While our two companies run very differently, we have come together to support what we believe is the only set of ideas that stand a chance of turning things around—ideas that can pass political muster in an otherwise very deeply divided Congress. These ideas center on reinvigorating what up to recently has been the most reliable source of job growth and innovation in our economy—the formation of new firms.
GenOn is one of the nation's largest operators of electric generating plants. Without new, growing companies and the people they employ, the demand for electricity will not generate growing profits for our company.
The Principal Financial Group provides employee benefit programs to 100,000 growing businesses employing six million U.S. workers. That includes services to nearly 800 employee-owned businesses. We know growing businesses are the real job creators in our economy today.
In our view, there is no hope of giving consumers renewed confidence in America unless governments at all levels mount a vigorous effort to get rid of rules that discourage entrepreneurs from launching and growing new businesses.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Edward R. Muller and Larry Zimpleman: An Entrepreneurial Fix for the U.S. Economy - WSJ.com
Lucy Hood: Smartphones Are Bridging the Digital Divide - WSJ.com
This month's Pew Internet Report on Smartphones spotlights some specifics. Under 30, nonwhite, low-income and less-educated smartphone users report "they mostly go online using their phones." Some 87% of them, according to Pew, sometimes use their mobile phones to browse the web, but 38% use their handsets as their primary means to access the Internet.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Business: America's Shrinking Entrepreneurial Class - WSJ.com | "So all of the energy that we've poured into entrepreneurship over the last 30 years"—incubators, education, special funding—"hasn't moved the needle."
Dane Stangler, director of research at Kauffman, says the annual number of new "employer firms"—start-ups that employ more than just the founder—was steady for years and has drifted down since the mid 1990s. "So all of the energy that we've poured into entrepreneurship over the last 30 years"—incubators, education, special funding—"hasn't moved the needle," he says.
And it won't with the bloated econ dev orgs that have sprouted all over the country to hand out public money. Our government isn't the answer. The sooner we recognize that the sooner we'll turn the corner on value creation that results in job creation. I couldn't have said it better.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Amazon, Skirting Apple, Announces Cloud for Books - WSJ.com - Thanks to HTML5
Amazon, in opting for the latter, could become the first of many major digital-content sellers to take the route of such Web applications, which use a technology called HTML5 that give browser-based software similar functionality to downloaded software.
Why HTML5 Web Apps Are Going to Rock Your World — Online Collaboration
The presentation that really brought home the potential of these next-generation web technologies for me was by Brad Neuberg, a developer who used to work at Google. Neuberg’s talk had the theme of “Small pieces, loosely joined,” and showed how technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, SVG, Canvas and WebGL can be used together to create stunning applications within the browser. The centerpiece of his presentation was the slide deck. It wasn’t a standard PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, but rather, a jaw-dropping, browser-based, 3-D slide demo, built using the very tools that Neuberg was talking about,. Neuberg could slickly navigate between the various slides in the presentation at will, and many “slides” contained a live demo of the technologies discussed. If you have Safari on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can check it out here. (Note: To navigate between the slides, use the arrow keys. You can zoom in and out using the space bar. The 3-D slide demo only works properly in Safari currently, but you can view a video of it in action in this blog post). While these technologies are impressive on their own, Neuberg’s demo showed that the way they can be easily combined in the browser will lead to real innovation in web apps over the next few years.
HTML5 Seems To Be Gaining Momentum - BusinessWeek
In the last month or so, we’ve seen some major services relaunch their websites for the iPhone, iPad, and other tablets based on HTML5 and bring them to the mainstream users—so much so that even giants such as Microsoft (MSFT) are ready to cast aside their own technologies in favor of HTML5.
Google (GOOG), whose apps keep getting better and better, is clearly leading the HTML5 charge. If that wasn’t enough, in July, Pandora relaunched its website for tablets. Earlier this month, Twitter launched an HTML5-based Web client that’s as fantastic as the dedicated app itself.
On Wednesday, August 10, Amazon (AMZN) launched Kindle Cloud Reader, which is so good, writes our Darrell Etherington, that "you’d be hard-pressed to tell that you aren’t using a native app, especially if you place a shortcut to the Web app on your iPad’s home screen." Vudu, owned by Wal-Mart (WMT), launched an HTML5 version of its Web app. As we had previously noted, "more than 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016, up from just 109 million in 2010, according to a new report by ABI Research."
Google+ May Pass Twitter With One-Fifth of U.S. Adults Online - BusinessWeek
Started in late June, Google+ is growing faster than Facebook and MySpace Inc. did in their early days. The service, which lets people connect with and manage groups of friends on a website, gained about 25 million users worldwide in less than a month, estimates market researcher ComScore Inc. Facebook has more than 750 million active users.
About Tout - Making email better...
In a world that is more "connected" than ever before, technology still does not facilitate meaningful conversations. Twitter limits to 140 characters and Facebook minimizes to 1-click actions. We believe E-Mail is still the most viable platform for having meaningful conversations and we're here to fix its problems.
10 years from now, we believe we'll still be using E-Mail. Except, it'll be 10x better, and E-Mail as we know it now will be vastly different. We are here to lead that movement to evolve E-Mail.
Wish they had a free plan so I could check it out!
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
CLE? - There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored | Nina Power | guardian.co.uk
As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.
Something tells me that while we drink the coolaid of economic development "Cleveland-style" this is more likely the outcome for CLE than what we're being told. Afterall something like 3 out of 5 people in CLE live at or below the poverty line.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Job Recruiters Turn to Facebook to Find Candidates - WSJ.com
Facebook's use as a job-recruitment tool remains small, but its appeal may be growing. Some recruiters say they have all but eliminated their spending on job boards, which can charge a few hundred dollars per job posting, depending on volume. Others note that while LinkedIn contains a more comprehensive résumé database, candidates tend to value referrals from their connections on Facebook more.
The majority of social-media traffic to Waste Management Inc.'s careers website comes from Facebook, beating out LinkedIn, said Jenny DeVaughn, manager of social media and employment branding. The Houston-based environmental services company is currently trying to fill 1,500 positions—from software developers to garbage truck drivers.
In addition to posting jobs and videos of current employees on its Facebook page, the company has recruiters and other employees find user groups and join discussions.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
@Mark_Quinn Tweet: Tasty Foodie Exploration
Reflections of a Newsosaur: Why journalists need to build their own brands
Here are a few:As a college student in 2004, Brian Stelter anonymously launched TV Newser, an insightful and gossipy blog about television news that soon became must-reading among industry insiders. His reporting was so compelling that he was hired by the New York Times, where he now is one of the top media experts in the nation.
Recognizing that the mainstream media were missing lots of market-moving news in the tedious corporate disclosures filed at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Michelle Leder started publishing the overlooked information at Footnoted.Com. Last year, she sold her journalistically and commercially valuable site to Morningstar, a $2 billion financial publishing company that wisely kept her on as editor.
Appalled by the shriveling local coverage in Minneapolis-St. Paul, veteran newsman Joel Kramer in 2007 launched the non-profit MinnPost, which has become perhaps the most successful grassroots news organization in the country. MinnPost not only helps to fill the news void in the Twin Cities but also provides valuable visibility and professional incomes to the writers who contribute to it.
How does this apply to your profession? Have you seen similar examples of this in your chosen career?
Saturday, August 6, 2011
About Us | EngagingCities - new approaches and technologies for community development
What we do
Our goal is to inspire urban planners, architects, developers, educators, economists, and policy makers to apply new approaches and technologies in ways that make community development more participatory, collaborative, and effective. We highlight new online tools and examine how they can be used in the emerging culture of citizen participation and engagement. We also explore low-tech, high-impact strategies for community involvement. Every day, new projects and developments across the globe demonstrate creative ways for including citizens in the shaping of places -- EngagingCities is where you can follow and become part of this movement. We share the stories of the people, places, and practices that turn engaging ideas into applicable realities.
The Media Equation - How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power - NYTimes.com
Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Fun at GiveCamp - Jack/Zen
Cleveland’s annual GiveCamp this weekend produced 22 projects engaging more than 200 tech volunteers. They collaborated to tirelessly create an amazing array of websites and apps for appreciative local non-profits, representing a half-million dollars worth of services.
It’s another amazing example of generous communities, adding to this already robust emerging social pattern. What is less easily measurable are the rich learning sets and network connections in the tech community that will continue to ripple into the future.
What could be parallel events for the medical, architecture, finance, and agriculture sectors?
A Snapshot of Community Building - The Conversations of Transformation
Here is a one-page overview of the four principles and four conversations for building thriving communities. It is a quick reference for people in communities learning how to engage in the building of their communities.
The Four Principles of Community
Our individual well-being will always be related to the well-being of the communities we belong to.
In thriving communities, people know and look out for each other, learn and share with each other.
The core difference between thriving and stuck communities is the kinds of conversations people have together.
In thriving communities, people talk about what they would love to see possible, what they bring to the community, what they can do to realize their dreams for the community, and who else can help make this happen. In stuck communities people talk about problems, deficiencies, permission, and blame.
Scoville: Location-based tool for community asset mapping? | EngagingCities
Scoville takes all of the places you’ve “checked in” at (either on Foursquare or Facebook) and uses them to create recommendations for others in your community. The idea is to let you know about the happening spots in your city. This could be very appealing to planners, because it very much resembles a community-driven asset mapping tool.
Ushahidi :: Home - With 3 in 5 people living below poverty in CLE we need to use Ushahidi software
We are a non-profit tech company that develops free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
Social Media Link Building Strategies - The SEO Secret Weapon?
So, search engine optimizers have largely moved away from using social media in their link building strategies as a way to get links to help search engine optimization factors.
However, this is all an evolving topic. What I mean is that the search engines are seeing social media as a place that can offer very legitimate and valuable information when it comes to links.
If a link is being tweeted over and over and over again, there must be something interesting there. For the search engines to completely ignore this information would be shortsighted and too absolutist.
And sure enough, Danny Sullivan teased out in an interview that both Bing and Google use signals from the social media world to influence link popularity.
You will definitely want to read the entire article if you’re into this kind of thing. But here are some of the cooler quotes.
Bing on Twitter: “We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results.” (Google said that they to use it as a signal.)
Danny: “Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it?”
Bing and Google: “Yes.”Danny: “Do you track links shared within Facebook?”
These are important quotes:Bing: “Yes. We look at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages.”
Google: “We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.”Those are important because it discusses the value of fan pages.