The Right Taps Blogs for Bucks

Grok Headline matches for The Right Taps Blogs for Bucks

Blogs, bosses and bucks

Blogs, bosses and bucks 06/25/2004 08:31 PM
I had a good time yesterday at Supernova, but it seemed that one of the points I made on our panel caused some consternation among some listeners, so let's look at it.

I had heard a certain amount of what I thought was wildly overoptimistic forecasting of the widespread adoption of blogging as a tool in corporate America. For instance, Tim Bray said: "Any corporation that doesn't do this in the future is going to be playing catch-up. They can use the technology to make the enterprise provide a more human face to world." (I copied this quote from a trade journal article on the conference and promptly lost the URL. Sorry. I wasn't taking notes myself so if it's wrong, apologies in advance.)

I agree with Tim and the other optimists that blogging can give enterprises a more human face. But will they let it? What I said yesterday is that I thought the successes to date in public blogging by software developers at places like Microsoft and Sun weren't likely to be duplicated in other, more traditional corporations any time soon. Software professionals are relatively unique in feeling that (a) their talents are in demand and (b) if they get fired from one job they can probably (except maybe at the very bottom of an economic cycle) get another one pretty easily. In other words, they feel more empowered to spout off on their blogs without fearing for their livelihood than the typical American worker does.

I'm not sure why, but Tim seemed to take this comment to mean that I thought that people in other fields -- I think he mentioned construction, it's hard to remember -- wouldn't succeed as bloggers because they're "not as interesting." Of course, that's not what I said, and it's precisely the opposite of what I think. Everyone has stories to tell, and everyone's stories are worth telling: that's a credo of the digital storytelling movement that I've been involved with for a decade now.

The stories that programmers are telling in the current explosion of blogs have given their work a vital new visibility; as developers tell their stories to each other, creating a pool of technical, practical and philosophical knowledge, they are also giving the public a new and fascinating window onto their discipline. (I'm as aware of this as anyone -- my work on my book is infinitely easier thanks to the profusion of programming blogs.)

Do I think it would be a Good Thing for this pattern to be duplicated in other fields? Of course -- and it's happening in some, predictably in those areas where individual professionals have a tradition of independence (the legal world, academia).

But the utopian vision of blogging somehow flattening corporate hierarchies and allowing Cluetrain-like voices of authenticity to trumpet forth from every Fortune 500 headquarters? Maybe it's possible on the sort of time scale that Supernova keynoter Tom Malone talked about -- from hunter-gatherers to agriculture, that sort of thing. But I don't think it's going to happen in our lifetimes.

I'm sorry to be the pessimist at the party. But for large numbers of workers in America, particularly those at big companies, the dominant fact of life remains don't piss off your boss. And, in an era of health-insurance lock-in and easy outsourcing and offshoring, many U.S. workers remain doubtful that they can simply waltz into a new job should their activities displease the current hierarchy to which they report. So the odds of them feeling at ease publishing honest Web sites about their work lives are extremely poor. The blogs you're going to see from within most traditional companies will be either uninformative snoozes or desperate attempts at butt-covering and -kissing. Not because people don't have great stories to tell -- but because telling the truth has too high a cost.

Someone at Supernova got up and said that he worked in investment banking and thought it was a field that was ripe for blogging. No doubt! I'm assuming that your typical investment banker has managed to sock away some private unemployment insurance cash (also known in some industries as "fuck you" money, something Dick Cheney apparently has in abundance).

For those with such resources, blog on! For those lucky enough to work for a company that says "blog on" and means it, cherish your luck. But for most of the rest of the working population, the blogging revolution will be happening in some other office.

Blogs Pump Bucks Into Campaigns

Blogs Pump Bucks Into Campaigns 02/18/2004 07:51 AM
A Democratic candidate buys $2,000 of advertising on a blog and gets $80,000 in campaign donations in two weeks. Was it a fluke, or the beginning of a new campaign cash cow? By Chris Ulbrich.

Wired News: Blogs Pump Bucks Into
Campaigns

Wired News: Blogs Pump Bucks Into
Campaigns 02/18/2004 09:22 PM
Blogs - Where The Money and Political Activists Are .. It's that thing that brings in money .. Blogs pump bucks into campaigns .. Wired News

wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,62325,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
track this site | 5 links

Save Big Bucks With Small Bucks

Save Big Bucks With Small Bucks 04/15/2005 10:07 AM
Did you realize that $2 per day can become $100,000?

Saddam seized in spider hole; Motorola
taps Zander; Berlusca rebuffed; NYSE
taps Thain

Saddam seized in spider hole; Motorola
taps Zander; Berlusca rebuffed; NYSE
taps Thain 12/19/2003 08:42 PM
Forbes Dec 19 2003 6:58PM ET

Saddam seized in spider hole; Motorola's
Galvin taps Zander; Berlusca rebuffed;
NYSE taps Thain

Saddam seized in spider hole; Motorola's
Galvin taps Zander; Berlusca rebuffed;
NYSE taps Thain 12/19/2003 07:39 PM
Forbes Dec 19 2003 6:24PM ET

How They Get the Big Bucks

How They Get the Big Bucks 11/18/2003 12:16 AM
For a thin-client deployment that's not going well, this IT shop brings in some highly paid consultants. Fish notices that one of them of them appears to be taking notes on everything that's said or done, using a handheld computer ...

The big bucks

The big bucks 05/13/2004 03:31 AM
USA Today May 13 2004 7:11AM GMT

Boston.com / News / Blogs / David
Weinberger bl0gs the Democratic National
Convention on Boston.com: Blogging
crosses over

Boston.com / News / Blogs / David
Weinberger bl0gs the Democratic National
Convention on Boston.com: Blogging
crosses over 07/29/2004 05:21 PM
fun post about the blogger breakfast

boston.com/news/blogs/dnc/2004/07/blogging_crosse.html
track this site | 3 links

Reading bl0gs, writing bl0gs

Reading bl0gs, writing bl0gs 06/06/2004 06:45 PM
Kansas City Star (subscription),MO-9 hours ago• BlogPulse.com offers a blog search engine. Just type in keywords of interest. Or use Google to search for “blog” and keywords of interest. ...

Internal Blogs: So, Are They Different
From External Blogs?

Internal Blogs: So, Are They Different
From External Blogs? 03/29/2005 07:22 AM
Internal Blogs: So, Are They Different From External Blogs?
http://www.llrx.com/features/internalblogs.htm

Dennis Hamilton shares his experience with launching a blog behind the corporate firewall, and suggests parameters that focus on content value to ensure its successful implementation. This is an feature article appearing in the March edition of Sabrina I. Pacifici's LLRX.com.

BEA Systems Bucks Up

BEA Systems Bucks Up 08/13/2004 02:15 PM
The software company's stock rises on improved second-quarter numbers.

Big bucks in Bluetooth?

Big bucks in Bluetooth? 07/22/2004 06:31 PM
Electric New Paper Jul 22 2004 9:04PM GMT

Big bucks from Bill

Big bucks from Bill 02/12/2004 11:37 PM
USA Today Feb 13 2004 4:10AM GMT

i'd take a hundred bucks if profiled

i'd take a hundred bucks if profiled 08/04/2004 06:50 PM
it's gonna happen anyway, i might as well get paid

Ten Years and Fifteen Bucks

Ten Years and Fifteen Bucks 12/19/2004 02:58 PM

« Pigs are pigs all the world over. »

Happy 40th Conrad and 30-*mumble* JJ! I think we have all earned the joy of good single malts and reading pandering crap like this knowing we're too old for the target market. James Earl Jones might have been cool, but RMS? Paging Brad Kuhn, paging Brad Kuhn....:) 'Tis a pity I gave up such ancient technology as the answering machine years ago.

When I came home tonight there was a big package from my mother who sent a few gifts, a few bags of dried cranberries and load of mail from the last few months which mostly consisted of quarterly retirement fund reports noting how much money they've lost this quarter and a slew of credit card offers. In contrast, the banks in Finland will mostly tell you to piss off if you want a MasterCard unless you have a job, even with a decent amount of money in the bank and no debt, and will give you a low line of credit and make you pay an annual fee. Of course, there's nowhere near the problem of personal debt here either.

After chopping up most of those I found an envelope from the City of St. Louis which struck me as odd since I've not lived there in almost a decade. I opened it and much to my amazement I found a harsh letter for a 10 year-old $15 parking ticket. Yes, TEN YEARS. Jesus christ in a merry widow with a cat 'o nines, even criminals enjoy a shorter statute of limitations on far worse crimes than being busted by the meter nazis. Fifteen whole dollars, which is something like 5 euro these days, induced them to send a threatening letter of doom.

Our records indicate that parking tickets issued to a vehicle registered in your name are delinquent. Your failure to satisfy this matter immediately will result in the forwarding of this debt to a national collection agency and may result in additional collection fees equal to 20 percent of the amount due. [emphasis theirs]

Holy shit, I'm in for a whole $15 and the $3 for collection. I'll bet Trump never got a lame letter like this when he was in the hole for a few billion bucks and I'm getting busted for a lousy $15?! The only thing worse than the US Postmaster on your ass is the parking ticket collective, even the parking nazis in Helsinki have an Orwellian logo to remind you that there is no escape from the everseeing eye of the "Time Expired" vultures. Why can't they just send me a letter that says something like that they're sorry that it took them 10 years to notice that I have one whole parking ticket outstanding and that they'd like me to pay up instead of the dramatic language of doom? I doubt that Finland would extradite me for a parking ticket back home, but I wonder if the US Customs guys would bust me if I ever reenter the US and send me to Gitmo as a parking terrorista. Who knew living on the edge could be so easy and so dreadfully dull at the same time?

Speaking of pigs, I found out about kinkkubingo [ham bingo] today at work. Bingo makes me think of old ladies [sorry mom] in church basements obsessing on their cards to win pocket money. Ham bingo is, apparently, a Christmas tradition of bingo or a raffle for a Christmas ham. I say 'apparently' as Google doesn't turn up much and my close Finnish girlfriend upon whom I rely to keep me informed on such important bits of cultural ephemera had never heard of it. DTM has a Kalkunnabingo [turkey bingo] every Sunday with Miss Bitch but, being a former fag hag supreme, I get a little suspicious when gay clubs start raffling off meat. :) It sounds like a bit of harmless holiday fun and might even be combined with a drinking game for pikkujoulu entertainment.

And, just in time for Christmas tree trimming, the paper lomo that you can cut out, glue together and enjoy. The Lomo people also have a cute advent calendar, too. Maybe I'll send one of the paper lomos to the parking crusaders with the pysäköinninvalvonta eyeball glued onto the front of it for grins.

Heyer's Bubbly Bucks

Heyer's Bubbly Bucks 06/15/2004 11:47 AM
Steven Heyer will leave Coca-Cola with a $23-million severance package.

TBL wins a million bucks

TBL wins a million bucks 04/15/2004 02:18 PM
seems fair, but when do we hand out the prize for creating FTP?

T-Rex Bones Don't Bring Big Bucks

T-Rex Bones Don't Bring Big Bucks 05/19/2004 06:08 AM
CBS News May 19 2004 10:08AM GMT

Dollar Tree Bucks Up

Dollar Tree Bucks Up 05/27/2004 01:55 PM
Dollar Tree had a pretty good quarter. But will steep gas prices alter its outlook?

Grokster And EFF Get Big Bucks Backer

Grokster And EFF Get Big Bucks Backer 03/28/2005 04:42 PM
Internet Billionare <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban">Mark Cuban</a> has announced his intention to financially support the EFF and Grokster. Cuban, who believes that any ruling could potentially hurt innocent businessmen like himself, announced his plans on his weblog; he said that "the EFF and others came to me and asked if I would finance the legal effort against MGM. I said yes. I would provide them the money they need."

Tomorrow, the US Supreme Court will hear the case of MGM vs. Grokster. Involving more than 28 of the world's biggest media companies, the lawsuit also includes P2P vendors Kazaa and Morpheus and attempts to set a precedent against other uses of p2p technology. Grokster is being defended by the EFF. The case has been brought to the Supreme Court after a lower court ruled in Grokster’s favour, and the media companies appealed.

In a post on Saturday, Cuban remarked that "If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only." He went onto say that "It wont be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios wont sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a judge believe the technology might impact the music business. It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them."

The EFF plan to use the so called "Betamax" defence. "The copyright law principles set out in the Sony Betamax case have served innovators, copyright industries, and the public well for 20 years," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF's IP attorney. "We at EFF look forward to the Supreme Court reaffirming the applicability of Betamax in the 21st century."

View: EFF Information | Cuban's Blog

Read full story...

Pistons Mow Down Bucks 108-82 in Game 1
(AP)

Pistons Mow Down Bucks 108-82 in Game 1
(AP) 04/18/2004 04:27 PM
AP - One of the best defenses in NBA history shut down the highest scoring team in the Eastern Conference. Richard Hamilton scored 21 points and the Detroit Pistons set a team playoff record with 14 steals in a 108-82 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday in Game 1 of their first-round series.

3Com and 3 Bucks (and Change)

3Com and 3 Bucks (and Change) 09/20/2004 10:45 AM
At more than $4 a stub, every 3Com share comes with $3.25 cash.

Big Bucks for Biometric Screening

Big Bucks for Biometric Screening 06/02/2004 05:37 AM
The Department of Homeland Security awards a $10 billion contract to a group of companies, led by Accenture, to build a system to screen and track foreign visitors to the United States.

CD Settlement brings you the big bucks

CD Settlement brings you the big bucks 03/13/2003 11:27 AM

Save Big Bucks When Investing

Save Big Bucks When Investing 03/24/2005 08:58 AM
Why spend more than you have to when investing?

Get into Google for under a thousand
bucks

Get into Google for under a thousand
bucks 07/28/2004 05:48 AM
Nbr.co.nz - Wed Jul 28, 09:45 am GMT

EMC bucks earnings trend with Q1 growth

EMC bucks earnings trend with Q1 growth 04/19/2005 12:16 PM
EMC today posted double-digit, year-over-year revenue growth for the seventh consecutive quarter, ending a string of lower-than-expected quarterly earnings announcements by other storage industry leaders.

Singapore Slings Biotech Bucks

Singapore Slings Biotech Bucks 07/28/2004 06:17 AM
The future-friendly city-state has an offer bioscientists can't refuse: unrestricted research, top-notch equipment and limitless funds. Just leave your chewing gum at home. By Stuart Luman from Wired magazine.

'Programming U.' Bucks Traditional
Schools

'Programming U.' Bucks Traditional
Schools 08/04/2004 03:35 PM
AP via Los Angeles Times Aug 4 2004 8:04PM GMT

UK ebiz bucks retail downturn

UK ebiz bucks retail downturn 01/06/2004 09:16 AM
vnunet.com Jan 6 2004 8:03AM ET

Do You See Dead People? Want a Million
Bucks?

Do You See Dead People? Want a Million
Bucks? 04/09/2004 03:55 PM
Do you see dead people? Do you believe in ghosts? Extrasensory perception? UFOs and alien abductions? Can faith alone heal what modern medicine cannot? Do you fear demon possession or live in fear of crossing paths with Bigfoot on some dark and lonely road? Do you believe in lucky numbers or that the wandering stars and planets hold dominion over your destiny? Do magnets exhibit mysterious healing qualities? If your answer to one or more of those questions is yes, then take heart: you're far from alone.

Dell ups bucks for recycling programs

Dell ups bucks for recycling programs 07/01/2004 12:36 PM
Twenty-two grants of $10,000 will go to recycling efforts in the United States and Canada.

Google's Big-Bucks Expansion Plans

Google's Big-Bucks Expansion Plans 05/04/2004 02:29 AM
Business Week May 4 2004 6:24AM GMT

Bucks Bounce Back to Nip Pistons 92-88
(AP)

Bucks Bounce Back to Nip Pistons 92-88
(AP) 04/22/2004 02:34 AM
AP - Michael Redd scored a career playoff-high 26 points and the Milwaukee Bucks held on to beat the Detroit Pistons 92-88 on Wednesday night to even the series at 1-1.

| Big Brother's Ryan reaps big bucks

| Big Brother's Ryan reaps big bucks 08/15/2004 02:26 AM
Entertainment.news.com.au - Sat Aug 14, 01:49 pm GMT

How To Save Big Bucks On A Laptop
Computer

How To Save Big Bucks On A Laptop
Computer 08/14/2004 06:54 PM
WebDevInfo Aug 14 2004 11:27PM GMT

I.B.M. Profit, Up by 17%, Bucks Trend in
Industry

I.B.M. Profit, Up by 17%, Bucks Trend in
Industry 07/16/2004 12:07 AM
New York Times Jul 16 2004 4:01AM GMT

Sell yourself with "Body Bucks" course
(Reuters)

Sell yourself with "Body Bucks" course
(Reuters) 01/22/2004 11:02 PM
Reuters - Selling yourself might be second nature for wannabe movie stars or aspiring screenwriters looking for a lucky break in California.
Grok Description matches for The Right Taps Blogs for Bucks
GrokA matches for The Right Taps Blogs for Bucks

The Right Taps Blogs for Bucks

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: