Slow shift away from billing by hours in services

The economist reports that some ad agencies are moving from a ‘pay per hour’ to a ‘pay for value’ model, driven in part by a recent push from Coca Cola.

Other service industries like law and consulting could potentially be pushed in that direction.  These industries, however, are likely to be very hesitant to move to a model where the ‘value’ is arbitrarily defined.

While it can improve accountability in some cases,  ‘pay for value’ might encourage less innovative thinking and risk taking by these service providers as they focus on sure bets.

Great wine is wine that YOU love

It’s hard to justify wasting money on bad bottles in these tough times.  But in the complicated world of wine, the only way to be sure you will enjoy the bottle is to taste before buying.

Wine critics with their points have their uses, but then again you could end up drinking cat-pee! You can buy bottles based on vintages or importer, but you need to calibrate to what you like first.

Take advantage of wine tastings at your local stores and nearby wineries.    And don’t let anybody tell you what you should like.

Wall Street Journal’s plan to transition to micro-payments unlikey to be game changer

FT reports that WSJ is going to introduce micro-payments for online access (e.g. pay per article).  This is not an entirely new business model.  The oft-quoted analogy it to itunes and music downloads, but that is flawed.

When itunes was introduced, there were few other legal alternatives for music downloads.  With the WSJ, on the other hand, there are many other sources of news.  While there is likely to be some additional revenue from this model, free (advertising supported) news is not going to go away.