Here are some facts from the report, “Global Reach,” by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute:

- Indian entrepreneurs helped found many Silicon Valley companies such as Sun Microsystems, Tibco Software, Brocade, Cerent and Hotmail.

- As a measure of its success, the median income in the Bay Area’s Indian community is more than $107,000.

- 75% of adults have at least a bachelors degree.

- 70% are in management or professional positions.

- More than 40 Bay Area venture firms have Indian leadership and/or activity in India.

Silicon Valley/Bay Area has very close ties to India:

- Visa has issued more than 30 million debit cards and 32 million credit cards to Indian consumers.

- India hosts Symantec’s largest engineering si.te outside the US, and works on more than 80% of its products.

- India accounts for one third of Adobe’s global engineering workforce.

- Hewlett Packard is the largest player in India’s IT market.

- Levi Strauss has 450 exclusive outlets in 80 Indian cities.

- Cisco second global headquarters is in Bangalore.

The report states: "The combination of Bay Area innovation and capital with India’s engineering talent, it finds, can be a formidable one in global markets."

The report says that there are issues such as immigration reform:

"An Indian with an advanced degree can wait as long as five years before his or her application for a green card (permanent residence) is even considered. This makes no sense when opportunities in India are beckoning and other countries are aggressively competing for the same talent."

Please see: BayAreaEconomy.org

You can watch it live at 6.45pm this evening: The Tech Awards 2009 | NBC Bay Area

There are five categories: environment, economic development, education, equality, and health.

The prize of $50,000 cash, is a little on the stingy side in my view, but significant because the recipients are usually in the developing world. (The gala costs way more than $250,000 but it also acts as a fund raiser for the Tech Museum of Innovation.)

Also, Al Gore will be there receiving the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award.

However, these winners look far more interesting:
(From The Tech Museum Awards - Technology Benefiting Humanity | Press Room)

The Tech Awards Laureates 2009:

Intel Environment Award

Dr. Joseph Adelegan, Cows to Kilowatts (Nigeria): Slaughterhouse waste is one of the most significant sources of water pollution and greenhouse gases emissions in most developing economies. The anaerobic fixed film reactor used in the Cows to Kilowatts project decontaminates the waste stream from slaughterhouses and turns this organic waste into methane that can be used to generate electricity or as inexpensive cooking gas.http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/publications/africa_casestudies/kilowatts.pdf

GRUPEDSAC (Grupo para Promover la Educaci�n y el Desarrollo Sustentable), Eco-techniques Toolkits for Self-Sufficiency (Mexico): Poor quality of life in rural Mexico includes loss of soil fertility, lack of access to clean water, adequate shelter, nutrition, and health resources. Customizable Eco-techniques Toolkits for Self-Sufficiency combine old and new sustainable technologies-from cisterns to solar ovens-to fit the needs of each community. http://www.grupedsac.org/

Sean White, Electronic Field Guide (USA): Plant species are disappearing at an alarming rate; mobile identification and classification of plant species may aid in conservation and cataloguing. The Electronic Field Guide uses photos to identify leaves with mobile, hand-held and augmented reality visualization of information. http://herbarium.cs.columbia.edu


BD Biosciences Economic Development Award

Alternative Energy Development Corp. (AEDC), Alternative Energy for Empowerment (South Africa): Fuel cell use largely avoids the lead-acid waste of solar or wind installation batteries. Inexpensive, zinc-air fuel cells can be used in poor communities lacking access to grid power. Fuel cell anodes can be removed manually in about 15 minutes and zinc oxide waste recycled as fertilizer. www.aedc.co.za

Solar Ear (Botswana, Brazil): Standard Western hearing aids cost an average of $750, with battery costs typically $1 per week. Solar Ear, an inexpensive hearing aid, suited to local conditions and manufactured by deaf workers who train one-another, costs $100 and is paired with a solar recharging unit for the batteries. www.solarear.com.br

Driptech (India): Hundreds of millions of people in the developing world face water shortages in crop production; drip irrigation delivers precisely the right amount of water and not more. Driptech's unique laser technology drills holes in one main line, thereby reducing the number of parts and the cost of a drip irrigation system. www.driptechnologies.com


Microsoft Education Award

Akshaya Patra Foundation, School Meals Program (India):
High quality, nutrient rich meals are key to the education process in poverty stricken areas. The School Meals Program uses integrated and adapted high-performance kitchen technology and food delivery systems to serve millions of Indian children a nutritious daily meal. http://www.akshayapatra.org/

GeoGebra (International): Dynamic Mathematics for Everyone is a free, open-source software to display and practice geometry and mathematics that will help achieve rapid diffusion of information and quicker comprehension. GeoGebra created web-based, open-source software to visualize and practice geometric-based mathematics. http://www.geogebra.org/

The Khan Academy (International): High school students around the world need informal, clear explanations that can be reviewed at a leisurely pace to supplement their formal learning. The Khan Academy created hundreds of free educational videos in math, statistics, physics, and finance using drawing software. The "blackboard" style videos are accessible via the internet and hosted on YouTube.http://www.khanacademy.org/


Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award

World of Good Development Organization (International): Handicraft workers around the world are generally paid per piece, often at low hourly rates. World of Good Development Organization's Fair Wage Guide Software provides localized pricing evaluation of handmade goods to improve wages of informal workers. The free web-based platform encourages ethical trade by comparing wages worldwide. http://www.fairtradecalculator.com/index.php

kiwanja.net (International): kiwanja.net's FrontlineSMS allows for SMS technology to be used by hundreds of NGOs worldwide, for activities as diverse as election monitoring and dissemination of agricultural prices. This free software for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) deploys two-way SMS messaging and provides easy-to-use communications infrastructure for outreach in rural and urban areas. http://www.frontlinesms.com/

SuryaHurricane: Electrification for the Landless (Bangladesh): Providing mobile solar lighting can alleviate health problems due to smoke and CO2 emissions while establishing social enterprises. Retrofitting existing kerosene hurricane lanterns with CFL or LED lights can provide lighting for transient settlers in flood and hurricane-prone areas. SuryaHurricane also establishes infrastructure for women establishes women-oriented infrastructure for recharging lantern batteries using boats equipped with PV modules. http://www.shidhulai.org/afftechnology.html


Nokia Health Award

mPedigree (Ghana): Counterfeit drugs are ubiquitous in the developing world; up to 80 percent of drugs in pharmacies are fakes with little or no active ingredients. Pharmaceutical manufacturers label packages with an alphanumeric code, which is later confirmed when consumers send free text queries in to the mPedigree database. This low-cost, instant method for reducing drug counterfeiting is expanding from Ghana to Nigeria, Rwanda, and India. http://www.mpedigree.net

PATH, Ultra Rice (India, Brazil, Colombia): More than a billion people in developing nations suffer from dietary deficiencies in crucial micronutrients, including iron, zinc, folic acid, and vitamin A. Ultra Rice is an affordable, nutrient-fortified additive to standard rice, tailored to satisfy deficiencies common in the region where it is distributed. http://www.path.org/projects/ultra_rice.php

Village Reach, Management Information System for Vaccine (Mozambique): Poor countries bear the greatest burden of infectious diseases, and have the least infrastructure for public health programs. Village Reach worked closely with the Mozambique Ministry of Health to implement supply chain logistics management systems, utilizing portable USB drives to automatically update and share information to improve the delivery of vaccines, drugs and critical medical supplies to rural clinics.http://www.villagereach.org/

This is significant because Techmeme shows that human aided algorithms are more effective than just software and server. Techmeme is a microcosm of the rest of the search-enabled world of services, from news aggregators to basic search.

If Techmeme can't be Techmeme just by using its algorithms, and now needs lots of editors, then that means much larger news aggregators and search companies will likely have to add human editors too.

Here is Gabe Rivera announcing the additional editors:

Ever since we first plugged human editors into the automation behind Techmeme, we've been improving how we work to make the human/machine combo more and more effective. While technological innovations have contributed to these improvements, smarter and more continuous human editing has played a critical role as well.

Over the past few months three more editors have joined Techmeme's editorial team. They are (with links to their Twitter profiles) Rich DeMuro, formerly of CNET and various TV news outlets, Lidija Davis of The Drill Down podcast, formerly of ReadWriteWeb, and Mahendra Palsule, writer for MakeUseOf.com and a former IT project manager. At this point we're now staffed 24 hours a day most weekdays.

We've created a list on Techmeme's Twitter profile to let you follow the whole team, which also includes Megan McCarthy, Omer Horvitz, and myself.

Six editors at Techmeme. Wow. That's got to signal a huge loss of faith in search algorithms. But I think Gabe is doing the right thing.

Also, Techmeme has Atul. He is a one-man Techmeme. He sends great article links to Techeme all day long. If you want to know what is in tomorrow's Techmeme just subscribe to @atul on Twitter -- he is tireless and usually spot-on.

Gabe didn't have choice bringing in human editors because there has been a big drop in the number of sites linking to each other's news stories.

For a long time you could see items on Techmeme that had no links to them at all. They were chosen by hand. Without sufficient numbers of links Techmeme's algorithm doesn't work.

What does this mean for other search engines, what does this mean for Google PageRank which lies at the heart of Google's search algorithm?

Surely, this is GOOG's Achilles' Heel!?

And surely this is a very signifiant watershed moment. I've always said that humans bring value but most geeks believe in the superiority of the algorithm. Things have changed. This is a very big change.

{The Demise Of Linking ... And Its Effect On Google Pagerank]

New Media Increasingly Looks Like Old Media Says Techmeme Founder

I've never been to the Big TED conference but I've seen many videos and this was just like it.

Conference is probably not the right word to describe TEDxSF it is more like attending a series of theatrical performances.

And each TED presentation seems to exist within a TED template:

- Pretty much everyone has a slide-show presentation to aid their 20 minute performance.

-Most are monologues.

- There is always an emotional moment or hook.

- A TED presentation will always seek to inspire

- It will encourage the audience to think beyond their boundaries.

-It will make copious use of terms such as: powerful, community, culture, creativity, innovation, engage, passion, transcend, think big, connect, connections, educate, universe...

- Each presentation have a funny glitch with the slides

- Humility and self-deprecating humor is essential.

- High ideals and big ideas are essential

- A call for change

- Ending with a potential standing ovation moment...

There is so much similarity in the TED presentations that sometimes it seems as if each one is an unconscious parody of itself.

But please don't misunderstand me, I love everything about TED, the people it attracts, and the incredible distribution of groundbreaking ideas that it enables. [It's yet another feather in the already very feathery hat of Chris Anderson.]

Less geek and more chic

I enjoyed all the presentations and I loved the music and comedy presentations too, they really helped to break things up.

I also liked being in a largely non-geek crowd. A couple of superstar angel investors were there, Stewart Alsop, and Jeff Clavier. And I ran into Jim Daly and Bruce Lowry. It was really refreshing not to be among the regular tech/media/PR crowd.

An explosion of TEDs

TEDxSF is an independently organized event following the TED format:

TEDx is a new program that enables local communities such as schools, businesses, libraries, neighborhoods or just groups of friends to organize, design and host their own independent, TED-like events.

There are a lot of local TEDx events coming up all over the world - 353! [Find one near you.]

The local TEDx events are less exclusive than Big TED and less elitist. You apply for an invitation and you are asked to write about your wishes for a better world. If you fit into any of these job categories you stand a better chance of an invitation: artist/designer/creator; industry leader; making a living by thinking big; professor; VC, lawyer, press, inventor, social entrepreneur, technologist, other.

You can apply to TEDxSF here: TEDxSF.

The next TEDx . . .

I'm looking forward to the next one in April and I am also looking forward to the TEDx events evolving, and maybe striking out a little on their own and developing their own local personalities.

I loved sitting back and watching the performances and I joked with one of the organizers, Jeanne Alford, "It's great, it's just like watching TED videos!" And it was.

I'm sitting there for hours, with others, in the dark, just watching...I would prefer to interact, debate, discuss, share -- in real-time, in real life, with real people.

If I'm just watching, then I can do that online. I'd rather not have the equivalent of an online experience when I'm out and about. I want a shared experience, and I want to share my experiences, and I want to experience others.

The Big TED has pioneered a great format but I'm sure it's not the only way to tell inspiring stories, there must be other ways to bring people together as participants, and maybe even as activists, too.

It would be great for TEDx events to experiment with different formats. I'd love to see the 'x' stand for experimental... as well as exciting, sexy, exuberant, existential, extrovert, exultive, and always extraordinary... But not exclusive. It would be great if it were a little bit more inclusive, a little more "Bill" than TED, a little more grounded.

But I have no idea if that's even possible. There is a very long list of rules that control every aspect of a TEDx event. But surely the point is not to clone Big TED, surely the point is not to have a homogeneous, franchised TED spreading throughout the world. The Golden Arches of TED?

I'd love to see the little TEDxs experiment, create, and explore, then bring the best back into Big TED. That would be amazing.

I'd like to congratulate to the organizing committee: Jeanne Alford, Heather Mason, Christine McCaull, Taylor Milsal, Suzie Katz, Mike Marquez, Peter Pham, Sumit Guha, Michael Levit, and Jason Johnson, and everyone that helped out - you did a superb job!

I'm looking forward to the next one and please let me know if I can help in any way.

- - -

This is my favorite TED video. It is from 2008. Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor's incredible experience of a massive stroke.

The research was conducted by Don Bulmer from SAP and Vanessa DiMauro.

Some of the key findings:

- Professional decision-making is becoming more social - enter the era of Social Media Peer Groups (SMPG)

• Traditional influence cycles are being disrupted by Social Media as decision makers utilize social networks to inform and validate decisions
• Professionals want to be collaborative in the decision-cycle but not be marketed or sold to online; however online marketing is a preferred activity by companies.
  

- Professional networks are emerging as decision-support tools

• Decision-makers are broadening reach to gather information especially among active users

- Professionals trust online information almost as much as information gotten from in-person

• Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% - combined strongly/somewhat trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust)

- Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years

• Three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions
• Reliance has increased for essentially all respondents over the past three years

- Social Media use patterns are not pre-determined by age or organizational affiliation

• Younger (20-35) and older professionals (55+) are more active users of social tools than middle aged professionals.
• There are more people collaborating outside their company wall than within their organizational intranet

Foremski's Take:

These are interesting findings particularly the level of trust that decision makers have towards their online communities, it is much higher than for other types of online information.

Also, the finding that age is NOT a factor in social media use is very interesting. There is a myth that younger people are heavier users or have mastered social media to a greater extent. This shows that age is not a factor and it should lead to broader adoption of social media for decision support.

There is more information here on Don Bulmer's blog: Everyday Influence: SNCR Research Reveals Social Media's Impact on Business and Decision Making

[I'm a Founding Fellow of SNCR - a Palo Alto based think tank focused on research into emerging media technologies.]

- - -

The methodology for this study involved a mixed methods approach supported by quantitative data gathered via online survey of 356 professionals to understand their perceptions and experiences with social media in support of their decision-making. Select interviews of 12 professionals were also conducted using a semi-structured interview guide as part of the second phase of the study.
Key demographics of the research include:

• Close to a quarter (23%) of respondents identified themselves as CEO of their organization; 50% as "Director" (24%) "Manager" (24%)
• Company size ranged from less than 100 to over 50,000 full-time employees
• Age was well distributed with the greatest proportion in the 36-45 range
• 25 countries were represented, with 58% of respondents living in the US
• All respondents were either the decision makers or influenced the decision process within their company or business unit

Yesterday, I caught up with Tibco Software (a former long-time sponsor and currently an advertiser on SVW) because it has been in the business of providing real-time computing technologies for two decades.

Its real-time technologies have been powering Wall Street trading desks and huge financial systems for years, and are also being used by some of the world's largest corporations within a variety of industries.

While the web developer world has seemingly just woken up to the importance of real-time, Tibco is talking about a world beyond real-time computing.

But what's next after real-time? It's literally 'what is next?' It's the use of predictive analytics to anticipate business events and then to respond in real-time with a custom business process.

It means being able to pick one customer event out of tens of millions of daily events and respond immediately with a targeted business process.

For example: a bank customer using an ATM is offered custom loans; a casino that tracks customer losses and offers free tickets to a dinner show to cheer them up; a cell phone company that responds to multiple dropped calls with free minutes.

"Companies need to move beyond real-time and start using predictive, rules-based business processes. This is what I call Enterprise 3.0," says Vivek Ranadivé, CEO of Tibco.

In an Enterprise 3.0 world you cannot use an IT infrastructure that is centered on a database. It would be too slow for the software to track events and then have to go back and forth to the database in order to process and respond to business events. This is the type of IT world dominated by Oracle with its database software and applications.

In an Enterprise 3.0 environment, the software applications run in memory so that they are very fast and are able to work in real-time, applying business processes based on predictive analytics.

"People don't realize that companies such as Amazon are already event-driven. Vodaphone deals with more than 1 billion events a day," says Mr Ranadivé.

"If you have a little bit of knowledge about the future, if you know how your customers will behave, you then have the ability to improve services, and you have opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell."

He believes that this approach to business computing will happen because it is the best way companies can use IT as a competitive weapon.

Everyone has the same servers and IT equipment and ERP applications. Competitive distinction, and innovation, will be expressed through the predictive rules and business processes developed within companies.

Not for sale...

Tibco is in an unusual position in that there are very few software companies of its size that haven't already been acquired by a larger company.

Recently there were reports that the German software giant SAP might be interested in buying Tibco. And companies such as Oracle have been making lots of software acquisitions.

"We're not looking to be acquired by an Oracle," says Mr Ranadivé. "We believe we have the opportunity to become the next Oracle."

Once the current "real-time" fad runs its course in the web developer communities, predicting what's next is easy -- it's literally "predicting what comes next" -- predictive business computing technologies.

And as large enterprises increasingly deploy predictive IT systems, Tibco looks to be well positioned, in the right place at the right time, and should be able to profit handsomely from these trends.

"PearlTrees is a way for people to map the Internet by collecting related web pages. Although each tree is organized subjectively it becomes connected to other trees, and over time it will represent a human map of the Internet," says Mr Lamothe.

He says that social bookmarking, through services such as Delicious, has failed. "If you add up all the users of social bookmarking services it might be 10 million, which is very small."

Social bookmarking has failed, he says, because tagging links is not a good way to organize the web. "You pick a tag but that tag doesn't say much, it is better to visually show the relationship between similar web content."

The company has several thousand users in France and will formally announce the service in the US around February.

Mr Lamothe says that a high percentage of users are women, and many users aren't geeks. These groups likely would never be Delicious users yet they are active in creating PearlTrees and thus are helping to map the web.

PearlTrees has an excellent user interface and is designed to allow people to learn its features through what Mr Lamothe describes as "social play." Some pearls have different colors, some have a small black pearl next to them, etc. The meaning of these things is discovered through clicking on the pearls and exploring.

PearlTrees have all the social sharing capabilities you'd expect: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.

The simplicity of the design and concept is intriguing because it allows for potentially unique collections of web sites, and for some novel uses. I want to try it for publishing a blog post and showing the research that went into a story. Or to curate a subject such as the ongoing Rupert Murdoch battle with Google. Or maybe crowd-source a news story...

There are lots of permutations of PearlTrees that can be created because each "pearl" can contain other PearlTrees seemingly ad infinitum "we don't yet know what the limit is," says Mr Lamothe.

An upcoming feature will interface PearlTrees with Twitter to create pearls of recommended links from your network. This would help transform the ephemeral nature of Twitter into a permanent record.

Revenue could come from several sources. All trees are currently public and a future option might be to charge people for creating private trees. "Creating public trees is contributing to the community but private trees don't, so we might charge for that service."

For now, Mr Lamothe wants more users, so that there are more PearlTrees available for new users, and then he will choose an appropriate monetization strategy.

Try it for yourself. The service is in "open alpha" and open to anyone: http://www.pearltrees.com/

I dealt with one aspect of this thinking last week. [The dirty little secret about search engine traffic]

There is a second aspect. It is Google that would be in trouble and not the newspapers.

Let me explain:

- The value of Google search traffic to the newspapers is low. Its loss wouldn't make much difference to the newspapers' already poor online revenues.

- The damage to Google would be much greater. If it is locked out from being able to index a large part of the Internet, it would be very bad for business. It would create a crisis of confidence in Google.

If something like that happened, it would strike at its very core, its mission: "To index all the world's information."

Google users would question "what else is missing?"

GOOG's index is its Achilles' heel. It will do everything it needs to do to protect its ability to index content.

It doesn't care if the content is free or not, as Google's Josh Cohen recently told SearchEngineLand: "...people will say ... 'I have to make this content free or Google won't index it,' and that's not the case."

I ask again, who has the most to lose if News Corp and other large publishers block Google?

Newspaper online revenues won't be much affected at all.

But for Google its reputation as having the best index would be seriously harmed. It would have a large hole in its index.

And that hole would be made up of missing content - new content - the most valuable thing for search engines. People search for new content. That's what brings them back to Google.

Google has far more to lose than the newspaper publishers from being blocked.

And that's why it will do whatever it needs to do in order to preserve its index, including possibly paying for access.

Rupert Murdoch may very well have found the weak spot in Google's business.

- - -

Please see part one of MediaWatch Analysis:

Murdoch Will Negotiate Payment For Access To Basket Of Content With GOOG et al

Google has borne much of the brunt of the complaints even though Yahoo News is three times larger (source: Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand).

Foremski's Take:

But why have Mr Murdoch and others at News Corp. spent so much time criticizing Google when there is a simple solution: post a robot.txt file that tells Google and others not to search and index their content?

Because criticizing Google results in a lot more publicity. Because Mr Murdoch has another goal: he is most probably laying the groundwork to negotiate a deal with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others, where they will pay to index News Corp content and also content from other publishers allied with News Corp.

Take a look at these points:

- By collecting a package of other publishers, Mr Murdoch can avoid the problem caused by what I call "first mover disadvantage" in that the first publishers with paywalls, risk losing audience to rivals that wait to build their paywalls. That's a much larger business risk than the traffic lost from blocking Google. That's a risk all news publishers face not just News Corp. Better to be in a collective.

- Mr Murdoch is emerging as a champion for other news publishers in his criticism of Google. That's an excellent opportunity to become the rallying point for the newspaper industry as a whole and to recruit publishers into a common basket of content.

- Mr Murdoch and his top executives are masters at using the media to manipulate others to get what they want -- in this case Google is the target.

- Why would competitors join with Mr Murdoch? A better question is why wouldn't they? They would all still compete on writing the news first, that wouldn't change in either scenario. The advantage would be better revenues from subscriptions using a collective approach. Mr Murdoch and his allies could offer packages consisting of local, regional, national and even foreign publications for one monthly fee. No need for micropayments by readers -- the payments could be divided up within the group transparently, the readers pay one fee.

- Would readers pay for content? They already do. Revenue from subscribers has already overtaken revenue from advertising at many publications. In its most recent financial quarter the New York Times said revenues from readers overtook advertising revenues for the first time -- a watershed moment. That's a trend that still has a ways to go and will be helped by new ways to collect subscriptions for online content.

- Would GOOG et al, pay for access to index content? Yes, GOOG already pays for content from the AP and for TV shows to show on YouTube.

- Google would pay because search engines need novelty. They need to index new content. Otherwise why do people use a search engine? To find what they already know is there, or to look for new content? It's mostly the latter.

- If users know that a search engine is blocked from new content then that is a very negative psychological strike against it -- what else doesn't it have? Google, and others need to maintain an impression that they "index all the world's content." Index is their prime goal, rather than to serve up free content.

Josh Cohen at Google News made this very point "there is still a lot of those discussions that take place where people will say ... 'I have to make this content free or Google won't index it,' and that's not the case."

- Google is open to working with publishers in a variety of ways. Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand interviewed Josh Cohen at Google News. He said that Google already has a large number of different programs to offer publishers and will work on custom programs too.

Here are a couple more quotes from Google's Josh Cohen:

"We want to be in a situation where the best content wins, not the best SEOed site."

"You can allow us to crawl content and show a preview to the user and label it as a subscription."

Mr Murdoch and his allies will be able to have their cake and eat it in the sense that they can have Google index their content, and also have a paywall.

Plus, they have many business levers to pull in that they can continue to make some content free; to place less content behind a paywall; and to optimize their landing pages for Google and other traffic to make for better ad conversions (as Jonathan Mendez points out in SVW comments).

And potentially get a payment from Google and other search engines in addition to everything else.

This will be one of the ways the media industry halts the decline in its fortunes. Overall, the media industry will need to adopt what I call a "Heinz 57" business model, with multiple revenue streams, there won't be just one or two magic bullets.

The challenge for publishers will be in managing multiple sources of revenue. But that's an opportunity for startups to offer the admin tools, and help aggregate the revenues streams for large publishers.

- - -

Please see:

Analysis On Murdoch And Switching Off GOOG: The Dirty Little Secret About Search Engine Traffic...

WSJ Chief: There Are Two Types: Creators And Aggregators - Creators Carry The Burden Of Costs

Google Is Really Bad At Monetizing Content Yet CEO Schmidt Lectures Newspapers

Happy Birthday Dear Internet . . . The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches

A Saturday Post: The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches, Anything That Can Be Digitized

In those articles I use the word "devalue" in its monetary sense but it can also be used in its broader definition, in reference to the cultural and societal sense of "values."

It's a controversial position because it seems as if I am critiquing the Internet and ignoring the tremendous amount of value that the Internet has enabled. But that's not the case, I'm merely pointing out a few things about the nature of the Internet and what it enables.

It's good to see others noticing this effect too. Especially when it is one of my favorite authors, the extraordinary writer Cormac McCarthy.

Mr McCarthy is not very interested in self-publicity and rarely gives interviews. But John Jurgensen at the Wall Street Journal managed to get some time with Mr McCarthy using the occasion of the upcoming release of "The Road," a movie based on his book of the same name.

Cormac McCarthy on The Road - WSJ.com

In the interview Mr McCarthy talks about technology and the future. He says:

Well, I don't know what of our culture is going to survive, or if we survive. If you look at the Greek plays, they're really good. And there's just a handful of them. Well, how good would they be if there were 2,500 of them? But that's the future looking back at us. Anything you can think of, there's going to be millions of them. Just the sheer number of things will devalue them. I don't care whether it's art, literature, poetry or drama, whatever. The sheer volume of it will wash it out. I mean, if you had thousands of Greek plays to read, would they be that good? I don't think so.

. . . This is just entry level to what's coming. Just the appalling volume of artifacts will erase all meaning that they could ever possibly have.

"The appalling volume of artifacts..."

What a brilliant way to describe the horror of the bounty that the Internet enables.

The rest of the interview is excellent too.

Cormac McCarthy on The Road - WSJ.com