Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Hell has no fury like a restaurant scorned

Two years ago it would have been unheard of. Today, in the equalizing world of Web 2.0 and blogs, those that are scorned by mainstream media scorn back.

Such is the case of The New York Times food critic Frank Bruni vs restaurateur turned blogger Jeffrey Chodorow.

The short version: Bruni writes a scathing review of Chodorow's new restaurant. Chodorow takes out a full page ad in the New York Times questioning Bruni's qualifications and to announce he is starting a blog where he will among other things shadow the reviews of the NYT food critics.

Is that delicious or what?

First,  Bruni 's no star review of Chodorow's latest restaurant venture.

Hanging upside down from the ceiling in the nearly pitch-black dining room are sharp, gleaming samurai swords, about 2,000 of them. The server volunteered that number, appended with an assurance that the blades, firmly anchored, shouldn’t cause any concern. The food and the bill should. Although Kobe Club does right by the fabled flesh for which it’s named, it presents too many insipid or insulting dishes at prices that draw blood from anyone without a trust fund or an expense account.

Then came Chodorow's full page ad.

"Mr. Bruni comes to us from Rome where he was not the local “expert” on Italian cuisine; he wrote about politics. In fact, there hasn’t been a real food critic with food background (except perhaps Amanda Hesser) at the New York Times since Ruth Reichl (now editor-in-chief at Gourmet magazine). Perhaps that’s also why your reviews are so all over the lot, with great restaurants getting bad reviews, fair restaurants getting great ones, one star reviews that read like two star and three star reviews that read like one star. Your readers would not expect your drama critic to have no background in drama or your architecture critic to not be an architect. For a publication that prides itself on integrity, I feel your readers should be better informed as to this VERY IMPORTANT fact, so that they can give your reviews the weight, or lack thereof, they deserve."

Near the end of the ad, Mr. Chodorow shared his true intention. From now on, he is going to shadow the food critics at the NY Times and create his own reviews in his newly launched blog.

"In the interest of fairness, I am also introducing my personal blog, which will be a compilation of my food-related experiences and musings and a special section entitled Following Frank and After Adam, in which I will make a follow-up visit to restaurants they write about for the purpose of reviewing their reviews. My blog will appear at www.chinagrillmgt.com/blog. "

So far over 60 people have shared comments on Chodorow's blog. Their comments are mixed from calling him a cry baby to applauding him.

Nothin' like  a food fight to get you smilin' in the morning.

  to Chip Griffin who wrote a great post on the restaurant wars.

Image credit: New York Times, Robert Presutti

Just Flock It

   Under the category of Browser Wars, a fellow Blogher who also happens to work at Flock, recently responded to someone's question on an easy way to add photos to their blogs.

I was interested because I have spent considerable time trying to learn the art of including photos on blogs.

Adding photos can be daunting. There's the sizing issue and the copy wrapping issue that sometimes can take longer to resolve than the post itself.

She recommended --sharing that she did work for Flock-- that they should start using Flock as their browser. Given that I am not a techie and that I just converted to FireFox from IE in 2006, I had never heard about Flock.  And, if you are, like I was, of the mindset that a browser, is a browser , is a browser...then I encourage you to take a look at flock.

From Extreme Tech

The Internet is supposed to be interactive, right? It's not just about being a passive watcher of Web sites, but about sharing your input, as well. The Flock browser is an attempt to bring some of the Web 2.0-style concepts right to the application that gives you a view of the interweb. Built on top of FireFox, Flock incorporates "mashups"—the hip buzzword for web service integration—with social bookmarks (with del.icio.us and Shadows), photo sharing (with Flickr and Photobucket), and blogging—with tools built into the browser for posting to your blog. In fact, it's this integration on which Flock's creators intend to build their business model, cutting deals with other web services.

Based on Firefox it does have some dandy features like allowing you to drag and drop photos from your desktop to their photobucket uploader and then a strip of your photos (that black band at the top of the screen shot) is displayed in the browser so you can just drop and drag the photos from your photbucket  onto your post. Very Cool. It magically does all the html coding thing for you. I'm sure it does a ton more that's all I've tried so far.

From Personal Computing World

Setup is easy and Flock will take all of the settings from Firefox, including page history and cookies. This makes the transition the most painless of all browser upgrades, although this will not help those moving from Internet Explorer or Opera. The interface is similar to most browsers, although the most recent browsing history is revealed by right-clicking on the Back button rather than there being a discrete menu. It does feel a little hidden, but is convenient once discovered. On a more favourable note, it is possible to add icons for the blogging, photo and news tools. A search box in the toolbar is nothing new, but the extra twist from Flock is that it searches dynamically as text is entered. The results vary depending on the words but it is a much faster way of searching. Flock is an ideal tool for anyone who wants to record their web experiences on a blog. Simply select an area of text or even an image, and then select the Blog This option. An editor appears with both a Wysiwyg editor and a source editor. It is compatible with Blogger, Typepad and other popular blogging tools. You can see some demo posts at http://ano pensource.wordpress.com.

The USB Mini Drive--Weapon Of Mass Destruction

IIn 2005 it was a top 10 business give away. In 2006, it"s on the 'most wanted' list for potential corporate criminals. That's right. the oh so convenient, oh so small, oh so coveted USB Mini Drive could soon be banned in a corporation near you because it has the power to be a weapon of mass destruction.

Steve Stasiukonis ,VP and founder of  Secure Network Technologies Inc. wrote a piece in Dark Reading all about the vulnerabilities corporations because of the beloved USB Mini. Here's a clue--buy stock in SuperGlu

As part of his business Stasiukonis is hired by companies to test the security of their networks. The client in this case asked them to really push the social engineering button. Stasiukonis writes,

Typically we would hang out with the smokers, sweet-talk a receptionist, or commandeer a meeting room and jack into the network. This time I knew we had to do something different. We heard that employees were talking within the credit union and were telling each other that somebody was going to test the security of the network, including the people element.

So here is what Stasiukonis did:  He took about 20 USB and had one of his folks write a trojan that,"

" when run, would collect passwords, logins and machine-specific information from the user’s computer, and then email the findings back to us."

Early one morning he "seeded" a bunch of USB drives in strategic locations:
the parking lot, smoking area and other place employees frequented. Then he got a cup of coffee and watched.

Surveillance of the facility was worth the time involved. It was really amusing to watch the reaction of the employees who found a USB drive. You know they plugged them into their computers the minute they got to their desks.

I immediately called my guy that wrote the Trojan and asked if anything was received at his end. Slowly but surely info was being mailed back to him. I would have loved to be on the inside of the building watching as people started plugging the USB drives in, scouring through the planted image files, then unknowingly running our piece of software.

After about three days, we figured we had collected enough data. When I started to review our findings, I was amazed at the results. Of the 20 USB drives we planted, 15 were found by employees, and all had been plugged into company computers. The data we obtained helped us to compromise additional systems, and the best part of the whole scheme was its convenience. We never broke a sweat. Everything that needed to happen did, and in a way it was completely transparent to the users, the network, and credit union management.

As interesting as this possible threat to corporate systems is the ethical discussion that follows the article. Not all readers are amused at the company's tactics to test the security of their system.

As one writer suggested, the easy fix is to simply Superglue all USB ports on corporate computers.
Net Net-- don't be surprised if someone from tech support stops by your desk later today with a bucket of Superglue--why deal with the real problem, when Superglue will do.

Hat Tip to the Daily Irrelevant.

Image Credit: Flickr member, Kansir

 

Get With It already. You sound like an old fogy

   

     It's one thing to say you don't listen to hip hop music. Or that you are bewildered with the fascination of tattoos and body piercings.

It's an entirely different issue when you don't see the 2000 pound gorilla in the middle of the room. The gorilla is the impact of social networking media on corporate America. It seems that executives just don't get it.

Recently Industry Week ran an article called "Unconvinced: Corporate Blogging."

Just 5% of executives said they were convinced "to a great extent" that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a communications medium, while the percentage dropped to 3% of executives who were convinced "to a great extent" that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a brand-building technique. As a sales or lead-generation tool, the percentage dropped to less than one. The survey on corporate blogging was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of New York-based public relations firm Makovsky + Co.

While the executives certainly have a right to their opinion. History is not on their side. Corporate culture is changing and online social networking is the technological equivalent to a corporate cultural tsunami. that is going to force organizations to reexamine how they interact with employees, customers and shareholders.

Matthew over at  Blogging4Business has a warning for these executives.

But perhaps the most interesting stat is the one that shows just how out of touch many top execs may be when it comes to new forms of business communication.

Less than one-third (30%) reported having a thorough understanding of the term “Internet blog.” (A blog or weblog combines text, links and images to form a personal journal full of news and opinion.)

If two thirds of the recipients don’t even understand what a blog is, then a, they can’t really understand what its potential impact might be, and b, blog evangelists obviously doing a particularly good job illustrating to companies why an open form of online conversation can help their business.

Turns out Ostriches don't really bury their heads in the sand....

If threatened while sitting on the nest, which is simply a cavity scooped in the earth, the hen presses her long neck flat along the ground, blending with the background. Ostriches, contrary to popular belief, do not bury their heads in the sand.

Looks like that leaves corporate executives as the ones who are burying their heads in the sand hoping beyond hope that these new fangled ways of sharing information will just go away.

Image credit:  Flickr member bingbing

Companyclick -where Myspace meets the watercooler

One of the newer social networking spots on the web is Companyclick-- It's a place for employees of The Fortune 500 to meet other people in their own corporation. Dimitry Rappoport says he got the idea when he worked in the financial sector. He says he always wanted to meet other people at work but just didn't know how. At best he says his networking circle always hovered around 10-15 people

In its first month, Companyclick signed up around 500 members. Rappaport says when they reach 50,000 they hope to attract advertising.

  You can listen to the entire podcast.

Will Swarm of Angels fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee?

If there is one thing about web 2.0 that you can say with certainty -- it will have an impact on just about every possible industry sector and profession. The question is. what industry is next and just how hard a hit will it feel?

If the folks at A Swarm of Angels have anything to say about it, Hollywood will be feel the punch of web 2.0 as it" flys like a butterfly and stings like a bee."

A Swarm of Angels bills itself as "remixing Hollywood"

A Swarm of Angels reinvents the Hollywood model of filmmaking to create cult cinema for the Internet era. It's all about making an artistic statement, making something you haven't seen before. Why are we doing this? Because we are tired of films that are made simply to please film executives, sell popcorn, or tie-in with fastfood licensing deals.

We want to invent the future of film. Call it Cinema 2.0.
To do it we need your help.

The concept is that 50,000 people will contribute 25 (its in British pounds and I have no idea where to find that symbol in Typepad) and in exchange people can download it, share it, use it as they want.

The idea is from writer and  filmaker Mark Hanson who has

'directed a number of digital short films, produced over 40 short films, and two TV series. He also founded the massively influential onedotzero digital film festival which he directed between 1996 and 2002 (co-directing the 1998 festival onwards). He has written a series of books about the future of film–including The    End of Celluloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age–and now he wants to invent that future by enlisting your help in making his first feature film in a completely unique way. Screen International have already labelled him an ‘International film visionary.’

 

 

Hat Tip to Emily Chang

Image Credit: Flickr member Ryan Gessner

Podcast Interview with Zillow's Director of Communications- Amy Bohutinsky

Just as discount brokerage houses have taken a bite out of stock broker's incomes, there are those that predict the launch of  Zillow- a web-based business that allows home buyers and sellers to get a "zestimate" of a home's value, could  eventually  reduce the fees realtors now enjoy.

Amy Bohutinsky left a job in San Francisco to become the Director of Communications for othe Seattle start-up. It is her job to present the company's brand message, and field questions about the company's "real purpose."

There is a great deal of interest in Zillow.  It' launched as a BETA site back in February. Bohutinsky says it could be months before the site is ready to officially launch. Part of the reason is that Zillow currently has data on 65 million single family homes in the U.S. The goal is to have that data on all homes--a whopping 85 million.

As Bohutinsky says it is incredibly time-consuming and difficult to get the data because there isn't a national database. Rather, Zillow has to extract data from county to county --all through the country.

There are some that predict that the company is a threat to the livelihood of real estate agents.  While Zillow now allows consumers to get their housing "zestimates", Bohutinsky says there are many more tools they plan to make accessible to consumers. And, it is this access of information, that realtors once held as  their own, that has experts wondering " What will this mean for realtors?"

That is a question, Bohutinsky is not prepared to answer.For the time-being, Bohutinsky  isn't talking about the future implications to realtors. Instead, she says Zillow is a "media company" - providing information to consumers and getting revenues from advertisers. While there are some that predict Zillow will eventually become a discount real estate brokerage firm ( much like discount online stock services), Bohutinksy says,Zillow is in the business of providing consumers with research tools.

She says, " we will continue adding tools and information to help people through the process. We have no plans to buy and sell homes on the site."

Click on the audioacrobat icon to listen to Bohutinsky's entire interview.

 

Are Real Estate Agents Going Six Feet Under

This is cross-posted at Blogher.

If you go to the new Zillow.com website you can get a bird's eye view of some houses that are for sale. To demonstrate this feature, Zillow includes some "famous" homes, among them, the house used for the HBO television series," Six Feet Under."

A bit Freudian? Some may say yes. While Zillow maintains it is not going to become a real estate brokerage, there are others who say this service, which lets you estimate teh value of your home and homes you may be interested in buying, is the first nail in the coffin for real estate agents.

Seattle-based blogger Marlow Harris whose blog,  360 Digest, looks at real estate and popular culture sees Zillow as a technological grim reaper.

Zillow is a new start-up, based in Seattle, which recently raised $32 million in venture capital. It’s headed by Richard Barton, founder of Expedia.

Expedia didn’t kill the travel agency per se, but it was definitely one of the nails in the coffin. Since 1995, many travel agents have exited the industry. Of the ones still in business, some have abandoned the “brick and mortar” agency for a home-based business to reduce overhead, and those who remain have managed to survive by promoting other travel products like cruise lines and train excursions, or by promoting their ability to aggressively research and assemble complex travel packages on a moment’s notice (essentially acting as a very advanced concierge).

Many people are expecting Zillow to shake up the real estate business in a similar fashion. "

Harris says that if Zillow is successful, the people who will be hurt the most are women.

"It’s interesting that the majority of real estate agents are female, as they seem to excell at this “people-person” type of job. The “skimmers’ at Zillow and Redfin are all males, at least the ones listed on their mastheads. A lot of real estate agents are women who have entered the workforce after their children are grown. They are people-people, not strategists, not computer programers, not business school grads. They are attracted to the business for a variety of reasons but if you ask them, a lot will say they like to “help people”.....The subtext of what these “real estate repackagers” are saying is that the average real estate agent (most likely a woman who has entered the business after her children are grown) makes more money than she deserves, and they want a cut of the pie. And they know how to get it, by building superior websites to lure the new, young buyers who are entering the real estate market and who are used to researching and ordering everything online. "

Harris lists several links that include articles about Zillow.One  of the more telling is an interview in Businessweek online  with Zillow founder Richard Barton( who also founded Expedia)

"Barton says the best brokers will be able to build on what Zillow offers. The bad ones could get squeezed out. He cited a California Association of Realtors study that found that buyers who searched on the Internet spent an average of 1.94 weeks with an agent before buying, while traditional buyers spent an average of seven weeks.

Said Barton: "It's very easy to think, 'Great, he's done all the work and I can earn a big, fat commission on 1.94 weeks of work.' You have to rethink that."

 

What Goes Around, Comes Around

Just as clothes dryers eradicated clothes lines in most backyards ,and CDs overtook the production of Albums, email has put a crimp in old-fashioned letter writing.

Recently, my daughter spent eight weeks in Israel. I didn't send one letter. We talked two or three times a day --thanks to Skype and great international calling rates. I sent emails. But I didn't send a bone fide letter.

She commented on it when she returned. She had expected at least one letter.

Now, there's a Web 2.0 application called  Shiny Letter that lets you create your letters on your desktop and then they'll mail it for you.

That's right. There's now a company that is in business that will take the letter you create on your desktop  and they'll do all the stuff you may have forgotten how to do... Print it, fold it, put it in the envelope, lick the envelope shut, adhere the stamp and either leave it for your postal officer or actually take it to a mailbox or post office. And they'll do it for a mere $2.00 for a four-page letter.

   

"ShinyLetter is a very simple service, we have taken a low tech task & put it online, hopefully making your life easier & Grandmothers around the World happier :) Our service allows you to write a postal letter to anyone in the World, we then print out your letter, slip it in an envelope, address it, stamp it & mail it using the postal system. We mail from several locations around the World."

Why would you use it? Well according to Shiny Letter:

          
                                 

"CONVENIENTOur system has been designed to be very easy to use, we are open 24-7, write a letter whenever & where-ever you want, then let us get to work.                 AFFORDABLE   Just $2.00 for up to a 4 page letter.                  COOL FACTOR Lets face it, it's a cool way to send a letter!                 More features are underway & coming soon."

Now, there is one aspect of this service that is potentially  cool. Shiny Letter  has mail drops all over the world. So, it claims that instead of your letter taking weeks to arrive at an international destination, it will just take a couple of days.Of course, I didn't see any real tests of this theory

So Let's Create The Shiny Letter Challenge

I need someone from Europe, Someone from Asia, Someone from Australia, and someone from South America to participate. Here's what you have to do. Email me your address. I will send you  three  letters. One from Shiny Letter and two from USPS...one via airmail, and one just regular mail. All you have to do is send me an email when you receive each letter.

To participate, just send me an email with your mailing address.

Tags: Web 2.0, communication, business

Hat Tip

To Blogher Emily Chang for including Shiny Letter on her blog eHub.

Image Credit: Flickr image by MoonRhythm

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Time,Time, Time Is On My Side (yes, it is)

If I had been thinking, I would have known that there was no way that I would remember the phone meeting I scheduled for 6:30 on Tuesday evening.

Tuesday was a very busy day. At 6:30 I was not only exhausted, I was facing another three hours of work. So I decided to take a "break' with my daughter and watch two episodes of LOST( thank you Netflix) which we are now addicted to(how did we avoid watching this show for two years?)

The appointment was in my Blackberry and my Blackberry was within hand reach, but in order to see the appointment, I would have had to deliberately open the Blackberry and check to see if I had scheduled something.

I didn't do that. When I heard the phone ringing in my upstairs office at 6:30, I ignored it. I knew that anyone who wanted to get in touch with me would try my mobile. I was on a break and had no intention of dashing upstairs to answer a call.

Now, if I had been using one of the many online calendars that are now available, I could have received an RSS reminder via my mobile phone and/or Blackberry and I wouldn't have had to spend Wednesday groveling about missing the appointment Blogher Charlene Li who blogs about technology developments in media and marketing </a> has been thinking about calendars too. She has lots of calendars to deal with and since 1998 has been using Yahoo!'s online calendar---but she may be making a change.

"Like many working parents, I juggle multiple calendars – my work calendar, two kids, spouse, school, church, visiting relatives, and supposed, an exercise calendar. So keeping track of all of the bits and pieces of my life is the bane of my evenings – I spend WAY too much time managing all of the multiple calendars. Just last week, I spent three evenings scheduling playdates for my two lovely kids – not my idea of fun.


So in an effort to get organized, I’ve been trying a slew of the new AJAX calendar products that promise to be an improvement over my existing online calendar (I currently use Yahoo! Calendar, which has kept my private life buzzing along happily since 1998). Having trialed a half dozen of them (including Airset, CalendarHub, 30Boxes, Planzo, and SpongeCell), Google Calendar is truly a best of breed in terms of ease of use and functionality."

Charlene sees major business potential for the new Google Calendar saying the API will create a new ecosystem of applications around schedules.

"Here’s an example: a hair salon could use Google Calendar to handle online appointment scheduling. Each stylist would have their own calendar, and a script would match the requested services with various schedules (a service currently offered by companies like spasalon.com). The analogy to Maps is particularly poignant if you think that Maps helped us control “space”; now Calendar is helping us control “time”.

However, Google does have some competition and one of the upstarts is a calendar called Kiko that Cheery Visage blogs, "I have the hots for Bubbleshare and Kiko"

"I simply must gosh over its slick, sexy user interface. The interface is very interactive; you can click on any day and start typing, drag an event around the calendar, change an event's time by resizing it. After trying out Google's calendar as well, I can honestly say that Kiko beats Google in the user interface area, hands down (Kiko is much better developed). ... The overall color themes are very tasteful and pleasant on the eyes. It sure knows how to win a girl's heart by doing a smashing job on coordinating colors (nothing turns me off more than clashing colors, ouch).

It's got a public calendar view (if you enable it), attendee invitation and status, and appointment reminders can be sent by e-mail, instant message or text message through mobile phone (which also includes some international service providers, not just United States)."

Not only does Cheery Visage have the "Hots" for Kiko but she's also enamored with Bubbleshare- a photo sharing site that offers some "fun" features like captions, bubble captions. Bubbleshare will also create online puzzles and jigsaws out of your photos.

So in the unlikely event that you have some time to kill today, try the  Online Jigsaw  of a Mayan Calendar

Image Credit: Mayan Calendar from Calendars Through The Ages, a Web Exhibit

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