让世界更平些：怎么查看昨日头条新闻？

Today , china top blogger Keso claimed on his blog  http://blog.donews.com/keso that : Good bye Donews . This is a breaking news for keso , donews and keso's fans , about in amount of 20 thousands fans .

Someone release a hearsay that keso will join Douban , but keso denied that later.

It seemed that after donews was been acquired by mop , one years ago , keso have a idea to leave , for sake of him does not accept donews will lose it's independ status .

from http://www.domolo.com/it

30 原IT经理世界总编辑，广源传媒CEO王超近期将离职

    If we lost google , we have yahoo,ask and live ,and so on. But we have no substitute for alexa .So somebody want to become a substitute to alexa , in china .

    www.chinarank.org.cn is one of them .

    Chinarank , chinese name "中国网站排名网" , was sponsored  by China Internet Association with technique support by ZhongSou . ZhongSou ,now , had already fullly retreat from the battle search engine market in china , turn to person portal and local portal .

    Huang ChengQing ,  Secretary of CIA , said that chinarank.org.cn still under test run for 3 months , and after that period , they will made adjusted or even shut down chinarank.org.cn according to common people opinions.

    reference:
   

中国式Alexa站-中国网站排名网(www.chinarank.org.cn)

Yahoo China SEO XieWen dismissed or resign ?

 

 

 

It is said that china internet market still been on " 春秋战国 " period , which means the market offers lot's of opportunities and , mean while, much more companys pursue and want to dominate in the market.  Yahoo china is one of them with it's subtle current status.

 

After MaYun's genius strategies "合纵连横" , Yahoo China with Alibaba and taobao had become to a giant who had  a strong  ambition  to win in each market segments , such as search engine , e-commercial business , online auction and even logistics delivery by the cooperation with EMS.

 

Mayun got all he want except on search engine market. From now on , I do not know what is Yahoo China's focus. If one company lost it's focus , it will blind and may be surpassed by it rival quickly .

 

When the end of year coming, with no clear and brillant signal of Yahoo China , MaYun was got into vaxation . He should to do somethings .

 

 

Today I get news about : XieWen , new ceo of yahoo china been dismissed .

 

 

If things I could not do well , at least , I could make a big bong .

 

 

 

I , myself a tiny grass root , have no chance to touch more internal clues about this event .  Though , from the public article's we could make a sense of .........

 

1) " 第四次创业，马云需要的是追随者、执行者，不是合作者。  " , We had to admitted that MaYun is a leader with strong vision , not a manager .

 

2)  

 

           As above slice , copyed from xiewen's web 2.0 speech ppt , shows that xie had it's own idea about how to development a web 2.0 website .

 

           What  could we learn from this event ? much more ...

 

 

further reading :

                 vote about this event.

 

                 多么乐智能网页快照系统

 

and more :

 

 

< 互联网 |健康 |教育 >

快速阅读 精华 最新

• ++> 1 盛大启动新一轮融资路演 2
• --> 2 搬家还是抢劫？关于百度空间博客搬家的三言两语 2
• ++> 3 陈天桥的选择 盛大抛出了他所持有的新浪股份 2
• --> 4 什么是DFS（分布式文件系统） 2
• --> 5 风投推手助跑以色列IT创业者 2
• ++> 6 集合 腾讯 QQ 相关新闻即时报 2
• ++> 7 Google中国涉嫌垃圾邮件营销！ 2
• --> 8 好创意并不等于好市场 2
• --> 9 声援张钰清洁影视圈民间联盟成立之檄文 2
• --> 10 趋势科技携手百度杀毒频道，全天候杀毒不打烊 2
• --> 11 黄健翔博客大骂吴虹飞 怒斥记者文章纯属编造 2
• --> 12 从“乞讨网”看见什么 2
• --> 13 用“求助网”代替乞讨网 2
• ++> 14 6名网络换客启动 要用300本图书换一所学校(图) 2
• ++> 15 专访微软在线服务副总: 挑战Google受众最重要 2
• ++> 16 中移动二维码在移动订房方面的应用 2
• --> 17 高通公司宣布与意大利电信达成协议 2
• ++> 18 巴伦周刊:Google股价被高估 2
• ++> 19 新闻背后:Q币冲击人民币稿出笼始末 2
• --> 20 微软副总裁:微软前途在于虚拟化和64位计算 2
• ++> 21 传中城网络参与开发荷花池电子商务 2
• ++> 22 企业网站已死:解读中小企业网站的死穴 2
• --> 23 用IT技术玩转B2B直复营销 2
• ++> 24 本周数字 2
• ++> 25 四川在线分类广告效果好 2
• --> 26 网络招聘也有依赖症 三成人求职时每天离不开招聘.. 2
• --> 27 居民楼里招游戏“枪手” 2
• ++> 28 以机构融合促进数字融合 2
• --> 29 以文学之名：Web 2.0 赚钱了 2

 

 

 

Rss reader in china

BlogBus.com get venture capital about 3-5 million USD

After successfully got venture capital investment from JAIC, ranked fourth of japan VC list , and Cyber Agent , an internet advertisement company, CEO of blogbus.com post an news at his blog , talk to public that " We can say something now ".

It is precious for one in china internet industry to " Keep silence ,Just to do something " , DuYi , blogbus ceo maybe one of them.

" We can say something now " , have another meaning is that we had a longer time to say nothing . It must have something problems in one company if they have nothing available to public .

Now , blogbus done both.

For me , known blogbus as a blog service provider or BSP about 2 years ago , at that time the blog begin burst in china market . Nevertheless , I did not become one of their user only because I had registered several other blog , such as blog.donew.com ,blog.csdn.net and vox.com .

blogbus did take neither the advantaged market position nor technological , it good cause , at least blog have and resisted their own style and occupied deserve market share .

from , china IT market watch

further reading:

• -->1 中文分词实现网络搜索习惯到站内搜索的良性转移 2
• -->2 智能化在站内搜索中的应用 2
• -->3 网站排名基本原则 2
• -->4 门户新闻再编辑的空间和使命 2
• -->5 光棍节 让我们告别单身 2
• -->6 岳贵:也谈下搜索引擎，说下SEO 2
• -->7 纵横冯皓璇:网上房展占有市场的份额会越来越大 2
• -->8 康盛CEO戴志康在厦门大学管理学院做创业报告 2
• -->9 《奇酷游戏》摆脱光棍节阴影好去处 2
• -->10 落实4大重点促进电子商务的普及和健康发展 2
• -->11 校园COS大赛第二场11月11日举行(图) 2
• -->12 陈天桥:卖新浪股票只为还债 盛大或将进入新浪 2
• -->13 上海IT青年创业项目展开幕 43家风投扎堆寻项目 2
• 14 “拍卖历史”——凝固历史瞬间影像价值的升华 2
• -->15 漫话千龙博客（26）频道开放175天三段变化分析 2
• -->16 视频网站的沙海迷局 2
• -->17 中国概念股个别发展 季报引导短线走势 2
• -->18 如何控制局域网内的BT下载、聊天、流量 2
• -->19 TOM在线第三季少赚59% 2
• -->20 反戈一击――流氓软件之父的嬗变之谜 2
• 
  

chinese version : Does qihoo should pay off for yahoo china's misplay of this year?

Yesterday , china famous blogger keso post a ironical blog about the quarrel between yahoo china and qihoo on his blog , the blog titled :　An international slobber war . 三言二拍：跨国口水

further reading :　http://tech.qihoo.com/zt/zt001.html?id=109011

• -->1 赵盾：事业忠于梦想 2
• -->2 新闻集团携手软银 建MySpace首个亚洲子站 2
• -->3 陈艺光：诚信是一种信仰 2
• -->4 龙口粉丝在美国被日本人抢注 2
• -->5 中国电子商务：多元价值中的个人实现 2
• -->6 邓小平再登时代杂志亚洲英雄榜 巩俐李小龙入选 2
• 7 雅虎搜索营销引入“蓝海战略” 2
• -->8 中兴在非再淘3000万美金 2
• -->9 盛大出售所持新浪部分股份 2
• -->10 盛大从可进可退到有得有失 2
• -->11 信产部公布SP整治结果:腾讯、TOM均榜上有名 2
• -->12 新江湖OL再传喜讯 全新版本即将推出 2
• -->13 直播:网易华南IT沙龙 网络音乐的反盗版新机遇 2
• -->14 网吧联盟专访 学院路中华网吧详细介绍 2
• -->15 盛大抛售370万股新浪股票 控制新浪的梦想破灭 2
• 16 庆祝记者节—特别报道《新闻背后的故事》 2
• -->17 赴美签证今日起须网上填表面签须交原件 2
• -->18 浙江在线采用OBLOG博客程序 2
• 19 学生作业网上救助效率高 2
• -->20 QQ币的疑点:汇率基本形成 流通性不成问题
• 
  

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  Jump to: navigation, search

http://blog.51ielts.com/user1/507/index.html

    For other articles with similar names, see The World Is Flat (disambiguation).

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Image:Worldisflat.gif
Original 1st edition cover
Author     Thomas L. Friedman
Country     United States
Language     English
Subject(s)     Globalization
Publisher     Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Released     April 5, 2005
Media Type     Print (Hardcover and Paperback) and audio-CD
Pages     488
ISBN     ISBN 0374292884

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century is a best-selling book by Thomas L. Friedman analyzing the progress of globalization with an emphasis on the early 21st century. It was first released in 2005 and was later released as an "updated and expanded" edition in 2006.
Contents
[hide]

    * 1 Overview
    * 2 Criticism
    * 3 Trivia
    * 4 Editions
    * 5 References
    * 6 See Also
    * 7 External links
          o 7.1 Reviews

[edit] Overview

Friedman believes the world is flat in the sense that the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries are leveling. The book cites many examples in which companies in India and China are becoming part of large global complex supply chains that extend across oceans, providing everything from service representatives and X-ray interpretation to component manufacturing. Friedman describes how these changes are made possible through intersecting technologies, particularly the Internet. Friedman criticizes those who resist these changes, arguing that global change is inevitable. He also warns that companies that are now part of a supply chain may eventually want to build a supply chain of their own. As he puts it, "they are racing us to the top." The World is Flat is part global reporting, part theory and reflection about how the world got here and what the ramifications are for education, government policy and readers.

In Chapter 11, "The Unflat World," Friedman discusses his philosophy of history: "I am a technological determinist ! . . . I believe that capabilities create intentions. . . . But . .  I am not a historical determinist". He notes that there are still three billion people who still live in an "unflat world" unaffected by the technologies and socioeconomic changes, sometimes this is caused by poverty. He addresses what these three billion people--as well as their governments and the world's businesses--need to do in order to join the "flat world."

[edit] Criticism

The central image of the book―the "flat" world―has been criticized as an "inaccurate and empty image"[1] that does not suit Friedman's own argument. For instance, some critics argue that while Friedman points out that the world is increasingly inter-connected, his image may suggest the opposite, as a flat world would be harder to navigate than a spherical one. However, Friedman more likely meant the metaphor to imply the "playing field is flat" in the competitive sense.

There has also been criticism of Freidman's use of the flat earth theory in his book. Friedman perpetuates the myth that Christopher Columbus set out to prove the world was round, while his contemporaries believed it was flat and that his ships would sail off the edge of the Earth. This false idea was begun by a biography of Columbus written by Washington Irving, and many have felt that Friedman should know better. However, even some critics of the Columbus reference have still been subject to the popular myth of the flat-earth era. The well-respected publication 'The Economist', in a review of Friedman's book, stated incorrectly that "Mr Friedman claims that this proved Columbus's thesis that the world is round. It did nothing of the kind. Proof that the world is round came only in 1522, when the sole surviving ship from Ferdinand Magellan's little fleet returned to Spain."[1] In actuality, few people in 1492 believed the Earth to be flat.

For whom doesn't know Ferdinand Magellan's (Fernão Magalhães) was Portuguese and not Spanish!!!

[edit] Trivia

The book was first published with a jacket that bore a painting, called "I Told You So", depicting a sailing vessel falling off the edge of the world. The week the book came out it was learned that the publisher had not obtained the artist's permission to use the painting. Farrar, Straus and Giroux printed a new cover using an image of the earth literally flattened like a coin from the Corbis stock photography library. In an interesting twist, because the book had rocketed to the top of the nonfiction New York Times Best Seller list, the new cover also includes the text "National Bestseller", something common for paperbacks but highly unusual for first edition hardbound covers.

[edit] Editions

    
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The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Hardcover)
by Thomas L. Friedman "No one ever gave me directions like this on a golf course before: "Aim at either Microsoft or IBM..." (more)
Key Phrases: triple convergence, reform retail, flattening world, United States, New York, Berlin Wall (more...)
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Now Available: The updated and expanded edition of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, featuring more than a hundred pages of fresh reporting and commentary from Thomas L. Friedman.

Only on Amazon: Check out other interviews and musical performances on Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher, presented by UPS and Cingular.

Customers who bought this item also bought

    * The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman
    * Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
    * 1776 by David McCullough
    * On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com

Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim, in his new book, The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to.

What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.) Friedman tells his eye-opening story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns will know well, and also with a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. His book is an excellent place to begin. --Tom Nissley

Where Were You When the World Went Flat?

Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we'd happily have peppered him with questions about The World Is Flat for hours. Read our interview to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?")

The Essential Tom Friedman

The World is Flat
Thomas Friedman

Read December 2005

Thomas Friedman has written a fat, breathless, energetic, pointed, compelling, flawed book that may just have the right effect for the wrong reasons. The short version of his message is that, as America grows lazy, the world grows restless to usurp America's crown (or at least to shatter it). This is not news to any immigrant, but it may just be to many Americans. And if this Yourdon-esque book is what people are stuffing in each others' stockings at Christmas or discussing over canapes at cocktail parties, perhaps that is for the best (at least for America).

I have never especially liked Friedman's New York Times op-ed pieces. His genius lies in finding a compelling anecdote, usually in the form of an person of allegoric proportion; from this, however, he has a marked tendency to extrapolate wildly. While this can be suitably entertaining, sometimes in a rubber-necking sense, it should not be confused with actual social science. This book, then, is better and worse than Friedman's essays: better because he has the space and time to weave a stronger basis for his arguments, and worse because he almost fails to do so. Instead of one anecdote we get several, but that still doesn't make it social science. And just as hard cases make bad laws, compelling anecdotes can make bad policy (which dictum can be taken as a short history of protectionism).

The book's superficial flaws are many. For the first third or so of the book, Craig Mundie of Microsoft could fairly demand co-authorship credit, so often does Friedman quote him. In general, Friedman rarely meets a quote he doesn't like (or so it seems). Carly Fiorina is another hero for her work integrating Hewlett-Packard; yet at least the short-term support for this is pathetically bad. (A charitable reading of Fiorina's problems at HP might be not with her ideas but with her handling of their corporate culture, but Friedman neglects to discuss any of this. And as with HP, so with the world at large, as I discuss below.) He is sometimes in such a rush that he even fails to get some basic facts right: mushing IT details, misunderstanding the ``law of large numbers'', thinking a post-doc is a degree, mixing up Hindi and Hindu, and so on. And his writing grates with its never-ending repetition of the notion of flatness (enough, already), his sometimes juvenile style, and the word-play, which eventually becomes all too much.

It is, however, unfair to take Friedman to task for details; that is not his strength nor, to his fair, his point. What he does well is present a strong case for globalization along classically liberal lines. His critique of the anti-globalization movement strikes me (doubtless because I share his analysis) as being spot-on. His coverage of the Gates Foundation's programs is very cogent. Some of his anecdotes, such as his discussion of UPS, are very strong. His moon-shot proposal is renewable energy, which is rather less sexy but far more urgent. Friedman has written is an excellent primer for the uninitiated to the world in which technology rewrites rules.

Despite its flaws, Friedman's book will no doubt be read by the great and good. If means justify the ends, and if the ends do not end up being undesirable (after all, one reaction to flatness is to erect walls), then these flaws will not matter. Indeed, given the wide audience this book was bound to have, I wished he had taken on many more issues, such as the paradoxical nature of US educational visas (which US embassies must enforce), which force students to ``prove'' (as I once stood in a line and did) that they will return home upon finishing their studies.

While Friedman doesn't take on visa policies very much, he does briefly tackle the centrality of the modern university in America's dominance. But what will it take for these institutions to remain competitive? It's intriguing to ponder this: the American economy is as strong as it is thanks to several characteristics: the free flow of capital, the rule of law, and a liberal bankruptcy process. But universities don't go bankrupt; indeed, as institutions, they are remarkably conservative, taking few risks (in part because they must offer a largely homogenous product to their audience). Will a future innovation in American higher education be a notion of bankruptcy of significant universities?

Like all great polemicists, Friedman pays just enough attention to counter-arguments to lull the careless reader. But reading this book, you would think cities like Bangalore are vast paradises of empowered technophiles. How many Indians speak English? Use PCs? Can afford a Dell? Want to answer phones for the rest of their life? Yes, Friedman acknowledges, there are problems: poverty, illiteracy, disease, and so on. But exactly how these problems interact with his glorious vision is hard to say. (And for that matter, Friedman assures us that all these jobs being exported are not really a cause for concern, because they do lead to a balance of trade (all those hackers in Bangalore are drinking Coke and running Windows on Dells). But for how long?)

This leads us to a discussion of the book's deeper flaws:

    * Friedman's brief history of globalization divides it into three phases: first by governments (upto about 1800), then by companies (until recently), and now by individuals. This is extremely neat but so utterly wrong as to be dangerous. The first phase was never about governments; what of the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Indus Valley, or anyone else? The second phase is most dramatically refuted by the Dutch and British companies of the Indies; indeed, in a clear reversal of Friedman's clean timeline, the ``British'' ruled India through a company until a populist Mutiny (or War of Independence) made that no longer tenable. And so on. Unfortunately, facts merely get in the way of Friedman's point, so he conveniently fails to mention any of them.
    * If Globalization 3.0 is about individuals (and for sure, it is), and this erodes the centrality of government, then what exactly is the role of government? Why, for that matter, should government even be involved in this process? I ask this not to be a contrarian libertarian, but because I'm baffled by the contradiction inherent in this book: it spends hundreds of pages telling us about how the ``flattening'' of the earth has freed us from national boundaries, and the rest of it telling us what governments (which are defined by those very boundaries) should do. So, like, is the genie out of the bottle, or not?
    * Friedman is so obsessed with bits that he completely forgets about atoms. This book is largely about services and to a smaller extent about manufacturing. But even as a computer scientist, I must confess that bits usually live only to serve atoms; but goods rarely show up in this account, and natural resources are non-existent (ironically, given his desire to make renewable energy a national goal).
    * There are two kinds of atoms: those you produce for others, and those you need to sustain yourself (including your ability to process bits). These are called infrastructure. And while Friedman comments now and then about power outages in India, he fails to acknowledge (or even recognize?) the massive infrastructural needs of the world he envisions and their distinct non-flatness.
    * Friedman is so focused on India, China, Eastern Europe and the US that he forgets the rest of the world. Africa gets a sad acknowledgment, and no more. I don't recall reading anything about South America. But his myopia is especially unfortunate when it comes to Western Europe and Australia. I see Western Europe as being in the midst of an experiment about the nature of lives people want to lead; ten years from now, when India's zippies have their suburban homes, cars and 2.2 children, might they ask exactly whom they are working so hard for? America will provide no model for a response, but Western Europe, which Friedman ignores with a sad shrug (akin to The Economist), might. Australia is even more interesting: it has a thoroughly modern, open economy, an increasingly diverse society, and the advantage of geography relative to Asia.

No, the world is not flat. As Richard Florida has already argued, network effects matter, as much to people as to abstract standards; he tells us, more compellingly, that the world is ``spiky''. And so on the arguments will go.

Friedman has given us a compelling verbal metaphor, and forced each of us to answer his focal question: ``When did you realize the world was flat?'' I may not believe the world is flat, but I did have one epochal moment that reshaped my imagination. I was about fifteen when my friend Al Vinjamur took me to the HP office in Bangalore to meet his cousin. We all knew the HP office: it was the one with its own satellite dish! But who knew for what? Anyway, Al's cousin (who worked in that most dazzling environment, the cubicle!) snuck us in after work and sat us at a terminal. He showed us a little bit of Unix. And then he showed us the same commands again...except they ran a little slower. That's when he dropped the bombshell: he was running those commands on a computer in England. It was an unforgettable experience, just watching that directory listing.

Thanks to the Fislers for loaning the book (and demanding that I read it in three days!).

The World is Flat

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    SPEAKER:
Thomas L. Friedman
Foreign Affairs Columnist,
The New York Times
   

ABOUT THE LECTURE:
Chances are good that Bhavya in Bangalore will read your next x-ray, or as Thomas Friedman learned first hand, “Grandma Betty in her bathrobe” will make your Jet Blue plane reservation from her Salt Lake City home. In “Globalization 3.0,” Friedman contends, people from far-flung places will become principal players in the marketplace.

In his latest book, The World is Flat, Friedman describes the unplanned cascade of technological and social shifts that effectively leveled the economic world, and “accidentally made Beijing, Bangalore and Bethesda next-door neighbors.” Today, “individuals and small groups of every color of the rainbow will be able to plug and play.” Friedman’s list of “flatteners” includes the fall of the Berlin Wall; the rise of Netscape and the dotcom boom that led to a trillion dollar investment in fiber optic cable; the emergence of common software platforms and open source code enabling global collaboration; and the rise of outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining and insourcing. Friedman says these flatteners converged around the year 2000, and “created a flat world: a global, web-enabled platform for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time, distance, geography and increasingly, language.” At the very moment this platform emerged, three huge economies materialized -- those of India, China and the former Soviet Union --“and three billion people who were out of the game, walked onto the playing field.” A final convergence may determine the fate of the U.S. in this final chapter of globalization. A “political perfect storm,” as Friedman describes it -- the dotcom bust, the attacks of 9/11, and the Enron scandal -- “distract us completely as a country.” Just when we need to face the fact of globalization and the need to compete in a new world, “we’re looking totally elsewhere.”

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Thomas L. Friedman won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, his third Pulitzer for The New York Times. He became the paper's foreign-affairs columnist in 1995. Previously, he served as chief economic correspondent in the Washington bureau and before that he was the chief White House correspondent.

Friedman joined The Times in 1981 and was appointed Beirut bureau chief in 1982. In 1984 he was transferred from Beirut to Jerusalem, where he served as Israel bureau chief until 1988. Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel).

His book, From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989), won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 1989 and The Lexus and the Olive Tree (2000) won the 2000 Overseas Press Club award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy and has been published in 27 languages.

Born in Minneapolis, Friedman received a B.A. in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University in 1975. In 1978 he received a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford.

Friedman's site at The New York Times

NOTES ON THE VIDEO (Time Index):
Video length is 1:15:04.

MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest introduces Thomas L. Friedman.

At 3:05, Friedman begins.

At 48:05, Q&A begins.