Wednesday, October 27, 2010

how to budget personal finances

First things first, the good folks over at Corrente are having a fundraising drive. Please go over and give 'em some cash to help 'em stay afloat. Now, onto business:


While things look pretty bleak in America, we can take comfort from the fact that we aren't alone in letting our economy get looted by multinational financial institutions. In Ireland, where eyes are doing anything but smiling, things are getting really dire:


The cost of bailing out the Republic of Ireland's stricken banks has risen to 45bn euro (£39bn), opening a huge hole in the Irish government's finances.


Oh. That sounds bad.


The increased cost will see the government run a budget deficit equivalent to 32% of GDP this year.


Yeah, that's pretty bad. But how much will this hurt Seamus Average?


Mr Lenihan defended the cost of the bail-out measures, which will cost the Republic's two million taxpayers the equivalent of 22,500 euros each


Holy crap! And the Irish have already implemented austerity measures to raise taxes and cut public services. Does this mean they'll have to do even more of that to pay for yet another massive bank bailout? Why, yes it does:


Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan today warned that further austerity measures will have to be imposed after the Central Bank revealed the total cost of the bailout for Irish banks will be almost €50 billion.


Speaking separately, Taoiseach Brian Cowen refused to rule out further tax increases in the forthcoming Budget and said "revenue raising" options would be required as well as spending cuts in the Budget, which is due to take place in December.


Speaking on RTE radio at lunchtime, Mr Cowen refused to outline how much would have to be found through austerity measures.


Ireland, then, is becoming a feudal state where people are taxed not to pay for police, fire departments, schools, hospitals or pensions. Instead they're taxed to bail out failed financial institutions. And what's more, they're having their taxes increased to bail out failed financial institutions. The banks are the feudal lords living in castles and the taxpayers are the serfs.


But hey, some people are happy about this charming turn of events! Here's Danny McCoy, the director-general at the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (which I gather is their version of the Chamber of Commerce):


The announcement of the final scale of its bank rescue plan concludes a month in which the troubles of Ireland’s economy have again been centre stage. Rating agencies and analysts have questioned the capacity of our small economy to cope with its emerging debt. Ireland has also become a test bed for state recovery strategies, including the introduction of austerity measures and the resolution of complex banking problems.


Thursday’s figures reveal the undeniably high, but manageable, costs of the domestic bank bail-out. The one-off impact is to push the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product to 32 per cent. However, the Irish government has also committed to framing a budgetary plan to reduce the underlying deficit to 3 per cent by 2014. This plan will help to satisfy market concerns by providing clarity on the scale of the painful, but deliverable, fiscal adjustments needed in coming years. And underneath, Ireland’s economy is much stronger than it at first appears.


Well yeah, you definitely don't want to go by how it "appears," do you? Because it appears that Ireland has unemployment of almost 14%. That's, like, pretty bad and stuff. But Mr. McCoy tells us the Irish are eating their crap sandwich and loving it:


Difficult though the situation is, the state has reacted swiftly. Stern measures to address the public finances – including public sector wage cuts, expenditure cuts and increases in personal taxation – have been introduced with widespread acceptance by the public.


Acceptance. Riiiiiiiight. That's why the ruling Fianna Fáil party is facing a nine-point deficit against the center-left Labour Party. After all, who doesn't love having their taxes jacked up even as their pension gets slashed? It's like having an angel eat whipped cream off your nipples!


Measures to fix the banking crisis through a new National Asset Management Agency have received a more mixed reaction. However, the aim of taking bad property loans off bank balance sheets to enable recapitalisation is sound.


Oh joys! The Irish have their own version of Timmy Geithner's cash-for-trash initiative! I can't imagine why that would get a mixed review! After all, buying worthless housing securities is almost as much fun as having your pension looted!


Of course, I shouldn't mock the Irish too much for their impending enslavement by the financial industry. After all, as Digby notes, we're about to get the same treatment here in the US:


Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) slammed Democrats Thursday for campaigning against Republicans on Social Security.


At an event for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Thursday morning, he took on Democrats who have gone after Republican candidates for supporting Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future. The plan includes partial privatization of accounts for those under 55.


What! How dare you campaign against policy proposals I made! The opposition party isn't supposed to oppose things!


“We’ve got to get beyond weaponizing these issues for political gain in the short run,” he said, adding that Congress and President Barack Obama aren’t offering any solutions on Social Security. “We’ve got to get through this political moment. The political weaponization of entitlement reform is very unfortunate. It’s hurting our chances of actually getting bipartisan agreement in the near future. It’s unfortunate but we’ve got to get out there."


Gee, Paul, I'd feel so bad for you, except Republicans have successfully and relentlessly weaponized any and all tax increases for the past 30 years.


Anyway, I hope lots of people are prepared to fight this crap in the coming years. Our corrupt business and political elites aren't satisfied with the looting they gave us with the 2008 financial crisis. They're going to start coming after everything else we have too.



First things first, the good folks over at Corrente are having a fundraising drive. Please go over and give 'em some cash to help 'em stay afloat. Now, onto business:


While things look pretty bleak in America, we can take comfort from the fact that we aren't alone in letting our economy get looted by multinational financial institutions. In Ireland, where eyes are doing anything but smiling, things are getting really dire:


The cost of bailing out the Republic of Ireland's stricken banks has risen to 45bn euro (£39bn), opening a huge hole in the Irish government's finances.


Oh. That sounds bad.


The increased cost will see the government run a budget deficit equivalent to 32% of GDP this year.


Yeah, that's pretty bad. But how much will this hurt Seamus Average?


Mr Lenihan defended the cost of the bail-out measures, which will cost the Republic's two million taxpayers the equivalent of 22,500 euros each


Holy crap! And the Irish have already implemented austerity measures to raise taxes and cut public services. Does this mean they'll have to do even more of that to pay for yet another massive bank bailout? Why, yes it does:


Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan today warned that further austerity measures will have to be imposed after the Central Bank revealed the total cost of the bailout for Irish banks will be almost €50 billion.


Speaking separately, Taoiseach Brian Cowen refused to rule out further tax increases in the forthcoming Budget and said "revenue raising" options would be required as well as spending cuts in the Budget, which is due to take place in December.


Speaking on RTE radio at lunchtime, Mr Cowen refused to outline how much would have to be found through austerity measures.


Ireland, then, is becoming a feudal state where people are taxed not to pay for police, fire departments, schools, hospitals or pensions. Instead they're taxed to bail out failed financial institutions. And what's more, they're having their taxes increased to bail out failed financial institutions. The banks are the feudal lords living in castles and the taxpayers are the serfs.


But hey, some people are happy about this charming turn of events! Here's Danny McCoy, the director-general at the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (which I gather is their version of the Chamber of Commerce):


The announcement of the final scale of its bank rescue plan concludes a month in which the troubles of Ireland’s economy have again been centre stage. Rating agencies and analysts have questioned the capacity of our small economy to cope with its emerging debt. Ireland has also become a test bed for state recovery strategies, including the introduction of austerity measures and the resolution of complex banking problems.


Thursday’s figures reveal the undeniably high, but manageable, costs of the domestic bank bail-out. The one-off impact is to push the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product to 32 per cent. However, the Irish government has also committed to framing a budgetary plan to reduce the underlying deficit to 3 per cent by 2014. This plan will help to satisfy market concerns by providing clarity on the scale of the painful, but deliverable, fiscal adjustments needed in coming years. And underneath, Ireland’s economy is much stronger than it at first appears.


Well yeah, you definitely don't want to go by how it "appears," do you? Because it appears that Ireland has unemployment of almost 14%. That's, like, pretty bad and stuff. But Mr. McCoy tells us the Irish are eating their crap sandwich and loving it:


Difficult though the situation is, the state has reacted swiftly. Stern measures to address the public finances – including public sector wage cuts, expenditure cuts and increases in personal taxation – have been introduced with widespread acceptance by the public.


Acceptance. Riiiiiiiight. That's why the ruling Fianna Fáil party is facing a nine-point deficit against the center-left Labour Party. After all, who doesn't love having their taxes jacked up even as their pension gets slashed? It's like having an angel eat whipped cream off your nipples!


Measures to fix the banking crisis through a new National Asset Management Agency have received a more mixed reaction. However, the aim of taking bad property loans off bank balance sheets to enable recapitalisation is sound.


Oh joys! The Irish have their own version of Timmy Geithner's cash-for-trash initiative! I can't imagine why that would get a mixed review! After all, buying worthless housing securities is almost as much fun as having your pension looted!


Of course, I shouldn't mock the Irish too much for their impending enslavement by the financial industry. After all, as Digby notes, we're about to get the same treatment here in the US:


Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) slammed Democrats Thursday for campaigning against Republicans on Social Security.


At an event for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Thursday morning, he took on Democrats who have gone after Republican candidates for supporting Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future. The plan includes partial privatization of accounts for those under 55.


What! How dare you campaign against policy proposals I made! The opposition party isn't supposed to oppose things!


“We’ve got to get beyond weaponizing these issues for political gain in the short run,” he said, adding that Congress and President Barack Obama aren’t offering any solutions on Social Security. “We’ve got to get through this political moment. The political weaponization of entitlement reform is very unfortunate. It’s hurting our chances of actually getting bipartisan agreement in the near future. It’s unfortunate but we’ve got to get out there."


Gee, Paul, I'd feel so bad for you, except Republicans have successfully and relentlessly weaponized any and all tax increases for the past 30 years.


Anyway, I hope lots of people are prepared to fight this crap in the coming years. Our corrupt business and political elites aren't satisfied with the looting they gave us with the 2008 financial crisis. They're going to start coming after everything else we have too.




Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Tree crushes miner to death at Mahdia - Stabroek <b>News</b> - Guyana

The life of a 49-year old miner was yesterday afternoon snuffed out after a tree fell on him while he was working at a mining area at Mahdia in Region 8.


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bench craft company complaints

money magazine helps with six common money problems by QuizzleTown


Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Tree crushes miner to death at Mahdia - Stabroek <b>News</b> - Guyana

The life of a 49-year old miner was yesterday afternoon snuffed out after a tree fell on him while he was working at a mining area at Mahdia in Region 8.


bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints
First things first, the good folks over at Corrente are having a fundraising drive. Please go over and give 'em some cash to help 'em stay afloat. Now, onto business:


While things look pretty bleak in America, we can take comfort from the fact that we aren't alone in letting our economy get looted by multinational financial institutions. In Ireland, where eyes are doing anything but smiling, things are getting really dire:


The cost of bailing out the Republic of Ireland's stricken banks has risen to 45bn euro (£39bn), opening a huge hole in the Irish government's finances.


Oh. That sounds bad.


The increased cost will see the government run a budget deficit equivalent to 32% of GDP this year.


Yeah, that's pretty bad. But how much will this hurt Seamus Average?


Mr Lenihan defended the cost of the bail-out measures, which will cost the Republic's two million taxpayers the equivalent of 22,500 euros each


Holy crap! And the Irish have already implemented austerity measures to raise taxes and cut public services. Does this mean they'll have to do even more of that to pay for yet another massive bank bailout? Why, yes it does:


Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan today warned that further austerity measures will have to be imposed after the Central Bank revealed the total cost of the bailout for Irish banks will be almost €50 billion.


Speaking separately, Taoiseach Brian Cowen refused to rule out further tax increases in the forthcoming Budget and said "revenue raising" options would be required as well as spending cuts in the Budget, which is due to take place in December.


Speaking on RTE radio at lunchtime, Mr Cowen refused to outline how much would have to be found through austerity measures.


Ireland, then, is becoming a feudal state where people are taxed not to pay for police, fire departments, schools, hospitals or pensions. Instead they're taxed to bail out failed financial institutions. And what's more, they're having their taxes increased to bail out failed financial institutions. The banks are the feudal lords living in castles and the taxpayers are the serfs.


But hey, some people are happy about this charming turn of events! Here's Danny McCoy, the director-general at the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (which I gather is their version of the Chamber of Commerce):


The announcement of the final scale of its bank rescue plan concludes a month in which the troubles of Ireland’s economy have again been centre stage. Rating agencies and analysts have questioned the capacity of our small economy to cope with its emerging debt. Ireland has also become a test bed for state recovery strategies, including the introduction of austerity measures and the resolution of complex banking problems.


Thursday’s figures reveal the undeniably high, but manageable, costs of the domestic bank bail-out. The one-off impact is to push the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product to 32 per cent. However, the Irish government has also committed to framing a budgetary plan to reduce the underlying deficit to 3 per cent by 2014. This plan will help to satisfy market concerns by providing clarity on the scale of the painful, but deliverable, fiscal adjustments needed in coming years. And underneath, Ireland’s economy is much stronger than it at first appears.


Well yeah, you definitely don't want to go by how it "appears," do you? Because it appears that Ireland has unemployment of almost 14%. That's, like, pretty bad and stuff. But Mr. McCoy tells us the Irish are eating their crap sandwich and loving it:


Difficult though the situation is, the state has reacted swiftly. Stern measures to address the public finances – including public sector wage cuts, expenditure cuts and increases in personal taxation – have been introduced with widespread acceptance by the public.


Acceptance. Riiiiiiiight. That's why the ruling Fianna Fáil party is facing a nine-point deficit against the center-left Labour Party. After all, who doesn't love having their taxes jacked up even as their pension gets slashed? It's like having an angel eat whipped cream off your nipples!


Measures to fix the banking crisis through a new National Asset Management Agency have received a more mixed reaction. However, the aim of taking bad property loans off bank balance sheets to enable recapitalisation is sound.


Oh joys! The Irish have their own version of Timmy Geithner's cash-for-trash initiative! I can't imagine why that would get a mixed review! After all, buying worthless housing securities is almost as much fun as having your pension looted!


Of course, I shouldn't mock the Irish too much for their impending enslavement by the financial industry. After all, as Digby notes, we're about to get the same treatment here in the US:


Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) slammed Democrats Thursday for campaigning against Republicans on Social Security.


At an event for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Thursday morning, he took on Democrats who have gone after Republican candidates for supporting Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future. The plan includes partial privatization of accounts for those under 55.


What! How dare you campaign against policy proposals I made! The opposition party isn't supposed to oppose things!


“We’ve got to get beyond weaponizing these issues for political gain in the short run,” he said, adding that Congress and President Barack Obama aren’t offering any solutions on Social Security. “We’ve got to get through this political moment. The political weaponization of entitlement reform is very unfortunate. It’s hurting our chances of actually getting bipartisan agreement in the near future. It’s unfortunate but we’ve got to get out there."


Gee, Paul, I'd feel so bad for you, except Republicans have successfully and relentlessly weaponized any and all tax increases for the past 30 years.


Anyway, I hope lots of people are prepared to fight this crap in the coming years. Our corrupt business and political elites aren't satisfied with the looting they gave us with the 2008 financial crisis. They're going to start coming after everything else we have too.



First things first, the good folks over at Corrente are having a fundraising drive. Please go over and give 'em some cash to help 'em stay afloat. Now, onto business:


While things look pretty bleak in America, we can take comfort from the fact that we aren't alone in letting our economy get looted by multinational financial institutions. In Ireland, where eyes are doing anything but smiling, things are getting really dire:


The cost of bailing out the Republic of Ireland's stricken banks has risen to 45bn euro (£39bn), opening a huge hole in the Irish government's finances.


Oh. That sounds bad.


The increased cost will see the government run a budget deficit equivalent to 32% of GDP this year.


Yeah, that's pretty bad. But how much will this hurt Seamus Average?


Mr Lenihan defended the cost of the bail-out measures, which will cost the Republic's two million taxpayers the equivalent of 22,500 euros each


Holy crap! And the Irish have already implemented austerity measures to raise taxes and cut public services. Does this mean they'll have to do even more of that to pay for yet another massive bank bailout? Why, yes it does:


Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan today warned that further austerity measures will have to be imposed after the Central Bank revealed the total cost of the bailout for Irish banks will be almost €50 billion.


Speaking separately, Taoiseach Brian Cowen refused to rule out further tax increases in the forthcoming Budget and said "revenue raising" options would be required as well as spending cuts in the Budget, which is due to take place in December.


Speaking on RTE radio at lunchtime, Mr Cowen refused to outline how much would have to be found through austerity measures.


Ireland, then, is becoming a feudal state where people are taxed not to pay for police, fire departments, schools, hospitals or pensions. Instead they're taxed to bail out failed financial institutions. And what's more, they're having their taxes increased to bail out failed financial institutions. The banks are the feudal lords living in castles and the taxpayers are the serfs.


But hey, some people are happy about this charming turn of events! Here's Danny McCoy, the director-general at the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (which I gather is their version of the Chamber of Commerce):


The announcement of the final scale of its bank rescue plan concludes a month in which the troubles of Ireland’s economy have again been centre stage. Rating agencies and analysts have questioned the capacity of our small economy to cope with its emerging debt. Ireland has also become a test bed for state recovery strategies, including the introduction of austerity measures and the resolution of complex banking problems.


Thursday’s figures reveal the undeniably high, but manageable, costs of the domestic bank bail-out. The one-off impact is to push the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product to 32 per cent. However, the Irish government has also committed to framing a budgetary plan to reduce the underlying deficit to 3 per cent by 2014. This plan will help to satisfy market concerns by providing clarity on the scale of the painful, but deliverable, fiscal adjustments needed in coming years. And underneath, Ireland’s economy is much stronger than it at first appears.


Well yeah, you definitely don't want to go by how it "appears," do you? Because it appears that Ireland has unemployment of almost 14%. That's, like, pretty bad and stuff. But Mr. McCoy tells us the Irish are eating their crap sandwich and loving it:


Difficult though the situation is, the state has reacted swiftly. Stern measures to address the public finances – including public sector wage cuts, expenditure cuts and increases in personal taxation – have been introduced with widespread acceptance by the public.


Acceptance. Riiiiiiiight. That's why the ruling Fianna Fáil party is facing a nine-point deficit against the center-left Labour Party. After all, who doesn't love having their taxes jacked up even as their pension gets slashed? It's like having an angel eat whipped cream off your nipples!


Measures to fix the banking crisis through a new National Asset Management Agency have received a more mixed reaction. However, the aim of taking bad property loans off bank balance sheets to enable recapitalisation is sound.


Oh joys! The Irish have their own version of Timmy Geithner's cash-for-trash initiative! I can't imagine why that would get a mixed review! After all, buying worthless housing securities is almost as much fun as having your pension looted!


Of course, I shouldn't mock the Irish too much for their impending enslavement by the financial industry. After all, as Digby notes, we're about to get the same treatment here in the US:


Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) slammed Democrats Thursday for campaigning against Republicans on Social Security.


At an event for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Thursday morning, he took on Democrats who have gone after Republican candidates for supporting Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future. The plan includes partial privatization of accounts for those under 55.


What! How dare you campaign against policy proposals I made! The opposition party isn't supposed to oppose things!


“We’ve got to get beyond weaponizing these issues for political gain in the short run,” he said, adding that Congress and President Barack Obama aren’t offering any solutions on Social Security. “We’ve got to get through this political moment. The political weaponization of entitlement reform is very unfortunate. It’s hurting our chances of actually getting bipartisan agreement in the near future. It’s unfortunate but we’ve got to get out there."


Gee, Paul, I'd feel so bad for you, except Republicans have successfully and relentlessly weaponized any and all tax increases for the past 30 years.


Anyway, I hope lots of people are prepared to fight this crap in the coming years. Our corrupt business and political elites aren't satisfied with the looting they gave us with the 2008 financial crisis. They're going to start coming after everything else we have too.




bench craft company complaints

Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Tree crushes miner to death at Mahdia - Stabroek <b>News</b> - Guyana

The life of a 49-year old miner was yesterday afternoon snuffed out after a tree fell on him while he was working at a mining area at Mahdia in Region 8.


bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Tree crushes miner to death at Mahdia - Stabroek <b>News</b> - Guyana

The life of a 49-year old miner was yesterday afternoon snuffed out after a tree fell on him while he was working at a mining area at Mahdia in Region 8.


bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Small Business <b>News</b>: Social Media Secrets

Pssst. We've got something important to tell you about a new tool that can totally transform your business. In terms of upfront investment, there is no cost,

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Juan Williams, Fox <b>News</b> Liberal

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning ...

Tree crushes miner to death at Mahdia - Stabroek <b>News</b> - Guyana

The life of a 49-year old miner was yesterday afternoon snuffed out after a tree fell on him while he was working at a mining area at Mahdia in Region 8.


bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Making Money on Line



Today Y Combinator is holding its sixth Startup School, where a roster of Silicon Valley’s most experienced and successful founders and investors come together to lecture hundreds of eager entrepreneurs. The event is always extremely popular, and today is no exception — the lecture hall on Stanford’s campus is packed to the brim.


Today’s event will feature eleven talks, including lectures from the likes of Paul Graham, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ron Conway. The first session — which featured Andy Bechtolsheim, Paul Graham, and Andrew Mason — just ended. You can find my notes from each talk below, and we’ll be posting more later today on each cluster of speakers. You can also watch a live stream of the event right here.


Andy Bechtolsheim


Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim’s talk revolved around innovation. He kicked off with a brief history of the incredible changes we’ve seen in the computer industry in a brief period of time, with the number of transistors on a chip increasing a million fold since 1970 and networking technology seeing similarly impressive gains.


Bechtolsheim says that there are a few key lessons from what’s gone on in terms of web innovation: first, the time from innovation to adoption can be remarkably short (see Google’s rapid adoption, for example). And the key to success isn’t to be first (after all, there were many search engines available before Google came out). Instead, it’s important to be the first to solve the right problem.


So why is there so much focus on web companies? Bechtolsheim says that it’s primarily because starting one is so cheap, relatively speaking. You no longer need to have your own infrastructure — with AWS, you can get up and running for cheap. It’s also cheaper than ever to raise awareness due to the proliferation of blogs, Twitter, etc.


Paul Graham

YC founder Paul Graham’s talk focused on one of the all-important problems facing budding startups: raising money. And he had good news, at least as far as entrepreneurs are concerned.


There’s an increasing tension between so-called Super Angels and Venture Capitalists (which manifested itself in AngelGate). Unlike traditional angel investors, Super Angels are investing other people’s money, which makes them similar to the VC camp. But, unlike VCs which have historically invested large sums of money (usually $1M+), Super Angels are happy to make many, much smaller investments.


This gives entrepreneurs more control — they can raise exactly how much they want instead of having to take a giant Series A round. It’s also led to larger VCs making small (~$100K) investments to compete more directly with the Super Angels.


This has another consequence: because VCs are mostly price-insensitive at this point (they view these seed investments as options to invest larger sums down the road), they don’t mind if the startup valuation grows higher than it would have. Which is great for the entrepreneur, but is bad for Super Angels who do care about the startup’s valuation. This, Graham says, could lead to what looks like another bubble with skyrocketing valuations, but hopefully without the pop at the end.


In the long term, this probably isn’t sustainable — Graham says that VCs and Super Angels will increasingly become one and the same, as the top VCs who add value are weeded out from the rest. But he thinks that process will take time, since the VC industry moves at a “glacially slow” pace. Until then, we’ll keep seeing those sky-high valuations for companies that appeal to both VCs (who think the company has a chance to IPO) and Super Angels (who think the company has a chance at an early, lucrative exit).


For more on this topic, see our post on The $4 Million Line. Graham will also be publishing an essay covering his talk, which we’ll post a link to as soon as it goes live.


Andrew Mason


Groupon founder Andrew Mason decided to take a different approach with his talk: he gave an old pitch for his original startup The Point, which eventually evolved into the wildly successful Groupon. The Point was a collective action platform that would let users take action together — for example, to raise money to build a dome around Chicago to block out the city’s frigid winter weather (yes, this was an actual initiative on the site).


But Mason’s (old) pitch wasn’t a good one, and The Point never really gained traction. So what went wrong? Mason pointed out some of the original company’s main flaws: it was about a vision more than making a tool that was actually useful. Mason was thinking of what the Point could become five, ten years down the road, without figuring out how to get people to actually use it.


Another problem: you need to recognize and embrace your constraints, and figure out what’s practical. You also need to realize that you’ll probably fail. Many people who are thinking of launching startups are very smart — they’ve succeeded in the past and the notion of failure isn’t really conceivable to them (Mason fell into this camp when he was working on The Point). Now, at Groupon, he constantly reminds himself of ways he could fail — the company has a bunch of magazine covers hanging on the wall near the entrance featuring companies that have gone downhill after massive success, like MySpace and AOL.


Image by Robert Scoble/Scobleizer on Flickr


This is the new line touted mostly by the conservative side– all these campaign donations are insignificant, making the absurd argument that we spend more each year on irrelevant and unrelated things like yogurt or halloween candy, that the cash spent on campaigns is of negligible effect on the election outcomes, and, finally, that the threat of foreign influence on our elections through these funding channels is also negligible. Nothing to see here, move along.


David Brooks spouted this exact same nonsense in his op-ed column in the NY Times earlier this week, replete with a host of imaginary numbers to cloud just how much is being spent on both sides then claiming that, in the end, all the cash shoveled into this mid-term election has no real influence on the outcome, going so far as to claim that these multimillion dollar donations are more for the ‘feel-good’ effect they offer the donors than for the spoils that would most assuredly come back to them once their chosen candidates are declared victorious.


I think it’s obscene the amount of money spent by both sides of the aisle during these elections and am troubled by the anonymous nature of so many of these donations, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how best to correct it without running afoul of the Bill of Rights. Free speech is free speech even if you’re not always happy with the outcome. If a corporation wants to support a candidate, I’m guessing it should be allowed to do so just as labor unions and other large organizations can.


I do think, however, that these corporate institutions should not be able to hide behind anonymity when making these donations. All donations by corporations should have the company’s tax identification number on the donation check. Since the Citizens United ruling judged these corporations as having the same rights as individuals, perhaps their donations should be capped at the same totals as individuals. If Proctor & Gamble wants to give to candidate X, allow them to donate at the same limits as Mr. Proctor N. Gamble.


Another, more drastic solution would be to rule that the First Amendment doesn’t apply and set a federally-funded limit for all candidates. Allow every candidate an equivalent amount of campaign funds and airtime for commercials, eliminate third-party advertising, and leave it at that. Otherwise, it will soon reach the point where the total spent during an election cycle meets or exceeds the GDP of third world countries.




Fox <b>News</b> Crew Gets Scolded At Democratic Meeting (VIDEO)

A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...

Shep Smith&#39;s Fox <b>News</b> Contract Renewed

Shep Smith isn't leaving Fox News anytime soon. The face of the network's news division has signed a three-year contract extension with Fox News, Deadline.com's Nellie Andreeva reported Tuesday morning.


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bench craft company complaints

PriceRitePhoto by Thomas Hawk


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Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...

Shep Smith&#39;s Fox <b>News</b> Contract Renewed

Shep Smith isn't leaving Fox News anytime soon. The face of the network's news division has signed a three-year contract extension with Fox News, Deadline.com's Nellie Andreeva reported Tuesday morning.


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Today Y Combinator is holding its sixth Startup School, where a roster of Silicon Valley’s most experienced and successful founders and investors come together to lecture hundreds of eager entrepreneurs. The event is always extremely popular, and today is no exception — the lecture hall on Stanford’s campus is packed to the brim.


Today’s event will feature eleven talks, including lectures from the likes of Paul Graham, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ron Conway. The first session — which featured Andy Bechtolsheim, Paul Graham, and Andrew Mason — just ended. You can find my notes from each talk below, and we’ll be posting more later today on each cluster of speakers. You can also watch a live stream of the event right here.


Andy Bechtolsheim


Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim’s talk revolved around innovation. He kicked off with a brief history of the incredible changes we’ve seen in the computer industry in a brief period of time, with the number of transistors on a chip increasing a million fold since 1970 and networking technology seeing similarly impressive gains.


Bechtolsheim says that there are a few key lessons from what’s gone on in terms of web innovation: first, the time from innovation to adoption can be remarkably short (see Google’s rapid adoption, for example). And the key to success isn’t to be first (after all, there were many search engines available before Google came out). Instead, it’s important to be the first to solve the right problem.


So why is there so much focus on web companies? Bechtolsheim says that it’s primarily because starting one is so cheap, relatively speaking. You no longer need to have your own infrastructure — with AWS, you can get up and running for cheap. It’s also cheaper than ever to raise awareness due to the proliferation of blogs, Twitter, etc.


Paul Graham

YC founder Paul Graham’s talk focused on one of the all-important problems facing budding startups: raising money. And he had good news, at least as far as entrepreneurs are concerned.


There’s an increasing tension between so-called Super Angels and Venture Capitalists (which manifested itself in AngelGate). Unlike traditional angel investors, Super Angels are investing other people’s money, which makes them similar to the VC camp. But, unlike VCs which have historically invested large sums of money (usually $1M+), Super Angels are happy to make many, much smaller investments.


This gives entrepreneurs more control — they can raise exactly how much they want instead of having to take a giant Series A round. It’s also led to larger VCs making small (~$100K) investments to compete more directly with the Super Angels.


This has another consequence: because VCs are mostly price-insensitive at this point (they view these seed investments as options to invest larger sums down the road), they don’t mind if the startup valuation grows higher than it would have. Which is great for the entrepreneur, but is bad for Super Angels who do care about the startup’s valuation. This, Graham says, could lead to what looks like another bubble with skyrocketing valuations, but hopefully without the pop at the end.


In the long term, this probably isn’t sustainable — Graham says that VCs and Super Angels will increasingly become one and the same, as the top VCs who add value are weeded out from the rest. But he thinks that process will take time, since the VC industry moves at a “glacially slow” pace. Until then, we’ll keep seeing those sky-high valuations for companies that appeal to both VCs (who think the company has a chance to IPO) and Super Angels (who think the company has a chance at an early, lucrative exit).


For more on this topic, see our post on The $4 Million Line. Graham will also be publishing an essay covering his talk, which we’ll post a link to as soon as it goes live.


Andrew Mason


Groupon founder Andrew Mason decided to take a different approach with his talk: he gave an old pitch for his original startup The Point, which eventually evolved into the wildly successful Groupon. The Point was a collective action platform that would let users take action together — for example, to raise money to build a dome around Chicago to block out the city’s frigid winter weather (yes, this was an actual initiative on the site).


But Mason’s (old) pitch wasn’t a good one, and The Point never really gained traction. So what went wrong? Mason pointed out some of the original company’s main flaws: it was about a vision more than making a tool that was actually useful. Mason was thinking of what the Point could become five, ten years down the road, without figuring out how to get people to actually use it.


Another problem: you need to recognize and embrace your constraints, and figure out what’s practical. You also need to realize that you’ll probably fail. Many people who are thinking of launching startups are very smart — they’ve succeeded in the past and the notion of failure isn’t really conceivable to them (Mason fell into this camp when he was working on The Point). Now, at Groupon, he constantly reminds himself of ways he could fail — the company has a bunch of magazine covers hanging on the wall near the entrance featuring companies that have gone downhill after massive success, like MySpace and AOL.


Image by Robert Scoble/Scobleizer on Flickr


This is the new line touted mostly by the conservative side– all these campaign donations are insignificant, making the absurd argument that we spend more each year on irrelevant and unrelated things like yogurt or halloween candy, that the cash spent on campaigns is of negligible effect on the election outcomes, and, finally, that the threat of foreign influence on our elections through these funding channels is also negligible. Nothing to see here, move along.


David Brooks spouted this exact same nonsense in his op-ed column in the NY Times earlier this week, replete with a host of imaginary numbers to cloud just how much is being spent on both sides then claiming that, in the end, all the cash shoveled into this mid-term election has no real influence on the outcome, going so far as to claim that these multimillion dollar donations are more for the ‘feel-good’ effect they offer the donors than for the spoils that would most assuredly come back to them once their chosen candidates are declared victorious.


I think it’s obscene the amount of money spent by both sides of the aisle during these elections and am troubled by the anonymous nature of so many of these donations, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how best to correct it without running afoul of the Bill of Rights. Free speech is free speech even if you’re not always happy with the outcome. If a corporation wants to support a candidate, I’m guessing it should be allowed to do so just as labor unions and other large organizations can.


I do think, however, that these corporate institutions should not be able to hide behind anonymity when making these donations. All donations by corporations should have the company’s tax identification number on the donation check. Since the Citizens United ruling judged these corporations as having the same rights as individuals, perhaps their donations should be capped at the same totals as individuals. If Proctor & Gamble wants to give to candidate X, allow them to donate at the same limits as Mr. Proctor N. Gamble.


Another, more drastic solution would be to rule that the First Amendment doesn’t apply and set a federally-funded limit for all candidates. Allow every candidate an equivalent amount of campaign funds and airtime for commercials, eliminate third-party advertising, and leave it at that. Otherwise, it will soon reach the point where the total spent during an election cycle meets or exceeds the GDP of third world countries.




bench craft company complaints

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Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

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Shep Smith&#39;s Fox <b>News</b> Contract Renewed

Shep Smith isn't leaving Fox News anytime soon. The face of the network's news division has signed a three-year contract extension with Fox News, Deadline.com's Nellie Andreeva reported Tuesday morning.


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A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...

Shep Smith&#39;s Fox <b>News</b> Contract Renewed

Shep Smith isn't leaving Fox News anytime soon. The face of the network's news division has signed a three-year contract extension with Fox News, Deadline.com's Nellie Andreeva reported Tuesday morning.


bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Fox <b>News</b> Crew Gets Scolded At Democratic Meeting (VIDEO)

A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...

Shep Smith&#39;s Fox <b>News</b> Contract Renewed

Shep Smith isn't leaving Fox News anytime soon. The face of the network's news division has signed a three-year contract extension with Fox News, Deadline.com's Nellie Andreeva reported Tuesday morning.


bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

Friday, October 22, 2010

Making Money Tips

This was probably inevitable: the minute that Dodd-Frank cracked down on the fees charged by credit cards aimed at students, some other bright financial innovation would crop up. This time, a debit card aimed at students. Which carries lots of fees. Ylan Mui reports that a company called Higher One has started signing up colleges around the country, taking on the burden of providing cash to students. In return, it gets lots of fees:


Students say several of the fees associated with Higher One’s card are particularly irksome, including the $19 inactivity fee, a 50-cent charge for using a PIN to make a purchase rather than a signature, and a $2.50 fee for using other banks’ ATMs…


Higher One said that only 1 percent of customers have been charged an inactivity fee and that more than half are charged the 50-cent fee only once. All fees are listed on Higher One’s Web site, along with tips on avoiding them.


“We have a big effort with educating students on how to use the account,” Smith said. “We’re very passionate about financial literacy.”


If the fees are listed on Higher One’s website, they’re not exactly prominent. I did find this page, eventually, via this blog entry, but it just says that “when you swipe & sign, you won’t be charged the PIN-based transaction fee”. I haven’t been able to find a page showing a 50-cent transaction fee anywhere*, although I did manage to find this page, showing a $25 fee for domestic wire transfers and a $50 fee for international wire transfers. “Higher One offers less costly alternatives for transferring funds”, it says, without giving any indication what they might be; I suspect that what they’re talking about is transfers to or from people who have already registered somehow with Higher One.


It should go without saying that any firm which is “very passionate about financial literacy” would encourage, rather than penalize, simple, cheap and safe PIN-debit transactions. It would not give students a debit card and then tell them that if they want to avoid fees they should select the “credit” option rather than the “debit” option when they come to pay.


And I can’t think of any good reason to charge a $19 inactivity fee to people who haven’t used their cards in 9 months.


The fact is that students are often very naive when it comes to money, and it’s easy to gouge them once or twice before they learn that banks are not necessarily on their side. If you can get your card accepted by a majority of freshmen every year, and then come up with all manner of weird fees to hit them with, that’s a great way of making money out of ignorance.


Meanwhile, all students should have a bank account: giving them a debit card instead only serves to maximize the number of unbanked students. So while I’m sure cards like this are attractive to colleges, it would be great if either the colleges or else the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau started being a lot more critical of them. Prepaid cards only ever make sense if the alternative is being completely unbanked; that should not ever be the case for students.


*At Southern Oregon University, Higher One agreed to waive the 50-cent PIN-debit charge, but only if there was a simultaneous “swipe-and-sign” campaign. If the campaign is unsuccessful and students do the sensible thing by using PIN debit, then the university can be charged $2 per student for “PIN fee elimination”.


Update: Higher One’s Donald Smith responds:


Higher One was founded 10 years ago by three college students (undergraduates at the time) who were looking for streamlining the way financial aid refunds were distributed to students. Today we work with more than 675 campuses across the country, have a 97% client retention rating, and an A+ rating with the BBB.


The OneAccount is Higher One’s optional, no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account created by students for students. We do not offer a stored value card. We are very open with our fee schedule. We post it on every program website for all to access, explain each fee, discuss how to avoid each fee, and provide students with a web page that tells them how to use the account for free (which you’ve already found). Because of this, we believe that our customers pay less than half the amount in fees that the average bank checking account customer pays per year.


Two of the fees you referenced in your blog are the PIN fee and the Abandoned Account Fee. The PIN fee is easily avoided by choosing a signature based transaction at the checkout. The majority of students uses it in this manner and is in turn protected by MasterCard’s Zero Liability Policy against fraudulent charges (a safer way of purchasing than a PIN based transaction). We do not have an inactivity fee on our fee schedule – we don’t penalize students who do not use their accounts. We do have an Abandoned Account Fee of up to $19, for those who have abandoned their accounts, but this has been charged to less than 1% of all OneAccount holders in our company’s history because of our proactive outreach plan.


Higher One offers no instruments of credit. As a matter of fact, we’re generally in favor of initiatives restricting students’ access to credit cards and promoting financial literacy. This is why we offer a full range of financial literacy resources along with the services we provide.


I particularly dislike the implication, here, that PIN-based transactions are unsafe. They’re not; they’re just less lucrative, in terms of interchange fees, than signature-based transactions.



Comments


Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteCloud posts










  1. Thanks for sharing this post!



     Posted by: JiHye |
    September 26, 2010 7:19 PM




















  2. The Twilio Fund for startups is an awesome idea.



    Posted by: Richard Uren |
    September 27, 2010 3:00 AM




















  3. Thanks for posting this tips. There are a lot of SaaS applications out on the web and only a few of them are successful. Personally, I think Basecamp (Project Management System) opened everyone's eyes on how to present a SaaS.



    To anyone that found this post helpful - check out this book as well -



    Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson



    Posted by: avisra |
    September 27, 2010 5:26 AM




















  4. "It's a formula that doesn't come up with the price by adding up the costs and then tacking on enough to make a profit."



    Interesting. It'll work for a while, but once there are a couple of similar competitors, prices will be driven down to costs plus a small delta. So make hay while the sun shines!



    Posted by: Sam Mason |
    September 27, 2010 5:38 AM




















  5. The SaaS model almost demands value-based pricing, because most of the costs are fixed. The cost per user will be determined by the number of users, which is impossible to predict when you're first setting prices.



    Having said that, if you price it too high or don't watch your costs, you leave yourself vulnerable.



    Six Apart is a good example of a company that never figured out how to price their product.



    Posted by: Barry Parr |
    September 27, 2010 9:21 AM




















  6. C'mon folks. Twilio isn't a SaaS, it's a VoIP reseller.



    Mutton isn't lamb is it?



    Posted by: James Barnes |
    September 27, 2010 11:47 PM























  7. The Fox <b>News</b> “Lawn Jockey” and The Tolerant Left | RedState

    Juan Williams' firing did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context of him having been the official Fox News lawn jockey stooge for years.

    autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Tweaks to be made to Korean track

    Korean Grand Prix organisers are making minor modifications to the new Formula 1 track on Friday night following complaints from drivers about potential trouble spots on the new Yeongam circuit.

    Surprise: Fox <b>News</b> signs Juan Williams to new $2 million deal <b>...</b>

    Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. ...


    eric seiger eric seiger

    This was probably inevitable: the minute that Dodd-Frank cracked down on the fees charged by credit cards aimed at students, some other bright financial innovation would crop up. This time, a debit card aimed at students. Which carries lots of fees. Ylan Mui reports that a company called Higher One has started signing up colleges around the country, taking on the burden of providing cash to students. In return, it gets lots of fees:


    Students say several of the fees associated with Higher One’s card are particularly irksome, including the $19 inactivity fee, a 50-cent charge for using a PIN to make a purchase rather than a signature, and a $2.50 fee for using other banks’ ATMs…


    Higher One said that only 1 percent of customers have been charged an inactivity fee and that more than half are charged the 50-cent fee only once. All fees are listed on Higher One’s Web site, along with tips on avoiding them.


    “We have a big effort with educating students on how to use the account,” Smith said. “We’re very passionate about financial literacy.”


    If the fees are listed on Higher One’s website, they’re not exactly prominent. I did find this page, eventually, via this blog entry, but it just says that “when you swipe & sign, you won’t be charged the PIN-based transaction fee”. I haven’t been able to find a page showing a 50-cent transaction fee anywhere*, although I did manage to find this page, showing a $25 fee for domestic wire transfers and a $50 fee for international wire transfers. “Higher One offers less costly alternatives for transferring funds”, it says, without giving any indication what they might be; I suspect that what they’re talking about is transfers to or from people who have already registered somehow with Higher One.


    It should go without saying that any firm which is “very passionate about financial literacy” would encourage, rather than penalize, simple, cheap and safe PIN-debit transactions. It would not give students a debit card and then tell them that if they want to avoid fees they should select the “credit” option rather than the “debit” option when they come to pay.


    And I can’t think of any good reason to charge a $19 inactivity fee to people who haven’t used their cards in 9 months.


    The fact is that students are often very naive when it comes to money, and it’s easy to gouge them once or twice before they learn that banks are not necessarily on their side. If you can get your card accepted by a majority of freshmen every year, and then come up with all manner of weird fees to hit them with, that’s a great way of making money out of ignorance.


    Meanwhile, all students should have a bank account: giving them a debit card instead only serves to maximize the number of unbanked students. So while I’m sure cards like this are attractive to colleges, it would be great if either the colleges or else the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau started being a lot more critical of them. Prepaid cards only ever make sense if the alternative is being completely unbanked; that should not ever be the case for students.


    *At Southern Oregon University, Higher One agreed to waive the 50-cent PIN-debit charge, but only if there was a simultaneous “swipe-and-sign” campaign. If the campaign is unsuccessful and students do the sensible thing by using PIN debit, then the university can be charged $2 per student for “PIN fee elimination”.


    Update: Higher One’s Donald Smith responds:


    Higher One was founded 10 years ago by three college students (undergraduates at the time) who were looking for streamlining the way financial aid refunds were distributed to students. Today we work with more than 675 campuses across the country, have a 97% client retention rating, and an A+ rating with the BBB.


    The OneAccount is Higher One’s optional, no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account created by students for students. We do not offer a stored value card. We are very open with our fee schedule. We post it on every program website for all to access, explain each fee, discuss how to avoid each fee, and provide students with a web page that tells them how to use the account for free (which you’ve already found). Because of this, we believe that our customers pay less than half the amount in fees that the average bank checking account customer pays per year.


    Two of the fees you referenced in your blog are the PIN fee and the Abandoned Account Fee. The PIN fee is easily avoided by choosing a signature based transaction at the checkout. The majority of students uses it in this manner and is in turn protected by MasterCard’s Zero Liability Policy against fraudulent charges (a safer way of purchasing than a PIN based transaction). We do not have an inactivity fee on our fee schedule – we don’t penalize students who do not use their accounts. We do have an Abandoned Account Fee of up to $19, for those who have abandoned their accounts, but this has been charged to less than 1% of all OneAccount holders in our company’s history because of our proactive outreach plan.


    Higher One offers no instruments of credit. As a matter of fact, we’re generally in favor of initiatives restricting students’ access to credit cards and promoting financial literacy. This is why we offer a full range of financial literacy resources along with the services we provide.


    I particularly dislike the implication, here, that PIN-based transactions are unsafe. They’re not; they’re just less lucrative, in terms of interchange fees, than signature-based transactions.



    Comments


    Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteCloud posts










    1. Thanks for sharing this post!



       Posted by: JiHye |
      September 26, 2010 7:19 PM




















    2. The Twilio Fund for startups is an awesome idea.



      Posted by: Richard Uren |
      September 27, 2010 3:00 AM




















    3. Thanks for posting this tips. There are a lot of SaaS applications out on the web and only a few of them are successful. Personally, I think Basecamp (Project Management System) opened everyone's eyes on how to present a SaaS.



      To anyone that found this post helpful - check out this book as well -



      Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson



      Posted by: avisra |
      September 27, 2010 5:26 AM




















    4. "It's a formula that doesn't come up with the price by adding up the costs and then tacking on enough to make a profit."



      Interesting. It'll work for a while, but once there are a couple of similar competitors, prices will be driven down to costs plus a small delta. So make hay while the sun shines!



      Posted by: Sam Mason |
      September 27, 2010 5:38 AM




















    5. The SaaS model almost demands value-based pricing, because most of the costs are fixed. The cost per user will be determined by the number of users, which is impossible to predict when you're first setting prices.



      Having said that, if you price it too high or don't watch your costs, you leave yourself vulnerable.



      Six Apart is a good example of a company that never figured out how to price their product.



      Posted by: Barry Parr |
      September 27, 2010 9:21 AM




















    6. C'mon folks. Twilio isn't a SaaS, it's a VoIP reseller.



      Mutton isn't lamb is it?



      Posted by: James Barnes |
      September 27, 2010 11:47 PM























    7. The Fox <b>News</b> “Lawn Jockey” and The Tolerant Left | RedState

      Juan Williams' firing did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context of him having been the official Fox News lawn jockey stooge for years.

      autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Tweaks to be made to Korean track

      Korean Grand Prix organisers are making minor modifications to the new Formula 1 track on Friday night following complaints from drivers about potential trouble spots on the new Yeongam circuit.

      Surprise: Fox <b>News</b> signs Juan Williams to new $2 million deal <b>...</b>

      Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday morning, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary, the Tribune Washington Bureau has learned. ...


      eric seiger eric seiger


      Month of May Earnings by Joisu B.





















































Wednesday, October 20, 2010

People Making Money Online


Justin Hartfield of WeedMaps is about as ballsy as entrepreneurs get. I mean that as a compliment. Not only is he building an online business that facilitates and profits off of the recreational use of marijuana– which let’s remember is still illegal in the United States– but he’s essentially rushing his small company out into the public markets, via a reverse merger with the mostly-unknown LC Luxuries Limited, which will build a new business around all things cannabis.


Between the anticipated closing of the deal, which will make WeedMaps essentially a publicly traded company on the Pink Sheets and California’s vote on a proposition to legalize marijuana, the next month will be huge for Hartfield– one way or another. Meanwhile revenues are soaring. WeedMaps was making $20,000 a month a year ago, made $300,000 in August and $400,000 in September– all off of just 50,000 registered users.


Obviously, the money-making potential is huge, but is there a greater moral issue here? Hartfield doesn’t see one. Hartfield was the guest on NBC’s Press:Here this week, where he discussed a unique dilemma in Silicon Valley: Having a $120 billion market to yourself in which no VCs want to invest. It’s a reality that’s driven him to this odd, back-door IPO.


It’s also helping make his company a cause. “We want to make buying a share in this company like buying a share in the legalization of marijuana cause,” he says. Hartfield — so unabashedly libertarian he could make Peter Thiel swoon– thinks markets are better ways of assessing public opinion than media or political polls. So, he argues, if people vote with their money for WeedMaps, it’ll be a proxy for how people feel about the practicality of legalization, which he sees as an inevitability. (Morality aside, I take issue with his certainty in this clip. Even in gung-ho California, some medical marijuana advocates oppose recreational legalization.)


But the deal is about more than just finding a way to go public. The new company will acquire and roll-up several smaller companies, likely also around the cannabis issue. Meanwhile, Hartfield is doing a weed/Web landgrab, taking nearly every business model that’s worked on the Web and building a weed version. His core site is like Yelp for weed, containing a database of more than 25,000 strains, where they can be found and reviews on dispensaries and headshops. He even offers an “elite” status.


The company has another site called WeedVote.com that helps get out the legalization vote, and the newly launched WeedMart.com is an online headship and he’s about to launch a new daily deals site for pot– that’s right, yet another Groupon clone, this time to get high. There’s also a feature called “Weed or Skin”– like Hot or Not but where you vote for scantily clad women or pictures of pot. I’m not kidding. While Hartfield isn’t the first to try to make money off of a vice, he revels in it more than most. “We don’t like to be hypocritical, and we don’t think there should be arbitrary differences between recreational and medicinal,” he says. This is clearly as much about the cause as it is about the company for him. Agree with his stance or not, you have to respect the conviction.


In the clip below, Hartfield talks about America’s “chronic fear of freedom” and the challenges he’s faced building this business. Go here for the full episode, which includes his rebuttal to medical marijuana advocates that say recreational legalization is bad for those who need the drug for medical reasons





For the first time, this year’s Knight News Challenge will be requesting entries in three specific categories: mobile, revenue models, and reputation/credibility. The contest judges won’t be seeking a certain quota of finalists in each category: “It’s much more of a signal to the population at large: These are the areas that need your attention,” Knight consultant Jennifer 8. Lee said on Monday, at a San Francisco information session sponsored by Hacks/Hackers.


Up to now, Lee said the Knight Foundation’s attitude towards the contest has been “we don’t know what news innovation is — you tell us.” But over the past four years, trends have emerged among the contest entries that mirror the broader development of the news business. 2010 was the year of mapping and data visualization projects, Lee said. In 2011, Knight sees innovations in credibility determination, mobile technology, and revenue model generation as key areas of development.


[Update: Lee has clarified some elements of the new News Challenge in a comment here — check it out for more details. Also, since this post was published, the News Challenge has officially announced the details for this year's contest, which includes an additional category, Community; you can see those here. —Josh]


Credibility in the news business used to be based on the brand reputation of large media outlets. But in a world in which anyone can report, and in which, in Lee’s words, rumors can explode and die within a day on Twitter, there’s a need for new ways to measure and establish credibility. For example, Lee said, “How do you know that this person is more serious reporting out of Tehran, or Iran, than that person?” In the world of online media, rumors can gain momentum more quickly and easily than in the traditional media ecosystem. What kinds of tools and filters could be used to combat hoaxes and determine the trustworthiness of online information? That third category is “the one that’s the most vague — and purposefully so,” Lee said.


The mobile and revenue models categories are more straightforward. Last year, the Chicago news site Windy Citizen won $250,000 to develop a software interface to creates “real-time ads” which constantly update with the most recent information from a business’ Twitter feed or Facebook page. Lee said this was a good example of a revenue model project.


The Knight News Challenge is also increasingly open to awarding funding to for-profit companies who want to build open-source projects. Last cycle, one of the grantees was Stamen Design, a top data visualization firm whose founder and employees had a proven commitment to making open source tools in their free time. Knight provided them with $400,000 to dedicate staff hours to projects that they would previously have done on weekends. There are many different ways of making Knight funding viable for for-profit companies, Lee said, so long as the companies can carefully document how the foundation funding is being applied to open-source work. “You can create the open-sourcey version of your project. That part becomes open source, and the other one doesnt,” Lee said.


Last year, out of 2,300 initial applications, the Knight Foundation ultimately made 12 grants totaling about $3 million. After hearing the KNC discussed at the meeting, here are some of the elements I took away as key to building the perfect News Challenge application — and some of the potential pitfalls that could lead to an early rejection.


— A working prototype is great. When the creators of Davis Wiki (which the Lab has been following for a while) applied for grant funding to expand their project, they weren’t just pitching a concept. They could point judges to a thriving local website which collects community insight and serves as an open forum for residents to deal with everything from scam artists to lost kittens.


As LocalWiki’s Philip Neustrom explained, one in seven people in Davis, Calif., have contributed material to Davis Wiki, and in a week “basically half” of the city’s residents visit the site. This June, Davis Wiki made The New York Times when residents used the site to assemble information about a local scam artist, the “Crying Girl.”


Neustrom and Mike Ivanov co-founded Davis Wiki in 2004. So by the time they were applying for a 2010 KNC grant, they already had a mature, well-developed site to demonstrate the viability of what they were planning to do.


— Your project should be sustainable. Knight doesn’t want the projects they fund to wither away as soon as the grant money runs out. In the case of LocalWiki, what may be the best proof of their sustainability was actually made after they won Knight funding. Their recent Kickstarter campaign, which closed last month, raised $26,324 for outreach and education work, and 98 percent of that came from Davis community members, Neustrom said. Davis residents helped raise money by organizing a dance party, a silent auction, and fundraising nights at a bar — evidence that future LocalWiki sites will be able to build grassroots support.


— Your project should be catalytic. As a project reviewer, Lee said she looks for ideas that will catalyze development in a larger area. That means not just having a proven concept, but having one that’s scalable and that brings innovation to an area that needs attention.


Out of 2,300 applicants last year, only 500 were asked to provide a full proposal, and 50 of those became finalists. In the final round, Lee said, there was a lot of consensus between the judges about what projects were ultimately promising. The judges were allowed to apportion their votes between different projects, and 28 of the 50 got no votes, Lee said. Among the common problems with proposals:


— Don’t ask Knight to fund content. Lee said the KNC receives many proposals for, say, money to start a hyperlocal blog in North Carolina. But while the idea of a hyperlocal blog was innovative five or six years ago, Lee said, “at this point, it’s no longer cutting edge. The point of the Knight News Challenge is to encourage innovation, creativity.”


— Don’t apply with projects that don’t fit Knight’s mission. As with any contest, some projects try to shoehorn themselves into an inappropriate category for the sake of funding. A grant to do a project using SMS to provide health information in Africa, for example, would be “too specific to be interesting to the Knight News Challenge,” Lee said.


— Don’t be vague. For example: applying to create “a news aggregator.”


— Avoid generic citizen journalism projects. Say a group wanted to take Flip cams and give them to inner city kids as an experiment in citizen journalism. “We’re not totally into the citizen journalism thing anymore,” Lee said. “It has been given its chance to do its thing and kind of didn’t do its thing that well.”


— Have the credibility to make the project work. An applicant may have a good idea for an innovative project, but he or she also has to have the experience and credibility to actually pull it off. One tip-off that credibility is lacking? If he or she asks for an amount of grant funding that’s disproportional to the realistic needs of the project.


[Disclosure: Both Knight Foundation and Lee have been financial supporters of the Lab.]



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Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Digital Photography Review

Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Canon has released a bug-fixing firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II full-frame DSLR. Firmware v2.0.8 addresses specific issues with video recording, live-view and flash settings.

10-10-10: Goal to plant 350 trees by this Sunday -- Port Angeles <b>...</b>

Your #1 News Source for the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and beyond.

Islamophobia Watch - Documenting anti Muslim bigotry - Fox <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

Last week, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on ABC's The View that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. "If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, ...


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Justin Hartfield of WeedMaps is about as ballsy as entrepreneurs get. I mean that as a compliment. Not only is he building an online business that facilitates and profits off of the recreational use of marijuana– which let’s remember is still illegal in the United States– but he’s essentially rushing his small company out into the public markets, via a reverse merger with the mostly-unknown LC Luxuries Limited, which will build a new business around all things cannabis.


Between the anticipated closing of the deal, which will make WeedMaps essentially a publicly traded company on the Pink Sheets and California’s vote on a proposition to legalize marijuana, the next month will be huge for Hartfield– one way or another. Meanwhile revenues are soaring. WeedMaps was making $20,000 a month a year ago, made $300,000 in August and $400,000 in September– all off of just 50,000 registered users.


Obviously, the money-making potential is huge, but is there a greater moral issue here? Hartfield doesn’t see one. Hartfield was the guest on NBC’s Press:Here this week, where he discussed a unique dilemma in Silicon Valley: Having a $120 billion market to yourself in which no VCs want to invest. It’s a reality that’s driven him to this odd, back-door IPO.


It’s also helping make his company a cause. “We want to make buying a share in this company like buying a share in the legalization of marijuana cause,” he says. Hartfield — so unabashedly libertarian he could make Peter Thiel swoon– thinks markets are better ways of assessing public opinion than media or political polls. So, he argues, if people vote with their money for WeedMaps, it’ll be a proxy for how people feel about the practicality of legalization, which he sees as an inevitability. (Morality aside, I take issue with his certainty in this clip. Even in gung-ho California, some medical marijuana advocates oppose recreational legalization.)


But the deal is about more than just finding a way to go public. The new company will acquire and roll-up several smaller companies, likely also around the cannabis issue. Meanwhile, Hartfield is doing a weed/Web landgrab, taking nearly every business model that’s worked on the Web and building a weed version. His core site is like Yelp for weed, containing a database of more than 25,000 strains, where they can be found and reviews on dispensaries and headshops. He even offers an “elite” status.


The company has another site called WeedVote.com that helps get out the legalization vote, and the newly launched WeedMart.com is an online headship and he’s about to launch a new daily deals site for pot– that’s right, yet another Groupon clone, this time to get high. There’s also a feature called “Weed or Skin”– like Hot or Not but where you vote for scantily clad women or pictures of pot. I’m not kidding. While Hartfield isn’t the first to try to make money off of a vice, he revels in it more than most. “We don’t like to be hypocritical, and we don’t think there should be arbitrary differences between recreational and medicinal,” he says. This is clearly as much about the cause as it is about the company for him. Agree with his stance or not, you have to respect the conviction.


In the clip below, Hartfield talks about America’s “chronic fear of freedom” and the challenges he’s faced building this business. Go here for the full episode, which includes his rebuttal to medical marijuana advocates that say recreational legalization is bad for those who need the drug for medical reasons





For the first time, this year’s Knight News Challenge will be requesting entries in three specific categories: mobile, revenue models, and reputation/credibility. The contest judges won’t be seeking a certain quota of finalists in each category: “It’s much more of a signal to the population at large: These are the areas that need your attention,” Knight consultant Jennifer 8. Lee said on Monday, at a San Francisco information session sponsored by Hacks/Hackers.


Up to now, Lee said the Knight Foundation’s attitude towards the contest has been “we don’t know what news innovation is — you tell us.” But over the past four years, trends have emerged among the contest entries that mirror the broader development of the news business. 2010 was the year of mapping and data visualization projects, Lee said. In 2011, Knight sees innovations in credibility determination, mobile technology, and revenue model generation as key areas of development.


[Update: Lee has clarified some elements of the new News Challenge in a comment here — check it out for more details. Also, since this post was published, the News Challenge has officially announced the details for this year's contest, which includes an additional category, Community; you can see those here. —Josh]


Credibility in the news business used to be based on the brand reputation of large media outlets. But in a world in which anyone can report, and in which, in Lee’s words, rumors can explode and die within a day on Twitter, there’s a need for new ways to measure and establish credibility. For example, Lee said, “How do you know that this person is more serious reporting out of Tehran, or Iran, than that person?” In the world of online media, rumors can gain momentum more quickly and easily than in the traditional media ecosystem. What kinds of tools and filters could be used to combat hoaxes and determine the trustworthiness of online information? That third category is “the one that’s the most vague — and purposefully so,” Lee said.


The mobile and revenue models categories are more straightforward. Last year, the Chicago news site Windy Citizen won $250,000 to develop a software interface to creates “real-time ads” which constantly update with the most recent information from a business’ Twitter feed or Facebook page. Lee said this was a good example of a revenue model project.


The Knight News Challenge is also increasingly open to awarding funding to for-profit companies who want to build open-source projects. Last cycle, one of the grantees was Stamen Design, a top data visualization firm whose founder and employees had a proven commitment to making open source tools in their free time. Knight provided them with $400,000 to dedicate staff hours to projects that they would previously have done on weekends. There are many different ways of making Knight funding viable for for-profit companies, Lee said, so long as the companies can carefully document how the foundation funding is being applied to open-source work. “You can create the open-sourcey version of your project. That part becomes open source, and the other one doesnt,” Lee said.


Last year, out of 2,300 initial applications, the Knight Foundation ultimately made 12 grants totaling about $3 million. After hearing the KNC discussed at the meeting, here are some of the elements I took away as key to building the perfect News Challenge application — and some of the potential pitfalls that could lead to an early rejection.


— A working prototype is great. When the creators of Davis Wiki (which the Lab has been following for a while) applied for grant funding to expand their project, they weren’t just pitching a concept. They could point judges to a thriving local website which collects community insight and serves as an open forum for residents to deal with everything from scam artists to lost kittens.


As LocalWiki’s Philip Neustrom explained, one in seven people in Davis, Calif., have contributed material to Davis Wiki, and in a week “basically half” of the city’s residents visit the site. This June, Davis Wiki made The New York Times when residents used the site to assemble information about a local scam artist, the “Crying Girl.”


Neustrom and Mike Ivanov co-founded Davis Wiki in 2004. So by the time they were applying for a 2010 KNC grant, they already had a mature, well-developed site to demonstrate the viability of what they were planning to do.


— Your project should be sustainable. Knight doesn’t want the projects they fund to wither away as soon as the grant money runs out. In the case of LocalWiki, what may be the best proof of their sustainability was actually made after they won Knight funding. Their recent Kickstarter campaign, which closed last month, raised $26,324 for outreach and education work, and 98 percent of that came from Davis community members, Neustrom said. Davis residents helped raise money by organizing a dance party, a silent auction, and fundraising nights at a bar — evidence that future LocalWiki sites will be able to build grassroots support.


— Your project should be catalytic. As a project reviewer, Lee said she looks for ideas that will catalyze development in a larger area. That means not just having a proven concept, but having one that’s scalable and that brings innovation to an area that needs attention.


Out of 2,300 applicants last year, only 500 were asked to provide a full proposal, and 50 of those became finalists. In the final round, Lee said, there was a lot of consensus between the judges about what projects were ultimately promising. The judges were allowed to apportion their votes between different projects, and 28 of the 50 got no votes, Lee said. Among the common problems with proposals:


— Don’t ask Knight to fund content. Lee said the KNC receives many proposals for, say, money to start a hyperlocal blog in North Carolina. But while the idea of a hyperlocal blog was innovative five or six years ago, Lee said, “at this point, it’s no longer cutting edge. The point of the Knight News Challenge is to encourage innovation, creativity.”


— Don’t apply with projects that don’t fit Knight’s mission. As with any contest, some projects try to shoehorn themselves into an inappropriate category for the sake of funding. A grant to do a project using SMS to provide health information in Africa, for example, would be “too specific to be interesting to the Knight News Challenge,” Lee said.


— Don’t be vague. For example: applying to create “a news aggregator.”


— Avoid generic citizen journalism projects. Say a group wanted to take Flip cams and give them to inner city kids as an experiment in citizen journalism. “We’re not totally into the citizen journalism thing anymore,” Lee said. “It has been given its chance to do its thing and kind of didn’t do its thing that well.”


— Have the credibility to make the project work. An applicant may have a good idea for an innovative project, but he or she also has to have the experience and credibility to actually pull it off. One tip-off that credibility is lacking? If he or she asks for an amount of grant funding that’s disproportional to the realistic needs of the project.


[Disclosure: Both Knight Foundation and Lee have been financial supporters of the Lab.]



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Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Digital Photography Review

Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Canon has released a bug-fixing firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II full-frame DSLR. Firmware v2.0.8 addresses specific issues with video recording, live-view and flash settings.

10-10-10: Goal to plant 350 trees by this Sunday -- Port Angeles <b>...</b>

Your #1 News Source for the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and beyond.

Islamophobia Watch - Documenting anti Muslim bigotry - Fox <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

Last week, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on ABC's The View that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. "If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, ...


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Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Digital Photography Review

Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Canon has released a bug-fixing firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II full-frame DSLR. Firmware v2.0.8 addresses specific issues with video recording, live-view and flash settings.

10-10-10: Goal to plant 350 trees by this Sunday -- Port Angeles <b>...</b>

Your #1 News Source for the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and beyond.

Islamophobia Watch - Documenting anti Muslim bigotry - Fox <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

Last week, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on ABC's The View that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. "If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, ...


robert shumake twitter

Justin Hartfield of WeedMaps is about as ballsy as entrepreneurs get. I mean that as a compliment. Not only is he building an online business that facilitates and profits off of the recreational use of marijuana– which let’s remember is still illegal in the United States– but he’s essentially rushing his small company out into the public markets, via a reverse merger with the mostly-unknown LC Luxuries Limited, which will build a new business around all things cannabis.


Between the anticipated closing of the deal, which will make WeedMaps essentially a publicly traded company on the Pink Sheets and California’s vote on a proposition to legalize marijuana, the next month will be huge for Hartfield– one way or another. Meanwhile revenues are soaring. WeedMaps was making $20,000 a month a year ago, made $300,000 in August and $400,000 in September– all off of just 50,000 registered users.


Obviously, the money-making potential is huge, but is there a greater moral issue here? Hartfield doesn’t see one. Hartfield was the guest on NBC’s Press:Here this week, where he discussed a unique dilemma in Silicon Valley: Having a $120 billion market to yourself in which no VCs want to invest. It’s a reality that’s driven him to this odd, back-door IPO.


It’s also helping make his company a cause. “We want to make buying a share in this company like buying a share in the legalization of marijuana cause,” he says. Hartfield — so unabashedly libertarian he could make Peter Thiel swoon– thinks markets are better ways of assessing public opinion than media or political polls. So, he argues, if people vote with their money for WeedMaps, it’ll be a proxy for how people feel about the practicality of legalization, which he sees as an inevitability. (Morality aside, I take issue with his certainty in this clip. Even in gung-ho California, some medical marijuana advocates oppose recreational legalization.)


But the deal is about more than just finding a way to go public. The new company will acquire and roll-up several smaller companies, likely also around the cannabis issue. Meanwhile, Hartfield is doing a weed/Web landgrab, taking nearly every business model that’s worked on the Web and building a weed version. His core site is like Yelp for weed, containing a database of more than 25,000 strains, where they can be found and reviews on dispensaries and headshops. He even offers an “elite” status.


The company has another site called WeedVote.com that helps get out the legalization vote, and the newly launched WeedMart.com is an online headship and he’s about to launch a new daily deals site for pot– that’s right, yet another Groupon clone, this time to get high. There’s also a feature called “Weed or Skin”– like Hot or Not but where you vote for scantily clad women or pictures of pot. I’m not kidding. While Hartfield isn’t the first to try to make money off of a vice, he revels in it more than most. “We don’t like to be hypocritical, and we don’t think there should be arbitrary differences between recreational and medicinal,” he says. This is clearly as much about the cause as it is about the company for him. Agree with his stance or not, you have to respect the conviction.


In the clip below, Hartfield talks about America’s “chronic fear of freedom” and the challenges he’s faced building this business. Go here for the full episode, which includes his rebuttal to medical marijuana advocates that say recreational legalization is bad for those who need the drug for medical reasons





For the first time, this year’s Knight News Challenge will be requesting entries in three specific categories: mobile, revenue models, and reputation/credibility. The contest judges won’t be seeking a certain quota of finalists in each category: “It’s much more of a signal to the population at large: These are the areas that need your attention,” Knight consultant Jennifer 8. Lee said on Monday, at a San Francisco information session sponsored by Hacks/Hackers.


Up to now, Lee said the Knight Foundation’s attitude towards the contest has been “we don’t know what news innovation is — you tell us.” But over the past four years, trends have emerged among the contest entries that mirror the broader development of the news business. 2010 was the year of mapping and data visualization projects, Lee said. In 2011, Knight sees innovations in credibility determination, mobile technology, and revenue model generation as key areas of development.


[Update: Lee has clarified some elements of the new News Challenge in a comment here — check it out for more details. Also, since this post was published, the News Challenge has officially announced the details for this year's contest, which includes an additional category, Community; you can see those here. —Josh]


Credibility in the news business used to be based on the brand reputation of large media outlets. But in a world in which anyone can report, and in which, in Lee’s words, rumors can explode and die within a day on Twitter, there’s a need for new ways to measure and establish credibility. For example, Lee said, “How do you know that this person is more serious reporting out of Tehran, or Iran, than that person?” In the world of online media, rumors can gain momentum more quickly and easily than in the traditional media ecosystem. What kinds of tools and filters could be used to combat hoaxes and determine the trustworthiness of online information? That third category is “the one that’s the most vague — and purposefully so,” Lee said.


The mobile and revenue models categories are more straightforward. Last year, the Chicago news site Windy Citizen won $250,000 to develop a software interface to creates “real-time ads” which constantly update with the most recent information from a business’ Twitter feed or Facebook page. Lee said this was a good example of a revenue model project.


The Knight News Challenge is also increasingly open to awarding funding to for-profit companies who want to build open-source projects. Last cycle, one of the grantees was Stamen Design, a top data visualization firm whose founder and employees had a proven commitment to making open source tools in their free time. Knight provided them with $400,000 to dedicate staff hours to projects that they would previously have done on weekends. There are many different ways of making Knight funding viable for for-profit companies, Lee said, so long as the companies can carefully document how the foundation funding is being applied to open-source work. “You can create the open-sourcey version of your project. That part becomes open source, and the other one doesnt,” Lee said.


Last year, out of 2,300 initial applications, the Knight Foundation ultimately made 12 grants totaling about $3 million. After hearing the KNC discussed at the meeting, here are some of the elements I took away as key to building the perfect News Challenge application — and some of the potential pitfalls that could lead to an early rejection.


— A working prototype is great. When the creators of Davis Wiki (which the Lab has been following for a while) applied for grant funding to expand their project, they weren’t just pitching a concept. They could point judges to a thriving local website which collects community insight and serves as an open forum for residents to deal with everything from scam artists to lost kittens.


As LocalWiki’s Philip Neustrom explained, one in seven people in Davis, Calif., have contributed material to Davis Wiki, and in a week “basically half” of the city’s residents visit the site. This June, Davis Wiki made The New York Times when residents used the site to assemble information about a local scam artist, the “Crying Girl.”


Neustrom and Mike Ivanov co-founded Davis Wiki in 2004. So by the time they were applying for a 2010 KNC grant, they already had a mature, well-developed site to demonstrate the viability of what they were planning to do.


— Your project should be sustainable. Knight doesn’t want the projects they fund to wither away as soon as the grant money runs out. In the case of LocalWiki, what may be the best proof of their sustainability was actually made after they won Knight funding. Their recent Kickstarter campaign, which closed last month, raised $26,324 for outreach and education work, and 98 percent of that came from Davis community members, Neustrom said. Davis residents helped raise money by organizing a dance party, a silent auction, and fundraising nights at a bar — evidence that future LocalWiki sites will be able to build grassroots support.


— Your project should be catalytic. As a project reviewer, Lee said she looks for ideas that will catalyze development in a larger area. That means not just having a proven concept, but having one that’s scalable and that brings innovation to an area that needs attention.


Out of 2,300 applicants last year, only 500 were asked to provide a full proposal, and 50 of those became finalists. In the final round, Lee said, there was a lot of consensus between the judges about what projects were ultimately promising. The judges were allowed to apportion their votes between different projects, and 28 of the 50 got no votes, Lee said. Among the common problems with proposals:


— Don’t ask Knight to fund content. Lee said the KNC receives many proposals for, say, money to start a hyperlocal blog in North Carolina. But while the idea of a hyperlocal blog was innovative five or six years ago, Lee said, “at this point, it’s no longer cutting edge. The point of the Knight News Challenge is to encourage innovation, creativity.”


— Don’t apply with projects that don’t fit Knight’s mission. As with any contest, some projects try to shoehorn themselves into an inappropriate category for the sake of funding. A grant to do a project using SMS to provide health information in Africa, for example, would be “too specific to be interesting to the Knight News Challenge,” Lee said.


— Don’t be vague. For example: applying to create “a news aggregator.”


— Avoid generic citizen journalism projects. Say a group wanted to take Flip cams and give them to inner city kids as an experiment in citizen journalism. “We’re not totally into the citizen journalism thing anymore,” Lee said. “It has been given its chance to do its thing and kind of didn’t do its thing that well.”


— Have the credibility to make the project work. An applicant may have a good idea for an innovative project, but he or she also has to have the experience and credibility to actually pull it off. One tip-off that credibility is lacking? If he or she asks for an amount of grant funding that’s disproportional to the realistic needs of the project.


[Disclosure: Both Knight Foundation and Lee have been financial supporters of the Lab.]



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Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Digital Photography Review

Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Canon has released a bug-fixing firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II full-frame DSLR. Firmware v2.0.8 addresses specific issues with video recording, live-view and flash settings.

10-10-10: Goal to plant 350 trees by this Sunday -- Port Angeles <b>...</b>

Your #1 News Source for the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and beyond.

Islamophobia Watch - Documenting anti Muslim bigotry - Fox <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

Last week, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on ABC's The View that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. "If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, ...


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Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Digital Photography Review

Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Canon has released a bug-fixing firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II full-frame DSLR. Firmware v2.0.8 addresses specific issues with video recording, live-view and flash settings.

10-10-10: Goal to plant 350 trees by this Sunday -- Port Angeles <b>...</b>

Your #1 News Source for the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and beyond.

Islamophobia Watch - Documenting anti Muslim bigotry - Fox <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

Last week, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on ABC's The View that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. "If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, ...


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Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Digital Photography Review

Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Canon has released a bug-fixing firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II full-frame DSLR. Firmware v2.0.8 addresses specific issues with video recording, live-view and flash settings.

10-10-10: Goal to plant 350 trees by this Sunday -- Port Angeles <b>...</b>

Your #1 News Source for the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and beyond.

Islamophobia Watch - Documenting anti Muslim bigotry - Fox <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

Last week, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on ABC's The View that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. "If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, ...


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Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Digital Photography Review

Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Canon has released a bug-fixing firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II full-frame DSLR. Firmware v2.0.8 addresses specific issues with video recording, live-view and flash settings.

10-10-10: Goal to plant 350 trees by this Sunday -- Port Angeles <b>...</b>

Your #1 News Source for the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and beyond.

Islamophobia Watch - Documenting anti Muslim bigotry - Fox <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

Last week, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on ABC's The View that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. "If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, ...


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Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Digital Photography Review

Canon updates firmware for EOS 5D Mark II: Canon has released a bug-fixing firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II full-frame DSLR. Firmware v2.0.8 addresses specific issues with video recording, live-view and flash settings.

10-10-10: Goal to plant 350 trees by this Sunday -- Port Angeles <b>...</b>

Your #1 News Source for the Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend and beyond.

Islamophobia Watch - Documenting anti Muslim bigotry - Fox <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

Last week, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on ABC's The View that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," prompting The View co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the set in disgust. "If anybody felt that I meant all Muslims, ...


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I had an interesting conversation with my boss today about people that make a living online. He's semi-old school, so he doesn't really understand (or believe) that so many people these days provide for their families from website revenue and such. As I rattled on and tried to explain to him how every day people are accomplishing this, he obviously didn't understand like I wanted him to, and after 15 minutes of Internet Marketing babble, he shocked me when he asked me if I could name 10 ways people make money online.

Sure, no problem, boss! So here is what I came up with:

1. First choice, obviously, was blogging. Of course, I had to explain the ways you can make money with a blog (paid reviews, selling ads, text link sales, etc...) I think I drove the point home, and it made more sense when I explained the concept to him. The key to making money with your blog is to stick with it no matter what. Add content, grow it, and start raking in the cash.

2. I had to mention Ebay. Ebay was the starting point some 7 years ago when I started to technically "make money online". I even tried to sell paper plates once...it was an addiction. Seriously though, the average American household has so much crap stored away, you'd be surprised at what you can dig out and sell for a few bucks. It all adds up!

3. Drop-shipping. This one wasn't hard to explain, and it relates to #2. Basically, a company that offers a drop-shipping program will allow you to sell their products at whatever price you want to sell them at (over their price) and put the profit in your pocket - and they'll also ship the product from their warehouse to the customers home, so you never physically touch any product. This was really popular a few years back, but due to extreme saturation of the market, it's died down some.

4. Sell your skills. Nothing is more in demand online, than talent. Can you write, design, code, or translate? There are literally thousands of people out there that need your help, and usually don't know where to go and find it. Here's the cool part - they'll pay you handsomely for you services! To start finding gigs in your specialty area, head over to the Digital Point forums - plenty of waiting customers! (Logos sell really, really well!)

5. Can you make stuff that sells? If you specialize in making robots out of toothpicks and forks, then why the hell aren't you selling them online through your own website? This tip is kind of obvious (after-all, it IS 2007), but if you have a unique product or service, then pay the $500 (more or less)to get a custom website, and start taking orders! Again, this is a real no-brainer, but sometimes people need reminding.

6. PPC campaigns. This one is one of my personal favorites that I've been testing lately. PPC (pay per click) are ads that you buy on search engines (Google Adwords) to promote a product or service - usually through an affiliate. Each time someone clicks on your ad and makes a purchase, you get a commission. This method can be tricky and potentially costly at first, but the key to success is test, test, and more tests. Get creative with your keywords and ads - make them stand out. Tweak your landing pages until your conversions pick up. Usually, you'll find success after a lot of trial and error. Just watch your spending at first, because it's very easy to lose money if you slack in the research department!

7. Own a popular website or blog? Sell advertising! Although this may seem obvious, there are still a surprising amount of sites that don't actively sell their available ad spots. Make sure you have a link or page that clearly describes your rates and available types of ads. I hate nothing more than when I click on someones advertising page, and all it has is a contact form. I'll pass on it nearly every time.

8.Write and sell an e-book! With digital products being one of the hottest selling items on the internet right now, what better time to create you own and start raking in the cash! Do you know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich using nothing but cheese, cardboard, and lighter? Write a book about it! Trust me, no matter what, someone will buy it. 9. Do you take pictures? If so, another hot selling item is your original photography. With a quick Google search, you'll find 20 sites that offer to buy your stock digital photos. Some even pay royalties when users download them. For those of you that have huge photo collections of interesting stuff, you're sitting on a goldmine.

10. Exploit the virtual gold trade in video games (a personal favorite!). There are millions of people who play online games such as World of Warcraft who do nothing but stash the in game currency and sell it in bulk to brokers who resell it to regular players. This is a HUGE market, and although the market is packed, it seems like there is always room for one more 'player'. Check out ige.com to see what I mean. That's it for now, there are many more ways to make money online, but these are some of the easier and more obvious ones. I didn't go into great detail for each method because it would take me 4 days to get it all down. I know that if you're reading this blog, you're search engine savvy enough to find out more information if you need it. Now get out there and start earning some extra money!


robert shumake detroit

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