by Christopher Paul on July 16, 2012 I’m breaking my no NY Times Rule for this bit of breaking news: Google’s Marissa Mayer abruptly left Google to start at Yahoo. The break seems to be quick somewhat clean (although that’s debatable, I suppose). From the New York Times:
“Ms. Mayer resigned from Google on Monday afternoon by telephone. She starts at Yahoo on Tuesday. Ms. Mayer will also join Yahoo’s board.
In an interview, Ms. Mayer said she “had an amazing time at Google,” where she has worked for the past 13 years, but that ultimately “it was a reasonably easy decision” to take the top job at Yahoo. She said Yahoo is “one of the best brands on the Internet.””
That’s a big ‘Eff you, Google!’ if I ever saw one.
Suddenly Yahoo! is interesting again.
by Christopher Paul on July 16, 2012 Franklin E. Zimring on how New York City beat Crime:
Twenty years ago most criminologists and sociologists would have doubted that a metropolis could reduce this kind of crime by so much. Although the scale of New York Citys success is now well known and documented, most people may not realize that the city’s experience showed many of modern America’s dominant assumptions concerning crime to be flat wrong, including that lowering crime requires first tackling poverty, unemployment and drug use and that it requires throwing many people in jail or moving minorities out of city centers. Instead New York made giant strides toward solving its crime problem without major changes in its racial and ethnic profile; it did so without lowering poverty and unemployment more than other cities; and it did so without either winning its war on drugs or participating in the mass incarceration that has taken place throughout the rest of the nation.
The short answer is increased police presence and agressive street stops and arrests. But the longer answer is more complex because it involves shattering preconcieved ideas about crime prevention. For example, crime and drug use were not linked. Gentrification, it seems, has little to do with reducing rates, either. Even the policing strategies were new and counter to what you might expect:
Starting in 1994, the city also adopted a management and data-mapping system called CompStat. At a central office in downtown Manhattan, analysts compile data on serious crimes, including their exact locations, and map them to identify significant concentrations of crime. Patrols then deploy in full force on-site — whether it is a sidewalk, a bar or any other public place — sometimes for weeks at a time, systematically stopping and frisking anyone who looks suspicious and staring down everyone else. Although one might expect that criminals would just move to another street and resume their business as usual, that is not what happened in New York. Thus, crimes prevented one day at a particular location do not ineluctably have to be committed somewhere else the day after.
Of course, it’s hard to say what change has had the most effect on crime rates. The combination of multiple strategies could be answer (vs one singular act or change). But whatever the case, New York has had a significant reduction in crime relative to the rest of the nation given it’s population.
by Christopher Paul on July 16, 2012 The Loop found a montage of Nexus7 unboxings and it makes for great comedy. I wonder if people ended up breaking some as they struggled to open them.
by Christopher Paul on July 16, 2012 Fred Wilson in defending “free” as part of a business model:
“When scale matters, when network effects matter, when your users are creating the content and the value, free is the business model of choice. And I don’t think anything has changed to make that less true today. If anything, it is more true.”
Fred doesn’t make a clear distinction between free vs ad supported and defines them as more or less the same. From a pure cash transactional point of view, I’d agree. But to support the ads that support the service, there is a cost associated with it. For Facebook, Google (and their associated properties), Twitter, etc., the cost is privacy and/or some slight inconvenience when having to view ads. Never the less, I’d agree that services that charge on the backs of user generated content aren’t going to make it.
One other point that Fred mentions that I feel needs special attention is this:
“I do not believe it makes sense to charge users to create the value.”
I feel this applies to newspapers and the news industry though Fred doesn’t apply it to them. If you look at the NY Times and other “papers”, you see they allow comments. They build up (or defend) their online readership by offering that. No user is going to want to pay for the privlage to read first then comment. They’ll find the same news somewhere else and comment on it where they can do so for free.
I don’t mind Twitter wants to charge ads. If they want to charge for certain search or API use, fine. But I’ll never pay for it and no paid Twitter-like network will ever scale the way Twitter has. Same with Facebook. Though I hate the creepiness of it, I understand it doesn’t take my cash to keep the lights on; it takes my information and eyeballs to do so. I can live with that.
by Christopher Paul on July 13, 2012 Elizabeth Cline writing for GOOD:
Sewing clothing is very labor intensive, which is why a $10 or $20 price tag on a dress should be raising eyebrows instead of just opening our wallets. Companies like H&M place their orders in a network of factories in countries such as Bangladesh and China, where poverty wages are legal (Bangladeshi garment workers are paid $43 a month) and workers have little choice but to put in the exhausting hours needed to feed the 24/7 fast-fashion machine. Not only does this debase the skill and craftsmanship of sewing, but factories in the United States cannot compete. Between 1990 and 2012, the United States lost half of our garment and textile industries. We now make 2 percent of our clothing here.
…
To feed our clothing addiction, approximately 82 million tons of fiber is now being produced worldwide, largely in countries with very minimal environmental standards. In China, I’ve traveled through an unimaginable landscape of factories along highways enshrouded in smog and saw dyes dumped in ditches in Bangladesh. The environmental toll of the fashion industry is being taken out on countries most U.S. consumers will never visit and is not reflected in the price tag of a $10 dress.
I’ve actually thought about this a lot over the past year or two and I’ve changed my own buying habits as a result. Though I never shopped at H&M or Zara, I’ve tried to find clothes that will last and made in America. Its not about national pride or anything. It’s really about knowing that I’ve decided to give my money to someone who isn’t working in a sweatshop. Sure, some items cost more but I expect these items to last me years.
Unfortunately, not all Americans can afford anything but Old Navy. And I don’t mean to insult anyone who shops there; there is something to be said for a bargain – especially if it fits a person’s style. My family has shopped there with great results.
But I do check the labels to see where something is made and where the materials came from to help my decision and, of late, I’ve steered towards handcrafted or sewn products for the US made with locally sourced materials.