List of lists

It's the end of the year and magazines are throwing out their lists of successes and failures. In the spirit of the season, these are a few of my favorite things:

Fortune's list of 101 dumbest moments in business Among them:

Nine-year-old Shea O'Gorman sends a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs suggesting ideas for improving her beloved iPod Nano, including adding onscreen lyrics so people can sing along. She gets back a letter from Apple's legal counsel stating that the company doesn't accept unsolicited ideas and telling her not to send in any more suggestions.

It's not brain surgery - The state Department of Health fines Rhode Island Hospital $50,000 when, for the third time in less than a year, one of its doctors operates on the wrong side of a patient's head.

In a cost-cutting move, Circuit City lays off all sales associates paid 51 cents or more per hour above an "established pay range" - essentially firing 3,400 of its top performers in one fell swoop. Over the next eight months Circuit City's share price drops by almost 70%.

The New York Times' list of the Top 10 Books of the Year and the best movies of the year.

Businessweek has it's list of the best business books of 2007.

Newsweek's best movies of 2007, best action movies and best books of 2007.

The search engine's have their Top 10 lists too: the top query on Google was iPhone and surprising Club Penguin (more about this in a subsequent post). Not surprisingly, Yahoo's users were more interested in the Spears family and actresses. Ask.com's top 10 searches included MySpace and Google (why would you go to a search engine to search for information about another search engine ?)

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