News & Links List

"Hitler Is As Angry As Ron Conway About Angelgate" TechCrunch


"Collusion" AVC

"Yes, There Is A Superangel Conspiracy." Adventures in Capitalism

"Fire in The Valley, Fire in My Belly... and Yes, Mike, I Have Stopped Beating My Wife." Master of 500 Hats

"Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels [Email]" TechCrunch

"Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here" TechCrunch

"AOL Fills Relevance Gap With TechCrunch, Social Media" BusinessWeek

"Why I gave up on Digg" CNET

"How Digg's Cassandra Debacle Could Have Been Avoided" Forbes

"PARC celebrates its 40 years of Silicon Valley innovation" CNET

"What Happens At Y Combinator" Paul Graham

"Sony Ericsson Is Planning No New Symbian Products" BusinessWeek

"From Niche E-Commerce To Web 3.0" Sramana Mitra

"Java Creator James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle" eWeek

"Exclusive: Former Googler Cassidy Steps Down as Polyvore CEO" WSJ's BoomTown

"Kevin Ryan Takes Over CEO Role At Gilt Groupe, Susan Lyne Becomes Chairman" Business Insider

"Rep. Sanchez: 'Vietnamese' trying to take seat" OC Register

"Bridging the achievement gap
The formula to help young African Americans succeed in school is not pie-in-the-sky." LA Times

Top Chef Season 7: Lame

Finally caught with Top Chef after being in Korea, so a few weeks delay but... what the? Kevin is the winner? What's up, Tom?! Padma?!

Again the Top Chef is not one of the best chefs but the chef of the moment. Tiffany, Ed, Angelo, and even Kelly would have been better than Kevin. Same with season 2 of Top Chef Masters. Marcus? Eh... How many 19 stars did Susur get? Or home run dishes like Rick?

Korea's 1st iPhone 4 Music Video

Cool project by Wonsuk Chin, who is a film director I met a few times while in Seoul. From his post at YouTube:

"Hi, my name is Wonsuk Chin and I'm a filmmaker currently based in Seoul. I just directed and shot a music video with an iPhone 4 and I believe it's Korea's 1st iPhone 4 music video.

The song "Garosougil" (the name of the street in Seoul) is written and sung by Yang Jinseok, also a renowned architect in Korea. We had fun making it and I hope you enjoy it, too.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach me @wonsuk on Twitter."

Mark Zuckerberg in Forbes 400? Number 35? Please.

Very irresponsible of Forbes to list Mark Zuckerberg in the Forbes 400 when it's still paper wealth. When did Forbes start listing people's wealth based on private company valuations? Look at Slide or RockYou a couple years ago and now? Ning a few years back and now? I'm not saying Zuckerberg won't be a billionaire, but his company hasn't been acquired or gone public, and I hardly consider secondary market valuations valid.

Seriously, do eyeballs and traffic mean that much to you, Forbes? Obvious answer.


UPDATE: Gigaom's Matthew Ingram has a post related to this, "Is Facebook Worth $33 Billion? It’s Complicated"

My quick comment on his post:

I don’t believe you took the middle road or even lean towards saying Sharespost and others are valid markets. Would you invest your 401K into it? Your nestegg? Seriously. I would hardly call secondary markets for startup shares a valid market or even try to compare it to public stock marets with millions more data, infrastructure, researchers and participants. Come on!

So you would agree with the valuation of Slide or Ning a few years ago? Maybe. Would you now? No. Valuation of private companies is not a science but an art. That’s startup 101 stuff.

You should really analyze how valuations were created for various startup companies and then explain how any startup’s valuation is justified as much as Google, Cisco, Apple, etc. It’s a frenzy that valued Slide at $500 million not some analysis based on revenue, cashflow or industry comps.

“Hmm, you guys are pretty hot, so I’ll agree with that $100 valuation…”

“5 engineers from Google and 10 signed deals with Fortune 100 companies… (and 3 competing term sheets) okay, $50 million pre-money for your Series B sounds fair.”

Amazon Web Service Start-Up Challenge 2010

AWS Start-Up Challenge 2010 is running again with a deadline of October 31, 2010. More info here:

The annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) Start-up Challenge is back with an expanded world footprint – start-ups in 22 countries across the Americas, Asia, and Europe can enter to win. This year, we will recognize 5 regional semi-finalists from each of the 3 regions, 6 finalists, and select one global grand prize winner.

The AWS Start-up Challenge is an annual competition designed for young, promising start-ups to get noticed and compete for a chance to win $100,000 in cash and credits. Start-ups that are using the AWS cloud computing platform can submit an application which describes their business plan and their use of AWS.

Day10K.com, Celebrating Your 10,000th Day

Interesting site for twenty-somethings I came across. It's Day10K.com, which helps you celebrate your 10,0000 day of life. Check it out.

TEDTalk by Christien Meindertsma: How Pig Parts Make the World Turn

"Christien Meindertsma, author of "Pig 05049" looks at the astonishing afterlife of the ordinary pig, parts of which make their way into at least 187 non-pork products, from bullets to artificial hearts."

News & Links List

"So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…" TechCrunch, Michael Arrington
The AngelGate bombshell and conspiracy theory.

"'Mouse over' security flaw causes Twitter trouble" CNNTech

"VideoEgg, Six Apart form online advertising play Say Media" VentureBeat

"The truth about iPad: It's only good for two things" TechRepublic

"Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone" TechCrunch

"Is Google a Monopolist? A Debate
Amit Singhal of Google argues the competition is one click away. Charles Rule, an attorney whose firm represents corporations suing Google, counters that the company commands a share of search advertising in excess of 70%—the threshold for monopoly under the Sherman Act." WSJ

"Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust" ReadWriteWeb

"The slow death of Dopplr
Once the darlings of the UK startup scene, Dopplr has dwindled inexorably ever since it was bought by Nokia a year ago" Guardian's PDA

"Super Angel/VC Smackdown: Why the Hate? (TCTV)" TechCrunch

"Selling becomes sociable
E-commerce is becoming more social and more connected to the offline world" The Economist

"Exclusive: Sources Detail Google's Proposal For A Music Service" Billboard

"Twitter by the Numbers" mehack


"10 Ways to Start a Fund for Social Good Online" Mashable

"Obama Added More to National Debt in First 19 Months Than All Presidents from Washington Through Reagan Combined, Says Gov’t Data" CNSNews

"Michael Joseph Gross Responds to Criticism of His Article on Sarah Palin" Vanity Fair

"Korea's kids just like ours, 100 years ago" Mitch Albom

"Greatest Hits of TED Videos" Fast Company

Swagger Wagon... Great Commercial by Toyota

Inevitable purchase for us... so the Toyota Sienna or Honda Odyssey?

MJ's Greatest Moments From 2KSports

HatTip to David Y. Derrick Rose, Andre Iguodala, Josh Smith, Russell Westbrook and Rajon Rondo talk about their favorite Michael Jordan moments.

Mobile TV in Korea on Galaxy S, FaceTime is Behind in Korea

Just a video shot (from my Samsung Galaxy S) of a Galaxy S in South Korea. My friend, Eugene, was just showing me the mobile TV (terrestrial DMB) service which comes standard on many phones in Korea. Korea was the first to launch mobile TV in the world with initially satellite DMB/TV and then regular terrestrial DMB/TV became available several months later. One source states that this was launched in 2005, but I remember some of my friends getting early access to mobile TV in Korea during 2004. Maybe my memory is fading as I hit forty.



Also since mobile video conferencing has been in Korea for several years (Apple calls this "FaceTime" like it was something they invented), Eugene talked about how it was lame on the iPhone 4 since it's limited to other iPhone 4s while in Korea other mobile phones allow video conferencing across all phone models and wireless networks.

News & Links List

Back from Asia and the two week break from blogging is over. Now just catching up on news links...

"Internet Founder Tim Berners-Lee Details 4 Concerns About Future of Mobile Web (Nokia World 2010)" ReadWriteWeb

"The Seven Best Startups At DEMO" TechCrunch

"Bessemer's Top 10 Laws Of E-commerce: Introduction" AlwaysOn

"The Social Layer: How the Rise of Web-Oriented Architecture is Changing Enterprise IT" ReadWriteWeb

"Zygna Isn’t Playing Around" Stowe Boyd

"Two years on, Chrome reshapes browser market" CNET

"Samsung Galaxy Tab Android tablet goes official" CNET

"Is Motorola back?" Fortune

"The Power Of Quora & Why Benchmark Was Right To Pay Up" AlwaysOn
My comment on this post: "Seems a bit of scratching another VC's back. Do you still believe this after seeing Facebook's Q&A system? Sure they said they wouldn't copy Quora, but it seems like they have. Also once Quora opened up their beta, the quality of answers have been diluted so Facebook and Quora looks like they are on a head-to-head crash course."

"Popular Android Mod Now Supports Froyo, Breathes Life Into Old Phones" ReadWriteWeb

"What Should You Do When Your Web Service Blows Up?" Brad Feld

"Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury" Vanity Fair

"Vanity Fair publishes 18-page attack on Sarah Palin" Christian Science Monitor

Traveling in Asia, Working on Next Thing

Sorry but light blogging to my already lite blogging this week. I'm traveling on Asia working on getting my next startup off the ground. More later...