Are birds social?

A reader asks: I am fascinated by all these social networking sites. How can I find a network where I can 'hang out' with other bird-watching enthusiasts?

We don't suppose you mean The Orioles, huh? Thought not. Read on for the answer...

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This Field Guide: Birds of the World group on Flickr has over 3,000 members and over 33,000 photos and substantial discussion. There are strict rules -- this is serious business.

You can submit your birding info, analyze your personal birding info, and analyze other public birding info in eBird. Registration is required.

Perhaps a teeny bit off topic, but really interesting: BirdJam is a company that integrates bird watching with iPods. With BirdJam, any North American bird song can be found within 15 seconds from the easily-accessed playlists organized by habitat and family. Call me a geek (okay, you didn't really have to do that) but I think that's really cool.

And sure, there are forums all over the place - like on Birder's World, for example.

Can't find the kind of network you want? Make your own! (listen carefully - this is really, really neato...)

You can create a full social network that you can customize and brand as your own. It's true. Check out Ning. It has a full suite of capabilities for photos, videos, discussions, blogs, privacy settings... you name it, Ning has it.

We can think of some really great ways to use this tool... anyone want to join a research social network?

Blog stats.

A reader asks: I hear a lot about how many blogs there are – one stat said a new blog every ½ second or some such number. But how many blogs are ACTIVE and how many get started and stall out? Also, while you’re at it, is there any way of ranking a blog’s “goodness”. Like some sort of ranking? And if so, what is that ranking based on? Man, I’m FULL of questions!

You ARE full of questions! Or something... (hee hee)

Here goes:

Steve Rubel pointed out a report recently from Microsoft. It says that almost 75% of Blogger's blogs are Spam Blogs or splogs. Yikes. That is a lot. And while the methodology is disputed by some, there is no arguing that there are a lot them - splogs, that is.

According to David Sifry (founder of Technorati) last October (new report in new format coming soon):

• Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
• Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
• About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
• About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
• The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
• Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times.

We believe that there are substantially more than 57 million blogs. A year ago, The Blog Herald said there were 200 million. Wow. But there are few new reports about this and, frankly, it's just so hard to get accurate statistics when it changes by the minute and there is no one way to count.

How to find the good ones? Well, Technorati has a good tool. You do the search and then choose how much authority you want to filter by -- little, none, a lot -- and it narrows the search. We've found it to be very useful.

Or you could ask us. We'll help you find the relevant blogs you need. The best way we've found is to use great search techniques to narrow and then read, read, read.

Visuals.

A reader asks: I'm not a visual guy. But I need to create charts and visuals to make my concepts clearer for my presentations. Like I said, this does not come easy to me. I've seen Ven Diagrams, Pyramids, Flow Charts. But are there others?

Answer: Are there ever!

We recently found about the coolest collection ever.
Check out the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.

Let it load. It takes a minute. Then run your cursor over each part of the table. You'll see a neato flash window with an example of the visualization method. It gave us some great ideas and we bet it will do the same for you.

A few are:
Radar Chart
Scatterplot
Concentric Circles
Cognitive Mapping
Tree
Metro Map
Histogram
Continuum
Magic Quadrant
Failure Tree
Value Chain
S-Cycle

Well, you get the picture!

Hair.

A reader asks: I've been pondering hair. It’s so weird, hair is. Dead protein. That’s all it is. Do you know how much money is spent each year trying to get you to spend your paycheck on products to make your dead protein look better? Me either. But I bet it is a lot. How about a ballpark figure here?

First of all, ad spending on hair care products is expected top $1 billion this year, according to Advertising Age. That’s a lot of advertising.

U.S. Shampoo sales were up 0.7% to $620.3 million for the 52 weeks ending Sept. 10, according to Information Resources Inc., Chicago. Meanwhile, sales of conditioner were up 3.5% in supermarkets to $360.3 million for the same period.

My favorite quote from the research “Hair care was flat for a while” okay, I thought it was funny.

One more piece of info:

According to IRI, hairspray sales in the US were about $367 million last year and US gel and mousse sales were $581 million.

Add them all together? It's almost $2 billion a year. And this doesn't include hair color. That's $2 billion on its own.

(And AdAge estimates the ENTIRE hair market at $8 billion, but that includes unmeasured channels, which always makes me go hmmmm....)

Like Steve.

A reader asks: I was following a blog on Carepages where this guy had some pithy quote from pop culture almost every day. No one remembers all those lines! How can I be as cool as Steve?

Oh, reader. You probably can't be quite as cool as he is. But here are some suggestions...

Check out Quotegeek. Very fun.

We ran a search on HOPE. Found these (among others...)

Red: Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
Movies > The Shawshank Redemption

Gloria: Joanie, you are now a world-class hopeless romantic.Joan Wilder: No, hopeful. Hopeful romantic.
Movies > Romancing the Stone

Man can't help hoping even if he is a scientist. He can only hope more accurately.
Love Against Hate
Personalities > Karl Menninger

For you patient searchers (you know who you are!) try Fagan Finder's Quote Search. Here there are 20 or 30 different quote search engines to try! It's hard to imagine you won't find something good here.

We're always looking for great research quotes. We know. It's not the most fascinating subject to everyone. So as an experiment, we tried some of the engines...

From Quotez

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Wernher von Braun

From Board of Wisdom

one of our all time favorites (you may have heard this from us before!)

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from many, it's research.
Wilson Mizner


If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein

From Said What

Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
David Ogilvy

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
Marston Bates

And if you're more in the mood for a good cliche, check out Cliche Finder.

Until next time!

Find Blogs.

A reader (okay fine, Wendy's mother) asked:You're always telling me that there are blogs that I'd want to read. How do you expect me to find them?I want to read about genealogy.
One easy way to find some starting points is to use the Google Blogsearch. For this, I typed in genealogy and the top results were:

Genealogy and How - Daily blog of online genealogy records and databases
Genealogy Blog - Genealogy on the Internet :: Today and Everyday
Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter - The DAILY newsletter for genealogy consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether the vendors like it or not! Check...
RssGenealogy.com - Latest Genealogy News - One source for all the latest genealogy news
The Genealogy Guys Podcast - George G. Morgan and Drew Smith discuss genealogy! Their podcast is the longest-running, continuous genealogy podcast

Then, when you start reading the first one, Genealogy and How, you'll see the blogroll is:


Dick Eastman
GenealogyBlog
GenealogyToday
RSS Genealogy
About Genealogy
Olive Tree
The Paper Trail
Ancestors at Rest
Family Bibles
Canadian Lib Genie
Family & Local Histories
Interment.net Blog
Death Records Blog

If you go to RSS Genealogy, you'll find 63 feeds. Wow.

You get the picture. What takes time is figuring out which ones matter. Which are worth reading. But if you pick a trail and follow it, you are bound to find some interesting and worthwhile sites.

There are other ways to go about this, as well. You can find articles in trade publications, consumer magazines...even newspapers...that talk about respected blogs.

What you'll find is that in any category, there are blogs that are linked to most often. These are worth checking out, for sure.

You can go to Alexa and see what the traffic is for specific blogs. If it's wildly popular, check it out.

(And of course, there are many blog search engines and directories! So don't get too tied down to Google. Some swear by Technorati, some Blogdigger. And some really interesting metasearches like Talk Digger. I bet we revisit that one soon - it's really neat.)

So go crazy! And try not to get too distracted by all the interesting things you find off-topic!

CEO Bloggers.

A reader asks: I've been reading about CEO's and blogging. Like this article BusinessWeek a few months back; but also tidbits in some of my daily reading. So how can I find out which CEOs really are blogging?

One great place to start is The NewPR/Wiki's CEO Blog List. Listed by country, this list is constantly updated.

You can check out the CEO Blog Watch blog.....

The Fortune 500 Business Blog Wiki... or the Fortune 500 Blog Project.

Stump the researcher. Part 5.

A loyal reader asks: I know I should know what they are, but what the heck are hedge funds? I keep hearing that the growth is huge. Yeah, tell me about that too.

So glad you asked.

We have a great source for these types of questions - financial trends and the like.

The Financial Services Fact Book 2007 Make a note of it. You'll need this one day. Don't worry, though. If you forget, you can always ask us...
This from the Fact Book:

Hedge funds are private investment pools subject to the terms of investment agreements between the sponsors of, and investors in, the hedge fund. While mutual funds typically have a minimum opening investment of about $1,000, hedge fund investors are often required to have a minimum investment of $1 million.

ASSETS OF HEDGE FUNDS, 1950-2006 (1)($ billions)
(1) All data are for January.Source: Hennessee Group LLC.

Retail.

Our reader asked:

A reader asks: For a strategy meeting, I want to find the top retail chains. I think I have a great idea how to market my client's product, but need to compile a list of partners to consider. What criteria should I use and how can I make a list?

The National Retail Federation compiles an annual list of the hottest retailers. You can check it out here. It show where the headquarters are, 2 years of revenue (and the change), 2 years of earnings (and the change) and 2 years of units (and the change). Looks like a great start!

Good luck.

Compare.

FruCall
This is way cool. Want to be sure you're getting a good deal when you're shopping? Stop by and register at FruCall. When you spot an item you like, call 1-888-363-7822 (you have a cell phone, right?) . Type the UPC of the product you're interested in and Frucall will tell you the best online prices for that item. If you like the online price better, you can buy it directly from the online merchant while you're on the phone. Or buy it later, if you'd rather. Your info is stored so you can check it at home later - and you can even leave yourself "voicenotes."

Pronto
This is a very comprehensive product search - Pronto has a terrific product selection on the web so you can find the lowest prices every time you shop online.

ShopLocal
Find the best deals to buy Online and at your Local stores.

Dealcatcher
Coupons, compare prices, deals.

Manly men.

Manly Men, Oil Platforms, and Breaking Stereotypes from Harvard Business Review piqued my interest. And not just because Andrew used to work offshore on rigs!

"You're a Neanderthal" has new meaning.

I heard about this on NPR the other day. Call me a geek (everyone else does)... but I thought it was simply fascinating!

Humans, Neanderthals closer on family tree: But it's the differences in DNA that excite scientists most

Zamzar

Prepare to be amazed. Zamzar is so cool!

This is a free online conversion tool for four categories of file formats - Document, Image, Music and Video Formats. You can see the exact conversion types on offer here, but this is more extensive than anything we've found.

And did we mention it's free?

Hola, Mi Amigo

Hola, Mi Amigo is a great demographic article in ClickZ today by Peter Lerma. Read it for additional insight into the Hispanic market online...

Stump the researcher. Part 1.

A loyal reader asks:

Who buys gift cards and why? Have we just become gift-giving slackers and this is the easy way out? Do we buy them even for our closest friends (those people we are supposed to know well enough to select something personal) or do we use them for the obligation gift to the nephew we haven’t seen in 4 years and have no idea what he’s into or what size he might be? Do people really like getting them (freedom to pick out what I really want) or hate them (now I have to go shopping AGAIN). How do we feel about knowing how much someone spent on us? Didn’t we used to be psycho about making sure the price tag was removed before we wrapped? Does it feel like holidays and birthdays are just financial transactions where we exchange cash?

Tough one, loyal reader.

We are shocked to report that the research shows that the primary reason people buy gift cards is that the recipients WANT gift cards. Frankly, I'm shocked. If I didn't read it myself, I'd say that the true motivation for buying gift cards is plain old laziness. (Sorry to any gift card clients we may have!)

Now some of the research:

Excerpted from: BigResearch

“The popularity of gift cards is soaring among consumers of all ages,” said Phil Rist, Vice President of Strategy for BIGresearch. “Once seen as a quick solution to a last minute present, gift cards have moved to the forefront as a holiday favorite to both give and receive.”

From Deloitte Consumer Holiday Survey

While gift cards are especially popular among shoppers over age 65 and those with incomes of more than $100,000, on average, respondents reported they planned to buy 4.7 cards each. These same respondents reported holding 2.3 cards unused from last year.

From Radio Advertising Bureau, Gift Cards Climb to the Top of the List

Once upon a time, gift cards were a last resort for people who didn't know what to buy. According to a new survey conducted by Stored Value Systems, a national leader in electronic gift card programs, that is no longer the case. The results of a national web survey of adults conducted at the end of February revealed that eight in 10 said they would rather receive a gift card to their favorite retailer than any other kind of gift."We've been doing surveys and watching gift cards grow in popularity for years," said Bob Skiba, SVS executive vice president and general manager. "Cards are so appreciated that many people specifically ask for gift cards to their favorite store or restaurant." Survey highlights include: -

• 76 percent of adults purchased gift cards in the 2005 holiday season.
• 91 percent of adults who had received holiday gift cards had redeemed them before the end of February 2006.
• Three-quarters of recipients made sure they used up the card completely.
• Eight in 10 people would rather get a gift card to a favorite retailer than any other kind of gift.
• More than one-half of respondents say that they always or often add their own money when making a purchase with a gift card.
• Of those purchasing holiday gift cards, two-thirds bought them in early December.
• 68 percent of adults prefer or bought gift cards with an appropriate holiday design.
• Eight respondents in 10 say that they spend more (33 percent) or the same amount (47 percent) on a gift card than they would on an alternate gift.
• Those who received gift cards during the 2005 holiday season were given an average of 2.6 cards, with an average value of $42.32.

"There were some fascinating insights that emerged in the survey," Skiba said. "Most people -- 91 percent -- had redeemed their gift cards before the end of February, which shows how quickly cards are used. "We were interested in some of the new distribution channels for people receiving cards, such as their availability at gift card malls, at the retailer's website, or as incentives and gifts from employers. We are also seeing that gift card usage is expanding into other areas beyond the traditional winter holiday gift for friends and family. Special events and holidays like Valentine's Day, weddings, birthdays, and anniversaries are times when our culture exchanges gifts, so it is only natural that consumers use those occasions to offer a loved one a gift card."

H2O

Great article about bottled water from AlterNet: The Bottled Water Lie. Between this and the articles I've read about the huge costs associated with all those bottles - recycled and thrown away, I wonder if rethinking our water makes sense....

Stop bleeding.

Researchers at MIT have created a liquid that stops bleeding in any tissue in a matter of seconds, according to Chemistry World. The discovery has the potential to revolutionize surgery and emergency medicine.

Pour-on nanotechnology stops bleeding in seconds

Spam + Blogs = Trouble

From the September 2006 Wired Magaine comes a fascinating article about Spam + Blogs = Trouble

Another great use for email.

RadioShack Uses E-Mail to Fire Employees -- How'd you like to get this email? "The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."

Way to go, Radio Shack.

Be mindful.

I found a new blog that I like. A lot. Creating Passionate Users. My favorite post so far is:

Your Brain on Multitasking. Kathy Sierra writes:

If you want to get more done, be mindful.
If you want to have more time, be mindful.
Mindful means one thing at a time.

The post is great. The blog? Okay, a little geeky and tech, but I like it. Check it out.