Answer Guy Central

Or at least it could be.

So remember Rupert Murdoch’s insistence that Google pay him for access to News Corp’s on-line content? Remember the rumor that Murdoch’s News Corp would do a deal with Microsoft Bing to have only that search engine “see” his stuff? Here comes the next bomb. And while it looks like pretty much nothing at the moment, get ready for the explosion.

Working with The New York Times and The Washington Post, Google is now testing Living Stories. At the moment there’s really nothing there to get excited about, and honestly I’m not sure of the number of people who will ever care about a string of stories about one topic (unless that topic is Tiger Wood’s extramarital activities, of course). But Google Living Stories matters, because it points to real collaboration between Google and the newspapers that both need Google to keep them alive and hate Google for making their content ubiquitous.

And that’s the business change lesson of the day: sometimes baby steps add up to something, and having Google and two of his chief competitors talking and working together will force Mr. Murdoch’s hand. The movement itself is the reward here, and search engines, newspapers, and consumers will all win.

What are you doing to change your business?

An amazing idea: the worst threat to security in your computer may not be a virus, or a piece of stray mal-ware. It’s your operating system.

Or so says Brian Krebs, blogging for The Washington Post. And he’s probably right.

The issue, says Krebs, is that most of the bad stuff that tries to infect your computer does so by mucking around in your operating system, and that your operating system gets harder and harder to protect over time. This is true.

Further, Krebs argues that Windows users have the biggest problems, because it’s Windows being targeted by a huge percentage of virus writers. This is also true.

What’s fascinating (and please remember that this is not truly a Windows issue; Macintosh and Linux computers get viruses, too) is his solution: you can completely avoid having sensitive data stolen by doing something that is becoming more and more simple: don’t type anything or use shopping or banking web site on a computer  unless you boot that computer from a clean, protected, pristine CD or DVD-based copy of the operating system.

This is almost a brilliant idea. Human nature being what it is (lazy) and technology understanding being what it is (low), the idea means very little here in the real world. But with Virtual Computers becoming more and more prevalent, it’s an idea that will lead to real solutions, and soon.

THAT’S Business Change.

Did you hear the one about the blogger who lost his job because not enough people were reading his words?

It’s not actually a new idea. The companies that aggregate blogs figured out quickly that if nobody was reading what one of their bloggers had to say that they were paying for nothing of value. The Gawker Medias of the world have been ruthless toward their mostly-underpaid staffers for years.

Now, The Washington Post is in on the act.

Is this bad business, or just another example of necessary business change? More of the latter, I’m afraid, but imagine you were writing a column for a big newspaper, were asked to do the extra work of writing a blog, had that blog promoted via means you weren’t told about, didn’t understand, and had no control over, and as a result of not enough traffic finding its way to your blog entries lost the job you had been doing for years. Ouch.

Now here’s a funny extension to things:

A couple of months ago, David Pogue, the New York Times’ lead technology journalist and the 935th most popular blogger in the world, suddenly became a non-force. His ranking dropped to zero. Why? Because somehow, the forces that make the Internet work got confused and though THIS blog was his. Yes, the problem has been fixed.

Which explains how I know that David is only the 935th most popular blogger. And raise the question: if David Pogue ranks 935, what chance do lesser lights have when their bosses start measuring them?

And firing them.

Watch the way you business goes, and the way you manage business change. Watch very carefully.