Mixed Business

Godbye Big Oil, Hello Big Corn

2007-01-27T20:41:00.000-08:00

To follow up on Bre's recent posts about ethanol, the Wall Street Journal has another article debunking the use of ethanol as the panacea to ween us off our oil dependence.

I find it fascinating that barely a decade ago, ethanol was touted as the quickest and most promising route to energy independence, efficiency and low pollution. Yet current research and facts show that, from the business, scientific, environmental and ecological points of view, it is in fact a rather unwise technology in which to invest our future.

For example: Ethanol's net energy output barely exceeds its energy input, at barely a 1.3 to one ratio. By contrast, gasoline exceeds its inputs by about 10:1. In addition, ethanol increases the level of nitrous oxides in the atmosphere, which adds to smog; has driven up the price of corn all across the Americas; and has diverted an inordinate amount of food-producing farmland into ethanol production.

In summary, there have got to be other ways to reduce (or eliminate!) our fossil fuel consumption, without destroying the planet with corn!!

Which reminds me...

Remember the last scene in Back to the Future? Doc returns to 1985 with a souped up DeLorean and dumps a bunch of banana peels into his fuel tank! Imagine if we could just convert all our biotrash into fuel....

perspective

2007-01-24T10:50:00.000-08:00

Here is a great article in LA Times ealier this week on Newtwork Philanthropy--about a shift in thinking within private foundations, especially those with tech money. The article focuses on Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll of Ebay fame.

Skoll is doing very intersting work to fund feature films with a purpose (Fast Food Nation, Inconvenient Truth, Good Night, and Good Luck, etc.). Omidyar's passion is microfinance.

I am especially interested in the ways in which they are willing to turn things on their head. Often a small shift in perspective produces exponentially larger results. This what intrigues me so much about leverage - small change, big results. The trick is to find the right point.

Omidyar is convinced he has found a point of leverage in shifting microfinance's emphasis on non-profit funding to profit. Making micro-finance profitable on a global scale is far easier said than done. But without capital markets, you can't scale operations to address the fundamental need.

Omidyar found the first big application for his platform at a dinner for Mohammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who invented microcredit and founded the Grameen Bank. Most of the world's microlending, Omidyar learned, is done with nonprofit cash. The more he heard about it—the high success rates at getting people permanently out of poverty, the low default rate on small business loans—the more he believed it was a viable business opportunity. He wondered what it would cost to bring microloans to every poor family in the world, based on the Grameen Bank's experience. After a few rough calculations, he figured it was probably $50 or $60 billion.

"You're like, that's a lot of money," he says, and it is—if it has to come from foundations. But private capital is functionally limitless. Look at it that way, he says, and "$60 billion is nothing."

see, its all a matter of perspective.

when brutal facts become brutal reality

2007-01-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting follow up to Jessmy's smart post below on Intel's change in logo as a reflection of their renewed strategic empahasis. Among all the buzz about iPhone, I recall hearing that Apple will drop "computer" from their name.

Both of these seem to be real examples of "cosmetic" changes (brand/PR) reflecting strategic changes. Too often, it seems like folks make the cosmetic changes but fail to address the reality ("you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig"). Branding and PR often (to me at least) have the "lipstick" connotation.

In today's WSJ, Andy Grove channels Michael Porter to discuss how public policy can learn from business strategy. In "Thinking Strategically" (subscription required) He makes the point that while businesses are able to adapt and adjust, governments typically do not (or at least governemtns adjust much more slowly). He attributes this to a few qualities -- most noteably measurement and the ability to confront what he calls "brutal facts" (he uses a stagger chart to illustrate).

He notes:
Our nation's corporations have been under severe criticism for a variety of shortcomings. Even so, the capitalist/free-market system of corporations consistently produces results. When corporations do not produce, they become irrelevant and often perish. In other words, if the brutal facts are not faced by the leaders, the brutal reality sets in. By contrast, our national strategy-setting and -execution machinery often seem broken. Consider this: Could we pull off the Manhattan Project today? With its complexities of planning and execution, under extreme time pressure? I doubt it.

Fruit flies can teach us how to cure diseases in human beings. Why not study how businesses set strategies and execute them, and adopt the best methods to address the overwhelmingly important issues facing our society?

He is especially concerned about nations' (especially the US) ability to adjust to structural changes in the competitive environment (this is the Porter part) - particularly those changes that have the power to influence our future (like foreign oil). However, it is one thing to recognize the change and its importance it is another to confront it. Here is where the data becomes key. In talking about oil dependence he notes:

The most recent addition to this thread of commitments was when President Bush, in his 2006 State of the Union address, set a new goal to replace more than 75% of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. Even if we somehow achieved 100% replacement of all imports by that time, when we compare this goal with the one set by President Nixon in 1974, we see a 45-year slippage in the course of 32 years. Even though the importance of the energy independence issue has been recognized and emphasized by every president since 1974, our vital national objective is vanishing like a mirage in the distance.

We have made little progress because we have failed to measure and adapt to facts (this is what a business is structured to do very well). This takes discipline, courage and an aversion to "lipstick" (not that there's anything wrong with it...)

Intel drops logo after 37 years!

2007-01-21T23:29:00.000-08:00

Redesign of Brand identity

From “Intel inside’’ to “’Leap ahead” is in keeping with Theodore Levitt's 1960 classic ''on avoiding marketing myopia. Intel’s effort to rebrand is to focus on the reason why they are in business. An aggressive $2.5 billion dollar campaign is an attempt to remember they are in business not for PC’s but in the business of Technology.

Intel’s has scanned the environment to realize they need to listen to the changing consumer demand. Phillip Kotler's Marketing bible emphasizes on scanning the environment and keeping up with changes.
1. The PC business is slowing down.
2. Apple's a big partner which is consumer electronics heavy.
3. AMD it's closest competitor gaining market share.

''Intel Inside'' was used to persuade consumers and businesses that the processor inside a computer was more important than the brand name on the outside.
`Leap Ahead' is about TECHNOLOGY!
Integrating the Intel Inside® logo was created in 1991, and the original Intel “dropped-e” logo, created by Silicon Valley pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore 37 years ago. Intel’s new logo combines the tradition and where they are headed for the future.

So what do YOU think of the new logo ?

2007-01-19T13:58:00.000-08:00

So the families of four teenage girls are suing myspace.com. The girls were sexually abused by their cyber friends after meeting them in person, and the parents think that myspace is to blame for not having stricter rules on age disclosure. Teenagers under 14 years of age are not allowed to join the site, but there is no way of stopping people from lying about their age... Pre-teens can say that they are older to get on the site, and older people can lie about their age and say they are younger so they can... well, you get the idea.

This is a continual debate it seems. Not myspace in particular, but the fact that technology has grown so fast that parenting practices cannot keep up.

When I was in highschool, I wasn't even allowed to have a pager. When I taught high school kids while working at the Academy of Art, every single student of mine had a cell phone and an iPod, and they were all very eager to add me as their friend on myspace. As if finding a summer internship isn't stressful enough without the looming future of raising children in such a fast paced technological environment. But truly, I think it is the parents responsibility to teach kids what is right and what is not.

Most of all, I don't want to be one of those parents that does not take responsibility for her shortcomings and instead sues the pants off of whatever third party got to my kids before I could... before I could give my kids the knowledge and tools to protect themselves.

Here's the article. Thanks to all those crazy writers at the SF Chronicle for always keeping me fiesty!

Update

2007-01-19T13:51:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the last post guys- talk about a rant! Here is another article I read today from the chronicle... The debate continues.

The Argument Surrounding Ethanol

2007-01-16T16:03:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal today about how the demand for ethanol as a fuel additive has reached new heights. Economists predict that corn prices will skyrocket as a result of the ongoing food vs. fuel debate continues. The whole argument is extremely politically charged, and the funny thing is that party preference does not dictate being pro or anti ethanol. Democrats love it because it is backed by the EPA and for other obvious environmentally hippie-fied reasons, and they hate it because a spike in corn prices will mean very bad things for the global economies that depend on low corn prices for feeding livestock and making many basic foods that feed many cost-effectively. Republicans love it because the automobile industry here in the US will not suffer as much while GM catches up with Toyota and other hybrid car manufacturers, but they hate it because shareholder wealth will shift all over the place when corn prices are destabilized and other markets shift as a result.

I myself am against ethanol for every imaginable anti reason you can think of, not just because of the politics surrounding the issue. My biggest platform lies in the fact that our economy will suffer tremendously as a result of corn prices going up, not to mention that all of that economic chaos is the sacrafice made for a mixture of gasoline-ethanol of 70%-30%. It's not a solution, it's just a BAD attempt at delaying the inevitable. We need alternative fuel sources, yes. But ethanol is NOT the answer!!!

Did I mention it is SUPER toxic and slightly unstable too???

Okay, I'm done with my rant. Make your own opinion by reading this, this, and THIS!

Hunting Wolves in Idaho

2007-01-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

Shocking though this may be, the governor of Idaho, C.L. "Butch" Otter, has called for hunters to cull their nearly-endangered wolf population down to 100, in a bloodthirsty and callous bid to keep them from attacking elk:

Idaho gov calls for wolf kill

"I'm prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself," the ironically-named Otter said earlier Thursday during a rally of about 300 hunters. Hey, aren't Otters also endangered?

The biggest problem with the governor's stance is that he is so brazenly bloodthirsty and doesn't mind knocking the population back down to the endangered threshold of 100 animals, from where it recently recovered. Furthermore, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to start removing federal protections from gray wolves in Montana and Idaho in the next few weeks.

I wonder how much of this stuff goes on right under our noses in California.

Yet another reason to love San Francisco...

2007-01-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

Looks like we've all been neglecting our mixing of business...

I have turned this blog into a personal attempt at recruiting friends to move there with me when we are all done with LA... and since I read the SF Chronicle daily and I have no shame in passing along articles in an attempt to promote the city as the best place EVER. But this one is actually really cool!

Gavin Newsom might be screwing the city over in terms of driving the 49ers away by not giving them a new stadium, but at least he has all of us trendy 20 and 30 something laptop toting internet addicts in mind!

Really?!?

2006-12-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

menwithcramps.com

"Cyclical non-uterine Dysmenorrhea"

As advertising filters continue to get more and more sophisticated, so do the advertisers. Can you believe that the above video, website, and tagline are all designed to sell ThermaCare Healwraps??

Since the appearance of youtube and myspace, viral advertising campaigns appear to be the up and coming model for advertising. This leads into somewhat dangerous territory for the unsuspecting public internet consumer. As reality shows have done for the last 12 years (I'm pretty sure that's when the Real World came online), myspace and youtube continue to blur the lines between reality and fiction. Furthermore, the advertising agency for ThermaCare strategically place website adds on the youtube page where the video was aired. This gives the website and the condition (Cyclical non-uterine Dysmenorrhea) even more seeming credibility. Given that the majority of the world goes to the internet for somewhat credible information or glimpses into other's reality, consumers are going to need to be more and more skeptical.

Unfortunately, it seems as though the general public has not yet identified this avenue as a means to advertising. Until internet users are aware that anything they read on the internet is subject to tampering or manipulation (unless coming from scholarly journals, not wikipedia!), the mantra is "users, beware"!

Google's at it Again!

2006-12-15T08:23:00.000-08:00

Well, we all know Google as the "upcoming" tech giant that is devoted to organizing the world's information. But who thought they would become the tech giant that has financial genius? Frankly, I had no doubts.

Google recently came up with a new program allowing its employees to sell their stock options in online auctions. This allows immediate cash flows for employees who typically have to wait 4 years before their options are fully vested.

This has been reported by numerous sources, however, the Washington Post has the most comprehensive article outlining the process. Here's a brief snippet:

"Many companies give stock options as a way to recruit, retain and compensate their workers. Options give an employee the chance to buy stock at a fixed price, often the market price at the time the option was granted, for a specific period of time. If the shares rise, the employee can profit by buying at the lower price and selling at the market price.

Google's stock options proved valuable to its early employees because its shares rose sharply from its initial offering price of $85 to close yesterday at $481.78 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Some analysts questioned whether Google's share price can continue growing at the same rate, which could mean new employees might not reap the same benefits from options as those earned by people previously hired."

A Complex Diagram for Complex Problem Solving

2006-12-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

Idiagram.com has some really great visual models for tackling difficult problems. I was particularly interested in the diagram for Art of Complex Problem Solving in light of the recent case competition held by the Value Centered Leadership Lab.

This diagram is fascinating. It is well organized and well designed visually (organigraph anyone?).

A Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

2006-12-14T12:19:00.000-08:00

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.

Does this hold true for Microsoft? Can Microsoft brand is way to coolness?

Branding is one place to start. Product names like “Xbox” and “Zune” are arguably a lot cooler than “Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System.”

Microsoft is developing a product line to compete with Adobe Systems (who pretty much dominates the design professionals' software market). Microsoft's Quartz, Acrylic, and Sparkle will face off against Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator.

While Xbox and Zune are cooler names than Visual Studio 2005 Tools blah blah blah, at the end of the day the product has to work and work well for designers.

Microsoft has a challenge ahead. Winning over design professionals is not easy. It will be interesting to see.

I leave you with a question...

Is it true that a Microsoft tool is a Microsoft tool is a Microsoft tool is a Microsoft tool?

Price Fixing

2006-12-10T01:22:00.000-08:00

OK, I know we're feeling a bit bruised after our Econ finals...so let's talk about price fixing some more!

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to reconsider a 95-year-old rule that forbids companies from setting a minimum retail price for their products:

High court to weigh ban on price fixing

The currently-standing 1911 ruling "outlaws contracts or agreements between manufacturers and independent sellers that require these retailers to charge a minimum price for a product." In essence, it outlaws price-fixing.

If overturned, this case could have significant pricing ramifications across many industries, potentially leading to higher retail prices for consumer products. Of course, it could also strongly benefit upscale brands and brands in specialty markets such as department stores, while digging into the revenues of discount superstores and chains such as Wal-Mart. It would also empower manufacturers to have much more power in dictating the markets in which their products are sold, and the desired quality of the brand, among other benefits.

Stirring up the pot like this might be just what is needed to resuscitate a once-thriving specialty market that has been in decline since the huge discount chains began gobbling up old department stores and homogenizing our shopping experience.

Something to ponder over a whiskey sour while you check your Econ grades on Wavenet.

Happy holiday shopping!

2006 Lists

2006-12-08T10:55:00.000-08:00

As a part of our new gorilla marketing effort (gorilla is old-school "viral") to boost traffic (and ad revenue) before year-end, Mixed Business (or at least this post author) invites you to post your "best of" lists for 2006.

This is an ongoing tradition started by a young friend of mine and this is the third year I have participated. Hopefully, you will post more than one list. Be creative, and no, they don't have to have 10 items. Need some ideas? Check out

1,2,3,...Jamboree!

I am partial to these:

Paul Bost's top 20 albums
or
5 unfortunately funny quotes (shameless self promotion)

Good tidings to all,
JTK

Beware of those old work emails!

2006-11-30T22:37:00.000-08:00

New rules go into effect today - December 1 - that effectively require businesses to track emails, IMs and other digital information generated at work, for the purpose of aiding in discovery for lawsuits that may occur at some point:

New rules make firms track e-mails, IMs

This is a good opportunity for me to point out how easily digital information can be tracked, archived and resurrected when we least expect it. So, be careful when dashing off hastily-typed notes to coworkers that may be taken as incriminating at some point down the line. More importantly, though, be mindful of the IMs sent to friends and colleagues, and think carefully about the digital photos stored on cell phones or work laptops. Seems like Big Brother just got a bit cozier in our virtual living room.

On the other hand, it forces companies and employees to be more scrupulous about how they handle and store their digital correspondence - and in particular, makes it more difficult for corporations to hide incriminating documents by digitally "shredding" them.

pretty good show

2006-11-27T16:02:00.000-08:00

Madeleine Peyroux has added a show at Smothers Theater here on campus 2/18/2007 (hard to plan so far ahead...) Tickets are $46, but because you have been generous with your tuition, they are offering a healthy discount.

she's not my all time favorite, but for $10 I am considering it. Anyone seen her live?

The Poor are Bankable (and profit is good for non-profits:)

2006-11-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

The Net Impact Conference 2006 conference held in Chicago at the Kellogg School of Business, was an in-depth introduction for me to the concept of Microfinancing. Accion International María Otero President & CEO, ACCION International and panelists Ken Appenteng and Beth Houle from Opportunity International Bank added to my knowledge of Microfinancing. I have integrated what I learned at the conference with the article by Muhammad Yunus who won the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for his work in Microfinancing with Grameen Bank

There are two presumptions about the poor within banking/financing industry.

Poor people don’t need banking services
Poor people are not bankable as they lack collateral

Microfinance works on the basis that character acts as collateral. First, groups choose members based on the degree of trust they place on each individual. Second, a loan to an individual is not given until the other member within the group has paid up what has been borrowed. Thus, social pressure acts as a deterrent against defaulting on loans. Additionally individuals who repay in time get higher loan amounts next time.

What is the advantage of small aid with terms of repayment vs. large financial aid provided by developed nations? Why not just give money out free? The article says, governmental aid leads to people inflating their needs, amounts received by the people who really need it is low and there is less room to react quickly to needs as time is required to get aid authorized.

The low default rates and the large potential market in the microfinance industry is attracting a lot of new entrants. There are potentially a lot of shake-ups in the horizon for this industry.

Recent developments in the industry is the introduction of a smart card that has complete data about the borrower on the card. Using biometrics technology, the fingerprint is embedded and so benefits the uneducated poor. In the past that thumbprint signed away their lives to the moneylenders but now it saves them.

Connotations of the word "profit" and its association with nonprofits should not be looked at negatively. Microfinance companies need to make a profit for long-term sustainability, i.e. to stay in business. The major criticism is directed towards the rate of interest charged. Interest rates can range from 4% and above (however, I have yet to research into the range of interest rates charged by various Microfinance providers).

Growing up in India I have seen the backlash of moneylenders who demand decades of free labor (bonded labor) in addition to very high interest rates. Local moneylenders also charge high interest rates for safekeeping money of the poor. That is where Microfinance companies come in by providing basic banking services and help prevent the poor from being exploited. The biggest contribution of Microfinance has been towards the empowerment of women. Teach a woman to stash money away not under the pillow but in the bank and you would lower the probability of food for the family being lost to the local bar in the village.

New Realism, just like the Old Realism

2006-11-20T11:35:00.001-08:00

Most in Washington seem to be waiting with bated breath for the Baker/Hamilton Study Group to pull a rabbit out of a hat in terms of options for Iraq. Not everyone is so willing to defer to their opinions.

There has been some tough criticism from Victor Hanson (on the Right) and Michael Kinsley (on the Left) about leaving it up to the old guard to solve current problems.

Hanson (who was just on campus last month) is cynical about an old dog and new tricks:

Next will come the Baker group report on Iraq no doubt with more calls to reassure regional dictatorships and to ask them to help stabilize Iraq, as if such creepy strongmen would find anything to their advantage in having a successful democracy next door.
And we should remember a few things about the return of realism which is really just an academic veneer to the old isolationism. This was a policy that gave us the arming of Osama bin Laden et. al. to stop the Soviets in Afghanistan, sort of played Iraq off against Iran in their murderous war of the 1980s, abandoned the Kurds, favored the Soviet Gorbachev over the Russian Yeltsin, stopped outside Baghdad and let the Shiites and Kurds be gunned down after urging them to revolt, let Milosevic do his murdering unopposed, and established a revolving door in the Middle East in which former American officials simply went out of office and into great profit by using their past contacts to be rewarded with legal, financial, and arms links to petro-dollar rich dictatorships ...

Kinsley wonders why are we so interested in listening to James Baker anyway?

If we had wanted our country to be run by James Baker, we had our chance. He was interested in running for president in 1996 but discovered that his interest in a James Baker presidency was not widely shared. . . . People like Baker always favor a bipartisan consensus.

They don't really believe in politics, which is to say they don't really believe in democracy.

and he notes that commisions are used in two basic ways:

Sometimes a problem is referred to a prestigious commission so that the commission can recommend doing things that everybody knows must be done but that nobody has the nerve to propose -- at least nobody who has to run for office.

On the other hand, sometimes a problem is referred to a commission simply to get it off the table. Action is widely perceived as necessary, and the creation of a commission can be made to look like action.

It looks like this one might be used for both.

Depressing.

A Happy Thanksgiving Indeed

2006-11-19T19:50:00.000-08:00

Alright folks, this has less to do with "business" and more to do with "mixed"...but please, spare me the indulgence!!

drum roll, please...

It'll be snowing in Lake Taho e on Thanksgiving!!

(She looks excited!)

And here's an update about my favorite resort from my favorite newspaper:

Kirkwood has completed the initial phase of its Timber Creek Lodge area renovation. The 30-year-old, two-story day lodge at the base of TC Express has been demolished and replaced with two large, temporary, tent-like structures. A 20,000-square-foot permanent lodge is expected to be completed by fall of 2008. The revamped facility will house ticket and ski-school offices in one tent and a cafeteria/retail shop in the other.

"It's a self-sustained operation that's going to make a great impact for families," said Kirkwood spokesman Allon Cohne. "It will help families get oriented and alleviate some of the traffic from the main hill."

If you love snow sports and haven't ever made it Kirkwood, I highly recommend. The mountain is secluded and geared toward intermediate to advanced skiers and snowboarders. They do have great green runs, but the bunnies are kept separate from everyone else. AND the vibe there is very friendly so if you are a beginner you will be made a fool if you get in someone's way :)

If only McPeak would stop assigning so much homework...

ECON- following you to the dinner table...

2006-11-13T21:59:00.000-08:00

I just found on The Royal Economic Society website an interesting article about how splitting a restaurant bill among a big party at at restaurant can provide insight to negative externalities:

Splitting the bill equally for a restaurant meal leads a group of diners to spend more than they would were each person to pay for their individual order. That is the central finding of experimental research by Professors Uri Gneezy, Ernan Haruvy and Hadas Yafe, published in the April Economic Journal. The study also finds that 80% of diners would prefer paying individually to splitting the bill equally.

These results have important implications for such phenomena as overfishing, deforestation, air and water pollution and arms races – all of which involve ‘negative externalities’, where people can impose some of the costs of their actions on others, leading to undesirable outcomes for society as a whole.

Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it.

The Greening of Wal-Mart

2006-11-13T20:49:00.000-08:00

Today's L.A. Times features an informative, in-depth article on Wal-Mart's greening initiatives:

"Wal-Mart Goes Green"

It goes into detail about specific initiatives, such as those used in their environmentally conscious demonstration store in Aurora, Colorado. The initiatives include getting power from wind turbines and solar panels, growing plants with drip irrigation, and building stores with environmentally conscious building materials — all used to varying degrees of success or failure. While the goal is to prepare a worldwide in-store rollout of these environmental experiments, Wal-Mart still has a ways to go before they can be widely and successfully implemented. Although these initiatives are not perfect, I laud Wal-Mart for making environmental consciousness an important part of their growth process, and hopefully it will spur their competitors to evolve their own programs at least on parity with those of Wal-Mart.

do you want cream with that?

2006-11-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

Economist has an interesting editorial Oxfam vs. Starbucks on the latest round in the fair trade coffee debate.

Starbucks also has questions about the different standards of fairness applied by the Fair Trade brand custodians in different parts of the world. It doubts even that the strategy of the Fair Trade movement, to secure farmers a premium over the market price for their beans, is the best basic approach. Starbucks prefers a code known as the CAFE practices (Coffee and Farmer Equity), which aims to help coffee farmers develop sustainable businesses through a mixture of technical support, microfinance loans, and investment in infrastructure and community development where the farmers live.

...As for Oxfam's involvement, it will be interesting to see how this battle of global brand versus global NGO develops. Starbucks has loyal customers who may well be prepared to hear out the firm's side of it and judge the case on its merits. Given the weakness of Oxfam’s arguments, Starbucks may yet emerge with its reputation enhanced, and Oxfam with its credibility damaged. Is it too much to hope that this battle may be a turning point in the war over corporate ethics, and that it will cease to be enough merely for an NGO to throw mud at a company, to have that mud stick? The Economist will drink a grande extra wet triple-latte to that.

The reference to microfinance, reminded me of the New Yorker article, "Millions for Millions" on the debate between Pierre Omidyar's(for profit) vs. Muhammad Yunus', nobel laureate and godfather of microfinance (non-profit) approach to lending.

Omidyar and his colleagues say that the biggest obstacle to commercialization of the sector is philanthropic capital. They say that it distorts the market—not only by filling channels that might otherwise draw commercial investors but also by keeping unsustainable programs alive.

Not so niiiiiice

2006-11-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

I am suprised this didn't happen sooner. It turns out a number of people have thought to sue, but no one thought to sock Sasha in the mush, until now.

BORAT star Sacha Baron Cohen was beaten up by a passer-by after he tried to play a prank as his alter ego.
He approached the man and said: “I like your clothings. Are nice! Please may I buying? I want have sex with it.”

But the bystander didn’t see the joke. He took one look at Cohen and punched him in the face.

The funnyman — known for his Borat catchphrase “Jagshemash!” — yelled for help but was slugged again and again.
More good good... err bad news here.

Branding 2.0: Another Level of Branding

2006-11-12T21:36:00.000-08:00

As if dressing like a Mac weren't enough ("Dress Like A Mac"), the latest convergence of technology-branding and real life is happening in Apple's retail stores, specifically its SoHo store:

"Sex and the Apple Store"

The store has become so hip that young, creatively-minded singles are apparently, ahem, hooking up after meeting there! This seems like an interesting paradigm for the future of corporate branding in the world of technology, and a social phenomenon heretofore not previously observed in that industry. While the article attributes some of the store's allure to the cachet built up by "Sex and the City"'s Mac-toting SoHo resident Carrie Bradshaw, the people who congregate there — young, hip, upwardly mobile, bright and self-motivated individuals — are attracted to the store's welcoming, art museum-like ambience and coffee-shop-like layout. In fact, the store has subtly become an offline extension of the online dating experience — yet still removed from traditional dating by its close relationship to the very product — the computer — that enables online dating.

Now that digital media is beginning to coalesce around lifestyle hubs such as integrated home media centers, I wonder whether other technology companies will pick up on the opportunity to actually build the shopping experience itself into the brand in order to powerfully influence even the people we meet and hook up with.

Postmodernism at its finest!

2006-11-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

The museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills just opened an exhibit featuring original art inspired by the Family Guy. The works include media ranging from oil to collage, and although the art snob in me would normally turn my nose up at something like this, I love the fact that the fine arts can still provide relevant commentary in a society that is now dominated primarily by blogging and all things online. Plus there is something weirdly poetic about a doggie sitting alone at a bar with a martini!

The exhibit opened November 9th and will be up until January 21st, 2007. You can read the legit specs on the show here.

Lowbrow pop art for the win!

4000 new jobs for Texans n cooler pick up trucks .

2006-11-12T18:40:00.000-08:00

Toyota's opens a new truck plant making trucks for Texans in San Antonio ...so as Friedman says the world is flat and getting flatter. This apparently will create about 4,000 new jobs and invite more investment in San Antonio. Toyota's very aggressive move is a good marketing strategy hitting the already struggling Detroit automakers.
Links to the article at japantoday.com

Additionally Toyota just bought 100 million shares of Isuzu from Mitsubishi and Itochu to work on new diesel engines powered by biofuel hoping to make it commercially viable in 3 years. Investing in environmental policies that make good business sense in the long run
Article here at freep.com.

Cell phones are even cooler than you thought!

2006-11-12T16:37:00.000-08:00

This is a cool idea indeed, but what ever happened to making a better camera-phone? On to the next project so soon?

following excerpt from sfgate.com

Putting YouTube clips on cell phones could help accelerate a service that so far has not gained widespread popularity, experts said. And it makes sense, because YouTube clips on average last only a few minutes. "That's something within the attention span of typical cell phone users," Leigh said.

But it also faces critical hurdles: It competes against the iPod and other portable media devices that allow consumers to download high-quality television shows and movies. Cell phone users may also not want to pay for the service, and users have complained that the quality so far isn't very good.

"It's choppy and small and the sound is horrible," said James McQuivey, a professor at Boston University who has studied consumer adoption of mobile television. But at the same time, he said, "YouTube is attractive to a young audience who are willing to sacrifice a high-end experience for something that's cool."

Scion production on the rise? Not if Toyota has a say

2006-11-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting business strategy. Toyota is on course to break it's previous sales records for its new and innovative brand Scion. However, Toyota doesn't want to make the "underground" scion brand too popular, so it's going to scale back production.

The brand is on track to beat its 150,000-car-a-year sales goal by 25,000 vehicles in 2006. That is a big reason why Toyota has surpassed DaimlerChrysler AG this year to become the No. 3 auto maker in the U.S. in sales.

But instead of riding that momentum to increase sales still further, Scion plans to throttle back production to keep sales from going above 150,000 vehicles next year. It is part of marketing strategy to keep the brand special and, above all, cool.

So is this a way to keep the brand "cool" as the article says, or is this a way to ensure price escalation and profit maximization for Toyota?

I think that Toyota is shooting themselves in the foot. Prices are going to be pushed in an upward direction due to this intentional shortage. Higher prices will more quickly alienate the target audience (Gen Y) of scion than will a few extra scions on the road.

Consequently, Toyota is finding itself in a lose-lose situation. Either follow the market and raise prices or produce more scion. Perhaps it feels that limiting production will be the best way to maintain brand integrity. Or, maybe, under the label of 'exclusivity' is a way for Toyota to maximize profits. Either way, Scion is not going to be the same brand since it's inception. Scion was built on uniqueness, individualism, and most importantly, low prices. How can it stay the same Gen Y friendly brand in mass production or with higher prices?

It will be interesting to see if this strategy pays-off for Toyota. I, of course, think this strategy will pay dividends to the share-holders leaving the intended consumers out to dry.

Here's the article that I read that influenced this blog. As you'll notice, the Wall Street Journal does not believe in free flow of information and consequently you'll see only a portion of the article -- most of which I already posted. If you have access to the WSJ, I would recommend reading the entire article. Otherwise, sorry, you're stuck with my analysis.

(full disclosure: I own a scion and am happy about the potential of limited depreciation on my car. However, I still think that the strategy is not in consumer's best interest.)

this will not be good for study habits

2006-11-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

two words: coo-ool

Line Rider

watch it in action

The Scoop

2006-11-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

Alright Gang... Here's the scoop.
I came across some cool activities you may want to check out to air out your brain.

Friday
Austin's very own Sound Team is playing at Avalon, 8pm. Listen.
Kid Koala, the back-flippin'ist Turntablist, is suiting up over at The Echo, 9pm.
The Wrens at The Troubadour, 10pm. Listen.

Then...
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is hosting Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images. The exhibition explores the impact of Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte's work on the post-war generation.

FYI: the pic above is not a pipe.

And Then...
11/16, Robert Redford is making an apperance at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' screening of All The President's Men.

What Newspaper You Read, Says A Lot About Who You Are

2006-11-09T08:06:00.000-08:00

Came across this post over at misscellania.com via neatorama.com.
Couldn't help but chuckle.

From misscellania.com:

Guide to US Newspapers
(or what the newspaper you read says about you).

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority, feministic atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.
10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

KW from New York adds:

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated and believe the country would be much better off if run by the Yankees.

The "Multitouch Reel"

2006-11-05T23:48:00.000-08:00

Following up on my touchscreen iPod post from last week, this video demonstration of revolutionary touchscreen technology literally pushes the touchscreen paradigm far into the future:

Mutitouch Interaction Research webpage

The purpose of this technology is for the user to interact with the interface using more than one finger or contact at a time, much like a pianist plays many tones at once using his hands. The user can manipulate objects in three dimensions, treating the digital space like a wall or tabletop, and even rearrange objects according to "force" or "touch" sensitivity. Significantly, the multitouch paradigm allows for multiple inputs by more than one user at the same time.

Get Your IT On

2006-11-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

Sun Microsystems is working on the world's first virtualized datacenter, Project Blackbox.

Project Blackbox is a prototype of the world's first virtualized datacenter built into a standard 20' shipping container. The design is supposed to be "one-hundredth of the initial cost", "one-fifth the cost per square foot", "twenty percent (20%) more efficient" and "requires one-third the space of a conventional with equivalent computing power". Built into a standard shipping container, the Blackbox is easily shipped, delivered and stored wherever it is needed. Upon delivery, you only need to hookup cool water, hot water, AC power and a network connection to begin using it (check out the video to see). Even more, the Blackbox "could handle up to 10,000 simultaneous desktop users".

So what does this mean (from the site):

A large Web 2.0 company struggling to keep pace with growth could rapidly build a datacenter and place it next to an inexpensive, green energy source.
A New York firm could place a container in a New Jersey warehouse, on a rooftop, or in a parking garage where space is abundant or less expensive. This would allow a company to increase datacenter capacity without having to undertake the cost and complexity of building a new class-A facility.
Global relief organizations could leverage Project Blackbox's easy management and support for up to 10,000 simultaneous desktop users - without administrators - to bring computing to remote villages and quickly mobilize IT systems to support relief efforts.
Governments worldwide could move data and applications close to field operations and away from terrorists or disasters quickly and confidently by taking advantage of Project Blackbox's powerful, ruggedized design.
An oil company could bring high-performance computing to offshore oil rigs for on-site seismic modeling in the ocean or onto supertankers to simulate fluid load.

This connects us back to the earlier post "We're All Petafiles Now".

"Maybe we can't throw out all of the old rules. Geography might matter after all; natural resources sure do. The New Yorker has a great article on the desperate need for water in the developing world – India in particular is crippled by its inability to solve this basic need, despite its brilliance in software development. Sadly, they don’t have it online, but here is a link to an interview with the author."

Project Blackbox seems to address the difficulties of the petascale era. The Blackboxes will provide some flexibility to companies and enable them to move datacenters to locations that enable them to take advantage of lower energy rates or greener energy. "Customers who select a configuration with the Sun Fire CoolThreads technology-based servers will save about $1,000 a year per Sun Fire T2000 or Sun Fire T1000 server in energy costs, in addition to cost savings provided by the container's cooling advantage over existing datacenter implementations."

And one last tid-bit...

Hear Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President, Sun Microsystems talk about Moore's Law, Web 2.0 and future of the marketplace. Very interesting. Listen here.

George Costanza's 2nd Favorite Desk

2006-11-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

George Costanza + Video iPod =

Desk Project
Installation view from Saki Satom
Gasworks Gallery, London, 2005

Tips on Buying Interview Suits

2006-11-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Kaushik for posting this article on the Pepperdine MBA Yahoo! group:

Tips on Buying Interview Suits

It lists tips on buying suits, how to wear the suit, etc., in order to make the maximum impression during your job interview. Also lists tips for women's skirts.

My Tax Strategy©

2006-10-31T18:35:00.000-08:00

I am not in the law school, but I have mixed feelings about this article. One side of me thinks, hey that's a great idea, the other side has a desire to quote Senge.

"As the American tax law gets more and more complicated, lawyers have come up with one more way to make life difficult for taxpayers: Now you may face a patent infringement suit if you use a tax strategy that someone else thought of first."

"Why would Congress pass a law allowing such a thing? The answer is that it did not. But a U.S. appeals court ruled in 1998 that business methods could be patented, and since then the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued 50 tax- strategy patents, with many more pending."

Original Article

How Much is Too Much?

2006-10-31T10:37:00.000-08:00

For babies (and generally any member of the population that matter), any amount of cocaine is too much! What is wrong with the world? There is something seriously wrong with a woman who gives her infant cocaine. Did she think it would quite down the kid? Let me tell you, cocaine is a stimulant. Therefore, that crying that is causing mom that mental anguish is going to INCREASE, not decrease.

Mom's not so bright idea

It's interesting that anyone who wants to can become a parent. No prerequisites necessary. Getting a driver's license is more challenging than getting a kid. All you need is a good solid night of passion.

KFC - No More Trans-fats!

2006-10-31T10:30:00.000-08:00

This article follows-up with my previous post about Krispy Kreme hiring ex-executives from Reynolds to help avoid potential restrictions on trans-fats. KFC has come up with a solution that is much cheaper than paying the millions required for prominent CEO expertise. Nice work KFC!

KFC article

LinkedIn add-in for Firefox

2006-10-30T17:54:00.000-08:00

Expand your online networking opportunities from within Firefox's menubar.

A new Firefox add-in adds the LinkedIn network to the menubar and makes it easier for business students to build our professional network of contacts:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1512/

"Join LinkedIn and get your business network working for you. Invite business contacts you know well, then use your network to find former colleagues and classmates, find a job, hire through referrals, and develop business relationships. The Firefox Companion brings you immediate access to your LinkedIn network as you browse and read email."

Now that's what I call armchair networking!

Touchscreen iPods are a-comin'

2006-10-30T17:46:00.000-08:00

Folks, you read it here first. Strong rumor (and a thick stack of patent drawings) has it that Apple is about to release a touchscreen iPod:

New Apple Patent art points way to iPod with camera

U.S. Patent Office entry for the new iPod

Well, wouldn't that be special.

Actually, it looks a lot like the wizards over in Cupertino have brewed up something far more than just a 6G iPod with a touch screen. From the drawings, it looks like they've added to the device digital camera and possibly wireless functions as well - features which may interact with the user in innovative ways, such as controls that dynamically relocate based on the device's orientation and the media being played.

I await Steven Jobs' world premiere announcement.

Dis-economies of scale

2006-10-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

yet again, it turns out bigger is not always better.

Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite era, the 1950s. The premise is invariably to take something out of its usual context--make people small or something else (gorillas, grasshoppers, amoebae, etc.) large--and then play with the consequences. However, Hollywood's approach to the concept has been, from a biologist's perspective, hopelessly naïve.

for example:

As for the contest with the spider, the battle is indeed biased, but not the way the movie would have you believe. Certainly the spider has a wicked set of poison fangs and some advantage because it wears its skeleton on the outside, where it can function as armor. But our hero, because of his increased metabolic rate, will be bouncing around like a mouse on amphetamines. . . .As for the Shrinking Man, pity the poor spider.

there must be a lesson for a contrarian business student in here somewhere...

Kong's excessive body size should have exhausted the safety factor. True, Kong stands a bit straighter than the average gorilla so he may gain a bit of the safety factor back, but it's clear that he's pushing the envelope. Is that why he has such a short fuse and is always roaring and bashing things? Not only does he continually run the risk of breaking his legs, but undoubtedly his feet hurt.

Definitely read the whole thing and learn.

Power to the People (well, sort of)

2006-10-30T01:53:00.000-08:00

A clever, potential source of energy is being tested by an innovative Japanese company in the guise of rubber mats installed in a Tokyo train station. As the nearly 760,000 daily commuters of Toyko Station race through the turnstiles, their footstomps are being converted into electricity:

Stepping Up Power in Tokyo". A train station in Tokyo tests if passengers' steps can generate electricity.

The goal is to provide another socially responsible form of power for the world's growing power needs in the face of climate change.

Now just imagine all the power that could be generated by armies of people running on treadmills at gyms, racing on rubberized school tracks, and galloping across those nifty moving walkways at airports. Perhaps it is enough power to trigger a light bulb in one of our heads to write a biz plan to sell this technology in the USA!

Nifty Firefox keyboard command for the Mac

2006-10-29T19:03:00.000-08:00

I discovered today, while working on me accounting project, that you can select a single column or row of tabular HTML data from, say, an annual report, by holding down the

Honda Accord Ad and viral marketing

2006-10-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

This 2003 Honda commercial is one of the most original commercials I have seen in a long time — and was done in decidedly low-tech fashion, with absolutely no computers:

http://www.steelcitysfinest.com/HondaAccordAd.htm

The entire ad was shot in one continuous take, after 606 tries, and has made the Internet rounds countless times. Reminds me a bit of that old Hitchcock film, Rope, which was shot “in real time” in 8 continuous ten-minute segments.

Lessons from a Basketball Coaching Legend

2006-10-29T11:32:00.000-08:00

Red Auerbach, legendary coach of the Boston Celtics in the 1950s and '60s, died yesterday at 89. He was a powerful innovating force in the NBA, and his style of leadership, emphasis of the team over individual stats, and ability to instill pride in his players are inspiring for students of leadership and management:

"We have never had the league's top scorer," Auerbach said of the Celtics' dominance. "In fact, we won seven league championships without placing even one among the league's top 10 scorers. Our pride was never rooted in statistics."

Red Auerbach Dies at 89

He also smoked some pretty cool stogies and tormented our L.A. Lakers for decades.

Another Creative Advertisement

2006-10-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

Came across this ad for Alteco 110 superglue. The brand's aim was to increase awareness and confidence in the glues bonding abilities. Read more about it over at ...How Advertising Spoiled me....

Coin worth picking up superglued to whatever:

Immobile mobile phone:

Superglued handle:

Study Break

2006-10-28T16:02:00.000-07:00

Life in finance...

Interesting uses of the penny...

Talks of Note

2006-10-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

From time to time I come across some very interesting podcasts. Here are a couple that I have found very interesting.

Ibiblio hosts a number of interesting talks. Back in September Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley's School of Information gave a very interesting talk about "digital publics". She asks what has happened to the things we did growing up, like biking around neighborhood, hanging out and doing nothing. These activities have been scheduled out of kids' lives. Kids' lives are now scheduled from 7am to 7pm. Danah says, in addition, a critical informal learning period when kids figure out status, learn to socialize and negotiate communities, and gain a cultural understanding has also been scheduled out. Instead kids go online on and attempt to learn these lessons. She ties in a lot of her research and thought and delivers an interesting discussion.

USC's Center on Public Diplomacy, hosted Bruce Schneier, security expert, to address public diplomacy and technology.

"Both data storage has dropped to free and data processing has dropped to free. As these things get cheaper it is easier to keep the data than it is to throw it away... so we are now leaving digital footprints... everywhere as we walk through our lives... so this is a problem because at least in the United States this data isn't owned by you."

He goes on to talk about how these "footprints" are used for identification and further, identification for security. Bruce feels these checks are a fiction and challenges the idea that identity somehow maps to intention. Can we actually pick out evil doers or terrorists? Criminals yes, but terrorists? It is becoming possible to offer wholesale surveillance where we can follow everyone and listen to every phone call. However, Bruce says this does not improve security. Trying to identify threats from all this data is like looking for a needle in a haystack while adding more hay. He talks about the bias for identification within the security industry, that identification makes surveillance easy, except that threats come from out of the blue.

You marketers must love this. Imagine being able to identify who someone is, how much money they earn, how much they have bought from the store and what as they walk into the store. Automatically you know employee know how to treat that person.

The next one I plan on listening to is this talk by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.

Innovation: Apple's MagSafe Connectors

2006-10-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

One feature I love about my MAC laptop is the magnetic power supply connection, termed Apple's MagSafe Connectors. It has saved my lappy from being yanked to the floor twice already.

Check out how the DIY crowd is fashioning their own magnetic plugs over at MAKE.

THE Google

2006-10-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist this video of how the president uses the "internetS."

Transcript:

HOST: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?

BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

Even more interesting is his reasoning for not using email.

“I don’t e-mail, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive e-mails because there’s no telling what somebody’s e-mail would show up as a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, ‘Well, I didn’t read the e-mail.’ ‘But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about e-mailing.”

I'll be looking for more celebrity use/non-use of technology. I remember reading that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson uses very little email and prefers his cell phone for business. I was also interested to see that Bill Gates watches pirated movies on YouTube. courtesy ComputerWorld.

WSJ: You watch physics lectures and Harlem Globetrotters [on YouTube]?

Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.

WSJ: But those were stolen, correct?

Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.

developing...

In praise of pounding nails

2006-10-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Matthew Crawford writes,

While manufacturing jobs have certainly left our shores to a disturbing degree, the manual trades have not. If you need a deck built, or your car fixed, the Chinese are of no help. Because they are in China.

He goes on to note how shop class is quickly becoming a thing of the past. All the rage today, a la Thomas Friedman, is to teach kids how to become "knowledge workers." Except, as pointed out in The Millionare Nextdoor, the typical millionare is the guy driving a pickup with his own business. Maybe business schools should take note.

So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You’re likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable.

read the whole thing and maybe change majors.

Google's Targeted Search Filter

2006-10-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

Google, which has been in the news a heck of a lot lately, today introduced a new custom search technology that allows anybody to add a Google search engine to their site to filter the results to only the sites that that person or company wants their clients to search. The advantage, in essence, is that you can limit the search results to relevant websites rather than having to wade through an endless heap of irrelevant links:

http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

The L.A. Times profiles it in this morning's business section:

Google lets sites create customized search tools

Try it out. It's free.

“We're all petaphiles now”

2006-10-23T16:24:00.000-07:00

No, not that sort.

George Gilder in Wired Magazine article "The Information Factories" is talking about “Peta” as in that prefix “signifying numbers of the magnitude 10 to the 15th power, a million billion.” He writes about the already started shift from desktop to so-called "cloud computing."

Two things interest me here. First, how critical water (as it relates to energy) may be for the internet age and 2) how the current parallel computing architecture may run counter to the fundamental laws of technology.

First, water: All this computing takes a staggering amount of electricity, much of it for airconditioning! Describing Ask.com’s data farm:

If it's necessary to waste memory and bandwidth to dominate the petascale era, gorging on energy is an inescapable cost of doing business. Ask.com operations VP Dayne Sampson estimates that the five leading search companies together have some 2 million servers, each shedding 300 watts of heat annually, a total of 600 megawatts...With a third of the incoming power already lost to the grid's inefficiencies, and half of what's left lost to power supplies, transformers, and converters, the total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 approaches 5 gigawatts... Air-conditioning will be the prime cost and conundrum of the petascale era. As energy analysts Peter Huber and Mark Mills projected in 1999, the planetary machine is on track to be consuming half of all the world's output of electricity by the end of this decade.

The article also notes how Google is building a massive, 30 acre data farm right next to the Columbia River gorge. Two reasons make this the perfect site for a next-gen data center. First, because it is close to PC-1, the main fiber-optic artery that connects Asia to the US.

The other attraction is The Dalles Dam and its 1.8 gigawatt power station. The half-mile-long dam is a crucial source of cheap electrical power – once essential to aluminum smelting, now a strategic resource in the next phase in the digital revolution. Indeed, Google and other Silicon Valley titans are looking to the Columbia River to supply ceaseless cycles of electricity at about a fifth of what they would cost in the San Francisco Bay Area. Why? To feed the ravenous appetite of a new breed of computer.

Maybe we can't throw out all of the old rules. Geography might matter after all; natural resources sure do. The New Yorker has a great article on the desperate need for water in the developing world – India in particular is crippled by its inability to solve this basic need, despite its brilliance in software development. Sadly, they don’t have it online, but here is a link to an interview with the author.

In the second half, Gilder points out how parallel architecture is starting to look like the mainframes of yesterday. This is his central thesis ever since he wrote Telecosm: dumb networks with smart edges prevail over smart networks with dumb edges. He seems to suggest that Google may be in for a fall (albeit a long way off) if it remains dedicated to its massive, smart architecture.

Google's magical ability to distribute a search query among untold numbers of processors and integrate the results for delivery to a specific user demands the utmost central control. This triumph of centralization is a strange, belated vindication of Grosch's law, the claim by IBM's Herbert Grosch in 1953 that computer power rises by the square of the price...

In this way, the success of the highly centralized computer-on-a-planet runs counter to the current that has swept the computer industry for decades. The advantages of the new architecture may last only until the centripetal forces pulling intelligence to the core of the network give way, once again, to the silicon centrifuge dispelling it to the edges. Google has pioneered the miracle play of wringing supercomputer performance from commodity CPUs, and this strategy is likely to succeed as long as microchip progress remains in the doldrums. But semiconductor and optical technologies are on the verge of a new leap forward… Such advances promise to transform the calculus of storage, bandwidth, and power that gives centralization its current advantage. As the redoubtable Bell Labs engineer turned giga-investor Andy Kessler tells me, "It's sure to happen. It always has. Because all the creativity, customer whims, long tails, and money are at the network's edge. That's where chipmakers find the volumes that feed their Moore's law margins. That's where you can find elastically ascending revenues and relentlessly declining costs."

Pepperdine Will Be Happy Warren Buffet is Wrong

2006-10-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was "wired at birth to allocate capital." It's a one-in-a-million thing. You've got it - or you don't.

An article over at CNN.Money.com argues that natural talent is irrelevant to great success. Thank Goodness. What It Takes Be Great

The article's A-List includes:

Warren Buffet
Tiger Woods
Bobby Fischer
Winston Churchill
Michael Jordan
Terrell Owens
Jerry Rice
Bill Gates
John D. Rockefeller

Quote from the article

"The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call "deliberate practice." It's activity that's explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition."

If you don't take anything else from this article, there are at least some good tips on improving your golf game.

Oh yeah, just kidding about the Terrell Owens thing, there's no mention of him anywhere in the article.

Props to my Sis for pointing this out.

Happy Birthday, iPod!

2006-10-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

Today the iPod turns five years old. And what a wonderfully influential five years it has been, as described by the Los Angeles Times in two pieces today:

The iPod Revolution: Five year ago Steve Jobs said his new music player would transform the world. He was right.

The iPod as a Reflection of You: Apple's music player is the best realization of our culture of self-construction.

Use Your Brain for Thinking, Not Note Taking

2006-10-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

I came across this interesting site, NoteMesh.

I find the idea of collaborating with classmates to create a set of class notes very intriguing.

Here are my thoughts:

Less thought spent concentrating on taking notes during class (theoretically)
More time being engaged during class time because most will contribute to the notes and share the burden of note taking (theoretically)
"Your" notes improve as more people contribute, edit, and review them
You get a tighter focused set of notes that becomes a better study guide
A dialogue on the class material develops as the class notes are edited and that helps contribute to your learning of the material

What do you guys think? Any thoughts?

GooglePlex to go Solar

2006-10-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

I thought this was of interest...
Googleplex Goes Solar, over at Boing Boing.

MAC tip

2006-10-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

In case you're wondering how to do a print screen on your new MACs...

Apple key + shift key + 4

Brings up a crosshair that you click and drag to snap a picture of your screen. It saves the picture to your desktop.

See...

Retirement funds for a new business venture?

2006-10-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'm adamantly opposed to the idea. I think it's incredibly foolish. Ever heard of an SBA loan?? Anyway, in case you're interested, here's an article that will walk you through the pros and cons. RETIREMENT DESTROYER

Ex-tobacco Executives move to Krispy Kreme

2006-10-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Krispy Kreme is facing possible bans on the cooking fats that make its doughnuts light, fluffy and overall yummy. Between the ban and accounting irregularities, it appears that the company is in trouble. In response, Krispy Kreme is trying to control damage by bringing in high powered executives from Reynolds to manage the overall crisis. So is this an admission that the cooking fats are just as harmful as tobacco and nicotine? Or is this a brilliant strategy to turn Krispy Kreme back into the doughnut dominating force it once was.

Krispy Kreme

Librarian: Search Strategy

2006-10-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

Go check out the Seaver Business Blog.

Librarian, Marc Vinyard has just added a helpful post about researching companies' financials.

He recommends using Factiva to augment your research:

It will provide ratios that arent available in Moodys/Mergent Online.

Check out the Blog here: Seaver Business Blog

Ad for Rexona deoderant

2006-10-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

OK, I must be feeling socially responsible today, or else just socially loafing off of the social responsibility of others! But I have one more thing to share today. And although it's not particularly socially responsible, it sure is an hilarious and effective use of stunt effects in advertising:

Stunt City video

I think this was shown during the Superbowl recently.

Microcredits net Economist a Nobel Peace Prize

2006-10-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

Loaning out microcredits: an interesting concept which was socially responsible enough to win an economist the Nobel Peace Prize today:

Economist, bank win Nobel Peace Prize

And there you have it. His idea has potentially raised the Bangladeshi per-capita income from $280 to $440 since 1985. Striking, I know. But it is Bangladesh folks. And that is a huge catch-up effect measured in percentage points.

Some economics concepts to keep in mind for your Econ final.

G'day...

Jeff Seabold on doing international business

2006-10-13T11:59:00.000-07:00

I was really inspired by this interview with entrepreneur and real estate guru Jeff Seabold. In addition to founding CS Financial, he has spurred a tremendous construction boom in Cabo San Lucas by offering cross-border financing.

The article is from the Oct. 2, 2006 issue of L.A. Business Journal:

"Mexican Move: Jeff Seabold, President of CS Financial, sees the future of real estate lending as an international project: today, Baja; tomorrow Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua."

The URL is to google's cache, so if you want to read the entire article, click on the "Print" function at the bottom.

Not The Best Power Point Presentation to Sleep Through

2006-10-12T14:36:00.000-07:00

http://lay-uh.ytmnd.com/

The best Power Point Presentation under a minute thirty.

"Only a Moron Would Buy YouTube"

2006-10-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

Said Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, said that only a "moron" would purchase YouTube. His reasoning being that it will only be a matter of time that YouTube will be "sued into oblivion." He also had choice words for viral marketing campaigns saying they don't work because "what makes viral so special is it's so hard to do. It's so hard to plan. It's hard to stand out." He also says there is no substantial advertising potential in sites like YouTube.
~DV Guru

Cuban's P.O.V. from his Blog Maverick

Some thoughts on Youtube and Google
I still think Google is crazy :)
Gootube - The End of DRM ?

YouTube founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim are estimated to make between $100 and $200 million on the deal.

Sequoia, one of YouTube's first funders, provided $11.5 million (in two rounds). How much do they make?

Michael Arrington wrote that Sequoia likely did whatever it could to maintain it’s equity share in the company. He estimated that share was between 25% and 30%.

What does this mean? If Sequoia put in $11.5 million for 30% of the company, and if in fact YouTube is being acquired for $1.6 billion then Sequoia’s stake translates into approximately $480 million (subject to a slight adjustment upwards if Sequoia had what is known as participating preferred stock). That’s a multiple of more than 41 times what was invested in a company founded in February 2005.
~TechCrunch

PVRWire has an informative post on the deal here.

Google Video goes head to head with YouTube.

Cubical Humor at its BEST!!!

2006-10-10T00:36:00.000-07:00


Not sure... Does this count as ROTFLOL????

Creative Advertising

2006-10-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Over at the Marketing Society Blog there is an interesting post on a couple of McDonald's ads.

If Only The Cheeseburgers Were That Good…

I also thought these ads were pretty ingenious:

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/ads/HEINEKENS-3D-BILLBOARD/
http://www.thecoolhunter.net/ads/DO-YOU-KNOW-FIRST-AID-/
http://www.thecoolhunter.net/ads/PAPA-JOHNS-PIZZA-GETS-IT-RIGHTS/
http://www.thecoolhunter.net/ads/Hey,-City-That-Never-Sleeps.-Wake-up.-/

I love the pizza guy and the coffee concepts.

Organic farming going agribusiness?

2006-10-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

To achieve the desired results that the American public demands from organic farming, will organic farming become "industrialized agribusiness?"

How do you achieve high level productivity while maintaining the ethical principles of organic farming?

The current model of the large corporation taking part in organic farming and continuing the same business model is a fallacy. Organic farming is difficult and time-consuming. It's focused on hard work and labor.

As in every other industry, the general American public and our capitalist economy will seek faster and easier ways of achieving productivity and overall output. But in farming practices that are based on hard-work and other "ethical principles" (and not pesticides or antibiotics) there are no short-cuts. Organic farming focuses on the primary principles that faster, bigger, harder, strong, is not always better. This is an unusual idea for most people to think about. All too often the public becomes engulfed in output efficiency. Organic farming focuses on what is commonly unpopular with the public -- the process.

Despite "process" being wildly unpopular in common American culture, organic products are booming in grocery stores. Whole Foods did roughly $4.7B in sales in the year 2005! That number is almost double the amount of sales done in 2002. With demand reaching new heights, pressure is on organic food producers to achieve higher levels of efficiency.

But regardless of increased demand, it is unthinking to say that agribusiness is going to resolve the lack of organic products available. Agribusiness is by definition in direct conflict of principle with organic farming. How can a chicken with its beak cut off be considered organic?

"For many companies, the preferred option is staying home and adopting the industrial scale of agribusiness. Naturally, giant factory farms make [organic farming] purists recoil. Is an organic label appropriate for eggs produced in sheds housing more than 100,000 hens that rarely see the light of day? Can a chicken that's debeaked or allowed minimal access to the outdoors be deemed organic? Would consumers be willing to pay twice as much for organic milk if they thought the cows producing it spent most of their outdoor lives in confined dirt lots?" Buinessweek

Malibu Septic Tanks under DNA testing?!?

2006-10-05T23:25:00.000-07:00

Malibu Septic Tanks under DNA testing?!?

LATIMES

LA County Officials are getting to the bottom of the "stink" around Malibu.

"The county plans soon to begin using DNA testing of sea water off Escondido and Ramirez canyons. The goal will first be to discern whether the waste is human or animal. Officials say they then plan to follow the trail wherever it leads, even if that means to the backyards and horse stables of well-heeled beachside and canyon residents." ~ LATIMES

You gotta love this quote by Dear Ole Pam:

"When the results of these tests come back, I'll bet that once again we'll find that ... people's meat addiction, not their septic tanks, is causing this pollution," Anderson wrote in an e-mail through her publicist. "The best thing any of us can do to fight pollution is to adopt a vegetarian diet." ~ CNN

Boing Boing and Defamer weigh in.

Are your notes really effective?

2006-10-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

I have been trying a mix of taking notes on my computer and hand writing them. I have yet to find the right style. Paperless is hip (and searchable), but I have yet to find a quick and efficient way to add quick drawings, tables and doodles. I came across this post about Study-Worthy Lecture Notes from Lifehacker.

Check out the link to building a word template.

Competitive Rent

2006-10-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

Check out this cool site: rentometer

I am curious to know if you think it provides acurate data.

You enter your rental address and rent amount and it provides comparable data in the surrounding area.

Power Point Keyboard Shortcuts

2006-10-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Power Point Keyboard Shortcuts.

From lifehacker

Keyboard Shortcuts

Globalization and the Phillips Curve

2006-10-04T23:28:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting post by the (most likely) author of your Economics textbook, Greg Mankiw: Globalization and the Phillips Curve

In addition, he makes an interesting comment on Globalization,

My sense is that, as a general matter, globalization as a phenomenon, while no doubt significant in many ways, nonetheless gets more attention than it deserves. We see this manifest itself in many ways. For example, the Chinese exchange rate is not a major issue facing the U.S. economy, yet somehow it manages to get a lot of attention, while more serious problems are routinely ignored.

Oh... and some background on the Phillips Curve.

"Future of Bibliographies"

2006-10-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

A very neat tool. "the future of bibliographies"

Use the ISBN to generate an MLA, APA or AMA bibliography.

ottobib.com

Jon Otto, the creator, is a 4th year undergrad at University of Wisconsin @ La Crosse.