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luni, 10 iunie 2013

The Right to Equal Pay for Equal Work

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The Right to Equal Pay for Equal Work

It's been 50 years since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, but its goals today stand unrealized. In 2013, full-time working women still make less than men on average.

The President has made tackling this issue a priority since his first day in the White House, but there's still more to do.

Find out where we are -- and where we need to go:

I Think I Might Have Been Wrong About Voice Search

Posted: 09 Jun 2013 07:48 PM PDT

Posted by willcritchlow

I roundly mocked voice search for such a long time.

I mocked it in public:

And I argued internally at Distilled against it being an important trend.

But I think I might have been wrong.

Before I explain why I think I might have been wrong, I want to give you a few of bits of information in my defence:

I don't drive much, and almost never on my own; I commute on the train and most of my driving is with my family.
I work in an open-plan office without so much as a cubicle to shield my embarrassing experiments with voice search from the world.
I actually don't like using the phone much, so it may have passed me by that talking into that small device is a perfectly acceptable thing that normal people do.

My main arguments why voice search wasn't an important trend were:

1. You look stupid talking into your phone

In hindsight, perhaps this was the most shortsighted of all my arguments. Of course we don't always look entirely sensible holding a bit of technology up to our ears, but it seems like we have made it socially acceptable in most environments.

Image courtesy of travosaurus

More importantly, I think that I underestimated the speed with which things can become socially normal. I'm personally more up for trying this kind of new thing than most, and I think I underestimated everyone else's willingness to try new things.

I increasingly make calls on my computer. Between Google+ Hangouts, Skype, and GoToMeeting, I probably average 2-3/day, so even in my cubicle-less existence it's becoming more and more normal for me to talk to my computer.

2. You can't edit things easily

Anyone who tried early voice dictation software is familiar with the process of trying to get it to recognise stop words and having it write out what you said:

"Delete word back. DELETE WORD BACK. Screw it."

My imagined future of voice search had all kinds of similar problems. While some people are reporting that third parties can activate Google Glass, I imagine that is just teething difficulties.

There are two big things that give me hope for the future of voice search in terms of query editing:

(a) So much context is going with each query

You only have to look at Google Now to realise how far this has come:

You know that when they are capable of returning results for things you haven't even searched for yet (see Danny's write-up), they must be doing a lot of enhancement of queries with implicit data even when you are explicitly searching. Here's how we've been thinking about it at Distilled:

All of this gives Google ever-increasing ability to get the query right by appending context and other information to it.

(b) Conversational search is amazing

Of all the many things that should impress me (like Google's ability to return results for a never-seen-before query in a fraction of a second), conversational search is perhaps one of the more gimmicky in its current incarnation.

We've long had results that shifted in response to previous queries but it's new that you are able to explicitly reference previous queries. It's amazing how slick this is (when it works) and it feels futuristic to be able to ask your computer:

"How old is Barack Obama?"
"How tall is he?"
"Who is his wife?"
"How old is she?"

Or to ask for the time in multiple time zones:

All of this makes me think that query correction may not be needed too much, and when it is, it may not be too much of a problem. It's already quicker than typing for relatively easily spoken mid-length queries.

3. It doesn't matter anyway â€" they're just queries

I honestly hadn't thought too much about the marketing implications, because I figured that not only was voice search not going to catch on, but that even if it did, it would make no practical difference to us as marketers. I figured the way it would work would be something like:

Voice --> text --> query --> result

In actuality, the clumsiness of voice input appears to be a driving force behind Google relying less on the query itself and more on the implicit and explicit input from the user.

I wonder if we should have seen this coming, with "(not provided)" foreboding the death of the keyword? I had interpreted the statements from Googlers about "the death of the number one ranking" as being all about naive personalisation (location, search history, etc.). In fact, it appears that they are talking about the capability to process a whole load of new implicit inputs, including things like:

Device
Current activity
Daily routine
Interests
Significant places
Social network
Calendar entries
Gmail information (flight confirmations, etc.)

Voice search is a powerful driver towards queryless search and (more importantly, I think) query-enhanced search, where sparse input information is combined with ambient and personal information to return the results you need right now.

Is voice search the future, then?

I think it's part of the future. I don't see it cannibalising much of desktop search, where I imagine it'll remain a novelty or an add-on, and I expect much of the its application to mobile search is incremental on top of more complex written queries.

The more important part in my mind is the impact of the technology it takes to power voice search. The fact that Google can roll out voice search this effective speaks not only to their natural language processing ability but also to the maturity of their ability to understand the web.

What should we do as marketers?

As web marketers, we need to realise that the dumb robot we've been considering all these years is rapidly becoming smarter. I think the actions for marketers have far less to do with voice search itself than with a real understanding of the underlying technology.

If you haven't seen this video (I found it via Justin), I highly recommend taking the time to watch at least the first half hour (up to the Q&A):

...and that's from over two years ago. It's quite stunning how far Google's understanding of the web has come, and technologies like Google Now are highlighting ability to put it all together.

The biggest actions I would recommend are therefore to prioritise all the things that help Google understand rather than just index your site. That means things like:

Authorship information
Structured markup (and structured data)
Accurate meta information for objects and pages
Machine-readable feeds of anything they consume (location data, prices, new content)

Conceptually, I think we need to change our mindset around keywords. "(not provided)" isn't the only thing taking away query information; queries will increasingly be composed largely of implicit information alongside the explicit query.

Even if "(not provided)" rolled back (some chance!), we would still be left with less and less information to explain why and how a particular visitor arrived on our site and why we ranked for them. I see analytics and reporting moving towards a content- and user-centric model (across repeat visits and across devices), and moving away from a transactional, session-based view of keywords. You can set yourself up for future success by moving towards content-centric metrics now, and by implementing user-centric tracking with your analytics platform of choice (or waiting for it to come to universal analytics).

I'm looking forward to some disagreement in the comments, but remember: there's a lot of science left to come.

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Seth's Blog : Memo to the modern COO

Memo to the modern COO

Why is it so hard for organizations to understand what Tony did with customer service at Zappo's? Instead of measuring the call center on calls answered per minute, he insisted that the operators be trained and rewarded to take their time and actually be human, to connect and make a difference instead of merely processing the incoming.

People hear this, see the billion dollars in goodwill that was created, nod their heads and then go back to running an efficient call center. Why?

In the industrial era, the job of the chief operating officer revolved around two related functions:

Decrease costs
Increase productivity

The company knew what needed to be done, and operations was responsible for doing it. Cutting costs, increasing reliability of delivery, getting more done with less--From Taylor on, the job was pretty clear.

In the post-industrial age, when thriving organizations do something different tomorrow than they did yesterday, when the output is connection as much as stuff, the objectives are very different. In today's environment, the related functions are:

Increase alignment
Decrease fear

Alignment to the mission, to the culture, to what we do around here--this is critical, because in changing times, we can't rely on a static hierarchy to manage people. We have to lead them instead, we have to put decision making power as 'low' (not a good word, but it's left over from the industrial model) in the organization as possible.

As the armed forces have discovered, it's the enlisted man in the village that wins battles (and hearts and minds) now, not the general with his maps and charts. Giving your people the ability to make decisions and connections is impossible in a command and control environment.

And a decrease in fear, because this is the reason that we're stuck, that we fail, that our best work is left unshipped. Your team might know what to do, might have an even better plan than the one on the table, but our innate fear of shipping shuts all of that down.

So we go to meetings and wait for someone else to take responsibility. We seek deniability before we seek impact. The four-letter word that every modern organization must fear is: hide.

Our fear of being wrong, of opening up, of creating the vulnerability the leads to connection--we embrace that fear when we go to work, in fact, that's the main reason people take a job instead of going out on their own. The fear is someone else's job.

Except now it's not.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 9 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Florida Repeals Renewable Fuel Standard; Silly Senator, Corn is for Food!

Posted: 09 Jun 2013 08:26 AM PDT

Last week Florida Governor Rick Scott signed HB 4001, repealing the state's Renewable Fuel Standard. This has researchers seeking handouts at the expense of everyone else in a tizzy.

For example, the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO) says Repeal of Florida's Renewable Fuel Standard Will Stifle Innovation, Investment and Jobs.

"Florida's repeal of its RFS sends a chilling message that companies developing advanced biofuel and other biotechnology innovations are unwelcome in the state," said Brent Erickson, executive vice president of BIO's Industrial & Environmental Section.

"Companies have invested more than $215 million in Florida over the past five years to develop commercial-scale advanced biofuel projects. These projects have generated nearly 1,000 high skill new jobs in the state," Erickson continued. "Florida's bioscience industry has monitored the state's commitment to policies that drive investment and development of new industries. Florida's biotech sector comprises more than 5,100 companies that employ more than 78,000 Floridians, contributing to the state's job growth over the past decade.

I am all in favor of research, as long as taxpayers don't have to pay for it. And mandated ethanol standards come at enormous cost.

Green Car News has additional details in Florida repeals law requiring 10% ethanol blend in gasoline

It looks like ethanol – especially when blended into gasoline – is facing some pushback. Florida has decided to repeal its Renewable Fuel Standard, which had required all gasoline sold in the state to be blended with nine-to-10 percent ethanol or other alternative fuels.

Florida Governor Rick Scott just signed into law HB4001, which repeals the state's Renewable Fuel Standard as of July 1, 2013. The bill was passed by the Florida House and Senate in April. The Florida Renewable Fuel Standard Act took effect December 31, 2011 and required all gasoline sold by terminal suppliers, importers, blenders or wholesalers (i.e., those up the supply chain) to be blended. These parties were also required to submit a monthly report to the Department of Revenue on the numbers of gallons of blended and unblended gasoline sold. Retail gas stations had not been expressly prohibited by state law from selling or offering unblended gasoline, Green Car Congress reports.

In his signing statement, Scott called the state's Renewable Fuel Standard, "a state mandate on Florida businesses that is duplication of the Federal Renewable Fuel Standard and inconsistent with the efforts to reduce the regulatory burdens that have helped Florida create over 330,000 new private sector jobs in the past two years."

The state of Maine is going in a similar anti-ethanol direction. Legislators are concerned about the damaging impact ethanol blend going up to 15 percent in gasoline (E15) could have on engines and the environment. They approved a bill by more than a 3-to-1 margin that would ban ethanol blends in Maine, as long as two other nearby states do the same. State leaders also supported a resolution asking the government to ban E15 altogether.

Ethanol Debacle Heats Up

This Week in Energy reports Ethanol Debacle Heats Up.

This summer we can expect the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set new targets for US ethanol use while the policy comes under massive criticism. The market has been unkind to the ethanol mandate, and we're not sure how the EPA is going to now attempt to push through a higher blend ethanol in fuel—above the 10%/gallon, when ethanol supplies aren't there.

So the new targets to be released this summer will require a bit of a re-think, and the EPA will have to decide how to resolve the issue, which could mean a lowering of targets or an elimination of them altogether.

Refiners and ethanol producers are up in arms over the mandate, which is already threatening to cause fuel shortages and higher prices for consumers—along with higher food prices thanks to the diversion of corn for the ethanol blend.

Of course, the beneficiaries of the EPA's ethanol targets—primarily the corn-growing states—are hoping there won't be any lowering of the requirements, but the market clearly sees things differently.

Those trading in Renewable Identification Markets (RINs)—otherwise known as ethanol credits—are also hoping the largesse of the forced mandate continues. The more difficult it becomes to blend low supplies of ethanol with gasoline, the more valuable these RINs become for traders. And the opposition to increasing this mandate from 10% is making the RIN market more vulnerable. For this year, it looks like refiners will be able to meet the ethanol requirements—with help from RIN credits—but next year looks impossible.

What will the EPA's summer target be? No one's quite sure yet, including the EPA, so it's impossible to predict, but we're inclined to think that the market will convince them that the planned 2014 target of 18.15 gallons of ethanol (up from this year's 16.5 gallons) is unrealistic.

Silly Senator, Corn is For Food

Please play the video for a correct interpretation of what is happening and why. Link if video does not play: Silly Senator, Corn is for Food!.

Ethanol advocates claim that ethanol is a cheap, renewable energy source that reduces pollution and our dependence on foreign oil. It sounds too good to be true--and it is.

Video quote: "Oil prices are as high as they have ever been, if renewable fuels, biofuels were such a good deal, they would already be emerging without government subsidies."

Precisely!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Cash Home Sales, Flipping, Offer More Signs of Housing Bubble; Housing Insanity Stage 2

Posted: 08 Jun 2013 11:58 PM PDT

It is extremely hard if not downright impossible to re-blow the last bubble. For case in point look at technology stocks like CSCO, INTC, SEBL, or JDSU.

Here is a chart of JDSU, a darling of the internet bubble.

JDSU Monthly

Cold Cash

What brought JDSU to mind was an interesting New York Times article As Home Sales Heat Up Again, Buyers Must Resort to Cold Cash

The percentage of homes bought with cash has shot up in many markets across the nation. Nearly a third of all homes purchased in Los Angeles during the first quarter of this year went for all cash, compared with just 7 percent in 2007. In Miami, 65 percent of homes sold were for cash deals, compared with 16 percent six years ago.

The prices on all-cash deals are also rising significantly. In Los Angeles, the median price on an all-cash home this year is about $351,000, compared with $230,000 in 2009. Over the same period, the median price over all increased to $410,000, up $85,000. In fact, last month, home prices in Southern California hit their highest level in the last five years.

All-cash buyers, typically investors eager to renovate and quickly resell or rent out homes, are making it more difficult for first-time buyers, who typically rely on mortgage loans that can take weeks or months to materialize. More California homes have been flipped in the last year than in any year since 2005.

Buyers in Boston are offering $100,000 more than the asking price or placing offers on homes they have spent only minutes in. In San Francisco, Miami and Phoenix, sellers are looking at dozens of offers within days of putting their home on the market, often accompanied by letters from would-be buyers professing their love for the property. New York City has seen similar drops in inventory, and prices have been rising steadily since 2009.

"Buyers are taking a lot more risks than they ever would before," said Dana DeSimone, a Boston real estate agent who called the current market an "insane asylum." "I don't know that I've ever heard of waiving the inspection contingency on a 150-year-old brownstone until now."

Housing Insanity Stage 2

Bernanke has not completely reblown the housing bubble, but it is not for lack of trying.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Get dad to create a wish list

What does dad really want for Father's Day? Ask him to start a wishlist on Pinterest! Maybe one of these pins will catch his eye…

For the foodie dad

For the sporty dad

For the techie dad

For the crafty dad

For the music-loving dad

For the dapper dad

Whether he's into fly-fishing, trying out the latest gadgets, or mastering his grilling technique, there's something for every dad on our Father's Day board. You can also check out what other people are pinning For Dad on Pinterest.

Happy pinning!

- The Pinterest Team

This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com.
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luni, 10 iunie 2013

The Right to Equal Pay for Equal Work

I Think I Might Have Been Wrong About Voice Search

I Think I Might Have Been Wrong About Voice Search

1. You look stupid talking into your phone

2. You can't edit things easily

(a) So much context is going with each query

(b) Conversational search is amazing

3. It doesn't matter anyway â€" they're just queries

Is voice search the future, then?

What should we do as marketers?

Seth's Blog : Memo to the modern COO

Memo to the modern COO

More Recent Articles

duminică, 9 iunie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Get dad to create a wish list

Hi Hari

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 10 iunie 2013

1. You look stupid talking into your phone

2. You can't edit things easily

(a) So much context is going with each query

(b) Conversational search is amazing

3. It doesn't matter anyway â€" they're just queries

Is voice search the future, then?

What should we do as marketers?

More Recent Articles

duminică, 9 iunie 2013

Hi Hari

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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