I’m in a position right now when I got lots and lots to do. Designs need to be completed, follow-ups on clients and the work I’ve turned over to them, and blogs want content. I used to work in a pretty chaotic manner, trusting my instincts and going with my natural workflow which usually would result in a whole lot of stuff getting done, in chunks. The chaotic take on work is a very giving one, and if I was ten years younger I would probably subscribe to it still.

But I’m not, and I don’t want to put in crazy work-hours all the time. Honestly, I don’t have the stomach for pulling all-nighters anymore, and when that disappears as your last resort you’ll have to get organized.

So this is how I’m solving the ever present time dilemma of an entrepreneur. Perhaps there’s something for you to try in this, and if not, why don’t you tell me how you manage your time?

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Google is currently advertising for a head of national TV sales, a job needing a candidate that will build a “world-class national TV-advertising-sales team and lead the effort to both sell television solutions and shape a next-generation advertising platform.”

The job is based in New York and includes “identify[ing] key strategic initiatives for growing TV ad sales”.

Shortform: if we didn’t know it already (its been rumored before), Google is getting into the TV advertising game.

The $66 million dollar question (or should that be 137.39 billion question given Google market cap as I write this), are they mad or has Google just become so arrogant that their desire to expand has no bounds? They’re not exactly doing well in Radio at the moment, and TV is an even harder market to break into, particularly given the bulk of the US TV ad spend is purchased in bulk and in advance following “ad sweeps”. Perhaps there’s a longer term picture we don’t know about, but certainly if it smells like Yahoo! and it looks like Yahoo! it probably is a repeat of the same mistakes Yahoo made in the past, essentially trying to be all things to all people whilst failing to support their core services properly. Google became the dominant player of the back of Yahoo losing the plot, and we all know there are any number of other startups waiting in the wings to pick up Google marketshare the minute search at Google starts to suffer. One to watch.

Tags: Google

US Representatives Rich Boucher (D-Va.) and John Dolittle (R-Calif.) have introduced legislation to the US House of Representatives that seeks to amend the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to make the Act more consumer friendly in terms of fair use of digital media.

The Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship (or FAIR USE) Act seeks to make things easier for consumers to use the content they buy across numerous devices, where as today the DMCA legally restricts such uses.

Rich Boucher told the Washington Post that “Without a change in the law, individuals will be less willing to purchase digital media if their use of the media within the home is severely circumscribed and the manufacturers of equipment and software that enables circumvention for legitimate purposes will be reluctant to introduce the products into the market” and has the backing of the Consumer Electronics Association.

ars technica on the other hand argues that the proposed changes do not go far enough, stating that the bill does not appear to propose what many proponents are seeking: clear protection for making personal use copies of encrypted materials, with;

no allowance for consumers to make backups of DVDs, to strip encryption from music purchased online so that it can be played anywhere, or to generally do any of the things that the DMCA made illegal in one fell swoop.

Personally, some changes should be better than none at all, but I’m not American. Any thoughts?

A new version of the Storm Worm Trojan (Virus) is targeting comments left on blogs and forums by automatically inserting links to malicious websites hosting the script when infected users go to post comments.

Storm Worm trojan includes a file that creates a back door to a computer that can be exploited later to steal data or to use the computer to post spam as part of a botnet.

News.com reports that the file is installed via email attachment or by visiting an infected site and quotes Dmitri Alperovitch, principal research scientist at Secure Computing saying that this method of spreading the virus is something not seen before.

Loren Feldman notes at 1938media that The Blogging Times is no more, replaced by a blank WordPress template with no content. The story is big enough news that it even got a run at Valleywag.

There’s no official word yet on why the site shut, but it’s public knowledge that Minic Rivera had left the site a couple of weeks back. Certainly deleting such as rich history of posts is a very strange move, after all the site was well indexed in Google, a status that will change very quickly with the content removed.

I’ve seen a lot of these sites come and go over the years, sites such as Blogosphere News and others with names I can’t recall now. In the past people would say things to me along the lines that the competition was going to beat the blogging news service I was providing at the time. They never did, but for all the inherent risks involved to your own status with competition, I always enjoyed reading the new comers, and indeed actively link to and promoting them. Blogs dedicated to Blogging News and related interests are still few and far between, and a diversity of voices creates a richer blogosphere for us all. Minic at the top of his game at The Blogging Times was a great writer who had knack for finding obscure yet interesting stories that made you want to come back for more. I know for me The Blogging Times, at least with Minic at the helm will be sorely missed and that the blogosphere shines ever so slightly dimmer with the demise of a site that showed so much potential.

Vale The Blogging Times 2006-2007.

Thanks to a partnership between Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo and the fast food chain McDonalds, customers visiting fast food restaurants in Japan will soon be able to pay for their meals by using their cell phones. Similar technology is already being used in Japan to allow commuters to purchase train tickets using their mobile phones.

While the immediate thought turns to customer convenience, analyst Julie Ask thinks that other factors may also be in play.

It gives both McDonald’s and DoCoMo the opportunity to track consumers and their eating habits. Cash is more likely to be used in small transactions. Electronic payments will allow user behaviour to be tracked and used for marketing purposes.

The Brits have more.

Ning has come out of its beta and delivered on its promise to allow anyone and everyone to create their own social networking site. Since the relaunch, Ning requires zero programming experience, and the new streamlined social application building process allows you to have your own social network up and running within minutes. I just tried making a social network and the whole process took me less than 5 minutes from signing up on the site to having the url live.

The first step after naming and describing the new application is drag and drop desired modules- such as text boxes, RSS feeds photos, forums, blogs and videos – into the application in the area you want them. Adding the “members” module, for example, shows a list of the networks most popular members within that module.

Even though you don’t need to have any programming experience, those of you that do, can further customize the site to suit your needs. Furthermore, while the site is completely free for basic use, there are upgrades available for a cost.

According to CEO Gina Bianchini, growth for the site has been both steady and strong.

Nearly 30,000 applications have been created to date, up from less than 5,000 a year ago. Page views have been spiking, reaching 20 million per month, 20x traffic a year ago. Unique visitors have reached nearly 5 million per month as well, 10x a year ago.

Team Arrington has a much more in-depth look at Ning.

Not tired of the Oscars yet? I am, but I’m no movie buff so I’m not the key demographic for this introvert event.

If you indeed want to read more about the Kings and Queens of the show then the Blogger’s Blog have a great roundup with more linkage then I wanted to see. And if you’re curious about how the talk went before the actual event, well, just check out the earlier post for even more links.

There you go. Another day’s productivity killed in the blogosphere.

By the way, that poster is for sale. $25, what a bargain huh?

This morning I read that AOL have extended their $900m bid for Swedish affiliate network TradeDoubler. The bid is now valid until March 14, whatever good that will do AOL since a 90% acceptance among shareholders are needed for the deal to go through, and that’s not happening.

According to a Reuters report, AOL has no plans to raise the offer.

AOL is looking to buy TradeDoubler to get into the European affiliate market, where the company is one of the really big players. Most likely they’ll want to combine TradeDoubler with Advertising.com, which also is active in Europe, in some manner.

We’ll most likely see more on this, but I would be surprised if the deal goes through without AOL pumping in more cash. TradeDoubler is a solid company, they don’t need to sell.

Digg today announced the inclusion of two new subcategories. I expected the addition of the “Microsoft” subcategory of Technology News, a reincarnation of the Windows section that was removed from the much earlier versions of Digg. It was only a matter of time before they realized that Digg needed to reintroduce a section to complement the Apple section.

More importantly though, and a bit unexpectedly, Digg announced a temporary subcategory under World & Business News called, “US Elections 2008.” This is surely in response to the overwhelming popularity of the Politics sections on Digg, which is evident in the past month’s Digg Presidential Statistics.

With the addition of the US Elections 2008 section, Digg only further defines it’s role as a news medium and will join the likes of YouTube in its growing influence in the 2008 presidential election.