aha!

Less than brilliant.

Laborcost with Italy's ridiculously low salaries can be lowered only by cutting taxes and/or social contribuitions.

Italy's Hindenburg moment.

Yves Smith of naked capitalism put to our attention

National Geographic Apocalypse The Rise of Hitler 1of2 Becoming Hitler - YouTube:

I've read most, maybe all, of the important Hitler biographies (still missing one that concentrates on "Hitler, the Munich Bohème years" or "Hitler, homme à femmes") so nothing new to see in this film. Maybe Hugenberg deserved a byline like "Germany's Murdoch".

Central in this rather linear narrative is the moment when Hindenburg who has beaten in previous elections Hitler, with the help of the social democrats and the catholics, nominates Hitler chancellor of the Reich. A move that has to do with Hindenburg antidemocratic spirits. Now to Italy.

President Napolitano, elected without Berlusconi's vote, doesn't send Berlusconi, who's without a parliamentary majority (but not yet "sfiduciato"), back to parliament but forces a "Grosse Koaltion" to vote a government made of technocrats. A move that has to do with Napolitano's antidemocratic spirits.

This is particularly unfortunate because Italy's main, I'd even say only problem is to be full with laws that are not applied. Therefore Italy's institution are of mediocre quality and without sound institutions there is no growth.

Technorati Tags: antidemocratic, institutions, growth, puppy

Eid.

Christian girl’s arrest sparks tension | DAWN.COM:

Police said the girl’s mental state was not stable as she suffered from Down’s Syndrome (a genetic disorder that causes mental retardation and severe learning disabilities in children). A medical examination of the girl was carried out.

Over 100 people of the area held a demonstration and urged the police to hand over the girl to them. According to sources, they wanted to set her on fire.

Maybe not exactly what the Prophet dreamed of.

Referendum on article 23 of the German Constitution could be handled short term.

Referendum on Europe Gains Support in Germany - NYTimes.com:

Germany has never held a national referendum, as the German Constitution allows a national plebiscite only as a necessity to alter its basic laws, which have not been changed since after World War II.

Referendums are allowed by most of the country’s 16 states, however, and have become popular in recent years, Mr. Pestalozza said.

While the first 20 articles of the Constitution require a very lengthy procedere article 23 which is about European integration could be put to referendum relatively easily.

(This is a test, pondering getting of fb and going back to blogging)

Technorati Tags: eurocrisis, German referendum

Closer to ROI measurement.

MediaPost Publications Del Monte Adopts Encore Attribution Ad Model To Credit Impressions, Clicks 03/21/2011:
Having the ability to track attribution becomes increasingly important, since management wants to know the ROI for each Facebook investment. Since zero transactions occur on Facebook, Chavez needs to quantify the time consumers spend with the brand.

Technorati Tags: ROI, socialmedia

Eric Schmidt sees a" 200 $ bn ad biz"

The Future Of Display Advertising (It's Bigger Than You Think) | Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Blog - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image:

... there is only so much that a creative can do in terms of content, but the size of the display ad's physical space is an issue as well. No matter how big a display ad is, it's still a fairly limited physical space. This makes it a lot less interesting for the majority of advertising creative-types to get excited about. Something has to give. If not, the industry will always be faced with a lack of desire for creative directors to really focus (and care) about display advertising.

"People read what interests them. Sometimes it's an ad." Gossage's thinking still applies. And it's never been easy.

Technorati Tags: banner ads, puppy

Brian Eno: Improvising Within The Rules : NPR

Brian Eno: Improvising Within The Rules : NPR:
Mr. ENO: Yes. Well, I'm often looking at different ways of creating sort of structures within which improvisations can take place to direct them somewhere interesting. Because the problem with improvisations is that, A, people tend to play within their comfort zone, so - the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually. And the second thing is I want to get set up ways of getting people to shut up sometimes. 'Cause the other big problem with improvisation is that everybody plays all the time unless told not to.

So, there are lots and lots of ways of approaching both of these issues. One of them is sort of by role playing, by saying, let's imagine a kind of music that hasn't yet existed.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. ENO: I imagine that we are living 20 years from now or 50 years from now and we're reading a review. I often write the review of a concert that we're supposed to have seen or has happened where we've seen 25 North African Arabic musicians who have a Japanese bandleader. And they're playing a new kind of music called neagata(ph) machine techno, which appeared in the suburbs of Tokyo in the year 2020. And then I make a description of what that music is like and then we try to make it.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. ENO: So, sometimes I have quite sort of involved frames that we are working within. But other times very simple ones, like the rule which says you can only use the extremes of your instrument, top or bottom 10 percent of its range. Or you can only play when so and so is playing, when this other person's playing; when he stops you stop. Just little rules like that, and they really aren't sacred in any way. They're very much ad hoc and they're really there to push us into a new place.

Technorati Tags: briefing, collaboration, unified requirements writing

Setec Astronomy | Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Blog - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

Setec Astronomy | Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Blog - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image:

Someone recently asked me about a Social Media course that was taking place and if I knew the instructor. I did not. Like the person asking the question, I went online and discovered that the individual leading this intensive session has no credible digital footprint. While they have a respectable job title, their LinkedIn profile was out of date. They have a handful of Twitter followers, but have not updated their status in the past six months and most of the tweets prior to that are repetitive Foursquare check-ins to their work, gym and a local bar (digging a little deeper it's clear that they were trying out Foursquare but dropped it in short order as well). They have no Blog, Podcast, YouTube clips or flickr stream. It's hard to even find places online where they have commented on other people's Blogs. They do have a Facebook profile, but the last update was a few weeks ago, and it was a link to a project they were working on.

Technorati Tags: digital credibility

expect a 'Social Business Suite'

The Stack: The Fifteen Classes of the Social Business Software Suite (Q4, 2010) « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Mark

Technorati Tags: New Normal, social software, socialmedia, vision

There is no way around this if you want to do outstanding creative work.

sketching and the guts of phones- lessons from planningness :: Influxinsights:
Instead of talking about applications and ad units, he suggested the thing we need to develop great ideas is to understand what's inside the guts of a phone or mobile device.

To me, most attempts at trying to get to mobile ideas involve looking at competitive applications and trying to put a twist on them. Heathcote's way suggests creatives need to know about all the functionality like- accelerometers, voice recognoition, smile recognition, the microphone, the speakers, etc and think about how they might play with those and perhaps even combine them.

Technorati Tags: briefing, collaboration, interpretive manager, unified requirements writing