Ideas

Unbelievable Traffic Stats

Paul Boutin: “Ok, ok, so a few of my bloggerati pals saw Dave’s post below and went: Whoa, are you saying there were 100,000 clickthroughs to Dave’s blog from one MSN article? Yes, it’s the norm. The msn.com domain pulls something like 10 million unique visitors every day. Sure, some of that is due to

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J.C. Penney’s Performance Clothing

You thought they just sold clothing, but J.C. Penney has their own research and development facilities! From the New York Post: ” J.C. Penney is at the forefront of an explosion in so-called performance clothing, a category dominated by wrinkle-free and stain-resistant fabrics that slash dry-cleaning bills and appeal to time-strapped consumers.” It gets better:

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Valuation Explained

Fred Wilson, the venture capitalist, explained valuation today on A VC: The question is what is the fair value of the business? This supposedly establishes how much of the company the venture capitalists will own for their investment. But I think the concept of valuation is often misunderstood by the people engaged in this process.

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Small Towns, Small Biz

Small Business Trends: “The Kiplinger Letter, in its latest edition (subscription required), reports that small towns in the United States are attracting more college graduates. Kiplinger says that is ‘good news for small-business employers in those areas. Young adults are shunning metropolitan areas for quieter towns and cities that offer cheaper housing, easier commutes, good

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Not Just Your Voice

Evelyn Rodriguez: Did you know in spoken conversation or public speaking, people respond to you more than the words (and therefore concepts) you mouth? Professor Albert Mehrabian of UCLA’s research determined which factors influenced listener impressions the most and they were: 55% non-verbal (facial expressions, body language) 38% voice (quality, tone, pitch, variation, volume) 7%

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Unprepared to Do Business

Steve Pilgrim pointed me to James Lileks’s entry today about his trouble with a DirectTV installation: One service call turned into seven. One three-hour wait window turned into 21 hours. I can still see the original installer who screwed everything up — scrawny, nervy, tar-stained teeth, a lummox associate whom you expected to say “I

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The Capitalism of Soccer

Slate: “When you look at the business of professional sports — in both Europe and the United States — American sports are virtually all socialistic while the European soccer leagues more closely resemble the entrepreneurial capitalism we Americans fetishize.” via Kottke.

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