October 2008
42 posts
Paul Kedrosky: Game Theory and Corporate Fear →
“Stories are everywhere about people like Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer finally realizing that Congress wasn’t going to get the urgency of the current credit market problems without prodding from companies perceived to well away from the financial nexus.”
One thing I always marvelled at when I was doing my trading job was the ~24hour clairvoyance of really smart contrarian...
September 2008
43 posts
MoMB | The Museum of Modern Betas →
“WorldWideWeb - Executive Summary
The WWW project merges the techniques of...”
–
WorldWideWeb: Summary -
alt.hypertext |
Google Groups
Tim Berners-Lee’s Usenet post explaining the WWW
“I really wish [“bailout”] critics would do better…
Do people...”
– Paul Kedrosky: Why the Bailout Bill Failed: Crisis Not Taken Seriously Enough?
Exactly.
“This is a bold bill that will keep the crisis in our financial system from...”
– House Narrowly Defeats Bailout Legislation - washingtonpost.com
The quote is from Bush, before to the vote. It’s an interesting line of thinking, because as my new favorite financial commentator Paul Kedrosky said, problems in financial services are by definition metastasized throughout the...
PageRank: It's not "magic"
I’d argue that the core of Google’s innovation - the PageRank idea - was of a purely social character… based on realising the limitations of the engineering efforts of the likes of Altavista in machine based semantic analysis. The relatively simple counting the backlinks is not exactly an engineering tour de force. Nor is the realisation that links are social gestures. Larry Page...
The Biggest Irony on the Internet
I find it absolutely hilarious that the talk page on the Wikipedia social media article is relatively dormant (and that the article itself is completely inadequate). With all the social media geeks running around Twittering and blogging their faces off, you’d think that the article would be more active than those of the two presidential candidates.
(Maybe it’s just that there’s...
Calculated Risk: Hold-to-Maturity Pricing →
Killer article on the info asymmetries in the MBS market.
If I get a second, I’m hoping to write a short piece on CDS (credit default swaps), which will include a mildly funny personal anecdote about a trader from Merrill trying to sell them to the investment firm I worked at back in 2002.
This song is so awesome it actually hurts my soul...
hypebot: Part 4: Tunecore's Jeff Price On The... →
Here’s all four parts of my loooooong interview with the esteemed Jeff Price of TuneCore, enjoy!
Calculated Risk: Report: Paulson Agrees on Equity... →
Holy cow, looks like the $700B plan might be engineered so that it actually works…I’m surprised, and happy ;-)
Follow Calculated Risk and Information Arbitrage for by far the best coverage of this and related stories…
Marketing: Targeting vs. Serendipity
but, i have no objection to noise - thru my many years selling advertising and targeting and profiling and media and such, i constantly reminded buyers that targeting often becomes the crutch of the lazy non-creative marketer — a useful tool of course but a severely limiting one, by definition ruling out educating prospects about new things and things they maybe didn’t know interested...
We All Should Get U.S. Bailout Tombstones →
Flipping Beacon
The chance that you’re interested in the same product / service at the same time as a friend is really slim. More likely, you’ll get spammed with irrelevant ads (business ads shown to friends in school, women’s clothing ads shown to male friends, etc). It’s far more effective to target people based on their own behavior than on the behavior of their friends. Furthermore,...
“Who cares where the assets are carried on a firm’s books? If Morgan...”
– Information Arbitrage: Paying for the Bailout: In Defense of the U.S. Taxpayer
This is one of the most genius financial analyses+creative ideas I’ve ever read…recommended!
“The current plan is vague, opaque, has almost no oversight, puts the taxpayers...”
– Calculated Risk
This is the financial equivalent of the “WMD” argument.
“In the latest attempt to shore up sales of music on physical media, SanDisk...”
– SanDisk, Record Companies Plan New Music Format - WSJ.com
hahahahaha
Some comic relief before the debate on [and potential passage of] the biggest ripoff of all time.
“This is not what the market really needed…The market did not need a ban on...”
– Information Arbitrage: From Capitalism to Socialism to ???: Crossing the Line
All of Roger Ehrenberg’s posts from this week are killer…
The First Horseman of the Macropocalypse →
Were YOU reading this on December 12, 2007?
Music geeks should also read and take note of the analogies to record labels below (bolding is mine):
What the Fed has just done - allying with other major central banks to inject liquidity into the banking system without regard for the underlying problems of adverse selection and moral hazard - is nothing short of economic madness. It’s...
“What is obvious to those who understand the principles of systemic design is...”
– Financial Russian Roulette - Readers’ Comments - The New York Times
I like to say that I called this when I went short on my career as a securities analyst in 2002, but it wasn’t the only reason I changed directions…
I will say that the people working in financial markets over...
What can the CIA teach you about solving marketing... →
WatchInside Facebook » Spanish Developer Creates Facebook Connect WordPress Plugin
Girl Turk: Mechanical Turk Meets Girl Talk's "Feed... →
“Advertisers should embrace social media. It’s the most exciting thing for...”
– Sometrics
hahaha
Finally, someone articulates what has been on the tip of my tongue for years!
;-)
“As discussed earlier, Bishop describes the Big Sort as a choice people make as a...”
– Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: The Bigger Consequences of the Big Sort
This is a really deep and brilliant meditation from John Hagel…probably the most stimulating thoughts on politics and marketing I’ve read in a while…
Election Strategy 101 →
Business Model Design for Internet Radio
I would love to see a “good” (as in “Be Good”) form of payola open up a new channel of demand-generation for artists. Clearly Ian/Topspin is thinking in these terms when he asked what is, in my opinion, the quintessential music-marketing question: “If you sound like Elvis Costello, how do we get you in front of Elvis Costello fans?” http://bit.ly/D1b7f Solving...
“Treasury officials also have held informal conversations with leading buyers of...”
– U.S. Seizes Control of Mortgage Giants - washingtonpost.com
CalArts School of Music named in recognition of... →
Good to see some funding going straight to the music school at CalArts.
Hopefully the jazz/improvisation department will see some love…Dave Roitstein, Larry Koonse, Joe LaBarbera, and Charlie Haden FTW!
[MFA ‘06]
Unemployment Rate Jumps to Five-Year High -... →
This is the exact reason why we need a 72-year-old man who has no clue how to use a computer in charge!
There’s no need for people with computer skills in this economy!
WatchJon Stewart Hits Karl Rove, Bill O’Reilly, Dick Morris On Sarah Palin Hypocrisy
Somehow, “hypocrisy” doesn’t do this justice. It’s absolutely disgusting!
I think it would be incredibly potent to stitch clips like these together and run them as ads.
More On Buying School Supplies Online
Albert, my wife teaches 3rd grade at a private school here in LA. I set her up with a private Wordpress blog that she uses to communicate with parents and publish newsletters. She also has a sidebar widget with her AMZ “class wishlist” on it right at the top of the page; it’s mostly for books for the library but I’m hoping to expand it to the whole shebang next year. I...
“Chrome is a textbook example of asymmetrical competition.
You don’t need...”
– How to Chrome Your Industry - Umair Haque
Why so little innovation? →
Shopping for School Supplies
continuations:
We have three kids in elementary school and yesterday I spent nearly 2 hours at Staples together with a bunch of other dazed and confused parents. The ritual of buying school supplies may have nostalgic value to some, but I find it appallingly inefficient. The ideal solution would be for the teachers to simply go ahead and order the supplies online and have them delivered to...
“I think in time, Google’s Android will be to the iPhone what Windows was...”
– A VC
Agreed. I don’t even know what the current price is, but I’m reiterating my GOOG “Buy” rating now.
I also think it could be VERY fast that this happens. Are HTC and Google really not going to come out of the gates swinging on this? Did anyone else read the...
How SAP Seeds Innovation →
“SAP’s collaborative Web sites and discussion forums give its customers ways to learn from SAP business partners as well as from each other”
This is mind-blowingly awesome. A must-read for marketers; we are all sooooo far behind.
Hagel/Brown in 2012 ;-)
Watch(via Google Video)
Monocle editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé talks to Lego CEO, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, at the company’s innovation centre in Billund, Denmark.
[[[Good thoughts on outsourcing innovation and next-gen branding]]]
P&G’s Innovation Culture →
This article, written by the P&G CEO, is effin’ genius.
“Of college graduates, 30 percent to 45 percent in India and China have...”
– Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown - NYTimes.com
Further quotes:
“But Ms. Estrin said that the technologies at the root of new products like Apple’s iPod or the Facebook social networking service were actually developed several decades ago. If a new round of fundamental...