Nouveau by Zaw Thet - Interesting New Stuff

Great moments in advertising...

Kudos to Virgin (courtesy of textually):

More Sadness

see this picture from NY times story.

This is really sad...

Myanmar Troops Kill 9 More Protesters - http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6954593,00.html

As a Burmese American I'm glad to see that the world news is covering this, but it is pretty sickening.

Pollution Levels in China are Scary

Very sobering article in the NY Times today. More here.

It says that China was only supposed to pass the US as the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases in 2010. But, some agencies think it has already happened this year! Just like currency on the world market, pollution on this scale affects us all at a global level.

I was thinking about heading to China for the Olympics, but seems like the right thing to do is pass.

Bees not disappearing because of cell phones

Bad for the bees, but good news for the mobile industry. A virus/parasite is blamed for the loss of billions of bees. More here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070426100117.htm

Blowing up stuff in a Microwave: Viral Marketing

First read about this on adfreak: Kraft just launched a new semi-brilliant website/campaign which shows what happens if you don't have Mac & Cheese handy, but instead want to blow other things up in a microwave.

Similar to the Mentos experiment on YouTube, I think this is great example of viral marketing and the power of online video. Who doesn't want to watch stuff getting blown up in a microwave? I'm going to forward this around to everyone I know. Especially with snazzy music and a countdown timer to impending doom. The only reason I say "semi-brilliant" instead of "brilliant" is that the could have picked cooler things to explode.

Even though they say do-not-attempt-at-home, I'm sure this is going to spawn a whole series of knock-offs.

Jurassic "Beaver"

At first I couldn't believe CNN would have a story about this on their front page. Then I realized that they were talking about an animal. Whoops!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/02/23/jurassic.beaver.ap/index.html

Kobe scores 81 points (2nd all-time)

And in case you missed it (like I did), you can see him scoring all 81 points in a condensed video here.

I love technology...

It's Official! 4INFO & Gannett (USA TODAY) Deal Announced Today

What a fun couple of months it has been. I'm very pleased to be able to publicly announce that Gannett (USA TODAY) is making a minority investment in us and that we have signed a major distribution agreement to integrate 4INFO mobile search with Gannett's media properties like USA TODAY. The press release is here. 4INFO's blog post is here.

I want to say thank you to all the 4INFO users out there that have helped us grow from a little start-up in our living room to where we are today. Also, thanks to all my family and friends that have put up with me and my crazy work schedule for the last year and half. More soon, this is only the beginning of the journey!

Update: digg this story

Tags: 4INFO SMS Mobile Search Mobile Wireless USA Today USAToday

SFWeekly Feature on the 49ers' Paraag Marathe

SF Weekly ran a huge feature on my great friend and ex-roomate Paraag Marathe. P has been doing some great work at the 49ers the past couple of years and it's high time he gets some of the recognition due to him!

My favorite quote from the story:

Would Schwartz want someone like Marathe in his front office? "Oh, certainly," he replies. And why is that? Schwartz doesn't hesitate. "I think he's a football guy."

The cartoon image on the front cover of the SF Weekly:

Watching Your Impending Doom

Terrifying article about the latest JetBlue incident and how passengers were watching their impending doom LIVE from their satellite TV sets aboard the flight.

While satellite TV sets aboard JetBlue Flight 292 were tuned to news broadcasts, some passengers cried. Others tried to telephone relatives and one woman sent a text message to her mother in Florida attempting to comfort her in the event she died.

"It was very weird. It would've been so much calmer without" the televisions, Pia Varma of Los Angeles said after the plane skidded to a safe landing Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt.

eBay to buy Skype?

The NY Times has an interesting article on a possible eBay acquisition of Skype here. The fact that it was leaked probably means someone is trying to kill the deal. Beyond diversification, the only good rationale I can see for the acquisition is to easily connect buyers that have questions with sellers. Any other thoughts? Leave a comment.

Gaza Pullout: Tactical Defeat, Strategic Victory

Fascinating article in The Nation this week. It states:

Once the media circus is over, Israel's melodramatic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip should be judged by how it improves Palestinian lives and the chances of a just and peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Even more interesting:

As a general, Sharon understands that in war one must at times cede tactically in order to win strategically. Accordingly, and "in the absence of a Palestinian peace partner," Israel will disengage from Gaza in order to impose its vision on the ten-times-larger West Bank and Jerusalem: the crown jewels of the occupation.

I'm not an expert on the Middle East, but I don't see the Gaza withdrawal as anything that will speed up the peace process. If anything, it gives Sharon more room to manuever while still looking good in the international community. How many pictures have we seen on CNN of Israeli soldiers going to door to door asking settlers to leave? The article is a pretty cynical view written by a Palestinian, but I think it is important to at least ask the questions posed in the article and to watch carefully.

Lions, Tigers, Elephants, Yosemite, Oh My!

CNN has a great story about a group that is proposing to transplant lions and elephants from Africa to the Great Plains of America.

Can you imagine walking through Yosemite and running into a pack of elephants?

They always tell you to put your food up in a tree when you are camping to prevent bears from attacking. How do you elephant proof something? Ha!

Flagstands...

This just in:

Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking 
miniature flag portraits of US President George W. Bush into piles of 
dog poo in public parks.

Enough said: http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/03/1728717.php

The Silicon Valley 100 - Truth & Rumors

I was honored to be chosen as a member of the Silicon Valley 100. The Silicon 100 is a group of folks that my friend Auren Hoffman put together. As covered in yesterday’s Newsweek article, The Connected Get More Connected, the members of the Silicon 100 receive new products and, if they like them, the idea is that they will produce favorable reviews and tell their friends to check out the products. Viral marketing at its finest. But wait you say! Is this really cost-effective for companies? Do these 100 people really make a difference in the grand scheme of things?

There are definitely skeptics out there. Dan Gilmor calls it “oddly creepy.” As another blog from a  Business 2.0 writer pointed out: “I like the sweet irony of this - the first product being offered is a shitter! What Crap!” Why the fuss? Well the most salient comments have been a) this won’t work and b) the folks in the Silicon 100 need to disclose that they are getting these products for free.

Note: If you just want to read about the kick-ass toilet, go to the "Enough Toilet Talk" section.

Why the Silicon 100 works: Connectors matter. I don’t really consider myself a “connector”, but apparently Auren does J The group is made of people from Silicon Valley such as: Marc Andreessen, Tim Draper, Stewart Alsop, Aileen Lee, Igor Sill, Bill Gurley, Ron Conway, Heidi Roizen, Katie Mitic, Pat House, Rusty Rueff, Hooman, Trevor Hewitt, Sean Parker, Ross Mayfield, Brad Templeton, and Joi Ito. There are several other “connector” marketing groups around, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of that targets Silicon Valley exclusively.

For those new to the theory on how groups like this work it goes like this. Our “social network” is made up of the web of the people we know. Interesting stuff can travel through our social networks. Viruses, ideas, power, products, and a whole lot more. The most famous example is the Six Degrees of Separation, also more popularly known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Six degrees means that you can reach anyone in the world in at most “six” hops. For example, 4 hops is the shortest route I have to Kevin Bacon. I went to school with a guy named Ryan Cummins. Ryan was a stunt double for Colin Farrell in that amazing movie SWAT. Colin Farrell was in a movie with Tom Gury. Tom Gury was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon. So the Oracle says I have a Bacon number of 4 (at least that’s the shortest path I know).

Not so long ago, discussion and interest in social networks was relegated to academics and researchers. While the idea of “networking” was pervasive throughout business and society, the underlying structure, benefits, and processes surrounding a person’s network or network of people was still unclear. Using data on network characteristics, the benefits of the design of social networks was first investigated by a paper called “The Strength of Weak Ties,” written in 1973 by my mentor Mark Granovetter. Mark found that weak ties (to those outside a person’s normal clique) held a surprising importance to many network functions such as finding a job or new information.

It is only in the past couple of years that this field has taken off, popularized by books such as Linked, The Tipping Point, and Six Degrees. Also, recent companies/services like Friendster, Orkut, MySpace, and Spoke have tried to monetize these theories by creating online communities and services based on your network of friends or contacts. New research has attempted to glean more information on the type and make-up of the global social network. What has been found is that social networks tend to be scale-free in nature, meaning that the majority of people know a relatively small number of people, but that there are individuals called “hubs” in the network that have an abnormally large number of relationships. That’s what connectors like the people in the Silicon 100 are, “hubs” in the network. The argument that they are an insular group is untrue. They are the people in the global social network that have a tremendous number of relationships. More importantly, they have a diverse network. If you can imagine social networks as a bunch of little clusters of people that know each other, and the paths to people that the Silicon 100 are being lit up, you would find that these people touch a inordinate amount of the little clusters in the network.

Okay, I’ve bored you with enough theory. Let’s see some hard numbers.

The Economics:

All in, the first Silicon 100 customer must have paid at least $10k to send out its product when you include COGS, shipping, and Auren’s fee. I did a little digging on Google and the search word “toilet” gets around 780 ad clicks per day. The average cost-per-click (CPC) is $0.42. So, in the very simplest model, using the $10k cost assumption, for the same amount of exposure the group of 100 people would each have to get around 238 people interested enough to go to the company’s website. I think that’s pretty realistic, don’t you? Even if it was just for laughs, I sent the website to at least 30 of my friends. I can't track clicks-throughs to Brondell, but this post had 391 hits yesterday. If any of these folks decide to visit they will be far more qualified that just a Google adwords click since it comes from a trusted source.

I still don’t buy into this idea….well it made the front page of Slashdot and you are reading this blog aren’t you? More people will read articles about cool toilets than ever before. The company has the mindshare it’s looking for in the right demo.

Enough Toilet Talk:

Let’s get to the more interesting “crap.” The Brondell Swash! (NOTE: If you haven’t figured it out, I got this s**t for free) Ross Mayfield and Joi Ito politely decided to pass on this first Silicon 100 product, but I couldn’t resist.

This is a serious toilet (or more accurately toilet seat). It has a front and rear water wash, a warm air dryer, a remote control, a heater, and best of all, an emergency siren for those large movements. The fancy toilet has been a craze in Japan for some years and apparently Brondell thinks that it might catch on in the US as well. One problem, the price point is a little high for most. $900 for the model they sent us. However, I’m sure the Brondell is geared at the higher end of the market anyways. Again, a reason the Silicon 100 works especially well since the group is targeted at a higher-end social network.

Why this thing rocks:

• I hate a cold toilet. I’d pay for just the seat warmer.

• It’s good for the environment. Toilet paper may become a thing of the past.

• It’s more sanitary and it saves on time. Giving the guy that comes out of the stall and doesn’t wash his hands a funny look won’t be necessary anymore.

• The remote control makes for a hilarious party trick. The first unsuspecting soul that drops trou is going to be in for a rude wetting as 5 of us stand outside pressing the “for her” button.

• The seat is contoured perfectly. It’s a little small, but hey that’s okay for me.

What they could do better:

• I was really disappointed when the toilet seat didn’t lift automatically when I approached. I was stoked that there was a little motion detector on the side of the toilet. Then I found out it was the IR receiver for the remote control. How sweet would it be if the motion detector figured out that you were male/tall and opened both lids. Now that is innovation.

• The initial power setting on the “for him” wash needs to be a little lower. It was an interesting experience for me the first time I sat down on this thing. Almost bounced me out of the seat and I still haven’t figured out how to turn it down, but it’s still nice.

• Also, maybe I’m not using it right but the warm-air dryer doesn’t seem to get me completely dry.

• The power cord is short. I don’t know about you but I don’t have a power outlet right next to my toilet. The extension cord running through my bathroom looks a little tacky.

Tips for Installation:

• Doing this over a case of beer is not a good idea (we installed the seat connector backwards…it took 15 minutes to figure that out).

• Standing on the seat to get the warm air dryer to turn on and then pressing the “for her” button will result in your bathroom wall getting very wet. Makes for a great picture though (coming soon).

Want to try it out? Feel free to shoot me an email. I may start a toilet timeshare.

A Tipping Point

I'm excited to be a moderator for this weeks Silicon Forum with Malcom Gladwell, the author of the Tipping Point. Will post more details after the event. More information on the Silicon Forum can be found here. Event details below.

Stonebrick Group presents:

Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is the author of the Tipping Point. His second book, Blink, will be out in January. Blink details how we make decisions and how one's "gut instinct" plays a major role in the decision making process. "Thin-slicing, snap judgments, and the power of thinking without thinking."

Topic:
How one's "gut instinct" plays a major role in the decision making process

Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 12:00 pm - 1:45 pm

Strict Invite only

Co-Hosted by:
Stewart Alsop - General Partner at New Enterprise Associates, Marc Benioff - CEO of Salesforce.com, Gwen Campbell - SVP at UBS Financial Services, Ken Denman - CEO of iPass, Joanna Rees Gallanter - Managing Partner of Venture Strategy Partners, Auren Hoffman - Chairman of Stonebrick, Andy Kessler, George Scalise - President of the Semiconductor Industry Association, Peter Thiel - Managing Member of Clarium Capital, Jane Wales - CEO of the World Affairs Council, and Neil Weintraut - Managing Partner of Palo Alto Venture Partners.

The event will be moderated by Auren Hoffman, Chairman of Stonebrick Group, and the table moderators will include, Anurag Chandra of  Lighthouse Capital Partners, Frank Cohen of Push to Test, Bob Concannon of Boyden International, Venky Ganesan of Globespan Capital Partners, Greg Heibel of Heller Ehrman, James Hong of HotorNot, Andrew Tulloch Jones of InvestAustralia, Chris Kelly of Spoke Software, Justin Lin of Teamsphere, Jason Mandell of LaunchSquad, Steve Mushero of GlobalTech,  Jesse Odell of LaunchSquad, Margarita Quihuis of Digital Vision Fellowship Program, Tod Sacerdoti of Plaxo, Julia Schwartzman of Schwartzman Legal Group, Mike Sigal of Guidewire Group, Zaw Thet of  SMSLocate, and Chris Tolles of Spoke Software.

Didn't like the election results?

Take the Skilled Worker Self-Assessment to see if you should apply to immigrate to Canada as a skilled worker. You only need a 67 to pass. I got an 83.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/skilled/assess/

Election 2004 Exit Polls

Kerry will win because many Republicans are not voting out of disgust, even if they cannot bring themselves to vote for Bush.

For up-to-date info check out:
1) http://www.zogby.com - called election for Kerry
2) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/2/174142/874 - gop insider thinks kerry is going to win

"Only" a deficit of $422 Billion

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=252866

The administration is excited that the deficit is only $422 B, instead of the projected $477 B. What is scary is that the reduction in this estimate is not due to economic progress made by the administration...but actually to BAD economic conditions that lead to higher tax revenue since most of the money is kept by people in higher tax brackets (i.e. the rich). This is horrible. It is jelly bean economics all over again and a return to Reaganism. We all saw where that got it.

The best analysis I've read of why this republican economic policy doesn't work came in Clinton's autobiography. I'll post some of his insights on this.

2004 Election Breakdown

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/politics/2004_ELECTIONGUIDE_GRAPHIC/

Great breakdown of the key states in the 2004 election.

Who should Kerry pick for his VP?

CNN.com 2004 Primaries

Twists in Iraq intelligence dispute

S.F. Examiner: Twists in Iraq intelligence dispute

Well it looks like CIA director Tenet is going to walk the plank soon. He recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Cheney has been lying from the get go. The question is...does the general public care enough about this to affect the upcoming election. Winners always get to write history.

Fresh light on dark energy

News in Science - Fresh light on dark energy

Thinking about this makes my head hurt. Have you ever tried to imagine how it is possible that the universe could be expanding into an infinite space? How can something make up 70% of the universe yet we have no idea what it is?

At least I'll sleep easy at night with the reassurance that the galaxy won't fall apart...untill the other 30% of the universe starts acting up.