Successful Blog

Tues. 7pm Chicago: Open Mic — Start Your Engines! It’s Cars!

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The Ferrari, the Porsche, the Bentley, the VW Bug. . .

Personal Branding logo

YES, the mic will be open again tonight. So start collecting your thoughts. Remember, you get to bring what you want to talk about.

The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

Tonight we’re talking about everything cars!

We might also talk about being able to be

  • cool cars, fast cars
  • first cars, junkers
  • things we did for cars, things we did in cars
  • places cars took us

AND THE EVER POPULAR,

Basil the code-writing donkey.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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The Mic Is On! We’re Having Parallel Lives!

Net Neutrality 9-19-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Google will flex political muscles
PAC to raise money for causes, candidates; lobbyists on board

Google filed paperwork Thursday to register its political action committee, Google NetPAC, with the Federal Election Commission. The company intends to use the committee “to support candidates who promote an open and free Internet for our users,” according to Alan Davidson, Google’s Washington policy counsel.

In addition, Google bolstered its clout by hiring former Republican Sens. Dan Coats of Indiana and Connie Mack of Florida as outside lobbyists. The political veterans may go a long way in building Google’s ties with Republicans, a group widely considered to be the opposition based on the overwhelming preference by Google employees to make campaign contributions to Democrats.

[ . . .]

Google’s push in Washington also involves co-sponsoring its first political fundraiser. On Wednesday, the company, along with eBay Inc. and TechNet, a technology industry group, will hold an event for embattled Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., at the Capitol Hill Club, a swanky Republican redoubt in Washington.

[ . . .]

Google’s move is somewhat uncharacteristic given its independent streak, down to its corporate motto, “Don’t be evil.” But as the company has grown into a major presence in U.S. business it has been thrust into political debates on which ride tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

“This is very, very symptomatic of the way high tech has evolved in California,” said Larry Gerston, political science professor at San Jose State University and an expert on Silicon Valley politics. “These companies started out with an entrepreneurial spirit and a feeling that what was important was the product and the people, so they didn’t have to care about politics. But as they become more sophisticated, they realized that politics could either protect them or hurt them.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 9-18-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Why Distrust Bell Promises on Net Neutrality

The dirty secret of modern telecomm is that all the money is in wireless. Verizon Wireless is the largest wireless provider. Verizon advertising claims only “the network” can guarantee good wireless service. (That is a lie.) Verizon claims it offers Internet service off its phones.

Does it? Not on your tintype.

Even The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg refers to the Verizon and Cingular networks as “Soviet Ministries.” They decide what online services users will be able to access, and at what price. They also take money from both sides of every information transaction.

When challenged about this, they lie. That’s right, they lie. They claim that if someone was unhappy with a third party they would complain to Verizon. As though people complain to their ISPs about every bad site visit they have. As though the mobile companies were paragons of customer service. They are not.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 9-17-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Major U.S. Trade Group Makes Case for Neutrality

The American Electronics Association (AeA) released a report yesterday strongly supporting Net Neutrality and urging Congress: “Don’t stifle competition and innovation by allowing network operators to change and distort what is currently a highly competitive system.”

“The principles of Net Neutrality have created the Internet as we know it — the most dynamic network for communication and commerce in human history,” states The Case for Preserving Net Neutrality, a report by AeA, which represents 2,500 companies from every corner of the high-tech industry.

[ . . . ]

According to the report, the only way to [“safeguard the competitive nature of the Internet] is for Congress to prevent companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from abusing their market power by imposing discriminatory new surcharges that favor the content from companies and Web sites that pay them the most.

Allowing the nation’s largest phone and cable companies to tilt the market in favor of larger and better funded content providers would “undermine the fundamental principles of open and free exchange of information across the network,” according to the AeA report.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Thanks to Week 47 SOBs

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muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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Brain Based Business

Brian Kim [dot] net

Carnival of Creators

carpe factum

eBeauty Daily

Life Beyond Code

Plagarism Today

Success from the Nest

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this badge’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Net Neutrality 9-16-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Guess the State and Win a Subsidy: Senate Plays Geography Games in Telecom Bill

Are you good at geography? If so, you may enjoy the small geography quiz buried deep inside of the telecommunications bill now pending in the U.S. Senate. Hidden on page 121 is a paragraph directing the FCC to expand universal service payments to “insular areas, including any insular area that is a State comprised entirely of islands…”

[. . . ]

As it turns out, the list of states covered by this provision is quite short:

1.Hawaii.

And, by total coincidence, a senator from that state — Daniel Inouye — is the co-chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee — which wrote the bill.

[. . . ]

The provision illustrates how far the bill has strayed from a hoped-for focus on eliminating unneeded regulation. At its core, there still is substantial positive reform: streamlining of the video franchising process. But that important change is surrounded by a luau of special interest provisions. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE