Thursday, December 30, 2010

Being Right or Making Money


Embracing New Opportunities Is Being Defeatist?

from the please-explain dept

A few months back a columnist for the Guardian, Helienne Lindvall wrote a laughably confused argument claiming that people who explained how "free" was an important element of a business model should not be trusted because they also made money. That made no sense, and lots of people explained why. She also got an awful lot of the basic facts wrong.



Lindvall is back, and rather than admitting her mistakes, she tries again, but comes across as even more confused and factually-challenged. The majority of the piece is about setting up more strawmen to knock over, with the two key ones being (1) that supporters of embracing new business models are "defeatist" because they suggest that file sharing cannot be stopped and (2) that while record labels may have ripped off musicians in the past, the companies ripping off musicians today are the "web 2.0" companies that are making money on content -- such as Google, Flickr and others.



Neither argument makes much sense when held up to any scrutiny. Lindvall seems to make the same mistake she made in her first piece (for which, I do not believe she has yet apologized). She takes a tiny part of an argument that someone has made, and pretends it's the entire argument. Just like she claimed that those who embrace free as a part of their business model are somehow being hypocritical in making money elsewhere, she now claims that people's entire argument is based on a tiny sliver of their argument, and ignores the important part.



The problem with her first strawman is that people aren't saying be "defeatist," and just accept that file sharing is file sharing and give up. They're saying that if file sharing isn't going away, and (here's the part she misses) you can use that to your advantage to make more money, why bother worrying about file sharing as being some sort of evil? The second strawman is a bit more nefarious, but goes back to the fallacy that web 2.0 sites are some sort of digital sharecropping, with the users "giving up everything," and the content creators getting nothing. That, of course, is hogwash. The reason people use these services is that they get something in return. What people like Lindvall forget or ignore is that in the days before YouTube, if you wanted to post your own video, you had to (a) buy expensive media serving software from the likes of Real Networks (b) install the crappy software and maintain it (c) host the files yourself, costing you server space (d) stream or download the files yourself, costing bandwidth. Then YouTube came along and made all of that both easy and free -- and you still want to complain that they're ripping you off? Seriously?



Fine: let's make a deal. For any project that Helienne Lindvall is involved in, she cannot make use of these tools which offer free services. Instead, she must set up the technology on her own server, and host and pay for all of it herself. Otherwise, she's just supporting the digital sharecroppers, right?



There are a few other whoppers in the article as well, such as this one:


Doctorow pointed out that numerous authors give away their work, while earning good money on the lecture circuit. I don't doubt that this model works for some authors, but there are fundamental differences between books and music.



Producing a record -- as opposed to writing most books -- tends to be a team effort involving a producer (sometimes several of them) and songwriters who are not part of the act, studio engineers and a whole host of people who don't earn money from merchandise and touring -- people who no one would pay to make personal appearances.

I love the "but we're different!" argument, because it comes up in every industry. I was just in Hollywood, where I explained how musicians were actually making use of these models and someone got upset and said "but we're the movie industry, and we're different!" Earlier this year, I met with a publisher, who also was looking at these models, and again exclaimed that "but book publishing is different!" Everyone wants to believe they're different, but everyone faces the same basic economics. Also, I'd imagine that my friends in the publishing industry would be pretty upset with Lindvall's false claim that a book is not a team effort. You have publishers and editors and agents, all of whom often take on quite similar roles to producers and songwriters and engineers.



That said, the really ridiculous part of her complaint here is that the same people she complains don't earn money from merchandise or touring also don't earn money from record sale royalties for the most part. There are some exceptions, but most of them are paid a flat-fee for their work, and that doesn't change either way under the new models, so her complaint here doesn't make sense. If a content creator can make money giving away some works for free, they can still afford to pay the fees for those who help out. The entire argument that an engineer "doesn't tour" is specious. The engineer doesn't make money from CD sales either.



Finally. Lindvall must be the first person to describe Jaron Lanier as an optimist, since he came out with his incredibly pessimistic book about how the internet was destroying everything good and holy in the world.



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2010 has seen some really inspiring creative apps become available and here’s our round-up of some of the best. We’re not including expensive pro software here, just mobile and web apps that are either free or available for pocket money. Have your tried all of these?


Instagram


iOS: While there was nothing new about adding cool filters to mobile photos in 2010, Instagram and the similar PicPlz did something a little different with the idea by attaching a social network to the concept.


Being able to view, ‘like’ and comment on other users’ photos in a newsfeed format has turned often throwaway mobile photos into a cult obsession for some, especially on Instagram. Matching a great photo with the perfect filter is a fine art. The ‘Popular’ board on Instagram is full of examples of that delicate balance and trying to match their efforts is truly a joy.


We said: “So why is Instagram so popular? I suspect its a combination of the app’s ease of use, simple design, and artsy filters that make crappy iPhone photos look beautiful, mysterious and engaging.


Buildor


Browser: The idea that a browser could run a Web design application packed with pro-level features would have sounded insane but this year Buildor achieved it with its Buildor Pro app.


Currently in private beta, you’ll need an invite to try this or you can sign up for the waiting list from the website. For Web coders, the app allows you to start a new project from scratch or (most impressively) edit live sites just by pulling up the URL. You’ll need the FTP details for the site if you want to save the results though. For designers meanwhile, Buildor Pro is being pitched as a powerful way of creating HTML mock-ups with full interaction design and font rendering. All of that in a browser – impressive.


We said: “While it remains to be seen whether pro developers will take to browser-based development en masse, there’s a real chance of Buildor disrupting the market if it gains traction.


Soundcloud


iOS and Android: Instant mobile podcasting apps like Audioboo and Cinch are a useful and fun way of recording interviews, speeches or random thoughts and sharing them online from wherever you are. Soundcloud took things a step further with the launch of its iPhone and Android apps this year.


Not only can you instantly record audio and share it to your social networks immediately, by uploading to Soundcloud you get the benefit of the service’s platform. This means that your mobile audio can instantly be used with the wide range of apps that are built to use the Soundcloud API, which opens up a world of possibilities. This is especially useful for musicians, as the service has primarily been music-focused to date. However, with mobile recording, there’s real potential for it to be adopted by a wider range of users.


We said: “SoundCloud has developed into what is now a highly flexible way of working online with any type of audio.


Camera+


iOS: As great as the iPhone 4′s camera is, Camera+ does an excellent job of making it even better. Taking good-looking photos is made easier with the app’s stabilizer, timer and burst features and a fantastic array of image editing and effects tools are built right in.


While it may have been unavailable for much of its life (thanks to an Apple-displeasing ‘Easter egg’ feature that allowed you to use the phone’s volume rocker as a zoom control) that only added to the allure of this app which has been reaping healthy financial rewards for its creators since it returned to the App Store earlier this month.


We said: “The favorite camera app of many is back in the app store and ready to rock your photography world again.


Whiteboard


iOS: Finger-drawing app Whiteboard became a universal iOS app this year, opening it up to use on the iPad and making collaborative drawing even more fun.


Yes, Whiteboard’s greatest appeal is drawing with friends, either via WiFi or by working together on the same screen – something that’s much easier on the large iPad screen. While you’re never going to paint a masterpiece of contemporary art with this app, it’s possible to lose yourself for hours while you scribble away creating cartoon characters or “improving” photos of friends by adding comedy moustaches and the like.


Air Harp


iOS: Plenty of musical instrument apps have been released for the iPad this year, but one that really caught our eye early on was Air Harp. Offering ample on-screen space for the harp’s fifteen strings, for the first time on a mobile device this really felt like a real instrument.


With its slightly melancholy sound, its can feel a little like a lone minstrel on a hillside at sunset while playing Air Harp. Unlike novelty instrument apps, Air Harp feels like something that you can take the time to learn properly before serenading a loved one with your musical skills. Easy-to-read sheet music makes it simple to play well-known tunes even if you’re far from being a virtuoso.


Nanostudio


iOS: Squeezing an entire music production studio into an iPhone app is a huge achievement, and that’s exactly what Blip Interactive has done with Nanostudio.


Unlike many of the apps on the list, it assumes a certain amount of prior knowledge of how music production works if you want to dive right into it. However, even if you’re a rookie you can get a lot out of this app – you’ll be creating fantastic sounding electronic music in no time.


We said: “The level of control on this app is amazing, every imaginable parameter can be easily edited and controlled – you can even easily move sound files from your PC or Mac via a wireless connection.”


Adobe Photoshop Express


iOS and Android: While a mobile photo editor isn’t going to rival a full desktop experience any time soon, Photoshop Express does a brilliant job of covering the basics of tweaking photos on the go, and for free.


Multitouch gestures let you rotate, crop, straighten or flip images and there are controls for adjusting the tint, saturation, contrast among its useful tools. As with many mobile apps on this list, the iPad version offers more space for controlling your edits while on iPhone and Android handsets it’s simply more convenient as that’s where most of the photos you’ll need it for will be created.


We said: “For a free app, it’s great.


Soundation


Browser: If it looks like there are a lot of audio-related apps, it’s because there’s simply been so much happening in the space this year. Soundation is a cloud-based multitrack recording app and what really makes it stand out is that it offers audio recording right from the browser.


Yes, in addition to importing audio and using the many thousands of loops available within the app, you can plug a microphone right into your computer and sing, play or speak whatever audio you like – another leap forward in what’s possible in the humble Web browser.


SumoPaint


Browser: There are plenty of browser-based image editing tools out there and SumoPaint is up there with the best of them.


Regularly updated with new features, this app is pure pleasure to use and you’ll have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not running a separate app. Layers, blending modes, drop shadows and a wide range of brushes are among the features you might not be used to seeing in browser-based image editors. While professional Photoshop users won’t be ready to switch to the cloud just yet, most beginner and intermediate users will find everything they need here.


Don’t miss our 10 Best Productivity Apps of 2010 and 10 Best Social Mobile Apps of 2010.






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Kidney Donation Set as Condition of Miss. Sisters - AOL <b>News</b>

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Former first lady of San Francisco tells groups boycotting February convention to participate if they want to be heard.


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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Ways of Making Money



There's already a company trying to plant solar panels in highway cloverleafs.


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http://republicpropertiescorp.com/about/solar

http://www.cloverleafsolarhighways.com/


Introducing Solar Highways

Republic Cloverleaf Solar is proud to announce its plans to bring a new approach to solar energy in Santa Clara County. Called the Solar Highways, this exciting project will bring solar farms to currently vacant Caltrans land along US Highway 101.

Proposed for seven Caltrans interchanges, the Solar Highways would intermittently stretch 20 miles from Gilroy to San Jose. The solar installations will consist of a 15-megawatt system located on 65 acres of property that will offset over 15,500 metric tons of carbon per year.

The first project of its kind, the Solar Highways will contribute numerous benefits to the community including a new viable renewable energy source, green jobs, revenue for the State of California and significant carbon emission offsets. In fact, this project will offset over two million car miles traveled per year.

The Solar Highways project will become a model for solar energy collection upon its completion. With solar energy a high priority for many key local and state agencies, this project has broad based support from many elected leaders and community organizations.

Reply


Ok Go Explains There Are Lots Of Ways To Make Money If You Can Get Fans

from the everything's-possible dept

Over the last few years, we've covered many of the moves by the band Ok Go -- to build up a fanbase often with the help of amazingly viral videos, ditch their major record label (EMI), and explore new business model opportunities. In the last few days, two different members of Ok Go explained a bit more of the band's thinking in two separate places, and both are worth reading. First up, we have Tim Nordwind, who did an interview with Hypebot, where he explained the band's general view on file sharing:


Obviously we'd love for anyone who has our music to buy a copy. But again, we're realistic enough to know that most music can be found online for free. And trying to block people's access to it isn't good for bands or music. If music is going to be free, then musicians will simply have to find alternative methods to make a living in the music business. People are spending money on music, but it's on the technology to play it. They spend hundreds of dollars on Ipods, but then fill it with 80 gigs of free music. That's ok, but it's just a different world now, and bands must learn to adjust.

Elsewhere in the interview, he talks about the importance of making fans happy and how the band realizes that there are lots of different ways to make money, rather than just selling music directly:

Our videos have opened up many more opportunities for us to make the things we want to make, and to chase our best and wildest ideas. Yes, we need to figure out how to make a living in a world where people don't buy music anymore. But really, we've been doing that for the last ten years. Things like licensing, touring, merch, and also now making videos through corporate sponsorship have all allowed us to keep the lights on and continue making music.

Separately, last Friday, Damian Kulash wrote a nice writeup in the Wall Street Journal all about how bands can, should and will make money going forward. In many ways the piece reminds me a bit of my future of music business models post from earlier this year -- and Kulash even uses many of the same examples in his article (Corey Smith, Amanda Palmer, Josh Freese, etc.). It's a really worthwhile read as well. He starts by pointing out that for a little over half a century, the record labels had the world convinced that the "music" industry really was just the "recorded music" industry:

For a decade, analysts have been hyperventilating about the demise of the music industry. But music isn't going away. We're just moving out of the brief period--a flash in history's pan--when an artist could expect to make a living selling records alone. Music is as old as humanity itself, and just as difficult to define. It's an ephemeral, temporal and subjective experience.



For several decades, though, from about World War II until sometime in the last 10 years, the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. Records not only made it possible for musicians to connect with listeners anywhere, at any time, but offered a discrete package for commoditization. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.

But, he notes, that time is now gone, thanks in large part to the internet. But that doesn't mean the music business is in trouble. Just the business of selling recorded music. But there's lots of things musicians can sell. He highlights Corey Smith and Smith's ability to make millions by giving away his music for free, and then touring. But he also points out that touring isn't for everyone. He covers how corporate licensing has become a bigger and bigger opportunity for bands that are getting popular. While he doesn't highlight the specific economics of it, what he's really talking about is that if your band is big, you can sell your fan's attention -- which is something Ok Go has done successfully by getting corporate sponsorship of their videos. As he notes, the sponsors provide more money than the record labels with many fewer strings:

These days, money coming from a record label often comes with more embedded creative restrictions than the marketing dollars of other industries. A record label typically measures success in number of records sold. Outside sponsors, by contrast, tend to take a broader view of success. The measuring stick could be mentions in the press, traffic to a website, email addresses collected or views of online videos. Artists have meaningful, direct, and emotional access to our fans, and at a time when capturing the public's attention is increasingly difficult for the army of competing marketers, that access is a big asset.



...



Now when we need funding for a large project, we look for a sponsor. A couple weeks ago, my band held an eight-mile musical street parade through Los Angeles, courtesy of Range Rover. They brought no cars, signage or branding; they just asked that we credit them in the documentation of it. A few weeks earlier, we released a music video made in partnership with Samsung, and in February, one was underwritten by State Farm.



We had complete creative control in the productions. At the end of each clip we thanked the company involved, and genuinely, because we truly are thankful. We got the money we needed to make what we want, our fans enjoyed our videos for free, and our corporate Medicis got what their marketing departments were after: millions of eyes and goodwill from our fans. While most bands struggle to wrestle modest video budgets from labels that see videos as loss leaders, ours wind up making us a profit.

Of course, that only works if you have a big enough fanbase, but that doesn't mean there aren't things that less well known bands can use to make money as well. He talks about an up-and-coming band in LA that doesn't even have a manager that was able make money:

The unsigned and unmanaged Los Angeles band Killola toured last summer and offered deluxe USB packages that included full albums, live recordings and access to two future private online concerts for $40 per piece. Killola grossed $18,000 and wound up in the black for their tour. Mr. Donnelly says, "I can't imagine they'll be ordering their yacht anytime soon, but traditionally bands at that point in their careers aren't even breaking even on tour."

The point, Kulash, notes, is that there's a lot of things a band can sell, focusing on "selling themselves." And, the thing he doesn't mention is that, when you're focusing on selling the overall experience that is "you" as a musician or a band, it's something that can't be freely copied. People can copy the music all they want, but they can't copy you. "You" are a scarce good that can't be "pirated." That's exactly what more and more musicians are figuring out these days, and it's helping to make many more artists profitable. And, no, it doesn't mean that any artist can make money. But it certainly looks like any artist that understands this can do a hell of a lot better than they would have otherwise, if they just relied on the old way of making money in the music business.



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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Making Money Quickly


University Of Glasgow Frees Up Research Instead Of Trying To Sell It All

from the good-for-them dept

We've pointed out how badly many universities have fallen for the myth of magical profits from tech transfer efforts. In the last 30 years or so, there's been this massive effort for some universities to try to profit off of "commercializing" their research. What they did was set up expensive "tech transfer" offices that were in charge of taking university research, patenting it, and then trying to find buyers. The theory, then, was that the university would make lots of money and companies would get access to all this great university research. The reality is that this hasn't worked out at all. First of all, that whole theory skipped over the part that prior to locking up all that research, companies already had access to it -- and were able to actually make use of it quickly because they didn't have to go through a crazy and expensive licensing process.



The other problem is that, since these tech transfer offices are focused on making money, and all they have to sell is patents, they started to overvalue the patents themselves, making them prohibitively expensive, which actually decreased the ability to get those ideas out to the commercial sector and to turn that research into big money. And, did we mention how expensive it is to set up and run some of these tech transfer offices? A study from a few years back found that the majority of tech transfer offices lost money, with only a tiny handful (somewhere around a dozen) actually making money.



Oh, and on top of all that, this focus on putting up locks for the sake of charging has actually made basic research much harder as well, since much of it is based on freely sharing ideas -- which is made more difficult when you want to hoard the idea in order to get a patent.



At some point, you would think universities would recognize this. They're losing money, harming their own research and going against their basic principles as institutions for disseminating knowledge. Thankfully, some are finally starting to get the message. James Boyle points us to the news that the University of Glasgow has announced that it will be offering up most of its research under a free license. It is still reserving a few "key" bits of research for fee-based licensing, but it appears the default will now be free, which seems like it should be a good thing in terms of actually commercializing the research out of the university.



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John Fund is very, very upset over the FCC's weaksauce Net Neutrality declarations and he's aiming at 'wealthy left-wing' organizations as the culprits. This makes me happy. When a winger can only squirm over something so weak and toothless as to be useless, it's a good day. But look at who he aims at! Paranoid, much?


Free Press and allied groups such as MoveOn.org quickly got funding. Of the eight major foundations that provided the vast bulk of money for campaign-finance reform, six became major funders of the media-reform movement. (They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers's Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.) Free Press today has 40 staffers and an annual budget of $4 million.


These wealthy funders pay for more than publicity and conferences. In 2009, Free Press commissioned a poll, released by the Harmony Institute, on net neutrality. Harmony reported that "more than 50% of the public argued that, as a private resource, the Internet should not be regulated by the federal government." The poll went on to say that since "currently the public likes the way the Internet works . . . messaging should target supporters by asking them to act vigilantly" to prevent a "centrally controlled Internet."


To that end, Free Press and other groups helped manufacture "research" on net neutrality. In 2009, for example, the FCC commissioned Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society to conduct an "independent review of existing information" for the agency in order to "lay the foundation for enlightened, data-driven decision making."


Considering how openly activist the Berkman Center has been on these issues, it was an odd decision for the FCC to delegate its broadband research to this outfit. Unless, of course, the FCC already knew the answer it wanted to get.


Wow. Openly activist? The Berkman Center? Here's the Berkman Center's Berkman@10 page, with some of their research projects and discussions posted online. Such terribly activist things. Open innovation, The Dilemma of Games, The Musician and the Scientist, and yes, Network Neutrality (not Internet Neutrality, by the way), as well as one called The Battle for the Web. Hardly activist.


Current projects include a Law Library wiki, a discussion of money in politics, and a paper about online political organizing. Again, not activist. Wonky. Educational. But not activist. I confess to zooming in on Fund's remarks about Berkman because I am a huge fan and avid reader of Doc Searls, who has been a Berkman Fellow for the past 4 years.


Berkman aside, the issue of Net Neutrality has always been about a democratic internet, one where everyone has equal access to content and pipes. The organizations Fund villifies in his post are organizations dedicated to the preservation of freedom of speech and free flows of information, so I'm struggling to reconcile the conservative maxim of constitutional freedoms above all with his abuse of organizations who strive to protect it.


I didn't have to struggle too long. A closer reading of his rant reveals a corporate agenda which trumps any speech rights.


The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney's agenda? "At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies," he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. "But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control."


A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that "any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself." Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been "taken out of context." He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was "hesitant to say I'm not a Marxist."


I am neither a socialist nor a Marxist, but I believe that the Internet should be preserved as something everyone can access equally, and am frustrated on a near-daily basis by the stranglehold providers have on that access. Fund's suggestion that net neutrality and regulatory authority over access somehow stifles innovation is to believe that the sole innovators are cable and telephone companies. In fact, the opposite is true. The true innovation has come from many different sources, including inhabitants of the Internet itself.


Facebook, Twitter, Google and blogs were not the invention of AT&T, after all.


The real threat to innovation is handing the keys to all of the Internet gates to the likes of Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. And yet, that is exactly what the FCC did with their weird ruling yesterday.




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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

If a video posted to Vimeo is to be believed, there are some insiders at ABC News who don't really care very much for newly-named boss Ben Sherwood, described in the video as the Draco Malfoy of Broadcast News. The video--essentially a ...

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

If a video posted to Vimeo is to be believed, there are some insiders at ABC News who don't really care very much for newly-named boss Ben Sherwood, described in the video as the Draco Malfoy of Broadcast News. The video--essentially a ...

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

If a video posted to Vimeo is to be believed, there are some insiders at ABC News who don't really care very much for newly-named boss Ben Sherwood, described in the video as the Draco Malfoy of Broadcast News. The video--essentially a ...

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

If a video posted to Vimeo is to be believed, there are some insiders at ABC News who don't really care very much for newly-named boss Ben Sherwood, described in the video as the Draco Malfoy of Broadcast News. The video--essentially a ...

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

If a video posted to Vimeo is to be believed, there are some insiders at ABC News who don't really care very much for newly-named boss Ben Sherwood, described in the video as the Draco Malfoy of Broadcast News. The video--essentially a ...

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

If a video posted to Vimeo is to be believed, there are some insiders at ABC News who don't really care very much for newly-named boss Ben Sherwood, described in the video as the Draco Malfoy of Broadcast News. The video--essentially a ...

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

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<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

If a video posted to Vimeo is to be believed, there are some insiders at ABC News who don't really care very much for newly-named boss Ben Sherwood, described in the video as the Draco Malfoy of Broadcast News. The video--essentially a ...

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Ben Sherwood - ABC <b>News</b> | Attack Video | Mediaite

If a video posted to Vimeo is to be believed, there are some insiders at ABC News who don't really care very much for newly-named boss Ben Sherwood, described in the video as the Draco Malfoy of Broadcast News. The video--essentially a ...

<b>News</b> Corp. Sells Fox Mobile Group To Investment Firm Jesta

It looks like News Corp. has unloaded its Fox Mobile Group division. According to a release, investment company Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release.

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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

budgeting personal finances




Conduct a Financial Fire Drill to Assess Financial Health





We conduct fire drills to ensure fire warning systems are functional and that building occupants know what to do in the event of a fire-related emergency. Apply that same type of stress test to your money with a financial fire drill.

Photo by Steve Snodgrass.


Finance and frugality blog Frugal Dad urges us to take stock of our financial health by conducting a financial fire drill. Just like a real fire drill helps you run through a dangerous scenario without risk—"Who put the file cabinets in front of the fire exit?"—a financial fire drill shows you how effective your escape routes are and how big your safety net is.


You'll need to gather up all your bills, take stock of your savings and emergency fund, and head over the Frugal Dad to run through their financial fire drill checklist—which includes great tips like making a slash-and-burn list of non-essential services you can cancel the minute you get laid off or in other financial trouble.





Consumerist Budget Spreadsheet Balances Your Money, Encourages Your Nest Egg





The saving-savvy folks at The Consumerist blog have put together a template Excel spreadsheet for managing personal finances. It's the kind of thing you always say you're going to do, but they went ahead and did it for you, and it's free.

It's not a new thing, but Consumerist's budget spreadsheet, crafted during the days the site was one of our blog network brethren, has come back, after being lost to the vagaries of server maintenance. The site has instructions on setting it up, including tips on thinking through your monthly expenses and advice on how much you should plan on socking away for a rainy day, retirement, and other expenses.


Maybe you use Mint or another automated spending/saving tracker instead—but then again, maybe those tools are so automatic that you don't get a good look at your real money situation.



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autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Listen To The Entire Michael Album | The Official Michael Jackson Site

Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Listen To The Entire Michael Album | The Official Michael Jackson Site

Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Listen To The Entire Michael Album | The Official Michael Jackson Site

Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Listen To The Entire Michael Album | The Official Michael Jackson Site

Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Listen To The Entire Michael Album | The Official Michael Jackson Site

Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Listen To The Entire Michael Album | The Official Michael Jackson Site

Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Listen To The Entire Michael Album | The Official Michael Jackson Site

Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


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Listen To The Entire Michael Album | The Official Michael Jackson Site

Michael Jackson Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Michael Jackson News. December 08, 2010. Listen To The Entire Michael Album. Here's your chance to listen to the entire Michael Album coming out December 14th. Preview the album below ...

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Lotus unveils F1 plans with Renault

Group Lotus has ramped up its involvement in Formula 1 by becoming title sponsor and a major shareholder in the rebranded Lotus Renault GP Team.

In Further Late Night Smooching <b>News</b>: Brian Austin Green Kisses <b>...</b>

Late night talk show guests seem to be getting a little overly lusty these days. Already tonight, we've seen Dame Helen Mirren kissing Jay Leno.


Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Making Easy Money


This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.


Two years ago I stumbled across the concept of blogging for money.  Instantly it hit me as the perfect thing: sit behind a computer, design a site, write, be my own boss, work from home, what could be better? I knew nothing about traffic, SEO, backlinks, Pagerank, or keywords.  I knew nothing about how to make money with a website.  So what did I do next?  I registered the domain name howthiswebsitemakesmoney.


Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance.  Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.


Two years later, I know how to start a site, I know how to write content, I know about SEO, I know about backlinks, I know how to add advertisements … but I still do not know how to make good money online.  The site makes dimes a day, not dollars.


The site has been two years of disappointment.  Two  years of waking up in the morning and seeing the same green egg in AdSense.  Two years of waiting for a four-digit affiliate check with my name on it.  Two years of working without pay.  Two years of scratching my head.


So I asked for advice, and every time the reply was the same: create a site about something else. Create a site about what you know and what you enjoy.  Do not create a site with the intent to make money, create a site with the intent to help people by doing something you enjoy doing.


What happened when I changed my intent


Six months ago I created a new site.  This time my intent was pure pleasure.


I live in Prague and I love it here.  So I made a little site about how great Prague is and what people should do when they come for a visit.  It was built in a month.  In a gust of activity I designed the site and wrote the content.


It was so easy.   I did not agonize over what to write about.  The content flowed effortlessly from my head to the keyboard.  I did not have to take long walks with the dog or waste water standing dazed in the shower coming up with new ideas.  I just sat down at the computer and wrote about what I know.  It was so easy I actually looked forward to it.


As an afterthought, I created a simple page where people can order a real postcard from Prague.  Visitors select a picture of Prague and fill out a form indicating what they want written on the postcard.  After they hit the Submit button I get the request by email.  I grab a postcard and, like an ancient scribe long before computers, lick the tip of the pen and write.  After pounding a Prague stamp on the postcard I toss it into the mailbox on my way to work. I charge $4.00 for this five minutes of work.


I created this site with no aspirations of becoming rich, no day dreams of shaking hands with Oprah, no imagined scenes of telling my employer to find some other donkey to kick around. I created the website because it was easy for me to do and I enjoyed it. I made it because I needed a break from my ‘real’ website. I expected nothing to happen.


Again, I was wrong.


My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.


I wrote a postcard from a son playing a trick on his mother: “Hi, Mom!  Sorry for not calling in last few days.  But I am in Prague with friends.  Having a great time and the beer is sooo cheap.  Say hi to Dad.”


I have written postcards to countries all over the world.  Some of them in languages other then English—I have no idea what I am writing. Fortunately, the order form does not allow Chinese characters!


I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.


I feel like I am making the world a better place.  I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.


And yes, I am making money.


Intend to enjoy and you might make money


I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.


New arrivals to the make-money-online scene go through the same initiation—they start out with the intent to make money, then fail to make more then a pile of pennies.  For some it means the end and they quit, but for others this brutal introduction teaches them that their intent needs to change.


Of course, making money is about traffic, clicks, affiliates, backlinks SEO, but it’s also about finding something you enjoy doing.  If your intent is only to make money the odds are stacked against you: you will probably quit.  But if your intent is to do something you enjoy then you will keep moving forward until one day, you will be surprised to find that you are making money.


What’s your intent?


Roman intends to figure out how this website makes money.  He has been trying to do that for two long years, so when he needs a break and do something fun he goes onto his other website to send a real postcard to his mother who misses him very much.



Affordability: Resources, Not Money



Probably the biggest thing that trips people up when thinking about countercyclical public policy is a misleading over-emphasis on accounting ledger books as the right measure of what can and can’t be afforded. Making sums add up is important, of course, but it’s more helpful to start by thinking about real resources. People’s time, capital goods, raw materials, etc.


Think about the mayor of a mid-sized city presiding over good economic times. Tax revenues are going up, and demands on social services are relatively low. Suddenly the budgetary picture looks very bright and it seems easy to “afford” longer library hours, more frequent bus service, and tax cuts. This, however, is close to backwards. You can’t manufacture librarians or bus drivers. It’s when times are good that it’s most costly to pull human beings out of whatever else they’re doing and have them drive buses. Similarly, it’s when people are flush that extra money in their pockets is going to go to enterprises with low marginal utility.


Then along comes the crash and suddenly the budget looks bleak. Now we “can’t afford” those extra social services and we need higher taxes. But with household budgets tight, the taxes are much more burdensome than they would have been in good times. And the real social cost of having someone work in a library rather than sit at home unemployed is probably below zero.


What you actually ought to be doing is setting the quantity of social services at some level that makes sense across the business cycle. Then during periods of economic growth, taxes should raise more money than you spend. That way thanks to your stockpile you never need to cut services in the face of a recession and in fact can shower your city with tax cuts during a downturn to families can get by. But of course almost no jurisdiction in America actually does engage in this sort of responsible budgeting, and the Reagan and W Bush administrations took the federal government on a wildly different course. This has bad economic consequences on its own terms, and I also think tends to distort the political dialogue. Since budget deficits are “bad,” it’s unintuitive to say that bigger deficits will help in a recession. By contrast I think it’d be easy for people to see why a surplus-accumulating government shouldn’t try to horde even more money at a time when people are struggling. The reality is that nothing magical happens at zero, and what we “can afford” is ultimately determined by how many resources are available not by accountants.






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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.


Two years ago I stumbled across the concept of blogging for money.  Instantly it hit me as the perfect thing: sit behind a computer, design a site, write, be my own boss, work from home, what could be better? I knew nothing about traffic, SEO, backlinks, Pagerank, or keywords.  I knew nothing about how to make money with a website.  So what did I do next?  I registered the domain name howthiswebsitemakesmoney.


Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance.  Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.


Two years later, I know how to start a site, I know how to write content, I know about SEO, I know about backlinks, I know how to add advertisements … but I still do not know how to make good money online.  The site makes dimes a day, not dollars.


The site has been two years of disappointment.  Two  years of waking up in the morning and seeing the same green egg in AdSense.  Two years of waiting for a four-digit affiliate check with my name on it.  Two years of working without pay.  Two years of scratching my head.


So I asked for advice, and every time the reply was the same: create a site about something else. Create a site about what you know and what you enjoy.  Do not create a site with the intent to make money, create a site with the intent to help people by doing something you enjoy doing.


What happened when I changed my intent


Six months ago I created a new site.  This time my intent was pure pleasure.


I live in Prague and I love it here.  So I made a little site about how great Prague is and what people should do when they come for a visit.  It was built in a month.  In a gust of activity I designed the site and wrote the content.


It was so easy.   I did not agonize over what to write about.  The content flowed effortlessly from my head to the keyboard.  I did not have to take long walks with the dog or waste water standing dazed in the shower coming up with new ideas.  I just sat down at the computer and wrote about what I know.  It was so easy I actually looked forward to it.


As an afterthought, I created a simple page where people can order a real postcard from Prague.  Visitors select a picture of Prague and fill out a form indicating what they want written on the postcard.  After they hit the Submit button I get the request by email.  I grab a postcard and, like an ancient scribe long before computers, lick the tip of the pen and write.  After pounding a Prague stamp on the postcard I toss it into the mailbox on my way to work. I charge $4.00 for this five minutes of work.


I created this site with no aspirations of becoming rich, no day dreams of shaking hands with Oprah, no imagined scenes of telling my employer to find some other donkey to kick around. I created the website because it was easy for me to do and I enjoyed it. I made it because I needed a break from my ‘real’ website. I expected nothing to happen.


Again, I was wrong.


My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.


I wrote a postcard from a son playing a trick on his mother: “Hi, Mom!  Sorry for not calling in last few days.  But I am in Prague with friends.  Having a great time and the beer is sooo cheap.  Say hi to Dad.”


I have written postcards to countries all over the world.  Some of them in languages other then English—I have no idea what I am writing. Fortunately, the order form does not allow Chinese characters!


I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.


I feel like I am making the world a better place.  I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.


And yes, I am making money.


Intend to enjoy and you might make money


I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.


New arrivals to the make-money-online scene go through the same initiation—they start out with the intent to make money, then fail to make more then a pile of pennies.  For some it means the end and they quit, but for others this brutal introduction teaches them that their intent needs to change.


Of course, making money is about traffic, clicks, affiliates, backlinks SEO, but it’s also about finding something you enjoy doing.  If your intent is only to make money the odds are stacked against you: you will probably quit.  But if your intent is to do something you enjoy then you will keep moving forward until one day, you will be surprised to find that you are making money.


What’s your intent?


Roman intends to figure out how this website makes money.  He has been trying to do that for two long years, so when he needs a break and do something fun he goes onto his other website to send a real postcard to his mother who misses him very much.



Affordability: Resources, Not Money



Probably the biggest thing that trips people up when thinking about countercyclical public policy is a misleading over-emphasis on accounting ledger books as the right measure of what can and can’t be afforded. Making sums add up is important, of course, but it’s more helpful to start by thinking about real resources. People’s time, capital goods, raw materials, etc.


Think about the mayor of a mid-sized city presiding over good economic times. Tax revenues are going up, and demands on social services are relatively low. Suddenly the budgetary picture looks very bright and it seems easy to “afford” longer library hours, more frequent bus service, and tax cuts. This, however, is close to backwards. You can’t manufacture librarians or bus drivers. It’s when times are good that it’s most costly to pull human beings out of whatever else they’re doing and have them drive buses. Similarly, it’s when people are flush that extra money in their pockets is going to go to enterprises with low marginal utility.


Then along comes the crash and suddenly the budget looks bleak. Now we “can’t afford” those extra social services and we need higher taxes. But with household budgets tight, the taxes are much more burdensome than they would have been in good times. And the real social cost of having someone work in a library rather than sit at home unemployed is probably below zero.


What you actually ought to be doing is setting the quantity of social services at some level that makes sense across the business cycle. Then during periods of economic growth, taxes should raise more money than you spend. That way thanks to your stockpile you never need to cut services in the face of a recession and in fact can shower your city with tax cuts during a downturn to families can get by. But of course almost no jurisdiction in America actually does engage in this sort of responsible budgeting, and the Reagan and W Bush administrations took the federal government on a wildly different course. This has bad economic consequences on its own terms, and I also think tends to distort the political dialogue. Since budget deficits are “bad,” it’s unintuitive to say that bigger deficits will help in a recession. By contrast I think it’d be easy for people to see why a surplus-accumulating government shouldn’t try to horde even more money at a time when people are struggling. The reality is that nothing magical happens at zero, and what we “can afford” is ultimately determined by how many resources are available not by accountants.






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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.


Two years ago I stumbled across the concept of blogging for money.  Instantly it hit me as the perfect thing: sit behind a computer, design a site, write, be my own boss, work from home, what could be better? I knew nothing about traffic, SEO, backlinks, Pagerank, or keywords.  I knew nothing about how to make money with a website.  So what did I do next?  I registered the domain name howthiswebsitemakesmoney.


Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance.  Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.


Two years later, I know how to start a site, I know how to write content, I know about SEO, I know about backlinks, I know how to add advertisements … but I still do not know how to make good money online.  The site makes dimes a day, not dollars.


The site has been two years of disappointment.  Two  years of waking up in the morning and seeing the same green egg in AdSense.  Two years of waiting for a four-digit affiliate check with my name on it.  Two years of working without pay.  Two years of scratching my head.


So I asked for advice, and every time the reply was the same: create a site about something else. Create a site about what you know and what you enjoy.  Do not create a site with the intent to make money, create a site with the intent to help people by doing something you enjoy doing.


What happened when I changed my intent


Six months ago I created a new site.  This time my intent was pure pleasure.


I live in Prague and I love it here.  So I made a little site about how great Prague is and what people should do when they come for a visit.  It was built in a month.  In a gust of activity I designed the site and wrote the content.


It was so easy.   I did not agonize over what to write about.  The content flowed effortlessly from my head to the keyboard.  I did not have to take long walks with the dog or waste water standing dazed in the shower coming up with new ideas.  I just sat down at the computer and wrote about what I know.  It was so easy I actually looked forward to it.


As an afterthought, I created a simple page where people can order a real postcard from Prague.  Visitors select a picture of Prague and fill out a form indicating what they want written on the postcard.  After they hit the Submit button I get the request by email.  I grab a postcard and, like an ancient scribe long before computers, lick the tip of the pen and write.  After pounding a Prague stamp on the postcard I toss it into the mailbox on my way to work. I charge $4.00 for this five minutes of work.


I created this site with no aspirations of becoming rich, no day dreams of shaking hands with Oprah, no imagined scenes of telling my employer to find some other donkey to kick around. I created the website because it was easy for me to do and I enjoyed it. I made it because I needed a break from my ‘real’ website. I expected nothing to happen.


Again, I was wrong.


My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.


I wrote a postcard from a son playing a trick on his mother: “Hi, Mom!  Sorry for not calling in last few days.  But I am in Prague with friends.  Having a great time and the beer is sooo cheap.  Say hi to Dad.”


I have written postcards to countries all over the world.  Some of them in languages other then English—I have no idea what I am writing. Fortunately, the order form does not allow Chinese characters!


I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.


I feel like I am making the world a better place.  I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.


And yes, I am making money.


Intend to enjoy and you might make money


I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.


New arrivals to the make-money-online scene go through the same initiation—they start out with the intent to make money, then fail to make more then a pile of pennies.  For some it means the end and they quit, but for others this brutal introduction teaches them that their intent needs to change.


Of course, making money is about traffic, clicks, affiliates, backlinks SEO, but it’s also about finding something you enjoy doing.  If your intent is only to make money the odds are stacked against you: you will probably quit.  But if your intent is to do something you enjoy then you will keep moving forward until one day, you will be surprised to find that you are making money.


What’s your intent?


Roman intends to figure out how this website makes money.  He has been trying to do that for two long years, so when he needs a break and do something fun he goes onto his other website to send a real postcard to his mother who misses him very much.



Affordability: Resources, Not Money



Probably the biggest thing that trips people up when thinking about countercyclical public policy is a misleading over-emphasis on accounting ledger books as the right measure of what can and can’t be afforded. Making sums add up is important, of course, but it’s more helpful to start by thinking about real resources. People’s time, capital goods, raw materials, etc.


Think about the mayor of a mid-sized city presiding over good economic times. Tax revenues are going up, and demands on social services are relatively low. Suddenly the budgetary picture looks very bright and it seems easy to “afford” longer library hours, more frequent bus service, and tax cuts. This, however, is close to backwards. You can’t manufacture librarians or bus drivers. It’s when times are good that it’s most costly to pull human beings out of whatever else they’re doing and have them drive buses. Similarly, it’s when people are flush that extra money in their pockets is going to go to enterprises with low marginal utility.


Then along comes the crash and suddenly the budget looks bleak. Now we “can’t afford” those extra social services and we need higher taxes. But with household budgets tight, the taxes are much more burdensome than they would have been in good times. And the real social cost of having someone work in a library rather than sit at home unemployed is probably below zero.


What you actually ought to be doing is setting the quantity of social services at some level that makes sense across the business cycle. Then during periods of economic growth, taxes should raise more money than you spend. That way thanks to your stockpile you never need to cut services in the face of a recession and in fact can shower your city with tax cuts during a downturn to families can get by. But of course almost no jurisdiction in America actually does engage in this sort of responsible budgeting, and the Reagan and W Bush administrations took the federal government on a wildly different course. This has bad economic consequences on its own terms, and I also think tends to distort the political dialogue. Since budget deficits are “bad,” it’s unintuitive to say that bigger deficits will help in a recession. By contrast I think it’d be easy for people to see why a surplus-accumulating government shouldn’t try to horde even more money at a time when people are struggling. The reality is that nothing magical happens at zero, and what we “can afford” is ultimately determined by how many resources are available not by accountants.






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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...



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