Ariel Garten: Know thyself, with a brain scanner

TEDxYouth@Manchester 2011 - Julian Baggini - Is There A Real You?

How should one approach an effective social media strategy? * Sherilynn Macale

January 30, 2012 in Entrepreneur, Social Media

I can’t help the twinge of irritation I feel when I’m told, “Social media is so easy, a monkey could do it.”

Well, sure it is, in the sense that you can basically be anywhere and have a “presence” regardless of what sort of content you post. But to make that content profitable or return some sort of positive result — that’s where actual business strategy comes in. Encyclopedic research, constant testing, and aggressive networking through these channels, not to mention the ability to quickly and easily adjust to organic change in the social market — it’s all relevant.

On a phone call the other night with an old colleague of mine who remains within the small group of individuals I’ve grown to respect, I was describing a brief and tiny segment of social strategy that I know, through experience, to be both highly profitable and extremely effective. And while I normally respect his opinions on most things — including the odd bit of relationship advice — I found his response to my explanation to be somewhat ignorant.

How should one approach an effective social media strategy? * Sherilynn Macale

E-books: A taxing situation

By Lynn Moore, THE GAZETTE January 30, 2012

MONTREAL - As a book lover, Carole Ramsahoye numbers among the millions of North Americans who own an electronic reader.

As an accountant, she is among the few Quebecers who have noticed that e-book purchases can include 9.5 per cent provincial sales tax while traditional print books do not.

“It’s illogical,” Ramsahoye said. “I’m having a difficult time to accept that e-books should be subject to QST and the paper print version should not be.”

While the federal government charges sales tax on all books, the Quebec government treats traditional books – as in pages inked with characters and bound together – as “zero-rated” for tax purposes.

Another Canadian who realizes that e-books are subject to provincial tax in many, if not all provinces, is Robert Hayashi, head of eBOUND Canada, the recently created digital arm of the Association of Canadian Publishers.

And he shares Ramsahoye’s frustration.

E-books: A taxing situation

Anonymous And The War Over The Internet

Posted: 1/30/12 12:20 PM ET
This article is the first in a two-part series tracing the development of the amorphous online community known as Anonymous, pranksters who have become a force in global affairs.

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 19, the U.S. Department of Justice website vanished from the Internet. Anyone attempting to visit it to report a crime or submit a complaint received a message saying the site was unable to load. More websites disappeared in rapid succession. The Recording Industry Association of America. The Motion Picture Association of America. Universal Music. Warner Brothers. The FBI.

By nightfall, most of the sites had come back online, but the people responsible for the outages had made their point. They'd landed what they hailed as the biggest blow yet in an escalating war for control of the Internet, and in one of their online command centers, "Phoenix" and his associates were celebrating.




Anonymous And The War Over The Internet

Pro-government hactivists deface Al Jazeera coverage of Syrian violence

The Al Jazeera English website was attacked and defaced on January 29 by hackers supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Targeting the news organization's "Syria Live Blog," which has been providing ongoing coverage of the Arab League's observer mission to Syria and developments in the ongoing unrest in the country, the hacker group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army posted pro-Assad and pro-Syrian government images to the site.

The relationship of the Syrian Electronic Army to the government itself is unclear. However, the group's domain was registered in May of 2011 in Tartous, Syria, and its site is hosted on servers maintained by the Syrian Computer Society—a group Assad was the head of before assuming Syria's presidency, and which introduced the Internet to Syria in 2001.

Pro-government hactivists deface Al Jazeera coverage of Syrian violence

Reinventing Textbooks: A Hard Course - NYTimes.com

Apple has announced ambitious plans to reinvent the textbook market -- something that Amazon tried to do three years ago. While Apple may have better luck, it wants total control over the how the books are sold. The two goals may be difficult to reconcile.

Reinventing Textbooks: A Hard Course - NYTimes.com