Anyone interested in business information, particularly of the financial and investing kind, will know of the blogging start-up ZeroHedge which has followed guerrilla war-like tactics in forcing its way onto the desktops and mobiles of the 0.0001%. You can only imagine how, as this seemingly piss-ant digital property has grown and grown it has got under the skin of all the big corporate information players which can still get away with charging a huge premium for digital information. 

Bloomberg, where former FT man John Micklethwait was brought in by Mike Bloomberg last year as Editor-in-Chief to try to square the differential circle between the company's multi-billion dollar terminal based information services and its TV channels and excellent retail mobile web offering is probably particularly concerned. Bloomberg’s terminal distribution business charges tens of thousands of bucks for yearly subscriptions while the retail service is free.  

Well, it now seems its all-out war between the two, with ZH accusing the Bloomies of trying to do them down through unscrupulous reporting. Given the tremendous influencer reach of ZH as shown by a graphic in this article, Mike Bloomberg must be thinking whether his new Editor in Chief has taken leave of his senses? Perhaps the former New York Mayor needs to take his mind off things and lobby Hillary to join her on the Democrat Party's ticket as Vice President!

View more on the ZeroHedge/Bloomberg spat at:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-29/full-story-behind-bloombergs-attempt-unmask-zero-hedge

Back at my desk after great break (OK, I was digitally dipping and emailing everyday) I stumble upon a fresh way to get some worldwide perspective on the news from an App called ‘Fresco News’. It's only available on iOS at present (and looks sweet on my new Xmas gold iPAD Air 2) but feels beta-ish. Still I love the way that it leads with open source images. In the future, if you tweet some hot news photo expect to hear from Fresco asking if they can represent your copyright interests across the web. Great business model taking on the awful greedy and rapacious Getty Images. Some are even calling it the ‘Instagram for news’.

The dnjournal 2014 list of top domain name sales is out. I am nostalgic, frustrated, chuffed and incredulous (is this actually possible without drugs?). From my first UK commercial website in 1996 (nostalgic!) I have had 3 rules for name value. Must be: 1) Made up of recognisable words; 2) Less than 8 characters; 3) A .com I thought this last rule was dead given the proliferation of suffixs but the list (chuffed!) says NO. So, why am I not a domain name millionaire (frustrated!)? And why has no one bought my goldsure & beingsure  domain names for mucho bucks? (Incredulous!)

The log files of my website show that my "Theory of Balls" page has been found by a visitor who typed in "theory of success in life" into @Google. Even though I am ranked 8 slots behind #Aristoltle #Plato I think this is bit of a 'win' don't you? SEE HERE It has been some time since I had a win on Google. In the early days of adwords I ran campaigns and became a Google case study (SEE HERE). Since the Big Agencies took over eCommerce the 'Don't Be Evil' mob have forgotten the little guy

Occasionally I come across a piece of creative that I just love. The latest #Android "be together, not the same" ad campaign is one of these. I may have been influenced by seeing it just as my Nexus phone seamlessly and automatically downloads and installs Lollipop Android. While the ad may be referring to iOS, not all Android installs are the same. @Samsung @LG and others 'fork' their phones and the result is a bloatware overlay that is one reason why sales of these are falling. Today, Android is such a sweet phone operating system that extras are not needed. Well done Google!

Here’s a question from one of my ‘Digital Topography’ workshop sessions: You’re stuck on a desert island and can only keep one MS Office application (other than an email client) for all your communication needs. Which one do you keep? The logical answer is Excel since it is the most powerful and can pretty much be used to do the functions of all the others (most participants choose PowerPoint for some reason).  A new question: Which social media app would you keep? Me: Twitter. As it serves up all the news that you need to know in 140 characters. More time to heat the beach and get some rays. But Twitter is struggling to both monetise the Timeline and attract new users. Perhaps the intelligensia has topped out on Twitter as it takes brains to sum things up in 140 characters. Therefore, click on the odd sponsored link on your timeline and help Twitter to make some money....

As the great #JackMa attends the opening bell of his #Alibaba ($BABA) IPO at the NYSE the pundits concentrate on the numbers: Raising $21.8B; Employees 26845; 279M Active buyers; $8.5B Annual  Revenue. But the real impact of this float is the way that Ma is a role model for entrepreneurs worldwide. Just watching him interview about what he wants for this company and from where he came from is truly inspirational. If you have teenagers dial him up on YouTube (I know they don't READ anything!) and show them a humble genius.  Great stuff. Congratulaitons Jack.