regierung kann in bestimmten Situationen so wertvoll sein, dass ich wünschte, man könnte ihn ewig am Leben erhalten. Sicherlich wird er sich oft zu Unrecht Bahn brechen, aber das ist immer noch besser, als wenn er sich überhaupt nicht regt. Mich erfreut hier und da eine kleine Rebellion. Sie ist wie ein Sturm in der Atmosphäre.
Mit einstweiliger Verfügung des Landgerichts Lübeck vom 13. November 2008, erwirkt durch Lutz Heilmann, MdB (Die Linke), wird es dem Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. untersagt, "die Internetadresse wikipedia.de auf die Internetadresse de.wikipedia.org weiterzuleiten", solange "unter der Internet-Adresse de.wikipedia.org" bestimmte Äußerungen über Lutz Heilmann vorgehalten werden. Bis auf Weiteres muss das Angebot auf wikipedia.de in seiner bisherigen Form daher eingestellt werden. Der Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. wird gegen den Beschluss Widerspruch einlegen.Irgendwas scheint Herrn Lutz Heilmann, MdB (sog. Linke) an diesem Artikel über Lutz Heilmann nicht zu passen. Die Stasi-Vergangenheit steht allerdings auch anderswo, nun aber sorgt er durch sein komplett unsinniges rechtliches Vorgehen dafür, dass ganz Deutschland mitbekommt, dass Lutz Heilmann beim MfS beschäftigt war und zudem keine Ahnung hat, wie das Internet funktioniert. Eine Verhinderung der Weiterleitung von wikipedia.de auf de.wikipedia.org zu erwirken, hilft nun mal absolut gar nicht, zeigt nur, wie Merkbefreit dieser Bundestagsabgeordneter ist.
Google is an investor at Fon and I don’t really use Yahoo Search but having said this, I still think it’s a good intellectual exercise to think about what Yahoo could do to improve its standing as a search engine.
So here are a few ideas I’ve had:
- I would allow users to find out how many other people do the same search. For example when I search Monaco Media Forum I would find a number or a ranking of how popular that search is.
-I would offer search in all Yahoo properties like Yahoo! Mail.
-I would compare my search results with Google in the background and if they deviate a lot I would try to understand who is right.
- I would offer people to tell more about themselves so Yahoo can give them more personalized results. Yahoo could do it with a Facebook app that would allow it to know about you to give you more personalized results. This would in turn allow Yahoo to show you more personalized ads.
- I would let the community act as a filter and beat Google at making search a more Digg-like experience, where each user can vote search results up and down and bury those he thinks are not good enough to be in the first pages. SEO geniuses can now trick Google into believing bad quality AdSense cluttered pages are indeed what’s best around on many topics. Putting search results in the hands of humans, like Mahalo or Wikia Search are doing, can indeed add value by letting people select the best information and results on certain topics.
- I would let the user choose what kind of results he wants to see at the top of search results pages. For example I may want to see Wikipedia as a first result for any city name I search and Linkedin first for any person name I search or Kelkoo for any product search I do and Weather.com for any weather search I do… So I would then use Yahoo! search as a shortcut for all the services I use.
- I would try to innovate on the user interface. Yahoo! Search now looks just like Google, so much that you can hardly tell them apart by looking at the search results. I would differentiate on the user experience, I would make the searching experience faster and better. I would let you scroll through results instead of moving from one search result page to the next, I would show you previews of web pages in AJAX pop-ups when you move your mouse over a search result. I could let you see results as thumbnails and let you zoom on them to get an idea about each page without actually visiting it.
- I would make search more vertical. I would guess from your search terms if you are looking for a job and narrow down the search results to job websites. If you are looking for a hotel I would show you just relevant search results, same for other verticals, like classifieds for houses. I would partner with vertical search websites and show you a preview of their results.
- I would save your search history and when you search for the same thing again I would show you a reminder of what results you visited the previous time, thus save you time when you are looking for that specific result you found the last time, maybe buried in the second or third page.
- I would add “social” to search. I would understand your interests learning from what you usually search for. I would then show you a list of your Yahoo! Mail or Yahoo! Messenger contacts that share your same interests and I would do it on relevant search results pages, so you can find the help of a friend when looking for information on the a PC to buy or where to go for your next vacation.
- I would know your location (Yahoo! also runs Fireagle) and show you local results first.
If not, what are you doing about it?
If so, who do you think you're kidding?
[Interesting side alley: I was talking to a friend yesterday and encouraged her to speak at an upcoming conference. She said, "No way. I don't know enough." I explained that volunteering to speak was the best way to be sure that she'd end up knowing enough by the time she was through.]