It’s standard operating practice for the music industry: Musicians sue label, claiming they got screwed out of royalties.
But from a writer’s perspective, it’s always nice when it’s a well-known act whose catalog includes a hit called “Money”.
Pink Floyd’s suit against EMI is technically about online royalties and the fact that EMI has been selling the group’s work as singles instead of albums at Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store.* That detracts from the fact that much of the bands’ output are “seamless pieces,” where “many of the songs blend into each other,” the group’s lawyer told Bloomberg.
The band isn’t always opposed to people picking and choosing its songs, though. Tune into “Cold Case” on CBS on March 21, and you’ll be treated to the following: “Hey You,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Mother,” “Marooned,” “Time,” “The Thin Ice” and “Wish You Were Here.”
In any case, EMI has much bigger problems to worry about. Like staying out of the clutches of rival Warner Music Group (WMG). “We’re huge fans of Pink Floyd who we have been working with for 40 years and whose great catalog we continue to represent and work for internationally,” says a shy EMI spokesperson.
*We should note that much of “Animals“, which has a great cover but crummy songs, is only available if you but the entire album.
To
It’s standard operating practice for the music industry: Musicians sue label, claiming they got screwed out of royalties.
But from a writer’s perspective, it’s always nice when it’s a well-known act whose catalog includes a hit called “Money”.
Pink Floyd’s suit against EMI is technically about online royalties and the fact that EMI has been selling the group’s work as singles instead of albums at Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store.* That detracts from the fact that much of the bands’ output are “seamless pieces,” where “many of the songs blend into each other,” the group’s lawyer told Bloomberg.
The band isn’t always opposed to people picking and choosing its songs, though. Tune into “Cold Case” on CBS on March 21, and you’ll be treated to the following: “Hey You,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Mother,” “Marooned,” “Time,” “The Thin Ice” and “Wish You Were Here.”
In any case, EMI has much bigger problems to worry about. Like staying out of the clutches of rival Warner Music Group (WMG).
“We’re huge fans of Pink Floyd who we have been working with for 40 years and whose great catalog we continue to represent and work for internationally,” says a shy EMI spokesperson.
*We should note that much of “Animals“, which has a great cover but crummy songs, is only available if you but the entire album.
An African-American couple; an African-American minister. Two words: must-see. Money vow:
"You are my friend, my partner, my love," Young, 47, told Townsend, 41. "I will love you today, tomorrow and forever."
Yes, I cried. You try not to.
Last autumn, I shared a list of essential personal-finance e-books. These books covered a variety of topics, and many of them were free. Today I want to draw your attention to two new e-books that you may want to consider.
Consumer Action Handbook
First up is the 2010 edition of the Consumer Action Handbook. I’ve mentioned this book before, and I’ll mention it in the future. This book is from the Federal Citizen Information Center, that small department of the U.S. government in Pueblo, Colorado, which distributes free and low-cost consumer publications.
The 2010 Consumer Action Handbook is a 172-page guide to becoming a savvy consumer, and includes information on buying a car, purchasing a home, preventing identity theft, shopping from home, creating a will, and handling unsatisfactory transactions. And much, much more.
This book would be a good buy at $10 or $15, but it’s freely available from the U.S. government. (Technically you’ve already paid for it with your tax dollars, of course.)
This book is a great resource, and I encourage you to order a copy, download the PDF, or bookmark the web site. Though the 2010 Consumer Action Handbook doesn’t go into great depth on any subject, it provides excellent informative overviews, and it usually points to further resources. It’s perfectly at home on the shelf with all of my other personal finance books. (And was, in fact, an excellent source while writing Your Money: The Missing Manual.)
Unautomate Your Finances
Elsewhere, our very own Adam Baker has just released his first e-book, Unautomate Your Finances, which lays out his personal financial philosophy. This e-book is not free. It costs $17, but comes with Baker’s “as long as I have a pulse” guarantee. (If you’re not satisfied, send him an e-mail and he’ll refund your money as long as he’s still alive.)
Baker believes that the more you simplify your financial life, the easier it is to control it. He’s not necessarily opposed to all automation, but believes that for many of us, automation breeds more complexity than simplicity. He argues that in most cases, automating our financial lives magnifies existing problems, and we’d be better off un-automating things: spending consciously, making sustainable choices, and focusing on our goals.
Along the way, Baker shares solid personal-finance advice on saving for emergencies, coping with credit, and creating a realistic budget. Is Unautomate Your Finances right for you? I don’t know. But since it comes with a money-back guarantee, it’s certainly worth a look!
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Kaplan, which provides the lion's share of the Washington Post Company's revenue, has been under inquiry by the Department of Ed since September. Money quote from Barron's:
The Post business desk seemed not to notice any of this, but Post investors might want to.
If you’re looking for a multi-purpose financial calculator, then you should look no further than T-Money. The $9.99 app by Sound Expressions features calculators for loans, savings and withdrawals, and profits and loss. Not can T-Money compute things like payments or principles, it can also show you multiple graphs of the calculations over time: a powerful tool for determining how your investment can be expected to perform in the months and years ahead.
If you can’t get enough of robots, here’s another kit to help you build your very own that won’t cost you a bunch of money in batteries. This simple little robot will give you something to play with on your desk while you’re probably supposed to be doing something else. That always seems to be the best time to play with desktop friendly toys. This kit can be built by yourself or you can enlist the help of a kid, although perhaps they should be a little older due to small parts.
The solar powered kit will teach you how to build a gearbox and also how automatic transmissions and motors work. It comes with push-out pre-cut balsa wood pieces. You’ll also be making a simple wiring circuit with a solar panel, battery, motor and switch. Once it’s all put together you can use a flip switch to choose between using the power from the battery or the solar panel. You can purchase it for £19.12 or about $29 through Ecotopia.
Source: Envirogadget
Canada continues to stick it to the U.S. when it comes to hockey. Not only do they get the gold medal, now Canadians can watch Hockey Night in Canada streamed live on Yahoo Canada for the rest of the season. (For those who made it through the Vancouver closing ceremonies, the table top hockey part of the Made in Canada parade was to the famed theme song from HNIC.) The Yahoo-CBC deal runs from this Saturday through the Stanley Cup Playoffs, including live playoff games. They’re not disclosing financial details and I haven’t been able to confirm whether any money is actually changing hands or if ad rev share is involved. Release.
Related
Link: http://www.popeater.com/2010/03/08/sa...
You know that Conan decided to follow one person on Twitter, the lucky Sarah Killen. It turns out that the Conan Bump will get your whole wedding paid for and raise a lot of money for charity. Conan: believe the hype.
The Best Links:
Autoquake, an online used car retailer in the UK, has raised another £6 million round of venture capital and venture debt financing from existing investors Accel Partners and Highland Capital Partners. The debt is being provided by Kreos Capital. This is after raising £4m from Accel and Highland only last year. That takes its total funding so far to £20 million. The money will be used to expand internationally.
Autoquake’s plan is to disrupt the car retail industry by selling quality used cars on behalf of large corporate fleets and leasing companies direct to consumers via virtual showrooms. High quality pictures of the actual cars on sale appear instead of the usual fuzzy pictures on the average second hand advert.
The boys are way into Chuck Norris jokes these days; apparently they're all the rage right now at school (last year it was "your momma" jokes).
Andrew (12) generally gets the genre and has come back from school with a few good ones like "Chuck Norris counted to infinity. Twice." or "When Chuck Norris jumps into the water, he doesn't get wet. The water gets Chuck Norris'ed."
Michael (9) doesn't quite understand what makes these funny but is still trying to make up jokes, like "Chuck Norris doesn't rob banks. He just walks in and they give him the money." We'll have to keep working on this with him.
Here's a list of funny ones I found. A few of my favorites:
"Chuck Norris doesn't breath. He holds air hostage."
"When the boogeyman goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris."
I had a great time over at Monarch Beverage yesterday with a ton of different breweries and individuals in the alcohol industry. We were talking about social media… plain and simple. How does the alcohol industry utilize social media to drive interaction as well as purchases… or foot traffic?
Our main focus throughout the entire presentation was focusing on the story. I read an excerpt from Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in A Thousand Years:
If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.
I know that is sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to you as a business owner but the truth of the matter is simply this… you have to tell a story to gain the attention of any individual on the face of the planet. You have to tell a story worth reading and more importantly… worth sharing.
Before you venture out into the world of social media… plan your story.
Here is the presentation:
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The HTC Desire Android super phone goes on sale in the UK next month, but if you want to place your dibs early in case of a run like the HTC HD2 saw, the phone’s up for pre-order now. We’ve taken a look at the tariffs though, and we’ve got bad news: they’re not really as desirable as the phone itself.
While the HTC Desire, packing a 3.7-inch screen and Android 2.1, isn’t a network exclusive, Carphone Warehouse is listing the T-Mobile tariffs for it.
We were just getting used to blaggin even the latest smartphones free on a 2 year, £35 per month contract, but you can forget about that on one network at least: the HTC Desire will set you back £49.99 up front for a 24 month tariff, with data, 1200 minutes and 500 texts.
Unless you’re already on T-Mobile and looking to upgrade to the HTC Desire, it might be worth waiting for the other networks to show their hands – even Three will stock it, so here’s hoping choice will drive the price down.
Out April | £varies | HTC
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Few subjects have created as much debate as the issue of walking away from of your home when there does not seem to be any financial sense in staying. Walking away from your home when it is worth less than the balance on your mortgage seems like the sensible thing to do for many. Research shows that when homes drop in value by over 25% owners start to think seriously about letting their homes go.
Many ask themselves, “why not let the home go in default and rent a better place for less?
It is worth noting that we are talking about people who can afford their mortgages but simply decide to let their home go as a financial strategic calculation. The difference between truly troubled homeowners that would like to keep their homes and those that are defaulting on a mortgage to save money can be separated by a very thin line. But the evidence points to a growing number of borrowers that simply do not want to live under what many are calling “house arrest”.
Some experts are pointing out that around 17% of those that defaulted in 2008, over half a million homeowners, did so because of a strategic calculation and not due to a lack of income to pay the loan.
It does seem like we are at the turning point in society’s psyche, a kind of revolution. People are not as attached to their property. Mortgage brokers are advising many to walk way, and a lot of them are listening. Something that has become common again is for homeowners to simply mail their house keys to the lender as a way of setting off a foreclosure, what is also called jingle mail.
There is nothing new to this reaction; previous recessions and crisis were also characterized by homeowners walking away from their homes. However what is different is the scale of the number of foreclosures. Four years ago, a handful of people had negative equity on their mortgage, now there are over 4.5 million homeowners whose house is worth less than 75% of the balance of their mortgage. The Real Estate is not doing any favors to the economy and is stalling again; causing experts to estimate that by June the number will climb to 5.1 million in June. That is simply a huge figure, it will mean that 1 out of every 10 homes in the United States will be going through a foreclosure.
Still many believe that this so called jingle mail revolution is the product of the media’s imagination. Something that is talked about but not actually carried out. The figures seem to say otherwise, but it is true that people generally do not want to move. They do not enjoying moving neighborhood, or their children’s school, which is what keeps so many underwater homeowners in their homes.
The eternal question is what the government should do about the whole matter. According to one estimate it would cost around $745 billion to bail out all underwater borrowers in the US. This is a little more than what it cost to bail out the banks in 2008. Most of us think it would be silly and wrong to bail out every troubled homeowner, but if the government does nothing it could cause even more homeowners to walk away, further crippling an already fragile economy.
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Whether you're planning a road trip or you're just headed out to run errands, you likely have a list of stops you'll need to make before you get to your final destination. If you're taking a road trip, perhaps you'd like to stop for gas and bathroom breaks every so often, or there are a number of interesting landmarks that you'd like to see while you travel. Route4Me is a Web app that allows you to input multiple destinations and addresses, and the app will plot the most time and travel efficient course from location to location for you. 
You can input up to 10 addresses at one time along with the departure address, and the service will do the calculations behind the scenes to see how far you are from each address, how far each address is from the other, and then give you a final course that takes you from location to location in the shortest amount of time. When the app has finished plotting your route for you, it will return the order of stops you should take to minimize your travel time. 
Route4Me also has a companion iPhone app that uses Google Maps to help you get from place to place quickly. The iPhone app will use your phone to determine your current location and use it as the departure address. Then you can add your stops, and the app will handle the rest, including driving directions. The iPhone app even gives your estimated travel time and how many miles you have to travel, and if your iPhone supports it, turn-by-turn navigation. 
Facebook To Sell Tickets With Eventbrite http://bit.ly/dCz0D5
Facebook looks to be partnering with event marketplace Eventbrite, a move may have been foreshadowed by recent design changes on the site. The announcement of a partnership was first noticed by a Facebook user who sent in a screenshot to TechCrunch this morning.
Facebook's recent redesign has showed a much more public events page, a feature that would go along with selling tickets to events quite perfectly.
Sponsor
The text of the announcement, which was hosted at facebook.eventbrite.com but has since been removed, read as follows:
Collect money for your event with EventbriteEventbrite is partnering with Facebook to enable you to collect money for your event. Your attendees pay with credit card and Eventbrite collects the money on your behalf and sends you a check when your event is over. We charge a small service fee for every ticket sold. 5.5% + $.99c, which attendees pay, costing you nothing.
Eventbrite has helped event organizers around the world sell over 10 million tickets. We're excited to help you sell yours and put some delightful cash in your pocket.
Until recently, the Facebook events page was primarily focused on one thing - the events you had specifically been invited to. That's no longer the case. Now, clicking on the "Events" link in the left column brings you to a page that lists not only all the events you're invited to, but any public events that any of your friends are attending.
This seems like a definite shift in focus toward becoming more of a go-to place for finding what's going on around you instead of just keeping track of invites. And if companies can get in on the game and start offering events that users can purchase tickets for through Facebook, then we're talking.
Eventbrite had already made it easy for its users to share events they created on the Eventbrite website on Facebook. This announcement would not only be sharing events, but allowing Facebook users to buy tickets through the site.
Discuss
If you want to make money, and perhaps especially in the open source software racket, you have to keep improving your software to help it get more widely adopted among enterprise customers who get nervous if they don't hand over big wads of cash to someone to babysit the code. That's why Terracotta, a maker of systems programs that help Java applications scale, has made a number of acquisitions and has tweaked two key programs in its portfolio.…
While I get many questions from bloggers asking for advice on ‘how to blog‘ perhaps one of the biggest questions a new blogger needs to ask themselves before they move on to the HOW to blog question is ‘WHAT will I blog about?’
There is no real right or wrong answer to this question as blogs come in all shapes and sizes and focus upon all manner of topics. However thinking through the question before you start a blog will help you make some of the other decisions that you’ll want to make later on in this guide (for example the domain name and the name of your blog will probably come out of this decision).
Choosing a niche to blog about is important for a number of reasons. These include:
My first blog was a personal blog with no real niche focus. It did start with a main focus upon Spirituality, but over time began to cover a large range of topics including blogging, photography, culture, politics, personal stuff that I was doing etc. The more topics I covered the less I appealed to everyone.
Sure a certain group of people were interested in Spirituality and Blogging, but less of them were into photography, even less also liked my stuff about Australian Pop Culture….. each topic narrowed the chances of me writing something that would appeal to all of my readers. I started to get complaints from them – ’stop writing about XXXX’.
When I began to break topics out onto their own blogs my audience responded well – those who were into photography gathered around that topic, those that were into blogging gathered on that blog.
In the end this is about relevance – people seem to be drawn to niche focused blogs because they know that they’ll see content on them that focuses upon the things they are specifically interested in.
I tried to make money from my personal blog for a while but found the going really tough. At the time I mainly tried to make money from advertising and found that sponsors were simply not interested in promoting their product (which had a specific focus) to an audience who were there to read about a whole range of things.
What camera manufacturer wants to promote their latest camera on a blog about photography that also touches on spirituality, politics and what movie I saw on the weekend?
Niche blogs also tend to work better with contextual ad networks like AdSense. AdSense is getting better are providing ads that related strongly to what is on a specific page of content but I have seen instances where blogs covering lots of different topics attract ads that don’t always relate to content on a particular page.
The other thing about AdSense is that it is a system that gives advertisers the ability to target specific sites. These types of targeted campaigns can be quite profitable but they are less likely to happen if a blog covers a large range of topics, many of which don’t relate to that advertiser.
When I went niche I found monetizing with advertising a lot easier. In fact monetizing with a variety of methods seems to be easier on niche blogs. Affiliate promotions and selling your own products work better because your audience is there to get information on certain topics – so when you promote products on those topics…. they’re much more likely to buy.
It is possible to rank well for all kinds of topics on a generic/multi topic blog. It’s possible – but I find it is easier when you have a blog with a focus upon a niche topic. If your whole site is about the one topic Google treats it as more of an authority on that topic the more content you add, the more you interlink the posts, the more other sites in your niche link to it etc.
There are certainly exceptions (mega sites like Wikipedia are obvious ones) but unless you have the pulling power of a massive site like that a niche focused site could be the way to go.
One of the consequences of moving to more of a niche focus with my blogging was that I noticed I was starting to become known for that topic.
The first time this happened was after I started my first photography blog and 2 months later had a phone call from a city-wide newspaper asking for a quote on a photography related story. This had not happened to me before as a result of my personal/multi topic blog but having a site purely focused upon a single topic gave a perception that that topic was ‘my thing’.
For me having niche focuses has helped me to become known on different topics – which has led to all kinds of opportunities in those niches – including writing books, speaking opportunities around the world, main stream media appearances and all manner of partnership opportunities with wonderful people in my industries.
Not everyone wants to build their profile and become known in an industry – but if that’s part of your goal then a niche blog on those topics can be powerful.
Before I conclude this post on niches I thought it might also be worth noting that a blogs niche need not only ever be focused upon a topic. I explored this more fully in a post titled – Does Your Blog Focus Upon a Niche Topic or a Niche Demographic? As the title of that post suggests – there are some successful blogs around that cover a variety of topics – that appeal to a similar type of person or demographic.
So instead of just writing about video games – a blog might choose to blog about topics that appeal to teenage boys – video games being one of the topics that they might have an interest in.
Worth noting though is that if you do decide to target a niche demographic rather than a niche topic – you could be opening yourself up for a lot of work. Covering a diverse range of topics can certainly work – but to cover them all comprehensively can take a lot of time and energy.
Now that we’ve looked at some of the reasons WHY a niche can be a powerful thing to think about before you start looking at HOW to blog – later this week I’m going to continue this post with a followup post exploring a number of factors that those looking to start a blog might consider when choosing a niche.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
How to Blog: Choose a Niche for Your Blog [Why Niches are Important]
There are a lot of companies out there that let you sgare plans with friends — in fact, a startup called Plancast just raised funding to do just that. But Shruti Challa, chief executive and founder of a startup called Tribal Atmosphere, said none of them seem to address the needs she had as a fresh-out-of-college entrepreneur living in San Francisco.
That’s where her company’s new application, Go Tribal, comes in. The problem with a service like Plancast, or a more traditional event/invitation service like Evite, is the fact they’re built around concrete plans and events, so they’re most useful after you have some idea of what you’re doing and who’s involved. Go Tribal comes much earlier in the process, when you’re still wondering, “Hmm, I wonder if anyone wants to hang out on Friday?”
So instead of broadcasting your plans, you broadcast your availability — whether you’re “down to go out,” whether you “can be convinced,” or whether you’re definitely busy. Then someone who wants to hang out at a specific day and time can pull together their available friends to start a plan. Go Tribal also provides some lightweight tools to formalize that plan — everyone in a group can post what they’re interested in, you can do a survey, and eventually everyone can hopefully agree on a finalized plan. Instead of taking the place of something like Evite, Challa said Go Tribal really hopes to replace all the emails, text messages, and phone calls sent back-and-forth between friends as they try to coordinate a get-together.
Go Tribal has previously been limited to a private test, but is now opening up to the first 10,000 users at its website. The service is aimed specifically at young, female professionals like Challa, but she said guys are welcome too. She added that we can expect more features, as well as mobile support, to come soon, and that Go Tribal will make money mainly through offers and advertising from lcoal businesses.
Companies: Go Tribal
People: Shruti Challa
I respect what Barnes & Noble is doing with this multi-reader ebook strategy, and I'm glad Samsung's finally been brought in from the cold, into the warm presence of a real ebook collection, but $400 for this thing? Really?
A six-inch-screened device with a sliding keypad, the Samsung E4's biggest draw is probably its stylus, which allows for full, paper-style annotation and notetaking. But the dual-display Nook, which itself is considered one of the pricier e-readers, costs a full $140 less—a gap that'll stare every potential E4 buyer right in the face, since the two readers will be sold side-by-side in Barnes & Noble stores. I mean hell, E Ink is E Ink, and you could almost buy a spare Sony Reader Pocket Edition with that kind of money.
The Samsung E4 will arrive in Barnes & Noble Stores, awkwardly, in Spring. [MarketWatch]
Robert Mustard, Jr., the man accused of shooting two men at a Dallas office building on Monday morning, was apparently trying to get his revenge on a financial advisory firm that he believed had lost all his money.
According to the Fort Worth News, when Mustard approached his financial adviser, Richard Smith, 66, and his son, Chris, 39, in their office yesterday, he accused them of taking "all my money," before opening fire with a 45-caliber weapon.
When police arrived, Mustard was still in the office, authoritiessaid.
Police shot at -- but missed -- Mustard, a disbarred lawyer, who then barricaded himself in an office and shot himself in the head.
WATCH WFAA's coverage:
