XPLANE.COM > bBlog / Archive: December 2006

| Subcribe via RSS

A short vacation

December 20th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in General

Things will slow down here for a week or two as we do some backend and hosting maintenance on bBlog — not to mention taking a break for the holidays. See y’all in 2007! (The link goes to del.icio.us.) Happy holidays!

The nine most surprisingly great business moves of 2006

December 18th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in Business

“Good deals are obvious. Great deals are not. News Corp’s $580-million purchase of MySpace was ‘Murdoch’s Folly’ no more when Google paid $900 million to power MySpace search. In that spirit, here are the top nine business moves from 2006 that don’t make sense — at first. Below, the video that started Deal #1.”

Emotional Intelligence and Job Titles

December 18th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in Leadership

“Too many leaders are promoted because of what they know or how long they have worked, rather than their skill in managing others.”

Craigslist Meets the Capitalists

December 18th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in Business

“Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, caused lots of head-scratching Thursday as he tried to explain to a bunch of Wall Street types why his company is not interested in ‘monetizing’ his ridiculously popular Web operation. Appearing at the UBS global media conference in New York, Mr. Buckmaster took questions from the bemused audience, which apparently could not get its collective mind around the notion that Craigslist exists to help Web users find jobs, cars, apartments and dates — and not so much to make money.”

Celebrating six years

December 15th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in General

Zoinks! December 13 was bBlog’s sixth anniversary! Since the year 2000 we’ve linked up more than 2,000 useful sites, stories and resources for entrepreneurs and anyone else involved in running a business. Thanks to everyone who stops by. (The link goes to a circa-2001 bBlog page on Archive.org.)

11 Tips for Time Management in a Web Worker World

December 13th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in Project management

“The Brazen Careerist blog points out ‘10 tips for Time Management in a Multitasking World.’ It’s a great list. My professional career began over 17 years ago. I have only worked in a traditional office setting for the first 6 of those years. Since then, I’ve been based out of a home office. Folks often say, ‘I don’t know how you work at home‚ĶI tried but there’s always something in the house I end up doing that takes me away from getting anything done for work.’ I assure you, getting distracted by housework is not my problem. Without feeling that anyone is directly monitoring your activities, it’s way too easy to be distracted by an over-stuffed to-do list and jumbled priorities.”

How We Did It: Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, Co-founders, Flickr

December 11th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in Entrepreneurship

“The original plan had been to create an online game. But they were just about out of money. And then Butterfield had this crazy vision of building a photo-sharing website, and before you knew it Flickr was a cultural phenomenon. Ya-hoooo!”

Ten Worst Internet Acquisitions Ever

December 9th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in Business

“As the market for acquiring fledgling Internet companies heats up, it’s worth taking a look at all those acquisitions that didn’t quite work out. For every Internet acquisition that’s successful there seems to be dozens that die on the vine. So what makes for a really bad Internet acquisition? First, it has to be expensive. No one’s going to rake a company over the coals over a few blown $50 million acquisitions. That might sound like a lot of money to you and me, but that’s a rounding error to Google. Second, for an acquisition to be lousy it has to contribute little or no long term growth to the acquiring company. An acquisition that doesn’t fit with a company’s long term strategy and that is quickly forgotten — that’s a bad buy. So, here is my highly subjective list of the 10 worst Internet acquisitions of all time…”

Where Work Is a Religion, Work Burnout Is Its Crisis of Faith

December 7th, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in Life

“People who are suffering from burnout tend to describe the sensation in metaphors of emptiness–they’re a dry teapot over a high flame, a drained battery that can no longer hold its charge. Thirteen years, three books, and dozens of papers into his profession, Barry Farber, a professor at Columbia Teachers College and trained psychotherapist, realized he was feeling this way. Unfortunately, he was well acquainted with the symptoms. He was a burnout researcher himself.”

World AIDS Day

December 1st, 2006 | Comments Off | Posted in Life

“World AIDS Day, observed December 1 each year, is dedicated to raising awareness of the global AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history… The concept of a World AIDS Day originated at the 1988 World Summit of Ministers of Health on Programmes for AIDS Prevention. Since then, it has been taken up by governments, international organizations and charities around the world.”