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' WEBSITE101: READING LIST
Reaching Great Minds Online
June 4, 2001 Issue #92
Mike Valentine, Editor, learn@website101.com
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By subscription only Welcome to the June 4, 2001 issue
WEBSITE101: READING LIST
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IN THIS ISSUE:
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==> Feature Article: Lets Have Women Run the Web!
==> Guest Article: Choosing an Effective Title
==> Classifieds
==> Subscribe/Unsubscribe information
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FEATURE ARTICLE
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Maybe Women Should Run the Web!
by Mike Banks Valentine
We all know that the idea of business on the web came on with
a roar and now lies whimpering and licking its wounds in the
safety of the shadows. Who was the enemy? Who or what was it
that clawed and scraped the potential of online business so
brutally that early enthusiasts are now seen as foolish, wild-
eyed dreamers? What brought down an idea that was bigger and
more powerful than a raging beast at full roar?
The Greed Monster. Greed and fear always do this to us.
Greed drives the spammers that clog the in-boxes of even the
most casual email user. They promise instant gratification of
our every desire -- financial or erotic. Just send your money.
Greed drove the venture capitalists that dumped huge amounts of
cash into poorly conceived ideas for internet businesses. Early
VC losses can be directly tied to the greed factor in investing.
"Gimme your money and fast!"
Greed drives the multi-level marketing programs that quickly
sprouted wings online as more promises of instant wealth were
strewn across the web. "Just send your money, hurry while there
is still time to get in on the ground floor!"
Greed drove the corporate behemoths to launch "web initiatives"
so they might beat their competition online. "Hurry before
our
competition kills us and drains our profits!" But to what end?
So now that we know the enemy. What do we do to vanquish him?
I use the masculine here because it evokes the warrior image.
Maybe the failure is in applying traditional male attributes
to the web. Power, fighting, hunting and killing don't work on
the web. What does work?
Co-operation, community building, helpfulness and sharing. All
attributes that are applied most often to women and are seen as
feminine qualities.
We may be better off seeing this medium as a feminine one.
When looking for valid business models online, just take a
look at what works and who is making it work.
Membership models proliferate online where sites seek our
opinions and want us to "join in." Most successful web
sites
encourage visitor participation and feedback in discussion
forums.
Ebay asks for ratings of active sellers from the buyers
of their products. The highest ratings earn more business.
Amazon publishes reader reviews of purchased books and
encourages you to "Be the first to review this book!"
People read those reviews and appreciate them.
Personalization and community building are incorporated into
all of the major portals. Discussion forums are available at
every one of the major online publishers. The web encourages
communication and sharing of knowledge - not hoarding, hiding
and greedily seeking to outsmart the consumer.
America Online pioneered in community building and was
rewarded with rapid growth and customer loyalty. I believe
they have lost their way now as greed leads them to keep a
fence around their technology, refusing to allow their AIM
instant messaging system to be accessed by non-members.
Greed, exclusion, proprietary systems and monopolistic
megacorporations are giving way to community, inclusion,
open source code and peer-to-peer sharing and swapping of
information. As long as old ideas are applied to the web
it will go nowhere. Napster was killed by the monster.
Online content providers are talking "Digital Rights
Management" and seeking ways to "monetize content",
which
simply means monopolizing information. Scarcity doesn't
work online. Community building, cooperation and being
helpful, open, giving and sharing does work.
Businesses that work those traditionally feminine ideas
into their online vision will be the winners on the web.
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GUEST ARTICLE
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CHOOSING AN EFFECTIVE TITLE
Tim North, http://www.scribe.com.au
"Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior
and are disgraced by the inferior."
George Bernard Shaw
It may seem trivial to tell you to choose a good title for your
next written work, but the importance of this task should not be
underestimated. A good title may be the difference between a
reader choosing to look at your work or passing over it.
Many readers will learn of your work while surrounded by other
documents that are competing for their attention. For example,
they may see it while:
* scanning the printed documents on a bookshelf;
* looking through the titles in a printed index;
* looking at a bound collection of documents; or
* searching the Internet.
A good title can help your work to stand out from the crowd.
Here then are some guidelines for choosing a good title.
TITLE GUIDELINE ONE
USE THE FEWEST NUMBER OF WORDS THAT EXPRESS WHAT YOU WISH TO SAY
When choosing a title, avoid generic phrases like 'An
investigation of...', 'A study into...' and 'Observations on...'.
These are implied anyway and add little value.
Compare these two titles:
A study of the effects of chaos as a source of complexity and
diversity in evolutionary processes
Chaos as a source of complexity and diversity in evolution
The first title takes seventeen words, the second one ten. The
first one contains extra words that convey slightly more
information (study, effects and processes) but at the cost of
making the title notably longer and less memorable.
Here is another example:
A description of a variety of different tools for creating an
interactive virtual-cinema environment
Tools for interactive virtual cinema
The first title clearly employs more words than are needed
(fourteen versus five). It does contain more information, but at
the cost of being wordier, harder to remember and burying the key
words at the end of the sentence.
Indeed, in the first title, the key word virtual-cinema is the
thirteenth word in the sentence, You have to read almost the
entire title before finding out what the paper is about. This
leads us to our next guideline ...
TITLE GUIDELINE TWO
PUT YOUR TOPIC WORDS NEAR THE START OF THE TITLE
Titles may contain several key words or key phrases (see
guideline three), but one of these words or phrases will usually
be more significant than the others. Let's call these the topic
words.
Putting the topic words near the start of the title makes it
easier for the reader to decide what your document is about and
if it should be read.
Consider the following titles in which the topic words are shown
in capitals. In all cases the topic words comes near the start of
the title.
CHAOS as a Source Of Complexity and Diversity in Evolution
The USC BRAIN PROJECT: Confronting Models With Data
VLSI NEURAL NETWORKS: Design Challenges and Opportunities
Low-level VISION IN INSECTS and Applications to Robot
Navigation
TITLE GUIDELINE THREE
INCLUDE SEARCHABLE KEY WORDS IN YOUR TITLE
Articles are usually indexed by key words. Frequently,
particularly with web-based search engines, these key words are
taken from the document's title. It follows that people will be
more likely to find your work if its title contains the
significant key words.
Compare these two titles:
An Interim Report from the Myers Project
The Myers Project Interim Report into the Effects of Sleep
Deprivation on Memory Retention
Not only does the second title bring the topic phrase ('the Myers
Project') to the start of the title, but it also includes
additional key words: sleep deprivation and memory retention.
Readers searching using these terms will have an increased chance
of finding the document.
Note that this guideline is somewhat at odds with guideline one:
use the fewest number of words. Clearly a balance needs to be
found between titles that are brief and titles that contain a
suitable number of key words.
With these guidelines in mind, you should have no trouble
choosing an effective title for your next publication.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Adapted from WRITING SCIENTIFIC PAPERS by Tim North. This easy-
to-read e-book is just $9.95 and comes with a 30-day, money-back
guarantee.
http://www.scribe.com.au/ebooks.htm
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Copyright © 2000 Mike Valentine
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If Women Ran the World . . .
A Whole Different Kind of Regime Change!
By Mitchell Axelrod
I have a simple solution that will eliminate the threat
of weapons of mass destruction and end all need for
war. It's a sure-fire way to step back from the brink
and save everyone from untold pain and suffering.
It's a regime change all right, a whole different kind
of regime change that would really rock the world.
We can avoid war, make the planet safer and our
lives more peaceful. Here's how:
AT 11:59PM TONIGHT, EVERY MAN IN POWER IN
EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD STEPS DOWN.
AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT, WE TURN OVER CONTROL,
POWER, and AUTHORITY OF THE PLANET TO WOMEN.
If women ran the world, here's what could happen,
starting tomorrow:
The leadership model would be one of serving, not
dominating.
We wouldn't be living in a perpetual state of fear and
high alert, and machine gun toting police would not be
standing at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.
War as a pre-emptive method of conflict resolution
would not be a model we teach our children.
The words, "compassionate conservatism" would have
a ring of truth to them.
No human life would ever again be called,
"collateral damage."
Peace, love and understanding, not power, perks and
politics would be the highest considerations.
There would be more points of view than,
"You're either with us, or you're against us."
Within weeks, every starving child on the planet
would have food to eat.
Within months, the homeless would have some
kind of shelter.
Every sick person would get medical attention,
whether they could afford it or not.
Homicide bombing would stop. Mothers don't send
their children to commit suicide and kill others for
someone else's fanatical beliefs.
There would be an end to honor killing, and all forms
of torture; physical, mental and emotional.
Iraqi women would locate, disclose and help round up
for elimination all weapons of mass destruction. Leaders
of North Korea, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, France,
Germany, Great Britain, Israel, the United States and
every other nuclear nation would follow. They would
begin to shut down all nuclear weapons programs.
Israelis and Palestinians would live in peace.
Anthrax, sarin gas, and other biological and chemical
killers would not show up in our mailboxes.
Genocide everywhere would end.
Billions of dollars earmarked for military attack on Iraq
would be channeled into food, shelter, health care and
education for the Iraqi people.
Billions of dollars of retirement plans would be intact,
and billions more would still be in company coffers
instead of the pockets and personal bank accounts of
fat cat male execs.
Tens of billion dollars of unpaid taxes would be injected
back into the economy from companies that incorporate
offshore to avoid paying corporate taxes.
Classrooms would take priority over boardrooms.
Little League would be as important as the Big League.
Elections wouldn't be a contest of affluence. Third and
fourth parties would emerge to reflect the political views
of a broader and more diverse population.
Troops would be coming home this week.
Our leader would know how to pronounce the word,
"N-U-C-L-E-A-R!
We would divert hundreds of billions of dollars from
destructive into constructive uses at home and abroad.
We would avoid the high cost of a war on Iraq. *
**************************************
*Estimated "High" Cost of War in Iraq (Figures from
the New York Times article, "The Price We Pay" at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/15/opinion/15CHAR.html
then click the graphic for the estimates):
Military Deployment = $79 billion
Military Occupation = $105 billion (First 5 years only.)
Humanitarian Aid = $10 billion
Governance = $12 billion
Reconstruction/Recovery = $105 billion
Debt/Claims/Reparation = $361 billion
Aid To Allies = $10 billion
(Doesn't include quid pro quo deals)
HIGH Cost of War = $682 billion
Human Lives Lost = Priceless!
**************************************
I'm sure you can think of quite a few other ways that
life on the planet would be very different today if
countries were not being run by testosterone driven
"alpha" males, and the world were not so dominated
by primordial, power-seeking behavior.
Really, it's a simple solution that would cost almost
nothing as compared to what we face.
Mr. Bush says that regime change is the only choice
for a free Iraq. I don't agree with him on much, but
on that I'm in complete alignment. Let's expand it to:
EVERY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET!
LET'S HAVE REGIME CHANGE EVERYWHERE.
LET'S DO IT TONIGHT!
Mr. Bush, set regime change in motion. Instead of giving
the order to attack Iraq, turn over the reigns of power to
Laura tonight at midnight. Mrs. Bush is trustworthy
as interim president until we can have a full election.
Simultaneously, at midnight tonight every male leader of
every country in the world steps aside, and turns over
power, leadership and control to women.
Their first act would be a 90-day non-violence pact, a
cooling down period. Every country has three months
to reorganize around "female" values and principles
of leadership. In a month or two, all the leaders would
come together in a world wide summit (sorry guys,
ladies only). Men can play an advisory role, but we
leave it to the women to decide policy.
C'mon, ladies. Don't you think it's time to express
and unleash your power?
Don't you think it's time for you to step forward and
get your hands on the steering wheel, before we run
this vehicle completely off the road?
For those who believe we need a New World order,
I say bring it on. Let the New World Order be:
"WOMEN RULE."
I understand how my male brethren may disagree, and
may not see eye to eye with this view. C'mon fellas,
we've had the reigns for thousands of years, and look at
where we are today. The ladies couldn't do any worse
than we have.
It's very clear we can't get it together without fighting,
wreaking havoc, creating massive "collateral damage"
and killing far too many innocent and irreplaceable
loved ones in the process.
What do you say, guys? Why don't we just step aside,
and let the ladies have at it for awhile?
Let's experience the next few years with women at the
helm. Heck, we may enjoy it. I know it's a big step to
give up authority and control to a maternal model of
power. But it's what we need to get planet Earth back
on even keel.
Look at the bright side: it can open up a whole new
world of possibility for us to spend our time in other,
more enjoyable, less stressful activities. Maybe we can
return to the real purpose of life: making love, not war.
Mr. Bush, show real leadership. Let Laura take over.
C'mon Saddam. Let Mrs. Saddam handle the weapons
of mass destruction. She'll know what to do with them.
Let women take over at midnight tonight, and we'll all
wake up tomorrow morning with a different feeling in
the pit of the stomach.
Yes, regime change does seem in order.
Ladies, you have my vote.
There's still timeÉ
Your brother,
Mitch Axelrod
P.S. Do share this with others.
© 2003, Axelrod Learning
Email: mailto:mitch@axelrodlearning.com
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