About Me 0011: January 2011

Monday, January 24, 2011

Making Money Through

Whenever you hear a business executive or politician use the term "American competitiveness," watch your wallet. Few terms in public discourse have gone so directly from obscurity to meaninglessness without any intervening period of coherence.

President Obama just appointed Jeffry Immelt, GE's CEO, to head his outside panel of economic advisors, replacing Paul Volcker. According to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, Immelt has "agreed to work through what makes our country more competitive."

In an opinion piece for the Washington Post announcing his acceptance, Immelt wrote "there is nothing inevitable about America's declining manufacturing competitiveness if we work together to reverse it."

But what's American "competitiveness" and how do you measure it? Here are some different definitions:

It's American exports. Okay, but the easiest way for American companies to increase their exports from the US is for their American-made products to become cheaper internationally. And for them to reduce the price of their American-made stuff they have to cut their costs of production in here. Their biggest cost is their payrolls. So it follows that the simplest way for them to become more "competitive" is to cut their payrolls -- either by substituting software and automated machinery for their US workers, or getting (or forcing) their US workers to accept wage and benefit cuts.

It's net exports. Another way to think about American "competitiveness" is the balance of trade -- how much we import from abroad versus how much they import from us. The easiest and most direct way to improve the trade balance is to coax the value of the dollar down relative to foreign currencies (the Fed's current strategy for flooding the economy with money could have this effect). The result is everything we make becomes cheaper to the rest of the world. But even if other nations were willing to let this happen (doubtful; we'd probably have a currency war instead as they tried to coax down the value of their currencies in response), we'd pay a high price. Everything the rest of the world makes would become more expensive for us.

It's the profits of American-based companies. In case you haven't noticed, the profits of American corporations are soaring. That's largely because sales from their foreign-based operations are booming (especially in China, Brazil, and India). It's also because they've cut their costs of production in the US (see the first item above). American-based companies have become global -- making and selling all over the world -- so their profitability has little or nothing to do with the number and quality of jobs here in the US. In fact, it may be inversely related.

It's the number and quality of American jobs. This is my preferred definition, but on this measure we're doing terribly badly. Most Americans are imprisoned in a terrible trade-off -- they can get a job, but only one that pays considerably less than the one they used to have, or they can face unemployment or insecure contract work. The only sure way to improve the quality of jobs over the long term is to build the productivity of American workers and the US overall, which means major investments in education, infrastructure, and basic R&D. But it's far from clear American corporations and their executives will pay the taxes needed to make these investments. And the only sure way to improve the number of jobs is to give the vast middle and working classes of America sufficient purchasing power to get the economy going again. But here again, it's far from clear American corporations and their executives will be willing to push for a more progressive tax code, along with wage subsidies, that would put more money into average workers' pockets.

It's politically important for President Obama, as for any president, to be available to American business, and to avoid the moniker of being "anti-business." But the president must not be seduced into believing -- and must not allow the public to be similarly seduced into thinking -- that the well-being of American business is synonymous with the well-being of Americans.

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

Another Facebook change, another privacy uproar. Read the headlines and you might have thought the social network was planning to open the books on private cellphone numbers and home addresses to any advertiser willing to slip them some cash, rather than adding some more sharing options along with the usual granular control over who gets to see what of your digital details. Unsurprisingly Facebook froze its plans pending a reassessment of its privacy controls; unfortunately, nobody is taking Facebook users – and the online community in general – to task over taking some responsibility for what they share.

If you haven’t been following the story, here’s the situation in a nutshell. Facebook announced on Friday that it was planning to add address and mobile number to the personal information that could be shared with applications, websites and advertisers. As with other personal details, the degree to which that data was accessible would be managed under each user’s permissions settings: everything from a come-and-get-me open pipe to a complete block on anything being revealed. Facebook billed it as a way to “easily share your address and mobile phone with a shopping site to streamline the checkout process, or sign up for up-to-the-minute alerts on special deals directly to your mobile phone.”

Don’t get me wrong; I’m under no illusion that Facebook is doing this for altruistic reasons. Making online purchases quicker is undoubtedly handy to those who actually click through Facebook adverts, but for the social network itself it’s all about making money from its most valuable asset: its millions of registered users. Just like with a free newspaper, Facebook makes its money by showing you adverts, and it can use your personal information to tailor those ads more appropriately. Access to personal contact details, meanwhile, is even more valuable.

However, just because there’s profit to be made for Facebook, it doesn’t mean this is either bad for the user or a sign of Evil Big Business taking advantage of the general public. We manage the degrees to which we disclose personal information all the time, long before Facebook arrived and gave us a simple privacy settings page to work with. Every time you avoid giving your phone number to a door-to-door charity worker, tick the no-junk-mail box on a bank form or refuse to give your address to someone you just met at a bar, you’re exercising your own, personal privacy filter.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. After all, it only takes a quick glance at sites like Lamebook (often NSFW) to see that many Facebook users have problems with over-sharing, accidentally making public posts out of what were meant to be private messages, and generally forgetting who out of their friends and family can read what they’re saying. Maybe Facebook does have some intrinsic responsibility to shepherd its members through the difficult journey that is online life; perhaps the privacy pages really won’t be complete until there’s color coding, pop-up warnings and a virtual cash register showing just how much you’ve lined Mark Zuckerberg’s pocket.

This constant push-me-pull-me with Facebook does users no favours. Every time the privacy patrol scream, and Facebook backtracks, it reinforces the idea that the site itself is solely responsible – should be responsible – for making safe use of the information we share online. Don’t get me wrong, if Facebook was looking to sneak in a “we can sell your identify” clause into the T&Cs, that’s something worth shouting about. When, though, we muster the same amount of vitriol for sharing options that already have safeguards – safeguards that satisfactorily protect our email address and other details – it looks more like abdication of responsibility. We want to trust Facebook do “do the right thing” – based on our own interpretation of what “the right thing” is, exactly – so that we won’t have to. We can spend our time looking up old crushes, posting photos of ourselves looking fierce in clubs, and commenting on videos of cats.

Privacy is important, but the responsibility begins at the individual level. Just as you don’t hand out your address to strangers in the street, maybe giving it to every website that asks isn’t all that sensible either. Relying on other people, or companies, to protect us universally is a naivety we abandon before adulthood in the real world, yet something many seem determined to cling to online. That’s before you get to the thorny issue of lost or stolen data. In the end, it’s your life, your number, your face: it’s up to you whether it’s an open book.

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American fitness guru Jack LaLanne died Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, California, according to his long-time agent, Rick Hersh. He was 96. The cause, said Hersh, was respiratory failure due to pneumonia.

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

(KRQE NEWS 13) - As of 7:10 a.m. - President Barack Obama is putting the finishing touches on a State of the Union speech Tuesday that'll mostly be about one thing -- jobs. Comments. Latest Headlines. News Happening Now � Sunday News ...

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A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

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Jack LaLanne dead at 96 – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

News Happening Now - KRQE

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Making Money With Website

So Christmas has been and gone. Are you now facing the New Year and wondering how you can keep up the Christmas spirit and goodwill for the coming year? Well, it certainly helps when you know how to do so for free from your own home.

There are so many simple ways to volunteer or donate to charity by giving up a small amount of your time or re-purposing some money you would normally have spent. So here’s a list of five of the best quick and easy ways to volunteer or donate to charity. Bookmark the list of charities and use it to do the rounds weekly!

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Skip1.org

This is a great concept — it’s a site which makes you think about how much money you waste on frivolous things. You nominate something which you will give up, say a lunch or newspapers for a month. Then you donate that same amount of money to feeding a hungry child.

Yes, you’re handing over money to charity, but it’s money you would have spent anyway. It’s also easy to share news of your donation with your friends via social networks, and hopefully convince a few of them to skip something for charity too.

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Free Rice

Free Rice has been around a while, but it’s so good it’s worth making sure it’s on this list. Play a simple, addictive trivia quiz and Free Rice will donate rice for each of your correct answers. This is a free and simple way to give whenever you have a free moment. Read more on FreeRice here.

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Causes

There are a number of things you can do using Causes, including raising awareness for your chosen charity and helping to raise funds for them. By far the easiest way to donate money with Causes is to set up a birthday or holiday fund. This way, instead of receiving presents from friends and family, you simply ask them to donate the money on your behalf. It takes about two minutes to set up, since you can log in with Facebook Connect – just choose the charity and you’re set!

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Charity Gifts

Here’s another easy way to spend your money on charity instead of something you were already going to pay for. Instead of giving gifts to your friends, give them the knowledge that you have donated to charity on their behalf. The Donation4Charity website searches all the big charity gifting sites (such as UNICEF, WWF and Oxfam) and lets you search the gifts according to how much money you have available to spend. Buy a goat for charity for about the same price as a modest gift!

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Sparked

Spend 5-10 minutes donating your expertise to charity: Give website feedback, brainstorm fundraising ideas or help design an awareness campaign. This is what they need help with – if you can spend a few minutes working on it then you’ve made a difference to a real charity with just a moment of your time. Read more on Sparked here & get going!

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And many, many more!

There are so many great ways to donate your time to charity — the sites listed above are just a few. Here’s some more great articles which introduce many more you might like to try.

Introducing Jumo – The Social Network for Social Good
How To Easily Coordinate Volunteers Using Volunteer Spot
5 Crowd Funding Websites To Support Your Favourite Charities, Bands & Projects
Find Volunteering Opportunities Near You with VolunteerMatch
10 Search Engines To Help The Environment
5 Cool Edutainment Games You Can Play and Also Donate To Charitable Causes
5 Websites To Lend A Hand & Make A Difference To The World

What are your favourite sites for donating your time to charity? Do you appreciate charity gifts given on your behalf? Let us know in the comments!

First announced at Tokyo Game Show last year, Gran Turismo 5's long-awaited Remote Races feature is finally gearing up for launch. A tweet from series head Kazunori Yamauchi confirms an "early February" release for the update.

Formally known as "Gran Turismo Anywhere," Remote Races allow you to control B-Spec races from a PC or mobile device by logging onto the official Gran Turismo website. You won't be able drive, but you will be able to issue commands during the race to a virtual racer that levels up (and down) over time. While not particularly engaging, it is a good way of earning money to use towards better cars in-game.

With the update arriving in early February, it seems Polyphony Digital is making good on its plans to release near-monthly updates for the PS3 driving sim. Update 1.05 came out in late December, and added 608MB of new features and tweaks. What else could be in store for 1.06?

Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » Mammoths news ...

“Japanese scientists attempt to resurrect Mammoth” shouted the news agency AFP (source: The online version of the Japanese newspaper “Yomiuri Shimbun”: Daily Yomiuri Online). The article lacks any hints about the major hurdles of such ...

Perfect Market, news ad firm, lands $9 million in funding round ...

Perfect Market Inc, a start-up that seeks to help news organizations make more money through online advertising, has won $9 million in new funding in a round led by Comcast Interactive Capital, the cable giant's venture arm.

Apple stock falls on news of Steve Jobs' medical leave ...

Apple shares have dropped after the announcement that CEO Steve Jobs is taking some time off to deal with medical issues. Shares of Apple fell 6.45% immediately after markets opened on Tuesday morning, but quickly made up about half of ...

Friday, January 14, 2011

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The main areas of law which are still eligible for public funding are Criminal, the Tenant part of Landlord & Tenant and Family/Matrimonial. Some criminal matters may be means tested and may require a contribution towards the legal advice costs but legal aid is available for most people facing criminal prosecution.

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The situation with Aid for family/matrimonial matters is somewhat different and the rules are beyond the scope of this article. Broadly speaking if a litigant is on benefits then they won't have to make a contribution toward their legal costs and it will all be funded by Legal Aid. If they are not on benefits and earning a wage they may have to make a contribution towards the cost of their legal work. It happens that very few people who are not on benefits fall in to the category where all their costs would be publicly funded.

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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.

The Write Stuff For Test Anxiety - Science News

Students score higher after jotting down worries before a big exam.

News Corp's The Daily iPad Newspaper Delayed By “Weeks, Not Months”

While we may all have our own opinions on whether News Corp's iPad-bound newspaper, The Daily, is a boondoggle or simply before its time, I think we were all at least looking forward to seeing what it was like. People were curious about ...

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Making Money Web

Last night just before 12 a.m., Twitter began exploding with the news: Facebook had raised $500 million — from Goldman Sachs. Bolstered by a $50-million stake from Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, a previous FB investor, the Wall Street behemoth had slapped down $450 million to snag the Internet behemoth — now valued at a cool $50 billion. As if on cue, the internet noted that yes, that was cooler than a million dollars.

Notes the NYT’s Dealbook, which broke the scoop: this makes Facebook “worth more than companies like eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner.” It also doubles Mark Zuckerberg’s multi-billion-dollar worth. It also makes Goldman Sachs the gatekeeper to who now gets to invest in the super-hot Facebook, and to the inevitable Facebook IPO. According to Dealbook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and Evelyn Rusli, Goldman is “planning to create a ’special purpose vehicle’ to allow its high-net worth clients to invest in Facebook, which would allow for max investment while circumventing disclosure rules for companies with 500 or more investors. Clever, that.

So: This is a big deal. Everyone’s already saying that this is putting Google even more on the ropes (seeing as now Facebook is the most visited website in the land) and that Goldman couldn’t be sitting prettier. Here are a few other things it means:

(1) Facebook hiring spree! To paraphrase Antoine Dodson, hide your startups, hide your engineers — Facebook’s a-comin’. Snapping up Hot Potato and Drop.io? Poaching Foursquare’s Nathan Folkman? That’s nothing compared to what Facebook’s got coming. Rumor has it they’re about to close on purchasing the Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park from Oracle. That’s probably not just for the scenery. They want to stock up, preferably with talent – and, importantly, companies – that will help it integrate across every platform possible. (I’m guessing one of the new buzzy photo apps will be snapped up.) If you think people are complaining about a developer shortage now, just wait.

(2) China! Mark Zuckerberg recently returned from a trip to China. Innocent pleasure jaunt for the Mandarin-speaking Facebook founder or connection-making relationship-building fact-finding mission to the land of 450 million potential users? China is certainly not an easy place to do business — they just kicked out Skype — but in a globalized, connected world, it’s certainly tough to ignore. Approximately 33% of its massive population is online and as we all know from the rest of the world, that is growing. It’s an insane market to ignore and smart, Mandarin-speaking audacious visionary CEOs probably aren’t going to shy away from trying. Facebook China. It’s gonna happen.

(3) Goldman’s PR Whitewash The Vampire Squid just attached itself to the buzziest, growing-est, Oscar-nominated-est, Person Of The Year-iest tech company around. Who will remember their year of scandal and record bonuses and how everyone hated Goldman Sachs (sample Gawker headline: “Who do you hate more, BP or Goldman Sachs?“). Goldman’s not there for you to like them, people, they’re there to make money — lots of it. But they did have a bruising year and being attached to the shining future-makers at Facebook (never mind the gatekeeper to the Facebook IPO) will certainly help. This lets them offer something shiny to their clients, and bask in that reflected glow. (And guaranteed cashola.) That doesn’t fool the people who know — I like Howard Lindzon’s take:

For Goldman Sachs, this is a no lose situation. If it works, they get the IPO and make some money. That is their job. They got off so easy with the government that this is like Vegas money they probably thought would be the taxpayer’s at some point a year back…The only thing I DO know is that Goldman could give a rat’s ass about the social web and sharing. If they are the top in social web, it’s small potatoes. The war in bonds, currencies and commodities is where the real money is at. This is play money. I hate that Facebook is letting them in.

This is not a coup for Goldman Sachs, this is a shame for the social web.

Okay I lied. I love Howard Lindzon’s take. So, maybe Goldman’s got an uphill PR sell. But — they’ve also got Facebook. Watch the narrative change.

(4) Bigger Players, Bigger Bets When Lindzon points out that this is small potatoes for Goldman, he’s not kidding. But now the bigger fish are sniffing around and what started as mutterings about a bubble somewhere in the late fall now seems to be turning into a gold rush. (Doesn’t Google and their adorable $6 billion offer for Groupon seem so quaint right now? Never mind Twitter’s recent $3.7 billion valuation.) These are billion-dollar figures, and they are actually now starting to sound…eensy. As Ray Kurzweil points out, when technology advances it does so exponentially — so it makes sense that the explosion of tech startups would chicken-egg in conjunction with an explosion of investor dollars — not just the usual (and educated!) suspects, but people on the sidelines reading about Facebook in their Time magazines and deciding that maybe the Internet’s not a fad, after all. (Yes. These people do exist, and many of them have a LOT of money.) High valuations, big deals, young companies getting scooped up — it’s gonna be a dizzying year.

(5) Sympathy For The Google. It’s official: Facebook has gone from underdog challenger of the mighty Google to the top social-tech dog. So watch for everyone to start rooting for Google again. After a wave of backlash (see here and here), the pendulum will swing back around to rooting for the loveable search giant with the cuddly name. Google can take your pity – its market valuation is almost four times Facebook’s at $190 billion, and its current year revenue is about $22 billion to Facebook’s $2 billion. Back to Lindzon: “I think that Google has to buy Twitter and that will start to be a meme soon. It’s a chess game and nuclear war now in the social space.” That sound you hear is the sound of the tech press collectively wetting itself. Ew. But still — everyone likes to root for an exciting matchup. Expect to see some bold moves from Google, soon — if they’re smart. Big “if” (RIP Google Buzz). But isn’t that how underdogs like it?

(6) New Facebook Ad Models. All that said…Facebook has made a big point about how it hasn’t really focused on the silliness of “making money” yet, despite that $2 billion annual rev and nearly 1 trillion display ads per year. I believe them — can they really not do better than targeted ads for Jewish singles in your area? You bet they can: They also make a point about knowing every little bit of information about you for the ultimate in micro-targeting. The online ad industry is evolving and innovating right along with the rest of the web (see AdKeeper) and the key to dominating going forward will be data — using it wisely to convert your users into dollars for advertisers. This is where smart technology will take user data and figure out how to map it on top of shopping data, so that purchasing intent can best be harvested. The stigma about buying online has now pretty much disappeared. With more people using the web, and mobile devices, more often do run more of their lives, there are big bucks at stake. And I’m not even TALKING about how Facebook is looking to horn in on search.

(7) New Facebook Business Models. They have all these users. All this data. They’d be crazy just to stick with what they’ve got. Hell, now they’ve got fun money just to fling up into the air and see where it goes. They’re poaching the best and brightest who all gush on and on about how “exciting” and “creative” and “free” it is. Clearly these people are getting to work on some fun stuff. So far Facebook has shown itself as adept at replicating the innovations of its competitors (see: Foursquare –> Facebook Places). But with all the resources at their disposal and innovations happening across every industry on every platform, they’d be nuts not to at least test the waters. Hey, that car’s not gonna drive itself. Oh, wait.

(8) People Generally Freaking Out This has already started to happen. First Groupon (“What? But they AREN’T EVEN A TECH COMPANY!!!”) and now Super-Sized Facebook. Entrepreneurs and founders and people with fledgling ideas that are half-built that they’ve been slaving over at night are obsessing about all day are suddenly freaking out that they have to get to market NOW before the bubble pops and the money dries up. Chill out, dude. (And, ladies!) If you’re making something of value, it’ll take. Just focus on it, be smart, and don’t let Twitter and TechCrunch freak you out. (Here, take some advice from these people.) Just a moment of Zen amidst the craziness. All right, now – onward! It’s 2011 and YOU’D BETTER NOT SCREW THIS UP. Haa, just kidding. Mostly.

Well: It should be interesting. Happy New Year, everybody!

Related:

Goldman’s Facebook Coup [Felix Salmon - Reuters]

The Social Web Index … All-Time Highs in Pressure and Price and Shame on Facebook [Howard Lindzon]

Was Goldman wise to invest $500m in Facebook at a $50B valuation? [Quora]

Goldman Sachs Just Bought The Facebook IPO [Business Insider]

Follow Rachel Sklar on Twitter here.

Illustration of Mark Zuckerberg as Avatar-ized Time Person of the Year from Sandbox World (via Boing Boing) (hat tip: Bnter).

Fishing for compliments is something of a misdemeanor in most social circles — unless your circle is the Internet and you’re fishing with a shiny, new vanity app.
ThreeWords.me is making the rounds this week. It’s a simple app that lets you solicit three-word responses from your friends around the web. Each respondent simply goes to your unique ThreeWords.me URL and enters three words about you.
Your friends can also add comments along with their three words, and you can reply to any entries. In your dashboard, you can see which words people entered the most.
You might get a lot of complimentary words, but be warned, o ye of little self-confidence: The app allows for anonymous commenting, so steel yourself for trolls, profanity and put-downs. You can delete any of the entries at your discretion. You can also choose to make all your responses private.
The premise is ever so grade school, which adds to the app’s charm. While ThreeWords.me is without question a slightly narcissistic game aimed squarely at the perpetually insecure social media scene, it’s nevertheless cute and catching on like wildfire through class='blippr-nobr'>Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook.
Its UI is simple, as well. You get to upload a background image and profile photo; other than that, the pages are decidedly bare-bones and lacking in the design department. Then again, the design isn’t what matters about this app; getting people to talk about — and hopefully compliment — you is what drives traffic to the pages in this case.
*Words blurred to preserve the author’s lingering sense of humility.
You can connect the app to Facebook, but sadly, you can’t use Facebook or Twitter to find your friends who are also using the app. You’ll have to do that part manually, a major shortcoming that’s likely holding the app back quite a bit in terms of adoption and growth.
ThreeWords.me puts us in mind of Formspringclass="blippr-nobr">FormSpring, Facto and a slew of other vanity apps we’ve been watching lately.
The app was created by college freshman Mark Bao, a teenager who’s been trying his hand at web-based entrepreneurialism for quite some time already. While we don’t see ThreeWords.me as a money-making endeavor right now, we’re sure the exposure can’t hurt.
Have you tried ThreeWords.me yet or seen others in your circle using it? Let us know what you think in the comments.

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Attorneys for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich today asked a federal judge to subpoena President Barack Obama to testify in Blagojevich's upcoming corruption trial on charges that include allegations Blagojevich sought to sell Obama's former ...

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

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Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

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Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

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Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

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With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Blagojevich defense wants Obama subpoenaed - Chicago Breaking News

Small Business News: Twitter Tycoons

With just 140 characters, Twitter has changed what it means to communicate. And, in case you haven't noticed, the way we do business too. If you aren't using.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Making Money Without

You're probably reading this on junk. And I'm not talking about newsprint - industry woes aside, that's high-quality stuff. But if you're on a computer or an iPad, and you're not plugged into an Internet jack in the wall? Junk, then.

But it's not your MacBook or your tablet that's so crummy. It's the spectrum it's using.

Spectrum, in the words of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, is the economy's "invisible infrastructure." It's the interstate system for information that travels wirelessly. It's how you get radio in your car, service on your cellphone and satellite to your television. It's also how you get WiFi.

But not all spectrum is created equal. "Beachfront spectrum" is like a well-paved road. Lots of information can travel long distances on it without losing much data. But not all spectrum is so valuable.

In 1985, there was a slice of spectrum that was too crummy for anyone to want. It was so weak that the radiation that microwaves emit could mess with it. So the government released it to the public. As long as whatever you were doing didn't interfere with what anyone else was doing, you could build on that spectrum. That's how we got garage-door openers and cordless phones. Because the information didn't have to travel far, the junk spectrum was good enough. Later on, that same section of junk spectrum became the home for WiFi - a crucial, multibillion-dollar industry. A platform for massive technological innovation. A huge increase in quality of life.

There's a lesson in that: Spectrum is really, really important. And not always in ways that we can predict in advance. Making sure that spectrum is used well is no less important than making sure our highways are used well: If the Beltway were reserved for horses, Washington would not be a very good place to do business.

But our spectrum is not being used well. It's the classic innovator's quandary: We made good decisions many years ago, but those good decisions created powerful incumbents, and in order to make good decisions now, we must somehow unseat the incumbents.

Today, much of the best spectrum is allocated to broadcast television. Decades ago, when 90 percent of Americans received their programming this way, that made sense. Today, when fewer than 10 percent of Americans do, it doesn't.

Meanwhile, mobile broadband is quite clearly the platform of the future - or at least the near future. But we don't have nearly enough spectrum allocated for its use. Unless that changes, the technology will be unable to progress, as more advanced uses will require more bandwidth, or it will have to be rationed, perhaps through extremely high prices that make sure most people can't use it.

The FCC could just yank the spectrum from the channels and hand it to the mobile industry. But it won't. It fears lawsuits and angry calls from lawmakers. And temperamentally, Genachowski himself is a consensus-builder rather than a steamroller.

Instead, the hope is that current owners of spectrum will give it up voluntarily. In exchange, they'd get big sacks of money. If a slice of spectrum is worth billions of dollars to Verizon but only a couple of million to a few aging TV stations - TV stations that have other ways to reach most of those customers - then there should be enough money in this transaction to leave everyone happy.

At least, that's some people's hope. Some advocates want that spectrum - or at least a substantial portion of it - left unlicensed. Rather than using telecom corporations such as Verizon to buy off the current owners of the spectrum, they'd like to see the federal government take some of that spectrum back and preserve it as a public resource for the sort of innovation we can't yet imagine and that the big corporations aren't likely to pioneer - the same as happened with WiFi. But as of yet, that's not the FCC's vision for this. Officials are more worried about the mobile broadband market. They argue (accurately) that they've already made more beachfront spectrum available for unlicensed uses. And although they don't say this clearly, auctioning spectrum to large corporations gives them the money to pay off the current owners. But even so, they can't do that.

"Imagine someone was given property on Fifth Avenue 50 years ago, but they don't use it and can't sell it," says Tim Wu, a law professor at Harvard and author of "The Master Switch." That's the situation that's arisen in the spectrum universe. It's not legal for the FCC to run auctions and hand over some of the proceeds to the old owners. That means the people sitting on the spectrum have little incentive to give it up. For that to change, the FCC needs Congress to pass a law empowering it to compensate current holders of spectrum with proceeds from the sale.

One way - the slightly demagogic way - to underscore the urgency here is to invoke China: Do you think it's letting its information infrastructure stagnate because it's a bureaucratic hassle to get the permits shifted? I rather doubt it.

Of course, we don't want the Chinese system. Democracy is worth some red tape. But if we're going to keep a good political system from becoming an economic handicap, there are going to be a lot of decisions like this one that need to be made. Decisions where we know what we need to do to move the economy forward, but where it's easier to do nothing because there are powerful interests attached to old habits. The problem with having a really good 20th century, as America did, is that you've built up a lot of infrastructure and made a lot of decisions that benefit the industries and innovators of the 20th century. But now we're in the 21st century, and junk won't cut it anymore.

Mike Huckabee featured a canned interview with Sean Hannity on his show this weekend as part of a year-end retrospective in which they discussed the Tea Party. The amusing part came when they discussed Teh Awesome Power of the Tea Parties, which Hannity identified with the American people themselves. Both of them argued vehemently against the notion that the Tea Parties were mere corporate Astroturf.

Completely absent from the discussion, naturally, was any mention whatsoever of the role played by Fox News. And while the role of astroturfers like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity in fact was indispensable, none of them came close wielding the sheer energizing and organizing power that having a national "news" network openly propagandize for a movement can bring.

As John and I explain in Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (pp. 121-127):

It costs advertisers thousands of dollars to air a single thirty-second commercial on a few cable stations for a week, even in relatively cheap rural markets. To advertise nationally on Fox News – the ratings leader in cable news – costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions if the ads air often enough and in prime-time programs.

So what Fox News offered up the organizers of the tea parties -- and the conservative movement opposing Obama’s presidency -- was something you couldn’t measure in dollars and cents, because not only did Fox air a steady onslaught of “tea party” promotional ads, they embraced the outright promotion of the events in their news broadcasts and on their “opinion shows.” Their on-air personalities as well as their websites took an active role day after day and night after night promoting and urging the Fox audience to join in the tea party protests. Media Matters, a non-profit organization that tracks the conservative media documented 63 instances where Fox News anchors and guests openly promoted the tea parties and discussed them as a legitimate news event.

Initially, there was a lull; there was only passing mention of the tea parties on Fox again for the two weeks after Van Susteren’s show. Then, on March 16, three Fox anchors – Glenn Beck, Bret Baier, and Bill O’Reilly – featured segments discussing the tea parties, again in glowing terms. O'Reilly told his audience that "big government spending protests are taking place all over the country. The latest in Cincinnati, where about 5,000 folks showed up, showed their displeasure with the Obama's administration money strategy. These gatherings are being dubbed tea parties."

But it was Beck in particular who most avidly embraced the tea parties, making them his own pet cause. Some of this had to do with the ease with which the tea-party themes – an embrace of small-government philosophy, with an anti-tax and pro-gun fervor thrown in for emphasis – melded with the populist themes Beck was already exploring in depth on his show. On March 13, he had hosted a special one-hour program themed “You Are Not Alone” that was most notable for some of Beck’s most maudlin crying jags, including his oft-lampooned sob, “I just love my country – and I fear for it!” The show – like Beck’s later Tea Party promotions – featured broadcasts from specially gathered audiences in locations around the country who wanted to join Beck’s cause of “standing up to big government”. Its purpose was to launch Beck’s “912 Project” – named dually after Beck’s wish to bring the country back to “where we all were on the day after 9/11,” as well as the “9 Principles and 12 Values” Beck espoused, drawn from a 1972 book titled The 5,000-Year Leap, by far-right conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen, which Beck promoted on his show and website.

After March 16 – when Beck noted the tea parties mostly in passing – the tea-party themes began to meld seamlessly with Beck’s “912 Project”. On March 18, Beck remarked: "People are starting to get angry. These tea parties are starting to really take off." On March 20, Beck began making the connection explicit. Once again denouncing the Missouri law-enforcement report on right-wing extremism, he connected the “extremists” described therein to the tea partiers:

But if you're concerned about the government, you're considered dangerous now in America. More than 160,000 Americans have already signed up to be part of our 9/12 Project, "912project.com," since we launched it a week ago -- 163,000 people have signed up. Who are these people? They're people just like you that are just concerned about our government and they're concerned about our country.

You know, are they militia members? Yes. Yes, sure they are, along with all the other people that are now on the tea parties nationwide. There is one here in Orlando, Florida. Tomorrow is supposed to be huge.

He mentioned the Orlando tea party warmly on March 23 as well, and then on March 24, Beck hosted two of the event’s tea-party organizers, Lisa Feroli and Shelley Ferguson, saying: "I have been telling you for weeks that you've got to stand up. And a lot of people around the country are doing these tea party things. But please, make them about principles, not about the parties. Make them about the principles."

Beck continued promoting the show each night through the rest of March. On his April 2 program, he announced that he would be hosting a special tea-party broadcast on April 15: "Tax Day, two weeks away. All right. More Americans are fed up with the nonsense in Washington both left and right. They are holding tea parties on April 15th. In this show, I can now announce that we're going to have our program live from the only place in America where I think it really, really makes sense - the Alamo. Plant your flag, America. It's in San Antonio, Texas. We will see you there on Tax Day!"

Beck was only leading the way for the other Fox anchors. A few days later, on April 6, he announced that not only would he be hosting his San Antonio “Tax Day tea party” on the 15th, but so would Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, who planned to do similar broadcasts from respective tea parties in Sacramento, Atlanta, and Washington the same day. Fox was planning to flood the airwaves with tea-party protests.

Beck was prolific in promoting the tea parties. Between March 16 and April 14, Beck urgently implored his audiences to take part in the Tax Day protests a total of 17 times (out of a total of 21 shows). One of the more piquant episodes came when he hired a motivational speaker and sometime actor named Bob Basso to dress up in colonial costume and pretend to be Thomas Paine, embarking on a tea-party-loving rant:

The time for talk is over. Enough is enough. Your democracy has deteriorated to government of the government, by the government, and for the government. On April 15, that despicable arrogance will be soundly challenged for the whole world to see. Our friends will applaud it. Our enemies will fear it.

In an unprecedented moment of citizen response not seen since December 7, 1941, millions of your fellow Americans will bring their anger and determination into the streets.

… Your complacency will only aid and abet our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn't dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn't dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn't dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn't dare pass the largest spending bill in history, in open defiance of the will of the people, but they did!

Beck’s fellow Fox hosts did their best to keep pace. Sean Hannity featured segments on the tea parties a total of 13 times between March 12 and April 14, while Neil Cavuto’s afternoon business-oriented show featured a total of ten segments devoted to the protests during that same time. Nor were the “opinion shows” the only ones to do so: Another 15 or so tea-party promotional segments ran those weeks on such “news” shows as Fox and Friends, America’s Newsroom , and Special Report with Bret Baier.

Fairly typical was a March 23 broadcast in which America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer directed people to a list of tea party events on FoxNews.com and promised to "add to [the list] when we get more information from the New American Tea Party." Likewise, on the March 25 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier said that the tea parties are "protests of wasteful government spending in general and of President Obama's stimulus package and his budget in particular." Another America's Newsroom broadcast on April 6, Fox contributor Andrea Tantaros described the protests: "People are fighting against Barack Obama's radical shift to turn us into Europe." Fox News also aired on-screen text stating that the "Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations."

Despite the obvious anti-Obama bent of all these protests, Beck and other Fox hosts worked hard to present the tea parties as “non-partisan,” bringing on guests who were either disappointed Democrats or conservatives still angry with the Republican Party too. Yet the nonstop drumbeat around the protests made clear that they were primarily in response to Obama administration policies.

The March 24 segment of America’s Newsroom promoting the tea parties was a classic instance of this. In it, Hemmer interviewed a man named Lloyd Marcus who was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who told Hemmer that he previously "was on a 40-city 'Stop Obama' tour". Marcus' wrote a song, posted on FoxNews.com, which made clear that this was about Obama:

Mr. President!

Your stimulus is sure to bust.

It's just a socialistic scheme,

The only thing it will do

Is kill the American Dream.

You wanna take from achievers

Somehow you think that's fair.

And redistribute to those folks

Who won't get out of their easy chair.

We're havin' a tea party across this land.

If you love this country,

Come on and join our band.

We're standin' up for freedom and liberty,

'Cause patriots have shown us freedom ain't free.

So when they call you a racist cause you disagree,

It's just another of their dirty tricks to silence you and me.

Indeed, Fox News’ website was rich with tea-party promotion, as were its affiliated sites like the new FoxNation site, which tried to act as a sort of “information central” for the tea parties, with numerous links discussing and promoting the protests. One link, titled "Find a Tea Party!", directed readers to a Google Maps page for "2009 Tea Parties." Another link to you to a YouTube video headlined, "The Trillion Dollar Tea Party Video!", which featured Tampa Bay Area Tea Party organizers explaining why viewers should "join your local tea party." For those who couldn’t make it, Fox News announced that viewers could also attend “a virtual tax day tea party” at FoxNation instead.

Sean Hannity’s website at Fox featured a graphic with links to a message board discussion: "This thread is for the sole purpose of getting the word out about organized tea party events around the country. If you know of a planned event, please post the information here." Hannity’s producers wrote a blog post on his site proclaiming, "Get your Tea Party Tees at CAFE PRESS and wear them on April 15!" There were also "some helpful links" to AtlantaTeaParty.net and TaxDayTeaParty.com.

Then there were the promotional ads. In the 10 days leading up to the April 15 protests, Media Matters reported that Fox News aired 107 ads promoting them.

At times, Fox tried to deny that this deluge of glowingly sympathetic “reports” and barrage of commercials on the tea parties actually constituted promotion of the event. On the morning of the protests April 15, Fox and Friends broadcast, host Steve Doocy told his audience that “Fox is not sponsoring any of them, but we have been covering them.” This was a peculiar (not to mention disingenuous) remark, considering that Fox had repeatedly run onscreen graphics describing the events at which its anchors were to appear as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.”

Of course, this history will never be aired on Fox -- especially now that Rupert Murdoch denies promoting the Tea Parties.

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