Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Scientists "Backing Up" Grain Varieties

The facility would make the villain from a James Bond film envious — a concrete bunker with blast-proof doors carved out of a mountain on an island off the coast of Norway. Inside, the permafrost will provide a cool environment for storage of every known variety of crop seed.

The goal of the seed repository — construction is slated to begin next year — will be to ensure that a global disaster would not wipe out essential crop species. Currently, there are about 1,400 seed banks around the world, but many are located in politically or environmentally unstable areas.

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Our RSS Feed

We’ve made some changes to our RSS feed that might mean people who previously subscribed will need to resubscribe, we apologize for the inconvenience. However, if you’re reading this post right now in your favorite newsreader that means you have nothing to worry about and may proceed as usual.

Currently Sundog has two feeds you can subscribe to:

• Subscribe to our blog
• Subscribe to our jobs

For those still scratching your heads over what RSS is in the first place, FeedBurner provides a great overview of what it is and how to use it.

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Monday, January 16, 2006

Millions vs. Billions

The United States will soon pass a major milestone. Sometime later this year, the population of our country will reach 300 million people.

It took us 125 years as a country to get to 100 million people, reaching that number around 1914. It was in 1967, about 53 years later, that we passed 200 million. And now just 39 later, we will be hitting the 300 million mark. Experts predict it will only take about 30 more years to swell our population to 400 million. These facts seem impressive when you consider our country’s ever-shortening cycle to add the next 100 million people.

However, I couldn’t help compare our country’s population growth to some recent astonishing statistics I read about worldwide Internet growth. Based on figures from Internet World Stats, the Internet first surpassed 100 million users in 1998. By the year 2000, there were 300 million users, and by 2003, there were 600 million users. Recently, the Internet surpassed one billion users and it is adding a million new users worldwide about every four days. Most of those new users are not from the U.S., and most of those new users don’t speak English.

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Copyright Battles Heat Up Abroad

Copyright law is a dinosaur; or maybe, calling it a BetaMax would be more appropriate. Like the ill-fated video tape format, intellectual property law had its place in history, but it simply doesn’t work with current technology anymore. Recent battles over implementation of copyright laws in France and Canada illustrate the need to rethink issues of content ownership.

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Sunday, January 15, 2006

ROI Silver Bullet: Fact or Fiction?

What’s holding back marketing managers from comprehensively measuring their Marketing spends and ROI?  Is it process? Technology? Mindset?  People?

Pat LaPointe, writing for CMO Magazine, suggests another possible reason: The Measurement Demon.

One such demon is called “The Silver Bullet Hunter.” This is a person, perhaps lurking in your very department, who “seeks the simplistic, single index to explain all aspects of marketing effectiveness,” says LaPointe, referring to that person’s search for a single “holy grail of measurement,” ignoring anything else as being “too complex.”

Think of it. What harried “feet-being-held-to-the-fire” Chief Marketing Officer wouldn’t pay a fortune to have the ROI Silver Bullet to show off to the CFO? “Hey, look at this: 300% ROI! I want a raise!”

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