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…But were afraid to ask. This is the title of this very interesting 34-slide
presentation on Google prepared by FaberNovel, a
french consulting firm. It is hard to realize the real nature of this just
10 years old giant given the number of services it has continuously released, updated (and
sometimes shut down) or
acquired.
This presentation gives a great overview of the company’s overall strategy and the reasons
it has become what it is today.
It addresses some key questions about the company’s future, presented in the slide above:
how Google won’t be affected by the crisis (not so sure about that
if you consider their own stock), its relation with Microsoft and its advantages on Facebook,
its footprint in the infrastructure and mobile world…
There is an interesting slide about how Google buys traffic through key partnership deals with
software or hardware companies (slide 14) Many tend to think Google has free traffic or zero
marketing costs which is a wrong assumption since it affects directly its P&L
For regular readers, most of this information will not be a surprise. But it is well organized
and structured and gives some good prospective. I just wished the presentation was focusing a
little more on the Giant’s weaknesses. A TechCrunch France reader funnily
commented that, only the absence of electricty could stop them. What we do know on the web is
that giants do not stay strong forever. The question is when will the wind change direction for
Google?
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch
Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Category: Utilities
Released: Dec 02, 2008
Price: $0.99
Description:
Traffic web cams for commuters in Cincinnati, IL Ready to head home and you want to check the
traffic? MultiCam is the fastest way to get to the traffic web cams that matter to you. Instead of
browsing to a web site and working your way through the menus and map graphics to find a web camera
just open MultiCam on your iPhone and go straight to the camera you want with one click. Flick
through the other cameras along your route, in order, with a simple Next button. Should I stay or
should I go? The traffic is slowing to a crawl. Is it going to clear quickly or is it time to bail
and find a better route? Open MultiCam, select the nearest camera with one click and then flick
through the web cams along your route to see how far the congestion continues. MultiCam is a simple
webpage viewer. It can display almost any web page. MultiCam Cincinnati comes pre-loaded with 105
traffic cameras. Cameras are provided by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet . Individual cameras may be inoperative due to weather conditions
or maintenance requirements.
Note: The description above is the official one supplied by the application
developer and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of this site or its staff.
You know it’s a strange, finicky sign of the times when MySpace announces that it has launched a beta mobile video site that
will stream video directly to handsets around the globe — but that news is almost
immediately deflated by what it doesn’t include: namely iPhone support and Hulu content. That’s a bit unfair to
MySpace, which must have worked hard with transcoding company RipCode to add video to the social network’s mobile site,
which lets users watch their favorite community and premium content videos on the go. But since
the service is streaming and not a progressive download, it won’t work on the iPhone.
MySpace knew this was going to be a big deal and even included an explanation in its FAQ:
Why did MySpace choose to support RTSP-streaming at the launch rather than progressive
download which would provide support for the Apple iPhone? Based on research from industry
analysts, the majority of the mobile community has streaming-enabled devices, especially in the
U.S. market. This is supported by MySpace’s own mobile web site traffic analysis. In
addition, device manufacturers like RIM which have historically only supported progressive
download, are now rolling out new BlackBerry devices supporting streaming video including the
BlackBerry Bold, Palm Centro, Motorola Q9, LG Voyager, Nokia N95, and Samsung Instinct. By
launching with support for mobile streaming, MySpace is reaching a wide community of subscribers.
If you have one of those aforementioned phones, you’ll be able to watch videos from the
community and from the likes of MySpace’s branded channels such as TMZ, College Humor and
VIMBY. But you won’t be able to watch anything from MySpace content partner Hulu (at least
not at launch, according to a MySpace rep). This isn’t too surprising, as it’s highly
unlikely that Hulu would let MySpace be the first to offer its content through mobile channels.
At the GigaOM Mobilize conference this past September, both MySpace and Facebook talked up their
mobile initiatives, though they spoke in terms of communication rather than entertainment.
There was a time when this would have been big news, but mobile video in and of itself
isn’t as impressive anymore, and there has been a lot of activity in the mobile video space
lately. Joost launched an
iPhone app this past weekend, MediaFLO is broadcasting the Victoria’s Secret fashion
show on mobile devices tomorrow night, and Qik launched an alpha of its
live-streaming service for select BlackBerries.
pWhen news came out that Conde Nast was launching its teen social media site a
href="http://www.Flip.com" title="Flip.com"Flip.com/a, back in 2006, Staci a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/junior-achievement-meets-conde-nast-new-site-for-ambitious-teen-girls"
title="had a very"had a very/a pertinent question: "Can Conde Nast, which has been so good at
matching demographics with ideas for print, create an online place appealing enough to catch and
keep teen girls attention among so much competition?" Now as it has announced that it is closing
Flip.com, the answer seems to be, unfortunately, no. The site will close down on Dec 16th,
according to a note sent out to users, reported a
href="http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the_state_of_journalism/flipcom_to_close_december_16_102210.asp"
title="by FishbowlNY"by FishbowlNY/a. "If you have any flipbooks that you would like to save before
this date, we suggest you print them. It's easy; go to the flipbook and click on the Print button
just below it." How convinient... /p p Just a few months after the site's beta launch early last
year, the company tied to retool it, and make it more about partnerships and working through other
social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Even that didn't seem to have worked. Part of it has
been its own internal bungling and key employee defection. Then, it didn't have a big traffic
funnel to bring any kind of mass to the social net, and if anything, the key in such an effort is
the network effect. /p p Conde Nast, which some thought to be the perfect magazine machine and
almost immune to a downturn, is having a particularly tough time during these times: it has been
slashing jobs across the board, including at Portfolio and Men's Vogue, as well as its online
division CondeNet. Flip.com was run out of CondeNet, and its budget review finished just late last
month...Flip's closure is likely a result of that review. What else will the company pull the plug
on? Any ideas? And by the way, I stand by a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-conde-nast-scales-back-portfolio-mens-vogue-layoffs-are-coming/"
title="my earlier prediction"my prediction/a in October: "I wouldn't be surprised if Portfolio ends
up being a special section with Wired magazine or New Yorker a year down the line." Now, it may
come even sooner... /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-conde-nast-social-net-flip-tries-to-avoid-flop-with-partnerships-and-pr"
title="Conde Nast Social Net Flip Tries To Avoid Flop With Partnerships And Promotions"Conde Nast
Social Net Flip Tries To Avoid Flop With Partnerships And Promotions/a/li lia
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/hachette-to-launch-home-improvement-portal" title="Hachette
To Launch Home Improvement Portal; CondeNet's Flip Opens Today"Hachette To Launch Home Improvement
Portal; CondeNet's Flip Opens Today/a/li lia
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/condenets-teen-girl-site-flip-will-let-users-control-advertising/"
title="CondeNet's Teen Girl Site Flip Will Let Users Control Advertising"CondeNet's Teen Girl Site
Flip Will Let Users Control Advertising/a/li /ul p!-- iMark Logic Digital Publishing Summit,
Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon
Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. a
href="http://content.adbureau.net/accipiter/adclick/CID=000010cb0000000000000000/SITE=PC_US/AAMSZ=PREMB_NEWS/relocate=http://marklogicdps.eventbrite.com/"Register
now!/a/i --/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=54CF3r"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=54CF3r" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
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src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=XxF8O" border="0"/img/a a
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src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=zw3BO" border="0"/img/a a
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src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/473172160" height="1" width="1"/
Matt Singley is a
business process advisor that focuses on social media and UGC sociology. He authors a blog,
Singley’s Blog
Thoughts, about new (and sometimes old) technologies that can help organizations get
ahead.
Each morning you get an obscenely-sized coffee, open your email and turn on your favorite music
to lean into the upcoming workday. You are a part of an ever increasing group that starts their
day with music and listens until it’s time to go to sleep. In this exploding market of
online streaming audio, two companies are leading the way, fighting for a position at the top and
looking to earn your loyalty:Â Pandora and Last.fm.
From a total traffic perspective the sites appear to be pretty close, with Pandora slightly overtaking Last.fm in the
early part of 2008. Â A closer look at the data however reveals that within the United
States, Pandora is dominating in site traffic by almost double. Why the big difference stateside
and elsewhere? Pandora is only offered to customers within the U.S. If you are an international reader, it appears the choice for
you is obvious; if not, read on.
It’s All About the Music
Let’s get right down to the music selection. I chose a wild mix of genre and popularity and
was happy to see that both services not only recognized each artist but also seemed to really
understand the type of music that each represented. Pandora started each channel with a song from
the artist I selected, but Last.fm played for over an hour and never included them. I love
listening to music while I work, so this part of the test was easy for me…I just listened
to a lot of music on each service, all day long.
It wasn’t long before I came up with a sweeping generalization: Last.fm plays more Indie
music, Pandora leans toward mainstream. As I continued to listen to each channel, I found myself
going back to Pandora more and more. The music that was being selected for me just seemed better,
it really seemed to understand what I liked. I think what sealed it for me was the inclusion of
“Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies in my Death Cab station. It just felt right.
Each service builds a custom channel based on artists or songs that you chose, and plays music
that they think you will like. From an ease-of-use standpoint Pandora came out of the gate
strong, I was signed up and listening to songs in less than a minute. I had to stumble around
just a bit longer to get going with Last.fm, although it was still a mostly straightforward
process.
A Look Under the Hood
With both Pandora and Last.fm working hard to create custom playlists for you, it’s
important to take a quick look at the technology that is driving these two sites.
 Last.fm uses a technique called scrobbling to determine which songs rise to the top and which sink.
 Scrobbling begins by downloading their software and ranking the songs that you like.
With millions of songs being scrobbled every day, this is a great way to crowdsource popularity.
From the Last.fm website:
Millions of songs are scrobbled every day. This data helps Last.fm to organise and recommend
music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides.
Pandora selects music based on The Music
Genome Project®, which is the work of “a group of musicians and
music-loving technologists.” This seems to be more of an artisan effort, with this group
listening to and defining the music, as opposed to the crowdsourcing method. Â
Since we started back in 2000, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands
of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of
each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to
include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.
So which method of determining what you will like is better? Do millions of ratings on songs
create a better experience for the listener, or does a select group of people tediously pouring
over individual songs yield better results? Â Before getting to the bottom line, I
want to take a look at more of the overall experience.
User Interface
Looking at the different UIs of the sites, I was naturally drawn to Pandora. The mostly Flash
media player seemed a lot easier to use, and frankly a little sexier than the average looking
player offered by the competitor. I was not disappointed with the Pandora interface, as I
listened to songs I was able to click through to more information about the artists, album, songs
and fans of the music all within the same page. Finding similar information over at Last.fm was
certainly possible, but required separate page loads for each category that I wanted to find out
about.
In terms of social networking, Last.fm is the clear leader. The media player page is set up like
a blog that you can scroll down and leave a “shout” about the track as well as look
through what others are saying. Last.fm also does a brilliant job of incorporating events into
the play page, such as upcoming concerts and events. Pandora simply doesn’t offer this kind
of service.
iPhone Apps
Pandora and Last.fm both have created iPhone apps that are free. Comments can be made about
aesthetics and function, but Pandora easily won the battle with response time. The Last.fm app seemed to slow down quite a bit
as I loaded channels but I didn’t have this problem with Pandora, which loaded almost instantly every time.
Final Thoughts
Designs will change, apps will get updated and new algorithms will be created, but in the end
it’s all about the music. Both services offer great things for their users, but one
consistently played tunes that I really like. Since it really is all about the music, I’m
picking Pandora as the winner in this head to
head battle.
divimg alt=""
src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/43031?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+The+road+to+ruinch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Automotive+industry+%28Business%29%2CGeneral+Motors%2CFord%2CBusiness%2CUS+economy+%28Business%29%2CUS+news%2CWorld+newsc5=Motoring%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CUS+Economyc6=Ed+Pilkingtonc7=2008_12_03c8=1127737c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Automotive+industryc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FAutomotive+industry"
width="1" height="1" //divpThe Ford plant in Highland Park, a city within the city of Detroit, is a
monument to the American automobile. It opened in 1910, and three years later pioneered the world's
first car assembly line. In 1925, it spewed out 9,000 Model Ts in a single day. The revolution that
turned America into a car-owning democracy had arrived. Today, there is ample evidence of that
revolution. The factory looks over a six-lane highway that is heavy with traffic from dawn to dusk.
Next door is a drive-thru McDonald's, where customers come to order Big Macs before rolling 50
metres to a drive-thru chemists to pick up indigestion tablets./ppThe story of the plant is told in
one of those green-and-gold heritage plaques erected by the main entrance. It says: "Mass
production soon moved from here to all phases of American industry and set the pattern of abundance
for 20th-century living." Pattern of abundance: the phrase reads like a sick joke, for the Ford
factory it describes is a shell of what it once was. Its red brick and granite walls still stand
proud, framed by decorative mosaics. But the windows are broken or boarded up, its ceilings have
gaping holes, the floor is covered in broken lumps of fallen plaster. On the roof, the flagpole
that for years flew the Stars and Stripes is rusty and bare./ppOther companies, other countries,
might have turned Henry Ford's factory of dreams into a museum rather than let it decay into the
pitiful wreck that it is today. But Ford, and its fellows in the Big Three - General Motors (GM)
and Chrysler - have enough to do staying alive without worrying about preserving the past. GM, the
giant of the three, has lost $73bn in the past three years; it is haemorrhaging $2bn a month. At
that rate it will run out of cash by the middle of next year and collapse by that year's end,
potentially bringing millions of workers down with it. Which is why the CEOs of the three giants
took their begging bowls to Washington earlier this month, pleading for a "bridging loan" of
$25bn./ppThey didn't get a warm reception. They were ridiculed by senators for having flown in
three separate corporate jets, an act that must rank among the most impressive PR disasters of the
decade. But what the senators and the largely hostile media coverage missed was that the miserable
condition of the Detroit car industry is not merely a comment on the failed leadership of its
corporate executives, though it is that. It is also a matter of personal survival for millions of
Americans who depend, directly or indirectly, on the revolution Henry Ford began 100 years
ago./ppNowhere is this more visible than in Detroit, the crucible of the Big Three. Half of GM's
100,000 workers live in the city, and they in turn support a spider's web of relatives, spin-off
industries and services. Detroit is really nothing but a company town. Hamtramckis a city within
the city that borders one of GM's main factories. When GM enjoyed good times, Hamtramck boomed. Now
GM is in the doldrums, Hamtramck is too. We walk along a stretch of shops along one of its main
streets. First in line is Anna's Beauty Salon: it's closed, but the sign on the door suggests Anna
is managing to stay open four days a week. Next, Popular Fashion and Variety Store: shut down.
Billiards and Burger Hall: abandoned. Antiques store, an oil painting portraying an autumn
landscape still in its window: deserted. Law offices: vacant. Funeral home: open. Even in a
recession, one aspect of life must go on - the ending of it./ppOn the other side of the road is the
Family Donut shop, a local institution run by a Polish family for the past 28 years. It has a
picture of Princess Diana on the wall, a gift from one of the regular clients, and another of the
Three Stooges. The owner, Vojno, is unloading a bundle of cardboard boxes used to pack the donuts.
A few years ago he would order up to 30 bundles a month; now it's 10. On Polish festive days, there
would be a line of customers out the door and round the corner, and the stools at the counter would
be loaded. Today, the line is more of a dribble and the counter is largely empty. Unless GM
recovers, and money starts flowing again, he will have to close in a few months. "It's not just me.
Everybody around here is going to shut down," he says. What will he do if he does have to close?
"I'll stay home and sleep. I'm hungry for sleep," he says./ppOne of the few clients, dressed in a
bomber jacket with Detroit written across the back, shouts over at him. "You only work one job, so
why do you need to sleep?"/pp"Shut up, Eddie," Vojno replies./pp"I work three jobs to make my
money," Eddie Fabiszak says, prompting the only other customer in the bakery to say, under his
breath: "Lucky man."/ppThe other customer is Melis Lejlic, 27, a naturalised American originally
from Bosnia. His father and mother, two uncles and a cousin all work in the car business. All now
fear redundancy. Lejlic works in construction, but that is no better. Car workers are no longer
spending on home improvements, so demand for his work has fallen by half. Of 10 builders he knows,
seven are unemployed. "Everybody in a small town like this is looking to the car industry, and
there's no hope there," he says. "Drive around, you'll see. Detroit is worse right now than
Baghdad."/ppThe comparison sounds far-fetched, but in the streets around the GM plant you can see
what he means. Several houses have no glazing in their rickety wooden walls. Front lawns have
turned into littered pasture. Walls are lined with barbed wire. A mural of a Stars and Stripes has
been graffitied. And though it is nothing like Baghdad, there is clearly a market in lawlessness. A
poster advertising the services of a lawyer says: "Aggressive criminal defence. Drugs CCW [carrying
a concealed weapon] Theft Murder All felonies misdemeanours." That is how Henry Ford's dream looks
in November 2008./ppGM's headquarters in downtown Detroit dominate the city's skyline. The seven
cylindrical glass towers of the Renaissance Centre were built in 1977 as a statement of the
company's untouchable status as the then unquestioned king of the auto world. Inside the main
tower, there is an exhibition of some of GM's most memorable models, dating back to the 1950s. It
is almost shocking to see how beautiful and exhilarating those cars were. There is a 1953 Chevrolet
Corvette Roadster, built largely by hand, its white, sensuous curves set off by red leather seats.
Then there's a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air in black, the quintessential car of the American dream, big
enough to carry a family to its suburban home but sufficiently powerful and sleek to avoid any
sense of frumpiness. Pride of place goes to a 1959 Cadillac series 62 convertible, which is an
outrageously attractive work of art. This was the baby of Harley Earl, GM's legendary designer.
Inspired by the tail of a second world war fighter plane, he placed fins on the back of the car,
with rear brake lights the shape of rockets and exhausts mimicking those of a jet. The 59 Cadillac
summed up an entire generation - young, dangerous, fast, unstoppable./ppPeter DeLorenzo spent 22
years working in the car business as an advertising and marketing consultant and now runs an
influential website called Autoextremist. He explains that when the explosion of creativity burst
out in the 50s, Detroit had just emerged from the crucial role it had played as the manufacturing
backbone of the war effort, churning out tanks and missiles at extraordinary rate, and confidence
was riding high. "Coming out of the second world war, the automobile was the symbol of American
might. GM was the symbol of American might, and most Americans were proud that GM was a successful
corporation that turned out magnificent cars people wanted."/ppThe design-led strategy not only
generated exquisite cars, it worked handsomely for GM. In 1955, four out of every five cars around
the world were US-produced and half of those came from GM. The Big Three monopolised around 95% of
the domestic market, and between them they transformed the US. They provided the stimulus for the
biggest construction project in world history - the laying of the US interstate highways - and gave
birth to the suburbs and to urban sprawl. Think Los Angeles. Think Phoenix rising out of the desert
of Arizona./ppHow you get from the invincibility of those days to the verge of bankruptcy is a
cautionary tale for the whole of America as its dominance wanes in an increasingly globalised
economy. DeLorenzo, who has written a book called The United States of Toyota, dates the start of
the rot to 1979 - just after GM had moved into its monolithic new headquarters in the Renaissance
Centre. By then Japanese car companies were already snapping at the heels of the Big Three, but
Detroit ignored the threat, steeped in complacency that the good times would last for ever.
Leadership within the business also crucially changed hands, from the designers to what DeLorenzo
calls the "bean counters". /ppBy the 1990s, the Big Three's reputation for innovation and beauty
had withered, replaced by a reputation for faulty products. "People started to associate Detroit
with cars coming off the assembly line and their doors falling off," says Micheline Maynard, a New
York Times business reporter and author of The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip.
She recounts how in 2002 GM's vice-chairman, Bob Lutz, declared that their vehicles were every bit
as reliable as Honda's and Toyota's; that same afternoon GM recalled 1.5m minivans./ppFrom the
sleek elegance of the 1959 Cadillac to the lumpen brutality of the Hummer: what was in the mind of
the GM executive who conceived putting a machine modelled on armoured vehicles on to the civilian
streets of US cities, at barely 13 miles per gallon? But then Lutz has argued that that hybrids
like the Toyota Prius "make no economic sense" and once called global warming "a total crock of
shit"./ppThe other key element in the demise of Detroit concerns the staple of the American auto
industry - the car worker. Ron Nidiffer is drinking beer in the New Dodge Lounge in Hamtramck,
temporarily off work as the GM plant has suspended production for want of sales. He has worked in
car factories for 36 years, 10 of them on the assembly line. He is one of a dying breed of car
workers who had their pay and conditions set back in the heyday. His union, the United Auto
Workers, negotiated a series of deals in the 1970s and 80s that have become the albatross around
the industry's neck. He makes $29 an hour - substantially more than American workers in Japanese
plants that have been transplanted to the non-unionised south, from Alabama to Texas. /ppBut the
trouble really starts when you include the so-called "legacy costs", the generous terms agreed for
pensions and health care that allowed workers to retire as young as 48. GM now carries about
470,000 retirees and spouses on benefits - more than four times its productive workforce - adding a
total of about $2,000 for every car it makes, a terrible burden in the face of fierce foreign
competition./ppThe symbol of excess that the UAW's critics like to point to is the "jobs banks", by
which workers are paid 95% of their salaries for doing nothing. The scheme was introduced as a way
of ensuring minimum employment levels, but billowed uncontrollably until it included about 40,000
workers. Nidiffer concedes that looking back, the jobs bank was indefensible. "Yes, it was a bad
idea. And I understand why some people are jealous of what we've had. We had good conditions, even
to excess."/ppBut what annoys him is the assumption that the largesse and complacency that
epitomised the attitude of both unions and management is still prevalent today. The job banks have
been whittled down to 3,500 workers, and wages have been cut in half for all new employees. He is
one of the last at the GM plant in Hamtramck to enjoy the old $29 an hour rate, the others having
taken redundancy. A deal has also been struck to lift the burden of legacy costs from GM's
shoulders by transferring health insurance into an independent fund administered by the union.
After all that, to hear Congress turn away the plea for $25bn from the Big Three CEOs makes
Nidiffer see red. "I'm extremely mad. We've made all these concessions, taken the hit, and yet
we're still accused of being lazy and greedy."/ppIt has not made him any happier that while
Congress rebuffed Detroit, it has bailed out the banks with apparent alacrity, including Citibank
which was last week handed the exact amount requested by the Big Three. "We're looking for a
pittance compared with what they've given the banks," Nidiffer says. His anger is echoed in the
front-page headline in the Detroit Free Press: "$85 billion for AIG. $700 billion for financial
firms. $25 billion for Citigroup. Why is the bar so high for $25 billion to Detroit?"/ppNidiffer's
frustration is heightened by his belief that if Detroit can see it through another 18 months it
will have turned the corner. His GM plant is poised to produce the Volt, a new plug-in electric
hybrid that will run for 40 miles on one full battery before a tiny petrol motor recharges it. The
cutting-edge model, which goes into production in 2010, has been spearheaded by Bob Lutz, the
global warming sceptic - a sign of how dramatically the outlook has changed at GM./ppBut none of
the new ideas being scrambled out by the Big Three will matter if they fail to make it to 2010.
Will the Volt go down in history as a great idea that GM carried with it to its grave? "There used
to be a saying, so goes GM, so goes the country," Nidiffer says. "That was in happy days. But the
same is true now. If GM goes under, the ripple effect will be felt throughout America."/ppA car
worker desperate to hold on to his job would say that, wouldn't he? But economists agree. Susan
Helper, a professor at Case Western university, says if GM went into bankruptcy next year, it could
set in train a knock-on effect that would hit not just the 240,000 employees of the Big Three, but
also 730,000 suppliers and about 1 million people working in dealerships across the country. Harder
to quantify, but potentially even more devastating, would be the loss of social capital - the
knowledge that is imbedded in a generation. "The idea that you can just liquidate Detroit and start
again is crazy. Knowledge is not held by any one person, but comes from how people in a company
interact."/ppCrunch time is coming. The tragedy of the American car is approaching its climax. You
can feel it, palpably, on the lot of Galeana's Dodge dealership, a short drive away from Nidiffer's
watering hole. Balloons in red, white and blue festoon the long line of cars, but who are they
fooling? A more accurate reflection of the mood are the signs propped up under a succession of
bonnets that spell the word S-A-L-E. Inside, a query about how things are going is met with the
reply: "Look at the board." The board in question has just one car handwritten on it - the extent
of today's business. Two years ago, the daily average was 15 cars./ppChrysler, which owns the Dodge
brand, used to offer huge discounts on the price of the cars disguised as leasing agreements. But
in July it announced it was suspending all leasing, and business went through the floor. The Big
Three can no longer afford to lower their prices, so instead the cars sit on the lot, looking
cheerful beneath the balloons. There is one small cause for hope for Galeana's dealers. A local
Chrysler plant has just announced 5,000 job losses, and each worker made redundant will be given a
voucher to buy a new Dodge car. It's come to this: the only chink of light for the dealers are the
redundancy packages of the workers who make the cars they sell./ppThis week, the CEOs of the Big
Three have one last shot at saving Detroit. They are travelling back to Washington to plead their
case again. And this time, they won't be going by private jet - Ford's Alan Mulally will drive a
Ford hybrid, and GM chief executive Rick Wagoner and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli will fly on
commercial planes. Tomorrow and on Friday, they will present Congress committees with a new
business plan that is expected to include a cap on top bosses' pay, concessions from the UAW and
the death of the most loss-making brands. Less certain is the outcome. Will they get their $25bn
and, if they do, will it be anywhere like enough? Or will this once great institution, this
embodiment of American might and ingenuity - and with it the livelihood of millions - go the way of
Henry Ford's factory of dreams./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom:
10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/automotive"Automotive industry/a/lilia
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/generalmotors"General Motors/a/lilia
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/ford"Ford/a/lilia
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"US economy/a/lilia
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/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
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src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/LPbma0ZH57Qib3vjcofBZfL78zw/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/p
You've probably already heard of Outside.in, the "hyperlocal"
news, information, and conferencing service created to serve cities, towns, and neighborhoods
throughout the US. John Geraci, one of the co-founders of Outside.in, has launched a new site
called DIYcity. The idea here is to use the crowdsourcing power of the interwebs and open
source/Web 2.0 software tools to create applications and services that improve the quality of
life in our urban environments. The site is a place where people can come to present and discuss
problems and then propose and develop solutions. The site will post these problems as weekly
challenges to the DIYcity community. Here's their first challenge:
DIYcity Challenge #1: build a Twitter bot that helps users avoid traffic and get where they're
going faster.
a
href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/coding_your_own_urban_ren.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890"
/Read more/a | a
href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/coding_your_own_urban_ren.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890"
/ Permalink/a | a
href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/coding_your_own_urban_ren.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments"
/Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/made_on_earth/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read
more articles in Made On Earth/a | a
href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fcoding_your_own_urban_ren.htmltitle=Coding%20your%20own%20urban%20renewalbodytext=%20You%26apos%3Bve%20probably%20already%20heard%20of%20Outside.in%2C%20the%20%26quot%3Bhyperlocal%26quot%3B%20news%2C%20information%2C%20and%20conferencing%20service%20created%20to%20serve%20cities%2C%20towns%2C%20and%20neighborhoods%20throughout%20the%20US.%20John%20Geraci%2C%20one%20of%20the%20co-founders%20of%20Outside.in%2C%20has%20launched%20atopic=tech_news"
/Digg this!/a
Never before have Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales been so
carefully tracked as they were this year. The scrutiny makes perfect sense, for the outcome of
this shopping season will directly impact our collective economic future. But while there were
numerous reports claiming that sales on those two crucial days were better than most had been
expecting, my friend Barry Ritholz, a respected Wall Street contrarian, is skeptical —
and says as much on his blog.
Later this week, we should get Master Card’s ShopperPulse data. It is the actual
measurement of what people spent (via their MC Credit Card) and has proven to be more reliable
than either foot traffic, surveys and other biased sources.
While we wait for that data, here are some facts from various sources which show that things are
not as sanguine as people might think.
comScore says Black Friday
e-commerce sales were $534 million, up 1 percent from last year’s sales of $531 million.
The number of page and product views across the online retail sector in general was down 8.55
and 8.29 percent, respectively, compared to Black Friday 2007, according to Coremetrics, which
also points out that there was an 18-percent drop in average session length — a clear sign
that retailers are struggling to keep customers on their sites. In addition, the number of people
who actually completed a purchase dropped by 1.69 percent to 3.49 percent. In other words, there
is a lot of hesitation on the part of consumers when it comes to spending.
That 1-percent gain in online sales may not translate into profits for etailers. People are
buying more per order (4.56 items vs. 4.45 items in 2007), but paying less for it. The average
value of their orders dropped by more than 6 percent, to $126.04 from $134.29. It also points to
people opting for lower-priced items.
On the web sites of department stores, Coremetrics data finds a 12-percent increase in order
sessions, a 30-percent surge in average items per order, and a 10-percent rise in average order
value — none of which is good news for specialty retailers.
Who Buckled Under the Buying Rush?
Our friends at Gomez, a company that tracks the technical performance of web sites, sent us a
long list of sites that went down and/or couldn’t keep up with consumers.
On Monday, Victoria’s Secret had major problems. It was unable to complete shopping
cart transactions (2:15pm ET) and was down completely between 10:06 am-12:00 pm ET, with a
message on its site saying it was “down for maintenance.”
Availability (defined as the percentage of times that a shopper’s end-to-end
transaction is accomplished without error) was not up to par among major brands on Friday.
Amazon’s availability was 73.49 percent, while Apple came in at 87.35 percent and Circuit
City at 63.75 percent.
Sears had just over 61 percent availability, but turned in a performance of 100 percent on
Saturday.
Dell saw downtime of around 35 minutes between 9:40 am and 10:15 am ET.
Staples availability was somewhat off, at 84 percent, on Friday, but rose to 95 percent by
Saturday.
What Was Hot — and What Was Not
HDTV’s were the hot item this season, thanks to prices that literally nosedived.
According to Retrevo (see disclosure below), a Sunnyvale,
Calif-based company that tracks the consumer electronics market, by Black Friday, interest in
HDTVs had surged by more than 250 percent compared to interest at the beginning of November.
Indeed, Samsung’s LN52A650 52″ LCD TV was the fourth best-selling product over the
web on Black Friday, according to PriceGrabber.
Nintento Wii topped PriceGrabber’s list of Black Friday products, followed by Ugg
boots, the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player, Samsung’s LN52A650 52″ LCD TV and
Nintendo’s Wii Fit. According to PriceGrabber, year-over-year interest in Blu-ray/HD-DVD
Players was up 147 percent.
The Wii was a big winner on Cyber Monday as well, according to Price Grabber. In their list
of top products, the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player came in at No. 3, Apple’s iPod
Touch 8GB MP3 player was No. 4, followed by Samsung’s LN52A650 52″ LCD TV in the No.
5 spot. Apple’s iPod Nano 3rd Generation 4GB MP3 Player and the Apple iPod Touch 16GB MP3
Player were ranked No. 10 and No. 11, respectively, followed by the Samsung LN46A550 46″
LCD TV (No. 12), the Sharp AQUOS LC42SB45U 42″ LCD TV (No. 14) and the PanasonicTH-42PX80U
42″ Plasma TV (No. 16).
According to RBC Captial Markets analyst Mark Sue, consumer electronics retailers used
navigation devices as a lure this holiday season. The Garmin Nuvi 200 was available for $97, the
TomTom One 125 for $99, the Garmin Nuvi 260w for $189, and the Magellan 1212 for just $79. Sue
points out that Garmin’s mid- to higher-tier products were being discounted as well. While
this might mean good news for consumer electronics retailers in the short term, I get the feeling
they might have pulled too much of their sales forward and will struggle in the coming months.
Linux.com: "One of the first things I do upon installing a Linux distribution is
put the Network Monitor applet on my GNOME panel. Watching the blue lights twinkle on and off makes
me aware of network traffic. But if you want more details about what's happening on your network,
such as which application is hogging bandwidth or what each network interface is up to, you can
turn to specialty tools like NetHogs and IPTraf. While NetHogs is a unique tool altogether, IPTraf
can be used on a server as well as by a home user."
pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=4901f465796c7a3d006ca5acmaxX=225maxY=237" border="0"
alt="denton_pie.jpg" title="denton_pie.jpg" width="225" height="237" /About a month ago, Gawker
Media owner Nick Denton scared the crap out of everyone saying ad revenues could plummet as much as
40% during the current downturn./p pSince then, Gawker Media's revenues are actually up -- just
under 40%, he says./p pSpecifically, Gawker Media's November 2008 ad revenues were 39% higher than
than they were in November 2007./p pSo wherefrom all this growth amid all the gloom?/p p(Before we
continue, let's all pause to wonder if and how much Denton benefits from his own doom and gloom
public service announcements. For one, it must nice to be able to blame the pain associated with
always painful business model adjustments on a macroeconomic climate. For two, do his
pronouncements every petrify the competition into paralysis? Don't know, but don't doubt that
people feel them emphysically/em.)/p pDenton attributes about 20% of the gains to adding Google ads
to each site's search results. Other big drivers include more sponsored posts and larger ad units,
such as marquee-takeovers and expanded leaderboards./p p"High-end sites need to run bigger and
richer ads -- the same way that glossy magazines run gorgeous spreads," says Denton./p pThe good
November hasn't put Denton out of his pessimitic mood. Gawker laid off three writers and an
editorial assistant this morning anyway. The cuts come from popular and profitible Gawker sites
Gawker.com, Jezebel and Gizmodo./p p"You could argue that we're being perversely conservative,"
owner Nick Denton tells us./p pa
href="http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/on/new_staff_cuts_at_gawker_gizmodo_and_jezebel_102157.asp"MediaBistro
broke the news and has the details/a:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"Gawker editor stronga
href="http://www.mediabistro.com/Sheila-McClear-profile.html"Sheila McClear/a/strong, weekend
editor stronga href="http://www.mediabistro.com/Alex-Carnevale-profile.html"Alex
Carnevale/a/strong, and Jezebel editorial assistant stronga
href="http://www.mediabistro.com/Maria-Mercedes-Lara-profile.html"Maria-Mercedes Lara/a/strong have
all been let go, while three other editors at Jezebel are being made into part-time employees. At
Gizmodo, Gawker Media's top traffic-getter, reporter stronga
href="http://www.mediabistro.com/Benny-Goldman-profile.html"Benny Goldman/a/strong was laid off.
Last week, video assistant stronga href="http://www.mediabistro.com/Nick-McGlynn-profile.html"Nick
McGlynn/a/strong was fired after more than a year at Gawker./p pstrongSee Also:/stronga
href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/how-to-layoff-employees-and-not-get-sued-"br /How To Lay
Off Employees (And Not Get Sued)/a/p pa
href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/eZweFcRCfdtI5mrTGz1L6pQUqlI/a"img
src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/eZweFcRCfdtI5mrTGz1L6pQUqlI/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
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border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=FS7ZwJ8Y"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=8rUuP529"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80"
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src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=Yiw3T5rx"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=4eLQ77Rc"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=p0bMhUIC"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=O2BFcJLD"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41"
border="0"/img/a a
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src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50"
border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/W1nLxjyJCUY"
height="1" width="1"/
://URLFAN is an evolving experiment designed to discover what websites the blogosphere is
discussing all in real time. It does this by cultivating the content of millions of RSS feeds,
parsing billions of pieces of information to make a transparent ranking based on that data. In this
way you can discover who's a fan of your URL. nbsp; nbsp; Now every website owner can see who's
talking about their site in real time and how they compare to every other site on the Internet.
There are many websites designed to rank the traffic of a website, such as Alexa, however ://URLFAN
is different. We rank websites according to their popularity in the fast moving and growing world
of RSS feeds. nbsp; nbsp; Unlike Alexa, there is no approximating in our ranking system since we're
using concrete data to generate the results. nbsp; nbsp; another one a
HREF=http://morpheus.cs.umbc.edu/bloglines/Feeds That Matter was developed out of a real need to
find interesting, high quality feeds for a given topic. Typically, I would add a feed to my RSS
reader only if I came across it by chance on another blog. This was not always the best way to find
good feeds. There are a number of blog search engines and some directories that are hand crafted.
However none of them had a very good listing of popular feeds on different topics./a
It seems that the Associated Press continues to struggle to figure out how to deal with this whole
online thing. It's still trying to a
href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081024/0337562636.shtml"revamp/a its pricing structure
after a bunch of newspapers a
href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081017/0221472571.shtml"canceled/a their contracts as they
were pretty pissed off that the AP is effectively a
href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080519/0305511168.shtml"competing/a with its own member
papers. The AP has also had a bit of a run-in with bloggers over its a
href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080617/0740561432.shtml"ridiculous fair use policies/a.
Its latest move seems to, once again, be getting pretty much everything backwards. Famed film
critic Roger Ebert is complaining that the AP has sent down word from on-high that a
href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/death_to_film_critics_long_liv.html" target="_new"all
entertainment articles must be 500 words or shorter/a -- including film reviews, interviews, news
stories, trend pieces and (best of all) "think pieces." Apparently, if you need more than 500 words
to get people thinking, you're a bit too verbose. On top of that, the AP is asking those same
entertainment writers to focus on more salacious, attention grabbing stories in picking what to
write. br /br / It's not difficult to see what's going on here. The AP is trying to be more
"bloggy." Shorter, more attention grabbing pieces? Apparently, it's decided that people online only
want to read the quick hits on salacious stories. Of course, despite what some may think, that's
not really true. The AP has an opportunity to be better than all of that. It could draw serious
attention by creating ireal/i content that people iwant/i, rather than running after the latest
fad. But, apparently, that's not in the AP's plan. It has the resources to do what various
small-time blogs can't do, but apparently, it's going in the other direction. Perhaps it's not too
surprising, but it's no less a mistake. br /br / Yes, short, attention grabbing stories get
traffic, but that doesn't mean good, thorough journalism would get ignored. The problem the AP is
having isn't that its stories are too long, or not attention-grabbing enough. It's that it still
views itself as a gatekeeper of information, rather than an enabler of both news gathering iand/i
news distribution. Of course, with each misstep by the AP, a
href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081029/0233592680.shtml"others/a are quickly moving in to
take its place.br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081201/0315542987.shtml"Permalink/a |
a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081201/0315542987.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a
href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081201/0315542987op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br
style="clear: both;"/ a
href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=310668f3228829d0fa98131b37a4a031p=1"img alt=""
style="border: 0;" border="0"
src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=310668f3228829d0fa98131b37a4a031p=1"//a img
src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=310668f3228829d0fa98131b37a4a031" style="display:
none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a
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)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
…But were afraid to ask. This is the title of this very interesting 34-slide
presentation on Google prepared by 
Category: Utilities
Matt Singley is a
business process advisor that focuses on social media and UGC sociology. He authors a blog,
