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Thanks to BK Marcus, I can now say I’ve seen everything: Armor of God PJs

Apropos my discussion on how much firms should spend on research and development, economist Peter Klein notes that Bell Labs seems to have successfully transitioned into a commercially-based R&D center (e.g. for-profit).

That’s good news for consumers everywhere.

Reminds me of Thomas Edison. His first patent (#90,646) was for an electronic voting machine and it subsequently resulted in poor sales. As a result, he purportedly swore to only invent commercially viable products from then on. Or in other words: don’t invent for the sake of inventing, but instead for practical, market-demanded uses.

The internets are abuzz with news that Facebook added a “blogging” feature.

I just tested it out, and while you can now incorporate your blog into your profile, you can’t do the opposite — there is no output RSS feed for the world to consume your thoughts.

So while the FB devs are busy creating a cleaner, more niche MySpace, the very nature of their operating model (a Walled Garden) prevents this new tool - and its musings - from becoming part of the larger blogosphere corpus.

My closing thoughts: it will probably help increase time logged into the system, as users will be busy writing and reading the notebook entries of their friends. Thus, in the end, their advertisers will benefit in the long-run (more page impressions, more eyeballs and more clicks). Smart business move.

Too bad end-users (those creating the content) won’t be able to directly benefit from the ad revenue.

Robert Scoble pointed to a couple of interesting stories today.

The first is a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a machinima (movie created in a virtual world) to help train employees in a corporate environment.  He uses the increasing popular Second Life platform.

The other story discusses a new course at San Jose State University that teaches journalists how to use podcasting as a productive medium.

See also Metaverse.

Business 2.0 has a really good write-up of all the blog-enterprises that are now funded through advertisements.

The main reason for their success: these blog cater to specific niches, thus the ads can be targeted to specific demographics much more effectively.  It is the Long Tail of advertising, what Chris Anderson calls “nichification.”

Via The Paradigm Shift

Ever want to sing along to your horoscope but felt awkward and inadequate? Harvey Sid Fisher turns that frown, upside down.

Now you will no longer feel dejected while singing about Aries!

What’s with that weird dancer in the background?  Trying to bring back 1983?