News & Links List

"William Morris Launching Agency 3.0 With Amp’d Founder Adderton"

"Why Facebook Is Even Bigger than You Think" Fast Company

"Anatomy Of A Failure: Lessons Learned" by Paul Bragiel, founder of Meetro.

"TweetWire, TweetWire.com is a neo-newspaper that grabs the freshest links posted to Twitter."

"This Week on the GigaOM Show: Cleantech VC Vinod Khosla"
Old interview from a couple months ago but interesting.

"ASU researchers explore bacteria-driven diesel fuel"

"Giving Until It Hurts"... Stephen Linton

Great article in The Washington Post on Dr. Stephen Linton and his efforts to help the people of North Korea. I met Stephen Linton almost 15 years ago when my parents befriended him and supported the early days of the Eugene Bell Foundation. I remember one fund-raiser at our home where Linton was showing a video of one of his trips inside North Korea during the mid-90s. These people were basically eating grass to sustain themselves. It was and still is systematic starvation of its people. And the concentration camps there are a systematic killing of its citizens.

Giving Until It Hurts
For a decade, Stephen Linton has been battling an epidemic of tuberculosis -- and the world's most obstinate bureaucracy -- in North Korea, a country few foreigners are allowed to even see

STEPHEN LINTON IS BEING HUSTLED THROUGH THE DARKENING CORRIDORS of Hadan Tuberculosis Hospital in western North Korea. It took him three hours to get here from Pyongyang, the capital, which is linked tenuously to Hadan by 50 miles of deeply rutted and washed-out roads. A diminutive man with a craggy face and patrician silhouette, Linton has just finished unloading a cache of medical supplies, and now the hospital director, who wears a white lab coat and a head covering that could double for a baker's hat, wants him to observe a surgery. But they'll have to hurry: It's already late in the November day and, in a country where electricity is tightly rationed, a surgery's outcome can hinge on how much sunlight is pouring through operating room windows... (full article)

"Black Hat Tariffs – The Black Hat Taxes On Consumer Internet Companies Are On The Rise"

Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf, has a good post on Black Hat Taxes:

Black Hat Tariffs – The Black Hat Taxes on consumer Internet companies are on the rise
Web sites are spending more than a quarter of their time fighting bad guys

I can speak from my three years at GoingOn Networks. Besides business development and product development as my primary duties, it seemed that my other role was cleanup boy. My last year more and more of my time in between real work was going through our system and deleting social network spam. Fake users, fake posts, and fake networks. It almost became my hobby. Our developers implemented various barriers, but sometimes you just had to manually go into our backend and delete trackback spam and spam networks on our social media platform. I won't even go into the hacker attacks (i.e. distributed denial-of-service attacks). I must have wasted hundreds of hours doing this.

Anyway, check out Auren's blog post.

News & Links List

"Khosla's Conspiracy" WSJ

"Google Health: A Quick Hands-On Look" TechCrunch

"Why Twitter Matters
Can the fledgling microblogging service become a social media powerhouse to rival giants like Facebook—or will it be gobbled up?"
BusinessWeek's Stephen Baker had this go up at the same day as my Twitter op-ed. Pretty good timing for both of us:)

"The Social Media Gender Gap
According to a Rapleaf study, while both sexes still use social networking sites in huge numbers, women are the ones holding down the fort" by Auren Hoffman

"Report: Apple’s market share of PCs over $1,000 hits 66%"

"Grid Networks Gets Nod From Comcast"

"Doc Rivers and the ugly side of ubuntu"

I love ESPN's Bill Simmons. He has a great post on the horrible coach of the Boston Celtics, Doc Rivers. I'm not a Celtics fan, but I will say that they should be doing so much better and shouldn't be leading most people to assume that the Detroit Pistons will win the Eastern Conference Finals against them. I've never seen any NBA coach make zero adjustments as a team moves through a playoff series. If they don't get to the finals, the Celtics should really get a new coach.

News & Links List

"Fro-yo chain debuts in Bay Area
'SURVIVOR' INVESTS IN KOREAN CHAIN"

"Silicon Valley Rumor: Microsoft to Buy Yahoo Search and Then Facebook"

"Blogging 2.0: It’s All About The User"

"The Most Popular Twitter Apps According to the Blogosphere"

"Web2.0 Expo Keynotes"

"Top 10 tech trends: Smart phones, alternative energies, Boomer technologies"
Churchill Club's annual event

"Trash-to-ethanol firms get digging"

"China bloggers cook up quake conspiracies"

"How to Enrage a Democrat"

"Best of the Web Today - May 16, 2008" WSJ

You Probably Think This Speech Is About You
President Bush spoke before Israel's Knesset yesterday. According to Barack Obama, Bush's speech was a "political attack" on Barack Obama, as the Jerusalem Post reports:

"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack," [Obama] said in a statement. "Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power--including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy--to pressure countries like Iran and Syria."

Obama added that Bush was aware that the candidate had never supported talking to terrorists, "and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

Other Democrats backed Obama and bashed Bush. Politico quotes this statesmanlike pronouncement from Sen. Joe Biden: "This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement."

Fox News reports that "even Hillary Clinton . . . piled on":

"President Bush's comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous, on the face of it and especially in light of his failures in foreign policy," she said. "This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced."

So, what exactly did President Bush say? Here's the relevant passage from his speech:

There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is--the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace, and America utterly rejects it.

Note what is absent from the speech: any reference to Barack Obama, to any other Democrat or to the Democratic Party. As we noted in 2006, when a speech by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prompted a similar response from Sen. Harry Reid, the unnamed U.S. senator to whom the president alludes is William Borah of Idaho, who was elected in 1907 and served until his death in 1940. Borah was a Republican.

So what are we to make of the pricky defensiveness of Obama and his fellow Democrats in the face of the president's speech?

The cynical interpretation is that Democrats have concluded Bush is so unpopular that opposing any position he takes will redound to their political benefit. By this logic, if Bush says "God bless America," voters can be expected to rally behind the fellow who says "God damn America."

But it's also possible that Obama & Co. are sincere--that when they hear the president talking about countenancing hatred, appeasing terrorists and breaking ties with Israel, they think: He's talking about us!

If Obama agrees with Bush that terrorists can't be appeased, he could say so, or refrain from saying anything. If he disagrees, he could put forward an argument to the contrary. Instead he whines about an imaginary Bush "attack" on him. Maybe--maybe--this is politically expedient. Certainly it is deeply unserious.

Spring Cleaning My Blog

Well, it's a little past spring, but it was time to finally clean my blog of some dead links and bad formatting. Since I neglected my blog for a year and a half and started up again after I left GoingOn Networks last October, it's been fun blogging again and writing more op-eds.

After a few friendly emails, I realized that I never updated my RSS feeds and blogroll, so I slowly started doing this a couple months ago. Today I finally finished going through my primary blogroll and deleted all the dead links and stagnant blogs.

If you have any suggestions for improvements, please let me know. Thanks!

@ Seesmic... Spielberg and Ford

Just read that Stephen Spielberg and Harrison Ford were on Seesmic through Loic Le Meur's Twitter. Very cool. This type of celebrity tracking and interaction is great for Seesmic, and an avenue that more celebrities should take. Imagine Paris Hilton on Seesmic for a few minutes everyday? Or Warren Buffet downloading his thoughts once a week?

Loic has more from his blog, "Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, George Lucas in Seesmic this morning," and Guardian Journalist Jemima Kiss has more here.

Follow Up On Nontrepreneur Op-ed... "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"

My old professor from Columbia University and advisor of a couple of my ventures, Michael Crow, sent me a link to the TED Talk below after reading my recent op-ed. He's now President of Arizona State University, and doing some amazing projects and programs for ASU and its community.

Anyway, check out Sir Ken Robinson's talk, "Do schools kill creativity?"


"Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it."

Twitter, Tina Fey, and the Future of Micro-Blogging

My op-ed at Mashable went up today. It's a light piece that I had fun with. Thanks to Jill for editing and TechCrunch's Mark Hendrickson, who provided his feedback. Check it out!

Twitter, Tina Fey, and the Future of Micro-Blogging

When the sitcom “30 Rock” began its run, some of my friends weren’t wild about Tina Fey, the show’s star and creator, saying she should “stay in the writer’s room” or that she “looked too mousy.” A few months later, however, those same guys were talking about how hot she was. Fey has since become a mainstream darling. Twitter is Web 2.0’s Tina Fey. Not so attractive initially, Twitter got better the more you looked at it. Case in point: Although I tested Twitter as soon as it launched, I eventually ended up sitting on my account because I wasn’t enamored by early adopters and Silicon Valley geeks listening to each other talk. Today, that situation has changed: While the echo chamber still exists, Twitter seems to be reaching a critical mass that will push it into the mainstream... (full op-ed)


UPDATE: From Compete's blog, "Twitter Traffic Explosion: Who’s behind it all?"

VentureBeat's MG Siegler has a related post, "Mainstream imminent? Twitter traffic almost doubled from February to April." I wonder where the idea for these posts came from? :) Probably coincidence.

UPDATE II: Learning 2.0 has a response and more thoughts here.

News & Links List

"The Top 50 Applications (for Android)"

"See The Big Picture"
'This is the first in a series of posts about rethinking your personal brand.'

"Icahn May Launch Proxy Fight with Yahoo"

"'Crime' and Ethanol" by Chuck Colson

"John McCain fleshes out his climate policy, draws contrast with Obama"

"Greens Going for the Green" Best of the Web (WSJ)

Even with the human tragedy of Cyclone Nargis still unfolding in Burma, environmentalists aren't wasting any time linking the disaster to global warming. Or at least one isn't: Al Gore. Citing the deadly Burmese storm and recent storms in China and Bangladesh, he declared on National Public Radio: "We're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming."

There's just one problem -- it's not clear there's any link between climate change and hurricane numbers or intensity. The number of big storms has been falling, not rising. As for intensity, researchers led by Christopher Landsea of the National Hurricane Center have found that earlier generations of hurricane-watchers using inferior satellite imagery incorrectly classified many storms as weaker than they actually were. After correcting for this mismeasurement, the "increase" in storm intensity since the 1970s nearly disappears.

But Mr. Gore is perhaps too busy these days to follow the science closely. In April, a London-based company he chairs began selling shares in its so-called Global Sustainability Fund to small investors in New Zealand, following a similar offer to investors in Australia (interestingly, out of sight of the U.S. press). He was also a conspicuously invoked presence when the Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins this month announced a new $500 million "green growth" fund in partnership with Mr. Gore's London firm. Asked by the San Jose Mercury News if Mr. Gore had been helpful in raising money, co-manager John Denniston replied: "That's not been his primary responsibility."

Uh huh. Mr. Gore's primary responsibility, from the looks of it, is to spread alarm about global warming and create the political conditions (subsidies, mandates) without which Kleiner's "green" energy ventures are unlikely to flourish. Expect the payoff to come next year as a new Congress and President debate global warming policy.

-- Joseph Sternberg

Addict-o-matic... Multi-site Search

Dave Pell was initially known for his blog, Davenetics, and then he launched search startup, Rollyo. Now he's created another approach to search with Addict-o-matic, where you can create your own search dashboard from every major search service that's out there.




Pretty cool. More from Dave:

"Addictomatic let's you instantly create a custom dashboard with the latest buzz on any topic - Obama, your favorite actress or TV show, your company, a sports team, a hot news item, a band, even yourself.

The site launched last week and it's been getting great feedback so far. Addictomatic searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images. It's the perfect tool to keep up with the hottest topics, perform ego searches and feed your addiction for what's up and what's now.

Search. Personalize. Bookmark.

After you search, you can personalize your results dashboard by moving around the source boxes. When you're done, bookmark the page and keep coming back to your personalized results dashboard for that search."

Digital Support Technology... Bringing Virtualization to the Desktop

Some of the core engineers from VMWare left to start a new company, Digital Support Technology over a year ago.

The Co-founder & CEO, Haiyang Wang, is a friend, so I'm posting about this seed-stage, under the radar company since they just released their first but uneventful press release, "Digital Support Technology Releases New Computer Support Automation Utility."

They are bringing virtualization technology that VMWare applied to the enterprise to the desktop PC/Mac, and specifically in the area of automated PC support. I've seen their demo and have to say that it's quite cool.

They are backed by Min Zhu, Co-founder of WebEx, and Feng Deng, Co-founder of NetScreen, which was acquired by Juniper Networks.

"Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide?"

This was one of my favorite talks at this year's TED.


Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance, looking for hints of where her own creativity comes from. It's a wild ride with a surprise ending.

News & Links List

"Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo to leave the company"

"Cash-Burning Facebook Borrows $100mm...Because It Couldn't Sell Stock?"

"15 Websites / Services I’d Actually Pay For" by Ryan Spoon

"Want a VC deal? Go fly a kiteboard"

"Nice breakdown on SNS volume" (below)


"California Schemin'" by Jennifer Lahl, Center for Bioethics and Culture Network National Director

Random Political Cartoons

Hibox Technology... Your Virtual Receptionist

One of our portfolio companies (sorry but the Lunsford Group doesn't have a working website), Hibox Technology has recently launched their product. It's a virtual receptionist technology that greets your guests in a cool fashion while saving your company money and human capital.



So this hardware and software based solution can increase your current receptionist's productivity or simply replace this position. With rent expected to double over the next two decades, space utilization and related costs become very important in the near future.

The core idea was inspired by Brandon Birtcher, CEO of Birtcher Development & Investments, which is a leading commercial real estate developer in Orange County. Birtcher and Lunsford Group have invested in Hibox Technology. If you're interested in this product, just email me at bernard[at]lunsfordgroup.com and I'll connect you with the Hibox team.

News & Links List

"Google denies staff 'brain drain'"
(Yawn) What a no story. Google has too much talent, some fat and some mistakes. They can probably unload a lot more people to Facebook and whoever else. And how many people from Google have gone to Facebook? 6, 8, or maybe 10 out of 18,000 googlers?

"Brightkite: A bright future for mobile social networking?"

"Web 2.0, Please Meet Your Host, the Internet"
Good piece by Allan Leinwand

"The War for the Web" by Andy Kessler

"Yoono Invites & Head-to-Head Comparison with Digsby, Flock"

"A Widget's Worth
Social networkers frequenting the likes of Facebook can't get enough of these small apps, but developers are still trying to determine how to make money"

MeetmyPlanet... Tripadvisor + CouchSurfing

Today I met some young entrepreneurs from France, Mehdi and Lucila. They are currently working on a seed-stage startup called MeetmyPlanet. A simplified way to think about the site is Tripadvisor meets CouchSurfing (yes, i hate doing that).

I believe that the idea came from extending CouchSurfing's online service by providing more information and interaction beyond just hosting travelers. CouchSurfing itself is a pretty cool service since it's a nonprofit that has serviced over 530,000 people in 228 countries since 2003. It's primarily for college students and young twenty-somethings that are cost-conscious for their travels.

MeetmyPlanet started late last year and has over 10,000 users, and is targeting the same market plus a wider audience that simply wants to meet locals or fellow travelers in the same cities of destination. Anyway, check it out.

Online Communications Opening for ENOUGH

Even though the Center for American Progress is a liberal think tank, this is a good cause and a techy job opening so I'll post it here. Also my close friend, Debbie, use to work here and Alan Rosenblatt, who sent me the mass message, is a good guy :)

Company: ENOUGH
Job Title: Director of Online Communications

Summary
ENOUGH is currently seeking a Director of Online Communications who will oversee our multi-channel Communications team. As part as part of the communications management team this new position will develop and implement overall ENOUGH strategy, providing overall leadership to ENOUGH’s online national communications. The goal of this program is to use new media to expand ENOUGH’s communications reach beyond traditional audiences of policy makers and activists by proactively broadcasting our campaigns, activities, initiatives, and ideas.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to the following:

- Work with the Communications Director to develop an online strategy that supports ENOUGH’s overall goals and oversee all aspects of its implementation
- Formulate creative ideas for the amplification of messages, campaign strategies, and victories
- Working with a cross-departmental team, maintain and develop the master content calendar for all web properties and plan content that connects the day’s news to ENOUGH ideas and initiatives with consistent branding and messaging
- Direct the creation of all multi-channel communications content, programming, and publication through strategies to effectively reach diverse audiences via websites, online and mobile video, blogs, email, text messages, online social networking, and direct marketing to individual and targeted audiences
- Develop online marketing strategies and keep current with emerging web technologies
- Manage website development to incorporate new features and functionality and maintain a consistent look and feel throughout all web properties
- Along with the Communications Director, develop and manage the organization’s entire online budget, including website development and maintenance, outreach and promotion, personnel, and operations
- Supervise a growing staff and oversee outside consultants

Requirements and Qualifications:

- A bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
- Seven or more years of professional experience (including at least three years managing staff teams). Experience directing the strategy and implementation of a national communications program for an advocacy, political, or leading news organization preferred
- Proficient in online publishing systems (Drupal highly desirable). Experience with e-CRM (e-Constituent Relationship Management) software platforms and online action tools preferred
- Knowledge of social networking platforms and emerging tools for online communication and collaboration
- Proven ability to build consensus and work effectively within a cross-departmental team
- Excellent communication skills—verbal and written (particularly online); demonstrated effectiveness in persuasive writing skills supported by samples of e-mail, text messaging, and blog and campaign writing; commitment to editorial excellence
- Strong organizational skills—detailed-oriented, good follow-through; effective time management skills, including prioritizing and managing multiple tasks

Preferences:

Each applicant must provide a résumé and a cover letter telling us why you want to work at ENOUGH and how your experience prepares you for this job. Also provide links to websites that demonstrate your work.

Email to jobs@americanprogress.org

"Nuclear Matters in North Korea"

Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis has a new book out. Jim Schoff's summary:

As you know, the six-party talks have a mixed track record when it comes to achieving their goal of verifiable North Korean denuclearization, but they remain the most useful available tool for addressing this challenge. The talks are now entering a critical implementation phase during an important time of political transition in South Korea and the United States, and the demands are increasing. It is time to look for more from the six-party talks, but we cannot expect the talks to deliver desired results unless the participants are willing to empower the process in modest ways.

IFPA is pleased to announce a new publication that explores the strengths and weaknesses of the six-party process as they have revealed themselves over the last five years. It is the result of an extensive multilateral research project. This book, Nuclear Matters in North Korea, also offers practical solutions to the myriad of implementation challenges the region faces with regard to nuclear dismantlement and verification, coordinated economic assistance and investment, and striking the right balance on the security front by reconciling the prospects for (and potential friction among allies caused by) U.S.-North Korea normalization, inter-Korean reconciliation, and the development of a regional security forum.

Information about the book (including a downloadable version of the table of contents, introduction, and summary of observations and conclusions) and the project upon which it is based can be found here. This book benefited from contributions by dozens of leading experts, officials, and scholars from throughout the United States and Asia, and it was made possible by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation. We are grateful to all of them for their contributions and support.

We hope that you find this report valuable to your work, and we welcome any comments or questions that you might have. Thank you for your consideration.


Sincerely,

Jim Schoff

Assoc. Director of Asia-Pacific Studies
Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis

Annoying Trolls on Facebook

So I generally try to keep my professional contacts and people I never met on Linkedin, especially obvious sales people and recruiters, and personal contacts or professional contacts that I met up with in various settings on Facebook. A few months ago I cleaned up my Facebook friends and removed almost 60 people, and but since then I've had a couple lapses in judgment.

A few days ago for the second time I foolishly allowed a friend request from someone that seemed harmless but was trying to accumulate sales leads for their tech company. I got a couple emails from friends asking who this person was trying to friend them on Facebook and that it was one of my contacts. Annoying. This happened last month too. Embarrassing. So no more random friend requests on Facebook. Seriously, these people should troll Linkedin and not Facebook.

Guantanamo Bay Prisoner Carries Out Suicide Bombing

Informative post from The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto. I don't fully agree with the process and methods at Guantanamo Bay, but in many cases it is necessary:

From Detainee to Detonatee

"A Kuwaiti man released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2005 has carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq, his cousin told Al Arabiya television on Thursday," Reuters reports from Dubai:

A friend of Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi in Iraq informed his family that Abdullah carried out the attack in Mosul, his cousin Salem told the Dubai-based television channel.

"We were shocked by the painful news we received this afternoon . . . through a call from one of the friend's of martyr Abdullah in Iraq," said Salem al-Ajmi in a telephone interview aired by Arabiya.

He did not say when the suicide bombing happened.

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, blogger and law professor Jonathan Adler makes a manful effort at evenhandedness:

What does this prove? Nothing really, but I'm sure partisans in the debate over Guantanamo and the treatment and detention of alleged [sic] enemy combatants will see this as evidence that confirms their respective points of view. On the one hand, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi may have been a dangerous enemy combatant all along, and should never have been released. On the other hand, he may have been wrongfully detained in the first place, only to become radicalized by his (mis)treatment by the U.S. military. In other words, we either had a terrorist and let him go, or we created one.

If Adler is right, though, he has focused on a trivial difference between the two sides of the debate while ignoring both an important point of agreement and the truly crucial area of contention.

According to Adler, both sides agree that the detainees at Guantanamo are terrorists, differing only over how they became terrorists. The real distinction is that one side (the side this column is on, in case it's not clear) favors keeping the terrorists at Guantanamo so as to prevent terrorism, whereas the other side wants to release the terrorists so that they can murder more Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere.


Well, one thing I disagree with Alder is that we created a terrorist. I highly doubt that, and such stories are only in Hollywood films.

U.S. Tour of North Korean Defector

Press Release from LiNK:

US TOUR OF NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR BORN AND RAISED IN CONCENTRATION CAMP

Washington, DC – LiNK will be hosting North Korean defector Dong-hyuk SHIN on a speaking tour entitled, "Born and Raised in a Concentration Camp," from Wednesday, April 30 to Wednesday, May 14. Shin will recount his experiences as a North Korean who was born into slavery as a political prisoner in a North Korean concentration camp. After some relatives defected, Shin's father, grandparents, and uncle were deemed treasonous and sent to separate camps. His father was sent to Political Prison Camp No. 14 in Kaechon, South Pyongan province, which houses approximately 60,000 inmates and is about 50 miles north of Pyongyang. For good behavior, he was permitted to marry a fellow inmate.

Dong-hyuk SHIN was born on Nov. 19, 1982 and called the camp home until 2005. While at the camp, Shin endured daily beatings, torture, starvation-level rations, saw forced abortions and even witnessed the public execution of his mother and brother in 1996. Shin described his life of total isolation from the world: "In South Korea, although there is disappointment and sadness, there is also so much joy, happiness and comfort. In Kaechon, I did not even know such emotions existed. The only emotion I ever knew was fear: fear of beatings, fear of starvation, fear of torture and fear of death."

The speaking tour will be held in Washington, DC (4/30-5/5); New York City (5/6-5/8); Chicago (5/9-5/10); San Francisco (5/11-5/13); Los Angeles (5/13); and Irvine, California (5/14). For more details, please visit: http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.blogspot.com/

LiNK's Executive Director Adrian Hong and Deputy Director Hannah Song will accompany Shin on the tour and will be speaking about the broader issue of human rights in North Korea, as well as the current refugee situation and LiNK's resettlement activities. Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK, is an international non-governmental organization devoted to human rights in North Korea and the protection of North Korean refugees.



So Christine and I are helping LiNK with this tour. Christine set up the Tech Talk for LiNK and Dong-hyuk Shin at Google, and we're helping Michael and Sunny Yang who are hosting a private event at their home in Los Altos Hills on May 13th. If you're in the Bay Area and interested in attending, just email me at bernard.moon[at]gmail.com. Also here is the rest of the tour's schedule.

News & Links List

"The State of the Facebook Platform Jesse"
Great post by Jesse.

"Facebook’s platform issues: Less developer activity, slower app growth" VentureBeat
Well, I have to point to my old op-ed at VentureBeat, "Life after Facebook, and the coming 'Dark Period'"

"Designing Web apps for the entire world" by Josh Lowensohn
Missed this piece by Josh, who gives a thumbs for my friend's session at the Web 2.0 Expo.

"What Twitter brings to the party"
Dan is overlapping into the op-ed I've been thinking about recently. Gotta finish!

"Facebook Apps Are Still for Toddlers: The Visual Proof!" BoomTown

"Watercooler: Yet another social network app company that’s making money"

"O'Reilly-Clinton Interview Shows Dem Flaw"

"Canadian Invasion"

I love The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto (from his Best of the Web Today):

The United States and Canada share the longest unprotected border in the world, and Totonto's Globe and Mail has a story illustrating why that is so dangerous:

More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year--in what a doctors' group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan.

The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record number of women to U.S. neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Specifically, 80 B.C. women have been sent to U.S. hospitals since April 1, 2007; in Ontario, 28 have been sent since January of 2007, according to figures from the respective health ministries.

André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, said the problem is due to bed closings that took place almost a decade ago, the absence of a national birthing initiative and too few staff.

"Neonatologists are very stretched right now," Dr. Lalonde said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. "We're so stretched, it's kind of dangerous."

Aw, look at the cute little Canadian babies! It's all very sweet and innocuous, right?

Don't believe it. Read between the lines, and you realize this is a sinister Canadian plot to take over America. Canada's military is no match for ours, so the crafty Canucks are using infancy instead of infantry to carry out their imperial designs.

Think about it. Canadian officials send women across the border, smuggling in "anchor babies" cleverly disguised as clumps of tissue. The women give birth inside the U.S., which means their Canadian offspring are entitled to U.S. citizenship. As these "children" grow and mature, they receive instructions from their masters in Ottawa about how to undermine American culture.

Before you know it, your kids are stuffing themselves with litres of back bacon, downing kilogram after kilogram of Crown Royal and Labatt Blue, and belting out "God Save the Queen" as they watch hockey on TV.

It's all so horrible to contemplate, but it can be stopped. All we need to do is make America as inhospitable as Canada for expectant Canadian mothers. Hillary Clinton has the right idea: The U.S. needs socialized medicine.

Microsoft-Yahoo Dead... Yahoo Needs a New CEO

The blogosphere is buzzing about Yahoo killing the Microsoft deal:

"Yahoo’s Black Monday Begins With Shares Down 20 Percent."

"Yahoo Execs’ Reaction: “I Need Some Prozac”" BoomTown

"Yahoo breaks the wrist, Microsoft walks away"

"Yahoo’s Yang Speaks, Notes That Glass Remains Half Full"

If Microsoft has really passed on this deal and isn't waiting for Yahoo's shareholders to beg Ballmer back to the table, Yahoo! really needs new leadership. Jerry Yang's recent performance on this deal and his time back at the helm of Yahoo! showed that he isn't the right person to lead them to new lands. I think they really need an outside CEO to salvage their company's future.

While acquisitions are difficult to effectively integrate, it was the best option that Yahoo! had on the table. I assume hubris played a part on this situation. The idea of Microsoft acquiring an icon of Silicon Valley bothered even those outside of Yahoo!'s walls. But imagine the potential of this merged entity? The combined search market share, all those email accounts, online ad platforms, Microsoft's R&D and Yahoo's smart but dumb acquisitions, and the muscle of Microsoft? Scary especially since I never count out the original Evil Empire. They might move like a DeathStar, but they still have smart, quality people in Redmond and the cash to burn through their mistakes.

So who should be Yahoo!'s new CEO? Obviously someone with operating experience at an Internet company, unlike Terry Stemel, and strong knowledge of the online ad marketplace. It's natural to look at high-profile candidates, such as Meg Whitman, but how about an executive at Google or a CEO of an online ad company? Who knows, but it will be interesting to see how all of this plays out over the next several months.

Why Are Some VC Associates Tools?

Recently I've had several discussions with my friends that are entrepreneurs and VCs about some of the amusing but stupid behavior or arrogance of associates at venture capital firms. For those of you that don't know, associates are the the mid-level professionals at VC firms, who are typically recent MBA graduates.

For some reason, a small percentage of this group don't represent their firms well. One of my friends was telling us about one associate that was stating that he could tell whether a startup was worth investing in within 10 seconds of a presentation. Really? You can assess the technology, team and market of all startups within 10 seconds? He should be on Jeopardy, not a VC. The amusing part about this story was that he went on to found a company that was mediocre at best.

Another friend was telling me how during a pitch one associate had his head buried in his Blackberry typing away, so this seasoned entrepreneur stopped and loudly told him, "Excuse, you should stop being rude. Did you know that I'm childhood friends with your partner?"

The associate immediately stopped and paid attention. Tool.

One story had an associate chiming in with stupid questions, so the partner in the meeting politely asked him to get some coffee for those in the meeting. This happened twice. I assume he didn't last long at this firm.

News & Links List

"Time 100"
A few from Silicon Valley, but two are from the "Web2.0" crowd, Michael Arrington and Jay Adelson.

"Twitter Said To Be Abandoning Ruby on Rails"

"Study: A profile of the U.S. tech entrepreneur"

"Age and the Entrepreneur"

"Democrats and the Killing Fields" by Arthur Herman

News & Links List

"Still at Risk" by Frederick M. Hess, AEI's director of education policy studies

"Who's Your Daddy?"
An interview with Wendy Kramer by CBC National Director, Jennifer Lahl

"Outsourcing Childbirth" WSJ

"How To Run On Fumes" Forbes' Entrepreneurs section

"Web in infancy, says Berners-Lee"

"Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans"

HatTip to Valleywag for this video:


"Modular robot reassembles when kicked apart." Very cool, but scary :)

Wright Stirs Obama... What Took So Long?

So Obama finally responds in a clear manner against Wright today. What took so long? Also what took so long for him to realize who Wright was? I question Obama's judgment unless he really didn't attend Wright's church that often, which is possible. For this elite, it seems church was merely a political duty. Either way, he was foolish to accept Wright on a surface level and let him officiate his wedding, or foolish to simply accept him because he was a pastor of a powerful church in Chicago.

Remember when Wright said, "America's chickens are coming home to roost" with regards to the 9/11 attack? His defense of this statement was awesome and incredibly twisted, "Jesus said, 'Do uhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifnto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."

I believe Jesus was focused on how we should treat others, and highlighting that we wouldn't want to be treated poorly so we should treat everyone with love, kindness and respect. I don't think there was an inverse intent of his statement that assumes others are allowed to do the same or worse to you. In the case of Wright's terrorism comparison, 9/11 was far worse of a direct attack on America than what America has done to any terrorist groups. How could he even compare? He's crazy.

Instapundit has good summary post here.

"The Gift That Keeps on Giving" By George Will

"The Wright Side of the Brain" WSJ

"Should VCs Replace Founders in a Downturn?"

Yahoo! Finance's Sarah Lacy interviews Sharon Wienbar of Scale Venture Partners and Pascal Levensohn of Levensohn Venture Partners. Webpage and comment string here.

I met Pascal a couple times through the Aspen Institute, and you can read his blog here.

Upcoming Asia Web Conference

Chang Kim, CEO of TNC (leading blog software company in Korea) and blogger of Web 2.0 Asia, initiated an effort to have a conference in Asia on the Internet/Web 2.0. He was nice enough to invite me to be part of the organizing committee even though I'm no longer living in Asia.

Anyway, if you have any speaker suggestions or interested in sponsoring, just contac