I received the following email from the Governor’s office in Albany. My question, does anyone really care what the Governor has to say?

Fellow New Yorker,

We are facing a fiscal emergency in New York State. When I announced my 2010-2011 Executive Budget proposal in January, we projected that our State faced a $7.4 billion budget deficit. However, the continuing effects of the Great Recession have pushed the size of the deficit to more than $9 billion today. And we face more than $60 billion in deficits over the next five years.

We must close the gap and we must do it quickly.

That means reducing spending across the board. I have put forward a proposal that includes serious cuts across every area of State government. I am proposing $500 million in cuts to State Agencies, on top of the $1.5 billion in savings we have already achieved at State Agencies over the last two years. That is a total of $2 billion in savings from State Agencies. My proposal also includes a $1.1 billion year-to-year cut to school aid, and a nearly $1 billion cut to base health care spending – because these two areas of spending make up more than 50 percent of our State’s budget.

FOR THE COMPLETE EMAIL CLICK HERE

(from Media.asia.com)

Initiative appoints Eric Bader to newly created global role as chief strategy officer

by Kenny Lim

GLOBAL – Initiative has hired Eric Bader (pictured) to the newly created global role of chief strategy officer.

Reporting to Richard Beaven, Initiative’s worldwide chief executive, Bader joins its worldwide leadership team and will be based in New York.

He boasts expertise in mobile communications having co-founded U.S mobile marketing agency Brand In Hand in 2007 and has worked on clients including Walmart, IBM, Wendy’s, Best Buy, American Express and Coca-Cola.

Prior to Brand In Hand, Bader was SVP, managing director, digital, at MediaVest Worldwide. He has over 10 years of experience and was also a senior strategist at Ogilvy.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY CLICK HERE

By Karen Matthews

Associated Press, Mar 8 2010, 6:00 AM ET

NEW YORK (AP) — Cablevision and ABC were negotiating a deal Monday that tentatively ended a dispute over fees and restored millions of viewers’ access to the Academy Awards telecast in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut shortly after the broadcast began.

The two sides, who had been hammering at each other for days in the media, said a deal had been reached Sunday night, nearly 15 minutes into the Oscar awards broadcast.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY CLICK HERE

Interesting article from GIZMODO from my friend Marshall Sponder (via GoogleBuzz)

So you’re fed up with Google, and you’ve got a litany of reasons. You don’t even have to explain—I’m just here to help you crawl out from under the shadow of the big G, step by step.

You don’t have to be ready to commit to a full overhaul of your online lifestyle to understand why someone might want to yank their data from Google’s servers, and hand it off to someone else: You’ve got Google’s CEO deafly rehashing fallacious arguments about privacy—”If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”—and hesitating on a drawback; you’ve got contextual advertising that seems just a little too closely tuned to that sexxxy love letter your girlfriend sent you while you were on that business trip; you’ve got that violently insane ex husband who now knows where you are because of Google’s clumsy Buzz rollout. Most of all, you’ve got reasons, and you’re ready for change.

Bill, Ellis, Gary & Jeff (Veronique Verschure photo)

My friend, Victor Lee joined us on Feb 17th for our event “Uncorking Gary Vaynerchuck…” and filed this great overview.

I attended SobelMedia’s latest event, an interview of Gary Vaynerchuk by journalist Ellis Henican of Newsday and Fox News on the evening of February 17, 2010 at the Samsung Experience at the Time Warner Center.

Gary Vaynerchuk has become a leading online and social media celebrity with his outspoken personality, relentless promotion, and savvy use of the latest online and offline marketing platforms. These include Twitter, his Wine Library TV website, and his book, Crush It.

My notes are below, with the caveats that they are my best rendition of the discussion, with no claim to accuracy; much of the discussion has been paraphrased, rather than being a direct quote of the participants; and I bring my own viewpoint and perspective to this discussion, which influences my perception of the discussion.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY CLICK HERE

foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. We aim to build things to not only help you keep up with the places your friends go, but that encourage you to discover new places and challenge you to explore your neighborhood in new ways.

By the way, in the past few weeks I have, for whatever its worth, reached Superstar status and was just named Mayor of New Paltz, New York…

FOR MORE INFO ON FOURSQUARE CLICK HERE

photo courtesy of Veronique Verscheure

Thank you again to everyone who attended our event on Feb 17th “Uncorking Gary Vaynerchuk: an in-depth interview with Ellis Henican.” Not only was it our first evening event of 2010 but one of the best turnouts we have had in a very long time. A special thank you to everyone at  the Samsung Experience, Jeff Katz of Definition 6 (our sponsor), Ellis Henican and of course Gary Vaynerchuk…who was just outstanding…on so many levels.

I also wanted to add a special shout-out to our friend Marvin Bzura of b2bvid.com who shot the entire event and posted it on his website B2Bvid.com, an innovative global video business network where small and mid-size business owners can network, showcase their company & utilize video over the Internet for communicating, training, publicity & advertising.

Below is a link to the presentation. We will be posting the edited version in the next few days

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE VIDEO

photo courtesy of Veronique Verscheure

Thanks to my friend Karen Levine for a nice write up on our event last night with Gary Vaynerchuk

I’ve just walked home in my doctor-disapproved pointy toed boots from a Bill Sobel event at the Samsung Experience featuring Gary Vaynerchuk, aka Gary V.

I didn’t start taking notes until 15 minutes into the talk because I was recording it and attempting to single-process by giving him my full attention. But after a bevvy of great tweetable takeaways, I broke down and pulled out my Moleskine notebook.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY CLICK HERE

photo courtesyof Newsday

from Newsday via AP

MARANA, Ariz. (AP) — Tiger Woods will end nearly three months of silence Friday when he speaks to the media for the first time about his middle-of-the-night accident that sparked shocking revelations about his infidelity.

Woods will talk to a small group of reporters at 11 a.m. Friday from the clubhouse of the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., home of the PGA Tour.

“This is all about the next step,” Mark Steinberg, his agent, told The Associated Press. “He’s looking forward to it.”

Steinberg said he would speak to a “small group of friends, colleagues and close associates” about his past and what he plans next, along with apologizing for his behavior.

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From Huffington Post

Posted: February 15, 2010

What a Difference a Week Makes: Google Buzz Arrives With a Bang

by Arianna Huffington

One of my favorite things about working in the news business is you never know where the day is going to take you. You wake up, and Evan Bayh is the farthest thing from your mind. Next thing you know, he makes a “last minute” decision and suddenly you find yourself drilling deep into all things Bayh (to say nothing of all things Brad Ellsworth).

Similarly, one of my favorite things about working in new media is how quickly new technology or killer applications of existing technology can completely change the game.

And it’s starting to feel like that’s what just happened with the release of Google Buzz. A week ago, it wasn’t on anyone’s radar (other than Google’s, of course). Today, it’s part of the conversation — and lots of people are using it. How many? With a host of caveats, Danny Sullivan has crunched some numbers and says that Google Buzz is already generating a quarter of the activity of Twitter.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY CLICK HERE