Silver lining from tsunami for one town?

This Yahoo article talks about a bunch of ruins that were exposed according to fisherman in Mahabalipuram when the water receeded before the tsunami hit.

Of course the locals are calling it the Indian Atlantis, but others aren't so sure. Either way, there are tourists coming now, and ultimately that might be the best thing that area needs right now.

If they can dye the river green one day a year...

(click on the image above for a bigger version)

Took most of the week to get to - but here is the picture out of my apartment window for my first St. Paddy's Day celebration in Chicago. This is actually from the day after (in the morning), since by the time I left for the bar crawl the green hadn't gotten this far down the river yet. In actuality, the color right after the dye it is almost radioactive green.

So you can see a bunch of the buildings and my view (which I have never gotten around to showing folks). The big constuction zone right below is the new Trump building that is going up (Bill Ransic, anyone?). So by next year I am sure there will be a 92 story building blocking part of that view.

Explain to me why this would work?

This blog makes a lazyweb request to create a fake "ad clicker and visitor" that would somehow make advertisers revolt and stop using the Pop-Up, thereby quickening its demise?

Umm... what? I am all about getting rid of pop-ups/pop-unders, but there are a few problems with this plan.

First of all, most of the pop-ups and pop-unders are purhased on a CPM basis. So a click on the ad doesn't cost anything nor would most advertisers really care - and assumably they don't track it.

Second, even for all the extra traffic headed to the advertiser, it is certainly bandwidth (which has costs), but I find it hard to believe that any extension in Firefox, even if installed by default in Firefox, would make that big a dent. Firefox is at most 5% of the market (if that). Of course, having the application hit the website 1,000, or 1 million times might be a different story, but I doubt that the script could do that without getting noticed.

The reason pop-ups/pop-unders exist still in the world are for the following reasons:

1. It is a cheap way to purchase advertising and a standard format.
2. It is a LOT of money for publishers. It is not an easy revenue line item to wean yourself off of once you have been using it on your site. A site like Google that never had them doesn't have this issue.
3. They deliver traffic - maybe not the most qualified or convertable, but they deliver enough (even if the 90% crud stat is right).

If you could figure out a way for publishers to replace the revenue they receive from pop-unders/pop-ups, most if not all would jump at the opportunity to get rid of them. They dislike them as much as the next guy but they like making their revenue for the quarter more.

How about a lazyweb request for some suggestions on ways a generic publisher could replace the money they get from pop-ups with another incremental revenue source? That would be interesting to hear about from the blogosphere.

Recipe for Funding Success

Even though it starts off with the requisite "I hate PowerPoint" diatribe, this post actually has a pretty in-depth outline for what to present to a VC (and in my mind, a bank, angels, and other funding sources). In some ways it is just an outline for a business plan, but at least it presents the information in a question format, which I think is nice for the end-user. Just so I don't give all the thunder away, here are the topics - click over to see the juicy details (and BTW, the blog is a pretty good read to boot):

1) WHAT IS YOUR VISION?
2) WHAT IS YOUR MARKET OPPORTUNITY AND HOW BIG IS IT?
3) DESCRIBE YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE
4) WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER?
5) WHAT IS YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION?
6) HOW ARE YOU SELLING?
7) HOW DO YOU ACQUIRE CUSTOMERS?
8) WHO IS YOUR MANAGEMENT TEAM?
9) WHAT IS YOUR REVENUE MODEL?
10) WHAT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT ARE YOU AT?
11) WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR FUND RAISING?
12) WHO IS YOUR COMPETITION?
13) WHAT PARTNERSHIPS DO YOU HAVE?
14) HOW DO YOU FIT WITH THE PROSPECTIVE INVESTOR?
15) OTHER

Saw this off of Boing Boing

Will I defect?

Seems strange to talk about this on a newly created Blogger site, but all the talk about Yahoo 360 is making me wonder if that might be the better place to blog? Assuming that anyone with a Yahoo ID can post/join, etc. setting up a community blog with my MBA-mates would make a whole lot more sense there - since we already have a Yahoo Group going.

The recommendations and social-network type of features are especially intriguing and something I thought that the other social networks should have stressed more in their ramp up to get the requisite network effect. Like Charlene mentions in her post, if all your friends and family are already there - and importantly signed up - then blogging is an easy extension. Trying to convince my parents or girlfriend or school-mates to sign up at a completely different site, since Blogger doesn't equal Google for most folks, is a hard sell.

I am eagerly waiting to see if Yahoo 360 lives up to my expectations...

UPDATE: There are screenshots out now.

The problem with mergers

Saw an interesting report from the McKinsey Quarterly (in their "Chart Focus" series), that talks about the problem with mergers and expectations of success. The report discusses the misguided expectations that companies have entering into large mergers. The oft-stated "synergies" in revenue and costs more often than not fail to materialize.

Given the recent trend in the market towards consolidation and larger mergers, this is interesting information for any company - and perhaps more interesting to the investor that is looking for the real return on equity in a large merger, and whether the benefits justify the costs. HP/Compaq, anyone?

Criminals are dumb

From the Wall Street Journal:

Getting away with crime is difficult enough, but it's especially hard when the criminal advertises his or her crimes to the world in advance. Cases in point: police in Quincy, Mass., discovered a man sleeping in a stolen car in the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy, wearing a stocking on his head and holding a cap gun and a note saying: "I have a Gun DO NOT Press any Alarms or let Custermors [sic] know Empty the All the register." And police in Moorhead, Minn., arrested a man for drunken driving last week who had a personalized license plate that read "TIPSY." "It doesn't mean I drink and drive," the defendant explained to the Associated Press. "It just means I have a good time."

All I have to say is, well... WOW. I feel a lot better about my (blog) writing skills after reading that stickup note. You gotta admit, the dumb criminals have a way of getting themselves caught. It truly is a nice self-correcting cycle.

Welcome!

Welcome to the world of Chatterbox - my little spot on the web to post interesting info, hopefully some new insights, and cool info.

Since I work in the online world and know a wee bit about the Sponsored Link arena, I might post some interesting thoughts on that topic from time to time.

Enjoy, and look forward to hearing from folks.