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After spending a good chunk of time over the last couple of days pulling together the Carnival of the Capitalists for this week, had a chance to pop down to Año Nuevo State Reserve with the youngsters for a couple of hours. Año Nuevo is just a short drive down the coast from Half Moon Bay, and just north of Santa Cruz. It also is home to the continental United States’ largest colony of elephant seals. From the ANSR web site:

“Fifty-five miles south of San Francisco and the Golden Gate, a low, rocky, windswept point juts out into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish maritime explorer Sebastian Vizcaino sailed by the point on January 3, 1603. His diarist and chaplain of the expedition, Father Antonio de la Ascension, named it Punta de Año Nuevo (New Year’s Point) for the day on which they sighted it in 1603.

Today, the point remains much as Vizcaino saw it from his passing ship. Lonely, undeveloped, wild. Elephant seals, sea lions, and other marine mammals come ashore to rest, mate, and give birth in the sand dunes or on the beaches and offshore islands. It is a unique and unforgettable natural spectacle that hundreds of thousands of people come to witness each year.

Año Nuevo State Reserve is the site of the largest mainland breeding colony in the world for the northern elephant seal, and the interpretive program has attracted increasing interest every winter for the past 19 years. People who hope to see the seals during the winter breeding season are urged to get their reservations early. The males battle for mates on the beaches and the females give birth to their pups on the dunes.”

These animals are massive. Males run about 4,000 pounds, with the largest specimens tipping the scales at over 5,000 pounds.

They also are very protective of their territory, with the bigger alpha males asserting their dominance over smaller, weaker males at any chance. (It is not clear whether the victorious males tell off-color jokes to their seal buddies and roar off in their Camaros after these encounters.)

Link to video of elephant seals battling (4MB, voiceover from the ANSR docent).

Link to full photo set.

This is Part 1. Link to Part 2.

Welcome to Carnival of the Capitalists for January 9, 2006. We’re glad you’re here!

What is CotC?
Carnival of the Capitalists is a blog carnival on the wide ranging topics of business and economics, hosted weekly at a different blog. Here can be found lists of future hosts and past CotC locations, as well as other information and links to many blogs that cover business and economics topics. If you would like to make some investments then you may be interested in the benefits of mutual funds. The carnival is also perfect for those who are wanting to learn more about stocks and shares as it’s all about being sensible with your money. So, if you’re looking to learn about anything from how photographers are handling digital technology to learning more about buy-sell agreements to finding out some good share tips uk, this is the perfect place for you!

Is this your first time here?
If this is your first time visiting The Social Customer Manifesto, welcome! A good place to understand what this place is all about can be found here — it’s all about doing business from the customer’s point-of-view. Another frequent request is for The Business Blogging Field Guide, if that’s your thing. Click around, read some posts, make yourself at home. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.

Next week’s host
Next week, CotC will be hosted by our new friends over at Wordlab who are setting up a special page where they will be presenting Carnival of the Capitalists.

SO…let’s get on with it!

SPOTLIGHT POST
In reading through this week’s submissions, Greg Manter’s post “Customer Service: Dell, Yahoo, Flames, and Blogs” lept out and exemplified a number of issues that continue to plague business. Of course, Dell has had their share of problems over the past twelve months, and Greg points to a post from Jeremy Zawodny that was also being followed here. The story gets interesting, however, as you read through the comments on Zawodny’s blog, where Greg himself jumps into the fray…not because of his issues with Dell, but because of issues with Zawodny’s employer, Yahoo. Evidently, Greg has been having a Dell-esque experience with the big Y!, in particular with their hosting services. After ten days of frustration, and even after calling in air support from the aforementioned Mr. Zawody, Manter finds out the root cause of his issue:

“Now, after 10 days, I knew why I couldn’t upgrade my Yahoo web-hosting service. Was I happy? Not exactly.

The knowledgeable customer service rep told me that I’d reached the maximum number of websites that I was allowed to host at Yahoo. (!?!) That’s right — I was too good a customer. She told me I’d have to find another host for the new site.”

Yes, that’s right. He was doing too much business with Yahoo, and was going to force them to color outside the lines. The lesson? Make sure your organization can take care of your customers when they are successful. And make sure that the capabilities and processes are in place to allow the people within the organization who are supporting customers to make decisions at the point-of-contact with the customer to do things in their interest — especially when they want to do more business with you!

Here’s the rest of the roundup…a lot of great submissions this week.

Blog	Post	Type	Summary
Multiple Mentality	They’ll Legislate Anything		Now that the space tourism business is becoming less of a pipe dream and more of a reality, the US government has decided to step in and legislate it.
Let’s Get Something Straight Between Us!	THE BLUES BROTHERS IN WASHINGTON (Bush and Cheney Blues)		How the current administration got the band back together…
Different River	The World’s Happiest, Least Appreciated Anniversary		This past December 31 was the 14th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Kicking Over My Traces	Photographer’s Action Plan for 2006		Photographers of all stripes feel put upon by digital technology. One photographer explains how to embrace the new technology and use it, instead of resisting and losing. Do his ideas have application beyond photography?
Financial Reference	Irked		Reasons why hedging your bets may not pay off in the long run.
ProfessorBainbridge.com	Insider Trading Exam Question		A stockbroker’s live-in girl friend in an attorney at a big Wall Street law firm. In casual conversation, she tells him about a merger she’s working on. He buys stock in the target and later sells at a profit. Did the attorney/girlfriend commit insider trading? Did the stockbroker/boyfriend? At what point does pillowtalk become illegal insider information?
InsureBlog	Buy and Sell, Part 2		Conclusion to series on buy-sell agreements. This part explains the mechanics of such arrangements.
Marketplace Monitor	GM’s Position in the Dow		The market value of GM is currently $10.5 billion. Google’s market value is $122 billion. What’s wrong here?
Blueprint for Financial Prosperity	Buying A Car On Ebay Series		Jim has purchased two cars off Ebay and comments on the process.
The Consumer Electronics Stock Blog	Palm Treo 700w Launches: Sell-side and Reviewer Responses		One of the capitalists’ favorite toys just got an upgrade… but it’s not looking so hot for consumers or the company, Palm.
Seeking Alpha	Can Sex Sell Online Financial Content?		Playboy Playmates pick stocks, and you can view their portfolios. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.
The Entrepreneurial Mind	The Time is Now for New Thinking on Our Economy		There is new evidence that we are stifling the entrepreneurial economic expansion with old thinking and out-dated policies.
Eidelblog	As union leaders bash Wal-Mart, many union workers shop there		Over 138 million Americans shop at Wal-Mart each week — including union workers. While union bosses attack Wal-Mart using union money, quite a few union workers don’t seem to mind benefiting from “everyday low prices,” courtesy of an efficient business model.
Business & Technology Reinvention	Benchmark Your Parking Lot		Use your company parking lot to rate your company’s personality.
Yoest.org	Are Managers Sociopaths?		Two decades ago, I was part of a 45 member sales team. Whenever there was excess budget, we sales guys, staff and management (also known as “overhead”) were evaluated by outside consultants. We all got the same tests. We were grouped by results. All the cool kids, the normal employees, sat in the front. 57 of them. Laughing and joking and backslapping and happy. In the back of the room were grouped — three quiet odd-balls: a product manager, the CEO and Your Business Blogger. At first I was pleased to have been grouped with the CEO. But…
Gongol.com	Evaluating Iowa’s Candidates for Governor in 2006		A chart depicting the various candidates for Governor in Iowa, illustrating where the various candidates stand on economic and business issues. The temperament of the governor elected in 2006 will influence how Iowa votes in the 2008 Presidential caucuses, so this election has national effects.
Fire Someone Today	Everybody hates a winner		Jack Welch famously said that you should be number one or number two in a category or get out. There is a lot to be said for being number two.
Searchlight Crusade	Housing Bubble – News from the Front		Toil and trouble…
Personal Finance Advice	$1 Million In 6 Months		The owner of million dollar homepage takes is idea a step further by auctioning off the last 10 spots for his site and earning an extra $150k+
Blog Business World	Setbacks: Learn from The RMS Titanic		The luxury ocean liner Titanic was thought to be unsinkable. In a time of hubris, where the belief that nature could be conquered and anything was possible, the Titanic went to the bottom of the North Atlantic ocean on her fabled maiden voyage. When a business experiences success in the marketplace, often that same sense of invincibility sets into the thinking of management.
Okdork.com	2006 Guide to the Internet		A guide to the Web 2.0 bubble-in-the-making.
Early Riser	ER Book Review: Heaven on Earth		Early Riser reviews one of the best books documenting the rise and dramatic fall of Socialism.
Retail Store Blog	Customer Service, Dell, Yahoo, Flames and Blogs		Lessons from the real-world of customer service nightmares and the flames they cause on blogs.
Sophistpundit	A Pragmatic Theory of Blogging		Thoughts on business blogging.
Political Calculations	Political Calculations: Automatically Indexing the U.S. Debt Ceiling		Ironman at Political Calculations adds a twist to the Skeptical Optimist’s proposal to index the U.S.’ National Debt Ceiling by factoring in population growth as well as economic growth.
Capital Chronicle	The Man who put ‘mental’ into ‘fundamental’ and other 2006 Investment Tales		A few of the subplots to bear in mind when considering the consensus that 2006 will be another uplifting chapter of the global growth story.
Worker Bees Blog	Seth Godin’s question-Where’s the “None of the Above” option?		On the definition of marketing, according to Elisa.
The Liberal Wrong Wing	Free Trading		A look into the importance of globalization and free trade in the American economy.
The Big Picture	What happens when bloggers get it wrong, but the MSM gets it right?		Man bites dog!
Chocolate and Gold Coins	Why Are They Doing It That Way: The Answer		This post looks at how Indians approach a simple task – removing sod from a lawn – and why they do it differently than Americans.
Financial Methods	How Index Investing Harms Your Portfolio		Index investors that invest in capitalization-based indexes (like the S&P 500 index, among others) suffer an unavoidable deterioration in performance.
Daily Dose of Opimism	Google (& Microsoft), Thy Enemy is Within		With one great near-monopoly that butters most of its bread, a bunch of lesser, derivative ideas funded by it’s core business, and a big balance sheet, Google, the company most-hyped to become the Microsoft of the future, already sounds a lot like Microsoft right now, only Google’s monopoly is less defensible, and is not being guarded.
The Common Room	From Bleeding Heart to Capitalist Pig Babysitter		How babysitting taught me some business lessons.
Scrivener.net	The IRS is now 0-10 on the telephone tax — and people are starting to not pay it.		Ten federal courts have now ruled that the federal tax on long-distance telephone service is illegal, bringing $9 billion of tax refunds into sight of taxpayers. The IRS has won zero cases, but is still collecting the tax.
Crossroads Dispatches	Thaikea: From Leftover Coffins To DIY Furniture Making		Making lemonade from lemons is the essence of the resilient entrepreneurial spirit.
Soccer Dad	I heard the news today, oh boy		The radio market in the Balto Wash area is changing. I don’t like it much
Retire at 30	Donations vs. Advertising – Is clicking in our own self interest		Many savy web users pride themselves on the ability to parse out ads while using the net. I argue that this is not in their self interest.
Small Business Trends	Business Trends in Asia Pacific for 2006		In this guest post, Wilson Ng gives his forecast of the top ten business trends in the Asia Pacific region for 2006.
EGO	Gold and Electronic Payments		When will micropayments be a common way of doing financial transactions? Comments on the use of digital currencies like E-gold.
The Skeptical Optimist	Let’s end the dangerous “Debt Ceiling” rhetoric		Here’s a brand new proposal for locking down the USA’s “debt ceiling” — and for ending most of the political grandstanding around that issue.
Wordlab	Duomilia Sex		VIIV is not a product, but a lineup of products. Looks like it’s going to be another good year for names built upon Latin roots, particularly if you’re looking to tap into that lucrative XVIII to XXXV market.
Roth & Company Tax Update	IRS ADDS ‘AMT ASSISTANT’ TO THEIR WEB SITE		The IRS has added a web feature to help you determine if you will owe 2005 alternative minimum tax, but you have to have your regular tax numbers to use it. This post will give you a good idea weather you face AMT by asking you a few simple questions.
Interested-Participant	Bank Offers Sharia Compliant Services		Since Sharia Law prohibits paying or receiving interest, the Ann Arbor-based University Bank has formed a subsidiary which allows Muslims to open accounts where any profits are shared rather than paid as interest.
Free Money Finance	Getting Rich is Simpler than You Think		Wealth is simply a matter if investing a small amount over a long period of time.

Legend

Law and Regulation	General Business	Marketing and Sales
Technology	Health Care and Social Services	Entrepreneurship
Economics and Finance	Education	Editor’s Choice