Presentations at Google

I like so much the initiative of Google, where they call eminent persons for presentations at Google, and they record and publish the presentations on You Tube. There are several presentations with different kind of people, like: Daniel Goleman, Bob Woodward, Paul Krugman, Barack Obama, John McCain, Noam Chomsky, Marshall Goldsmith, Henry Kissinger, and others.

They separate using the tags: authors@google, leading@google, women@Google, candidates@Google (before the president election, they interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain)

In the Google Author Series (authors@google), I would highlight the presentations of the following authors:
- Ian Ayres
- Don Tapscott
- Chris Anderson
- Steve Wozniak



This is an excellent initiative, because sharing the videos, they enable the people watch good presentations with nice content.

Thank you, Google!

The kinds of free business models

Recently, Chris Anderson has written, in his famous blog The Long Tail (the same name of his best selling book), several posts about the kinds of free business models. Those materials are for his new book, to be called "FREE". He is editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine.

After many changes, evolving through the posts, he defines what he calls the four kinds of free business models:
- Free 1 - Direct cross-subsidy - Get one thing free, pay for another
- Free 2 - Ad-supported - Third party subsidizes second party
- Free 3 - "Freemium" - A few people subsidize everyone else
- Free 4 - Gift economy - People give away things for non-monetary rewards (Reputation, attention, etc)



The last post, that he published today, called The biggest fortunes built on free, is about the billionaires who made their money on businesses whose products are primarily free to consumers, based in the Forbes 400 List. In the list, are the founders of Google and their main executives, the founders of eBay, Yahoo, Facebook, Paypal and many others.

This is an interesting point of view about the free business models.

Below are links to some posts, in chronological order:
- The three kinds of FREE
- Revised: the *four* kinds of FREE
- A revizualization of the four kinds of free
- FREE: the cocktail party version
- The biggest fortunes built on free

Chris Anderson is the author of a very nice book:
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

Books that define why and how the world is changing

If I had to choose three books that define how the world is changing, I mention:



- The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More - Chris Anderson




- Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything - Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams








- The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century - Thomas L. Friedman






Because I think those three books define why and how the society, the economy and the companies are changing nowadays.