W. P. Carey MBA - Executive Program - Arizona State University

Google and advertising revenue

An interesting point that relates, at least indirectly, to one of Google's revenue sources: advertising:

Google is [a] brand-killer. Time and again, I've seen that consumers find the information they want via Google without being very aware of who ended up providing that information: They ask a question; Google takes them to the answer; they leave, satisifed; they don't pay attention to where they were. This can harm brands that get advertising based on syndicated research that asks consumers how often they visit or how aware they are of a brand; they may well visit a brand's site but if they don't pay attention then the brand doesn't get credit in the survey and looks smaller than it is. In spite of that, I can't imagine a publisher who wouldn't want to come up in Google searches; hell, they all pay companies in the new industry of search-engine optimization to make sure they come up higher and higher in those searches.

Yet some of the ads on these sites that are visited anonymously as Google ads -- does it reduce the value of Google ads if a site is accessed via Google?

An article in Wired News addresses some of the complexities of Google's business model as applied to GoogleNews. If Google is a "brand killer," it benefits the sites it links with greater traffic but diminishes the benefits of greater traffice by making the sites more anonymous and the advertising on those sites less visible or memorable -- or linked. Net result? Time will tell.

Beslan website

A local website has been set up in Beslan by several people who were teachers at Beslan Middle School No. 1, and an article describing it runs in Canada's Globe and Mail.

The Guardian describes the activities of the site:

Beslan.ru is compiling a list of all the victims, in what the paper calls "filling in for a government gone AWOL in the wake of the siege".

The site - which is being translated into English - includes news on the political and social aftermath of the violence, appeals for help for the victims and their families, and details on how to donate money. [emphasis added]

The high cost of stress

In a September 5 article, The New York Times reported on the high cost of stress:

Workplace stress costs the nation more than $300 billion each year in health care, missed work and the stress-reduction industry that has grown up to soothe workers and keep production high.

$300 billion? That's an awfully round number, isn't it? How accurate is it? Forbes, NPR, MSNBC and others quoted the number as though it were right. Did they check?

That estimate comes from the AIS: the American Institute of Stress.

According to Dr. Paul Rosch of the AIS, the statistics are based on a 1979 book titled “Stress and the Manager” by Karl Albrecht. Even though “Stress and the Manager” warns that “any attempt to estimate a dollar cost of chronic stress in a business organization or in American business in general, would of course involve gross guesswork and speculation,” Albrecht “brazenly” (his word) speculates: he guesses an absenteeism rate due to stress, guesses a turnover rate due to stress, guesses an “overstaffing” cost for reduced productivity due to stress, and estimates a cost per absentee day per worker. Then he concludes that the approximate cost to U.S. businesses totals $150 billion per year.

Perhaps AIS adjusted these “guesses” for inflation.

One additional source of errancy is that the number confuses correlation (things that happen at the same time) and causality (one causes the other). It assumes that because these various traits show up in the workplace, they are not just correlated with stress but actually caused by it. Technically, these workplace problems are stress-related, not stress-caused.

Unfortunately, even the estimate that stress-related costs amount to $300 billion is not justified, as the AIS did not bother to apply their percentages (such as 19 percent of absenteeism) to actual costs per worker ($645 per year in 2003, according to CCH, Inc.) times the number of workers in the United States, to obtain the cost of absenteeism related to stress. In fact, the costs associated with stress may be much higher (or much lower) than $300 billion.

Check out the whole evalution of this analysis here. It is a great example of how, when deadlines are approaching, major media outlets often present pure guesses as being good estimates of things that often are difficult to even define, let alone measure.

More on outsourcing

Six months ago or so there was a lot of attention given to the number of jobs that were going "off shore." Millions of jobs were being lost, mostly in the "knowledge" businesses (writing code, developing systems, even answering "help lines").

Where have they all gone? "Nowhere" is the assessment of this economist.

Now ... we can add some actual figures to the overheated debate. The Government Accountability Office has issued its first review of the data, and one undeniable conclusion to be drawn from it is that outsourcing is not quite the job-destroying tsunami it's been made out to be. Of the 1.5 million jobs lost last year in "mass layoffs'' - that is, when 50 or more workers are let go at once - less than 1 percent were attributed to overseas relocation; that was a decline from the previous year. In 2002, only about 4 percent of the money directly invested by American companies overseas went to the developing countries that are most likely to account for outsourced jobs - and most of that money was concentrated in manufacturing.

Read the whole thing. Here are footnotes to the article (links to the various information sources quoted in the article).

It's just business

Remember the Montreal Expo's. Because that's all they will be -- a memory. They are moving to Washington, DC. How are local fans taking the news? Here are the comments of one of them:

What will [I] do when they're gone?

I won't root for them, that much I know. Washington is a great city, and I think the Expos will find a warm home there. A waterfront site revolving around a long-planned redevelopment in the promising, but still hardscrabble, Navy Yard area has major potential. Given the rabid interest in landing a team that I saw during my two years living in The District, I strongly believe the 'Spos/Sens/Nats/Feds will be a success.

As Jerry Seinfeld liked to say, rooting for a sports team is like rooting for laundry. Sure, you grow attached to certain players. But trades, free agency--all of that means your favorites may not be around long.

And then, remembrance of some of the biggest events in the Expo's stay in Montreal, starting clear back in 1982, nearly a quarter-century ago:

Aug. 1, 1982: A game charged with pennant fever featured Steve Rogers and the Cardinals' Joaquin Andujar going head-to-head. Both pitchers were in the midst of Cy Young-caliber seasons, and 51,353 crazed fans turned up for this showdown; this was in the days when the far-off outfield seats stayed open, all the way to the upper deck flanking the scoreboard. A dramatic three-run seventh inning gave the Expos a thrilling 5-4 victory. Not yet eight years old at the time, in one of my first games ever at the Big O, I remember wondering if all games were this much fun.

Read the whole article.

Current interactive electoral map

Here is an interactive map (click map to enlarge -- go to site to use interactive features) showing the current best guesses on how the electoral vote will go in the upcoming presidential election.

Jamming in church

It's happening in Mexico. To help reduce the number of interruptions from cell phones ringing during the service, several churches have installed "spy ware:" devices that jam signals so that the phones won't ring at the wrong time:

In four Monterrey churches, cell phone blockers the size of a hand-held radio have been tucked among the paintings of the Madonna and clay statues of saints to bring peace back to Mass.

"There are still many people who don't understand that being at Mass is sharing a moment with God," said Juan Jose Martinez, a priest and spokesman for the Monterrey Archdiocese. "Sadly, we had no other choice but to use these little gadgets."

The churches began using the cell phone blockers, made by the Tel Aviv-based Netline Communications Technologies, after Rodrigo de la Mora, an insurance salesman, imported them as a personal favor for a priest.

And the congregation.

What the high-tech bubble got right

Quite a lot, actually. True, stocks like Yahoo were trading at $200 per share when normal calculations put their value at about $12. And when the bubble burst, Yahoo stock lost 95% of its value. But it still had quite a bit of value left.

even with all the fat trimmed off its market cap, Yahoo was still worth a lot. Even at the morning-after valuations of March and April 2001, the people at Yahoo had managed to create a company worth about $8 billion in just six years.

The fact is, despite all the nonsense we heard during the Bubble about the "new economy," there was a core of truth. You need that to get a really big bubble: you need to have something solid at the center, so that even smart people are sucked in. (Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the South Sea Bubble of 1720.)

What was the core of truth? Read this great article by someone working at Yahoo during the blow-up and the burst to see what aspects of business and value the bubble had good insights into. A starter: the internet (it actually is a big deal); choices (more than ever); youth (a source of energy, different points of view, a market-moving sector of the economy); and more.

Atomic wrist watches

The great book Longitude tells the story of the development of clocks that were accurate within very tight bounds under a wide range of sea-going conditions. In the late 1600's and early 1700's, clocks were so expensive that only the very rich could afford them -- even on land. That's why castle towers routinely showed a clock face: not only was it a gift of sorts to the surrounding inhabitants, it was a sure statement of the wealth of those in the castle.

Small clocks -- small enough to carry with you -- were even more expensive. They weren't available until the 1800's and well into the 1900's a small and accurate clock was still quite valuable. That was one reason why retirement gifts were often pocket watches (later, wrist watches) -- these were rare, expensive and something that a person was not likely to buy for himself or herself. A real gift.

The 21st century equivalent of "a good wrist watch" is on the horizon: an atomic clock small enough to fit inside a watch, a cell phone, a GPS hand-held unit. The technology is almost here:

Atomic clocks, which rely on the oscillations of atoms, not quartz crystals, are far more precise. But the smallest models currently on the market are about the size of a pack of cigarettes, bigger than most devices in which they might find a home. Now several researchers are developing tiny atomic clocks that could be made using standard semiconductor processes and slipped into cellphones, hand-held computers and Global Positioning System receivers.

"If you have a small, low-power clock available, all kinds of technologies or innovations will flow from it," said R. Michael Garvey, the chief technology officer at Symmetricom, a maker of atomic clocks. Mr. Garvey's company is among the research groups looking at miniature atomic clocks under a program funded by the military.

this article details their development.

Music and technology

Beginning with a casette tape recorder when he was nin, Yo-Yo Ma (shown at right with recording specialists -- click to enlarge) has creatively used technology to improve his performances. He noticed that the tempo of his pieces sounds different depending on where the audience is located -- he learned this by putting microphones in different places in the venues where he played.

Recently he has started integrating live performance with digital images, voices and instrumentals.

Mr. Umezaki [a music and voice instructor at McGill University and a recent collaborator with Mr. Ma and his Silk Road music group] came across an 18th-century Chinese scroll that depicted an Imperial voyage to China's south. Because the scroll is about 30 feet long, it can never all be displayed at once.

Inspired, the [Silk Road] group not only wrote a 30-minute musical piece but also digitized important sections of the scroll. At a performance at Carnegie Hall this month, those images were displayed in motion and in harmony with the music. The spell was broken only when the big letters "DVD'' inadvertently appeared on the screen at the end, prompting knowing laughter from the audience.

Read the whole piece.