WWIII: The Great War on Capital of 2008
Shareholders around the world have seen extravagant expenditures of their wealth squandered by CEOs with their arm-waving and talmudic reading of balance-sheets and P&Ls, like the obsessive, pre-scientific study of entrails. Less than one CEO in a hundred could give an intelligent, educated account of what strategy it would take for their business to survive in the rapidly evolving environment of the next decade.
Website of the Week: A quirky new path to market for product ideas
Ben Kaufman, who also founded mophie and kluster, is back with a new variation on NameThis: quirky. The premise is this: entrepreneurs and creative people in general are bubbling with far more product ideas than they can possibly pursue. Consequently, these ideas end up dormant or exploited by someone else. Described by Kaulfman as a "social product development company", quirky invites users to submit their product ideas for US$99 each - this ensures that only the best ideas are lodged. The quirky community selects one product from the pool of submitted ideas every seven days. From there, the community (known as "influencers") weigh in by voting, rating and influencing other people's product ideas.
Get the message
Do you like receiving marketing via text message? I don’t. When my BlackBerry rings like a bicycle bell, I get a warm feeling inside...
Eminem 'tea-bagging' (How a publicity stunt can really 'hit the spot')
On Monday night, I watched one of my favourite satirists (and the creator of everyone's favourite fictional Kazakstani character Borat), Sacha Baron Cohen, turn...
Eminem ‘tea-bagging’ (How a publicity stunt can really ‘hit the spot’)
On Monday night, I watched one of my favourite satirists (and the creator of everyone's favourite fictional Kazakstani character Borat), Sacha Baron Cohen, turn...
Website of the Week: Intel sponsors… "Tomorrow"
Forget "Intel Inside". The world's biggest manufacturer of microprocessors has a new tagline: "Sponsors of Tomorrow".
Intel's new three-year advertising campaign kicked off in May with the launch of a thoughtful new website, viral video ads and interactive display advertising in New York's Times Square and other branding hotspots around the globe.
Website of the Week: Intel sponsors… “Tomorrow”
Forget "Intel Inside". The world's biggest manufacturer of microprocessors has a new tagline: "Sponsors of Tomorrow".
Intel's new three-year advertising campaign kicked off in May with the launch of a thoughtful new website, viral video ads and interactive display advertising in New York's Times Square and other branding hotspots around the globe.
The corporate spin FAIL of the year so far
Firstly, Mars, ahhh... you sell chocolate bars. You might have seen McDonald's harried into offering a "healthy options" menu, but the difference is Maccas came up with new, healthier products. They didn't make Big Macs 11 percent smaller, charge the same and pat themselves on the back.
Anthill seeks part-time rabble-rousers
Are you an active or aspiring blogger, with exciting, inspiring, erudite, informative things to say, yet feel frustrated at how hard it has become...
What is Microsoft Bing? And do we really care?
Waking up on Friday, I found myself trawling through messages on my phone. The first few are from work, but then I get to one from a contact who asks me this:
"What are bloggers saying about Microsoft's Bing?"
This left me dumbfounded. What is Bing? As a write on personal finance and micropreneurship, anything that surrounds starting something new or spending to develop something new interests me. A quick search on Google helped me find the answer...
World’s most litigious man sues Guinness Book of World Records
Jonathan Lee Riches is unhappy about being labeled the world's most litigious person. So much so that he is suing the Guinness Book of World Records.
World's most litigious man sues Guinness Book of World Records
Jonathan Lee Riches is unhappy about being labeled the world's most litigious person. So much so that he is suing the Guinness Book of World Records.
Website of the Week: The Gruen Transfer
In shopping mall design, the "Gruen transfer" refers to the moment when consumers respond to "scripted disorientation" cues in the environment (of course, with the goal of soliciting a purchase). It shouldn't come as a surprise, therefore, that the website of the popular ABC television program of the same name is extremely effective at seducing visitors who wander through its pages, making departure feel almost impossible.
What do the PM and The Fonz have in common?
The AFR's Peter Ruel contributed a great piece to today's news cycle, bound to delight anyone who watched the PM's exhausting attempt on the ABC's Lateline earlier this week to avoid sharing his thoughts on 'what level the public debt is likely to go'.
Japanese astronaut testing “stink-free” underwear
It might not be quite up there with curing cancer or developing alternative energy systems, but scientists from the Women’s University in Tokyo might very well have improved the lives of astronauts (and their colleagues) with the invention of stink-free underwear.
Japanese astronaut testing "stink-free" underwear
It might not be quite up there with curing cancer or developing alternative energy systems, but scientists from the Women’s University in Tokyo might very well have improved the lives of astronauts (and their colleagues) with the invention of stink-free underwear.
Vinyl Wall Clocks
The era of vinyl albums is a distant memory for all but a few old skool DJs and retro trendoids. But it doesn't mean we can't celebrate vinyl's beloved role in history by hanging recycled albums on our walls as a permanent reminder of time passed. The Grateful Thread’s recycled vinyl wall clocks are as cool as many of the records they are made from.
7 ways to be happier at work
The combination of entrepreneur and brain scientist is rare in one human being. Jeffrey M. Stibel is one such person, and when he opines,...
FutureFeed – microblog updates on what your friends will be doing
With Twitter tripping the light fantastic, it's great to see people having some fun with the implications of its elevation to mainstream consciousness. First there was The Mime. Then, of course, there was the release of Flutter, the natural evolution of Twitter's truncated narcissism. Now comes FutureFeed, which "tells you what your friends are doing before they do it!"
Website of the Week: We Are Hunted charts the music people are really listening...
There are lots of smart online tools for new music discovery (Pandora, last.fm, jango and imeem come to mind - most of which have become quite familiar with legal representatives of the music labels). But the idea of comprehensively aggregating the online listening and networking behaviour of users is a breakthrough.