What you see above is a pile of 16 new credit card offers received during the week of Christmas while I was out of town. The mailman delivered this liability stack in just 7 working days. That's 2.3 new offers per day. I realize this is in no way a record, but c'mon. Tree huggers should be going after plastic masters for this. It's ridiculous. But alas, the onslaught must work, otherwise this post wouldn't exist.

From the NY Times: Attack of the Zombie Computers is growing threat. 80% of all spam now originates from botnets I posted previously about Internet Evil: Bot Masters. There may be real trouble for the net here. It will probably take a high profile attack and some real economic damage to bring out a solution. Nothing motivates like real pain. 

In a word, slick. And clearly one the more ambitious phones we've seen to date, with seemingly a lot of potential from the videos I've seen. It's not without its problems, however. A single carrier is lame, 4Gb and 8Gb is a bit limiting though manageable, and I'm not sold on a touch screen keyboard. If anyone can make it work, it's Apple, but I'm a big fan of physical clicks and actual buttons (tips hat to Blackberry). After all, it's the only thing I know. So what do you think of the new, still not approved by the FCC, iPhone?

Genuine VC posted here on Vertical Marketplaces. Of course Nimble is one of these marketplaces so you can read my posting this here as a form of self reinforcement, but what do you expect. I'm on the bandwagon.

The real opportunity here is in the business model itself – not just providing paid advertising listings (or even contextual relevant advertising adjacent to the listings themselves), but rather actually participating in the transaction as a percentage fee. The more intimate the relationship these marketplaces play in the transaction, the greater the value they can capture from it. As Rentacoder has demonstrated, this level of is engagement is possible by assuming the risk of the transaction, which gives both transacting parties the comfort in "paying" for the introductory services in a substantial manner.

I learned a good lesson this evening while blogging a rumored story: when you're confused (and your browser cache adds to the confusion) and everybody else is doing it (read: other big sites), go seek advice first. I was a little quick to publish the story for fear of missing out on early traffic as other sites had already begun posting. Turns out the site acquisition rumor was just a good ole version of cross-promotional branding I wasn't familiar with, and luckily my editor caught the soon to be noticed mistake early.

So is it just me or does making professional mistakes get harder to deal with the older you get? I hate feeling like a smoe and kick myself sometimes for making seemingly obvious misteaks. "Teacher, my eraser is out..." What do you do after making a goof?

Venture Capital Financing is a form of equity financing (trade stock/ownership for cash) that is typically meant for high growth high return companies.  Venture Capitalists (VC) obtain their money (to invest in a company) from institutions like pension funds, universities, government programs (i.e. Utah Fund of Funds), wealthy individuals and corporations.  The investors in venture capitalists expect a high return on their money so venture capitalists are very careful in what companies they invest in.  For the most part venture capitalists invest in companies that have reached certain milestones, like customers buying the product or government regulator agencies (FDA) has signed off on some aspect or level of experimental data.  VC’s require healthy portions of ownership in a company in return for the investment dollars.  VC’s demand large ownership chucks (around 40-50%) because of economics not because of greed or ill will (at least let’s hope so).  An entrepreneur must understand that VC’s have individuals to answer to and prudent investing is required.  Although VC’s live and play in the high risk world, within that world there is higher risk and lower risk and VC’s must balance risk with potential return. 

Last Friday I attended the networking event Utah First Fridays for the first time. After I was through signing in, I stood there in amazement and felt as if I was in an episode of the Office when Dwight stares at the camera and you can’t help but get the strange feeling of awkwardness. “Ugh!!!” I thought, “What am I supposed to do now? Wait for someone to come and talk to me or do I just start introducing myself to every person here?” I really didn’t know, considering this was my first time to a networking event in Utah. What’s the protocol? How long do you spend talking to someone before moving on to the next person? What’s the point of all this anyway?

After spending a few very awkward moments just staring at people who were staring back, I decided the best thing to do would be to get some food. Maybe if I go eat something, I will appear less approachable and it will save me the time and effort of actually having to introduce myself to anyone. Or, maybe people will decide that since I’m stuffing bagels into my mouth to leave me alone. Either way, I thought it would be better than standing there laughing under my breath at the situation.

As I was eating a woman approached me and I thought to myself, “Oh my gosh, what am I supposed to…….” Before I could even finish my thought, she had already said hello and given me her name. Well, after a few minutes of finding out about her and why she was there, I had a huge sense of relief come over me and realized that most of these people are just trying to meet people who can help them meet people. So I decided to forget about my insecurities and feelings of awkwardness and start getting my $5 worth of networking. After an hour I had met and talked to at least 15 people all who were very nice, genuine and just trying to get the word out. One man came up to me and told me a little about his cleaning business and gave me a brochure. I told him, “Well, I don’t have an office for you to clean but I’ll pass the word a long to someone who might” he looked at me said, “That would be great!” as if that’s all he wanted to hear.
So I’ve determined that after my one experience with networking events, feeling awkward is pointless and doesn’t it get you anywhere. So you’re if debating on whether networking events are for you or not, just think, “Office episode” or sitting at home wondering when you’re business is going to take off.

From Wired: "Everyone knows the MP3 format is used by more devices and people than any other file-based digital-audio format. Most also know that record labels prefer DRMed alternatives such as the ones sold by Apple's iTunes, because they make it harder for people to share music. But... Evidence is mounting that major labels may start to prefer the MP3 format, as impossible as that used to seem."

I really like iTunes and iPods, but I won't deny that as a consumer non-DMR MP3 tracks being sold at Apple's store not to mention everywhere else would be a much better thing.

My brother-in-law got me Freakonomics as a Christmas gift (thanks, Steve!), and I gotta say its one of the most interesting books I've read in a very long time. The book claims to have no central theme in favor of exploring several economic/incentive questions about why things are the way they are, but I'd say the book is really about challenging conventional wisdom. For example, authors Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner cite legalized abortion as the reason for the sudden drop in crime since the early 90's (e.g. according to the book, a majority of women who get abortions are poor, uneducated, and don't want the child, thus the child that would have been born has a higher chance of becoming a criminal) though mass media and other experts cited innovative policing strategies for the drop.

To give you an idea of how inspiring Freakonomics was for me, I usually jot down a few notes per book. Really, I email myself notes: ideas for further research online, words to look up in the dictionary, blog post ideas, and thoughts for further consideration. For any given book, I generally email myself about 3-5 times over the duration of either the couple of weeks or several months it takes me to complete it. With this book, I emailed myself 19 times over the course of two days which is how long it took me to read the short book. More of my specific thoughts on key ideas to follow.

I’ll be in San Francisco for MacWorld Tuesday through Friday. Podango will be in the Culture Catch Salon located just a few blocks from the Mascone Center.  Stay tuned for updates on the show throughout this week.

Drop me a line if you’re going to be in town and we’ll hook up.

I’m still trying to figure out how I got sent to MacWorld and not CES?

DON’T…DRINK…THE…COOL…AID!!!!