From Joe over at Dappered on “luxury”:
It doesn’t matter if your outfit cost $7,500 or $75. It doesn’t matter if you’re hopping a private jet to Marseille or riding your bike to the park down the street. That Pinot Grigio can cost $500, or it can cost $6.50. What’s key is that you’re taking the time to actually enjoy life…
It’s a quick and smart read. I’m starting my list…
Over a year ago, John Gruber rightfully gave AllThingsD (from the Wall Street Journal) a hard time about properly attributing sources. For the longest time ATD would not use hyperlinks to point to original sources nor even the websites of companies or products mentioned in their articles.
Yet, even when an article was updated to point to an original source, AllThingsD did not cite the author by name (just the publication name). It seemed half-hearted, especially from a publication that so prominently features its principals: Kara Swisher, John Paczkowski, and of course, Walt Mossberg.
These days, the individuals behind an article are just as, if not more, important than the publication they come from. Micah Baldwin summarized this best last night:
I am starting to realize that I dont care about publications (magazines/newspapers, etc). I am now valuing specific writers or topics. (ex. apple biz posts by MG Siegler or writing posts by Ben Casnocha)
I’ve felt the same for a while and realize that my allegiance is to the writers: I’ve followed MG Siegler from VentureBeat to TechCrunch to his own blog. I enjoyed reading Mat Honan on The Awl and even more at WIRED. Brad Feld writes on his personal blog but also publishes on a Wall Street Journal blog.
The importance of knowing and appreciating the “who” behind an article goes back to the (over-simplified) point that companies are simply made up of people. Yes, the New York Times and WIRED are distinct publications, but I could easily see myself reading a great article from Nick Bilton in both.
Related side note: it was strange to me that so much attention was lent to the WSJ story a week ago about iPhone 5 demand being “down”. And the one about the “cheaper iPhone” coming soon (again!) the week before that. The WSJ has been mostly reputable when publishing stories about Apple, but most of the predictive headlines from Asawa and Lessin have gone unsubstantiated. Know who you’re reading…
(I originally drafted this post on July 2, 2011)
From Forbes:
Here’s how it works. Members buy plots of land on Powder Mountain (early lots were rumored to have sold for $1 million a pop), build a home and get access to a private lodge and thousands of acres of skiing, riding, biking and hiking. Membership to Summit also brings a year-round program of speakers, conferences and concerts. The goal is to create a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who dig the Summit ethos of innovation, art and social impact with some hard partying mixed in.
You had me at skiing. And hiking. And community…
Since the most recent MacBook Air was announced, like any self-respecting nerd, I’ve been running some numbers.
Some context: I’ve used a first-generation MacBook Air as my primary and only computer since July 2008 (27 months ago). This means I use the same computer at work, when I travel, and when I’m on the couch.
Just a mere 800 days ago, I purchased mentioned notebook with the following specifications:
And it only set me back a measly $2,699. If you can recall the summer of 2008, SSDs were very expensive. I paid heavily for what has been my faster, and favorite computer in the short history of owning laptops.
That said, much has changed in recent months.
Fast forward to today and Apple is able to offer nearly the exact same computer for a more affordable cost. In fact, 2008 Devin is pissed.
The latest MacBook Air with 13″, 1.8 GHz, 2 GB, and a whopping 128 GB solid state drive (double what I have now) is a modest $1299. Wow. Less than half the price in just two years.
Sure, the cost of computing is always coming down, we all understand that. And frankly, my computing needs have not changed much. So why even entertain a replacement? Isn’t two years a little premature to swap out?
The thing that makes the new MacBook Air interesting is the technology enhancements and iterations that have brought it to where it is today. On paper, my old clunker and the new hotness look nearly the same.
But, in reality, much has changed:
Not to mention the obvious: an improved device design that makes the machine a tad lighter, slightly slimmer, and a bit more aesthetically pleasing (at the cost of the backlit keyboard). And these are just a handful of the little things I’ve noticed, I’m sure there are more. I hear Apple is detail-oriented.
So, the current MacBook Air is an improvement over what I have in-hand now. Then comes the money.
I’ve been thinking about the cost of replacing devices and the “acceptable” frequency of upgrades. With some quick math, anyone can figure out how to amortize (spread out) the cost of their gadget over a lifetime. Since my MacBook Air is my primary and only machine, I don’t even need to assign any special value based on usage; it’s used 100% of the time:
$2700 / 27 months = $100 per month
The immediate question: did I receive over $100 in value every month I used the original MacBook Air? Have the past two years been “worth it” to even start considering a replacement? Short answer: of course. I use it at work every weekday to earn my fatty paycheck.
A-ha, but Crowd Favorite would provide me with my own computer. I happened to opt to use my own. This now becomes a different question for me, personally.
Put another way, would I pay $100 to use this notebook every month for the past 27 months? Still, yes.
Taking any possible side income out of the equation, I would pay $100 every month for the ability to do the following:
All things considered, I can do a lot for under $100 a month. Heck, most people pay close to that just to watch HBO shows and high-definition football games.
Most would look at dropping a couple grand as a fairly important purchase and avoid it as much as possible. But, rethinking the cost in more manageable and relatable numbers will help realize it’s not that scary. We all know our monthly bills and monthly income, so why not re-think a purchase like a new notebook accordingly?
Would you pay $100 per month to rent your personal computer?
(If you hadn’t realized already, this is my round-about way of convincing myself its okay to buy a new, expensive, and potentially unnecessary gadget. Ha!)
I like beer (we recently started homebrewing) and I like conventions. That’s precisely why I’m excited for my first Great American Beer Festival which is conveniently located here in Denver.
One pro-tip brought to our attention was to bring food to a half-day beer tasting convention. Sure, that makes sense. But what is the most convenient and tasty beer-related food you can bring1?
If you haven’t seen pretzel necklaces before, they’re simply a piece of string with hard pretzels, soft pretzels, funyons, and any other hole-based snack hanging from your neck. Think candy necklaces for adults.
You can make a bunch of them quickly if you use an unsharpened pencil or pen to stack up a bunch of the pretzels at once.
Just tape the string to the top of the pencil, slide the pretzels onto the pencil and viola. Now you don’t have to fumble with threading a flimsy string through a hole.
The tool of choice: a non-sharpened pencil with string and tape
I was able to make 3 necklaces this way in less than 5 minutes. I could likely sell one of these for a few bucks at the door while everyone is waiting.
In short, 36 necklaces per hour at $3 per necklace means over $100 for a quick hour of work.
Some experts say these make you look “dumb” and may screw up your palate. We’ll see about that… ↩
Place an order with AmazonTote and you get free batched “shipping” to your door once a week. No minimums, no obligations, no subscription. If you have Amazon Prime then you have two delivery days available each week. At first I thought this might cannibalize Prime subscriptions (I only have Prime so I can get free shipping in just a few days) but this just extends the benefit.
Rachel mentioned a story about a college professor who, to paraphrase, said that “we kids have no right to complain about all the websites we use (Google Mail, Facebook) because they’re giving everything to us for free”.
Well sure, in the traditional economic sense, they are providing a lot for no monetary exchange. But that’s the whole premise of Chris Anderson’s book: Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Does that mean we have no right to complain, request new features, or demand some level of service? I think we do. Without the collective network of millions, Facebook would not exist. We are the customers because we’re paying with a different (and arguably, more sparse) currency: attention.
While email and social networks are part of most peoples’ lives, nothing scares me more than online banking and financial services. Which is why Mint.com and Intuit scare me. If I file my taxes online for free with TurboTax, is there really any guarantee it will work like it should? The penalties here are a bit greater than if I can’t ‘poke’ my friends for a day or two on Facebook. What if I spend hours each month tracking my finances and Mint suddenly loses all that data? It’s happened. Do I have any right to demand satisfaction? The way I’ve received (no) support from Mint, the answer may appear to be no. But, the way more successful companies (Facebook, Google) have handled themselves, I’d say demonstrably yes. They understand I am a “paying” customer and need to be treated as such.
Now, what if a WordPress plugin developer releases their feature to the world for free. Do they have to follow-up with every email question? How could one person be expected donate both their time in the form of a plugin and in the form of support to thousands of individuals? The latter does not scale and, more importantly, your usage did not contribute to any economic model I can perceive. Open source software is largely reputation based. Yet somehow people expect, nay, demand customer satisfaction. I see it every day.
Companies based on free services like Facebook and Google exist to make money and users are their customers. Individuals releasing free software like plugin developers exist to help grow a community and better an existing product. Somehow this subtle difference is not clear to the average user.
As software and web services become more fundamental and part of our lives, the truism of “getting what you paid for” becomes less obvious; people expect more for less. Unfortunately, there are externalities that bleed into other unrelated areas of the internet. Interestingly enough, the professor was wrong while, at the same time, entirely right.
The concept of “checking in” to a location using a web-based service is not new. Brightkite, Foursquare, and Gowalla have all been doing this for quite some time. But ever since Yelp has joined the fray, I can’t help but feel awkward about it.
We’ve now added the ability for yelpers to “Check-in” to businesses. Active users of this feature may receive “Regular” status of highly-frequented businesses.
This sounds great on the surface. Users who are already visiting restaurants and businesses simply indiciate that they’ve physically visited the location. It becomes fun and almost a game, much like Foursquare or Gowalla, to be one of the top patrons (Mayor or Top 10, respectively) or one of the most active users amongst your friends (Leaderboard).
But I feel this is where it gets sticky (emphasis mine):
Yelp is all about community – we have never put emphasis on any one voice or opinion. In line with that philosophy, we opted to highlight a group of people who frequent a business as opposed to just one person. “Regular” status can be achieved by frequent patronage – or checking in – of a business. This title will show up on a user’s profile, next to reviews and tips and on the business page in the iPhone app, as well as eventually on that business listing on Yelp.com. The Regular with the most Check-ins will not only be featured on that business page, but get to wear the golden badge of honor. The moniker can also be lost if patronage wanes, so Regulars must visit a business often to keep it.
Sure, the check-ins and ‘Regular’ badges are, again, a fun “lightweight” way to interact with Yelp. But, those who do check-in regularly and provide favorable ratings seem to confuse the impartiality of a review. You’re not going to be a “Regular” at your 1-star venues are you? No, so this will become a form of rating inflating (as ‘Regulars’ are likely visiting their top-rated establishments).
I understand that someone who visits the coffee shop three times may have a more well-rounded perspective of the businesses service, food, and experience (compared to someone who had one awesome or one terrible experience). But, along the lines of Foursquare, which offers “Mayor Specials“, its arguable that frequent visitors (or Regulars) may be given preferred treatment. Perhaps not explicitly, but in the way that you start to get to know the guy behind the counter on your fourth visit. Or perhaps you really get to know the bartender… but maybe not the bar? What happens to your “Real Reviews” then, Yelp?
Sure, the individuals who are ‘Regulars’ are not a secret. They are clearly indicated and you can take their reviews with a grain of salt. And sure, before, these people would have received the same treatment and written the same reviews. But, now there is more incentive to visit regularly and write reviews.
So what about when Yelp starts mixing in the Sales & Special Offers variable? If I only visited a bar because I was getting a free drink, does that change my overall expectations and, ultimately, my review? Deals for “Regulars” is certainly something to stay away from.
I don’t know, maybe this is not a major concern to Yelp. But having chatted with Alex, I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering about this. There is arguably some potential for conflicts of interest in the form of preferable treatment and new incentive to visit regularly and write (impartial?) more reviews.
I was trying to come up with an attention-grabbing title for this book to make sure nobody skimmed past. Frankly, I couldn’t decide between “great personal finance book” or “the greatest personal finance book
Ramit Sethi is a brilliant guy (he hired me once or twice) and there’s no doubt in my mind that he is, indeed, rich (you have to be to live in San Francisco). Insert one more joke here about him being Indian. Seriously, I’ve been a long time reader of his blog, aptly titled, I Will Teach You To Be Rich and couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book.
Photo: Devin Reams, Ramit Sethi, Jon Otto, Noah Kagan
This book serves as a six week, step-by-step guide to:
If these all sound like scary things, don’t worry, Ramit will hold your hand the entire time. His cheeky, informal writing style sounds more like your best buddy chatting about money than some writer on a soapbox trying to impress you with big words. This book is easy to read, follow-along with and teaches you all the things about finance you wish you had known when you were in your 20s.
I took two personal finances classes in academia: one in high school and one in college. The former taught me lessons like: how to write checks (I don’t use paper checks anymore) and how to balance a checkbook (I use Mint to track that information). The latter taught things like: the importance of owning real estate (we all know how that turned out) and how to manually complete your 1040 form (I use TurboTax for that). Point being: traditional finances courses and books aren’t doing you a lot of good.
I Will Teach You To Be Rich cuts through the noise (Jim Cramer, anyone?) and gives it to you straight: start saving now, don’t invest in individual stocks, real estate isn’t the best investment, banks sucks, but despite all of this, feel free to spend lots of money (on the things you love). If you disagree with any of the previous statements, you’ll love this book.
Though I’m biased, I do think this is a must-read for anyone, especially anyone under 30. Plus, I have the benefit of hindsight: the book already hit Amazon’s #1 best seller and is still #1 in personal finance.
If I could walk up to each of my friends and slap them with a copy of this book I know it would make a huge difference in their lives. Seriously, I want all of my friends from school to read this book now. Pick up this book and start acting today. It’s not hard stuff, and even the simple things like setting up automatic monthly payments have huge benefits: you’ll never ever pay a late fee again. You’ll never have to remember to set aside money for investing. Simply asking for an increase in your existing credit lines means you can raise your overall credit score saving you hundreds of thousands of dollars in financing (if you buy a house or car).
Enough said: go buy I Will Teach You To Be Rich
As a follow-up to this week’s previous post about the stock market and automakers, here is Rachel with more on how the economy works.
I think one of the most common misconceptions is that the government is in charge of creating money. Yes, they produce physical cash and they attempt to manage the money supply via interest rates, discount rates, and reserve requirements. But if you look at these ways that the Treasury and the Federal Reserve can manipulate the money supply, it’s largely through controlling the bank’s actions. And while the government usually plays a strong role in determining the amount of money in circulation, lately it’s found that it’s ability to affect change has been limited.
Banks utilize fractional reserve requirements to leverage the amount of money they are able to loan. Essentially a reserve ratio is a limit set by the government that ties the amount of loans made to the amount of deposits held by the bank. Conservatively, banks today have a required reserve ratio of 10% (and in some cases 3% or 0%). This means that for every $100 of legal tender that is deposited with the bank, the bank is allowed to loan out $90. Should this $90 be spent in such a way that it is eventually re-deposited with a bank, that bank is able to issue a new loan of $81 based on their fractional reserve requirements. If this process continues uninterrupted, the bank can issue up to $1,000 in newly created fiat money from that original $100 deposit. Because bank credit has been legally decreed by the government to be a medium of exchange, the banks just created $900.
For a bank to remain operational, reserve requirements must be met every day, meaning that a bank must have the correct ratio of deposits to outstanding loans. Previously, banks could borrow from each other if they had a shortfall of deposits or, for a small interest rate, lend any excess deposits overnight to banks in need. So what does the current landscape look like? As more and more institutions become crippled and sometimes bankrupted by their bad loans and “toxic assets”, the inter-bank lending market has seen increased stagnation. Banks are scared of what yet undisclosed disaster may lie in wait on each others’ balance sheets, and thus are unwilling to lend to any entity that they deem to be a risk in returning their capital. Banks who previously relied on the operational flexibility allowed by the market’s liquidity (read: all of the them) are now severely limiting credit issued to consumers, as the existence of their business depends on them keeping what remains of their balance sheet in check.
What does all that mean? No lending. And what happens when the banks refuse to lend money, not to individuals, not to corporations, not even to each other? The end result is that you have an economy used to the periodic injection of $900 waiting in fear, unable to find financing for basic individual and business needs. As the perception that the money supply has dried up continues, consumers stop spending and businesses are then hit with decreased revenue in addition to loss of credit. This has lead to business cost-cutinng efforts, including work force reduction, which in turn contributes to the growing consumer panic. Growth has slowed to the point of retraction, spending has ground to a halt, and you have a society that is firmly in the midst of both economic and financial crises.
Say what you will about the bailouts, but the government’s interest is intrinsically tied to the bank’s operations. The banking system’s ability and willingness to lend are going to play a large role in the economy because the whole process is a cyclical relationship. So far we have spent $158.6 billion in “recapitalizing the banks.” Though the execution of this plan has been somewhat dubious, the overall goal is to provide the banks with more money in deposits, meaning that they can now lend without fear of violating their reserve requirement. Theoretically, injecting the money into the economy through the banks should bolster their balance sheets, allow lending, increase consumer confidence, help businesses, and slow the downward spiral. Admittedly this theory depends entirely on your economic perspective and has already displayed several significant flaws.
The politics behind the bailouts are sticky and the plan’s effectiveness is questioned by many. However, it is useful to try to try to think through the banking system and the interwoven structure of cause and effect without the cloud of sensational news. I would love to hear your thoughts on the situation.
Also, those who are further interested may want to follow NPR’s Planet Money podcast for a more in-depth look at many of the underlying issues.