Normal Rockstar

Google CIO Moves to EMI

No, this is not the next George Clooney - his name is Douglas Merrill and he was the CIO of Google... until yesterday, when the blogosphere lit up with stories about his departure from Google to EMI to take over as president [HT: John Furrier].

Yes, you read that right: an ex-Google executive is now president of one of the largest music labels in the world.

Talk about taking on a new challenge - moving from the internet company that seems to have everyone talking and wanting jobs to an industry that has been reeling for years, bleeding sales, and still hasn't figured out what the next model should look like! I'm not sure whether to give him props for stepping up to the plate or to just give him the old fashioned "What are you - stupid?!?". I guess we'll have to see how EMI does - they're obviously banking on a little Google magic...

To read more on the story, click here and here.

"Wired" Magazine: Why FREE is the Future of Business

Chris Anderson, author of "The Long Tail" and editor of Wired Magazine, has written a fascinating article this month called "Why $0.00 is the Future of Business". Here is a link to the full article - it's pretty long, so you'll need to give yourself a little bit of time to wade through it. If you don't have the time and would rather watch a video, you can watch him give a synopsis of his article below (Wired posted it on YouTube but didn't give any embedding code, so I just recorded it and posted it on my YouTube page so that I could embed it here for your viewing ease - please forgive the low quality audio.)

What do you think?

UPDATE: I guess Wired got jumpy about me recording it, so the video below won't work anymore. Just click on their YouTube link above to watch it. So much for making things user friendly!!

I'm a Believer (in Craigslist)

Yesterday was enough to make me a believer in the potential of Craigslist. If you haven't heard about this website yet, I'm not quite sure what to say - you must be somewhat out of the "technological loop", as more than 25 million people in the US alone visit Craigslist every month. In brief, Craigslist is a website providing local classifieds and forums for 450 cities worldwide. It's not flashy - you don't go because the website looks so cool. You go because you can find what you want quickly and at a good price.

Two examples from yesterday alone:

1. My roommate is moving to Texas and needed to sell his car quickly. He posted his ad for free at 9:15am and within the first 15 minutes had 15 email inquiries. By 11:15am he had the cash - his car sold in two hours!!

2. Erin and I needed a washing machine as we've been using our roommates. We searched for a particular brand in our area in the price range we were looking for. I sent an email, arranged a time last night to go by and look at it, and we brought it home and installed it that night - the seller lived literally 3 minutes from our house.

So... We've been wanting to sell our car too, so I posted it this morning on Craigslist just to see what would happen. I've had one inquiry so far, but  I don't think it was anything serious. I guess we'll just see what happens. If you're interested in a '99 Acura Integra, check out the post - maybe I can sell it through my blog instead!

Image Well: Great Blogging Tool for Mac Users

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I've suggested this little application to a number of Mac bloggers now, and I figured I might as well pass it on to whoever else might find it helpful. Image Well is one of my favorite blogging tools - it makes adding images to my blog a snap. No longer do I need to open some robust image editing program (aka Adobe Photoshop) just to resize a picture. Instead, I just drag whatever image I am wanting to edit into Image Well, set the dimensions I want, and save it to my Blog Images folder. It's really that simple and user friendly - give it a shot! [HT: Michael Hyatt]

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogging tips, image editing, mac, productivity

Currently in Debt? Time to Borrow in Second Life

Well, the end of the world has to be near, because it is now possible to go into real debt in the virtual world. FirstMeta, a Singapore-based company, is offering the MetaCard, a new credit card for Second Life users.

Click here for the rest of the story.

Steve Jobs Writes Open Letter

I watched Steve Jobs' announcement of the new iPod Touch yesterday and was FLOORED when he revealed the price drop on the iPhone. If you missed it, Apple dropped the price of the iPhone $200 just two months after it was made available to the public. Now, I don't own an iPhone in large part due to the cost of the product - I can't justify spending $599 on a phone! But my first thought when I heard this was, "Oh boy - sucks to be an iPhone owner right now!"

Well, it seems like many iPhone owners felt the same way. Yesterday, in a rather unconventional move, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to iPhone owners offering a $100 in-store credit to anyone who was an early adopter of the iPhone. Very interesting... Personally, I think it was a great move. Technology changes quickly, but not THAT quickly - I'm prepared to see prices change every six months or so, but two months is a little ridiculous.

What do you think?

NBC to Leave iTunes

This is interesting: NBC has decided to end their relationship with iTunes after Apple refused to up the price on their shows from $1.99/episode to $4.99. Read Apple's story here - and get NBC's side of the story here.

Here's my two cents: it boggles my mind that NBC actually thought the consumer would be willing to pay $4.99/episode when they can get episodes from other networks for $1.99. I mean, really - these days the consumer doesn't have to look very hard to find free episodes to download. I would guess that raising the price to $4.99 would push more consumers to hunt for those free episodes instead of paying for them and the company would end up losing money anyway.

What do you think? Would you pay $4.99/episode for your favorite TV show?

[This opens a whole other can of worms: the iTunes effect on the music industry. Any thoughts? If you've come across any blogs recently discussing this, let me know - I'll be posting something this week on this as it's kind of fresh on my mind.]

iPhone Unlocked by 17 Year-Old College Freshman

If you haven't already heard, the iPhone was unlocked this past weekend by 17 year-old George Hotz. You can read his step-by-step process on his blog and hear the story of how he accomplished this (if you are unaware, Apple had programmed the iPhone to only work with AT&T - a rather unpopular move for millions of cell phone users).

After trying to sell the phone on eBay over the weekend, Hotz got frustrated with the number of bogus bidders and decided to accept the offer of high-tech mogul Terry Daidone: a new Nissan 350Z Roadster and three, new 8GB iPhones.

Read more on the story here.

And for the record, this still doesn't make me want an iPhone... I talked to a guy the other day who told his son if he stood in line to buy him an iPhone he'd buy him a new video game  - so the kid stood in line for nine hours. (Read my post yesterday... it may be appropriate here again!)

If you go ahead and try and crack your iPhone, let me know how it goes - I'd be interested to hear how successful people have been with these steps!

Video Game Addiction

This is one reason why I don't want to get into video games. In fact, the American Medical Association was supposed to vote on adding "video game addiction" to a widely used mental illness manual created and published by the American Psychiatric Association. I heard that they voted in favor of it, but I haven't been able to find anything to back that up online. Can anyone help?

In the meantime, if you've got gamers in your family, make sure you do some reading... And check out As Real As Your Life, the documentary from which this movie trailer originated [HT: Ethos].

iPhone: Will It Blend?

I watched this yesterday in utter disbelief. Definitely a new use for an iPhone!