Month: August 2008

  • Government real estate numbers are a load of crap

    The Bureau of Economic Analysis uses a wholly bogus imputed rent variable in its calculations about the health of the US economy and the health of the real estate industry. BEA treats homeowners as businesses, which pay rent to themselves. Therefore, homeowners contribute to the real estate industry’s GSP even if not employed by the…

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  • What Martial Arts Can Teach Us About Improving Presentations

    What Martial Arts Can Teach Us About Improving Presentations One of the keys to being successful in the martial arts is taking good notes, storing away information. In ninjutsu, a secondary key is taking good notes in such a way that your notes are useful only to you. If someone borrows, copies, or steals your…

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  • Why PodCamp Works – Integrated Verticals

    Imagine for a moment that your industry, that your specialty, is a single post, a single beam. It represents your vertical, everything you’re good at, and also everything that’s wrong with your industry’s growth. It’s fishbowl. It’s vertical. It’s a silo, an echo chamber in which no new ideas flow in or out. You keep…

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  • What martial arts can teach us about marketing

    The martial art that I practice places an incredible amount of emphasis on the basics of the art. Basic footwork patterns, basic abilities to hit, grapple, throw, and otherwise put the kibosh on someone trying to hurt you. One of the things that every senior instructor at my dojo, the Boston Martial Arts Center, constantly…

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  • FDIC Insurance Fund Falls Below Statutory Limit

    From the FDIC press release: Financial results for the second quarter are contained in the FDIC’s latest Quarterly Banking Profile, which was released today. Among the major findings: Provisions for loan losses continue to be the main cause of falling earnings. Rising levels of troubled loans, particularly in real estate portfolios, led many institutions to…

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  • The Wheel of Time Turns

    The Wheel of Time Turns Fall is coming around again, and as it does, the echoes of autumns past come with it. Nostalgia for times past are inevitable as the growing season ends and we buckle down for winter’s arrival; Halloween in older traditions is said to be the day when the veil between living…

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  • If marketing designed stop signs…

    More truth than comedy. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVb8EC1Y2xM[/youtube] Hat tip to Rachel Timmerman for this one. Did you enjoy this blog post? If so, please subscribe right now! Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com

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  • What is the future of podcasting?

    Chris Brogan asks: But now, think about podcasting. Where is THAT going? If you can guess that one correctly, get back to us all. It’s been a crazy ride so far. Podcasting is going exactly where it should be going, which is away from “shiny object of the day, one solution will solve your problems”…

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  • Media is not marketing

    Media is not marketing One of the greatest mistakes folks in media – old and new – make is to mistake media for marketing, to mistake product for promotion. Media is not marketing. Media is the product. Marketing and promotion are entirely separate from media, the product. Consider: if media were marketing, radio and television…

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  • How your phone can make your email inbox more productive

    I get a lot of email. When I came back from vacation this morning, I faced hundreds and hundreds of emails, from status reports to pitches and everything in between. How did I whittle this down to something manageable? When I face a lot of email on the desktop client, there are a lot of…

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