URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT

1212 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 7, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

Google's Lunchtime Betting Game
BYLINE: By NOAM COHEN
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; LINK BY LINK; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 950 words
IT probably doesn't come as a huge surprise to learn that while employees in many companies sit in the cafeteria gossiping about work, or the boss, or the competition, at Google they are doing something else.

At Google, employees are encouraged to go online and place bets on a prediction market -- an exchange that tries to forecast events based on the money wagered on a particular outcome.

Prediction markets have been used for years to predict things like elections. At Google, they are used, of course, for business. In the last two and a half years, 1,463 employees have made wagers with play money (Goobles, as in rubles) on questions like: will Google open a Russia office? will Apple release an Intel-based Mac? how many users will Gmail have at the end of the quarter?

The lure, nominally, is accumulating those Goobles, which can be converted to modest prizes -- $10,000 worth each quarter. As it happens, Google employees were also taking part in an experiment on how information courses its way through the company. A study of those markets -- by two outside economists, Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania and Eric W. Zitzewitz of Dartmouth College, and a Google economic analyst, Bo Cowgill -- used the betting patterns of employees and their demographic details to try to find common factors among people with similar opinions -- is it type of job or level within the corporate structure, being friends or sitting close to one another?

According to the report, ''Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google,'' which was presented Friday at the American Economic Association meeting in New Orleans, the strongest correlation in betting was found among people who sat very close to one another, trumping even friendship or other close social ties.

This is tangible evidence, the authors argue, that information is shared most easily and effectively among office neighbors, even at an Internet company where instant messaging and e-mail are generally preferred to face-to-face discussion.

It is an argument, the authors say, for giving greater importance to ''microgeography,'' or how people interact in the workplace. The finding that information moved fastest among people who were the closest together is also an endorsement of the company's ''third rule for managing knowledge workers: Pack Them In,'' the authors say.

''Peoples' primary job isn't to trade these commodities,'' Mr. Zitzewitz said, putting the role of prediction markets into perspective, even at Google. ''What we are picking up is communication on 'low priority topics.' But that's how creative ideas come about.''

The other crucial finding of the report was that there was a detectible ''optimism bias'' among Google employees. That is, results that were good for the company tended to be overpriced, particularly for ''subjects under the control of Google employees, such as, would a project be completed on time or would a particular office be opened.''

This optimism was most evident among new employees, the report found, and it was bound to show up on days when Google stock had climbed.

This discovery largely jibes with what experts have found about the entrepreneurial mindset. If you take a job where much of the reward will come from the appreciation of company stock, you tend to see the silver lining within the cloud. (What is striking is that this bias was detected at Google during its greatest period of success. The stock more than tripled in the two-and-a-half-year period being studied, yet it was still possible to be too bullish about the company.)

Beyond its findings, the report is fascinating for its inadvertent peeks into the secretive world of Googleland.

One learns, for example, that the researchers could determine ''physical proximity'' by using ''data on the precise latitude and longitude of employees' offices'' -- the better to find the closest burrito stand using Google Earth, I guess.

Also, the authors report that ''employees moved offices extremely frequently'' during the time they were studying the company, about once every 90 days. ''You walk into their offices and no one packs from their moves,'' Mr. Zitzewitz said, a sign, he said, that Google was acting on the kind of insights the report described and was putting the right people next to one another.

A question never addressed in the report is what would seemingly be most interesting to an outsider: Do prediction markets work? Unlike surveys, the markets rely on something, I think the technical term is ... oh, yeah, greed, to get their results.

Ask me who I think will win a baseball game, an election and an Oscar, and I can try to be objective, but I can't help being influenced by who I would like to see win. (The Yankees, Fred Thompson, Pee-wee Herman; or is it the Yankees, Pee-wee Herman, Fred Thompson?) Put $5 on it, however, and suddenly I am willing to use all the information I have at my disposal to come up with the best answer.

When they exist exclusively within a company, these markets are a way of extracting hidden knowledge from the work force: if a floor salesman learns that a new TV model will be a dud, with a predictions market he can profit from that knowledge, and perhaps the chief executive can learn that as well.

Google, however, is no ordinary company. As detailed in a footnote, one Google employee, looking to be a profitable trader, wrote the code for an extremely prolific trading robot. As a result, he ''was participating in about half of all trades'' and made a profit (in Goobles).

So the authors had to compensate for these trades. Who knew that someone from Google would try to game the system?
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EMPLOYMENT (89%); INTERNET & WWW (77%); INSTANT MESSAGING (77%); TALKS & MEETINGS (63%); KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (62%)
COMPANY: GOOGLE INC (90%)
ORGANIZATION: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE (55%); UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA (55%)
TICKER: GOOG (NASDAQ) (90%); GGEA (LSE) (90%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (90%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC (90%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (90%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (90%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW ORLEANS, LA, USA (79%) LOUISIANA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%); RUSSIA (56%)
LOAD-DATE: January 7, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1213 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 7, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

Some Brand-Name Bloggers Say Stress Of Posting Is a Hazard to Their Health
BYLINE: By DAN FOST
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 561 words
Om Malik's blog, GigaOm, regularly breaks news about the technology industry. Last week, the journalist turned blogger broke a big story about himself. Mr. Malik, 41, blogged that he had suffered a heart attack on Dec. 28.

''I was able to walk into the hospital for treatment that night and have been recovering here ever since,'' Mr. Malik wrote. ''With the support of my family and my team, I am on the road to a full recovery. I am going to be O.K.''

His heart attack -- and his blogging about it -- raises the issue of what happens when a blogger becomes a name brand.

''The trouble with a personal brand is, you're yoked to a machine,'' said Paul Kedrosky, a friend of Mr. Malik's who runs the Infectious Greed blog. ''You feel huge pressure to not just do a lot, but to do a lot with your name on it. You have pressure to not just be the C.E.O., but at the same time to write, and to do it all on a shoestring. Put it all together, and it's a recipe for stress through the roof.''

Mr. Malik has 12 employees, including a chief operating officer, and editors run some of his blogs, Yet, ''It's his name on the door,'' Mr. Kedrosky said. ''People want to know what Om Malik thinks. People want to see posts with Om Malik's byline.''

Paul Walborsky, the chief operating officer for Mr. Malik's company, Giga Omni Media, played down stress as a factor in Mr. Malik's health. He noted Mr. Malik's incessant smoking of cigars and cigarettes was a more likely cause.

In his post last Thursday, Mr. Malik blamed a variety of vices. ''Friends and family have purged my apartment of smokes, scotch and all my favorite fatty foods -- I am even going to be drinking decaf,'' wrote Mr. Malik. His online avatar features a drawing of him wearing a press fedora and chomping a cigar, and until he rented an office last year he worked largely out of a Starbucks in San Francisco.

The day after his blog, more than 800 people had posted comments on Mr. Malik's site wishing him a speedy recovery and offering lessons from their own health ailments. The sympathy rolled in from fellow journalists, start-up chief executives, venture capitalists, public relations professionals and, naturally, other tech bloggers.

Despite joining the exhortations that ''we need you,'' Mr. Kedrosky also warned, ''If you come back to blogging before I give you permission, I'll be at your door to take away your MacBook.''

Mr. Malik, a native of India, has written for tech and business magazines including Forbes, Red Herring and the recently shuttered Business 2.0. GigaOm started as his personal blog, but he left Business 2.0 in 2006 when venture capitalists financed his idea to turn the blog into a business.

It now operates several Web sites, including Web Worker Daily, NewTeeVee, Earth2Tech and Found/Read, each of which has its own arsenal of staff and freelance contributors.

Michael Arrington, who founded the popular TechCrunch blog, said he did not know to what extent stress had to do with Mr. Malik's attack, ''but the stress is crushing in what we do.''

''I was a corporate lawyer and an entrepreneur, and I know about working all the time. But now, you're always worried a big story is breaking in your e-mail, and if you wait an hour, you'll miss it. Every morning when I wake up, the panic hits and I have to see my e-mail as soon as possible.''

DAN FOST

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (91%); JOURNALISM (90%); WRITERS & WRITING (89%); DISEASES & DISORDERS (77%); SMOKING (68%); OILS & FATS (63%); VENTURE CAPITAL (60%); PUBLIC RELATIONS (50%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (51%) UNITED STATES (51%)
LOAD-DATE: January 7, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1214 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 7, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

That Gilbert and Sullivan Maiden With Mission and Erudition
BYLINE: By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; MUSIC REVIEW 'PRINCESS IDA'; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 702 words
For more than 30 years the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players have won loyal audiences by providing musically ingratiating, broadly comic and very tame productions of this timeless repertory. You will not see high-concept stagings here -- no ''Pirates of Penzance'' set in Guantanamo Bay. And that's the way patrons of this tradition-bound company like things.

The audience certainly enjoyed the Players production of ''Princess Ida'' on Friday night, which opened its 2008 season, the ''G&S FEST 2008,'' at City Center. Those who, like me, found the musical performance stylish, for the most part, but the staging amateurish -- full of histrionic acting and inane sight gags -- seemed to be in the minority. Albert Bergeret, who founded the company, conducts and directs most of its productions, including this one. His musical gifts far outweigh his directorial skills.

''Princess Ida'' satirizes Victorian society's preoccupation with women's education. Set in vaguely medieval times, the daffy operetta tells of Princess Ida, daughter of King Gama, who has been betrothed since infancy to Prince Hilarion, son of King Hildebrand. Alas, the prince and princess, in their early 20s when we meet them, are strangers to each other. Ida has renounced men and founded a university for women at the isolated Castle Adamant. Aided by two adventure-loving friends, Hilarion sneaks into the castle to claim his intended.

Gilbert, who adapted this three-act text from one of his existing plays, is not at his best here. The blank-verse dialogue is a little stiff and wordy. Still, the material clearly inspired Sullivan. The score deftly shifts from bubbly vitality to wistful elegance. There are elaborate ensembles, including an extended Act II finale for soloists and chorus, rousing music of almost Verdian grandeur.

Sullivan again proves himself a master at evoking diverse musical styles, as in ''This Helmet, I Suppose,'' a song for Arac, one of King Gama's blockheaded warrior sons. This humorously ominous music, with its contrapuntal orchestral writing and walking bass line, is a riff on sturdy solo arias from Handel oratorios. It was solidly sung here by the bass-baritone David Wannen.

But the mock-stentorian delivery of lines and exaggerated comic gestures were like what you would encounter from Gilbert and Sullivan societies at countless colleges. Mr. Bergeret believes in having his cast illustrate almost every word with broad hand and arm movement. Fingers stroke chins at the mention of ''face,'' and arms sweep the sky when the chorus sings of ''empyrean heights.'' Remembering all these gestures must be as hard for the cast as memorizing Gilbert's lines.

In one surprisingly poignant song, when Prince Hilarion, the sweet-voiced tenor Colm Fitzmaurice, now a prisoner, pleads his amorous case to Princess Ida, his hands were bound by a chain. Unable to gesture, he became much more natural in his acting. I could have done without the stabs at incongruous modern comedy, as when King Hildebrand's soldiers break into a tap-dance routine.

Projecting words clearly is the hardest challenge and the most essential task in performing Gilbert and Sullivan. Most of the words came through here, though I think the results would be better if the production dispensed with amplification, which was sometimes too reverberant.

Kimilee Bryant brought a plush soprano voice and lovely presence to the title role, though her diction was too often mushy. Other standouts were Keith Jurosko as the grave King Hildebrand and especially Stephen Quint as the hunchbacked, delightfully sour King Gama (who has the best patter songs).

Now and then Mr. Bergeret ably leapt to the rescue when the coordination between the orchestra and the cast in a complex ensemble threatened to go askew. But if not always tidy, the performance was supple, buoyant and winning. The musical performance, that is.

''Princess Ida'' is repeated on Saturday night, in repertory with ''The Pirates of Penzance,'' ''Trial by Jury,'' ''The Mikado'' and ''G&S a la Carte'' presented by the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, through Sunday at City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan; (212) 581-1212, citycenter.org.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MUSICAL THEATER (90%); MUSIC (89%); CLASSICAL MUSIC (77%); MUSIC INDUSTRY (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (76%); WOMEN (67%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (90%); CUBA (73%)
LOAD-DATE: January 7, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: From left, William Whitefield, Patrick Hogan, Colm Fitzmaurice and Kimilee Bryant in ''Ida.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1215 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 7, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

From Hype To Fear
BYLINE: By PAUL KRUGMAN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 21
LENGTH: 804 words
The unemployment report on Friday was brutally bad. Unemployment rose in December, while job creation was minimal -- and it's highly likely, for technical reasons, that the job number will be revised down, showing an actual decline in employment.

It's the latest piece of bad news about an economy in which the employment situation has actually been deteriorating for the past year. It's no longer possible to hope that the effects of the housing slump will remain ''contained,'' as one of 2007's buzzwords had it. The levees have been breached, and the repercussions of the housing crisis are spreading across the economy as a whole.

It's not certain, even now, that we'll have a formal recession, although given the news on Friday you have to say that the odds are that we will. But what is clear is that 2008 will be a troubled year for the U.S. economy -- and that as a result, the overall economic record of the Bush years will have been dreary at best: two and a half years of slumping employment, three and a half years of good but not great growth, and two more years of renewed economic distress.

The November election will take place against that background of economic distress, which ought to be good news for candidates running on a platform of change.

But the opponents of change, those who want to keep the Bush legacy intact, are not without resources. In fact, they've already made their standard pivot when things turn bad -- the pivot from hype to fear. And in case you haven't noticed, they're very, very good at the fear thing.

You see, for 30 years American politics has been dominated by a political movement practicing Robin-Hood-in-reverse, giving unto those that hath while taking from those who don't. And one secret of that long domination has been a remarkable flexibility in economic debate. The policies never change -- but the arguments for these policies turn on a dime.

When the economy is doing reasonably well, the debate is dominated by hype -- by the claim that America's prosperity is truly wondrous, and that conservative economic policies deserve all the credit.

But when things turn down, there is a seamless transition from ''It's morning in America! Hurray for tax cuts!'' to ''The economy is slumping! Raising taxes would be a disaster!''

Thus, until just the other day Bush administration officials were in denial about the economy's problems. They were still insisting that the economy was strong, and touting the ''Bush boom'' -- the improvement in the job situation that took place between the summer of 2003 and the end of 2006 -- as proof of the efficacy of tax cuts.

But now, without ever acknowledging that maybe things weren't that great after all, President Bush is warning that given the economy's problems, ''the worst thing the Congress could do is raise taxes on the American people and on American businesses.''

And even more dire warnings are coming from some of the Republican presidential candidates. For example, John McCain's campaign Web site cautions darkly that ''Entrepreneurs should not be taxed into submission. John McCain will make the Bush income and investment tax cuts permanent, keeping income tax rates at their current level and fighting the Democrats' plans for a crippling tax increase in 2011.''

What ''crippling'' tax increase, which would tax entrepreneurs into submission, is Mr. McCain talking about? The answer is, proposals by Democrats to let the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year expire, returning upper-income tax rates to the levels that prevailed in the Clinton years.

And we all remember how little entrepreneurship there was, how weakly the economy performed, during the Clinton years, right? Oh, wait. (I've put some charts comparing job performance during the Clinton and Bush years on my Times blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com. It's pretty startling how comparatively weak the Bush era looks.)

Never mind. The whole point of scare tactics is that they can work even in the face of inconvenient facts.

And what I'm not sure about is whether the Democrats are ready for the fight they're about to face.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Barack Obama won his impressive victory in Iowa with a sunny, upbeat message of change.

But there's a powerful political faction in this country that understands very well that any real change will create losers as well as winners. In particular, any serious progressive reform of health care, let alone a broader attempt to reduce middle-class insecurity and inequality, will have to mean higher taxes on the affluent. And members of that faction will do whatever it takes to scare people into believing that change means disaster for the economy.

I don't think they'll succeed. But it would be a big mistake to assume that they won't.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EMPLOYMENT GROWTH (90%); UNEMPLOYMENT RATES (90%); JOB CREATION (90%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); ECONOMIC NEWS (89%); CAMPAIGNS & ELECTIONS (87%); TAX INCENTIVES (78%); RECESSION (78%); TAXES & TAXATION (78%); ECONOMIC POLICY (74%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (72%); PUBLIC POLICY (71%); POLITICS (70%); ELECTIONS (70%); TAX LAW (60%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (53%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: January 7, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1216 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
January 7, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

Paid Notice: Deaths ROSENTHAL, SAMUEL
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Classified; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 159 words
ROSENTHAL--Samuel, originally of Brooklyn, NY, passed away on January 3, 2008 at the age of 94, after 67 years of marriage to his beloved wife Molly. Devoted father to Susan, Maxine (Steven), and Edward (Debi). Cherished grandfather to Kevin (Rachelle), Robert, Cheryl (Elliot), Jeffrey (Alyssa), Jason and Matthew. Adored great-grandfather to Jacob, Adam, Hannah, Zachary and Dylan. A CPA, Sam was an extraordinarily dedicated professional, working selflessly as Comptroller of Federation of Jewish Philanthropies UJA, until his retirement in 1977. Post-retirement, he was treasurer of Price Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies for many years. During World War II, Sam helped protect his country working for the Coast Guard. A proud graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School and New York University (1935), he was a lifelong New Yorker. Sam was a multi-lingual, intelligent man with a great sense of humor who will be deeply missed and never forgotten.

Download 3.51 Mb.

Share with your friends: