Haven’t had a lot of time to think about President Elect Obama’s New Economic Plan (see his address below) but it seems to me that it’s the right thing to do.  I would wish for a plan that creates well over 2.5 million jobs -as he’s said, we’ve lost almost that many jobs this year, alone.   We need to create a lot more than 2.5 million jobs - perhaps,  triple that number - but not, all at one time, of course. Thinking back to Paul Krugman ’s remark about being Worried about next year , along with the  U.S

Haven’t had a lot of time to think about President Elect Obama’s New Economic Plan (see his address below) but it seems to me that it’s the right thing to do.  I would wish for a plan that creates well over 2.5 million jobs -as he’s said, we’ve lost almost that many jobs this year, alone.   We need to create a lot more than 2.5 million jobs - perhaps,  triple that number - but not, all at one time, of course.

Thinking back to Paul Krugman’s remark about being Worried about next year, along with the  U.S. Loses 533,000 Jobs in Biggest Drop Since 1974, (which totally supports his fears) as reported in the New York Times, yesterday along with the  Terrible employment numbers and meshing it with Barack Obama Pledges Public Works on a Vast Scale

Although he put no price tag on it, he said he would invest record amounts of money in the vast infrastructure program, which also includes work on schools, sewer systems, mass transit, electric grids, dams and other public utilities. He vowed to upgrade computers in schools, expand broadband Internet access, make government buildings more energy efficient and improve information technology at hospitals and doctors’ offices.

“We need action — and action now,” Mr. Obama, said in an address taped for broadcast Saturday morning on radio and YouTube.

My feeling is this is the time to start measuring the needs of each of those areas, and to the extent we can, to also monitor sectors using tools such as Compete.com (which is doable - they have the technology), HitWise.com, and other such tools, even Google Suggest - to start a discussion on both the size of the changes needed, and the sentiment/reaction to changes being made next year, as they are rolled out.

I already wrote  ideas about the 1 year old Recession and when i think it’ll end -I think 3 stimulus packages will be needed over the next 15 months, perhaps over 2 Trillion dollars would need to be spent over the next two years - and from the sound of it - Obama and a Democratic lead congress will spend it - even knowing that down the line we’ll have to find a way to pay for it - but that is a better alternative than widespread Economic Collapse which is really, the only alternative.

If we don’t do massive, massive stimulus - we won’t reverse the slide - because it’s not just us - the whole world is sliding down with us.   We’re going to have to pull our selves out - but so will everyone else - and we’ll need to work together to do it - and I think we should take an opportunity now to talk about how we’ll measure it - using the tools we now have (Government says one thing - they have their tools - but we now can measure sentitment - reach, frequency - all this stuff is pretty public).

I can see doing posts about it - how’s the President’s Economic plan doing with Schools - and then pulling data out of Compete (just as they will) - to show how sentiment is changing - to show how this stuff is working - or what they need to do to make it better.

Why?  Because hopefully, the Government will be listening - we’re all in this together.

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Measuring the New Economy

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While walking to work this morning I thought about news of the last day; that we’ve been in a Recession since December 2007 (one year!), that several of my friends have already lost their jobs, that rents and other fixed expenses continue to rise, but income is falling and the economy,as a whole, is moving toward Deflation. My mind races to paint a picture of what we’re likely to see next year and what I came up with, is this. Economy continues to go deeper into recession as Barack Obama takes office in January 2009; the first stimulus package is passed by early Feb and the first money for stimulus flows out of the Tresuary in late April 2009

While walking to work this morning I thought about news of the last day; that we’ve been in a Recession since December 2007 (one year!), that several of my friends have already lost their jobs, that rents and other fixed expenses continue to rise, but income is falling and the economy,as a whole, is moving toward Deflation.

My mind races to paint a picture of what we’re likely to see next year and what I came up with, is this.

Economy continues to go deeper into recession as Barack Obama takes office in January 2009; the first stimulus package is passed by early Feb and the first money for stimulus flows out of the Tresuary in late April 2009. Unfortunately, the stimulus is too late to help the unemployed and nothing much happens.

A second stimulus happens in late 2009, but 2009 is already a wash out, and it’s not till spring of 2010 that employment starts to grow again, and not till 2011, before it recovers to a pre recession level. I think a third stimulus will happen in early 2010, and that will seal the recovery.

In all, about 2 Trillion Dollars will be spent over the next two years, trying to revive the economy, and that had nothing to do with stimulus going on in other countries at the same time.

I expect the usual challenges that everyone is talking about, but the problem is going to be, how to survive through 2010.

And the problem is that there’s going to be a lot of difficulty around “uncertainity” in when the economy will recover.

Maybe, the best thing Obama can do, at this point, for the economy is bring a sense of certainity back to the markets and to provide as many alternative energy jobs as he can create.

Of course, this is all my own views (no one else’s) and I may be all wet.

We’ll see.

Btw, this post was written on my iPhone, expect the usual spelling and grammar errors.

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Ideas about the 1 year old Recession and when i think it’ll end

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Good article in the New York times on how Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web - which is an example of how we don’t necessarily need more Social Networks as much as we need a way to call Social Network information into every site experience, according to the article. While there really should end up being just a few repositories of the data - instead of a zillion networks, Facebook is the closest to realizing a cloud that can touch most sites: MySpace , Yahoo and Google have all announced similar programs this year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce the work needed to embrace each identity system.

Good article in the New York times on how Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web- which is an example of how we don’t necessarily need more Social Networks as much as we need a way to call Social Network information into every site experience, according to the article.

While there really should end up being just a few repositories of the data - instead of a zillion networks, Facebook is the closest to realizing a cloud that can touch most sites:

MySpace, Yahoo and Google have all announced similar programs this year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce the work needed to embrace each identity system. Facebook, which is using its own data-sharing technology, is slightly ahead of its rivals.   I think that’s a good thing, at least, for now.

In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.

Go here to see the original:
Facebook Connect Social Media Cloud

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Just wondering if it makes sense to do one thing Google wants vs. another?  I mean , there’s a new tool Google released 2 weeks ago that tells you all the keyword phases you could advertise on connected with a theme, that you are letting money on the table, by not advertising these words (which is good for Google) . On the other hand, assuming I did not advertise but just took the time to create meaninful content on these keyword phrases , maybe I’d get the traffic , except I would have to really streach what I’m writing about and maybe make up stuff I really don’t know very much about.

Just wondering if it makes sense to do one thing Google wants vs. another?  I mean, there’s a new tool Google released 2 weeks ago that tells you all the keyword phases you could advertise on connected with a theme, that you are letting money on the table, by not advertising these words (which is good for Google).

On the other hand, assuming I did not advertise but just took the time to create meaninful content on these keyword phrases, maybe I’d get the traffic, except I would have to really streach what I’m writing about and maybe make up stuff I really don’t know very much about.

And I think that would be doing a disservice.

Or I could go and work on the Google Search Wiki for the keyword phases a care about and make sure I comment all over the place and make sure people know my point of view - and get traffic that way.

I would opt for the latter over the former - as this is the future of Search and is more honest and transparent, in my opinion.

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Google Search Wiki vs. Creating your own Content

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I’m pretty proud that I went to Aix last year, to see Cezanne ’s mountain - as I promised to do.  This is one of the results of that trip. My video footage and voiceovers are going to be used to annotate one of Paul Cezzane’s greatest paintings - Sous Bous - at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I’ve been glowing about it for the last two weeks, and I got the first message about it on my birthday, November 9th.  While I’d like to go back to Aix (maybe next Spring, with Marsha Wooley ’s Denver Art class - if she goes next year) - I decided to not go to LeWeb3 08 this year - even though I’ll be there in heart - because what I really wanted to see was more of Cezanne’s mountain

I’m pretty proud that I went to Aix last year, to see Cezanne’s mountain - as I promised to do.  This is one of the results of that trip.

My video footage and voiceovers are going to be used to annotate one of Paul Cezzane’s greatest paintings - Sous Bous - at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

I’ve been glowing about it for the last two weeks, and I got the first message about it on my birthday, November 9th.  While I’d like to go back to Aix (maybe next Spring, with Marsha Wooley’s Denver Art class - if she goes next year) - I decided to not go to LeWeb3 08 this year - even though I’ll be there in heart - because what I really wanted to see was more of Cezanne’s mountain.

Of course, it always helps to go with friends.  Anyway - here are the videos from my Paris and Aix Trip in June 2007 that attracted the attention that lead to this.

And here was my first day in Aix -

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Paul Cezzane’s Sous Bous and my video annotation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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