GOOG MSFT Dare Obasanjo

Really interesting post by Dare Obasanjo trolling through a few comparisons of organization, process, hiring, and culture at Google and Microsoft:

TheGOOGMSFTExodus

Three Kings Spam & Bonus Movie Trailer

Three Kings Trailer

Three Kings is one of my favorite movies - certainly the crowning achievement of David O Russell's moribund-ish career; today I got a new spam email reminiscent of that film's plot - this is actually an entertaining read:

DEAR FRIEND I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE.

My name is sgt martins scott, I am an American soldier with Swiss background, serving in the military with the army's 3rd infantry division. With a very desperate need for assistance, I have summed up courage to contact you. I found your contact particulars in an address journal. I am seeking your kind assistance to move the sum of ( $ 25 million u.s. dollars ) Twenty Five million united states dollars to you, as far as I can be assured that my share will be safe in your care until I complete my service here, this is no stolen money, and there are no danger involved.

Source of money:

Some money in various currencies was discovered in barrels at a farmhouse near one of Saddam's old palaces in Tikrit-Iraq during a rescue operation, and it was agreed by staff Sgt Kenneth buff and I that some part of this money be shared among both of us before informing anybody about it since both of us saw the money first. This was quite an illegal thing to do, but I tell you what? No compensation can make up for the risk we have taken with our lives in this hell hole. Of which my brother in-law was killed by a road side bomb last week. You will find the story of this money on the web address below;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm

The above figure was given to me as my share, and to conceal this kind of money became a problem for me, so with the help of a British contact working here and his office enjoy some immunity, I was able to get the package out to a safe location entirely out of trouble spot. He does not know the real contents of the package, and believes that it belongs to a brithish/american medical doctor who died in a raid here in Iraq, and before giving up, trusted me to hand over the package to his family in united states.I have now found a much secured way of getting the package out of Iraq to your country for you to pick up, and I will discuss this with you when I am sure that you are willing to assist me. I want you to tell me how much you will take from this money for the assistance you will give to me.

One passionate appeal I will make to you is not to discuss this matter with anybody, should you have reasons to reject this offer, please and please destroy this message as any leakage of this information will be too bad for us soldier's here in Iraq. I do not know how long we will remain here, and i have been shot, wounded and survived two suicide bomb attacks by the special grace of god, this and other reasons i will mention later has prompted me to reach out for help, i honestly want this matter to be resolved immediately, please contact me as soon as possible my only way of communication is email.Indicate your interest in assisting me as well as Providing the following information to facilitate the smooth conclusion of the Transaction.

Wedding Season

Startup Valuation Via Brad Feld

Brad's 1,2,3 . . . description of valuing startups is particularly clear and succinct:

1. Value your investments at your cost.
2. If a financing happens at an increased valuation and is led by a new investor, write your investment up to the new price per share.
3. If a financing happens at a decreased valuation regardless of whether or not there is a new investor, write your investment down to the new price per share.
4. If bad things are happening, you can take a discretionary write down based on your best judgement.
5. If good things are happening, you should not take a discretionary write up. Only write things up in case #2.
6. If the company is public, use the publicly traded price but discount it due to illiquidity (usually 25%).

Seattle - Land of Dueling Bumper Stickers

The Logic Behind Landmark SCOTUS Decisions

"Silent on central questions of gun control for two centuries, the Supreme Court found its voice Thursday in a decision affirming the right to have guns for self-defense in the home and addressing a constitutional riddle almost as old as the republic over what it means to say the people may keep and bear arms." (More than 12 words from the AP)

Here is the kind of off-the-cuff pseudo-logic exercised by Antonin Scalia in formulating the majority opinion - I mean, honestly?:

"Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense in part because "it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police."

From the AP

Telemark Skiing In June

In uphill mode - the 'earning' part of 'earn your turns' - low down on Mount Adams this past weekend.

Mount Adams Very Early At Lunch Counter

Mount Adams - dawn-ish - at circa 9,000 feet.

Wetpaint, Weebly, Mahalo - blist blog

Wetpaint is a good place to easily create a free website - I have a new post on the blist blog expanding on this thought - go read it.

Take That, Scientists!

From the Seattletimes

This is a great example of what I call 'Republican Logic'.

Oh, and this is an AP story - so I posted the image of text rather than the text itself b/c the AP doesn't have OCR software scanning for re-posts. If they did, they'd try to charge me like $12 or something.

About Half The Stuff I Did This Weekend

Milk&Honey
Betrayed
Noguchi
Bulgarian
Tia Pol's
Shakeshack

Mostly courtesy of A-Lo

Danger Mouse & Jemini

Before Gnarls Barkley, before the Grey Album there was Ghetto Pop Life a collaboration between DM & Jemini:

Example Weebly Sub-Domains

site:weebly.com

Enterprise 2.0: Incentivizing Adoption

Great quote from CIA guys at Enterprise 2.0 answering a question from a self-described 'middle-manager' on how to coax employees to adopt new products and tools:

CIA: incentivize employee adoption of e2.0 with "dinner tokens, lanyards & trinkets - people like that."

Then they made a second and better point: replace existing business processes - don't just pile on additional requirements and processes.

Internet Pharma Riches Here I Come!

ads in rias - blist blog

I have a new post up on the blist blog about advertising within Flash/Flex applications - particularly advertising in RIAs:

Advertising in RIAs

Savan & Me Haz Facebook Group

We've got some cool folks on board - you can read more on savanrith.com

ReadWriteWeb - Iceberg - Repost

Iceberg, an app builder, got some nice coverage in RWW yesterday - I wrote a comment that's worth a repost:

Iceberg is a good product in a hard space - app builders are trying to get traction with an audience who don't think about investing time upfront to 'create an application' but rather want to start solving their data organization problem right away. It's hard to cross this chasm and make it easy enough to appeal to this audience, but flexible enough to create compelling apps or appeal to more technical users. There's a continuum of different product categories aimed at 'making it easier to program' - from frameworks like Rails to intermediate products like Thermo or Popfly to end-user products like Iceberg - some categories won't be able to escape the 'not flexible enough for technical people, and not easy enough for non-technical people' trap.

Mathew
http://www.blist.com

Kids Are Pets - Totspot - Dogster For Kids

Kids Are Pets - Totspot - Dogster For Kids:



Via TC

Muxtape - World's Greatest UI

Muxtape: plays songs, has big fonts. Period.

Matt Cutts Mili Vanilli SEO

"risky link building behavior is a lot like Milli Vanilli. If you do something that will benefit your site right away, like lip synching your way to a Grammy, you will get caught and it wont benefit your company in the future. You will be stripped of your Grammy and acquire a drug problem. And your site will be banned."

Matt Cutts at SMX

It Must Be The Emerald City

June + 52F + Rain = Seattle!

Here's U.S.E.'s awesome Seattle song - Emerald City:

Management Posts Via Ross Mayfield

I am reading all of these, thanks to Ross Mayfield for putting them all in one place:

Provocations and Design Flaws for Management

Take That VCJ Pay Wall!

If they tell you this:



Go here:



And read this fun article from Venture Capital Journal

SEOmoz Top 100 Domains On blist

I made a cool blist from some data that Danny Dover put together over on SEOmoz - it's a ranked list of the Top 100 Domains on the Internet - a few of the top 100 are NSFW - so the first thing I did was to create a custom blist datatype so that I could mark each one as Safe/NSFW. Log in to blist and then paste in this url to take a look:

http://app.blist.com/#/blist/mjohnsonapp/SEO-Moz-Top-100-Domains

There are a few data sources: Compete, Quantcast, Alexa, Popurls