In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft recently invested $240 million into social networking all-star Facebook at a $15 billion valuation.  Just to put things in perspective, that places Facebook as the fifth most valuable internet company, sitting squarely between Amazon at #4 and Interactive Corp (which runs Ask.com, Hotels.com, and a […]

There’s a curiously engaging book called How Proust Can Change Your Life, written by Alain de Botton, that looks at Marcel Proust’s life and works (novels) in the context of universal life lessons. Chapter 2, entitled “How to Read for Yourself,” conveys the notion that Proust believed in novels as “a […]

There’s a lot I like about career discovery startup Path 101’s intended trajectory. As I wrote last week, the company is “tackling 3 million+ publicly posted resumes on the web (and any others the company can get its hands on) and working on organizing that information.” Such work could hold exceptional […]

I’m curious as to what’s happening to certain of our online form entries.  Most of them comprise of address, email, or other information that is plugging directly into a back-end database and either serve as query against or populate preset tables. These are permission-based entries which we, as consumers, thoughtfully offer and generally […]

Earlier this week I heaped praise on a La Quinta Inns & Suites ad campaign, and a kind reader pointed me to their ad agency, Mullen.  So I fished around on the Mullen site to get a better sense of their excellent work and ran across the following:
“You can measure Mullen by its […]

File this one under humor, for now.
It seems Australia’s role as leading indicator has expanded from real estate to social networking.  I couldn’t help but make the mental connection while reading in short succession Greenspan’s housing comments in his book, The Age of Turbulence, and Duncan Riley’s Techcrunch commentary on Australian social […]

How cool!  Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a post called “Letter to a Young(er) Professional” which covered core recommendations for folks early on the career path.  I hit off with the following:
First, know your options.  If there’s one tool I wish I was given in college it would be a […]

La Quinta Inns & Suites is bringing their corporate slogan, “wake up on the bright side,” to new use - as title for a series of comics advertising the company’s service. The “advertising as content” storm has been brewing for some time but rarely has it been implemented as explicitly as […]

Life’s full of randomness.  Some thinkers even encourage seeking it out as stimulus or influence.  But as Jeffrey Kluger nicely sets up his most recent reportage, ”Of all the things that shape who we are, few seem more arbitrary than the sequence in which we and our siblings pop out of the womb.”  Yup.
It’s […]

Last night I joined some friends to watch Sony Pictures’ “Who Killed the Electric Car?“  The documentary tracks General Motors’ EV1, an electricity-powered vehicle (hence EV, which has stuck as a general term), from birth in the hands of creative tinkerers in the mid-90’s ’til “death” at the hands of… well, nearly everyone involved according to the filmmakers.  One is […]