Over the weekend I’ve been reading extracts from Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd . It is one of the very few business books I am definitely buying.  Youngme Moon makes a stack of observations that resonate with me. If you’ve seen my Tweetstream from Sunday afternoon then you’ll know what I mean. Here’s a sampling of quotes: “…true differentiation – sustainable differentiation – is rarely a function of well-roundedness…[it is] a function of lopsidedness”  (I’ve used an illustration from this section at the top of this post.) “When Nintendo introduced the Wii in 2006, the video game console wars where in full swing…Nintendo opted out…

California certainly has a budget crisis. But it’s nothing compared to the crisis in Illinois, where the Land of Lincoln is a reported $4.3 billion behind in paying the bills. Meanwhile, the Libertyville Drivers Services Facility office may be closed permanently for failure to pay their bills. Stephen Martin, whose family owns the Brookside shopping center on the 300 block of…

A friend sent me the following, asking me if I had heard about this new tax? Any cell phone user having a ringtone other than Rrrring, Rrring, John Philip Sousa’s stirring “The Internal Revenue Service March,” or–in homage to Colbert–”La Marseillaise” would be subject to having their bank accounts confiscated, their cattle slaughtered, their lands put to the torch, and their rollover minutes forfeited. Well, it’s not real. It’s from Christopher Buckley’s article in ForbesLife titled “But Enough About You IRS, Mon Amour.” It includes such gems as the Driving While Texting Tax, the Nonsmoking Tax, the 3-D Movie Glasses Tax, Aircraft Lavatory User Fees, and the Celebrity Tax. I’m actually annoyed that Mr. Buckley …

So who is short selling Medifast (NYSE:MED) stock? I’m not, but apparently plenty of other people are . (No, Medifast, I have no idea who it is, nor do I care who it is. That’s your problem. Not mine.) As my readers already know, Medifast is on the hunt for anyone who would dare to say something less than flattering about the company. I’m being sued, along with others, for having …

Yaeger CPA Review is doing a first-ever Labor Day SCORES promotion that coincides with the release of Wave 1 CPA Exam Results for the July/August 2010 testing window, as well as the Labor Day Holiday weekend. CPA Exam Candidates looking to get on the road to passing the CPA Exam can buy a Single HomeStudy Course for $150 off or a Complete HomeStudy Course and save $455 . This is a Limited Time / Limited Quantity Promotion. Complete Four-Part HomeStudy Course: Retail Price: $1,550 Discount: You Pay: …

Yesterday evening I spoke with Euan Semple , wise man of the web who helps business understand the value of community and the new class of tools that can loosely be described as ’social media.’ I’d previously seen him Tweet about trying to find a saas/cloud based billing application. Euan is hiring a virtual assistant to handle his billing while he concentrates on what he does…

I stumbled across this report at TechCrunch about inDinero in a C round where it hopes to raise $1 million. That’s pretty good for a new vendor in the apps space but reflects the interest in SaaS/cloud apps that are aimed at the very small business (VSB.) Founder Jessica Mah traces here entrepreneurship back 7 years to age 13. No – that’s not a typo or a joke. This is one seriously smart person. If…

…sometimes someone says what many think but are otherwise afraid to articulate in public. Adrienne Gonzalez is a master of that genre of writing. I throughly enjoy her stuff and highly recommend. I’m sure she has taken to heart Stephen Fry’s admonition of all those who sniff at use of the F… word . That is part of her charm. We once met in San Francisco. Adrienne is EXACTLY as you might expect only with more tattoos. Anyhoo – she pinged me with this piece. I hate lists but I giggled uncontrollably at what she is saying. Please excuse the shameless self pimping but when well played, irony is a beautiful thing: Don’t isolate There are some folks who get away with…

Since the recession began, a number of new businesses started to supplement or substitute incomes during situations of job loss. It is important for these small businesses and their owners to be cognizant of the hobby loss rule instituted by the IRS. Business or Pleasure? The hobby loss rule relates to business expenses used as a deduction for activities considered to be hobbies by the IRS. The rule can effect and limit how you account for write-off deductions for these…

Wesley Snipes is still fighting his upcoming visit to ClubFed. The troubles he got into are all courtesy of his tax guru, Eddie Kahn. Mr. Kahn received ten years at ClubFed for his ‘advice’ to Mr. Snipes. He just got 20 more years for conspiracy to defraud and mail fraud. Joe Kristan has more.

No, not the Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees. Instead, it’s the on-again, off-again battle between the State of New York and the Indian tribes of New York state on collecting cigarette taxes. The Indian tribes sell cigarettes, and they don’t want to collect New York taxes on cigarettes. They view themselves as sovereign nations, and New York law doesn’t count. On the other hand, the State of New York believes that it doesn’t matter: If you’re located within the boundaries of New York state (and these tribes are, at …

Earlier today I learned that ClearBooks had ‘unexpected downtime.’ Whenever you see that phrase you should substitute: ‘total cock up.’ To its credit, ClearBooks tried to communicate the issue on GetSatisfaction but in doing so exposed fundamental weaknesses of which buyers should be aware. From the GS trail : We are currently experiencing a problem with our database server. Downtime is currently unforseeable and could be for several hours. Unfortunately, this has caught us out with only one system…

I’ve known for some time that Kashflow is refactoring its user interface. Both Duane Jackson, CEO Kashflow and I agree that in its current iteration it is out of date and by making changes, he hopes this will encourage more people to come on board. User interfaces are always the subject of much angst among developers and can easily upset customers. UI is also subjective: what’s good for one isn’t necessarily good for another. The trick comes in striking a balance that most customers will accept and which continues to get the job done in as few clicks as possible. Over the weekend Duane sent me some representative screen shots to give an idea where they’re going. The main …

Ross Mayfield, co-founder SocialText pointed me to a case study of Hayes Knight , an ST customer that in my view ‘gets’ the connections between socializing tools and CRM as applied to professional services firms. Progress at last. I’ve only been saying that firms need to grasp this way of working for the last five years. Frustrating at times.. (sic) As background, Hayes Knight is a group of independent accounting firms in Australia bound under the same name operating out of nine Australian states with 42 directors and more than 300 staff . From the case study: Hayes Knight’s knowledge management company,  …

Neville Hobson does an excellent job outlining the way paper.li works and what it can mean for communications: …the newspapers you create with Paper.li aren’t about the people in your community who tweet but rather what they link to. I was explaining it to a friend yesterday when I saw that he clearly couldn’t see the remotest value in something like this: he thought it was about publishing people’s tweets. Once he understood that it wasn’t that, he said he could see the potential usefulness of such a tool. …