September 2008
20 posts
Op-Ed Columnist - Revolt of the Nihilists - Op-Ed... →
House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party. Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support. Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds.
In Praise of Political Tweets - Bits Blog -... →
Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, told me that the company was considering setting up other specialized pages for issues and events about which people may want to share their thoughts.
Drilling Down - Letting Our Fingers Do the Talking... →
In the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile. Since then, the average subscriber’s volume of text messages has shot upward by 64 percent, while the average number of calls has dropped slightly.
Party Leaders Back Revised Plan for Bailout -... →
At one point, when too much information was leaking out, staff members’ BlackBerrys were confiscated and collected in a trash bin.
6 Months Later, Spitzer Is Contrite, Yes, but... →
despite his efforts to move forward, Mr. Spitzer can be moved by flashes of anger, especially when it comes to what he views as his achievements and legacy, and he has faced an adjustment as he confronts life without the power he once wielded.
In Viewing the Debate, New Yorkers Tip Their Hands... →
“Iran, Al Qaeda, Hamas. Got it. O.K. What about jobs? And is my money safe in the bank?”
Talks Implode After Day of Chaos; Fate of Bailout... →
Mr. Boehner pressed an alternative that involved a smaller role for the government, and Mr. McCain, whose support of the deal is critical if fellow Republicans are to sign on, declined to take a stand.
A New Kind of Venture Capitalist Makes Small Bets... →
He and his partners are avid users of the Web 2.0 technologies in which they invest, which they say is essential to understanding how the services work and why people use them.
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers - Bits Blog... →
In fact, most Wall Street computer models radically underestimated the risk of the complex mortgage securities, they said. That is partly because the level of financial distress is “the equivalent of the 100-year flood,” in the words of Leslie Rawl, the president of Capital Market Risk Advisors, a consulting firm. But she and others say there is more to it: The people who ran the financial firms...
TVNEWSDAY - DTV Lessons from the Wilmington Front →
TV is different. People seem to think of it as a right. They’ve forgotten that TV is just a technology and you have to master that technology to take advantage of it.
The Ads That Aren't - washingtonpost.com →
Tracey says vapor ads may be increasing in frequency due to the rise of YouTube and the proliferation of political blogs. Before they were around, it was more difficult for a campaign to persuade reporters to do stories on a new ad until it was in wide circulation, he says. But nowadays, Tracey says, the ad is on the Internet somewhere almost as soon as a candidate announces it, providing an...
Your Data With Destiny - Advertising Age - Digital →
Volunteered data, priceless as it is, nonetheless takes a marketer only so far. To create a genuine bond, an intimate relationship, requires a thorough understanding of consumer behavior, consumer interests, consumer sentiments, consumer moods, consumer movements and so on — not the sort of information that you can put in a sign-up form, even if anybody were patient or generous or honest or...
Op-Ed Columnist - Making America Stupid - Op-Ed -... →
Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M....
Who Uses AOL and Why? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com →
I wonder whether AOL.com is like the CBS Evening News — an icon from another age that serves an aging and declining audience, despite regular efforts at remodeling.
A Risky High-Wire Act - Mergers, Acquisitions,... →
Is the definition of companies that are “too big to fail” getting broader? Or are some industries simply more important than others? The seizure of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the second time this year, after the rescue of Bear Stearns, that Washington has intervened to prevent a financial collapse. Now, troubled automakers in the United States are also looking for...
I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You - Clive... →
Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye. Facebook is no longer alone in offering this sort of interaction online. In the last year, there...
A Social Network Where You Can Be Too Social -... →
But all the friending, messaging and poking on the online social network has created a hazard: using it too much.
ad_icon Elizabeth Coe found out after she sent 100 friends and professional acquaintances a link to her company’s Web site. She got booted. In an e-mail a few days after she sent the link, Facebook said her account had been disabled for “persistent misuse of the...
After the Curtain Falls, the Web Gets Into the Act... →
For Equity and Broadway producers, the untapped marketing potential of the Web is the other side of the issue. A comic online Tony campaign by “Xanadu” earlier this year — the one about an adolescent named Cubby Bernstein who’s a genius at theatrical marketing — went viral, with more than a half-million hits for Episode 6 (Nathan Lane lost amid a bunch of nearly nude...
Official Google Blog: Search experiments, large... →
components of your web search experience and the principles behind creating a great search experience. There are complex algorithms underlying simple features such as spelling correction and the two line snippets that describe each search result. We figure out what works by running experiments - tiny tests for a small number of users which help us determine whether that feature helps or hurts.
Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and... →
From the beginning, the Chrome team hoped that its visual presentation would be so understated that people wouldn’t even think they were using a browser. The mantra became “Content, not chrome,”