Gowalla Follows Foursquare's Lead with Real-Life Incentives http://bit.ly/9qTc74
After recent announcements by Foursquare of partnerships with big time players like Zagat, the New York Times and Bravo, Gowalla is fighting back with its own major media partnership.
Gowalla and the Travel Channel announced today that the two companies will be working together to offer "the integration of proprietary Travel Channel content into Gowalla's social networking service." Along with another deal, Gowalla has started to connect the virtual with the real, a direction we think will be key in succeeding in the location-based app arena.
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According to a press release, the agreement will begin with tomorrow's premiere of "Food Wars" on the Travel Channel. In much the same way that Foursquare began offering special badges and information on venues featured in Bravo's television shows, Gowalla will begin adding new features based on the locations in the show. Here's the company's explanation:
The first content integration will focus on the new series, Food Wars, a new Travel Channel offering where blindfolded participants choose sides to determine "Who Makes The Best Dish In Town." Food Wars pits the nation's most famous culinary rivals against one another for a final showdown, where a blind taste test will settle the debate. Locations used in the series will be integrated into the Gowalla platform and Gowalla users will be able to check in and find specific show information, along with the details of the culinary showdown that was filmed there, pick up Items specific to the show, and be awarded specially created passport stamps.
Gowalla also quietly released an Android version of its app this weekend, which is currently available for download in the Android Marketplace.
This comes just in time for SXSW Interactive, which is bound to have thousands of techies roaming Gowalla's hometown of Austin. As the CNET article on the deal points out, Gowalla has led rival Foursquare in the funding realm, with $8.4 million in Series B funding last year. And while we do like the look of Gowalla, Foursquare offers real-life incentives, such as discounts at certain locations for becoming mayor. Well, just in time for the aforementioned SXSW, Gowalla will have some real-life incentives too - Austin's homegrown Sweet Leaf Tea.
Now, the Sweet Leaf deal isn't quite up to par with a Zagat partnership, but it's one to keep in mind over the next couple of weeks nonetheless, as your wandering Austin's streets and growing more dehydrated by the moment. (Yes, we know how much beer you really drink.) According to Gowalla's blog, there will be virtual Sweet Leaf Tea cans around town that will be redeemable for the real thing, so keep an eye out.
And really, it's this sort of thing that we think will keep apps like Gowalla afloat. Long after the shininess of "checking in" and collecting "virtual goods" for their own sake wears off, real-life incentives will be there. Whether they come in the form of information, as is the case with the Travel Channel deal, or in the form of tasty sweet goodness, as with a can of Sweet Leaf Tea, we're going to need something more than a virtual beatnik to keep us checking in everywhere we go. And of course, letting our friends know where we are, and vice-versa, is great, but if one company gets into the real-life game and another doesn't, guess which one we'll probably be playing.
Discuss
A tenured professor’s income would be far more stable than a stockbroker’s. If both were 30 and made $120,000 a year, the professor’s human capital would be valued at $2,270,000, while the stockbroker’s would be $2,110,000. They would rarely make the same amount, of course, but the professor’s replacement income is higher because of the stability of his job.
- Mitchell TsaiIf you are young and have many working years ahead of you, your human capital is high, and you can take more financial risk. Just how much depends on the person. Are you comfortable taking that risk?
- Mitchell TsaiThat is where the discussion of human capital is supposed to be less emotional. “Even very risky human capital is more bondlike than stocklike,” Mr. Gordon said. “The question is really, are you more like a junk bond or a Treasury?” Determining that could help you avoid the double whammy of losing both human and financial capital.
- Mitchell Tsai
Did you know that the first time a moving sidewalk was proposed for New York City it was 1871? It was brought up again in 1902 for the Brooklyn Bridge, according to EphemeralNY, after which it was debated in the newspapers. Eventually Mayor Seth Low spiked the idea, forcing generations of pedestrians to use their own two legs to get anywhere. Until 1910, when the idea rose from the dead! This time, they were to replace the subway system... which sounds like a highly unenjoyable, fume-heavy experience.
To backtrack, in 1871, the idea came from local wine merchant Alfred Speer, who patented the first "endless-travelling sidewalk"—his idea was to build an elevated one moving along Broadway. It was suggested that boring "stop 'n' chats" would become a thing of the past as one would just have to "step on the passing sidewalk to be carried rapidly beyond sight or hearing of his tormentor." Cause of death on this one: no financial backer.
New Scientist reports that by 1902 New Yorkers were fed up with the rush hour crush; one commuter calling it a "daily torture." So Bridge Commissioner Gustav Lindenthal figured some high-speed moving walkways oughta do the trick, and proposed a looping system with 4 walkways on the Brooklyn Bridge, the fastest containing benches that would whisk pedestrians across the river. It's suspected that Brooklyn Rapid Transit had a hand in burying the idea, as they had a monopoly on the borough's public transit at the time.
Still, proposals came in, with moving sidewalks suggested for the Williamsburg Bridge, Wall Street, and as mentioned, in the subway system. The New York Times even wondered "why this improvement was not considered when this present [subway] system... was built". And in 1932 a similar idea involving an elevated tube system was proposed.
Take a look at the moving sidewalk in action, in Paris in 1900. And if you think the idea of incorporating those into the city is crazy, check out what the world thought 2008 would look like back in 1968.
By being the first and, largely, the only publication pursuing the [John] Edwards story [extramarital affair and out-of-wedlock fatherhood] through his denials of the affair and of fathering a child out of wedlock, The Enquirer is under consideration for a Pulitzer Prize http://nytimes.com/2010/02/19/business/media/19pulitzer.html and it has strong support for its bid from other journalists. http://nytimes.com/2010/02/21/opinion/22douthat.html
- Mitchell Tsai
Rahm Emanuel, the President's Chief of Staff, is either the only reasonable man in the White House or he is a compromise monster who is killing Hope. The New York Times Magazine says "both, kinda."
Well, Peter Baker's story on Rahm is actually more about how Rahm works very, very hard to be pragmatic, and he gets a lot of shit for it, and he is personally very, very tired, and kind of burned out. Rahm did not speak to Baker, of course.
Emanuel, who declined to talk to me on the record for this article, generally shrugs off most of the commentary, scorning armchair critics who haven't spent time in the White House or Congress actually trying to accomplish something.
But some other, unnamed guy—who seems to have some insight into Rham's thinking—sure had a lot to say!
"We've got to drive the ball at them," a senior White House official told me. "Driving the ball at them, making them pick between small government and no government, putting them in their responsibility-and-accountability box. You walk away? You're walking away from responsibility, and the public's angry at you. You participate? Your base hates you."
[...]
Emanuel is said to figure that Americans still mostly like Obama and think he is on their side. "He is not seen as part of the Washington problem," says a senior White House official. "In fact, if anything, he is seen as trying to clean it up, and the question about him is does he have the swat to get it done." Emanuel tells colleagues that the outsider brand represents Obama's most powerful asset, and protecting it is Emanuel's top political priority.
Curious. Axelrod and Gibbs spoke on the record... so those quotes must be from Malia.
So. Rahm was hoping to have a lot more victories now than he does, but lots of bad stuff happened, and sometimes the President listens to people other than Rahm. These facts ended up in the newspaper, which was embarrassing for Rahm, because he doesn't like to be portrayed as losing things and also it made his boss look bad. But the most important thing is that Rahm gets a lot of shit from both liberals and conservatives.
The crossfire underscores his contradictions - how can Emanuel be so intensely partisan without being all that liberal and so relentlessly pragmatic without being bipartisan?
There are not actually contradictions here. In the current political climate, partisanship barely relates to policy goals (that's how a moderate Republican health care bill fails to attract a single GOP vote and how the extension of unemployment benefits is filibustered before passing unanimously). And pragmatism doesn't mean "bipartisan," it means "accomplishing whatever is possible." And "bipartisanship" is not currently possible.
Both of those facts make up the liberal argument against Rahm Emanuel, actually: if he's going to have to be relentlessly partisan to get things done, which is obviously the case, why does the administration so often preemptively compromise to conservative elements that won't get on board no matter what substantive deals they're offered? You can negotiate with Lindsey Graham to trade KSM for Guanatamo, but Lindsey Graham won't deliver a single other Republican vote—if you want to close Gitmo you just have to close Gitmo yourself.
If the compromise is pointless, you're just watering down good policy (or worse, crafting bad policy) for no reason. Failed compromise attempts aren't helping with the optics. They're not helping in Congress. What they're doing is making the stimulus just a touch too small, ensuring a sluggish, jobless recovery and no political capital to pass a second one, because your opponents have decided to argue that the stimulus caused the recession. If you're going to be painted as a socialist for expanding Romneycare nationwide, and you're not going to win Olympia Snowe's vote even by giving her everything she wants, why not push for even better subsidies, a national exchange, and a public option? Because you're scared they'll call you a double socialist?
The story of Rahm demanding a 12-figure stimulus instead of a 13-figure stimulus is the sort of thing that makes observers like Dana Milbank wet in the pants, too. Milbank is a guy who does not even pretend to understand anything about policy, but he plays at being an expert in the cynical game of politics (which is bullshit, by the way—the fact that he claims to have voted for McCain in 2000, Hagel in 2004, and Bloomberg in 2008 just proves that he's a bog-standard educated Republican who is incredibly, embarrassingly susceptible to fawning media coverage).
To the Milbanks of the world, that preemptive compromise that the Administration's economists thought was a terrible idea was in fact a wonderful display of Seriousness. Standing up to the stupid liberals is the wisest and bravest thing a Democratic politician can do, among the centrist beltway pundit crowd. The only thing that could've made the Dana Milbanks of the world even happier, in fact, would've have been if Emanuel had convinced Obama to push for an even smaller stimulus that Lindsey Graham could've signed on to. Then, the jobless rate would probably be even worse a year out, but the President would have a fucking notch in his "bipartisan accomplishments" bedpost.
Don't get us wrong! We are all in favor of "fake bipartisanship," something a "senior White House official" claims Rahm is actually engaged in. That is good for optics, and gives your members some cover when they have to take a tough vote. Barack Obama does "fake bipartisanship" really well, to great effect. If Rahm is behind that, then good on him.
But "fake bipartisanship" is when you have a televised summit with Republicans, adopt their least objectionable suggestions, and shame them for not cooperating. "Fake bipartisanship" is not abandoning the policy goals of your administration because you are scared John McCain and Liz Cheney will criticize you on Meet the Press.
So. That's Rahm Emanuel. He'll probably be out in early 2011. Someday he wants to be mayor of Chicago, but he has to wait for all the Daleys to die.
RT @bpapa: Looks like the iPad's "books" app actually has a NYTimes BUTTON in the Tab Bar! http://bit.ly/arENLs
Filed under: Apple Corporate, iPad
The iPad television ad that appeared during Sunday night's Oscars ceremony showed off more than the iPad's functionality. It revealed some book pricing, too.
TUAWiPad ad reveals book pricing and NYT button originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The Financial Times will move its video assets to Brightcove, according to a report from Journalism.co.uk.
The paper, which is currently publishing between 200 and 300 videos per month, had previously signed up with Maven Networks, which was bought by Yahoo in early 2008. Yahoo decided to shut down Maven merely 17 months after the acquisition, announcing that it was going to “wind down its Maven Networks customer base.”
Yahoo told us at the time that each client had a different time line for a transition off the Maven platform. It looks like The Financial Time’s time has come now, even though the exact date for the transition to Brightcove is not known. A Brightcove spokesperson couldn’t be reached for comment on the switch.
The Financial Times is seeing more than a million video views per month. However, the paper is now considering to move these videos behind its pay wall to add value to the premium section of the site.
Journalism.co.uk is reporting that the FT’s Lead Product Manager Stephen Pinches told the audience of a Beet.tv panel in London that keeping the paper’s videos free is “not a given.” Pinches described video as one of the most valuable assets of FT.com, adding that there is going to be a gradual transition of video behind the site’s pay wall. Pinches also said that the Financial Times eventually wants all of its journalists to produce video.
The Financial Times is another prestigious media powerhouse win for Brightcove, which most recently announced a contract with Japan’s Nikkei. It has also been serving videos for the New York Times, the Guardian and the China Morning Post. All in all, Brightcove powers video on more that 300 newspaper web sites worldwide, according to a recent blog post.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Nat Tarbox.
Related content on GigaOm Pro: Can Online Video Show Us the Future of Newspapers? (subscription required)
The financial writers at the WSJ and NYT have suffered a string of embarrassments lately.
Here they are:
See Also:
Filed under: Apple Corporate, iPad
The iPad television ad that appeared during Sunday night's Oscars ceremony showed off more than the iPad's functionality. It revealed some book pricing, too.TUAWiPad ad reveals book pricing and NYT button originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Pandora Will Pull Ahead With Warner Music http://bit.ly/ddUbq4
It was just about a year and a half ago now that we were hearing the bells toll for Internet radio service Pandora, but, as evidenced in today's New York Times profile of the decade old stalwart, the service seems to be going nowhere but up.
While Pandora "has been on the verge of death, struggling to find investors and battling record labels over royalties," according to the Times' profile, a recent move by Warner Music may help to put one Internet radio station above the rest.
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The Times' profile tracks the full life and times of one of our favorite Internet radio stations, describing the many reasons Pandora experienced its first profitable quarter in 2009 and looks to become even more profitable. But it might have missed out on one reason - Pandora will have the music that other free players won't.
As Tom Conrad, CTO for Pandora, told us last month when Warner announced it would pull all of its licensed content from streaming music services, "Pandora operates under a different licensing structure and won't be impacted by Warner's apparent decision with respect to free, on-demand services." This could be huge in keeping Pandora on track to break $100 million in revenue this year, as predicted by William Blair, a digital media analyst, in the Times article.
The Times compares Pandora with other services, such as Slacker Radio, noting that Pandora has one third as many songs but three times as many listeners. We can't help but wonder if the absence of Warner's discography might further imbalance this scenario in Pandora's favor.
While the sheer number of songs is obviously not the deciding factor here, it could be a big one. With control over artists from Frank Sinatra to the Bee Gees to Puff Daddy, Warner's music catalog could be the distinction between life or death for any online streaming music service. And now, with deals with automakers and consumer electronic manufacturers, it looks like Pandora is here to stay.
And as the Times points out, with last month's hiring of CFO Steve Cakebread, the company looks poised to go public in 2010. In the meantime, we wonder what will come of the competition when Warner music officially pulls the plug and leaves them without a "Stairway to Heaven".
DiscussAmerica got its first prime-time peek at Apple’s latest gadget on Sunday night, as the company rolled out its first TV commercial for the iPad during the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony.
No surprise, it was a visually slick, 30-second montage of everything the iPad can do, with a finger-snapping soundtrack provided by Danish group The Blue Van.
But Steve Jobs wasn’t on his couch back in Silicon Valley watching it; he evidently journeyed down to Southern California to catch the Oscars in person, and was not too shy to pose for a pic with a fan.
(Jobs likely felt very at home at the big show. He got to see Pixar, which was bought from Jobs by Disney in 2006, pick up a couple more statuettes, this time for “Up.” The show was broadcast on ABC, owned by Disney, of which Jobs is the largest shareholder.)
The iPad commercial depicts the device as a powerful computing tool. It is seen zipping through a variety of applications, from reading the New York Times, to Edward Kennedy’s biography, to displaying the latest “Star Trek” movie. It manages Email and photo albums as well, all that from the comfort of an anonymous users’ lap, with feet happily propped on the coffee table.
Apple is of course famous for its marketing prowess, and its campaigns for the iPod and Mac are already the stuff of legend. We’ll see on April 3 how effective the iPad spots are, as the device hits store shelves on that day.
The road to online music streaming is littered with the bodies of startups with interesting ways of sharing music. And internet radio darling Pandora was almost one of them — multiple times. This weekend, The New York Times documented the various ways that Pandora almost went out of business over the 10 years of its existence.
Pandora is on track to earn $100 million this year. That turn around is due to a number of issues. Some of them are extenuating circumstances — like recently reduced royalty fees for streaming songs. But Pandora has also been paying attention to changes in consumer behavior and digital payment structures. Their new revenue streams — including online ads, new streaming deals and a paid streaming model — prove that there's not always one way to bring in a dollar.
Music streaming is a sector with myriad hurdles standing in the way of profitability. Pandora started off as a music recommendation service for businesses in 2000. After the dot-com bubble burst — and funding dried up — Pandora CEO Tim Westergren shifted his focus to bring music to consumers rather than businesses. And while the company found a strong following of consumers, revenues didn't follow. Especially after record companies demanded royalty fees for individual songs in 2007.
But Pandora enlisted its coterie of brand advocates to champion its cause. According to The Times:
"Pandora hired a lobbyist in Washington and recruited its listeners to write to their representatives. 'A lot of these users think they’re customers of the cause rather than users per se,' said Willy C. Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School who has written a case study on Pandora. 'It’s a different spin on marketing.' The board agreed to negotiations and after two years settled on a lower rate."
Pandora also hired Steve Cakebread from Salesforce.com as CFO to help run the business. But even after royalty fees were lowered from 0.19 per song played to $.08 per song or 25% of revenue, Pandora needed additional money to help bear the burden of streaming costs and other overhead.
The company has been interspersing its stream of songs with advertising for a few years to help defer costs. But also, in 2008, they launched an iPhone app to stream music in mobile. From the Times: "Almost immediately, 35,000 new users a day joined Pandora from their cellphones, doubling the number of daily signups."
Meanwhile, Pandora is asking heavy users to pony up for the music they love to stream. Free users are allowed 40 hours of free listening per month. For music over the limit, it costs 99 cents to listen for the rest of the month. If users know they're heavy listeners, they can forgo ads altogether and listen to unlimited streams for $36 a year.
This freemium model has worked well for Pandora, in part because they have closely tied every payment decision to the fees and charges that Pandora is required to pay. Users who came out to defend the service when the labels wanted to gouge online streaming are now aware that the music they want to get for free isn't free to deliver.
And Pandora isn't just depending on direct payment and ads delivered to consumers to increase its bottom line. The company has also hired George Lynch, an executive from Sirius XM Satellite Radio, to help win new listeners this year through streaming Pandora into multiple new vehicles by the end of the year.
While the terrain of streaming music may shift in unfavorable ways yet again, Pandora has done an excellent job of communicating its difficulties to consumers without forcing them to bear the brunt of the burden for those fees. Consumers can still access the company's great music genome to discover music, but if they really value the service, they have to pay for it. Or put up with small inconveniences that help bring in revenue through alternate means. Meanwhile, the company is working to partner with other brands to deliver music in new ways and come up with other means to share its music now that it's become clear that unlimited free sharing couldn't last forever.
There was an article in the New York Times last week about how sweetened condensed milk is having a “moment” — apparently eschewed by food snobs, home cooks from Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean couldn’t care less as they know it’s the manna, the building block of many awesome things from Key Lime Pie to Vietnamese Coffee to Dulce De Leche. It’s okay, I’m drooling too.
... Read the rest of coconut milk fudge on smittenkitchen.com
© smitten kitchen 2006-2009. | permalink to coconut milk fudge | no comment to date | see more: Brazilian, Candy, Photo
The federal government is taking a road trip, dubbed the 2010 Census Portrait of America Road Tour, to try to convince "hard-to-count audiences" to participate in this year's dicennial Census. One of those particularly hard-to-count groups are those who identify as racially mixed. Many will choose to take advantage of the "mark one or more races" (MOOM) option made first available on the 2000 Census. Race scholars have been hotly debating the significance of this paradigm shift, asking: just what are the Civil Rights consequences of the Census option of "mark one or more races"?
Demonized in the early twentieth century as sexually polluting and culturally degenerate, mixed race people are now all the rage. The New York Times hails them as Generation E.A.: Ethnically Ambiguous and celebrates them as ambassadors to the post-race new world order. With Obama, our self-described "mutt" President, as its poster-child, the "the Mulatto Millennium" is finally upon us.
But the current fêting has its downside, primarily a dismantling of affirmative action and civil rights. The packaging of multiracials as the vanguard of the future too often casts civil rights organizations and efforts as outdated, associated with 1970s tribal politics by old-fashioned "monoracials." In this context, Obama's multiculti cool just seems so much more du jour than Jesse Jackson Sr.'s last-century ethnic pride. In fact, one of the most acute challenges facing the National Association for Colored People (NAACP), which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, is the creeping sense that black people are no longer relevant in the next century.
Certainly the 1967 Loving vs Virginia Supreme Court decision legalizing interracial marriages, as well as immigration tends, have contributed to our multi-hued population, but people of mixed descent have existed in distinct communities since the colonial era in the Americas. The dramatic increase in public visibility and popularity in the last decade is also due to its appeal as a post-civil rights answer to the "race problem."
The hope that mixed race identification represents a new millennial political solution to the intractable problem of race in this U.S. is powerfully seductive. It implies, after all, the free will to choose one's race, fulfilling that most-cherished American mandate of individualism. The widely-circulated manifesto, "Bill of Rights for Mixed Race People," for instance, insists on the refusal to be "boxed" in, on the Census or anywhere else: I can check black today, more than one tomorrow, refuse to check anything the day after.
For some mixed race advocates, the Census box represents the new nonviolent resistance, a finger in the eye of the racial status quo.
Yet even the most well-intentioned individuals are often unaware of the political effects of what they see as a private choice. I personally witnessed this when I lived next to a business "empowerment zone" in a mostly black neighborhood in Tacoma, Washington. This zone, targeted for economic improvement based on racial demographics, was threatened by the sudden increase in those identifying more than one race for the Census--overnight, those who had been black became mixed, and the empowerment zone risked dissolution.
Few could have anticipated the community impact of their box-checking. Federal guidelines have since sought to correct for these unexpected effects, but my point is that the government accounting of race through the Census is explicitly designed to inform public policy and the distribution of resources. This is not about ethnic squabbling over spoils.
It is a recognition that the Census was never meant as--nor should it be--a site for self-expression.
Some mixed race advocates claim that they are destroying what Mark Twain called the "legal fiction of race." But, ironically, this position only tends to reinforce the logic behind categorization, for it assumes the destruction of a racial homogeneity that never existed. According to some studies, well over 80% of people of African descent in North America are mixed and Latinos also, of course, have mestizo and diasporic mixes. There is no purity to overturn.
Others suggest that more refined racial categorization--new and improved boxes--can better represent individual hybridity. But Brazil and South Africa have long experimented with legal racial designations of every nuance and shade. No one would say these two countries' elaborate taxonomies have led to racial equity and progress. Quite the opposite.
I often hear: if I check black (or Latino or Asian), I will betray my white parent. But the loyalty test is a red herring: Halle Berry's white mother, for one, is on record for being proud that her daughter claimed the Academy Award for Best Actress (2002) as the first African American woman in history to do so.
How did checking a Census box become such an iconic moment to prove filial devotion?
By all means, let us honor, encourage, and study cross-cultural exchanges and multiracial experiences without making mixed race either a political special interest or the national solution to the "race problem." There are better venues in which to both represent our multi-splendored selves and more productively ally with social justice efforts.
Instead of marking more than one race when the 2010 Census appears in your mailbox this March, think twice and consider checking once.
Online music service Pandora could hit $100 million in revenue this year, which would represent more than twice as much revenue as the company pulled in for 2009 and potentially set the stage for an IPO.
The new estimate comes from a Wall Street analyst quoted in a New York Times profile of Pandora, a company that has narrowly escaped all but certain death several times since its inception in 2000. The Times credits much of Pandora’s rise to its wildly successful iPhone app, which doubled signups for the service overnight.
Much of it also has to do, however, with the new licensing deal that the company was able to achieve last year that brought royalties down to a much more affordable level that Pandora offsets with both ads and subscription revenue.
As for whether these rising tides might lead to Pandora going public, the Times reports that nothing is imminent, but notes that the company recently hired a CFO — the same one that was at the helm of Salesforce.com when it made its Wall Street debut.
On a side note, Pandora’s success is quite the tale in perseverance. For example, the Times talks of founder Tim Westergren not scoring a venture capital investment until his 348th pitch. In a decade when we’ve seen countless music startups falter or sold off for pennies on the dollar, Pandora’s tale is an inspiring one, and the NYT’s profile is worth a read.
Tags: finance, online music, pandora
Pandora Could Hit $100 Million in Revenue for 2010
- Sarah PerezOver the weekend, the New York Times published online a great infographic, documenting the history of budget reconciliation back to 1981. It definitely cuts through a lot of the bullroar we've heard lately about a parliamentary procedure that's actually common and non-controversial.
As you can see for yourself, budget reconciliation has shepherded all sorts of legislation into existence: big bills, small bills, partisan bills, non-partisan bills. And, as I've already noted, reconciliation has been used to create substantial government programs as well.
The Times's conclusion? Pretty basic, really:
The history is clear: While the use of reconciliation in this case -- amending a bill that has already passed the Senate via cloture -- is new, it is compatible with the law, Senate rules and the framers' intent.
It's worth pointing out of course that overwrought concern over the budget reconciliation process is a new development in the political life of this country. Jamison Foser took a look back over the way the budget reconciliation process was covered by the media during the drive to pass the 2003 Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act and discovered that the media pretty much didn't cover it at all:
The Senate reconciliation vote occurred on May 23, 2003. In the month of May, only one New York Times article so much as mentioned the use of reconciliation for the tax cuts -- a May 13, 2003, article that devoted a few paragraphs to wrangling over whether Senate Republicans could assign the bill number they wanted (S.2) to a bill approved via reconciliation. The Times also used the word "reconciliation" in a May 9, 2003, editorial, but gave no indication whatsoever of what it meant.
And that's more attention than most news outlets gave to the use of reconciliation that month. The Washington Post didn't run a single article, column, editorial, or letter to the editor that used the words "reconciliation" and "senate." Not one. USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press were similarly silent.Cable news didn't care, either. CNN ran a quote by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley about the substance of the tax cuts in which he used the word "reconciliation" in passing -- but that was it. Fox News aired two interviews in which Republican members of Congress referred to the reconciliation process in order to explain why the tax cuts would be temporary, but neither they nor the reporters interviewing them treated reconciliation as a controversial tactic.
And ABC, CBS, NBC? Nothing, nothing, nothing.
The bottom line is that budget reconciliation has only become "controversial" because opponents of health care reform deemed it so and made a lot of noise about it, this creating the sort of shiny, twinkling light that attracts the media and compels them to lose their minds completely. The pendulum of power over time tends to shift, and so one day the GOP will find itself needing to advance legislation through the reconciliation process, and we'll never hear about the "controversial" budget reconciliation process again.
[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]
By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
After a Reuters report on Friday cited China's Industry and Information Minister, Li Yizhong, as having told an indeterminate parliamentary body that the government was in talks with Google over its claims of having been hacked in early February by a Chinese malicious source, a vice minister for the same government agency issued a statement through China's Xinhua news agency denying any negotiations have taken place at all.
The denial was covered by Reuters as a request by the ministry for more information, so that China could prosecute Google's complaint. The Xinhua report itself (not a Google English-language translation of the report) states the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's position that Google never filed a complaint in the first place.
Last Tuesday, Xinhua quoted a spokesperson for a key Chinese political advisory body, Zhao Qizheng, as strongly denying Google's allegations of Chinese malicious hacking, specifically the implication that the government was involved. But being consistent, Qizheng and the Xinhua report were careful not to call Google's accusation a "charge."
If one reads the Xinhua reports at face value -- putting aside Reuters' interpretations of them -- they could represent China's attempt to call Google's bluff. Ever since the incident, the state-run news agency has reiterated that Google has threatened to pull out of the country, but has not done so. And a political cartoon published by Xinhua last Friday, entitled "Google and the Spooks," depicts the political association it would prefer Chinese citizens draw in their minds. It shows the familiar Google search page, with the logo embellished with Nixonian eyes and an American flag necktie bearing a National Security Agency seal.
The prevailing theory, put forth last month in The New York Times, is that the perpetrators of the alleged incident may have been vo-tech students of a certain Ukrainian professor who has been suspected of online mischief before. While on the surface that might appear to exonerate the Chinese government, the Times' source, a noted intelligence research analyst, warned readers not to draw that conclusion too quickly, saying the Chinese "have a different model" for exploiting targets. That source may have helped the Times uncover that Google had been working with the NSA to determine the source of the incident.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
David Axelrod, President Obama's chief political adviser, sleeps "five fitful hours a night," the New York Times reported yesterday.
"I think he's getting close to a burnout kind of thing," Axelrod's friend Sam Smith was quoted as saying.
Charles Czeisler, a Harvard sleep researcher, has found that getting four or fewer hours of sleep five nights in a row has an impact on our memory, attention and speed of thinking that is equivalent to being legally intoxicated.
"Like a drunk," says Czeisler," a person who is sleep deprived has no idea how functionally impaired he or she truly is. Most of us have forgotten what it really feels like to be awake."
"In my long political career," Bill Clinton told a post-presidency audience, "most of the mistakes I made, I made when I was too tired, Too many members of the Congress in both parties are sleep deprived. It clouds your judgment, and it undermines your ability to be relaxed and respectful in dealing with your adversaries."
In a much cited study of the keys to great performance, researcher Anders Ericsson found that top violinists named sleep as the second most important everyday activity, after practice, when it comes to improving as violinists.
The best violinists in his study slept an average of 8 ½ hours, including a 20 to 30 minute daytime nap. Ninety-five per cent of us need at least 7-8 hours a night to feel fully rested. The average American sleeps between 6 and 6 ½ hours with no nap.
Sleep is the first thing the driven class is willing to sacrifice in the name of getting more done.
That's based on the mistaken assumption that the best way to be more productive is to work more hours. In fact, there's considerable evidence that people get more done, in less time, at a much higher level of quality when they're more rested.
It's not how the number of hours you work that determines the value you generate, it's the focus you're capable of bringing to whatever hours you work.
How would you like to be operated on by a surgeon who is deeply sleep deprived? Or fly in a plane with a pilot who hasn't had sufficient sleep?
How do you feel about having your government run by people who don't get enough sleep?
Virtually all major disasters caused by human error during the past 50 years were connected to insufficient sleep, or took place in the middle of the night, when the body is craving sleepThink the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Challenger space shuttle crash, the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl meltdowns.
How do we get our leaders to start truly valuing sleep, recognizing periods of real recovery not as a sign of weakness, or a waste of time, but rather as a prerequisite to great performance? And how do you do the same? My own first answer is to go to bed earlier.
David Axelrod, President Obama's chief political adviser, sleeps "five fitful hours a night," the New York Times reported yesterday.
"I think he's getting close to a burnout kind of thing," Axelrod's friend Sam Smith was quoted as saying.
Charles Czeisler, a Harvard sleep researcher, has found that getting four or fewer hours of sleep five nights in a row has an impact on our memory, attention and speed of thinking that is equivalent to being legally intoxicated.
"Like a drunk," says Czeisler," a person who is sleep deprived has no idea how functionally impaired he or she truly is. Most of us have forgotten what it really feels like to be awake."
"In my long political career," Bill Clinton told a post-presidency audience, "most of the mistakes I made, I made when I was too tired. Too many members of the Congress in both parties are sleep deprived. It clouds your judgment, and it undermines your ability to be relaxed and respectful in dealing with your adversaries."
In a much cited study of the keys to great performance, researcher Anders Ericsson found that top violinists named sleep as the second most important everyday activity, after practice, when it comes to improving as violinists.
The best violinists in his study slept an average of 8 ½ hours, including a 20 to 30 minute daytime nap. Ninety-five per cent of us need at least 7-8 hours a night to feel fully rested. The average American sleeps between 6 and 6 ½ hours with no nap.
Sleep is the first thing the driven class is willing to sacrifice in the name of getting more done.
That's based on the mistaken assumption that the best way to be more productive is to work more hours. In fact, there's considerable evidence that people get more done, in less time, at a much higher level of quality when they're more rested.
It's not how the number of hours you work that determines the value you generate, it's the focus you're capable of bringing to whatever hours you work.
How would you like to be operated on by a surgeon who is deeply sleep deprived? Or fly in a plane with a pilot who hasn't had sufficient sleep?
How do you feel about having your government run by people who don't get enough sleep?
Virtually all major disasters caused by human error during the past 50 years were connected to insufficient sleep, or took place in the middle of the night, when the body is craving sleep. Think of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Challenger space shuttle crash, the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl meltdowns.
How do we get our leaders to start truly valuing sleep, recognizing periods of real recovery not as a sign of weakness, or a waste of time, but rather as a prerequisite to great performance? And how do you do the same? My own first answer is to go to bed earlier.
David Axelrod, President Obama's chief political adviser, sleeps "five fitful hours a night," the New York Times reported yesterday.
"I think he's getting close to a burnout kind of thing," Axelrod's friend Sam Smith was quoted as saying.
Charles Czeisler, a Harvard sleep researcher, has found that getting four or fewer hours of sleep five nights in a row has an impact on our memory, attention and speed of thinking that is equivalent to being legally intoxicated.
"Like a drunk," says Czeisler," a person who is sleep deprived has no idea how functionally impaired he or she truly is. Most of us have forgotten what it really feels like to be awake."
"In my long political career," Bill Clinton told a post-presidency audience, "most of the mistakes I made, I made when I was too tired. Too many members of the Congress in both parties are sleep deprived. It clouds your judgment, and it undermines your ability to be relaxed and respectful in dealing with your adversaries."
In a much cited study of the keys to great performance, researcher Anders Ericsson found that top violinists named sleep as the second most important everyday activity, after practice, when it comes to improving as violinists.
The best violinists in his study slept an average of 8 ½ hours, including a 20 to 30 minute daytime nap. Ninety-five per cent of us need at least 7-8 hours a night to feel fully rested. The average American sleeps between 6 and 6 ½ hours with no nap.
Sleep is the first thing the driven class is willing to sacrifice in the name of getting more done.
That's based on the mistaken assumption that the best way to be more productive is to work more hours. In fact, there's considerable evidence that people get more done, in less time, at a much higher level of quality when they're more rested.
It's not how the number of hours you work that determines the value you generate, it's the focus you're capable of bringing to whatever hours you work.
How would you like to be operated on by a surgeon who is deeply sleep deprived? Or fly in a plane with a pilot who hasn't had sufficient sleep?
How do you feel about having your government run by people who don't get enough sleep?
Virtually all major disasters caused by human error during the past 50 years were connected to insufficient sleep, or took place in the middle of the night, when the body is craving sleep. Think of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Challenger space shuttle crash, the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl meltdowns.
How do we get our leaders to start truly valuing sleep, recognizing periods of real recovery not as a sign of weakness, or a waste of time, but rather as a prerequisite to great performance? And how do you do the same? My own first answer is to go to bed earlier.
Samsung has quietly upgraded its Go range of netbooks, the N315. Most significantly, it has the newer 1.66GHz Atom CPU from Intel's newer Pine Trail platform versus the older 1.6GHz version, along with a matte screen. The chassis and keyboard are carried over, and a Wi-Fi radio is integrated as well. The New York Times' Reader software is preloaded onto the larger 250GB hard drive, along with Windows 7 Starter....
What’s even sadder than the cynical deluge of hybrid supercars is that the only event from last week's Geneva Motor Show covered by the mainstream non-automotive press was Justin Timberlake introducing the Audi A1 at a press conference.
Granted, a free commuter paper is not exactly The New York Times, but it’s perhaps a reflection of the general public’s interest.
Our Mr. Petrány was in attendance at Audi’s press event on Tuesday afternoon and he described an awkward corporate scene, where Mr. Timberlake feigned great interest in receiving the first Audi A1, equipped with a 1.4-liter engine, after being introduced by 15 seconds of corporate rock performed by a band flown in from Sweden.
Perhaps it’s too much to ask from the general press to focus on anything other than a nano-bit of vapid celebrity news, but one cannot help but think of the Geneva Motor Show’s great history, spanning almost a century.
Has the automobile really fallen to such levels of social irrelevance that the only bit of interest at a supposedly grand motor show is a shabbily dressed man purchased for corporate money, sticking out like a sore thumb in his unlaced boots and his garish belt from the French-Italian chic of the local crowd.
Geneva is the canary in the coalmine of automotive trends. If there’s any indication of where the automobile is headed, Geneva points to a world of pointless hybrids and appliance-cars, sparsely decorated with a lone Lexus LF–A or an Audi RS5.
But maybe there’s hope.
A few pages behind Timberlake, a spread describing the history of the show featured a rather large print of a red Countach, introduced here in 1971 to hurl the world of supercars forever spaceward. At least one person on the 6:42 AM Lausanne-Geneva express was interested.
Not that being interested in a red or yellow wedge from outer space is a particularly great request from the human nervous system, but still, it's a start. We need our supercars like never before.
Photo Credit: Máté Petrány, Lamborghini, and the author
Apple introduced its first iPad commercial during last night’s Academy Awards show; in true Apple fashion, the ad combines sleek product shots and a tune that immediately gets stuck in your head. Set to “There Goes My Love” by the Blue Van, the ad highlights the iPad’s app from the New York Times as well as the device’s e-reader and movie-viewing capabilities. It also confirms the release date of April 3. But does the ad make you more likely to buy an iPad? Check it out for yourself below.
