Three weeks ago, I asked for some input about the blog, and the possibility of a fundraiser. Many of you were so kind as to say “attagirl”, give me lots of good advice, as well as offers of assistance, both in comments and privately. I feel guilty that I have not been able to thank you all, since I continue to be chronically time stressed (my inbox is a war zone, and I do hope to get back to those of you I have not yet responded to by the weekend).
Many of you hopefully see a new favicon, courtesy reader Duarte Guerreiro, in place of our old Blogger B which hung around despite the fact that we’ve been off Blogger for over two years. The little “n” was more readable in grey than in orange. I can see it in Firefox but not Safari, sadly. My tech guy might get that fixed.
One suggestion was a weekly or bi-weekly videocast. I’ve checked with Scott Sanders (I jokingly call him Movie Guy) who did our ECONNED trailer. It anticipated OWS in interesting ways. I mentioned I’d never seen anyone look decent in a home video set-up. His comment:
The problem with a home video setup is the lighting. Cameras are excellent and inexpensive these days, at least compared to just a few years ago. Editing software is cheap as well, and you could do almost anything you’d need with an inexpensive Mac.
Lighting is the real issue. To make people look their best you really need some skillful handling of professional grade lighting gear…
I’m thinking that maybe audio might be a good route for you at this point. You could assemble a really top notch interview system for far less than a video system. Also, anything other than a fully professional setup with video is going to look, well, amateur. With a decent audio system you could make some really high quality audio recordings in almost any location. And you could probably carry everything you’d need in a briefcase.
People love their video, I get that. But a well-produced audio program is going to present you in a very favorable light, much more so than a half-measure video effort.
Personally, for anything over about 5 minutes, I generally prefer audio anyway. I can listen while I do other things, like fight the LA traffic.
Frankly, audio is a ton easier (you have NO idea how much time you wind up wasting on TV greasepaint and hair).
And while we are on audio, a digression. One thing that COULD make me much more productive is dictating my posts. I am the world’s slowest touch typist and when I briefly tried dictation, I was very good at it. But the reviews of Dragon Dictate for the Mac are terrible, as in 2 stars. It is not at all the same product as for Windows. And I have no patience with learning software. Has anyone here used Dragon Dictate (the Mac version) successfully? How long did it take you to get to be productive? What strategies do you use?
I’ve also come to realize my inbox is really symptomatic of a bigger problem. I now have too many relationships to manage. Too many people send me messages that I just can’t get to, and many of these are people I really do have dealings with (as in I’ve met). This is now coming at the expense of the blog and my having anything that remotely resembles a life. So filtering is not an answer, this is a matter of absolute load. A secretary would be an answer (and someone kindly volunteered from afar), but the blog would not support a full time secretary, and a full time helper person’s duties would include inbox, troll patrol, research, and assembling some of the Links. And as you can imagine, I’m loath to turn over access to my inbox to anyone other than a full time employee. Aargh.
Reader wunsacon asked what I’d rather be doing. Truth be told, I’m a nerd. I’d be happier if I were less distracted and could write and research more, and spend less time on running my life. That includes spending some time at OWS (research can include fieldwork). And yes, I do have great fun debunking financial services industry and political propaganda. Although writing ECONNED in such a compressed time frame was a bit hellish, it did require me to read quite a few books and articles, and I miss doing deep dive research.
Reader sleeper suggested reports from the field, as reports on local economic conditions. That might be interesting if we could get enough dispersion. I’ve included some over the transom posts that I found intriguing (Daniel Pennell on MERS based on his presentations to the Virginia legislature, Timothy Fong on protests in California aimed at disrupting foreclosures). So regional developments that have national implications are clearly of interest too.
Dan Duncan suggested this:
Embed Wolfram’s CDF functionality into your site.
Then, get Richard to make contact with some folks at Wolfram to hook up with some contributors. There are many incredibly bright mathematicians, economists, traders and other scientists who would love to have the NC platform.
There’s so much you could do with this…No other financial blogger has anything like it.
The CDF player will allow the reader to interact directly with the blog post.
It’s hard to describe unless you’re familiar with Mathematica. [I don’t think Matlab has anything like this.]
Take this Wolfram post after the Japan earthquake. The author does a great job in explaining the earthquake engineering:
http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/uses-examples/infographics-full-example.html
Download the free CDF player and you’ll see…The ability to interact with the presentation makes it much more interesting. Unlike most passive interactions with web content, this actually sticks in the mid of the reader.
The reason why this hasn’t caught on yet, IMO, is that most of the Wolfram posts focus on the code for the Mathematica wonks. Once Wolfram–or bloggers– focus more on the end presentation, the appreciation for this will grow.
If you do try the CDF Player, check out this post on US debt for another example as it relates to your subject matter.
http://blog.wolfram.com/2011/08/24/exploring-americas-debt-problem/
Here, you’ll see the over-emphasis on code, which you’d obviously eschew. But at the end you’ll see an interaction between 3 month T-Bill yield and Velocity of $ over time. It really is interesting to watch the data points cluster over the years…until 2009 and 2010.
These kinds of interactive presentations would be interesting, unique and could be thoughtfully applied to a wide variety of subjects.
The point would be to attract more math/quant types who might do interesting data visualizations. Sadly, Richard Smith is having to cut back the time he spends on the blog (:-( ), but I’ve asked a couple of hard core math types what they think. Reader input also appreciated.
A lot of you suggested finding volunteers, but my experience is unless it is a well defined task of a specific time duration (like research support for ECONNED), there is a lot of filtering and churn. So this can be selectively helpful, but it isn’t necessarily generally helpful. Having said that, one thing that might be useful is if I had 3-5 people who could advise me on tech matters (like what it would take for the Dan Duncan suggestion above). Requests are likely to be infrequent, but they are the sort of thing I can’t resolve quickly on my own.
Reader BenE suggested adding ads to my RSS reader. I asked my ad service, and they said they are getting to that, but RSS ads don’t pay all that much.
Some people suggested I not post on weekends, or alternatively, have some designated weekend posters. The latter idea appeals to me if I can find some receptive writers.
Some of you asked re subscriptions. I’m at a bit of a loss here. I pinged Jane Hamsher, and she said the options were not good, that Paypal was pretty user and publisher friendly, but they take a lot out in fees, and the others are a huge hassle to implement. I’m seeing about getting that implemented.
I know some of you are leery of Paypal (which is what I use for my tip jar) and I would be loath using them to debit funds from my bank account. But if you use a credit card for payment, you can look to the credit card company’s rules for protection (I’d never handle a dispute through PayPal, I’d go straight to the credit card company). The alternative is to mail me a check or money order.
Finally, some of you would like a T shirt. I would like a T shirt too. But that is hassle for me and the name of the game is distraction minimization.
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Video casting using existing open source packages and marrying it with a big network for global distribution is a great idea. I will be in NYC early next week. Perhaps I should drop in. You have copies of business plans. In life, timing is everything. Feel that market demand for social media platforms?
If you really want to keep your integrity of which I no doubt you do, then you’ll need to learn to meet new people and assign smidgeons of trust to consider distributing the load. I don’t believe you intended to, but you dismissed those trying to help. The timing to harness and manage social energy JUST arrived. Your going to dismiss an army of willing volunteers calling it churn?
Get into your emails and tell your other friends to write you a check for a social media platform or get lost.
Corporate revenues exist in Higher Ed market. What? All corporations bribe our government?
Here is my number: 603-953-3388 .
Lone wolves don’t do well in this kind of environment.
Jason,
Have you ever worked with volunteers? I have. As indicated, when it is something specific and time limited, it can work well. That is NOT the nature of my support needs these days.
Volunteers by nature are doing you a favor. They are not obligated. You can’t ask too much of them, you can’t ask them to do things on your schedule. I have pressing time demands and that does not fit at all well with volunteers. It fit better with a book, which had longer time frames. And they were hugely helpful then. But this is a matter of horses for courses. The overwheming majority of volunteers are between things. Students looking for a job. People between jobs. They can and have dropped me when paid gigs show up. As they should!
You keep coming here and pushing your platform. You approached me at the inception and I told you I was not interested. And not only have I gotten advice from pros re TV, my experience with it does not advance me. I don’t get more speaking gigs or other bennies, so I’m not clear on what the point would be. If I could do video from here for Real News Network, which I like and some videocasts for readers, it would be a plus, if it could be done affordably from my location. But I need professional grade lighting, and the economics don’t support that. And I already turn down real TV now because it is often inconvenient. So why should I be interested in TV for social media?
What about “no” don’t you understand?
Ahhhh… free, unsolicited, condescending, patronizing advice. Arrogant, too.
Mostly kind of concern-trolly, I think.
Yves
John Hawks (http://johnhawks.net/weblog/)an anthropologist,has a connection with Amazon where he gets a cut if people order through his site
“If you access Amazon through one of my links, Amazon will give 6% of every purchase” This might help you out. Also he has recently redone his site which looks great.
I’e had Amazon before. If you notice, blogs like mine, Barry’s, CR, Ed Harrison, no longer use that. The payout on real ads is higher. I only have so much prime real estate and it’s better that ads go there.
I think the problem is that most readers don’t understand how this works. But there are a few that do and they would pick out the link. You already have a link to Amazon under your book and it would not take any extra RE, but it is not functional in this sense.
If readers would click on the advertisements more often, then funding problems for popular web sites would go away.
I find that moving money from national advertisers to my favorite web sites is fun and satisfying. Try it.
Actually not so much. These are CPM based ads, not click through ads. The click through issue is more complicated. If a site has a low response rate generally, then advertisers notice (this gets tracked). So it helps by keeping the site appealing to advertisers, but not in the “hit the lever, produce a concrete result” the way Google ads do.
Dragon works very well and is worth the effort to learn.
Publish less, once a week is sufficient. Also, limit the weekly to six items. Less is indeed more.
As you like to dig, reflect on the topics of the day. Our economy, our political situation and the situations in Europe and Asia. That’s a very full plate.
Could you please post a address we can mail checks / MOs to ?
Thanks
That’s very kind!
We don’t launch until this weekend, but if you are so inclined, please make payment in the name of Aurora Advisors Incorporated, 903 Park Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10075.
Please also send a short email to yves@nakedcapitalism.com with “Check is in the mail” headline. No body required. We will have # of donor goals and I’d want to make sure to include payments en route.
Steve Keen recently set up a kind of subscription/once off donation system recently.. Might be worth asking him?
Thanks for the snail mail info. It answers the question I had planned to post. Since the Wikileaks takedown by financial services I have refused to use paypal. (I know, the credit cards aren’t any better in that respect.) Nonetheless, I am happy you provide this option…I wrote Juan Cole over at Informed Comment and he added a snail mail address to his blog for reader contributions after I emailed onabout this same issue. A check will definitely be in the mail from this regular reader.
I should have been more clear. This is Dragon for the Mac. It is not the same product as on Windows. The Windows reviews are great, the ones for the Mac often hate it (as in one star on Amazon, strong recommendations not to waste your money).
Do you use it on the Mac?
Thanks for your blog.
Have you tried any of the virtual machines? They will let you run Windows on your Mac desktop in a window you can minimize to do something else. They work much better than you’d think, but I have no idea how they work with Dragon. They require an Intel Mac; they run on native hardware, not as an emulation (so they are fast). You will need a copy of Windows to do the install.
VirtualBox
VMWare
are two examples. Typically they have some issues with games where there is a high video content. Otherwise, they work well.
Yves,
If you’d like to take up Steve’s advice, here’s the download link to VMWare Player: https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=player&lp=1
Per the FAQ (http://www.vmware.com/products/player/faqs.html), usage is free for personal non-commercial use.
You’d have to purchase a “full” license of a Windows OS to install into the virtual machine running on your desktop. But, I suppose you might test the idea using whatever evaluation copy at your disposal.
You can probably set up a share drive (between your Mac host and your Windows guest VM) easily enough and use that to bring your dictated Word docs into your Mac.
Which model Mac do you use?
I’d forgotten how good that ECONned book trailer was – actually, I think it’s only become more relevant.
———————–
USING DRAGON DICTATE ON MAC:
I have used Dragon Dictate — for several months this year. I used it on Mac, and I only used it because I was completely, totally, utterly, and absolutely desperate.
if it’s a choice between giving Dragon Dictate crack, or completely going bonkers, then I’d say for 200 bucks it’s worth a try.
I was encased in a massive cast that prevented me from even touching a keyboard… There is nothing else that would in any conceivable universe have forced me to use voice recognition software. With that said, Dragon Dictate for all its many faults and foibles is still better than losing your mind. For one thing, it’s a lot more replaceable ;^)
But only barely.
HEADPHONE = ESSENTIAL!
If you decide to use DragonDictate, it is essential to get a separate headphone. I recommend Logitech. It makes a world of difference, because the microphone on your computer is simply not accurate enough for the software to function adequately.
Without the headphone your words come out looking — like this would stop global allus itself. How’s that for a real life sample of the gibberish that can be produced if you do not use the headphone?
The headphone is essential if you try Dragon Dictate with a Mac.
So figure in additional 70 bucks. At a minimum.
You might also find that you start to talk funny.
For instance, instead of just saying “for instance” and leaving it at that, you have to say “for instance comma”, and this can bleed into the rest of your life if you do this more than 6 hours each day. It can result in some fairly amusing conversations with friends, to whom you are now making ridiculous statements like “Dash–Dash– Exclamation point!” when you just meant to emphasize one simple thing.
So on the upside, there is the *potential* for humor — provided you don’t completely lose your mind and go stark raving bonkers about all the typos.
SPEAKING PUNCTUATINGLY…AND NUMERICALLY…!
So as long as you don’t mind speaking your words as well as your punctuation, if that does not make you crazy, then I’d say for the 200 bucks of a Mac version 4 Dragon Dictate, it’s worth a try.
You will however, see odd things like the number 4 showing up when the word for — or four — is really what you wanted. These little nitpicky things can either drive a person (like me) completely bonkers, or they can be amusing little bungles that are readily edited.
(they can be readily edited if you are not in a ginormous cast and can actually use your fingers to access the keyboard, but I digress 8^\
THE MORE YOU USE DD, THE BETTER THE VOCABULARY BECOMES —
the more you use DragonDictate, the more it will develop a vocabulary that is based on the words you use frequently. In other words, at 1st it can be incredibly exasperating.
It gets better over time as it picks up your patterns.
Nevertheless, it is far better with simple, frequently used words or terms of art that it will program itself to remember.
DD IS HANDY FOR EMAIL –
for e-mail, Dragon Dictate is quick, handy and can be a real lifesaver.
For me, quicker and simpler types of communication are ideal for Dragon Dictate.
I think it’s actually awesome for e-mail and you might want to try it just to get a handle on your currently monstrous inbox.
———————–
WIN EMULATION SOFTWARE:
As for the whole idea of running Win software on Mac, I have done it several ways at different times. I paid a minor fortune for Parallels software on a Mac Intel, but… (How do I say this graciously?) To me it just wasn’t worth it. It takes up gobs of hard drive space. And then of course you get to put on the Win bloatware.
Some people swear by it.
For myself, if I need to work on a PC, then it’s just cheaper and simpler to get a cheap PC.
In other words, it would have been cheaper for me to get a low cost Vaio or Dell than all the time and energy that I spent on emulation software + Win software + **my time and sanity**.
In my own case, I ended up deleting all of the emulation software, and all of the Win software, and wrote it off as an expensive mistake.
There are a lot of different views on this topic, and I don’t have any interest in getting into a flame war about Win or Mac.
I have found that since Mac designs their hardware and software to work together, messing that same design architecture up with more stuff is a little too crazy-making for me.
But I realize that other people have different needs, and different circumstances, and it may work much better for them than it did for me.
For some people, it’s mission critical.
For me, it was not worth it.
——————–
VIDEO:
With respect to the video and audio components, if there’s any way for you to partner with the Real News Network that would be awesome. RNN and Ratigan seem to be at the top of the quality content heap, and how Paul Jay manages to run RNN on what appears to be a shoestring budget impresses the hell out of me. But I respect that he produces segments long enough to actually explain a concept (and Ratigan does this with increasing frequency).
In other words, to me a quick superficial ‘chat’ full of interruptions is actually harmful because Yves knows so much that it’s important to have media that allow her to fully explain a concept. So superficial media does more damage than it’s worth, IMVHO. But from what I’ve seen, RNN and BNN let Yves actually explain a concept in each segment and I think that’s critical.
——————-
AUDIO:
With respect to audio, it seems that the potential for high quality audio content from naked capitalism is really unlimited. Podcasts are phenomenally convenient for so many listeners at such a low cost that I think the addition of audio would be a great resource.
My fond hope is that a podcast component would make it more possible for city managers, and others involved with policy decisions to more readily access excellent NC background work on fraudclosure, derivatives, economic policy, and other topics on which I think many people are truly still flailing around trying to find clear, **credible** explanations. Because so many people have such huge time pressures, yet badly need the information that Yves can distill, podcasts like an excellent place to focus.
——————-
DATA VISUALIZATIONS:
These seem to be on the cusp of coming into their own. I strongly concur with Dan Duncan’s view that this kind of content hugely boosts reader comprehension. I also agree that this is the future, but that is in part because software and hardware and make it possible.
Because of new browser technologies that tend to fall under the term HTML 5, we are on the cusp of some new possibilities for visualizing data. this actually probably plays straight to Yves’ interests in research, because those all rely on good data sets. Those good data sets all come from research.
The key point with HTML 5, in case other readers don’t realize it, is that it is built into every Safari and Chrome browser on newer computers, browsers, iPhones, iPads, Androids, and what ever new devices (including Kindle Fire) that come along will support the HTML 5 standard.
That means that no matter how people access NC (and I have read it on iPhone, iPad, and desktop) they would still be able to see the visualizations. So that’s the good news.
Apologies for such a dreadfully long comment.
Please note that it was created using Dragon Dictate 2.5 on a Mac running OS X.6.8.
Mirabile Dictu!
Dragon software was a life saver to me or so I thought it would be. If you have a accent in your speech like myself “southern accent” get ready for some heavy correction work. The operation and flow of the software is simple enough.
For the right people it is a awesome tool, if you are from say Boston, Jersey or the South with that speech accent be ready for some work.
Per above, do you use the Windows or Mac version? The Mac version is different, and substantially inferior, hence my concern. It has awful ratings on Amazon, barely over 2 stars.
I do have the windows version.
P.S. Thanks for the wildlife photos. They help to break up all the bad news with a smile or two. I think you do a great job.
May I suggest a rule of thumb? If you want to show us graphs, use video. If you don’t think you’ll need to, use audio.
Hello Ives,
Martin Armstrong is able to get 200 people to come to Philly and pay $2,500.00 for a two day seminar. I maintain you can do one day and people will pay $1,000.00 per day minimum–that would generate revenure for video, full time assistant, travel and even a part time reporter….
Maam;
Yes, that pesky T-shirt idea, oh well.
I know less than certain offensive subjects about web paging, but; could the site contain a regular side site? As in a regular ‘contest’ zone for , um, say, T-shirt design ideas? I know some regular ‘style’ policing would be in order, but the idea would be free crowd sourcing for agitprop purposes. Then let the lurkers download approved designs with some ‘paywall’ type licensing fee attached. It doesn’t have to be much, with your growing public exposure, perhaps a little economy of scale might come into play.
This idea comes out of my experiences in dorm life, from way back when Buffaloes roamed the Plains in Vast Herds. We had a “Graffiti Stall Wall” wherin monthly contests were held. The wall would be freshly painted when it became too cluttered. Lots of good stuff would surface that way. The wall also acted as a Dr Bronners Bottle, writ large as it were.
Well, just an idea.
Yves,
I agree about the problems with the T.V. format. I think podcasts are extremely effective if you wanted to do something like that. The other question I have is in regards to volunteers. I know filtering volunteers is a hassle, but could you partner up with someone like bobswern at DKOS to handle some of the issues that are sucking up your time? Your in depth analysis of issues, and ability to explain them in ways the rest of us can understand, is your talent. I loved your book by the way!
Hallo again. I loathe PayPal and cancelled my account. Have you checked into Flattr ( http://flattr.com/ )? They are targeting micro payments for bloggers amongst other social groups.
Also, I reiterate my offer of free labor. I understand your reluctance to bring in a volunteer, but if you change your mind, feel free to drop a line.
a dot l dot julian at gmail dot com
P.S. If you have an iPhone / iPad try downloading the Dragon dictation app and run a test. The app is free, download took about a minute, initial set up another minute. I ran a brief test and it seemed okay-ish. You would still have to edit for errors after finishing a recording.
Yves, how fast do you type? That may be a factor. I think for slow typers Dragon makes better sense.
As a 50 wpm typist, the Windows version Dragon did not actually either save or lose me time. Dragon was impressive alright but the editing eventually led me to discontinue use as there was no net time gain. There were fun moments of course, as for example when “primate placement” appeared instead of intended “private placement”.
I hope appeal for support increases donations and a paid part-time editor or secretary becomes feasible. Just sent in my long-overdue donation. You are too marvelous to get burnt out!!!
I’m more like 30 WPM. I have horrid manual dexterity.
I am even more amazed at you now, cranking all this out at 30 wpm……thought that was one of your edges,
wonders never cease….
Hi,
If you have an army of willing volunteers how about you start on the IT side of things. This can be done easily by volunteers who know what their doing.
Create a dedicated discussion board which then can be used to harness the wider volunteer army. Get one or two IT volunteers and get them to get the ball rolling. You don’t want to burden yourself with further jobs.
But I completely can understand your hesitation regarding volunteers for day to day duties. Some retirees though may work…
Anyway I can’t help, but I love your site. Been following it many years.
Yves, I follow your blog daily and find info here I find nowhere else. I especially love your links.
I live in the country and am confined to a slow dialup connection–symptom of the digital divide the gov’t shows no interest in alleviating.
My point is that I, and perhaps others like me who depend on your blog for information about what is really happening–would be left out if you went to video streaming or downloading videos or podcasting. I beg you to remember us and leave some of your info on regular internet pages.
Thanks for everything!
“The alternative is to mail me a check or money order.” – send to what address? (sorry if I’m missing the info somewhere on this blog…)
Here you go: (from upthread)
“…if you are so inclined, payment is in the name of Aurora Advisors Incorporated, 903 Park Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10075.
Please also send a short email to yves@nakedcapitalism.com with “Check is in the mail” headline. No body required. We will have # of donor goals and I’d want to make sure to include payments en route.”
thanks very much, check is in the mail!
I’m a professional writer and editor and use Dragon Dictate on the Mac almost every day. I’m glad I have it, but it’s no miracle cure.
My advice:
(1) You do have to take the time to train it, especially at the beginning. Having the commands on a cheat sheet also helps.
(2) My style is to use it to lay lots of ideas down quickly without worrying too much about errors. I then go back and edit my dictations to correct the flubs. I try to do this within 24 hours, so I have some idea of what I was talking about and can still guess the wrong words.
(3) I wouldn’t try to use it for finished writing. Controlling it is too distracting and crazy-making; you start thinking about it, not what you’re writing.
Love you book and your blog. Keep up the good work.
I probably should not admit this, but I had a dream about NC last night. Very strange. I read way too much financial news and commentary.
Would love a podcast (i don’t have time for videocasts but podcasts are good for the commute), but you’d need to be careful not to duplicate content with the blog.
I didn’t know you had a tip-jar. I will donate now.
The new favicon shows up in Safari on my Mac.
The favicon not showing up might just be a matter of cleaning up the browser cache (it saves stuff from sites you visited to speed up loading times and is therefore showing the old icon).
I agree with your movie guy and some of the commenters on the video/audio/text. I can relate from experience that lightning, framing, editing and a lot of other stuff required for a good video is a giant pain in the ass to get right and very likely not worth the effort if you are short on resources and time.
For audio, I agree it’s great to work on stuff and listen to interesting ideas at the same time. It is also much lighter on the internet tubes (I sometimes work from a crappy wireless connection and 1 minute so-so quality videos might take up to 5 minutes to load). But at the same time, I can read much faster than the time it takes for people to speak and can easily skip stuff I don’t care about, so I’m conflicted between the two. I’m thinking it might be more interesting for discussions and interviews, to get a better sense of the tone.
Having also worked with volunteers on several projects, I can relate to what you are saying. People get mad if you reject their help if it’s a cause they care about, but they have to understand volunteer work is great for sporadic and fragmented stuff like “I need this background by the end of the week” where they can work around their schedules and duties, but that’s not the same as having someone who is always on call for daily tasks that need to get done ASAP or on a continuous pace.
Anyway, if you need any “sporadic and fragmented” work by an animator/drawing/design guy, or some perspective on Portugal from a local, let me know. The righteous stand ready to serve ;)
Salutations from the land of austerity.
Good thought on the browser cache!
Use cmd-shift-R to force Safari to ignore the cache and completely reload a page from scratch. I got the new grey n favicon as soon as I did that.
You can clear Safari completely by clicking the Reset Safari link halfway down the pull down menu under the browser title. The new favicon shows up on Safari for me and on my retro but beloved default browser Camino.
Anything you can do to increase your reach would be fantastic. You and the broader NC community is the closet thing we have to a modern Percora
RE volunteers: perhaps 1-off intermediate duration research projects on a particular topical area could be a viable path? As you said, using volunteers for fast cycle blogging is probably not practical- and using them for long term research, as you did when writing Ecconed, is only applicable to tasks like Book writing. Perhaps a “hybrid” approach would be to use volunteers to research a topical area over an intermediate period of time, and then use the material to inform a series of blog posts on a particular topic over a period of days/weeks/months? This could also align with a broader strategy of moving into a “research deep-dive” model, which you mentioned is more in tune with your interests
Just an idea.
Keep up the great work
Put the blog in abeyance for a few weeks. Just suspend operations here. Go away and get your other lives in order and in proper priority. After a few weeks off the treadmill, away from the compulsion, you’ll have a much better view of what you should do and what you can unload. This kind of perspective can’t be gotten from the middle of the action, you have to be outside looking in.
The first thing I’d throw overboard is the links. Either assign culling to someone else or read the first so many that come in from reliable contributors and select from those.
You’ve already established connections and cross references with other bloggers. Think about furthering those associations in ways that are beneficial all around. You’re all stretched to the limit and beyond.
Unless you have more than 24 hours in your day, in which case your fabulous fortune is made, it’s self-defeating to look for a way to squeeze in more.
yves, i have some funds ‘pre-donated’ to any charity in a fidelity gift fund. i would like to give you a 3 digit tip out of this but it needs to get to you thru a nonprofit. i have given to GG via fdl, they have a registered nonprofit writers fund set up. if you are registered or can get registered there, email me and i’ll send you a well deserved appreciation thru that nonprofit.
Naked Capitalism is one of the best financial information websites of our time and I really, really like the on line format (especially the animal pictures). I do not know how you find the time to research, write and publish your website and still manage to perform your video interviews.
Some suggestions for you to save time is to only post original content Monday, Wednesday and Friday (and then only one article per day) and take the Holidays off for goodness sake. Let someone else manage the site for you (upload, format and publish content).
Use Dragon and let someone else format and proofread your copy, then give it back to you for your final publishing approval.
Also, make sure you have a good email client that enables you to effectively manage your email contacts. All online payment processors are expensive so use the one that saves you time and that you have no objections with.
Did I mention how much I enjoy Naked Capitalism?
Kudos to you for a terrific website.
“The alternative is to mail me a check or money order. ”
I hate paypal due to some conflicts. Post a P.O Box and I’ll cut you a check every so often.
Podcast would be great. Check out Marc Maron’s WTF model. He has a podcast which is free for current shows. To get access to archive podcasts and special features you need to buy a subscription.
He has an app to manage the podcast and handle the archives and special shows. He also gets a sponsor for each podcast.
Podcasts are much better than videos IMO. I can’t finish off the kitchen while I watch a video.
Love this blog and all you do, Yves. I’ve learned more here than anywhere else I frequent, and enjoy the commenters here. I think the typical subject matter keeps the trolls and “morans” out.
I second taking the weekends off. I’ve been trying that myself lately, just to really turn off because I have a hellish commute and a very stressful job on top of my interest in all things going on. It’s hard to stay away from the computer on a lazy Sunday, but it seems to be helping me be more centered.
Perhaps a targeted fundraiser for an assisstant….or for a specific project, like fieldwork with OWS?
Thanks again for all you do.
I love this site.
But I’m sad at people who tell Yves to post less, or cut weekends.
Maybe I don’t get it, but we need _time saving_ ideas. I keep seeing ideas that would take staggering effort and may not pan out. Some take too much time even to read!
Here’s a very small time saving idea:
Yves dictates, and somebody else types it.
Hi Yves, I sent you an e-mail offering to transcribe.
Also, an alternative idea: Open source it — post your audio as a podcast and let your readers transcribe. I think people LIKE to help. A friend once told me this story of how he was on vacation, started laying stones across a creek, had to go to dinner, and when he came back other kids had finished laying stones the rest of the way.
People who need people are the luckiest people in the world… let your lucky flag fly.
Best wishes.