tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62240264805198843702024-03-13T03:42:12.370-07:00Info Blog Articlesmyspace, google, ebay, yahoo, youporn, youtube, myspace.com, play game, yahoo.com, mapquest, you tube, kim kardashian, facebook, play games, craigslist, soulja boy, vanessa hudgens, free lady sonia, walmart, girls, webkinz, hotmail, rihanna, redtube, britney spears, hotmail.com, best buy, music lyrics, christmas, linkin parkUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-35067391392569879042008-01-14T06:44:00.000-08:002008-01-14T06:46:10.674-08:00Pink Floyd The Wall - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tkJNyQfAprY&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tkJNyQfAprY&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />Comfortably Numb (Gilmour, Waters) 6:49<br /><br />Hello?<br />Is there anybody in there?<br />Just nod if you can hear me.<br />Is there anyone at home?<br />Come on, now,<br />I hear you're feeling down.<br />Well I can ease your pain<br />Get you on your feet again.<br />Relax.<br />I'll need some information first.<br />Just the basic facts.<br />Can you show me where it hurts?<br /><br />There is no pain you are receding<br />A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.<br />You are only coming through in waves.<br />Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.<br />When I was a child I had a fever<br />My hands felt just like two balloons.<br />Now I've got that feeling once again<br />I can't explain you would not understand<br />This is not how I am.<br />I have become comfortably numb.<br /><br />O.K.<br />Just a little pinprick.<br />There'll be no more aaaaaaaaah!<br />But you may feel a little sick.<br />Can you stand up?<br />I do believe it's working, good.<br />That'll keep you going through the show<br />Come on it's time to go.<br /><br />There is no pain you are receding<br />A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.<br />You are only coming through in waves.<br />Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.<br />When I was a child<br />I caught a fleeting glimpse<br />Out of the corner of my eye.<br />I turned to look but it was gone<br />I cannot put my finger on it now<br />The child is grown,<br />The dream is gone.<br />I have become comfortably numb.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-49708426255557797612008-01-14T06:42:00.000-08:002008-01-14T06:43:17.487-08:00Kim Kardashian Not Getting Married<img src="http://images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/20080102/425.kardashian.bush.010208.jpg" class="blog_img_center" title="Kim Kardashian, Reggie Bush" alt="Kim Kardashian, Reggie Bush" height="315" width="425" /> <p>The Internet was all abuzz last night with news of <strong>Kim Kardashian</strong> getting engaged to<strong> </strong>Heisman Trophy-winning footballer <strong>Reggie Bush</strong> over the holidays. The eye of the storm was an <a target="_blank" href="http://www.okmagazine.com/news/view/3525"><em>OK!</em> magazine piece</a> saying the betrothal was a done deal.</p><p>And as much as we would love to watch the Kardashian clan go shopping for wedding dresses in season two of their E! series, <em>Keeping Up with the Kardashians</em>, Kim's rep has gone on record: "It's not true."</p><p>But you know, if we have learned anything from reality TV in '07, it's that even a fake engagement can be pretty awesome fodder...right, Speidi?!</p><p>Source: http://www.eonline.com<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-47870829394678168042008-01-14T06:38:00.000-08:002008-01-14T06:40:57.800-08:00One More Night by Cascada<object width="300" height="80"><param name="movie" value="http://media.imeem.com/m/KAP61KORz-/aus=false/"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://media.imeem.com/m/KAP61KORz-/aus=false/" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="80" wmode="transparent"></embed></object><br /><br /><strong>One More Night lyrics</strong><br /><br />You are all I can remember<br />After all that we’ve been through<br />Forever in my heart<br />Now I’m through<br />And truth is like November<br />Still can’t believe it’s true<br />Too long we’ve been apart<br /><br />One more night<br />I wanna to be with you<br />Where I wanna to hold you tight<br />It feels so right, tonight<br />So leave it up to you<br />And I think the time is right to stop the fight<br />One more night<br />I wanna to be with you<br />Where I wanna to hold you tight<br />It feels so right, tonight<br />So leave it up to you<br />And I think the time is right to stop the fight<br /><br />Why can’t true love be forever?<br />Why did my dream explode?<br />The day you went away<br />Cause I will keep this spell together<br />And wish you well of hope<br />Your girl from yesterday<br /><br />One more night<br />I wanna be with you<br />Where I wanna hold you tight<br />It feels so right, tonight<br />So leave it up to you<br />And I think the time is right to stop the fight<br />One more night<br />I wanna be with you<br />Where I wanna hold you tight<br />It feels so right, tonight<br />So leave it up to you<br />And I think the time is right to stop the fightUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-52128166703905854802008-01-14T06:34:00.000-08:002008-01-14T06:37:45.210-08:00Die Rzte - Anti-Zombie lyrics<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wlmf5IVGZzc&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wlmf5IVGZzc&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />"In der Hölle ist kein Platz mehr, hat früher immer mein Großvater erzählt. Schon mal was von Macumba gehört oder Voodoo? Mein Großvater war ein Priester in Trinidad. Er pflegte zu sagen: 'Wenn in der Hölle kein Platz mehr ist, kommen die Toten auf die Erde'."<br />Sie essen alle auf.<br />Sie fressen alle auf.<br />Und hast Du keine Knarre,<br />rate ich Dir: "Lauf!"<br />Sie sind nicht mehr am Leben.<br />Sie sind nicht tot.<br />Wenn ich sie seh', dann seh' ich rot.<br />Ziel auf den Kopf, keine Gnade.<br />Sie haben mit unseren lieben Toten nichts gemein.<br />Du hörst sie schmatzen und hohles Stöhnen.<br />Ich werd' sie mit 'ner Ladung Blei verwöhnen.<br />Sie wandern stumpf durch die Botanik.<br />Nur die Ruhe, bitte keine Panik!<br />Es muss so sein, Du musst es tun.<br />Und dann können Sie in Frieden ruhen.<br />(Ooh) Sie kommen aus der Hölle,<br />(Ooh) denn da gibt es viel zu viele.<br />(Ooh) Der Eintritt ist verboten,<br />(Ooh) Für die lebenden Toten.<br />Bist Du bereit?<br />Dann mach sie alle.<br />Dafür bleibst Du auch am Leben.<br />Hast Du genug Blei dabei?<br />Dann sag' ich Dir: "Feuer frei!"<br />Ob Neunmillimeter oder Maschinengewehr,<br />schieß doch einfach 'n paar Magazine leer!<br />Vorsicht sie kommen mit dem Impuls.<br />Fressen, um zu fressen, um zu killen.<br />(Ooh) Sie kommen aus der Hölle,<br />(Ooh) denn da gibt es viel zu viele.<br />(Ooh) Der Eintritt ist verboten,<br />(Ooh) Für die lebenden Toten.<br />(Ooh) Sie kommen aus der Hölle,<br />(Ooh) denn da gibt es viel zu viele.<br />(Ooh) Der Eintritt ist verboten,<br />(Ooh) Für die lebenden Toten.<br />"Ruhe bitte - Dummköpfe - Ruhe bitte - Dummköpfe, manchmal fragt man sich, ob sich die Rettungsversuche überhaupt lohnen. Lohnt es sich die Menschen zu retten? So wie ich die Sache sehe, ist die Intelligenz bereits ausgerottet und es leben nur noch die Idioten."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-65982120624232515662008-01-14T06:30:00.000-08:002008-01-14T06:32:36.360-08:00Amy Fisher<h3>Overview</h3> <div class="info"> <h5>Date of Birth:</h5> 21 August 1974, Long Island, New York, USA <span class="tn15more inline">more</span> </div> <h5>Trivia:</h5> Gave birth to her second child, a daughter Ava Rose, on January 26, 2005.<br /><br /><h3>Filmography</h3><a name="self">Self:</a><div class="filmo"><ol><li>"Howard Stern on Demand" .... Herself (1 episode, 2007)<br />... aka Howard TV on Demand (USA)<br /> - Amy Fisher & Joey Buttafuoco (2007) <small>TV episode</small> (voice) .... Herself</li><li>"The View" .... Herself (1 episode, 2004)<br /> - Episode dated 5 October 2004 (2004) <small>TV episode</small> .... Herself</li><li>"The Early Show" .... Herself (1 episode, 2004)<br /> - Episode dated 4 October 2004 (2004) <small>TV episode</small> .... Herself</li><li>"Good Day Live" .... Herself (2 episodes, 2004)<br /> - Episode dated 4 October 2004 (2004) <small>TV episode</small> .... Herself<br /> - Episode dated 1 August 2004 (2004) <small>TV episode</small> .... Herself</li><li>"American Morning" .... Herself (1 episode, 2004)<br /> - Episode dated 4 October 2004 (2004) <small>TV episode</small> .... Herself</li><li>"Dateline NBC" .... Herself (1 episode, 2004)<br />... aka Dateline (USA: short title)<br /> - Episode dated 1 October 2004 (2004) <small>TV episode</small> .... Herself</li><li>"Today" .... Herself (1 episode, 2004)<br />... aka NBC News Today (USA: promotional title)<br />... aka The Today Show (USA)<br /> - Episode dated 1 October 2004 (2004) <small>TV episode</small> .... Herself</li><li>"The Oprah Winfrey Show" .... Herself (1 episode, 2004)<br />... aka Oprah (USA: short title)<br /> - Episode dated 27 September 2004 (2004) <small>TV episode</small> .... Herself<br /></li></ol></div> <h5><a name="archive">Archive Footage:</a></h5> <ol><li> 101 Most Unforgettable SNL Moments (2004) (TV) .... Herself </li><li> 101 Biggest Celebrity Oops (2004) (TV) .... Herself - #52: Amy Fisher: 3 TV Movies </li></ol> <h3>Additional Details</h3> <div class="info"> <h5>Other Works:</h5> Her wrote the book, "Amy Fisher: My Story", with Sheila Weller which was published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. in 1993. </div> <div class="info"> <h5>Publicity Listings:</h5> 3 Portrayals / 2 Print Biographies </div> <div class="info"> <h5>Genres:</h5> News / Talk-Show </div> <div class="info"> <h5>Plot Keywords:</h5> Non Fiction / Character Name In Title / Morning Show <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /><br />Source: http://www.imdb.com</span> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-82991068315235524532008-01-07T05:10:00.000-08:002008-01-07T05:12:48.273-08:00Madonna<b>Madonna</b><br /> Born: August 16, 1958 in Bay City, MI<br />Years Active: 80 's, 90 's, 00's<br /> <br /><b>News:</b><br />• <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2008/01/06/madonna_sings_for_india/">Madonna Sings For India</a><br />• <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2008/01/04/tv_remakes_we_d_like_to_see_gilligan_s_i/">TV Remakes We'd Like To See, Vol. 1: 'Gilligan's Island'</a><br />• <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2008/01/04/madonna_shows_off_dance_moves_in_india/">Madonna Shows Off Dance Moves In India</a><br /><b><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/News/">More News >></a></b><br /> <br /> <span class="rgttext"><b>Biography:</b></span><br />After a star reaches a certain point, it's easy to forget what they became famous for and concentrate solely on their persona. Madonna is such a star. Madonna rocketed to stardom so quickly in 1984 that it obscured most of her musical virtues. Appreciating her music became even more difficult as the decade wore on, as discussing her lifestyle becam... <b><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Biography">Continue Bio >></a></b><br /><br /><b>Photo Gallery:</b><br /><table border="0" width="270"><tbody><tr> <td align="left"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Pictures"><img src="http://images.starpulse.com/Photos/Thumbs/Madonna-ww08.jpg" alt="Madonna" border="0" /></a></td> <td align="left"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Pictures"><img src="http://images.starpulse.com/Photos/Thumbs/Madonna-ww09.jpg" alt="Madonna" border="0" /></a></td> </tr><tr><td class="rgttext" colspan="2" align="right"><b><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Pictures">View All Pictures >></a></b></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <!--VIDEO FROM CACHE--> <b>Music Videos:</b><table class="rgttext" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="4"><tbody><tr> <td><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Videos/"><img src="http://singingfool.com/photos/1036/madonnadussldorf.jpg" border="0" height="75" width="100" /></a></td><td valign="top">2007 <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Videos/615318/">Jump (live)</a><br />2007 <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Videos/196142/">Ray Of Light (live) (explicit Language)</a><br />2005 <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Videos/675167/">Sorry</a><br />2005 <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Videos/428768/">Hung Up</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><b><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Videos">More Music Videos >></a></b><br /><br /><b>Movie Trailers:</b><table class="rgttext" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="4"><tbody><tr> <td><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Trailers/"><img src="http://videodetective.com/photos/954/040077_25.jpg" border="0" height="75" width="100" /></a></td><td valign="top">2007 <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Trailers/943381/">Arthur </a><br />2007 <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Trailers/470318/">Madonna: The Confessions Tour</a><br />2002 <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Trailers/516899/">Swept Away</a><br />2000 <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Trailers/179983/">Next Best Thing, The</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><b><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Trailers">More Movie Trailers >></a></b><br /><br /> <span class="rgttext"><b>Discography:</b></span><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1"><tbody><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2007</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Discography/album/P64565/R1022217/">Confessions Tour [Bonus DVD]</a></td></tr><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2007</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Discography/album/P64565/R948339/">Confessions Tour</a></td></tr><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2006</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Discography/album/P64565/R933159/">Music [Bonus Tracks]</a></td></tr><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2006</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Discography/album/P64565/R834380/">I'm Going to Tell You a Secret</a></td></tr><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2006</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Discography/album/P64565/R832205/">Confessions Remixed</a></td></tr></tbody></table><b><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Madonna/Discography/Index/P64565/1/">All Releases >></a></b><br /><br /><span class="rgttext"><b>Filmography:</b></span><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1"><tbody><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2006</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/movie/Arthur_and_the_Invisibles/V327356/0/0/">Arthur and the Invisibles</a></td></tr><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2005</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/movie/I%27m_Going_to_Tell_You_a_Secret/V337827/0/0/">I'm Going to Tell You a Secret</a></td></tr><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2004</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/movie/Madonna%3A_Sex_Bomb_-_Unauthorized/V307658/0/0/">Madonna: Sex Bomb - Unauthorized</a></td></tr><tr><td class="rgttext" valign="top">2003</td><td class="rgttext"><a href="http://www.starpulse.com/movie/Saturday_Night_Live%3A_25_Years_of_Music/V288558/0/0/">Saturday Night Live: 25 Years of Music</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Source: http://www.starpulse.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-89695003678357121652008-01-07T05:02:00.000-08:002008-01-07T05:10:15.818-08:00Test<h3 id="siteSub">From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</h3><br /><p><b>Test</b> or <b>Tester</b> may refer to:</p> <ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_%28student_assessment%29" title="Test (student assessment)">Test (student assessment)</a>, an assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment" title="Experiment">Experiment</a>, part of the scientific method, to verify or falsify an expectation with an observation</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_%28Unix%29" title="Test (Unix)">test (Unix)</a>, a Unix command for evaluating conditional expressions</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_%28biology%29" title="Test (biology)">Test (biology)</a>, the shell of sea urchins and the shell of certain microorganisms</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEST_%28x86_instruction%29" title="TEST (x86 instruction)">TEST</a>, an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_assembly_language" title="X86 assembly language">x86 assembly language</a> instruction</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Test" title="River Test">River Test</a>, England</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Martin" title="Andrew Martin">Andrew Martin</a> or Test, a professional wrestler</li></ul><br /><h2><span class="mw-headline">People with the surname Tester</span></h2><br /><div class="notice metadata" id="disambig"><i>This page or section lists people with the surname <b>Tester</b>. If an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/:Test" title="Special:Whatlinkshere/:Test">internal link</a> for a specific person referred you to this disambiguation page, you may wish to add the given name(s) to that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28links%29" title="Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)">link</a>.</i></div> <ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Tester" title="Jon Tester">Jon Tester</a>, Democratic Junior Senator from Montana, USA</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Tester" title="Ralph Tester">Ralph Tester</a>, head of a section at British codebreaking station Bletchley Park</li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-31562547782412817722008-01-07T05:00:00.000-08:002008-01-07T05:02:36.205-08:00Florida Real EstateSelling Your Home <table class="contentpaneopen"> <tbody><tr> <td colspan="2" valign="top"> <p><span style="background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);">When selling your home, most people know of a relative or friend that is a licenced Realtor. In a sellers market buying & selling your home may not difficult, but in a buyers market you need someone that can truly help you sell your home. Our Agents market and networking your home to someone that may not live in your city or town, and looking to relocate from a different region of the country also. Coldwell Banker Referral service reachs out to other customers that may be moving to your location and looking for your home as well as local and regional marketing. Look for the sell edge contact us! </span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);">Look for help from ColdwellBanker professional Real Estate Agents. Concider it Sold!</span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <span class="article_seperator"> </span> <table class="contentpaneopen"> <tbody><tr> <td class="contentheading" width="100%"> Buying Your Home </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p><span style="background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);">If you are looking to move within your area or to somewhere unkown to you, we can help you! Are you looking to purchase you new home in a different location? Our friendy professional agents will show you homes that fit your needs so you save time and money. Your Coldwell Banker Agent will be their all along the way to hold your hand in moving to strange area. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);">Fill the out your contact information and your Referral agent can assit in information in your move. An Coldwell Banker agent will give you information is free of charge. So what are you waiting for? Fill out the contact us form and meet your first friend and professional in your new location. (<em>Your contact informaion is strictly used for Coldwell Banker in contacting a agent to help you. all information is concidered private and confidential.).</em></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><em>Source: http://meaford-ontario.com<br /></em></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-60662008735822085642008-01-07T04:56:00.000-08:002008-01-07T05:00:28.335-08:00Making a dry-laid stone walk<div id="main_left_container_left_col"> <div class="slide_shadow"> <div class="slide_container"> <img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/HomeDepot_Images/diy/232_01_01.PW_077_01.jpg" alt="" class="slide_1" /> <a href="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/imagePopUp.jsp?langId=-15&width=319&height=480&imgUrl=232_01_01.PW_077_01.jpg" title="Enlarge" onclick="TB_show(this.title, this.href, false); return false;"><img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/images/btn_enlarge.gif" alt="Enlarge Picture" class="btn_enlarge" /></a> </div> </div> </div> <div id="main_left_container_right_col"> <div class="step_header_number">Step 1</div> <div class="step_header_title">LAY OUT THE PATH</div> <div class="step_description">Lay out the boundaries and slope of the walk using batterboards, stakes, and mason’s line. Cut the sod along the edge of the walk with an edger and slip a spade under the sod. Press the handle down near the ground and remove the sod by kicking the back of the spade. Dig deeper, removing enough soil to accommodate a 6-inch base plus the thickness of an average stone.<br /><br /><div id="main_left_container_left_col"> <div class="slide_shadow"> <div class="slide_container"> <img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/HomeDepot_Images/diy/232_02_01.PW_077_02.jpg" alt="" class="slide_1" /> <a href="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/imagePopUp.jsp?langId=-15&width=319&height=480&imgUrl=232_02_01.PW_077_02.jpg" title="Enlarge" onclick="TB_show(this.title, this.href, false); return false;"><img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/images/btn_enlarge.gif" alt="Enlarge Picture" class="btn_enlarge" /></a> </div> </div> </div> <div id="main_left_container_right_col"> <div class="step_header_number">Step 2</div> <div class="step_header_title">FILL THE BED WITH GRAVEL AND SAND</div> <div class="step_description">Measure down from the mason’s line to make sure the surface follows the intended slop of the walk. Fill the excavated area with 2 inches of gravel, then tamp with a power tamper. Add another 2 inches and tamp again until you have 4 inches of tamped gravel. Cover with landscape fabric. Spread 2 inches of bedding sand over the landscape fabric. If you need more than one piece of landscape fabric, overlap the sheets 12 to 18 inches.<br /><br /><div id="main_left_container_left_col"> <div class="slide_shadow"> <div class="slide_container"> <img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/HomeDepot_Images/diy/232_03_01.PW_078_01.jpg" alt="" class="slide_1" /> <a href="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/imagePopUp.jsp?langId=-15&width=319&height=480&imgUrl=232_03_01.PW_078_01.jpg" title="Enlarge" onclick="TB_show(this.title, this.href, false); return false;"><img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/images/btn_enlarge.gif" alt="Enlarge Picture" class="btn_enlarge" /></a> </div> </div> </div> <div id="main_left_container_right_col"> <div class="step_header_number">Step 3</div> <div class="step_header_title">MAKE A TRIAL LAYOUT</div> <div class="step_description">Lay out the stones for the walk on the ground next to the excavation-this leaves the sand-and-gravel bed undisturbed while you cut and fit stones. A gap of ½ inch between stones is ideal. When you need to cut a stone, mark the cut with a carpenter’s pencil, making the cut as straight as possible.<br /><br /><div id="main_left_container_left_col"> <div class="slide_shadow"> <div class="slide_container"> <img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/HomeDepot_Images/diy/232_04_01.PW_078_02e695.jpg" alt="" class="slide_1" /> <a href="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/imagePopUp.jsp?langId=-15&width=319&height=480&imgUrl=232_04_01.PW_078_02e695.jpg" title="Enlarge" onclick="TB_show(this.title, this.href, false); return false;"><img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/images/btn_enlarge.gif" alt="Enlarge Picture" class="btn_enlarge" /></a> </div> </div> <div class="slide_shadow"> <div class="slide_container"> <img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/HomeDepot_Images/diy/232_04_02.PW_078_03.jpg" alt="" class="slide_1" /> <a href="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/imagePopUp.jsp?langId=-15&width=329&height=480&imgUrl=232_04_02.PW_078_03.jpg" title="Enlarge" onclick="TB_show(this.title, this.href, false); return false;"><img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/images/btn_enlarge.gif" alt="Enlarge Picture" class="btn_enlarge" /></a> </div> </div> </div> <div id="main_left_container_right_col"> <div class="step_header_number">Step 4</div> <div class="step_header_title">MAKE CUTS WITH A BRICK CHISEL</div> <div class="step_description">Put a brick chisel on the pencil line and strike it what a 3-pound sledgehammer. Score along the entire line this way. Then place the line directly above the edge of the piece of wood. Sever the piece with a single, solid blow. Place the stones in position on the sand-and-gravel bed. Embed each one in the sand by tapping it with a rubber mallet until it is flush with the adjacent ground.<br /><br /><div id="main_left_container_left_col"> <div class="slide_shadow"> <div class="slide_container"> <img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/HomeDepot_Images/diy/232_05_02.PW_078_05.jpg" alt="" class="slide_1" /> <a href="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/imagePopUp.jsp?langId=-15&width=319&height=480&imgUrl=232_05_02.PW_078_05.jpg" title="Enlarge" onclick="TB_show(this.title, this.href, false); return false;"><img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/images/btn_enlarge.gif" alt="Enlarge Picture" class="btn_enlarge" /></a> </div> </div> <div class="slide_shadow"> <div class="slide_container"> <img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/HomeDepot_Images/diy/232_05_01.PW_078_04.jpg" alt="" class="slide_1" /> <a href="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/imagePopUp.jsp?langId=-15&width=319&height=480&imgUrl=232_05_01.PW_078_04.jpg" title="Enlarge" onclick="TB_show(this.title, this.href, false); return false;"><img src="http://diy.homedepot.ca/diy/images/btn_enlarge.gif" alt="Enlarge Picture" class="btn_enlarge" /></a> </div> </div> </div> <div id="main_left_container_right_col"> <div class="step_header_number">Step 5</div> <div class="step_header_title">CHECK FOR FLAT</div> <div class="step_description">Stone walks are never perfectly flat, but check for high and low spots by placing a straight 2x4 across the length and width of the walk. Set a high stone with a tap of the mallet or by removing sand from beneath it. Add sand under the low stones. Once you’ve laid all the stones, sweep mason’s sand into the joints with a stiff brush or broom. Since you can’t use a power tamper on uneven surfaces such as natural stone, mist the surface with water. Continue adding sand and misting until the joints are filled to the level of the stones.<br /><br />Source: http://diy.homedepot.ca<br /></div> </div></div> </div></div> </div></div> </div></div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-73134996449305791132008-01-07T04:54:00.000-08:002008-01-07T04:56:04.612-08:00Dr. Phil -- Brit's Family Asked Me to See HerDr. Phil just appeared on CBS' "Early Show" this morning, and said that he went to see Britney Spears and her family's request.<br /><br />Here's what he said about his visit on Saturday morning: "I want to sent the record straight. I went to see Britney at the request of her family. I talked to Lynne, Jamie, and Brian, because they were frustrated that she wasn't going to be held for a longer time."<br /><br />Asked how he had come to be involved in the saga, Dr. Phil said, "Thursday night, the phone rang, it was Lynne, clearly she was very upset. Any parent would be. I was first contacted by her family a year ago, and had maintained a running dialogue for the last year or so."<br /><br />Source: http://www.tmz.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-81319295221399685502008-01-07T04:51:00.000-08:002008-01-07T04:54:02.824-08:00The Wal-Mart You Don't KnowThe giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?<br /><br /><strong>By:</strong> Charles Fishman <strong> | </strong><strong>Photographs By:</strong> Livia Corona<br /><br />A gallon-sized jar of whole pickles is something to behold. The jar is the size of a small aquarium. The fat green pickles, floating in swampy juice, look reptilian, their shapes exaggerated by the glass. It weighs 12 pounds, too big to carry with one hand. The gallon jar of pickles is a display of abundance and excess; it is entrancing, and also vaguely unsettling. This is the product that Wal-Mart fell in love with: Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles.<br /><br /><p>Wal-Mart priced it at $2.97--a year's supply of pickles for less than $3! "They were using it as a 'statement' item," says Pat Hunn, who calls himself the "mad scientist" of Vlasic's gallon jar. "Wal-Mart was putting it before consumers, saying, This represents what Wal-Mart's about. You can buy a stinkin' gallon of pickles for $2.97. And it's the nation's number-one brand."</p> <p>Therein lies the basic conundrum of doing business with the world's largest retailer. By selling a gallon of kosher dills for less than most grocers sell a quart, Wal-Mart may have provided a ser-vice for its customers. But what did it do for Vlasic? The pickle maker had spent decades convincing customers that they should pay a premium for its brand. Now Wal-Mart was practically giving them away. And the fevered buying spree that resulted distorted every aspect of Vlasic's operations, from farm field to factory to financial statement.</p> <p>Indeed, as Vlasic discovered, the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us "every day low prices." It's the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart.</p> <p>Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what</p> <p>number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. "Clearly," says Edward Fox, head of Southern Methodist University's J.C. Penney Center for Retailing Excellence, "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been." It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being.</p> <p>Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.</p> <p>Of course, U.S. companies have been moving jobs offshore for decades, long before Wal-Mart was a retailing power. But there is no question that the chain is helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China. Wal-Mart, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s trumpeted its claim to "Buy American," has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States.</p> <p>One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market. "One of the things that limits or slows the growth of imports is the cost of establishing connections and networks," says Paul Krugman, the Princeton University economist. "Wal-Mart is so big and so centralized that it can all at once hook Chinese and other suppliers into its digital system. So--wham!--you have a large switch to overseas sourcing in a period quicker than under the old rules of retailing."</p> <p>Steve Dobbins has been bearing the brunt of that switch. He's president and CEO of Carolina Mills, a 75-year-old North Carolina company that supplies thread, yarn, and textile finishing to apparel makers--half of which supply Wal-Mart. Carolina Mills grew steadily until 2000. But in the past three years, as its customers have gone either overseas or out of business, it has shrunk from 17 factories to 7, and from 2,600 employees to 1,200. Dobbins's customers have begun to face imported clothing sold so cheaply to Wal-Mart that they could not compete even if they paid their workers nothing.</p> <p>"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."</p> <blockquote class="pull"> The gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart became a devastating success, giving Vlasic strong sales and growth numbers--but slashing its profits by millions of dollars. </blockquote> <p>There is no question that Wal-Mart's relentless drive to squeeze out costs has benefited consumers. The giant retailer is at least partly responsible for the low rate of U.S. inflation, and a McKinsey & Co. study concluded that about 12% of the economy's productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s could be traced to Wal-Mart alone.</p> <p>There is also no question that doing business with Wal-Mart can give a supplier a fast, heady jolt of sales and market share. But that fix can come with long-term consequences for the health of a brand and a business. Vlasic, for example, wasn't looking to build its brand on a gallon of whole pickles. Pickle companies make money on "the cut," slicing cucumbers into spears and hamburger chips. "Cucumbers in the jar, you don't make a whole lot of money there," says Steve Young, a former vice president of grocery marketing for pickles at Vlasic, who has since left the company.</p> <p>At some point in the late 1990s, a Wal-Mart buyer saw Vlasic's gallon jar and started talking to Pat Hunn about it. Hunn, who has also since left Vlasic, was then head of Vlasic's Wal-Mart sales team, based in Dallas. The gallon intrigued the buyer. In sales tests, priced somewhere over $3, "the gallon sold like crazy," says Hunn, "surprising us all." The Wal-Mart buyer had a brainstorm: What would happen to the gallon if they offered it nationwide and got it below $3? Hunn was skeptical, but his job was to look for ways to sell pickles at Wal-Mart. Why not?</p> <p>And so Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles went into every Wal-Mart, some 3,000 stores, at $2.97, a price so low that Vlasic and Wal-Mart were making only a penny or two on a jar, if that. It was showcased on big pallets near the front of stores. It was an abundance of abundance. "It was selling 80 jars a week, on average, in every store," says Young. Doesn't sound like much, until you do the math: That's 240,000 gallons of pickles, just in gallon jars, just at Wal-Mart, every week. Whole fields of cucumbers were heading out the door.</p> <p>For Vlasic, the gallon jar of pickles became what might be called a devastating success. "Quickly, it started cannibalizing our non-Wal-Mart business," says Young. "We saw consumers who used to buy the spears and the chips in supermarkets buying the Wal-Mart gallons. They'd eat a quarter of a jar and throw the thing away when they got moldy. A family can't eat them fast enough."</p> <p>The gallon jar reshaped Vlasic's pickle business: It chewed up the profit margin of the business with Wal-Mart, and of pickles generally. Procurement had to scramble to find enough pickles to fill the gallons, but the volume gave Vlasic strong sales numbers, strong growth numbers, and a powerful place in the world of pickles at Wal-Mart. Which accounted for 30% of Vlasic's business. But the company's profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more, Young says--millions of dollars.</p> <p>The gallon was hoisting Vlasic and hurting it at the same time.</p> <p>Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat." Hunn recalls things a little differently, if just as ominously: "They said, 'We want the $2.97 gallon of pickles. If you don't do it, we'll see if someone else might.' I knew our competitors were saying to Wal-Mart, 'We'll do the $2.97 gallons if you give us your other business.' " Wal-Mart's business was so indispensable to Vlasic, and the gallon so central to the Wal-Mart relationship, that decisions about the future of the gallon were made at the CEO level.</p> <p>Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. "The Wal-Mart guy's response was classic," Young recalls. "He said, 'Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off.' " Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy--although the gallon jar of pickles, everyone agrees, wasn't a critical factor.</p> <p><span class="bold">By now, it is accepted wisdom</span> that Wal-Mart makes the companies it does business with more efficient and focused, leaner and faster. Wal-Mart itself is known for continuous improvement in its ability to handle, move, and track merchandise. It expects the same of its suppliers. But the ability to operate at peak efficiency only gets you in the door at Wal-Mart. Then the real demands start. The public image Wal-Mart projects may be as cheery as its yellow smiley-face mascot, but there is nothing genial about the process by which Wal-Mart gets its suppliers to provide tires and contact lenses, guns and underarm deodorant at every day low prices. Wal-Mart is legendary for forcing its suppliers to redesign everything from their packaging to their computer systems. It is also legendary for quite straightforwardly telling them what it will pay for their goods.</p> <blockquote class="pull"> "We are one of Wal-Mart's biggest suppliers, and they are our biggest customer, by far. We have a great relationship. That's all I can say. Are we done now?" </blockquote> <p>John Fitzgerald, a former vice president of Nabisco, remembers Wal-Mart's reaction to his company's plan to offer a 25-cent newspaper coupon for a large bag of Lifesavers in advance of Halloween. Wal-Mart told Nabisco to add up what it would spend on the promotion--for the newspaper ads, the coupons, and handling--and then just take that amount off the price instead. "That isn't necessarily good for the manufacturer," Fitzgerald says. "They need things that draw attention."</p> <p>It also is not unheard of for Wal-Mart to demand to examine the private financial records of a supplier, and to insist that its margins are too high and must be cut. And the smaller the supplier, one academic study shows, the greater the likelihood that it will be forced into damaging concessions. Melissa Berryhill, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, disagrees: "The fact is Wal-Mart, perhaps like no other retailer, seeks to establish collaborative and mutually beneficial relationships with our suppliers."</p> <p>For many suppliers, though, the only thing worse than doing business with Wal-Mart may be not doing business with Wal-Mart. Last year, 7.5 cents of every dollar spent in any store in the United States (other than auto-parts stores) went to the retailer. That means a contract with Wal-Mart can be critical even for the largest consumer-goods companies. Dial Corp., for example, does 28% of its business with Wal-Mart. If Dial lost that one account, it would have to double its sales to its next nine customers just to stay even. "Wal-Mart is the essential retailer, in a way no other retailer is," says Gib Carey, a partner at Bain & Co., who is leading a yearlong study of how to do business with Wal-Mart. "Our clients cannot grow without finding a way to be successful with Wal-Mart."</p> <p>Many companies and their executives frankly admit that supplying Wal-Mart is like getting into the company version of basic training with an implacable Army drill sergeant. The process may be unpleasant. But there can be some positive results.</p> <p>"Everyone from the forklift driver on up to me, the CEO, knew we had to deliver [to Wal-Mart] on time. Not 10 minutes late. And not 45 minutes early, either," says Robin Prever, who was CEO of Saratoga Beverage Group from 1992 to 2000, and made private-label water sold at Wal-Mart. "The message came through clearly: You have this 30-second delivery window. Either you're there, or you're out. With a customer like that, it changes your organization. For the better. It wakes everybody up. And all our customers benefited. We changed our whole approach to doing business."</p> <p>But you won't hear evenhanded stories like that from Wal-Mart, or from its current suppliers. Despite being a publicly traded company, Wal-Mart is intensely private. It declined to talk in detail about its relationships with its suppliers for this story. More strikingly, dozens of companies contacted declined to talk about even the basics of their business with Wal-Mart.</p> <p>Here, for example, is an executive at Dial: "We are one of Wal-Mart's biggest suppliers, and they are our biggest customer by far. We have a great relationship. That's all I can say. Are we done now?" Goaded a bit, the executive responds with an almost hysterical edge: "Are you meshuga? Why in the world would we talk about Wal-Mart? Ask me about anything else, we'll talk. But not Wal-Mart."</p> <p>No one wants to end up in what is known among Wal-Mart vendors as the "penalty box"--punished, or even excluded from the store shelves, for saying something that makes Wal-Mart unhappy. (The penalty box is normally reserved for vendors who don't meet performance benchmarks, not for those who talk to the press.)</p> <p>"You won't hear anything negative from most people," says Paul Kelly, founder of Silvermine Consulting Group, a company that helps businesses work more effectively with retailers. "It would be committing suicide. If Wal-Mart takes something the wrong way, it's like Saddam Hussein. You just don't want to piss them off."</p> <p>As a result, this story was reported in an unusual way: by speaking with dozens of people who have spent years selling to Wal-Mart, or consulting to companies that sell to Wal-Mart, but who no longer work for companies that do business with Wal-Mart. Unless otherwise noted, the companies involved in the events they described refused even to confirm or deny the basics of the events.</p> <p>To a person, all those interviewed credit Wal-Mart with a fundamental integrity in its dealings that's unusual in the world of consumer goods, retailing, and groceries. Wal-Mart does not cheat suppliers, it keeps its word, it pays its bills briskly. "They are tough people but very honest; they treat you honestly," says Peter Campanella, who ran the business that sold Corning kitchenware products, both at Corning and then at World Kitchen. "It was a joke to do business with most of their competitors. A fiasco."</p> <p>But Wal-Mart also clearly does not hesitate to use its power, magnifying the Darwinian forces already at work in modern global capitalism.</p> <blockquote class="pull"> Caught in the Wal-Mart squeeze, Huffy didn't just relinquish profits to keep its commitment to the retailer. It handed those profits to the competition. </blockquote> <p><span class="bold">What does the squeeze look like</span> at Wal-Mart? It is usually thoroughly rational, sometimes devastatingly so.</p> <p>John Mariotti is a veteran of the consumer-products world--he spent nine years as president of Huffy Bicycle Co., a division of Huffy Corp., and is now chairman of World Kitchen, the company that sells Oxo, Revere, Corning, and Ekco brand housewares.</p> <p>He could not be clearer on his opinion about Wal-Mart: It's a great company, and a great company to do business with. "Wal-Mart has done more good for America by several thousand orders of magnitude than they've done bad," Mariotti says. "They have raised the bar, and raised the bar for everybody."</p> <p>Mariotti describes one episode from Huffy's relationship with Wal-Mart. It's a tale he tells to illustrate an admiring point he makes about the retailer. "They demand you do what you say you are going to do." But it's also a classic example of the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't Wal-Mart squeeze. When Mariotti was at Huffy throughout the 1980s, the company sold a range of bikes to Wal-Mart, 20 or so models, in a spread of prices and profitability. It was a leading manufacturer of bikes in the United States, in places like Ponca City, Oklahoma; Celina, Ohio; and Farmington, Missouri.</p> <p>One year, Huffy had committed to supply Wal-Mart with an entry-level, thin-margin bike--as many as Wal-Mart needed. Sales of the low-end bike took off. "I woke up May 1"--the heart of the bike production cycle for the summer--"and I needed 900,000 bikes," he says. "My factories could only run 450,000." As it happened, that same year, Huffy's fancier, more-profitable bikes were doing well, too, at Wal-Mart and other places. Huffy found itself in a bind.</p> <p>With other retailers, perhaps, Mariotti might have sat down, renegotiated, tried to talk his way out of the corner. Not with Wal-Mart. "I made the deal up front with them," he says. "I knew how high was up. I was duty-bound to supply my customer." So he did something extraordinary. To free up production in order to make Wal-Mart's cheap bikes, he gave the designs for four of his higher-end, higher-margin products to rival manufacturers. "I conceded business to my competitors, because I just ran out of capacity," he says. Huffy didn't just relinquish profits to keep Wal-Mart happy--it handed those profits to its competition. "Wal-Mart didn't tell me what to do," Mariotti says. "They didn't have to." The retailer, he adds, "is tough as nails. But they give you a chance to compete. If you can't compete, that's your problem."</p> <p>In the years since Mariotti left Huffy, the bike maker's relationship with Wal-Mart has been vital (though Huffy Corp. has lost money in three out of the last five years). It is the number-three seller of bikes in the United States. And Wal-Mart is the number-one retailer of bikes. But here's one last statistic about bicycles: Roughly 98% are now imported from places such as China, Mexico, and Taiwan. Huffy made its last bike in the United States in 1999.</p> <p><span class="bold">As Mariotti says, Wal-Mart is tough</span> as nails. But not every supplier agrees that the toughness is always accompanied by fairness. The Lovable Company was founded in 1926 by the grandfather of Frank Garson II, who was Lovable's last president. It did business with Wal-Mart, Garson says, from the earliest days of founder Sam Walton's first store in Bentonville, Arkansas. Lovable made bras and lingerie, supplying retailers that also included Sears and Victoria's Secret. At one point, it was the sixth-largest maker of intimate apparel in the United States, with 700 employees in this country and another 2,000 at eight factories in Central America.</p> <p>Eventually Wal-Mart became Lovable's biggest customer. "Wal-Mart has a big pencil," says Garson. "They have such awesome purchasing power that they write their own ticket. If they don't like your prices, they'll go vertical and do it themselves--or they'll find someone that will meet their terms."</p> <p>In the summer of 1995, Garson asserts, Wal-Mart did just that. "They had awarded us a contract, and in their wisdom, they changed the terms so dramatically that they really reneged." Garson, still worried about litigation, won't provide details. "But when you lose a customer that size, they are irreplaceable."</p> <p>Lovable was already feeling intense cost pressure. Less than three years after Wal-Mart pulled its business, in its 72nd year, Lovable closed. "They leave a lot to be desired in the way they treat people," says Garson. "Their actions to pulverize people are unnecessary. Wal-Mart chewed us up and spit us out."</p> <p><span class="bold">Believe it or not,</span> American business has been through this before. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., the grocery-store chain, stood astride the U.S. market in the 1920s and 1930s with a dominance that has likely never been duplicated. At its peak, A&P had five times the number of stores Wal-Mart has now (although much smaller ones), and at one point, it owned 80% of the supermarket business. Some of the antipredatory-pricing laws in use today were inspired by A&P's attempts to muscle its suppliers.</p> <p>There is very little academic and statistical study of Wal-Mart's impact on the health of its suppliers and virtually nothing in the last decade, when Wal-Mart's size has increased by a factor of five. This while the retail industry has become much more concentrated. In large part, that's because it's nearly impossible to get meaningful data that would allow researchers to track the influence of Wal-Mart's business on companies over time. You'd need cooperation from the vendor companies or Wal-Mart or both--and neither Wal-Mart nor its suppliers are interested in sharing such intimate detail.</p> <p>Bain & Co., the global management consulting firm, is in the midst of a project that asks, How does a company have a healthy relationship with Wal-Mart? How do you avoid being sucked into the vortex? How do you maintain some standing, some leverage of your own?</p> <blockquote class="pull"> This July, in a mating that had the relieved air of lovers who had too long resisted embracing, Levi Strauss rolled blue jeans into every Wal-Mart in the United States. </blockquote> <p>Bain's first insights are obvious, if not easy. "Year after year," Carey, a partner at Bain & Co., says, "for any product that is the same as what you sold them last year, Wal-Mart will say, 'Here's the price you gave me last year. Here's what I can get a competitor's product for. Here's what I can get a private-label version for. I want to see a better value that I can bring to my shopper this year. Or else I'm going to use that shelf space differently.' "</p> <p>Carey has a friend in the umbrella business who learned that. One year, because of costs, he went to Wal-Mart and asked for a 5% price increase. "Wal-Mart said, 'We were expecting a 5% decrease. We're off by 10%. Go back and sharpen your pencil.' " The umbrella man scrimped and came back with a 2% increase. "They said, 'We'll go with a Chinese manufacturer'--and he was out entirely."</p> <p>The Wal-Mart squeeze means vendors have to be as relentless and as microscopic as Wal-Mart is at managing their own costs. They need, in fact, to turn themselves into shadow versions of Wal-Mart itself. "Wal-Mart won't necessarily say you have to reconfigure your distribution system," says Carey. "But companies recognize they are not going to maintain margins with growth in their Wal-Mart business without doing it."</p> <p>The way to avoid being trapped in a spiral of growing business and shrinking profits, says Carey, is to innovate. "You need to bring Wal-Mart new products--products consumers need. Because with those, Wal-Mart doesn't have benchmarks to drive you down in price. They don't have historical data, you don't have competitors, they haven't bid the products out to private-label makers. That's how you can have higher prices and higher margins."</p> <p>Reasonable advice, but not universally useful. There has been an explosion of "innovation" in toothbrushes and toothpastes in the past five years, for instance; but a pickle is a pickle is a pickle.</p> <p>Bain's other critical discovery is that consumers are often more loyal to product companies than to Wal-Mart. With strongly branded items people develop a preference for--things like toothpaste or laundry detergent--Wal-Mart rarely forces shoppers to switch to a second choice. It would simply punish itself by seeing sales fall, and it won't put up with that for long.</p> <p><span class="bold">But as Wal-Mart has grown in</span> market reach and clout, even manufacturers known for nurturing premium brands may find themselves overpowered. This July, in a mating that had the relieved air of lovers who had too long resisted embracing, Levi Strauss rolled blue jeans into every Wal-Mart doorway in the United States: 2,864 stores. Wal-Mart, seeking to expand its clothing business with more fashionable brands, promoted the clothes on its in-store TV network and with banners slipped over the security-tag detectors at exit doors.</p> <p>Levi's launch into Wal-Mart came the same summer the clothes maker celebrated its 150th birthday. For a century and a half, one of the most recognizable names in American commerce had survived without Wal-Mart. But in October 2002, when Levi Strauss and Wal-Mart announced their engagement, Levi was shrinking rapidly. The pressure on Levi goes back 25 years--well before Wal-Mart was an influence. Between 1981 and 1990, Levi closed 58 U.S. manufacturing plants, sending 25% of its sewing overseas.</p> <p>Sales for Levi peaked in 1996 at $7.1 billion. By last year, they had spiraled down six years in a row, to $4.1 billion; through the first six months of 2003, sales dropped another 3%. This one account--selling jeans to Wal-Mart--could almost instantly revive Levi.</p> <p>Last year, Wal-Mart sold more clothing than any other retailer in the country. It also sold more pairs of jeans than any other store. Wal-Mart's own inexpensive house brand of jeans, Faded Glory, is estimated to do $3 billion in sales a year, a house brand nearly the size of Levi Strauss. Perhaps most revealing in terms of Levi's strategic blunders: In 2002, half the jeans sold in the United States cost less than $20 a pair. That same year, Levi didn't offer jeans for less than $30.</p> <p>For much of the last decade, Levi couldn't have qualified to sell to Wal-Mart. Its computer systems were antiquated, and it was notorious for delivering clothes late to retailers. Levi admitted its on-time delivery rate was 65%. When it announced the deal with Wal-Mart last year, one fashion-industry analyst bluntly predicted Levi would simply fail to deliver the jeans.</p> <p>But Levi Strauss has taken to the Wal-Mart Way with the intensity of a near-death religious conversion--and Levi's executives were happy to talk about their experience getting ready to sell at Wal-Mart. One hundred people at Levi's headquarters are devoted to the new business; another 12 have set up in an office in Bentonville, near Wal-Mart's headquarters, where the company has hired a respected veteran Wal-Mart sales account manager.</p> <p>Getting ready for Wal-Mart has been like putting Levi on the Atkins diet. It has helped everything--customer focus, inventory management, speed to market. It has even helped other retailers that buy Levis, because Wal-Mart has forced the company to replenish stores within two days instead of Levi's previous five-day cycle.</p> <p>And so, Wal-Mart might rescue Levi Strauss. Except for one thing.</p> <p>Levi didn't actually have any clothes it could sell at Wal-Mart. Everything was too expensive. It had to develop a fresh line for mass retailers: the Levi Strauss Signature brand, featuring Levi Strauss's name on the back of the jeans.</p> <p>Two months after the launch, Levi basked in the honeymoon glow. Overall sales, after falling for the first six months of 2003, rose 6% in the third quarter; profits in the summer quarter nearly doubled. All, Levi's CEO said, because of Signature.</p> <blockquote class="pull"> "They are all very rational people. And they had a good point. Everyone was willing to pay more for a Master Lock. But how much more can they justify?" </blockquote> <p>But the low-end business isn't a business Levi is known for, or one it had been particularly interested in. It's also a business in which Levi will find itself competing with lean, experienced players such as VF and Faded Glory. Levi's makeover might so improve its performance with its non-Wal-Mart suppliers that its established business will thrive, too. It is just as likely that any gains will be offset by the competitive pressures already dissolving Levi's premium brands, and by the cannibalization of its own sales. "It's hard to see how this relationship will boost Levi's higher-end business," says Paul Farris, a professor at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. "It's easy to see how this will hurt the higher-end business."</p> <p>If Levi clothing is a runaway hit at Wal-Mart, that may indeed rescue Levi as a business. But what will have been rescued? The Signature line--it includes clothing for girls, boys, men, and women--is an odd departure for a company whose brand has long been an American icon. Some of the jeans have the look, the fingertip feel, of pricier Levis. But much of the clothing has the look and feel it must have, given its price (around $23 for adult pants): cheap. Cheap and disappointing to find labeled with Levi Strauss's name. And just five days before the cheery profit news, Levi had another announcement: It is closing its last two U.S. factories, both in San Antonio, and laying off more than 2,500 workers, or 21% of its workforce. A company that 22 years ago had 60 clothing plants in the United States--and that was known as one of the most socially reponsible corporations on the planet--will, by 2004, not make any clothes at all. It will just import them.</p> <p><span class="bold">In the end, of course, it is</span> we as shoppers who have the power, and who have given that power to Wal-Mart. Part of Wal-Mart's dominance, part of its insight, and part of its arrogance, is that it presumes to speak for American shoppers.</p> <p>If Wal-Mart doesn't like the pricing on something, says Andrew Whitman, who helped service Wal-Mart for years when he worked at General Foods and Kraft, they simply say, "At that price we no longer think it's a good value to our shopper. Therefore, we don't think we should carry it."</p> <p>Wal-Mart has also lulled shoppers into ignoring the difference between the price of something and the cost. Its unending focus on price underscores something that Americans are only starting to realize about globalization: Ever-cheaper prices have consequences. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: "We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world--yet we aren't willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions."</p> <p>Randall Larrimore, a former CEO of MasterBrand Industries, the parent company of Master Lock, understands that contradiction too well. For years, he says, as manufacturing costs in the United States rose, Master Lock was able to pass them along. But at some point in the 1990s, Asian manufacturers started producing locks for much less. "When the difference is $1, retailers like Wal-Mart would prefer to have the brand-name padlock or faucet or hammer," Larrimore says. "But as the spread becomes greater, when our padlock was $9, and the import was $6, then they can offer the consumer a real discount by carrying two lines. Ultimately, they may only carry one line."</p> <p>In January 1997, Master Lock announced that, after 75 years making locks in Milwaukee, it would begin importing more products from Asia. Not too long after, Master Lock opened a factory of its own in Nogales, Mexico. Today, it makes just 10% to 15% of its locks in Milwaukee--its 300 employees there mostly make parts that are sent to Nogales, where there are now 800 factory workers.</p> <p>Larrimore did the first manufacturing layoffs at Master Lock. He negotiated with Master Lock's unions himself. He went to Bentonville. "I loved dealing with Wal-Mart, with Home Depot," he says. "They are all very rational people. There wasn't a whole lot of room for negotiation. And they had a good point. Everyone was willing to pay more for a Master Lock. But how much more can they justify? If they can buy a lock that has arguably similar qual-ity, at a cheaper price, well, they can get their consumers a deal."</p> <p>It's Wal-Mart in the role of Adam Smith's invisible hand. And the Milwaukee employees of Master Lock who shopped at Wal-Mart to save money helped that hand shove their own jobs right to Nogales. Not consciously, not directly, but inevitably. "Do we as consumers appreciate what we're doing?" Larrimore asks. "I don't think so. But even if we do, I think we say, Here's a Master Lock for $9, here's another lock for $6--let the other guy pay $9."</p> <p class="footnote"> Charles Fishman (<a href="mailto:cnfish@mindspring.com">cnfish@mindspring.com</a>) is a senior writer at <cite>Fast Company</cite>. Andrew Moesel provided research assistance for this story.</p>Source: http://www.fastcompany.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-71062957623910427562008-01-07T04:49:00.000-08:002008-01-07T04:51:08.683-08:00Messy desk = ordered mind, expert says<span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica;font-size:85%;"><b>By CAROL SMITH<br /></b></span><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica;font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:-1;">SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST<br /><br /></span></span><p> Is a cluttered desk a sign of genius or just hopeless disorganization?</p><p> I had plenty of opportunity to ponder this question during a recent office move that involved packing multiple (I dare not say how many for fear the storage police will come after me) boxes of back files.</p><p> Now a certain Jay Brand has unwittingly come to my rescue and allowed me to save face among my colleagues who were able to fit all their office belongings into two allotted "hot files" for the move.</p><p> Brand, a former psychology professor, is now a "cognitive engineer" at office furniture giant Haworth Inc. in Holland, Mich.</p><p> He says, and I quote: "A clean desk isn't always the sign of a productive employee."</p><p> Phew.</p><p> "In fact, a clean desk can hinder worker efficiency."</p><p> I love this guy.</p><p> The premise is that people use their desk space as an extension of their minds.</p><p> "The human mind, specifically short-term memory, has a limited capacity," Brand said. "It has seven, plus or minus two, 'chunks' available for storing things.</p><p> "Since most people are doing seven things at once, they tax the capacity of their working memory almost immediately."</p><p> They need a place to "offload" some information from working memory into the environment.</p><p> Information placed into the environment this way is known as a "cognitive artifact."</p><p> "It expands a person's capacity to think," Brand said. "You're using the environment to think as well."</p><p> Companies that promote, or require, clean desk policies are in essence giving their workers "environmental lobotomies," he said.</p><p> "Essentially, you're required to destroy the context of your work every night and recreate it the next morning. It's wasted time."</p><p> Each time people clean their desks, they lose the embedded cues that their cognitive artifacts provide, Brand said. "Workers in such environments can sometimes feel like they spend more time getting organized each day than working on actual projects."</p><p> Brand himself confesses his work group -- the industrial design division at Haworth -- has a reputation for being difficult to clean up around. </p><p> Everyone has a different working style, he said. As long as people's piles mean something, they're useful.</p><p> People think differently. Some people lay out their projects left to right. Others use a top down method.</p><p> Piles may be organized by topic, chronologically, or some highly idiosyncratic system. Different strategies work for different people, Brand said. Using space to think, however, is not an excuse for being a pack rat, he said.</p><p> Rats.</p><p> "I don't advocate people be messy as an end in itself," he said. "You have to have some method to your madness."</p><p> Most people never use 80 percent of the stuff they file away, and 60 percent of the stuff on their desks.</p><p> Current projects tend to attract all kinds of paper. But once a project is finished, cull through the file, then put the rest in storage, Brand said.</p><p> Other tips include using multiple surfaces to layer information. Shelves can help separate information so ideas don't get lost.</p><p> Moving things around in the piles also helps refresh their significance, he said. "Post-it notes, pictures, magazine articles, lists and charts lose their meaning and become virtually invisible if left alone."</p><p> Also, keep your most important projects and priority items within your personal "strike zone."</p><p> Retailers have long known that people's attention is most often focused on items placed in view between their shoulders and their hips. Anything higher or lower is less likely to get noticed. You can apply the same strategy to the papers in your work environment.</p><p> The concept that my desk with its drifts of paper, and stacks of things I can't bear to toss may be an extension of my inner brain is a scary thought.</p><p> Then again, a clean desk is a blank slate.</p><p> And that's an even scarier one.</p><p>Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-66244421858360670082008-01-07T04:47:00.000-08:002008-01-07T04:49:07.370-08:00Craigslist historyCraigslist, an universal database arranged as both an advertisement service and discussion forums, is often considered the Internet equivalent of classified ads. Craigs list offers a wide range of services, goods, romance activities, events postings as well as advice.<br /><br />In 1995, the very first post on Craiglist was done. For the most part Craig Newmark did they vast majority of submission to the site himself. Most of the earlier postings to this site were in regards to social events and similar topics leaning more towards the Internet industry in the San Francisco area.<br /><br />It was not too long after craigslist.org got its start that word of mouth had caused this tremendous site to grow beyond the expectations of the founder Craig Newmark. Many people were at this time using the website for non-event postings. At this time visitors to the site were often trying to fill job positions. This seemed to be an excellent way for companies to reach the people that would best benefit the individual industries. This is how the category jobs became to have a permanent place on Craigslist.<br /><br />Soon after the website became a popular site, the founder decide it was time for him to be a full time addition to his website. The high demand for this particular classified ad grew into a website that was beyond all others that were found on the Internet With many daily visitors it was now time to enlist some help to keep this site up to date and as easily flowing as it could be. By the end of the first quarter in 2000, <b>Craigslist</b> now employed nine people.<br /><br />This popular websites employees were employed and ran this website from Craig Newmark's home in San Francisco. They were located on Cole Street. It has been stated that the reason Craigslist is so popular is due to the people that utilize the website are able to have a voice. Pretty much proving if the people are giving a voice in the industry it can rapidly grow into something spectacular. Offering honesty, integrity and a feeling of trustworthiness is the key factors in Craigslist. Take all of that and then add in an easy to use website, and viola. You have an excellent top ranking website, that everyone can enjoy.<br /><br />There was a higher demand for many new categories on the website. The viewers of Craigslist were by now growing even more. Looking for different services, it was now apparent that Craigslist was among the most popular website to find things. The popular website was in need of a domain name, this was when the site was registered as craigslist.org and craigslist.com. This was a preventative measure to ensure the name Craigs list could not be used for anything else. <h1>Craigslist awards and prices</h1> Since its start, Craigslis has received many awards:<br /><br />- NYPRESS: 2003, Best Local Website, by Manhattan Reader's Poll<br />- Webby: 2001, Best Community Site, by the Academy<br />- Webby: 2001, Best Community Site, by the People's Voice<br />- PC World : 2006, Best Product (3rd place) <h1>Craigslist controversies</h1>Most often the source of controversy arises when individuals post within the wrong categories. These posts are then flagged and on many occasions, certain individuals will post negatively about the poster. Many times affiliate marketers flood the board, which is strictly forbidden by Craigslist. Craigs lists's Terms of Use state: that no content content "that constitutes or contains 'affiliate marketing,'...that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if: posted in areas of the craigslist sites which are not designated for such purposes...[or] that includes links to commercial services or web sites, except as allowed in 'services.'" Many people use automated programs that post these advertisements for them. But please note that these posts are always removed and almost immediately! Be aware of this before trying to post content that isn't allowed on this site. Find more creative ways to market yourself and ensure that your posts stay active.<br /><br /> <h1>History of Craigslist expansion:</h1> 3/1995: SF Bay Area<br />6/2000: Boston<br />8/2000: Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC<br />10/2000: Sacramento<br />4/2001: Atlanta, Austin, Denver, Vancouver<br />10/2002: Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix<br />4/2003: Dallas, Detroit, Houston, London, Toronto<br />11/2003: Baltimore, Cleveland, Honolulu, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, St. Louis, Tampa Bay<br />1/2004: Montreal, Providence<br />2/2004: Nashville, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Columbus, Fresno, Hartford, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Norfolk, Orlando<br />9/2004: Albuquerque, Anchorage, Boise, Buffalo, Memphis, Salt Lake, Santa Barbara, Manchester, Edinburgh, Dublin, Melbourne, Sydney<br />11/2004: Albany, Amsterdam, Bangalore, Eugene, Inland Empire, Monterey Bay, Omaha, Orange County, Ottawa, Paris, Reno, San Antonio, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Spokane, Tokyo, Tucson, Tulsa<br />1/2005: Auckland, Bakersfield, Belfast, Berlin, Brisbane, Brussels, Burlington, Calgary, Cardiff, Des Moines, Edmonton, Glasgow, Jacksonville, Louisville, Richmond, Stockton, Winnipeg<br />2/2005: Birmingham UK, Buenos Aires, Columbia, Manila, Mexico City, Rome, Seoul<br />3/2005: Zurich<br />4/2005: Allentown, Barcelona, Birmingham AL, Cape Town, Delhi, Hong Kong, Lexington KY, Little Rock, Madison, Maine, Modesto, Mumbai, New Haven, New Jersey, Rochester, Shanghai, Stockholm, West Palm Beach, Wichita<br />6/2005: Adelaide AU, Ann Arbor, Asheville, Athens GR, Bangkok, Beijing, Champaign-Urbana, Charleston SC, Chico, Dayton, Delaware, El Paso, Florence IT, Fort Myers, Frankfurt, Geneva, Grand Rapids, Halifax, Harrisburg, Humboldt, Istanbul, Jackson MS, Jerusalem, Johanessburg, Lima Peru, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Munich, New Hampshire, Oklahoma City, Osaka, Perth AU, Prague, Puerto Rico, Redding, Rio De Janeiro, San Luis Obispo, Santiago, Saskatoon, Syracuse NY, Tallahassee, Tel Aviv, Tijuana, Vienna, Western Massachusetts, Victoria BC, West Virginia<br /> 7/2005: Costa Rica, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming<br />9/2005: Baton Rouge, Bristol UK, Chennai IN, Ithaca, Knoxville, Leeds UK, Liverpool UK, Mobile, Montgomery, Newcastle UK, Pensacola, Quebec, Savannah, Shreveport, Toledo<br />1/2006: Bellingham WA, Cairo Egypt, Chattanooga TN, Colorado Springs CO, Gainesville FL, Hamilton ON, Kitchener ON, Hyderabad India, Lansing MI, Medford OR, Oxford UK, Palm Springs CA, Santa Fe NM, Taipei China, Ventura CA<br />6/2006: springfield MO, columbia MO, rockford IL, peoria IL, springfield IL, quad cities IL/IA, fort wayne IN, evansville IN, south bend IN, bloomington IN, gulfport-biloxi MS, huntsville AL, salem OR, bend OR, london ON, windsor ON, fort lauderdale FL, sarasota FL, daytona beach FL, cape cod MA, worcester MA, green bay WI, eau claire WI, appleton-oshkosh WI, flagstaff AZ, yakima WA, utica NY, binghamton NY, hudson valley NY, long island NY, akron-canton OH, youngstown OH, greenville SC, myrtle beach SC, duluth MN, augusta GA, macon GA, athens GA, flint MI, saginaw MI, kalamazoo MI, upper peninsula MI, mcallen TX, beaumont TX, corpus christi TX, brownsville TX, lubbock TX, odessa TX, amarillo TX, waco TX, laredo TX, winston-salem NC, fayetteville NC, wilmington NC, erie PA, scranton PA, penn state PA, reading PA, lancaster PA, topeka KS, new london CT, lincoln NE, lafayette LA, lake charles LA, merced CA, south jersey NJ, fort collins CO, roanoke VA, charlottesville VA, blacksburg VA, provo UT, fayetteville AR, rocky mountains, micronesia, helsinki FI, warsaw PL, oslo NO, naples IT, jakarta ID, marseilles FR, kolkata IN, budapest HU, caracas VE, hamburg DE, pakistan, bangladesh, beirut LB, malaysia, panama, caribbean, portugal, christchurch NZ, wellington NZ, durban ZA, prince edward island, newfoundland, cote d'azur<br /><br />Source: http://craigslistinfo.infoUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-11148388265834185962008-01-07T04:30:00.000-08:002008-01-07T04:47:01.562-08:00Canada's labels slam proposed digital 'tax'By Robert Thompson<br /><br />TORONTO (Billboard) - A revolutionary plan that would effectively legitimize file-sharing here has been slammed as "a pipe dream" by Canadian labels.<br /><br /><p>The Songwriters Assn. of Canada proposes to allow domestic consumers access to all recorded music available online in return for adding a $5 Canadian ($4.96) monthly fee to every wireless and Internet account in the country.</p> <p>The SAC claims that the proposal, which has been presented to labels' bodies the Canadian Record Industry Assn. (CRIA) and Canadian Independent Record Production Assn. as well as publishers' groups, would raise approximately $1 billion Canadian ($993 million) annually. Although the SAC does not detail how revenue would be collected and distributed, it says it would go to artists, labels and publishers.</p> <p>The idea doesn't strike a chord with everyone. The SAC proposal "would signal the death of paid music services in Canada," said Alistair Mitchell, CEO of Canadian music service Puretracks. "It would be saying we're just giving up on developing new models. The concept is so flawed, I don't know where to start."</p> <p>"This proposal is incredibly well thought out and well constructed," acting SAC president Eddie Schwartz said. Producer/songwriter Schwartz, whose songs have been performed by Joe Cocker, Pat Benatar and Donna Summer, says the scheme would "allow people to gain access to the entire repertoire of Western music" for only $60 Canadian per year.</p> <p>That, he added, "amounts to $0.16 ($0.159) per day. (Which) seems like a pretty good deal." Schwartz said it's unlikely that users with both a wireless phone and an Internet account would have to pay twice for access.</p> <p>MANY HURDLES TO CLEAR</p> <p>The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Assn. estimates that Canada had 18.5 million wireless phone users and 7 million residential Internet users at the end of 2006. In 2006, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the trade value of recorded music fell 9.1 percent to $598.7 million Canadian ($529.8 million); CDs accounted for 85 percent of that total.</p> <p>CRIA president Graham Henderson said he has discussed the plan with Schwartz, but his organization is reluctant to become involved. "We don't want to pursue what amounts to a pipe dream that is presented as a quick fix," he said. "We'll lose focus on the real issues that will help us resolve the industry's problems."</p> <p>Schwartz said he has received positive feedback from consumer groups. But he noted that the plan would require clearance from the Copyright Board of Canada, and the SAC has not yet taken the concept to the regulatory body.</p> <p>The SAC also has yet to present its proposal to Canadian Internet service providers, although some are dismissive of the plan.</p> <p>"It appears (the SAC) would ask wireless carriers and ISPs to collect this surcharge on their behalf," said a spokesman for Bell Canada, one of the country's largest telecommunications companies and the majority owner of Puretracks. "(That) would not go over well with our client base, especially with the large number already signed up for our (legal) mobile and online music services."</p> <p>The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2004 that ISPs are not responsible for the actions of clients using their Internet services. One senior source at a Canadian ISP said, "ISPs are not required to -- nor would they -- police this kind of usage. Nor would they charge, collect and remit what is in essence a tax."</p> <p>However, the proposal has received support from the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, a group of 187 acts, including the Barenaked Ladies and Avril Lavigne.</p> <p>Artist Andrew Cash described the SAC suggestion in a statement on behalf of the CMCC as "the first progressive proposal we've seen in Canada to address file-sharing."</p> <p>Reuters/Billboard</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-33646012721257683752008-01-03T07:08:00.001-08:002008-01-03T07:08:54.345-08:00Your Tube, Whose Dime?<span style="text-transform: uppercase; float: left;">New York - </span><p>The Web lets users watch whatever they want, whenever they want to watch it. So what do they want to see? A home-made <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XxI-hvPRRA&feature=Views&page=1&t=a&f=b">video</a> of two boys lip-synching along to the Pokémon television theme song. Internet video site YouTube has streamed the video more than 9.5 million times in the last four months, making it the site's most-watched movie. </p><p>Startup of the moment YouTube, which garnered 12.9 million unique visitors in March, doesn't care what viewers watch, as long as they keep tuning in. Making money is another matter: The site, which has raised $11.5 million in venture capital in the last year, didn't see a penny in revenue until March, when they cautiously began selling ads. Meanwhile the site's bandwidth costs, which increase every time a visitor clicks on a video, may be approaching $1 million a month--much of which goes to provider Limelight Networks. </p><p>Internet optimists predict that online video, long-rumored to be the next big thing, is finally taking off: IDC estimates that video generated $230 million in revenue in 2005 but will jump to $1.7 billion by 2010. In the meantime, the best play in Internet video may not be the companies that show off the clips, but the ones who deliver them to users' PCs.</p><p>The content-delivery business may be a $500 million a year business--twice the value of Internet video advertising and users fees--and is growing 25% per year, IDC estimates. It is dominated by big, publicly traded hosting providers such as <b>Akamai Technologies</b> (nasdaq: <a href="http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=AKAM" class="maintkrlink">AKAM</a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=AKAM"> news </a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=AKAM"> people </a>) and <b>AT&T</b> (nyse: <a href="http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=T" class="maintkrlink">T</a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=T"> news </a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=T"> people </a>), as well as boutique shops such as Limelight, which also serves <strong>News Corp.</strong>'s (nyse: <a href="http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=NWS" class="maintkrlink">NWS</a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=NWS"> news </a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=NWS"> people </a>) MySpace and <strong>Microsoft</strong>'s (nasdaq: <a href="http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=MSFT" class="maintkrlink">MSFT</a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=MSFT"> news </a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=MSFT"> people </a>) Xbox Live videogame service. Some of the biggest portals, like <b>Yahoo!</b> (nasdaq: <a href="http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=YHOO" class="maintkrlink">YHOO</a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=YHOO"> news </a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=YHOO"> people </a>) and <b>Google</b> (nasdaq: <a href="http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=GOOG" class="maintkrlink">GOOG</a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=GOOG"> news </a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=GOOG"> people </a>), have built up their own content-delivery networks and don't need to pay a third party for many services.</p><p>The bandwidth companies typically charge video sites up to a penny per minute of video streamed. Big players who buy in bulk get discounted rates: Industry observers estimate that YouTube, which is streaming 40 million videos and 200 terabytes of data per day, may be paying between a tenth of a cent and half a cent per minute. Neither YouTube nor Limelight would comment on their pricing.</p><p>And while privately held Limelight doesn't open its books, Akamai this week posted earnings of $11.5 million in on revenue of $91 million for the first quarter of this year; the company's stock has tripled in the last year. IDC analyst Rona Shuchat says Akamai may control half of the content-delivery market.</p><p>Some upstarts in the video Web market are betting on a different content-delivery model. Instead of paying for professional hosting, they're hoping people will open their digital subscriber lines and cable modems to transfer data between users instead of sending everything from a central server. This "peer to peer" setup has been successful for online phone service <strong>Skype</strong>, purchased last year by <b>eBay</b> (nasdaq: <a href="http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=EBAY" class="maintkrlink">EBAY</a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=EBAY"> news </a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=EBAY"> people </a>), and underground file-sharing networks using software called BitTorrent, which some say is responsible for one-third of all Internet traffic.</p><p> <strong>Gilles BianRosa</strong>, chief executive of BitTorrent-software maker Azureus, says peer-to-peer networking could save his company 95% in hosting costs when it launches a community-based video site in the next few months. Other companies are already onboard: <strong>WurldMedia</strong> Chief Executive <strong>Gregory Kerber</strong>, whose company will start serving movies and television shows for <strong>General Electric</strong>'s (nyse: <a href="http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=GE" class="maintkrlink">GE</a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=GE"> news </a> - <a href="http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=GE"> people </a>)'s NBC-Universal this year, says the peer-to-peer model is the next step in Web video evolution. "We can sell to the consumer at the same price point that they're used to, but we'll be giving them a higher-quality product that's more versatile," Kerber says.</p><p>But peer-to-peer transfers can be flaky. They require willing participation and good behavior from users, including access to their upstream bandwidth that most broadband service providers already cap tightly. As a result, some video-delivery specialists such as <strong>Solid State Networks</strong> are hedging their bets with a mix of peer-to-peer and traditional content-delivery. Solid State Chief Executive <strong>Rick Buonincontri</strong> eyeballs cost savings around 50% over standard hosting while maintaining a professional service-quality level. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-83189529639223615712008-01-03T07:06:00.000-08:002008-01-03T07:07:25.399-08:00YouTube Stars - Video Blogs<span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:Small;"><span id="lblIntro"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Comic Sans MS;font-size:100%;"> <p> <b>This is the hottest thing on the Internet!</b> First it was e-mail. Next came chat rooms. Then there was Instant Messaging, MySpace and blogs of all shapes and sizes. Now, the hottest thing for socializing on the net is video blogging. Sites like YouTube.com are making Stars out of ordinary cyberspace citizens. Then again, the people you will meet in this article have probably always had a certain flair and charm and talent. But now they can show off to the entire world! </p> <p> <strong>This web page</strong> will introduce you to the Stars of YouTube. You'll be entertained by their video performances! Further down on this page, we present an article called, <a href="http://www.bkserv.net/LFC/article.aspx?ArticleID=74#Article">"YouTube Stars - Creating Reality TV?"</a>. The article is written by a man who describes the kinds of videos that people are creating and uploading to YouTube. Learn which videos and video personalities he has found to be entertaining and even occasionally uplifting. </p> <p> After you have read our article, follow the <strong>Related Links</strong> to see the videos discussed in the article. We have embedded two short clips from the amazing illusionist known as MadV right in this page. For more information about blogging and making videos on your computer, <strong>please buy a few</strong> of the Books we recommend below. <strong>Remember the thrill of sending and receiving your first emails? Well, the Internet is fun once again; check it out for yourself!</strong> </p> </span></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-80117613861009719972008-01-03T07:03:00.000-08:002008-01-03T07:05:25.172-08:00Are your e-communications safe?<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica;font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.beststuff.com/images/articles/mcollier.jpg"><img src="http://www.beststuff.com/images/thumbs/mcollier2.jpg" alt="Marsha Collier " align="left" border="1" height="75" width="75" /></a> In a day when it seems that the entire world has access to all of our personal information, Newsweek arrives with a blasting cover "Beating Big Brother," and as a techie-lite, I'm always interested in how big brother is peeking into my business. After reading the article, it seems there is a whole world of cyber-snoops out there, and even if it's just for kicks, these folks care about our online communications.<br />After some research, I find that not even faxes are secure. Many times we receive a fax that is not meant for us. A fax number can be entered incorrectly, and even if the person sending the fax types in the receiver's correct fax number, a disturbance in the telephone network can mysteriously cause a fax to go awry and deliver it to an unintended machine. In large offices confidential faxes come over the lines and lay open to whoever gets to the fax machine first. Worse that that, and something we rarely think of, is interception. Fax lines can be bugged and all incoming and outgoing faxes can be read. Intercepting a fax is a fairly simple process, it's no problem for home equipment to scan satellite traffic and pick up fax messages from around the world. There are professional grade interception units that can capture up to 150 faxes from a 6000 line satellite.<br /><br />We worry about the security of our email, but sending documents by email precludes the need to retype or scan a document for additions and corrections. (Which can be a rather tenuous process when faced with large documents or contracts).<br /><br />So email security is a real problem. As an email wends its way over the Internet it stops at many computers designed to direct the mail to its intended address. Anyone with access to these servers can easily scan all the email that passes through their systems; they can use software that scans for keywords, credit card numbers, names or email addresses. Emails that match their search can be saved and read without the sender or receiver being aware of the breach in security.<br /><br />There is a publicly available type of software, very popular with teenage hackers, nicknamed "sniffer" that will permit users to do the very same thing. A search on Yahoo for "sniffer software" yields about 24,600 web pages - you obviously don't have to be a rocket scientist to get access to this software.<br /><br />What can possibly save us from all these cyber-snoops and bad deed doers? Encryption of our files and emails seems to be the only answer. The familiar 128 bit encryption versions of Internet Explorer or Netscape allow us to open certain secure websites, and this technology can also be applied to files and email.<br /><br />Bit encryption is achieved with mathematical algorithms that use a "key" to encyrpt and decrypt data into unreadable digital code and back again. The average key, 56 bit, is not as strong as the 128 bit - which isn't as uncrackable as the 256 bit key.<br /><br />To illustrate the complexity of these keys, a 56-bit key creates 72 quadrillion possible combinations. The 128 bit key would be 4.7 sextillion (4,700,000,000,000,000,000,000) times more difficult to crack than a 56-bit key. Your home computer has the power to crack a 56 bit key, but it stops at the 128 bit.<br /><br /><b>Encryption for everyone</b><br />Cryptography has traditionally been a James Bond type of thing to many of us, but as most of Bond's gadgets, encryption is available at a reasonable price. Cypherus, a new utility for encrypting documents, has a friendly changeable skin and a drag-and-drop interface. It gives everyday users the power of encryption - once reserved exclusively for governmental and military agencies - as a tool to safeguard sensitive data and communications.<br /><br />The software can encrypt individual e-mail messages. Email recipients who don't have the software installed will receive the message's "key" as an executable file, and a password must be agreed upon prior to sending the email.<br /><br />To prevent prying eyes from examining files on your computer, you can encrypt your files with a single mouse-click. Cypherus has the power to secure single files or groups using "Normal, High, Paranoid, and Custom" encryption levels that top out at 448-bit. Their "Shredder" permanently removes deleted files by physically overwriting file information on the hard drive. This feature can be conveniently automated to render deleted files unreadable by anyone.<br /><br />Cypherus encryption is so strong that it the U. S. Government considers it a munition and they are therefore prevented from exporting their technology to "the big 7" countries: Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan.<br /><br />But there are limits to the Cypherus protection. The illustrious attorney, F. Lee Bailey, spokesman for APMSafe (the developer of Cypherus, quips, "If the CIA wants to see what's on your disk, they will get in, but hopefully that won't be a problem for the people who are paying $50 for this particular program."<br /><br />All this for only $49.95. You can buy this little bit of magic at direct at <a href="http://www.cypherus.com/">www.cypherus.com</a>. <br /><br />By <a href="http://www.beststuff.com/articles/20000804125144/">Marsha Collier</a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-22453922494149820942008-01-03T07:02:00.000-08:002008-01-03T07:03:42.449-08:00eBay Resources for Buying and Selling OnlineFrom Barbara Crews,<br /><br /><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">The ABCs of eBay: </span><br />Are you still hesitant about buying on eBay? Read my step-by-step tutorial on how to register, bid, buy and search on eBay. Once you take that first step, it's easy. Maybe even too easy! <ul><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/library/articles/blebayindex.htm">The ABCs of eBay</a></li></ul></div><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">FAQ: Auction Terms: </span><br />Some of the terms can be a bit confusing at times. Just what does a Buyer's Premium mean or what about a Dutch Auction? Don't be surprised by extra fees after an auction ends, learn what these terms mean before bidding. <ul><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/od/termsandfaq/a/auctionterms.htm"> Auction Terms and Descriptions</a></li></ul></div><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">eBay Proxy Bidding: </span><br />People often compain about being outbid by only fifty cents or a dollar, regretting that they did not bid a little more to win the auction. But that doesn't always work. <ul><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/od/ebay/a/ebayproxybids.htm"> Proxy Bidding Explained</a></li></ul></div><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">Quick Steps to Selling on eBay: </span><br />A brief how-to on selling on eBay that will give you an idea of just what steps are needed to list your stuff for sale. <ul><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/cs/newsresources/ht/blhtsell.htm"> How-to Sell on eBay</a></li></ul></div><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">Ten Ways to Sabotage Your eBay Listings: </span><br />It's time to start selling some of your extra collectibles, it's easy right? Just stick a few pictures up on eBay and wait for the money to roll in. Wrong. <ul><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/od/auctionsandshopping1/tp/sabotageebay.htm">Dos and Don'ts for eBay Listings</a></li></ul></div><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">Sniping: </span><br />If you're not an auction sniper, you probably really dislike sniping and would like to tar and feather the last guy that took a win away from you. But just what is sniping and how does it work? <ul><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/library/articles/blsniping.htm">Are You a Sniper?</a></li></ul></div><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">Frauds and Scams: </span><br />Do not ever give out personal information in replying via an email about your Paypal or eBay account. Also never log-in to eBay via an email you've received.<b> Never.</b><p> Find out more about the way folks are trying to swindle us. </p><ul><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/od/ebay/a/ebayemailscams.htm">eBay Mail Scams</a></li><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/od/ebay/a/ebayemailscams_2.htm">Paypal Fraud eMails</a></li><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/library/weekly/aa110702a.htm">Beware of Escrow Scams</a></li></ul></div><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">Fun Stuff: </span><br /><ul><li> Do you buy on eBay? Why not? Take the poll or see how others voted on <br /><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/library/polls/blpollebay1003.htm">Yes, I Buy Collectibles on eBay</a>.</li><li> Rare? Hard-to-Find? Just what are sellers trying to sell us?<br /> <a href="http://collectibles.about.com/library/weekly/aa081601a.htm">Humorous Look at Standardizing Auction Terms</a> </li><li> Would you believe four categories?<br /><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/od/auctionsandshopping1/a/EBay042997.htm">Flashback -- eBay, April 1997</a> </li><li>Since you can find collectors for everything, it shouldn't be surprising to find people that collect eBay logo items!<br /><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/cs/miscellaneous/a/blebayorama.htm"> eBay-O-Rama</a></li></ul></div><div class="pDsc"><span class="pCo">eBay's Collecting Survey: </span><br />Are you an intentional collector or unintentional collector? Find out how you fit into this eBay survey. <ul><li><a href="http://collectibles.about.com/library/articles/aaebaysurvey.htm">eBay Commissioned Survey</a></li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-63839478717399637332007-12-31T11:08:00.000-08:002008-01-03T06:58:43.649-08:00"Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace"<p><strong>"Identity Production in a Networked Culture: <span class="body"><strong>Why Youth Heart MySpace</strong></span>" </strong></p> <p>danah boyd<br /> American Association for the Advancement of Science<br />February 19, 2006</p> <p><span class="style2">Citation:</span> boyd, danah. 2006. "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace." <em>American Association for the Advancement of Science</em>, St. Louis, MO. February 19. </p> <p><em><strong>[This is a rough, unedited crib of the actual talk.]</strong></em></p> <p><em>Much appreciation to the Macarthur Foundation for funding this research and to the rest of the <a href="http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/digitalyouth/">Digital Youth </a> team for guidance and insight. </em></p> <p><em>If you have feedback about this talk/essay (especially if you think i'm wrong), write me: zephoria@zephoria.org </em></p> <p><em>This crib has been translated to <a href="http://www.danah.org/papers/AAAS2006-French.pdf">French</a> thanks to Laurence Allard. </em></p> <p><strong>Introduction:</strong></p> <p>I want to talk with you today about how teenagers are using a website called MySpace.com. I will briefly describe the site and then discuss how youth use it for identity production and socialization in contemporary American society. </p> <p>I have been following MySpace since its launch in 2003. Initially, it was the home to 20-somethings interested in indie music in Los Angeles. Today, you will be hard pressed to find an American teenager who does not know about the site, regardless of whether or not they participate. Over 50 million accounts have been created and the majority of participants are what would be labeled youth - ages 14-24. MySpace has more pageviews per day than any site on the web except Yahoo! (yes, more than Google or MSN). </p> <p>Many of you may have heard about MySpace, most likely due to moral panic brought on by the media's coverage of the potential predators and bullying. There is no doubt that the potential is there, but there are more articles on predators on MySpace than there have been reported predators online. Furthermore, bullying is a practice that capitalizes on any available medium. Moral panics are a common reaction to teenagers when they engage in practices not understood by adult culture. There were moral panics over rock&roll, television, jazz and even reading novels in the early 1800s [1]. The media, typically run by the parent generation, capitalizes on and spreads the fear with little regard for data or actual implications. Examples are made out of delinquent youth, showing how the object of fear ruined them in some way or other. The message is clear - if you don't protect your kids from this evil, they too will suffer great harm to their minds, bodies or morals.</p> <p>There _are_ potential risks on MySpace but it is important not to exaggerate them. The risks are not why youth are flocking to the site. To them, the benefits for socialization outweigh the potential harm. For this reason, i want to ask you to put your fears aside for the duration of this presentation and try to see the values of MySpace for youth. What they are doing is really fascinating.<br /></p> <p><strong>What is MySpace: </strong></p> <p>So what is MySpace?</p> <p>MySpace is a social network site. In structure, MySpace is not particularly unique. The site is a hodgepodge of features previously surfaced by sites like Friendster, Hot or Not, Xanga, Rate My Teacher, etc. At the core are profiles that are connected by links to friends on the system. Profiles are personalized to express an individual's interests and tastes, thoughts of the day and values. Music, photos and video help users make their profile more appealing. </p> <p>The friend network allows people to link to their friends and people can traverse the network through these profiles. An individual's "Top 8" friends are displayed on the front page of their profile; all of the rest appear on a separate page. Bands, movie stars, and other media creators have profiles within the system and fans can friend them as well. People can comment on each others' profiles or photos and these are typically displayed publicly.</p> <p>Originally, the site was 18+ and all data was public. Over time, the age limit dropped to 16 and then, later, to 14. The youngest users are given the option to make their profiles visible to friends-only and they do not appear in searches. </p> <p>When someone starts an account, they are given an initial friend - Tom Anderson, one of the founders of MySpace. By surfing the site, they find and add additional friends. Once on MySpace, most time is spent modifying one's own profile, uploading photos, sending messages, checking out friends' profiles and commenting on them. Checking messages and getting comments is what brings people back to MySpace every day. </p> <p>When MySpace was initially introduced, skeptics thought that it would be just another fad because previous sites like Friendster had risen and crashed. Unlike the 20-somethings who invaded Friendster, the teens have more reason to participate in profile creation and public commentary. Furthermore, MySpace's messaging is better suited for youths' asynchronous messaging needs. They can send messages directly from friends' profiles and check whether or not their friends have logged in and received their email. Unlike adults, youth are not invested in email; their primary peer-to-peer communication occurs synchronously over IM. Their use of MySpace is complementing that practice.</p> <p>Many teens access MySpace at least once a day or whenever computer access is possible. Teens that have a computer at home keep MySpace opened while they are doing homework or talking on instant messenger. In schools where it is not banned or blocked, teens check MySpace during passing period, lunch, study hall and before/after school. This is particularly important for teens who don't have computer access at home. For most teens, it is simply a part of everyday life - they are there because their friends are there and they are there to hang out with those friends. Of course, its ubiquitousness does not mean that everyone thinks that it is cool. Many teens complain that the site is lame, noting that they have better things to do. Yet, even those teens have an account which they check regularly because it's the only way to keep up with the Jones's. </p> <p>Of course, not all teens are using the site, either because they refuse to participate in the teen fad or because they have been banned from participating. Such non-conformity is typical of all teen practices.</p> <p>With this framework in mind, i want to address three issues related to MySpace: identity production, hanging out and digital publics.<br /></p> <p><strong>Profiles:</strong></p> <p>Every day, we dress ourselves in a set of clothes that conveys something about our identity - what we do for a living, how we fit into the socio-economic class hierarchy, what our interests are, etc. This is identity production. Around middle school, American teens begin actively engaging in identity production as they turn from their parents to their peers as their primary influencers and group dynamics take hold.</p> <p>Youth look to older teens and the media to get cues about what to wear, how to act, and what's cool. Most teens are concerned with resolving how they perceive themselves with how they are perceived. To learn this requires trying out different performances, receiving feedback from peers and figuring out how to modify fashion, body posture and language to better give off the intended impression. These practices are critical to socialization, particularly for youth beginning to engage with the broader social world.</p> <p>Because the teenage years are a liminal period between childhood and adulthood, teens are often waffling between those identities, misbehaving like kids while trying to show their maturity in order to gain rights. Participating in distinctly adult practices is part of exploring growing up. Both adults and the media remind us that vices like sexual interactions, smoking and drinking are meant for adults only, only making them more appealing. More importantly, through age restrictions, our culture signals that being associated with these vices is equal to maturity. </p> <p>The dynamics of identity production play out visibly on MySpace. Profiles are digital bodies, public displays of identity where people can explore impression management [2]. Because the digital world requires people to write themselves into being [3], profiles provide an opportunity to craft the intended expression through language, imagery and media. Explicit reactions to their online presence offers valuable feedback. The goal is to look cool and receive peer validation. Of course, because imagery can be staged, it is often difficult to tell if photos are a representation of behaviors or a re-presentation of them.</p> <p>On MySpace, comments provide a channel for feedback and not surprisingly, teens relish comments. Of course, getting a comment is not such a haphazard affair. Friends are _expected_ to comment as a sign of their affection. Furthermore, a comment to a friend's profile or photo is intended to be reciprocated. It is also not uncommon to hear teens request comments from each other in other social settings or on the bulletin boards. In MySpace, comments are a form of cultural currency. </p> <p>For those seeking attention, writing comments and being visible on popular people's pages is very important and this can be a motivation to comment on others' profiles. Of course, profile owners have the ability to reject comments and Tom rejects most of them. Some people literally spam their network with comments. Last week, there were "Valentine's cards" that people made and added to the profiles of all of their friends via comments. People advertise events through mass comments. Some comments are also meant to be passed on, creating virus like memes. </p> <p>The rules of friending are also very important. It is important to be connected to all of your friends, your idols and the people you respect. Attention-seekers and musicians often seek to be friended by as many people as possible, but most people are concerned with only those that they know or think are cool. Of course, a link does not necessarily mean a relationship or even an interest in getting to know the person. "Thanks for the add" is a common comment that people write in reaction to being friended by interesting people.</p> <p>While these dynamics may not seem particularly important, they are essential to youth because they are rooted in the ways in which youth jockey for social status and deal with popularity. Adults often dismiss the significance of popularity dynamics because, looking back, it seems unimportant. Yet, it is how we all learned the rules of social life, how we learned about status, respect, gossip and trust. Status games teach us this.<br /></p> <p><strong>Hanging Out: </strong></p> <p>So what exactly are teens _doing_ on MySpace? Simple: they're hanging out. Of course, ask any teen what they're _doing_ with their friends in general; they'll most likely shrug their shoulders and respond nonchalantly with "just hanging out." Although adults often perceive hanging out to be wasted time, it is how youth get socialized into peer groups. Hanging out amongst friends allows teens to build relationships and stay connected. Much of what is shared between youth is culture - fashion, music, media. The rest is simply presence. This is important in the development of a social worldview. </p> <p>For many teens, hanging out has moved online. Teens chat on IM for hours, mostly keeping each other company and sharing entertaining cultural tidbits from the web and thoughts of the day. The same is true on MySpace, only in a much more public way. MySpace is both the location of hanging out and the cultural glue itself. MySpace and IM have become critical tools for teens to maintain "full-time always-on intimate communities" [4] where they keep their friends close even when they're physically separated. Such ongoing intimacy and shared cultural context allows youth to solidify their social groups.<br /></p> <p><strong>Digital Publics: </strong></p> <p>Adults often worry about the amount of time that youth spend online, arguing that the digital does not replace the physical. Most teens would agree. It is not the technology that encourages youth to spend time online - it's the lack of mobility and access to youth space where they can hang out uninterrupted.</p> <p>In this context, there are three important classes of space: public, private and controlled. For adults, the home is the private sphere where they relax amidst family and close friends. The public sphere is the world amongst strangers and people of all statuses where one must put forward one's best face. For most adults, work is a controlled space where bosses dictate the norms and acceptable behavior. </p> <p>Teenager's space segmentation is slightly different. Most of their space is controlled space. Adults with authority control the home, the school, and most activity spaces. Teens are told where to be, what to do and how to do it. Because teens feel a lack of control at home, many don't see it as their private space.</p> <p>To them, private space is youth space and it is primarily found in the interstices of controlled space. These are the places where youth gather to hang out amongst friends and make public or controlled spaces their own. Bedrooms with closed doors, for example.</p> <p>Adult public spaces are typically controlled spaces for teens. Their public space is where peers gather en masse; this is where presentation of self really matters. It may be viewable to adults, but it is really peers that matter. </p> <p>Teens have increasingly less access to public space. Classic 1950s hang out locations like the roller rink and burger joint are disappearing while malls and 7/11s are banning teens unaccompanied by parents. Hanging out around the neighborhood or in the woods has been deemed unsafe for fear of predators, drug dealers and abductors. Teens who go home after school while their parents are still working are expected to stay home and teens are mostly allowed to only gather at friends' homes when their parents are present. </p> <p>Additionally, structured activities in controlled spaces are on the rise. After school activities, sports, and jobs are typical across all socio-economic classes and many teens are in controlled spaces from dawn till dusk. They are running ragged without any time to simply chill amongst friends. </p> <p>By going virtual, digital technologies allow youth to (re)create private and public youth space while physically in controlled spaces. IM serves as a private space while MySpace provide a public component. Online, youth can build the environments that support youth socialization.</p> <p>Of course, digital publics are fundamentally different than physical ones. First, they introduce a much broader group of peers. While radio and mass media did this decades ago, MySpace allows youth to interact with this broader peer group rather than simply being fed information about them from the media. This is highly beneficial for marginalized youth, but its effect on mainstream youth is unknown. </p> <p>The bigger challenge is that, online, youth publics mix with adult publics. While youth are influenced by the media's version of 20somethings, they rarely have an opportunity to engage with them directly. Just as teens are hanging out on MySpace, scenesters, porn divas and creature of the night are using MySpace to gather and socialize in the way that 20somethings do. They see the space as theirs and are not imagining that their acts are consumed by teens; they are certainly not targeted at youth. Of course, there _are_ adults who want to approach teens and MySpace allows them to access youth communities without being visible, much to the chagrin of parents. Likewise, there are teens who seek the attentions of adults, for both positive and problematic reasons.</p> <p>That said, the majority of adults and teens have no desire to mix and mingle outside of their generation, but digital publics slam both together. In response, most teens just ignore the adults, focusing only on the people they know or who they think are cool. When i asked one teen about requests from strange men, she just shrugged. "We just delete them," she said without much concern. "Some people are just creepy." The scantily clad performances intended to attract fellow 16-year-olds are not meant for the older men. Likewise, the drunken representations meant to look "cool" are not meant for the principal. Yet, both of these exist in high numbers online because youth are exploring identity formation. Having to simultaneously negotiate youth culture and adult surveillance is not desirable to most youth, but their response is typically to ignore the issue.</p> <p>Parents also worry about the persistence of digital publics. Most adults have learned that the mistakes of one's past may reappear in the present, but this is culturally acquired knowledge that often comes through mistakes. Most youth do not envision potential future interactions. </p> <p>Without impetus, teens rarely choose to go private on MySpace and certainly not for fear of predators or future employers. They want to be visible to other teens, not just the people they they've friended. They would just prefer the adults go away. All adults. Parents, teachers, creepy men. </p> <p>While the potential predator or future employer don't concern most teens, parents and teachers do. Reacting to increasing adult surveillance, many teens are turning their profiles private or creating separate accounts under fake names. In response, many parents are demanded complete control over teens' digital behaviors. This dynamic often destroys the most important value in the child/parent relationship: trust.<br /></p> <p><strong>Conclusion:</strong></p> <p>Youth are not creating digital publics to scare parents - they are doing so because they need youth space, a place to gather and see and be seen by peers. Publics are critical to the coming-of-age narrative because they provide the framework for building cultural knowledge. Restricting youth to controlled spaces typically results in rebellion and the destruction of trust. Of course, for a parent, letting go and allowing youth to navigate risks is terrifying. Unfortunately, it's necessary for youth to mature.</p> <p>What we're seeing right now is a cultural shift due to the introduction of a new medium and the emergence of greater restrictions on youth mobility and access. The long-term implications of this are unclear. Regardless of what will come, youth are doing what they've always done - repurposing new mediums in order to learn about social culture. </p> <p>Technology will have an effect because the underlying architecture and the opportunities afforded are fundamentally different. But youth will continue to work out identity issues, hang out and create spaces that are their own, regardless of what technologies are available. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Phrase Bibliography: </strong></p> <p>[1] Thomas Hine's "Rise and Fall of American Teenager" p. 104-105<br /> [2] Erving Goffman's "Presentation of Self in Everyday Life"<br /> [3] Jenny Sunden's "Material Virtualities."<br /> [4] Misa Matsuda in "Personal, Portable, Pedestrian"</p> <p><em>Note: A great deal of other literature informed this talk even if not explicitly cited. Citations are used to explicitly reference people's turn of phrases.</em></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-9761283244835852952007-12-31T10:57:00.000-08:002008-01-03T06:59:18.461-08:00MySpaceFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia<br />MySpace<br />URL http://www.myspace.com<br />Alexa rank 6<br />Commercial? Yes<br />Type of site Social network service<br />Registration Required for most services<br />Available language(s) Multilingual<br />Owner News Corporation<br />Created by Thomas Anderson<br />Christopher DeWolfe<br />Launched August 2003<br />Current status active<br />Fox Interactive Media headquarters, where MySpace is also housed<br />Fox Interactive Media headquarters, where MySpace is also housed<br /><br />MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos internationally. It is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California, USA,[1] where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; in turn, the owner of Fox Interactive and therefore MySpace, News Corporation, is headquartered in New York City.<br /><br />According to Alexa Internet, MySpace is currently the world's sixth most popular English-language website and the sixth most popular website in any language,[2] and the third most popular website in the United States, though it has topped the chart on various weeks.[3] The service has gradually gained more popularity than similar websites to achieve nearly 80 percent of visits to online social networking websites.[3]<br />The company employs 300 staff[4] and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. With the 100 millionth account being created on August 9, 2006,[5] in the Netherlands[6] and a news story claiming 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006,[7] the site reportedly attracts new registrations at a rate of 230,000 per day. As of December 18, 2007, there are over 300 million accounts.[cita<br /><br />History<br /><br />MySpace was founded in August 2003[8] by eUniverse (which later in mid-2004 changed its name to Intermix). eUniverse created and marketed the Myspace website, providing the division with a complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise, bandwidth, and server capacity right out of the gate so the MySpace team wasn’t distracted with typical start-up issues. The project was overseen by Brad Greenspan (eUniverse's Founder, Chairman, CEO), who managed Chris DeWolfe (MySpace's current CEO), Josh Berman, Tom Anderson (MySpace's current president), and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse.<br /><br />The very first MySpace users were E-Universe employees. The company held contests to see who could sign-up the most users.[9] The company then used its resources to push MySpace to the masses. eUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to quickly breathe life into MySpace [10], and move it to the head of the pack of social networking websites. A key architect was tech expert Toan Nguyen who helped stabilize the MySpace platform when Brad Greenspan asked him to join the team.[11]<br /><br />Shortly after launching MySpace, team member Chris DeWolfe in its first business plan suggested that they start charging a fee for the basic MySpace service.[12] Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping MySpace free and open was necessary to make it a large and successful community.[13]<br /><br />Some employees of MySpace including DeWolfe and Berman were later able to purchase equity in the property before MySpace, and its parent company eUniverse (now renamed ‘Intermix’), were bought in July 2005 for US$580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises). Of this amount, approx. US$327m has been attributed to the value of MySpace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion.<br /><br />In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of MySpace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene"[14] which they have since done. They also released it in China and will possibly launch it in other countries.[15]<br /><br />The corporate history of MySpace as well as the status of Tom Anderson as a MySpace founder has been a matter of some public dispute.<br />Contents of a MySpace profile<br />Blurbs, blogs, multimedia<br /><br />Profiles contain two standard "blurbs:" "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet" sections. Profiles also contain an "Interests" section and a "Details" section. However, fields in these sections will not be displayed if members do not fill them in. Profiles also contain a blog with standard fields for content, emotion, and media. MySpace also supports uploading images. One of the images can be chosen to be the "default image," the image that will be seen on the profile's main page, search page, and as the image that will appear to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. Flash, such as on MySpace's video service, can be embedded. Also there is a "details" section which allows the user to provide personal information on the user such as his/her race, religion, sexual orientation.<br />Comments<br /><br />Below the User's Friends Space (by default) is the "comments" section, wherein the user's friends may leave comments for all viewers to read. MySpace users have the option to delete any comment and/or require all comments to be approved before posting. If a user's account is deleted, every comment left on other profiles by that user will be deleted, and replaced with the comment saying "This Profile No Longer Exists."<br />Profile customization (HTML)<br /><br />MySpace allows users to customize their user profile pages by entering HTML (but not JavaScript) into such areas as "About Me," "I'd Like to Meet," and "Interests." Videos, and flash-based content can be included this way. Users also have the option to add music to their profile pages via MySpace Music, a service that allows bands to post songs for use on MySpace.<br /><br />A user can also change the general appearance of his page by entering CSS (in a <style> ... </style> element) into one of these fields to override the page's default style sheet using MySpace editors. This is often used to tweak fonts and colors, but it has its limitations due to poorly-structured HTML used on the profile page. The fact that the user-added CSS is located in the middle of the page (rather than being located in the element) means that the page will begin to load with the default MySpace layout before abruptly changing to the custom layout. A special type of modification is a div overlay, where the default layout is dramatically changed by hiding default text with <div> tags and large images.<br /><br />There are several independent web sites offering MySpace layout design utilities which let a user select options and preview what their page will look like with them.<br /><br />MySpace has recently added its own "Profile Customizer" to the site, allowing users to change their profile through MySpace. Using this feature bypasses the CSS loading delay issue, as the MySpace default code is changed for the customized profile.<br />Music<br /><br />MySpace profiles for musicians are different from normal profiles in that artists are allowed to upload up to six MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use MySpace to post and sell music, which has proven popular among MySpace users.<br />MySpace features<br />Bulletins<br /><br />Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a MySpace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for notifying an entire, but usually a portion of the friends list (depending on how many friends are added), without resorting to messaging users individually. Some users choose to use Bulletins as a service for delivering chain messages about politics, religion, or anything else and sometimes these chain messages are considered threatening to the users, especially the ones that mention bad luck, death, or topics similar to that.[16] They have also become the primary attack point for phishing. Bulletins are deleted after ten days.<br />Groups<br /><br />MySpace has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a common page and message board. Groups can be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group can choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join.<br />MySpaceIM<br /><br /> Main article: MySpaceIM<br /><br />In early 2006, MySpace introduced MySpaceIM, an instant messenger that uses one's MySpace account as a screen name. A MySpace user logs in to the client using the same e-mail associated with his or her MySpace account. Unlike other parts of MySpace, MySpaceIM is stand-alone software for Microsoft Windows. Users who use MySpaceIM get instant notification of new MySpace messages, friend requests, and comments.<br />MySpaceTV<br /><br />In early 2007, MySpace introduced MySpaceTV, a YouTube look-alike video sharing website.<br />MySpace Mobile<br /><br />There are a variety of environments in which users can access MySpace content on their mobile phone. American mobile phone provider Helio released a series of mobile phones in early 2006 that can utilise a service known as MySpace Mobile to access and edit one's profile and communicate with, and view the profiles of, other members.[17] Additionally, UIEvolution and MySpace developed a mobile version of MySpace for a wider range of carriers, including AT&T[18], Vodafone[19] and Rogers Wireless[20].<br />MySpace News<br /><br />In the month of April 2007, MySpace launched a news service called MySpace News which displays news from RSS feeds that users submit. It also allows users to rank each news story by voting for it. The more votes a story gets, the higher the story moves up the page.<br />MySpace Classifieds<br /><br />Full service classifieds listing offered beginning in August 2006. Has grown by 33 percent in one year since inception.[21]<br />Controversy over corporate history<br />Spam/Tom Anderson PR<br /><br />In September 2006, a lengthy article written by web journalist Trent Lapinski, "MySpace: The Business of Spam 2.0", was published by the Silicon Valley gossip blog, Valleywag (a Gawker Media property). The article recounted a detailed corporate history of MySpace, alleging that MySpace was not organically grown from Tom Anderson's garage, but rather was a product developed by eUniverse aimed at overtaking Friendster, and that had initially gained popularity through an intensive mass internet campaign and not by word of mouth.[22] Amongst other claims was the assertion that Tom Anderson had originally been hired as a copyeditor and his "founder" and "first friend" status was a public relations invention. Lapinski suggested that News Corp. had attempted to suppress the publication of the history by threatening his original publisher.<br />Brad Greenspan / The MySpace Report<br /><br />In October 2006, Brad Greenspan (the former Chairman, CEO and largest individual shareholder of Intermix Media, who claims to be the true "founder of MySpace") launched a website and published "The MySpace Report" that called for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to investigate News Corp's acquisition of MySpace as "one of the largest merger and acquisition scandals in U.S. history."[23] The report's main allegation is that News Corp. should have valued MySpace at US$20 billion rather than US$327 million, and had, in effect, defrauded Intermix shareholders through an unfair deal process.[24] The report received a mixed response from financial commentators in the press.[25] An initial lawsuit led by Greenspan challenging the acquisition was dismissed by a judge.[26]<br /><br />Greenspan's report also states that the MySpace program code had originally been the brainchild of an Intermix/eUniverse programmer named Toan Nguyen who made the breakthrough technical contributions to the project.[27]<br /><br />Valleywag speculated that Greenspan was likely a key source for Lapinski's September article, "MySpace founder accuses company of defrauding investors of $20 billion."<br />Criticism<br />Customer Service<br /><br />To compound potential issues, MySpace has no customer service telephone number readily available for the public,[28] and contacting them for help via any other available corporate phone numbers rarely yields substantial results.<br />Accessibility and reliability<br /><br />Because most MySpace pages are designed by individuals with little HTML experience, a very large proportion of pages do not satisfy the criteria for valid HTML or CSS laid down by the W3C. Poorly formatted code can cause accessibility problems for those using software such as screen readers.[29] The MySpace home page, as of December 27, 2007, fails HTML validation with 117 errors, using the W3C's validator.[30]<br /><br />Furthermore, MySpace is set up so that anyone can customise the layout and colors of their profile page with virtually no restrictions, provided that the advertisements are not covered up by CSS or using other means. As MySpace users are usually not skilled web developers, this can cause further problems. Poorly constructed MySpace profiles could potentially freeze up web browsers due to malformed CSS coding, or as a result of users placing many high bandwidth objects such as videos, graphics, and Flash in their profiles (sometimes multiple videos and sound files are automatically played at the same time when a profile loads). PC World cited this as its main reason for naming MySpace as #1 in its list of twenty-five worst web sites ever.[31]<br /><br />In addition, new features have been gradually added (see featuritis). This, and the increasing number of MySpace members, leads to an increase in bandwidth used. This increase in usage often slows down the servers and may result in a "Server Too Busy" error message for some users who are on at peak hours, "Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred. This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group," or a variety of any other error messages throughout the day.[32]<br />Security<br /><br />In October 2005, a flaw in MySpace's site design was exploited by 'Samy' to create the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. MSNBC has reported that "social-networking sites like MySpace are turning out to be hotbeds for spyware", with "[i]nfection rates are on the rise, in part thanks to the surging popularity of social-networking sites like MySpace.com."[33] In addition to this, the customization of user pages currently allows the injection of certain HTML which can be crafted to form a phishing user profile, thus keeping the myspace.com domain as the address.[34] More recently, there has been spam on bulletins that has been the result of phishing.[35] Users find their MySpace homepage with bulletins they didn't post, realizing later they had been phished. The bulletin consists of an advertisement that provides a link to a fake login screen, tricking people into typing in their MySpace e-mail and password.<br /><br />Other security fears regarding profile content itself are also present. For example, the embedding of videos inherently allows all of the format's abilities and functions to be used on a page. A prime example of this surfaced in December 2006, when embedded QuickTime videos were shown to contain hyperlinks to JavaScript files, which would be run simply by a user visiting a 'phished' profile page, or even in some cases by simply viewing a user's 'about me' elsewhere on the site. Users who entered their login information into a fake login bar that appeared would also become 'phished', and their account would be used to spam other members, thus spreading this security problem.[36]<br /><br />In April 2007, a house in the United Kingdom was wrecked by gatecrashers storming a party after reading an invite for it on MySpace. The party caused an estimated £20,000[37]-£25,000[38] worth of damage, forcing the family to move out after graffiti was sprayed on walls and light fixtures were ripped out. Rachel Bell, the organizer of the party, claimed that her account was hacked and she only expected a small number of people to turn up. The resulting situation required several police cars and a dog-handling unit in order to restore peace.[39]<br />Child safety<br /><br />The minimum age to register an account on MySpace is 14.[40] Profiles with ages set to 14 or 15 years are automatically private. Users whose ages are set at 16 or over have the option to restrict their profiles and the option of allowing certain personal data to be restricted to people other than those on their friends list. Accessing the full profile of, or messaging someone when their account is set to "private" (or if under sixteen) is restricted to a MySpace user's direct friends.<br /><br />MySpace will delete these profiles if the victim verifies their identity and points out the profile via e-mail.[41]<br /><br />Recently, MySpace has been the focus of a number of news reports stating that teenagers have found ways around the restrictions set by MySpace, and have been the target of online predators.[42] In response, MySpace has given assurances to parents that the website is safe for people of all ages. Beginning in late June 2006, MySpace users whose ages are set over 18 could no longer be able to add users whose ages are set from 14 to 15 years as friends unless they already know the user's full name or email address.[43] Some third party Internet safety companies like Social Shield[44] have launched online communities for parents concerned about their child's safety on MySpace.<br /><br />In June 2006, 16-year-old American Katherine Lester flew to the Middle East, to Tel Aviv, Israel, after having tricked her parents into getting her a passport in order to be with a 20-year-old man she met through MySpace.[45] U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded the teen to turn around and go home.<br /><br />In December 2006, MySpace announced new measures to protect children from known sex offenders. Although precise details were not given they said that "tools" would be implemented to prevent known sex offenders from the USA creating a MySpace profile.[46]<br /><br />In February 2007, a U.S. District Judge in Texas dismissed a case when a family sued MySpace for negligence, fraud and misrepresentation; a girl in the family had been sexually assaulted by a man she met through MySpace, after she had misrepresented her age as 18 when she was 13. Regarding his dismissal of the case, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks wrote: "If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace."[47]<br /><br />In July 2007, the company found and deleted 29000 profiles belonging to registered sex offenders.[48] Hardline anti-pedophile organization Perverted Justice has praised Myspace for its efforts to combat pedophiles using their service.[49]<br /><br />In October 2007, a study published in the Journal of Adolescence conducted by Sameer Hinduja (Florida Atlantic University) and Justin W. Patchin (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) concluded that most adolescents use MySpace responsibly: "When considered in its proper context, these results indicate that the problem of personal information disclosure on MySpace may not be as widespread as many assume, and that the overwhelming majority of adolescents are responsibly using the website," they say.[50]<br />Social and cultural<br /><br />Dave Itzkoff, in the June 2006 Playboy magazine, related his experiences of experimentation with membership in MySpace. Among his other criticisms, one pertains to the distance afforded by the Internet that emboldens members, such as females who feature photos of themselves in scant clothing on their profile pages or behave in ways they would not in person, and he indicated that this duplicity undercuts the central design of MySpace, namely, to bring people together. Itzkoff also referenced the addictive, time-consuming nature of the site, mentioning that the Playboy Playmate and MySpace member Julie McCullough, who was the first to respond to his add-friend request, pointedly referred to the site as "cybercrack". Itzkoff argued that MySpace gives many people access to a member’s life, without giving the time needed to maintain such relationships and that such relationships do not possess the depth of in-person relationships.<br /><br />Furthermore, in terms of MySpace's potential for underhanded commercial exploitation, Itzkoff is particularly critical of the disturbing and fraudulent behavior of people who can contact a member, unsolicited, as when he was contacted by someone expressing a desire to socialize and date, but whose blog (to which Itzkoff was directed via subsequent emails) was found to be a solicitation for a series of commercial porn sites. Itzkoff is similarly critical of the more subtle commercial solicitations on the site, such as the banner ads and links to profiles and video clips that turn out to be, for example, commercials for new 20th Century Fox films. He also observed that MySpace’s much-celebrated music section is heavily weighted in favor of record labels rather than breakthrough musicians.<br /><br />In relating criticism from another person, whom Itzkoff called "Judas," he illustrated that, while the goal of attempting to bring together people who might not otherwise associate with one another in real life may seem honorable, MySpace inherently violates a social contract only present when people interact face-to-face, rendering, in his opinion, the website nothing more than a passing fad:<br />“ There will come a moment when, like deer quivering and flicking up their ears toward a noiseless noise in the woods, the first adopters will suddenly realize they’re spending their time blogging, adding, and gawking at the same alarming photos as an army of 14-year olds, and quick as deer, they’ll dash to the next trend. And before you know it, we’ll all follow.[51] ”<br />Politics<br /><br /> * Many political organizations have created Myspace accounts to keep in touch with and expand their membership base. These range from larger organizations like Greenpeace and the ACLU to smaller locally focused environmentalist groups and Food Not Bombs activists.<br /> * Several historical political figures (from Napoleon to George Washington to Herbert Marcuse) have had accounts created to either raise awareness about their role in history or perhaps sometimes to behave more in jest as if those historical figures were actually posting messages and adding friends, etc.<br /> * Many hopeful 2008 presidential candidates have set up MySpace profiles, presumably in an effort to snare younger voters. Most profiles feature photos, blogs, videos, and ways for viewers to get involved with campaigning. MySpace features these politicians' profiles on its front page in the "Cool New People" section, on what appears to be a random rotation.<br /><br />Censorship<br /><br />Activist group MoveOn.org has criticized MySpace, claiming that the website practices censorship by not showing anti-media ads, removing fake profiles for high-profile media executives like Rupert Murdoch, and allegedly attempting to force users away from using third-party flash applications on their profiles.[52]<br />Stalking<br /><br />According to Alison Kiss, program director for Security on Campus, social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook have made it easier for stalkers who target women on college campuses.[53]<br />MySpace China<br /><br />The Chinese version of MySpace, launched in April of 2007, has many censorship-related differences from other international versions of the service. Discussion forums on topics such as religion and politics are absent, and a filtering system that prevents the posting of content about Taiwan independence, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, and other "inappropriate topics" has been added.[54] Users are also given the ability to report the "misconduct" of other users for offenses including "endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, and spreading rumors or disturbing the social order."[55]<br /><br /> See also: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China<br /><br />International sites<br /><br />Since early 2006, MySpace has offered the option to access the service in different regional versions. The alternative regional versions present automated content according to locality (e.g. UK users see other UK users as "Cool New People," and UK oriented events and adverts, etc.), offer local languages other than English, or accommodate the regional differences in spelling and conventions in the English-speaking world (e.g. United States: "favorites," mm/dd/yyyy; the rest of the world: "favourites," dd/mm/yyyy).<br /><br />Sites currently offered are:<br /><br /> * MySpace Global<br /> * MySpace Australia<br /> * MySpace Brazil (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace Canada (in English) (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace Canada (in French) (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace China (in Chinese) (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace Denmark<br /> * MySpace France<br /> * MySpace Finland<br /> * MySpace Germany (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace Ireland<br /> * MySpace Latin America (in Spanish) (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace Italy (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace Japan (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace Mexico (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace Netherlands<br /> * MySpace New Zealand<br /> * MySpace Spain (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace UK<br /> * MySpace USA (in Spanish) (currently in beta)<br /> * MySpace USA (in English) (this is, in fact, identical to the "global" site)<br /><br />MySpace is also looking at expansion into India, Korea, Greece and South Africa.<br />Musicians' rights and MySpace Terms of Use Agreement<br /><br />Until June 2006, there was a concern amongst musicians, artists, and bands on MySpace such as songwriter Billy Bragg owing to the fine print within the user agreement that read, "You hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services." The fine print brought particular concern as the agreement was being made with Murdoch's News Corporation. Billy Bragg brought the issue to the attention of the media during the first week of June 2006.[56] Jeff Berman, a MySpace spokesman swiftly responded by saying, "Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist's work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends."<br /><br />By June 27, 2006, MySpace had amended the user agreement with, "MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, 'Content') that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose."<br />Blocking<br /><br />Many schools and public libraries in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Malaysia have restricted access to MySpace because it has become "such a haven for student gossip and malicious comments."[57]<br /><br />A Catholic school in New Jersey has even prohibited students from using MySpace at home, an action made to protect students from online predators as claimed by the school, although experts questioned the legality of such a ban. In Autumn 2005 Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta Township, New Jersey made headlines by forbidding its students to have pages on MySpace or similar websites or face suspension or expulsion, even if only using the website outside of school.[58][59][60]<br /><br />On July 28, 2006, the United States House of Representatives passed a controversial bill requiring libraries and schools receiving certain types of federal funding (E-rate) to prevent unsupervised minors from using chat rooms and social networking websites, such as MySpace. This bill, known as the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA), was approved by a 410-15 vote in the United States House of Representatives but was not brought to a vote in the United States Senate. Since the Congressional session of its introduction expired, the bill must be reintroduced in either chamber to be voted upon again.<br /><br />Although schools and public libraries try to prevent the use of MySpace, they are not always successful; students have been known to use web proxies in order to log in to the site.<br /><br />On July 31, 2007, a free MySpace blocker was announced by Solid Oak Software.<br />Legal issues<br /><br />In May 2006, Long Island, New York teenagers Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli were charged with illegal computer access and attempted extortion of MySpace, after both had allegedly hacked into the site to steal the personal information of MySpace users before threatening to share the secrets of how they broke into the website unless MySpace paid them $150,000. Both teens were arrested by undercover Los Angeles police detectives posing as MySpace employees.[61]<br /><br />In April 2007, police in County Durham, United Kingdom, arrested a 17-year-old girl on charges of criminal damage following a party advertised on MySpace, held at her parents' house without their consent. Over 200 teenagers came to the party from across the country, causing £20,000[62]-£25,000[63] of damage, such as cigarette butts, urine on clothing, and writing on the walls. The girl's parents, who were away at the time, had to move out of the house.[64][65]<br />Celebrities on MySpace<br /><br />Some MySpace users have enjoyed a degree of fame due to their accounts. One example is Christine "ForBiddeN" Dolce's appearance on The Tyra Banks Show and her own Playboy pictorial in the October 2006 issue. MySpace's music section has also helped many amateur bands progress. One illustrative example is English band Arctic Monkeys, who owe some of their success to the publicity that MySpace generated for them. When asked about the popularity of the band's MySpace website in an interview with Prefix magazine, the band pointed out that they did not even know what MySpace was, and that their page had originally been created by their fans. It has been claimed that pop artist Lily Allen's fame is also due in part to her being promoted on MySpace. In response to an interview question on Triple J, in which she was asked if she was 'discovered by MySpace', Allen stated, "Not accurate at all, I had a record deal before I set up my MySpace account so, erm, that's... couldn't really be further from the truth."[66] Other MySpace celebrities include Tila Tequila and Jeffree Star as well as newly renowned Chris Crocker.<br />YouTube<br /><br />YouTube first appeared on the web in early 2005, and it quickly gained popularity on MySpace due to MySpace users' ability to embed YouTube videos in their MySpace profiles. Realising the competitive threat to the new MySpace Videos service, MySpace banned embedded YouTube videos from its user profiles. MySpace users widely protested the ban, prompting MySpace to lift the ban shortly thereafter. But since then, links from each embedded video on MySpace to the home pages of the video on YouTube have been blocked making it more difficult to find the same videos on YouTube's website.[67]<br /><br />Since then YouTube has become one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web,[68] outgrowing MySpace's reach according to Alexa Internet.[69] In July 2006 several news organisations reported that YouTube had overtaken MySpace.[70] In a September 2006 investor meeting, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin claimed that virtually all modern Web applications (naming YouTube, Flickr, and Photobucket) were really just "driven off the back of MySpace" and that "we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them."[71]</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6224026480519884370.post-76666689397671775262007-12-31T10:46:00.000-08:002008-01-03T06:59:48.465-08:00Why parents must mind MySpace<h2>Posting too much information on social networking sites may be dangerous</h2>By Rob Stafford<br /><div class="textMedBlack">Correspondent</div><div class="textMedBlack">NBC News<br /><br /><br /><i><i>Rob Stafford is back with another report on the popular social networking site, MySpace.com, which has made headlines recently since several sex crimes have been connected to the site. In the multi-part report, "Dateline" follows a police officer who assumes a fake identity, engages in online conversations with young teens, and then shares with their parents what he has found. Airs April 9, 7 p.m. on NBC. The report, below, aired Dateline Friday, Jan. 27, 9 p.m.<br /><br /></i></i>You may never have heard of MySpace.com, but it's a safe bet, your kids have.<p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>It's a social networking sites — sort of a cyber combination of a yearbook, personal diary and social club. The biggest of them is MySpace.com. With more than 50 million members, its one of the fastest growing Web sites in the country.</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Shannon Sullivan, teenager:</strong></b> Everyone has a MySpace and everyone wants a My Space.</p><p class="textBodyBlack">It’s free, easy to join, and easy to message its members. Kids chat about everything from school, to sports, to fundraisers for Katrina victims. It all seems like innocent fun, and it can be. But many parents and teens are unaware there are hidden dangers.</p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Shannon Sullivan: </strong></b>I honestly just thought it was my friends looking at it</p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>Which is why Shannon disclosed so much on her space. She put her name, her address, and where she went to school— everything about how to find Shannon was on that site.</p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Rob Stafford, Dateline correspondent:</strong></b> Were you worried about doing that?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Shannon Sullivan:</strong></b> I didn’t think twice about it.</p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>Shannon did think twice about something else: The rules on my space say you’re supposed to be at least 14 years old. </p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Stafford:</strong></b> How old did you say you were?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Shannon Sullivan:</strong></b> I think it was 18.</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Stafford:</strong></b> You think it was 18?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Sullivan:</strong></b> I was 13 at the time.</p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>Shannon’s mother Margaret happens to run the computer system at a private grammar school. She has parental controls on her home computer, and several months ago, MySpace popped up on one of the reports Margaret gets on the Web sites Shannon has visited.</p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Margaret Sullivan:</strong></b> I was just very upset. Somebody looking for a kid could find a kid very easily.</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Stafford:</strong></b> Had you ever heard of it?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Margaret Sullivan:</strong></b> No.<br /></p></blockquote>She was stunned by what Shannon revealed and found the sites of other kids far more revealing.<blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Margaret Sullivan:</strong></b> I found all kinds of pictures of kids in revealing positions, and pictures of kids scantily dressed.</p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>It’s a cyber secret teenagers keep from tech-challenged parents who are not as savvy as Margaret. It’s a world where the kids next door can play any role they want. They may not realize everyone with Internet access, including sexual predators, may see the pictures and personal information they post.</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>When “Dateline” surfed MySpace, we found scenes of binge drinking, apparent drug use, teens posing in underwear, and other members simulating sex, and in some cases even having it. We also found less provocative pages like Shannon’s was, but potentially even more dangerous. Teens listed not only their names, and addresses, but even cell phone numbers and after school schedules. </p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Parry Aftab, Internet lawyer and safety expert: </strong></b>[It’s] one stop shopping for sexual predators, and they can shop by catalogue. </p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>Internet lawyer Parry Aftab started the Web site wiredsafety.org, and her safety tips appear on MySpace.com. </p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Stafford: </strong></b>Do parents have any idea what some kids are posting on these sites?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Aftab: </strong></b>Parents are clueless. They’re caught like deer in the headlights.</p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>Aftab educates parents and kids about the dangers lurking on the Web.</p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Aftab: </strong></b>Pedophiles are using all of the social networking sites. And every other anonymous Internet technology to find kids. The social networking sites are where kids are.</p></blockquote>Aftab says even kids who don’t list their name and address can provide enough personal information— such as the kinds of bands and boys they love— for a pedophile to use to con their way into their lives.<blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Aftab: </strong></b>If someone knows you "like pina coladas and walks in the rain," it’s very easy online to be exactly what it is you’re looking for— to be your “soul mate.”</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Stafford: </strong></b>Who might happen to be a 40 year old predator?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Aftab: </strong></b>Absolutely. The teens just don’t get it. To them, they’re talking to a computer monitor.They’re playing in an area where they don’t recognize the consequences.</p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>In the last month, authorities have charged at least three men with sexually assaulting teenagers they found through MySpace.com and just this week police found a missing 15-year-old girl who investigators say was sexually assaulted by a 26-year-old man she met through the site. MySpace members are now warning each other about the danger of sharing information online. </p><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>Aftab says parents need to find out what their kids are sharing.</p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Aftab: </strong></b>Say to your kids, “I’d like to see your profile page tomorrow.” It’s important that you give them a day to clean up their page. That will be the last time you give them warning. </p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>Then Aftab says look at their site: Are the pictures provocative? Their profiles too detailed? Who are they talking to? And perhaps most important— have they kept their profiles private, protected by a password, to keep strangers out?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>MySpace.com would not agree to an on-camera interview but did tell “Dateline” via e-mail that it prohibits posting personal information and has a team that searches for and removes both underage users and offensive material. MySpace said it does not pre-screen the content of its more than 50 million members, but encourages all of them to exercise caution. </p><p class="textBodyBlack">Shannon Sullivan’s safety lesson came from her mom who grounded her from the Internet for two weeks.</p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Stafford: </strong></b>And six months ago you had no idea this was a danger?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Shannon Sullivan:</strong></b> Six months ago, I thought it was just another place you can to on the computer.</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Stafford:</strong></b> And you were 18 back then?</p><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Shannon Sullivan:</strong></b> Yes. (laughs)</p></blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><span id="byLine"></span>Her mother, Margaret, did something Aftab says too many parents are afraid to do: take control of their child’s computer.</p><blockquote><p class="textBodyBlack"><b><strong>Aftab:</strong></b> They’re afraid of their kids. They somehow think because technology is involved, they’re no longer the parent. Get real. You’re the parent. If you don’t like it, unplug the computer. If they don’t follow your rules, no Internet at all. If you’re not the parent and if you’re not going to step in, no Web site on earth is going to be able to help your child be safe.</p></blockquote></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0