Monday 21 February 2011

How to Making Money


Why The Arguments That The Huffington Post Must Pay Bloggers Is Misguided: Payment Isn't Just Money

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We didn't mention the whole AOL buying Huffington Post story earlier this week, because there just didn't seem to be that much to say about it. It was an interesting deal, to be sure, and I'll be curious to watch what AOL does with the property, but, beyond that, it seemed like just another content acquisition deal. However, almost immediately after the deal went through, I started seeing some rumblings on Twitter, picking at the scab that has always annoyed a certain group of people about The Huffington Post: that it doesn't pay most of its writers. Sure enough, it didn't take long for this issue to start to spread, with the inevitable summary line of: "Hey, HuffPo became famous because all these people worked for free, and yet, they don't get a cut of the sale."



That story is now snowballing. Dan Gilmor wrote a blog post arguing that it was the "ethical" thing to do to start paying bloggers. Douglas Ruskoff said that he'd no longer blog on the site for free. And, of course, a bunch of cranky HuffPo contributors have created a whole campaign arguing that Arianna Huffington had no right to sell the site, since it was built off of their free labor.



They're all wrong.



Of course, we've been through this before. Five years ago, Nick Carr tried to argue that all the various big Web 2.0 sites like (at the time) Digg, YouTube and MySpace were really digital sharecroppers exploiting labor. As we argued at the time, this was hogwash. People were using those sites because they provided a valuable service. The reason they provided labor was because they got something of value in return -- whether it was attention or hosting or distribution or reputation.



Three years ago, we saw an almost identical controversy after AOL bought Bebo and musician Billy Bragg demanded some of the $850 million AOL paid (in retrospect, a massively bad decision). Bragg argued that Bebo made this money based on all of the "free labor" of musicians who used the site. But that ignored the fact that those musicians got tremendous value in using the Bebo platform to connect with fans and distribute their music... all for free. The folks who got to keep the money were the ones who took the actual risk. The ones who had to cover the expenses to keep the site and the service running, even when it wasn't making enough revenue. They took the risk, they should get the reward. The people who used the site did so of their own free will knowing quite well that the benefit they got from using the service was worth it to them at the time. Along those lines, if Bebo had struggled and faced bankruptcy instead of a massive buyout, would Bragg have felt obligated to give them money to keep it going? Similarly, if HuffPo had been running out of money, and Arianna had gone back and demanded that those who used the platform pay up retroactively, how would these people have reacted?



There are more ways to "get paid" than with money.



The reason that people chose to blog for free at the Huffington Post was because it's a fantastic platform for exposure. It brings traffic like no one else out there, and if you want to present something in a way that's likely to get more attention than on your own blog that no one visits, posting at HuffPo can be quite a good way to go.



And that's the point: the people who chose -- of their own free will -- to post at the Huffington Post for free did so because they clearly got value out of doing so. Otherwise, why would they have done so in the first place? To then say that the only proper thing is to pay them is completely missing the point. It's an attempt to retroactively go back and change the terms of a deal. If you wanted to get paid directly for what you write, fine, don't write for the Huffington Post. It's that simple. Go out and pitch your stories to publishers who pay freelancers. But don't go back and complain afterwards when the folks who actually did take the risk of putting together the site, financing it, organizing it, hiring the staff, buying the servers, paying for the bandwidth, and building it up so that it was such a successful platform, then get paid for their efforts.



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Minecraft hitting iPhone, iPad iPhone <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our iPhone news of Minecraft hitting iPhone, iPad.

WWOR, <b>News</b> Corp Station, Being Investigated By FCC

New Jersey station WWOR, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, is being investigated by the FCC about whether it misled the government about the scope of its local and news programming. At stake is WWOR's license to operate.

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Thursday 17 February 2011

Making Money Advertising


We’ve been promised for a while now that our phones will become our personal assistants. Executives from Cambridge, Mass.-based Vlingo sat down with me this week to talk about how they’ve delivered on that promise — and started turning it into real revenue.


It seems like all the big guys are trying to get into this business. The incentive, as a Googler put it when the company launched a similar service last year, is that voice is much more natural than typing as a way to interact with your phone. Apple, meanwhile, showed its interest by acquiring a startup called Siri. And Microsoft included voice commands on Windows Phone 7.


The difference, according to Vlingo’s vice president of business Hadley Harris, is that the startup has built all its basic technology, including speech recognition (something that Siri outsourced) and the “intent engine” that allows the app to translate your words into actions that it understands. Vlingo is working with other companies to integrate a wide range of apps into the system, so that you can use your voice to buy a plane ticket off travel site Kayak or check your updates on Facebook.


Vlingo has been downloaded 7 million times, Harris said. BlackBerry users represent most of those downloads, since that’s the phone that Vlingo focused on first, but iPhone and especially Android are catching up. The company’s strategy is to release new features on Android first, then port them to other phones as resources and technology allow.


The app is free, so Vlingo makes money through advertising and revenue sharing with its partners. Specifically, Harris told me it currently earns $7.74 for every 1,000 Web searches, $49 for every 1,000 local searches, and $24 for every 1,000 “other” monetizable actions, such as a ticket purchase on Kayak. With users performing an average of 30 actions every month, Harris said Vlingo is making about 14 cents per user per month.


That might seem a little low, Harris acknowledged, but the plan is to dramatically increase both the number of users and the number of actions over the next year. Most promisingly, he said Vlingo has made deals with a number of Android handset manufacturers who don’t want to direct all of their usage to Google services. (He said it’s too early to reveal who the manufacturers are.) Not only will that put Vlingo on more phones, it will also make the application more prominent on those phones by turning it into the default app whenever you want to use voice commands.



Next Story: Why display ads are cool again Previous Story: Gamification gets popular, but it’s still finding its feet




App Store Classics: Game Dev Story, a game about making games.


Ever wondered what it’d be like to run your own game development house? Me neither, but don’t let that stop you getting involved with Game Dev Story (iTunes link), a little gem of a game from Japanese developers Kairosoft, currently on sale in the app store for $0.99.


The concept is straightforward – grow your development house from a tiny team of four staff churning out cheap and cheerful PC games to a revered coding powerhouse in swanky offices crafting masterpieces for the latest consoles.


At first you’ll probably be going over budget left right and centre, trying to figure out which game types work best and therefore shift more units, but once you get into the swing of it you can concentrate on hiring and training the best staff and purchasing licences to develop console games, resulting in better made and better selling games with higher profit margins.


It’s not just a question of hiring and firing, coming up with game ideas and watching your staff working their buns off though. Through the use of ‘boosts’ which are periodically made available to purchase as the game progresses (not in-app purchases I hasten to add), you can choose one of your coders to work on enhancing one specific aspect of the game. This pushes up the overall quality of the game you’re making and results in better reviews and sales, adding a further strategic element as you choose the right moment and category in which to use your boosts. At certain points within the development cycle you also get the chance to work on the graphics and sound specifically, either using one of your own staff or hiring in a freelancer, and this too gives you the opportunity to increase the overall quality of your virtual product.



When you make your first million seller it’s a satisfying moment but there’s no time to rest on your laurels. There are always new consoles appearing on the market, contract jobs to take on, new staff to hire and new game types to discover. If you leave too much of a gap between development cycles you start losing fans and therefore a few sales, but think carefully about what kind of games you make – my pirate simulation was a right turkey.



It’s all great fun, but it’s fair to say there are a few things here which need to be addressed by the time Game Dev Story 2 arrives in the app store. I know it’s a tall order on a phone but I couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be if I could play the games my team had made. Even a comedy cut sequence showing some aspects of the latest game would have been good. There are also some hugely expensive advertising options within this game that offer no feedback other than some numbers increasing on a stat page. If I’m sponsoring a racing team I’d like to see my company logo on the side of a formula one car at least!


Finally, the game is perhaps a bit on the easy side. I’m sure if developing a multi million selling game was this straightforward we’d all be at it. Well, maybe not, but it’s easy to make enough money that you don’t have to worry too much about how you spend it, and this negatively impacts the strategy element.


All things considered however, Game Dev Story is great fun. It’s a good natured game and from the cute graphics and retro sound to the amusing titles you can give your creations, it’s a rewarding experience which works perfectly whether in short bursts or longer play sessions. Did I mention that it’s currently only $0.99 on the app store?







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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

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As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.


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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Drunk Dialing FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

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Washington Extra – Royal <b>news</b> | Analysis &amp; Opinion |

As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.


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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Drunk Dialing FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Drunk Dialing FAIL.

Washington Extra – Royal <b>news</b> | Analysis &amp; Opinion |

As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.


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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Drunk Dialing FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Drunk Dialing FAIL.

Washington Extra – Royal <b>news</b> | Analysis &amp; Opinion |

As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.


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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Drunk Dialing FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Drunk Dialing FAIL.

Washington Extra – Royal <b>news</b> | Analysis &amp; Opinion |

As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.


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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Drunk Dialing FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Drunk Dialing FAIL.

Washington Extra – Royal <b>news</b> | Analysis &amp; Opinion |

As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.


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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Drunk Dialing FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Drunk Dialing FAIL.

Washington Extra – Royal <b>news</b> | Analysis &amp; Opinion |

As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.


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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Drunk Dialing FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Drunk Dialing FAIL.

Washington Extra – Royal <b>news</b> | Analysis &amp; Opinion |

As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.


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Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to Meet With <b>...</b>

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, ...

Probably Bad <b>News</b>: Drunk Dialing FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and <b>...</b>

epic fail photos - Probably Bad News: Drunk Dialing FAIL.

Washington Extra – Royal <b>news</b> | Analysis &amp; Opinion |

As is increasingly the case, the United States is finding that talking pro-democracy is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath of uprisings another.















Tuesday 15 February 2011

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A lawyer representing a former Zuckerman Spaeder client in a legal fee dispute in Washington told a federal appeals court today that the case belongs in arbitration.



The attorney, David Holzworth of Yoss LLP, who represents James Auffenberg Jr., asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reverse a trial judge’s refusal to move the dispute from court to arbitration.



Zuckerman lawyers represented Auffenberg in a criminal tax case, winning acquittal for the St. Louis-based automobile dealer. The firm alleges Auffenberg owes more than $834,000 on top of the $1.5 million he has already paid. Auffenberg’s lawyers argue the firm said he would have to pay no more than $1.5 million. The firm sued Auffenberg in Washington’s federal trial court.



Auffenberg’s attorneys moved to stay the fee case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia almost a year into the litigation. Judge Reggie Walton rejected the effort, saying Auffenberg “actively” participated in the litigation and failed to timely invoke arbitration. More background on the case here and here.



Holzworth said today in court that Auffenberg asserted his arbitration rights orally at the beginning of the litigation. He noted there was no “substantial” discovery in the litigation before Auffenberg moved to stay the proceedings.



Zuckerman lawyers are advocating an “extreme” standard that would require a client to invoke a right to arbitration of a fee dispute before answering a complaint, Holzworth said in court papers filed in December.



Zuckerman partner Francis Carter, representing the firm, argued today in the D.C. Circuit that Auffenberg’s participation in the litigation meant he waived his right to mandatory arbitration. Carter said there were numerous “mile posts” at which Auffenberg could have asked for arbitration.



“If he wanted to arbitrate, he knew how to start it,” Carter said. In court papers, Carter noted that Auffenberg responded to the initial complaint and subsequent amended complaints, among other documents. Auffenberg, Carter noted, did not assert arbitration as a defense.



Judges Douglas Ginsburg and Merrick Garland, sitting with Senior Judge Stephen Williams, did not immediately rule.



Undeterred by the persistently high unemployment rate and slow economic growth, Obama pledges to invest tall stacks of money on "infrastructure." This includes such cutting-edge investments as additional paved trails in local parks -- presumably to ignite the sure-to-boom pedestrian path market. This from the man who also plans to prescribe pain pills instead of covering expensive medical procedures. Basically, in 21st century America we will meander through the world's most intricate system of hike-and-bike paths in a drug-induced daze until we accidentally fall into the abyss. Except it won't be the abyss, just a large hole left from another public works project that was left unfinished because the nation's finances fell into the actual abyss. This is what Obama means by "winning the future."
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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

CBS <b>News</b>&#39; Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The foreign correspondent was the victim of a "brutal and sustained" attack.

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You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.


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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

CBS <b>News</b>&#39; Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The foreign correspondent was the victim of a "brutal and sustained" attack.

Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space – This <b>...</b>

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.


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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

CBS <b>News</b>&#39; Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The foreign correspondent was the victim of a "brutal and sustained" attack.

Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space – This <b>...</b>

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.


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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

CBS <b>News</b>&#39; Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The foreign correspondent was the victim of a "brutal and sustained" attack.

Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space – This <b>...</b>

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.


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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

CBS <b>News</b>&#39; Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The foreign correspondent was the victim of a "brutal and sustained" attack.

Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space – This <b>...</b>

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.


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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

CBS <b>News</b>&#39; Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The foreign correspondent was the victim of a "brutal and sustained" attack.

Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space – This <b>...</b>

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.


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Lara Logan of CBS <b>News</b> Was Attacked and Sexually Assaulted in Egypt

Many of the scenes broadcast from Egpyt in recent days have been joyful, but events took a horrific turn for CBS News correspondent Lara.

CBS <b>News</b>&#39; Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted in Egypt - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

The foreign correspondent was the victim of a "brutal and sustained" attack.

Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space – This <b>...</b>

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space. And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.

















Friday 11 February 2011

Moms Making Money

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Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 2/11/11 - Mile High Report

Horse Tracks -- Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee.

Nokia Finally Drops Its <b>News</b>: It&#39;s Microsoft | mocoNews

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Jodi Bieber wins the World Press Photo of the Year for her portrait of an Afghan woman who was disfigured by her husband on authority of the Taliban.


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Horse Tracks -- Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee.

Nokia Finally Drops Its <b>News</b>: It&#39;s Microsoft | mocoNews

The news everyone has been waiting for has finally come out: Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has done a deal with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), where Windows Phone will become the primary operating system for Nokia's smartphones. The deal will bring brands ...

Is This the Best <b>News</b> Picture in the World? World Press Photo <b>...</b>

Jodi Bieber wins the World Press Photo of the Year for her portrait of an Afghan woman who was disfigured by her husband on authority of the Taliban.


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Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 2/11/11 - Mile High Report

Horse Tracks -- Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee.

Nokia Finally Drops Its <b>News</b>: It&#39;s Microsoft | mocoNews

The news everyone has been waiting for has finally come out: Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has done a deal with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), where Windows Phone will become the primary operating system for Nokia's smartphones. The deal will bring brands ...

Is This the Best <b>News</b> Picture in the World? World Press Photo <b>...</b>

Jodi Bieber wins the World Press Photo of the Year for her portrait of an Afghan woman who was disfigured by her husband on authority of the Taliban.


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Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 2/11/11 - Mile High Report

Horse Tracks -- Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee.

Nokia Finally Drops Its <b>News</b>: It&#39;s Microsoft | mocoNews

The news everyone has been waiting for has finally come out: Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has done a deal with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), where Windows Phone will become the primary operating system for Nokia's smartphones. The deal will bring brands ...

Is This the Best <b>News</b> Picture in the World? World Press Photo <b>...</b>

Jodi Bieber wins the World Press Photo of the Year for her portrait of an Afghan woman who was disfigured by her husband on authority of the Taliban.


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Denver Broncos <b>News</b>: Horse Tracks - 2/11/11 - Mile High Report

Horse Tracks -- Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee.

Nokia Finally Drops Its <b>News</b>: It&#39;s Microsoft | mocoNews

The news everyone has been waiting for has finally come out: Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has done a deal with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), where Windows Phone will become the primary operating system for Nokia's smartphones. The deal will bring brands ...

Is This the Best <b>News</b> Picture in the World? World Press Photo <b>...</b>

Jodi Bieber wins the World Press Photo of the Year for her portrait of an Afghan woman who was disfigured by her husband on authority of the Taliban.


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Starting a business can be rewarding and also a lot of hard work. If you find something you love to do it makes it so much easier. If you love making jewelry and love getting together with friends you can start a Jewelry Making Party business.

A jewelry making party is where a bunch of friends get together to make jewelry. You will bring all the supplies and teach everyone how to do it. They then pay you for the supplies they used.

This article will explain what you need for your business, how to run it and how to get customers. Business laws vary from location to location. You will need to get a business license and find out how to handle sales tax where you live. I won't discuss these things specifically, there are a lot of resource available online.

What you need. You will need jewelry making supplies. You don't have to do everything. Start small. Bracelets are a great place to start. Everyone likes making bracelets and the supplies are basic and they are easy to learn how to do. You will need clasps, stringing material (wire), beads, crimp beads, crimper (or needle nose pliers) and wire cutters. In the future you may decide to do parties with more complex jewelry. When you get to this point you can offer beginner and advanced classes.

The supplies you will need for your business are basic no matter what type of jewelry you choose to do. You will need craft boxes to separate your beads. Providing each guest with an ice cube tray will give them something to put the beads they are working with in. I also like handing each person a washcloth to work on. It will keep beads from rolling on a table. You will also need a calculator, a pen and a small notepad or a receipt pad for calculating each customer's total bill. You may also want business cards but they aren't necessary when you are first getting started.

How to conduct a party. If you don't know everyone you can start by introducing yourself and asking everyone's names. Explain how the party will work. Tell them they will need to pick out a clasp and the beads they will want to use and to put them in their ice cube tray. Then show them how to string a bracelet and how to attach the clasp. Explain that you will be happy to help each person finish attaching the clasp.

The easiest way to charge is to just have a flat fee for each bracelet that each person makes. This will mean you will make more money on some than others. Another way is to charge for each bead. This is easier than it sounds. It will be the best method if you intend to carry both inexpensive beads and semi-precious stones. Using small labels and your home printer make labels for the price of each bead. Attach the labels to the inside partitions of your craft boxes. Then you can tally up the beads on each bracelet by looking at the box. Make sure you charge for the clasp as well. Having the prices right on the box will help each person spend what they want to on their bracelet. I find most people will happily spend $15 to $20 per bracelet.

Types of parties. When you start out just invite friends and family members over to your house for snacks and jewelry making. It is a good idea to offer incentives for them to "host" their own party. It can be as simple as offering them a free bracelet if they invite their friends and family members over to their house for a jewelry party.

Birthday parties for little girls can be really fun. The best way to do this is to charge a set price for each guest. Have the mother hosting the party pay you up front for each girl so you know how many to plan on. Bring only the beads you want to use for the party. Purple, pink and white beads are really popular, but you will want a variety of other colors as well. Ask each girl to pick out their beads and help them make their bracelet the right size. To make it special and to get more parties finish each bracelet and put it in a little organza drawstring bag and slip in a business card. The girls will go home and tell their mothers they want to make jewelry at their own birthday party. Mothers like this idea because it doubles as an activity and a party favor.

Traditionally a bride will take her bridesmaids out to lunch and buy them a small gift. Having a jewelry party is a fun spin on this tradition. The bride invites her bridesmaids over and they all make a coordinating bracelet or necklace to wear at the wedding. The bride picks the colors so you can have kits made ahead of time for each person. Charms are a fun addition. Don't forget to ask the bride to include mothers and flower girls. They will all like the idea of matching jewelry and it is something they will wear again.

There are many other types of parties you can do including mother/daughter parties and Girl Scout activities.

The most important thing is to make sure your parties are relaxing and fun. Help each person with their project so they don't become frustrated. When they finish each piece of jewelry compliment them on their creativity and their accomplishment.

Making Money. Just like starting any business you will need to make an upfront investment. If you already make jewelry as a hobby you will have most of the hardware. The beads will be your main investment. You will want several different types of beads for people to choose from. In the beginning you can start small and add to your inventory as you start making money. You will get a feel for what beads and what colors are popular and what style of clasps get chosen most. I have found that offering too many different beads can be overwhelming. While you want to appeal to everyone's tastes you don't need to have hundreds of beads in each color. Make sure you have one or two options of beads in each color, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, and white. You will also want several different type of silver spacer bead. Charms sell well but you can add those gradually. It is also a good idea as you get going to have Swarovski Crystal beads available to represent each birthstone. Make a chart for these or just label them right in their boxes with the month. You may also want to carry small jewelry gift boxes and bags. Sell these separately and encourage everyone to make an extra bracelet for a gift.

You can buy your beads from wholesale places online, however, some require you to spend a certain amount or order in bulk quantities. This will be fine when you start doing many parties. In the beginning check what your local craft stores have in stock. Another good resource is Art Beads. They have a very good website and free shipping no matter how small your order is.

Mark up your beads so that the average bracelet will cost about $15. Depending on how much your beads cost you the profit will be about $10 for each bracelet. It seems that most customers will make about two or three bracelets per party.

Marketing. Once you do a few parties you will find it easy to schedule more. Ask each guest if they want to have their own party at their house with their friends. Word of mouth is a great way to get business. There are creative ways to advertise your business as well. Hang flyers at local dance studios or other places that moms and little girls frequent. Ask schools if you can add flyers to the other notices their students take home. You may decide in the future you are ready to spend more money on advertising. Bridal shows and local bridal magazines are a great place to advertise.

The most important thing is to have fun and make sure your customers do as well. Good luck!


Tuesday 8 February 2011

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Sunday 6 February 2011

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Cross-posted from The Urbanophile.


I recently had the privilege of seeing Jan Gehl, godfather of Copenhagen's bicycle network and a consultant to New York City and many others, speak. He was beyond awesome, but one thing that really stuck with me was how he got the tone completely right. One of his observations about how they transformed Copenhagen was, "We never talked about taking away things from people. We only talked about what they were going to get."


This is a lesson too seldom heeded by urbanists, who almost seem to define themselves as much in terms of what they are against as in terms of what they are for. The anti-car rhetoric immediately comes to mind. All these urbanist things we want to do are talked about in terms of cars all the time. But what's that got to do with it? If these are good policies, and have all sorts of benefits for citizens, why can't we talk about that? Why don't we defend our proposals on their own merits?


Carol Coletta of CEOs for Cities has a great saying that "eat your spinach" marketing doesn't work. Coletta's group has been working for a while now to try to create a new vision of the American dream, one rooted in a more urban context -- a vision that would do for the city lifestyle what the GM
Futurama exhibit did for the suburban, auto-based one. It's a hugely important initiative, and one that we should all seek to emulate.


Moving beyond sustainability


Nothing has done more to hurt the urbanist cause than it becoming almost inseparably linked to the notion of "sustainability" and climate change. Sustainability has become almost a shibboleth of the right-thinking urbanist. Architects, planners, politicians, journalists, and more all try to outdo each other with ever more rhetoric about radical transformations and grandiose, even-science fictiony visions of the future low-carbon world. These might score points with the inside crowd, but they don't impress the average member of the public all that much. Quite the opposite, in many cases.


Right now in America, millions of people are out of work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has had to invent new categories of long-term unemployment to measure the scale of the problem. Ben Bernanke just said it might be five years before employment normalizes. More than 43 million people -- one out of every seven in America -- are on food stamps. That's about the population of the entire country of Spain. State and local governments are broke. Our local social safety nets are getting shredded as they cut back. The federal government is drowning in debt. Millions of people are or soon will be in foreclosure. Many more are underwater on their homes. People are hurting out there.


Against this backdrop, it should come as no surprise that Americans have roundly shown that they ain't buyin' it on cap-and-trade or other measures of sustainability. Apocalyptic but nebulous risks like climate change seldom resonate even in normal times. But especially with
everything going on in America right now, it's just not on the list. We might not like that, but that doesn't make it any less true. It's like Julian Simon put it: "No food, one problem. Much food, many problems." Climate change is the concern of people who aren't worried about where
their next paycheck is coming from, where they are going to live after they lose their house, or how they are going to feed their kids.


Bill Clinton was right: It's the economy, stupid. Urbanists prattle on about sustainability all the time as if the last few years didn't even happen. No wonder it's not working. And because pretty much all urbanist policies have been sold on sustainability, there's a
linkage in the public's mind, so that if they don't believe in climate change or don't rate it highly in favor of more immediate concerns, that takes urbanism down with it.


The good news is, it doesn't have to be that way. With better packaging, I believe there is a case for pro-urbanist policies -- one that can work with the times and the trends instead of against them. Some people will never be converted. But I'm convinced there are a lot more people who would be open to various environmental and urbanist ideas if we talked about their practical benefits rather than how they are good for the
planet (even if they are).


Delinking conservation from sustainability


Back in the early 1980's my father ran a freon packaging plant. They took in bulk freon in rail cars and put it into smaller cylinders for the marketplace. When he came in, a lot of excess freon from the packaging process was simply blown off into the atmosphere. Now, my dad's
not exactly a staunch environmentalist, nor was the ozone hole even on the radar then. But he calculated how much money they were losing from wasting all that product, and decided to install recapture equipment to eliminate the blow-off. It didn't require any environmental consciousness. Eliminating waste was simply good business.


Similarly, at my old company, we talked about sustainability a lot. But what we talked about a lot more was cutting costs. Reducing our office space footprint, encouraging telecommuting, going paperless where possible, installing high end
"telepresence" videoconferencing to reduce executive travel -- all reduced the firm's environmental footprint a lot. But they also saved beaucoup dollars for the shareholders.


In an era of belt-tightening, why not play up the money-saving angle of conservation? After all, wasting all this stuff costs a lot money -- money many of us don't have. There's a real business case to be made here.


If I were mayor of a city, I'd be targeting my green message not at the sustainability-urbanist axis, but the taxpayers, making sure they know how much money I'm saving them. That's the kind of green that resonates with them right now.


New York's positive livability message


When it comes to transportation policy and urban livability, New York City is setting the bar from a policy and action perspective. But they're also doing it from a communications standpoint. I'll show here again this great video on New York's quality of life agenda.





Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Janette Sadik-Khan, and others don't bury their environmental goals in the sand. She says the goal is to make New York "the greatest, greenest city in the world," and they do talk about taking space away from cars.


But the clear focus is the benefit to New Yorkers. Not only is the imagery great, so are the talking points, stressing quality of life-- "We really try to focus on things that improve the quality of our lives today" (Bloomberg) -- safety (traffic fatalities down 20 percent since PlaNYC released, pedestrian safety improved by 60 percent in Times Square since
closing Broadway), better services (reduced bus boarding times, faster bus speeds), the benefits to business -- "Our agenda is to unclog our streets so commerce doesn't get stifled" (Bloomberg), and the fact that businesses are pleased (sales are up) now that Times Square has been reconfigured -- and the inclusive nature of the improvements -- "It's not just for the spandexed and the brave. It's for moms, dads, kids, everyone" (bike planner).


A recent article on Sadik-Khan in the Guardian reinforces the messaging:



Congestion -- sclerotic city arteries clogged with traffic -- is economically inefficient, ergo making mass transit work serves the city's economy. Since 96 percent of Wall Street's workforce goes to the office by subway, bus, boat, bike, or on foot, keeping the city moving and
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More good marketing messages


New York isn't alone in spreading the good news about practical benefits of these policies. If you ever get to hear Washington, D.C. planning chief Harriet Tregoning talk, she's got a ton of evidence about how that city's approach has paid off. For example, even during the recession, D.C. sales tax collections have been going up. Now, obviously in the nation's capital there are always unique dynamics, but that blows me away.


Tregoning's also been working hard to marshal statistics to help make business even better. For example, a lot of national retailers rely on traffic counts to decide where to locate stores. But in the city, there may be huge numbers of people passing by on foot or in buses that aren't
getting picked up by that measure. So they are working diligently to find ways to gather data to give a more accurate picture of demand to retailers. That's the intersection of urbanism and business.


There are also sorts of fiscal benefits that can be talked up. As I like to say, "less lanes is less money." Why spend money on more concrete for cars than you actually need by over-designing for peak of the peak and such?


I was also stunned to read in Streetsblog that all New York's current bicycle initiatives combined only cost $8.8 million -- and only $2 million of that came from the city's budget. As bike commuting has doubled since 2006, albeit on a low base, it's tough to imagine any expenditure that could be more cost efficient or have a higher return on investment than that.


Let's face it, most municipalities and states are broke right now. Low-cost, fast, high-impact changes like NYC's public plaza program and pedestrian/bike improvements are clearly the way to go. We can't afford anything else. In the short term especially, the pedestrian and bicycle need to be at the core of the transport policy for any city that hopes to have a fiscal future.


There's a lot more where this came from. I think this is the type of thing that needs to inform our arguments to a much great extent going forward. As Jarrett Walker said over at Human Transit, let's not talk about "coercion". Let's stop talking about what we want people to give up, and about how we have to do this or that to "save the planet." Instead, let's talk
about why it's just plain a good idea to do anyway. Let's defend our policy prescriptions on their own merits -- because I'm convinced they can stand on their own two feet.


More goodness from Munich


I'll leave you with another video. Copenhagenize pointed me at this video out of Munich, talking about marketing bicycling to help build the bicycle culture in that city. They want to produce something that inspires an emotional connection, that gets people to experience the
"joy of cycling." Marketing isn't all just about dry facts and figures, though that's what I stressed in this post. This short piece talks about how Munich developed their sales approach.





















This handy map from Pleated Jeans turns USA stats into a cartographic parade of obesity, corruption and gonorrhea. It’s ugly, and not just in North Dakota. Alaska’s damn dreadful though, huh? (Sorry Yanks, no refunds!) Best case scenario, you weasel in between porny Utah and cokey Colorado and stay put. And then there’s New York’s terrible problem of… daily commute average of 30.6 minutes? Really? That’s our biggest problem?


Let’s all laugh at these guys now:


Rationale and statistics


Most stats taken from America’s Health Rankings and Census.gov (unless otherwise noted).

1. Alabama: highest rate of stroke (3.8 percent) (tied with Oklahoma)

2. Alaska: highest suicide rate (23.6 suicides per 100,000 people in 2004)

3. Arizona: highest rate of alcoholism

4. Arkansas: worst average credit score (636)

5. California: most air pollution (15.2 micrograms per cubic meter)

6. Colorado: highest rate of cocaine use per capita (3.9 percent total population)

7. Connecticut: highest rate of breast cancer

8. Delaware: highest abortion rate (27 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44)

9. Florida: highest rate of identity theft (122.3 reports per 100,000 people)

10. Georgia: sickly based on highest rate of influenza

11. Hawaii – highest cost of living (tied with California)

12. Idaho – lowest level of Congressional clout

13. Illinois: highest rate of robbery (284.7 incidences per 100,000 people)

14. Indiana: rated the most environmentally unfriendly by NMI solutions

15. Iowa: highest percentage of people age 85 and older (1.8 percent) (tied with three other states)

16. Kansas: poorest health based on highest average number of limited activity days per month (3.5 days)

17. Kentucky: most cancer deaths (227 per 100,000 people) (BONUS fact: Kentucky also has the highest rate of tobacco smokers – 25.6 percent)

18. Louisiana: highest rate of gonorrhea (264.4 reported cases per 100,000 people)

19. Maine: dumbest state claim based on lowest average SAT score (1389)

20. Maryland: highest rate of AIDS diagnosis (27.6 people per 100,000 people)

21. Massachusetts: worst drivers claim based on highest rate of auto accidents

22. Michigan: highest unemployment rate (13.6 percent)

23. Minnesota: highest number of reported tornadoes (123 in 2010)

24. Mississippi: highest rate of obesity (35.3 percent of total population)BONUS facts: Mississippi ranks last in the most number of categories. These include highest rate of child poverty (31.9 percent), highest rate of infant mortality (10.3 percent) lowest median household income ($35,078), highest teen birth rate (71.9 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19) and highest overall rate of STDs.

25. Missouri: highest rate of bankruptcy (700 out of every 100,000 people)

26. Montana: highest rate of drunk driving deaths (1.12 deaths per 100 million miles driven)

27. Nebraska: highest rate of women murdered annually

28. Nevada: highest rate violent crime (702.2 offenses per 100,000 people). BONUS fact: Nevada also has the highest rate of foreclosure (one in 99 houses)

29. New Hampshire: highest rate of corporate taxes

30. New Jersey: highest rate of citizen taxation (11.8 percent)

31. New Mexico: antisocial claim based on lowest ranking in social heath policies

32. New York: longest average daily commute (30.6 minutes)

33. North Carolina: lowest average teacher salary

34. North Dakota: ranked last in ugliest residents report as chosen by The Daily Beast

35. Ohio: nerdiest state claim based on highest number of library visits per capita (6.9)

36. Oklahoma: highest rate of female incarceration

37. Oregon: highest rate of long-term homeless people

38. Pennsylvania: highest rate of arson deaths (55.56 annually)

39. Rhode Island: highest rate of illicit drug use (12.5 percent of population)

40. South Carolina: highest percentage of mobile homes (18.8 percent)

41. South Dakota: highest rate of forcible rape 76.5 per 100,000

42. Tennessee: chosen most corrupt state by The Daily Beast

43. Texas: lowest high school graduation rate (78.3 percent)

44. Utah: highest rate of of online porn subscriptions

45. Vermont: infertility claim based on lowest birth rate of any state (10.6 births per 1,000) (tied with Maine)

46. Virginia: highest number of alcohol-related motorcyle deaths

47. Washington: most cases of bestiality (4 reported in 2010)

48. West Virginia: highest rate of heart attack (6.5 percent of population)

49. Wisconsin: highest rate of binge drinking (23.2 percent of population)

50. Wyoming: highest rate of deadly car crashes (24.6 deaths per 100,000)









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Cross-posted from The Urbanophile.


I recently had the privilege of seeing Jan Gehl, godfather of Copenhagen's bicycle network and a consultant to New York City and many others, speak. He was beyond awesome, but one thing that really stuck with me was how he got the tone completely right. One of his observations about how they transformed Copenhagen was, "We never talked about taking away things from people. We only talked about what they were going to get."


This is a lesson too seldom heeded by urbanists, who almost seem to define themselves as much in terms of what they are against as in terms of what they are for. The anti-car rhetoric immediately comes to mind. All these urbanist things we want to do are talked about in terms of cars all the time. But what's that got to do with it? If these are good policies, and have all sorts of benefits for citizens, why can't we talk about that? Why don't we defend our proposals on their own merits?


Carol Coletta of CEOs for Cities has a great saying that "eat your spinach" marketing doesn't work. Coletta's group has been working for a while now to try to create a new vision of the American dream, one rooted in a more urban context -- a vision that would do for the city lifestyle what the GM
Futurama exhibit did for the suburban, auto-based one. It's a hugely important initiative, and one that we should all seek to emulate.


Moving beyond sustainability


Nothing has done more to hurt the urbanist cause than it becoming almost inseparably linked to the notion of "sustainability" and climate change. Sustainability has become almost a shibboleth of the right-thinking urbanist. Architects, planners, politicians, journalists, and more all try to outdo each other with ever more rhetoric about radical transformations and grandiose, even-science fictiony visions of the future low-carbon world. These might score points with the inside crowd, but they don't impress the average member of the public all that much. Quite the opposite, in many cases.


Right now in America, millions of people are out of work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has had to invent new categories of long-term unemployment to measure the scale of the problem. Ben Bernanke just said it might be five years before employment normalizes. More than 43 million people -- one out of every seven in America -- are on food stamps. That's about the population of the entire country of Spain. State and local governments are broke. Our local social safety nets are getting shredded as they cut back. The federal government is drowning in debt. Millions of people are or soon will be in foreclosure. Many more are underwater on their homes. People are hurting out there.


Against this backdrop, it should come as no surprise that Americans have roundly shown that they ain't buyin' it on cap-and-trade or other measures of sustainability. Apocalyptic but nebulous risks like climate change seldom resonate even in normal times. But especially with
everything going on in America right now, it's just not on the list. We might not like that, but that doesn't make it any less true. It's like Julian Simon put it: "No food, one problem. Much food, many problems." Climate change is the concern of people who aren't worried about where
their next paycheck is coming from, where they are going to live after they lose their house, or how they are going to feed their kids.


Bill Clinton was right: It's the economy, stupid. Urbanists prattle on about sustainability all the time as if the last few years didn't even happen. No wonder it's not working. And because pretty much all urbanist policies have been sold on sustainability, there's a
linkage in the public's mind, so that if they don't believe in climate change or don't rate it highly in favor of more immediate concerns, that takes urbanism down with it.


The good news is, it doesn't have to be that way. With better packaging, I believe there is a case for pro-urbanist policies -- one that can work with the times and the trends instead of against them. Some people will never be converted. But I'm convinced there are a lot more people who would be open to various environmental and urbanist ideas if we talked about their practical benefits rather than how they are good for the
planet (even if they are).


Delinking conservation from sustainability


Back in the early 1980's my father ran a freon packaging plant. They took in bulk freon in rail cars and put it into smaller cylinders for the marketplace. When he came in, a lot of excess freon from the packaging process was simply blown off into the atmosphere. Now, my dad's
not exactly a staunch environmentalist, nor was the ozone hole even on the radar then. But he calculated how much money they were losing from wasting all that product, and decided to install recapture equipment to eliminate the blow-off. It didn't require any environmental consciousness. Eliminating waste was simply good business.


Similarly, at my old company, we talked about sustainability a lot. But what we talked about a lot more was cutting costs. Reducing our office space footprint, encouraging telecommuting, going paperless where possible, installing high end
"telepresence" videoconferencing to reduce executive travel -- all reduced the firm's environmental footprint a lot. But they also saved beaucoup dollars for the shareholders.


In an era of belt-tightening, why not play up the money-saving angle of conservation? After all, wasting all this stuff costs a lot money -- money many of us don't have. There's a real business case to be made here.


If I were mayor of a city, I'd be targeting my green message not at the sustainability-urbanist axis, but the taxpayers, making sure they know how much money I'm saving them. That's the kind of green that resonates with them right now.


New York's positive livability message


When it comes to transportation policy and urban livability, New York City is setting the bar from a policy and action perspective. But they're also doing it from a communications standpoint. I'll show here again this great video on New York's quality of life agenda.





Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Janette Sadik-Khan, and others don't bury their environmental goals in the sand. She says the goal is to make New York "the greatest, greenest city in the world," and they do talk about taking space away from cars.


But the clear focus is the benefit to New Yorkers. Not only is the imagery great, so are the talking points, stressing quality of life-- "We really try to focus on things that improve the quality of our lives today" (Bloomberg) -- safety (traffic fatalities down 20 percent since PlaNYC released, pedestrian safety improved by 60 percent in Times Square since
closing Broadway), better services (reduced bus boarding times, faster bus speeds), the benefits to business -- "Our agenda is to unclog our streets so commerce doesn't get stifled" (Bloomberg), and the fact that businesses are pleased (sales are up) now that Times Square has been reconfigured -- and the inclusive nature of the improvements -- "It's not just for the spandexed and the brave. It's for moms, dads, kids, everyone" (bike planner).


A recent article on Sadik-Khan in the Guardian reinforces the messaging:



Congestion -- sclerotic city arteries clogged with traffic -- is economically inefficient, ergo making mass transit work serves the city's economy. Since 96 percent of Wall Street's workforce goes to the office by subway, bus, boat, bike, or on foot, keeping the city moving and
making it prosperous are of a piece ... "The goal has been moving as many people as possible as quickly as possible -- and safely," she says. "Re-engineering streets is about re-imagining streetscapes, but it's also about making streets safer." ... "What we've found is that we've not
only achieved a 50 percent reduction in cyclist injuries where we have these lanes, but a 40 percent cut in all injuries because of the pedestrian refuge islands," she says.



More good marketing messages


New York isn't alone in spreading the good news about practical benefits of these policies. If you ever get to hear Washington, D.C. planning chief Harriet Tregoning talk, she's got a ton of evidence about how that city's approach has paid off. For example, even during the recession, D.C. sales tax collections have been going up. Now, obviously in the nation's capital there are always unique dynamics, but that blows me away.


Tregoning's also been working hard to marshal statistics to help make business even better. For example, a lot of national retailers rely on traffic counts to decide where to locate stores. But in the city, there may be huge numbers of people passing by on foot or in buses that aren't
getting picked up by that measure. So they are working diligently to find ways to gather data to give a more accurate picture of demand to retailers. That's the intersection of urbanism and business.


There are also sorts of fiscal benefits that can be talked up. As I like to say, "less lanes is less money." Why spend money on more concrete for cars than you actually need by over-designing for peak of the peak and such?


I was also stunned to read in Streetsblog that all New York's current bicycle initiatives combined only cost $8.8 million -- and only $2 million of that came from the city's budget. As bike commuting has doubled since 2006, albeit on a low base, it's tough to imagine any expenditure that could be more cost efficient or have a higher return on investment than that.


Let's face it, most municipalities and states are broke right now. Low-cost, fast, high-impact changes like NYC's public plaza program and pedestrian/bike improvements are clearly the way to go. We can't afford anything else. In the short term especially, the pedestrian and bicycle need to be at the core of the transport policy for any city that hopes to have a fiscal future.


There's a lot more where this came from. I think this is the type of thing that needs to inform our arguments to a much great extent going forward. As Jarrett Walker said over at Human Transit, let's not talk about "coercion". Let's stop talking about what we want people to give up, and about how we have to do this or that to "save the planet." Instead, let's talk
about why it's just plain a good idea to do anyway. Let's defend our policy prescriptions on their own merits -- because I'm convinced they can stand on their own two feet.


More goodness from Munich


I'll leave you with another video. Copenhagenize pointed me at this video out of Munich, talking about marketing bicycling to help build the bicycle culture in that city. They want to produce something that inspires an emotional connection, that gets people to experience the
"joy of cycling." Marketing isn't all just about dry facts and figures, though that's what I stressed in this post. This short piece talks about how Munich developed their sales approach.





















This handy map from Pleated Jeans turns USA stats into a cartographic parade of obesity, corruption and gonorrhea. It’s ugly, and not just in North Dakota. Alaska’s damn dreadful though, huh? (Sorry Yanks, no refunds!) Best case scenario, you weasel in between porny Utah and cokey Colorado and stay put. And then there’s New York’s terrible problem of… daily commute average of 30.6 minutes? Really? That’s our biggest problem?


Let’s all laugh at these guys now:


Rationale and statistics


Most stats taken from America’s Health Rankings and Census.gov (unless otherwise noted).

1. Alabama: highest rate of stroke (3.8 percent) (tied with Oklahoma)

2. Alaska: highest suicide rate (23.6 suicides per 100,000 people in 2004)

3. Arizona: highest rate of alcoholism

4. Arkansas: worst average credit score (636)

5. California: most air pollution (15.2 micrograms per cubic meter)

6. Colorado: highest rate of cocaine use per capita (3.9 percent total population)

7. Connecticut: highest rate of breast cancer

8. Delaware: highest abortion rate (27 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44)

9. Florida: highest rate of identity theft (122.3 reports per 100,000 people)

10. Georgia: sickly based on highest rate of influenza

11. Hawaii – highest cost of living (tied with California)

12. Idaho – lowest level of Congressional clout

13. Illinois: highest rate of robbery (284.7 incidences per 100,000 people)

14. Indiana: rated the most environmentally unfriendly by NMI solutions

15. Iowa: highest percentage of people age 85 and older (1.8 percent) (tied with three other states)

16. Kansas: poorest health based on highest average number of limited activity days per month (3.5 days)

17. Kentucky: most cancer deaths (227 per 100,000 people) (BONUS fact: Kentucky also has the highest rate of tobacco smokers – 25.6 percent)

18. Louisiana: highest rate of gonorrhea (264.4 reported cases per 100,000 people)

19. Maine: dumbest state claim based on lowest average SAT score (1389)

20. Maryland: highest rate of AIDS diagnosis (27.6 people per 100,000 people)

21. Massachusetts: worst drivers claim based on highest rate of auto accidents

22. Michigan: highest unemployment rate (13.6 percent)

23. Minnesota: highest number of reported tornadoes (123 in 2010)

24. Mississippi: highest rate of obesity (35.3 percent of total population)BONUS facts: Mississippi ranks last in the most number of categories. These include highest rate of child poverty (31.9 percent), highest rate of infant mortality (10.3 percent) lowest median household income ($35,078), highest teen birth rate (71.9 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19) and highest overall rate of STDs.

25. Missouri: highest rate of bankruptcy (700 out of every 100,000 people)

26. Montana: highest rate of drunk driving deaths (1.12 deaths per 100 million miles driven)

27. Nebraska: highest rate of women murdered annually

28. Nevada: highest rate violent crime (702.2 offenses per 100,000 people). BONUS fact: Nevada also has the highest rate of foreclosure (one in 99 houses)

29. New Hampshire: highest rate of corporate taxes

30. New Jersey: highest rate of citizen taxation (11.8 percent)

31. New Mexico: antisocial claim based on lowest ranking in social heath policies

32. New York: longest average daily commute (30.6 minutes)

33. North Carolina: lowest average teacher salary

34. North Dakota: ranked last in ugliest residents report as chosen by The Daily Beast

35. Ohio: nerdiest state claim based on highest number of library visits per capita (6.9)

36. Oklahoma: highest rate of female incarceration

37. Oregon: highest rate of long-term homeless people

38. Pennsylvania: highest rate of arson deaths (55.56 annually)

39. Rhode Island: highest rate of illicit drug use (12.5 percent of population)

40. South Carolina: highest percentage of mobile homes (18.8 percent)

41. South Dakota: highest rate of forcible rape 76.5 per 100,000

42. Tennessee: chosen most corrupt state by The Daily Beast

43. Texas: lowest high school graduation rate (78.3 percent)

44. Utah: highest rate of of online porn subscriptions

45. Vermont: infertility claim based on lowest birth rate of any state (10.6 births per 1,000) (tied with Maine)

46. Virginia: highest number of alcohol-related motorcyle deaths

47. Washington: most cases of bestiality (4 reported in 2010)

48. West Virginia: highest rate of heart attack (6.5 percent of population)

49. Wisconsin: highest rate of binge drinking (23.2 percent of population)

50. Wyoming: highest rate of deadly car crashes (24.6 deaths per 100,000)









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Cross-posted from The Urbanophile.


I recently had the privilege of seeing Jan Gehl, godfather of Copenhagen's bicycle network and a consultant to New York City and many others, speak. He was beyond awesome, but one thing that really stuck with me was how he got the tone completely right. One of his observations about how they transformed Copenhagen was, "We never talked about taking away things from people. We only talked about what they were going to get."


This is a lesson too seldom heeded by urbanists, who almost seem to define themselves as much in terms of what they are against as in terms of what they are for. The anti-car rhetoric immediately comes to mind. All these urbanist things we want to do are talked about in terms of cars all the time. But what's that got to do with it? If these are good policies, and have all sorts of benefits for citizens, why can't we talk about that? Why don't we defend our proposals on their own merits?


Carol Coletta of CEOs for Cities has a great saying that "eat your spinach" marketing doesn't work. Coletta's group has been working for a while now to try to create a new vision of the American dream, one rooted in a more urban context -- a vision that would do for the city lifestyle what the GM
Futurama exhibit did for the suburban, auto-based one. It's a hugely important initiative, and one that we should all seek to emulate.


Moving beyond sustainability


Nothing has done more to hurt the urbanist cause than it becoming almost inseparably linked to the notion of "sustainability" and climate change. Sustainability has become almost a shibboleth of the right-thinking urbanist. Architects, planners, politicians, journalists, and more all try to outdo each other with ever more rhetoric about radical transformations and grandiose, even-science fictiony visions of the future low-carbon world. These might score points with the inside crowd, but they don't impress the average member of the public all that much. Quite the opposite, in many cases.


Right now in America, millions of people are out of work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has had to invent new categories of long-term unemployment to measure the scale of the problem. Ben Bernanke just said it might be five years before employment normalizes. More than 43 million people -- one out of every seven in America -- are on food stamps. That's about the population of the entire country of Spain. State and local governments are broke. Our local social safety nets are getting shredded as they cut back. The federal government is drowning in debt. Millions of people are or soon will be in foreclosure. Many more are underwater on their homes. People are hurting out there.


Against this backdrop, it should come as no surprise that Americans have roundly shown that they ain't buyin' it on cap-and-trade or other measures of sustainability. Apocalyptic but nebulous risks like climate change seldom resonate even in normal times. But especially with
everything going on in America right now, it's just not on the list. We might not like that, but that doesn't make it any less true. It's like Julian Simon put it: "No food, one problem. Much food, many problems." Climate change is the concern of people who aren't worried about where
their next paycheck is coming from, where they are going to live after they lose their house, or how they are going to feed their kids.


Bill Clinton was right: It's the economy, stupid. Urbanists prattle on about sustainability all the time as if the last few years didn't even happen. No wonder it's not working. And because pretty much all urbanist policies have been sold on sustainability, there's a
linkage in the public's mind, so that if they don't believe in climate change or don't rate it highly in favor of more immediate concerns, that takes urbanism down with it.


The good news is, it doesn't have to be that way. With better packaging, I believe there is a case for pro-urbanist policies -- one that can work with the times and the trends instead of against them. Some people will never be converted. But I'm convinced there are a lot more people who would be open to various environmental and urbanist ideas if we talked about their practical benefits rather than how they are good for the
planet (even if they are).


Delinking conservation from sustainability


Back in the early 1980's my father ran a freon packaging plant. They took in bulk freon in rail cars and put it into smaller cylinders for the marketplace. When he came in, a lot of excess freon from the packaging process was simply blown off into the atmosphere. Now, my dad's
not exactly a staunch environmentalist, nor was the ozone hole even on the radar then. But he calculated how much money they were losing from wasting all that product, and decided to install recapture equipment to eliminate the blow-off. It didn't require any environmental consciousness. Eliminating waste was simply good business.


Similarly, at my old company, we talked about sustainability a lot. But what we talked about a lot more was cutting costs. Reducing our office space footprint, encouraging telecommuting, going paperless where possible, installing high end
"telepresence" videoconferencing to reduce executive travel -- all reduced the firm's environmental footprint a lot. But they also saved beaucoup dollars for the shareholders.


In an era of belt-tightening, why not play up the money-saving angle of conservation? After all, wasting all this stuff costs a lot money -- money many of us don't have. There's a real business case to be made here.


If I were mayor of a city, I'd be targeting my green message not at the sustainability-urbanist axis, but the taxpayers, making sure they know how much money I'm saving them. That's the kind of green that resonates with them right now.


New York's positive livability message


When it comes to transportation policy and urban livability, New York City is setting the bar from a policy and action perspective. But they're also doing it from a communications standpoint. I'll show here again this great video on New York's quality of life agenda.





Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Janette Sadik-Khan, and others don't bury their environmental goals in the sand. She says the goal is to make New York "the greatest, greenest city in the world," and they do talk about taking space away from cars.


But the clear focus is the benefit to New Yorkers. Not only is the imagery great, so are the talking points, stressing quality of life-- "We really try to focus on things that improve the quality of our lives today" (Bloomberg) -- safety (traffic fatalities down 20 percent since PlaNYC released, pedestrian safety improved by 60 percent in Times Square since
closing Broadway), better services (reduced bus boarding times, faster bus speeds), the benefits to business -- "Our agenda is to unclog our streets so commerce doesn't get stifled" (Bloomberg), and the fact that businesses are pleased (sales are up) now that Times Square has been reconfigured -- and the inclusive nature of the improvements -- "It's not just for the spandexed and the brave. It's for moms, dads, kids, everyone" (bike planner).


A recent article on Sadik-Khan in the Guardian reinforces the messaging:



Congestion -- sclerotic city arteries clogged with traffic -- is economically inefficient, ergo making mass transit work serves the city's economy. Since 96 percent of Wall Street's workforce goes to the office by subway, bus, boat, bike, or on foot, keeping the city moving and
making it prosperous are of a piece ... "The goal has been moving as many people as possible as quickly as possible -- and safely," she says. "Re-engineering streets is about re-imagining streetscapes, but it's also about making streets safer." ... "What we've found is that we've not
only achieved a 50 percent reduction in cyclist injuries where we have these lanes, but a 40 percent cut in all injuries because of the pedestrian refuge islands," she says.



More good marketing messages


New York isn't alone in spreading the good news about practical benefits of these policies. If you ever get to hear Washington, D.C. planning chief Harriet Tregoning talk, she's got a ton of evidence about how that city's approach has paid off. For example, even during the recession, D.C. sales tax collections have been going up. Now, obviously in the nation's capital there are always unique dynamics, but that blows me away.


Tregoning's also been working hard to marshal statistics to help make business even better. For example, a lot of national retailers rely on traffic counts to decide where to locate stores. But in the city, there may be huge numbers of people passing by on foot or in buses that aren't
getting picked up by that measure. So they are working diligently to find ways to gather data to give a more accurate picture of demand to retailers. That's the intersection of urbanism and business.


There are also sorts of fiscal benefits that can be talked up. As I like to say, "less lanes is less money." Why spend money on more concrete for cars than you actually need by over-designing for peak of the peak and such?


I was also stunned to read in Streetsblog that all New York's current bicycle initiatives combined only cost $8.8 million -- and only $2 million of that came from the city's budget. As bike commuting has doubled since 2006, albeit on a low base, it's tough to imagine any expenditure that could be more cost efficient or have a higher return on investment than that.


Let's face it, most municipalities and states are broke right now. Low-cost, fast, high-impact changes like NYC's public plaza program and pedestrian/bike improvements are clearly the way to go. We can't afford anything else. In the short term especially, the pedestrian and bicycle need to be at the core of the transport policy for any city that hopes to have a fiscal future.


There's a lot more where this came from. I think this is the type of thing that needs to inform our arguments to a much great extent going forward. As Jarrett Walker said over at Human Transit, let's not talk about "coercion". Let's stop talking about what we want people to give up, and about how we have to do this or that to "save the planet." Instead, let's talk
about why it's just plain a good idea to do anyway. Let's defend our policy prescriptions on their own merits -- because I'm convinced they can stand on their own two feet.


More goodness from Munich


I'll leave you with another video. Copenhagenize pointed me at this video out of Munich, talking about marketing bicycling to help build the bicycle culture in that city. They want to produce something that inspires an emotional connection, that gets people to experience the
"joy of cycling." Marketing isn't all just about dry facts and figures, though that's what I stressed in this post. This short piece talks about how Munich developed their sales approach.





















This handy map from Pleated Jeans turns USA stats into a cartographic parade of obesity, corruption and gonorrhea. It’s ugly, and not just in North Dakota. Alaska’s damn dreadful though, huh? (Sorry Yanks, no refunds!) Best case scenario, you weasel in between porny Utah and cokey Colorado and stay put. And then there’s New York’s terrible problem of… daily commute average of 30.6 minutes? Really? That’s our biggest problem?


Let’s all laugh at these guys now:


Rationale and statistics


Most stats taken from America’s Health Rankings and Census.gov (unless otherwise noted).

1. Alabama: highest rate of stroke (3.8 percent) (tied with Oklahoma)

2. Alaska: highest suicide rate (23.6 suicides per 100,000 people in 2004)

3. Arizona: highest rate of alcoholism

4. Arkansas: worst average credit score (636)

5. California: most air pollution (15.2 micrograms per cubic meter)

6. Colorado: highest rate of cocaine use per capita (3.9 percent total population)

7. Connecticut: highest rate of breast cancer

8. Delaware: highest abortion rate (27 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44)

9. Florida: highest rate of identity theft (122.3 reports per 100,000 people)

10. Georgia: sickly based on highest rate of influenza

11. Hawaii – highest cost of living (tied with California)

12. Idaho – lowest level of Congressional clout

13. Illinois: highest rate of robbery (284.7 incidences per 100,000 people)

14. Indiana: rated the most environmentally unfriendly by NMI solutions

15. Iowa: highest percentage of people age 85 and older (1.8 percent) (tied with three other states)

16. Kansas: poorest health based on highest average number of limited activity days per month (3.5 days)

17. Kentucky: most cancer deaths (227 per 100,000 people) (BONUS fact: Kentucky also has the highest rate of tobacco smokers – 25.6 percent)

18. Louisiana: highest rate of gonorrhea (264.4 reported cases per 100,000 people)

19. Maine: dumbest state claim based on lowest average SAT score (1389)

20. Maryland: highest rate of AIDS diagnosis (27.6 people per 100,000 people)

21. Massachusetts: worst drivers claim based on highest rate of auto accidents

22. Michigan: highest unemployment rate (13.6 percent)

23. Minnesota: highest number of reported tornadoes (123 in 2010)

24. Mississippi: highest rate of obesity (35.3 percent of total population)BONUS facts: Mississippi ranks last in the most number of categories. These include highest rate of child poverty (31.9 percent), highest rate of infant mortality (10.3 percent) lowest median household income ($35,078), highest teen birth rate (71.9 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19) and highest overall rate of STDs.

25. Missouri: highest rate of bankruptcy (700 out of every 100,000 people)

26. Montana: highest rate of drunk driving deaths (1.12 deaths per 100 million miles driven)

27. Nebraska: highest rate of women murdered annually

28. Nevada: highest rate violent crime (702.2 offenses per 100,000 people). BONUS fact: Nevada also has the highest rate of foreclosure (one in 99 houses)

29. New Hampshire: highest rate of corporate taxes

30. New Jersey: highest rate of citizen taxation (11.8 percent)

31. New Mexico: antisocial claim based on lowest ranking in social heath policies

32. New York: longest average daily commute (30.6 minutes)

33. North Carolina: lowest average teacher salary

34. North Dakota: ranked last in ugliest residents report as chosen by The Daily Beast

35. Ohio: nerdiest state claim based on highest number of library visits per capita (6.9)

36. Oklahoma: highest rate of female incarceration

37. Oregon: highest rate of long-term homeless people

38. Pennsylvania: highest rate of arson deaths (55.56 annually)

39. Rhode Island: highest rate of illicit drug use (12.5 percent of population)

40. South Carolina: highest percentage of mobile homes (18.8 percent)

41. South Dakota: highest rate of forcible rape 76.5 per 100,000

42. Tennessee: chosen most corrupt state by The Daily Beast

43. Texas: lowest high school graduation rate (78.3 percent)

44. Utah: highest rate of of online porn subscriptions

45. Vermont: infertility claim based on lowest birth rate of any state (10.6 births per 1,000) (tied with Maine)

46. Virginia: highest number of alcohol-related motorcyle deaths

47. Washington: most cases of bestiality (4 reported in 2010)

48. West Virginia: highest rate of heart attack (6.5 percent of population)

49. Wisconsin: highest rate of binge drinking (23.2 percent of population)

50. Wyoming: highest rate of deadly car crashes (24.6 deaths per 100,000)









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It's taking banks so longer and longer to process home foreclosures. What does this mean for foreclosure clean up business owners? When the flood gates open, foreclosure cleaning and real estate services companies are going to be busier than ever.

Following is an explanation of how and why.

Home Foreclosures: How Long Does It Take a Bank to Foreclose?

The time period from when formal home foreclosure takes place varies by state. Some states have a grace period of 30 days; others can take as long as six months. But, these are in normal times. Right now, we're in anything but normal times.

It's taking banks in states with high home foreclosure rates (eg, Florida, Georgia, California, Nevada, etc.) as long as six or nine months to even get around to even dealing with a property and processing it as an official foreclosure.

Home Foreclosures: The "Sign" (or Not) of the Times

Usually, when a home is foreclosed on, soon after the residents depart, you'll see a realtor's "For Sale" sign in the yard. Or, a bank "Foreclosure for Sale" sign. Or at the very least some kind of lock box on the door to secure the property.

Nowadays, it's not uncommon for a property to sit empty -- with none of the above present -- for months on end.

This probably means that the bank/lender hasn't gotten around to officially foreclosing on the property because once they do, they assign it to a realtor to be fixed up and ready to be marketed again (eg, put up for sale or lease).

When you consider the latest home foreclosure statistics, this makes perfect sense. According to RealtyTrac, a leading site for home foreclosure information, U.S. foreclosure filings may hit a record 1.8 million by the first half of the year (2009).

Foreclosure Cleanup and Real Estate Cleaning Firms Poised to Capitalize

Once banks get their policies and procedures in place, foreclosure clean up and real estate services firms are poised to capitalize.

Right now, banks are just struggling to deal with the tsunami of paperwork required to process a foreclosure. This leaves little time for vetting companies to deal with what happens after this process is done, eg, getting a property ready to go back on the market again.

Want Foreclosure Clean Up Contracts? Get Official

Man-with-a-van-type operations won't cut it. Banks and other lenders will be looking for companies that have the proper licensing and insurance, at the very least. In essence, they will be looking to hand out foreclosure clean up contracts and other real-estate-related services to "official" companies.

Many communities have federal dollars that have come in/are coming in to specifically help neighborhoods recover from the home foreclosure crisis.

Those foreclosure clean up companies (and real estate services firms) who have their "ducks in a row," so to speak, will be the ones to capitalize.



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