John Warner, a.k.a. The Swamp Fox, is a Greenville, SC-based venture capitalist. On his blog, he writes about the Greenville Chamber's recent visit to Austin, TX--a city that has emerged as an entrepreneurial haven with the third-most venture capital investment in the country. In other words, the money is flowing in Austin. Warner asks why and considers what his own vibrant upstate community can do to share in some …
Amazon To Sell Chapters Like iTunes Sells Songs
Through a service called Amazon Pages, Amazon will allow people to "inexpensively" buy chapters from a book and read them online. Customers will get complete online access to the book through another service called Amazon Upgrade. Both services are an extension of Amazon's existing search within a book program. "Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade leverage Amazon's existing Search Inside the Book technology to give …
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Casting For Dollars
Fruitcast is a new service with the aim of commercializing podcasts. Their logo is also strangely reminiscent, but that's another story. We make it ridiculously easy to put ads on your podcast. All you have to do is sign up for an account, and post the new feed URL we create for you on your website (or redirect it through another service, such as the excellent FeedBurner). Each time a listener downloads an episode …
If We Don’t Measure Their Impact Maybe They’ll Go Away
Ad Age: Terrestrial broadcasters insist they’re not nervous about satellite radio’s 7 million subscribers, but they’ve successfully stalled Arbitron’s plan to add satellite and online radio listening to its diary measurement system. Arbitron was originally scheduled to instruct its diary keepers to record their satellite and online radio listening in the fall 2005 book. Instead, Arbitron now plans a 25-market test of …
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Lamar Builds Better Boards
nola.com: Lamar Advertising Co. sustained $14 million in hurricane damage to its billboards in Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the company. But the company's chief financial officer said new designs will cut future storm repair costs. CFO Keith Istre said the storms would allow the company "to replace existing inventory with wind-resistant structures that are much more durable and have a much higher …
For Some The World Is Flat
Marketing guru Adam Hanft, founder and CEO of Hanft Unlimited queries Richard Florida in a Fast Company web exclusive. Hanft: Does the importance of the Creative Class in driving innovation fly in face of the notion that technology makes geography insignificant? Are we becoming a world where free-agents work entrepreneurially, as "nowhereians" with a global soul, in Pico Iyer's term -- or a world where geography …
Theif Gives Spyware Even Worse Name
Wired: In the first U.S. prosecution of its kind, FBI agents arrested a 20-year-old Los Angeles man Thursday on charges that he cracked some 400,000 Windows machines and covertly installed pop-up-generating adware on them, in a scheme that allegedly brought in $60,000 in ill-gotten profits. Jeanson Ancheta faces a 17-count federal indictment charging him with two counts of conspiracy and various forms of computer …
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NASCAR Dad Meet Yoga Mama
Yahoo News: Julia King, 38, is part of an emerging class of women whom marketers call Yoga Mamas. These middle- and upper-income mothers are more style- and brand-conscious than their parents. No matter their income, they spend like lottery winners on their babies and toddlers. In the process, they're revolutionizing the baby-products market and forcing manufacturers and retailers of all sizes to adjust. From the …
Actually, Winning Is Everything
Lewis Lazare contemplates the tagline's place in motivational psychology. For Two by Four/Chicago, the timing couldn't have been more perfect. The local shop was named ad agency of record for the Chicago White Sox a year ago, just in time to put in place an ad campaign for a season that would prove an unexpectedly historic one for the South Side baseball team. For last season, Two by Four created the ad campaign …
Rankings Are Rank At Reed
Colin Diver, President of Reed College in Portland, OR has no need, nor love for ranking systems. Writing in The Atlantic, Diver utterly destroys U.S. News & World Report. It's an enjoyable read. And one the bloatosphere--whose members are too often obsessed with their Technorati rank, Google rank or Blogebrity status--might learn from. For ten years Reed has declined to fill out the annual peer evaluations and …