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Competing with the singleminded

I was talking with a few executives from one of the biggest technology companies in Europe, and they were explaining how their hands were tied in moving forward on the internet. They were doing the best they could under the circumstances, of course, but there were units in their organization that needed to be protected, prices that needed to be supported, sacred cows that couldn’t be touched. After all, they argued, how could they wipe out their current business just to succeed online?

This conversation happens every single day at organizations large and small. You want to do the new thing, but of course you must do it in a measured, rational way.

Which is great, unless your competition doesn’t agree.

When you have someone who is willing to accomplish A without worrying about B and C, they will almost always defeat you in accomplishing A. Online, of course, this often leads to doom, since there are many organizations that are willing to get big at the expense of revenue, or writers willing to be noticed at the expense of ethics or reputation. But in the short run, the singleminded have a fantastic advantage. And sometimes, their singleminded focus on accomplishing just that one thing (whatever it is) pushes them through the Dip far ahead of you and then yes, they make a ton of money and you’ve lost forever.

Newspapers, magazines, TV stations, hardware companies, real estate brokers, travel agents, bookstores, insurance agents, art galleries and five hundred other industries need to think hard about this before it’s too late.

Posted by Seth Godin on August 26, 2009 | Permalink

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Homes auction demand 'remains high'

(UKPA) – 6 hours ago

Demand for property at auctions remains high – with nearly three-quarters of homes selling when they go under the hammer, research has shown.

Countrywide Property Auctions said it had sold 72% of the 179 lots it had offered at six auctions across the country during July and the first week of August, with £8.9 million worth of property changing hands.

It added that 22% of homes sold for more than their guide price, with one property in Benfleet, Essex, selling for 61% more.

Mark Tanton, Countrywide chief auctioneer, said: “As the property market has begun to stabilise, more developers and investors have begun to re-emerge at the auction rooms and are now bidding for properties that have the potential to make the highest return.

“Buyers were more selective about the properties they bid for. It was the good quality properties with realistic reserve prices that attracted the most interest.”

But the success rate was slightly lower than during the group’s last auction series, held between May 28 and June 12, when 79% of the 122 lots sold, with 40% going for more than their guide price.

The latest round of auctions were held in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, London, Bristol and Llandudno, with properties ranging from family homes and modern apartments to Grade II listed buildings and land developments.

The group said three-bedroom properties were most in demand, with developers, buy-to-let landlords and first-time buyers all bidding for them.

Westcountry Property Auctions, a specialist division of Countrywide, said it had recently held its most successful auction of the year.

Graham Barton, senior auctioneer at Westcountry Property Auctions, said: “One of the strongest indicators we’ve seen is the popularity of land again, with several plots being snapped up by local developers. We are regularly attracting over 1,000 people to each auction and it was noticeable at this auction that private buyers are willing to part with their money and reinvest sensibly in property.”

Copyright © 2009 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

One of the Internet marketers who I respect the most is Indian Dr. Mani. What is special about the Doc, is that he really is a doctor, and devotes the money he generates online to heart surgeries for children, which he even does himself!

Dir Mani’s written a new book – a real physical book – that you can order now (today if possible to help the book rank well in Amazon).

The book is called…

Think, Write And RETIRE!

Your ULTIMATE guide to being an Internet Infopreneur and turning words into MASSIVE wealth – Easily!

As a blogger who makes a living from what I write, I wholeheartedly recommend what this book teaches, and if you order a copy from Amazon today you can grab a bunch of bonus gifts too.

Full details are here.

US home sales are up, home building is up. Can home prices be far behind?

That depends on how many homes come on the market as owners deal with defaults, pay cuts and job losses. This “shadow inventory” will create new downward pressure on home prices.

For now, the data suggest home prices are flattening out.

The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City home price index for June was down 15.4 per cent year-over-year, better than the 16.4 per cent fall expected by economists.

The index increased 1.5 per cent from its May level, which was up 0.5 per cent from April, the first back-to-back increases since the summer of 2006. Stabilised home prices are considered imperative for financial markets to mend totally and consumer wealth to stop falling.

But it’s “too soon to call this a turning point,” cautioned economist and the index’s co-developer, Robert Shiller, during an S&P teleconference on home prices.

One big reason is the millions of owners who want to sell their homes but are holding back because of low prices. Signs of a bottoming out may push them to enter the market.

And if inventories keep creeping up, house hunters will have little incentive to meet asking prices or create bidding wars. Buyers have to perceive a limited supply of homes before price increases can gain traction.

Clearly, demand has picked up since the spring, helped by greater affordability and the tax credit for first-time buyers. Existing home sales rose a strong 7.2 per cent in July.

But inventory increased 7.3 per cent, to 4.09 million, and the supply of homes for sales remained at 9.4 months. While that’s down from last winter, it is well above the normal supply of about five or six months.

And supply could keep growing.

“There appears to be a large ‘shadow’ inventory of homes available for sale,” says Steven Wood of Insight Economics, the result of hesitant homeowners and financial institutions temporarily holding foreclosed homes off the market.

Indeed, foreclosed homes represent the main inventory problem. The Mortgage Bankers Association reports that 720,000 began the foreclosure process in the second quarter. And Barclays Capital forecasts the number will peak at 1.15 million in mid-2010.

Foreclosures will increase as long as the unemployment rate rises. Cash-strapped homeowners are missing mortgage payments, leading the way to greater delinquencies and foreclosures.

The urge to default on a mortgage may be greatest at the intersection of two unfortunate groups: the 14.5 million unemployed and the 15.2 million homeowners whose mortgages are worth more than their homes.

“In the past if you had equity in your house but no job, you sold the house and moved to find a new job,” says Mark Fleming of mortgage-data tracker First American CoreLogic.

“But we have a new feedback loop right now: can’t sell house, can’t move to find a job.”

As a result, says Mr Fleming, people may feel they have little choice but to default to get out from under the mortgage.

Those foreclosures will increase housing inventory later on, a negative for the price outlook.

How The Magic DOES NOT Happen!

Posted by ontheroad on August 26th, 2009 | Categorized as Underachiever

One of the biggest mistakes people make when creating a product is believing beautiful design, a witty Twitter post, great copy, or an awesome video happen with sheer brilliance…

Rubbish

John Gruber at Daring Fireball highlighted two fantastic examples of great design through many reworks.

You should have read Gary Halberts first draft of a  Sales Letter… miles away from what it would become….

Check out these two fantastic examples and be THRILLED

Great stuff happens through doing work repeatedly…not some form of divine inspiration.

http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/convert-design-evolution/

And the work that goes into a tweet… 

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/twitter-iterations.html

Seriously, there is no magic. Just effort.

Ed

Posted via email from Ed’s posterous

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A SERIES of auctions leading to legal disputes over million-dollar properties has prompted calls for new laws banning late bidding to be clarified.

In the latest case, a Melbourne doctor alleged that auctioneer Elliott Gill, of Bennison Mackinnon, proclaimed a 1930s brick villa in Armadale ”sold” to him at $1.68 million, only to immediately accept another bid after the fall of the hammer.

The High Street auction then continued and the doctor eventually won at $1.81 million. He is making a professional indemnity claim against the agency.

The dispute follows a similar legal stoush over a $7.3 million Brighton beachfront mansion sold at auction a fortnight ago by agency Hodges, as reported in The Age.

Introduced a year ago, the laws state that an auctioneer must not accept any bid or offer for a property that is made after it has been ”knocked down to the successful bidder”. In the event of a disputed bid, the auctioneer may resubmit the property for sale at the last undisputed bid or start the bidding again.

Bennison Mackinnon director Iain Carmichael said in the Armadale case the bid was disputed and the auction reopened in accordance with the law. He said the laws were too vague and there was no definition of what it meant to knock down a property.

”There’s a lot more of this holding back, late bidding happening lately,” he said. ”It will definitely continue because it is in the nature of some bidders to want to outfox the auctioneer and they can take great delight in getting one over them. I don’t have a problem with that, but the law needs to be clear.”

Buyers’ advocate Mal James agreed that unconventional bidding had occurred at some recent auctions. His company witnessed an auction in Lambeth Avenue, Armadale, where a mansion was passed in at $2.25 million without a bid. Three people in then approached the agent with higher offers and the property sold for more than $2.5 million.

”Three people got into a secret bidding war afterwards,” Mr James said. ”Why wouldn’t you bid at auction? I don’t understand. Some bidders are taking on new strategies where the benefits are not obvious and it leaves agents open to criticism that in some cases at least is undeserved.”

But another buyer’s advocate, David Morrell, said auctioneers brought the problem of late bidding on themselves because they took too long to knock the hammer.

”Some of them go on with the ‘going once, going twice’ for three or four minutes. It’s absurd,” he said. ”They’re looking after the vendor’s interests, but they don’t have any respect for the purchaser.”

While not commenting on specific cases, the president of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, Enzo Raimondo, said the law for auctions was clear, worked well and did not need to be reviewed. He said: ”When the auctioneer indicates the property is sold, then it is sold, and once that has happened they are unable to reopen the bidding. If there is a dispute about that course of events at a particular auction, then the parties do have legal recourse.”

A spokeswoman for Consumer Affairs Minister Tony Robinson said the law was clear.

Consumer Affairs said no late-bidding complaints had been lodged with it since the new law was introduced.

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  By Matthew Peters GameSpot
  Posted on ZDNet News: Aug 25, 2009 5:50:04 AM

  Back in the summer of 2005, an Internet addiction clinic opened in China, and by the following summer, a clinic opened in Amsterdam to treat video game addicts. Now, a similar clinic has recently opened its doors 13 miles away from Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

  To some, real-life “high adventure outings” don’t quite compare to the in-game variety.

  For $14,500–or the cost of an 80.6-year World of Warcraft monthly subscription–the reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program now provides a 45-day intensive care program for game, Internet, and texting addicts. Patients can receive psychotherapy, 12-step group counseling, “nutritional education,” personalized fitness plans, and “high adventure outings” around the facility’s rural forested landscape.

  “The reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program is specifically oriented toward launching tech dependent youth and adults back into the real world,” the clinic’s online mission statement states. “Our individually tailored program is designed to assist participants with an Internet and/or computer-based behavioral addiction to break the cycle of dependency. Our 45-day abstinence-based recovery program exposes participants to a variety of activities and everyday life skills, which are often avoided or underdeveloped as a result of excessive ongoing computer, video game play, and Internet use.”

  Earlier this month, a study of 552 Americans by the US Center for Disease Control–conducted in the area around reSTART–found that those who game are more likely to be overweight and suffer mental health problems. In July, a British psychiatrist said he plans to assemble fellow therapists to enter the online game World of Warcraft to treat in-game addicts.

  For more on gaming addiction, read GameSpot’s feature on the subject.

  This article was originally posted on GameSpot.

PARTS of the Queensland coastline will be declared off-limits for development under a coastal planning policy released yesterday that claims sea levels will rise 80cm over the rest of this century.

Under Queensland’s planning laws, yesterday’s draft policy would set guidelines for development that would then be implemented by local councils.

Queensland is a coastal development “hotspot”, and in the past few years several local councils have been forced to make their own estimates of future rises in sea levels due to global warming, and have applied them to development applications. However, Queensland is believed to be the first state to put a figure on how much the sea will rise.

The Bligh government policy is based on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and predicts sea levels will rise 30cm by 2050 and 80cm by 2100. Government and industry figures yesterday predicted that if these guidelines were adopted by local councils, it would have an effect on coastal development in all major coastal towns.

But the areas most affected would be Mooloolaba and Noosa on the Sunshine Coast, where most of the beach disappeared after strong storms in May, and parts of the Gold Coast and Yeppoon, Mackay and Cairns further north.

A spokesman for the state government said the policy would not apply to existing houses and units on the beachfront but only to future development, as well as redevelopment on existing sites.

Planning Institute of Australia vice-president Greg Tupicoff said the policy would give some certainty to developers and flexibility to local councils.

“That’s really what industry wants — that combination of certainty and flexibility,” he said.