The blogosphere is no longer the cool and edgy place to publish, where maverick innovators shatter the world with their out of the box thinking.  The establishment has joined the party, with the director of the Congressional Budget Office - the Bureaucrats Bureaucracy - starting his official blog.

Via MR.

Categories: Business and Economics, Social Software, Technology
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A new video short from Kansas State anthropologist Michael Wesch on the changing characteristics of information in a digital world:

The same Michael Wesch created this video about Web 2.0 which made the rounds a few months back.

Categories: Information Economics, Social Software, Technology
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My American Express card has chronic trouble with its magnetic stripe, especially at Walgreens stores. The other day, while making a purchase at a busy Walgreens, my card was having the same trouble. I expected the cashier to ask if I had a different card, or cash, or to manually enter the number on the card. Instead, she took a plastic bag, wrapped it around the card, and slid it through the machine. The card ran right through. I told the clerk it was a pretty cool trick, and she replied that a customer taught it to them.

The plastic bag around the credit card is a great trick, but Walgreens didn’t think of it. It’s not in their employee handbook, and it likely won’t come up at a staff meeting. Nobody at the Walgreens I went to is going to tell it to people at other stores, and Walgreens corporate isn’t going to submit a flier about it. It’s likely that nobody at a manager meeting is going to bring it up, and nobody will tell it to a district manager to spread to other stores. It’s just a trick that the clerks in this store know. Except that the clerks didn’t think of it themselves - they found it from a customer. And customers are the people who will spread it, because despite all the hype around knowledge-management and information sharing, in industries with separated business units with high customer touch points (i.e. retail, hospitality), your customers are still your best communication tool.

Whenever my American Express card won’t scan again, I’m not going to reach for another card. I’m going to ask for a plastic bag, and I’m going to teach a new store the same trick. Customers share information for you all the time. Store managers get suggestions about what another store is doing well, or something they’ve tried somewhere. Customers create a network outside your organization that you have no control over, that you never see, and that you interact with at random times. But by proactively communicating with your customers, you don’t just engage them, you create a human network that continuously improves your business.

Categories: Business and Economics, Customer Engagement, Social Software, Users as Partners
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If the information economy is driven by the young, and it’s millenials who are saturated with the share-your-life-with-everyone world of the internet, why are most of the blogs I read written by old people, either Boomers or late Gen-Xers? Some hypotheses:

1. Young people aren’t very good writers yet, so nobody wants to read them. Older bloggers have had decades to refine their writing, and practice makes it better. It doesn’t matter how good your ideas are if you can’t communicate them well.
2. Older people have more to say. They’ve spent decades accumulating experience, usually in a specific area (economics, human resources, technology), and that makes their opinions more valuable. It also gives them a greater bank of stories to share from, tempers their ideas with a knowledge of what works and what doesn’t in the real world, and most importantly, lends them credibility on an internet that’s something pretty scarce.
3. Good blogs have focus, and young people don’t. Millennials are still trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives through some magical personal quest that nobody cares about. It makes their blogs tough to follow. Boomer blogs have a single cohesive idea that attracts those who are interested and keeps them tuning in.

After the recent lapse in posting, prepare for some changes in this blog. Cohesive idea: making better decisions.

Categories: Generations, Social Software, Technology
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Gruntled Employees has a two word corporate blogging policy:

“Be professional.”

If your employee-bloggers are posting the secret-sauce recipe, bad-mouthing customers, or distributing NSFW (not safe for work) art, fire them. And if you’re concerned that your employees won’t understand what you mean by “be professional,” then you have a management problem or an employee problem. Or both

Categories: Business and Economics, Governance, Managing, Social Software
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On Geekdad:

My sense is that blogs work best when they’ve got a tight focus and a distinct niche.

“Things David Dworin is interested in” might be too narrow. By any other measure, this blog is way too broad. Welcome to my brain.

Categories: Ephemera, Social Software
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In an interview, Tim O’Reilly points out the big deal of Web 2.0 - it’s about the information:

That goes back to a major theme of web 2.0 that people haven’t yet tweaked to. It’s really about data and who owns and controls, or gives the best access to, a class of data. Amazon is now the definitive source for data about whole sets of products — fungible consumer products. EBay is the authoritative source for the secondary market of those products. Google is the authority for information about facts, but they’re relatively undifferentiated.

Information is the oil/gold/guns of the twentieth century.

Categories: Business and Economics, Distribution, Information Economics, Information Markets, Social Software, Technology
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Slate has announced a guide to political futures markets for the 2008 US Presidential Election. Political futures generally predict outcomes better than polls for a number of reason. Slate is going to track the big prediction markets along the big races and report along.

For a snapshot, the Iowa Electronic Market, the Big Daddy of prediction markets, shows Clinton and Obama neck and neck for the Dems, and the Field Candidate (anyone but McCain, Romney, and Guiliani) taking the republicans. Guiliani leads among those candidates with their own futures. The dems are also predicted to win by a slim margin.

Also, I haven’t investigated the differences between contracts in the markets, but the wide price differences between the Iowa Electronic Market and Intrade seem like an arbitrage opportunity for those who can trade in both.

Categories: America, Information Markets, Politics, Polling, Social Software, Technology
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Another bit of down to earth wisdom for the masses from Tycho at Penny Arcade:

People seem to think that by posting in threads and agreeing with other people they are changing the world. They are not. They are posting in threads online. The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. Being outraged online is a form of entertainment, and refreshing a thread to receive a hit of consensus packs the thrill of genuine activism without requiring any sweat. I’m afraid this test may require more from the community than a sardonic jpeg.

One day, hopefully before I go back, I’ll get to a write up about my impressions from their PAX convention. The short version: there are real people behind lots of the stuff you see written online, and most of them are exactly like you’d expect, and don’t behave that differently offline.

Categories: Information Economics, Politics, Social Software, Technology
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Or will at least be on a TV.

Tycho of Penny Arcade writes:

Forming your own bands which create original music and then upload these tracks - complete with vocals - to a community rated central repository verges on the supernatural. That’s the new MTV. It’s what MTV looks like when we seize the reins in glorious revolution.

He’s talking about Rock Band, the upcoming game from the makers of Guitar Hero.

Established companies are finally starting to ‘get it’ and empower their users or risk becoming irrelevant.

Categories: Business and Economics, Community, Information Economics, Social Software, Technology
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I underestimated how much having a “real job” would cut into my blogging time, and thus, posts have been slow. More than that, though, I underestimated how addicted I would get to Yahoo Answers. It’s more than just the desire to earn more points. It lets me fulfill my secret desire to be an advice columnist, and I think my 10% best answer ratio indicates I’d be pretty good at it. Most of my best answers are in the realm of dating/relationship issues and financial advice, but my friends could have told you that.

What’s my incentive to contribute? Is it the otherwise meaningless points? The thrill of answering questions? The social reward of participating and helping people? Or is it just a way for me to channel my inner Dear Abby? Lets just say that if you like my answers, and you want to give me a column at a major newspaper or alternative weekly, you know how to find me.

Categories: Dating, Incentive Centered Design, Information Markets, Social Software, Technology
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Prizes stimulate innovation better than grants:

BACK in the 1700s, prizes were a fairly common way to reward innovation. Most famously, the British Parliament offered the £20,000 longitude prize to anyone who figured out how to pinpoint location on the open sea. Dava Sobel’s best-selling 1995 book “Longitude” told the story of the competition that ensued, and Mr. Hastings mentioned the longitude prize as a model at that meeting back in March.

Eventually, though, prizes began to be replaced by grants that awarded money upfront. Some of this was for good reason. As science became more advanced, scientists often needed to buy expensive equipment and hire a staff before having any chance of making a discovery.

The internet is changing the economics of innovation and discovery.  Science is no longer expensive like it once was, it is within the realm of dedicated and educated hobbyists.  Robin Hanson, who the article discusses, is everywhere you find interesting information economics problems.

Categories: Business and Economics, Incentive Centered Design, Information Asymmetries, Information Economics, Information Markets, Matching Mechanisms, Science, Social Software, Strategy, Technology, Users as Partners
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I picked up a Wired magazine for the plane and it was one of their best issues in months.  A few of the Must Read pieces, in order:

• What We Don’t Know: Want to know all the cool things that scientists are still trying to figure out?  Wired collected dozens of questions, along with descriptions, that show where science is looking but not finding the answers they want.  Alongside are John Hodgmans hysterical expert opinions.  If you think learning stuff about the universe is cool, start reading this article now.
• How Yahoo Blew It: Yahoo had all the advantages when Google started to emerge: a full product suite, enormous user base, and existing relationships with advertisers.  So how did they screw it up?  This article points the finger indirectly at CEO Terry Semel, who came in to make it a content creator when it needed to serve ads better.  As an aside, I’ve noticed lately that a lot of the Yahoo! products that I left for Google are now better than their rivals.  I also owe Yahoo for helping me find my Wii.
• The Invisible Enemy: Soldiers from Iraq started getting sick with drug-resistant bacteria that started to spread through the evacuation chain.  Was it coming from desert soil? Unsanitary field hospitals? Coating the IEDs?  This article explores the making of an epidemic in the hospital system, and how the military is starting to combat it.

Two other articles, on MTV creating virtual worlds and the growing acceptance of manufactured diamonds, deserve nods, but not the lengthy descriptions.  I normally don’t highlight a whole magazine, but Wired this month deserves a trip to the newsstand.

Categories: Distribution, Science, Social Software
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FuturTech Panels are today.  Everybody come!

Categories: Business and Economics, Futurtech, Graduate School, Information Economics, Science, Social Software, Technology, Winter of Dave
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Blogging has dropped off due to the successful purchase of a Wii this past weekend (Task #1 Complete). If you want to be Wii friends, my number is 2885 7009 2914 6714. Send me yours and I’ll add you. Maybe our Mii’s can hang out a little, play some Wii Tennis at the club, or go bowling. I hear The Mii Parade is a happening place. Wow, my Mii goes more places than I do.

Categories: Social Software, Technology, Video Games, Winter of Dave
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