Roger W. Neal, senior vice president and general manager of BusinessWeek Digital, said that as Business Exchange pages work their way up through search engine results, the site should double BusinessWeek’s traffic on the Web within two years, allowing it to sell more ads.

There you have it, bluntly, from a senior BusinessWeek executive: Business Exchange is a search-engine spam trap, meant to capture Google users on their way to actual information. What makes the plan brilliant: In the short term, ad salespeople will sell these pages at BusinessWeek.com rates, raking in a fortune on throwaway content. In the long term, though, BusinessWeek risks turning all of its online inventory into junk by association.

(Photo by Chester Higgins/The New York Times)

• BusinessWeek, Lacy's former employer, doesn't think her freelance columns deserve space in print. But she can drive traffic to the online-only columns by appealing to her Facebook fans. Just keep repeating: Nobody reads magazines anymore.
• Facebook's what-are-you-doing status updates have encouraged Sarah to ditch traditional journalistic modesty. Summary of her U.S. News interview: "I I I've I'll I mine me I was jogging one day and I happened to run into this guy and he was telling me about this new company. I have an assistant."
• Using Facebook's powerful promotional tools, Lacy has boosted the Kindle edition of her book to the #1,397 spot on Amazon.
• Lacy was chosen over all other journalists on Earth to interview Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at mankind's most important gathering, the South by Southwest conference in March. Thanks to Sarah's Facebook-like interview style — "Sarah Lacy is now friends with Mark Zuckerberg" — those who were there still haven't stopped talking about her.

(Photo by Andrew Feinberg)

• Alan Levy (BlogTalkRadio)
• Alec Oxenford (OLX, DineroMail)
• Alejandro Estrada (DineroMail)
• Alexis Bonte (Erepublik.com)
• Andrew McLaughlin (Google)
• Anil de Mello (Mobuzz)
• Arturo J. Paniagua (Hipertextual)
• Auren Hoffman (Rapleaf)
• Axel Schmiegelow (Sevenload, Denkwerk Group)
• Benjamí Villoslada (Menèame)
• Brent Hoberman (Mydeco)
• Carlos Martìn (IG Expansiòn)
• Cedric Maloux
• Christophe F. Maire (Nokia gate5, investor)
• Claudia Gisiger-Gonzalez (UNHCR)
• Dan Dubno (Blowing Things Up)
• David Sifry (Technorati)
• Demian M. Bellumio (Cyloop)
• Eduardo Arcos (Hipertextual)
• Efe Cakarel (The Auteurs)
• Ehssan Dariani (studiVZ)
• Esteban Sosnik
• Esther Dyson (EDventure)
• Felix Petersen (Plazes)
• Hans Peter Brøndmo (Plum)
• Ibrahim Evsan (Sevenload)
• Ivan Communod (Vpod.tv)
• Jacob Hsu (Symbio)
• James Gutierrez (Progress Financial)
• Jennifer L. Schenker (BusinessWeek)
• John Markoff (The New York Times)
• Joichi Ito (Creative Commons, Six Apart Japan, investor)
• Jon Berrojalbiz (Trading Motion)
• Jonas Birgersson (Labs2)
• Jörg Rohleder (Vanity Fair)
• José María Figueres (Grupo Felipe IV)
• Jose Marin (IG Expansion)
• Julio Alonso (Weblogs SL)
• Lars Hinrichs (XING)
• Loïc Le Meur (Seesmic)
• Louise T Blouin MacBain (Louise Blouin Media)
• Lukasz Gadowski (Spreadshirt.com, investor)
• Lukasz Wejchert (Onet.pl)
• Marc Samwer (European Founders Fund)
• Marcelo Claure (Brightstar Corp.)
• Marko Ahtisaari (Blyk, Dopplr, FON)
• Mathias Entenmann (Betfair)
• Matt Biddulph (Dopplr)
• Megan Smith (Google)
• Michael Arrington (Techcrunch)
• Michael Jackson (Mangrove Capital Partners)
• Michael Wolf (Farallon Point)
• Nikesh Arora (Google)
• Ola Ahlvarsson (Result, FON)
• Om Malik (Giga Omni Media)
• R.J. Friedlander (Grupo Planeta)
• Ricardo Galli (Menéame)
• Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz (Vpod.tv)
• Rupert Schäfer (DLD, Hubert Burda Media)
• Scott Rafer (Lookery, Mashery, Winksite)
• Tariq Krim (Netvibes)
• Thomas Crampton (Next Media)

• Joe Green (top left) has raised $7.3 million for his Facebook application, Causes. Which would be more impressive had the funding not come from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Thiel is an investor in Facebook, and has a vested interest in creating the impression that Facebook appmakers are worth something.
• 
  
• Drew Houston (not pictured) runs a company, Dropbox, which offers online file storage, a service users can't get from anyone else. Except AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, and a good dozen other startups.
• 
  
• VideoEgg CEO Matt Sanchez (top, second from left) tried to compete with YouTube and failed. Or "evolved," as BusinessWeek put it, into an ad network for Flash games, a crowded field that so far has garnered VideoEgg gross revenues of $300,000 a month. The magazine lauded Sanchez for raising $27 million in venture funding; it should have asked instead how much is left.
• 
  
• RockYou cofounder Jia Shen (bottom left) launched his widget startup while working for another company, Iconix, according to IM chats produced in court. He and cofounder Lance Tokuda settled a lawsuit with iconix last year. They're now trying — so far unsuccessfully — to raise another round of venture funding, or sell the company.

Whatever the reason, the magazine's editors failed at BusinessWeek Arcade. A number of the listed games, like Echoes, aren't Web-based at all. When I click "Play Now," the games attempt to download to my computer. Finally, we've found an audience for whom even casual games are too hard a concept.

Swisher, aggrieved at the lack of recognition for her scoop, accused BusinessWeek and the Times of running "hand-fed" stories, a charge Lacy and Stone's editor denied. (Lacy told me she'd known since the previous Sunday, but had held the information for her column; Stone's editor told Swisher his meeting with Slide that morning was previously scheduled.)

PaidContent.org clearly felt left out. After one of its writers filed a me-too post, editor Rafat Ali skewered Lacy in a followup post, calling her a "doting, in-awe poseur."

On Silicon Alley Insider, Henry Blodget, Lacy's cohost on Yahoo's soon-to-be-launched TechTicker finance show, came to her defense, dismissing PaidContent as an "aging, LA-based digital news blog."

Oh, and somewhere along the way, I managed to write a story on the subject without calling anyone names.

All of which shows how petty bloggers can be, and none of which answers the question of whether this matters to readers. My suspicion: Only to the extent that they may pass over a story they feel they've read elsewhere first. Google News actively punishes scoops, presenting news on a given subject by the most recent article written, a practice which encourages follow-on news articles and blog posts — and, for that matter, makes it hard to discover who actually broke a given story. Techmeme tends to favor the person who writes with most authority, drawing links from other blogs.

Another ink-stained wretchery has already called foul: New York suggests BusinessWeek, in running the article right before Google cofounder Larry Page's wedding to Stanford Ph.D. student Lucy Southworth, is attempting to cause trouble in their tropical paradise. It's all quite silly. Valley billionaires don't give their brides prenups — they give them funding.

Recap: Lacy co-wrote the magazine story which catapulted Kevin Rose of Digg to wider fame. The coverline, over a photo of the linkdump founder with his thumbs up, proclaimed: How This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months. Cue Silicon Valley derision, which didn't stop Lacy quickly tapping a New York publisher for a rumored six figures.

And, in all these stories, even Valleywag glossed over the fact that Lacy is smoking, so smoking that she'd even be considered smoking in one of those cities where models and actresses congregate. She's also flirtatious, especially after a drink or two.

Not saying that's the reason for her success. Lacy's married, to a civilian, happily. The fact that she and Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp are both attractive, and know each other, does not mean that they're having an affair, or that she sleeps with other tech execs. And she got the book deal without ever meeting her agent, or publisher, in person, though they might have snuck a look at her photo, I guess.

But, in maintaining access to young entrepreneurs such as Max Levchin and Joshua Schachter, the likely subjects of her book, Lacy's looks don't hurt. Oh, I guess this counts as one of those bubble indicators. You know it's a bubble when ... the tech business books are written by hotties.

There is softball coverage and then there is SOFTBALL COVERAGE. In Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet, the latest BusinessWeek cover story, Amazon sycophants Rob Hof and the BW crew give us a nice example of the latter.

Hof and Co. fawn all over Amazon's latest technology, including the patent-pending 'artificial artificial intelligence' Mechanical Turk, which not-so-impressed others likened to a virtual sweatshop. BW is wowed at how MT made it possible for Amazon to introduce its failed A9 Yellow Pages and may soon enable 18 year-old Eric Cranston to offer a pittance to those who complete mind-numbing photo-editing tasks! And in an exclusive interview, Hof gets Bezos to spill the beans on how MT can be used to tell if a photo has a naked person in it!

Surprised they aren't building entire cities around it.

The article runs through new Google ventures in the last 6 months; customized searching, online payments, classified ads but no youTube! Businessweek.com writer Catherine Holahan finishes the handjob with this a quote from a Internet stock fluffer.

"They are crossing into uncharted territory," says Denise Garcia, WR Hambrecht's Internet research analyst. "It is the promise of the future that we are seeing. And until we can see some flaws in their plan, the stock will continue to grow."

How Google's Garden Groans Grows [BusinessWeek]

Smart Move or Silly Money 2.0?
It Feels Like 1998 All Over Again
Bubble V. Boom?
A Billion for Bebo? Bubble, Bubble, Double Trouble
Social Networks: More Bubble Than Profit? (Part of a special report)
Bubble, Bubble
Tiny Bubbles...
No Web 2.0 Bubble? Hmmm....
Web 2.0 Ads: Another Sign of a Bubble?
Podcasting: The Bubble?

Let's just all put down the magazine and give them some time alone to figure out this bubble.

Also, a separate source says Lacy definitely took six figures (probably $100-200k, says the source) for the book.

Finally, someone at BusinessWeek mentioned that the bubblicious article was Lacy's first cover story, theorizing that she got it thanks to co-writer Jessi Hempel, a more seasoned writer with some covers under her belt.

Granted, Jessi is the one who went around the blogosphere defending the story, then passing the buck for the story's most egregious exaggerations (especially the $200 million valuation of Digg) to Lacy and BusinessWeek's editors. If that's how a seasoned writer acts, maybe giving this green one a book deal is so crazy it might work.

Earlier: Scoop: BusinessWeek bubble blower gets book deal [Valleywag]

The BW story scandalized those afraid of the ludicrous business valuations that Silicon Valley mostly avoided after the dot-com bomb, and it sent Digg's management scrambling to explain that no, they didn't tell Lacy and co-writer Jessi Hempel that their company was worth $200 million, and no, they really aren't a bubble company.

Lacy shies away from the same accusation — Her book is "not a bubble book," she tells me, and she denies rumors that Penguin, her publisher, advanced her $500k (another ludicrous fake valuation, of course).

Lacy says she'll cover "the rise of Web 2.0 out of the bust, following key characters who are/were notable
stakeholders in both, with analysis on what is the same and what's different." Not a promising premise — sounds like every other story in Business 2.0, Forbes, and Fast Company — but just how bad (or, who knows, good) the book turns out depends on which "key characters" Lacy decides to follow. (It's a safe bet her friends at web startup Yelp — pictured left — will make the cut.)

Earlier, on Lacy's BW story: Why BusinessWeek said Kevin Rose is worth $60 million [Valleywag]

"'Witch Hunt' in the Silicon Valley," says BusinessWeek.

Well, someone's gotta do this.

SEC: What makes you think she is a witch?
Stockholder: Well, She turned my stock into a newt!!
(pause)
SEC: a newt?
(long pause)
Stockholder: It got better...
Stockholders: BURN HER anyway! BURN! BURN! BURN HER!

"Witch Hunt" in the Silicon Valley [BusinessWeek]

Remember the fuss over BusinessWeek's cover story, "Valley Boys," a few weeks back? I know, we forgot about it too. But a few alert readers pointed out that feature writer Sarah Lacy has a little undisclosed connection to the story.

Lacy tapped the founders of Yelp for BusinessWeek's gallery of Valley boys. Are they really changing the world, making millions, nabbing the hot babes? Sure, as much as anyone else in the feature, and as much as dozens of other Valley boys who didn't make it into this hall of fame. But the Yelp boys have an in with Lacy.

Above is a shot of Lacy with Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman at San Francisco's "Bay to Breakers" charity race. Both are sporting "Co-ed Naked Yelping" tees, and boy do they look happy and close. (Granted, they were probably guzzling beer from a keg just like everyone else at Bay to Breakers, so factor that in.)

Sure, it's a bit sketchy to cover your friends for BusinessWeek. But don't be too hard on Lacy. She wrote a puff piece about Yelp and all she got was this lousy t-shirt.

Photo: Yelp Bay to Breakers [DJYelp on Flickr]
Graphic: Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman [BusinessWeek]

On the left, the secret boring cover. On the right, the stupid but sensationalistic cover BusinessWeek ran.

Wealth Punks: The other cover [Web 2.0 Blog]
Earlier: Why BusinessWeek said Kevin Rose is worth $60 million [Valleywag]
Earlier: Kevin Rose explains the BusinessWeek cover photo [Valleywag]

Why did it happen?

Well, the editors made a "last-minute decision," pushed by people higher up at the magazine, according to a source. Valleywag hasn't learned which specific higher-ups were gunning for the change, but the cover copy reads less like the experiential story of a Wired profile and more like a sensationalistic exaggeration to push newsrack sales.

For netting pure publicity, the cover worked. But most of that publicity was media backlash against superinflated numbers — so at what expense comes this quick shot of readership (and a glut of online traffic)?

At best, BusinessWeek will escape with the same reputation it had going in. But at worst, when deals go sour, articles like this will be blamed — and no one will want to be the magazine's next cover boy.

Earlier: Kevin Rose explains the BusinessWeek cover photo [Valleywag]
Also: Digg fallout [Valleywag]

Kevin Rose: btw, the cover shot was taken as a joke - I had no idea they were going to use that pic..
Valleywag: yeah, can you tell me about that on-record?
Kevin: honestly I was just messing around when they took that pic. had no idea they would actually use it for the cover
it was me just joking around
BusinessWeek didn't show us the cover or title of the story until they put it on their website
Wag: why the headphones?
Kevin: good question
Wag: ha, why did you even have them on?
Kevin: they wanted a pic for the inside of us doing something... I had a pic of me drinking a beer, but I guess that didn't make the cut
Wag: are those their headphones?
Kevin: no, mine
$20 @ best buy - sony ones - seriously pretty good

There we go. Kevin Rose didn't think his thumbs would end up on BusinessWeek, and he uses cheap headphones.

Earlier: Ripping on the Valley Boys story, part 1: the cover [Valleywag]
And: Digg fallout [Valleywag]

• Steve Rubel wins at life by showing the last time this happened. Pictured: Netscape founder Marc Andreesen, who's now cooling his heels at a low-profile startup. [Micro Persuasion]
• The linguistically adept Techdirt calls Kevin a "vapor millionaire." [Techdirt]
• Jason Fried, prophet of small business, calls BW's math "slippery." [37signals.com]
• Jason Calacanis, manager of Netscape's Digg competitor, does some quick arithmetic and laughs at the resulting valuation-to-earnings ratio. [Calacanis.com]
• The UK Guardian misses a perfectly good chance to snipe BW. [Guardian]
• In a comment on Digg, Kevins says, "I'm not a millionaire." In fact, one of his employees had to buy him lunch yesterday. [Digg]
• The community at Slashdot (Digg for old people) adds some witty retorts, including: "I've noticed that the level of discussion on Slashdot has improved since Digg 3.0 was unleashed." [Slashdot]
• Blogger Rafat Ali won't listen to the story's accompanying podcast, for fear of nausea. [PaidContent]

In my haste to finish the workday, I only cursorily covered this yesterday. But now, in the harsh light of several more critical stories, let's give that cover story the beating it deserves.

First off, the cover's a disaster. There are three kinds of cover portraits: The artistic, the serious, and the goofy. Kevin Rose dressed like a sixth-grader and giving two thumbs up? That goes beyond "goofy" into "mildly insulting."

The 29-year-old dot-commer isn't the only one being insulted. Readers' intelligence takes a blow when BusinessWeek claims Rose made $60 million from Digg. Just six months ago, Kevin was saying "I wish" about Yahoo's rumored $40-million buyout of Digg. BusinessWeek even admits inside that Digg only pulls $3 million a year in revenues.

Now, $3 million is a fantastic income for a two-year-old company with 15 employees. And sure, that number will probably rise. But the $60 million figure, based on an arbitrary Digg valuation of $200 million, is an obvious grab for attention — BusinessWeek couldn't be bothered to write "How Kevin Rose may have made 40% of a $40 million deal."

Coming up: Why, BusinessWeek, why? Also: The best of the worst from inside the article.

Valley Boys [BusinessWeek]

What a better chance to remind you to nominate a Web 2.0 hottie than with this week's BusinessWeek cover story about Valley hottie Kevin Rose? BW profiles the Digg founder (seen here wearing headphones — why? discuss) at length, describing him as a bright-eyed boy "beaming as though he's talking about a new girl."

The piece touches on stories like Rose's rejection of an early $5-million buyout offer from blog publisher Jason Calacanis, the infamous signing of a girl's breasts at a Diggnation recording, and Kevin's childhood in Las Vegas. Great stuff and a good read for more than just Digg fanboys. Still, what's with that cover?

Valley Boys [BusinessWeek]

For example, Fine wonders why Wired sold its magazine to one company (Condé Nast) and its web site to another (Lycos). A writer of his caliber should know that Wired had no choice but to split its properties, because no media company would take the site, and no dot-com would take the magazine. Condé Nast was so uninterested in the Internet that it let Lycos handle its magazine's web site — a decision everyone later regretted.

He also says that Wired News and Wired Mag shared offices for eight years. Wrong again — the remnants of the once-mighty Wired News just moved across the hall from the Mag a few months back, only to hear endless "You think this is a Holiday Inn?" jokes from the Mag staff.

But Fine's real sin is quoting Condé Nast dealmaker Steve Newhouse (the boss's son), who says the purchase is all about Web 2.0. Bull. Web 2.0 doesn't care about Wired, and to be honest, Wired doesn't really care about Web 2.0 (its editor's Net-centric "Long Tail" book notwithstanding).

Newhouse did not pay $25 million for eight writers at a dying news site. Newhouse paid $25 million to wrest his magazine's web site away from Lycos.

Update: Fine posted a correction. If he sends me his address, I'll mail him a copy of Wired — A Romance.

Steve Newhouse on Wired and Wired News [BusinessWeek]
Earlier: Condé Nast bought Wired News: What that means [Valleywag]

For instance, she says about the Google Checkout payment system:

PayPal is a really excellent, mature product. And our service, if you actually look at what we are doing, doesn't really take aim at what they do and what their core competencies are. So there is just a misunderstanding of where the product is aimed.

She means: "Still, it's fun to watch 'em squirm."

Marissa speaks volumes, after the jump.

She says:

Gmail, I would say, has actually been phenomenally popular. It may not be the size of Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. We actually have artificially restricted the uptake [...] if we removed the invitation model, we would see ten times as much demand. And if you do that calculation, we would be almost as large as Yahoo! or Hotmail. So, we think that Gmail is actually a very good product.

She means: "Pay no attention to the ComScore report, pay no attention to the ComScore report..."

She says:

[CEO] Eric [Schmidt] and [co-founder] Larry [Page] acknowledged that we really do need to apply a little bit more organization to some of what's happening here at Google.

She means: "Dad took the car keys and grounded me. Can't party, must do homework."

Mayer says:

There certainly are some engineers who tire of working on one particular task and want to move on to a new task.

Mayer means: "You've heard of Geek A.D.D.? Add that to a PhD and a sense of entitlement, and 'herding cats' becomes a woefully inadequate metaphor. Try 'herding ecstasy-fed pumas.'"

BusinessWeek asks, "Do product managers need to have more power inside Google?" Mayer says:

No, I don't think so.

She means: "I'm the VP of search products. You seriously think I'd let them have my power?"

Inside Google's New-Product Process [BusinessWeek]

• Martin Sorrell, head of UK advertising giant WPP, says media owners should put everything behind a pay wall. Yeah, that seemed to work six years ago. [Online Press Gazette]
• MySpace says it will restrict dirty messages between teens, which is like McDonald's restricting hamburgers. Remember the good old days when the Internet was dangerous? [NYT]
• Pictured: BusinessWeek, running out of cliched covers of its own, takes a cliched cover from a year-old Seattle Weekly. The latter paper is not amused. [Seattle Weekly]

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Earlier: Marissa Mayer: hologram or android? [Valleywag]

But BusinessWeek publishes the list with sparse subtitles and bland illustrations. Where's the in-depth commentary? The overachieving Google VP deserves better.

1. Ideas come from everywhere: Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team. Other examples of innovative finance teams: Enron, WorldCom, President Bush's budget advisor.
2. Share everything you can: Every idea, every project, every deadline — it's all accessible to everyone on the intranet. And yet Googlers are very careful not to accidentally have any idea what everyone else is doing — especially the PR department.
3. You're brilliant, we're hiring: Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience. As for high-experience, low-intelligence, that's why they have CEO Eric Schmidt.

4. A license to pursue dreams: Employees get a "free" day a week. Half of new launches come from this "20% time." It has to be approved, and Larry decided it has to be close to the "80% time," but sure, it's kinda free. They have $5 massages and you're going to nitpick over this?
5. Innovation, not instant perfection Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely. The first priority isn't making the customers happy — it's pushing releases to keep the press happy.
6. Don't politic, use data: Mayer discourages the use of "I like" in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics. It's not "Larry Page favors me because I have blackmail." It's "Larry Page dated me for three years. Larry Page is [redacted] inches long. Larry Page is classified with low self-esteem. Larry Page is promoting me over you."
7. Creativity loves restraint: Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines. Or give them leather straps and a ball gag, and you'll see, creativity adores restraint.
8. Worry about usage and users, not money: Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow. Then, cash in before the money follows the stockholders out the door.
9. Don't kill projects — morph them: There's always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged. Ugly projects never die, they just get passed to a new team and warped out of all recognition until the original developer sits at his desk, gorging himself on free trail mix and weeping.

Marissa Mayer's 9 Notions of Innovation [BusinessWeek]

Sure, sure, you wrote "products" to replace "ones." I don't buy it. Work up some nerve and print "mediocre shit" like the man said.

The Hottest Tech Outfit You Never Heard Of [BusinessWeek]

I can hear Tom Anderson now: "You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

From MySpace to Safer Space? [BusinessWeek]

• BusinessWeek profiled little old me. Note: The Compaq Evo is being replaced by a refurbed Powerbook with working speakers. Continue sending loud and obnoxious videos. [BusinessWeek]
• Podcaster Adam Curry was a real sport about the Bastard of the Blogs thing. (But he implies that he drinks Budweiser smokes pot. Official loss gain of cool points?) [Adam Curry]
• And Waggers keep writing the Valleyspeak phrasebook. Note to would-be word-coiners: the blog-related lexicon is saturated. Send words about business, social networks, anything but blogs! [Valleyspeak]

Sell the Benefit
Show the customer how the product will make them feel good. A great lesson, taught in 2000 in the book How to be a Rainmaker.

Practice, Practice, and Practice Some More
I think we actually have a saying for that. It's catchier.

Keep It Visual
Good advice, which Gallo spoils by crediting a 17% market cap increase to a Powerpoint presentation.

Exude Passion, Energy, and Enthusiasm
Unlike all the other areas in your life.

"And One More Thing..."
"At the end of each presentation Jobs adds to the drama by saying, 'and one more thing.'" Except when he doesn't.

It's Your Turn
The classic New Media appeal: "What are your suggestions? Write my next article!"

That's all for that piece. Do you have other pieces to deconstruct? Write my next article!

How to Wow 'Em Like Steve Jobs [BusinessWeek]

It's all about convergence — but at the article's end, LucasArts producer Chris Williams admits:

There's no project that ILM and LucasArts are both collaborating on right now. But there is full intention that we get to that place. That's certainly a key part of the vision.

Please, interview people who already did something and leave the "They'll change the world next year" stories to Wired.

The New Force at Lucasfilm [BusinessWeek]

Found this in the January BusinessWeek (thanks to Rod Boothby). Looks like they've gotten so used to writing about the Google VP that they let HER start writing — about herself, of course.

Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work — unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms — haikus, sonatas, religious paintings — are fraught with constraints. They're beautiful because creativity triumphed over the rules.

Thank you, Marissa Mayer, for breaking out of corp-speak and gracing the world with adages from the heights of Google. Please don't let your position as an executive in an IT company stop you from realizing your true calling as a timeless cultural critic.

Turning Limitations into Innovation [BusinessWeek]