‘Long Tail’ Author Anderson: Free Doesn’t Work As A Standalone Business Model | paidContent.org

"Long Tail author and Wired EIC Chris Anderson explains why the “zero sum” model doesn’t work alone in this economy—and teases his next book Free—in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. The argument: “free” wasn’t enough before for all but a few and it’s not going to work now without a pay component, whether it’s “freemium”—“free as a form of marketing to put the product in the hands of the maximum number of people, converting just a small fraction to paying customers” or flat out charging for the bulk of goods and services. (The essay itself exemplifies “freemium”—free for anyone who wanders by WSJ.com, not just to those of us who pay to subscribe to the site’s full content.) It works for the consumer, or as Anderson puts it, “It’s a consumer’s paradise: The Web has become the biggest store in history and everything is 100% off.” Of course, that’s until the products they use disappear because the money isn’t there."

Wired 8.04: Why the future doesn't need us.

"From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things."

The Semantic Enterprise | Collaboration 2.0 | ZDNet.com

"While the greater semantic web shows great promise, it is going to be an immensely complex process linking up all content on the entire internet as it continues to grow - effectively tagging everything online. The task is arguably much more viable within the manageable boundaries of a specific business environment.

Information context is immensely important and powerful within the enterprise. We are all familiar with the huge document graveyards multiple Sharepoint shared drives and wikis can become - we spend time laboriously finding the location of information and then arriving at the single destination where it lives, over and over again.

While we have some very effective current generation enterprise 2.0 social network style software solutions for collaboration, there is an ongoing huge issue of scaling: an online environment for a team of say 40 can break down when it expands to 400, choking on its own success in a sea of information, for example. This is not the fault of the software but rather of the content being created and uploaded, which lacks the metadata which enables machines to filter and ‘read’ and process it."

Persuasive 2008 - The third international conference on persuasive technology

"Persuasive Technology 2008 gathered people interested in how software and related technologies influence people's attitudes and behaviours. The conference also featured the best new insights into how web sites, video games, and mobile phones and other applications can be designed to motivate and persuade people."

Engines of Creation 2.0: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology - Updated and Expanded by K. Eric Drexler

"Engines of Creation 2.0: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology - Updated and Expanded K. Eric Drexler"

ChangeThis | This is Your Buyology | Martin Lindstrom

“I have spent years talking with brand fans; from obsessed Harley Davidson riders to young Japanese Hello Kitty admirers (one of whom, incidentally, owns more than 12,000 pieces of Hello Kitty merchandise), to devoted Irish Guinness beer drinkers. I’ve, time after time, been struck by the apparent parallels between the power of religion and of brands over followers. But, in reality, would such a claim possibly hold up? Is it possible that some brands have managed to create their own religion by, coincidently or deliberately, adopting triggers and tactics from the world of religion? The question became an obsession for me.”"

Stack ‘em High and Sell ‘em Cheap…Job Postings That Is | Amitai Givertz's Recruitomatic Blog

"To the cynics who might postulate the alliance between SHRM and JobTarget has more to do with monopolistic price fixing than affinity programming, I say this: Phooey!"

That was the week that was...Week ending January 23, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"That was the week that was...Week ending January 23, 2009"

Prison Radio | Index of Mumia Abu-Jamal's Recorded Essays

"Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist who chronicles the human condition. He has been a resident of Pennsylvania’s death row for twenty-five years. Writing from his solitary confinement cell his essays have reached a worldwide audience. His books 'Live From Death Row', 'Death Blossoms', 'All Things Censored', “Faith of Our Fathers” and the recently released “We Want Freedom” have sold over 150,000 copies and been translated into nine languages. His 1982-murder trial and subsequent conviction have been the subject of great debate."

Lottery Tickets and Credit Cards: The Dangers of an Irrational Brain: Scientific American

"George Loewenstein is a neuroeconomist at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied everything from the brain activity triggered by retail shopping to the psychology of lottery tickets. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Loewenstein about his latest research, and what why credit cards are so dangerous.

LEHRER: Your most recent paper looked at some of the factors that seem to influence the purchase of lottery tickets. What did you find?"

Cyberethics | Founder-Editor: David Vance

"The Place of Cyberethics

How do Cyberethics fit into the overall scheme of Information Systems Management? This is the question we seek to answer. New technology creates challenges in the areas of privacy, property, security and individual identity and radically reshapes life styles around the globe. While the scholarly debate continues as we define the field, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that such a task is best handled by those who understand the capabilities and limitations of the technology, the tools of philosophical and ethical reasoning as developed over the millenia, and are sensitive to the spiritual impact of these technologies. Thus, we call for a broad scale dialog to understand, then direct the path of these helpful but disruptive inventions."

That was the week that was...Week ending January 16, 2009 - RecruitingBlogs.com

"With so much good stuff, and much of it coming from new members, it's getting harder and harder to choose just three posts for my Editor's Picks. So, from this week forward I'll pick the best of that days posts and you can pick a best one of your own..."

Technology News: Wikis: Collaboration and the Productivity Revolution

"Web 2.0 Has Seen Explosive Growth, Where's the Impact?

Facebook More about Facebook now claims over 140 million active users. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 10th largest in the world, right behind Russia and right ahead of Japan.

Yet if we were to measure the GDP of Facebook, we would come up with a negative sum. Facebook's top applications include online bumper stickers and sharing a (virtual) beer. The top business application, the Visa Business Network, has about 50,000 monthly users. In comparison, virtual beers have 5.7 million. In other words, Facebook is about wasting time. It's fun, but it's not productive. Adding Chuck Norris facts to your Facebook page or poking your friends might be entertaining, but it's not profitable.

The irony is that the Web 2.0 ethos of openness and collaboration has the potential to revolutionize business productivity ... but until the global recession hit, there was too much money available in time-wasting consumer applications to attract entrepreneurs to practical business applications. But times have changed."

The Convergence of Cognitive Neuroscience and Marketing « Kogelschatz on Advertising

"When I moved to Boston over a year ago to work for Modernista! on the Cadillac account, I quickly put an ad on Craigslist to join a band. Throughout high school and college, I had been in a band, but took some time off to focus on my masters program at Michigan State University. To say the least, I was anxious to get back into music. Soon after joining my new band, I found out that all of my band members were neuroscientists at well-renowned universities - Boston College, Harvard and MIT. Frequently while waiting for shows to begin, we would sit together and debate our set list for the evening. The discussion would usually focus on music, but every so often neuroscience would become the topic of discussion. It was interesting to hear their thoughts and ideas on neuroscience, however I couldn’t help but think how neuroscience could be applied to advertising."

Neuromarketing » Branding, Brains, and Google

"“Brand choice turns out to be a largely unconscious process,” says Tjaco Walvis, who led the one-and-a-half-year study. “But in that process, the brain behaves much like Google. It seems to use a set of rules called an algorithm to pick the brand from our memory that best and most reliably fits our functional and emotional needs at that particular moment. It behaves rationally, but in an unconscious way…”

Based on the study, Mr. Walvis concludes that the brain’s “algorithm” for brand choice has three elements.

Firstly, the brain selects the brand it has learned is best able to satisfy our biological and cultural goals. We unconsciously select the brand that is the most uniquely rewarding, based on its associations with our goals and the brain’s reward centers (e.g. the dopamine system).

Secondly, the brain selects the brand that has shown most frequently in the past that it is able to fulfill these needs. Coherent brands that repeat their promise are more likely to be chosen. Volvo, Coca-Cola and Disney are examples of coherent brands.

Thirdly, the brain selects the brand it has interacted with most intensely in the past. Brand participation creates numerous new connections in our brain, facilitating that brand’s retrieval. Nike Plus is an example of strong participation concept. [From Marketwire.]”

Social Media Case Studies SUPERLIST- 19 Extensive Lists of Organizations Using Social Media > IIG

"Need Inspiration?

A great way to get ideas for how your organization can use social media is to check out what others are doing. Here are 18 sites below (and one book) that will get you started.

Did I miss any collections? Please let me know in the comments and I’ll add them to this list."

7 Critical Elements of Your Social Media Strategy | Convince & Convert

"It’s fantastic that interest in social media is so high, but I’m alarmed at the number of brands and agencies that are ready to jump into social media to take “advantage” of audience concentration in Facebook, Twitter, and other fast-growth outposts. What’s lacking in most social media programs is an actual strategy. If you don’t know precisely why you’re in social media, with whom you want to engage, and how you’re going to measure success, you’re not ready to start.

I use a 7-step Social Media Strategy Worksheet to create a framework that governs what the initiative aims to accomplish. (You can download the Social Media Strategy Workshop as a PDF here, and use it as much as you like, with attribution)."

FT.com / Mind-boggling marketing

"What do smokers think and feel when they see gruesome pictures of diseased body parts and dire predictions of early, painful death on their cigarette packs? Smokers say the warnings put them off. But when their reactions were tested under a brain scanning machine, parts of the brain associated with intense craving flared into action on the scans. Even the most graphic health warnings might unwittingly encourage smokers to light up, the experiment suggested.

It is an intriguing finding from the biggest “neuromarketing” research project so far, a $7m study organised with university academics by marketing consultant Martin Lindstrom and reported by him in a new book, Buy-ology. The study was designed, in his words, to reveal “hidden truths behind how branding and marketing messages work on the human brain”."

Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace | Gary Stringer

"As the Internet grows, it begins to have an impact not just on the way we use our computers, but on the way we live our lives too. The effects of mass communication are already apparent in the way we inhabit the “global village”, but these are just the beginnings of a massive social and cultural change. We are moving towards an information society.

This module looks at how the Internet has already changed the world for almost everyone in it. It examines the benefits, problems, and moral dilemmas that the Internet has presented, and looks to a future where the Internet will be even more ubiquitous and influential."

Six Degrees of Separation Is Now Three

"Is it time to revise the old saw that everyone in the world is connected by just six degrees of separation? A study from French mobile carrier O2 has found that strangers are more connected to each other than they ever have been.

According to the study, the average person is now connected by just three degrees within a shared “interest” or social group instead of six. In fact, it found that people are usually a part of three main networks: family, friendship, and work.

O2 asked adults across three different age groups — 18-25, 35-45, 55+ — to make contact with random strangers from areas all across the globe using only personal connections. By linking their shared interests, the participants were able to connect to that person in three person-to-person links."

Society for Neuroscience | Neuroscience Core Concepts

"Each essential principle is supported by fundamental concepts comparable to those underlying the U.S. National Science Education Standards (NSES). Consult the Overview Matrix to integrate Neuroscience Core Concepts into your curriculum."

BrightPlanet - The 'Deep' Web: Surfacing Hidden Value

"Searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean. While a great deal may be caught in the net, there is still a wealth of information that is deep, and therefore, missed. The reason is simple: Most of the Web's information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search engines never find it.

Traditional search engines create their indices by spidering or crawling surface Web pages. To be discovered, the page must be static and linked to other pages. Traditional search engines can not 'see' or retrieve content in the deep Web — those pages do not exist until they are created dynamically as the result of a specific search. Because traditional search engine crawlers can not probe beneath the surface, the deep Web has heretofore been hidden."

Deep Web » AI3:Adaptive Information

"I’m pleased to wrap up a multi-part interview with the Federated Search Blog as part of their ongoing ‘Search Luminaries’ series. Sol Lederman, editor of the blog, does a thorough and comprehensive job! Over the past month on every Friday, I have answered some 25 or so of his detailed questions.

Federated Search Blog was particularly interested in the deep Web, its discovery and size. Many of the early questions deal with those themes. However, by Part 4 things get a bit more current, with the topics shifting to the semantic Web, linked data and Zitgist."

An Analytic View of Delusion - Cogprints

"The present article proposes a logical account of delusions, which are regarded as conclusions resulting from fallacious arguments. This leads to distinguish between primary, secondary, ..., n-ary types of delusional arguments. Examples of delusional arguments leading to delusion of reference, delusion of influence, thought-broadcasting delusion and delusion of grandeur are described and then analysed. This suggests finally a way susceptible of improving the efficiency of cognitive therapy for delusions."

Tyler Durden’s 8 Rules of Innovation | Lateral Action

"If you haven’t seen the movie Fight Club (or read Chuck Palahniuk’s excellent novel), I won’t spoil the fantastic plot twist where we come to understand who Tyler Durden really is. The story isn’t for everyone, but if you think it’s about fighting, you’re on the wrong track.

At its core, Fight Club is about living the life you truly want to live, and the hard path to getting there. Tyler helps the story’s nameless hero (usually referred to as Jack) down that path to enlightenment, so maybe what Tyler says can help the rest of us as well.

Luckily, Tyler says a lot of things that apply directly to innovative action. Here are his 8 rules for creative people to live by."