And yet, The Hollywood Reporter finds the movie market gurus slightly embarrassed at what they call the “family stampede.” Family films have well outpaced pre-release projections repeatedly since May, and the studio bosses are puzzled over why these movies “outperform” their guesses. "The simplest answer is that the tracking doesn't include the young kids themselves," Disney distribution boss Chuck Viane said.

"It's just harder to get a handle on what kids are thinking," another brilliant marketer guessed. "Tracking surveys are based on what people express in phone and Internet surveys, and you're not going to find the young kids that way." Pre-release tracking surveys focus on parents. "The nag factor is what drives those kind of movies," a studio executive tartly declared. "The parents might be less inclined than the kids to see a picture, but then the kids pester the parents, and the rest is history."

So why don’t the studio bosses start factoring in the possibility of a “nag factor” from young children, wanting to go to the movies with parents who demand quality for their children, and make some movies accordingly? No million-dollar marketing exec has thought of that yet?

"There can be a disconnect in tracking sometimes about how far a picture will reach across all audiences," said Sony distribution president Rory Bruer, whose gone-to-China remake of "The Karate Kid" debuted last month with a much-better-than expected $55.7 million. "There's no doubt that word-of-mouth is important in that aspect." Maybe the studio underestimated the affinity of parents for the first version of the film, released back in 1984. It's well on its way to grossing $200 million.

Sometimes, pre-tracking surveys are wrong the other way, overestimating turnout. Last fall, pre-release surveys suggested the Michael Jackson tribute film “This Is It” could ring up “$40 million or more” on its first weekend. The actual figure was a lot less: $23 million.

“Despicable Me” is a great example of the “out-performed expectations” story line. The Universal cartoon with the inept bald-headed villain who learns to love and parent three young girls grossed $56.4 million in its opening weekend, although the “experts” expected a much lower $30 to $35 million weekend.

"People think it was a whole host of things contributing to the big opening," one executive told the Hollywood Reporter. "You had some fresh-looking characters, funny trailers and a huge boost from running those trailers with other hit family films over the past several weeks." Surveys had suggested “tepid” interest from consumers.

Anyone watching NBC or Universal's cable channels were subjected to repeated on-screen promos during their favorite shows. NBC also ran a 30-minute “behind the scenes” infomercial on the opening night of the film, since Friday night TV in the summertime isn't a hot spot for advertisers.

Only one R-rated movie has grossed over $100 million this year, the Leonardo di Caprio horror flick “Shutter Island.” It has just been squeezed out of the top ten by “Despicable Me.” Three movies have grossed over $300 million to top the 2010 list: “Toy Story 3” (a daring G), “Alice in Wonderland” (PG), and “Iron Man 2” (PG-13). Three more movies have grossed over $200 million: “Twilight: The Eclipse Saga” (PG-13) and the family cartoons “Shrek Forever After” (PG) and “How to Train Your Dragon” (PG).

Why can’t greedy Hollywood just look at the math and put their money where the American public’s eyes want to go?

Here’s what should follow: more respect from the movie awards shows for these animated films. “Toy Story 3" drew rave reviews across the board. The St. Petersburg Times said it “isn't merely the best movie of the summer — even with summer just kicking in — but an immediate candidate for best of the year.” Don’t bet the mortgage.

NewsBusters is turning 5. Enter our free t-shirt contest to help us celebrate!

And yet, The Hollywood Reporter finds the movie market gurus slightly embarrassed at what they call the “family stampede.” Family films have well outpaced pre-release projections repeatedly since May, and the studio bosses are puzzled over why these movies “outperform” their guesses. "The simplest answer is that the tracking doesn't include the young kids themselves," Disney distribution boss Chuck Viane said.

"It's just harder to get a handle on what kids are thinking," another brilliant marketer guessed. "Tracking surveys are based on what people express in phone and Internet surveys, and you're not going to find the young kids that way." Pre-release tracking surveys focus on parents. "The nag factor is what drives those kind of movies," a studio executive tartly declared. "The parents might be less inclined than the kids to see a picture, but then the kids pester the parents, and the rest is history."

So why don’t the studio bosses start factoring in the possibility of a “nag factor” from young children, wanting to go to the movies with parents who demand quality for their children, and make some movies accordingly? No million-dollar marketing exec has thought of that yet?

"There can be a disconnect in tracking sometimes about how far a picture will reach across all audiences," said Sony distribution president Rory Bruer, whose gone-to-China remake of "The Karate Kid" debuted last month with a much-better-than expected $55.7 million. "There's no doubt that word-of-mouth is important in that aspect." Maybe the studio underestimated the affinity of parents for the first version of the film, released back in 1984. It's well on its way to grossing $200 million.

Sometimes, pre-tracking surveys are wrong the other way, overestimating turnout. Last fall, pre-release surveys suggested the Michael Jackson tribute film “This Is It” could ring up “$40 million or more” on its first weekend. The actual figure was a lot less: $23 million.

“Despicable Me” is a great example of the “out-performed expectations” story line. The Universal cartoon with the inept bald-headed villain who learns to love and parent three young girls grossed $56.4 million in its opening weekend, although the “experts” expected a much lower $30 to $35 million weekend.

"People think it was a whole host of things contributing to the big opening," one executive told the Hollywood Reporter. "You had some fresh-looking characters, funny trailers and a huge boost from running those trailers with other hit family films over the past several weeks." Surveys had suggested “tepid” interest from consumers.

Anyone watching NBC or Universal's cable channels were subjected to repeated on-screen promos during their favorite shows. NBC also ran a 30-minute “behind the scenes” infomercial on the opening night of the film, since Friday night TV in the summertime isn't a hot spot for advertisers.

Only one R-rated movie has grossed over $100 million this year, the Leonardo di Caprio horror flick “Shutter Island.” It has just been squeezed out of the top ten by “Despicable Me.” Three movies have grossed over $300 million to top the 2010 list: “Toy Story 3” (a daring G), “Alice in Wonderland” (PG), and “Iron Man 2” (PG-13). Three more movies have grossed over $200 million: “Twilight: The Eclipse Saga” (PG-13) and the family cartoons “Shrek Forever After” (PG) and “How to Train Your Dragon” (PG).

Why can’t greedy Hollywood just look at the math and put their money where the American public’s eyes want to go?

Here’s what should follow: more respect from the movie awards shows for these animated films. “Toy Story 3" drew rave reviews across the board. The St. Petersburg Times said it “isn't merely the best movie of the summer — even with summer just kicking in — but an immediate candidate for best of the year.” Don’t bet the mortgage.

NewsBusters is turning 5. Enter our free t-shirt contest to help us celebrate!

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Mimicking Apple an imperative for PC makers | Nanotech - The <b>…</b>

PC makers are imitating Apple as fast as they can–and for good reason. Read this blog post by Brooke Crothers on Nanotech - The Circuits Blog.

The 'JournoList' Controversy, Fox <b>News</b> and the 'Helen Thomas Seat'

But it turns out that one of the journalists disparaging Fox News in e-mails was Michael Scherer of Time magazine. And unlike the other Fox critics on the JournoList, Scherer may actually be in a position to use his authority to hurt …

Going Global: George Stephanopoulos And ABC <b>News</b> Execs Discuss New <b>…</b>

Earlier this week, ABC News launched a new iPad application that adds a twist to the way most apps present the news: a third dimension. Fire up the app and you're immediately faced with a nifty-looking globe that's covered in headlines …

And yet, The Hollywood Reporter finds the movie market gurus slightly embarrassed at what they call the “family stampede.” Family films have well outpaced pre-release projections repeatedly since May, and the studio bosses are puzzled over why these movies “outperform” their guesses. "The simplest answer is that the tracking doesn't include the young kids themselves," Disney distribution boss Chuck Viane said.

"It's just harder to get a handle on what kids are thinking," another brilliant marketer guessed. "Tracking surveys are based on what people express in phone and Internet surveys, and you're not going to find the young kids that way." Pre-release tracking surveys focus on parents. "The nag factor is what drives those kind of movies," a studio executive tartly declared. "The parents might be less inclined than the kids to see a picture, but then the kids pester the parents, and the rest is history."

So why don’t the studio bosses start factoring in the possibility of a “nag factor” from young children, wanting to go to the movies with parents who demand quality for their children, and make some movies accordingly? No million-dollar marketing exec has thought of that yet?

"There can be a disconnect in tracking sometimes about how far a picture will reach across all audiences," said Sony distribution president Rory Bruer, whose gone-to-China remake of "The Karate Kid" debuted last month with a much-better-than expected $55.7 million. "There's no doubt that word-of-mouth is important in that aspect." Maybe the studio underestimated the affinity of parents for the first version of the film, released back in 1984. It's well on its way to grossing $200 million.

Sometimes, pre-tracking surveys are wrong the other way, overestimating turnout. Last fall, pre-release surveys suggested the Michael Jackson tribute film “This Is It” could ring up “$40 million or more” on its first weekend. The actual figure was a lot less: $23 million.

“Despicable Me” is a great example of the “out-performed expectations” story line. The Universal cartoon with the inept bald-headed villain who learns to love and parent three young girls grossed $56.4 million in its opening weekend, although the “experts” expected a much lower $30 to $35 million weekend.

"People think it was a whole host of things contributing to the big opening," one executive told the Hollywood Reporter. "You had some fresh-looking characters, funny trailers and a huge boost from running those trailers with other hit family films over the past several weeks." Surveys had suggested “tepid” interest from consumers.

Anyone watching NBC or Universal's cable channels were subjected to repeated on-screen promos during their favorite shows. NBC also ran a 30-minute “behind the scenes” infomercial on the opening night of the film, since Friday night TV in the summertime isn't a hot spot for advertisers.

Only one R-rated movie has grossed over $100 million this year, the Leonardo di Caprio horror flick “Shutter Island.” It has just been squeezed out of the top ten by “Despicable Me.” Three movies have grossed over $300 million to top the 2010 list: “Toy Story 3” (a daring G), “Alice in Wonderland” (PG), and “Iron Man 2” (PG-13). Three more movies have grossed over $200 million: “Twilight: The Eclipse Saga” (PG-13) and the family cartoons “Shrek Forever After” (PG) and “How to Train Your Dragon” (PG).

Why can’t greedy Hollywood just look at the math and put their money where the American public’s eyes want to go?

Here’s what should follow: more respect from the movie awards shows for these animated films. “Toy Story 3" drew rave reviews across the board. The St. Petersburg Times said it “isn't merely the best movie of the summer — even with summer just kicking in — but an immediate candidate for best of the year.” Don’t bet the mortgage.

NewsBusters is turning 5. Enter our free t-shirt contest to help us celebrate!

There is no Antennagate.

Well, that’s not true. But what Jobs called Antennagate at today’s press conference is more than just the design flaw in the iPhone 4 they insisted was a non-issue. It’s a design flaw with the entire way the issue was handled — by them and by us. The feeding frenzy around the iPhone 4 has been a months-long affair, for a combination of two reasons: one, that Apple has a unique position in tech coverage, and two, that controversy generates traffic. The result is outrage, confusion, expenditure, flamewars, and everything else that’s been happening online since the launch.

Sorry about that. We’re not perfect.

See, as you may know, Apple enjoys a bit of a coverage bias here and elsewhere on the net. Why is that? You know why, for the most part: sexy products, charismatic leader, a whiff of elitism. They’re fun to write about and many people enjoy reading about them — that’s enough for us. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, when a design flaw, plain for all to see, was detected in what was heralded as the best smartphone ever to be released, the response in the tech community was mixed and misleading.

I say mixed because Apple coverage seems to be opinionated for more than other coverage, anywhere you look on the net. There is very little emotion in reporting on HP or Palm — perhaps it is because, as MG suggests, Apple works hard on building an emotional bond with its customers, something which its detractors see and abhor. Whether that’s the case or not, Apple news is often delivered with a slant. And I say misleading because in some ways, how Antennagate (which I am going to stop referring to as such; “-gate” terms are overused) was reported exposed many of the weaknesses in the online reporting structure of which we are a small part. Let’s get into that.

Apple’s ubiquity in web culture usually works in their favor: a press conference with a couple hundred people becomes an internet-wide festival of love and hate. Of course, part of that is their knowing how to put on a presentation, the value of which is something many companies deeply underestimate. Even when revealing the iPhone’s flaws and return rates, Steve treated it like he was revealing new flavors of candy. But the coverage is unstoppable and in a way, free. A major part of advertising is getting people talking about your product; with Apple, people are so primed to talk that all they have to do to advertise is show a picture with the name of the product. Considering Apple’s marketing reach, the excesses and Jobsian quips that do routinely set the internet on fire are mercifully few and far between.

In the last few weeks, however, that self-same ubiquity has been Apple’s worst enemy. Imagine if everything you did propagated, memelike, to the farthest corners of the internet, where even the die-hard Apple hater must acknowledge every announcement, even if it’s just to criticize it (something I enjoy occasionally). After using that power judiciously and deliberately for years, the inevitable finally happened: they dropped the ball — and it dutifully propagated. When your failure becomes a meme, you’re cooked.

For the record, these were my two contributions:

The signal drop heard ’round the world was followed by many more reports of launch issues. It was rough, and because of the way the internet has set itself up to instantly propagate exactly this kind of thing, soon people were hearing about iPhone 4 issues before they even knew there was an iPhone 4. The launch problems became a bigger story than the launch. Why? Because we liked it that way.

The appetite for this kind of thing is bottomless. Reasons for interest include fanboyism, professional interest, idleness, schadenfreude, legitimate concern… there was something for everybody. Then Apple, knocked off-balance by their own unpreparedness, gave a response that simply made things worse. “Non-issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.” I can’t think of a response that could have garnered a more comprehensively varied response. Shock! Defensiveness! Rationalizing! Minimizing! The circus became a feeding frenzy. And then the official statement, in which they revealed that iPhones had been using a ridiculously inaccurate signal display for years, and that they were going to make the bars bigger? My god!

So Apple was far from innocent in this whole affair, right up to the non-apology given by Steve today. Their only mistake, Steve implied, was a visual element that caused users to involuntarily ruin their own signal. Steve could talk his way out of a sunburn, as the saying goes, but not this time. Scott noted when we were chatting about this that according to Apple, the iPhone is unlike every other phone on the market — except when there is a problem, at which point it’s just like every other phone on the market. That said, I’m glad they decided to give out bumpers, and of course you can always return the phone for a full refund, so as far as I’m concerned, customers are completely provided for. Class-action lawsuits are pending but I wouldn’t hold out much hope for a settlement.

But were we innocent? One could say we just did our jobs, and wrote up what was going on. We detailed it step by step. Was that the extent of our responsibilities, though? If it was, then Twitter did our job as well as we did, and maybe better. I wrote a while back: “Real time, real discussion, real reporting – choose two.” Looking back on all the coverage, there was a lot of real-time discussion, but almost no reporting at all. Some very valuable input came from Anandtech, when Anand systematically tested the attenuation caused by shorting the antenna, but by and large it was theories, counter-theories, rumors, and fabrications getting multiplied and amplified by blogs like this one. Even ostensibly reliable outlets in the old media posted garbage of every kind. Publishing rumors is, of course, a valuable part of the job, since many are true or end up resulting in interesting discussion. I’m glad we posted all the things we posted. But I also think Steve is right: this was a pretty serious mountain-molehill situation.

The antenna problem is real, of course. How much of a problem it really is — that’s harder to say. Although I would normally say that it’s under-reported in those Apple statistics, that probably isn’t the case here. After all, this is probably one of the most widely-publicized product launches in history, partly because of the huge amount of attention given to this very flaw. If a user has an iPhone, they are almost certain to know of the issue. And if they know of it, they are almost certain to notice it when it happens. Although as Apple and others have noted, it mainly occurs in areas with marginal reception, so many people may find later that they are death grip sufferers and didn’t know it when they take a trip to the boonies. For this reason I’d suggest getting a case even if you don’t really need it where you live.

But those numbers: half a percent of iPhone 4 users complaining? 1.7% return rate? Nearly identical call drops to 3GS? Out of 3 million users, that’s around 30,000 — not a trivial number by any means, but in retrospect, does it justify the international wave of mockery? It ain’t exactly Side Talkin, after all: 2.9 million people seem to be happy with their phones.

The Point

What am I getting at here? Well, I think this whole debacle demonstrates the power of the Internet to report in the wrong way, as opposed to the Tiger Woods incident, which I think demonstrated the Internet’s strengths (though it also resulted in my writing the “Choose Two” article I mentioned). When the event is what matters (e.g. Tiger Woods crashing his car with his wife beating on the windows), and updates on the granularity of minutes are warranted, the Internet is the perfect medium. But by applying that toolset to something it is totally unsuited for, we found ourselves groping in a dark and crowded echo chamber, grasping at factual straws and thrusting them into the faces of everyone we encountered. How little it accomplished! Apple is temporarily humbled, but they would have been one way or another. But they have the benefit of being unfairly set upon, of being able to quote hundreds of articles spewing FUD and unconfirmed nonsense — after all this, they get to play the victim card! That’s the real Antennagate.

Unfortunately, the solution is an impossible one. This is because the solution is discretion. Discretion and restraint are things that have more or less disappeared, since the benefits of being first and wrong outweigh the benefits of being late and right. The short-term benefits, I should say, in the form of traffic and popularity — very important metrics to the powers that be (advertisers and such). The long-term benefits of being a reliable source for news and analysis are becoming more and more difficult to discern, which is disturbing to me. Yet I still believe, and this whole thing has made me believe more, that perspective and discretion are as important as ever — and probably only as rare as they ever were to begin with. I’m not going to get all emotional on you here and say “oh no journalism is dying,” as if I know a thing about that, but let’s be honest: sometimes journalism can be pretty hard to find — even if you think you know where to look.

There you have it. I just wanted to put my own lid on this whole iPhone 4 thing, with the conclusions I’ve drawn from it. If it came off like Apple apologia, I don’t think you read closely enough. The way the world reports and is reported is going through all kinds of transitions, and one day I think that this whole thing and other stories like it are on their way to becoming case studies in Mass Communications 101.

Download CNN International <b>News</b> App for iPhone from App Store

CNN has launched a new International News App for the iPhone / iPod touch. Users can follow news by Topics and view video. The app is iOS4 compatible and.

Hillary Rodham Clinton Says Despite Withdrawal Plans, US, World <b>…</b>

(July 20) — US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an international conference in Kabul today that the United States and the world will stand with Afghanistan even after Washington begins withdrawing its troops next summer.

Colorado <b>News</b>: The Week In Review (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

It's been a wild week for Colorado politics, as major developments the three most-watched statewide primaries have changed the face of the races and brought national attention to Colorado. We've recapped some of the week's biggest …

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There isn’t a clear counterpart to Mint for businesses, though. That’s where inDinero, a Y-Combinator-funded startup, comes in.

inDinero, which launches today, is a web-based financial dashboard for small businesses. Like Mint, it aggregates financial data from bank accounts, investments, and other sources and places them in a simple, easy-to-navigate interface where you can quickly see your income, spending, recent activity, and your financial runway.

The app is divided into five parts: Dashboard, Income, Spending, Planning and Trends. Dashboard provides an overview of your business finances, Income provides detailed information about your income streams, Spending breaks down your different costs, Planning helps you set goals for your business, and Trends analyzes and graphs out spending and income trends in order to provide useful insights.

Businesses need this type of information in order to minimize costs while maximizing revenues. While solutions such as Mint also aggregate financial information and analyze it, they are not focused on small businesses. We look forward to seeing inDinero’s business toolset grow and evolve.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jwohlfeil

For more Business coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business
• Subscribe to the Business channel
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Web technology has revolutionized finance by making it easier than ever to monitor cash flow and track trends in your spending. Mint.com has been a leader in this realm for personal finance: its technology helps you track multiple accounts, analyze spending trends, and manage financial goals.

There isn’t a clear counterpart to Mint for businesses, though. That’s where inDinero, a Y-Combinator-funded startup, comes in.

inDinero, which launches today, is a web-based financial dashboard for small businesses. Like Mint, it aggregates financial data from bank accounts, investments, and other sources and places them in a simple, easy-to-navigate interface where you can quickly see your income, spending, recent activity, and your financial runway.

The app is divided into five parts: Dashboard, Income, Spending, Planning and Trends. Dashboard provides an overview of your business finances, Income provides detailed information about your income streams, Spending breaks down your different costs, Planning helps you set goals for your business, and Trends analyzes and graphs out spending and income trends in order to provide useful insights.

Businesses need this type of information in order to minimize costs while maximizing revenues. While solutions such as Mint also aggregate financial information and analyze it, they are not focused on small businesses. We look forward to seeing inDinero’s business toolset grow and evolve.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jwohlfeil

For more Business coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business
• Subscribe to the Business channel
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

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ASUS EP101TC Now Shipping with Android | Netbooknews - Netbooks <b>…</b>

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Rachel Maddow: Fox <b>News</b> Stoking Racial Fears Among Whites (VIDEO)

Rachel Maddow tore into Fox News again Wednesday night, accusing the channel of stoking racial fears among whites. Maddow used the channel's role in hyping the Shirley Sherrod story as a springboard for a broader discussion of the …

Navigate The 3D Globe of <b>News</b>

TV network ABC has released a custom ABC News iPad app that's interesting for two reasons—its clever use of HTML5 and the amazing rotating Globe of News.

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Today the Netbook News team went down to the ASUS headquarters to hang out with the Eee Pad team, and we learned something that actually made us breath a sigh of relief. The EP101TC pad will dropping Windows CE and will be shipped with …

Rachel Maddow: Fox <b>News</b> Stoking Racial Fears Among Whites (VIDEO)

Rachel Maddow tore into Fox News again Wednesday night, accusing the channel of stoking racial fears among whites. Maddow used the channel's role in hyping the Shirley Sherrod story as a springboard for a broader discussion of the …

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TV network ABC has released a custom ABC News iPad app that's interesting for two reasons—its clever use of HTML5 and the amazing rotating Globe of News.

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Cory Doctorow at 10:02 PM Wednesday, Jun 23, 2010

Google's won the first round of the enormous lawsuit Viacom brought against it. Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion for not having copyright lawyers inspect all the videos that get uploaded to YouTube before they're made live (they're also asking that Google eliminate private videos because these movies — often of personal moments in YouTubers' lives — can't be inspected by Viacom's copyright enforcers).

The lawsuit has been a circus. Filings in the case reveal that Viacom paid dozens of marketing companies to clandestinely upload its videos to YouTube (sometimes “roughing them up” to make them look like pirate-chic leaks). Viacom uploaded so much of its content to YouTube that it actually lost track of which videos were “really” pirated, and which ones it had put there, and sent legal threats to Google over videos it had placed itself.

Other filings reveal profanity-laced email exchanges between different Viacom execs debating who will get to run YouTube when Viacom destroys it with lawsuits, and execs who express their desire to sue YouTube because they can't afford to buy the company and can't replicate its success on their own.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ruled that YouTube was protected from liability for copyright infringement by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA has a “safe harbor” provision that exempts service providers from copyright liability if they expeditiously remove material on notice that it is infringing. Viacom's unique interpretation of this statute held that online service providers should review all material before it went live. If they're right, you can kiss every message-board, Twitter-feed, photo-hosting service, and blogging platform goodbye — even if it was worth someone's time to pay a lawyer $500/hour to look at Twitter and approve tweets before they went live, there just aren't enough lawyers in the universe to scratch the surface of these surfaces. For example, YouTube alone gets over 29 hours' worth of video per minute.

Viacom has vowed to appeal.

In dismissing the lawsuit before a trial, Stanton noted that Viacom had spent several months accumulating about 100,000 videos violating its copyright and then sent a mass takedown notice on Feb. 2, 2007. By the next business day, Stanton said, YouTube had removed virtually all of them.

Stanton said there's no dispute that “when YouTube was given the (takedown) notices, it removed the material.”

Calling Stanton's reasoning “fundamentally flawed,” Viacom said it was looking forward to challenging the decision in appeals court.

Judge sides with Google in $1B Viacom lawsuit
(Thanks, Mike P!)

(Image: Viacom, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from mag3737's photostream — used with permission)

I’m Neil Glassman and my beats for Social Times include social media marketing and advertising tools, techniques and success stories. Sometimes my posts go off on a tangent, focusing on small business social media issues or research with broader implications.

How did I get the gig? Well, I certainly did not tell Nick O’Neill the whole story that follows.

I didn’t realize growing up that AM radio was one of the original social networks. It had Top 40 formats (mashups), DJ shout outs (tweets), contests to win logo T-shirts (badges) and exclusive clubs to which everyone belonged (Facebook groups).

I got into late night talk shows (blogs), which had an intimacy and affinity with listeners that radio has lost and web social networks have yet to fully discover. My parents didn’t think it was such a great idea for me to stay up late listening on school nights and took away my TV privileges for one night as punishment. That was the night of The Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan.

My luck with media improved over the years and I found myself marketing technology for media companies. My training was much like everyone else’s in the field: a box of Mad Magazine “best-of” books, learning how to touch-type and a brief career teaching emotionally disturbed junior high schoolers.

In the beginning, I worked with startups, turning underdogs into wonderdogs. Recently I’ve helped a few companies avoid a mid-life crisis. Whatever my responsibilities are for a particular company, my favorite part is finding ways to present a solution to the marketplace and having the marketplace react by saying, “Ah-Ha!”

Successful marketing means thinking outside the box while delivering campaigns inside the box. I leaped on the web-based and electronically delivered marketing platforms very early and with good success. When Nick put out a call for writers on marketing and advertising, I thought it was a cool opportunity and am grateful to have been chosen to contribute to Social Times. My posts are a great way to share my explorations of the potential of the social web, not just for marketers, but for the world’s cultures.

As marketers, our first priority is to develop campaigns that are effective. If we manage to leave a slogan, image or song in our collective unconscious in the process, that’s a great bonus. In my collaborations, I’ve had the chance to participate in some firsts — at least I think they were firsts. If you know something I don’t, teach me.

The first music video shown on TV that was shot and produced totally on video — no film conversion at any step. The Towel Tapes, February 1979.

Marketing the first hardware product to include mp3. Telos Zephyr, April 1993.

The first time the Internet ground to a halt because too many were trying to log in to a multimedia event. Streaming George Clinton concert audio to demonstrate Macromedia Shockwave, the precursor to Flash. November 1996.

On the personal front, I’m a New Yorker with a huge appetite for great songwriters and musicians of diverse genres. Tweet me and I’ll send you a link to my calendar of all the free concerts in town this summer.

Blogging works best when it’s participatory, so join in the conversation with the talented team on Social Times. Pitch me ideas for posts about using social media for marketing and advertising. Don’t forget to include how you are going to make the market say, “Ah-Ha!”

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Four new MVC3 characters revealed <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of Four new MVC3 characters revealed.

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Today the Netbook News team went down to the ASUS headquarters to hang out with the Eee Pad team, and we learned something that actually made us breath a sigh of relief. The EP101TC pad will dropping Windows CE and will be shipped with …

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Just Posted: Panasonic DMC-LX5 sample gallery: Just posted: full sized images from the Panasonic DMC-LX5. We had the chance to shoot with the newly-announced LX5 and have prepared a 24 shot gallery of images. We intentionally shot at a …

I wondered if the reviewer, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and I had read the same book.

f you go by her philosophy, payday lenders and other members of the “poverty industry” are upstanding entrepreneurs, performing a service for society!

She waits until the second to last paragraph to “mention” that payday lenders are providing this wonderful service at “something like a 300% to 400% interest rate.”

Ms. Mangu-Ward makes a historic comparison of those in the “poverty industry” with loan sharks of a different era. I'm not sure that Mangu-Ward, a Yale University graduate, has ever met a loan shark. I have.

As I note in my book Son of a Son of a Gambler, loan sharks and gamblers populated my hometowns of Covington and Newport in Northern Kentucky.

Although the sharks were aggressive in their collections policies, any loan shark who charged 400% would have soon been floating in the Ohio River.

I also doubt that many loan sharks were ever touted for their entrepreneurial acumen in the Wall Street Journal.

The sad thing is that the Wall Street Journal would allow such a slanted and biased reviewer to write a review for their newspaper.

She leaps to conclusions that show a lack of research, especially for a graduate of an Ivy League school.

For example, she said that Rivlin brings “a level of financial illiteracy and disdain for entrepreneurs that is somewhat surprising in a man who once covered Silicon Valley for the New York Times.”

If Mangu-Ward had done her homework, she would have read Rivlin's books, The Plot to Get Bill Gates and The Godfather of Silicon Valley. The first book shows Rivlin's tremendous empathy with the featured entrepreneur and the second shows some keen insights into how businesses truly operate.

Anyway, Broke USA is not about entrepreneurism. It's about the poverty industry and how loan sharking has become legalized.

Rivlin devotes much of his book to efforts in North Carolina and other states to offer payday loans at a more reasonable interest rate. He notes how the United States armed services put a 36% cap on any payday loans made to military personnel.

None of that important information made it into a “review” that in the author's mind puts payday lenders in the same category as Mother Teresa: Doing good for the poor.

I don't remember Mother Teresa charging 400% interest rates.

Despite what the Wall Street Journal says, Broke USA is an even-handed look at the poverty industry.

A little even-handedness would have gone a long way in the Wall Street Journal's review.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575325840351124892.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/wall-street-and-legalized_b_596986.html

Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is an award-winning financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor.

McNay is a lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table and has four professional designations in the financial services field.

My partner and I run tourist accommodation on a rural farm/wildlife refuge in Australia. We launched our first cottage last July and second larger venue in December. This time next year we hope to have another cottage-like venue. Each is self contained and out of sight of each other. We build everything we can ourselves including the furniture.

Ocherdraco's link is a good one and will lead you to other resources. I used the resources of this Oz site and my state tourist office. I also browse other accommodation venue websites, check their bookings, see what makes them special or not. Quite often I've seen what they've done and do the opposite.

We came to the business with tourist lodge cleaning as our only accommodation operation experience, but had lots of customer service, marketing and business knowledge. We did ensure we had adequate liability insurance, adhered to fire code, and had the right licences etc.

As Lebbanen said, cleaning is your friend. We frequently spend two hours cleaning and preparing our cottage after each stay, and up to three hours in the larger venue. Plus time spent collecting and chopping firewood, maintenance, managing our water resources, marketing and laundry. Lots of laundry.

The answers in these two threads on making our cottage nice and pricing our larger venue gave as a great deal of good advice on making an appealing accommodation venue.

Judging by our occupancy rates we must be doing a lot of things right. We're enjoying it. The commute is great, the dress code is easy - flannies & blunnies - and we like providing for our guests and making them feel comfortable and welcome. But it's not for slackers. Keeping up standards takes care and time. Once we have our third venue, managing the three will take two people 3-8 hours per day… plus laundry.

How are you on laundry?
posted by Kerasia at 3:45 AM on July 17
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When I first got my debit card about 10 years ago, I thought this was going to be the missing link to my money management. After all, the whole point of having a debit card is that you can't spend money you don't have since the money comes directly out of your checking account.

But in these times of banks making more money from our misuse of money than our good use of money, I shouldn't have been surprised at what I began to notice over the past couple of years. (And if you've already noticed this, well, take heart in that you're not alone.)

In the case of credit cards, banks and credit card companies have made over $30 billion in late fees and over the limit fees this year (http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/08/10/am-overdraft-fees/). That's a lot of money. Not only that, but the cardholders are probably not making a dent in their revolving debt. Think you're safe if you have a debit card? Not really. You see, that comfort we had in not being able to spend more than what we have is gone.

With a credit card, usually when you hit the limit or go over, then you cannot charge anymore. I haven't used a credit card in a long time but I will tell you that if I make a mistake with my debit card and there aren't enough funds, then these banks will still approve the charge. Why? The money is not there. So now a charge has occurred you did not have the funds for and now you will be hit with an overdraft fee.

If that happens to you every once in awhile, then it's probably just annoying to you. If you aren't so good with your money, then you are going to see that overdraft fee again and again as the bank continues to let your checking account go into the negative. And if you aren't checking your account like a hawk, then you could look up and be short $500 or more from your direct deposited paycheck, $500 you needed for bills, because the bank approved things it had no business approving.

Not don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should not be held responsible for our indescretions with money. We should all strive to be better stewards of the money entrusted to us. But this business with the overdraft fees remind me of the mortgages loans that certain banks shouldn't have made because the customer was not really able to pay it back. If the purpose of the debit card is to only allow you, as the customer, to use the money you have, then why are there overdraft fees after the account has already gone negative? Shouldn't there be a mechanism or something that prevents your account from being charged when you have a negative balance?

So then why would a bank continue to charge $29-$35 overdraft fees that go on top of the charge you didn't have the money for in the first place? One word - greed. I'm not anti-bank, but I am anti-greed.

Greed is the only way I can explain why banks would continue to really rob you of your money like that. If the credit card companies are making more than $30 billion from late fees and over the limit fees, then imagine how much the banks are making from these overdraft fees.

So what can you do about all of this?

1. Be sure you are balancing your checkbook everyday. I know that sounds like common sense, but I assure you that it is not common practice. If you kept the books at a business, then you would have to do it anyway. It only makes sense that you should keep the books for your own household. Don't give away your money because you didn't balance the books.

2. Leave your debit card at home. You don't need it to pay for gas. You don't need it to pay for groceries. You can write a check to pay for larger ticket items. And one of the great things about checks is that you can get them with the carbon copy so that you still have a copy of the check for you to record later. Using good old cash will help keep your checking account in line.

3. Be sure to leave a cushion in your checking account for the “oops” moments. The “oops” moments are when you forget you needed some money for your child's pictures or you scheduled a payment from your checking account and forgot to record it. The “oops” moment should be a rarity, but it's still good to keep a cushion. Everyone's cushion will be different, but if you want a number, then start with $100.

Starting with those three tips should help you from handing over more of your hard-earned money than necessary. Stop paying the banks for their misbehavior and your mismanagement of money. Get a hold of your money and make it work for you to help you and your family to live a better life.

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Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: July 20, 2010 (Audio)

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): CA's pioneering e-waste program a model gone wrong; 'Climategate' debate a polite, well-mannered affair; Geoengineering can't please everyone!; CBO: Corn based ethanol a waste of taxpayer money; …

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Breaking <b>News</b>: Lindsey Graham Thinks You Are Stupid | RedState

Oh, and he's voting for Elena Kagan for Supreme Court (can you believe it? No way…) Apparently, in defending Graham's earth-shattering announcement that.

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Muhammad Cartoon Activist Molly Norris Lands on al-Qaida Hit List

(July 12) — Molly Norris, the American cartoonist who started Everybody Draw Mohammad Day, has been placed on the hit list of radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

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Pop culture | KRCW-Santa Monica (89.9 FM) will rebroadcast the 1991 radio production of American Splendor, starring Dan Castellaneta, from 7:30 to 8 p.m. PST today. This broadcast will appear on air and via KCRW.com live stream only, and will not be available on demand or via podcast.

Legal | The Wall Street Journal's Tomomichi Amano looks at efforts by a newly formed coalition of Japanese and American manga publishers to crack down on U.S.-based scanlation websites. “People might say it’s like whack-a-mole,” says Vertical Inc.'s Ioannis Mentzas, “but we think even making one (legal) case will greatly change the situation.” [Japan Real Time]

Hank Wasiak is a partner at the creative firm The Concept Farm, and the best selling author of the Asset-Based Thinking book series. He is a three-time Emmy award winning TV host, a teacher at USC’s Graduate School of Business, and a Reiki Master.

Social Mediasocial media started out as a bit of a novelty — a playground for the “geekerati.” But it has taken hold as a game changing force that will reshape advertising at its very core.

It’s time to move past debates about traditional media co-existing with social media. Madison Avenue should see social media as a wonderful, if not disruptive, gift. It should run hard to catch up with the consumer, let go of legacy business models and build something better.

My career in advertising started in February, 1965, right in the middle of the Mad Men era, and I am fortunate to still be doing what I love. Just when I thought I’d seen everything over the past five decades, along came social media. Here I am at age 67, cheering for change and eager to be a part of it.

To put things into perspective, it’s helpful to look back at the impact that TV had on the ad business in the mid 60s and draw some parallels with where we are today.

That Was Then

When I arrived on Madison Avenue, the growth and expansion of television advertising was hitting its stride. An explosion of mass, controlled, “broadcast out and shout” communications was changing the face, function and finances of advertising. Madison Avenue embraced these changes in a big way and leveraged the power of television to launch a golden age of advertising.

Creative people started seeing short-message story telling as a valued currency just as creative departments promoted collaboration between art directors and writers. TV production departments also grouped together producers, directors and technical specialists into collaborative teams.

The client/agency relationship deepened as agencies took on proactive roles. Research also changed, and put more emphasis on measuring both the rational and emotional components of messaging.

In effect, a new breed of Mad Men emerged to start boutique agencies that fueled a creative revolution and brought a new value system to the business.

The Seeds of Disruption

While TV ushered in a new era in advertising, the business aspect evolved and reshaped itself along relatively predictable lines. All of that changed with the InternetInternet, social media, and the rise of mobile devices. This quote from Jim Farley, the CMO of Ford, sums up the sentiment in most C-suites today: “We want to take that stupid little box we were forced into as advertisers, blow it up, and change the way we interact with the customer, and we want it to be around the experience.”

Now it’s time for Madison Avenue to embrace these social marketing opportunities with the same enthusiasm it had for the disruptive change of television.

This Is Now

Marketing has traditionally focused on the four “Ps”: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Social media has morphed into the fifth, and possibly most important “P”: People. A people strategy is at the center of today’s dynamic and fluid social marketing mix. John Janitsch of Duct Tape Marketing has another take on the four Ps, and has turned them into four Cs for the social age: Content, Context, Connection and Community.

A people strategy is much broader, deeper and more profound than consumer targeting. It involves listening to and engaging with everyone who can touch or influence current and potential customers at all stages of brand interaction. Jeff Pulver is a savvy guy who has had his finger on the pulse of this dynamic for some time. “The social media revolution is less about “we the people” and more about “me the people,” Pulver said.

Social media has changed the way people interact amongst themselves and with their media. People play multiple — sometimes simultaneous — roles as receivers, creators, critics, advocates, transformers and transmitters of messages. Brian Solis’ conversation prism helps to put this mash-up into perspective.

This Is Why

A “Me the People” mindset changes the way companies strategize, organize, monetize and commercialize their business. This recent statement from Bob MacDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble, sums up just how far a “me the people” movement can go: “What I would like to have is a one-on-one relationship with seven billion people in the world and be able to customize offerings for those seven billion people. Digital allows that relationship.”

Seth Godin’s insight into how this is driving change in C-suites is brilliant — the role of the CMO has changed from Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Movement Officer.

The stage is set. In 2010, social media has introduced the advertising business to its next big disruption. But this time the state of the advertising business is quite different. Advertising is struggling to recapture relevance. It is mired in murky fee-based compensation systems, dealing with loss of control and trying to keep up with the accelerating pace of media dispersion.

A Much Needed Mindset Shift

For Madison Avenue to make it through this change and emerge stronger there has to be a mindset shift away from deficit-based, downside thinking to asset-based, upside thinking. Madison Avenue needs to embrace the power of letting go, reaffirm core values that maximize the potential of what is working and experiment with new models. Here are five suggestions for that “up” mindset shift:

• Lighten Up. Stop lamenting the end of advertising as we know it. Celebrate the emergence of advertising as the consumer wants it and as it was meant to be — the art of one-on-one persuasion.
• Listen Up. Take Chris Brogan’s advice. Grow bigger ears and become an expert at listening to what people feel. Value response and engagement skills as much as creative abilities.
• Loosen Up. Get comfortable with giving up control to gain confidence and traction with clients and consumers. Client relationships ought to be rooted in trust, transparency and creative programs that are built on a strong positioning and responsibly deliver what is promised.
• Ladder It Up. Embrace “collabetition.” Resist the urge to say “we can do it all” and openly collaborate with like-minded competitors to add value to an idea or program.
• Live It Up. Everyone at an agency has to immerse themselves in the “social circles” in which consumers live and move everyday. Observation and understanding have been trumped by participation and engagement.

There are some other lessons we can keep in mind moving forward. Advertising is an art, made up of ideas that can move and persuade people. Technology, digital tools and metrics are useful but they cannot come up with those ideas for you.

Energize creatives to go beyond just making ads. They should become masters of sustained transmedia storytelling. Involve media people at all levels of development.

Lastly, invite consumer participation in the creative process through dialogue, inclusion and experimentation. Wisely directed user-generated content and crowdsourced ideas can be a huge asset.

Ultimately, I believe that the advertising business is ready to enter its next golden age. Bill Bernbach, an influential and inspiring “Mad Man” I had the privilege to work for, had these words of advice: “An idea can turn to dust or magic depending upon the talent that rubs against it.”

Now is the time to be magicians.

More business resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Improve B2B Sales Productivity with Social Media
- 13 Essential Social Media Lessons for B2B Marketers from the Masters
- 10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers
- HOW TO: Build A Twitter Strategy for Your Business
- Why Small Businesses Shouldn’t Take Social Media for Granted

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UC Davis <b>News</b> &amp; Information :: Guggenheim fellowship for music and <b>…</b>

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Patch said Kagan hurt the cause of campaign finance regulation in Citizens United by deviating from the central argument in the Austin case – that immense corporate spending could disproportionately shape and distort voters’ opinions on elections.

Instead, Kagan argued that corporate-funded ads could corrupt the politicians benefitting from them and violate the will of shareholders whose money might be spent on them.

“That was a tactical error that was beneficial to people like us who think that campaign finance regulations are too burdensome,” said Patch…

Kagan’s abandoning the holding in Austin that corporate ad spending distorts public opinion “gave an opening (which Chief Justice Roberts took) to further denigrate the rationale by saying: Look, even the government has abandoned it,” said Rick Hasen, a professor at Los Angeles’s Loyola Law School who specializes in election law and usually favors restrictions on campaign spending.

Kagan’s views of free speech are bound to come up tomorrow, if only because of one fateful line in a brief she signed, but there’s some reason to think her views on this subject might be closer to the conservatives than to the liberals. In any event, consider the clip a reminder that a president doesn’t necessarily pick the best person for the job, just the best person who can be easily confirmed. And she will, almost certainly, be easily confirmed. Exit question: Wasn’t one of the big Democratic arguments in favor of Kagan the fact that she’d be able to sway swing votes like Kennedy’s through the sheer force of her intellect and persuasive ability?

I met James Montier at a value investment seminar in Italy in 2007 where he presented. We had long discussions later the day and into the evening on value investing and investment strategy.

James was kind enough to put me on his distribution list and I really looked forward to each of his articles as they always taught me something.

Unfortunately James decreased his writings since taking a position with the asset manager GMO in 2010.

I decided to put this resource page together so Eurosharelab visitors can also benefit from James’s investment wisdom.

James Montier’s Amazon Page shows all the books he has authored as well as the following short biography:

James Montier is a member of GMO’s asset allocation team.

Prior to that, he was the co-Head of Global Strategy at Société Générale and has been the top-rated strategist in the annual Thomson Extel survey for most of the last decade.

Montier is the author of four market-leading books:

• The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How not to be your own worst enemy (Little Book, Big Profits)

• Behavioral Finance: Insights into Irrational Minds and Markets

• Behavioral Investing: A Practitioners Guide to Applying Behavioral Finance

• Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment

He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Durham and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

2010

In this May 2010 article called I Want to Break Free, or, Strategic Asset Allocation does not equal Static Asset Allocation James Montier talks about in the beginning investing was a simpler and happier.

The essence of investment was to seek out value; to buy what was cheap with a margin of safety. Investors could move up and down the capital structure (from bonds to equities) as they saw fit. If nothing fit the criteria for investing, then cash was the default option.

But that changed with the rise of modern portfolio theory and, not coincidentally, the rise of “professional investment managers” and consultants.

In March 2010 Miguel Barbosa in his Simolean Sense blog interviewed James Montier about his book Value Investing: Tools & Techniques For Intelligent Investing.

In the second part of the interview Miguel talks to James about his other book The Little Book of Behavioral Investing – How Not To Be Your Own Worst Enemy.

In this February 2010 article, the first since joining GMO, James Montier asks Was It All Just A Bad Dream? Or, Ten Lessons Not Learnt from the financial crisis.

2009

In November 2009 article titled Only White Swans on the Road to Revulsion James Montier makes the argument that that the housing bubble and the crisis following its collapse was not an unforeseen event but rather the result of over optimism and the illusion of control, two classic human behavioural mistakes.

This article is the text of a speech called Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, or how EMH has damaged our industry which James Montier delivered at the at the August 2009 CFA UK conference on “What ever happened to EMH”. Dedicated to Peter Bernstein (EMH = Efficient Market Hypothesis)

Here is the video recording of the above mentioned speech by James Montier: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. The video is 42 minutes long, but well worth watching.

The financial times in this 24 June 2009 article EMH, AMH: Edwards and Montier ride again motions James Montier leaving Societe Generale to join US investment manager Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co, just after he and Albert Edwards won the Thomson Extel European analysts award in May 2009 as the top global strategy team.

In this 2 June 2009 research paper Forever blowing bubbles: moral hazard and melt-up James Montier explored the bubble phenomenon and what happens in the future after a bubble pops. He explores the possibility that all the government rescue packages initiated in 2008 have the possibility to again inflate a substantial bubble.

In this 24 June 2009 Financial Times article called Insight: Efficient markets theory is dead. James Montier explains why the efficient markets theory is dead but still lives because of academic inertia.

In June 2009 James Montier’s published this list of his Favorite Investment Books as well as a Summer reading list of more recent titles.

In May 2009 shortly after the market started its recovery from its March 9 2009 lows James Montier in this article titled Sucker’s rally or the birth of a bull? asks if this is a suckers rally and if so what investors could do to protect themselves. He also gives a few short ideas from his shorting screen.

In this 27 January 2009 article Clear and present danger: the trinity of risk, James Montier writes about the three primary and interrelated sources of investment risk; Valuation risk, business or earnings risk and balance sheet or financial risk.

2008

In this excellent review of James Montier’s book – Behavioral Investing: A Practitioner’s Guide to Applying Behavioral Finance, Bruce Grantier summarises the main points of the book with emphasis on mistakes and biases followed by a discussion of number of behavioral phenomena.

In the article The psychology of bear markets published in December 2009, during the brunt of the bear market James Montier writes about that the mental barriers to effective decision-making in bear markets are as many and varied as those that plague rationality during bull markets but that they more pronounced as fear and shock limits logical analysis.

In this 25 Nov 2008 article called The road to revulsion and the creation of value, James Montier argues that the road to revulsion – sharply declining prices – ends in an investment nirvana with unambiguously cheap assets.

In this 25 November 2008 Bloomberg article Montier Has ‘Never Been More Bullish’ on Stocks James Montier makes the cast that stocks are “distinctly cheap” because they trade at 15.4 times the 10-year moving average of its companies’ profits, compared with an average of 18 for the U.S. market since 1881.James wrote that fifteen stocks in the U.S. index, pass his test for “deep value,” while a tenth of shares in Europe and a fifth in Asia qualify.

In this 27 October 2008 article – An admission of ignorance: a humble approach to investing James Montier details his investment strategy.

It makes no sense to forecast, the importance of a margin of safety, avoid trying to time the market and buy cheap insurance. But most importantly, humility should be the central theme of a good investment process.

In this October 22nd, 2008 Financial Times blog post by Paul Murphy summarises an article Analysts are rubbish by James Montier about the bullish bias built in to the investment industry by the analysts and that analysts are exceptionally good at one thing and one thing only – telling you what has just happened.

In this 9 September 2008 article – The dangers of DCF James Montier writes about the dangers Of Discount cash flow (DCF) saying its implementation is riddled with problems but the good news is that several alternatives exist.

In this 23 June 2008 article – You are still wasting your time, or, are analysts just overpaid secretaries? James Montier writes about the whether company visits are useful for fund managers. The answer in general is no but they can be improved by learning to look for evidence that disagrees with us, and seek to disprove our ideas, rather than illustrate them with supportive evidence.

In this article The Road To Revulsion 16 June 2008 James Montier writes about bubbles, that bubbles are a by-product of human behaviour, and that human behaviour is sadly all too predictable.

The details of each bubble are different but the general patterns remain very similar. He also touches on the propensity for commentators to continually proclaim the end of the problem and a resumption of business as usual.

In the 30 May 2008 article Inflation Not The Problem Albert Edwards and James Montier explain why they are sceptical of all the market commentators saying that the worse market decline of the recession was over. How right they were, but it’s the way they arrived at their conclusion that makes the article worthwhile reading.

If you have any interest at all in short selling this is an article for you. On 26 May 2008, with the markets particularly overvalued James Montier turned his thinking to short selling writing Joining The Dark Side: Pirates, Spies and Short Sellers.

In the article he explains a simple short screen with surprising results shown through back testing in the USA and Europe.

In the article with the catchy title Asleep at the wheel, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb published on 7 April 2008 James Montier points out that company management and analysts are unwilling to revise their profit estimates in spite of the looming recession as everyone thinks their business is recession resistant. He points out that this is why they are all overoptimistic and how you can avoid falling into the same trap.

In this 13 March 2008 research article called Remember, Cassandra was right! James Montier makes a strong argument that the mess in the US economy and housing market was not caused by a black swan event (unpredictable) but rather was sadly predictable.

It follows the standard pattern of a bubble deflating, some thing that we have seen a thousand times before.

On 12 January 2008 James made the last post on his blog called Behavioural Investing – The application of psychology to finance and the home of an investing sceptic.

The articles he wrote is luckily all still there and it’s a real treasure trove of information.

In this 15 January 2008 article The Dash To Trash And The Grab For Growth James Montier wrote just shortly after the absolute peak in the 2008 bull market he suggests that if you cannot move to cash because of career risk then invest in large dividend paying companies as what is going to happen to growth stocks at already high valuations is not going to be pretty. How right he was.

2007

In this blog post called The Sources of Value, written in October 2007 James Montier analyses which of the component sources of return leads to value, over reasonable periods of time, to outperform growth?

On 3 October 2007 James Montier posted a blog article titled Sector rotation: an investment dead end? He argues that investors focusing on sectors rather than stocks are barking up the wrong tree.

James Montier’s book Behavioural investing: a practitioner’s guide to applying behavioural finance was published in September 2007. At the link above you can read parts of the book at Google Books.

In this 24 September 2007 blog post called The myth of exogenous risk and the recent quant problems James Montier argues that many aspect of investment risk are endogenous (like a gambler playing poker, where the actions of the other plays are integral to the game) to the way in which we invest.

The problems experienced by the quant funds in August may help highlight some of these issues.

In this 10 September 2007 blog post Yet more evidence on the folly of forecasting, or why we don’t need economists! James Montier presents even more evidence that humans cannot forecast and why you should avoid listening to anyone who says he can as well as avoid it yourself.

On 21 August 2007 James Montier posted a blog article titled Earnings manipulation as a source of short ideas. He identifies shorting candidates through a measurement called the M score. Past results are impressive in identifying under-performing companies.

On 15 March 2007 James Montier posted a Macro Research article titled Global Equity Strategy . Investing 101: A reading list. Here he comes up with a collection of his best books in different categories (classics, modern, psychological and hidden gems) that is arguably the best reading list for any aspiring investor.

In the 30 January 2007 article by James Montier CAPM is CRAP James says that the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is insidious. It creeps into almost every discussion on finance. And them he goes on to systematically take the model apart with real life examples and evidence.

In his 10 January 2007 research paper Contrarian or conformist? James Montier, in his usual style puts himself against the common view saying that the then biggest consensus portfolio bets to him seemed to be small cap and low quality however large cap, high quality looks like the better bet to him. To emphasise he quotes Sir John Templeton once observed, “It is impossible to produce a superior performance unless you do something different from the majority”.

2006

In this 30 November 2006 article with the enticing title Improving returns using inside information James Montier explains the results of a unknown but interesting research paper on share buybacks and how they, when implemented, are a powerful indicator for positive returns.

In this July 2006 research note titled Come out of the closet, or, show me the alpha James features a study that suggests
closet indexing accounts for nearly one third of the US mutual fund industry. Stock pickers account for less than 30% of the market, yet they have real investment skill. A fascinating read.

The article Prophet Among Pinstripes in the April 2006 issue of Fastcompany magazine features James Montier where he gives his five laws about investing bias, evolution, and true happiness.

In March 2006 shortly after the release of Joel Greenblatt’s book The Little Book That Beats the Market James tested the strategy worldwide and in this article called The little note that beats the markets found that on average the Little Book strategy
beats the markets by around 7% p.a. between 1993-2005, and with lower risk than the market! Value plus quality seems to make sense.

In the article Behaving Badly published in February 2006 James Montier features a short test you can take after which you will also become a strong believer in behavioural finance. Give it a try!

2005

In November 2005 James Montier wrote the article Seven Sins of Fund Management – A behavioural critique where he explores some of the more obvious behavioural weaknesses inherent in the ‘average’ investment process.

For example he writes that the first sin was placing forecasting at the very heart of the investment process. An enormous amount of evidence suggests that investors are generally hopeless at forecasting. So using forecasts as an integral part of the investment process is like tying one hand behind your back before you start.

In this 31 March 2005 article called Bargain Hunter James Montier confesses that he is an unabashed value investor. He adds that if the reader does not share this viewpoint, or isn’t open to be persuaded of the merits of such an approach, he should stop reading now for what follows will only distress his.

James teams up with Rui Antunes his “usual accomplice and compatriot in adventures involving large amounts of data” and embarked upon an investigation of value strategies.

In the article Abu Ghraib: Lessons from behavioural finance and for corporate governance, wrote at the end of January 2005 James Montier says even though it is tempting to believe bad behaviour is the result of a few rotten individuals. However, the overwhelming psychological evidence suggests that if you put good people into bad situations they usually turn bad.

2004

In the June 2004 paper If it makes you happy James Montier leaves investment advice aside and explores one of Adam Smith’s obsessions: what it means to be happy.

He also discusses why that’s important to investors, and how we can seek to improve our own levels of happiness. The article further lists
James’s top ten suggestions for improving happiness.

In the article Who’s a Pretty Boy Then? Or Beauty Contests, Rationality and Greater Fools James Montier in February 2004 played a classic Keynes’ beauty contest with over 1000 professional investors.

He found that on average professional investors are using between one and two steps of strategic thinking in forming their expectations. He also found that many investors suffer the curse of knowledge and end up either picking zero or severely underestimating the irrationality of other players.

These results speak directly to the ability of investors to exit the market before the mass exodus. He found, unsurprisingly, that only a very small minority shows the required level of strategic thinking to beat the gun.

In this 76 page presentation Insights into irrational minds and market Applied Behavioural Finance: Insights into irrational minds and market James Montier gave in 2004 he in great detail described the behavioural biases investors are prone to. Its a great summary of a lot of his previous work in a presentation format, summarised in bullet points and graphs.

2003

This November 2003 issue of welling@weeden James Montier offers a reality and earnings checks.

In this January 2003 research paper Running with the Devil: The Advent of A Cynical Bubble James Montier explores the nature and underlying psychology of four different kinds of bubbles. To assess which comes closest to describing the current market.

To us, the current market environment is largely a greater fool market. Because such markets lack fundamental support, they are liable to precipitous declines.

2002

In Darwin’s Mind: The Evolutionary Foundations of Heuristics and Biases James Montier in December 2002 writes that a catalogue of biases that cognitive psychologists have built up over the last three decades seem to have stem from one of three roots – self-deception, heuristic simplification (including affect), and social interaction.

In this paper James explores the evolutionary basis of each of these roots. The simple truth is that we aren’t adapted to face the world as it is today. We evolved in a very different environment, and it is that ancestral evolutionary environment that governs the way in which we think and feel.

In 22 November 2002 James Montier wrote in Part man, part monkey that leaving the trees could have been our first mistake. Our minds are suited for solving problems related to our survival, rather than being optimised for investment decisions. We all make mistakes when we make decisions. The list below gives a top ten list for avoiding the most common investment mental pitfalls.

1. You know less than you think you do
2. Be less certain in your views, aim for timid forecasts and bold choices
3. Don’t get hung up on one technique, tool, approach or view flexibility and pragmatism are the order of the day
4. Listen to those who don’t agree with you
5. You didn’t know it all along, you just think you did
6. Forget relative valuation, forget market price, work out what the stock is worth (use reverse DCFs)
7. Don’t take information at face value, think carefully about how it was presented to you
8. Don’t confuse good firms with good investments, or good earnings growth with good returns
9. Vivid, easy to recall events are less likely than you think they are, subtle causes are underestimated
10. Sell your losers and ride your winners

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