The Newspaper is Dead ... Paper! Get'cher paper right here!

A Pew Research Center for People and the Press survey indicates that the Internet has overtaken newspapers as a primary source for news.  While still lagging television as a primary source of news for most people, the Internet now rivals television among the under-30 crowd.

Some of us get a certain amount of our news and opinion via RSS feeds, usually collected into a news reader like Google Reader or an RSS-enabled home page, like iGoogle or a pre-assembled site like Alltop.com.  In effect, we're piping multiple information resources right to a summary page on our computer screens.  If we want to take that information away from the computer, it's a pain to print out the individual posts.

Now, Tabbloid.com allows us to have our own "newspapers" e-mailed to us in an assembled form ready to read on-screen or to be printed.  You can select the news or opinion feeds of the most interest to you (as long as they're available in RSS format).  In my example, I've taken feeds from marketing guru Seth Godin, designer/marketing professor Garr Reynolds, venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, and several other blogs.  Tabbloid automatically packages the latest posts and e-mails the document at a preselected time and interval.  The service is free.

Drawback?  While it's a nice, easily readable layout, it's not as space-efficient, text-wise as the newspaper.  My example for Dec. 30, using eight moderately active blogs, filled 26 pages. If you've got to print it, you're still killin' trees. (Subsequent tabbloids have run 1-4 pages on the same blogs, so it's possible that just the first one catches up on slightly older posts. - RP)

Skydrive Goes Higher Yet

Microsoft's free online storage service, Skydrive, has made a stratospheric leap (relatively). When I last wrote about Skydrive last May, they had just moved up from a small, but useful 500 megabytes to 5 gigabytes. That space allowable has been bumped up by a factor of five ... it's now 25 gigabytes of space, and still free. While Google's much whispered about online storage service has never materialized, Microsoft has jumped further ahead in this niche.

As I said before, the real problem with online storage is really transfer rates. I just purchased a 500 gigabyte external drive with both USB and Firewire connectors for $90 cheap ... compared to these external drives, waiting for a gigabyte of data to upload to online storage would be like the proverbial "watching the grass grow." The watchwords for online storage are still: "Patience, Grasshopper."

Become a World Banker

Over the Christmas break, my daughters and parents helped support businesses in Cambodia, Azerbaijan and Paraguay. This is their first experience with providing credit in third-world countries. When these businesses repay their loans, my family members will be able to re-lend the money to other entrepreneurs. The total amount in play for us is a grand total of $75.

The concept is called "micro-lending." Business owners in economically challenged countries need credit to grow their enterprises, often in small amounts from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Those amounts can go a long way toward lifting people out of poverty. Kiva.org provides a structure through which people like you and I can lend money to specific entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Kiva partners with existing microfinance institutions that manage the loans and repayments and individuals like you and I provide the capital. For example, Francisca Arce of Paraguay needed $625 to help purchase inventory for her fabric stores. We and 20 other lenders each provided $25 to $50 of that amount. She is now fully funded and is scheduled to repay the loan over the next 11 months.

It's not nearly the commitment of joining the Peace Corps, but it is a way to make a difference for people ... better earnings, better family nutrition, better empowerment ... capitalism, not welfare.

The Smart Money in 2009

This is in this blog because I found it in another blog (tompeters.com) linked to another blog (acleareye.com). Like all reading, blogs or books or magazines or (even) comic books, sometimes you find wisdom worth sharing.

There ARE dark clouds over the economy, but I like blogger/marketer Tom Asacker's point of view in his "Nine Predictions for 2009." It would be tough to top the positive attitude of his list in any year. It's especially worth reading now.

Overlooking Job Sites

While I expect most job seekers are spending too much of their time on the CareerBuilder and Monster employment sites, I also expect most job seekers are overlooking a couple websites I view as important.

Number 1 on my short list is the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. If you want the big picture on the labor situation, the prospects for your current career, or ideas about where you might go next, this is a highly useful site. I particularly recommend the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Occupational Outlook Quarterly (WAY down the left column under "Occupations")

The Number 2 site is JobHuntersBible.com, which is the companion site to the long-running "What Color is Your Parachute" employment guide. Published almost annually since 1973, the 2009 book has been significantly rewritten with the current job market in mind. This book will get you thinking of strategies WAY past merely submitting resumes.

If you're finding yourself looking for work in the current abysmal job market or if you're just covering yourself in your current job, spending some time with these resources could truly pay off.