Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

Fortune just released the Global 500 list last month. I took a snap shot of the largest 20 corporations in the world:

Amazingly, half of the top 20 are either Oil or Auto companies. Another surprise is that the American auto makers are gaining more grounds in the top 20 list. Only Toyota and Volkswagen showed up on the list. You’d think our auto industry is on a downhill with all the troubles GM had lately. I am puzzled about how a company that got downgraded to junkie and almost got kicked out of Dow ended up on the top 5 list?

I am also surprised to see ING Group has such a close call with Citigroup (revenue wise). After all, it is an ultra young bank (funded in 1991) and it is only well known as an online bank here in the States. This little bank even beats IBM! What’s their secret? Anyway, I am a happy customer of ING Direct myself and I have been enjoying its excellent interest rate for a while. If you are sick and tired of the money market’s 0.8%, I’d roll the cash into an orange account (currently at 3.30% for saving) with ING.

There are also a few companies that made to the top 100 but with negative profits:
#26 McKesson (-156.7 million)
#51 Pemex (-2,258.9 million)
#53 Vodafone (-13,910.4 million)
#57 Fiat (-1972.6 million)
#67 Kroger (-100 million)
I am staying away from those companies for now, job or stock.

By looking at the entire Global 100 list in my hardcopy Fortune magazine, only 33 of them are US based companies. We have long adopted the concept to invest mainly in our own market. Even our financial advisors are telling us that International assets are riskier and we should put only 10 to 20 percent in the International funds as part of the diversification exercise. My question is that if our economy is only a slice of the pie, shouldn’t we try to bite the entire global pie and invest more in foreign funds?

Cosmopolitan Sept issue got a few guys to take a crack at penning the cover lines:

• “Sit Back, relax, and I will do all the work” 33 Things he wants to hear
• Engagement-Ring Trend – Glass looks better than diamonds
• Yeast infections and why you should never mention them to your man ever, ever again
• Confessions of a desperate boyfriend “I held her purse for two hours”
• Male mysteries solved – Why rolling over and falling asleep means he loves you. And other fascinating facts
• Leaving the seat up – 12 secret ways guys show they are committed
• You + Him + Your best friend = Great Idea
• Chick flicks and why they can harm your man

As a token of my appreciation to the guys who spitted out their Dark Side, here are a few cover lines I wrote for GQ or Maxim (whoever wants to pay me.. )

• 4 Famous Names You Must Know And Why: Tiffany, Channel, Louis Vuitton and Fendi (No, you can’t date them)
• Breaking news from the science research – why do you think women are whining when they are simply just talking
• Why Bad Boys Night Out Could Harm Your Health And Your Relationship
• Hello Couch! 10 Better Things To Do Around The House
• Your Wallet + 30 Carat Ring = Great Idea
• A Dude Who Just Never Grow Up - A Forever Kid’s Story

Ok, gals and guys, if you’ve got some cover lines to share, comment on!

What’s happening in New Orleans is just devastating. Although I am sort of out of the way and not able to offer direct help, I can still open my wallet and use my village to help in some ways. Being said, this post will stay on the top of this blog for a while.

Every dollar counts. So if you can, please click on the following red cross credit card donation link and give a little. I have used this link to donate a few times and it is very easy and secure to use. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!

Hurricane 2005 Relief - Red Cross Credit Card Donation Site

Update: By Sept 2, Red Cross has received more than $200 million donations from individuals and corporations. The figure still falls short of the total amount of $550 million the agency received after last December’s Tsunami. This is a disaster happened in our own backyard, so let’s keep up with the good work and give a little more. And thanks to all of our international readers for your help and support!

I have also collected 90+ Katrina aftermath photos to remember this greatest nature disaster.

Yep, you heard me alright. Finally, I was personally attacked by the blog readers today. Well… Ok… I admit this is not the first time since I started Yuna’s Village. The first encounter was when I published the “Apple missing one bite” joke. It was just something I wrote to have a laugh at Microsoft. Someone left a comment to inform me that I was stupid. My first reaction was to delete it and so I did (a nice incentive for being the blog system admin )

When Darren Rowse published his Disclaimer, he sadly wrote in the “What Does Blog Cost Me” section:

Personal Attack - This is all sounding rather heavy here and I don’t want to get too gloomy but another cost of this site is that at times the response that people have to my writing here is to attack. I guess I’m writing about topics that people have strong feelings on (money and blogging) and people feel they want to have their say. Unfortunately the internet can be a pretty impersonal medium and people feel they have the right to write things that they would probably not say to the face of a human being. I try to respond graciously to such emails, comments and instant messaging interactions and don’t let them get to me too much - but at times it all gets a bit too much and takes its toll on me.

At that time, I really couldn’t understand who the hell would attack Darren, a guy who spent 12+ hours a day writing and collecting blog tips to share with everybody. So to support him, I wrote back in the comment section:

…
But like you said, the web is a brutal place and sometimes our best intentions are not always being appreciated by a few people who don’t think on the same line. I guess that’s something a blogger has to deal with, just like every other person who holds a profile in the public.
…

It was fairly easy for me to say that to Darren at that time. After all, I wasn’t the one who’s being attacked… until now.

The post and research I did on the “Elite blog” topic got picked up by digg.com’s homepage (you can see some of the aggressive comments through the link) around lunch time today. By the time when dinner was cooking, I’ve had about 2700 visitors on site. Along with the excitements, the publicity also brought me some comments like, “shitty blog”, “I hate all bloggers” and the one that really got me angry: “Fuck off”, a rude no point comment left on my own site.

It was easy for me to tell Darren to laugh it off. But when it really happened, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why would people do that? What did I say?”

But think about it, did I ever say anything mean to anyone I have never met? Heck yeah! I bitched about Reese Witherspoon’s ridiculous chin and thought her Legally Blonde was cheesy. I remember seeing her in one of the interviews telling the host how hurt she was when she got on the Internet and seeing so many people hating her and her movies. Oops… I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings Reese… I just said whatever I felt like saying…

So, the comment I wrote to Darren is something I could have a use myself. After all, we are the ones who choose to put ourselves out there for the world to read. And the world has its rights to say whatever back to us… some of the stuff may not be pretty… So… what can I do? Consider it as the growing pain of a baby blogger and laugh it off I guess…

On the bright side, out of today’s 3300 visitors so far (still counting), the attack ratio is only 0.24%. I should really consider myself lucky then.

Blog on!

Another reader submission from Paco:
To find out how you can submit a story or a link, check here.
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One of the many magazines I read a month is Wired. Here is an article that captured my attention and has me talking about the subject for over a month.

The Mad Genius from the Bottom of the Sea
Unlimited energy. Fast-growing fruit. Free air-conditioning. John Piña Craven says we can have it all by tapping the icy waters of the deep.

…

Running the frigid pipes through heat exchangers produces unlimited air-conditioning that costs almost nothing. Draining their sweat yields an endless supply of freshwater for drinking and irrigation. The cold water also creates a temperature difference between root and fruit that Craven believes speeds growth. And by turning the flow on and off, Craven has found he can further accelerate the plants’ growth cycle by forcing them in and out of dormancy - he can get three crops of grapes a year and pineapples in eight months instead of the usual 18. Feeding some of the water through a contraption Craven calls a hurricane tower generates clean electricity. “What the world doesn’t understand,” says Craven, still zigzagging through the parking lot, “is that what we don’t have enough of is cold, not heat.”

…

click here for more of this article

This is a reader submission from “Nosaj” (Jason K):
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Just finished reading this article. It really got me stirred up… If you’ve got any reactions or feel it Blog worthy, feel free to use any part you would like.

The basics are: If you’re a professional, you’d better watch out if you ever decide to change jobs. A new legal issue for US IT workers has come. The theory of ‘Inevitable Disclosure’ as applied to the IT worker basically states that if you work for Employer A and decide to jump ship to Employer B, whether you’ve signed a Non-Compete agreement or NOT, Employer A can file a LAWSUIT against YOU to keep you from taking the position at Employer B. - And now you’re out of a job…

What a complete piece of BS!!! Now, more than ever, we are treated by US IT companies as little more than contractors. The days of keeping a job for more than 5 years with a company are essentially over for the vast majority of us. Companies hire and fire regular associates now based solely on their projected earnings statements. IT Workers have mostly adapted to this model by accepting the ‘hire and fire’ cycle, by accepting the ‘outsourcing fad’, and by giving up one of the most precious benefits of a professional career: Stability. Now - it appears we have to deal with LAW SUITS when we attempt to take control of the situation by the only means we have available: The right to work where we please - as expressed by ‘jumping ship’ to hopefully better employment situations.

Where do we go from here? Ever heard of anyone who has been through a mandatory salary reduction? I have. Now, if we were to try to leave such an abusive and/or failing company, they would have the LEGAL option to invoke a lawsuit against us using the ‘Inevitable Disclosure’ argument. How about if we get laid off? Fired? Evil corporations can still invoke this to protect themselves - or - to act punitively against us!

At the very least, if our increasingly communist judicial system is going to allow this, then companies willing to invoke this type of lawsuit against us to protect themselves should be required to pay us our salary + benefits + bonuses + raise schedule for the term they feel necessary to protect their intellectual assets.

-J

This is my contribution #5 to the “31 days to better blog” project.

After blogging and babbling for a couple of months on any topics I feel like to, I start to wonder what make those elite blogs so elite? What are the top bloggers talking about? What kind of common characteristics do they share? With those questions in mind, I did a mini research to gather some data from the top bloggers’ sites.

How the research is conducted:
I randomly picked 10 sites from Feedster’s top 50 list and another 10 sites from Technorati’s top 50 list. I read each one of them to answer the following questions:
- What does the blog talk about?
- Is it a collaborative blog with mainly links or a blog with original contents written by an author?
- How old is the blog?
- How often does the blog get updated?

Findings:
Top category of the topics:

Collaborative vs original contents
20% to 30% top blogs are collaborative news sites that collect news from main events to odd news. Majority of the blogs still fall under the traditional kind which involves one ore more authors writing their own commentaries and thoughts.

How old are the top blogs
A third of the top blog sites are less than 3 years old. Another third are established in the 2000 to 2001 range. Only 1/3 of top blogs are run by the real seasoned pros who started before year 2000.

How often do the top bloggers update their sites
7 out of the top 10 Technorati’s sites update daily with multiple posts. The rest of the site owners blog at least a few times a week.

Conclusions:

• People love news, especially politics and current events. To be honest, I am quite surprised to see that the political related blogs attract so much attention from the public.
• The older the blogs, the better chances they have to hit the main stream. So the young bloggers shouldn’t be discouraged to be ranked at 2,987,445 right now. You never know what’s gonna happen 2 years down the road.
• Personal blog doesn’t make to the front page. Dave’s Davenetics is the only one in my sample data that made to the top list. I took a closer look at why this rare gem is so rare. Turns out, although the blog is about anything that sparks his mind and brain at that moment, almost each entry is linked to another article that is fun and informative. In addition, he spends a chuck of his time blogging about politics as well. So, I’d say his blog has very little to do with “personal” materials.
• I know this is old news, but the data further proves the rule of “blog often”. Majority of the bloggers update their sites daily with multiple pieces of contents. Those elites who can get away from this theory are either very unique (such as postsecret) or have long posts (like dooce.com). Again, davenetics makes an exceptional case of being a non-daily blogger with short posts yet is able to make to Technaroti’s top 10 list. What’s his secret?

Final Thoughts
So, what does that mean to us, the little guys in the Blogotown who often talk about nothing to everything? I guess the chance of a regular personal blog becoming an A-lister is pretty slim. Even for those ones that do talk about the niche topics may not receive the kind of spot light, unless you are really good at talking about politics and digging out the odd news.

So the question goes back to what your purpose of blogging is. If the purpose is to make money and turn blogging into a full time gig, then it’s time to retake Political Science 101 and Journalism 201. But if we are happy to be the little guys and blog for our own joy and personal growth, then maybe it’s a good idea to stop being the stats’ whores and be happy with whatever the rankings we get.

Sorry to shatter your “live-happily-ever-after” tales. The truth is, Disney lied to all of us about what really happened in the original fairy tales written in the 19th century.

So exactly, what happened to the Little Mermaid? According to the original tale written by Hans Christian Anderson in 1836:

The mermaid traded her tongue and her beautiful voice for her human legs from the witch. Her human feet would feel like walking on the knives for each step she took. Another condition: if the prince would marry someone else, her heart would be broken the next morning after the wedding and her body would become foam on the crest of waves.

But on that day when the little mermaid dragged the sinking prince back to the beach, she went hiding when a beautiful princess was passing by. So, the prince mistakenly thought the beautiful princess was the girl who saved him. Unable to speak, the little mermaid couldn’t tell him the truth. So the prince married the other girl on the ship. In order to save the little mermaid from dying the next morning, her sisters traded their hair for a knife from the witch and told the little mermaid to kill the prince before the sun rose(shown in the picture). Once the blood from prince’s heart touched her feet, the fish tail would grow back and she could return to the sea. The little mermaid was hesitating. Finally, instead of killing him to save herself, she jumped from the ship into the sea and her body dissolved into the cold foam. The End.

The original version is sad, dark, yet beautiful. So, I sort of can understand why Disney tweaked half of the story to make us happy. However, I think the schools should put the original literatures back in the libraries so the kids can read about the real tales. Otherwise, it’d be a shame if we attend some sort of International Fairy Tale Conventions with the belief that the little mermaid lived happily ever after.

Coincidently, Liz also posted the real Snow White story on her site. Check out how you got cheated again by Disney! I googled the original Grimm’s fairy tale “Little Snow White” if you are interested.

Duncan from Blog Herald got an email from someone who is trying to sell a few blog site domains (“website address” in a more common term) from $5000 to $25,000:
BloggingTools.com - $ 25000
CorporateBlogs.com - $ 20000
EroticWeblogs.com - $ 5000

Duncan laughed at it and you can take a look at the readers’ comments here.

But what I am shocked to see is that the dude who wants $25000 for his “BloggingTools.com” is by far not the only one who is miscalculating the zeros.

Check this guy out on eBay (or you can search “bloggt” on eBay)

Initial bid is $3,500 and you can have it for $50000.

Ok, I can understand if someone wants to cash in a good number of zeros from a website address like www.cnn.com. But bloggt.com?! What the heck is that?! I checked the site, it has absoooolutely nothing. According to Alexa, there is no traffic to that site at all (how could it be?). AND I can’t google any well established sites that share similar names with this one.

That dude got a little more than 3 days left, currently 0 bidder.

I proudly announce that I am no longer the only villager who is throwing Brew-Ha-Ha’s at you anymore.

Here is our first Villagers’ Brew-Ha-Ha list put together by the readers.

• Liz (Blog call sign Me Strauss) has a peanut butter jelly sandwich story to tell. Check out the recipe of a Double-Double-Decker grilled PBJ and PBJ’s 5000 year long history at the end of the post.
• Traveling Aussie who used to be in Atlanta now working in London has a hard time to keep track of the time changes. Here is his submission “How to tell you are living in 2005”
• Kimmi, the goody girl poured 8 emails in my mailbox one night with full of goodies. Besides the bad-daddy-nanny photos, here is the link to the fart joke “25 signs that you have grown up”
• Paco, the goody man submitted a “science” paper about Ibmentium, neutrons, morons and peons and the reorganization that causes certain morons to become neutrons. It also discusses the moron promotion method and how Ibmentium is formed when morons reach certain density. A must read modern “science” paper.

Here is how you can submit an entry to Yuna’s Village. If you wrote the original content on your site that fits’s Yuna’s Village’s style, I can link to your site too.