With all the doom and gloom of the past few months and all signs pointing to hard times ahead, I’ve been thinking back to earlier in the decade, during the dotcom bust.

I was at Live365, the Internet radio network, and we had burned through millions of dollars with no appreciable revenues nor a business model. Our CEO/founder had left, and I found myself promoted to the management team well short of my 30th birthday and with no management experience to speak of.  Our investors, having lost faith in the prior management team, had the Company on a very tight leash.  So tight that we depended on a wire transfer every two weeks to meet payroll and other obligations.

At one point, our ISP shut us off, and we had no Internet access at the office. I had to get an employee to drive a check over so that they would turn us back on. Even worse, our site went down when the people we bought bandwidth from got shut off themselves. It wasn’t our fault, but we were still down, and the worst part was that we didn’t have enough cash to migrate to another bandwidth provider. I’ll never forget one of our employees offering to make the Company a personal loan. I couldn’t accept it because I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to pay him back.

Amazingly, our users didn’t give up on us. They set up alternate forums to discuss what was going on, sent pizza to our offices and, most importantly, gave us moral support. I won’t go through the litany of hardship we faced but, suffice to say we almost went under a few times. We were able to survive through sheer will, the dedication of our employees and users and a lot of luck.  There were so many lessons learned, but, in particular:

1. Be as transparent with your employees and other stakeholders as you can be. At one point, we had to tell everyone in the company that coming to work was optional and that the next payroll was in doubt because of our cash issues. Even though it was bad news, they appreciated the transparency. In hindsight, I would have been much more communicative than I had been.

2. Cultivate a trusted adviser or mentor outside of the workplace. I think people should do this anyway but it helped me a great deal to have someone I could talk to about the issues I was facing and dispassionately help me evaluate the scenarios and available options.

3. Remember whom you work for and where your fiduciary duties lie. Yes, you ultimately work for yourself.  But, as a founder or management team member, you may have fiduciary duties to shareholders, both common and preferred, to employees, creditors and customers.  Their interests can diverge even in the best of times and especially so when things start going pear-shaped. I made some painful decisions that ruined a friendship but were for the ultimate good of the company and satisfied my fiduciary and ethical obligations — and, to reiterate No. 2 above, I’m glad I had a trusted adviser to help me make sense of things during such an emotionally fraught period.

4. Accelerate non-advertising revenue models. This is a more practical recommendation.  Even if your usage and advertising metrics are growing nicely, now is the time to accelerate development of non ad-based models and prioritize the other revenue streams more highly.  Your investors and poptential investors and acquirers will appreciate this. Not only that but they are likely to discount your ad-based revenues anyway, so any momentum you can show outside of ads will bolster your story.

5. What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Easy to say, hard to live through. But just keep telling yourself this when things really, really suck.

6. Pray! Seriously, luck plays a big role. Do whatever you can to make your own luck.

While it’s going to be a bumpy road ahead that will involve a lot of pain for many people, I think it actually will be better this time around: The Internet, the web and mobile are real media with real users, real revenues and real business models. Add to that the fact that it’s orders of magnitude cheaper to develop and go-to-market than it was then, and I don’t think the downturn in our general field will be as drastic as it was back in the day.

Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of International Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since 2005. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com.

With all the doom and gloom of the past few months and all signs pointing to hard times ahead, I’ve been thinking back to earlier in the decade, during the dotcom bust.

I was at Live365, the Internet radio network, and we had burned through millions of dollars with no appreciable revenues nor a business model. Our CEO/founder had left, and I found myself promoted to the management team well short of my 30th birthday and with no management experience to speak of.  Our investors, having lost faith in the prior management team, had the Company on a very tight leash.  So tight that we depended on a wire transfer every two weeks to meet payroll and other obligations.

At one point, our ISP shut us off, and we had no Internet access at the office. I had to get an employee to drive a check over so that they would turn us back on. Even worse, our site went down when the people we bought bandwidth from got shut off themselves. It wasn’t our fault, but we were still down, and the worst part was that we didn’t have enough cash to migrate to another bandwidth provider. I’ll never forget one of our employees offering to make the Company a personal loan. I couldn’t accept it because I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to pay him back.

Amazingly, our users didn’t give up on us. They set up alternate forums to discuss what was going on, sent pizza to our offices and, most importantly, gave us moral support. I won’t go through the litany of hardship we faced but, suffice to say we almost went under a few times. We were able to survive through sheer will, the dedication of our employees and users and a lot of luck.  There were so many lessons learned, but, in particular:

1. Be as transparent with your employees and other stakeholders as you can be. At one point, we had to tell everyone in the company that coming to work was optional and that the next payroll was in doubt because of our cash issues. Even though it was bad news, they appreciated the transparency. In hindsight, I would have been much more communicative than I had been.

2. Cultivate a trusted adviser or mentor outside of the workplace. I think people should do this anyway but it helped me a great deal to have someone I could talk to about the issues I was facing and dispassionately help me evaluate the scenarios and available options.

3. Remember whom you work for and where your fiduciary duties lie. Yes, you ultimately work for yourself.  But, as a founder or management team member, you may have fiduciary duties to shareholders, both common and preferred, to employees, creditors and customers.  Their interests can diverge even in the best of times and especially so when things start going pear-shaped. I made some painful decisions that ruined a friendship but were for the ultimate good of the company and satisfied my fiduciary and ethical obligations — and, to reiterate No. 2 above, I’m glad I had a trusted adviser to help me make sense of things during such an emotionally fraught period.

4. Accelerate non-advertising revenue models. This is a more practical recommendation.  Even if your usage and advertising metrics are growing nicely, now is the time to accelerate development of non ad-based models and prioritize the other revenue streams more highly.  Your investors and poptential investors and acquirers will appreciate this. Not only that but they are likely to discount your ad-based revenues anyway, so any momentum you can show outside of ads will bolster your story.

5. What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Easy to say, hard to live through. But just keep telling yourself this when things really, really suck.

6. Pray! Seriously, luck plays a big role. Do whatever you can to make your own luck.

While it’s going to be a bumpy road ahead that will involve a lot of pain for many people, I think it actually will be better this time around: The Internet, the web and mobile are real media with real users, real revenues and real business models. Add to that the fact that it’s orders of magnitude cheaper to develop and go-to-market than it was then, and I don’t think the downturn in our general field will be as drastic as it was back in the day.

Raghav “Rags” Gupta is VP of International Partnerships at Brightcove, where he has worked since 2005. His blog can be found at www.ragsgupta.com.

The escalation of conflict between government troops and Muslim separatist rebels in several areas of Mindanao Island has affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Mindanao is located in south Philippines.

The intensified fighting began after a peace agreement was rejected by many politicians, and finally by the Philippine Supreme Court. Critics believe the agreement was unconstitutional since it would compromise the sovereignty of the Republic of the Philippines. They added that the agreement would pave the way for the establishment of a separate Moro-controlled state within the territories of the country.

Angered by the rejection of the agreement, a rebel commander attacked military posts which produced civilian casualties. The government retaliated by launching offensives against the territories controlled by the rebels.

The fighting has not stopped. More than 610,000 people have been displaced already. The non-stop fighting has created several “ghost towns” in some provinces of Mindanao. The situation of refugees is deteriorating. Children are among those who are suffering the most.

Volunteer Sarah Matalam posts pictures of evacuation centers in Cotabato province:

Muslim groups want the government to stop the indiscriminate air strikes by the military. Like a Rolling Store uploads a report by a humanitarian mission which visited several evacuation sites in Mindanao:

“The offensives have led to mass evacuations. In the evacuation centers, the displaced persons suffer from inadequate facilities. Most of them have set up tents in whatever public place available. With heavy rains and flooding now common at this time of year, many child evacuees are sick with cough, cold, fever, and diarrhea. A number of evacuees have died of disease. There is also the trauma experienced by the evacuees, particularly the children.”

Dr. Carol Araullo, a member of the humanitarian mission, emphasizes that more help is needed:

“The hunger, sickness and generalized misery; the listlessness, the yearning to go back to their farms and homes safely; the appeal for a return to normalcy, for an end to the military restrictions over their comings and goings – these images and plaints became etched in our minds and hearts as we went from one evacuation center to another.

“Scores of victims of human rights abuses were interviewed: those wrongfully arrested, those beaten up because they were rebel suspects or so that they would point to the rebels/rebel sympathizers; those whose relatives had been killed or were injured in the course of the government’s drive to flush out the “rogue elements” of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front; those whose houses and other properties had been destroyed.

“After the teams had tallied the numbers of patients treated, families given relief goods and victims of human rights violations attended to, we came to the sobering conclusion that what the Mission had achieved was a mere drop in the bucket compared to the overwhelming needs.”

Journalist Edwin Espejo was affected by what he witnessed:

“Deep into the heart of the conflict, trails of destruction – burnt houses, abandoned homes and ubiquitous presence of checkpoints and war materiel – are eerie testaments of the war.

“Of course, we are living in troubled times and disturbing scenes are fast numbing one’s senses. Many would argue that journalists covering the conflict in Mindanao cannot afford to be emotionally attached to events unfolding before their very eyes.

“Yet one cannot totally dissociate his or her self from realizing that the war is affecting not only the combatants from both sides of the conflicts. It is also sublimely creating different levels of consciousness and commitment on journalists covering the war and affecting the quality of their reportage.”

Reckons of Spring writes that while Manila politicians are debating, the people of Mindanao are suffering:

“While many of the politicians and top government officials based in Manila are busy in expressing their contrasting opinions about the issues related to the “ancestral domain”, I wonder how the displaced locales of North Cotabato and neighboring provinces are faring. Do they have any food to ease their hunger? Do they have any medicine or medical attention to ease their pains? Can they ever sleep amidst the horror of the ongoing circumstances, or to simplify my question, can they find a shelter, no matter how temporary it is- for a night's sleep?”

The fighting is turning uglier everyday. An Al Jazeera team has learned that the government has been recruiting vigilantes to fight the rebels:

“Civilians are being given jobs normally the preserve of the police and army at an alarming rate across Mindanao. In North Cotabato Al Jazeera met some new recruits being put through their paces in a military-backed militia programme that normally takes three months. This training programme has been accelerated to just six weeks in order to fill what the authorities regard as a security vacuum.”

Watch the report of Al Jazeera:

And Part II of the report:

The rebel commander who is probably the most wanted man in the Philippines today insists in a video interview that it was government troops who first attacked the rebels.

Another controversy is the alleged involvement of US troops in the fighting. Himagsik Kayumanggi reports:

“US Special Forces were sighted inside the 64th Infantry Battalion Camp in Datu Saudi Ampatuan, Maguindanao. Bai Ali Indayla of the Moro human rights group Kawagip testified that the soldiers were engaged in covert operations, such as the supervision of drones or spy planes and predator missile strikes. This was confimed by Major Gen. Eugenio Cedo, then commander of the Western Mindanao Command. As usual, the US Embassy denied that the soldiers were involved in actual combat; they were only responding to the military request for aerial surveillance to determine conditions of the terrain and visibility, for “future civil-military projects,” to quote Rebecca Thompson, US Embassy Information Officer.”

Peace advocates want both parties – the government and Muslim rebels – to call for a ceasefire. There is an online petition asking the government to cease its military operations in Mindanao. A letter was sent to the Holy Pope to intervene. The Philippines is a Catholic-dominated country:

“We hope that Your Holiness could help us bring peace and justice to our brothers and sisters in Mindanao by expressing concern about the unfolding humanitarian crisis and appeal for restraint for the protection of all civilians, as well as for the opening of access for the provision of speedy humanitarian assistance to the affected population.”

Mindanao bloggers have vowed to blog for peace. Journalist Walter Balane has a message for bloggers:

“Blogging might not only be limited to blogging about Mindanao and its peoples but also helping the “voiceless” learn to blog so they, too, can blog about themselves.

“Of course it would be extremely difficult for existing Mindanao bloggers to access many of the areas safely and for the people in communities to approach which local bloggers can help them.

But bloggers must continue to try linking them and engaging them for mutual respect and understanding in an effort to connect more and more people.

Many of us who are already blogging about the voiceless must continue doing it and infect others to do the same.

We can focus on a Mindanao consciousness that is more inclusive, not exclusive.”

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/91730?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Honda+slams+brakes+on+productionch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Automotive+industry+%28Business%29%2CBusinessc5=Motoring%2CBusiness+Marketsc6=James+Robinson%2CKathryn+Hopkins%2CJustin+McCurryc7=2008_11_22c8=1122190c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Automotive+industryc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FAutomotive+industry" width="1" height="1" //divpThe Japanese car manufacturer Honda is halting production at its flagship plant in Swindon for two months next year as it struggles to cope with a sales slump./ppWhile the plant's 4,800 employees will be paid during the closure in February and March, union officials fear that shutting the production line is the prelude to a round of redundancies as the recession starts to bite across Europe. /ppThe mothballing of Honda's only British plant comes as sales of new cars plummet across the world. American rivals General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are trying to persuade the US Congress to sign off a $25bn (pound;17bn) bail-out as they struggle to cope with the financial crisis, while other car manufacturers have been cutting production and laying off part-time staff./ppBMW has announced plans to close its Oxford factory, which produces the Mini, for four weeks to reduce output, while Nissan, Toyota, GM and Ford have all announced temporary shutdowns at UK plants or have shed contract workers./ppTemporarily closing the Swindon plant will reduce Honda's production by 21,000 vehicles, on top of plans to reduce production by 10,000, and the company now expects its total output in Europe for the year to the end of next March to be 175,000 vehicles, a fall of 29% from last year. /ppIt is also cutting shifts at its plant in Saitama, immediately to the north of Tokyo, which will further reduce production by 40,000 vehicles, and reducing output at plants in Alabama and Ohio in the US by 18,000 vehicles./ppThe company, however, is faring better than some of its domestic rivals. This week Isuzu and Mazda announced they would cut a combined 2,700 temporary jobs while Toyota, the country's biggest carmaker, is halving its temporary workforce in Japan, from 6,000 to 3,000./ppNews of the Swindon closure alarmed union leaders who believe the company had originally been looking to make 1,300 people redundant. /ppUnite regional officer Jim D'Avila said: "This is unexpected bad news. The union, staff and the company need to work together to minimise any financial hardship and to find ways to protect pay and long-term job security./pp"Unite has meetings scheduled with the company throughout December in order to seek a solution and end this uncertainty for staff."/ppA spokeswoman for Honda said the Swindon closure was due to a slowing of demand for cars "in western Europe and in Russia and eastern Europe, so we have to adjust our inventory to appropriate levels. That means reducing production"./ppPhil Brook, a 26-year-old worker on the main line at the Swindon plant, was shocked at the news, which was broken to workers when they arrived at the factory at 6 o'clock yesterday morning. /pp"I don't know what the pay is going to be in February and March," he said. "They just told us in a meeting this morning that they were going to close the plant for those two months but that we should come back in on Monday./pp"There's a pretty gloomy atmosphere [inside the factory]. Everyone's a bit scared."/ppAnd he did not hold out much hope for the future. "There's not a lot they can do," he added./ppAnother worker on the main line, who did not want to be named, said: "This is going to have a big effect on my life. Emotionally, I should be happy at Christmas but now there is so much to worry about. /pp"I have to support my wife and my three-year-old son. I have bought some of his Christmas presents but I don't know if I'll be able to buy any more. /pp"I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills and my rent."/ppOther locals in the village of Wroughton, just outside Swindon, are worried about the number of lorries that will soon be blocking their roads as thousands of cars are transported to Wroughton airfield. Honda is having to stockpile a lot of cars there as it simply cannot sell them in a time of such economic crisis./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/automotive"Automotive industry/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227317660416112201400459684"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Businesscountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227317660416112201400459684" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

div class="center"div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/9f/ce/0009ce9f.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/9f/ce/0009ce9f_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_642719"//a/divbr/ bThe Rolling Stones - Aftermath (UK Version) (Japan Mini LP Remastered 2006) [UICY-93021]/bbr/ iEAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC + CUE + LOG -gt; 333Mb | MP3 @320 -gt; 124Mb | Artworkbr/ Universal / ABKCO/i/divbr/ br/ table class="quote"trtd class="quote_left"#8220;/tdtd class="quote_center"It's difficult for American listeners to remember this, but like the recordings of the Beatles and nearly all other British groups of the '60s, the Rolling ... Full DescriptionStones' first several albums did not make it across the Atlantic in one piece. Prior to ABKCO's comprehensive 2006 reissue program, the US versions of the Stones' early albums were the de facto standards on CD, but particularly in the case of 1966's AFTERMATH, the UK album was very different.br/ br/ The track lineup is shuffled and expanded to create a much different mood. "Paint It Black" is gone, replaced as the opening track by the snotty social commentary of "Mother's Little Helper," which--when followed by "Stupid Girl," "Lady Jane," "Under My Thumb," and "Dontcha Bother Me"--is like a pentathlon of punky misogyny capped by the grinding blues jam "Goin' Home." Side Two is more emotionally varied but just as musically far-reaching, adding the poppy "Take It Or Leave It" and "What To Do" to an already strong set of tunes centered on the stunning full-length version of "Out of Time" that for some reason had never been released in the United States before this belated reissue./tdtd class="quote_right"#8221;/td/tr/table

I usually don't do this. Once I post or publish my year's ten best list, I try not to tamper with it. But 2006 has been gnawing at me. At the time, it didn't seem like such a good movie year, but the more I think about it, the more I realize there were gems right there in front of my nose. (It certainly seemed like a better bet than 2008.) Some of the films had to blossom a bit, to age a little. Some I had to see again. But now that a couple of years have gone by I feel the need to re-visit 2006 and once again sort through the best films of the year.

If I'm honest with myself, my favorite film from 2006 was Rian Johnson's Brick, which I included all the way down at #10 on my list. I've since seen it three times, and I'm continually astounded by just how delightfully perfect it is, from its language to its tone and plot. It even includes some emotionally devastating performances on top of its twisty crime story. Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential is another one I had to see three times, but it keeps getting better. Zwigoff is one of our singular American talents, absolutely incapable of making something impersonal. This was his darkest film, and I think it turned off most viewers upon initial viewings. But I've spoken with people lately who have been re-discovering it, and it may have a second life someday.

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divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/54318?ns=guardianpageName=Society%3A+Type+of+buggy+can+affect+baby+development%2C+study+findsch=Societyc3=The+Guardianc4=Children+%28Society%29%2CEducation%2CSociety%2CUK+newsc5=Society+Weekly%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CChildren+Societyc6=Polly+Curtisc7=2008_11_21c8=1121502c9=articlec10=GUc11=Societyc12=Childrenc13=c14=h2=GU%2FSociety%2FChildren" width="1" height="1" //divpFrom what their children eat to where they sleep and whether their favourite toy is educational enough, parents have never been short of things to agonise about./ppBut today researchers add "buggy worry" to the list, with a report suggesting front-facing strollers could deprive babies of their first lessons in life by discouraging their parents from talking to them./ppThe study suggests that old-fashioned buggies, which allow babies to lie down and look up at their parent, give babies the best start in life. A recent wave of hi-tech, adaptable, parent-facing buggies - such as the Bugaboo Cameleon and the Stokke Xplory - can help, but they are often expensive, the researchers say. /ppThe research into the psychological effects of buggies reveals that life in a 21st-century baby buggy can be emotionally isolating. Children in front-facing varieties are significantly less likely to talk, laugh and interact with their parents than those in buggies that face the pusher, according to the research. The study is published by the National Literacy Trust for its Talk to Your Baby campaign and funded by the educational charity the Sutton Trust. /ppIt includes an observational study of more than 2,722 parent-infant pairs across the country, carried out by Suzanne Zeedyk, of Dundee University's school of psychology. Some 62% of the babies were in away-facing pushchairs, as were 86% of toddlers. Parents using face-to-face buggies were more than twice as likely to be talking to their child./ppA separate, small-scale study monitored 20 babies wheeled in pushchairs across a one-mile stretch in Dundee. Half the journey was spent in an away-facing buggy and half in a parent-facing one. The results suggested that babies' average heart rates fell slightly in a parent-facing buggy, and babies were also twice as likely to fall asleep in this orientation, suggesting they may be more stressed when in away-facing buggies./ppMothers and infants also laughed more often in face-to-face buggies. Only one baby in the group of 20 laughed during the away-facing journey, while half laughed during the face-to-face journey./ppZeedyk emphasised that the study was small and required further investigation, but said: "If babies are spending significant amounts of time in a baby buggy that undermines their ability to communicate with their parent, at an age when the brain is developing more than it will ever again, then this has to impact negatively on their development. Our experimental study showed that, simply by turning the buggy around, parents' rate of talking to their baby doubled."/ppLaura Barbour of the Sutton Trust said: "The Sutton Trust hopes that buggy manufacturers will look closely at this research, which suggests that face-to-face models improve communication at a very early stage. The problem is that at present these cost a minimum of pound;200."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/children"Children/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Societycountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227257662628112108581338183"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Societycountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227257662628112108581338183" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a