Fred Vogelstein writes in the current issue of Wired about how Yahoo is losing (or lost) the war with Google over search advertising. It’s brutal. “When Terry Semel became co-CEO of Warner Bros. in the early 1980s, he was steeped in the marketing and distribution plumbing of Hollywood. So it’s […]
Tonight I found an article about the My Dollar Stores, one of India’s most popular American imports. These stores are able to import direct from China to nearby India, and in the big cities they have proven very popular. One lesson the California-based founders of My Dollarstores learned was that […]
Last night we watched a provocative movie called “Laurel Canyon,” at the house with our friends Jack and Laura. We had a fire going and it was fun to enjoy a movie none of us knew anything about–another Blockbuster Surprise. The movie began with a sex scene. A woman named […]
Joanna Weiss writes on Boston.com about an unlikely hero among college students, Jim Cramer. “If “Mad Money” is a business primer, it’s a crash course designed for the ADHD set. Cramer has a penchant for madcap props — he has eaten cereal drenched in soda pop and worn diapers to […]
Cindy gave me a fascinating book for my birthday in October that I recently finished. It’s called Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran, by Elaine Sciolino. The author is a Newsweek and New York Times writer who has spent more than twenty years visiting Iran and has built up […]
Last night I enjoyed a few laughs with one of my oldest and best friends, Bill Hewitt. There is something that is so wonderful about old friends…the kind who really know you, remember stuff, and who get the joke–every time. We watched the Florida Gators trounce the Ohio State Buckeyes. […]
Today was a good day to catch up with someone special. I have a tradition that every year my godmother Caro sends me a Christmas check. And in return I write her a very long, old fashioned snail mail letter, telling her everything I’ve done over the past year. It’s […]
As the winter that didn’t yet happen moves into January, I had a chance to relive the real winter of 2004 when I traveled to Whitefish Montana for a press trip. There I skiied Big Mountain on skis and snowcycles, went dogsledding, explored Glacier National Park and and did some […]
We met the bespectacled Andreas in Goteborg, and enjoyed dinner with him and his wife Elin. He develops internet ad campaigns and one of them was fascinating, it was for an ice cream company. He showed us how a Swedish cellphone customer can send a tiny bar code to a […]
Today I took some wise advice from my sister Jenny. I wrote out cards to all of my employees and told them why I value them, and added some crisp bills to make it really feel good. You wanna know how to get into the Christmas spirit? Write cards and […]
We are sitting in Copenhagen’s airport with our flight delayed two hours. No announcement told us, we just learned this by overhearing another passenger, then seeing it for ourselves on the board. Thanks a lot! I always like to watch the planes come and go and see what the workers […]
Random thoughts on Sweden: One cool thing I saw here were heated sidewalks, that eliminate the need for snow shoveling. And when we went into the cafes (there are almost 700 in Goteborg), no one was working on laptops except us. Our friend Bo told us that people never bring […]