Business: China's housing boom spells trouble for boyfriends

http://m.latimes.com/inf/infomo;JSESSIONID=0319289B1E9D7865E952.213?view=Business+Items&feed:a=latimes_1min&feed:c=businessnews&feed:i=54451641&nopaging=1

"Young Chinese are coming of age at a time of exploding wealth and rising expectations for material success. In a survey last year on Sohu.com, a popular Web portal similar to Yahoo, 73% of respondents said homeownership was a necessity for marriage. An almost equal percentage said they had difficulty buying an apartment.

"I'm 25 years old, looking for a boyfriend.... I want you to have an apartment and a car.... The apartment has to be built after 2000 and the car has to be better than a minivan," read one post on the popular Chinese Web portal Baidu."

The End of Men - Magazine - The Atlantic - Flash Player Installation

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/1/

"As recently as 1985, about half of all women in a national survey said they "must have a son." That percentage fell slowly until 1991 and then plummeted to just over 15 percent by 2003. Male preference in South Korea "is over," says Monica Das Gupta, a demographer and Asia expert at the World Bank. "It happened so fast. It's hard to believe it, but it is." The same shift is now beginning in other rapidly industrializing countries such as India and China."

TechCrunch: Zynga goes to the mattresses with Mafia Wars users

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/14/zynga-goes-to-the-mattresses-with-mafia-wars-users/

"When Zynga continued to ignore users they started emailing us [TechCrunch] instead. Emails thousands of words long came in containing the kind of bitter passion that you usually only see when we say something mildly critical about the iPhone. Some users are saying that they are going to do a credit card charge back on money they've previously spent on Zynga games. Others say they're leaving to try one of the many competitors. Etc.

What really seemed to make the users angry is the tone Zynga used in communicating with them:

"Your account was determined to have attempted to use an unauthorized redemption code that would result in $120 worth of Reward Points.
As a result of this action, your account has been reverted to its status as of 5am PST on Tuesday June 8th."

Remember that this is just fake money to buy fake stuff on Mafia Wars that costs Zynga nothing to create. The code was created by Zynga and distributed without any technical restrictions on its use (meaning anyone could use it).

In other words, Zynga screwed up."

Engadget for Mobile

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/02/hp-ceo-we-didnt-buy-palm-to-be-in-the-smartphone-business/

"hey, Mark? You should really look into the smartphone business when you get a second, okay? Just trust us on this one"

- hopefully he means "today smartphones, tomorrow the world".

Or is Hurd in the "cell phones are toys" camp?

Diane Passage knew just how to hook him: Rich men like Kenneth Starr are easy prey for strippers

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/05/29/2010-05-29_dancers_have_the_guys_by_the_youknowwhat.html

"The [girls] make them feel comfortable. They assuage their insecurities. They somehow convince them they are attractive, interesting, funny. That they are loved not for their money or power, but for who they really are.

"These CEOs are easy prey for a beautiful Scores girl," Osher says. "They become hypnotized, and follow them around like lost puppy dogs.""

For a laugh...

Follow @BPGlobalPR on twitter:

"Just got the concession call from Exxon Valdez. They were great competitors and remarkably evil about everything. #bpwins!"

Apple, HP, Dell Begin Probing Supplier After Suicides (Update2) - BusinessWeek

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-26/apple-hp-dell-begin-probing-supplier-after-suicides-update2-.html


"Gou said he plans to increase psychological testing to help prevent more suicides.

"I offer my sincerest apologies to society, the entire public, all our employees and their families because we had no way of preventing these things from happening," Gou said as he bowed at a press conference today. "

Why you shouldn't believe 'Facebook backlash' numbers | The Social - CNET News

The following is exactly what I just did on Facebook - deleted all profile, info, hobbies, and interests info:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20005921-36.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheSocial

"The best indication of concern about Facebook and how it handles user privacy is not a quantifiable one. The lack of alternatives to Facebook--as well as the many legitimately good things that the service does, from event organization to keeping in touch with old friends--means that many dissatisfied members probably will not delete their accounts altogether. It's more likely that they may be clamping down on privacy controls, deleting information that has been defaulted to public (the "interests" section, for example), or taking additional privacy-conscious steps like deleting old photo albums. There's not a good way for market research firms, pollsters, or pundits to find this out. It could very well still be happening.

The reason for Facebook to be concerned is that many of these actions that members could be taking will make their profiles less valuable to advertisers because they'll be chipping away at "engagement," that magic factor that Facebook execs love to hold up. If you delete information on your profile, it's tougher to target ads. If you're deleting a friend from your contacts list, that's one fewer News Feed that your Facebook-connected third-party actions will show up in--and so forth. That's something that I'm sure has been the topic of many a discussion internally at Facebook over the past few weeks, and maintaining engagement levels could indeed be very central to the company's current decision-making process."

Facebook, Zynga, 7-11, and the "Third Wave"

Zynga And 7-Eleven Strike Branding Deal, 10% Of The U.S. Now Playing FarmVille (http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/23/zynga-and-7-eleven-strike-multi-million-dollar-branding-deal-10-of-the-u-s-now-playing-farmville/)

"In total there will be more than 30 branded items in store, ranging from cups, bottles water, a signature ice cream and more. Consumers will be able to connect back to the social games by using their product redemption codes for limited edition 7-Eleven goods within FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVille."

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/23/the-third-disruptive-wave-tcdisrupt/

"Venture capitalist John Doerr, who is arguably the most successful venture capitalist of all time, told me this during our briefing call for Disrupt: Zynga is the fastest growing business Kleiner Perkins has ever invested in.

That was said by a man who's firm has invested in Google. And Amazon. And AOL, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Genentech, Intuit, Lotus Development, LSI Logic, Macromedia, Netscape, Quantum, Segway, Sun Microsystems, and Tandem, among many, many others.

First thing tomorrow John Doerr is going to outline why he thinks that is happening. He'll talk about the Third Wave. The First Wave was personal computers and the wave of disruption that caused. The second wave was the Internet, ditto. We are now, says Doerr, in the Third Wave.

What exactly is the Third Wave? It's the tectonic shifts we're seeing in mobile platforms (read his post here about the iPad), the social graph (particularly Facebook), and online commerce. All of these things are related and being accelerated by each other (Facebook is the largest mobile application, Zynga leverages Facebook and also stokes Facebook growth, Groupon is social/flash commerce, etc.)"

I think the the Third Wave is simply social media. Social media is the killer app.
5 years from now, Facebook and Zynga's models won't work any longer.
They basically use first-mover advantage to essentially swindle people out of their privacy and their $$, and have gotten away with it so far.
The more fascinating phenomenon to me is how social media is going to kill the consumer PC business.

BlackBerry Guide for Power Users – Do More With Your BlackBerry

http://www.labnol.org/gadgets/phones/blackberry-guide-tips-tricks-keyboard-shortcuts/2851/

This article contained some things I didn't already know about.

"Close vs Escape - If you are running a browser or playing a game in your BlackBerry and press the "End Call" key, the application does not get closed but is merely hidden from your view. Too many open applications will soon slow down your BlackBerry so make it a habit to close, not escape.

See What's Running – To see a list of all open applications in your Blackberry, press the ALT key followed by Escape. It's pretty much like doing an Alt+Tab in Windows to help you navigate through open applications or switch from one application to another."

Will Android overtake Apple?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/iphone-android-25-percent/

Smartphone mkt share table in the article.

"While Android is rising faster than the iPhone in relative share, it is still trailing in absolute numbers. Gartner estimates consumers bought about 8.4 million iPhones in the first quarter, compared to 5.2 million Android phones. Apple sold 4.9 million more iPhones in the first quarter than the year before, while Android sales were up by 4.6 million units."

Fwd: HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war - Engadget

"HP was the winner of a month-long bidding war that involved serious offers from five companies -- a bidding war that involved Jon Rubinstein personally warning HP that it had to "significantly and immediately" increase its offer to remain in the game. What's more, HP's winning bid came in at just 20 cents a share more than its primary rival. Yeah, it's juicy -- read on for the full blow-by-blow"

http://i.engadget.com/2010/05/16/hp-bought-palm-after-a-five-company-bidding-war/

Facebook

This came from Engadget and I can't find the article again:

"Meanwhile for those looking for a distributed open alternative, keep your eye on three projects: OneSocialWeb (in active development with running code you can install yourself), Diaspora (no code, but an almost absurd $180,000 in crowdsourced funding), and The Appleseed Project (a open-source effort with running code that just came out of mothballs — and has a private, hosted beta you can join and code you can install yourself)."

http://s3.moveon.org/images/with_dims/facebook-graphic-1.3_750x615.png

i knew about Instant Personalization but i did not know about this.

NYT: Cellphones Now Used More for Data than Calls

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=C54A675C75C0380FC1339ACE7A18A6C3.w5?a=595491&f=24

I would like to see streaming audio and video broken out of the data below - it must be a huge portion of data use.

"For example, although almost 90 percent of households in the United States now have a cellphone, the growth in voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated, according to government and industry data.

This is true even though more households each year are disconnecting their landlines in favor of cellphones.

Instead of talking on their cellphones, people are making use of all the extras that iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones were also designed to do - browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, play games and send e-mail and text messages.

The number of text messages sent per user increased by nearly 50 percent nationwide last year, according to the CTIA, the wireless industry association. And for the first time in the United States, the amount of data in text, e-mail messages, streaming video, music and other services on mobile devices in 2009 surpassed the amount of voice data in cellphone calls, industry executives and analysts say.

"Originally, talking was the only cellphone application," said Dan Hesse, chief executive of Sprint Nextel. "But now it's less than half of the traffic on mobile networks." "


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Angry Birds Game Makes Developers Happy - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635204575242072251608374.html?ru=yahoo&mod=yahoo_hs

"Total sales of smartphones, which have open operating systems that allow for downloads of externally developed applications, surged 50% to 54 million phones from a year earlier in the first quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. Research firm Gartner forecasts end-users' spending on mobile games will more than double to $11.4 billion world-wide by 2014 from $5.6 billion in 2010, a huge growth market for developers like Rovio"

Sent from my iPod

Great comment from NYT RE: BP & Oil Spill

Digg and NYT are 2 great examples of where the articles comments are almost more interesting, amusing, and profound than the articles themselves. (OK, Digg is not profound.) I always read the comments on the articles I read on these sites. If you don't you are missing something. Digg makes this even more efficient by showing comments in order of popularity (readers can "digg" comments as well as the original article). NYT should adopt this.

"What I would like to know is - why is nobody addressing the fact that off-shore drilling only benefits Big Oil and the elected officials they buy off? All the American people get for it is a polluted coastline. I'm sick of hearing the argument that off-shoring drilling is justified because it means the U.S. will be using domestic rather than foreign oil (thus not "supporting the terrorists"). This is the silliest argument I've ever heard. Why does the media pretend that it's legitimate? This is not Venezuela, where the government owns the oil. BP owns that oil and it's not a charity. It will sell it to the highest bidder - probably Japan or China. Wake up, America!

Concerned New Yorker
New York, NY"

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NYT: Disney Gets a Half-Price Deal

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=594561&f=24

"The economic downturn figured prominently in [Club Penguin's] inability to meet its aggressive growth projections. But the fickle nature of children's entertainment, an oversaturation of virtual worlds aimed at youths and competition from new smartphone games have also contributed, analysts say.

Club Penguin is still by far the leading online world for children, and other sites have experienced much deeper declines in unique visitors. Webkinz.com, where children care for stuffed animals that come to life, registered about 3.8 million unique visitors in April, a 50 percent drop from a year ago. Neopets.com, owned by Viacom, suffered a 39 percent decline, to about 1.5 million.

Disney operates a flotilla of online worlds along with Club Penguin. Some, like PixieHollow.com, have found an audience with young girls, but others - particularly one dedicated to "Pirates of the Caribbean" - have suffered from technology bugs. The company is currently testing a long-delayed new offering, World of Cars, which is planned for a summer introduction."

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NYT: Net-Worth Obsession

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=594246&f=19

We tend to have an intense curiosity about our neighbors and friends, especially those who seem to earn about what we do but spend a lot more. Do they skimp on retirement savings or their children's college funds? Are they not burdened by student loans? Do they have a trust fund? Have they simply maxed out every credit card they can get their hands on? There's no way to answer these questions without seeing a breakdown of net worth.

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Deepwater Horizon: Survivor's Stories

"Marine biology student Albert Andry III and three high school buddies had come to the Deepwater Horizon for a couple leisurely days of tuna fishing and beer drinking. It turned out to be anything but leisurely. The group had left Venice around 3 p.m. in Andry's 26-foot catamaran, the Endorfin, and had spent the afternoon fishing for blackfin near BP's Amberjack Rig 109 near the South Pass of the Mississippi River. Andry's radar had been stolen recently, so when they'd landed enough fish, the 23-year-old from Mandeville, La., headed for the Deepwater Horizon, where they would idle overnight. The men arrived at sunset. The water was smooth as glass and teeming with jellyfish, their translucent blue and white "sails" erect in the light breeze. They were fishing for bait under the lip of the platform when water began raining down from the rig's network of pipes -- so much that Andry thought the crew was dumping the bilges to keep the Deepwatwer Horizon from sinking. Andry's eyes began to burn, and buddy Wes Bourg -- who had worked on offshore rigs -- told the skipper they needed to get out of there. Fast. "Go, go, go, go,...
GOOOOO!" Bourg shouted. With no radar and only the light of a crescent moon to see by, Andry pointed the bow north, gunned the twin 140-horsepower Suzuki outboards and hit the deck. They were about 100 yards from the Deepwater Horizon when the lights went out, and the first of a series of massive booms shook the rig."

http://wireless.go.com/wireless/abcnews/section/US/10598191_2


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