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Saturday, April 30, 2011
Matrix Partners Closes $650 Million Funds To Invest More In China, India
Matrix Partners, a US-based investment firm with additional offices in India and China, this morning announced that it has closed two new funds: Matrix Partners China II (at $350 million) and Matrix Partners India II (at $300 million). The funds bring the firm's total international assets under management to $650 million in China and $600 million in India. Matrix Partners established an India presence back in 2006 and has an experienced entrepreneur running its investment team there: Avnish Bajaj, co-founder and former CEO of India's largest online marketplace Baazee.com (acquired by eBay). The firm has been active in China since 2008.
Emmanuelle Vaugier Sarah Silverman Larissa Meek Gina Carano Sanaa Lathan
This Week?s Top Funding and Investment Stories
Welcome to the first edition of ?Top Funding Stories,? a weekly series where we summarize the big startup funding and investment stories of…
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Sequoia-Backed Milanoo Appears To Be Gaming Search Results With Link Spam
As we saw from retailer JC Penney's recent downfall in search rankings, using 'black hat' SEO tactics and gaming search is considered deceptive and 'tantamount to cheating' by Google. J.C. Penney said that it had no idea that this was happening and fired its SEM agency right away. But the retailer's search ranking had already been "adjusted" by Google, and the damage was done. These sort of situations are considered deceitful by many in the search industry (including Google) and generally cast a malevolent cloud over a company's search tactics. So, it's surprising to find that a Sequoia Capital -backed Chinese startup, called Milanoo, appears to be gaming Google search results with these same black hat links spam tactics. Milanoo, a China-based online retailer and wholesaler with a ?passion for fashion,? is an ecommerce company serves customers with fashion apparel and related products in over 180 countries around the world, in seven languages (including English, Spanish and French). Launched in 2008, the startup just raised "millions of dollars" from Sequoia. According Digital Due Diligence, a small agency that provides in-depth investment research into online assets of companies; Milanoo has been caught using similar tactics as J.C. Penney.
Gina Gershon Ehrinn Cummings Sienna Miller Cindy Taylor Halle Berry
The Lies Social Networks Keep Telling Themselves
Online social networks have been around for years, but most of them still make the same basic ? and utterly incorrect ? assumptions about the way we interact with each other. Whose fault is that, and how exactly do we fix it?
Samantha Mathis Samantha Morton Grace Park Jill Wagner Susie Castillo
Iran Officially Worst Online Oppressor
"Freedom on the Net 2011" determined that the five worst countries for online freedom - based on obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of user rights - are Iran, followed by Burma, China, Cuba and Tunisia. (The last entry is certainly changed somewhat by the uprising earlier this year.)
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The authors explain the situation in Iran.
"Since the protests that followed disputed presidential elections in June 2009, the Iranian authorities have waged an active campaign against internet freedom, employing extensive and sophisticated methods of control that go well beyond simple content filtering, though this too has become more severe since the election. Tactics employed include deliberately slowing internet speeds at critical times to make basic online activities difficult and ordering blogging service providers inside Iran to remove 'offensive' posts. The regime has also sought to counter critical content and online organizing efforts by extending state propaganda into the digital sphere: over 400 news websites are either directly or indirectly supported by the state."Since June 2009, an increasing number of bloggers have been threatened, arrested, tortured, and kept in solitary confinement, and at least one blogger died in custody. Over 50 bloggers and online activists have been arrested, and a dozen remained in detention at the end of 2010. The Iranian authorities have taken a range of measures to monitor online communications, and a number of protesters who were put on trial after the election were indicted for their activities on Facebook and Balatarin, a Persian site that allows users to share links and news. A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army, later found to be associated with the Iranian authorities, also managed to hack a number of opposition and news sites with a mix of technical methods and forgery."
In contrast, the five freest countries are Estonia, the United States, Germany, Australia and the U.K.
But here's arguably the worst indicator of the health of free speech online.
"Even in more democratic countries--such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom--internet freedom is increasingly undermined by legal harassment, opaque censorship procedures, or expanding surveillance."
We expect repressive countries to repress. We expect democratic countries to exert forces against that tendency. Of course they do, but when you see this sort of trend, you're seeing a speech ecosystem under serious threat. Transparency is growing more opaque even as it becomes the motif du jour. Is it time for those in democratic countries to spend at least as much time at the sickbeds of their own freedoms as the graves of others'? (That was a rhetorical question. It's time.)
Other sources: OpenNet Initiative
Discuss
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It?s Time to Realize Our Location Concerns Aren?t Dumb
Hot on the heels of the furor over Apple?s location databases, personal navigation device giant TomTom is in trouble for selling speed data to police. But both companies have shown how technology firms are too quick to dismiss the worries of their customers.
Ashley Scott Michelle Behennah Julie Benz Saira Mohan Brittny Gastineau
Onavo?s Guy Rosen Plans To Disrupt Data Roaming (TCTV)
Onavo, as we just reported, is a magical iPhone app which literally shrinks the data your phone uses and thus your roaming data bill when you are travelling. It launches today and I caught up with CEO and co-founder Guy Rosen at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam.
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This Week in Politics & Digital: The Openness & Transparency Issue
This week’s political/digital news focused on issues of transparency, from public records to open data to President Barack Obama releasing…
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Bill O'Reilly Mocks Brian Williams: "Nobody Knows Why Tornadoes Come"
For the latest media news, visit The Wire. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
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See Also:
- Billy Graham's Son: Victims Of The Holocaust Are Not In Heaven
- Chris Matthews: I Was Also Skeptical Of Obama At First
- Chris Matthews Asks Tea Partier: How Would You Like Being Called A Foreigner?
Mýa Natalie Imbruglia Patricia Velásquez Jennifer Morrison Adrianne Palicki
Friday, April 29, 2011
Blog Post: Weekly Business Productivity Digest - 4/29/2011
This is a collection of interesting articles, blog posts, etc from around the web related to Cloud, Technology, Leadership, CIOs and the Enterprise. In addition to our own content, the goal is to showcase the variety of conversations occurring around the web in the area of business productivity. If you have others we should consider for future Digests, just post in the comments section.
Forrester: Public Cloud Growth to Surge, Especially SaaS
Overall, Forrester's report, "Sizing the Cloud", predicts that the global market for cloud computing — including the public cloud, the private cloud and the virtual private cloud — will leap from $40.7 billion this year to more than $241 billion in 2020.
Connecting IT and the Business
When more than 700 CIOs were asked what tasks and activities would consume them the most in three to five years, they listed “driving business innovation” and “identifying opportunities for competitive differentiation.”
Lessons From a Cloud Failure: It's Not Amazon It's You
Some developers saw that AWS outage as a warning about what happens when we rely too much on the cloud. But the real failure of Amazon's downtime is not AWS, but the sites that use it. The problem for those sites that were brought down by the AWS outage is the sites' own failure to implement the one key design principle of the cloud: Design with failure in mind.
Dr. CIO: Prepping our Next-Gen IT Leaders
It appears that the CIO role is more important than ever before. In fact, a number of executives have articulated to me concerns that the CIO talent pool appears to be very shallow, that the same people are mentioned when new CIO opportunities become available—and those positions will be available this year, for sure.
Microsoft CIO Tony Scott: 5 Lessons Learned from Our Cloud Deployment
CIOs have heard about cloud computing and know the benefits, yet they remain uncertain on how and where to begin to bring their business into the cloud. As Microsoft CIO, my top priority is to transform our IT organization to meet the company’s ever-evolving business and technical needs.
Robin Tunney Kate Groombridge Dania Ramirez Lucy Liu LeAnn Rimes
This social media stock market game is building a real-world ?value score? about you
I’ve been playing Empire Avenue for a few weeks now and I’ve found it a really compelling game for a number of social reasons. First, what is it? It’s a stock market game where you can buy or sell your friends, or other people in the social media world. You can buy or sell me [...]
Ana Hickmann Mischa Barton Jamie Lynn Sigler Stacy Keibler Rihanna
If It's On Your Resume, You're Eventually Going To Be Questioned
At KAS, when I look at many sales and marketing resumes, I almost always find a section where the applicant lists his or her skills (or perceived in most cases) in a separate, but bold expertise section usually placed near the top of the CV. Because many of these individuals have done enough research to know to put the key terms on their resume, naturally, they are charming, quick witted, energetic and intelligent enough to get past middle management.
Sadly enough, in many companies, the reason is that middle management typically can't define these intangible "areas of expertise" themselves. Thus, the applicant scoots past having to dig in and define the terms during the interview and gets the offer. However, middle management is the highest level they will ever get by relying solely on wit and experience. There are two main reasons for this:
1. At good companies, upper management personnel of a mid to large size company are trained on these tactics and know them left and right, up and down. Trying to slide these skills past C-level executives on your resume without being able to confidently discuss them in a matter that sounds intelligent and engage in a conversation of substance is like trying to pass contraband past a group of police dogs.
2. The applicant does not know the skills they list. Yes. They know that they are crucial and are intelligent enough to decipher that, but they don't learn the foundations and are unable to implement these key points. In business, if you are not learning, you are not growing and if you don't have the finer points of business down, your charm and smooth talking will only take you so far.
Now, we must define as to what are the typical key points that are falsely represented on a resume?
1. Negotiation tactics - I interviewed a young professional the other day who had the word "negotiation" under her skill set. She was a little snooty; therefore I decided to do a test. I said, "Oh, I see that you like negotiating, what types of tactics do you use for contract disputes?"
The response was exactly as expected, "Uh, well, sometimes you have to walk away." What a lot of people don't understand is that to learn true negotiation tactics, to become knowledgeable about, requires a lot of reading. It's no secret that there are entire classes devoted to the subject it in our nation's law schools. However, to know enough to speak and learn basic negotiation as, eventually you dive into psychology, you don't have to look much further than your Barnes and Noble.
I began studying negotiation very thoroughly about a year ago and we do get higher fees than our competition receives; I know that for a fact and it happens frequently. However, would I feel comfortable speaking to an expert on the fact? My comfort level would, depending on the person, be small to mid-level.
Therefore, if you're just throwing out the term on your resume, you are inevitably going to meet an individual who knows the ins and outs and, conversely you will not look professional and your resume nor yourself will hold any integrity in that company's eyes for a long, long time.
2. Consultative selling - this one is often misused in entry-level to 2 - 4 year level resumes. Many people have the misconception that consultative selling is quite basic and is simply the act of not being aggressive with a customer on the phone. This is quite off, again. People tend to put the phrase down as an expertise on their resume and don't have the slightest clue as to what this sales tactic truly involves.
Any smart, thorough interviewer, who knows the ABC's of selling and business development, is going to ask the interviewee to define the term. Then, if the interviewer has not read up on the tactical revenue generation sales method, they are ousted. Again, this could quickly be remedied by the one verb that is not implemented enough in both the job seeking and business world. That word, of course, is "reading." Better yet, I prefer "studying."
3. SEO - this skill is all over marketing resumes. Also, the bad part about someone having it on their CV is that the results from search engine optimization campaigns are a lot more tangible than the aforementioned 2 resume kinks.
New Rule Job Seekers Should Implement: If you don't consider yourself an expert (or close to it), don't put it on your resume. If you want it on your resume, become an expert at it.
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10 More Reasons You Need to Quit Your Job Right Now!
I was sure that I would at least be seeing crack whores having sex in the hallways when I got out of the elevator. At the very least, I wanted to hear loud screaming, maybe even a gunshot in the room next door in the middle of the night. I stayed at the dirtiest, cheapest hotel in NYC last night because I wanted to be right by the Nasdaq when I woke up. I had videos to do at 7:30am with the Yahoo team �(Stacy Curtin, Aaron Task, and Henry Blodget) and I knew I would need to wake up at 4:30 to prepare or they would crucify me with questions I couldn?t answer and I?d feel humiliated and embarrassed. I stayed at the ?St. James Hotel? [Note to St. James legal team: all blog mentions are positive publicity] where I remembered from my 3am/HBO days. I knew what went on there. But?
Nothing.
And at 4:30 in the morning when I woke up and went downstairs for coffee there was just the manager downstairs watching the Royal Wedding. Whatever happened to real shitbag hotels in this fine city. The Royal Wedding? �I watched it for five minutes with the guy. The only thing that I got out of it was that Prince William and his new bride were going to be spending the night at Buckingham Palace. Why can?t anyone on the news just say , ?does that mean they will probably be having sex at Buckingham Palace? Does anyone know when the last time that happened was?? Piers Morgan, where are you when we need you at moments like this?
(Piers Morgan getting kissed by one of my ex-girlfriends)
7:30 I went to do my videos with Aaron Task and Henry Blodget. The thing is, I realized I had been a bit misleading. One of the topics was going to be ?10 Reasons You Need to Quit Your Job Right now?. But when I looked at the blog post I had already done on the topic I realized that I said 90% of people ?Should? quit their jobs and I gave 10 reasons for recognizing if now is the right time for you to leave. But thats a little different than saying, you have to quit right now.
But the reality is, most people need to begin their exit strategy RIGHT NOW
So here?s the 10 reasons you need to quit your job right now. And below that I have the methods for doing it.
1)����� Safety. We used to think you get a corporate job, you rise up, you get promoted, maybe you move horizontally to another division or a similar company, you get promoted again, and eventually you retire with enough savings in your IRA. That?s all gone. That myth disappeared in 2008. It really never existed but now we know it?s a myth. Corporate CEOs kept their billion dollar salaries and laid off about 20 million people and sent the jobs to China. Fine, don?t complain or blame other people. But your job is not safe.
2)����� Home. Everyone thinks they need a safe job so they can save up to buy a home and also qualify for a mortgage. Mortgage lenders at the banks like people who are like them ? other people locked in cubicle prison. �Well now you don?t need to worry about that. Here?s why you should never own a home in the first place. Save yourself the stress.
3)����� College. Everything thinks they need to save up to send their kids to college. Depending on how many kids you have and where you want them to go to college it could cost millions. Well now we know you don?t need to send your kid to college. So you don?t need to stress about that money anymore.
4)����� Their boss. Most people don?t like their boss. Its like any relationship. Most of the time you get into a relationship for the wrong reasons. Eventually you?re unhappy. And if you don?t get out, you become miserable and scarred for life.
5)����� Their coworkers. See above.
6)����� Fear. We have such a high unemployment rate, people are afraid if they leave the job they are miserable at, they won?t be able to get a job. This is true if you just walk into your boss?s office and pee on his desk and get fired.� But its not true if you prepare well. More on that in a bit.
7)����� The Work. Most people don?t like the work they do. They spend 4 years going to college, another few years in graduate school, and then they think they have to use that law degree, business degree, architecture degree and then guess what? They hate it. But they don?t want to admit it. They feel guilty. They are in debt. No problem. Read on.
8)����� Bad things happen. All the stuff I mention in the post ?10 Reasons You Need to Quit Your Job? start to happen. And it gets worse and worse. You don?t want to look back at your life and say, ?man, those were the worst 45 years of my life.? That wouldn?t feel good.
9)����� The economy is about to boom.� I don?t care if you believe this or not. Stop reading the newspaper so much. The newspapers are trying to scare you. Bernanke just printed up a trillion dollars and airlifted it onto the US economy. Who is going to scoop that up. You in your cubicle? Think again.
10)�� Your job has clamped your creativity. You do the same thing every day. You want to be jolted, refreshed, rejuvenated.
Note: some people love their jobs. This is not for them but the 90% who don?t.
So: Henry and Aaron asked a good question: you still need to support yourself, you still need to support your family, you can?t just walk into your boss?s office and quit.
I?ve written about this before. You need to prepare. Its like training for the Olympics if you feel now is the time to move on from your job. You need to be physically ready, emotionally (don?t quit your job and get divorced on the same day for instance), mentally (get your idea muscle in shape) and spirituall all ready.
The posts that will help you quit your job. To quit, at least follow the ideas in the first post:
-��������� How to be the Luckiest Man Alive in 4 Easy Steps
-��������� What to do if you were Fired Today
-��������� The 100 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur
In the above link, it?s not about starting a business. It?s about finding what your frontier is, how to explore it, how to test the waters and move beyond it. I?m not saying I can do this. I?ve hit my boundary so many times and bounced off that I have six broken noses to show for it.
Some notes on this post:
Note #1: I get a lot of criticisms from anonymous people in the Yahoo message boards. Claudia begs me, ?Don?t look at the message boards unless you talk to me first.” Because she knows I?m an addict. I tell her ?ok? but I know I?m going to look. Because that?s what addicts do.
Note #2: Sometimes people criticize the ?list? format in these posts. ?10 reasons? for this. ?10 reasons? for that. About 20% of my posts are lists. Not so much. Read “The Power of Hypnosis” or “The Tooth” for two recent non-list posts. And Charlton Heston clearly didn?t mind lists when he came down from Mt. Sinai with ?The 10 Commandments?, the very first blog post. 3500 years later and still getting clicks.
(the first blogger)
I don’t mind when people critique me when they’ve lost, quit, or have been fired from as many jobs as I have. Or lost a home. A wife. Tried to raise two kids with almost nothing. Been as desperately unhappy as sometimes I’ve been. This doesn’t qualify me for anything, of course. Maybe it disqualifies me. Who cares? �A lot of people have had much worse than me. And I?ve been very blessed as well.
Sometimes �you can build back up. And sometimes you just think, ?How the hell did this happen to me again?. �You can criticize me on Yahoo message boards. You can critique lists if you think you have some better way of helping people. �My goal in these posts is to help people maybe think for a split second they can reduce some stress in their lives, they don?t have to go through what I went through, they can throw themselves into experience and still come back alive, and at the end of the day, they can use some of these ideas to live a better and more fulfilling life. I’ve had that experience and I like to write about it.
Later tonight I?m going to give my two daughters, nine and twelve years old, two choices and ONLY two choices. Either they watch ?Star Wars? with me or they watch ?Schindler?s List?. And if they don?t like either choice then maybe I?ll just sit by the TV with some ice cream and watch all by myself.
—
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Read more posts on The Altucher Confidential �
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Anne Marie Kortright Paige Butcher Amanda Peet Xenia Seeberg The Avatars of Second Life
The most important new protocol since RSS: AirPlay (three cool new apps that use it to change how we view TV)
I still remember when Dave Winer showed me RSS and what it did. It changed my life and continues to, even after we switched much of our reading behavior to Twitter (a new iPad app is coming on Friday that uses RSS, more about that when the embargo ends). But since RSS has there been [...]
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New Heat Pump Will Last 10,000 Years
formaggio writes "Most heat pumps maintain an average useful life of 10-20 years, but researchers at the University of Stavanger in Norway (USN) and the University of Oslo believe that they have developed a new heat pump that will last up to 10,000 years."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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