Miscelanea

Issue #3 for jrmhp

6/6/2008 - 6/18/2008

feedjournal.com

Cashing in on Same-Sex Wedding Bells (Portfolio.com: Culture and Lifestyle) Submitted at 6/16/2008 9:00:00 PM

A t Los Angeles' gay pride parade June 8, a local radio station had a float emblazoned with a banner that read, "Welcome to the hell that is marriage." The message was a cheeky nod to the May 15 California Supreme Court ruling legalizing marriage for same-sex couples, but it typified how quickly some segments in the business community are gearing up for same-sex nuptials, which began Monday evening. Gay and lesbian couples are sure to be ecstatic on their wedding days, but the ones shedding the most tears of happiness may be California's wedding and honeymoon vendors. Will a change in law mean a bull market for big fat gay weddings? The Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law thinks so. The think tank released a study June 9 showing California's $6 billion-a-year wedding industry will get an infusion of $683 million over three years in direct spending by same-sex couples. Based on numbers in Massachusetts, where it has been legal for resident gays and lesbians to marry since 2003, the Williams Institute estimates roughly half of California's 102,000 domestic partners will get married, while another 68,000 couples from outside the state are expected to come and celebrate their nuptials. The Institute thinks same-sex marriage should generate 2,200 jobs in California, bring in $8 million in marriagelicense fees, and increase sales and occupancy tax revenues by $55 million. A 2005 study showed that if same-sex marriage was legalized nationally, the wedding industry could generate another $2 billion annually. That's peanuts for the overall industry, since 2.4 million straight couples get married each year and

spend on average $20,000, racking up a total of $72 billion, according to bridal website theknot.com. But the potential for a deep-pocketed, underserved market coming online in an economy where more straight couples may be thinking of pulling back their spending is undoubtedly attractive to vendors. The impact on California and the rest of the country could be significant, says Betsy Stevenson, an assistant professor at the Wharton School who studies the tax implications of marriage. She compared marriage in the Golden State today to Nevada 60 years ago, when that state's lax divorce laws made it a destination for couples looking to split. The revenue Nevada brought in encouraged other states to change their divorce laws. "Once California starts making money, other states will want to get into the game," Stevenson said. San Francisco first saw the economic potential back in 2004. Thousands of same-sex couples were married out of City Hall around Valentine's Day before the state put the kibosh on the renegade licenses and began litigation that ultimately led to this year's decision. Businesses in the city, which for years have catered to informal commitment ceremonies, were struck by a "Flowers from the Heartland" phenomena, a movement in which well-wishers ordered wedding flowers for same-sex couples they didn't know. Thousands of bouquets were distributed randomly to the throngs of couples waiting to get married, a boon to florists in the city. But this time around, the feeling is that marriage will be more lasting, said Joe D'Alessandro, the president and C.E.O. of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau. He and his partner of nearly six years are planning a 75-person wedding for Labor Day, with a budget of about $10,000. "That's the ballpark we've

talked about," he explained. "It's easy to run up. You can go through that in a flash." Expanding existing business without alienating the mainstream is a common theme, even if you're taking out full-page newspaper ads that seem to be congratulating same-sex couples. Less than two weeks after the California court decision, Macy's made headlines in San Francisco and Los Angeles touting its gift-registry program in an ad that read, "First comes love. Then comes marriage. And now it's a milestone every couple in California can celebrate." Macy's spokesman Jim Sluzewski resisted any suggestion Macy's was taking a stand on same-sex marriage, since all the company was doing was innocently running an "inclusive" ad that promotes its registry, which has been open to same-sex couples for 15 years. "The fact that we are advertising a wedding registry is not at all unusual," he said. "In the wedding business, everything is new business." For businesses rushing out to buy rainbow-colored paraphernalia and bride-bride cake toppers in bulk in a bid to attract cookie-cutter gay nuptials, cool your heels, since samesex couples are likely to be as individualistic as their straight counterparts, said Tegan Firth of San Francisco's Hornblower Cruises & Events. Her company has served same-sex couples for years, and in the first 10 days after the court decision got inquiries from 15 couples, half from outside California. "Commitment ceremonies and now same-sex weddings are going to be similar to other kinds of social celebrations in the sense that it is a very unique experience for the individual," Firth said. "A lot of times the requests we receive are very specific to the couple." Joie de Vivre Hotels is offering a promotion that is designed to appeal to socially conscious gay and lesbian

couples. The boutique hotelier's Silicon Valley property Hotel Montgomery will donate 10 percent of any group block rate for same-sex marriage bookings to the Human Rights Campaign, a national gayrights advocacy group that is gearing up to fight a statewide constitutional amendment initiative in November seeking to overturn the marriage decision. The hotel group is also preparing an information packet for couples that includes courthouse times and other specifics visitors may not know, such as the requirement that you must be in California for at least 24 hours before getting married. Susan Wilcox, the vice president of communications for the California Travel and Tourism Commission, put out a press release June 3 promoting venues beyond the traditional gay favorites that are also waiting to serve the happy groom and groom, such as locations in Yosemite and the Cascades. Figuring out if estimates are correct that marriage is a financial gain for California is premature. "It's kind of hard to say what that will net out as," Wilcox said, noting economic impact numbers are "elusive statistics." But in this case, there will be a paper trail. "At least with marriage numbers we'll be able to tell who came and what they did," she said. "We will know from the marriage licenses. All of those statistics will be very telling." But for D'Alessandro, his marriage is more than just a statistic to him. "It is a basic civil-rights issue," he said. "The emotions are very powerful." Related Links Commentary: The Price of Prejudice How Mark Zuckerberg is Like Howard Dean Reality Check: Ford Still Pro-Gay Post-Boycott

persuasive. Isn't that worth trying? Second, he rejected the idea of having a 'real' publisher publish it. A real publisher adds time (perhaps six months or a year or two) and limits many of your options re: pricing, distribution, royalties and promotion. Third, he realized that the ideas in a book are different than the book itself. The ideas are free. Dave made the ideas even easier to share by putting them into a PDF. If you want the souvenir edition, the one you can hand to a friend or read on the beach or store on your shelf, that costs a lot of money, but you don't mind, because you've already decided you wanted one (no risk, cause you've read it!) Fourth, he figured out a way to use

scarcity to create promotion. On the day a book is released, it's scarce. Scarce because no one has read it yet. That scarcity makes it more likely that someone will blog about it, because it's a scoop. News. Cooler still, he's not offering a copy of the book. Instead, he let me and a few other people offer it exclusively. No, this doesn't work if you haven't worked with the blogger for years, haven't earned a reputation and most especially, haven't written something worth reading. In other words, it takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success. So, if you're going to write a book in six years, please start now and focus on hard work, breaking new ground and being a standup guy.

If you follow Dave's tactics exactly, you'll certainly fail (at least with me), because it's already been done before. But, I have no doubt that variations on this method are going to get more and more powerful. (You can read my original free ebook--it was seven (!) years ago-- right here. That book was a total homerun for me and for my readers--it has been downloaded, emailed and purchased millions and millions of times. I'm surprised the tactic isn't more popular.) Find hundreds of other free ebooks at changethis. I started changethis with some talented interns a few summers ago, and because I'm not involved with it any longer, it's cooler than ever.

What Dave just did (Seth's Blog)

Submitted at 6/15/2008 10:41:00 PM

Dave Balter, an old friend and colleague, has written a new book. It costs $45 on Amazon. But, for my loyal readers...you can get a copy of the ebook (the entire book) for free here. The way he is bringing his idea to the world is instructive. First, he wrote a book. You should write a book, too. Publishing a book is easier than it appears (in some ways, like the typing, typesetting, printing, and distributing part) but more difficult in others (like the writing something worth reading part.) Writing a book forces you to be organized and passionate and

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The 3-D Dilemma (Portfolio.com: Culture and Lifestyle) Submitted at 6/16/2008 3:00:00 AM

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the newest champion of 3-D movies, is on a conference call with analysts. Katzenberg, who runs DreamWorks Animation SKG—the Glendale, California, studio that made the Shrek films—is not happy. It’s April, and he’s been proclaiming for a year that 3-D is the biggest thing to hit Hollywood since color. He has vowed that all his new animated movies will be in 3-D, which will add $15 million to the cost of each. DreamWorks’ Monsters vs. Aliens is coming out next year, and Katzenberg was hoping that 5,000 theaters would be 3 -D-ready by then. Not happening. Not even close. Maybe 1,500 will be ready to show Katzenberg’s new film, and this spells trouble for DreamWorks. “Things have dragged along, and it’s been pretty disappointing,” he says. He knows that if 3-D doesn’t hit big, he’s going to look like the guy with 10,000 unsold Segways in a warehouse. ( View a pop-up graphic showing some of the biggest 3-D blockbusters and bombs.) Not far away, in Los Angeles, Cary Granat, the co-C.E.O. of Walden Media, is in his own 3-D nail-biter. Walden’s Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D—which is basically Indiana Jones Goes Spelunking—will be the first major live-action digital-3-D release when it comes out on July 11. He hoped to open Journey in 1,700 theaters, but only about 1,000 are 3-D -ready. Far, far away—northwest Arkansas—Mike Thomson, vice president of operations and technology for Malco Theatres, pulls his truck up to a McDonald’s drivethrough. For 43 years, he’s worked for Malco, which manages more than 320 screens, and he speaks with the weariness of someone who has seen innumerable fads come and go. Thomson believes in 3-D too, but clearly not with the zeal of Katzenberg and Granat. Malco is upgrading a handful of its theaters for digital 3-D, yet he sounds cautious. “We need to give people something they can’t get at home,” he says, reflecting an industrywide worry that borders on panic. “3-D is a piece of the puzzle, but it’s not the magic bullet.” Thomson drives off with his McGriddles sandwich, and the movie industry perches on the edge of its collective seat. This story might not turn out the way Hollywood imagined. S tudios are latching onto 3-D for much the same reason that Bob Dole took Viagra. Most of Hollywood’s businesses are making money—for all Katzenberg’s complaining, DreamWorks’ first-quarter profit was up 69 percent—but the sector that makes Hollywood feel best about itself, theatrical showings, is deflating, in large part because the difference between seeing a movie in your local multiplex and on a 52-inch high-definition TV in your family room is not that vast. The Motion Picture Association of America claims that 2007 was a good year for the cinema business, with

U.S. box office revenue up 5 percent to $9.6 billion. But that’s unsupportable spin. The jump can be almost entirely attributed to a bump in ticket prices. The number of tickets sold in the U.S. stayed flat from 2006 to 2007, at 1.5 billion. (In 1950, while TV was taking off, U.S. theaters sold 3 billion tickets a year—and the population was half what it is today.) Meanwhile, 379 screens were added between 2006 and 2007. Do the math and movies are doing worse than ever in theaters. This stuff gives Hollywood agita. Publicity campaigns and the buzz from theatrical releases are what drive DVD sales and premium-cablechannel showings, not to mention ancillary moneymakers like toys, videogames, and Happy Meal tie-ins. “We make films for the theater and want to exhibit there first,” says Chuck Viane, president of movie distribution for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. “It’s the engine that pulls the train.” Hollywood hopes that 3-D can stoke that wheezing engine. Katzenberg is making the next Shrek in 3-D, and Pixar Animation Studios is rendering the first two Toy Story movies, as well as making the next one, in 3-D. Director James Cameron ( Titanic) just finished shooting Avatar, a 3-D movie planned for 2009. Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings films, is bringing the comic-book character Tintin to the screen in a 3-D movie. Director Robert Zemeckis ( Beowulf, Forrest Gump) is already filming his adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in 3-D. Every major studio has leaped aboard. When anyone questions whether such faith in 3-D is justified, Hollywood puts forth Exhibit A: Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour. The Disney 3-D concert film shattered records for a limited release by grossing almost $45,000 a screen when it was released early this year; it made more than $30 million during its opening weekend. But Disney can’t be sure whether Hannah killed because it was in 3-D. According to Viane, relatively few theaters could show digital 3-D when the movie came out, which meant that it played on only 683 screens. “If we had done it in 2-D and opened on thousands of screens, would we have made more money? Hard to say,” he says. “More screens typically mean more gross.” Malco’s Thomson is more direct: “ Hannah would’ve been huge, in 3-D or not.”

C reating a 3-D movie today is unlike making one in any other era. New software allows studios to render computer-animated films like Shrek in 3-D. And while shooting live action in 3-D was virtually impossible just a few years ago, technology developed by Vince Pace, who previously specialized in underwater cameras and worked with Cameron on Titanic, has made it feasible. (Cameron even helped develop some of Pace’s technology.) Dual-lens cameras mimic the way eyes capture an image from slightly different angles. Computers then digitize the images, allowing directors to manipulate them. This technology has become workable only in the past few years, and it's quickly getting better and cheaper. When images captured by Pace cameras are projected onto a screen, the overlapping images look slightly blurry to the naked eye. But when a viewer puts on special high-tech glasses that direct one image into each eye, the brain unites the two pictures, creating a single 3-D image. In a screening room at Walden headquarters, I watch Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D wearing giant glasses that look like something you’d see on a 90-year-old man in Sarasota, Florida. The 3-D is compelling and easy to watch. Later, I talk to Brendan Fraser, Journey’s star and executive producer. “I’m very enthusiastic,” he says. “This picture is the tippity--top of the spear of what’s coming. I want to be an old guy and say I was on the tip of that pointy spear and helped drive 3-D forward.” When I suggest that he might someday be known as the Al Jolson of 3-D, Fraser guffaws and asks if he can use that line in interviews. But whether Fraser gets to be the Jolson of digital 3-D depends on whether 3-D spreads the way talkies did in the late 1920s. This is where reclusive billionaire Philip Anschutz enters the scene, trying to save the day. T here’s a chicken-and-egg problem with 3-D movies: For them to achieve mass-market success, studios must deliver a stream of blockbusters. But if too few screens are equipped for 3D, there’s little point in spending the extra 20 percent it costs to shoot in the format. Furthermore, to show digital 3-D movies, theaters must install a system, typically from one of the two main suppliers, Real D and Dolby Laboratories. A 3-D system can cost $20,000 or more. What’s more, only

4,600 of the 38,000 theaters in the U.S. have digital projectors, so many owners first have to fork out $75,000 for those—making the total price close to $100,000. Theater owners don’t want to spend that much money unless they know they’ll be able to fill the house. Another hitch is the glasses. (“They’re a little Buddy Holly, but hey, we’re all in this together!” Fraser quips.) So far, there is no standard that works with every 3-D system. Real D relies on cheap disposable or recyclable glasses, which could cost theaters or studios millions to stock. Dolby uses expensive glasses—around $40—that are supposed to be returned at the end of every screening, but people inevitably steal them. “That is the fly in the ointment,” says Thomson, whose theater chain is buying Dolby systems. “You have to get the glasses back or you lose your ass.” You can see where this is going: Theaters don’t want to invest until Holly-wood does, and Hollywood doesn’t want to invest until theaters do. Once both invest, the industry hopes to create a positivereinforcement cycle. Anschutz invested in both the chicken and the egg. He funded Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D through Walden, which he controls. He also owns Regal Entertainment Group, the world’s largest movietheater chain, with more than 6,000 screens. Regal has installed more Real D systems than any other operator. Anschutz was also connected to Real D. Joshua Greer, its president and co-founder, started developing the 3-D-projection system while he was an executive at Walden. “We didn’t want Walden to be in the business of selling a 3-D system to theaters,” Granat says. “So Josh took the project out of Walden and built Real D with knowledge from Walden.” To recap: Anschutz stands to make money both by showing Journey in theaters and on the film itself. Plus, he had a role in the birth of technology that other theater chains are likely to buy and install. Anschutz has the chicken, the egg, and the chicken feed. "I wish I could say the movie theater experience will never go away, but I’m not sure,” says Jonathan Kuntz, a film-history professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. It’s not just home theaters that are competing for consumers’ time. Audiences are being pulled away by other forms of entertainment too. They’re increasingly logging on to YouTube and Facebook, playing Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft, instant messaging, and blogging. Consumers will do something that’s inconvenient to have a high-quality experience—like go to a U2 concert. And we’re willing to put up with lower quality for the sake of convenience—like listen to a U2 song on an iPod. But we’re not that interested in something that is both inconvenient and of not-so-great quality. Movie theaters are inconvenient (you have to leave the house), and the experience isn’t much better than that of a nice home 3-D page 12

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Happiness Is ... (Portfolio.com: Culture and Lifestyle) Submitted at 6/16/2008 3:00:00 AM

I f you went out into the street and asked people at random how happy they were, what do you think you would find? That the healthy are happier than the sick? True, although not by as much as you might think. Young people are happier than the middle-aged and the old? False—happiness is remarkably stable over the life cycle. Religious people are happier than nonbelievers? True, at least according to researchers in happiness economics, a rapidly growing field that relies on opinion surveys rather than on government statistics to measure well-being and trace its causes. In April, at the Brookings Institution in Washington, two enterprising young economists from Wharton, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, addressed the age-old question of what money can and can’t buy. Drawing on a wide variety of surveys, the duo claimed that rich people are happier than poor people, rich countries are happier than poor countries, and as countries get richer they get happier. Within weeks, newspapers around the world had picked up on the findings, and Wolfers was appearing on CNBC to brief viewers. Why all the fuss? Stevenson and Wolfers’ paper runs counter to a large body of evidence suggesting that, especially in rich countries, economic growth has failed to translate into greater subjective well-being. In the United States, the first happiness surveys were carried out at the end of World War II. Sixty years later, despite the fact that people’s inflation -adjusted incomes have quadrupled, reported happiness levels have hardly budged. The U.S. isn’t alone. “In China, between 1990 and 2004, per capita income went from 5 percent of the U.S. level to 16 percent,” says Richard Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California and one of the founders of the happiness school. But happiness over that period stagnated. “Life satisfaction, if anything, seems to be declining. India, Chile, Turkey, Ireland—all of them show little or no improvement in happiness or well--being despite rapid economic growth.’’ Stevenson and Wolfers argue that countries like these are exceptions to the rule. “Our results suggest that economic growth is a very powerful force for raising well-being,” Wolfers says. “It is not true that only income matters, but on average it looks like economic growth is good for happiness, even in rich countries.” The new paper galvanizes an important debate about the purpose and effectiveness of economic policy—and about what has been the economic status quo for more than six decades. Governments around the

world, including the U.S., have long made maximizing the gross domestic product—a measure of all the goods and services produced in the economy—their overriding economic goal. The problem, if you buy into the argument of Easterlin and his followers, is that the endless pursuit of higher G.D.P. is largely selfdefeating. People in nations with higher G.D.P.’s don’t get continuously happier. As a result, governments might be better advised to concentrate on things that actually do have an impact on happiness, such as maintaining stable families and friendly communities, reducing joblessness, providing adequate health care, and guaranteeing more personal freedom. In his 2005 book, Happiness: Lessons From a New Science, Richard Layard, one of Britain’s leading economists and a member of the House of Lords, advocated just such a policy shift, saying, “We should monitor the development of happiness in our countries as closely as we monitor the development of income.” I asked Layard if the promotion of happiness is a practical agenda. “Oh, yes,” he replied. “We’re very busy at it here in Britain.” Many British government departments already have well-being divisions, and the Office for National Statistics, which tracks Britain’s G.D.P., is gathering more information about subjective wellbeing. Last year, the British government, led by Gordon Brown, allocated more taxpayer money for mental health programs, which can have a big impact on reported happiness. Other European countries are following Britain’s lead. Frustrated with what he called “the growing gap” between official economic statistics and daily reality, French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently appointed a high-level commission to explore ways of quantifying happiness and well-being. The European Commission is also working on new economic indicators that will incorporate nonmonetary factors such as environmental progress into economic decisionmaking. Here in the U.S., though, the happiness school has made less headway. “The political establishment is much more proeconomic growth, and it doesn’t like this subjective well-being stuff,” Easterlin says. “There is a feeling it is promoting welfare-state ideas such as families, health, and other human concerns.” Also, despite the survey evidence, many economists refuse to accept that money and happiness don’t go together. “People who have more income have more opportunities,” Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist and an authority on the measurement of well-being, said. “How can you find that they are less happy? To an orthodox

economist, it doesn’t make sense.” If you believe Stevenson and Wolfers, the traditional focus on G.D.P. makes eminent sense. Using new data from a 2006 worldwide survey by Gallup, they find the correlation between income and life satisfaction is 0.82, which seems impressive. (One represents perfect correlation; zero is none.) In a discussion session following Stevenson and Wolfers’ presentation of their paper at Brookings, Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker praised the paper warmly, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who is now back at Harvard, said it had appended the conventional wisdom of the happiness school. But is that really the case? Gallup asked people to imagine themselves on a ladder with steps numbered from zero to 10, with the bottom of the ladder representing “the worst possible life for you” and the top representing “the best possible life for you.” The respondents were then asked to say which step they were standing on. If you instruct people to think about the best possible and worst possible lives they could be living, you are surely inviting them to compare their living standards with those of people elsewhere. This methodological quirk alone could -easily -explain why residents of poor countries report low scores and residents of rich countries report high ones, and it wouldn’t have anything to do with money making people happier. The Gallup survey is just one of many. Others show a much weaker link between income and life satisfaction. Using data from the World Values Survey, which dates back to 1980, Stevenson and Wolfers couldn’t identify any statistically significant relationship between movements in G.D.P. and changes in life satisfaction. “I can’t say I’m absolutely certain that greater growth in income causes greater happiness,” Wolfers concedes. “And you can’t say for certain that greater growth doesn’t produce greater happiness.” Maybe not, but I can say for sure—because Wolfers and Stevenson confirm it—that as people and countries grow richer, each extra dollar of income buys less and less additional happiness. A $100 rise in average income in Jamaica, for example, has three times the impact on measured happiness as a $100 increase in the U.S. Moreover, other economists, including John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, have shown that nonmonetary factors like working conditions appear to have a much bigger impact on happiness than income. “What we really care about is how big the effect of income is on well-being,” Helliwell says. “The answer is it’s small relative to other things.” Why is the relationship between money and happiness so complicated? Rivalry and jealousy

provide a large part of the answer. What many people care about most is not the dollar amount of their income but their income relative to the income of others in their peer group. As H.L. Mencken put it many years ago, wealth is any income that is $100 more a year than the income of your wife’s sister’s husband. A recent example comes from the former East Germany. During the 1990s, living standards there rose sharply, but reported happiness fell. The likely explanation: After decades of belonging to the decrepit Soviet bloc, East Germans began comparing themselves with West Germans. Also, as people become richer, they quickly grow accustomed to bigger houses, more powerful cars, and better-made clothes, but their possessions don’t make them much happier. We humans are trapped on a hedonic treadmill. The faster we try to get ahead, the quicker we end up back where we started. Studies show that even lottery winners, after an initial period of adjustment, don’t become much happier. Fortunately, Helliwell and other researchers—even taking into account rivalry and habituation—have identified some things that make people feel better, such as getting married, being employed in a secure job, having a full social life, and playing an active role in the democratic process. Not very long ago, quality-of-life issues like these were largely beyond the purview of economics, and I, for one, was of the mind that economists should stick to things they know about, like inflation and interest rates. After delving into the happiness literature, I’ve changed my view. In poor countries, where billions are struggling to eke out an existence, economic growth is the only route out of poverty and degradation. In rich countries, though, it may be time to supplement G.D.P. with other measures of progress. In his book, Layard calls on governments to promote -family-friendly policies like flexible work hours and more parental leave and subsidize organizations that promote communities, such as sports leagues and good public schools. With more research and a bit of imagination, economists should be able to augment this list. What could be more important than promoting happiness and well-being? As utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham pointed out two centuries ago, the answer is nothing. John McCain and Barack Obama, take note. Related Links Do Happiness and Economic Growth Rise, and Fall, Together? Broken English The US Economy Reaches a Fork in the Road

expert Timothy Pychyl and selfprofessed “structured procrastinator” John Perry discuss the latest research on this type of behavior and how to prioritize what’s really important. If you’ve been around here for a

while, you’ll remember John Perry for his excellent piece on “ Structured Procrastination.” Great stuff.

Talk of the Nation on Procrastination (43 Folders -) Submitted at 6/12/2008 12:13:26 PM

How to Be a Productive Procrastinator : NPR(Talk of the Nation)

The Talk of the Nation that’s on right now (available for streaming later) is on the topic of procrastination. Why do today what you can do the day after tomorrow? Procrastination

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MobileMe: .Mac's iPhone-Friendly Replacement (43 Folders -) Submitted at 6/9/2008 3:16:34 PM

Apple - MobileMe There’s lots to digest from today’s WWDC Stevenote— not least of which was the dramatic announcement of a 3G iPhone for only $199. But you’ll be hearing lots about that in a million places. I want to talk about my first impressions about something even closer to my heart that’s at least different this time around, if not entirely new. Today, Steve announced the upcoming release of Apple’s MobileMe service, which will replace the existing.Mac service at the same price of $99/year for an Individual account, while adding some new features, including: • Individual account quota doubled to 20GB of storage, including email and files (.Mac currently offers 10GB at the same price) • MS Exchange-like “push” syncing between applications on multiple Macs as well as your iPhone, via the MobileMe “cloud” • Revamped, web-based Me.com versions of Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, and iDisk applications As someone who’s had strong feelings, high hopes, and occasional disappointmens with .Mac, I’m going to spend some time over the next few weeks looking into what these changes will mean for the always-on knowledge worker — particularly now that the service is clearly moving toward tighter integration with iPhones, the iPod Touch, and webbased usage. But first, just a few things to note here (quickly and on first impression): • Lovely tweaks- This is where Apple just obliterates the competition; all the tiny little changes we saw to GUI and workflow on the MobileMe web apps and related iPhone apps reflect a lot of thought and look well-suited for real-world usage. I can’t wait to see the improvements to iPhone’s Calendar

and Contacts, in particular. Kudos, team. An iPhone that makes MobileMe easy and transparent to use is a big win all around. (N.B.: as you might expect, Apple’s site has many lovely demonstration videos in their MobileMe section) • Love the “Push”- No longer having to physically plug in your iPhone to sync stuff like Mail, Calendar, and Contacts is terrific for the multiple-device user. Knowing that (at least as long as you’re online) everything matches up just means big peace of mind to me. Maybe most importantly, one hopes that the new Push approach addresses some of the previous sync problems that have plagued .Mac users ( Nuclear reset, anyone?). • Love the (baby) steps toward true cloud computing- Having such gorgeous and functional apps on the iPhone is a big step in the right direction. How the services that those apps access evolve will be interesting to watch; adding something like broader support for Preferences syncing and better/easier iPhone password management would also be big wins. • Hiya, Windows hold-outs- I don’t know enough about “Enterprise” buying decisions to speak intelligently about business adoption, but I will say that MobileMe seems like a smart way reach out to individual Windows users and say, “See? Look how easy this all is!” Similarly, a lot of people I talk to these days are down to a single Windows device, and that’s the one they have to use at work. MobileMe potentially keeps them connected to their Apple world, even when they’re on a PC. That said…. • Where the heck is a modern, functional iDisk?- It looks like the iDisk web interface has been updated (very pretty, actually), and yeah, there’s double the storage, but what can I do with all that stuff when I’m not in front of my home computer? Where’s the mobile part? I was really

hoping to see something more impressive with iDisk this time around — like a website with honest to gosh, Google Docs-like editing and management. And what about the iPhone? Can I do anything with my iDisk documents on there? That feels like a swing and a miss for a service with mobile in the name. Questions • Will stability and reliability of MobileMe greatly improve over .Mac? Take everything else away, and at the heart, any .Mac/MobileMe product will not survive if Apple doesn’t fix the uptime and sync problems. I know sync is hard. But, lots of things are hard and when other companies are doing it more reliably and for free, it should be easy to see there’s a bar consumers expect you to reach. • How will iPhone additions like Push and GPS affect real battery life? If Steve’s battery estimates are anything like real-world, it’ll be great. But I have a feeling those are CandyLand Gumdrop numbers. I realize this is an iPhone-specific note, but I’ll say that a half-day of “Every 15 Minutes” email checking was an eye-opener for me. I can’t imagine what kind of power that thing pulls when it’s running full-time GPS for an hour or so. • Ready for some competition? With the introduction of independent applications using the iPhone SDK, we can look forward to a bonanza of new functionality that — based on the game demoes we saw today — could be pretty eye-popping. Although I

don’t know details of what functionality is exposed to developers, I have to imagine that the combination of ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and speedy 3G access will bring some much-needed competition into Apple’s back yard. I wonder how Apple will react to that. Bottom Line Boy, if there’s any product that us fanboys want to love, this is it. But it’s been a tough few years, even for the superfans. We’ve watched half a dozen or more other companies’ services build similar or better features, provide higher reliability, and charge lower or zero cost in a way that seems to outpace Apple’s offering without breaking a sweat. So, I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this and reporting back to you on how it’s working for me. I want it to work great, and I think it can, based on Apple’s high standards and ability to control all the pieces. I also stand by what I said in this post from January about the untapped possibilities of .Mac: …Apple might eat the lunches of about three different industries over the next couple years. If they can pull it off, if they can fix .Mac, and if they have the vision to re -imagine themselves as the company who makes your entire digital world safe, fun, ubiquitous, and flawlessly integrated. Please share your thoughts, hopes, wishes, and remarks about MobileMe or anything else related to the Keynote announcements here in comments. [These were quick notes I jotted this afternoon. Pardon any typos; I will fix them as I see them, as well as giving myself a day or two to add links on other coverage as it arises. I have a feeling a lot of people will be talking about MobileMe]

Cracking the China Code (Portfolio.com: Top 5) Submitted at 6/17/2008 11:00:00 AM

C hina’s $60 billion advertising market is the third largest in the world. Yet according to a new study by R3/Grupo Consultores, few marketers have a true understanding of what it takes to build brands in the fastest-growing market on the planet. Over a two-year period ending in March of 2008, R3/Grupo Consultores surveyed more than 500 advertisers and more than 100 global and independent agencies working in China, which only re-legalized advertising in 1978. The results, discussed at the Cannes International Advertising Festival this week, have broad implications for future marketing efforts with China, and perhaps are harbingers of future ad trends in the rest of the world. One surprising finding: In a country where marketers strive to elicit loyalty from consumers, the average client/agency relationship is the world’s shortest at less than two-and-

a-half years — compared with almost five years in the Europe and the United States. The No. 1 reason Chinese clients gave for seeking a new agency is a lack of creativity (in the U.S. it’s a dissatisfaction with service). In fact, 85 percent of Chinese advertisers said that creativity matters most — more than anywhere in the world. The survey said that most brands look to multinational agencies for high level creative, and local shops for a better understanding of the complex and varied Chinese demographic, which is to be expected in a country 102 cities of more than a million people, and still a 70 percent rural population. Also of note is the finding that project-based, rather than fee-based compensation for work is more common in China than anywhere else. This is trend that ShuFen Goh, Principal of R3 Asia Pacific, feels could be related to the premium placed on creative and will become more prevalent in the rest of the

world. (An excerpt of her talk with Portfolio.com can be found here). The study busts the myth that Chinese marketers are playing catchup with the rest of the world. Goh says she found that China is actually playing leapfrog, bounding past conventional global marketers in some areas. This is best exemplified with the phenomenal growth of mobile phones as a means of communication – and a prime advertising opportunity. China Mobile, the world's largest cellular provider, has 530 million subscribers, and it adds as many subscribers each month as there are people in Portugal. “The first button a child pushes in China today isn’t the television, radio, or computer; it’s the mobile,” Goh says. She predicts the world will soon be playing catch up to China when it comes to mobile advertising. In addition to grasping mobile’s jaw -dropping potential and the importance of creativity, advertisers in China should also note the tension

between tradition and transformation in the 5,000-year-old culture. This includes a rise in using blogs, chat rooms, and other interactive branding technology as an outlet for social expression. According to the study, the most dynamic multinational brand in China is Coke. The most admired is Procter & Gamble. Daniela Riccardi, greater China president of P&G, said her company's status should be no surprise. Procter will be celebrating its 20th year of having an advertising presence in China this August. That is about eight times longer than most ad relationships there. For an interactive map of Cannes parties, click here. Related Links On Cannes: Cracking the China Market China Comes to a Boil Mr. Paulson Goes to China

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Almost Like Being There (Portfolio.com: Culture and Lifestyle) Submitted at 6/16/2008 9:00:00 AM

A t the 17th hole on Kiawah Island Golf Resort's challenging Ocean Course, the foursome paused. The Atlantic Ocean can be seen from many of the raised greens, but on this hole, all eyes were on an adjacent pond—and its resident alligator. Chad Nelson joked to YuChiang Cheng that a Kiawah pro had suggested not going after any lost balls, then pulled out a 3-wood and chipped his over the drink. Cheng followed suit. Cheng, C.E.O. of San Franciscobased videogame maker World Golf Tour, has never been to South Carolina. But he's played Ocean Course hundreds of times. It is one of dozens of premier resorts that the start-up has recreated in what the founders call "2 ½-D" in an effort to become a new gaming heavyweight. For years, the virtual-golf scene has been dominated by Electronic Arts, the world's largest independent game publisher. E.A. Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise has sold more than 26 million copies since it was first released in 1998. Much like Woods, it has squashed the competition: Microsoft's Links franchise, which started in 1990, shut down after five years against E.A. And in addition to locking up Woods, E.A. Sports holds the exclusive license for the P.G.A. Tour, essentially shutting out other comers—until now. World Golf Tour is trying to sidestep the roadblocks. It's cutting individual deals with top golf courses so that it doesn't need to deal with the P.G.A. Tour. The stars of its greens will not be pro golfers, but players'

avatars. And it is making the games in Flash, so they will be available to a far wider audience of players—for free. Nelson, World Golf Tour's president and co-founder, conceived the game in early 2006 while golfing in Italy. He and Cheng had sold their PC game-development studio, WagerWorks, to IGT for $90 million the year before, and he wondered why there were no good online golf games. Since the pair knew they didn't want to be just another game developer, they decided to come up with a new business model, one that would combine online distribution, advertising opportunities, and virtual sale items. And the game couldn't be like its predecessors—Flash-based golf experiences at the time were like the miniature golf of videogames. "We're going for a true golf simulation," Nelson says. "Things like course management—where you place the ball, type of clubs and stance you use, how you use spin control—has an impact on the game." In October 2007, the company unleashed a dozen technicians, programmers, and photographers onto Kiawah's Ocean Course, to meticulously record the layouts with digital photography on the ground and in the air (using remote drones and full-size helicopters), G.P.S. technology, and terrain mapping. The company had a pair of ex-Electronic Arts programmers build an online physics engine to replicate the way balls roll across different surfaces; hundreds of high-definition digital photographs (an average of 700 per hole) layered atop a 3-D map allows balls to "bounce" and "roll"—paving the way for golfers to experiment

with shots virtually before trying them for real. "A lot of our golfers are going to want to do that," Cheng claims, which is why the company has built into its contracts the ability to offer discounted rates at the resorts. It's not the only way they're hoping to bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds—and to make money. The founders see three main revenue streams from the game—product placement within the game, ads on the site, and partnerships with television broadcasters and major golf events. When it is released to the public late this summer, W.T.G. will allow players to create their own avatars that can wear (sponsored) clothing and use virtual versions of real (sponsored) golf equipment. Last May the company released a scaleddown version of the game, a "skills challenge" with a few holes from the Las Vegas Bali Hai Golf Course; for monthly competitions it has been offering real-world prizes from TaylorMade. As it completes work on its slate of courses for this year (the game officially launches in late summer, with nine new holes being released every month afterward), it is focusing on creating partnerships around 2009 golf broadcasts so it can jointly sell advertising and share revenues. Its first deal comes in September, with the Muscular Dystrophy Association for the Jerry Lewis M.D.A. Golf Tournament. "This would include those that don't necessarily attend or play real-world golf events, but would have a keen interest in the opportunities (and fun) offered by this platform," said Jerry Weinberg, president and C.E.O. of

the M.D.A. W.T.G. is pinning additional advertising hopes on a socialnetworking component, which lets players create online profiles, post blog entries and videos of shots, and send friends a news feed with information like scores or how to do better on a hole. Relatively speaking, the cost of building this game is low. It takes roughly six months and $200,000 to make one World Golf Tour course simulation. (They've already completed four of the 10 licensed courses through investments from Series A lender Battery Ventures and Series B leader Panorama Capital.) A next console game, like Tiger Woods, can cost upward of $10 million for its initial creation, slightly less to develop sequels. Michael Pachter, videogame analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities, says E.A. sells an average of 2.5 million copies of the Tiger Woods golf game annually for PCs, consoles, and handheld game devices. He believes a free Flash-based PC game could attract 10 times the players, but won't be much of a threat to successful console games—at least not for several years. "I think that will work if they create a sticky product, and they appear to think it's sticky," he said. "I doubt that the game play and customization is as good as Tiger, but if it's free, I'm sure World Golf Tour is good enough." Related Links How About a Massive Multiplayer Wii Baseball League? The Gamesman Game Boy

things up might sway the producers. But there are several reasons it shouldn't. For one thing, Meet the Press isn't in nearly as much trouble as the nightly news. The show's audience isn't going anywhere. Average viewership for Meet the Press and its competition in the Sunday morning political talk fest, Face The Nation on CBS and This Week with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, has held fairly steady in the past 10 years, though Meet the Press has consistently led the pack, with an average of just under 4 million viewers per show in the current broadcast season. That loyal audience includes the kinds of tastemakers and civic leaders that every network—and advertiser—wants to reach, while being relatively cheap to produce and thus reliably profitable. Finally, the shows are "often newsmaking opportunities," says Jeffrey Schneider, senior vice president at ABC News. "Every Sunday there are a whole array of news-makers who are having tough questions put to them, and those answers often command the front page of the newspaper the next morning." The shows' hosts each play leading roles

in the political coverage at their respective networks, and the relationships they form on the show allows them to break news for the networks year-round. Still, as good as the formula is, change has obviously come to Meet the Press. As the names of possible successors—Tom Brokaw for the immediate time being, David Gregory or Andrea Mitchell from within NBC News, or even a cable cousin like Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann—are tossed around, questions about format changes are inevitable. No matter who takes over, the show "will not be reinvented," predicts Andrew Tyndall, the blogger who authors the site TyndallReport.com, a website tracking network news coverage. "It will evolve, if the new host is up to the task." That's a big if, of course. But no doubt exactly what NBC is hoping for.Related Links Summertime Slump News-division Layoffs at NBC, CBS Katie Couric: Still Anchored to CBS Evening News

Staying the Course (Portfolio.com: Top 5) Submitted at 6/17/2008 2:30:00 PM

The unexpected death last Friday of Meet the Press host Tim Russert has left NBC facing questions about the future of its political coverage, and the format of one of its most popular shows, smack in the middle of a key election season. NBC executives were attending memorial events Tuesday in Washington, and were not available for comment. "Our focus right now is on the next few days," said a spokesperson, declining to comment on the search for a successor. But competing networks weren't so reticent. "Tim was the format" of the most popular of the Sunday morning political gabfests, said a news executive from a competing network who did not want to be identified. "By definition [the show] will change to suit whoever they put in there.” Maybe so. But during the changing of the guard at Meet the Press, the longest-running program in the history of broadcast television, NBC network executives would be wise to pay attention to recent efforts to revive the nightly news, which has fallen the farthest, in term of ratings and prestige, of anything on broadcast

television in recent years. CBS, NBC, and ABC have pulled a series of increasingly desperate stunts to try to retain their aging or fleeing viewers—and by extension, advertisers. Bells and whistles have included online interactive quizzes tied to news broadcasts, webcasts of the nightly news, and most notoriously, hiring Katie Couric, whose charm and smarts were supposed to revitalize CBS's nightly offering. These grabs for younger viewers, while necessary in a shifting media landscape, have been almost universally unsuccessful. The lesson for the producers of Meet the Press? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News, was involved with initial talks to bring Katie Couric to the network. "A lesson to me there is that for the evening news—and the Sunday morning shows are kind of like this—the people who watch it like it the way it is," says Heyward, who left the network in 2005 and is currently working for Marketspace, a consultancy affiliate of Monitor Group. Of course, Meet the Press is now broken. It has lost its charismatic host, and the temptation to shake

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Tales of a Corporate Gunslinger (Portfolio.com: Culture and Lifestyle) Submitted at 6/16/2008 3:00:00 AM

O ver a 15-year stretch, whenever a company got into trouble, Steve Miller seemed to be the guy to call. He was whisked from one corporate suite to the next, serving as C.E.O. or de facto boss at numerous companies, including -Morrison Knudsen, Waste Management, Bethlehem Steel, and a half-dozen others. Along the way, he encountered every sort of corporate mishap you can think of: bad mergers, incompetent executives, bloated pensions, outright fraud. At Federal-Mogul, a distressed autoparts company, he served three stints as C.E.O. When he was installed the second time and called to tell an executive assistant, she shot back, “Don’t worry; I know the drill.” Once, he was packing his bags and clearing out of New York after a short stretch with Reliance Insurance when he heard his telephone ring—for Miller, always an ominous sound. It was one of Aetna’s directors, William Donaldson, begging Miller to come to Hartford, Connecticut, and straighten out the health-insurance behemoth. I got to know Miller when I was writing about his final, and perhaps defining, job: C.E.O. of Delphi, a General Motors spinoff that was hopelessly burdened by labor costs. He seemed then to be a disarmingly candid if not always humble executive, and this is the fellow we meet in The Turnaround Kid: What I Learned Rescuing America’s Most Troubled Companies. It’s a riveting tale, stitched together by a central theme, which may be described as the nobility of old-

fashioned labor. Miller is the kind of guy who likes machines—“sawmills, ships, earth-movers.” He grew up in Oregon, and though his father was a corporate lawyer, his grandfather, who ran a lumber mill, was for Miller the epitome of the rolled-up-sleeves ideal. “Every moment,” he writes of his summers at the mill, “I was absorbing lessons about the vital dignity of work.” And it’s a tale with irony too, because as Miller comes of age, the brick-and-mortar industries he loves are well into their decline. He is practically their undertaker; he vows to reinvent industrial America as a leaner, meaner, and more competitive place. A graduate of Stanford Business School, Miller began his career at Ford Motor in 1968, when the executives, unaware of the turbulence ahead, seemed as secure in their jobs as tenured professors. But in 1979, Miller jumped to Chrysler, as an assistant controller, and plunged into the task of -persuading the teetering auto-maker’s bankers to refinance its debt. During the next couple of years, he made 116 trips around the country and, though still a junior executive himself, arm-wrestled bank presidents for loans. For Miller, it was a transforming experience. He saw the delicious upside of being in a crisis: “You get to make decisions without being hobbled by bureaucracy,” he writes. In his memoir, he also applauds the government for providing Chrysler a loan guarantee; it was a controversial step that was crucial to the company’s survival. Though his position is at odds with his self-description as a “doctrinaire, sink-or-swim capitalist,” the author is no ideologue. At heart, he’s a

sentimentalist. After the bailout, life at Chrysler settled down, and Miller, having been promoted to chief financial officer, discovered he was bored. But he waged a gutsy battle against chairman Lee Iacocca, who was famous for saving Chrysler and had acquired the trappings of royalty. Miller zings Iacocca for losing the common touch (and for believing his own press). Later, Miller is equally skillful at dressing down such boardroom egos as Carl Icahn and Al Dunlap, the Sunbeam C.E.O. known for ruthless cost-cutting. Having visited “Chainsaw Al,” Miller slyly reports that Chainsaw’s house was decorated like a shrine to himself. This is an apt sendup of the C.E.O. who was soon after exposed as a fraud. At Chrysler, Miller’s criticism of Iacocca soured the chief on him, and in 1992 he went to work for the financier James Wolfensohn. Though Miller hardly expected it, his Chrysler experience had branded him a financial firefighter. His first client was the developer Paul Reichmann, and despite Miller’s best efforts, Reichmann had to file for bankruptcy. But one thing about being a rescue artist (and Miller doesn’t quite admit this): You really can’t lose. The trouble is the other guy’s fault; the success, yours. Miller left Wolfensohn, but by then, he recounts, he “seemed to be on everyone’s short list for corporate crisis jobs.” One plus to his career, and to the book, is his steady accretion of expertise; crisis work turns out to be a discipline like any other. At Bethlehem, Miller enjoyed his greatest success, getting the union to agree to a sale and paving the way (post-bankruptcy) for a streamlined,

His Happening (Portfolio.com: Culture and Lifestyle) Submitted at 6/16/2008 10:00:00 AM

O nce again, M. Night Shyamalan has delivered the surprise twist—this time, in his own career. After a series of critical pans and low box-office expectations, The Happening—the new flick featuring mass suicide from the director of The Sixth Sense—grossed more than $30 million in its opening weekend, according to Exhibitor Relations, a Los Angeles-based entertainmentresearch company. Shyamalan established his trademark blend of horror and sci-fi, with a smattering of plot kinks, in 1999, with The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis. The movie unexpectedly became one of the most successful horror films of all time, grossing about $673 million worldwide for Disney's Buena Vista studio. But none of Shyamalan's movies since The Sixth Sense has matched that movie's box-office receipts or critical acclaim. Among his next three films for Buena Vista— Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village—only 2002's Signs, starring Mel Gibson, even approached Sense's success, grossing about $408 million worldwide. Unbreakable only took in $95 million

domestically, while The Village scored a disappointing $114 million in the U.S. After a much-publicized split with Disney, Shyamalan then moved to Warner Bros. for his biggest dud yet, 2006's critically panned Lady in the Water, which made only $73 million worldwide. Making matters worse were a series of remarks Shyamalan made criticizing the judgment and honesty of Disney executives that appeared in a book about his career. With The Happening, Shyamalan switched studios again, this time landing at Fox. And expectations were low, given the movie's initial notices. "This is easily the worst of all his movies," says David Poland, editor of several influential movie-industry blogs. With negative reviews in the New York Times and elsewhere, Poland said on Friday that The Happening would need to have an opening weekend of at least $25 million to be deemed a success because of Shyamalan's notoriety and past record. "Everybody has this incredible focus on Night because he has put the focus on himself," says Poland. Making a big opening even more unlikely was The Happening's release date, which put it into direct

competition with The Incredible Hulk, a movie destined to be popular among the exact fans—teenage boys and young men—who are Shyamalan's bread and butter. (The Hulk wound up topping the weekend box office with a $55 million opening, followed by Kung Fu Panda at $34 million, and then The Happening.) Instead of fizzling, however, the movie's big opening surprised everyone, even outpacing The Sixth Sense's opening numbers (just under $27 million). The Happening's R rating, the first for Shyamalan, apparently succeeded in diversifying his typical audience. And the subtle marketing campaign, one of his least aggressive ever according to Poland, managed to pique audiences' curiosity without giving too much away. Next up for the director is a collaboration with Paramount on Avatar: The Last Airbender, an adaptation of a Nickelodeon show. That movie is set for a 2010 release, and we're betting that Paramount is considerably happier about that arrangement this week than they were last. Related Links Miley's Pre-Maturity How Mickey Got His Groove Back HD DVD Is Dead. What to Do With the Remains?

more productive steelmaker. He tried to repeat the formula at Delphi, where he dreamed of liberating the auto industry from the choke hold of pension and health-care costs. Instead, he found himself a pariah, vilified by the United Auto Workers. Miller was right about the need for labor concessions, but it’s not too hard to figure out why he wasn’t loved. Though a down-to-earth guy—one who never outgrew his lumberjack plaids—Miller cannot help sounding preachy when he talks about the great things he did for America by driving factory wages down near the level of those of Wal-Mart employees. When he confesses, “As strange as it may sound coming from someone with my range of experience, I was a little in awe of Wolfensohn,” you want to reply, “No, it doesn’t sound strange at all.” Wolfensohn was, after all, an international star who eventually became president of the World Bank. It’s strange only to Miller, whose view of himself is inflated. And when he advises executives, “Don’t worry about [taking] credit,” one wonders why his excellent ghostwriter, -Michael D’Antonio, isn’t mentioned on the cover or the title page, only hidden in the acknowledgments. Still, this is a highly engrossing memoir, poignantly leavened by the story of the untimely death of Miller’s wife. No one executive can fix all of corporate America, but Miller came close.Related Links Chrysler's Bumpy Ride Chrysler: Press Presses on with the Press Chrysler: On Strategy, In Public

All customers are smarter than average (Seth's Blog) Submitted at 6/13/2008 3:20:00 AM

In study after study, respondents rate themselves as less racist than average, smarter than average, more generous than average. And though they are never asked, I'm pretty certain that your customers also believe that they are righter than average as well. At the airport yesterday, a woman at security said to the TSA official, "I'm a regular traveler, a frequent flyer and I know the rules. I want the fast line." A moment later, it was determined that the woman had two huge bottles of shampoo in her very large carry on. "No one told me that there was a restriction on liquids! Where does it say that?" she snarled, as she stood in front of the sign that said that... Any time you ask customers to selfsegregate, they will put themselves in the best line. And just about any time you ask a customer to acknowledge that they were wrong, you will fail.

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Law Firm Back From the Brink (Portfolio.com: Top 5) Submitted at 6/17/2008 9:30:00 AM

In signing a $75 million settlement with federal prosecutors, the classaction law firm Milberg LLP has taken a page from the playbook of the accounting firm KPMG. At first blush, the deal cut by Milberg—now a shadow of its former self in the wake of guilty pleas by Melvyn Weiss and William Lerach, the two men that built the firm into a shareholder lawsuit behemoth—may seem quite onerous: The firm has agreed to "accept responsibility for the conduct of its partners" for paying kickbacks to people who put their names on lawsuits for almost three decades. It has also agreed to "cooperate fully" with "any agency" designated by the prosecutors regarding kickbacks—a potentially wide-ranging cooperation, given that there are calls in Congress to probe Lerach's claims that kickbacks were "industry practice" at one time. But Milberg is no longer facing the dark cloud of criminal charges. Even after its indictment, the firm had still been able to convince some judges to appoint it for the coveted role of law firm for the "lead plaintiff" in securities class actions, a title that carries with it the power to control the litigation of these cases, and the lion's share of the lawyers' fees awarded at their end. With the charges settled, "They are in a better position now," a rival lawyer says. Likewise, KPMG emerged as a stronger firm after agreeing to a deferred prosecution agreement in 2005 to avoid an indictment over its role in questionable tax shelters. Moreover, the current management

of Milberg extracted a powerful concession from the prosecutors, who acknowledge that none of its current partners were involved with the criminal activity. The "statement of admitted facts" attached to the agreement says that the seven "conspiring partners" who made secret kickbacks "took affirmative steps to conceal their illegal activities from other partners, associates, and employees of the firm." Sean Coffey, a partner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman, himself a former prosecutor, called that "a very significant statement from the government that will go a long way to give at least some courts confidence in Milberg going forward." Coffey's firm has emerged as a major player in shareholder lawsuits, representing institutional investors in blockbuster class actions like the case stemming from the accounting scandal at WorldCom. Current management at Milberg and their counsel "have done a terrific job of repairing the damage of the former leadership," Coffey said. "The former leadership took a circle-the-wagons approach that very much harmed the firm." On the other hand, Robert Giuffra Jr., a defense lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell who, as counsel to the Senate Banking Committee, was one of the key drafters of a 1995 law that changed the rules for securities class actions, says other plaintiffs' firms and defense lawyers will use the agreement against Milberg, either to grab institutional-investor business it is trying to catch, or prevent it from being appointed as the lead law firm. "The problem that they face is that Milberg really had no choice but to enter an agreement with the

Department of Justice," Giuffra said. With no defense, they had to enter an agreement or go out of business, making their plea and agreement to a court monitor more necessity than nobility. One mystery remains: The firm's admitted statement of facts points to Weiss, Lerach, and former partners David Bershad and Steven Schulman. But it also alludes to three other "conspiring" partners, identified only as Partner E, Partner F, and Partner G. It is not clear who these former partners are. Milberg has agreed to follow a "best practices" program for two years. Under it, the firm agrees to "ensure full compliance with all legal and ethical rules" and submit its referral agreements to the review of a court-appointed monitor—limitations that one lawyer called a "joke." But the use of a monitor drew a complaint from a seemingly unlikely source: Ralph Ferrara, a partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf who has defended corporate management against many class actions filed by Milberg Weiss when it was led by Mel Weiss. "Milberg is one of the many, many entities that has succumbed to this monitor idea under the threat of indictment," Ferrara said, calling the use of court-appointed monitors "a completely extra-judicial, extraconstitutional method of prosecution." Oddly enough, having a monitor check up on Milberg may work to the firm's benefit as it tries to rebuild, Ferrara says. "It may be used as a wedge to get back into the good graces of the institutional clients they want to serve," Ferrara said. "They can say, Look, this is behind us." Milberg has a much more profound

problem on its hands, at least in his view: "The firm has lost its soul," he said, referring to his longtime courtroom opponent, Mel Weiss. "It has to reincarnate itself around a group of people that have never had to be soul-like before." Weiss is scheduled to report to prison on August 28, while Lerach has been denied a bid to move from the federal prison at Lompoc, California, to a residential alcohol rehabilitation program. In Condé Nast Portfolio, Lerach claimed Milberg Weiss paid kickbacks to plaintiffs for decades "to stay competitive" because it was "industry practice" prior to passage of a 1995 law by Congress. His essay expounded on a claim he made on the eve of his March sentencing to the Wall Street Journal. That has triggered calls for a congressional investigation, and infuriated fellow plaintiffs' lawyers. Coffey, for one, dismisses the call for a Capitol Hill inquiry as "a press release from the Chamber of Commerce with a senator's name on it." It is an odd twist that Lerach's parting gift was to big business, while painting his fellows at the plaintiffs' bar with a black brush: "The corporate apologists from the Chamber had to be kicking their heels when Lerach threw out that tidbit just before the jailhouse door closed shut," Coffey said. Related Links The Twilight of Milberg Weiss Plaintiffs Lawyer's Fall The End of Milberg Weiss.

Secondary Sources: Bubble, Minimum Wage, Deficit (WSJ.com: Real Time Economics) Submitted at 6/17/2008 10:00:00 AM

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.• The Bubble: The Washington Post concludes its threepart series on the recent financial meltdown today with a look at the aftermath. “David E. Zimmer began putting out job feelers after being laid off as an executive at People’s Choice, a subprime lender, interviewing with hedge funds and others to see whether there was any interest in his expertise in the arcane world of structured finance. There wasn’t. He blamed it on the fallingknife syndrome: The market for subprimes made firms wary of investing in the field and hiring someone like him who specialized in it. ‘Who wants to catch the knife?’ he said. Zimmer, though, figured there was a need for his kind of specialized knowledge. He started a consulting business, Princeton Structured Finance Analytics Group, assessing the value of institutional investors’ holdings in mortgages and the underlining loans in securities.

Already, he said, there’s a lot of interest from accounting firms, auditors and others. Looking back on the past few years, he said: ‘Everybody’s culpable in this — everybody — Wall Street, investors, originators, brokers. At every point in the process, something broke down.’ He added, ‘Do you want to get philosophical? Are people self interested? Absolutely. It’s what makes capital markets efficient. As we’ve learned, it’s also what makes them dangerous.’” • Minimum Wage vs. Tax Rebates: Zubin Jelveh of Portfolio wonders whether raising the minimum wage may be a more effective economic stimulus than tax rebates. “Right now, the national minimum wage is set at $5.85/hr and will get a bump in late July to $6.55/hr followed by another boost to $7.25/hr next July. The Economic Policy Institute says that 5.6 million workers will be affected by this change. Aaronson, Agarwal, and French estimate that a $1 minimum wage increase translates into a $2,000 boost in annual spending. A back-of-the-envelope calculation (assuming that 5.6 million

minimum wage earners experience a $1 gain in pay) would put new spending at $11.2 billion. The cost to businesses would be $2.8 billion in increased wages. On the other hand, past research has shown that consumers spent about two-thirds of their stimulus checks back in 2001. This time around, that would translate into an additional $80 billion in spending. So, what’s better, spending $120 billion to stimulate $80 billion in consumption, or $2.8 billion to stimulate $11.2 billion?” • Deficit Watch: On its editorial pages, the Financial Times writes that the U.S. needs to be more concerned with its deficit. “Fiscal consolidation, unappealing though it may be as a platform, ought to be the organizing principle for current political debate in the U.S. The country must start to get a grip on spending, or steel itself to pay very much more in taxes. The electorate and its leaders continue to flinch at facing, let alone making, this choice. It can be evaded between now and November, one supposes — but not indefinitely.” Compiled by Phil Izzo

Silence is a virtue (Seth's Blog) Submitted at 6/15/2008 7:48:01 AM

If the best thing you can think of is a bad pun, random capitalization and a weak photo (salt and pepper included!) it's probably better to do nothing at all. Nothing at all is actually the biggest difference between professional and amateur marketers. The pros are better at being quiet. Even if there's room left on the page, or in the display window or in the blog post...

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How Smart Are You? (Portfolio.com: Top 5) Submitted at 6/17/2008 9:00:00 PM

T he words come in a rapid, random progression on the computer screen: "PO ET," "BEAC H, " "ATTENDANT," "JURY," "CAVE" … there are 15 in all. I’m watching them tick by one by one, slightly panicked that I am going to forget them. The screen goes dark, and I’m now supposed to write down as many of the words as I can quickly recall. I am annoyed when I manage only five words. EXPERIMENTAL MAN David Ewing Duncan explores advances in personalized medicine and what they can tell us about ourselves. Paul Turk says not to worry, that this is fairly typical. Turk is director of business development for Cognitive Drug Research, a British firm that uses automated tests to gauge how well we think. He's come to my office in San Francisco to administer a battery of tests to check out my attention, memory and executive function. I will be compared on this test and several others with people my age and to those who are younger and older. Their results have been averaged on a database of tens of thousands of adults. I’ll also get a “brain-age” score. I have to admit to certain nervousness. What if a) I turn out to be a moron; or b) my brain-age is older than I am? Cognitive Drug Research is one a handful of businesses, most of them outside of the U.S., that work with pharmaceutical companies to test how new drugs for everything from nicotine addiction to Alzheimer’s disease affect the mind’s ability to remember things, make decisions,

and analyze information. The results from their tests are recognized “end points” by the Food and Drug Administration to determine if new brain medications work, which means that the drug industry has billions of dollars in potential revenues riding on them. (For more information, see “ The Ultimate Cure,” an article on the neurotechnology industry in the June issue of Condé Nast Portfolio.) Cognitive tests have been around for a century as examinations taken with paper and pencil. In the 1970s and '80s the tests shifted to computers, Cognitive Drug Research founder Keith Wesnes says. He is a psychologist and neuroscientist who started the company in 1986 as an outgrowth of testing programs he developed for his academic experiments on cognition. Besides drug trials, cognitive experiments are being run on patients who have had open heart surgery; take cholesterol-lowering drugs; experience what is known as “Chemofog”, a cognitive decline that sometimes accompanies chemotherapy treatments for cancer; and soldiers returning from Iraq with head trauma. Tests have been run on children eating sugary breakfast cereals versus more healthy breakfasts, and on the cognitive impact of being obese. A competitor of Cognitive Drug Research, Cogstate of Australia, offers a product called Cogstate Sport that monitor an athlete’s recovery from concussions. Customers include the Rugby Football League in Britain and the Australian Football League. Somewhat ominously, Cogstate also offers a test that allows employers to check out their workers. According to the company's website: CogState WorkPlace allows

employers to comprehensively measure if their employees are fit for duty when it comes to their ability to think and act. Taking only around 8 minutes to complete, it has been proven to be sensitive to the effects of alcohol, fatigue and certain types of drugs. This method of testing is significantly less invasive than existing methods of drug and alcohol testing and therefore can be used as a less invasive step within an OH&S [Occupational Health and Safety] system. Experimenters also have tested methods for enhancing cognition. For instance, placing subjects into a room high in oxygen apparently makes the brain very happy given the improved scores on cognition and memory. Drugs on the market and being tested also improve scores for healthy people, in some cases by as much as 20 percent. Issues of enhancement and testing workers raise a host of ethical issues, including the possibility that these tests will be abused by individuals wanting to boost their own intelligence with drugs, or by employers discriminating against people who don’t score high on the

Amazon, Ebay Test Legal Waters (Portfolio.com: Top 5) Submitted at 6/17/2008 11:00:00 AM

What sort of no-goodness are Amazon.com and eBay up to? Look no further than the news from overseas. The two companies seem to have a nifty little trick: If they can't get away with a slightly questionable strategy here in the U.S., they test it out somewhere else. Case in point: Amazon.com pulled the one-click buy feature on its British web site for books published by Hachette Livre, the second-largest English language trade publisher after Random House. Amazon reportedly yanked the feature in response to sort of revenue dispute with Hachette Livre. (Amazon.com declined to comment.) The publisher also claims that Amazon pulled its books from promotions. Meanwhile, our friends over at eBay have been trying to implement a PayPal-only policy in Australia -- the move would make it mandatory for all users to only use PayPal on eBay, and would disable any other online

payment system on the Australian site. The policy isn't passing the sniff test with Australian regulators, though. The Australian Consumer and Competiton Commission (ACCC) hinted it may give eBay the smackdown. "Given eBay's position as Australia's leading online marketplace, the notified conduct will substantially reduce competition to supply online payment services," said ACCC chair Graeme Samuel. EBay said the ACCC's decision " undermines online consumer protection," but at the same time, the company fully admits it wouldn't try anything like that in the U.S. -possibly because of regulatory concerns, but more likely because it wants to avoid lawsuits from competitors and customers. "In the US, we are not mulling, planning, or otherwise seriously considering a move to PayPal-only. There are US market-specific reasons why PayPal-only is something we simply cannot do in the US," said spokesman Usher Lieberman in a blog post.

What are those market specific obstacles? Most likely the company is concerned about the long-arm of the anti-trust law and lawsuit-happy competitors. "On antitrust issues, the difference between other countries and [the U.S.] is that here, if you engage in anticompetitive conduct, you not only have to worry about government regulators, there's also a robust risk of private suits from competitors or customers. In most other countries, that's not as well developed," says Mark Ostrau, a partner and co-chair of the antitrust and unfair competition group at Fenwick & West. "And if a [foreign] government steps in, it almost gives [companies] a chance to test the waters, to see how a government reacts, and then pullback, without the overhang of large damage claims through private action." Related Links A New Way for EBay? Amazon Doubles Up On First Quarter Profit Error 404. You've Been Hacked.

tests. And what should be done about the prospect of delivering bad news to people with mental disorders, who might get more depressed, or worse? Wesnes says that his privately held company has tested about 30,000 people, and earns about $7 million to $8 million a year. But adds that he believes the cognitive-testing market is on the verge of expanding into an online business that would offer tests directly to consumers, businesses, or anyone else. Consumers would need to be protected from anyone abusing these sites and the information generated; and accommodations would need to be made to protect or educate patients who might be upset by the results. For healthy people, the sites could be used to run self-experiments, such as comparing one’s cognitive abilities while listening to, say, Carlos Santana versus listening to a Bach concerto; or before and after a bike ride. The price won’t be outrageous—perhaps $40 or $50, says Wesnes, though he has not yet done an analysis to set prices. Last weekend, I got my results from my own battery of test, and was surprised to hear that despite being 50 years old, my “brain age” is in my 20s. I was quick in responses and usually pretty accurate, said Wesnes. “But that doesn’t mean that you weren’t sharper in your 20s,” he said. “We are all on our own scale, and we all decline with age.” So I think that’s good news—for now. We’ll see how I do on the next test I’m planning with Wesnes, Turk, and Cognitive Drug Research—to determine how my brain does after drinking a glass or two of a modestlypriced Bordeaux. Will I do worse ... or better?

Thanks for your mail! (Seth's Blog) Submitted at 6/12/2008 11:50:51 AM

We answered all three, at least pretty much. You can move on, now. Nothing to see here...

NYT: Businesses Fight the Email Monster They Helped Create (43 Folders -) Submitted at 6/14/2008 11:24:46 AM

Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast - NYTimes.com Is Information Overload a Billion Drag on the Economy? - Bits Technology - New York Times Blog If you’ve seen the video of my NYT: page 9

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NYT: continued from page 8 Inbox Zero talk at Google, you may recall the moment when a few attendees start mentioning the hundreds of internal email messages they receive (and send) in a given day. I still remember, because I almost fainted. Whenever I hear these and similar stories, the same question always comes to mind: “ What does a company get out of its employees spending half their day using an email program?” Well, apparently, it’s a question a lot of people are starting to ask. Including Google. A story in today’s New York Times covers Sili Valley’s new interest in curbing unnecessary interruptions and helping stem the flow of endless data. Intel and other companies are already experimenting with solutions. Small units at some companies are encouraging workers to check e-mail messages less frequently, to send group messages more judiciously and to avoid letting the drumbeat of digital missives constantly shake up and reorder to-do lists. A Google software engineer last week introduced E-Mail Addict, an experimental feature for the company’s e-mail service that lets people cut themselves off from their in-boxes for 15 minutes. A few more stats for you: A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times… I’d also draw your attention to this infographic illustrating data points

from recent studies on “workers’ efficiency at information-intensive businesses.” 28% of a typical worker’s day is spent on: Interruptions by things that aren’t urgent or important, like unnecessary e-mail messages — and the time it takes to get back on track. Sidenote: According to that same graphic, 20% of an average day is spent on meetings. Wow. Expressed as a year, that means a meeting you start on New Year’s day would let out around the middle of March. Yikes. Sounds like these folks have their work cut out for them. I think it’s important to clarify something here: there’s nothing fundamentally wrong or irreparable about email as a tool. Given my position on how email gets (ab)used, you could be forgiven for thinking I want everyone to write each other letters once a year and ride cows to work. No. Not at all. My point has always been that, as with any tool, email can be used for good or ill depending on the problems you’ve decided it can solve. One trouble is that our use and widespread adoption of email hasn’t brought with it an equally widely-adopted understanding about how to use it, what content it’s appropriate for, and what expectations we accept regarding when it’s allowed to take us away from everything in our life that’s not email. There are very few shared rules of the road right now. And that’s making life hard for a lot of people. I’m thrilled to hear that these ideas

are bubbling up and getting the attention they deserve; email pain is usually a quiet, lonely, and shameful one, where people’s work and home life suffer from the silent understanding that “too much is never enough” — that trying to tamp down this always-on hysteria is a sign of weakness or sloth. That’s ironic, given the biggest reason we reason use email so much: it’s easy. There’s no cashier, editor, or therapist through which your message must pass. You set your own rules for what’s appropriate to send, ask, or demand. You decide what it means when someone reacts (or doesn’t react) in a given manner or time frame. Email is still the Wild West, and companies are paying billions of dollars a year to supply the sixshooters and Stetsons. Yeehaw. I’ll keep following these stories, because, I must tell you, I think it’s going to be a rocky road for businesses to patch. Will whacky experiments like “No Email Fridays” have an affect on how we think about this medium? Only as much as “No Ice Cream Sundays” can help fix your eating disorder. But, I’m glad they’re trying, and I’m really glad the conversation has started at a higher level. As for the decision-makers who are struggling with this stuff: these stats are great for getting companies off the bubble, but before you start breaking crockery, I suggest talking to lots of real employees about how they work, how they communicate, and how they might be able to help

Secondary Sources: Fed and Oil, Saudi Dollar Peg, Sentiment (WSJ.com: Real Time Economics) Submitted at 6/18/2008 9:36:00 AM

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.• Fed and Oil: John Berry of Bloomberg says that the Fed has history on its side when they bet oil prices will moderate. “Inflation isn’t out of control in the U.S. Fed officials are determined to make sure that remains the case, even as they pursue their dual mandate to achieve both stable prices and maximum sustainable employment. When, as now, inflation and unemployment are both higher than Fed officials and the public would like, policy can’t focus on one goal to the exclusion of the other. Since last summer, officials have had to concentrate on keeping the economy afloat in the face of serious financial market turmoil. The danger of a deep recession has subsided. So now it’s time for some anti-inflation insurance — in small, moderate doses.”

• Saudi Dollar Peg: Writing for the Financial Times, Martin Feldstein says it’s time for Saudi Arabia to remove its peg to the dollar. “The double-digit inflation problem in Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors is different from that of other emerging market economies. Although the rising price of imported food affects them all, the inflation problem in the Gulf region is exacerbated by their fixed exchange rate policy… The Saudis could shift from the existing dollar peg, either to a policy of linking the riyal to a basket of currencies with a heavy weight on the euro, or to a marketdetermined “floating” exchange rate. Shifting to a weighted basket peg would reduce the problem of imported prices but would still limit the ability of the Saudi monetary authorities to pursue an independent anti-inflationary interest rate policy.” • Consumer Sentiment: The Washington Post looks at the disparity between the gloom in

consumer sentiment and the actual economy. “The biggest reason for people’s gloom might be because of what they’re used to. In the 1980s and ’90s, memories of the double-digit unemployment and double-digit inflation from the 1970s were still fresh. ‘People expected very little out of the economy,’ said Richard Curtin, who has administered the University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment for 35 years. ‘Compared to what their frame of reference was, the performance of the economy was absolutely tremendous.’ But now, coming off two decades of prosperity and low inflation, Americans have come to treat low unemployment and inflation as givens. We have gotten so used to things being good, in other words, that even when conditions become somewhat bad, it feels terrible.” Compiled by Phil Izzo

you. Every time I speak to a company, I hear half a dozen depressing stories of management disconnection and communication bedlam, alongside one or two completely inspiring tales about how employees and small teams are working to fix things at a squad or platoon level. It’s really amazing, and I wish it were something C-levels and managers were more cognizant of. So, I suggest you be open to seeing email as just one tool among many, and be gracious about listening to those teams about how they’ve worked to fix or ameliorate these problems. Bottom line (and I’ll never stop saying this): stop trying to eradicate human communication problems by introducing waves of new technology or made-up rules of social engineering. A company with email problems is also experiencing people problems. Until you understand why the wetware isn’t working like you’d expected, don’t go nuts with topdown technology solutions and overclever edicts. There’s a million tiny ways to improve how a business communicates with itself, and a lot of that intelligence is currently trapped, unmined, in the heads of people who’ve never been asked for an opinion. I like to think articles like this represent every knowledge worker’s opportunity to raise his or her hand and say, “Hey, I have an idea.” [NYT links via Mrs. Mann]

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OmniFocus for iPhone: LocationAware Contexts and More

LinkedIn Locks In

(43 Folders -)

(Portfolio.com: Top 5)

Submitted at 6/10/2008 10:54:42 AM

The Omni Group - OmniFocus for iPhone and iPod touch [ Disclosure: I’m a consultant on the OmniFocus project. You can blame me for having requested any of the features you don’t like.] Oh, man. It’s so nice to lift the veil on this one. It’s been like I knew you guys were getting the big Lego Millennium Falcon for Christmas, but I couldn’t tell you until Santa had gone back up the chimney (in his black mock turtleneck and jeans). Anyway. Merry Christmas, Mac productivity nerds: iPhone synching for OmniFocus is coming. And it is gorgeous, usable, and location-aware. More here on OmniGroup’s blog. From the OmniGroup site: Using your location, OmniFocus can create a custom list of actions to complete nearby. Buying groceries? OmniFocus can show you the closest grocery store and create an instant shopping list. Capture tasks anywhere, anytime with OmniFocus: you can enter text, take a picture, or even make a quick voice recording.

Yum. Screengrabs and more — including a reminder that you should totally visit me at the WWDC OmniFocus meetup tonight— after the iJump. FWIW, I’m going to let OmniFocus answer any questions people have ( blog post comments, forum) about details of their apps and plans and what have yous. I just wanted to take the opportunity to fist bump the

OmniNerds on their fine hard work. They’re pathologically dedicated to taking care of their customers, and you can see that in this app. It’s crazy -smart and a lot of fun to use. So! Yes. Tonight. Come to the OmniFocus meetup at the W and fistbump me: The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus meetup in S.F. on 6/10/08 What: OmniFocus meetup When: Tuesday, June 10th 2008, 6:30 - 8:00 pm Where: W Hotel ( map), San Francisco • 3rd Floor, Workroom 2 Please RSVP. Max capacity for the room is 150, so make sure you arrive on time to snag a good seat. Also, completely off topic, there’s a rumor that there might be a totally informal, last-minute You Look Nice Today meetup in SF tonight featuring@scottsimpson and me(@lonelysandwich is at a Fannypack Convention in Prague). Stay tuned to@ylnt for details as they emerge. [ Again, with the Disclosure: I’m a consultant on the OmniFocus project. You can blame me for having requested any of the features you don’t like.]

Hooray for Bollywood! (Portfolio.com: Top 5) Submitted at 6/18/2008 4:00:00 AM

Can a Hollywood divorce lead to a monsoon wedding? The principals of DreamWorks SKG, heading for a split from Viacom this year, are nearing a deal with an Indian conglomerate to create a new movie venture, report Lauren Schuker and Merissa Marr of the Wall Street Journal. Under the plan being discussed, Reliance A.D.A. Group would invest $500 million to $600 million in the studio founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen in return for a big stake in the venture, the Journal says. But the Los Angeles Times, following the Journal report, cites a person familiar with the situation who cautions that the talks are fluid and that an agreement is not imminent.

Indeed, Reliance has been talking to a number of Hollywood players, the Times reports. The $1.6 billion sale of DreamWorks to Paramount began with much fanfare in 2005. But bad blood between the studio founders and Viacom, the corporate parent, built last year to the point where a split seemed inevitable. The breaking point appeared to be comments by Viacom's chief executive, Philippe Dauman, at a Goldman Sachs media conference in September. He told analysts and investors that a departure of the DreamWorks team would be "completely immaterial" to Viacom's financial position. The contracts of Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen allow them to leave this year. Stacey Snider, the chief executive of the studio, is expected to join them. But the DreamWorks team could be

exchanging one internal corporate feud for another. The Wall Street Journal notes that Anil Ambani, who controls wireless operator Reliance Communications and has ambitions in the entertainment business, has been battling his brother, Mukesh Ambani, the head of Reliance A.D.A., who was profiled by Sheelah Kolhatkar in the November issue of Condé Nast Portfolio. Variety notes that under the deal with Viacom, Spielberg and company get to keep the DreamWorks name. It reports that the new venture will try to produce half a dozen live-action movies a year. Related Links Hollywood Square-Off Spielberg Out At DreamWorks-Not Viacom C.E.O. Dauman Potshots Dreamworks

Submitted at 6/18/2008 5:00:00 AM

So if Facebook is worth $15 billion, then LinkedIn must be worth…? The answer turns out to be $1 billion, based on a new $53 million capital infusion from Bain Capital and other investors. The valuation will certainly escalate the debate about the potential worth of social-networking sites and whether there is really a significant business there. Of course, LinkedIn is different, as it is focused on professional networking rather than all things social. As Kara Swisher at All Things Digital decribed it, it is "the serious cousin to the party-hearty twins of MySpace and Facebook." Founded four year ago, LinkedIn now has more than 23 million users in 150 countries—and its number of unique visitors is growing. Its chief executive, Dan Nye, told Jessica Guynn of the Los Angeles Times that the new capital would be used to introduce corporate services and explore potential acquisitions. "We have a strong balance sheet and a strong business model," Nye told the paper. "Now we have the luxury of being able to focus on building a great company." Brad Stone of the New York Times says only a quarter of LinkedIn's $100 million in revenue this year will come from ads. The way the investment was officially announced was very 2.0: a video on YouTube. Connie Loizos of Private Equity Hub was not a fan: "Watching the video reminded me of a late-night infomercial. (Not the pornographic kind. The kind where you end up with some crap abdominal cruncher because seemingly respectable people testified that it had given them six-pack stomachs. And in your fatigued state, you believed them.)" See for yourself here. Related Links LinkedIn Goes Mobile MySpace and Friends Need to Make Money. And Fast. Why Isn't There a Corporate Facebook?

Favored links for June 16th (43 Folders -) Submitted at 6/16/2008 6:45:03 AM

• Make It Stop! Crushed by Too Many E-Mails : NPR- I think somebody on Massachusetts Ave. must have called “Oy Vey, Email!” Week at NPR. Here’s another one on email overwhelm, including tips and technology on “email organization.” How ‘bout that. At the risk of repeating myself, organizing your email is like alphabetizing your recycling! Call me, Yuki. Let’s talk. • Spark | CBC Radio | Episode 41 June 11 & 14- In my latest Spark segment, I shared some ideas on how to deal with annoying forwarded

email from friends and family, or what I call “turkey bacn.” • lonelysandwich - Why Me?- Adam thinks “MobileMe” signals Apple’s big move behind what used to be considered enemy lines. “Apple is removing the Mac from the Apple computer experience and laying the foundation for a browser-based OS…” • Jonathan Coulton » The JoCo Primer- Jonathan has a really smart series of pages for introducing new fans to himself and his music, as well as suggesting where to go next. Memo to self, internet: steal this idea. • Ars at WWDC: Exclusive preview of mobile NetNewsWire- Not only is

my beloved NetNewsWire coming to iPhone, but let me also take this opportunity to congratulate Brent on his outstanding taste in demo web content. • The $100 Distraction Device“Why giving poor kids laptops doesn’t improve their scholastic performance.” I dunno. I respect that there’s lots of sides to the OLPC debate, but this particular one’s got a bit of damp straw and double standards to it. • OmniFocus for the iPhone snags an Apple Design Award!Congratulations to my OmniGroup peeps on their award. After getting lots of little sneak peeks from friends

at WWDC [ cough], I am so excited for the apps that are coming to the iPhone. This is going to be huge, people. • Start!- I’m honored to be speaking at Jeff and Bryan’s amazing-looking one-day conference for indie web folks, here in San Francisco. And, talk about a bargain. Register today. • Word Spy - tweetup- “A real world meeting between two or more people who know each other through the online Twitter service.” Kinda scared to try this; I’m pretty sure a lot of my Twitter friends are bots created by the influential Butt Joke industry.

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Tipping Points and Energy Costs (WSJ.com: Real Time Economics) Submitted at 6/16/2008 11:00:00 AM

The term “tipping point,” made fashionable after Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book of the same name, became part of the academic vernacular after a 1971 paper in which Nobel laureate economist Thomas Schelling showed how white families leaving a neighborhood as black families moved in induced other whites to leave as well. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Justin Lahart writes about about tipping points and energy prices — why, for instance, did signs of conservation appear when gasoline neared $4 a gallon, instead of say a year ago, when it pushed past $3? Post your thoughts on energy and tipping points below, and also check out these related links. Schelling’s original paper on the

tipping point and white flight: http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/educati on/phd/classpapers/Schelling_Seg_M odels.pdf Geoffrey Heal and Howard Kunreuther with more on tipping p o i n t s : http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/risk/li brary/06-13.pdf Peter Reiss and Matthew White on demand for electricity markets in San Diego during California’s energy crisis in 2000. It shows that people really do respond quickly to higher energy prices, though their ability to cut back by a lot is constrained by the fact that they can’t easily replace appliances like refrigerators — which are the biggest energy hogs — with more efficient models: http://www.stanford.edu/~preiss/herb s3.pdf Here’s a paper by Nicholas Burger — a PhD student at U.C. Santa

Barbara — and Colorado School of Mines economist Daniel Kaffine (himself a recent graduate of UCSB). It shows that as prices go up, L.A. freeways get a lot less congested. http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~burger/w orking_papers/BKGas.pdf Here’s Lutz Kilian and Paul Edelstein on how higher prices affect cosumer expenditures. Shows how, because of the declining importance of the U.S. auto sector and because U.S. auto makers can more easily shift to making smaller cars, gasoline price increases might not be quite so damaging to the economy as in the 1970s/early 1980s: h t t p : / / w w w personal.umich.edu/~lkilian/ek05240 7b.pdf Related story: Have U.S. Drivers Reached Filling Point of No Return?

Authenticity and reality and intention (Seth's Blog) Submitted at 6/14/2008 3:22:00 AM

Take a listen to this montage of three songs. Listen to mp3 Any guesses as to what you just heard? Go ahead, I'll wait. That's right, it's the Silver Beats, a group of four young men from Japan that have a serious Beatles Otaku. (One of John Lennon's original name for his group was the Silver Beetles.) They mimic each note, each cable, each instrument. I saw them in concert and it was uncanny. Here's the thing: As far as I know, they don't speak English. Does that change things? Does it make the song different when you know the singer has no idea what, "I want to hold your hand," means? If every original Beatles song was replaced by an indistinguishable

Silver Beats cover, would it matter? What about when a rich guy sings the blues? Or when a heartbreaker song is sung by a happily married man? The popcorn videos I posted the other day have been seen around the web millions of times. It's now generally assumed that they are fake. Does that make them resonate differently for you? What about the difference between Jerry Seinfeld (who writes his own material) and someone like David Letterman (who doesn't). Does it change your experience to know that? How much marketing fakery do you willingly accept, and how much do you want to know about? Does the vegetarian really want to know that they didn't wash the pot at the restaurant and a few molecules of chicken broth are in that soup? How many molecules before it matters? Is it different if it's an accident? Why?

Marketers like to talk about transparency and authenticity. I think for most people, most of the time, we care a lot more about the effect and use of a product or service and less about who made it and why. We chose Converse because they get us a date, and we don't change brands just cause Nike owns them now. Except for when we do. When we feel deceived or tricked, the game can change, and rapidly. It's easier than ever to mount ornate hoaxes and fancy subterfuges. And you can get away with it for a while. But often, and at the worst possible moment, the market might change its mind. It might stop enjoying the fakery and switch to scorn and anger instead. I have no clue how to predict when this will happen. How much risk are you willing to take?

"Zerstreutheit" and the Attention Management Cure (43 Folders -) Submitted at 6/13/2008 12:34:14 PM

Linda Stone: Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List? Linda Stone— who coined the phrase “ continuous partial attention” — makes a thoughtful distinction between managing time and attention, deflating the misconception that making long lists and then overscheduling your day can be a bulwark against distractions, interruptions, and the crippling feeling of being overwhelmed. In this recent blog entry from the Huffington Post, Stone talks about a pattern she’s noticed from talking with people about how they think about and plan their day. What did surgeons, artists, and CEO’s have in common? Most of

them reported that they managed both their time and their attention. In surgery, in the studio, and in the time carved out to think through strategies and issues, these professionals reported shutting down the devices and endless inputs (email, phone, interruptions), at scheduled times, and claiming those moments to focus. In almost every case, these professionals reported experiencing “flow” (a la Csikszentmihalyi) in their work. [HuffPo link via Boing Boing] She also goes on to include some tips about managing attention and focusing on outcomes rather than just obsessing over building a long and un -doable list. Good post — and a great reminder that time management has no prayer of working if it’s not accompanied by even tighter attention management.

I also have to share this William James quote, which Stone’s post mentions in passing (my emphasis). Every one knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German. “Zerstreutheit.” I love it when there’s a German word for my problem.

Going, Going, Gone (Portfolio.com: Culture and Lifestyle) Submitted at 6/16/2008 3:00:00 AM

O n July 15, Yankee Stadium, which opened its gates in 1923, will host its last Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Come October, it and its crosstown counterpart, the New York Mets’ Shea Stadium, will be abandoned in favor of the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, replete with skyboxes, club seating, and other money-makers. But the doomed stadiums promise revenue streams from their memorabilia, destined to be auctioned sometime after this season’s last pitch. The teams are negotiating with New York City, which owns both stadiums, to salvage coveted collectibles: seats, lockers, signs, even clubhouse urinals. No agreement has been made onhow the city, teams, and as-yet-unnamed auction houses will split the proceeds, but the auctions are likely to be lucrative. Last year, the city of Detroit grossed close to $2.3 million by auctioning pieces of Tiger Stadium, and the St. Louis Cardinals raked in more than $5.4 million for 20,000 seats and other items from the old Busch Stadium. New York prices are, of course, a whole different ball game. Pairs of seats from Shea could command $500 and pairs from Yankee Stadium $1,000, says Brandon Steiner, C.E.O. of Steiner Sports Marketing, a memorabilia distributor. And with all the seats expected to sell, auctions could earn $28.7 million for the Yankees and $13.9 million for the Mets (minus cuts for the city and auctioneers). Bids on lockers used by Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Reggie Jackson, and Thurman Munson are likely to break the $21,503 record price for Albert Pujols’ old stall at Busch. (If a Yankee wants to keep his current locker, -he’ll probably have to bid on it.) And true obsessives might be eyeing far bigger items. The oversize exhaust pipe -at Yankee Stadium that’s painted -as Babe Ruth’s Louisville Slugger? Shea’s big apple, which rises from a giant top hat after every Mets home run? Priceless.Related Links Fantasy Physician New York Mets' Epic September Collapse Costs Team Millions Foul Ballpark

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What Happens in Darfur (Portfolio.com: Culture and Lifestyle) Submitted at 6/16/2008 3:00:00 AM

Coca-Cola Coke has stated in op-eds and at a shareholders meeting that sponsors shouldn’t push a political agenda. In a rebuttal to the activist group Dream for Darfur, the company stated, “To criticize those who are helping thousands every day is more than ironic.” General Electric “The role of a sponsor isn’t to take up cause X, Y, and Z,” a G.E. representative says. “We commend Dream for Darfur for raising awareness of this tragic situation,” the rep told the New York Times,“but we strongly disagree with the organization’s approach.”

Johnson & Johnson J&J defends itself against criticism: “Given the complexities of the tragedy,” a company spokesperson notes, “we are disappointed that Dream for Darfur has used such a narrow context by which to evaluate the company’s response.” Kodak Because Kodak is shifting to a business-to-business model, this is its last Olympic sponsorship. In February, Kodak sent letters to the U.N. and the International Olympic Committee demanding that they apply their influence to end the genocide in Darfur McDonald’s McDonald’s feels it deserves a break today. Its upbeat statement to the media about athletic glory includes this catchall disclaimer:

“Concerning political issues, these need to be resolved by governments and international bodies such as the United Nations.” Visa In a statement issued to the media, Visa says it seeks “urgent resolution” of issues surrounding the Games. “Our hope...is that the Summer Games in Beijing will provide a means for increasing dialogue around a range of issues—certainly including human rights.” Related Links No Word From Our Sponsors Spielberg Withdraws As Artistic Advisor To Olympics Brangelina Does Not Star in This Sundance Documentary About Foreign Adoption

Lacker: Inflation Not Is it worthy? ’70s Style, but Still Too High (Seth's Blog)

Submitted at 6/17/2008 4:45:00 AM

(WSJ.com: Real Time Economics) Submitted at 6/16/2008 1:10:00 AM

Inflation expectations have not risen to levels of the 1970s, however, inflation still is “unacceptably high,” a regional Federal Reserve Bank president said Monday. Lacker “Inflation expectations are higher than I would like,” said Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Lacker is not currently a voting-member of the interest rate setting Federal Open Market Committee. During his last rotating term as a voting member in 2006, Lacker dissented repeatedly from FOMC decisions to hold rates steady, arguing instead for higher rates to quell inflation. Speaking to a group of business executives and community leaders in Spartanburg, S.C., Lacker urged the Federal Reserve to act vigilantly in fighting inflation. Lacker said inflation is stable but cautioned that stability should not be allowed to lead to complacency. ( See the full text of the speech.) The economy, he said, is not in a

recession. However, he said in prepared remarks it is poised for only “tepid growth.” Still, he showed optimism in relation to consumer spending in the coming months. “People tend to look forward and will often take a temporary shock in stride, even a severe one,” he said, adding, “Despite several years of elevated inflation, the public’s expectation of future inflation has not become completely adrift as it was in the 1970s.” The Fed’s massive interest rate cuts in the past several months have helped lessen the severity of the nation’s economic slowdown. “There is currently a good deal of monetary stimulus in the pipeline to support activity in the months ahead,” Lacker said. But he said withdrawing some of that stimulus as downside risks to the economy diminish makes sense. “As we move through this period of low growth, we need to be attuned to the risk that we emerge from the slowdown with inflation following a higher trend than when we went in,” Lacker said.– Meena Thiruvengadam

Is this the best I can do? I’ve paid for the rent and the furnishings and the menus and the staff and the insurance... is this plate of food worthy of what went before it? I’ve flown across the country to visit this museum--a building that cost more than a billion dollars to create and fill and maintain. Is my attention focused enough? We paid $300 in marketing costs just to get this phone to ring this one time. How shall we answer it? I’ve had a great education, suffered and scraped and scrounged to get this point... is this diagnosis, this surgery, this prescription, this bedside manner the end that justifies that effort? We live in a stable democracy, a place where people have lived and died to give us the freedom to speak out... is that talking head or this spinning pundit the best we can do? Or is he just trying to make a profit and air another commercial? Is cutting corners to make a buck

3-D continued from page 2

Mack in the Mire (Portfolio.com: Top 5) Submitted at 6/18/2008 5:30:00 AM

Goldman Sachs may have calmed some fears, but Wall Street continues to be a very nervous place. There were no bombshells or surprises in Morgan Stanley's secondquarter results. Earnings tumbled 60 percent, yet were still slightly better than analysts' forecasts. Revenue, however, came in a little shy of estimates and that has worried some about whether the Street can ever revive the money-making machine. Net revenue, or revenue minus interest expenses, fell 38 percent, to $6.51 billion. The results were helped by the sale of some holdings: $698

million from the sale of its Spanish onshore mass affluent wealth management business, and $732 million related to the secondary offering of MSCI. Revenue from equity sales and trading declined 11 percent. Revenue from fixed income, with credit markets still trying to recovery from their paralysis, tumbled 85 percent, to $414 million. Its asset management business had a pre-tax loss of $227 million, compared with pre-tax earnings of $303 million in the quarter a year ago. "Given the turbulent environment this quarter, we stayed close to shore and continued strengthening the firm's capital and liquidity positions,

appropriate when you consider what you could have done? What would someone with a bigger vision have done instead? Is being negative or bitter or selfish within reason in face of how extraordinarily lucky we were to have been been born here and born now? I take so much for granted. Perhaps you do as well. To be here, in this moment, with these resources. To have not just our health but the knowledge and the tools and the infrastructure. What a waste. If I hadn’t had those breaks, if there weren’t all those people who had sacrificed or helped or just stayed out of my way... what then? Would I even have had a shot at this? What if this were my last post? Would this post be worthy? The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.

John Mack, Morgan Stanley's chief executive, said. Like other Wall Street firms, Morgan Stanley has been shaking up the executive suite, getting smaller, shoring up capital and liquidity. For the quarter, it is taking severance expenses of $245 million. The question for Morgan Stanley is where —with credit markets shaky and deal making soft—it is going to find real growth. Related Links Wall Street Requiem Mack Crawls Back Mark-to-Model on Wall Street: The Numbers

theater. Bringing in 3-D will boost the quality of the experience, but it still might not be enough to lure butts out of living rooms and into cinemas. Home theaters will soon be able to show 3-D. I visited a Kodak lab where a team is working on a 3-D display, and the images rivaled what I saw in Walden’s screening room. “It will be three years before the price and package are appropriate for consumer applications,” says Kodak researcher Patrick Cosgrove. There’s another potential glitch in Hollywood’s 3-D scheme: Theaters are losing their appeal. “3-D doesn’t address the core problem,” says George Mason University professor Tyler Cowen, who has written extensively about the economics of entertainment. He says that people don’t go to theaters because the screen is bigger or the image is in 3D; they go because they want to go out. Theaters have suffered to a large degree because they fail to provide 3-D page 14

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Markets Pare RateIncrease Expectations (WSJ.com: Real Time Economics)

appear to match the balance of views within the U.S. central bank.” The markets continued to whittle away at rate-increase odds following reports on housing starts and producer prices, now putting odds of an August increase at about 64%. For next week’s FOMC meeting, markets put only about 14% chance for quarter-point raise, down from 26% yesterday. However, while Treasury yields are down today, the two-year yield remains within a few points of 3%, suggesting the bond market isn’t ready, at least not yet, to give up completely on the idea of some dramatic increases.–Phil Izzo

Submitted at 6/16/2008 12:06:00 PM

As part of a promotion we're doing, I built a Squidoo page about my friend Jacqueline. It got me thinking about what it takes to make change, particularly change in the way markets respond. Markets are big and slow and often sort of dumb, so a memo isn't going to be enough to make change happen. As far as I can tell, there's no demographic formula for determining who will make a difference. It doesn't seem to matter where you were born, how much money your parents made or where you went to college. Sure, a head start in those areas makes it more likely that you'll end up in a position of leverage. But it seems as

Home building may not have found its bottom yet. The Census Bureau this morning said housing starts fell 3.3% in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 975,000 units. That’s the lowest level since March 1991, when the housing market was crawling its way out of an epic, five-year collapse. Most of the pain has been felt in single-family starts, the biggest chunk of the market. They fell another 1% last month and are down 63% since peaking in January 2006. The silver lining is that total housing starts are now down 57% from their peak, nearly matching the 59% decline, on average, in every major housing downturn since 1964. If history is any guide, then that could be a sign a bottom is near. The trouble is that it is tough to make a case for a rebound in starts any time soon. There are still far too many houses on the market, foreclosures and interest rates are rising, and the job market is

Submitted at 6/6/2008 12:45:05 PM

though that isn't enough. Superheroes don't have a look, but they definitely have an attitude. They're restless and impatient, but, here's the cool paradox, they're also calm and patient. Patient because they realize that change takes a while. Patient because they understand that if it's worth doing, it's worth getting through the Dip. Impatient and restless, though, because they refuse to accept the status quo. Most of the time, of course, these can't co-exist. Most of the time, the impatient flit. They don't stick it out. Acumen just celebrated their seventh anniversary and this is the year traction is really kicking in. The more superheroes we can find, the better. If you know one, celebrate them!

weakening. And history offers another lesson that’s not quite so encouraging: In every downturn since 1964, starts have bottomed at an annualized level of 845,500 units, on average. A retreat back to that would mean another 13% decline in starts from here.–Mark Gongloff

Free Books for your Amazon Kindle (43 Folders -)

Superheroes (Seth's Blog)

(WSJ.com: Real Time Economics) Submitted at 6/17/2008 10:23:00 AM

Submitted at 6/17/2008 11:01:00 AM

Futures markets reduced the chances for an increase in the federal funds rate in the wake of articles from the Journal and the Financial Times that said policymakers are unlikely to raise rates soon. Yesterday markets were putting a 90% chance on a quarter-percentagepoint increase in the federal funds rate to 2.25% at the Aug. 5 meeting, but those odds were dropped to 69% following the Journal and FT articles. In today’s Journal, Sudeep Reddy wrote, “For now, Fed officials want to both demonstrate their vigilance against inflation risks, particularly from soaring energy prices and the weak dollar, while also giving the economy time to recover from the trouble in the housing, labor and financial markets. As a result, the Fed’s policy statement following its meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday is likely to use stronger language about the risks from inflation than in May, but is unlikely to go so far as to ratify market expectations of a rate hike as soon as August.” Krishna Guha of the FT wrote, “In recent days the market has gone from pricing in one rate increase by the end of the year to pricing in at least three and possibly four. This does not

Tough to Find Silver Lining in Housing Starts

My pick of the week on the latest episode of MacBreak Weekly wasn’t so much my new Kindle(which I do like a lot), but rather a few services that make it easier to find and download free books you can read on the Kindle. These picks included Project Gutenberg, Manybooks.net, and the wonderful Feedbooks. Feedbooks is the service I highlighted as being the most interesting of the three to me since you can download one Kindle/Mobi book( more info) containing clickable links to hundreds (thousands?) of free and Creative Commons-licensed books that can be downloaded

directly to your Kindle, usually in less than a minute or so. Zesty. Hello, 1984 and A Princess of Mars. In addition to all the great stuff Andy has enumerated, these free book services have made me see the Kindle as a flawed but fascinating game-changer. More tips and buying advice coming soon (short version: it ain’t for everybody, by a long shot, but it’s surprisingly great for commuters and travelers who devour novels in particular). And, if you’re still hungry for more Kindle-friendly book sites, check out Free Kindle Books and Free Ebooks Online. The post contains a large collection of links that can help fill your reader in no time.

San Francisco Fed Sees Growth Picking Up (WSJ.com: Real Time Economics) Submitted at 6/17/2008 3:21:00 AM

The San Francisco Fed is expecting stronger U.S. economic growth in the second and third quarters than it had previously anticipated, an economist with the bank said. Source: San Francisco Fed In a monthly FedViews newsletter posted to the bank’s Web site late

Monday, economist Reuven Glick said strong retail sales in May combined with less of a drag from the housing sector are contributing to the rosier outlook. However, Glick expects slower growth in the fourth quarter as the government’s fiscal stimulus package ends. ( See corresponding charts.) Glick is forecasting headline inflation of more than 4% in the second and third quarters. He expects

that figure to fall as commodity prices steady or decline. He predicts core

inflation will remain “relatively stable.” For 2009, the San Francisco Fed is forecasting annualized economic growth of 3% on further improvements in the housing sector and easing credit constraints. Glick also said in the newsletter that increases in market interest rates “imply monetary policy tightening is expected in the future.”–Meena Thiruvengadam

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The power of remarkable (Seth's Blog) Submitted at 6/18/2008 3:19:20 AM

When I first wrote about Little Miss Matched about five years ago, they were an obscure little sock company, selling funky socks to fashionable girls. The idea was beyond clever. 3 to a box, 133 styles, none of them match. Instead of a strategy built around a consultant's vision of 'utility' or a strategy built around cheap or a strategy built around excessive retail distribution and heavy advertising, they built their strategy around one girl saying to another girl, "wanna see my socks?" I couldn't have invented a better Purple Cow story if I had tried. The company let me know today that they just did a huge deal with Macys and closed a $17 million

funding with the folks who financed Build a Bear's retail rollout. Money isn't the only point, of course, but if that's the way you keep score, that's a long way for a little company to come in five years. [full disclosure: My feet are sponsored by LMM and I wear their socks every day. I am compensated by the company--they give me 33 free socks a year (not pairs of socks, just 33 socks), worth about $110.]

Guide to Better Napping (43 Folders -) Submitted at 6/17/2008 6:55:29 AM

How to nap - Boston.com I’m a big fan of napping and often evangelize the transformative power of a quick Pzizz. If you’re new to the nap habit — or if you buy the propaganda that naps are only for infants and layabouts — treat yourself to this cool infographic from The Boston Globe(shown in part above). [via Arts & Letters Daily] It’s full of handy tips for learning when you’re most likely benefit from a nap, how long to snooze, as well as

what you can do to improve your environment for good sleep. Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve heard it before: napping shouldn’t require a guide and software. But an astonishing number of people I’ve talked to just can’t bring themselves to sleep during the day (and many sleep poorly at night as well). As a marginally sleep-deprived Dad, I’m all for anything that helps people get rested and refreshed, and the advice in this little guide comports with everything I’ve learned about making naps work. Happy napping.

3-D continued from page 12

NAHB Survey: Builders as Gloomy as Ever (WSJ.com: Real Time Economics) Submitted at 6/16/2008 1:56:00 AM

U.S. home builders’ confidence in the market took a nosedive in June, according to the results of a monthly index the National Association of Home Builders released Monday. The association’s latest index for sales of new, single-family homes dipped to just 18 in June, matching a record low set in December 2007. The index, which was 19 in May, gauges builders’ perceptions of current home sales as well as sales expectations for the next six months. Sentiment fell sharply in the

Northeast and in the West, coming in flat in the Midwest. Sentiment rose in the South. “The housing economy is hurting,” said NAHB Chief Executive Jerry Howard, in a teleconference with reporters. The NAHB also renewed its call on lawmakers to include a tax credit for home buyers in a housing stimulus package being considered in Congress. NAHB has been conducting the survey for more than 20 years. Any number over 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor. Chart: NAHB via Lehman Brothers

their customers with great going-out experiences: They have crummy seats, sell expensive and bad food, and don’t serve alcohol. If all this is true, efforts by Malco and other chains like Landmark to introduce such amenities as couches and waiters might have more impact on the theater business than 3-D will. Maybe the money that theaters are spending on 3-D could be better used on other things. Despite the efforts of Anschutz, Cameron, Katzenberg, and others, the

greater forces at work here suggest something other than a happy ending. For Hollywood, 3-D may indeed be like Viagra—a temporary cure for a situation that will only get worse over time. Related Links A Rich Green Beast on the Great White Way 3-D Movies: Wave of the Future? DreamWorks Animation Sees Some Extra Green