Christmas gifts: January 2011

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Guarding Your Company's online reputation

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Monday, January 24, 2011

personal finance

Eight resolutions for retirement savers in 2011 [MarketWatch] "Now that 2010 year-end statements are arriving in the mail it's time to get back on the grid — and to make sure you start 2011 on the right foot, especially with your retirement accounts."

Extra Income Online: 5 Websites That Can Seriously Pad Your Pockets [Wise Bread] "Instead of taking on a second, or in some cases, third job to elevate your earnings, consider making use of these websites that can take you from rags to debatable riches."

11 Tricks to Cutting Travel Costs in 2011 [NY Times] " Here are 11 strategies — and some useful Web sites — to help you save on travel this year."

30 Things Broke People Say (That Keep Them Broke) [Smart on Money] "Why save money? You can't take it with you when you die!"

Save Money on Gas, Food and Travel: 13 Smart Tricks [MoneyWatch] "Here are 13 ways to trim some of these everyday expenses."

— FREE MONEY FINANCE

8 Unexpected Ways to Generate Extra Cash [MintLife Blog] "Alternatives to help supplement income or even simply maintain it, aside from asking for more job perks."

How to Take Control of Your Finances in 2011 [Get Rich Slowly] "Here are eleven simple but effective steps to build a better financial future."

Slow and Steady Saving Still Pays [Wall Street Journal] "Steady savings and the passage of time can benefit younger 401(k) investors."

Will your pet bankrupt you? [MSN Money] "Before you adopt that cute mutt or exotic fish, be sure you know what the animal's needs are — and that you have a plan to deal with unexpected expenses."

25 Toughest Interview Questions of 2010 [MoneyTalksNews] "Some of the weirdest questions employers asked their prospective employees in 2010."

— FREE MONEY FINANCE

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

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AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Reports: Terrorist attack kills 31, injures at least 100 at Moscow ...

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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Making Easy Money

“We wanted to be the Bose of the digital world,” Cullen said. But in order to do that, the Sonos crew had to figure out how to make a product that was easy to use and could deliver a sound quality that audiophiles and those listening to MP3s would appreciate (as an aside for digital music junkies, Cullen says he stores his audio files as 320 kbps MP3 files). Improvement is ongoing, with the latest advancements being the way it built its S5 boombox-style device. Sonos, not longer content to shuttle bits around the home network through a proprietary wireless system, designed a new speaker for the S5 that digitally controls the output from the different parts of the speaker.

An advantage of this is that the S5 sounds the way most consumers prefer their speakers to sound (at least according to the gurus at Lucas Arts who vetted the sound quality for Sonos) and that the speaker profile can be changed via a DSP programmer tweaking the settings. Expect those advances to be seen in future Sonos products. Cullen also notes that the home audio market is the focus today, but people listen to music in other places, such as in their cars or via headphones — an area Sonos will one day explore. As it does, it’s staying focused on providing the best sound for digital music and continuing to refine the way it builds its products in the service of that goal.

Lesson#2: Consider Usability Before You Build

It took the guys at Sonos a few months to build their first prototype, and at the end, they were left with a product only a geek could love. Realizing this, they sought help from a usability expert, who told them they didn’t need a usability expert until much later in their process. What they needed was an industrial designer who could get in early and help them build the hardware and software with an eye toward the consumer. The team eventually hired Meiko Mieko Kusano, a designer for Phillips, who told them, “Usability is in the bones of the product, not the skin.” Cullen still credits that mentality with Sonos’ success.

“Most consumer electronics companies build out hardware and then add software to update it and change their designs every 18 months. We turned that on its head, building hardware that will last and software that we can update whenever we need to in order to improve the experience.” Cullen credits that shift to Kusano, and offers up Sonos’ Zone Player products as an example. “You should be able to stream music over that for the next 15 years.”

Lesson#3: Don’t Be Afraid to Cannibalize Yourself

That long-term vision for the hardware is part of the success of the Sonos platform, but the other is the philosophy the company has about working with partners and even introducing new products to expand its base. When it launched, a Sonos system could run a user about $99 for a wireless router, another $350 to $500 or so for something that picks up that signal and connects to speakers in one room (each room would need another of these), and a special controller for about $350 to drive the system. But in 2008, Sonos released a free app for the iPod that mimicked the functionality of the controller and thus brought down the cost of the system. Sales surged. The loss in controller revenue was more than offset by sales of the new system, Cullen said.

It now has a free app for the iPad, and as mentioned earlier, Cullen says support for other platforms will come. But last year, Sonos introduced a much more disruptive product: its S5 boombox. For $400, the S5 has speakers and allows someone to create a Sonos network with the addition of a Zone Bridge for $99. The launch of that product has changed the profile for Sonos, moving it out of the specialty market and into the mainstream. At the time of this writing, items No. 3 and No. 6 on Best Buy’s Top 10 bestselling wireless and streaming audio products were S5s. However, Sonos’ S5 cracked the top 100 of Amazon’s Bestsellers in Home Audio & Theater Products list at No. 73, behind rivals Logitech and Bose. But Cullen says the fear of cannibalizing sales of its more expensive gear hasn’t been realized; instead people buy an S5, then tend to add more onto their networks.

Lesson #4: A True Platform Doesn’t Pick Winners

As a platform, Sonos plans to release a breadth of hardware and software to ensure a better digital music experience, but it also extends that to partnerships it signs with music providers. Sonos currently supports Spotify in the U.K. and Scandinavia, and that partnership alone has enabled it to boost sales of its system in those countries by a non trivial amount. In the U.S., a partnership with Pandora has had a smaller but still noticeable affect on sales as well. Cullen said Spotify and other some partners have offered to pay Sonos for providing access to their content to Sonos users, but Sonos doesn’t play that game. “We don’t take revenue from people,” Cullen said. “We don’t want any incentives to guide our behavior rather than the user choosing what they want to listen to. We don’t want to be picking winners and losers.”

So far, Sonos’ strategy is working. The company has now raised $65 million,and while Cullen wouldn’t discuss IPO plans, he says the company has been approached by buyers. However, the $15 billion home audio market beckons, and Sonos believes it has learned how to play the game well and can take the disruption provided by digital music and home networks to give the industry giants a run for their money.

Related GigaOM Pro Content (sub req’d):

Will Sonos Ever Be the Next Big Thing?

5 Connected Consumer Companies to Watch in 2011

Connected Consumer 2011: Rise of the Virtual Video Operator

With The Social Network sweeping the awards at last night’s Golden Globes, it’s time to brace for yet more mainstream attention — as if any were needed — for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. As director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin polish their trophies and prepare themselves for possible Oscar-winning speeches, it’s easy to imagine executives at the company’s Palo Alto offices shaking their fists in fury.

Facebook has certainly had its troubles with the film in the past, and for good reason. There are plenty of well-documented arguments justifying Zuckerberg anger about the movie. It’s not exactly flattering. It paints him as something between arrogant and autistic. It suggests he’d sell his friends out for a buck. And it misrepresents his love life quite drastically for dramatic effect.

But Zuckerberg, despite the funds at his disposal, has essentially done nothing to shut it down. Why? Because he understands that the publicity generated by the movie ultimately makes him — and therefore Facebook — look more interesting than reality.

After I watched the film with some friends, we talked about it. Some admired the way the film managed to deliver a fairly accurate on-screen representation of programming — because, let’s face it, making coding look sexy is about as hard a task as you can imagine. Other friends thought it immature and demeaning to technologists.

Personally, I found the film a little boring. But I did emerge with an image of Zuckerberg that was, if not positive then certainly more powerful than it had been. The pseudo-Zuckerberg portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg might not be somebody I’d want to hang out with, but he was probably going to take over the world.

On screen, he is smart, rapacious and intimidatingly clever. He might clash with his friends, but he is willing to do whatever it took to turn Facebook into a success story. He is driven, analytical and apparently destined for success. I would lay money on the fact that investors at Goldman Sachs saw the movie and thought admiringly of this cutthroat young man who was motivated by a chance of glory.

In real life, of course, there’s plenty to be said for Zuckerberg’s leadership: he’s focused and determined, and has played it smart almost every step of the way. He might get caught asking for forgiveness rather than permission, he might have more than a few lawsuits on his hands, and might be redrawing popular concepts of privacy — but he’s found success almost every time he’s turned the corner. And whatever you think of Facebook’s $50 billion valuation, it certainly makes his regular decisions to keep hold of the company look like genius.

However, as an individual, he remains largely in the shadows. Even as Facebook has moved out of college dorms and into mainstream life, he kept fairly quiet. The odd awkward interview at SXSW or sweaty appearance at All Things Digital aside, he’s restricted his public persona.

But The Social Network has changed all that, and Zuckerberg has used the opportunity, whether it’s making a headline-grabbing appearance on Oprah, a confident keynote at the Web 2.0 Summit or racking up millions more users and big investors.

In the end, it’s this approach that has surprised me most about Zuckerberg, and demonstrated that he is even more clever than he is usually given credit for.

It’s unusual for somebody who clearly loves to be in control to hand his public image over to Hollywood, but Zuckerberg appears to have recognized that in the space of two hours, The Social Network does more to bring him alive than any public appearance could ever manage. Myth, in cases like this, is often more important than fact — and by giving the myth room to breathe, Zuckerberg proves he’s not just a business mind, but also a master of public relations. After all, he can let the Hollywood version of himself hog the spotlight while he laughs all the way to the bank.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

How Much is Facebook’s Market Power Worth?

4 NewNet Companies That Made Headlines in 2010

What Facebook Messages Is Really After

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Pitchfork: The Strokes Confirm Release Date for New Record

TwentyFourBit points out that the Strokes' bassist Nikolai Fraiture has confirmed a recently speculated rumor concerning the release date of ...

Police: 2 teens shot at California high school – This Just In ...

[Updated at 4:05 p.m.] A suspect in an apparently accidental shooting at Gardena High School in California has been caught and handcuffed by police, according to footage aired by CNN affiliate KTLA shortly before noon PT.

Small Business News: Social Entrepreneurship on the Rise

In recognition of Martin Luther King Day, we present a roundup about an important new trend, the rise of social entrepreneurship. Instead of profit, the.

Friday, January 14, 2011

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How do you usually start your morning? Lunatic rush, eternal lack of time, work, where we come sleepy, irritated and seedy? Delaying the time for getting up to the critical moment and again being late, we convulsively invent excuses about a stuck lift or traffic jams.

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It can be very hard when you are applying for a bad credit mortgage, and it feels like all the odds are stacked against you. The feeling of going in to see a loan officer just hoping that they will be favorable toward you and that you might just have a chance of buying a home. The situation may be grim and you're feeling completely overwhelmed anyway, but know that millions before you have been in your same shoes. There is light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark it may seem. Here are three simple steps that you can use to help you apply and possibly get a bad credit mortgage.

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The Daily, the iPad-only newspaper from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is being delayed a few weeks, according to the Associated Press. The digital paper is still working out subscription details, the AP said.

Small Business News: Building Better Strategy

Building a better strategy should be the constant goal of every small business owner and entrepreneur. Think your business is running as well as it can, has.

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

Making Money Secrets

well i don't have much thought provoking opinion in regards to any of those 5 subjects. except Øbomba is a liar and has no balls. now i am very confused what to think about JA. i just read a long article this morning on NYT about the accusations these swedish woman made in regards to him and having sex with him. i think they sound like tiger's dumb doo girls. they wanted it so bad from this julian man, probably secretly wanted to get pregnant. then twist the whole story and condemn him. i am just sick of all this shit being news anyway.

yeah, let's just all be really merry around here like WB7 is every day. winky faces galore and so happy holidays. jeeze get real, it ain't so happy for 99% of people on this earth. why are you pretending to be so above this blight of criminals, destroying every piece of earth, wildlife, ocean beings and people's lives and future, happy holly dazing. america showing all this fake shit like lights and cutting down evergreen trees and putting stupid fake ornaments and lights in each window. it is a BIG waste of energy, that gets EXCEL energy wealthy and those MOFO ceo's billions. christ someone here in boulder put up a HUGE light bulb star on flagstaff mt. it looks hideous. stars don't look like this, nor made of fake stupid incandescent light bulbs.

i don't celebrate christMASS, i get through it.

Everyone wants to know the secrets of the YouTube stars—how did they make successful careers out of YouTube, how do they make money and what advice do they have for hopefuls looking to follow in their footsteps? Tubefilter’s ‘Secrets if YouTube Superstars’ panel at CES shed some light on these questions. Tubefilter’s editor and co-founder, Marc Hustvedt, moderated the panel, which was made up of YouTube megastars iJustine, Joe Penna (aka MysteryGuitarMan), Phil DeFranco, Freddie Wong and Brandon Laatsch.

You can watch the full thirty-seven minute panel in the video below, but I’d like to take a little time to recap some of the most interesting points that were brought up. I think that Hustvedt asked great questions, leading the panelists to shed some very interesting light on the world of YouTube as a business.

Putting In The Work

I think that the most important thing that can be gleaned from the ‘Secrets Of The YouTube Stars’ CES panel is that you can’t go anywhere on YouTube without putting in lots and lots and lots of work. There was a general consensus that these guys work an average of about 80 hours a week. That’s an average of about 11.5 hours a day with no weekend! And these guys have already made their YouTube channels a success, so just imagine how much work goes in to making a name for yourself when you’re starting out at the bottom.

iJustine says, “This is our life. Every second of the day you’re working, essentially. If you’re not posting videos you’re still tweeting, your updating Facebook or you’re updating all these social networks to tie back to your videos and keep people updated on what you’re doing.” YouTube stars never sleep—it’s a 24/7 job. Brandon Laatsch says, “We’ve pulled more all nighters in the last year than we did all throughout college.” But what’s important to note is that these guys love their job. If you have the passion and the drive, and you’re willing to put in the hours it can be incredibly rewarding.

Bringing Home The Bacon

The question on everyone’s mind is, how do YouTube stars make money? The panelists are all paying the bills with money they make from YouTube videos, but how do they do it?

Joe Penna explains the two major ways that YouTube stars make money, in addition to the revenue that they earn through YouTube advertising. One of these ways is through working with brands. The other is through merchandising.

Penna, iJustine and DeFranco all have quite a lot of experience working with brands. They seem to agree that working with brands is fantastic, as brands trust them to take creative control and allow them the budget to make bigger, better videos than they could otherwise. Laatsch also pointed out that over the last year or so viewers have become a lot more accepting of brand deals. At first there was a lot of name calling (i.e. “You’re a sell out!”), but now that viewers understand that this is what these guys are doing for a living they get that branding is a good thing as it enables them to make better videos. All the YouTubers stressed that they incorporated branding into their videos in an unobtrusive way as to not freak their viewers out.

YouTube also helps with revenue through grant programs. They helped DeFranco branch his single channel out into the six-channel DeFranco Inc. and they also sponsored Freddie and Brandon in a project in which they drove around in an RV for a month, making videos with their fans.

Personality

The most important thing that I think can be gleaned from this panel for wannabe YouTube stars is the importance of personality. If you take a look at the top YouTube channels nearly all of them are supported by a personality. MysteryGuitarMan makes music videos, but he’s sure to speak directly to his viewers in each and every one of his videos as well. If you have a strong personality your viewers feel like they know you personally and this is one of the biggest keys to YouTube success.

DeFranco says that YouTube stars are different from television or movie stars because you may want to catch a glimpse of a television star but you’d like to sit and chat over a beer with a YouTube star. You feel like you are friends with them, they influence you and they can’t wait for you to put out another video.

I’d also like to point out that this is fantastic for branding. Brands can tap into an audience of millions when they turn to YouTube stars for promotional purposes and these millions trust these stars and are completely engaged and influenced by them. This is much more direct and effective advertising that television advertising, and cheaper. It’s a lot more bang for your buck!

Check out the full panel below to find out more from five of YouTube’s biggest stars. What did you find most interesting about the panel?

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

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Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

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Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

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Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

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Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

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Bruno Mars Continues Hot 100 No. 1 Rotation with 'Grenade ...

Bruno Mars circles back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, as Grenade once again replaces Katy Perry's Firework at No. 1 (1-2).

Dallas Cowboys Tidbits: Snacking On Cowboys News - Blogging The Boys

Get the latest roundup of Cowboys in the news. Dallas Cowboys Tidbits are for those that like to eat and run!

Sarah Palin Appearing On Sean Hannity's Fox News Show Monday (VIDEO)

Sarah Palin will give her first interview since the Arizona shootings--and her controversial "blood libel" video--to Fox News' Sean Hannity. Palin will appear on "Hannity" on Monday, Jan. 17.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Making Money Job

As you may have noticed, the NYT put up a long article about whether it's worth it to go to law school — whether it's a good investment. The article begins with an anecdote about a young man with $250,000 in student loans and compares his situation to that of a person who bought an expensive house and has a big mortgage loan to pay off. Of course, education is different from a house. You can sell the house, but you keep your education in you head.

Both the house and the education may turn out to be worth less than you paid, but the present-day value of a house has to do with what someone else is willing to pay to take it off your hands. You don't sell your education to someone else. You try to get a job. When you buy a house, you have some expectations about how the market price will change over time. When you get an education you have expectations about what kinds of jobs you may be able to get with it. But so much depends on you. You have to have absorb and process the material the school teaches, you need to present yourself appropriately in interviews, and, once you get the job, you have to perform well. Your services are the product. The education was part of making your services worth buying in the job market. But no one ever purchases your education from you.

Now, why focus on law schools? People buy all sorts of education. It's expensive. And students major in plenty of subjects that are far less likely to result in jobs. Here's where we get to the real meat of the article: Do the law schools trick students into thinking they are buying a bigger boost in the job market than they're really going to get? And it's the old U.S. News and World Report problem. As schools vie for higher ranking, they do what they can to produce statistics that factor into the calculation, and one thing is the percentage of "graduates known to be employed nine months after graduation." Law schools today report an average of 93%, which is 9% more than back in 1997, even though everyone knows the job market for law grads has gotten much worse.

Another statistic that counts in the rankings is median starting salary:

Many schools, even those that have failed to break into the U.S. News top 40, state that the median starting salary of graduates in the private sector is $160,000. That seems highly unlikely, given that Harvard and Yale, at the top of the pile, list the exact same figure....

That is to say, the U.S. News rankings are, on their face, unbelievable.

So the glut of diplomas, the dearth of jobs and those candy-coated employment statistics have now yielded a crop of furious young lawyers who say they mortgaged their future under false pretenses. You can sample their rage, and their admonitions, on what are known as law school scam blogs, with names like Shilling Me Softly, Subprime JD and Rose Colored Glasses.

“Avoid this overpriced sewer pit as if your life depended on it,” writes the anonymous author of the blog Third Tier Reality — a reference to the second-to-bottom tier of the U.S. News rankings — in a typically scatological review. “Unless, of course, you think that you will be better off with $110k-$190k in NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt for a degree that qualifies you to wait tables at the Battery Park Bar and Lounge.”

But so far, the warnings have been unheeded. Job openings for lawyers have plunged, but law schools are not dialing back enrollment.... Apparently, there is no shortage of 22-year-olds who think that law school is the perfect place to wait out a lousy economy and the gasoline that fuels this system — federally backed student loans — is still widely available.

It's important for prospective students to know what they're getting into. But are they being tricked into thinking it will be easy to become a lawyer, make a lot of money, and love your job too? I don't think so. The bad economy has made the odds worse, but students aren't fools. The NYT focuses on one particular individual, who seems to have been especially unrealistic. (You can go to the article to see the details on this one guy. I don't know why he was chosen as the star of the article.) I think most students do think hard about taking on loans and training for the legal profession. You've got to search for the truth and think hard about where your decisions will lead you and if you want to go there.

Quite aside from the economic issues, many people go to law school only to figure out they don't like being a lawyer. But you have to do something in life. What will it be? What else are you going to do? For far too many young people, law school seems like a specific, sensible choice. Three years of education, and you will be highly qualified for a wide array of respectable jobs. If you're reasonably smart and hard working, you will get through it. But it's not a magic ticket to affluence and prestige.

My advice: Know what you're doing! Think!

On the CBS broadcast of the 33rd annual Kennedy Center Honors, Oprah Winfrey was one of the honorees to receive recognition from her fellow celebrities. Oprah pal John Travolta and Barbara Walters provided some harmless remarks, but luckily comedian Chris Rock arrived on the scene to offer some uncomfortably hilarious jabs at both the “most powerful person in the world” and the guy sitting next to her (Barack Obama).

While making fun of Oprah always seems amusing (as Bill Maher recently demonstrated), it’s particularly exciting watching it be done to her face. Rock joked about how Oprah got Obama his job and also about how rich she is, claiming “she’s so rich, China owes her money!”

Unfortunately, just when Rock gets warmed up, making a sex joke about Oprah and fellow honoree Paul McCartney, out rushed Travolta and Walters to end the fun.

Watch the amusing clip from CBS below:

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Friday, January 7, 2011

Making Money Working

In 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life. Eventually Memphis heard the grievances of its sanitation workers. And in subsequent years millions of public employees across the nation have benefited from the job protections they've earned.

But now the right is going after public employees.

Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers. They don't want stories about Wall Street bonuses, now higher than before taxpayers bailed out the Street. And they'd like to avoid a spotlight on the billions raked in by hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose income is treated as capital gains and subject to only a 15 percent tax, due to a loophole in the tax laws designed specifically for them.

It's far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public's work -- sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees -- to call them "faceless bureaucrats" and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets. The story fits better with the Republican's Big Lie that our problems are due to a government that's too big.

Above all, Republicans don't want to have to justify continued tax cuts for the rich. As quietly as possible, they want to make them permanent.

But the right's argument is shot-through with bad data, twisted evidence, and unsupported assertions.

They say public employees earn far more than private-sector workers. That's untrue when you take account of level of education. Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.

The Republican trick is to compare apples with oranges -- the average wage of public employees with the average wage of all private-sector employees. But only 23 percent of private-sector employees have college degrees; 48 percent of government workers do. Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be -- all need at least four years of college.

Compare apples to apples and and you'd see that over the last fifteen years the pay of public sector workers has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education. Public sector workers now earn 11 percent less than comparable workers in the private sector, and local workers 12 percent less. (Even if you include health and retirement benefits, government employees still earn less than their private-sector counterparts with similar educations.)

Here's another whopper. Republicans say public-sector pensions are crippling the nation. They say politicians have given in to the demands of public unions who want only to fatten their members' retirement benefits without the public noticing. They charge that public-employee pensions obligations are out of control.

Some reforms do need to be made. Loopholes that allow public sector workers to "spike" their final salaries in order to get higher annuities must be closed. And no retired public employee should be allowed to "double dip," collecting more than one public pension.

But these are the exceptions. Most public employees don't have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year. Few would call that overly generous.

And most of that $19,000 isn't even on taxpayers' shoulders. While they're working, most public employees contribute a portion of their salaries into their pension plans. Taxpayers are directly responsible for only about 14 percent of public retirement benefits. Remember also that many public workers aren't covered by Social Security, so the government isn't contributing 6.25 of their pay into the Social Security fund as private employers would.

Yes, there's cause for concern about unfunded pension liabilities in future years. They're way too big. But it's much the same in the private sector. The main reason for underfunded pensions in both public and private sectors is investment losses that occurred during the Great Recession. Before then, public pension funds had an average of 86 percent of all the assets they needed to pay future benefits -- better than many private pension plans.

The solution is no less to slash public pensions than it is to slash private ones. It's for all employers to fully fund their pension plans.

The final Republican canard is that bargaining rights for public employees have caused state deficits to explode. In fact there's no relationship between states whose employees have bargaining rights and states with big deficits. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights -- Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, for example, are running giant deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many that give employees bargaining rights -- Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana -- have small deficits of less than 10 percent.

Public employees should have the right to bargain for better wages and working conditions, just like all employees do. They shouldn't have the right to strike if striking would imperil the public, but they should at least have a voice. They often know more about whether public programs are working, or how to make them work better, than political appointees who hold their offices for only a few years.

Don't get me wrong. When times are tough, public employees should have to make the same sacrifices as everyone else. And they are right now. Pay has been frozen for federal workers, and for many state workers across the country as well.

But isn't it curious that when it comes to sacrifice, Republicans don't include the richest people in America? To the contrary, they insist the rich should sacrifice even less, enjoying even larger tax cuts that expand public-sector deficits. That means fewer public services, and even more pressure on the wages and benefits of public employees.

It's only average workers -- both in the public and the private sectors -- who are being called upon to sacrifice.

This is what the current Republican attack on public-sector workers is really all about. Their version of class warfare is to pit private-sector workers against public servants. They'd rather set average working people against one another -- comparing one group's modest incomes and benefits with another group's modest incomes and benefits -- than have Americans see that the top 1 percent is now raking in a bigger share of national income than at any time since 1928, and paying at a lower tax rate. And Republicans would rather you didn't know they want to cut taxes on the rich even more.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

Business cycles and the essence of long-run economic growth are distinct issues. Preventing recessions is not the key to growth, as these are regrettable but unavoidable companions to an economy directed by a capital allocation process that is susceptible to systematic failure. Preventing the last failure is pretty irrelevant, because the next systematic failure will be different. Last I checked, only the US government is offering low-down payment loans, and no one offers no-documentation loans, so our government is not really helping here. As for creating growth via something new, if centralized governments could do that, the Soviet Union would still be around.

That decentralized, self-interested, people can collectively make such large errors seems irrational or corrupt to many, but they should remember that growing economies require people to be making things better, which means, new ways of doing things. New ideas are often wrong. Economics has gone onto intellectual cul-de-sacs many times (socialism, Keynesian macro models, input-output models, Hilbert spaces in finance, Arbitrage Pricing Theory, Kalman-filter macroeconomic models, etc.). Other scientific disciplines have their own mistakes, and political mistakes--stupid wars--are also common. These are rarely conspiracies, but rather, smart people making mistakes because the ideas that are true, important, and new, are really hard to discern, and tempting ones are alluring when lots of other seemingly successful people are doing it.

My Batesian Mimicry Theory posits that recessions happen because certain activities become full of mimics, entrepreneurs without any real alpha who got money from investors looking in their rear-view window of what worked and focusing on correlated but insufficient statistics. For example, people assumed a nationally diversified housing prices would not fall significantly in nominal terms, because they had not for generations; people assumed anything related to the internet would make them rich in the internet bubble, conglomerates would be robust to recession in 1970, that the 'nifty fifty' top US companies had Galbraithian power to withstand recessions in 1973, that cotton prices would not fall in 1837, etc.

As in ecological niches, there is no stable equilibrium with when mimics arise to gain the advantages of those with a real, unique and costly, comparative advantage. Every so often there are too many mimic Viceroy butterflies, not enough real poisonous Monarch ones, and a massive cataclysm occurs as predators ignore the unpleasant after-effects and start chomping on all of them. The Viceroy population grows until this devastating event occurs, a species recession. Next time, it won't happen in butterflies, but rather, among frogs or snakes. They key is, some ecological niche is always heading towards its own Mayan collapse (distinct from the 2012 Mayan apocolypse).

The key to wealth creation is doing less with more--destroying jobs at the micro level and creating jobs at the macro level by reallocating capital and labor to more valuable pursuits. The computer got rid of things from typesetters, secretaries, to engineers working with slide-rules, but these people didn't stay unemployed, they did something else, making the economic pie bigger. This is antithetical to government and unions who think creating a permanent 'job' creates productivity--stability at the micro level and stagnation at the macro level. Wealth is created by having decentralized decision-makers focused on simple goal of making money, which means, they oversee transactions where revenues collected are greater than expenses paid. If externalities are properly priced (I know, most liberal think this never happens), this implies value is created. The continual improvements in method (ie, productivity, wealth creation) merely maintain profits in a competitive environment; to do nothing would see their profits eaten away by competitors would could easily copy what they did and just undercut their prices.

The key to this is having managers who keep their workers focused. A good example is a story I heard second-hand about a football player for Minnesota Vikings in the 1970s. Coach Bud Grant called this marginal player into a meeting, and said, 'Here's what I need you to do...'. The player, an articulate fellow quite confident in himself, interrupted with an explanation of why he wasn't doing better and suggestions about how to correct it, mainly focused what others were doing wrong. Grant cut him off: 'You don't understand. This isn't a negotiation. Do what I'm telling you, and you have a role here. Otherwise, you don't.' Hierarchies only work well when people have clearly defined goals, and managers who manage their direct reports singlemindedly.

Private firms can do this much more quickly and often than government, and are rewarded with investment and retained earnings to the degree they do it well. When the government wants to do something, like build a light-rail system, it instead satisfies all its stakeholders who have no financial downside, only veto power, and so the cost/benefit calculus is almost irrelevant. The probability that benefits will outweigh costs when not prioritized is negligible, as highlighted by the fact that companies have to work very hard to make this positive when all those other considerations are ignored.

Thus, Minneapolis's light rail, at the cost of $1.1B for 12 miles of track, takes me longer to go downtown than a car because it stops 19 times at places no one wants to go because these 'hubs' were then sold as development opportunities, and an unusual number of ex-city councilmen are part owners of coffee shops and stores near these stops. Ridership does not even cover their marginal costs. It could have worked if they had an express train that went non-stop from end to end, but doesn't because it was not designed with the goal of making money, only the hope.

Good companies like Facebook, Apple and Google, have this sense of really understanding their users. Lots of simple things that making going to their sites and getting what you want. Their inferior competitors are relatively ugly, cluttered, and clunky. These generally weren't genius ideas like the ideas needed to create the first transistor, or Cantor's diagonal argument, in that there competitors had similar raw competence in these field, but it did take people looking to do things better than others, and decisive people who could empathize with their customers created really great things.

Robin Hanson had a neat article about the Myth of Creativity, where he criticizes Richard Florida's vision of bohemian lead productivity:

This is a Star Wars vision of innovation: "Feel the force, Luke; let go of your conscious self and act on instinct." And it is just as much a fantasy as that celluloid serial. Innovation is no more about releasing your inner bohemian than it is about holding hands, singing Kumbaya, and believing in innovation.

In truth, we don't need more suggestion boxes or more street mimes to fill people with a spirit of creativity. We instead need to better manage the flood of ideas we already have and to reward managers for actually executing them.

Sure, it's good to punish fraudsters, and be wary of the stupid ideas that were passed off as brilliant in the prior cycle (eg, Angelo Mozilo winning the American Banker's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, celebrated by politicians on the right and left, prized by Fannie Mae, and Harvard, is now an example of the 'unregulated predatory private sector'). But this is like learning not to put one's hand on a hot stove--good to know, but old news to most. Our priority at the top level should be to get out of the way, and so government should focus on its essential but limited perennial tasks as opposed to creating some new engine of growth. Leave that for the millions of people making sure millions of small changes are constantly made to daily procedures. Such changes do not require vision from politicians, subsidies, or tax breaks, but are rather the natural by product of people trying to make a buck. It's the standard Hayek/Friedman view of macroeconomics, and it's still the best description of how the complex adaptive system of our economy works.

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