Reflections along the way.
The number one reason I check Drudge is for the headlines. His headlines crack me up! I know folks say he is Republican operative, but I tend think there a little more anarchy in his libertarianism.
Today’s topper:
'MAYBE IT WILL TAKE A WOMAN TO CLEAN UP THE HOUSE'...
Just when you thought it was safe to pick up an O’Reilly book…Web 3.0.
Simon Simeonov sees some interesting implications of Web 2.0 for E-Commerce. Here are three trends he observes:
1. First, expect a significant move to more interactive user experiences delivered through rich internet applications (RIAs). “The main goal will be reducing shopping cart & checkout abandonment…”
Doug thoughts: From a useability standpoint, I think most carts flunk. But newer AJAX models may solve the problems of way too many steps. As long as we can think human-centered and not just cool. Of course, the cart is fundamental for E-Commerce but there are so many other possibilities for RIAs.
2. The second trend is accelerating disaggregation, brought about by the dual forces of focusing on core competencies and leveraging network effects. … “The most successful services will reduce the barriers to purchase across sites.”
Doug thoughts: The interconnecting between sites and services is changing the landscape in ways that most companies cannot fully grasp yet. But it will most certainly change the way we understand brand and marketing.
3. The third trend is social commerce, which comes in two flavors: content-driven and interaction-driven, or passive vs. active. Combined with disaggregation, it means that social commerce will happen everywhere, not just on the e-commerce sites.
Doug thoughts: I think Netflix friends is one amazing example of on site social commerce.
Word on the street (WSJ) is that Google is in talks to buy YouTube for about 1.6 billion. This will be Google’s largest acquisition to date. Not bad for the YouTube guys, considering they’re just about a year and half old (Feb 2005). Looks like Mark Cuban will have to eat his words.
via Drudge
The American Association of Kidney Patients sent me an update today with one article that suggests 4 shorts walks per day actually do more to keep blood pressure lower than one long walk. I try to walk several days a week. It’s good for me and gives me a few minutes to think. But I like the idea of dividing it up into four shorter walks. For my schedule, it would be easier to do this every day rather than my tendency to walk about 3 or 4 days a week now.
Sick of working? Take a mental health day, using Call-In-Sick.
Here’s their spiel:
Call-in-Sick is a revolutionary new FREE service that allows you to call in your sick message to your boss or employer from anywhere, any time.
Picture the scenario: You stay out too late on a workday night and decide to call in sick the next day. The next day you drag
yourself out of bed at 5am because you know your boss won’t be there to answer the phone.
With Call-in-Sick you can record your sick message the night before then schedule it to be sent directly to your boss’s phone early in the morning without you even getting out of bed!
Nathaniel, one of my co-workers, sent this to me via Mike Yamamoto. Maybe nobody is buying my kidney transplant excuses and want me to come up with something fresh!
NYT announced today that Netflix is offering a $1 million dollar prize for the person who can improve their recommendation system by at least 10 percent. To help potential winners, they’re making available “to the public 100 million of its customers’ movie ratings, a database the company says is the largest of its kind ever released.”
I think this is pretty cool. It is more of the consumer generated content trend where companies look outside their walls to the public for help in creating solutions.
There’s only one political race that I’ve been following this year and that is the Lieberman-Lamont showcase showdown. And the only reason is that I think Lieberman is a decent guy that was completely hung out to dry on the basis on one issue. So I was delighted to read this little article on Lieberman today in The Stanford Daily.
I don’t normally mention politics here simply because our culture has moved far beyond any form of reasoned discourse or proper rhetoric. I think many of us Americans are not on the fringe waiting and wanting to virtually crucify the “other guy.”
There are real problems in our world and real disagreements as to how to solve those problems. If we could ever learn to listen and really dialogue (Martin Buber), we might actually find places of wisdom that teach us to avoid killing each other (virtually or literally).
Lifehacker posted some great free education resources. This excites me because I have so much to learn.
When I graduated from college, I thought I was pretty smart. By the time I graduated from Graduate school (’94), I realized that I was completely ignorant. Since that time, I’ve been trying to catch up but it sure feels like I’m getting dumber as the years go by. So there may be no hope!
But who knows, maybe Lifehacker combined with The Teaching Company may at least keep me from fading into total illiteracy.
Apparently YouTube is getting ready to be sued into oblivion. At least that’s what Mark Cuban believes. According to Reuters,
“There is a reason they haven’t yet gone public, they haven’t sold. It’s because they are going to be toasted,” said Cuban, who has sold start-ups to Yahoo Inc. and CompuServe.
Dang! I was just starting to like YouTube. One minute they’re the fastest growing video sharing site in the world and the next minute they’re a burned up piece of bread from yesterday’s breakfast.
I actually think there’s potential to find a way to keep the irreverent and diverse user-generated content while still making peace with copyright holders and even welcome more commercial entities.
Well here’s hopin’ Cuban is just showboatin’ and the zany world of YouTube keeps growing and shocking.
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