Is anyone stealing your stuff?
Matt Mason, author of the Pirate's Dilemma, pithily says,
Matt Mason, author of the Pirate's Dilemma, pithily says,
Of all of the work I've done at Edvisors over the years, Scholarship Search Secrets, a free eBook on using Google and other tools to find money for college, is one of my proudest accomplishments. No other single piece of work has changed as many lives for the better as this one eBook, and the sixth edition brings new ideas to the table at a time when they're desperately needed, because college isn't getting cheaper but our collective wallets certainly are getting lighter.
I'm an avid gold-maker in World of Warcraft. Like real life, the amount of gold you have in the game is a direct measure of how much value you bring. If you quest like mad and rack up thousands of gold, you've got the skills and the time to complete lots of quests. That's value. If you farm materials like in-game consumables, you're generating value for other players who don't have to spend their time farming, and the gold pours in. If you play the Auction House, knowing your markets and trends, you can arbitrage items that are sold for unusually low prices by players that don't know better and resell them at market prices - and the gold pours in.
I present two charts.
Podcasters Across Borders 2009 has wrapped up and the team of Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche threw yet another impressive event. This year's PAB theme was ostensibly bringing outside knowledge into the podcasting world, but the general subject of many of the presentations was on story more than anything - ways to more effectively communicate your story from Six String Nation to a Hollywood career. There were some spectacular new tools and techniques debuted which I look forward to integrating into my shows, the Financial Aid Podcast and Marketing Over Coffee, ideas that I think will, if they work well, bring things up a notch. Also picked up some great new photography techniques I'll be trying out soon.
Here's another serious topic for discussion: how do you, in social media, reconcile openness and secrecy?
A couple of years ago, I posted a graphic of the mortgage resets from Credit Suisse First Boston. Let's see where we are now.
Take a look at these three charts.
There's a popular expression, a cliche, that says time is money. However, time isn't money. Why?
The seeds of the economic recovery are beginning to sprout a little. While the broader economy still has a lot to shake off and the investment, credit, and financial markets still have more garbage to take out, there are small signs of recovery underway that will eventually grow to big signs down the road. A few anecdotal pieces of information: