Bin of the chavs: Lotto lout Michael Carroll set to return to old job after blowing £9.7m win

He became the self-proclaimed king of the chavs after turning up to collect his £9.7million lottery win wearing an electronic offender’s tag.

But eight years on, having blown all that money, Michael Carroll is practising for a return to his old job as a binman.

The 26-year-old, who squandered his multi-million fortune on drugs, gambling and thousands of prostitutes, has since February claimed £42 a week in jobseeker’s allowance.

Dress rehearsal: Michael Carroll practices wheeling bins near his Norfolk home

But he is keen to get off the dole and back to earning £200 a week collecting rubbish near his home in Downham Market, Norfolk.

The father of two told The People: ‘I can’t wait t

via Bin of the chavs: Lotto lout Michael Carroll set to return to old job after blowing £9.7m win | Mail Online.

 

Peggy Noonan On Steve Jobs And Why Big Companies Die

There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacsons biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business. Hes at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to “build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.” Then he turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about “why decline happens” at great companies: “The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because theyre the ones who can move the needle on revenues.” So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the companys daily life. They “turn off.” IBM [IBM] and Xerox [XRX], Jobs said, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but “they didnt know anything about the product.” In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.

via Peggy Noonan On Steve Jobs And Why Big Companies Die – Yahoo! News.

 

You Don’t Really Want A Faster Horse !!!

Henry Ford is quoted as saying “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse!”. While this might be true, this is a short sighted view of product management.

via You Don’t Really Want A Faster Horse – Technorati Business.

 

Googles Tax Tricks: Double Irish And Dutch Sandwich : Planet Money : NPR

 

 

 

Google uses a few awesomely named (and perfectly legal) tricks to keep its global tax bills low.

The techniques saved the company billions of dollars in taxes in the past few years,Bloomberg News reports. And they’re a reminder of the Rube Goldberg-esque strategies companies use in all kinds of settings to deal with rules and regulations.

‘The Double Irish’

Google licensed the European rights to its search and advertising business to a unit called “Google Ireland Holdings,” according to Bloomberg.

Despite what the name might suggest, Google Ireland Holdings has its “effective centre of management” in Bermuda — land of sun, sand, and superlow corporate taxes.

 

Google Ireland Holdings in turn owns Google Ireland Limited, which employs almost 2,000 people in Dublin.

That unit sells billions of dollars of ads every year — but winds up passing most of that money through to Google Ireland Holdings, the Bermuda unit.

This arrangement is actually pretty common in the corporate world, Bloomberg says. It’s called the “Double Irish” because of the two-company structure.

The Dutch Sandwich

Irish law exempts some royalty payments to other E.U. countries. So those European profits make a brief stopover in the Netherlands on their way from Ireland to Bermuda.

The money passes through a Dutch unit called “Google Netherlands Holdings” which lists no employees and pays out 99.8 percent of what it collects to the Bermuda unit, according to Bloomberg.

This move is known as the Dutch Sandwich.

The Spokeswoman

A Google spokeswoman told Bloomberg that “Google’s practices are very similar to those at countless other global companies operating across a wide range of industries.”

 

 

 

Googles Tax Tricks: Double Irish And Dutch Sandwich : Planet Money : NPR.

 

Seths Blog

Two things every business and non-profit needs to know:How much does it cost you to get one new customer.On average, whats that customer worth over the relationship you have with her?

The internet revolutionizes both sides of the equation.Facebook and Twitter are marvels because for each, the cost of a new customer is vanishingly close to zero. When you can get people into a relationship for nothing, you dont need to make much on each one to be delighted with the outcome.Note that the ongoing, digital connection with a customer can dramatically increase the lifetime profit as well.

Netflix is far more likely to have a higher average lifetime value than the local video store. Musicians are moving from making a dollar a listener from CDs to hundreds of dollars a true fan in collectibles and concert tickets–things they can only deliver because they know who their best customers are.

On the other hand, legions of unsophisticated marketers are getting both sides of the equation wrong.They invest a lot in hoopla, spin and hype to get strangers to notice them once, making the cost of a connection high, and then, once they borrow a little attention, they put everything into a one shot transaction, which few people engage in, and those that do create little value, because the permission asset is then discarded.

Dates, not singles bars. Subscriptions, not vegomatics.

via Seths Blog.

 

Social Media Influence? The Final Word on Your Klout Score

To be honest with you, in light of all of the recent blog posts and Twitter conversations about the subject, I never intended to write this blog post about Klout. But as I pointed out earlier in defense of Klout, it is one barometer of how active someone is in social media. Klout is in a never-ending battle to measure activity and display those that have actual influence with a higher number, and that is not an easy task as you can imagine. I’m not a fan of the debate among those in social media as to whether or not the changes are fair or not, so I wanted to remind others that the success of Klout doesn’t come down to listening to those blogging or complaining about it: It comes down to whether or not brands will accept the measurement or not.Let me explain.

via Social Media Influence? The Final Word on Your Klout Score.

 

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs – NYTimes.com

“Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.

He was willing to be misunderstood.

via A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs – NYTimes.com.

 

The Once and Future Way to Run – NYTimes.com

Earlier this year, I may have found it. I was leafing through the back of an out-of-print book, a collection of runners’ biographies called “The Five Kings of Distance,” when I came across a three-page essay from 1908 titled “W. G. George’s Own Account From the 100-Up Exercise.” According to legend, this single drill turned a 16-year-old with almost no running experience into the foremost racer of his day.

I read George’s words: “By its constant practice and regular use alone, I have myself established many records on the running path and won more amateur track-championships than any other individual.” And it was safe, George said: the 100-Up is “incapable of harm when practiced discreetly.”

via The Once and Future Way to Run – NYTimes.com.