I’ve been giving this a lot of thought as I work on a presentation for Emerson College tomorrow night with Chris Brogan. What is community, in a world where friends can be a click away but a thousand miles apart, where you can be next to someone but can’t talk except via Twitter, where you…
Scratch troubled, we are screwed as a country I read with great alarm on CFO.com that as the housing and mortgage crisis deepens, people are dipping into or even cashing out retirement funds. “In the last four or five months we have seen an absolute onslaught of people trying to do hardship withdrawals and loans…
Could you use an extra $45,000 per week? If so, you might want to consider having a subscription object written for you in Second Life. A “bonus” called an allowance is issued in Second Life every week to residents. It’s L$50, or roughly US$0.18 per avatar. 18 cents doesn’t sound like much, but hire a…
Dear music industry, Please make it easier to be legally compliant. Thanks. — I had an unpleasant experience this morning in the iTunes Store. I mentioned on Twitter to my friend, Bronwen Clune, that Josh Groban’s new album, Noel, had a very good version of Little Drummer Boy on it. I figured, heck, it’s only…
I’ve got an easy answer for that. Pick five Republican senators and five Democratic senators at random, wheel a kiddie pool into the Capitol Rotunda, strap them to a gurney, and have them try out the technique – no permanent physical harm, we promise! – for 60 seconds. At the end of the 60 seconds…
“I have been saying for about two years we’re looking at a 1929 kind of event. I think that we are really in trouble in this country. And what you have seen in the last four months is just the beginning of it.” -Patrick Byrne, Chairman and CEO of Overstock.com, December 2007 “If home prices…
Rogers Canada is modifying Web pages. Take a look at this Wired article. Is this a marketing dream? A marketing nightmare? Bit of both. If you searched for a student loan, I could buy a modification of the results you get from your ISP. Even if you wanted a loan from my competitor, if I…
From HillaryClinton.com: I will consider legislation that enables lenders to convert unworkable mortgages into stable, affordable loans without the permission of investors. Protection from lawsuits will remove the obstacle that keeps lenders, servicers and others from turning mortgages that were designed to fail into mortgages families can afford. Right now, servicers who process monthly loan…
The Contagion Spreads If you want to talk viral, let’s talk about the disease of debt that’s spreading. What started out as a portfolio of subprime mortgages going bad is rapidly spreading to any financial sector that touches any form of credit or debt. Last week, First Marblehead (ticker: FMD), one of my company’s partners,…
A Ninja Perspective on Racism I had an amusing experience on Friday as I was bringing my lunch – Chinese food from the place on the first floor – back up to my office. On the elevator ride up, the guy in the elevator commented, “Man, that smells good. Where ya delivering to?” He had…
