ING Direct Acquires ShareBuilder

So, I’ve been with Sharebuilder for months now as they’re the cheapest no frills trading site. And was kind of excited when I received an email that they’ve been acquired by ING Direct.

Great! I thought…

They did a good job announcing it to the world in the above press release, but did they stop and think about current customers? NO.

Does this mean I can use ING now? How can I login? WHAT’S THE PLAN? Where’s the transparency?

I feel left in the dark. Sharebuilder wants me to be excited, but for what? I don’t see it yet. And uncertainty pissed customers off because, well, we expect the worst when nobody is telling us everything. In other words, when will the costs go up…

“Gimme More (Pills)” – Greg & Mario vs. Britney Spears

God I love YouTube…

According to The Telegraph, Gordon Brown, the UK’s new Prime Minister, has had enough of paying the Ministry of Defense’s 1,000 PR practitioners an average annual salary of £39 thousand ($80 thousand—yes, I’m in the wrong country) to foster public support—or lack thereof—for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they can’t seem to figure out who these 1,000 practitioners are:

Yet in a striking admission, an internal Ministry of Defence (MoD) document reveals that senior officials have “no clear idea” of who they are, whether they are making an impact, or their actual cost to the country.

The document, The Defence Communications Strategy, also contains what is believed to be the first official admission by the Government that there is little or no support for the war in Iraq among the British public.

It looks as though Brown is trying to clean house but is a bit lost at the moment. However, he is taking the lead and trying to create change in a country where public opinion of its previous PM, Tony Blair, took a severe nose dive on issues like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even further for his alliance with the Bush administration on these and other sensitive international issues. In the meantime, Brown is listening to his people who are demanding change. Now let’s just wait and see if he can pull it off.

Missing: MoD’s army of 1,000 press officers [via Strumpette]

Over at the University of Maryland, the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda have compiled a list of the most transparent newspapers in the world:

This study investigated 25 of the world’s top news sites to evaluate which of them open up their newsrooms to public scrutiny and comment:

1. Which outlets post corrections to their stories?
2. Which ones provide details about their owners and offer information about any other media and non-media holdings of those owners?
3. Which ones publish their internal guidelines for reporters (such as how potential conflicts of interest by reporters or editors are handled)?
4. Which ones publish their internal standards for stories (such as how anonymous sources are handled or how politicized language is identified)?
5. Which ones actively seek readers’ comments and complaints?

The New York Times comes in second, trailing behind the UK’s The Guardian.

Openness & Accountability: A Study of Transparency in Global Media Outlets [ICMPA]

I am sick and tired of people saying “this is about free speech and Don Imus has the same rights as any other American” etc. WRONG. It’s about money. Once the advertisers leave, you are toast.

David Carr wrote a great piece in The New York Times yesterday with his list of reasons why it was inevitable that Imus would be fired. And I couldn’t agree more:

OLD MEETS NEW Mr. Imus is an old-school radio guy caught in a very modern media paradigm. When he started 30 years ago, if he made the same kind of remark, it would have floated off into the ether — the Federal Communications Commission, if it received complaints, might have taken notice, but few others.

But radio is now visible — Mr. Imus’s show was simulcast on MSNBC, and more to the point, it is downloadable. By Friday, reporters and advocates could click up the remark on the Media Matters for America Web site, and later YouTube, and see a vicious racial insult that delighted him visibly as it rolled off his tongue. The ether now has a memory.

The media equation: Flying solo past the point of no return [The New York Times]

The best part about Vitalist is the fact that they are listening to their customers. With the combination of their blog, contact page, and knowledge base full of previously answered questions presented in rank-order, they have the appearance of addressing users’ problems and needs as quickly as possible.

I complained in a few emails that their mobile version (www.vitalist.mobi) wasn’t working correctly on my new Verizon LG VX8600 and within a week they had set up a new version of their mobile page (m.vitaist.mobi) specifically for Verizon users like me. Yes, it was my phone that had the issue. But they discovered a way to work around Verizon’s problem. Flawless. Vitalist has an A++ in my book:

Sorry to not get back to you sooner on this. We believe the issue is with the Openwave browser on many Verizon phones. It only accepts cookies from a .com domain. We have created an alternate url for the mobile app at m.vitalist.com. Please try this address and let us know if it is working for you.

Thank you

Robert Walker
robert@vitalist.com

I know I’ve written about it before, but I just gotta say it again: Vitalist is my solution for keeping my ADD mind under control (or at least manageable). I’ve used other systems before my attempts to find a replacement for the executive function part of me that doesn’t work right—the control room or CEO of thought processes that involve organizing, prioritizing, and utilizing cognitive functions of the brain for important work tasks.

Well, I’m still using Vitalist as a GTD system that, well, just works. All my todos are organized by project and context (where I need to be to do them), and anything with a due date is automatically fed into my Google calendar, which then emails and txts me when it’s due. Vitalist also sends me a daily email as a teaser of things on my todo list. Love it.

If you haven’t seen the 1984 spoof, well, the you’re just ummm…..slow. But her response in an interview with NY1 was nothing short of the most ethical and intelligent rebuttals I’ve heard in awhile:

I haven’t seen it but I’m pleased that it seems to be taking attention away from what used to be on YouTube and getting a lot of hits, namely me singing ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ Everybody in the world now knows I can’t carry a tune,” said Clinton. “I thank heavens for small favors and the attention has shifted, and now maybe people won’t have to tune in and hear me screeching about ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’

I think anything that drives interest in these campaigns and get people who otherwise are not at all interested in politics, I think that’s pretty good,” she continued. “I might quibble a little bit about the content, but if we get more people, especially young people, thinking about politics, I’m happy about that.

Hillary, I love you. You take a stance on issues. You don’t avoid anything. You love the ‘mos. All there’s left to do now is talk about your husband’s past and get it out in the open before someone else does, because it’s still in the weaponry of your opponents. But I have faith in you, you’ll find the right time.

…but we’d like to apologize.

I really, really hate the RIAA. I’m a musician and I support the protection of copyright. However, I also support the protection of college students’ rights and a free market economy. When the signs are there that the industry needs to make changes, why fight that? Change is good, and necessary.

Why is Apple’s iTunes so successful? Because it makes it easier to pay for music than download it elsewhere. They don’t sell music—they sell a service. Why do we go to Amazon to buy a book rather than the 100s of other sites? Because they sell a service that is better than anything else on the Internet.

You can’t wage a war with your consumers. College students are broke, yet are the driving force of promoting music and making or breaking artists. They’ll screw you over just the same in the long run.

To top it all off, when students pay the settlement fee, they “look forward to future business.”

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Try this.

If you got one of these letters, get a lawyer, who will simply tell you just to ignore it. The RIAA hasn’t the manpower to pursue every single lawsuit, which is why they are trying to cheat college students into paying a simple fine rather than being sued. It’s a joke. I have a feeling the lawsuits will turn the other direction and people will begin suing the RIAA soon…just watch.

Anyone get one of these letters yet? Let’s hear about it…