Broadband Usage Around the World

I didn’t realize that the U.S. was such a laggard when it came to the deployment of broadband Internet access. See chart below, courtesy of the International Telecommunications Union. We’re 16th on the list of the top 20 economies, one-half Korea’s rate, and just under Liechtenstein’s.

Not very impressive;...

Flipping Web Sites

I read an interesting article in Business 2.0 this month (June 2006) entitled “Flipping Web Fixer-Uppers” regarding a new trend in online entrepreneurship – purchasing underperforming sites, improving the content, infrastructure, and/or marketing to build traffic and revenue, and then selling them for a profit. This has been facilitated by sites such as SitePoint and eBay where whole sites and the businesses built around them are auctioned off.I took a look at SitePoint,...

Our Hubris, Our Loss

Some of my colleagues and friends have called me ‘paranoid,’ ‘crazy,’ and ‘apocalyptic,’ but I continue to stick to my guns on the issue of America’s intellectual decay. Our economic and cultural dominance has always stemmed from our ability to attract and retain the best-of-the-best intellectuals from around the globe,...

IRS Beckoned into the Digital Age

Despite the rain here in Washington, the dreaded April 17th Tax Day has been pretty uneventful. The line at the post office near us isn’t remarkably long and no one looks particularly panicked. Most people I’ve spoken to have used some form of tax software to prepare their returns. I was going to use one myself,...

PR and ROI: A Critical Crossroads

As a practitioner and researcher in the arena of marketing accountability, I am impressed with the latest articles in PRWeek, and other places, about the industry’s growing stress on measurement. It is clear that PR must be concerned about accountability measurement if it is to retain its proper share of corporate budgets....