The Richest person in the world: Carlos Slim Helu

The richest person in the world is Carlos Slim Helu, but who Carlos Slim Helu? The Richest Man In The World reportedly makes $30 million a month. Carlos Slim Helu, who tops The Forbes billionaire list, is the Lifetime Honorary Chairman of Telefonos de Mexico.

Mr. Helu, whom the Christian Science Monitor weirdly described as "the portly cigar-smoker", is the first man from a developing country to become Richest Man In The World. That's another way of saying Carlos Slim Helu is the first person of color to top the Forbes billionaire list.

How Carlos Slim Helu got there is by purchasing a controlling interest in Telmex in 1990, along with a group of investors, and used that to leverage the buying of as many telecom companies in Mexico and Latin America as possible. Now, his family owns 90 percent of Mexico's telephone lines and 80 percent of its cellphone. He's used that to finance his business operations around the World.

Carlos Slim Helu owns almost 7 percent of The New York Times and in 2009 gave the Times Company a $250 million loan. He's reportedly happy with his stake in the company and has no plans to increase it.

Stay tuned for updates.

Seattle P.I. has Zennie Abraham, but formatting not his fault

On March 18th The Seattle P.I., the website that was once connected to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, turns one year old.

This month of March, and to the total surprise of this blogger, his work turned up on the "City Brights section" of Seattle P.I.

It's great to at the Seattle P.I. (as it gives me a reason to focus on a city I love, Seattle) and at SFGate.com , and at Examiner.com, and at Zennie62.com, and the 100 blog network we have there, and on Youtube.com , Blip.tv, and five other video sites, and about 30 social networks and bookmarking sites and on CoLoursTV.

The one problem is the Seattle P.I. appears to be using the Zennie62 RSS feed but not formatting the result. Thus, the blog posts come out without paragraph breaks, leaving one long "go" of words all mushed together. The damage is done when it reads "posted by Zennie Abraham" - it wasn't posted by Zennie Abraham.

He's me, as you know.

Thanks, Seattle P.I.; please fix my blog posts!

Stay tuned.

Gabourey Sidibe lands movie role, proves Howard Stern wrong

Gabourey Sidibe in Yelling To The Sky

Actress Gabourey Sidibe, who was the focus of shock jock radio host Howard Stern's racist rant on Monday, has landed a movie role and proved Howard Stern wrong at the same time.

Gabourey Sidibe is in a movie called Yelling To The Sky.

Written and directed by Victoria Mahoney, the description of Yelling To The Sky is this: "In a depraved New York neighborhood, the youngest of three mixed-race sisters named Sweetness O’Hara, spends the better part of being seventeen navigating an identity between the known: a violent life of crime, and the unknown: a life of purpose and meaning."

You can become a fan of the movie at Facebook here: Yelling to The Sky.

To recap, on The Howard Stern Show, Howard Stern ranted that Actress Gabourey Sidibe, who played the lead role in the award-winning movie Precious, and was a Best Actress Nominee for an Oscar at the 2010 Academy Awards, would never get another movie role. Howard Stern referred to Gabourey Sidibe as a "fat black chick" causing this blogger to ask what he skin color has to do with anything?

Again, to make sure the message is sent, Howard Stern was being racist. Period. End of story. Racism is a mental illness. It is the putting down - the rejecting - of a person because of the color of their skin. Howard Stern talked as if being black was something that made Gabourey Sidibe unattractive in his eyes. That's John Mayer-level racism. Racists are not known for thinking; if Howard Stern were thinking he would have never made the statement he did on his show.

Instead, Stern stuck his foot in his mouth.

Now Howard may say, "Oh, c'mom. That's a small independent film." So was Precious.

Stay tuned.

Forbes Rich List has Bill Gates at #2 and Mexican mogul Carlos Slim #1

The 2010 Forbes Rich List is out and for the first time in 15 years, an American is not in the top spot of the top 10. Microsoft co-founder and former-Chairman Bill Gates (or William Gates III) is not number one and neither is Warren Buffett. This year, Bill Gates, the 2009 leader, was replaced by Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim.

On ABC's Nightline Wednesday, much was made of the fact that fewer Americans were in the top-10; in 2005 five of the ten on the list were American. But this should come as no surprise considering the last 30-years of American assistance in the development of the multinational economy. Three decades of "outsourcing" of jobs - sending American jobs to countries like Mexico and India - has created the wealth base in those countries that allows the purchase of goods and services produced by the people who runs the businesses that caused them to reach the Forbes Rich List.

Over the last three decades, America has lost over $976 billion in job-generated wealth; over $400 billion of that in just the last eight years. The reason is America never installed a really coordinated industrial policy to improve and maintain key export industries.

In the case of telecommunications, which is Carlos Slim's area, America was the call center for the World in the 1980s; today call centers are primarily in India, Mexico, Canada, and Asia and over the years those countries have subsidized the growth of the telecom industry.

In the case of France's Bernard Arnault, who's number 7 on the list, French government subsidies helped him acquire a textile company Boussac, which owns Christian Dior. Arnault sold off all assets, save for the luxury Christian Dior brand and the Le Bon Marché department store. The Arnault family only used $15 million of its own money according to Wikipedia.

And the Forbes Rich List Top 10 may one day have no Americans on it; right now there are only three: Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Warren Buffett.

Stay tuned.

Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do by Zennie Abraham

This Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do blog post is an update of an older post from 2009. It contains some refinements in an approach that's worked very well for this blogger.

My friends come to me for advice in this area all the time, so I created this "Top 10" list of actions to take in using social networks to get yourself noticed online. (I'm going to add to this later, with more detail but watch the video for more background.)

The objective here is not just to get yourself noticed, but to also protect your identity.  By being everywhere, and with the same name and photo, you create your "look" such that it's harder for anyone else to not only pretend to be you, but to alter your online persona.   In other words,  by having your name already online, it guards against and overwhelms any other view of you that's posted online.   To do this, you have to be on as many platforms as possible.

Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do

1.Figure out your name. (I’m Zennie Abraham, Zenophon Abraham and Zennie62)
2.What do you want to get out of this? (Business? pleasure? Information?

If you’re in the business of pleasure that’s another story.)
3.Figure out your title: CEO? Producer? Party Animal?
4.Develop an email list. Remember, email is still a form of social networking.
5.Find a photo you’re proud of and nothing with you wearing a gorilla suit. (It does work for some but I don’t recommend it.)

6.Business?
a.Join Linkedin
b.Join Ryze (Great small business membership base in the Bay Area.)
c.Join Plaxo
d.Join Facebook and turn off the relationship notifications. (We don't need

know that you're dating Sven Nordgarden.
e. Join H5
f. Join Foursquare.com
g. Join YouTube.com


7.Pleasure?
a.Join MySpace
b.Join Facebook
c.Join FriendFeed
d. Join Brightkite.com
e. Join Foursquare.com
f. Join YouTube.com


8.Information?
a.Join FriendFeed
b.Join Facebook
c.Join Technorati (I recommend creating a blog and then posting it as your website of choice in their system.)
d. If sports-related, join MakeitPro.com 
e. Join Brightkite.com
f. Join Foursquare.com
g. Join YouTube.com

Now some of you may find the inclusion of YouTube confusing, but it's a social network, not just a video distribution site. Moreover, it's a powerful identify-protection tool for this purpose, so long as you use your name and don't call yourself "Ardvark".

9.Set up a blog – put your resume in it without your phone number. That’s your free website. I prefer Blogger.com. It’s free. Make the blog title your name. Why? To mark your place with your name on cyberspace. Link to it from your social network profile. The point is to begin to protect your name and identity by having something out there you made about you, not someone else.

10.Use your email signature as the place for your links to your Linkedin Page and Blog page. (Now you have two places pointing at your blog page, which helps with SEO and to have others see your resume.)

A word on Twitter.

Twitter is not a social network, it's a communications system and you need to have something to say to use it. It's volume-based; the more you post the more valued your account because people will follow you looking for interesting posts, or what are called "tweets". I think of Twitter as an accessory to a social network not a replacement for one.

Twitter is very misunderstood by people in business. To continue my current favorite organization to pick on, just because it needs to improve, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) does not have a Twitter account.  How could a Twitter account - and a blog - benefit AMPAS?  I'll demonstrated via this scenario:

The Academy makes a mistake and leaves out Farrah Fawcett from its Memorial Tribute portion of the 2010 Oscars.  To deal with the negative press it does the following:

1) Issues an apology on the AMPAS blog, which because it's connected to the AMPAS Twitter account, also goes out to AMPAS Twitter followers, and because the AMPAS Twitter account is connected to AMPAS on Facebook, it's posted to Facebook too.

2) AMPAS issues a press release based on the blog contents.

3) AMPAS asks its Twitter followers (hopefully over 1 million) to retweet the initial message.

4) AMPAS then makes a video-embeded blog post that's a "Tribute to Farrah Fawcett" and then does one blog post for each of the other actors that were missing.  That too goes out via Twitter, one for each performer, and it goes to Facebook.

What will happen is each AMPAS blog post link is heightened by the click rates that will happen from being part of a tweet.  That will raise the blog post pages in a search for "Farrah Fawcett and Academy" and thus more people will see the AMPAS apology and the online tribute.

End result: message is efficiently sent and the online tracks are seeded with tributes so that as the issue dies down, a track record that the Academy did something is in place.

The Oscars: Alec Baldwin at The Polo Lounge; Stephen Fry was there!

Just a follow-up to the blog post "The Oscars: Alec Baldwin at The Polo Lounge, The Beverly Hills Hotel's power outages." In it, this blogger reported on his brunch at The Polo Lounge..

Just about five minutes after I was seated at a prime table for seeing people or just being left alone, I saw a great pair of athletic female legs in a killer backless black dress walk elegantly but briskly by me, followed by a man in a dark grey suit with an upright walk and very tightly combed and moused hair. The man turned out to be the legendary actor and author George Hamilton, who I'm told is a regular at The Polo Lounge.

Then Hamilton and his lovely, leggy blonde female companion were seated at a round booth already occupied by a man who looked very much like Stephen Fry, who was also with a female companion. I'd never seen Fry in person before. It just so happens that Fry and I follow each other on Twitter, so I messaged him to confirm this. An update soon, assuming he answers back.

Well Stephen Fry was kind enough to send a message that it was indeed, him. He was with the British composer Leslie Bricusse and his wife and...Mr. Kirk Douglas was in the corner.

Stephen Fry at The Apple iPad Introduction

My view was obstructed by another group at a table more in the foreground from Mr. Fry and such that I missed Mr. Douglas. Moreover, I was consumed in The Sunday New York Times' article on the growing Internet culture in New York. Ignorance is bliss.

What's Stephen Fry up to? That wasn't the focus of our Twitter messaging, but Mr. Fry does have a rather interesting social network at The New Adventures of Stephen Fry, and of course he recently finished his 50-state tour of America.

 Even more recently, Fry was a special guest at the introduction of the Apple iPad.

With all that, the title "Actor and Presenter" is too limiting for Stephen Fry; renaissance man is more appropriate.

Stay tuned.

Stephen Collins from Star Trek TMP talks Star Trek and The Hurt Locker

Hard core Star Trek fans like this blogger will certainly remember the first Star Trek Movie. Called Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Produced by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, it was released in 1979 and directed by the legendary Robert Wise. It starred Stephen Collins who played Star Fleet Officer Captain Willard Decker, who was set to command the new U.S.S. Enterprise, until Captain James T. Kirk, who was raised to the rank of Admiral, decided he wanted more than his five year mission.

Here's a clip from Star Trek TMP:



31 years later (!) I met Stephen Collins at The Night of 100 Stars Oscar Gala and he was tickled that of all his roles and work, someone remembered that he played Willard Decker. I asked him what he thought of J.J. Abrams' version of Star Trek, which was released 30 years later. "I loved it. This is weird, but I'm not really a Star Trek afficianado, and so I haven't seen a lot of the movies. But the new one, I think is just a terrific movie in every way. It's just a good movie on its own right. You don't have to have ever seen Star Trek to love (this one). I think Chris Pine is a huge find. J.J. Abrams just did an incredible job.

Stephen Collins is an Acedemy Member and shared with me that the email writing micro-campaign that The Hurt Locker Producer Nicolas Chartier launched didn't make a difference to him as a voter and doubted that it made a difference to many of the Academy voters. He was right. The Hurt Locker scored The Best Picture Oscar at the 2010 Academy Awards.