Business Insight Zone

In this case, the gleaming windshield of an immaculate 1962 Studebaker GT Hawk.

Other days, as the saying continues, you’re the bug. While today wasn’t a bad one, it’s been more on the “bug” end of the spectrum than the “windshield” end. No special reason — and I’m not even a traditional hater-of-Mondays.

Here, then, are a few things I’ve been thinking about today, in no special order besides how they’re arranged on my desk or the browser of my computer.

~ ~ ~

–Item: Bloglines gets the heave-ho from yours truly. My once-trusty Bloglines RSS reader has been reallly spotty of late. Turns out it’s not just me, as this TechCrunch item makes clear:

Destruction Of Bloglines Now Complete; Founder Prepares To Switch To Google Reader

Users who hadn’t already left Bloglines for Google Reader and other functional RSS readers are doing so now, largely because Bloglines has stopped working and the company has done absolutely nothing to communicate to users what is going on or when it might be fixed. . . .

At the recommendation of a friend, I used the easy-peasy option of exporting all my RSS feeds to an OPML file (like HTML, but for feeds), then uploaded the same file to the free NewsGator online reader, which works much like Bloglines, with the difference that it actually works. The export was simple — and believe me, if I can do it, you can, too — and it even kept my feeds organized in the folders I set up in Bloglines. The OPML process is explained in more detail by the estimable Marshall Kirkpatrick here.

~ ~ ~

–Item: Sometimes, ONE LITTLE WORD can set me off. Thanks to P.R. visionary Brian Solis and Austin’s own social-media-realty maven Lani Anglin-Rosales, I’ve been trying out all sorts of tools to improve my Twitter usage. (By the way, this is not just for fun — besides its other benefits, the Hoover’s Twitter account has already brought us some warm leads for new customers.) Two of these tools, however, earned a demotion in my book with their thoughtless use of language — even though I acknowledge their potential utility:

1. follow cost lets you see how “expensive” it will be to follow a particular Twitter user by telling you how often they tweet (i.e., how often they circulate messages to everyone following them). But on their lovely, minimalist home page, they don’t say “How much attention will it cost to follow X” or the like. No, they say, “How annoying will it be to follow _____ on Twitter?”

Annoying? Where did that come from?

Far from being annoyed, some people enjoy reading frequent tweets. On the other side of the coin, some tweeters manage to be annoying by tweeting very little but being a jerk in each and every tweet. Others tweet all day every day in a delightful stream of free association.

In short: what does frequency have to do with annoyance?

2. Qwitter has a good idea — if it’s used right: who stopped following you after which tweet? This could help you figure out which topics (or tones of voice, etc.) tend to drive people away, and if it’s used to reform your own behavior, good. But the tagline for the service is “Catching Twitter quitters” — which stinks.

My own experience tells me there are many reasons to quit following someone on Twitter: too many tweets, too much anger or cynicism or whatever, lack of shared interests, and so on. Once in a while, I go through the whole list of my Twitter followers and tidy things up along these lines; at other times, seeing a tweet from someone reminds me that I’ve been meaning to stop following them, even though the tweet of the moment is unobjectionable. (I’ve made this point before.)

This is no different than the decision to stop reading a particular opinion columnist, or to stop keeping in touch with a particular acquaintance, or to let a magazine subscription lapse. And it’s senseless to talk about “catching” such “quitting” in any of these contexts, because readers are always free to leave when they please.

~ ~ ~

–Item: Jason Zweig talks sense.

Take a Deep Breath, Turn Off the TV, Calm Yourself
With Stocks Swinging Wildly, It’s Easy to Panic; Some Advice for Fighting the Herd Mentality

Fear is a defense mechanism. It bursts forth in our brains the instant we sense that we, or others near us, are threatened. When fear leaps from one person to another, it turns into panic. . . .

Viewed this way, today’s financial markets — in which tens of millions of investors watch each other’s fears unfolding in real time on television and online — constitute one giant panic-transmission machine.

We’ve talked before (twice) about Zweig’s take on the irrationality in the markets. His advice is well worth keeping in mind as the markets continue to gyrate around us.

~ ~ ~

–Item: Rio Tinto sees biodiversity and profitability going hand in hand. It’s amazing to read this NYT interview with CEO Tom Albanese and remember that the words are coming from the mouth of the head of one of the largest mining outfits in the world.

Madagascar is a great example because it is known to be incredible for its biodiversity. But what is less known is that most of the natural forests have already been degraded. In some cases they have been completely removed largely as a consequence of overpopulation and poverty. It’s important to recognize that the worst villain of biodiversity is poverty.

To the extent that mining opportunities can bring jobs into areas, you basically create alternative solutions that can help with forests. It has to be very holistic. It’s not just recreating or replacing the biodiversity that will be impacted by mining, but also providing for those local communities alternative sources of, say, forest products, that, as we regenerate forests, stop them from being cut down again.

~ ~ ~

–Item: Larry Dignan takes the pulse of IT executives. If you’re interested in where IT spending is headed, read Dignan’s writeup at ZDNet:

State of the enterprise tech economy

. . . Despite this perfect storm it’s hard to generalize the enterprise technology economy. Simply put, it’s not all gloom and doom. And technology executives seem calm–in IT there’s no panic. But there is a general feeling that the tech sector and all the executives in the ecosystem have been here before and will manage through a downturn again.

~ ~ ~

–Item: Jay Walker’s library is super-awesome. I’m not related to entrepreneur Jay Walker (he started Priceline.com, among other things), but I wish I were if it meant I could hang out with him in his spectacular home library, which is something like a cross between the British Museum and a medieval “cabinet of wonders” . . . if it were built my M. C. Escher. Be sure to check out the pictures here:

WIRED: Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker’s Library

~ ~ ~

(Photo by Dave_7, used under a CC-Share Alike license.)

Category: Green & Clean, Internet, Manufacturing & Heavy Industry, Technology