Blogger's Lounge

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Making Money Internet

Last night, for the second week in a row, The Simpsons took a shot at corporate cousin Fox News. However, if you’re clicking over to Hulu or Fox’s websites to check out this week’s helicopter gag, you’re going to be disappointed. WebNewser has noticed that the joke, from the episode’s opening credits, has been removed. Did someone at Fox (other than Bill O’Reilly) complain?

Well, maybe. However, as much as we love a good conspiracy, our money is on WebNewser’s second hypothesis, that the gag was added at the very last minute and after the websites had received their copy. We can easily imagine the producers of the show getting so excited about the media coverage of the first joke (and thoroughly enjoying O’Reilly’s take down of it) that they rushed to their computers to add the new joke to the next episode, which was finished long in advance of airing. Besides, as much as some might like to picture shadowy Fox executives wringing their hands over the joke, we just can’t imagine any exec exclaiming, “What? People are writing about our two-decade-old series all over the internet because of one joke?! Well dont let them do it again!”

However, you’d think that the TV channels would get the shows before the websites so you never know…

UPDATE Simpsons’ Executive Producer Al Jean revealed in an exclusive interview with the NY Times David Itzkoff that the motives behind the anti-Fox News gag were light in spirit:

Mr. Jean said the “Simpsons” producers — in particular, the creator of the series, Matt Groening — were pleased with how the first Fox News joke seemed to ruffle the feathers of Bill O’Reilly, the host of the Fox News program “The O’Reilly Factor.” (On his show last week, Mr. O’Reilly played the “Simpsons” satire of Fox News and, with a smile, said of the cartoon family: “Pinheads? I believe so.”)

The “Simpsons” producers could not let that remark stand, so they rushed their second Fox News joke into Sunday’s episode — so late in the production process that the gag could only be inserted into the version shown in North America, but not into versions shown in foreign markets or on the Internet.

“There’s a lot of masters that go out,” Mr. Jean said in a telephone interview, “so to save money we just put it in the one master that’s for the U.S. and Canada. More money that will then go to Fox News and undoubtedly to Bill O’Reilly.”

Mr. Jean emphasized that neither he nor his “Simpsons” colleagues have ever been told by their corporate Fox parents to stop making fun of Fox News.

Check out the opening from Fox below as well as the Hulu version below that:

Bing Gordon, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, says that his venture capital firm has to gear up for the coming tech boom. That’s one reason that his company hired famous Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker as a new partner on Monday.

Meeker’s investing focus at the firm will be on the Internet and how the shift to mobile will create huge new opportunities, Gordon said in an interview.

Gordon is sitting pretty himself as the backer of Kleiner’s investments in mobile gaming firm Ngmoco, which was bought by DeNA for $403 million, and Zynga, the hot social gaming company that is valued at $5.6 billion.

“She thinks big and thinks global,” Gordon (pictured right) said. “Among the analysts, she is my favorite personality. She makes fearless macro bets and is right most of the time.”

Gordon said he sees a big boom coming, not a bubble, much like Kleiner’s managing partner John Doerr, who said that we’re in the midst of yet another boom for internet investments at the recent Web 2.0 Summit. The reason is that he sees a lot of technologies that are changing the way we live.

“The world of digital media is being transformed,” Gordon said. “A bunch of new businesses can be reinvented, thanks to social graphs, the mobile internet, and the new shopping habits of the young. Those are going to create a whole generation of cool new companies. Mary has the right stuff to help people take advantage of the opportunities.”

As for his own focus, Gordon said he is fascinated how users are dealing with the information overload from the social internet and how users are building their own social capital. He is also interested in the “new algorithms, data structures and network topologies of the social web.” He is looking at the intersection of mobile operating systems, the social web, and entertainment. He is also interested in gamification, or making non-game applications more fun and engaging by making them more game-like.

Beyond spotting trends, Meeker will now have to pick the right companies and entrepreneurs that are riding those trends. Meeker will focus on Kleiner’s digital investments, which largely means the social and mobile Internet. But Gordon said that renewed emphasis on internet companies doesn’t mean that the company is backing off completely on big cleantech investments.

“If you look at our cleantech and life science press releases, you can see there are other partner recruitments happening there too,” he said.

Kleiner has a new fund, the sFund, to invest in social Internet companies. But Gordon said it isn’t easy to predict whether Kleiner will invest more money in 2011 than it will in 2010.

[photo credit: SF Business Journal]

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Mr. Jean said the “Simpsons” producers — in particular, the creator of the series, Matt Groening — were pleased with how the first Fox News joke seemed to ruffle the feathers of Bill O’Reilly, the host of the Fox News program “The O’Reilly Factor.” (On his show last week, Mr. O’Reilly played the “Simpsons” satire of Fox News and, with a smile, said of the cartoon family: “Pinheads? I believe so.”)

The “Simpsons” producers could not let that remark stand, so they rushed their second Fox News joke into Sunday’s episode — so late in the production process that the gag could only be inserted into the version shown in North America, but not into versions shown in foreign markets or on the Internet.

“There’s a lot of masters that go out,” Mr. Jean said in a telephone interview, “so to save money we just put it in the one master that’s for the U.S. and Canada. More money that will then go to Fox News and undoubtedly to Bill O’Reilly.”

Mr. Jean emphasized that neither he nor his “Simpsons” colleagues have ever been told by their corporate Fox parents to stop making fun of Fox News.

Check out the opening from Fox below as well as the Hulu version below that:

Bing Gordon, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, says that his venture capital firm has to gear up for the coming tech boom. That’s one reason that his company hired famous Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker as a new partner on Monday.

Meeker’s investing focus at the firm will be on the Internet and how the shift to mobile will create huge new opportunities, Gordon said in an interview.

Gordon is sitting pretty himself as the backer of Kleiner’s investments in mobile gaming firm Ngmoco, which was bought by DeNA for $403 million, and Zynga, the hot social gaming company that is valued at $5.6 billion.

“She thinks big and thinks global,” Gordon (pictured right) said. “Among the analysts, she is my favorite personality. She makes fearless macro bets and is right most of the time.”

Gordon said he sees a big boom coming, not a bubble, much like Kleiner’s managing partner John Doerr, who said that we’re in the midst of yet another boom for internet investments at the recent Web 2.0 Summit. The reason is that he sees a lot of technologies that are changing the way we live.

“The world of digital media is being transformed,” Gordon said. “A bunch of new businesses can be reinvented, thanks to social graphs, the mobile internet, and the new shopping habits of the young. Those are going to create a whole generation of cool new companies. Mary has the right stuff to help people take advantage of the opportunities.”

As for his own focus, Gordon said he is fascinated how users are dealing with the information overload from the social internet and how users are building their own social capital. He is also interested in the “new algorithms, data structures and network topologies of the social web.” He is looking at the intersection of mobile operating systems, the social web, and entertainment. He is also interested in gamification, or making non-game applications more fun and engaging by making them more game-like.

Beyond spotting trends, Meeker will now have to pick the right companies and entrepreneurs that are riding those trends. Meeker will focus on Kleiner’s digital investments, which largely means the social and mobile Internet. But Gordon said that renewed emphasis on internet companies doesn’t mean that the company is backing off completely on big cleantech investments.

“If you look at our cleantech and life science press releases, you can see there are other partner recruitments happening there too,” he said.

Kleiner has a new fund, the sFund, to invest in social Internet companies. But Gordon said it isn’t easy to predict whether Kleiner will invest more money in 2011 than it will in 2010.

[photo credit: SF Business Journal]

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Mr. Jean said the “Simpsons” producers — in particular, the creator of the series, Matt Groening — were pleased with how the first Fox News joke seemed to ruffle the feathers of Bill O’Reilly, the host of the Fox News program “The O’Reilly Factor.” (On his show last week, Mr. O’Reilly played the “Simpsons” satire of Fox News and, with a smile, said of the cartoon family: “Pinheads? I believe so.”)

The “Simpsons” producers could not let that remark stand, so they rushed their second Fox News joke into Sunday’s episode — so late in the production process that the gag could only be inserted into the version shown in North America, but not into versions shown in foreign markets or on the Internet.

“There’s a lot of masters that go out,” Mr. Jean said in a telephone interview, “so to save money we just put it in the one master that’s for the U.S. and Canada. More money that will then go to Fox News and undoubtedly to Bill O’Reilly.”

Mr. Jean emphasized that neither he nor his “Simpsons” colleagues have ever been told by their corporate Fox parents to stop making fun of Fox News.

Check out the opening from Fox below as well as the Hulu version below that:

Bing Gordon, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, says that his venture capital firm has to gear up for the coming tech boom. That’s one reason that his company hired famous Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker as a new partner on Monday.

Meeker’s investing focus at the firm will be on the Internet and how the shift to mobile will create huge new opportunities, Gordon said in an interview.

Gordon is sitting pretty himself as the backer of Kleiner’s investments in mobile gaming firm Ngmoco, which was bought by DeNA for $403 million, and Zynga, the hot social gaming company that is valued at $5.6 billion.

“She thinks big and thinks global,” Gordon (pictured right) said. “Among the analysts, she is my favorite personality. She makes fearless macro bets and is right most of the time.”

Gordon said he sees a big boom coming, not a bubble, much like Kleiner’s managing partner John Doerr, who said that we’re in the midst of yet another boom for internet investments at the recent Web 2.0 Summit. The reason is that he sees a lot of technologies that are changing the way we live.

“The world of digital media is being transformed,” Gordon said. “A bunch of new businesses can be reinvented, thanks to social graphs, the mobile internet, and the new shopping habits of the young. Those are going to create a whole generation of cool new companies. Mary has the right stuff to help people take advantage of the opportunities.”

As for his own focus, Gordon said he is fascinated how users are dealing with the information overload from the social internet and how users are building their own social capital. He is also interested in the “new algorithms, data structures and network topologies of the social web.” He is looking at the intersection of mobile operating systems, the social web, and entertainment. He is also interested in gamification, or making non-game applications more fun and engaging by making them more game-like.

Beyond spotting trends, Meeker will now have to pick the right companies and entrepreneurs that are riding those trends. Meeker will focus on Kleiner’s digital investments, which largely means the social and mobile Internet. But Gordon said that renewed emphasis on internet companies doesn’t mean that the company is backing off completely on big cleantech investments.

“If you look at our cleantech and life science press releases, you can see there are other partner recruitments happening there too,” he said.

Kleiner has a new fund, the sFund, to invest in social Internet companies. But Gordon said it isn’t easy to predict whether Kleiner will invest more money in 2011 than it will in 2010.

[photo credit: SF Business Journal]

Next Story: LinkedIn joins the article-sharing party Previous Story: NewsBasis: Death to the bad PR pitch!

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Monday, December 6, 2010

personal finance blog

Founder Nick Denton has been talking about Gawker Media’s move away from the standard blog format for a while now. Today he published a long post explaining the thinking behind the changes. You might even call the post a manifesto, if it wasn’t so clinical.

The basic idea behind the redesign — a layout with big images highlighting the day’s most important stories, while the old-fashioned, reverse-chronological news stream runs along the side — is no surprise. In fact, it has been viewable on a test website for months. And it’s pretty obvious that this gives Gawker’s blogs (including Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and of course Gawker itself) a way to highlight their hottest stories, rather than whatever is newest.

To explain the change, Denton offered an example from Gizmodo’s biggest story, when it ran photos of the then-secret iPhone 4 (which Gizmodo purchased from someone who found the phone in a bar):

In order to keep video of the iPhone prototype at the top of the reverse chronological flow, Gizmodo actually stopped publishing for several hours. How ridiculous! In any sane medium, a story as powerful as that, one which was drawing more than 90% of the site’s traffic, would be given commensurate real estate; and it wouldn’t require a hack to keep the item prominent. Hence the splash story; now we can finally create front pages that match the visual impact of a tabloid wood or magazine cover; and we can leave them up as long as they’re generating interest.

(We’ve never had a story quite as insanely popular as the iPhone 4 post, but we struggle with similar issues at VentureBeat around our own scoops, which is why we’ve added our own box of highlighted stories.)

Denton is big on the importance of scoops, but at the same time he acknowledges the necessity of running smaller stories that comment on or just point to coverage elsewhere. Those stories will be de-emphasized in the new layout, and Denton hints that he might restructure Gawker’s editorial staff to reflect the division between different kinds of bloggers: “the curator or editor; and the producer or scoopmonger.”

Beyond the magazine-style layout, Denton said Gawker’s sites will emulate TV and offer more regularly scheduled programming. For example, he said Lifehacker could designate a specific time on a specific day as its personal finance slot, and readers can reliably return to the site at that time to find new articles on that topic. That also creates more opportunities for advertisers — who might want to be the “exclusive” sponsor of a certain channel or type of programming, while also avoiding the more salacious Gawker content that they might not want to be associated with.

Denton’s post prompted caustic responses from his former employees. Former Gawker writer Alex Pareene pointed out that Denton’s blog post is exactly the kind of story that Denton would discourage from his writers: “long, wordy, and of interest only to a niche audience.” And former Gawker editor Choire Sicha (who co-founded his own site, The Awl) dismissed Denton’s strategy as “panic writers & have no ad sales dept.”

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The average American has 3.5 credit cards, according to Experian, and many of us have several more than that. So how do you decide which one to pull out when you're at the cash register? If you always reach for the same card out of habit, you could be cheating yourself out of perks and benefits. Worse yet, choosing the wrong card could even cause your credit score to dip.

WalletPop consulted with Gerri Detweiler, a personal finance expert at Credit.com, to get a rundown of what you should keep in mind when you're making a purchase to help determine which card to pull out of your wallet.

No Balance. First of all, if you have some cards on which you're carrying a revolving balance, your initial choice should be for a card with no balance. Here's the reason: If you charge a purchase on a card that already has a balance on it, the interest for that purchase will start accruing immediately. If you don't have a balance, you'll be able to "float" that purchase -- and any subsequent purchases made that month -- interest-free, until the bill is due.

Low Interest. If you're going to charge your purchase on a card that carries a balance, reach for the card that offers the lowest APR. You'll be able to pay it off more quickly, especially if you planned ahead for a big purchase by applying for a card that has a low or 0%-teaser rate. (Just make sure you've paid it off by the end of the promo period!)

Low Utilization. All other things being equal, choose the card that isn't as close to being maxed-out. The FICO scoring model takes into account how much of your available credit you've used on each card, so if you use a card that's close to its limit, your score could suffer. This article offers more details about how your utilization is calculated and how high is too high.

Reward Benefits. If you don't carry a credit card balance and have little utilization, you can choose your card based on perks. A good place to start is with your cards' reward programs. Before you buy, check your rewards' balance. If you're close to the number of miles or points you need to redeem something like a statement credit or an airline ticket, use that card. As this article points out, card issuers switch up their reward promotions frequently, so it pays to check what's currently being offered before hitting the mall or shopping online.

Price Protection. Even if you've shopped around, you might be tempted to kick yourself if you find out the item you just bought was available somewhere else for less. If you're the type of person who won't sleep at night unless you got the best deal out there, reach for a card that offers you this type of coverage, especially for big-ticket purchases. Likewise, some cards will give you extra time to return an item if you're seized with buyer's remorse after the store's return policy expires. This is especially handy if you're shopping online and the item doesn't arrive in time for you to make a decision.

Warranty Protection. If you're buying electronics or computer equipment, research your cards' benefits programs to find out which ones offer you protection if the product arrives broken or dies a month after you get it. Some cards offer this protection, so you can skip the overpriced "extended warranty" the cashier pitches you at the time of purchase.
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To explain the change, Denton offered an example from Gizmodo’s biggest story, when it ran photos of the then-secret iPhone 4 (which Gizmodo purchased from someone who found the phone in a bar):

In order to keep video of the iPhone prototype at the top of the reverse chronological flow, Gizmodo actually stopped publishing for several hours. How ridiculous! In any sane medium, a story as powerful as that, one which was drawing more than 90% of the site’s traffic, would be given commensurate real estate; and it wouldn’t require a hack to keep the item prominent. Hence the splash story; now we can finally create front pages that match the visual impact of a tabloid wood or magazine cover; and we can leave them up as long as they’re generating interest.

Next Story: How’s your beta test going? Ask users with Prefinery Previous Story: Return of the Celtic Tiger: Can renewables refuel the Irish economy?

Breaking News: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

News - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry ...

The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.

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The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.

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The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.

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To explain the change, Denton offered an example from Gizmodo’s biggest story, when it ran photos of the then-secret iPhone 4 (which Gizmodo purchased from someone who found the phone in a bar):

In order to keep video of the iPhone prototype at the top of the reverse chronological flow, Gizmodo actually stopped publishing for several hours. How ridiculous! In any sane medium, a story as powerful as that, one which was drawing more than 90% of the site’s traffic, would be given commensurate real estate; and it wouldn’t require a hack to keep the item prominent. Hence the splash story; now we can finally create front pages that match the visual impact of a tabloid wood or magazine cover; and we can leave them up as long as they’re generating interest.

Next Story: How’s your beta test going? Ask users with Prefinery Previous Story: Return of the Celtic Tiger: Can renewables refuel the Irish economy?

Breaking News: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

News - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry ...

The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.

Carnahan Camp To Fox News: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker

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Breaking News: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

News - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry ...

The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.

Carnahan Camp To Fox News: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker

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Breaking News: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

News - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry ...

The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.

Carnahan Camp To Fox News: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker

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Breaking News: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

News - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry ...

The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.

Carnahan Camp To Fox News: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

personal finance manager

Aaron Patzer celebrated his 30th birthday this weekend in the British Virgin Islands. But as he enjoyed rock-climbing and noshing on lobster, his absence from Silicon Valley was causing a round of speculative gossip. Is the erstwhile founder of one of the most successful Web-based start-ups in years ever going to return to work?

"He's been gone for months," notes the head of one Mountain View start-up. "It's like he lives in New Zealand now."

"When I hear these things I have to wonder if he'll start another company or retire," says a serial entrepreneur. "But maybe he's just on vacation."

Over the past two months the wunderkind founder of Mint.com, the online money-management tool acquired last September by Intuit for $170 million, has been traveling the globe, hopping from Canada to India, with plenty of stop-offs in between. And, as Patzer confirmed to Inc.com, he has indeed been on a birthday vacation this past weekend in the British Virgin Islands.

Is he still running Quicken, the division of Intuit that his leadership team at Mint took over following the purchase? "I've been spending quite a bit of time in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK as Mint is expanding globally, and I'm personally doing much of the research and business deals to make them happen," Patzer wrote in an email.

What about his desk in Mountain View, where he has served for the past year as vice president and general manager of Intuit personal finance? What of overseeing the company's online, mobile, and desktop products?

"I'd say he's there for one-third of the month—at least a week each month to check in with his team," says Martha Shaughnessy, an Intuit spokesperson who works closely with Patzer.

With Mint poised to announce Monday the expansion of its online personal finance services to Canada (its local headquarters are in Edmonton), Patzer's multiple months of working virtually and conducting research and pursuing deals abroad certainly makes some sense. But consider that friends and associates say they know Patzer has been largely in Australia and New Zealand in recent months, and the logic gets foggier. Shaughnessy does not precisely deny that Patzer had moved out of the country. ("He kind of has," she says.)

Consider also that Patzer, who launched Mint at 26, and scored nearly $5 million in Series A funding from investors including Shasta Ventures and First Round Capital, has by many accounts had a rocky time adjusting to his position as a vice president at Intuit, a company of nearly 8,000 people with a 2009 revenue of more than $3 billion.

"Large companies like Intuit can have trouble innovating. But Aaron is the kind of person who speaks his mind, and has rubbed some people the wrong way," a Palo Alto entrepreneur who knows Patzer but who wished to remain anonymous, says. "There's a culture clash."

This scenario is not rare in Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists eager for liquidity routinely prepare portfolio companies to be sold. Conflicts between the original founders and their new corporate bosses often ensue, for reasons that range from operations to general philosophy.

"There's a reason founders of start-ups don't look like CEOs of large corporations," says Steve Blank, a California serial entrepreneur who teaches entrepreneurial studies at Stanford University and at the University of California. "The skills that made you a success in a small company as a CEO don't translate to a large company when you're trying to execute."

And, Blank says, today most founders simply don't succeed in making the transition from build to execute. "There are more culture clashes today," he says.

One doesn't have to gaze far for recent examples. Flickr founders Caterina Fake and Steward Butterfield left Yahoo three years after their photo-sharing start-up's acquisition. Delicious founder Joshua Schachter also barely made it three years at Yahoo, calling innovating at a large company "an incredibly frustrating experience." Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian managed to stay at Condé Nast just until their contracts were up, though Dennis Crowley didn't last long at Google after it acquired his proto-Foursquare company, Dodgeball. He wrote online: "The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space."

Although the entire Mint team transitioned into positions at Intuit, Patzer told the New York Times last December that he missed the scrappy start-up vibe. "The corporate campus seems so quiet. A start-up is overflowing with energy. Here it’s a little more subdued," he told the Times. "They’ve got these high, very depressing cubicles."

Could Patzer have been so discontent that he'd step away from Intuit leaving money on the table? Colleagues and acquaintances doubt it both because Patzer is reported to earn a huge salary and because they believe he is truly eager to help take the company international.

"He's an entrepreneur at heart, of course," said Yan-David Erlich, co-founder of ChoiceVendor, a rating service based in San Francisco. Erlich knows something about corporate dissonance: his company was acquired by LinkedIn three months ago, and Erlich left it after two months for personal reasons, which included his desire to travel internationally. "He could either start another start-up or retire, but I highly doubt he'll retire. It's in his interest to make it work for himself," Erlich says.

In interviews this summer, Patzer was already hinting at wanting to build out Intuit in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. "That's something that I'd like to personally do, not only for the travel experience, but just to really understand how other cultures handle money and their personal financial lives," he told a writer for the Bank of America's small business website.

As Mint and Intuit look to expand to other English-language-speaking countries, Patzer's travel schedule is likely to remain rigorous. "We'll be playing calendar Tetris going forward," Shaughnessy admits.

Is this new arrangement a bad thing for Patzer, who's known for loving to work out by hiking, climbing trees, and adventure-traveling? Not so much. "One of the reasons the acquisition was so appealing to him was that he's eager to do new things and have the financial freedom to do so," Shaughnessy says.

'Morning Glory' Has Us Looking Back at Our Favorite Working Girls

Ever since Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant's newsroom shenanigans in "His Girl Friday," Hollywood has been fascinated by the Working Girl—that chic, career-driven leading lady who kicks ass, takes names and looks fabulous in a pencil skirt. Driven by pure professionalism, the Working Girl excels at the office, intimidates her male coworkers, sacrifices her personal life to work extra hours and, of course, would never, ever get caught using an office Xerox to make illicit photocopies of her butt.

The latest star to take on a working woman role is Rachel McAdams, who we'll get to see play a hotshot morning show producer when her latest film, "Morning Glory" premieres this week. And today, we're taking a look at all the ladies who paved the way before her, with a list of our favorite working girls throughout cinematic history. Which of these actresses would we most want to share a cubicle with?

1. Anne Hathaway in "The Devil Wears Prada"

Poor Anne sacrifices everything—her love life, her self-esteem, and even her deep, abiding love of onion bagels—in the service of an evil editor who in no way is based on Anna Wintour, at a magazine which in no way resembles Vogue. Her only solace? A closet full of stolen samples from fashion photo shoots.

2. Julia Roberts in "Erin Brockovich"

Julia won an Oscar for her excellent portrayal of real-life go-getter Erin Brockovich, who took down an environmentally-poisonous corporation using nothing but hard work, keen investigation...and her boobs.

3. Maggie Gyllenhaal in "Secretary"

This might be what people mean when they talk about a "hostile work environment." Maggie plays a secretary to the sadistic-but-weirdly-sexy James Spader, who punishes her proofreading errors by spanking her. Not exactly our recipe for workplace romance, but hey, whatever tickles you.

4. Gwyneth Paltrow in "Iron Man"

Tony Stark might be Iron Man, but he'd be nothing without the cool intellect and devoted assistance of Gwyneth's Pepper Potts.

5. Scarlett Johansson in "Scoop"

It's a credit to Scarlett's acting skills that despite being one of the most gorgeous women on the whole damn planet, she still managed to make us buy her performance as an overeager journalism student who stumbles onto an aristocratic scandal. (The doofy glasses helped.)

6. Sanaa Lathan in "Something New"

Sanaa plays a busy lawyer with a classic Working Girl conundrum: pursuing a career at the expense of her love life. Good thing she's got Simon Baker to, er, landscape her yard, if you know what we mean.

7. Christina Applegate in "Anchorman"

Starring opposite Will Ferrell as a plucky newscaster, Christina's go-getter role can best be summed up as follows: "Mr. Harken, this city needs its news. And you are going to deprive them of that because I have breasts? EXQUISITE BREASTS?"

8. Katherine Heigl in "Knocked Up"

Katherine is a struggling entertainment reporter when she has a one-night stand with a slacker played by Seth Rogen. The good news: It turns out that carrying Seth Rogen's babyspawn is great for your career.

9. Melanie Griffith in "Working Girl"

Despite being an under-appreciated secretary with blond hair and a breathy voice, Melanie's Tess McGill is the ultimate driven career girl: a secret finance whiz who uses duplicity to get her foot in the door on Wall Street, pitch a major merger between two companies, and—of course—seduce Harrison Ford while she's at it.

10. Zooey Deschanel in "(500) Days of Summer"

It's never really clear just what Zooey's professional role is at the greeting-card company where she meets Joseph Gordon-Levitt... but if we had to guess, it's probably something like "Senior Manager of Epic, Soul-Rending Heartbreak."

Just for fun, Rosalind Russell and her snazzy outfit in His Girl Friday:

Source

Good job MTV, I actually like this list. Are they missing anyone? (besides obviously Peggy and Joan if this included TV).

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