Presidential FX Market Impact

Oh, no! My first political post! Politics and blogs can be a tiresome combination, so I will keep this one to economics:

Stock markets may not be good economic criteria to assess Presidential performance, but I have heard of a couple little things called Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy which have a reasonably direct tie to sitting Presidents, and may even affect foreign exchange rates :). Here's a solid 'manage by the numbers' indicator for the current crowd, USD vs. EUR, last 5 years:



Good thing I haven't given them my money to manage - oh, wait, damn! I would have been better off in frigging Indian Rupees.

A Good FX Trading Flash Ad

If you're going to buy banners you might as well plump for, at minimum, mildly memorable creative. When I first saw this ad, the bull nostrils made me look twice:

Click To Play

And no, unfortunately, I don't get paid for running this ad :(

NDAs: US vs. Europe

I have been getting NDA'ed by a lot of people lately, which has a) allowed me to learn about a lot of cool stuff, and b) is a little tiresome. Well, no doubt the day will come when I don't sign NDAs.

So far in my experience, European NDAs need not always be quite as 'legal' as US NDAs, and can even (gasp!) be drawn up by non-lawyers. This is because it is far less common Europe for misunderstandings to end up with lawyers picking through the agreements clause-by-clause than in the US.

Dave noted that, in his experience, other types of European contracts can be more verbose than their US counterparts, so my observation just applies to NDAs.

While on the topic of legals, I wanted to include a link from Josh Kopelman pointing to the NVCA 'open source' venture financing documents - great resource.

Free Judys Book Landing Page Mockup

I woke up this morning and mocked up a Judy's Book landing page variation just for fun. Basically fewer competing calls to action, and more focus on the strongest (and highest priority elements). Pretty sure this new page would convert better - Sorry about the low-res - it's the product of single-digit minutes using OpenOffice. Art History degree at work!

New Page Idea:


Current Live Page:

The Uncov I Have Been Waiting For

I have been reading Uncov for a little while now. For some reason, I have the idea that it is fairly new, and might be related to Gawker, but I am way too lazy to check even simple things like that. I have enjoyed the humor since Day 1, because, apparently, I have a sense of humor (thanks Rahul!).

But I have never felt compelled to mention Uncov here - until now. Today's review of Simple Spark was so funny, so pitch perfect - I could not help but link to it.

And Uncov guys - if you have not come across Ridiculous Infomercial Review yet, well, you really need to! My personal favorite reviews include Tom Vu, Cal Pines, and the crowning achievement that is Santo Gold

Oh, We Know About Internet Startups!

I stopped in to Fox's Gem Shop today - far and away Seattle's best jeweler - regarding the care and feeding of my wristwatch.

The owners, old friends who I hadn't seen in years, asked what I was up to these days. "Internet Startups" I said. "Oh, we know about Internet startups here!" Chai responded.

I think that neatly sums it up - the fundamental motivation is velocity of money flowing into pocket, and anyone who tells you different isn't being completely straight.

Copenhagen Photos

Here are a few touristy photos from Copenhagen - and it really started to pour rain that one afternoon so we had no choice but to retreat back to the hotel room with a bottle of wine.

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