WHO SAYS THE GOOGLE & SUN DEAL IS ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS?
I never did, but I might be wrong in the end. Interesting to see how this develops. Update from CNet:
Google throws bodies at OpenOffice
CNET News.com
By Stephen Shankland
Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, a demonstration of its affinity for open source initiatives and one the company believes also shows sound practical sense.
OpenOffice has its roots in Sun Microsystems' StarOffice suite of programs. Five years ago, Sun turned its proprietary software into an open-source project. Only recently, however, has the competitor to Microsoft's Office attracted serious attention.
Now Google believes it can help OpenOffice--perhaps working to pare down the software's memory requirements or its mammoth 80MB download size, said Chris DiBona, manager for open-source programs at the search company. (full article)
Junto Boyz
Monday, October 31, 2005
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CIA IS THE BIG LOSER IN THE LIBBY/PLAME AFFAIR
Instapundit speaks out on this situation:
THE BIG LOSER in the Libby affair, it would seem to me, is the CIA. At least it will be if anyone pays attention.
Consider: Assuming that Valerie Plame was some sort of genuinely covert operative -- something that's not actually quite clear from the indictment -- the chain of events looks pretty damning: Wilson was sent to Africa on an investigative mission regarding nuclear weapons, but never asked to sign any sort of secrecy agreement(!). Wilson returns, reports, then publishes an oped in the New York Times (!!) about his mission. This pretty much ensures that people will start asking why he was sent, which leads to the fact that his wife arranged it. Once Wilson's oped appeared, Plame's covert status was in serious danger. Yet nobody seemed to care.
This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn't care much about Plame's status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.
The other possibility is that they're so clueless that they did this without any nefarious plan, because they're so inept, and so prone to cronyism and nepotism, that this is just business as usual. If so, the popular theory that the CIA couldn't find its own weenie with both hands and a flashlight would appear to have found some pretty strong support.
Either way, it seems to me that everyone involved with planning the Wilson mission should be fired. And it's obvious that the CIA, one way or another, needs a lot of work. (full post with some good links)
MORE from Power Line with a great excerpt from a New York Sun editorial:
If Ms. Plame didn't want her identity out, she shouldn't have gotten her husband a secret mission and then allowed him to wage a public campaign against the president's foreign policy. The leading prevaricator in this case is Mr. Wilson himself. He has accused Mr. Bush of falsely leading America to war. Mr. Bush had claimed "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Mr. Wilson drank tea in Niger for a week and said that Mr. Bush's claim was not true. But even after Mr. Wilson's objection, the July 2004 report by the British government's Butler Commission found that Mr. Bush's comment was "well-founded." In a July 2004 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senators Roberts, Hatch, and Bond said of Mr. Wilson, "The former Ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading."
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Instapundit speaks out on this situation:
THE BIG LOSER in the Libby affair, it would seem to me, is the CIA. At least it will be if anyone pays attention.
Consider: Assuming that Valerie Plame was some sort of genuinely covert operative -- something that's not actually quite clear from the indictment -- the chain of events looks pretty damning: Wilson was sent to Africa on an investigative mission regarding nuclear weapons, but never asked to sign any sort of secrecy agreement(!). Wilson returns, reports, then publishes an oped in the New York Times (!!) about his mission. This pretty much ensures that people will start asking why he was sent, which leads to the fact that his wife arranged it. Once Wilson's oped appeared, Plame's covert status was in serious danger. Yet nobody seemed to care.
This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn't care much about Plame's status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.
The other possibility is that they're so clueless that they did this without any nefarious plan, because they're so inept, and so prone to cronyism and nepotism, that this is just business as usual. If so, the popular theory that the CIA couldn't find its own weenie with both hands and a flashlight would appear to have found some pretty strong support.
Either way, it seems to me that everyone involved with planning the Wilson mission should be fired. And it's obvious that the CIA, one way or another, needs a lot of work. (full post with some good links)
MORE from Power Line with a great excerpt from a New York Sun editorial:
If Ms. Plame didn't want her identity out, she shouldn't have gotten her husband a secret mission and then allowed him to wage a public campaign against the president's foreign policy. The leading prevaricator in this case is Mr. Wilson himself. He has accused Mr. Bush of falsely leading America to war. Mr. Bush had claimed "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Mr. Wilson drank tea in Niger for a week and said that Mr. Bush's claim was not true. But even after Mr. Wilson's objection, the July 2004 report by the British government's Butler Commission found that Mr. Bush's comment was "well-founded." In a July 2004 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senators Roberts, Hatch, and Bond said of Mr. Wilson, "The former Ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading."
SUPREME COURT NOMINATION, TAKE 2... SAMUEL ALITO
President nominated Samuel Alito today. Okay he's a respectable candidate and a legal stud. Now the battle begins on The Hill.
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President nominated Samuel Alito today. Okay he's a respectable candidate and a legal stud. Now the battle begins on The Hill.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
THE REBIRTH OF TECH
Michael Copeland and Om Malik has an article on "Tech's big comeback" in Business 2.0. Actually, Tony's speech lately on his hypothesis how the greatest Internet companies will be born after the bust (from 2002-2007) is pretty money... like Russell's recent post. Tony's speech covers his view on the rebirth of tech and factors driving this. Anyway, here's a clip of Michael and Om's article:
A new technology boom of potentially unprecedented power and durability is spawning in all of the nation's tech centers from Palo Alto to Seattle to Austin to New York.
That may sound absurd at a time when the country seems besieged by ominous economic forces. But a growing body of evidence suggests that tech is taking flight again. Venture capital is flowing more profusely than it has since the late 1990s. The downward trend in IT employment has abruptly reversed course, as companies both new and old hoard engineers. Corporate IT spending, both an engine and an indicator of tech industry health, was up 9 percent through the first half of 2005 and is expected to rise 7 percent more in 2006. Commercial real estate, dead in most tech hubs postbubble, is roaring back. (full article)
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Michael Copeland and Om Malik has an article on "Tech's big comeback" in Business 2.0. Actually, Tony's speech lately on his hypothesis how the greatest Internet companies will be born after the bust (from 2002-2007) is pretty money... like Russell's recent post. Tony's speech covers his view on the rebirth of tech and factors driving this. Anyway, here's a clip of Michael and Om's article:
A new technology boom of potentially unprecedented power and durability is spawning in all of the nation's tech centers from Palo Alto to Seattle to Austin to New York.
That may sound absurd at a time when the country seems besieged by ominous economic forces. But a growing body of evidence suggests that tech is taking flight again. Venture capital is flowing more profusely than it has since the late 1990s. The downward trend in IT employment has abruptly reversed course, as companies both new and old hoard engineers. Corporate IT spending, both an engine and an indicator of tech industry health, was up 9 percent through the first half of 2005 and is expected to rise 7 percent more in 2006. Commercial real estate, dead in most tech hubs postbubble, is roaring back. (full article)
MONEY POST BY RUSSELL BEATTIE... "WHERE'S THE AMBITION?"
Great post by Russell even though it's just another spin on the various complaints, including myself, on the type of companies coming out of the Web 2.0 frenzy. Not sure if I agree with the title completely, but he gets his message across:
All these startups in my feeds lately are killing me! There are tons of them, but none seem to be doing anything particularly special. I mean, it’s nice that there’s a sort of rebirth of small startups, but there’s absolutely no sort of wow factor that I’ve seen. And no, this isn’t an anti-Web 2.0 style backlash: I really believe in the idea of the web as a platform. Amazon and eBay’s web services are perfect examples of platforms which have created huge value for both companies, as well as the developers using their APIs. That’s not the problem. It’s all these Flickr-wannabes, flip-it-quick companies that are bugging me.
Here, let me categorize them:
Scrape Engines - These are the little search sites focusing on one niche or another. They’re not full-on Search Engines that crawl the entire web and add value by allowing us all to make order from the massive chaos that is the web, they rob value from other sites by crawling them to death and stealing most of the vital information, returning very little. I’m sure there’s some sort of justifiable symbioses here for some, but most are just leaches, IMHO.
Mashed Ups - Yes, it’s so neat you can add a free map to your database of geo-data. Good for you. Thank Google for giving god-knows-how-much money to Navteq for you every time you query their data and render a map. Even the GOOG can only throw so much money out the window for so long, so I wouldn’t plan on that lasting very long. If you’re doing the Mash-up for fun, that’s cool. But be honest, you’re not really creating much value are you? Yes, sometimes the sum of parts can be greater than the whole, but that’s really not the case here.
Web Trapps - AJAXy, Tagged and Shared: Calendaring, To Do Lists, Email, Notes, Word Processors, Project Management, Databases, and anything to do with Getting Things Done. Have fun with all that, but 99.9% of the people out there will still be using Microsoft Office and Yahoo! (Yes, my employer, but I’d say that anyways.) Really. Look, I don’t *trust* your site to keep my personal (and definitely not my professional) data safe, okay, and I’m not going to change my daily habits to include a site that may disappear from the face of the Earth tomorrow. And I could participate in the whole collective intelligence part, but then I’ll just abandon you if you “go commercial” then as well.
Social Anything - Look, you’re not going to be another del.icio.us alright? And News Corp is the last company to ever pay that much money for a Social Networking site. Ever. (Yes, that includes you too, FaceBook). And you know how I’ll find that podcast, song, movie or other digital content I’m looking for? I’ll probably just ask a friend, search for a reviews, browse iTunes, or buy whatever is marketed at me like everyone else.
Phile Sharing - Oh my god! Stop with the photo sharing sites already! An honestly, if you describe your site like, "It’s like Flickr, but with [insert file type here]" then you’ve got serious problems. No, really. No, no, really.
[Great example. So true.]
Content Management Saturation - There shall only be one Wikipedia, and it’s free. There’s about as many blog and wiki software platforms as there needs to be. Generally, I think at this point, the world does not need another CMS solution. Maybe in a few years, but right now we really have what we need.
[Crap, Russell, you're knocking on GoingOn's space. Oh well, I still love your post. But just wait til you see our product and our ambition.]
RSS Holes - RSS is a pretty great technology, but really, how many more startups munging RSS feeds do we need? Google and Yahoo! are already doing RSS Search, so there’s probably better ways to spend your efforts on that front. And if your service is described like, "We take the RSS feeds and do [insert cool sounding agent/filtering/analysis technology here]" you’re in trouble. Yet, though Bloglines has barely touched their feature set in over a year, no one seems to be able to come up with a decent competitor in terms of functionality and usefulness (and ability to read via mobile) - that I don’t get.
[Totally with you, Russell]
Firefoxing - Umm, I like FireFox as much as the next geek. But if you’re creating enhancements to a browser with a 7% marketshare, god knows what you or your investors are thinking.
Am I missing anything? Any general category or buzzword I left out? (full post)
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Great post by Russell even though it's just another spin on the various complaints, including myself, on the type of companies coming out of the Web 2.0 frenzy. Not sure if I agree with the title completely, but he gets his message across:
All these startups in my feeds lately are killing me! There are tons of them, but none seem to be doing anything particularly special. I mean, it’s nice that there’s a sort of rebirth of small startups, but there’s absolutely no sort of wow factor that I’ve seen. And no, this isn’t an anti-Web 2.0 style backlash: I really believe in the idea of the web as a platform. Amazon and eBay’s web services are perfect examples of platforms which have created huge value for both companies, as well as the developers using their APIs. That’s not the problem. It’s all these Flickr-wannabes, flip-it-quick companies that are bugging me.
Here, let me categorize them:
Scrape Engines - These are the little search sites focusing on one niche or another. They’re not full-on Search Engines that crawl the entire web and add value by allowing us all to make order from the massive chaos that is the web, they rob value from other sites by crawling them to death and stealing most of the vital information, returning very little. I’m sure there’s some sort of justifiable symbioses here for some, but most are just leaches, IMHO.
Mashed Ups - Yes, it’s so neat you can add a free map to your database of geo-data. Good for you. Thank Google for giving god-knows-how-much money to Navteq for you every time you query their data and render a map. Even the GOOG can only throw so much money out the window for so long, so I wouldn’t plan on that lasting very long. If you’re doing the Mash-up for fun, that’s cool. But be honest, you’re not really creating much value are you? Yes, sometimes the sum of parts can be greater than the whole, but that’s really not the case here.
Web Trapps - AJAXy, Tagged and Shared: Calendaring, To Do Lists, Email, Notes, Word Processors, Project Management, Databases, and anything to do with Getting Things Done. Have fun with all that, but 99.9% of the people out there will still be using Microsoft Office and Yahoo! (Yes, my employer, but I’d say that anyways.) Really. Look, I don’t *trust* your site to keep my personal (and definitely not my professional) data safe, okay, and I’m not going to change my daily habits to include a site that may disappear from the face of the Earth tomorrow. And I could participate in the whole collective intelligence part, but then I’ll just abandon you if you “go commercial” then as well.
Social Anything - Look, you’re not going to be another del.icio.us alright? And News Corp is the last company to ever pay that much money for a Social Networking site. Ever. (Yes, that includes you too, FaceBook). And you know how I’ll find that podcast, song, movie or other digital content I’m looking for? I’ll probably just ask a friend, search for a reviews, browse iTunes, or buy whatever is marketed at me like everyone else.
Phile Sharing - Oh my god! Stop with the photo sharing sites already! An honestly, if you describe your site like, "It’s like Flickr, but with [insert file type here]" then you’ve got serious problems. No, really. No, no, really.
[Great example. So true.]
Content Management Saturation - There shall only be one Wikipedia, and it’s free. There’s about as many blog and wiki software platforms as there needs to be. Generally, I think at this point, the world does not need another CMS solution. Maybe in a few years, but right now we really have what we need.
[Crap, Russell, you're knocking on GoingOn's space. Oh well, I still love your post. But just wait til you see our product and our ambition.]
RSS Holes - RSS is a pretty great technology, but really, how many more startups munging RSS feeds do we need? Google and Yahoo! are already doing RSS Search, so there’s probably better ways to spend your efforts on that front. And if your service is described like, "We take the RSS feeds and do [insert cool sounding agent/filtering/analysis technology here]" you’re in trouble. Yet, though Bloglines has barely touched their feature set in over a year, no one seems to be able to come up with a decent competitor in terms of functionality and usefulness (and ability to read via mobile) - that I don’t get.
[Totally with you, Russell]
Firefoxing - Umm, I like FireFox as much as the next geek. But if you’re creating enhancements to a browser with a 7% marketshare, god knows what you or your investors are thinking.
Am I missing anything? Any general category or buzzword I left out? (full post)
J2... MR. RELIABLE
HatTip to Taulli.com. Randomly came across this post from The Motley Fool on J2, which I've been regularly using over the past several years:
Wasn’t faxing supposed to be dead by now? Don’t tell that to J2 Global (Nasdaq: JCOM), which has made a nice business from faxing. Then again, the company uses the Internet to deliver its faxing services—making its transmissions something more like an e-mail fax—so that may explain its continued success.
In the third quarter, J2 posted revenues of $37.7 million, a 36% increase from the same period a year ago. Net profits surged 54% to $12.5 million or $0.49 per share, excluding a one-time gain on the sale of an investment. The company has $131.6 million in the bank.
True, this is not the hypergrowth of a Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). However, J2 does offer something that investors really like: consistent growth. The company has generated revenue growth for 34 consecutive quarters, as well as growth in operating earnings for 15 straight quarters. (full post)
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HatTip to Taulli.com. Randomly came across this post from The Motley Fool on J2, which I've been regularly using over the past several years:
Wasn’t faxing supposed to be dead by now? Don’t tell that to J2 Global (Nasdaq: JCOM), which has made a nice business from faxing. Then again, the company uses the Internet to deliver its faxing services—making its transmissions something more like an e-mail fax—so that may explain its continued success.
In the third quarter, J2 posted revenues of $37.7 million, a 36% increase from the same period a year ago. Net profits surged 54% to $12.5 million or $0.49 per share, excluding a one-time gain on the sale of an investment. The company has $131.6 million in the bank.
True, this is not the hypergrowth of a Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). However, J2 does offer something that investors really like: consistent growth. The company has generated revenue growth for 34 consecutive quarters, as well as growth in operating earnings for 15 straight quarters. (full post)
Friday, October 28, 2005
FLOCK, WINK, GOOWY... SUNNY DAY, SWEEPING THE CLOUDS AWAY
Ok, the past few weeks I've been checking out so many 'alphas' and 'betas', including our own, that I feel like I'm back in kindergarten watching too much Sesame Street. Lately, I've been trying out Flock, but I'm not big on it yet and pretty happy with Firefox. Same with Wink, which is a search "powered by people." Both have legs and I know many people will find both to be cool and useful services, but they just didn't grab me yet.
One service that I came across, which I thought was very cool was Goowy. It has a slick interface and a fun feel to the whole service. It provides a new desktop experience with email, calendar, RSS reader, Google maps, Flickr integration, and some other services. You can tell it was developed by people that simply wanted to create a high-quality, fun product. Anyway, check these new products out.
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Ok, the past few weeks I've been checking out so many 'alphas' and 'betas', including our own, that I feel like I'm back in kindergarten watching too much Sesame Street. Lately, I've been trying out Flock, but I'm not big on it yet and pretty happy with Firefox. Same with Wink, which is a search "powered by people." Both have legs and I know many people will find both to be cool and useful services, but they just didn't grab me yet.
One service that I came across, which I thought was very cool was Goowy. It has a slick interface and a fun feel to the whole service. It provides a new desktop experience with email, calendar, RSS reader, Google maps, Flickr integration, and some other services. You can tell it was developed by people that simply wanted to create a high-quality, fun product. Anyway, check these new products out.
"FURIOUS BLAIR TAKES AIM AT IRAN"
This past week Iranian President made a bold, idiotic statement calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Of course, this created a storm of protests across the globe, but my favorite is from Tony Blair. This is why I love this man. He is a stud.
Tony Blair for the first time held out the prospect of military action against Iran last night after it called for the destruction of Israel.
A furious British Prime Minister condemned comments from the hardline leader of an Islamic state the US claims is developing nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
Describing his "revulsion", and in terms reminiscent of the early build-up to the war on Iraq, a visibly angry Mr Blair said European countries would be holding talks with the US and other allies about a possible response.
He said Iran was making a "very big mistake" if it thought the world would ignore such comments because it was distracted by other events.
"To anybody in Europe knowing our history, when we hear statements like that made about Israel it makes us feel very angry, it's just completely wrong," he said. "And it indicates and underlines, I am afraid, how much some of those places need reform themselves."
Mr Blair made no direct reference to military action, which Britain had previously always insisted was not on the agenda.
"Ask yourself: A state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon?" he said.
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This past week Iranian President made a bold, idiotic statement calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Of course, this created a storm of protests across the globe, but my favorite is from Tony Blair. This is why I love this man. He is a stud.
Tony Blair for the first time held out the prospect of military action against Iran last night after it called for the destruction of Israel.
A furious British Prime Minister condemned comments from the hardline leader of an Islamic state the US claims is developing nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
Describing his "revulsion", and in terms reminiscent of the early build-up to the war on Iraq, a visibly angry Mr Blair said European countries would be holding talks with the US and other allies about a possible response.
He said Iran was making a "very big mistake" if it thought the world would ignore such comments because it was distracted by other events.
"To anybody in Europe knowing our history, when we hear statements like that made about Israel it makes us feel very angry, it's just completely wrong," he said. "And it indicates and underlines, I am afraid, how much some of those places need reform themselves."
Mr Blair made no direct reference to military action, which Britain had previously always insisted was not on the agenda.
"Ask yourself: A state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon?" he said.
SOUTH KOREA'S MAJORITY PARTY LEADERSHIP QUITS... OH, ROH!
HatTip to Thomas. Well, after another across-the-board defeat, the Uri Party leadership quits. This can be considered a purposeful slap in the face of President Roh or just a silly sympathy move. Either way, it's a good thing for South Korea:)
Uri leaders quit en masse
Take responsibility for heavy defeat in latest by-elections
The Korea Herald
By Lee Sun-young
The Uri Party leadership stepped down en masse yesterday to take responsibility for the party's heavy defeat in Wednesday's by-elections, throwing the ruling camp into disarray.
"We have decided to resign from all leadership posts, accepting criticism from the public shown in the Oct. 26 by-elections," Uri Chairman Moon Hee-sang said.
An emergency leadership team will be formed to lead the party until it selects a new leader at a national convention.
Moon and other Uri top dogs have been under fire since their party was trounced in the by-elections by the largest opposition force, the Grand National Party. Uri failed to win a single seat out of 4 at stake. It was a painful replay of the humiliation they suffered in April's parliamentary and local by-elections where the party failed to land a single victory in 23 constituencies at stake.
The group resignation followed a party meeting yesterday where Uri lawmakers and executive party members argued fiercely over the fate of the current leadership. On the night of the by-election, Moon asked rank-and-file lawmakers to determine whether the current leadership should stay. (full article)
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HatTip to Thomas. Well, after another across-the-board defeat, the Uri Party leadership quits. This can be considered a purposeful slap in the face of President Roh or just a silly sympathy move. Either way, it's a good thing for South Korea:)
Uri leaders quit en masse
Take responsibility for heavy defeat in latest by-elections
The Korea Herald
By Lee Sun-young
The Uri Party leadership stepped down en masse yesterday to take responsibility for the party's heavy defeat in Wednesday's by-elections, throwing the ruling camp into disarray.
"We have decided to resign from all leadership posts, accepting criticism from the public shown in the Oct. 26 by-elections," Uri Chairman Moon Hee-sang said.
An emergency leadership team will be formed to lead the party until it selects a new leader at a national convention.
Moon and other Uri top dogs have been under fire since their party was trounced in the by-elections by the largest opposition force, the Grand National Party. Uri failed to win a single seat out of 4 at stake. It was a painful replay of the humiliation they suffered in April's parliamentary and local by-elections where the party failed to land a single victory in 23 constituencies at stake.
The group resignation followed a party meeting yesterday where Uri lawmakers and executive party members argued fiercely over the fate of the current leadership. On the night of the by-election, Moon asked rank-and-file lawmakers to determine whether the current leadership should stay. (full article)
Thursday, October 27, 2005
GOOGLE'S MUST-SEE TV ARCHIVE... FLEXING ITS MUSCLES
This is pretty cool. Over at Google's official blog, Steve Mosko, President of Sony Pictures Television, posts about how they are putting up on Google the Archive of American Television. Talk about flexing their influence to get this unique offering. Check out some of these interviews. Insightful and informative.
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This is pretty cool. Over at Google's official blog, Steve Mosko, President of Sony Pictures Television, posts about how they are putting up on Google the Archive of American Television. Talk about flexing their influence to get this unique offering. Check out some of these interviews. Insightful and informative.
NOVEMBER 11TH! SILENT AUCTION & COCKTAIL PARTY AT MARTUNI'S IN SF!
Last week Christine and I officially joined the board of the Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA. Well, Christine initially got asked to join and then dragged me into it:) We both thought it was a good cause and a great organization. This YMCA is located in the heart of the Tenderloin, one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Francisco, and their activities effectively serves the youth in the area with solid programs and learning opportunities.
Anyway, this is fundraising season for the YMCA, so there is a Silent Auction & Cocktail Party on Thursday, November 10th at 6:00pm. $10 Sliding Scale to enter and special "YMCA" drinks at a lower cost. It will be at Martuni's which is at 4 Valencia Street. Come join the party! (I guess this is a good time to use Zvents and Eventful.)
YMCA Fundraiser
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Last week Christine and I officially joined the board of the Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA. Well, Christine initially got asked to join and then dragged me into it:) We both thought it was a good cause and a great organization. This YMCA is located in the heart of the Tenderloin, one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Francisco, and their activities effectively serves the youth in the area with solid programs and learning opportunities.
Anyway, this is fundraising season for the YMCA, so there is a Silent Auction & Cocktail Party on Thursday, November 10th at 6:00pm. $10 Sliding Scale to enter and special "YMCA" drinks at a lower cost. It will be at Martuni's which is at 4 Valencia Street. Come join the party! (I guess this is a good time to use Zvents and Eventful.)
YMCA Fundraiser
HARRIET MIERS WITHDRAWS
Maybe Miers finally realized she was facing a huge uphill battle. Maybe the Bush administration didn't prep people on the Hill early enough about her background and positions? Or maybe Miers didn't disclose enough on her views to make Republicans confident in her nomination? Or maybe most people just didn't see her as Supreme Court material?
Under withering attack from conservatives, President George W. Bush ended his push Thursday to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and promised a quick replacement. Democrats accused him of bowing to the "radical right wing of the Republican Party."
The White House said Miers had withdrawn her name because of a bipartisan effort in Congress to gain access to internal documents related to her role as counsel to the president. But politics played a larger role: Bush's conservative backers had doubts about her ideological purity, and Democrats had little incentive to help the nominee or the embattled Republican president.
The withdrawal stunned Washington on a day when the capital was awaiting potential bad news for the administration on other fronts, including the possible indictments of senior White House aides in the CIA leak case. Earlier in the week, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq surpassed 2,000
Bush said he reluctantly accepted Miers' decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down.
"It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House - disclosures that would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel," Bush said. "Harriet Miers' decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the constitutional separation of powers - and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her." (full article)
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Maybe Miers finally realized she was facing a huge uphill battle. Maybe the Bush administration didn't prep people on the Hill early enough about her background and positions? Or maybe Miers didn't disclose enough on her views to make Republicans confident in her nomination? Or maybe most people just didn't see her as Supreme Court material?
Under withering attack from conservatives, President George W. Bush ended his push Thursday to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and promised a quick replacement. Democrats accused him of bowing to the "radical right wing of the Republican Party."
The White House said Miers had withdrawn her name because of a bipartisan effort in Congress to gain access to internal documents related to her role as counsel to the president. But politics played a larger role: Bush's conservative backers had doubts about her ideological purity, and Democrats had little incentive to help the nominee or the embattled Republican president.
The withdrawal stunned Washington on a day when the capital was awaiting potential bad news for the administration on other fronts, including the possible indictments of senior White House aides in the CIA leak case. Earlier in the week, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq surpassed 2,000
Bush said he reluctantly accepted Miers' decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down.
"It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House - disclosures that would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel," Bush said. "Harriet Miers' decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the constitutional separation of powers - and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her." (full article)
WHITE SOX WIN WORLD SERIES!... BITTERSWEET MOMENT FOR THIS CHICAGO BOY
Last night was incredible watching the White Sox win their first World Series crown in 88 years. The last time Chicago fans celebrated a World Series title was 1917, so I know the city is going crazy right now. Admittedly, I'm a Cubs fan, but I still love my hometown so I'm happy for Chicago and all the White Sox fans.
There are a couple bittersweet moments that I was thinking about during the days that led up to last night's win:
1. Jerry Reinsdorf gets a World Series title. The owner of the White Sox and Bulls in Chicago is probably the second most hated man for Chicago sports fans after his former GM Jerry Krause. I really hate Reinsdorf for treating Michael Jordan poorly and allowing for our Chicago Bulls to break up after winning six NBA titles where they could have won a couple more. His arrogance disgusts me, and I remember him stating that winning a World Series title means more to him than his six NBA titles so I really hate it now that he won.
2. Frank Thomas should have been playing. I love the Big Hurt. After my childhood favorite, Don Mattingly, I really believe Frank Thomas deserved to win and play in the World Series since he is such a class act and incredible player. It really sucked that the Yankees started to win again the year after Mattingly retired. It's not exactly the same situation, but Thomas got hurt in the middle of this year so he couldn't contribute to this year's championship team. Hopefully they'll get another title with Frank.
More from ESPN's Jim Caple here.
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Last night was incredible watching the White Sox win their first World Series crown in 88 years. The last time Chicago fans celebrated a World Series title was 1917, so I know the city is going crazy right now. Admittedly, I'm a Cubs fan, but I still love my hometown so I'm happy for Chicago and all the White Sox fans.
There are a couple bittersweet moments that I was thinking about during the days that led up to last night's win:
1. Jerry Reinsdorf gets a World Series title. The owner of the White Sox and Bulls in Chicago is probably the second most hated man for Chicago sports fans after his former GM Jerry Krause. I really hate Reinsdorf for treating Michael Jordan poorly and allowing for our Chicago Bulls to break up after winning six NBA titles where they could have won a couple more. His arrogance disgusts me, and I remember him stating that winning a World Series title means more to him than his six NBA titles so I really hate it now that he won.
2. Frank Thomas should have been playing. I love the Big Hurt. After my childhood favorite, Don Mattingly, I really believe Frank Thomas deserved to win and play in the World Series since he is such a class act and incredible player. It really sucked that the Yankees started to win again the year after Mattingly retired. It's not exactly the same situation, but Thomas got hurt in the middle of this year so he couldn't contribute to this year's championship team. Hopefully they'll get another title with Frank.
More from ESPN's Jim Caple here.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
"CORPORATE WEBSITE AS A BLOG"... WANNA USE GOINGON?
Great post by Brad Feld on utilizing a blog as the primary website for companies. Very glad to see the market slowly moving in this direction and to read posts like Brad's since we're launching our beta next month.
The meme of “Corporate Web Site As A Blog” is going around – and I like it. While this has been popular for individuals for a while (e.g. www.feld.com) – it’s starting to happen with companies. Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham did this recently with their site at Union Square Ventures and Matt Blumberg just launched a new Return Path web site organized around a blog – launched with a post on Matt’s blog about why Return Path did this.
A friend of mine emailed me suggesting that a blog was a lousy basis for a web site – that instead I should be using traditional CMS tools because it’d be easier to control and tune the formatting. I vociferously disagreed with him – I think the brilliance of organizing a corporate web site around a blog is that you can transform what has turned into largely static brochureware into a vibrant and ever changing articulation of a company. As I sit in a hotel room in Boston, all I need to do is type my new content (into Blogjet in my case) and hit post when I’m done – my blog deals with the rest. In addition – if one is bold enough to leave comments on, you can even turn it into a conversation with your constituency. Now, you can configure CMS systems to behave this way, but why bother.
I’ve noticed recently that the only page that regularly changes on a typical corporate web site is the news / press release page (and – btw – where are the RSS feeds for these pages – if I want to know about what is going on at your company, make it easy for me.) As Matt and Fred have artfully said, they want to incorporate the dynamic nature of their businesses and the markets in which they participate into their web site in order to communicate more effectively what they are doing and engage in a conversation with anyone who is interested in them. (full post)
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Great post by Brad Feld on utilizing a blog as the primary website for companies. Very glad to see the market slowly moving in this direction and to read posts like Brad's since we're launching our beta next month.
The meme of “Corporate Web Site As A Blog” is going around – and I like it. While this has been popular for individuals for a while (e.g. www.feld.com) – it’s starting to happen with companies. Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham did this recently with their site at Union Square Ventures and Matt Blumberg just launched a new Return Path web site organized around a blog – launched with a post on Matt’s blog about why Return Path did this.
A friend of mine emailed me suggesting that a blog was a lousy basis for a web site – that instead I should be using traditional CMS tools because it’d be easier to control and tune the formatting. I vociferously disagreed with him – I think the brilliance of organizing a corporate web site around a blog is that you can transform what has turned into largely static brochureware into a vibrant and ever changing articulation of a company. As I sit in a hotel room in Boston, all I need to do is type my new content (into Blogjet in my case) and hit post when I’m done – my blog deals with the rest. In addition – if one is bold enough to leave comments on, you can even turn it into a conversation with your constituency. Now, you can configure CMS systems to behave this way, but why bother.
I’ve noticed recently that the only page that regularly changes on a typical corporate web site is the news / press release page (and – btw – where are the RSS feeds for these pages – if I want to know about what is going on at your company, make it easy for me.) As Matt and Fred have artfully said, they want to incorporate the dynamic nature of their businesses and the markets in which they participate into their web site in order to communicate more effectively what they are doing and engage in a conversation with anyone who is interested in them. (full post)
OH, YEAH... IRAQ RATIFIED ITS CONSTITUTION
Love those psycho neocons. Some more words from The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto:
Voters in Iraq approved the new constitution by a landslide 78% to 21% margin, Reuters reports:
"Two provinces had already been confirmed to have voted heavily "No"--96 percent in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar and 81 percent in Saddam Hussein's home region of Salahaddin.
But the final results announced on Tuesday showed that a third, "swing," province of Nineveh, had voted by only 55 percent against the constitution, short of a two-thirds majority."
Opponents of Iraqi democracy will complain that the Sunnis are "disenfranchised," but it should be noted that such outlying jurisdictions are common in the U.S. too. In 1964, for example, 87% of Mississippi voters rejected Lyndon B. Johnson, who won a nationwide landslide. Likewise in 1984, when the District of Columbia went 85% against Ronald Reagan. No one would argue that these results mean America would be better off under a fascist dictatorship.
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Love those psycho neocons. Some more words from The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto:
Voters in Iraq approved the new constitution by a landslide 78% to 21% margin, Reuters reports:
"Two provinces had already been confirmed to have voted heavily "No"--96 percent in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar and 81 percent in Saddam Hussein's home region of Salahaddin.
But the final results announced on Tuesday showed that a third, "swing," province of Nineveh, had voted by only 55 percent against the constitution, short of a two-thirds majority."
Opponents of Iraqi democracy will complain that the Sunnis are "disenfranchised," but it should be noted that such outlying jurisdictions are common in the U.S. too. In 1964, for example, 87% of Mississippi voters rejected Lyndon B. Johnson, who won a nationwide landslide. Likewise in 1984, when the District of Columbia went 85% against Ronald Reagan. No one would argue that these results mean America would be better off under a fascist dictatorship.
CINDY SHEEHAN CALLS TO WITHHOLD SUPPORT FOR SENATOR CLINTON
This is funny. Crazy woman, Cindy Sheehan, is now after Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize President Bush to wage war in Iraq. Can you imagine some people at DNC HQ? Initially thinking... "This is awesome! This mother of a fallen solider camping out in front of Bush's home and rallying to end the war..."
Now it's like... "What the?... Mother f*#cker! That friggin crazed woman! What is she doing?! She's killing our best chance! Can we get someone to kidnap her and blame the Republicans?"
Cindy Sheehan, who has crusaded nationally against the war in Iraq since her son was killed there, called on antiwar activists yesterday not to support Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is seeking re-election next year. "I believe that any candidate who supports the war should not receive our support," Ms. Sheehan told The Associated Press in an interview. "It doesn't matter if they're Senator Clinton or whoever."
Though Ms. Sheehan has criticized Mrs. Clinton's position on the war in the past, this is the first time she has urged people to withhold support from the senator.
Senator Clinton voted to authorize the president to wage war in Iraq, but she has been critical of the way his administration has conducted the war. Still, she has not called for either a withdrawal of American troops or a timetable for their withdrawal. Mrs. Clinton's office declined to comment on Ms. Sheehan's remarks. (full article)
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This is funny. Crazy woman, Cindy Sheehan, is now after Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize President Bush to wage war in Iraq. Can you imagine some people at DNC HQ? Initially thinking... "This is awesome! This mother of a fallen solider camping out in front of Bush's home and rallying to end the war..."
Now it's like... "What the?... Mother f*#cker! That friggin crazed woman! What is she doing?! She's killing our best chance! Can we get someone to kidnap her and blame the Republicans?"
Cindy Sheehan, who has crusaded nationally against the war in Iraq since her son was killed there, called on antiwar activists yesterday not to support Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is seeking re-election next year. "I believe that any candidate who supports the war should not receive our support," Ms. Sheehan told The Associated Press in an interview. "It doesn't matter if they're Senator Clinton or whoever."
Though Ms. Sheehan has criticized Mrs. Clinton's position on the war in the past, this is the first time she has urged people to withhold support from the senator.
Senator Clinton voted to authorize the president to wage war in Iraq, but she has been critical of the way his administration has conducted the war. Still, she has not called for either a withdrawal of American troops or a timetable for their withdrawal. Mrs. Clinton's office declined to comment on Ms. Sheehan's remarks. (full article)
"SO WHO SHOULD YOU CALL A JOURNALIST?"
Good article by CNet's Declan McCullagh. Good timing since I was thinking about this issue while writing my column for AlwaysOn this week... finally worked on it after sitting on my idea for six weeks.
A renewed effort in the U.S. Congress to create a federal shield law for news organizations is raising a sticky question: Who is a journalist?
A generation ago, the answer usually was clear. Not anymore. Online scribes and video publishers are experimenting with novel forms of journalism, and even the most stodgy news organizations are embracing blogs.
That leaves politicians--hardly the most clued in about all things tech--in something of a quandary. They're being lobbied by professional news organizations and the American Bar Association to approve some kind of journalist's shield law while being urged by prosecutors to leave out bloggers.
The justification for a shield law is a perfectly reasonable one. After a federal appeals court enforcedgrand jury subpoenas against The New York Times and Time magazine, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case, news organizations decided to fix the law.
The Justice Department took a swipe at the leading shield proposal (H.R.3323/S.1419) during a Senate hearing last week, arguing that it would let criminals pose as bloggers.
"As drafted, the definition invites criminals to cloak their activities under the guise" of a journalist, warned Chuck Rosenberg, a U.S. Attorney in Texas. "The definition arguably could include any person who sets up an Internet 'blog.'" (It covers anyone who publishes an electronic "periodical.")
Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, seemed to be sympathetic to that argument. "The relative anonymity afforded to bloggers, coupled with a certain lack of accountability, as they are not your traditional brick-and-mortar reporters who answer to an editor or publisher, also has the risk of creating a certain irresponsibility when it comes to accurately reporting information," Cornyn said.
Even the original sponsor of the Senate shield proposal, Richard Lugar, R-Ind., recently indicated that bloggers will "probably not" be deemed journalists. (full article)
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Good article by CNet's Declan McCullagh. Good timing since I was thinking about this issue while writing my column for AlwaysOn this week... finally worked on it after sitting on my idea for six weeks.
A renewed effort in the U.S. Congress to create a federal shield law for news organizations is raising a sticky question: Who is a journalist?
A generation ago, the answer usually was clear. Not anymore. Online scribes and video publishers are experimenting with novel forms of journalism, and even the most stodgy news organizations are embracing blogs.
That leaves politicians--hardly the most clued in about all things tech--in something of a quandary. They're being lobbied by professional news organizations and the American Bar Association to approve some kind of journalist's shield law while being urged by prosecutors to leave out bloggers.
The justification for a shield law is a perfectly reasonable one. After a federal appeals court enforcedgrand jury subpoenas against The New York Times and Time magazine, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case, news organizations decided to fix the law.
The Justice Department took a swipe at the leading shield proposal (H.R.3323/S.1419) during a Senate hearing last week, arguing that it would let criminals pose as bloggers.
"As drafted, the definition invites criminals to cloak their activities under the guise" of a journalist, warned Chuck Rosenberg, a U.S. Attorney in Texas. "The definition arguably could include any person who sets up an Internet 'blog.'" (It covers anyone who publishes an electronic "periodical.")
Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, seemed to be sympathetic to that argument. "The relative anonymity afforded to bloggers, coupled with a certain lack of accountability, as they are not your traditional brick-and-mortar reporters who answer to an editor or publisher, also has the risk of creating a certain irresponsibility when it comes to accurately reporting information," Cornyn said.
Even the original sponsor of the Senate shield proposal, Richard Lugar, R-Ind., recently indicated that bloggers will "probably not" be deemed journalists. (full article)
SK-EARTHLINK RENAMED HELIO
From Rafat's PaidContent.org:
SK Earthlink, the $440 million joint venture between Korea's biggest telecom player SK Telecom, and Earthlink, has a new consumer-friendly name: Helio. The new phone service (MVNO) will launch in spring of 2006, and aimed at the young consumer.
Why Helio? Here's the officialese: "The Heliocentric view, radical when Copernicus preached it in the 16th century, held that the sun was at the center of the solar system. In the same way, HELIO recognizes that for millions of young consumers today, the mobile device is at the center of their lives."
The LA-based Helio will bank on SKT's Korea heritage of high-tech, high-speed and high-end devices, coupled with lots of multimedia content. The service will strictly be a post-paid offer... The full management team list is here.
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From Rafat's PaidContent.org:
SK Earthlink, the $440 million joint venture between Korea's biggest telecom player SK Telecom, and Earthlink, has a new consumer-friendly name: Helio. The new phone service (MVNO) will launch in spring of 2006, and aimed at the young consumer.
Why Helio? Here's the officialese: "The Heliocentric view, radical when Copernicus preached it in the 16th century, held that the sun was at the center of the solar system. In the same way, HELIO recognizes that for millions of young consumers today, the mobile device is at the center of their lives."
The LA-based Helio will bank on SKT's Korea heritage of high-tech, high-speed and high-end devices, coupled with lots of multimedia content. The service will strictly be a post-paid offer... The full management team list is here.
"BRAND BLOGS CAPTURE THE ATTENTION OF SOME COMPANIES"
Good drumbeat for GoingOn...
Michael Marx loves Barq's root beer. He frequently wears a Barq's T-shirt. He brings Barq's root beer to parties.
So it should come as no surprise that Mr. Marx, 34, of Gilbert, Ariz., keeps a blog dedicated to Barq's.
"I've been drinking Barq's for 15 years. It's my beer," said Mr. Marx, who started his blog, thebarqsman.com, last year to collect news about Barq's, commercials he likes for the drink and musings on why he thinks Barq's is the best.
As the number of blogs has grown, more consumers like Mr. Marx are keeping Web diaries dedicated exclusively to their favorite brands. Most of them are written without the consent of the companies that own the brands; a spokesman for Coca-Cola, which owns Barq's, had not heard of Mr. Marx's blog.
But some companies are starting to pay attention to blogs, using them as a kind of informal network of consumer opinion.
"In addition to viewing blogs as another media channel, it allows us to keep our pulse on the marketplace," said Ken Ross, a vice president of Netflix, the movie rental company based in Los Gatos, Calif. One of the best-known blogs about Netflix, hackingnetflix.com, was started last November by Mike Kaltschnee, who lives in Danbury, Conn.
"I post anything I find interesting, and it turns out 100,000 people a month find it interesting, too," said Mr. Kaltschnee. He also started a blog about Trader Joe's, the specialty grocery chain based in Monrovia, Calif., at trackingtraderjoes.com. (full article)
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Good drumbeat for GoingOn...
Michael Marx loves Barq's root beer. He frequently wears a Barq's T-shirt. He brings Barq's root beer to parties.
So it should come as no surprise that Mr. Marx, 34, of Gilbert, Ariz., keeps a blog dedicated to Barq's.
"I've been drinking Barq's for 15 years. It's my beer," said Mr. Marx, who started his blog, thebarqsman.com, last year to collect news about Barq's, commercials he likes for the drink and musings on why he thinks Barq's is the best.
As the number of blogs has grown, more consumers like Mr. Marx are keeping Web diaries dedicated exclusively to their favorite brands. Most of them are written without the consent of the companies that own the brands; a spokesman for Coca-Cola, which owns Barq's, had not heard of Mr. Marx's blog.
But some companies are starting to pay attention to blogs, using them as a kind of informal network of consumer opinion.
"In addition to viewing blogs as another media channel, it allows us to keep our pulse on the marketplace," said Ken Ross, a vice president of Netflix, the movie rental company based in Los Gatos, Calif. One of the best-known blogs about Netflix, hackingnetflix.com, was started last November by Mike Kaltschnee, who lives in Danbury, Conn.
"I post anything I find interesting, and it turns out 100,000 people a month find it interesting, too," said Mr. Kaltschnee. He also started a blog about Trader Joe's, the specialty grocery chain based in Monrovia, Calif., at trackingtraderjoes.com. (full article)
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
ROSA PARKS DEAD AT 92
A great American has passed away.
Rosa Parks, the Alabama seamstress whose soft-spoken refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man triggered the Montgomery bus boycott, the first great mass action in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, died yesterday. She was 92.
Mrs. Parks died at her home in Detroit of natural causes, according to a spokesman for US Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan.
The boycott brought to national prominence a 26-year-old Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr. He later inscribed a copy of his book "Stride Toward Freedom" to Mrs. Parks, "Whose creative witness," he wrote, "was the great force that led to the modern stride toward freedom." (full article)
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A great American has passed away.
Rosa Parks, the Alabama seamstress whose soft-spoken refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man triggered the Montgomery bus boycott, the first great mass action in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, died yesterday. She was 92.
Mrs. Parks died at her home in Detroit of natural causes, according to a spokesman for US Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan.
The boycott brought to national prominence a 26-year-old Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr. He later inscribed a copy of his book "Stride Toward Freedom" to Mrs. Parks, "Whose creative witness," he wrote, "was the great force that led to the modern stride toward freedom." (full article)
Monday, October 24, 2005
PRESIDENT BUSH NOMINATES BEN S. BERNANKE TO SUCCEED GREENSPAN
President Bush nominated Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Bernanke's profile from The Washington Post:
Five years ago, Ben Bernanke posed the prescient question in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, "What Happens When Greenspan is Gone?"
President Bush answered on Monday: Replace Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan with Bernanke, a straight-talking Ivy League economist with a reputation for eschewing political ideology.
In the world of economic theory and policy, Bernanke, 51, has espoused targeting inflation, stressed the importance of communication and transparency by the Fed and argued that the final say on debts and deficits lies with the president and Congress.
Born in Georgia and raised in Dillon, S.C., Bernanke was an academic star. In sixth grade, he won the state spelling bee but missed higher acclaim when he faltered on the word "edelweiss," a flower. He got a score of 1,590 on his SAT out of a possible 1,600, taught himself calculus in high school and then focused on economic numbers at Harvard.
After graduating summa cum laude from the Ivy League university in 1975, Bernanke continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his doctorate four years late. His focus during his years in Boston were the underpinnings of the Great Depression and the losing ways of the city's beloved baseball team, the Red Sox.
The former was his field of study; the latter an obsession he eventually shed. A Washingtonian of late, Bernanke recently switched his allegiance to the capital's baseball team, the Nationals.
He was an economics professor at Stanford and chaired the department at Princeton.
Sworn in as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers in June, Bernanke had served on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (full article)
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President Bush nominated Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Bernanke's profile from The Washington Post:
Five years ago, Ben Bernanke posed the prescient question in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, "What Happens When Greenspan is Gone?"
President Bush answered on Monday: Replace Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan with Bernanke, a straight-talking Ivy League economist with a reputation for eschewing political ideology.
In the world of economic theory and policy, Bernanke, 51, has espoused targeting inflation, stressed the importance of communication and transparency by the Fed and argued that the final say on debts and deficits lies with the president and Congress.
Born in Georgia and raised in Dillon, S.C., Bernanke was an academic star. In sixth grade, he won the state spelling bee but missed higher acclaim when he faltered on the word "edelweiss," a flower. He got a score of 1,590 on his SAT out of a possible 1,600, taught himself calculus in high school and then focused on economic numbers at Harvard.
After graduating summa cum laude from the Ivy League university in 1975, Bernanke continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his doctorate four years late. His focus during his years in Boston were the underpinnings of the Great Depression and the losing ways of the city's beloved baseball team, the Red Sox.
The former was his field of study; the latter an obsession he eventually shed. A Washingtonian of late, Bernanke recently switched his allegiance to the capital's baseball team, the Nationals.
He was an economics professor at Stanford and chaired the department at Princeton.
Sworn in as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers in June, Bernanke had served on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (full article)
ONLINE NETWORKING REVIEW... FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, ETC.
Good article by Reyhan Harmanci from The San Francisco Chronicle:
Before the Internet, social life was both simpler and more complicated. To keep up with friends, you actually had to see them. To organize a party, you had to pick up the phone. To get a date, you had to have chemistry. Now, thanks to the miracle of online social networking sites, you can manage your friends without taking your hands off the keyboard.
Social networking has become one of the most popular applications on the Internet in the wake of the dot-com bust. There is now a social network site for practically every subgroup, no matter how weird, niche or pragmatic.
SmallWorld.net is an invitation-only site restricted to jetsetters. Dogster.com caters to dog owners. LinkedIn.com serves professionals who want to foster new business ties. Meetup.com helps people plan events.
Unsurprisingly, young people are the force behind the most popular sites. MySpace.com, which was acquired in September by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $580 million, boasts 33 million users who, among other things, use the site to upload and share music.
Palo Alto-based Facebook.com, which was founded in February 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, has grown to 8.3 million users and is the 11th most visited site on the Internet, according to Web trafficking firm comScore Media Metrix.
Chris Hughes, a Facebook spokesman and Harvard senior, said the company is close to claiming representation at every college in the country, with 80 percent membership among each collegiate population. In September, Facebook launched a service for high school students; a month later, 22,000 teenagers have registered accounts.
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Since the first generation of online networking, a whole galaxy of start-ups have emerged, all trying to tie social networks to certain services or communities.
The ever-changing composition of Facebook and other popular networking sites exemplifies what O'Reilly calls the "secret sauce" of the Internet: harnessing collective intelligence. "EBay and Amazon don't just sell things; Amazon lets readers write annotations and reviews, and eBay gives informed search results. It's all about user-generated content," he said.
O'Reilly believes online social networking is in its infancy. "There's a huge opportunity for players like Microsoft or Yahoo or Google to layer social networking applications on top of existing features, like utilizing existing buddy lists or saving e-mail addresses and connecting them to profiles," he said.
"I really believe the next generation of e-mail, for example, will take on social networking features."
But whether or how these sites will change the nature of social life is harder to predict. Unlike dating sites, which facilitate real-world interactions, Facebook, MySpace and Friendster are not necessarily intended to bring people from the online world to the offline one. Instead, they enable users to find strangers with similar interests, to experiment with identity, to maintain and solidify friendships, to network for jobs and housing. (full article)
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Good article by Reyhan Harmanci from The San Francisco Chronicle:
Before the Internet, social life was both simpler and more complicated. To keep up with friends, you actually had to see them. To organize a party, you had to pick up the phone. To get a date, you had to have chemistry. Now, thanks to the miracle of online social networking sites, you can manage your friends without taking your hands off the keyboard.
Social networking has become one of the most popular applications on the Internet in the wake of the dot-com bust. There is now a social network site for practically every subgroup, no matter how weird, niche or pragmatic.
SmallWorld.net is an invitation-only site restricted to jetsetters. Dogster.com caters to dog owners. LinkedIn.com serves professionals who want to foster new business ties. Meetup.com helps people plan events.
Unsurprisingly, young people are the force behind the most popular sites. MySpace.com, which was acquired in September by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $580 million, boasts 33 million users who, among other things, use the site to upload and share music.
Palo Alto-based Facebook.com, which was founded in February 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, has grown to 8.3 million users and is the 11th most visited site on the Internet, according to Web trafficking firm comScore Media Metrix.
Chris Hughes, a Facebook spokesman and Harvard senior, said the company is close to claiming representation at every college in the country, with 80 percent membership among each collegiate population. In September, Facebook launched a service for high school students; a month later, 22,000 teenagers have registered accounts.
.....
Since the first generation of online networking, a whole galaxy of start-ups have emerged, all trying to tie social networks to certain services or communities.
The ever-changing composition of Facebook and other popular networking sites exemplifies what O'Reilly calls the "secret sauce" of the Internet: harnessing collective intelligence. "EBay and Amazon don't just sell things; Amazon lets readers write annotations and reviews, and eBay gives informed search results. It's all about user-generated content," he said.
O'Reilly believes online social networking is in its infancy. "There's a huge opportunity for players like Microsoft or Yahoo or Google to layer social networking applications on top of existing features, like utilizing existing buddy lists or saving e-mail addresses and connecting them to profiles," he said.
"I really believe the next generation of e-mail, for example, will take on social networking features."
But whether or how these sites will change the nature of social life is harder to predict. Unlike dating sites, which facilitate real-world interactions, Facebook, MySpace and Friendster are not necessarily intended to bring people from the online world to the offline one. Instead, they enable users to find strangers with similar interests, to experiment with identity, to maintain and solidify friendships, to network for jobs and housing. (full article)
"THE MAD MAN OF WALL STREET"
This week's cover story in BusinessWeek. Great article by Roben Farzad. I read about Jim Cramer's background before, but this one was a bit more entertaining. I sometimes watched him on Kudlow & Kramer, and recently started watching him on his new show, Mad Money. Definitely a character and someone worth listening to.
Cramer has been there and done that. He paid his dues in the '80s as a Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS ) broker, followed by 14 years at Cramer Berkowitz, his $450 million hedge fund, where he earned an average return of 24% a year after fees. There, he had enough mega-paydays to kiss the Street hustle goodbye forever. With a net worth he says is between $50 million and $100 million, you might think Cramer would be out bronzing in St. Barts with daiquiri in hand.
Instead, he rises at 3.45 a.m. weekdays. After scanning headlines online, checking messages, and shooting e-mails to his TV producer, he works out in his Summit (N.J.) home gym until 5.30 a.m., when he calls traders and brokers and writes his first online story. Later, Cramer carpools his younger daughter, Emma, to school, before setting off on the 75-minute trek to Wall Street. By the time his workday is over, usually around 7 p.m., his driver will have logged 120 miles, Cramer will have banged out six Web columns, done a radio show, and scoured his larynx taping Mad Money, his surreal nightly call-in show on CNBC that is perhaps best described as Louis Rukeyser meets televangelism meets Pee-wee's Playhouse. At some point, he'll work on his monthly column for New York magazine. "I'm hard-core about the market," he says, his bobble-head emerging from a wall of flickering screens.
At one level, none of this makes much sense. With the market trading sideways and in danger of posting its fourth losing year since 2000 -- and real estate still the cocktail party topic of choice -- stockpicking is not exactly a growth industry. (Cramer trades stocks for a charitable trust; he no longer owns any stocks personally, other than his 15.4% stake in TheStreet.com, which he co-founded, worth about $15 million.)
Why, then, is Cramer so in-your-face? In the aftermath of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's attacks on Wall Street research, analysts hide behind weaselly ratings such as "In-Line" and "Equal Weight," and scores of stocks are no longer covered. "The analysts," Cramer pronounces, taking a break from another drug-pump tantrum, "they are colorless and odorless and sanitized and fear Spitzer to the point of death." Even CNBC, he complains, is "terribly gun-shy about being anything but 'corporate crime watch' when people still need to make money."
Cramer senses a huge information vacuum. "You can't just be neutral on everything," he says. "Go see a shrink!" What he sees is a woefully underserved market for unabashed, aggressive stockpicking -- his kind -- that is laced with bombastic sound bites like "Back up the truck!" and "Get the paddles!" and lends itself to the showmanship that has made Mad Money a cult hit with 384,000 nightly viewers. No Warren Buffett, Cramer is a trading mercenary to the core. His rapid-fire in-and-out moves are raising chat room buzz to levels not seen since day traders reigned supreme during the bubble. All of which has turned CNBC's once-moribund 6 p.m. slot into one of its top-rated hours. "What's smart about Mad Money is it does away with the usual boring guests and lets Cramer vent in a way that is hard not to watch," says Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz, who profiled Cramer in his book The Fortune Tellers. "It occupies some sort of netherworld between sheer entertainment and useful financial advice."
.....
Already 13 hours into his workday, Cramer seems no less a workaholic than he was during his reign of terror at Cramer Berkowitz, where he frequently hurled water bottles at associates and smashed keyboards. He even told his partner, Jeff Berkowitz, that he had no business at his daughter's school play when Intel (INTC ) was about to report its results.
He takes a breather to talk about the impact of his obsessiveness on his family. After a catastrophic 1998 that nearly sank Cramer Berkowitz, the fund netted clients 47% in 1999 and 28% in 2000. "I was killing the market when everyone else was doing badly, and yet I was more miserable than ever," he says. His elder daughter didn't want to be around him, resenting him for being constantly leashed to his investors by phone. "All I did was say, 'Be quiet. Please leave Daddy alone. Daddy has to trade."'
In 2000, Cramer's wife, Karen, gave him an ultimatum: Slow down, or else. She had been a partner at his hedge fund. He still affectionately calls her his "trading goddess" for persuading him to sell out before the 1987 crash and buy into the October, 1998, panic. (She declined to comment for this story.)
The tipping point came just before Thanksgiving, 2000, on a trip to Las Vegas with his dad. After ignoring his dad to call in orders to his fund for hours, Cramer suddenly turned to him and said they were clear to go to dinner. His dad exploded: "'You're 46 years old, and this is what you're doing?"' Cramer recounts. "'You don't care about anything but the fund. How can you be so miserable?"'
Cramer says the incident forced him to rethink his life. Later, he cashed out of the fund, handing full control to Jeff Berkowitz. "Easy come, easy go," Cramer says, with a clap. These days, his daughter's morning carpool is his top priority. "I never miss," he says. "It's inviolate." On weekends, Cramer tends to his garden's beefsteak tomatoes and chili peppers and digs night crawlers for bass fishing at his country house. (full article)
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This week's cover story in BusinessWeek. Great article by Roben Farzad. I read about Jim Cramer's background before, but this one was a bit more entertaining. I sometimes watched him on Kudlow & Kramer, and recently started watching him on his new show, Mad Money. Definitely a character and someone worth listening to.
Cramer has been there and done that. He paid his dues in the '80s as a Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS ) broker, followed by 14 years at Cramer Berkowitz, his $450 million hedge fund, where he earned an average return of 24% a year after fees. There, he had enough mega-paydays to kiss the Street hustle goodbye forever. With a net worth he says is between $50 million and $100 million, you might think Cramer would be out bronzing in St. Barts with daiquiri in hand.
Instead, he rises at 3.45 a.m. weekdays. After scanning headlines online, checking messages, and shooting e-mails to his TV producer, he works out in his Summit (N.J.) home gym until 5.30 a.m., when he calls traders and brokers and writes his first online story. Later, Cramer carpools his younger daughter, Emma, to school, before setting off on the 75-minute trek to Wall Street. By the time his workday is over, usually around 7 p.m., his driver will have logged 120 miles, Cramer will have banged out six Web columns, done a radio show, and scoured his larynx taping Mad Money, his surreal nightly call-in show on CNBC that is perhaps best described as Louis Rukeyser meets televangelism meets Pee-wee's Playhouse. At some point, he'll work on his monthly column for New York magazine. "I'm hard-core about the market," he says, his bobble-head emerging from a wall of flickering screens.
At one level, none of this makes much sense. With the market trading sideways and in danger of posting its fourth losing year since 2000 -- and real estate still the cocktail party topic of choice -- stockpicking is not exactly a growth industry. (Cramer trades stocks for a charitable trust; he no longer owns any stocks personally, other than his 15.4% stake in TheStreet.com, which he co-founded, worth about $15 million.)
Why, then, is Cramer so in-your-face? In the aftermath of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's attacks on Wall Street research, analysts hide behind weaselly ratings such as "In-Line" and "Equal Weight," and scores of stocks are no longer covered. "The analysts," Cramer pronounces, taking a break from another drug-pump tantrum, "they are colorless and odorless and sanitized and fear Spitzer to the point of death." Even CNBC, he complains, is "terribly gun-shy about being anything but 'corporate crime watch' when people still need to make money."
Cramer senses a huge information vacuum. "You can't just be neutral on everything," he says. "Go see a shrink!" What he sees is a woefully underserved market for unabashed, aggressive stockpicking -- his kind -- that is laced with bombastic sound bites like "Back up the truck!" and "Get the paddles!" and lends itself to the showmanship that has made Mad Money a cult hit with 384,000 nightly viewers. No Warren Buffett, Cramer is a trading mercenary to the core. His rapid-fire in-and-out moves are raising chat room buzz to levels not seen since day traders reigned supreme during the bubble. All of which has turned CNBC's once-moribund 6 p.m. slot into one of its top-rated hours. "What's smart about Mad Money is it does away with the usual boring guests and lets Cramer vent in a way that is hard not to watch," says Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz, who profiled Cramer in his book The Fortune Tellers. "It occupies some sort of netherworld between sheer entertainment and useful financial advice."
.....
Already 13 hours into his workday, Cramer seems no less a workaholic than he was during his reign of terror at Cramer Berkowitz, where he frequently hurled water bottles at associates and smashed keyboards. He even told his partner, Jeff Berkowitz, that he had no business at his daughter's school play when Intel (INTC ) was about to report its results.
He takes a breather to talk about the impact of his obsessiveness on his family. After a catastrophic 1998 that nearly sank Cramer Berkowitz, the fund netted clients 47% in 1999 and 28% in 2000. "I was killing the market when everyone else was doing badly, and yet I was more miserable than ever," he says. His elder daughter didn't want to be around him, resenting him for being constantly leashed to his investors by phone. "All I did was say, 'Be quiet. Please leave Daddy alone. Daddy has to trade."'
In 2000, Cramer's wife, Karen, gave him an ultimatum: Slow down, or else. She had been a partner at his hedge fund. He still affectionately calls her his "trading goddess" for persuading him to sell out before the 1987 crash and buy into the October, 1998, panic. (She declined to comment for this story.)
The tipping point came just before Thanksgiving, 2000, on a trip to Las Vegas with his dad. After ignoring his dad to call in orders to his fund for hours, Cramer suddenly turned to him and said they were clear to go to dinner. His dad exploded: "'You're 46 years old, and this is what you're doing?"' Cramer recounts. "'You don't care about anything but the fund. How can you be so miserable?"'
Cramer says the incident forced him to rethink his life. Later, he cashed out of the fund, handing full control to Jeff Berkowitz. "Easy come, easy go," Cramer says, with a clap. These days, his daughter's morning carpool is his top priority. "I never miss," he says. "It's inviolate." On weekends, Cramer tends to his garden's beefsteak tomatoes and chili peppers and digs night crawlers for bass fishing at his country house. (full article)
CONGRESSMAN FRANK WOLF SLAMS YAHOO
Interesting remarks from the House floor. Definitely well spoken and hard to disagree with. This is an old issue now, but Yahoo should still be ashamed for this:
YAHOO SHOULD BE ASHAMED -- HON. FRANK R. WOLF
(Extensions of Remarks - October 18, 2005)
HON. FRANK R. WOLF OF VIRGINIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I recall with great irony the heated annual debates in Congress surrounding Most Favored Nation trade status and ultimately Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China. The coalition that battled granting China this privilege faced an almost certain perennial loss. Even so, it served as a valuable forum in which to highlight just what kind of a country we are dealing with in China. The list of egregious actions laid at the feet of the communist government of the People's Republic of China is long and spans decades--human rights abuses, religious persecution including torture and imprisonment, slave labor practices, forced sterilization, espionage operations against U.S. businesses, software piracy and
intellectual property theft, military spying. At the time many argued with tremendous passion, business interests foremost among them, that trade with China would change China, not the other way around.
It strikes me that those may have been hollow promises--that little has changed in China. Rather it appears that some American companies are increasingly honoring repressive Chinese laws so that they might keep their seat at the table and with it the promise of great profit.
Shi Tao, a freelance journalist for Internet publications, was recently sentenced in China, to 10 years in prison for "leaking state secrets abroad."
Tao was arrested in November 2004 after Yahoo, an American company, cooperated with Chinese government authorities to grant them access to Tao's personal e-mail account. Tao simply e-mailed portions of a directive issued by China's Propaganda Department that instructed the Chinese media as to how to cover the 15th anniversary of the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
Incidentally, even today it is still impermissible to use the term "4 June," the date of the brutal government crackdown on pro-democracy activists, student leaders and workers in Tiananmen Square, in the press or online.
Yahoo justified their actions by claiming that to do business in China, they had to follow Chinese laws--a morally bankrupt argument which excuses doing business with the worst actors on the world scene, under the guise of respect for the law. But even if one subscribed to that argument, it is noteworthy that the information that Yahoo turned over to government authorities was stored in Hong Kong, outside of the jurisdiction of the mainland police.
Yahoo's chairman and chief executive officer Terry Semel, after vigorously defending his company's decision, is reported to have said, "on a personal level, I wince." I would say to Mr. Semel, I too wince. And I would venture to guess that Mr. Tao's family winced when police grabbed him on a street, searched his house and confiscated his computer and other items, thus launching the ordeal that culminated his eventual prosecution and imprisonment.
During the dark days of the Cold War the vast majority of those living behind the Iron Curtain saw America as a friend--we represented their hopes and aspirations. But today in China some are complicity with the oppressors.
Mr. Semel and the company he leads is a beneficiary, as we all are, of this great experiment in self-governance, free enterprise and individual liberty that we call America. When faced with a choice between the bottom line, and betraying the very tenets that underpin this nation, Yahoo chose profit. They should be ashamed.
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Interesting remarks from the House floor. Definitely well spoken and hard to disagree with. This is an old issue now, but Yahoo should still be ashamed for this:
YAHOO SHOULD BE ASHAMED -- HON. FRANK R. WOLF
(Extensions of Remarks - October 18, 2005)
HON. FRANK R. WOLF OF VIRGINIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I recall with great irony the heated annual debates in Congress surrounding Most Favored Nation trade status and ultimately Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China. The coalition that battled granting China this privilege faced an almost certain perennial loss. Even so, it served as a valuable forum in which to highlight just what kind of a country we are dealing with in China. The list of egregious actions laid at the feet of the communist government of the People's Republic of China is long and spans decades--human rights abuses, religious persecution including torture and imprisonment, slave labor practices, forced sterilization, espionage operations against U.S. businesses, software piracy and
intellectual property theft, military spying. At the time many argued with tremendous passion, business interests foremost among them, that trade with China would change China, not the other way around.
It strikes me that those may have been hollow promises--that little has changed in China. Rather it appears that some American companies are increasingly honoring repressive Chinese laws so that they might keep their seat at the table and with it the promise of great profit.
Shi Tao, a freelance journalist for Internet publications, was recently sentenced in China, to 10 years in prison for "leaking state secrets abroad."
Tao was arrested in November 2004 after Yahoo, an American company, cooperated with Chinese government authorities to grant them access to Tao's personal e-mail account. Tao simply e-mailed portions of a directive issued by China's Propaganda Department that instructed the Chinese media as to how to cover the 15th anniversary of the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
Incidentally, even today it is still impermissible to use the term "4 June," the date of the brutal government crackdown on pro-democracy activists, student leaders and workers in Tiananmen Square, in the press or online.
Yahoo justified their actions by claiming that to do business in China, they had to follow Chinese laws--a morally bankrupt argument which excuses doing business with the worst actors on the world scene, under the guise of respect for the law. But even if one subscribed to that argument, it is noteworthy that the information that Yahoo turned over to government authorities was stored in Hong Kong, outside of the jurisdiction of the mainland police.
Yahoo's chairman and chief executive officer Terry Semel, after vigorously defending his company's decision, is reported to have said, "on a personal level, I wince." I would say to Mr. Semel, I too wince. And I would venture to guess that Mr. Tao's family winced when police grabbed him on a street, searched his house and confiscated his computer and other items, thus launching the ordeal that culminated his eventual prosecution and imprisonment.
During the dark days of the Cold War the vast majority of those living behind the Iron Curtain saw America as a friend--we represented their hopes and aspirations. But today in China some are complicity with the oppressors.
Mr. Semel and the company he leads is a beneficiary, as we all are, of this great experiment in self-governance, free enterprise and individual liberty that we call America. When faced with a choice between the bottom line, and betraying the very tenets that underpin this nation, Yahoo chose profit. They should be ashamed.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S INNOVATION AWARDS... "A BETTER IDEA"
Excerpt from today's article:
The genome-sequencing technique from 454 Life Sciences was selected as the Gold winner in The Wall Street Journal's 2005 Technology Innovation Awards competition. Innovative technologies from around the world were eligible for awards in categories including biotechnology, software, security, energy and the environment, among others.
Judges selected Gold, Silver and Bronze winners, as well as giving out an Honorable Mention award. They also named winners in each of 12 categories and a total of 20 runners-up.
Around 750 applications were screened by a Wall Street Journal editor, who narrowed the field to 104 semifinalists. Then a panel of expert judges from industry, research organizations and academia scored each entry and picked the winners.
Entries were judged on two main criteria: Does the innovation represent a breakthrough from conventional ideas or methods in its field, and does it go beyond incremental improvements on technologies that already exist? Some judges also considered the utility of the innovation. "I looked at how much of an impact it's going to have -- really how useful it is," says one judge, Diane Greene, president of VMware Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company that sells software that enables different operating systems to run on a single computer.
The Silver award was given to Ecology Coatings, of Akron, Ohio, for developing protective coatings that don't require polluting solvents and can be used without expensive, energy-intensive curing.
.....
The Bronze winner was Alien Technology Corp., a Morgan Hill, Calif., semiconductor company that has developed a manufacturing process that dramatically reduces the cost of radio-frequency identification, or RFID, tags.
Tiny RFID tags promise to revolutionize inventory management for retailers, libraries and military quartermasters by the wireless tracking of products from the factory floor to the loading dock to the display shelf. For the tags to become widely used, costs have to plunge to only pennies a tag, compared with about 50 cents with traditional manufacturing methods. These traditional techniques rely on mechanically assembling tiny integrated circuits into RFID tags using a robotic arm. (full article)
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Excerpt from today's article:
The genome-sequencing technique from 454 Life Sciences was selected as the Gold winner in The Wall Street Journal's 2005 Technology Innovation Awards competition. Innovative technologies from around the world were eligible for awards in categories including biotechnology, software, security, energy and the environment, among others.
Judges selected Gold, Silver and Bronze winners, as well as giving out an Honorable Mention award. They also named winners in each of 12 categories and a total of 20 runners-up.
Around 750 applications were screened by a Wall Street Journal editor, who narrowed the field to 104 semifinalists. Then a panel of expert judges from industry, research organizations and academia scored each entry and picked the winners.
Entries were judged on two main criteria: Does the innovation represent a breakthrough from conventional ideas or methods in its field, and does it go beyond incremental improvements on technologies that already exist? Some judges also considered the utility of the innovation. "I looked at how much of an impact it's going to have -- really how useful it is," says one judge, Diane Greene, president of VMware Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company that sells software that enables different operating systems to run on a single computer.
The Silver award was given to Ecology Coatings, of Akron, Ohio, for developing protective coatings that don't require polluting solvents and can be used without expensive, energy-intensive curing.
.....
The Bronze winner was Alien Technology Corp., a Morgan Hill, Calif., semiconductor company that has developed a manufacturing process that dramatically reduces the cost of radio-frequency identification, or RFID, tags.
Tiny RFID tags promise to revolutionize inventory management for retailers, libraries and military quartermasters by the wireless tracking of products from the factory floor to the loading dock to the display shelf. For the tags to become widely used, costs have to plunge to only pennies a tag, compared with about 50 cents with traditional manufacturing methods. These traditional techniques rely on mechanically assembling tiny integrated circuits into RFID tags using a robotic arm. (full article)
"EBAY NATION AND THE GOLDEN GOOSE"... REYNOLDS SPEAKS UP AGAINST STUPID REGULATIONS
Glenn Reynolds has a good commentary at Tech Central Station on how Congress should "exempt Internet businesses from intrusive state and local regulation." Great example of the how North Dakota is thinking about requiring people who sell on eBay to obtain an auctioneer's license. These applicants "would pay a $35 fee, obtain a $5,000 surety bond and undergo training at one of eight approved auction schools, where the curriculum includes talking really fast."
Seriously stupid people in our nation. Actually, there are stupid people in every nation, but it's just easiest to point out those in your own backyard.
It's easy to make fun of this kind of thing, and people are. One blogger observes: "Soon enough, governments will force these guys to wear a suit and tie in front of their personal computers."
But even though North Dakota's proposal is being targeted for mockery, it's also being targeted for emulation, as quite a few other states are considering similar proposals. This seems like a dreadful idea to me.
The Internet has done very well as a venue for commerce and small business, in no small part because Internet entrepreneurs have been free -- either de jure or de facto -- from a lot of the dumb laws and regulations that afflict small businesses in general. You'd think that people would take the lesson, and reduce the regulations afflicting concerns that do business off the Internet. Instead, I fear, we'll see a lot more proposals like this one, aimed at bringing the Internet under bureaucratic, guild, and trade-union control.
North Dakota's law may be dumb, but it protects existing auctioneers, auction schools, and auction-regulating bureaucrats, or at least they probably hope it will, and that's the usual agenda of state trade-regulation laws. (My own state had a law forbidding anyone but a licensed mortician from selling caskets, until a federal court struck it down in response to an Institute for Justice lawsuit. The law was ostensibly about consumer protection, but it was really about letting morticians charge enormous markups without fear of competition.) (full commentary)
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Glenn Reynolds has a good commentary at Tech Central Station on how Congress should "exempt Internet businesses from intrusive state and local regulation." Great example of the how North Dakota is thinking about requiring people who sell on eBay to obtain an auctioneer's license. These applicants "would pay a $35 fee, obtain a $5,000 surety bond and undergo training at one of eight approved auction schools, where the curriculum includes talking really fast."
Seriously stupid people in our nation. Actually, there are stupid people in every nation, but it's just easiest to point out those in your own backyard.
It's easy to make fun of this kind of thing, and people are. One blogger observes: "Soon enough, governments will force these guys to wear a suit and tie in front of their personal computers."
But even though North Dakota's proposal is being targeted for mockery, it's also being targeted for emulation, as quite a few other states are considering similar proposals. This seems like a dreadful idea to me.
The Internet has done very well as a venue for commerce and small business, in no small part because Internet entrepreneurs have been free -- either de jure or de facto -- from a lot of the dumb laws and regulations that afflict small businesses in general. You'd think that people would take the lesson, and reduce the regulations afflicting concerns that do business off the Internet. Instead, I fear, we'll see a lot more proposals like this one, aimed at bringing the Internet under bureaucratic, guild, and trade-union control.
North Dakota's law may be dumb, but it protects existing auctioneers, auction schools, and auction-regulating bureaucrats, or at least they probably hope it will, and that's the usual agenda of state trade-regulation laws. (My own state had a law forbidding anyone but a licensed mortician from selling caskets, until a federal court struck it down in response to an Institute for Justice lawsuit. The law was ostensibly about consumer protection, but it was really about letting morticians charge enormous markups without fear of competition.) (full commentary)
"DOES THE VIDEO IPOD MAKE A CASE FOR TINY SCREENS?"
Michael Stroud, CEO of iHollywood Forum and AO columnist, has a good post and discussion at AlwaysOn on Apple's recent move into video:
Whenever the subject of video on mobile phones comes up at my conferences, I always hear some variant of the following statement: "Two-minute video on mobile phones, great. TV shows and movies, bad. No one wants to watch long-form content on tiny screens."
That's why Apple's release of its Video iPod is so intriguing. Apple is betting that people do want to watch long-form video on tiny screens. Apple's deal with ABC to download TV programs like Desperate Housewives on iPods is groundbreaking. Once again, Steve Jobs is happily going against conventional wisdom.
I'd love to say I have an opinion on whether Jobs's bet is correct. But I don't. It's fair to say Jobs doesn't know either. Apple is opportunistic about its product releases. It throws a product into the marketing wind—say, the iPod Shuffle or the iMac Mini—and sees if it takes in the market. If it does, it ramps up production. (full article)
[tags: apple, ipod, video ipod, itunes, tech]
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Michael Stroud, CEO of iHollywood Forum and AO columnist, has a good post and discussion at AlwaysOn on Apple's recent move into video:
Whenever the subject of video on mobile phones comes up at my conferences, I always hear some variant of the following statement: "Two-minute video on mobile phones, great. TV shows and movies, bad. No one wants to watch long-form content on tiny screens."
That's why Apple's release of its Video iPod is so intriguing. Apple is betting that people do want to watch long-form video on tiny screens. Apple's deal with ABC to download TV programs like Desperate Housewives on iPods is groundbreaking. Once again, Steve Jobs is happily going against conventional wisdom.
I'd love to say I have an opinion on whether Jobs's bet is correct. But I don't. It's fair to say Jobs doesn't know either. Apple is opportunistic about its product releases. It throws a product into the marketing wind—say, the iPod Shuffle or the iMac Mini—and sees if it takes in the market. If it does, it ramps up production. (full article)
[tags: apple, ipod, video ipod, itunes, tech]
Saturday, October 22, 2005
MIDWAY TRADING IS A MESSED UP COMPANY... MORE OIL-FOR-FOOD BRIBES
I'd say Midway Trading is worse than Scientigo on the ethical and likability totum pole. They lined the pockets of Iraqi officials to get the rights to sell $42 million worth of Iraqi oil. Greedy, unethical, unprincipled bastards. I hope the $250,000 fine isn't all they get. The management deserves to go to jail.
A Virginia company admitted in state Supreme Court in New York that it paid $440,000 in kickbacks to Iraqi officials as part of the United Nations "oil-for-food" program.
Midway Trading, based in Reston, Virginia, pleaded guilty to grand larceny charges and agreed to pay a $250,000 fine, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said today.
"The oil-for-food program was set up as a way for the Iraqi people to receive humanitarian goods and not to line the pockets of the ruling party," Morgenthau said.
Created by the U.N. Security Council as an exemption to sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the program allowed Iraq's former dictator, Saddam Hussein, to sell $64 billion worth of oil from 1996 until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Hussein skimmed more than $17 billion from the program through oil smuggling and graft involving humanitarian goods, U.S. congressional investigators said in November.
Morgenthau said Midway won the right in late 2000 to buy $42 million worth of oil from Iraq through Bulf Oil, a Romanian company, as part of the oil-for-food program. He said Midway funneled the bribes to Iraqi government officials through a Bulf employee. (full article)
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I'd say Midway Trading is worse than Scientigo on the ethical and likability totum pole. They lined the pockets of Iraqi officials to get the rights to sell $42 million worth of Iraqi oil. Greedy, unethical, unprincipled bastards. I hope the $250,000 fine isn't all they get. The management deserves to go to jail.
A Virginia company admitted in state Supreme Court in New York that it paid $440,000 in kickbacks to Iraqi officials as part of the United Nations "oil-for-food" program.
Midway Trading, based in Reston, Virginia, pleaded guilty to grand larceny charges and agreed to pay a $250,000 fine, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said today.
"The oil-for-food program was set up as a way for the Iraqi people to receive humanitarian goods and not to line the pockets of the ruling party," Morgenthau said.
Created by the U.N. Security Council as an exemption to sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the program allowed Iraq's former dictator, Saddam Hussein, to sell $64 billion worth of oil from 1996 until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Hussein skimmed more than $17 billion from the program through oil smuggling and graft involving humanitarian goods, U.S. congressional investigators said in November.
Morgenthau said Midway won the right in late 2000 to buy $42 million worth of oil from Iraq through Bulf Oil, a Romanian company, as part of the oil-for-food program. He said Midway funneled the bribes to Iraqi government officials through a Bulf employee. (full article)
SCIENTIGO... ANOTHER SCO-LIKE LEECH
Scientigo is in serious need of revenues, or their management team is run by a bunch of idiots. I don't believe they are going to claim royalties on XML.
Charlotte, N.C.-based Scientigo owns two patents (No. 5,842,213 and No. 6,393,426) covering the transfer of "data in neutral forms." These patents, one of which was applied for in 1997, are infringed upon by the data-formatting standard XML, Scientigo executives assert.
Scientigo intends to "monetize" this intellectual property, Scientigo CEO Doyal Bryant said this week.
Rather than seek royalties itself, Scientigo has forged a tentative agreement with an intellectual-property licensing firm that will handle contracts with third parties, Bryant said. A final agreement could be announced early next week, he said.
"We're not interested in having us against the world. We're just looking for ways to leverage an asset; we have pretty concrete proof that makes us feel comfortable saying it is an asset," Bryant said.
.....
Most software companies use XML in some way, as do individual developers and corporate customers. The standard itself is developed at the World Wide Web Consortium, which published an initial draft of XML in late 1996 and proposed XML version 1.0 in December 1997.
Patent lawyer Bruce Sunstein, a co-founder of Boston-based Bromberg & Sunstein, viewed Scientigo's patents and concluded that the company will have difficulty in enforcing claims over XML.
Sunstein noted that XML is derived from SGML, which dates back to the 1980s. SGML, in turn, is based on computing concepts from the 1960s. If Scientigo's claims were ever litigated, the company would have to address all the prior work on data formats.
"You can wish them good luck if you want, but there is a lot of history this patent will have to deal with, and the fat lady has not finished singing on this one yet," Sunstein said. (full article)
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Scientigo is in serious need of revenues, or their management team is run by a bunch of idiots. I don't believe they are going to claim royalties on XML.
Charlotte, N.C.-based Scientigo owns two patents (No. 5,842,213 and No. 6,393,426) covering the transfer of "data in neutral forms." These patents, one of which was applied for in 1997, are infringed upon by the data-formatting standard XML, Scientigo executives assert.
Scientigo intends to "monetize" this intellectual property, Scientigo CEO Doyal Bryant said this week.
Rather than seek royalties itself, Scientigo has forged a tentative agreement with an intellectual-property licensing firm that will handle contracts with third parties, Bryant said. A final agreement could be announced early next week, he said.
"We're not interested in having us against the world. We're just looking for ways to leverage an asset; we have pretty concrete proof that makes us feel comfortable saying it is an asset," Bryant said.
.....
Most software companies use XML in some way, as do individual developers and corporate customers. The standard itself is developed at the World Wide Web Consortium, which published an initial draft of XML in late 1996 and proposed XML version 1.0 in December 1997.
Patent lawyer Bruce Sunstein, a co-founder of Boston-based Bromberg & Sunstein, viewed Scientigo's patents and concluded that the company will have difficulty in enforcing claims over XML.
Sunstein noted that XML is derived from SGML, which dates back to the 1980s. SGML, in turn, is based on computing concepts from the 1960s. If Scientigo's claims were ever litigated, the company would have to address all the prior work on data formats.
"You can wish them good luck if you want, but there is a lot of history this patent will have to deal with, and the fat lady has not finished singing on this one yet," Sunstein said. (full article)
Friday, October 21, 2005
EUROPE SHOULD WAKE UP AND SMELL THE GREEN TEA
HatTip to Mingi. Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, has a great article on Europe and China:
European Union finance ministers went to China last week. Let's hope the trip shatters the complacency that seems to pervade European capitals these days. "Wake up and smell the coffee," is what Americans like to say when they encounter complacency. But it's the Chinese green tea the Europeans need to wake up and smell.
A hundred years ago any delegation of European leaders visiting China could have felt smug with reason. Western Europe accounted for roughly a third of world output. After a century of economic stagnation, China produced less than a tenth.
.....
The roots of the problem are not far to seek. As the OECD points out, an exceptionally large share of British pupils leave school without qualifications. This helps to explain why one in every 14 British men aged between 25 and 54 is inactive; they simply lack the skills that employers need. Thirty per cent of Britons aged between 25 and 34 are classified by the OECD as "low-skilled", the second-worst rate in a sample of 16 developed countries. The countries that come top - with five per cent or fewer "low-skilled" - are Japan and Korea.
This is where Europe really has to worry. For what is happening in Asia is not merely that their manufactures are becoming as good as ours. The reality is that their workforce is rapidly becoming better than ours. And as a billion-plus Chinese pour their energies not only into working but also into studying, the gap between the Old West and the New East can only widen. (full article)
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HatTip to Mingi. Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, has a great article on Europe and China:
European Union finance ministers went to China last week. Let's hope the trip shatters the complacency that seems to pervade European capitals these days. "Wake up and smell the coffee," is what Americans like to say when they encounter complacency. But it's the Chinese green tea the Europeans need to wake up and smell.
A hundred years ago any delegation of European leaders visiting China could have felt smug with reason. Western Europe accounted for roughly a third of world output. After a century of economic stagnation, China produced less than a tenth.
.....
The roots of the problem are not far to seek. As the OECD points out, an exceptionally large share of British pupils leave school without qualifications. This helps to explain why one in every 14 British men aged between 25 and 54 is inactive; they simply lack the skills that employers need. Thirty per cent of Britons aged between 25 and 34 are classified by the OECD as "low-skilled", the second-worst rate in a sample of 16 developed countries. The countries that come top - with five per cent or fewer "low-skilled" - are Japan and Korea.
This is where Europe really has to worry. For what is happening in Asia is not merely that their manufactures are becoming as good as ours. The reality is that their workforce is rapidly becoming better than ours. And as a billion-plus Chinese pour their energies not only into working but also into studying, the gap between the Old West and the New East can only widen. (full article)
MICHELLE KOSINSKI... "MORON OF THE WEEK"
Samantha Burns has a revealing and entertaining post on Michelle Kosinski, the MSN reporter who tried to deceive the nation about a water catastrophe in New Jersey.
Moron of the week #5 is Michelle Kosinski because she so deservingly gained the title. And, because nobody guessed correctly, despite the double meaning hint "by the looks of things, I'd say that this person could be in deep trouble", Shockingly Provincial remains enthroned.
For those who haven't heard, perhaps you're wading on the sidelines not knowing about the news of the week, Michelle Kosinski is a news reporter for MSN Today show who deceived us all about the water catastrophe in New Jersey.
Okay, so we weren't really deceived since two men walked by her in ankle deep water while she was fake paddling a canoe, giving away her story that ended up being rather farcical, even to the news anchors.
So, here's the story if you haven't heard it yet (the video footage is available on that site). While Wayne, NJ had accumulated 8 days of rain water, Kosinki decided to take advantage of the story. (full post)
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Samantha Burns has a revealing and entertaining post on Michelle Kosinski, the MSN reporter who tried to deceive the nation about a water catastrophe in New Jersey.
Moron of the week #5 is Michelle Kosinski because she so deservingly gained the title. And, because nobody guessed correctly, despite the double meaning hint "by the looks of things, I'd say that this person could be in deep trouble", Shockingly Provincial remains enthroned.
For those who haven't heard, perhaps you're wading on the sidelines not knowing about the news of the week, Michelle Kosinski is a news reporter for MSN Today show who deceived us all about the water catastrophe in New Jersey.
Okay, so we weren't really deceived since two men walked by her in ankle deep water while she was fake paddling a canoe, giving away her story that ended up being rather farcical, even to the news anchors.
So, here's the story if you haven't heard it yet (the video footage is available on that site). While Wayne, NJ had accumulated 8 days of rain water, Kosinki decided to take advantage of the story. (full post)
GOOGLE SHARES SURGE... $340! ALRIGHT!
Google is kicking ass. Our household has some shares in this stock, so we're happy:) Hmmm... maybe it's time we sell. News from ABC:
Google Inc. shares rocketed to an all-time high on Friday as an impressive round of quarterly results appeared to win over skeptics worried that the Web search company was more bark than bite.
In an earnings report that showed the company outstripped Wall Street expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter since its initial public offering in August 2004, Google said on Thursday it saw a "sea-change" shift to Internet marketing from print and broadcast.
ThinkEquity analyst John Tinker echoed the term "sea-change," saying that Google's results show "more and more firms are realizing that Internet advertising is effective."
"They've come up with a new product that is changing the way people are advertising," Tinker said. "They are changing the way people are doing business."
While Google has long been a hot spot for users searching for everything from news to long-lost friends, there have been questions about whether the company can turn its popularity into steady advertising dollars.
But the company's Thursday earnings report showed that it is pulling advertising money from old media at a faster-than-expected clip — prompting upgrades by analysts and another big jump in its stock.
Among the upgrades, Needham boosted its price objective to $370 from $300 a share, while Banc of America Securities increased its target to $360 from $280.
First Albany and Lehman Brothers went further, upping their price targets to $450 a share. (full article)
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Google is kicking ass. Our household has some shares in this stock, so we're happy:) Hmmm... maybe it's time we sell. News from ABC:
Google Inc.
In an earnings report that showed the company outstripped Wall Street expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter since its initial public offering in August 2004, Google said on Thursday it saw a "sea-change" shift to Internet marketing from print and broadcast.
ThinkEquity analyst John Tinker echoed the term "sea-change," saying that Google's results show "more and more firms are realizing that Internet advertising is effective."
"They've come up with a new product that is changing the way people are advertising," Tinker said. "They are changing the way people are doing business."
While Google has long been a hot spot for users searching for everything from news to long-lost friends, there have been questions about whether the company can turn its popularity into steady advertising dollars.
But the company's Thursday earnings report showed that it is pulling advertising money from old media at a faster-than-expected clip — prompting upgrades by analysts and another big jump in its stock.
Among the upgrades, Needham boosted its price objective to $370 from $300 a share, while Banc of America Securities increased its target to $360 from $280.
First Albany and Lehman Brothers went further, upping their price targets to $450 a share.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
PICTUREAL... DVD, ONLINE VIDEO CONVERSION
Plugging for Pictureal. My friend, Jeff, introduced me to Yogesh who started Pictureal, which is a cool service. They take your VHS tapes, Beta, MiniDV, etc. and convert it to an edited DVD movie that you can play at home and put it online for you to share with your friends and family. You can read more about it here.
Yogesh was nice enough to offer a "friends and family" discount of 15% you can use multiple times, and he was cool with me posting it up on my blog. Just type in this code: 7od68.
They just launched a few weeks ago, so check them out if you have tapes or digital film that you want edited into a nice DVD or online clip.
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Plugging for Pictureal. My friend, Jeff, introduced me to Yogesh who started Pictureal, which is a cool service. They take your VHS tapes, Beta, MiniDV, etc. and convert it to an edited DVD movie that you can play at home and put it online for you to share with your friends and family. You can read more about it here.
Yogesh was nice enough to offer a "friends and family" discount of 15% you can use multiple times, and he was cool with me posting it up on my blog. Just type in this code: 7od68.
They just launched a few weeks ago, so check them out if you have tapes or digital film that you want edited into a nice DVD or online clip.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
THE NEW PROGRESSIVE COALITION... VC METHOD FOR PROGRESSIVES?
Okay. I have to reluctantly plug for my friend Deborah. She joined another Deborah's new thing that supports progressive political groups. Whatever. They need all the help that they can get. Dems definitely lack creativity, ideas, and infrastructure. Here's a clip from the MercuryNews:
When Deborah Rappaport woke up last November to news that George W. Bush had kept his job, despite the nearly $5 million she and her venture capitalist husband Andy had spent to help unseat him, the Woodside political activist didn't go into hibernation.
Instead, she hatched another million-dollar plan. Today Rappaport, 47, is launching the New Progressive Coalition, a fundraising initiative to support progressive political groups using venture capital methods. Donors are called ``investors.'' Political activists are running ``start-ups.'' The goal is to get the money to the brightest ideas. And, just like eBay and its well-honed feedback system, the members will rate ideas and organizations on the coalition's Web site. Top rating: five stars.
It's only natural. Her husband, Andy Rappaport, is a general partner at August Capital in Menlo Park. The Woodside mother of three has long been active in local philanthropic and educational activities. The couple gave $1 million to the San Jose Museum of Art in 2000, and Deborah now serves as president of the board. She also sits on the Portola Valley School District board.
As Democrats, the Rappaports have long supported the party's candidates, but now the couple believe what they've learned from business can help build a national network of support for progressive groups.
Say you have a few extra bucks lying around and want to support a progressive cause. Give her Redwood City-based NPC $100, go on the group's Web site, www.newprogressivecoalition.com, and start perusing who is looking for your money. You'll find a wide selection. (full article)
Anyway, here's my friend, Deborah's plug, so if you're from the left and want to help them out just go to their website:
The New Progressive Coalition is a new political venture whose purpose is to build a powerful network for long-term progressive change.
Most progressives agree that our greatest shortcoming is that we don't have a strong and cohesive network of organizations, activists and investors – a shortcoming that the right wing does not share.
In fact, the right wing has spent billions of dollars over decades to develop their think tanks, grassroots, media and advocacy groups… while progressives have simply ignored building the infrastructure of our own movement.
NPC's goal is to change that.
The idea behind NPC is this conviction: progressives have the talent, the will, the resources and the imagination to succeed.
And, in order to counter the right-wing’s ascendancy, we need to focus on wiring all of our talent and leadership together and building a progressive political machine for the long term.
Now that we’ve just launched our new beta website, NPC is up and running and ready to wire progressive politics by:
* Creating a marketplace of ideas, resources and services for political entrepreneurs and investors of all sizes
* Connecting political innovators (those who wish to start progressive organizations) with political investors (those who wish to provide financial support to progressive organizations)
* Hosting events and online forums to help the progressive community succeed by exchanging winning strategies that can be replicated across the country
There’s much more to come, too, but the simple concept behind the New Progressive Coalition is this: connect the most innovative ideas with the resources needed to turn them into political reality and create a powerful community of action.
So, if you’re concerned about the direction this country is heading in (who isn’t?) and interested in helping to counter the $300 million right wing machine, I invite you to check out NPC’s website and learn more about us.
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Okay. I have to reluctantly plug for my friend Deborah. She joined another Deborah's new thing that supports progressive political groups. Whatever. They need all the help that they can get. Dems definitely lack creativity, ideas, and infrastructure. Here's a clip from the MercuryNews:
When Deborah Rappaport woke up last November to news that George W. Bush had kept his job, despite the nearly $5 million she and her venture capitalist husband Andy had spent to help unseat him, the Woodside political activist didn't go into hibernation.
Instead, she hatched another million-dollar plan. Today Rappaport, 47, is launching the New Progressive Coalition, a fundraising initiative to support progressive political groups using venture capital methods. Donors are called ``investors.'' Political activists are running ``start-ups.'' The goal is to get the money to the brightest ideas. And, just like eBay and its well-honed feedback system, the members will rate ideas and organizations on the coalition's Web site. Top rating: five stars.
It's only natural. Her husband, Andy Rappaport, is a general partner at August Capital in Menlo Park. The Woodside mother of three has long been active in local philanthropic and educational activities. The couple gave $1 million to the San Jose Museum of Art in 2000, and Deborah now serves as president of the board. She also sits on the Portola Valley School District board.
As Democrats, the Rappaports have long supported the party's candidates, but now the couple believe what they've learned from business can help build a national network of support for progressive groups.
Say you have a few extra bucks lying around and want to support a progressive cause. Give her Redwood City-based NPC $100, go on the group's Web site, www.newprogressivecoalition.com, and start perusing who is looking for your money. You'll find a wide selection. (full article)
Anyway, here's my friend, Deborah's plug, so if you're from the left and want to help them out just go to their website:
The New Progressive Coalition is a new political venture whose purpose is to build a powerful network for long-term progressive change.
Most progressives agree that our greatest shortcoming is that we don't have a strong and cohesive network of organizations, activists and investors – a shortcoming that the right wing does not share.
In fact, the right wing has spent billions of dollars over decades to develop their think tanks, grassroots, media and advocacy groups… while progressives have simply ignored building the infrastructure of our own movement.
NPC's goal is to change that.
The idea behind NPC is this conviction: progressives have the talent, the will, the resources and the imagination to succeed.
And, in order to counter the right-wing’s ascendancy, we need to focus on wiring all of our talent and leadership together and building a progressive political machine for the long term.
Now that we’ve just launched our new beta website, NPC is up and running and ready to wire progressive politics by:
* Creating a marketplace of ideas, resources and services for political entrepreneurs and investors of all sizes
* Connecting political innovators (those who wish to start progressive organizations) with political investors (those who wish to provide financial support to progressive organizations)
* Hosting events and online forums to help the progressive community succeed by exchanging winning strategies that can be replicated across the country
There’s much more to come, too, but the simple concept behind the New Progressive Coalition is this: connect the most innovative ideas with the resources needed to turn them into political reality and create a powerful community of action.
So, if you’re concerned about the direction this country is heading in (who isn’t?) and interested in helping to counter the $300 million right wing machine, I invite you to check out NPC’s website and learn more about us.
BLOGON 2005... BLOGS NOT INTERESTING?
I was just wondering how BlogOn 2005 is going since none of our team could make it out to NYC, and most of us attended the ThinkEquity Partners Private Company & VC Summit. I checked out Greg Yardley's blog and he had a good post on his thoughts:
I attended the BlogOn conference for most of today - it’s eight short blocks from our office out on the west side of Manhattan - but I didn’t feel the urge to write about it in any sort of depth. It’s been pretty staid so far. Susan Mernit describes the keynote - a pitch for Seth Godin’s new startup, Squidoo - better than I can. Pretty much a product promo. Not to say the product’s necessarily bad - I do plan to try it out - it’s just not what you’d expect from a keynote. Other sessions didn’t grab me overly hard, either. I wandered out of the last one at the end of the day thinking “hmmm, blogs aren’t quite as interesting as I thought.”
Don’t misunderstand me - the blogs I read every day are interesting, the people I met at BlogOn are interesting and this blog and its personal ramifications are very interesting (to me, anyway). But blogs as a business - well, not so much. I think that’s because blogs have passed the tipping point and are successfully transitioning into the mainstream. Gil Schwartz, Exec. VP of Communications for CBS - who gave the best presentation of the day - said that the membrane between mainstream journalism and ‘blogging’ has shrunk to the point where it’s insignificant. Seems true to me. The conference attendee list is certainly thick with big media folks. There’s no particular feel or sense that blogging is a revolutionary act, something that crept into the discourse in 1999 or so and could be said without qualification until 2003, maybe 2004. Instead, this conference is all about facilitating large corporations’ adaptation of and adoption to the new medium. No ’stick it to the man’ here. That, to me, is the mark of something rapidly maturing, well-established and largely well-known. (full post)
Greg has some more afterthoughts here and a small plug for GoingOn.
Susan Mernit knocks on Seth Goldin for making his keynote a commercial here, and Jeff Jarvis has a more positive post here.
Jeremy Pepper at The PR Blog has various posts on the conference here. The one that interests me is the one on McDonald's corporate blogging strategy. If they launch a marketing blog, I would blog for it for free since I LOVE McDonald's. You're reading on a person that use to eat 2-3 sandwiches for lunch a couple times a week... Filet-O-Fish, Double Quarter Pounder, and a McChicken please... Oh, and a super-size coke. Yeah, this was when I was young and had a high metabolism.
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I was just wondering how BlogOn 2005 is going since none of our team could make it out to NYC, and most of us attended the ThinkEquity Partners Private Company & VC Summit. I checked out Greg Yardley's blog and he had a good post on his thoughts:
I attended the BlogOn conference for most of today - it’s eight short blocks from our office out on the west side of Manhattan - but I didn’t feel the urge to write about it in any sort of depth. It’s been pretty staid so far. Susan Mernit describes the keynote - a pitch for Seth Godin’s new startup, Squidoo - better than I can. Pretty much a product promo. Not to say the product’s necessarily bad - I do plan to try it out - it’s just not what you’d expect from a keynote. Other sessions didn’t grab me overly hard, either. I wandered out of the last one at the end of the day thinking “hmmm, blogs aren’t quite as interesting as I thought.”
Don’t misunderstand me - the blogs I read every day are interesting, the people I met at BlogOn are interesting and this blog and its personal ramifications are very interesting (to me, anyway). But blogs as a business - well, not so much. I think that’s because blogs have passed the tipping point and are successfully transitioning into the mainstream. Gil Schwartz, Exec. VP of Communications for CBS - who gave the best presentation of the day - said that the membrane between mainstream journalism and ‘blogging’ has shrunk to the point where it’s insignificant. Seems true to me. The conference attendee list is certainly thick with big media folks. There’s no particular feel or sense that blogging is a revolutionary act, something that crept into the discourse in 1999 or so and could be said without qualification until 2003, maybe 2004. Instead, this conference is all about facilitating large corporations’ adaptation of and adoption to the new medium. No ’stick it to the man’ here. That, to me, is the mark of something rapidly maturing, well-established and largely well-known. (full post)
Greg has some more afterthoughts here and a small plug for GoingOn.
Susan Mernit knocks on Seth Goldin for making his keynote a commercial here, and Jeff Jarvis has a more positive post here.
Jeremy Pepper at The PR Blog has various posts on the conference here. The one that interests me is the one on McDonald's corporate blogging strategy. If they launch a marketing blog, I would blog for it for free since I LOVE McDonald's. You're reading on a person that use to eat 2-3 sandwiches for lunch a couple times a week... Filet-O-Fish, Double Quarter Pounder, and a McChicken please... Oh, and a super-size coke. Yeah, this was when I was young and had a high metabolism.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
"WIKIPEDIA FOUNDER ADMITS TO SERIOUS QUALITY PROBLEMS"
Hmmm... an old issue revisited. Of course I like my version from this past February on this issue better... a bit more color:)
Encouraging signs from the Wikipedia project, where co-founder and überpedian Jimmy Wales has acknowledged there are real quality problems with the online work.
Criticism of the project from within the inner sanctum has been very rare so far, although fellow co-founder Larry Sanger, who is no longer associated with the project, pleaded with the management to improve its content by befriending, and not alienating, established sources of expertise. (i.e., people who know what they're talking about.)
Meanwhile, criticism from outside the Wikipedia camp has been rebuffed with a ferocious blend of irrationality and vigor that's almost unprecedented in our experience: if you thought Apple, Amiga, Mozilla or OS/2 fans were er, ... passionate, you haven't met a wiki-fiddler. For them, it's a religious crusade. (full article)
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Hmmm... an old issue revisited. Of course I like my version from this past February on this issue better... a bit more color:)
Encouraging signs from the Wikipedia project, where co-founder and überpedian Jimmy Wales has acknowledged there are real quality problems with the online work.
Criticism of the project from within the inner sanctum has been very rare so far, although fellow co-founder Larry Sanger, who is no longer associated with the project, pleaded with the management to improve its content by befriending, and not alienating, established sources of expertise. (i.e., people who know what they're talking about.)
Meanwhile, criticism from outside the Wikipedia camp has been rebuffed with a ferocious blend of irrationality and vigor that's almost unprecedented in our experience: if you thought Apple, Amiga, Mozilla or OS/2 fans were er, ... passionate, you haven't met a wiki-fiddler. For them, it's a religious crusade. (full article)
OPEN TO ENTREPRENEURS!
Tony's recent post at AlwaysOn:
Open to Entrepreneurs!
Great Internet companies are coming down the pike, sustained by America's inspiring free-market culture.
Even at the very lowest bottom of the dot-com bust, my position remained firm: The coolest companies had yet to arrive. In doing research for The Internet Bubble book in 1998 and 1999, something became clear to my brother Michael and me. History dictates that of the companies born out of new industries, most of the truly great ones are founded after a period of initial funding and financial collapse. We also discovered that many great companies were founded during recessions, including HP, Disney, Intel, and Cisco. So by our rough calculations, many of the great Internet companies would be founded between 2002 and 2006.
Here we are in 2005, and I think we have much to show. Perhaps our favorite of the new class is Skype—an AO100 Top Innovator since we started the list, and this year's Innovator of the Year. Founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, two wild and crazy guys from Estonia who had already disrupted the music business with their file-sharing company, Kazaa. By allowing people to talk and videoconference over the Internet for free, Skype VoIP applications are poised to create major problems for the big telcos. If you don't believe us, read what the Internet's founding father, Vint Cerf, says in his [print blogozine] guest editorial. More Skype-like private companies are coming down the pike; check out our top picks in the list of AO100 winners. (full post)
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Tony's recent post at AlwaysOn:
Open to Entrepreneurs!
Great Internet companies are coming down the pike, sustained by America's inspiring free-market culture.
Even at the very lowest bottom of the dot-com bust, my position remained firm: The coolest companies had yet to arrive. In doing research for The Internet Bubble book in 1998 and 1999, something became clear to my brother Michael and me. History dictates that of the companies born out of new industries, most of the truly great ones are founded after a period of initial funding and financial collapse. We also discovered that many great companies were founded during recessions, including HP, Disney, Intel, and Cisco. So by our rough calculations, many of the great Internet companies would be founded between 2002 and 2006.
Here we are in 2005, and I think we have much to show. Perhaps our favorite of the new class is Skype—an AO100 Top Innovator since we started the list, and this year's Innovator of the Year. Founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, two wild and crazy guys from Estonia who had already disrupted the music business with their file-sharing company, Kazaa. By allowing people to talk and videoconference over the Internet for free, Skype VoIP applications are poised to create major problems for the big telcos. If you don't believe us, read what the Internet's founding father, Vint Cerf, says in his [print blogozine] guest editorial. More Skype-like private companies are coming down the pike; check out our top picks in the list of AO100 winners. (full post)
RANDOM NEWS QUICKLIST
"Iraq vote counts 'point to fraud'"
"Chinese celebrate the return of second manned space flight"
"Sun's gloomy side"
"Google's Plan for Galactic Domination"
"Google Offers Glimpse at Data Collection"
"Inflation Soars Highest in 15 Years"
"Frist Says He's Cooperating in Stock Probe"
"Miers Backed Ban on Most Abortions in '89"
"'Nightline' Has a Threesome"
"Losing weight can mean gaining a sex life"
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"Iraq vote counts 'point to fraud'"
"Chinese celebrate the return of second manned space flight"
"Sun's gloomy side"
"Google's Plan for Galactic Domination"
"Google Offers Glimpse at Data Collection"
"Inflation Soars Highest in 15 Years"
"Frist Says He's Cooperating in Stock Probe"
"Miers Backed Ban on Most Abortions in '89"
"'Nightline' Has a Threesome"
"Losing weight can mean gaining a sex life"
Monday, October 17, 2005
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER VERSUS THE LABOR UNIONS... CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT ALIVE AND KICKIN IN CA
Decent article and good summary of the big initiatives on the California ballot from Tech Central Station's Michael Rosen:
Just a few months ago, conventional wisdom had all but written Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's eulogy, complete with all the shopworn Terminator clichés fit to print.
The "Governator's" approval ratings were in the high 30's. The Democrats in the Assembly and Senate had stymied his reform agenda at almost every turn. His attempt to bypass the California Legislature and take his case directly to the people was in jeopardy as several of his initiatives were floundering. As little as 28% of Californians approved of the special election he called (California's fourth statewide election in as many years).
Worst of all, according to a Field Poll, positive opinion of Schwarzenegger hovered perilously close to the level of his ousted predecessor, Gray Davis.
Much of this bad news was attributed to a vehement and intensely personal advertising campaign against the governor on the part of the various unions, who had much to lose if the initiatives succeeded. Beginning in late spring, the airwaves have been blanketed with "everyday" teachers, workers, and parents lambasting the governor -- depicted in dull and grainy footage that would embarrass the National Enquirer's editorial staff -- for his betrayal of schools and families.
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In fact, the very opposite appears to be true: the simple, straightforward, and essentially conservative reforms that Arnold has set forth have become rather appealing to Californians, who have proven themselves more conservative than generally thought on the issues themselves, if not necessarily in the officials they elect. (Both the Assembly and the Senate are dominated by Democrats). As Republican State Senator Tom McClintock -- who garnered 13.5% of the gubernatorial vote in the recall election and who is now seeking the lieutenant governorship -- is fond of saying, when it comes to actual policies, California is still very much Reagan country.
But what exactly are the issues in this election that have elicited such high levels of support? The Schwarzenegger-sponsored initiatives are as follows:
*Proposition 74 requires five years of satisfactory service -- instead of two - before a teacher can earn lifetime tenure in the state school system, which embarrassingly ranks among the lowest in the nation. The teachers unions are up in arms over this measure and, according to the governor and his supporters, are approaching bankruptcy after spending tens of millions of dollars on their ad campaign. The California Teachers Association has even reportedly had to raise member dues by $60 per year to cover its political costs.
Californians appear to appreciate the delicious irony involved in the union's argument, on one hand, that the state spends far too little on schools (read: administrators' and teachers' salaries) and its expenditure, on the other, of more than $50 million of its administrators' and teachers' union dues, money that could better be spent improving the quality of education. By an 11-point margin, according to Survey USA, Golden Staters are siding with Arnold and against the unions.
*Proposition 75 has organized labor even more terrified. This initiative would prohibit public employee unions from spending union dues for political purposes without the written consent of its members. The measure has the potential of fundamentally shifting the balance of power in Sacramento away from the unions and the Democratic legislators they heavily influence. It is also premised on common sense: why shouldn't individual workers be able to control whether their hard-earned salaries fund political causes they oppose?
Foes of Prop 75 argue that the unions shouldn't have to disarm unilaterally when corporations enjoy unfettered use of shareholder profits for political advocacy. The difference, of course, is that shareholders can easily and quickly sell the stock of any company whose political contributions they abhor; they can also swiftly replace the sold shares with those of any other company.
By contrast, union members -- especially in closed-shop industries -- cannot simply renounce their union memberships, unless they're also willing to quit their jobs. As one San Diego AFL-CIO member wryly observed, "the only institution I know of where you have mandatory political dues is the Communist Party." This predicament is especially treacherous in the public sector where unionization is most widespread.
All told, according to recent polling, Californians favor the measure by a whopping 60%-37% as Republicans have successfully (and perhaps surprisingly) depicted themselves as the party of workers' rights.
*Proposition 76 would impose a cap on state spending growth, essentially requiring that the budget grow no faster than tax receipts and other state revenues. Known as the "live-within-our-means" measure, Prop 76 embodies an easy-to-follow, agreeable way to limit government sprawl. Spending grew by more than 40% during the Davis administration, i.e. between 1998 and 2004, far outstripping revenue growth. The initiative calls for the creation of rainy-day funds as well. So far, residents of the Golden State approve of this limited government measure by a 58-36 margin.
*Finally, Proposition 77 would dramatically reconfigure the way that California's Congressional and legislative districting lines are drawn. Currently, as in most other states, the legislature creates its own districts every 10 years on the basis of census data. The system has bred an unhealthy political stasis in which of 153 congressional and legislative seats up for grabs in the 2004 election, not a single one changed party hands. (full article)
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Decent article and good summary of the big initiatives on the California ballot from Tech Central Station's Michael Rosen:
Just a few months ago, conventional wisdom had all but written Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's eulogy, complete with all the shopworn Terminator clichés fit to print.
The "Governator's" approval ratings were in the high 30's. The Democrats in the Assembly and Senate had stymied his reform agenda at almost every turn. His attempt to bypass the California Legislature and take his case directly to the people was in jeopardy as several of his initiatives were floundering. As little as 28% of Californians approved of the special election he called (California's fourth statewide election in as many years).
Worst of all, according to a Field Poll, positive opinion of Schwarzenegger hovered perilously close to the level of his ousted predecessor, Gray Davis.
Much of this bad news was attributed to a vehement and intensely personal advertising campaign against the governor on the part of the various unions, who had much to lose if the initiatives succeeded. Beginning in late spring, the airwaves have been blanketed with "everyday" teachers, workers, and parents lambasting the governor -- depicted in dull and grainy footage that would embarrass the National Enquirer's editorial staff -- for his betrayal of schools and families.
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In fact, the very opposite appears to be true: the simple, straightforward, and essentially conservative reforms that Arnold has set forth have become rather appealing to Californians, who have proven themselves more conservative than generally thought on the issues themselves, if not necessarily in the officials they elect. (Both the Assembly and the Senate are dominated by Democrats). As Republican State Senator Tom McClintock -- who garnered 13.5% of the gubernatorial vote in the recall election and who is now seeking the lieutenant governorship -- is fond of saying, when it comes to actual policies, California is still very much Reagan country.
But what exactly are the issues in this election that have elicited such high levels of support? The Schwarzenegger-sponsored initiatives are as follows:
*Proposition 74 requires five years of satisfactory service -- instead of two - before a teacher can earn lifetime tenure in the state school system, which embarrassingly ranks among the lowest in the nation. The teachers unions are up in arms over this measure and, according to the governor and his supporters, are approaching bankruptcy after spending tens of millions of dollars on their ad campaign. The California Teachers Association has even reportedly had to raise member dues by $60 per year to cover its political costs.
Californians appear to appreciate the delicious irony involved in the union's argument, on one hand, that the state spends far too little on schools (read: administrators' and teachers' salaries) and its expenditure, on the other, of more than $50 million of its administrators' and teachers' union dues, money that could better be spent improving the quality of education. By an 11-point margin, according to Survey USA, Golden Staters are siding with Arnold and against the unions.
*Proposition 75 has organized labor even more terrified. This initiative would prohibit public employee unions from spending union dues for political purposes without the written consent of its members. The measure has the potential of fundamentally shifting the balance of power in Sacramento away from the unions and the Democratic legislators they heavily influence. It is also premised on common sense: why shouldn't individual workers be able to control whether their hard-earned salaries fund political causes they oppose?
Foes of Prop 75 argue that the unions shouldn't have to disarm unilaterally when corporations enjoy unfettered use of shareholder profits for political advocacy. The difference, of course, is that shareholders can easily and quickly sell the stock of any company whose political contributions they abhor; they can also swiftly replace the sold shares with those of any other company.
By contrast, union members -- especially in closed-shop industries -- cannot simply renounce their union memberships, unless they're also willing to quit their jobs. As one San Diego AFL-CIO member wryly observed, "the only institution I know of where you have mandatory political dues is the Communist Party." This predicament is especially treacherous in the public sector where unionization is most widespread.
All told, according to recent polling, Californians favor the measure by a whopping 60%-37% as Republicans have successfully (and perhaps surprisingly) depicted themselves as the party of workers' rights.
*Proposition 76 would impose a cap on state spending growth, essentially requiring that the budget grow no faster than tax receipts and other state revenues. Known as the "live-within-our-means" measure, Prop 76 embodies an easy-to-follow, agreeable way to limit government sprawl. Spending grew by more than 40% during the Davis administration, i.e. between 1998 and 2004, far outstripping revenue growth. The initiative calls for the creation of rainy-day funds as well. So far, residents of the Golden State approve of this limited government measure by a 58-36 margin.
*Finally, Proposition 77 would dramatically reconfigure the way that California's Congressional and legislative districting lines are drawn. Currently, as in most other states, the legislature creates its own districts every 10 years on the basis of census data. The system has bred an unhealthy political stasis in which of 153 congressional and legislative seats up for grabs in the 2004 election, not a single one changed party hands. (full article)
KOREAN-AMERICAN POLITICAL POWER
HatTip to Thomas. Slowly growing. It's been a long road, but it's about time Korean Americans started to become more active in the political process.
As More Korean-Americans Vote, Politicians Take Note
OCTOBER 14, 2005
by Jong sik Kong
A flock of U.S. politicians descended on Chodae Korean Church located in the northern New Jersey town of Norwood early Sunday morning.
Scott Garrett, an emerging republican representative, and Gordon Johnson, a democratic state assemblyman, were among them. Mayors of nearby Tenafly, Norwood, and Demarest also attended the service.
They came to see their constituents before the elections on November 8 for New York mayor and New Jersey governor. On the same day, the Korean American Voters Council (KAVC) ran a voter registration campaign in big Korean churches. On this day, the saying: "Where there are votes, there are politicians" rang true.
Recently, a growing number of Korean-Americans are becoming aware of the need to raise voter turnout to enhance influence of the Korean community in the U.S.
An estimated two million ethnic Koreans live in the U.S. If those who own U.S. citizenship cast their votes, they can affect U.S. politics and even influence U.S. Korean Peninsula policy.
According to the KAVC, which leads the Korean-American community's voting efforts in the U.S., the turnout of Korean Americans increased from seven percent in 1994 to 23.5 percent in 2004. However, it is still far lower than that of other ethnic minorities. To cast a ballot in the U.S., voters have to undergo a complex registration process.
The director of the KAVC Kim Dong-seok said, "Jewish voter turnout is as high as 78 percent, and they maximize their influence by building a consensus on some important issues and casting uniform ballots."
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HatTip to Thomas. Slowly growing. It's been a long road, but it's about time Korean Americans started to become more active in the political process.
As More Korean-Americans Vote, Politicians Take Note
OCTOBER 14, 2005
by Jong sik Kong
A flock of U.S. politicians descended on Chodae Korean Church located in the northern New Jersey town of Norwood early Sunday morning.
Scott Garrett, an emerging republican representative, and Gordon Johnson, a democratic state assemblyman, were among them. Mayors of nearby Tenafly, Norwood, and Demarest also attended the service.
They came to see their constituents before the elections on November 8 for New York mayor and New Jersey governor. On the same day, the Korean American Voters Council (KAVC) ran a voter registration campaign in big Korean churches. On this day, the saying: "Where there are votes, there are politicians" rang true.
Recently, a growing number of Korean-Americans are becoming aware of the need to raise voter turnout to enhance influence of the Korean community in the U.S.
An estimated two million ethnic Koreans live in the U.S. If those who own U.S. citizenship cast their votes, they can affect U.S. politics and even influence U.S. Korean Peninsula policy.
According to the KAVC, which leads the Korean-American community's voting efforts in the U.S., the turnout of Korean Americans increased from seven percent in 1994 to 23.5 percent in 2004. However, it is still far lower than that of other ethnic minorities. To cast a ballot in the U.S., voters have to undergo a complex registration process.
The director of the KAVC Kim Dong-seok said, "Jewish voter turnout is as high as 78 percent, and they maximize their influence by building a consensus on some important issues and casting uniform ballots."
THE WHITE HOUSE, THE CIA, AND THE WILSONS
HatTip to Lucianne.com. Christine and I just got back from D.C. late last night. It was a good weekend in saying bye our friend, Debbie, before she moves to London. We had lunch with her and then in the evening joined a party that her friends were throwing for her. It was a mix of politicos (mostly dems. not my crowd:), people from CNN (again not my crowd), her college buddies, and her long time friends she grew up with in D.C. It was funny since Christine mentioned how the crowd seemed different from what she has seen. I replied that it was definitely different than the stylish NYC hipsters or the laid back geek/tech scene we were getting use to in SF. Hard to generalize this scene... one way to describe is a preppy frat/sorority scene or maybe a professional frat/sorority flavor? Okay, maybe that doesn't sound good. Anyway, here's the article:
FOR TWO YEARS, THE political class in Washington has followed with intense interest the story of Joseph Wilson and the events that led to the compromising of his wife's identity and undercover status as a CIA operative. The rest of the country seems to have responded with a collective yawn. That will soon change if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald issues indictments of senior White House aides in his investigation of the alleged leaking of Mrs. Wilson's name.
The narrative constructed to date by the mainstream media is uncomplicated: The White House exaggerated claims of Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Niger despite objections from the CIA and the broader U.S. intelligence community. In the late spring of 2003, Joseph Wilson laid bare this White House deception with firsthand accounts of his involvement in the intelligence-gathering. Bush administration officials quickly became obsessed with Wilson, and their anger drove them to retaliate, exposing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, by leaking her identity to reporters. (full article)
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HatTip to Lucianne.com. Christine and I just got back from D.C. late last night. It was a good weekend in saying bye our friend, Debbie, before she moves to London. We had lunch with her and then in the evening joined a party that her friends were throwing for her. It was a mix of politicos (mostly dems. not my crowd:), people from CNN (again not my crowd), her college buddies, and her long time friends she grew up with in D.C. It was funny since Christine mentioned how the crowd seemed different from what she has seen. I replied that it was definitely different than the stylish NYC hipsters or the laid back geek/tech scene we were getting use to in SF. Hard to generalize this scene... one way to describe is a preppy frat/sorority scene or maybe a professional frat/sorority flavor? Okay, maybe that doesn't sound good. Anyway, here's the article:
FOR TWO YEARS, THE political class in Washington has followed with intense interest the story of Joseph Wilson and the events that led to the compromising of his wife's identity and undercover status as a CIA operative. The rest of the country seems to have responded with a collective yawn. That will soon change if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald issues indictments of senior White House aides in his investigation of the alleged leaking of Mrs. Wilson's name.
The narrative constructed to date by the mainstream media is uncomplicated: The White House exaggerated claims of Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Niger despite objections from the CIA and the broader U.S. intelligence community. In the late spring of 2003, Joseph Wilson laid bare this White House deception with firsthand accounts of his involvement in the intelligence-gathering. Bush administration officials quickly became obsessed with Wilson, and their anger drove them to retaliate, exposing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, by leaking her identity to reporters. (full article)
Friday, October 14, 2005
TAKING OFF FOR D.C.
Just ran around today with a couple meetings, conference call, and work. Christine is flying in from Seoul to D.C. and will meet me there tomorrow morning. We visiting since my good friend Debbie is taking off for London.
Couldn't post any links or commentary today, so maybe I'll have some downtime this weekend. Anyway, have a nice weekend!
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Just ran around today with a couple meetings, conference call, and work. Christine is flying in from Seoul to D.C. and will meet me there tomorrow morning. We visiting since my good friend Debbie is taking off for London.
Couldn't post any links or commentary today, so maybe I'll have some downtime this weekend. Anyway, have a nice weekend!
Thursday, October 13, 2005
"A NEW PROPOSAL FOR IRAQ"... ED KOCH, FORMER NYC MAYOR
Ed Koch, Democrat and former Mayor of New YOrk City, speaks up for President Bush again:
On October 6th, President Bush delivered a superb speech on international terrorism. It is because our President has been willing to stand up to international terrorism and so many leaders in the Democratic Party have not been willing to do so, that caused me and millions of others to cross party lines and support him in the last presidential election and cheer his victory; notwithstanding that I did not then, nor do I now, agree with him on a single domestic issue, ranging from his proposals to reform Social Security and to changing our tax structure. For me, the single most important issue the world faced in 2001 and now, trumping all other issues, is international terrorism. President Bush’s willingness in the face of all the attacks, so many unfair and ad hominen, to continue to stand up and exhort the world to continue the ongoing battle against international terrorism is why I admire and respect him so much. Would that my party produced such a leader that I could similarly follow. I know that will happen someday.
The President’s recent speech on international terrorism was magnificent. The text of the President’s entire speech, delivered at the National Endowment for Democracy on October 6th, can be obtained from the White House.
The New York Times in two foolish editorials published on the next day, October 7, 2005, sought to denigrate the President instead of trying to add to our security by strengthening him in his leadership when he has taken on the ferocious, often insane, Islamic terrorists who believe they have the right to kill every infidel -- Christians, Jews, Hindus, et.al. (full op-ed)
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Ed Koch, Democrat and former Mayor of New YOrk City, speaks up for President Bush again:
On October 6th, President Bush delivered a superb speech on international terrorism. It is because our President has been willing to stand up to international terrorism and so many leaders in the Democratic Party have not been willing to do so, that caused me and millions of others to cross party lines and support him in the last presidential election and cheer his victory; notwithstanding that I did not then, nor do I now, agree with him on a single domestic issue, ranging from his proposals to reform Social Security and to changing our tax structure. For me, the single most important issue the world faced in 2001 and now, trumping all other issues, is international terrorism. President Bush’s willingness in the face of all the attacks, so many unfair and ad hominen, to continue to stand up and exhort the world to continue the ongoing battle against international terrorism is why I admire and respect him so much. Would that my party produced such a leader that I could similarly follow. I know that will happen someday.
The President’s recent speech on international terrorism was magnificent. The text of the President’s entire speech, delivered at the National Endowment for Democracy on October 6th, can be obtained from the White House.
The New York Times in two foolish editorials published on the next day, October 7, 2005, sought to denigrate the President instead of trying to add to our security by strengthening him in his leadership when he has taken on the ferocious, often insane, Islamic terrorists who believe they have the right to kill every infidel -- Christians, Jews, Hindus, et.al. (full op-ed)
"VENTURE CAPITAL IS NOT FOR GIRLIE MEN"
I initially read this article in hardcopy since I went old school and subscribed to Fortune a few months ago. The article is another entertaining piece on Tim Draper who's been getting a fair amount of press lately because of his firm's Baidu and Skype deals. The magazine has a funny picture of Tim flexing like the Hulk with his suit pant rolled up and no shoes. Tony, who's childhood friends with Tim, says the picture is totally Tim.
There are all sorts of approaches to the venture capital game. Some investors study one area so deeply they become experts. Others simply back the best entrepreneurs. A third type invests only in companies that aim for giant markets. Then there’s the Tim Draper method, which is a bit like using a machine gun to shoot a fleeing duck: Fire enough bullets at the darn thing, and something will hit the target.
Because of his scattershot approach, it has long been fashionable with a certain crowd on Sand Hill Road, the VC power corridor in Menlo Park, Calif., to dismiss Draper as something of a hack. Back in 2001—when it was popular to mock the silly dot-com investments of venture capitalists—Draper was even singled out as one of Silicon Valley’s “dumbest” VCs by the magazine eCompany Now (owned, like FORTUNE, by Time Warner). But nobody’s laughing at him today. At the moment, Draper, 47, is the hottest venture capitalist on the planet.
Most of his peers would kill for even one investment in their careers as successful as his two coups this year alone. The hottest IPO of the summer was that of Chinese search engine Baidu, the shares of which soared 354% in their first day of trading. Draper’s firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, invested $14 million in Baidu, a stake that is worth more than $500 million today. eBay’s $2.6 billion deal to buy Skype gave Draper his second big hit of 2005. Together, Draper’s Skype investments and that of his father produced returns of more than $250 million from a stake similar in size to what he invested in Baidu. (full article)
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I initially read this article in hardcopy since I went old school and subscribed to Fortune a few months ago. The article is another entertaining piece on Tim Draper who's been getting a fair amount of press lately because of his firm's Baidu and Skype deals. The magazine has a funny picture of Tim flexing like the Hulk with his suit pant rolled up and no shoes. Tony, who's childhood friends with Tim, says the picture is totally Tim.
There are all sorts of approaches to the venture capital game. Some investors study one area so deeply they become experts. Others simply back the best entrepreneurs. A third type invests only in companies that aim for giant markets. Then there’s the Tim Draper method, which is a bit like using a machine gun to shoot a fleeing duck: Fire enough bullets at the darn thing, and something will hit the target.
Because of his scattershot approach, it has long been fashionable with a certain crowd on Sand Hill Road, the VC power corridor in Menlo Park, Calif., to dismiss Draper as something of a hack. Back in 2001—when it was popular to mock the silly dot-com investments of venture capitalists—Draper was even singled out as one of Silicon Valley’s “dumbest” VCs by the magazine eCompany Now (owned, like FORTUNE, by Time Warner). But nobody’s laughing at him today. At the moment, Draper, 47, is the hottest venture capitalist on the planet.
Most of his peers would kill for even one investment in their careers as successful as his two coups this year alone. The hottest IPO of the summer was that of Chinese search engine Baidu, the shares of which soared 354% in their first day of trading. Draper’s firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, invested $14 million in Baidu, a stake that is worth more than $500 million today. eBay’s $2.6 billion deal to buy Skype gave Draper his second big hit of 2005. Together, Draper’s Skype investments and that of his father produced returns of more than $250 million from a stake similar in size to what he invested in Baidu. (full article)
BLOGS VS. "REAL" NEWS
Related to many of my recent posts. Forbes has a good article called "Can You Tell Blogs From 'Real' News?" on Yahoo!'s move to include blogs in their news search.
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Related to many of my recent posts. Forbes has a good article called "Can You Tell Blogs From 'Real' News?" on Yahoo!'s move to include blogs in their news search.
STEVE RUBEL'S CALL TO ARMS FOR THE PR INDUSTRY... WELL, WANT SOME WEAPONS?
Steve has a great post over at his Micro Persuasion's blog, and it was partly stimulated by his meeting with Tony last week. It's cool because these are the conversations that we been having at GoingOn over the past several months as we mapped out our market entry strategy. We have already been in deep discussions with various PR firms and definitely see them as partners that will be using our platform.
It's funny because some of our competitors, such as Blogtronix, don't see the relevancy of Public Relations in the new media and Web 2.0 world, and they go around stating that "PR is dead."
Of course, we take the opposite view and will be one of the partners and tools to help PR firms educate and empower their clients in this growing next wave of media. So if you're a PR firm and interested in learning more about the GoingOn blogging/communication platform, just email me from your work email account and we can start the conversation:) Steve's post:
This afternoon I had lunch with Tony Perkins from AlwaysOn. We discussed his new project - GoingOn - and so much more. One thing Tony and I agreed on is that the marketing community has got 75% of social media mastery under its belt. They conceptually get its importance, how it evolves marketing from a monologue into a dialogue and the importance of listening. What they don't get is the last 25% - how to put this into action immediately. They don't know how to subscribe to RSS feeds and, what's more, develop conversational marketing programs. This is where the money will be made.
This was very consistent with a conversation I had last week with Andrew Bernstein from Cymfony. Andrew's seeing a lot of demand for Cymfony's Consumer Insights tools, but he's frustrated that he can't help them go the distance. He wants to help them master the last 25%. But, you see, that's not his job. Cymfony and others like Intelliseek give their clients lots of rich data and insights but they don't tell them what to do with that information. That's our job.
Now I am biassed, but this is where I think the public relations agencies come in. This is our brass ring. Let's grab it. There will be enough business to go around for all of us. We're not competitors. We're partners. We need to really help marketers understand how to put this into action. That's why I was critical of Edelman's survey. Like everything else, all it did was just give marketers more data.
What we need to do is teach. We need to show PR professionals, media buyers and others how to read RSS feeds. We need to help them get immersed in writing blog posts so they get a feel for what works/doesn't. We need to show them how to monitor blog search feeds and then, appropriately, respond. Believe me, I would love to do this myself and see my agency win the lion-share of dollars here. But I can't. This is too big. We need to do this together guys. (full post)
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Steve has a great post over at his Micro Persuasion's blog, and it was partly stimulated by his meeting with Tony last week. It's cool because these are the conversations that we been having at GoingOn over the past several months as we mapped out our market entry strategy. We have already been in deep discussions with various PR firms and definitely see them as partners that will be using our platform.
It's funny because some of our competitors, such as Blogtronix, don't see the relevancy of Public Relations in the new media and Web 2.0 world, and they go around stating that "PR is dead."
Of course, we take the opposite view and will be one of the partners and tools to help PR firms educate and empower their clients in this growing next wave of media. So if you're a PR firm and interested in learning more about the GoingOn blogging/communication platform, just email me from your work email account and we can start the conversation:) Steve's post:
This afternoon I had lunch with Tony Perkins from AlwaysOn. We discussed his new project - GoingOn - and so much more. One thing Tony and I agreed on is that the marketing community has got 75% of social media mastery under its belt. They conceptually get its importance, how it evolves marketing from a monologue into a dialogue and the importance of listening. What they don't get is the last 25% - how to put this into action immediately. They don't know how to subscribe to RSS feeds and, what's more, develop conversational marketing programs. This is where the money will be made.
This was very consistent with a conversation I had last week with Andrew Bernstein from Cymfony. Andrew's seeing a lot of demand for Cymfony's Consumer Insights tools, but he's frustrated that he can't help them go the distance. He wants to help them master the last 25%. But, you see, that's not his job. Cymfony and others like Intelliseek give their clients lots of rich data and insights but they don't tell them what to do with that information. That's our job.
Now I am biassed, but this is where I think the public relations agencies come in. This is our brass ring. Let's grab it. There will be enough business to go around for all of us. We're not competitors. We're partners. We need to really help marketers understand how to put this into action. That's why I was critical of Edelman's survey. Like everything else, all it did was just give marketers more data.
What we need to do is teach. We need to show PR professionals, media buyers and others how to read RSS feeds. We need to help them get immersed in writing blog posts so they get a feel for what works/doesn't. We need to show them how to monitor blog search feeds and then, appropriately, respond. Believe me, I would love to do this myself and see my agency win the lion-share of dollars here. But I can't. This is too big. We need to do this together guys. (full post)
QUMANA SURVEY ON BLOG AD EARNINGS AND BLOGGER THOUGHTS
HatTip to Don Loeb. Not new news, but just a confirmation of what most people in the blogosphere already knew:
On a per month basis, 69% of our bloggers (those who previously indicated they participate in advertising programs) earn less than $20 per month from all income sources: advertising & sponsorship. It's rather a pity that so many bloggers, of whom we have identified as being experienced, are not seeing any return for their efforts.
You can see from the graph that there is a real hurdle between $50 a month and anything above. From general experience, I know that blogs tend to go through several earnings ranges. You can be stuck on one range for a long time then jump up to the next without really experiencing a gradual incline in that direction.
We can see, for example, that there is a big barrier between earning $50 per month an anything greater than that - it would appear the next gap starts at $200. (full post)
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HatTip to Don Loeb. Not new news, but just a confirmation of what most people in the blogosphere already knew:
On a per month basis, 69% of our bloggers (those who previously indicated they participate in advertising programs) earn less than $20 per month from all income sources: advertising & sponsorship. It's rather a pity that so many bloggers, of whom we have identified as being experienced, are not seeing any return for their efforts.
You can see from the graph that there is a real hurdle between $50 a month and anything above. From general experience, I know that blogs tend to go through several earnings ranges. You can be stuck on one range for a long time then jump up to the next without really experiencing a gradual incline in that direction.
We can see, for example, that there is a big barrier between earning $50 per month an anything greater than that - it would appear the next gap starts at $200. (full post)
"WORLD'S OLDEST NOODLES UNEARTHED IN CHINA"
Come on, who really believed that they oldest noodles came from the Middle East and moved to Europe? Typical European-centric history. I would have assumed China and now it's proven. Read about this makes me miss lunches at Hong Kong. I loved the noodle shops there especially northern Chinese style. Beef noodles, pork meatballs with noodles and broth... yum.
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Come on, who really believed that they oldest noodles came from the Middle East and moved to Europe? Typical European-centric history. I would have assumed China and now it's proven. Read about this makes me miss lunches at Hong Kong. I loved the noodle shops there especially northern Chinese style. Beef noodles, pork meatballs with noodles and broth... yum.
LEGO'S LONG TAIL
Chris Anderson has an interesting post on Lego's long tail:
I'm often asked for Long Tail examples outside of entertainment, especially those that apply to physical goods, not just digital bits sent down a broadband connection. There are quite a few (aside from eBay, the obvious one), but perhaps my favorite is Lego.
If you just know Lego from kids' birthday parties and the display shelves of a toy store, you've only seen half of the company. The other half is the Lego that caters to enthusiasts, ranging from kids who want more than the stock kits to adults who have turned to bricks as the ultimate prototyper's toolkit.
It all starts with Lego's mail-order business, which began as a traditional shop-at-home catalog and is now increasing organized around its website. In a typical toy store, Lego may have a few dozen products. On its online store, it has nearly 1,000, ranging from bags of roof tiles to a $300 Deathstar (shown). If you want to see how different the online market is from the traditional retail market for Lego, check out their topsellers list. Only a few of those products are even available in stores, and most of those are inexpensive items added to other purchases to bring them over $50 and thus qualify for free shipping.
It's worth pausing here and considering the Long Tail implications of this. At least 90% of Lego's products are not available in traditional retail. They're only available in the catalogs and online, where the economics of inventory and distribution are far friendlier to niche products. Overall, those non-retail parts of the business represent 10-15% of Lego's annual $1.1 billion in sales. But the margins on these products are higher than the kits sold through Toys R Us, thanks to not having to share the revenues with the retailer. And because the virtual store can carry products for all Lego fans, from kids to adult enthusiasts, and not just the sweet spot of nine-year-old boys, the range of prices can be a lot greater online, from $1 bricks to the aforementioned $300 Star Wars kit. (full post)
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Chris Anderson has an interesting post on Lego's long tail:
I'm often asked for Long Tail examples outside of entertainment, especially those that apply to physical goods, not just digital bits sent down a broadband connection. There are quite a few (aside from eBay, the obvious one), but perhaps my favorite is Lego.
If you just know Lego from kids' birthday parties and the display shelves of a toy store, you've only seen half of the company. The other half is the Lego that caters to enthusiasts, ranging from kids who want more than the stock kits to adults who have turned to bricks as the ultimate prototyper's toolkit.
It all starts with Lego's mail-order business, which began as a traditional shop-at-home catalog and is now increasing organized around its website. In a typical toy store, Lego may have a few dozen products. On its online store, it has nearly 1,000, ranging from bags of roof tiles to a $300 Deathstar (shown). If you want to see how different the online market is from the traditional retail market for Lego, check out their topsellers list. Only a few of those products are even available in stores, and most of those are inexpensive items added to other purchases to bring them over $50 and thus qualify for free shipping.
It's worth pausing here and considering the Long Tail implications of this. At least 90% of Lego's products are not available in traditional retail. They're only available in the catalogs and online, where the economics of inventory and distribution are far friendlier to niche products. Overall, those non-retail parts of the business represent 10-15% of Lego's annual $1.1 billion in sales. But the margins on these products are higher than the kits sold through Toys R Us, thanks to not having to share the revenues with the retailer. And because the virtual store can carry products for all Lego fans, from kids to adult enthusiasts, and not just the sweet spot of nine-year-old boys, the range of prices can be a lot greater online, from $1 bricks to the aforementioned $300 Star Wars kit. (full post)
GOOGLE AND COMCAST FIGHTING FOR AOL STAKE OVER MICROSOFT
Smart play by Google to bring Comcast into the picture. Or was it Comcast that initiated? Either way, Google really needed to cut into the Microsoft and AOL talks because it would have killed a chunk of their revenues. More from The Wall Street Journal:
Google Inc. and Comcast Corp. are in serious discussions with Time Warner Inc. about buying a minority stake in America Online for as much as $5 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.
The negotiations focus primarily on AOL's network of Web sites, such as the AOL.com Web portal and AOL Instant Messenger, rather than its slowly declining telephone dial-up Internet business. AOL is the Internet's second-biggest network of sites, with 112 million U.S. visitors in September, trailing Yahoo Inc.'s 123 million, according to comScore Media Metrix.
Google and Comcast are hoping a stake in AOL will allow them to tap AOL's large audience and its content offerings, such as concerts, drawing more consumers and advertising to their Internet services.
The talks threaten to derail separate negotiations under way between Microsoft Corp. and AOL about creating an Internet joint venture. Those discussions, which have been percolating for several months, were progressing rapidly until talks with Google and Comcast heated up last week, according to people close to the deal.
The structure of the deal is up in the air. Under one of the ideas being discussed, Google, of Mountain View, Calif., and Philadelphia-based Comcast would join together in a partnership that would own about 50% of AOL, the people said. However, Time Warner, of New York, wants a controlling interest in AOL that it can consolidate on its income statement.
Dividing AOL into an Internet-access business and a content business wouldn't be trivial, since they are currently intertwined. However, a person close to the discussions says the spun-off portion of AOL could license its content to the portion of AOL that provides Internet-access accounts. Google and Comcast are valuing AOL's content business at about $10 billion, which implies a valuation of as much as $5 billion for a minority stake. (full article)
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Smart play by Google to bring Comcast into the picture. Or was it Comcast that initiated? Either way, Google really needed to cut into the Microsoft and AOL talks because it would have killed a chunk of their revenues. More from The Wall Street Journal:
Google Inc. and Comcast Corp. are in serious discussions with Time Warner Inc. about buying a minority stake in America Online for as much as $5 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.
The negotiations focus primarily on AOL's network of Web sites, such as the AOL.com Web portal and AOL Instant Messenger, rather than its slowly declining telephone dial-up Internet business. AOL is the Internet's second-biggest network of sites, with 112 million U.S. visitors in September, trailing Yahoo Inc.'s 123 million, according to comScore Media Metrix.
Google and Comcast are hoping a stake in AOL will allow them to tap AOL's large audience and its content offerings, such as concerts, drawing more consumers and advertising to their Internet services.
The talks threaten to derail separate negotiations under way between Microsoft Corp. and AOL about creating an Internet joint venture. Those discussions, which have been percolating for several months, were progressing rapidly until talks with Google and Comcast heated up last week, according to people close to the deal.
The structure of the deal is up in the air. Under one of the ideas being discussed, Google, of Mountain View, Calif., and Philadelphia-based Comcast would join together in a partnership that would own about 50% of AOL, the people said. However, Time Warner, of New York, wants a controlling interest in AOL that it can consolidate on its income statement.
Dividing AOL into an Internet-access business and a content business wouldn't be trivial, since they are currently intertwined. However, a person close to the discussions says the spun-off portion of AOL could license its content to the portion of AOL that provides Internet-access accounts. Google and Comcast are valuing AOL's content business at about $10 billion, which implies a valuation of as much as $5 billion for a minority stake. (full article)
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
YAHOO! THE NEXT GEN MEDIA COMPANY? TIME WARNER OF THE 21ST CENTURY?
It's been hectic with GoingOn's beta launch and other projects happening, so I haven't had a chance to blog much or write for my AlwaysOn column in almost two months. I feel really bad since my editor, Jill, has been asking every week and I keep pushing back on this.
Anyway, today I'm checking my Yahoo! email account, which I probably check every other day, and I come across a promotion for "Kevin Site in the Hot Zone"... "One man. One year. A world of conflict." The email reads:
Join award-winning journalist Kevin Sites as he spends one year reporting directly from more than 20 of the world's armed conflicts, uncovering the stories you may not find anywhere else. Get the untold story now.
After reporting from Somalia, Kevin Sites is now en route to his next hot zone: Northern Uganda. For more than 20 years, it has been the scene of brutal conflict between the Ugandan government and a warlord's resistance army.
Follow Kevin Sites as he reports from these conflicts: (map of various locations)
I remember reading about Kevin Sites before and came across some criticism of his journalistic method and integrity. But this is not what came to mind. It is better that I checked out his blog/news site today rather than a few weeks back because all of Yahoo!'s recent activities puts this in a different perspective for me.
They've incorporated blogs into their news search, launched their beta Yahoo! Podcasts (yikes! first wave gets "googled" and now some startups might get "yahooed"), started new search services, and now the promotion of a journalist's blog as another big step towards this new wave of user-generated content. Well, Kevin Sites's blog isn't a typical personal blog, so maybe call it a "small media" service? I don't know what I should call it, but I just found it very interesting that they have signed up and started to promote a blogger. Who's next? Will this be a new trend that will spread to mainstream media outlets? Maybe things will never completely move towards a long-tail model of content distribution, but just a long tail of content creation that allows major media outlets more choice to pick the best of what's out there? Who knows. The space is too early to tell, but I definitely give props to Yahoo!.
[tags: yahoo, yahoo!, podcasts, longtail, media]
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It's been hectic with GoingOn's beta launch and other projects happening, so I haven't had a chance to blog much or write for my AlwaysOn column in almost two months. I feel really bad since my editor, Jill, has been asking every week and I keep pushing back on this.
Anyway, today I'm checking my Yahoo! email account, which I probably check every other day, and I come across a promotion for "Kevin Site in the Hot Zone"... "One man. One year. A world of conflict." The email reads:
Join award-winning journalist Kevin Sites as he spends one year reporting directly from more than 20 of the world's armed conflicts, uncovering the stories you may not find anywhere else. Get the untold story now.
After reporting from Somalia, Kevin Sites is now en route to his next hot zone: Northern Uganda. For more than 20 years, it has been the scene of brutal conflict between the Ugandan government and a warlord's resistance army.
Follow Kevin Sites as he reports from these conflicts: (map of various locations)
I remember reading about Kevin Sites before and came across some criticism of his journalistic method and integrity. But this is not what came to mind. It is better that I checked out his blog/news site today rather than a few weeks back because all of Yahoo!'s recent activities puts this in a different perspective for me.
They've incorporated blogs into their news search, launched their beta Yahoo! Podcasts (yikes! first wave gets "googled" and now some startups might get "yahooed"), started new search services, and now the promotion of a journalist's blog as another big step towards this new wave of user-generated content. Well, Kevin Sites's blog isn't a typical personal blog, so maybe call it a "small media" service? I don't know what I should call it, but I just found it very interesting that they have signed up and started to promote a blogger. Who's next? Will this be a new trend that will spread to mainstream media outlets? Maybe things will never completely move towards a long-tail model of content distribution, but just a long tail of content creation that allows major media outlets more choice to pick the best of what's out there? Who knows. The space is too early to tell, but I definitely give props to Yahoo!.
[tags: yahoo, yahoo!, podcasts, longtail, media]
KOREAN GOVERNMENT AT IT AGAIN (SIGH)... PRIVATE EQUITY WITCH HUNT CONTINUES II
More news from Thomson's Jeff Borrell. This is really messed up:
In a further escalation of its pursuit of foreign private equity firms, Korea 's National Tax Authority has announced it is seeking personal prosecution of the recently resigned head of Lone Star Fund in Korea, Steven Lee, on charges of tax evasion, saying that Lee had evaded personal income tax payments in the country. The NTS says that at least four other Lone Star staff members are also headed for prosecution and will be restricted from overseas travel. The Korean Herald reported earlier that Newbridge officials are under investigation for tax evasion. It is the first time that the Korean government has sought to prosecute individuals, as well as their corporations. Market pros speculate that the new actions, taken on years-old PE investments and exits, could mean that the personnel of all foreign firms that have made spectacular exits in recent years will be liable to similar investigations and prosecutions, including: AIG, The Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs, H&Q Asia, HSBC, Newbridge Capital, and West Brook.
.....
A day after Goldman Sachs was named as one of five U.S. firms being fined and referred to prosecution by the Korean National Tax Service (NTS), the private equity arm of Goldman is reported to be investing $550 million to acquire a 9.4% stake in Korea's Hana Bank. Hana, which is currently consolidating its banking and other financial operations, was mentioned in last week's APEN in a story about Hana being named as a possible acquirer of LoneStar Funds Korean Exchange Bank (KEB), a report Hana later denied. Lonestar is also being prosecuted for its earlier investment, sale and non-payment of taxes on an office property to Singapore 's GIC.
In a related story, another of the Singapore government's investment arms, Temasek, already holds a stake in Hana Bank. Goldman's purchase comes two years after it reportedly made $1 billion in tax-free profit from its sale of another Korean bank acquisition, Kookmin Bank. That investment and sale of a 5% stake in Kookmin is the reason Goldman is currently being prosecuted for tax evasion in Korea. Goldman is reportedly seeking the position in Hana Bank to gain access to the bank's funds management operations.
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More news from Thomson's Jeff Borrell. This is really messed up:
In a further escalation of its pursuit of foreign private equity firms, Korea 's National Tax Authority has announced it is seeking personal prosecution of the recently resigned head of Lone Star Fund in Korea, Steven Lee, on charges of tax evasion, saying that Lee had evaded personal income tax payments in the country. The NTS says that at least four other Lone Star staff members are also headed for prosecution and will be restricted from overseas travel. The Korean Herald reported earlier that Newbridge officials are under investigation for tax evasion. It is the first time that the Korean government has sought to prosecute individuals, as well as their corporations. Market pros speculate that the new actions, taken on years-old PE investments and exits, could mean that the personnel of all foreign firms that have made spectacular exits in recent years will be liable to similar investigations and prosecutions, including: AIG, The Carlyle Group, Goldman Sachs, H&Q Asia, HSBC, Newbridge Capital, and West Brook.
.....
A day after Goldman Sachs was named as one of five U.S. firms being fined and referred to prosecution by the Korean National Tax Service (NTS), the private equity arm of Goldman is reported to be investing $550 million to acquire a 9.4% stake in Korea's Hana Bank. Hana, which is currently consolidating its banking and other financial operations, was mentioned in last week's APEN in a story about Hana being named as a possible acquirer of LoneStar Funds Korean Exchange Bank (KEB), a report Hana later denied. Lonestar is also being prosecuted for its earlier investment, sale and non-payment of taxes on an office property to Singapore 's GIC.
In a related story, another of the Singapore government's investment arms, Temasek, already holds a stake in Hana Bank. Goldman's purchase comes two years after it reportedly made $1 billion in tax-free profit from its sale of another Korean bank acquisition, Kookmin Bank. That investment and sale of a 5% stake in Kookmin is the reason Goldman is currently being prosecuted for tax evasion in Korea. Goldman is reportedly seeking the position in Hana Bank to gain access to the bank's funds management operations.
OF COURSE... JOBS REVEALS NEW IPOD WITH VIDEO
He denied it a while back, but we all knew it was going to happen.
Apple Computer on Wednesday unveiled its long-rumored video iPod, as well as a new iMac and an updated version of iTunes that lets users buy music videos, TV shows and movies.
The iPod has "been a huge hit for us, so it's time to replace it," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said as he showed off the new video-capable MP3 player at an event here. "Yes, it does video."
The music players, which come in black or white with a 2.5-inch screen, will be available in a 30GB model for $299 and a 60GB version for $399. The new devices hold up to 15,000 songs, 25,000 photos or more than 150 hours of video, Apple said. (full article)
Some pics here... don't know whose account it is.
[tags: video ipod, ipod, apple]
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He denied it a while back, but we all knew it was going to happen.
Apple Computer on Wednesday unveiled its long-rumored video iPod, as well as a new iMac and an updated version of iTunes that lets users buy music videos, TV shows and movies.
The iPod has "been a huge hit for us, so it's time to replace it," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said as he showed off the new video-capable MP3 player at an event here. "Yes, it does video."
The music players, which come in black or white with a 2.5-inch screen, will be available in a 30GB model for $299 and a 60GB version for $399. The new devices hold up to 15,000 songs, 25,000 photos or more than 150 hours of video, Apple said. (full article)
Some pics here... don't know whose account it is.
[tags: video ipod, ipod, apple]
INSTANT MESSAGING OPENING UP... MICROSOFT, YAHOO SIGN DEAL
This is pretty big and I'm a bit surprised that both parties agreed to this, but I'm sure part of the motivation is dealing with the AOL IM juggernaut in this space. The Wall Street Journal and eWeek have more on this.
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This is pretty big and I'm a bit surprised that both parties agreed to this, but I'm sure part of the motivation is dealing with the AOL IM juggernaut in this space. The Wall Street Journal and eWeek have more on this.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
RANDOM NEWS QUICKLIST
"Quake killed between 30,000 and 40,000"
"Spain's Government-Sponsored Terrorism"
"Historic elections under way in Liberia"
"Nobel goes to men who explained world conflicts using 'game theory'"
"Game industry to fight California video game law"
"Microsoft settles RealNetworks dispute"
"EchoStar Rolls Out Portable Media Player"
"EBay's PayPal to buy VeriSign unit for $370 mln"
"Yahoo expands news searches to include blogs"
"Space tourist Olsen returns to Earth"
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"Quake killed between 30,000 and 40,000"
"Spain's Government-Sponsored Terrorism"
"Historic elections under way in Liberia"
"Nobel goes to men who explained world conflicts using 'game theory'"
"Game industry to fight California video game law"
"Microsoft settles RealNetworks dispute"
"EchoStar Rolls Out Portable Media Player"
"EBay's PayPal to buy VeriSign unit for $370 mln"
"Yahoo expands news searches to include blogs"
"Space tourist Olsen returns to Earth"
MORE ON MIERS
The debate continues among Republicans and conservatives on Harriet Miers nomination for the Supreme Court. Since I posted on this subject before, after reading some other commentaries I did lean towards being more open-minded about her ability to serve on the Supreme Court and found her pro-business efforts appealing. Now after reading The Wall Street Journal's John Fund, I'm back to my original position of being negative on her nomination:
Miers Remorse
Conservatives are right to be skeptical.
Monday, October 10, 2005
I have changed my mind about Harriet Miers. Last Thursday, I wrote in OpinionJournal's Political Diary that "while skepticism of Ms. Miers is justified, the time is fast approaching when such expressions should be muted until the Senate hearings begin. At that point, Ms. Miers will finally be able to speak for herself."
But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now--and loudly--because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. "She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession," says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.
White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president's views, but never gave any hint of her own. Indeed, when the Dallas Morning News once asked Ms. Miers to finish the sentence, "Behind my back, people say . . .," she responded, ". . . they can't figure me out." (full article)
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The debate continues among Republicans and conservatives on Harriet Miers nomination for the Supreme Court. Since I posted on this subject before, after reading some other commentaries I did lean towards being more open-minded about her ability to serve on the Supreme Court and found her pro-business efforts appealing. Now after reading The Wall Street Journal's John Fund, I'm back to my original position of being negative on her nomination:
Miers Remorse
Conservatives are right to be skeptical.
Monday, October 10, 2005
I have changed my mind about Harriet Miers. Last Thursday, I wrote in OpinionJournal's Political Diary that "while skepticism of Ms. Miers is justified, the time is fast approaching when such expressions should be muted until the Senate hearings begin. At that point, Ms. Miers will finally be able to speak for herself."
But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now--and loudly--because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. "She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession," says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.
White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president's views, but never gave any hint of her own. Indeed, when the Dallas Morning News once asked Ms. Miers to finish the sentence, "Behind my back, people say . . .," she responded, ". . . they can't figure me out." (full article)
Monday, October 10, 2005
REFLECTIONS ON WEB 2.0... BUILDING A COMPANY TO LAST?
I touched on this topic on Friday, but there have been some good posts on the recent startup activity by Brad Feld, Tom Evslin, and Fred Wilson.
So much of what I’m seeing in Web 2.0 are - at best - what Fred calls “second derivatives.” VCs are once again throwing money at this stuff just to “get in the game” – I saw a quote somewhere from a VC that said something to the effect of “if the company can’t identify its four likely acquirers, I’m not interested in it.” This is craziness and – like all irrational things – will end badly for many VCs (and unfortunately for the entrepreneurs they back.)
This isn’t an attempt to throw cold water on the current enthusiasm around web-based applications. I think it’s extremely exciting, a ton of fun to be involved in, and hugely interesting to play with. However, there is a big difference between building companies that have value vs. simply creating incremental features. As you look at your business, think about where the fundamental value is. If the answer is “I’m just hoping to get bought by GAMEY” (one of Google / AOL / Microsoft / eBay / Yahoo), think harder. (full post)
I agree with Brad. My principles and definition of entrepreneurship couldn't lead me to build to flip. I believe if you're going to start a company, it should be with a goal to create lasting value and a sustainable business model. If you get bought out along the way, great for you as long as it was a real company.
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I touched on this topic on Friday, but there have been some good posts on the recent startup activity by Brad Feld, Tom Evslin, and Fred Wilson.
So much of what I’m seeing in Web 2.0 are - at best - what Fred calls “second derivatives.” VCs are once again throwing money at this stuff just to “get in the game” – I saw a quote somewhere from a VC that said something to the effect of “if the company can’t identify its four likely acquirers, I’m not interested in it.” This is craziness and – like all irrational things – will end badly for many VCs (and unfortunately for the entrepreneurs they back.)
This isn’t an attempt to throw cold water on the current enthusiasm around web-based applications. I think it’s extremely exciting, a ton of fun to be involved in, and hugely interesting to play with. However, there is a big difference between building companies that have value vs. simply creating incremental features. As you look at your business, think about where the fundamental value is. If the answer is “I’m just hoping to get bought by GAMEY” (one of Google / AOL / Microsoft / eBay / Yahoo), think harder. (full post)
I agree with Brad. My principles and definition of entrepreneurship couldn't lead me to build to flip. I believe if you're going to start a company, it should be with a goal to create lasting value and a sustainable business model. If you get bought out along the way, great for you as long as it was a real company.
RANDOM THINGS TO CHECK OUT... VOICE123, IMVU
HatTip to Jeff and Carl. Actually, Jeff emailed me about Voice123 a while back, but I finally decided to post it up. He came across the company when he was looking for voices for their corporate answering message. It's bascially a voiceover marketplace.
Also if you're into IMing check out IMVU, which is a 3D instant messenger that's in beta. I believe some of the team came from There, which is a competitor to Second Life.
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HatTip to Jeff and Carl. Actually, Jeff emailed me about Voice123 a while back, but I finally decided to post it up. He came across the company when he was looking for voices for their corporate answering message. It's bascially a voiceover marketplace.
Also if you're into IMing check out IMVU, which is a 3D instant messenger that's in beta. I believe some of the team came from There, which is a competitor to Second Life.
"HOUSE BACKS BUSH ON INTERNET STANCE"
Of course they should. Create a "U.N. of the Web"? Are they crazy? Too many cooks in the kitchen will ruin this dinner.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives said this week that the United States should resist international pressure to give up authority over key Internet functions amid a mounting feud over the issue.
In a letter to Commerce and State Department officials, the lawmakers said the Bush administration should retain strong oversight over the Internet domain name system, specifically the root servers that guide traffic to huge databases containing addresses for all the top-level domains, such as .com, .edu, and the country code domains like .uk and .jp.
"Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying domain name system of the Internet remain stable and secure," the letter said. "As such, the United States should take no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the domain name system. Therefore, the United States should maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file." (full article)
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Of course they should. Create a "U.N. of the Web"? Are they crazy? Too many cooks in the kitchen will ruin this dinner.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives said this week that the United States should resist international pressure to give up authority over key Internet functions amid a mounting feud over the issue.
In a letter to Commerce and State Department officials, the lawmakers said the Bush administration should retain strong oversight over the Internet domain name system, specifically the root servers that guide traffic to huge databases containing addresses for all the top-level domains, such as .com, .edu, and the country code domains like .uk and .jp.
"Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying domain name system of the Internet remain stable and secure," the letter said. "As such, the United States should take no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the domain name system. Therefore, the United States should maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file." (full article)
Sunday, October 09, 2005
FREEDOM!... ESPN, SUNDAY FOOTBALL, HOME WITHOUT THE WIFE
So earlier today I dropped off Christine at SFO. She taking off to Asia for a business trip and will be gone for five days. So for the next five days I get to watch ESPN, baseball, football and other sports programming without a complaint or a time limit of 10 minutes. Lately, the only time I get to watch sports at home is when Christine is busy with work and I decide to take a break. (No complaints, Christine... just my commentary;)
I glad that she's enjoying her transition from investment banking to the tech world. It's funny because when I first met my wife I never imagined her working in the tech sector, and now I see it as a blessing since her understanding of my passion for technology and entrepreneurship has grown due to her immersion into this space.
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So earlier today I dropped off Christine at SFO. She taking off to Asia for a business trip and will be gone for five days. So for the next five days I get to watch ESPN, baseball, football and other sports programming without a complaint or a time limit of 10 minutes. Lately, the only time I get to watch sports at home is when Christine is busy with work and I decide to take a break. (No complaints, Christine... just my commentary;)
I glad that she's enjoying her transition from investment banking to the tech world. It's funny because when I first met my wife I never imagined her working in the tech sector, and now I see it as a blessing since her understanding of my passion for technology and entrepreneurship has grown due to her immersion into this space.
BLOG VALUE BASED ON WEBLOGS INC. SALE... $758,311.52 FOR THIS BLOG?
Alright! Tristan Louis has an interesting analysis of blog valuation based on the AOL acquisition of Weblogs Inc:
Many in the blogosphere say that traffic is not a good measure of what blogs are but that conversation, as represented by links and indexes like Technorati, represent a more accurate view of the value of a blog. As a result, I decided to look at how may sites were linking to sites in the WeblogInc empire. Jason and Brian have been doing a great job at building a stable of blogs but it seems a large portion of their success comes from a single blog. Let's dig into the numbers. (full post)
Nathan at Inside Google rans some numbers for some other blogs:
InsideGoogle: $1,231,776
InsideMicrosoft: $369,420
Google Blogoscoped: $3,223,260
Scoble: $6,990,780
Steve Rubel: $4,290,348
Search Engine Watch blog: $4,086,180
But it seems Nathan used "total inbound links" versus "number of sites linked to," which creates a higher valuation if you use the former. Louis used the latter is his calculations... unless I missed something while skimming through his post. Anyway, Junto Boyz with 1,343 inbound links listed in Technorati would be valued at $758,311.52, but with 342 sites linked to this blog it would be valued at $193,106.88. I'll take the former valuation method:)
With some of that money, I would buy a party pan of Buffalo Joe's wings (best buffalo wings period. seriously) and two dozen Krispy Kreme donuts everyday for the next decade, and gain 35 pounds and make my dream of being over 250 lbs... just kidding, Christine.
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Alright! Tristan Louis has an interesting analysis of blog valuation based on the AOL acquisition of Weblogs Inc:
Many in the blogosphere say that traffic is not a good measure of what blogs are but that conversation, as represented by links and indexes like Technorati, represent a more accurate view of the value of a blog. As a result, I decided to look at how may sites were linking to sites in the WeblogInc empire. Jason and Brian have been doing a great job at building a stable of blogs but it seems a large portion of their success comes from a single blog. Let's dig into the numbers. (full post)
Nathan at Inside Google rans some numbers for some other blogs:
InsideGoogle: $1,231,776
InsideMicrosoft: $369,420
Google Blogoscoped: $3,223,260
Scoble: $6,990,780
Steve Rubel: $4,290,348
Search Engine Watch blog: $4,086,180
But it seems Nathan used "total inbound links" versus "number of sites linked to," which creates a higher valuation if you use the former. Louis used the latter is his calculations... unless I missed something while skimming through his post. Anyway, Junto Boyz with 1,343 inbound links listed in Technorati would be valued at $758,311.52, but with 342 sites linked to this blog it would be valued at $193,106.88. I'll take the former valuation method:)
With some of that money, I would buy a party pan of Buffalo Joe's wings (best buffalo wings period. seriously) and two dozen Krispy Kreme donuts everyday for the next decade, and gain 35 pounds and make my dream of being over 250 lbs... just kidding, Christine.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
"PORK GUMBO"... RESULT OF PUTTING TOGETHER LOUISIANA LAWMAKERS FOR A FUNDING REQUEST
Tech Central Station's Veronique de Rugy has a good article on the ridiculous request of $250 billion by the state's lawmakers to Congress. This is what happens when you put together some very stupid people for a proposal of such importance. Whether in government, corporate, or nonprofit arenas, I've seen this occur a few times in my short lifetime. One memory comes to mind when I was an observer to the negotiations between one of the largest labor unions in a U.S. state and a major city. The union leaders were dealing with the welfare of their 10,000+ members and they were throwing out arbitrary numbers for their negotiations with the city labor relations manager.
"We'll start at X dollars for a base salary increase... X amount of hours for sick days..."
I remember almost busting out laughing during a couple meetings because there was no basis for these numbers and no analysis done beforehand. It seems the lawmakers in Louisiana went through a similar exercise.
"Congressman Shmoe, how much do you want for that bridge in your city?"
"$20 million."
"Ok. $20 million is a good number. We'll put that down... Now what about that new court house?"
"... Now, let's add this all up. $250 billion? Hmmm... that seems like a good number. They'll negotiate and knock us down to about $100 billion, but we'll all come out good now."
Anyway, here's an excerpt from de Rugy's article:
Louisiana lawmakers have come up with a request for $250 billion in federal reconstruction funds for Louisiana alone. That's more than $50,000 per person in the state. This money would come on top of the $62.3 billion that Congress has already appropriated for emergency relief and on top of payouts from businesses, national charities and insurers.
According to Senator Mary Landrieu (D, LA), author of the Louisiana bill, "Louisiana will be rebuilt by Louisianans. New Orleans will be rebuilt by New Orleans. And the Southern Louisiana will be rebuilt under the leadership of the people who call it home." Yet, the bill waves the normal cost-sharing requirements to shift the entire cost to the federal government. In other words, Ms Landrieu is expecting federal taxpayers to foot 100 percent of the bill.
We are talking about a lot of money here. The $250 billion will cost $1,900 per American household. (This ignores the progressivity of the income tax which will make it much worse for some than others.)
That being said, I thought it would be informative to know what we are asked to pay for. A not so quick read of the 440 page bill soon demonstrated that the Louisiana lawmakers stuffed it with everything they could think of including many items having nothing to do with hurricane relief. The items include:
-$35,000,000 for the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board
-$8,000,000 for direct financial assistance to alligator farmers
-$12,000,000 for the restoration of wildlife management areas
-$25,490,073 to complete the Sugarcane Research Laboratory (full article)
[tags: louisiana, new orleans, mississippi, katrina, Hurricane Katrina, hurricane, politics, pork]
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Tech Central Station's Veronique de Rugy has a good article on the ridiculous request of $250 billion by the state's lawmakers to Congress. This is what happens when you put together some very stupid people for a proposal of such importance. Whether in government, corporate, or nonprofit arenas, I've seen this occur a few times in my short lifetime. One memory comes to mind when I was an observer to the negotiations between one of the largest labor unions in a U.S. state and a major city. The union leaders were dealing with the welfare of their 10,000+ members and they were throwing out arbitrary numbers for their negotiations with the city labor relations manager.
"We'll start at X dollars for a base salary increase... X amount of hours for sick days..."
I remember almost busting out laughing during a couple meetings because there was no basis for these numbers and no analysis done beforehand. It seems the lawmakers in Louisiana went through a similar exercise.
"Congressman Shmoe, how much do you want for that bridge in your city?"
"$20 million."
"Ok. $20 million is a good number. We'll put that down... Now what about that new court house?"
"... Now, let's add this all up. $250 billion? Hmmm... that seems like a good number. They'll negotiate and knock us down to about $100 billion, but we'll all come out good now."
Anyway, here's an excerpt from de Rugy's article:
Louisiana lawmakers have come up with a request for $250 billion in federal reconstruction funds for Louisiana alone. That's more than $50,000 per person in the state. This money would come on top of the $62.3 billion that Congress has already appropriated for emergency relief and on top of payouts from businesses, national charities and insurers.
According to Senator Mary Landrieu (D, LA), author of the Louisiana bill, "Louisiana will be rebuilt by Louisianans. New Orleans will be rebuilt by New Orleans. And the Southern Louisiana will be rebuilt under the leadership of the people who call it home." Yet, the bill waves the normal cost-sharing requirements to shift the entire cost to the federal government. In other words, Ms Landrieu is expecting federal taxpayers to foot 100 percent of the bill.
We are talking about a lot of money here. The $250 billion will cost $1,900 per American household. (This ignores the progressivity of the income tax which will make it much worse for some than others.)
That being said, I thought it would be informative to know what we are asked to pay for. A not so quick read of the 440 page bill soon demonstrated that the Louisiana lawmakers stuffed it with everything they could think of including many items having nothing to do with hurricane relief. The items include:
-$35,000,000 for the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board
-$8,000,000 for direct financial assistance to alligator farmers
-$12,000,000 for the restoration of wildlife management areas
-$25,490,073 to complete the Sugarcane Research Laboratory (full article)
[tags: louisiana, new orleans, mississippi, katrina, Hurricane Katrina, hurricane, politics, pork]
MORE THAN 18,000 DEAD BY EARTHQUAKE
Horrible. Within this year we've had a catastrophic tsunami, several hurricanes, and now this earthquake. Pakistan, India and Afghanistan were all hit by this 7.6 quake that I'm sure most of you have been watching or reading about.
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Horrible. Within this year we've had a catastrophic tsunami, several hurricanes, and now this earthquake. Pakistan, India and Afghanistan were all hit by this 7.6 quake that I'm sure most of you have been watching or reading about.
Friday, October 07, 2005
GOOGLE READER LAUNCHED... A BUNCH OF COMPANIES GET "GOOGLED"
At Web 2.0, Google announced its new feed reader. Mix reviews but I'm sure it will rapidly improve over time. Greg Yardley has a good post on mood of some conference attendees after Google made this announcement. I can imagine the words flying around... crap! f*ck! ohmy. As I posted before, it's probably a crappy feeling to get "googled" by Google. To see thousands of hours of work, dreams of fortunes, and the excitement of building something cool, hitting a brick wall at a 100 miles per hour.
A ton of people will write about the services that Google Reader provides, so let me just say this - as soon as it was announced, I heard a quietly muttered ‘fuck’ from somewhere behind me to my right. Didn’t turn to see who it was - but in the crowd we’ve got here, it could’ve been one of many, many people.
I imagine the new Google Reader will contribute even more to the quiet (or not-so-quiet) feeling that Google’s doing too much, swiping not just engineers but business models away from the small start-up. Google VP of Engineering Alan Eustace’s comments that more engineers means more products - since Google’s committed to small team-size, no more than three per project - is only going to add to this feeling. Google is at risk of becoming the Microsoft of Web 2.0. (full post)
[tags: web 2.0, web2.0, google, rss, technology, web, blogs, search]
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At Web 2.0, Google announced its new feed reader. Mix reviews but I'm sure it will rapidly improve over time. Greg Yardley has a good post on mood of some conference attendees after Google made this announcement. I can imagine the words flying around... crap! f*ck! ohmy. As I posted before, it's probably a crappy feeling to get "googled" by Google. To see thousands of hours of work, dreams of fortunes, and the excitement of building something cool, hitting a brick wall at a 100 miles per hour.
A ton of people will write about the services that Google Reader provides, so let me just say this - as soon as it was announced, I heard a quietly muttered ‘fuck’ from somewhere behind me to my right. Didn’t turn to see who it was - but in the crowd we’ve got here, it could’ve been one of many, many people.
I imagine the new Google Reader will contribute even more to the quiet (or not-so-quiet) feeling that Google’s doing too much, swiping not just engineers but business models away from the small start-up. Google VP of Engineering Alan Eustace’s comments that more engineers means more products - since Google’s committed to small team-size, no more than three per project - is only going to add to this feeling. Google is at risk of becoming the Microsoft of Web 2.0. (full post)
[tags: web 2.0, web2.0, google, rss, technology, web, blogs, search]
"FREEH'S REVENGE"
HatTip to Power Line. The Director of the FBI under Clinton has written a book called My FBI : Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror. Sort been waiting for this book:) More from Matt Drudge:
In another revelation, Freeh says the former president let down the American people and the families of victims of the Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia. After promising to bring to justice those responsible for the bombing that killed 19 and injured hundreds, Freeh says Clinton refused to personally ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to question bombing suspects the kingdom had in custody – the only way the bureau could secure the interviews, according to Freeh. Freeh writes in the book, "Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library." Says Freeh, "That’s a fact that I am reporting."
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HatTip to Power Line. The Director of the FBI under Clinton has written a book called My FBI : Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror. Sort been waiting for this book:) More from Matt Drudge:
In another revelation, Freeh says the former president let down the American people and the families of victims of the Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia. After promising to bring to justice those responsible for the bombing that killed 19 and injured hundreds, Freeh says Clinton refused to personally ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to question bombing suspects the kingdom had in custody – the only way the bureau could secure the interviews, according to Freeh. Freeh writes in the book, "Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library." Says Freeh, "That’s a fact that I am reporting."
MORE FROM WEB 2.0... THOUGHTS ON UPCOMING.ORG
A lot more posts on the Web 2.0 conference, but I've just selected a few. Richard MacManus has several good summaries that you should check out. It was also good to meet Richard on Wednesday since he's working with Marc Canter to help build out our platform. He flew in from New Zealand to attend the conference, so it was definitely cool since we won't be able to meet with him often. Here are some of his posts:
"Mary Meeker talk"
"Bubble or Bubble-let?"
"A Conversation with AOL CEO Jonathan Miller"
Richard's post on "Bubble-let" led me to Susan Mernit's post on "Yahoo buys Upcoming.org," which I decided not to post on a few days ago. Susan states how this signals that the bubble is truly back.
I tend to agree, but also think the acquisition was strategic. Google has been hoarding engineering talent over the past year, so I'm guessing this was a way to get creative, enterprising engineers into Yahoo!'s DNA.
Yesterday at one of the Web 2.0 parties, I was talking with a programmer from a similar company to Upcoming.org. Both of us initially talked about how the acquisition really didn't make sense. Less than a year old, Upcoming.org hasn't drummed up significant traffic and users. The programmer stated that Yahoo! could have just built it themselves. I questioned whether this was true and especially if they had available bodies to do so. We agreed that it would have been better for Yahoo! to wait and see how the space develops, but of course the acquisition costs would be higher at that point. We also discussed how Upcoming.org's founders should have waited it out, but maybe they didn't want to be the odd one out down the road. Or, hopefully, they negotiated an incentive package based on the future performance of Upcoming.org.
Anyway, last link, Om with his latest, "And 5 More Things About Web 2.0 conference"
I agree with Om's point on "Revenue Models… what is that?" As I posted before, the problem with many of these cool tools are just that. They are only tools and features that will have a difficult road towards becoming a sustainable company. I hope the craze within this space doesn't grow to the point where larger entities bail them out and valuations go skyhigh. While this environment would be great for GoingOn Networks when we raise our next round of financing, I don't believe it's healthy in the longrun for the tech industry.
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A lot more posts on the Web 2.0 conference, but I've just selected a few. Richard MacManus has several good summaries that you should check out. It was also good to meet Richard on Wednesday since he's working with Marc Canter to help build out our platform. He flew in from New Zealand to attend the conference, so it was definitely cool since we won't be able to meet with him often. Here are some of his posts:
"Mary Meeker talk"
"Bubble or Bubble-let?"
"A Conversation with AOL CEO Jonathan Miller"
Richard's post on "Bubble-let" led me to Susan Mernit's post on "Yahoo buys Upcoming.org," which I decided not to post on a few days ago. Susan states how this signals that the bubble is truly back.
I tend to agree, but also think the acquisition was strategic. Google has been hoarding engineering talent over the past year, so I'm guessing this was a way to get creative, enterprising engineers into Yahoo!'s DNA.
Yesterday at one of the Web 2.0 parties, I was talking with a programmer from a similar company to Upcoming.org. Both of us initially talked about how the acquisition really didn't make sense. Less than a year old, Upcoming.org hasn't drummed up significant traffic and users. The programmer stated that Yahoo! could have just built it themselves. I questioned whether this was true and especially if they had available bodies to do so. We agreed that it would have been better for Yahoo! to wait and see how the space develops, but of course the acquisition costs would be higher at that point. We also discussed how Upcoming.org's founders should have waited it out, but maybe they didn't want to be the odd one out down the road. Or, hopefully, they negotiated an incentive package based on the future performance of Upcoming.org.
Anyway, last link, Om with his latest, "And 5 More Things About Web 2.0 conference"
I agree with Om's point on "Revenue Models… what is that?" As I posted before, the problem with many of these cool tools are just that. They are only tools and features that will have a difficult road towards becoming a sustainable company. I hope the craze within this space doesn't grow to the point where larger entities bail them out and valuations go skyhigh. While this environment would be great for GoingOn Networks when we raise our next round of financing, I don't believe it's healthy in the longrun for the tech industry.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
"SHOULD MICROSOFT INVEST IN STARTUPS?"
Dan'l Lewin starts his new column at AlwaysOn. Great addition to our lineup.
We do invest. We don’t invest. Which is it? Believe it or not, it does depend on how you define “invest.”
We don’t invest in startups in the traditional venture capital way. At least not any more. But we do aggressively invest our resources, programs, people, and, of course, technologies in startup companies worldwide, and we work proactively with leading venture capitalists to enable innovation and accelerate the software ecosystem. In fact, this has been my charter since joining Microsoft almost five years ago. Having lived and worked in Silicon Valley for almost 30 years—spending my formative years at Apple, helping to found NeXT, and then a series of startups and large corporate partnerships—I actually sought out Microsoft. Based on the shift in technology taking place around XML, open standards and Microsoft’s efforts around .Net, I believed Microsoft could be the best partner for entrepreneurs and early stage companies in the venture community.
In this first “Edge of the Valley” column, my aim is to clarify Microsoft’s position: We are heavily investing in startups. We’re open for business and care passionately about entrepreneurs and their commitment to changing the world. In fact, during the last three or four years, we’ve had hundreds of extremely successful engagements helping startups drive their shareholder and end customer value. The reality and leverage of the Microsoft partner ecosystem is amazing—96% of Microsoft’s revenue is driven through our partners, and for every $1 of our revenue, our partners make $7 to $8. We know venture-backed startups are fundamental to Microsoft’s long-term success.
VC Model Today
VCs bank on hitting a home run, and the top funds manage to hit one out of the park every five to 10 years. That world, however, is changing. VC funds today expect 90% or more of their “exits” will be through acquisition, where returns are very, very good, but not out of the park. For a company to go public today, the market requires about a $250-million market capitalization—perhaps five to 10 times forward-looking revenue. That’s a vast departure from the go-go days when companies were going public without revenue, with seemingly just a business plan and a prayer. (full post)
[tags: microsoft, technology, windows, venture capital, entrepreneurship, alwayson]
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Dan'l Lewin starts his new column at AlwaysOn. Great addition to our lineup.
We do invest. We don’t invest. Which is it? Believe it or not, it does depend on how you define “invest.”
We don’t invest in startups in the traditional venture capital way. At least not any more. But we do aggressively invest our resources, programs, people, and, of course, technologies in startup companies worldwide, and we work proactively with leading venture capitalists to enable innovation and accelerate the software ecosystem. In fact, this has been my charter since joining Microsoft almost five years ago. Having lived and worked in Silicon Valley for almost 30 years—spending my formative years at Apple, helping to found NeXT, and then a series of startups and large corporate partnerships—I actually sought out Microsoft. Based on the shift in technology taking place around XML, open standards and Microsoft’s efforts around .Net, I believed Microsoft could be the best partner for entrepreneurs and early stage companies in the venture community.
In this first “Edge of the Valley” column, my aim is to clarify Microsoft’s position: We are heavily investing in startups. We’re open for business and care passionately about entrepreneurs and their commitment to changing the world. In fact, during the last three or four years, we’ve had hundreds of extremely successful engagements helping startups drive their shareholder and end customer value. The reality and leverage of the Microsoft partner ecosystem is amazing—96% of Microsoft’s revenue is driven through our partners, and for every $1 of our revenue, our partners make $7 to $8. We know venture-backed startups are fundamental to Microsoft’s long-term success.
VC Model Today
VCs bank on hitting a home run, and the top funds manage to hit one out of the park every five to 10 years. That world, however, is changing. VC funds today expect 90% or more of their “exits” will be through acquisition, where returns are very, very good, but not out of the park. For a company to go public today, the market requires about a $250-million market capitalization—perhaps five to 10 times forward-looking revenue. That’s a vast departure from the go-go days when companies were going public without revenue, with seemingly just a business plan and a prayer. (full post)
[tags: microsoft, technology, windows, venture capital, entrepreneurship, alwayson]
WEB 2.0 DAY ONE ROUND UP
Well, this isn't really a round up from my perspective since I left after the morning sessions, but a compilation of blog posts:
SiliconBeat's "Zimbra & Zvents win at Web 2.0 & other gossip"
TechCrunch on Attention Trust's Recorder, and Seth Goldstein's and Greg Yardley's posts at AttentionTrust's blog.
TechCrunch's has a list of startups that presented at Web 2.0's Launchpad workshop, and as usual they provide some great summaries. Part 1 of their list here and Part 2 here.
Om has his "10 Things About Web 2.0 Conference"
And Brad Feld has some brief comments on the difference between O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference and The Media Center's We Media in NYC. Most of our team (Marc, Carl, Valerie, and I) stayed in SF and went to Web 2.0, and Marc did his workshop gig yesterday which went well). Tony attended the We Media conference yesterday along with some other meetings in NYC.
UPDATE: More posts and thoughts...
From Marc on his workshop, which I did think he tooted his horn a little too much:), and Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo notes from the workshop... actually his notes and thoughts are pretty detailed on this and other events at Web 2.0, so I would recommend checking out his blog.
Genuine VC has "Minor Tidbits from Web2.0 Conference" and a couple other posts.
Jeff Jarvis, who is guest blogging at Lifehacker, has his views on some of the companies at the Launchpad.
[tags: web 2.0, web2.0, Blog, tech, technology]
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Well, this isn't really a round up from my perspective since I left after the morning sessions, but a compilation of blog posts:
SiliconBeat's "Zimbra & Zvents win at Web 2.0 & other gossip"
TechCrunch on Attention Trust's Recorder, and Seth Goldstein's and Greg Yardley's posts at AttentionTrust's blog.
TechCrunch's has a list of startups that presented at Web 2.0's Launchpad workshop, and as usual they provide some great summaries. Part 1 of their list here and Part 2 here.
Om has his "10 Things About Web 2.0 Conference"
And Brad Feld has some brief comments on the difference between O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference and The Media Center's We Media in NYC. Most of our team (Marc, Carl, Valerie, and I) stayed in SF and went to Web 2.0, and Marc did his workshop gig yesterday which went well). Tony attended the We Media conference yesterday along with some other meetings in NYC.
UPDATE: More posts and thoughts...
From Marc on his workshop, which I did think he tooted his horn a little too much:), and Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo notes from the workshop... actually his notes and thoughts are pretty detailed on this and other events at Web 2.0, so I would recommend checking out his blog.
Genuine VC has "Minor Tidbits from Web2.0 Conference" and a couple other posts.
Jeff Jarvis, who is guest blogging at Lifehacker, has his views on some of the companies at the Launchpad.
[tags: web 2.0, web2.0, Blog, tech, technology]
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
KOREAN GOVERNMENT AT IT AGAIN (SIGH)... PRIVATE EQUITY WITCH HUNT CONTINUES
HatTip to Jeff. I guess this is a follow up to my op-ed, which got great traffic on OhMyNews and probably a watchful eye from the KCIA:) Anyway, Asian Private Equity News's Jerry Borrell comments:
Meantime, Korean regulators were at it again. After driving firms such as Hermes and Sovereign out of the country (I exaggerate for effect), Korean authorities are taking on some of the top PE firms in the U.S.., some of whom marched in to save the country’s ailing financial companies in the late ‘90s after Korean chaebols left themselves and nearly the entire country in a default in ’97 and ’98. The Koreans have made it clear that they’re going to penalize US PE firms for using the laws on the books that allowed them to protect their earning through the use of offshore tax shelters. And we’re not just talking penalties. Korean authorities say they want the cases handled by the country’s criminal prosecutors, once the penalties are paid.
Talk like that makes the rough and tumble politics of India look pretty attractive, especially given the absence of regulatory backlash against the PE firms that continue to rake heaps of money out of their investments in that country. At one point last week, DFJ’s Tim Draper, subject to a bevy of lawsuits via his investments in Baidu.com, said at one event that the governments in the region are going to learn the hard way that the world of private equity is really competitive. If they don’t want [PE firms] in their markets, “we’ll leave for places where we’re welcome,” noting that capital is really portable. It’s little wonder that Vietnam has become the fastest-growing private equity market in Asia, as the government keeps asking for more help and then passes legislation which helps attract even more capital.
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HatTip to Jeff. I guess this is a follow up to my op-ed, which got great traffic on OhMyNews and probably a watchful eye from the KCIA:) Anyway, Asian Private Equity News's Jerry Borrell comments:
Meantime, Korean regulators were at it again. After driving firms such as Hermes and Sovereign out of the country (I exaggerate for effect), Korean authorities are taking on some of the top PE firms in the U.S.., some of whom marched in to save the country’s ailing financial companies in the late ‘90s after Korean chaebols left themselves and nearly the entire country in a default in ’97 and ’98. The Koreans have made it clear that they’re going to penalize US PE firms for using the laws on the books that allowed them to protect their earning through the use of offshore tax shelters. And we’re not just talking penalties. Korean authorities say they want the cases handled by the country’s criminal prosecutors, once the penalties are paid.
Talk like that makes the rough and tumble politics of India look pretty attractive, especially given the absence of regulatory backlash against the PE firms that continue to rake heaps of money out of their investments in that country. At one point last week, DFJ’s Tim Draper, subject to a bevy of lawsuits via his investments in Baidu.com, said at one event that the governments in the region are going to learn the hard way that the world of private equity is really competitive. If they don’t want [PE firms] in their markets, “we’ll leave for places where we’re welcome,” noting that capital is really portable. It’s little wonder that Vietnam has become the fastest-growing private equity market in Asia, as the government keeps asking for more help and then passes legislation which helps attract even more capital.
SEX SLAVES IN CHINA
HatTip to Mingi. Even though I read stories about this every few months, it still disturbs me everything.
The women who flee North Korea believe nothing could be worse than their dictatorship's famine and labour camps.
But many change their minds after they cross the Tumen River into the "safety" of China, smuggled by middlemen who promise safe passage.
"I was locked into a house and raped every night," said Kim Chun-ae, a matronly 51-year-old. "My teenage daughter was sold three times by traffickers. She was 'recycled'."
Mrs Kim is lucky. After five years of imprisonment in labour camps and a man's bedroom she finally made it to South Korea.
She left behind tens of thousands of women who made the same leap of faith only to end up in China.
South Korean charities say between 100,000 and 300,000 people have escaped North Korea in the nine years since famine swept Kim Jong-il's impoverished regime, killing two million. Most are still hiding in northern China, terrified of his infamous camps. Aid workers say between 70 and 90 per cent of women defectors have been sold for sex. (full article)
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HatTip to Mingi. Even though I read stories about this every few months, it still disturbs me everything.
The women who flee North Korea believe nothing could be worse than their dictatorship's famine and labour camps.
But many change their minds after they cross the Tumen River into the "safety" of China, smuggled by middlemen who promise safe passage.
"I was locked into a house and raped every night," said Kim Chun-ae, a matronly 51-year-old. "My teenage daughter was sold three times by traffickers. She was 'recycled'."
Mrs Kim is lucky. After five years of imprisonment in labour camps and a man's bedroom she finally made it to South Korea.
She left behind tens of thousands of women who made the same leap of faith only to end up in China.
South Korean charities say between 100,000 and 300,000 people have escaped North Korea in the nine years since famine swept Kim Jong-il's impoverished regime, killing two million. Most are still hiding in northern China, terrified of his infamous camps. Aid workers say between 70 and 90 per cent of women defectors have been sold for sex. (full article)
AOL BUYS WEBLOGS INC FOR $25 MILLION
Interesting move by AOL. I guess the dinosaur is slowly awaking. Congratulations to Jason and his colleagues!
America Online Inc. has agreed to buy Weblogs Inc. -- a network of Internet diaries focused on niche topics ranging from food to gadgets -- for around $25 million, a source familiar with the deal said on Wednesday.
AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., could announce the acquisition of New York-based Weblogs Inc. (http://www.weblogsinc.com//) as early as Thursday, the source said.
Weblogs includes roughly 80 advertising-supported sites published by a group of more than 100 bloggers. (full article)
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Interesting move by AOL. I guess the dinosaur is slowly awaking. Congratulations to Jason and his colleagues!
America Online Inc. has agreed to buy Weblogs Inc. -- a network of Internet diaries focused on niche topics ranging from food to gadgets -- for around $25 million, a source familiar with the deal said on Wednesday.
AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., could announce the acquisition of New York-based Weblogs Inc. (http://www.weblogsinc.com//) as early as Thursday, the source said.
Weblogs includes roughly 80 advertising-supported sites published by a group of more than 100 bloggers. (full article)
HARRIET MIERS THE WRONG PICK
A fair about of disappointment from conservatives on Bush's pick for the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers. I'll post more later since I have to run, but here are a bunch of links:
"Disappointed, Depressed and Demoralized" by Bill Kristol
"Miers is the wrong pick" by George Will
"Don't misunderestimate Miers" from The American Thinker's Thomas Lifson
"Intellectual decay" from The American Thinker
UPDATE: Okay, I'm back in front of my desk and I have say that I too am disappointed in this pick by President Bush and whoever else on his staff that pushed for Miers. It was an easy pick probably to ensure a conservative, pro-life justice for years to come, but life isn't about the easy choices nor was this a politically wise choice. This was a decision with far greater importance. This was to decide on who would be a guardian and interpreter of our great constitution, and I believe an essential qualification is to have a proven legal mind that reflects this ability. The person doesn't have to be a judge, but at least someone with literature to support their capabilities. George Will and J. Peter Mulhern's excellent article (The American Thinker) state this well:
Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers' nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists. (full post)
Our intellectual infrastructure is badly decayed and Supreme Court Justices have an important role to play in overhauling it. To play that role we need justices capable of a profound impact on the law and on the culture of which the law is part. When George W. Bush promised to look for justices like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, most conservatives understood him to mean that he would look for greatness. Harriet Miers might become a great justice, but no serious person will claim that it’s likely. Madam Justice Miers may well be a nightmare for the abortion boosters and the racial grievance mongers. It doesn’t follow that she is the answer to conservatives’ dreams.
The nominee we need wouldn’t necessarily have a degree from the Harvard Law School. In fact, one of the strongest arguments in favor of the President’s second Supreme Court nominee is that she has never been polluted by that institution or any other elite cesspool. Conservatives have long and bitter experience with the effect of Ivy League intellectual pretensions on jurists with second and third rate minds (Justices Kennedy and Souter leap to mind.) The problem isn’t that Harriet Miers, like Justice Jackson before her, lacks a prestigious educational background. The problem is that nothing in her life story even hints that she might have the right stuff to be an important intellectual leader.
Graduating from law school, working as a commercial litigator in a large firm, rising to become the managing partner of that firm, dabbling in local and ABA politics, and signing on with a rising politician to do spade work, are all pretty pedestrian achievements. Those of us who have been around the law a bit know any number of people with similar background and know that many of them shouldn’t be trusted to shine shoes. If Harriet Miers turns out to have the stuff of greatness it will be the biggest surprise since Ulysses S. Grant turned out to be the right general to win the Civil War, and Grant didn’t start at the top.
Conservatives feel betrayed and they should. They have been betrayed. We were promised that W would add some serious conservative firepower to the Supreme Court. He had the chance and he chose to reward a loyal friend instead. Time and some good results may take away most of the sting. But conservatives won’t soon forget that when crunch time came President Bush treated a Supreme Court appointment like a garden variety patronage job. (full post)
MORE comments and links from Power Line.
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A fair about of disappointment from conservatives on Bush's pick for the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers. I'll post more later since I have to run, but here are a bunch of links:
"Disappointed, Depressed and Demoralized" by Bill Kristol
"Miers is the wrong pick" by George Will
"Don't misunderestimate Miers" from The American Thinker's Thomas Lifson
"Intellectual decay" from The American Thinker
UPDATE: Okay, I'm back in front of my desk and I have say that I too am disappointed in this pick by President Bush and whoever else on his staff that pushed for Miers. It was an easy pick probably to ensure a conservative, pro-life justice for years to come, but life isn't about the easy choices nor was this a politically wise choice. This was a decision with far greater importance. This was to decide on who would be a guardian and interpreter of our great constitution, and I believe an essential qualification is to have a proven legal mind that reflects this ability. The person doesn't have to be a judge, but at least someone with literature to support their capabilities. George Will and J. Peter Mulhern's excellent article (The American Thinker) state this well:
Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers' nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists. (full post)
Our intellectual infrastructure is badly decayed and Supreme Court Justices have an important role to play in overhauling it. To play that role we need justices capable of a profound impact on the law and on the culture of which the law is part. When George W. Bush promised to look for justices like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, most conservatives understood him to mean that he would look for greatness. Harriet Miers might become a great justice, but no serious person will claim that it’s likely. Madam Justice Miers may well be a nightmare for the abortion boosters and the racial grievance mongers. It doesn’t follow that she is the answer to conservatives’ dreams.
The nominee we need wouldn’t necessarily have a degree from the Harvard Law School. In fact, one of the strongest arguments in favor of the President’s second Supreme Court nominee is that she has never been polluted by that institution or any other elite cesspool. Conservatives have long and bitter experience with the effect of Ivy League intellectual pretensions on jurists with second and third rate minds (Justices Kennedy and Souter leap to mind.) The problem isn’t that Harriet Miers, like Justice Jackson before her, lacks a prestigious educational background. The problem is that nothing in her life story even hints that she might have the right stuff to be an important intellectual leader.
Graduating from law school, working as a commercial litigator in a large firm, rising to become the managing partner of that firm, dabbling in local and ABA politics, and signing on with a rising politician to do spade work, are all pretty pedestrian achievements. Those of us who have been around the law a bit know any number of people with similar background and know that many of them shouldn’t be trusted to shine shoes. If Harriet Miers turns out to have the stuff of greatness it will be the biggest surprise since Ulysses S. Grant turned out to be the right general to win the Civil War, and Grant didn’t start at the top.
Conservatives feel betrayed and they should. They have been betrayed. We were promised that W would add some serious conservative firepower to the Supreme Court. He had the chance and he chose to reward a loyal friend instead. Time and some good results may take away most of the sting. But conservatives won’t soon forget that when crunch time came President Bush treated a Supreme Court appointment like a garden variety patronage job. (full post)
MORE comments and links from Power Line.
THE REAL 24 HOUR LAUNDRY... NING LAUNCHES
HatTip to Om. Marc Andreessen corrected my prior post about the false speculation that his new thing was a blogging platform like ours. Now we find out that it's something pretty cool:
Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications. Social apps are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.
Om's commentary:
The much talked about 24 Hour Laundry has come out from under the covers as Ning. This is Marc Andressen’s latest and has some seriously smart people working for the company. What they have done is developed a meta app, a framework that allows folks like you and me to roll our own “social applications.” It is a hard one to quantify, and you have to use it to know it. Given that we have been bombarded with social apps in recent months, its nice to see a "mother of all social apps." (full post)
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HatTip to Om. Marc Andreessen corrected my prior post about the false speculation that his new thing was a blogging platform like ours. Now we find out that it's something pretty cool:
Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications. Social apps are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.
Om's commentary:
The much talked about 24 Hour Laundry has come out from under the covers as Ning. This is Marc Andressen’s latest and has some seriously smart people working for the company. What they have done is developed a meta app, a framework that allows folks like you and me to roll our own “social applications.” It is a hard one to quantify, and you have to use it to know it. Given that we have been bombarded with social apps in recent months, its nice to see a "mother of all social apps." (full post)
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
GOOGLE, SUN PARTNERSHIP... MOVEMENT ON THE BATTLEFIELD
Definitely the troops and tanks are in formation. Google and Sun lining up together in preparation for their battle against Microsoft. This will be a very interesting battle to watch. Great article by CNet's Stephen Shankland:
Sun Microsystems and Google plan to announce a collaborative effort that some analysts speculate could elevate the profile of the OpenOffice.org and Java software packages.
Details won't emerge publicly until Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Sun CEO Scott McNealy take the stage on Tuesday at a news conference in Mountain View, Calif. But one strong possibility is a partnership that could help shift personal computing out of Microsoft's domain and into Google's.
The partners have complementary assets for such a task. Sun has the open-source OpenOffice.org software suite and its close relative, StarOffice. It has Java software, which is well suited for network-friendly applications that run on any Java-enabled PC.
As for Google, its products have become daily resources for a vast number of computer users, and it offers a growing suite of software. In addition, it has the ambition of becoming the company that supplies network-based applications.
.....
A partnership with Sun that provided an office applications suite would round out that list--and dramatically increase the competition between Google and Microsoft, whose Office suite dominates the market for word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software.
"Google could deploy a version of Google Office at any time. The reason they haven't (is) they're not set up to serve enterprises with all the security and name recognition that Sun has," said Stephen Arnold, author of "The Google Legacy: How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software." "That's a very obvious plus for Google," he said.
.....
There already are close ties between the two companies, observed Caris & Co. analyst Mark Stahlman, who in the early 1990s heard talk at Sun about building the kind of network services that Google now is providing. Among the ties: Google CEO Schmidt was Sun's chief technology officer in the 1990s; John Doerr, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, is on the board of both companies; and Andy Bechtolsheim, a Sun co-founder who returned to the company to launch its Galaxy servers, wrote a check for $100,000 that helped get Google started. (full article)
UPDATE: CNET adds a bunch of other articles on this. Including an overview of buzz from the blogosphere where most people are saying "big deal." Om calls it a "Cheap Publicity Ploy."
|
Definitely the troops and tanks are in formation. Google and Sun lining up together in preparation for their battle against Microsoft. This will be a very interesting battle to watch. Great article by CNet's Stephen Shankland:
Sun Microsystems and Google plan to announce a collaborative effort that some analysts speculate could elevate the profile of the OpenOffice.org and Java software packages.
Details won't emerge publicly until Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Sun CEO Scott McNealy take the stage on Tuesday at a news conference in Mountain View, Calif. But one strong possibility is a partnership that could help shift personal computing out of Microsoft's domain and into Google's.
The partners have complementary assets for such a task. Sun has the open-source OpenOffice.org software suite and its close relative, StarOffice. It has Java software, which is well suited for network-friendly applications that run on any Java-enabled PC.
As for Google, its products have become daily resources for a vast number of computer users, and it offers a growing suite of software. In addition, it has the ambition of becoming the company that supplies network-based applications.
.....
A partnership with Sun that provided an office applications suite would round out that list--and dramatically increase the competition between Google and Microsoft, whose Office suite dominates the market for word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software.
"Google could deploy a version of Google Office at any time. The reason they haven't (is) they're not set up to serve enterprises with all the security and name recognition that Sun has," said Stephen Arnold, author of "The Google Legacy: How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software." "That's a very obvious plus for Google," he said.
.....
There already are close ties between the two companies, observed Caris & Co. analyst Mark Stahlman, who in the early 1990s heard talk at Sun about building the kind of network services that Google now is providing. Among the ties: Google CEO Schmidt was Sun's chief technology officer in the 1990s; John Doerr, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, is on the board of both companies; and Andy Bechtolsheim, a Sun co-founder who returned to the company to launch its Galaxy servers, wrote a check for $100,000 that helped get Google started. (full article)
UPDATE: CNET adds a bunch of other articles on this. Including an overview of buzz from the blogosphere where most people are saying "big deal." Om calls it a "Cheap Publicity Ploy."
Monday, October 03, 2005
WHAT'S WEB 2.0?
Richard MacManus discusses and compiles various definitions "Web 2.0":
The 'What is Web 2.0?' meme is everywhere and everyone seems to have a different interpretation. Here are some of the latest:
Om Malik: "a “collection of technologies - be it VoIP, Digital Media, XML, RSS, Google Maps… whatever …. that leverage the power of always on, high speed connections and treat broadband as a platform, and not just a pipe to connect."
John Hagel: “an emerging network-centric platform to support distributed, collaborative and cumulative creation by its users.”
Susan Mernit: "The enduring lesson of all of the social media and emerging technologies is that we've created an a la carte, do it yourself platform where users can engage with sophisticated forms of search, feeds, metadata and APIs, social networks and identity, and commerce and fill these vessels with their own information..."
Dave Winer thinks it's The Two-Way Web redux. (and it's interesting to note the focus of my weblog before Web 2.0 was precisely that - Dave's Two-Way Web vision).
Wikipedia's current definition: "Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications, like Gmail, to end users. The proponents of this thinking expect that ultimately Web 2.0 services will replace desktop computing applications for many purposes." (full post & links)
MORE from Om, "What is Web 2.0… take two"
|
Richard MacManus discusses and compiles various definitions "Web 2.0":
The 'What is Web 2.0?' meme is everywhere and everyone seems to have a different interpretation. Here are some of the latest:
Om Malik: "a “collection of technologies - be it VoIP, Digital Media, XML, RSS, Google Maps… whatever …. that leverage the power of always on, high speed connections and treat broadband as a platform, and not just a pipe to connect."
John Hagel: “an emerging network-centric platform to support distributed, collaborative and cumulative creation by its users.”
Susan Mernit: "The enduring lesson of all of the social media and emerging technologies is that we've created an a la carte, do it yourself platform where users can engage with sophisticated forms of search, feeds, metadata and APIs, social networks and identity, and commerce and fill these vessels with their own information..."
Dave Winer thinks it's The Two-Way Web redux. (and it's interesting to note the focus of my weblog before Web 2.0 was precisely that - Dave's Two-Way Web vision).
Wikipedia's current definition: "Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications, like Gmail, to end users. The proponents of this thinking expect that ultimately Web 2.0 services will replace desktop computing applications for many purposes." (full post & links)
MORE from Om, "What is Web 2.0… take two"
TRUE STORY BEHIND MOTOROLA'S RAZR
From Ron May's The May Report. If you want tech news & gossip out of Chicago, check out Ron's newsletter. He's has an interesting background story on the development Motorola's RAZR:
The development of the RAZR was done by ONE engineer and his team and it was initially REJECTED by Motorola executives, so the engineer went around the company ON HIS OWN and used an ODE (Outsourced Design and Engineering) firm in Shen Zhen China (they generally used Benq, but for this he used his own resources) and then he came back with the design which he then pushed a second time.
That's the real story and all the talk now about how ingenious the company was, about how the RAZR was a part of some grand plan, about the two icons, about the processes in the firm that encourage innovation is revisionist history -- and I might add revisionist credit-taking -- and an attempt by Motorola to take an entirely unexpected success --- they had initially expected to sell only 2 million units of RAZR --- and recast it as part of a grand scheme. The PEBL, also known as the "Bean" is Motorola's attempt to convince people that RAZR represents a transformation in how the firm works. Why was RAZR rejected initially by Motorola executives? My information is that it was rejected because it lacks functionality and features. It is strong on design, but weak on features. In design parlance, it was form over function, and that is antithetical to what Motorola has stood for over the last seventy five years.
Jim Wicks' argument in his talk was that Motorola is undergoing a cultural shift, but a 75 year old engineering firm that has always focused on the primacy of engineering does not turn around on a dime. Becoming the hip consumer products firm may be an ideal now, but it has not been the focus. It seems to me to be an afterthought, AFTER the success of the RAZR. Further evidence that the story Motorola is now telling is revisionist history is that Zander and others were not really talking up RAZR even a year or more ago. What is more, Motorola was considering selling off its entire handset business before RAZR came along. Which came first, cultural change or the RAZR? Which came first, the engineering with the thin chip or the design of thin? Which came first, consumer oriented products
Not one word about RAZR in any of Ed Zander's discussion with the analysts in July of 2004. Granted, RAZR was introduced in October 2004, but if this was going to be the mother of all icons, you would think that he would have at least hinted about it. In fact, back then the mantra was "seamless mobility" --- remember that gem? I focus on this because even the word "Icon" has only come into use very recently. I see not one reference to the term prior to the Wicks talk and the article quoting Roger Jellicoe, all on September 12th and 13th of this year, just two weeks ago!
.....
As some background to the story, all the major handset manufacturers from Motorola to Siemens to Phillips outsource the design and development of cell phones to ODM and ODE (Original Design Manufacturers and Original Design and Enginnering)firms. These are often small companies, but not always. They are almost all in China, Taiwan and South Korea, but not much in Korea anymore because they got swept up by Samsung there. There are a few left in Europe but their activities have fallen off a lot. Everyone except Samsung and LG use these ODE and ODM firms. Flextronics and Benq are some of the bigger firms that Motorola and others outsource to. Benq will do the design of the handset and will manufacture it. If they use a smaller firm like Microcell, Microcell will do the design, but not the manufacturing.
Motorola would routinely visit these firms to keep them apprised of the product road map. They do it under NDA so that the companies can develop the technology to respond to bids for new products. Let's say Motorola wants push to talk, a color screen and an integrated digital video camera. They put that out for bid and they need the ODMs and ODEs to be able to act quickly. Motorola will give them a general idea where they are going, but won't be overly specific.
We all know that Motorola was not doing well until the RAZR arrived.
The RAZR never appeared on any product road map that Motorola was showing the ODMs and ODEs. No one at Motorola knew it was coming. That is my information, at any rate. There was one engineering team leader who came up with the idea of the RAZR. He showed it to the directors of the handset division. They said it was garbage because its functionality was limited.
Everyone at Motorola is now taking credit for the idea of form over function when it was really one guy and his team. (full post)
|
From Ron May's The May Report. If you want tech news & gossip out of Chicago, check out Ron's newsletter. He's has an interesting background story on the development Motorola's RAZR:
The development of the RAZR was done by ONE engineer and his team and it was initially REJECTED by Motorola executives, so the engineer went around the company ON HIS OWN and used an ODE (Outsourced Design and Engineering) firm in Shen Zhen China (they generally used Benq, but for this he used his own resources) and then he came back with the design which he then pushed a second time.
That's the real story and all the talk now about how ingenious the company was, about how the RAZR was a part of some grand plan, about the two icons, about the processes in the firm that encourage innovation is revisionist history -- and I might add revisionist credit-taking -- and an attempt by Motorola to take an entirely unexpected success --- they had initially expected to sell only 2 million units of RAZR --- and recast it as part of a grand scheme. The PEBL, also known as the "Bean" is Motorola's attempt to convince people that RAZR represents a transformation in how the firm works. Why was RAZR rejected initially by Motorola executives? My information is that it was rejected because it lacks functionality and features. It is strong on design, but weak on features. In design parlance, it was form over function, and that is antithetical to what Motorola has stood for over the last seventy five years.
Jim Wicks' argument in his talk was that Motorola is undergoing a cultural shift, but a 75 year old engineering firm that has always focused on the primacy of engineering does not turn around on a dime. Becoming the hip consumer products firm may be an ideal now, but it has not been the focus. It seems to me to be an afterthought, AFTER the success of the RAZR. Further evidence that the story Motorola is now telling is revisionist history is that Zander and others were not really talking up RAZR even a year or more ago. What is more, Motorola was considering selling off its entire handset business before RAZR came along. Which came first, cultural change or the RAZR? Which came first, the engineering with the thin chip or the design of thin? Which came first, consumer oriented products
Not one word about RAZR in any of Ed Zander's discussion with the analysts in July of 2004. Granted, RAZR was introduced in October 2004, but if this was going to be the mother of all icons, you would think that he would have at least hinted about it. In fact, back then the mantra was "seamless mobility" --- remember that gem? I focus on this because even the word "Icon" has only come into use very recently. I see not one reference to the term prior to the Wicks talk and the article quoting Roger Jellicoe, all on September 12th and 13th of this year, just two weeks ago!
.....
As some background to the story, all the major handset manufacturers from Motorola to Siemens to Phillips outsource the design and development of cell phones to ODM and ODE (Original Design Manufacturers and Original Design and Enginnering)firms. These are often small companies, but not always. They are almost all in China, Taiwan and South Korea, but not much in Korea anymore because they got swept up by Samsung there. There are a few left in Europe but their activities have fallen off a lot. Everyone except Samsung and LG use these ODE and ODM firms. Flextronics and Benq are some of the bigger firms that Motorola and others outsource to. Benq will do the design of the handset and will manufacture it. If they use a smaller firm like Microcell, Microcell will do the design, but not the manufacturing.
Motorola would routinely visit these firms to keep them apprised of the product road map. They do it under NDA so that the companies can develop the technology to respond to bids for new products. Let's say Motorola wants push to talk, a color screen and an integrated digital video camera. They put that out for bid and they need the ODMs and ODEs to be able to act quickly. Motorola will give them a general idea where they are going, but won't be overly specific.
We all know that Motorola was not doing well until the RAZR arrived.
The RAZR never appeared on any product road map that Motorola was showing the ODMs and ODEs. No one at Motorola knew it was coming. That is my information, at any rate. There was one engineering team leader who came up with the idea of the RAZR. He showed it to the directors of the handset division. They said it was garbage because its functionality was limited.
Everyone at Motorola is now taking credit for the idea of form over function when it was really one guy and his team. (full post)
RANDOM NEWS QUICKLIST
"Australians Win Nobel Prize in Medicine"
"Scientists Discover 10th Planet's Moon"
"Sales of Digital Music Triple"
"Yahoo to digitize public domain books"
"Finding Nemo Costs Cisco $12.5 Million"
"NTL to Acquire Telewest for $6 Billion"
"Police seek Bali bombers' names"
"Schroeder indirectly hints ready to bow out"
|
"Australians Win Nobel Prize in Medicine"
"Scientists Discover 10th Planet's Moon"
"Sales of Digital Music Triple"
"Yahoo to digitize public domain books"
"Finding Nemo Costs Cisco $12.5 Million"
"NTL to Acquire Telewest for $6 Billion"
"Police seek Bali bombers' names"
"Schroeder indirectly hints ready to bow out"
BUSH CHOOSES HARRIET MIERS TO REPLACE O'CONNOR
HatTip to Lucianne. Just came out that President Bush will nominate Harriet Miers, White House counsel, for the Supreme Court post.
President Bush has chosen Harriet Miers, White House counsel and a loyal member of the president's inner circle, to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, a senior administration official said Monday.
If confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, Miers, 60, would join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman on the nation's highest court.
Miers, who has never been a judge, was the first woman to serve as president of the Texas State Bar and the Dallas Bar Association.
Without a judicial record, it's difficult to know whether Miers would dramatically move the court to the right. She would fill the shoes of O'Connor, a swing voter on the court for years who has cast deciding votes on some affirmative action, abortion and death penalty cases. (full article)
|
HatTip to Lucianne. Just came out that President Bush will nominate Harriet Miers, White House counsel, for the Supreme Court post.
President Bush has chosen Harriet Miers, White House counsel and a loyal member of the president's inner circle, to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, a senior administration official said Monday.
If confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, Miers, 60, would join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman on the nation's highest court.
Miers, who has never been a judge, was the first woman to serve as president of the Texas State Bar and the Dallas Bar Association.
Without a judicial record, it's difficult to know whether Miers would dramatically move the court to the right. She would fill the shoes of O'Connor, a swing voter on the court for years who has cast deciding votes on some affirmative action, abortion and death penalty cases. (full article)
M400 SKYCAR FOR $3.5 MILLION
HatTip to Slashdot. Only Neiman Marcus would offer a $3.5 million Moller Skycar. Pretty cool though.
|
HatTip to Slashdot. Only Neiman Marcus would offer a $3.5 million Moller Skycar. Pretty cool though.
ORACLE CEO WANTS TO CRUSH SALESFORCE.COM
This is so Oracle. I hope Mark Benioff kicks their ass, and his platform strategy seems to be taking off.
Oracle's president said on Friday his company would rather beat Salesforce.com than buy the much smaller provider of customer management software.
Oracle has been scooping up software companies to diversify its slow-growing database business. Most recently Oracle said it would buy Siebel Systems for nearly $6 billion, raising the specter that it might try to acquire Salesforce.com as well.
"In this case I think it would be much more fun to crush them," Oracle President Charles Phillips said of Salesforce.com at a press briefing in New York. "We see a lot of ways to compete with them. We will try that for a while."
Salesforce.com, whose software tracks company sales, customer service and marketing, was founded by Mark Benioff, a former protege of Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who invested in the San Francisco-based company before it went public. (full article)
|
This is so Oracle. I hope Mark Benioff kicks their ass, and his platform strategy seems to be taking off.
Oracle's president said on Friday his company would rather beat Salesforce.com than buy the much smaller provider of customer management software.
Oracle has been scooping up software companies to diversify its slow-growing database business. Most recently Oracle said it would buy Siebel Systems for nearly $6 billion, raising the specter that it might try to acquire Salesforce.com as well.
"In this case I think it would be much more fun to crush them," Oracle President Charles Phillips said of Salesforce.com at a press briefing in New York. "We see a lot of ways to compete with them. We will try that for a while."
Salesforce.com, whose software tracks company sales, customer service and marketing, was founded by Mark Benioff, a former protege of Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who invested in the San Francisco-based company before it went public. (full article)
"OUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM IN A NEWS MAGAZINE" NOMINEE... JOSEPH RHEE
I found out a little late, but my cousin, Joey, got nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on a piece he did for ABC News Primetime Live. He's been a producer there for a few years and before that he was at NBC's DateLine for a while. Congratulations, Joey!
ABC News Primetime Live
Non-Profit Hospital Litigation ABC
Executive Producer
Shelley Ross
Senior Investigative Producer
Chris Vlasto
Producers
Joseph Rhee ; Catherine Upin
Correspondent
Christopher Cuomo
|
I found out a little late, but my cousin, Joey, got nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on a piece he did for ABC News Primetime Live. He's been a producer there for a few years and before that he was at NBC's DateLine for a while. Congratulations, Joey!
ABC News Primetime Live
Non-Profit Hospital Litigation ABC
Executive Producer
Shelley Ross
Senior Investigative Producer
Chris Vlasto
Producers
Joseph Rhee ; Catherine Upin
Correspondent
Christopher Cuomo
Sunday, October 02, 2005
"WHAT'S UP WITH BLOGLINES?"
Russell Beattie has a good post on some recent problems with Bloglines, which is my RSS reader of choice:
Has anyone noticed that Bloglines is really suffering since it got bought by Ask Jeeves? I was expecting improvements in the service, but instead, not much has happened that I can see. This isn’t abnormal - it took *ahem* quite a while for OddPost to turn into the new Yahoo! Mail beta after Y! bought them last year. But since I use Bloglines every day (all day), I’m starting to get really frustrated.
Oh boy! Another list of gripes! Actually, no. I’ll just say three things: They aren’t fixing bugs, they aren’t keeping up, and they aren’t innovating at all. More specificially:
Bug #1: If you go to this page, you’ll see that because my old Java system insisted on adding in a ;jessionid to the end of my feed url, it looks like I had hundreds and hundreds of feeds. Every time someone tried to automagically add a feed to Bloglines, it looked different, so Bloglines added a new feed for my site to its database. I’ve done a couple things to resolve this: I’ve emailed Bloglines support, and I’ve used mod_rewrite to return 301s - permanent redirects - for anything except my one official feed. Neither has helped. (full post)
|
Russell Beattie has a good post on some recent problems with Bloglines, which is my RSS reader of choice:
Has anyone noticed that Bloglines is really suffering since it got bought by Ask Jeeves? I was expecting improvements in the service, but instead, not much has happened that I can see. This isn’t abnormal - it took *ahem* quite a while for OddPost to turn into the new Yahoo! Mail beta after Y! bought them last year. But since I use Bloglines every day (all day), I’m starting to get really frustrated.
Oh boy! Another list of gripes! Actually, no. I’ll just say three things: They aren’t fixing bugs, they aren’t keeping up, and they aren’t innovating at all. More specificially:
Bug #1: If you go to this page, you’ll see that because my old Java system insisted on adding in a ;jessionid to the end of my feed url, it looks like I had hundreds and hundreds of feeds. Every time someone tried to automagically add a feed to Bloglines, it looked different, so Bloglines added a new feed for my site to its database. I’ve done a couple things to resolve this: I’ve emailed Bloglines support, and I’ve used mod_rewrite to return 301s - permanent redirects - for anything except my one official feed. Neither has helped. (full post)
IDENTITY THEFT BY METH HACKS
I guess I've been in the dark about the growing problems of meth addiction in the U.S. Now it's reached point where meth addicts are phishing and hacking into people's identity to get credit card numbers and other items to sell for money to satisfy their addiction. I guess we should all be more careful and watchful of suspicious activity on our credit cards.
Methamphetamine addicts are using the Internet to commit identity theft, law-enforcement officials and medical experts in the USA and Canada say.
Meth is a highly addictive, cheap alternative to cocaine and heroin. Meth addicts - already adept at stealing personal information from mailboxes to finance drug habits - now are hacking PCs to steal information, says Bob Gauthier, a detective in the Edmonton, Alberta, Police Service's meth project team.
In the USA, the problem is increasing "in complexity and size" in the West and Midwest, says Robert Brown, agent-in-charge of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. He says meth addicts also are participating in phishing e-mail scams and selling stolen goods on auction sites. Many are employed by ID theft rings run by non-drug users, he says. (Story: Counties say meth is top drug threat (July 5))
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has introduced a bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee that asks the Justice Department to investigate a link between ID theft and meth use. "The meth epidemic is creating a wave of identity theft," she says. Among recent cases: (full article)
|
I guess I've been in the dark about the growing problems of meth addiction in the U.S. Now it's reached point where meth addicts are phishing and hacking into people's identity to get credit card numbers and other items to sell for money to satisfy their addiction. I guess we should all be more careful and watchful of suspicious activity on our credit cards.
Methamphetamine addicts are using the Internet to commit identity theft, law-enforcement officials and medical experts in the USA and Canada say.
Meth is a highly addictive, cheap alternative to cocaine and heroin. Meth addicts - already adept at stealing personal information from mailboxes to finance drug habits - now are hacking PCs to steal information, says Bob Gauthier, a detective in the Edmonton, Alberta, Police Service's meth project team.
In the USA, the problem is increasing "in complexity and size" in the West and Midwest, says Robert Brown, agent-in-charge of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. He says meth addicts also are participating in phishing e-mail scams and selling stolen goods on auction sites. Many are employed by ID theft rings run by non-drug users, he says. (Story: Counties say meth is top drug threat (July 5))
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has introduced a bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee that asks the Justice Department to investigate a link between ID theft and meth use. "The meth epidemic is creating a wave of identity theft," she says. Among recent cases: (full article)
Saturday, October 01, 2005
FULBRIGHT FUNDING FOR FY2006... CALL TO ACTION
With reluctance I'm posting this to see if there are any alumni or supporters of the Fulbright program that want to help the Fulbright Association in their push before Congress. Christine was a Fulbright and it paid for her graduate studies and more which is great, but it bothers me everytime I read their internal emails and posts that she forwards me since the vast majority of them bash President Bush. Actually, Christine is not a fan of President Bush, which creates some minor tension in our household... but she will leave the Darkside soon:)
ACTION REQUESTED:
Please contact your members of Congress today to ask them to support funding of $440.2 million for State Department-administered educational and cultural exchange programs for Fiscal Year (FY) 2006. This funding level, included in legislation passed in July by the Senate, would provide an increase of $79.45 million over current spending levels for these programs. It would help strengthen the Fulbright and other flagship exchange programs and build strong exchange initiatives.
Contact Your Senators! Contact Your Representative!
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
In February, President Bush requested $430.4 million for educational and cultural exchange programs administered by the Department of State in his FY 2006 budget. In June, the House of Representatives passed its version of appropriations legislation, which includes $410.4 million for these programs. In July, the Senate approved legislation that would appropriate $440.2 million for State Department-administered educational and cultural exchange programs, including Fulbright exchanges. Senate and House members and their staffs will soon be meeting to negotiate the differences between the two bills. Since subcommittees were reconfigured at the beginning of the 109th Congress and the jurisdiction of the relevant subcommittee in each chamber is no longer identical, members of Congress will also have to work out jurisdictional differences in the two bills. In the Senate, State Department programs are included in the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations legislation, while in the House they are included in the Science, State, Justice and Commerce Appropriations legislation. (more here)
|
With reluctance I'm posting this to see if there are any alumni or supporters of the Fulbright program that want to help the Fulbright Association in their push before Congress. Christine was a Fulbright and it paid for her graduate studies and more which is great, but it bothers me everytime I read their internal emails and posts that she forwards me since the vast majority of them bash President Bush. Actually, Christine is not a fan of President Bush, which creates some minor tension in our household... but she will leave the Darkside soon:)
ACTION REQUESTED:
Please contact your members of Congress today to ask them to support funding of $440.2 million for State Department-administered educational and cultural exchange programs for Fiscal Year (FY) 2006. This funding level, included in legislation passed in July by the Senate, would provide an increase of $79.45 million over current spending levels for these programs. It would help strengthen the Fulbright and other flagship exchange programs and build strong exchange initiatives.
Contact Your Senators! Contact Your Representative!
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
In February, President Bush requested $430.4 million for educational and cultural exchange programs administered by the Department of State in his FY 2006 budget. In June, the House of Representatives passed its version of appropriations legislation, which includes $410.4 million for these programs. In July, the Senate approved legislation that would appropriate $440.2 million for State Department-administered educational and cultural exchange programs, including Fulbright exchanges. Senate and House members and their staffs will soon be meeting to negotiate the differences between the two bills. Since subcommittees were reconfigured at the beginning of the 109th Congress and the jurisdiction of the relevant subcommittee in each chamber is no longer identical, members of Congress will also have to work out jurisdictional differences in the two bills. In the Senate, State Department programs are included in the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations legislation, while in the House they are included in the Science, State, Justice and Commerce Appropriations legislation. (more here)
Business & Technology, Politics, and Random Posts from the Left, Right, and Elsewhere
Place of Birth: Seoul, Korea
Hometown: Northbrook, IL USA
Lived in: Seoul, Chicago (Villa Park & Northbrook), Madison, WI, Springfield, IL, St. Louis, New York City, Chicago (Glenview), Seoul, San Francisco
Also blogs at: AlwaysOn, Coro Blog, SportsBlog
More on Bernard or Blogger profile or GoingOn profile or Linkedin profile
Max Yow
Homeland: Canada
Sports: combative sports, sports you play with a ball, sports with no swimming, sports you can play while drinking and smoking (pool, darts, bowling, video games).
More on Max
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If you have questions, topic ideas, or whatever, just email bernard at bernard.moon@gmail.com. Thank you!
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forget the long tail!
(03/21/2006)
2084
(11/02/2005)
building the perfect team
(08/17/2005)
open it up, new york times, chicago tribune, san francisco chronicle!
(06/07/2005)
staring down the digital divide
(06/08/2005)
2005 world series of poker... tech style
(03/30/2005)
rss: real simple syndication or really saturated space?
(02/10/2005)
blogosphere: lost in translation?
(02/10/2005)
diamonds in the rough at redmond
(02/10/2005)
it's a wiki wiki world
(02/03/2005)
where technology is ubiquitous, opportunity abounds
(1/12/2005)
start of "reality media" column
(12/23/2004)
Tech
bill joy's apocalyptic vision, determinism, and commonality with stephen hawking
(07/22/2005)
google economy => blogosphere
(01/25/2005)
power of the long tail
(12/14/2004)
protectionist china... will chinese or u.s. companies lose out?
(3/15/2004)
skype... p2p telephony & a very cool company
(2/13/2004)
poor george glider is right
(2/9/2004)
it's not the deficit stupid!... tech is the primary driver for growth
(12/02/2003)
immature venture capital industry in asia (9/29/2003)
boom time memories... masayoshi son was the man
(7/1/2003)
Politics
south korea's recent idiotic policies against foreign direct investment
(09/09/2005)
my first op-ed
(11/30/2004)
100,000 protest against Bush for... what?
(11/23/2003)
Society
generalizations of east asians
(5/16/2004)
sports is the great equalizer and unifer
(4/20/2004)
defining wisdom... age is the lesser factor
(10/18/2003)
living together before marriage
(8/25/2003)
friendships, relationships, people in life... (7/7/2003)
sugar mommas
(6/13/2003)
need for laws and enforcement
(4/10/2003)
old shaq issue
(4/2/2003)
Religion
creationism & christmas
(12/23/2004)
the passion of the christ... misunderstood
(2/20/2004)
christian's view of homosexuality
(1/13/2004)
is man determined or free?
(8/18/2003)
destructive christianity
(5/3/2003)
Others
"Blah Blah Bernard Blah Blah" Changing to "Junto Boyz"... A New Direction
(4/20/2004)
art of asking questions
(9/18/2003)
ode to bacon
(8/13/2003)
big guys... eating stories iv
(7/27/2003)
big guys... eating stories i
(4/2/2003)
cnn
cnet
businessweek
economist
forbes
fortune
fast company
pe week wire
the deal
ecommerce times
ne asia online
pacific epoch
eweek
release 1.0
technology review
techweb
zdnet news
the american spectator
drudge report
foreign policy
frontpage
harvard political review
mother jones
national review
the new republic
the weekly standard
il conservative politics
the atlantic
the hill
roll call
george f. will
asianweek
financeasia
korea herald
the onion
cox & forkum cartoons
garage technology ventures
growthink research
entrepreneur.com
entrepreneur america
venture economics
venture reporter
vfinance.com
yahoo! small business
nationmaster
thomas, legislative info
american enterprise institute
brookings institute
carnegie endowment
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center for american progress
center for strategic & int'l studies
heritage foundation
hudson institute
national center for policy analysis
progress & freedom foundation
progressive policy institute
rand corporation
reason public policy institute
urban institute
columbia institute for tele-info
international justice mission
charles barkley's outrageous career
liquid generation
wikipedia
"You cannot go on explaining away things over forever or you will find that you have explained even explanation itself away. You cannot go on seeing through things forever because the whole point of seeing through something is to see something else through it." - C.S Lewis
December 11, 2005
"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." - Western Union internal memo, 1876
December 4, 2005
"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful." - Marie Curie
November 27, 2005
"One cannot step into the same river twice." - Heratidus
November 20, 2005
"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment." - Robert Maynard Hutchins
November 13, 2005
"We are moving away from the old idea of leadership -- leadership has less to do (now) with heroism. We don’t look for... unblemished omnipotent heroes, but leaders who are complex, dependent, changeable... We do not need one dominant authority structure telling all our inner voices to shut up..." - Walter Truett Anderson
November 6, 2005
"To know oneself is to know one’s [country]. It is also... paradoxically a form of exile from that world... to know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility, and that virtue is not conspicuous in any national character." - Flannery O’Connor
October 30, 2005
"Men content themselves with the same words as other people use, as if the very sound necessarily carried the same meaning." - John Locke
October 23, 2005
"In order to thrive in a world of change and chaos, we will need to accept 'chaos' as an essential process by which natural systems, including organizations, renew and revitalize themselves." - Margaret Wheatley
October 16, 2004
"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary." - Robert Louis Stevenson
October 9, 2004
"We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in the idle fancy that we already know - or that it is of no use seeking to know what we do not know." - Plato
October 2, 2004
"Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions." - Oliver W. Holmes
September 25, 2004
"What you learn intellectually lies in the shallow pools among the wrinkles of your brain. What you learn through the skin of experience sinks deep into your roots." - Hank Taft
September 18, 2004
"In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him." - C.S. Lewis
September 11, 2004
"A society is judged by how it treats its least desirable people." - Anonymous
September 4, 2004
"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations." - George Bernard Shaw
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