On Tuesday, the EU accepted a proposal to consider internet censorship as a trade barrier. The proposer of the policy, Jules Maaten, feels that this would protect online freedom of speech.Justice John Stevens has this to say about internet censorship:

As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.— Justice John Paul Stevens, in Reno v. ACLU, 1997.

Although internet censorship is, in my opinion, valid in certain cases; I don’t think that one can label it as a barrier for trade. Do you agree with this proposal? What do you think would be the consequences on the global economy if such a policy if it were approved?

With the recent news of Yahoo! laying off close to 1000 employees due to a muted outlook released by Jerry Yang, will this acquisition be a positive outcome for Yahoo employees?

Microsoft most likely wants to pick up Yahoo (and they’ve tried in the past, but failed) because they want to gain in the online advertising market — something they haven’t been able to successfully accomplish.

According to Forbes, “Shareholders don’t seem very hopeful: shares in Microsoft were down 4.9%, or $1.60, to $31.00, on Friday morning, though Google was sinking even lower, by 6.1%, or $34.40, to $529.90.”

What do you think of this buyout? Will it help Google?

I’m reading a case study published by the Harvard Business School on Google Advertising, and one of the last few paragraphs mentions something I find quite interesting which I was not aware of.It states that Google has been conducting an experiment whereby they purchase ad space from magazines and allow its AdWords advertisers to bid for placement in those magazines.

…the search engine was buying up print inventory and selling it to its advertising clients…Google…could feasibly become a direct-to-marketer.

A one-stop shop for all things advertising (print, online, TV, and radio). Ad agencies aren’t going to like that, now are they?

Many people consider e-mail marketing as a spammer’s game. Is it effective? Is it cost-efficient? Vero Pepperrell discusses steps on how to avoid email management pitfalls in her article, The Seven Deadly Sins of Email Marketing Management.

Steve linked to this article which mentions some information about a supposd mobile phone being developed by Google:

As the personal project of co-founder Larry Page, Google’s phone is also one of its best-protected secrets. When a report surfaced in the New York Times discussing the possibility of a mobile phone project, the famously grumpy Page threw a hissy fit, and the suspected leakers took the bullet.

We’ve been making enquiries too, and a picture is beginning to take shape. In August 2005 Google acquired a stealth-mode startup called Android, founded by Andy Rubin. Rubin was a veteran of Apple and General Magic, but is best known for leading WebTV and subsequently Danger Inc. Danger produced one of the most-photographed phones of recent years, thanks to Paris Hilton: its Hiptop was marketed by T-Mobile as the Sidekick.

The iPhone to many people in the USA is being looked at as the next revolutionary mobile phone device, while people in other countries view it as being nothing exciting.  This might be because the the FCC regulates the type of devices that are allowed to be used in the USA and so we always get the cool mobile phones a few years later than the rest of the world.

With Google already making such successful online apps, I don’t see why they couldn’t pull off a mobile phone, and I look forward to seeing how they do it.

While reading through my daily dose of RSS feeds via Google Reader I came across this interesting post entitled “Hiring – No False Positives” by Dick Costolo, the CEO of FeedBurner:

[T]he “No False Positives” school of hiring says that bad hires are worse than no hire because bad employees infect the company with all sorts of issues. Better to march on with nobody filling an important slot than to bring in a sub-par performer.

The hire fast, fire fast approach basically can be boiled down to “it’s really almost impossible to understand whether a person is going to be a killer A+ match before they start working with you day to day, so best to find somebody that seems close enough, and then remove them quickly if they don’t work out.”

One school of thought would most likely be best utilized by those in the sales industry while a company that hires individuals in fields such as mine would utilize the “No Hire” philosophy.  Which of these two does your position fall under?

Many of you know that I hurt my back while at the gym back on the 25th of February so I won’t go into details of how it happened (e-mail me if you really want to know). I could barely move that following Sunday and then when I went in to work on Monday it was quite a task sitting still in the crappy chairs they give us. I requested a footrest to try and take the pressure off my back and was told I had to get an Ergonomic Assess through HR before I could get one.

I went and had that done and then I got CC’d on an email from HR to my manager saying “it’s been determined he needs a foot rest, have him order it in the way stuff is ordered in your department.” It’s been a week and still no footrest!

Execupundit.com: Note From Boss To Employees

How many of you have had a good and or bad manager? Are you a manager yourself? Have any of your employees ever given you a negative review? A friend of mine is in charge of a few different teams (design, marketing, development) and he is always looking for ways to be a great manager for all of the employees. There’s this program he found called ManagerAssistant which has a Employee Appraisals and Reviews section that lets him manage his employees and he has told me it’s helped him become a better manager. If you’re a manger and want that extra edge in being the best manager in your company, give it a try!

Yesterday I posted 10 ways to do nothing at work, well today, for those of you who would disagree with that list, here are 18 ways to stay focused at work. Source: c|net.

So, who’s a fan of this list?