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This struck me as an amusing opener to an AP article:

Google is offering to run the search engines of small Web sites for as little as $100 per year, marking the company's latest attempt to make more money ...

Google offers to run search engines for small Web sites for $100

This book gets mixed reviews, but the message may resonate ...

From Publishers Weekly:

Twenty-something journalist Daniel Brook sees the best minds of his generation scrivening away as corporate lawyers and accountants, and he's furious about it. His fresh and striking pay-gap polemic laments the plight of "educated, idealistic young people" who must choose whether "to be a sellout or a saint" — that is, whether to take a lucrative corporate job or to eke out a pauper's existence in creative or nonprofit work.

"The new economic realities," Brook writes, "are shaping people's lives, closing off certain career and lifestyle options. They are reducing freedom."

Many readers will wince in recognition of their work/life compromises. "Corporate America is riddled with secret dissenters," Brook notes; he does a real service asking why it must be this way.

From Booklist:

Selling out in order to make big bucks used to be viewed with contempt, but, Brook argues, in today's aggressive society, it has become ever more acceptable, even mundane.

For many people the choice comes down to sticking to one's ideological guns or living a comfortable life, but for "boomerang kids" -- college grads so far in debt that they have to move back in with their folks -- selling out is the only way to escape childhood.

An exploration not only of the economics of compromise but also of the frustration that comes in the wake of putting material concerns ahead of personal beliefs.

The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America

When Verizon customers order FiOS, they get attached to a proprietary network and get (more or less permanently) removed from the open-access network.

Verizon's new high-bandwidth fiber lines are fully capable of carrying not only calls but also Internet data and television with room to grow. But once the copper is pulled, it's difficult to switch back to the traditional phone system or less expensive Digital Subscriber Line service. And Verizon isn't required, in most instances, to lease fiber to rival phone companies, as it is with the copper infrastructure.

Once You Go Optical, There's No Going Back -- No, Really

SoundExchange says that it has offered small webcasters (those with revenues of under $1.2 million) a subsidy that would extend the current, revenue-based agreement until 2010. Yet webcasters, still hoping for a more beneficial outcome, have also petitioned the DC Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of the rate increase.

The Last Stand of Internet Radio?

An article last week about inexpensive dresses misstated the name of a clothing store on Broadway. It is Yellow Rat Bastard, not Dirty Yellow Bastard.

See also, from last month, Angelina Appreciates a Good Discount.

Correction: Just Don’t Call Them Inexpensive

James Surowiecki on prediction markets.

Prediction markets function like futures markets, except that, instead of betting on the future performance of a company or a commodity, people can bet (often with play money) on things like election outcomes, current events, and product sales.

The collective intelligence of consumers isn’t perfect—it’s just better than other forecasting tools. The catch is that to get good answers from consumers you need to ask the right kinds of questions. And you need a critical mass of people to participate.

Nobody knows anything. But everybody, it turns out, may know something.

The Science of Success

The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present.

I assume this is a limited-time offer; soon the article will disappear behind the paywall.

Prediction is possible only in a world in which events are preordained and no amount of action in the present can influence future outcomes. That world is the stuff of myth and superstition.

Here are the rules:

Rule 1: Define a Cone of Uncertainty
Rule 2: Look for the S Curve
Rule 3: Embrace the Things That Don’t Fit
Rule 4: Hold Strong Opinions Weakly
Rule 5: Look Back Twice as Far as You Look Forward
Rule 6: Know When Not to Make a Forecast

Paul Saffo, on Six Rules for Effective Forecasting | HBR

Soon enough, Presidential candidates will be talking about the need to break our dependence on foreign water. This is not a joke.

Americans spent more money last year on bottled water than on ipods or movie tickets: $15 Billion. A journey into the economics--and psychology--of an unlikely business boom. And what it says about our culture of indulgence.

If you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.

If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35.

Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person.

Marika is making a bowl of grog, a lightly narcotic beverage that is an anchor of traditional Fiji society.

After visiting 45 aboriginal settlements over the past ten months, the inquiry found violence and child sexual abuse rife in every one.

The report shocked Australia. Its respected authors, Rex Wild, a prominent barrister, and Pat Anderson, an aboriginal health-worker, blamed alcohol, drug abuse, pornography, unemployment and a breakdown of aboriginal culture and identity for the horrors they uncovered. Ms Anderson said alcohol was “totally destroying” families and communities. “Something needs to be done to curb this river of grog.”

Let's hope we get aboriginal punks (of the old school) and not aboriginal jihadists. Maybe they'll go straight edge.

Message in a Bottle

Google's magnetic pull on top Silicon Valley talent is showing signs of weakening.

By way of explanation, WSJ speaks of "a new generation of Internet start-ups" and stock options vesting. Among the recently departed are Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, both creators of Google Maps and Google Founders' Award recipients.

Google is on track to receive more than two million resumes in 2007.

You know you've reached big blue status when ...

Google has begun experimenting with the creation of offsite "skunkworks" operations ...

Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google's Work Force