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- ZDNet Author Biography
Mitch Ratcliffe is a veteran journalist, media executive and entrepreneur. He was editor of the ground-breaking Digital Media newsletter in the 1990s and a frequent contributor to ZDNet over the years. He led development of the first Web audio/video news network at ON24, sat on the board of Electric Classifieds...- more about Mitch Ratcliffe »
ZDNet Resources
- Amanda Chapel, aka "Strumpette," needs some tough love
- I had a strange Twitter back-and-forth with "Amanda Chapel," the pseudonymous authors of a PR blog called "Strumpette," about the nature of the hacker ethic. I personally don't think the hacker ethic is very effective as a counterpoint to the system of intellectual property it decries, because hackers seem intent...
- Tags: Hacker, Twitter, Amanda Chapel, Hacking, Security, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-07-14
- Check out the bionic neck
- I've told you about my disc replacement surgery, but I've never shown you. Here's an X-ray from my most recent follow-up appointment with the doctor who did the surgery. As a trial patient, I have agreed to go back after three weeks, six weeks, three months, six months, a year...
- Tags: Surgery, Blogging, Internet, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-07-09
- Demographics forging a new Net market: It's not your kids' Web
- It's easy and fashionable to talk about "digital natives" that have grown up online, but the demographics of the United States are shifting radically to the grey and Web services developers should heed that news and make changes in their products and plans as a result. Old coots, like me,...
- Tags: U.S., Web, Web Service, Advertising Age, West, Channel Management, Marketing, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-07-07
- Seven Tech ways to make America better this July 4
- Something about getting a new neck earlier this spring made me start thinking about how to change my life to make America a better place. Here a few that you can try to make the country better over the Fourth of July weekend: 1.) Turn off your...
- Tags: Phone, PC, Cell Phone, Computer, Productivity, Telecom & Utilities, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-07-02
- McCain's campaign team has no Facebook chops
- You have to admire the chutzpah of the idea of convincing voters that they should vote for a candidate through an arcade game rip-off of Space Invaders, because it's simply ludicrous coming from a candidate who has declared he doesn't even know how to "use a computer." Aaron Jacobs-Smith of...
- Tags: Facebook, Team, John McCain, McCain, Jacobs-Smith, Games, Personal Technology, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-07-01
- What is a company blogger good for?
- I often hear from companies that want to "be social" or "hire a blogger." Usually, there hasn't been any effort put into the question of what they'd like to accomplish from the effort, so I send out the following. Now, you can call me to talk when you have an...
- Tags: Marketing, Industry, Blog, Site, Blogger, Industry New, Blogging, Strategy, Internet, Management, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-06-30
- Wiretapping: This was no time for a compromise
- Democrats in Congress have arrived at a compromise on legislation that will allow warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens' telephone lines. In March, I covered the threats to privacy from this bill, which was pushed hard by the White House as essential to national security. Today, the Democrats caved in big...
- Tags: Phone, Democrat, Telecom & Utilities, Security, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-06-19
- Scribes, professionals and the decline of mass media
- Clay Shirky, in his Here Comes Everybody, devotes a chapter, "Everyone is a media outlet", to a comparison of the decline of scribal production to the decline of "professional" journalism. He sets up this analogy on faulty legs that leave the argument that "what was once a chasm is now...
- Tags: Journalist, Journalism, Stock, Media, Photograph, Image, Music, Investment, Document Management, Finance, Enterprise Software, Software, Managerial Accounting, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-06-09
- Data Portability: Social Infrastructure still very much wanting
- In a penetrating analysis of the Facebook developers forum, 20bits shows that the participation of programmers in the discussion about the Facebook platform is rapidly dwindling, which suggests the platform itself is incompatible with the needs of the market. The fewer programmers writing for the Facebook platform, the less relevant...
- Tags: Facebook, Data Portability Standard, Social Networking, Development Tools, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-05-08
- Two product quickies: Mophie Juice Pack good; Simple Tech stranded
- I've been using the Mophie Juice Pack, an external battery that slips onto the Apple iPhone, for the past week and recommend it highly. The battery is about half the weight of the phone itself and fits neatly and securely onto the iPhone to provide a full day's charge for...
- Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Macintosh, Battery, Engineering, Apple Mac OS, Operating Systems, Software, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-05-05
- Which stock to buy today: YHOO, MSFT or GOOG?
- The Microsoft-Yahoo deal implosion was a near certainty when the talks began. Two cultures as convinced that they are superior to one another can never coexist, so forget blaming anyone for what was inevitable. At least it didn't take two years and billions of dollars in real losses, as compared...
- Tags: Google Inc., Stock, Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., MSFT, Operational Accounting, Business Structures, Finance, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-05-05
- How this blog saved my life and saved me $100,000
- A few months back, I told you about how my neck had gone bad, really bad. At that time, I was in the middle of a six-month dive into pain, alleviated only by gobbling unwholesome quantities of Percoset. Three weeks ago last Friday, I had an amazing surgery that relieved...
- Tags: Blog, Doctor, Disc, Health Care, Surgery, Healthcare, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-04-20
- Jump Point: Data-control, day-parting and success in any age
- Tom Hayes has written a new book, Jump Point, that will get you thinking. Jump Point combines the freeconomics ideas recently covered by Wired's Chris Anderson with a globe-spanning perspective on competitiveness, but, most importantly, suggests that the impact of technology is a trailing phenomenon. In other words, when it...
- Tags: Hayes Corp., Jump Point, Internet, Supply Chain, Leadership, Strategy, Business Operations, Management, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-03-17
- Creeping totalitarianism: The NSA, personal data and you
- Here's a simple rule for preventing totalitarian rule in any nation: Don't build the systems for monitoring people's daily lives closely in the first place, and you will not be at risk of totalitarian rulers using those systems to overwhelm individual choice. The Wall Street Journal today has a long...
- Tags: Monitoring, Terrorism, NSA, Government, Homeland Security, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-03-10
- Presidential candidates: Take a data integrity and transparency pledge
- Whomever you support for president, I hope you'll consider joining me in asking the candidates for a pledge that they will enforce data integrity policies at least as rigorous as expected of publicly traded companies, and that they'll open their administration to public scrutiny of most public policy. ...
- Tags: Data Integrity, President, Administration, Democracy, E-mail, Workforce Management, Online Communications, Human Resources, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-03-03
- FCC sure we're headed to Hell, ass first
- WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- ABC is appealing the Federal Communications Commission's decision to fine the Walt Disney network and 45 of its stations a total of $1,237,500 for airing scenes of a woman's buttocks on a 2003 episode of "NYPD Blue." Five years after the fact, the FCC is fining...
- Tags: FCC, Media, Federal Government, Government, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-02-22
- GenieTown: Local services as local community
- In a market where many of the global players have local listings for businesses and service providers, GenieTown is starting at the ground level and building up. The company, which made its public debut today, is a knowledge-sharing community built around person-to-person and small-business services providers in the Bay Area....
- Tags: Community, Service Provider, GenieTown, Business Services, Benefits, Human Resources, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-02-20
- Retail displays transform transactions and markets
- I was invited to a Microsoft forum on advanced retail display technology last week and came away with a strange sense that, although the future is going to look a lot like BladeRunner's stifling advertising environment, it could also be useful and powerful for the customer, not just the advertiser....
- Tags: Environment, Window, LevelVision, Construction, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-02-11
- Becoming cyborg: Beware inequalities ahead
- For the past couple of months I have been exploring a different kind of technology, the biological ones. You see, I need a new neck. Most of the big news in medical technology seems these days to revolve around genetic discoveries. Nevertheless, the first kind of...
- Tags: Insurance Company, Disc, Fusion, Surgery, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2008-01-03
- Erosion of privacy is a corporate strategy
- CNET reports on Google's efforts to expose Google Reader user's shared items to Google Talk contacts. The article compares this to the Facebook Beacon project, which would have made purchases and other personal preferences available to people who are Facebook friends. That's not an exact analogy,...
- Tags: Strategy, Google Inc., Facebook, Article, Privacy, Freedom, Security, Mitch Ratcliffe
- Blog posts 2007-12-27
White Papers and Webcasts
In this podcast Intel's Malcolm Harkins and HP's Manny Novoa chat about the latest issues in security technologies, notably the emergence of hardware assisted virtualization.
