Silicon Valley Watcher - conversations and observations at the intersection of technology and media

Guest post by DD Ganguly, CEO, Dimdim

A few years back, I used to work for a global company with more than 13,200 people. My office alone had more than 1,000 people, so when winter rolled around, it'd be hard not to encounter someone who had a cold or the flu. Back then, it was unpleasant to hear a colleague sneezing or coughing in the halls, but it wouldn't prevent me from being in the office, nor would I be upset that they were coming to work sick. But now, coughing in your elbow is not enough to prevent the spread of dangerous, highly contagious diseases like the H1N1 virus. We must change the way we do business to stay healthy.

[Guest post from C. Josh Abend, founder of Innovation America, a consultancy established in 1976. He has worked with some of the largest corporations in the US.]

By C. Josh Abend

Many people relate to the story of how fragile canaries are used in the mines to warn of imminent danger of gas, fire, and explosion. When the canaries keel over, its time to leave.. The weakest and most fragile elements in the environment are the ones that signal catastrophe and are the first to succumb. Then we should take survival steps or perish. We are now getting such a national warning... and it is about innovation.

The canaries at risk represent our "secret sauce" of economic success. That is our vital, independent, start-up companies, created by passionate, entrepreneurs and innovators ; they represent Americas legacy of inventiveness, willing to put themselves at risk for a new idea.; and such ideas have contributed to our enviable economic assets and made us a world exemplar of innovation. Today every small business deserves, help, but to extinguish our entrepreneurial "innovation feed-stock" could inflict an irreversible wound at a time we will depend on this process more than ever.. One danger of neglect could be a domino effect inhibiting job creation, growth, and our global competitiveness. Some might consider that an implosion.

Why such a dire prediction?. Any small business if viable can create income and jobs for its owners and its local employees. But only an innovation derived business or technology, offers scale; when successful, it creates a much larger multiplier of opportunities and jobs in more than one location. It can produce new plants and offices, offer a new tax source, and it tends to seed a continuous birthing of new innovations and economic growth. Apple for example has been one such admired start-up for over two decades.. It is time industry officially elevated Innovation beyond its current buzz word status. It remains one the most powerful engines we use to create economic wealth, new products and services. Can we risk the possibility that this engine might sputter and stall-out? In today's economic rescue parlance, some industries are considered "Too big to fail". Doesn't bailing them out without a requirement for a measurable innovation policy and operational plan risk the failure of billions of stimulus dollars ?. The entire innovation community is waiting for the chance to help get that right.

Between a rock and ... no place

By Matt Grimshaw, Editorial Director of the Semiconductor Technical Journal Future Fab International

Another week gone of 2009 and almost no-one I know will be sad to see the back of this most depressing of years. However amidst the empty trade shows, wafer thin magazines and ominously empty ad spots on websites I saw some news this week that warmed the gloomy skeptic that's hidden in the dark parts of my soul: Texas Instruments is finally kitting out its 300mm Richardson, Texas Fab (RFAB) that it broke ground on in 2004.

I'd sourced and run a number of papers on the construction of the facility itself a few years back as it was the first (and I think only - apologies if I'm wrong in this) LEED Gold certified semiconductor manufacturing facility in the world - meaning that it's so green the Environmental Protection Agency wants to give it a big hug and introduce it to the wild.

It was doubly impressive because chip fabs are not exactly what you'd call green. They consume enough power in a day to light up a small city, more gallons of water per day than flow down many rivers and generally have a pretty sizable environmental impact including the use of some not very nice chemicals and materials.

[Guest post by Lawrence Gould, CEO and co-founder of the microstock company Vivozoom (www.vivozoom.com), he was previously the CFO of Getty Images.]

By Lawrence Gould

Could it get any easier?

Web designers, advertisers and bloggers can choose from millions of pictures - everything from shots of Afghan voters lining up to cast ballots in their presidential election to one of the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge - thanks to traditional stock and microstock photo companies delivering the right, high-quality image for any need.

But as users have gained unprecedented access to these images, the combined theft of stock and microstock photos comes to as much as $10 billion a year. As evidenced by the recent controversy over the Los Angeles Times lifting copyrighted, all-rights reserved photos of wildfires from the image-hosting site Flickr, confusion over image rights reigns supreme.

[Guest post from Sunil Vemuri co-founder of reQall (www.reqall.com), a service available on iPhone and BlackBerry that's designed to improve your ability to remember. Mr Vemuri holds a Ph.D. from MIT's Media Lab, where his research on memory prosthesis inspired reQall.

By Sunil Vemuri

When IBM last listed its annual Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years, it was satisfying - dare I suggest a little validating? - to see the computing giant acknowledge that "smart appliances" would usher in a new era of remembering with ease.

I'm happy to say that the future is here.

Memory tools are increasingly used by everyone from physicians compiling patient reminders to college students trying to keep tabs on midterms and keggers. Among the panoply of devices and services, which allows users to record a note to themselves via voice or electronic messaging to get reminded at the right time. While it's fun to speculate on how this might free up the time of some ground-breaking researcher trying to crack the grand unified theory, reQall and other such tools already have practical, everyday applications.

People suffering from such neurobehavioral conditions as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are fired from work because they forget instructions from supervisors. Slaves to the rush-hour commute seek out new, effective ways to optimize the time squandered in traffic. Everyone from CEOs to folks juggling multiple jobs to heads of households sweat the small stuff that crazed schedules demand. Memory tools have successfully addressed all these scenarios.

By Matt Grimshaw, Editorial Director of the Semiconductor Technical Journal Future Fab International.

I've started to get a little teed off with the 'light at the end of the tunnel' speech. There seems to be a global consensus that the chip industry (and the world as a whole) is finally starting to do an impression of a Hero in a Hollywood blockbuster that's been close to death...first there's the close up of the inanimate body, then the flicker of life before some sort of choking/coughing that brings our saviour back to life.

The chip industry appears to be flickering in the manner mentioned above, but very, very slowly with all the speed of a tortoise walking through quicksand...each month now is showing gains over the preceding month leading one to believe that the much whispered recovery is underway and perhaps the nightmare of the last twelve months can be put behind us so that we can start to bandage our wounds, bury the dead and rehire some of the thousands of engineers that were laid off... But sometimes it's just hard to believe because there's still a massive cloud overhead and some of my industry contacts have all the confidence of a vertigo sufferer standing on the edge of a cliff.

By Matt Grimshaw

This article all started earlier in the week; news reached my eyes that France & Germany were "officially out of recession", followed by Hong Kong today. Then closer to my own world the first analyst has broken ranks and claimed that the recession was over for the battered & beleaguered Semiconductor Tool & Equipment vendors, although it may be a little too early to cry Hallelujah and cease ritualistically sacrificing of 300mm test wafers to the great god of productivity, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Downturns are never nice, but this one has been the ugliest I have personally experienced, with hundreds of my friends in the chip sector either floating across to the Photovoltaic industry or becoming 'consultants'. Some have even gone running to the hills to begin lives as professional hermits.

[Here is an excellent article by Andrew Fowler, from Newsvetter, a Portland based PR consultancy. If you'd like to publish a guest post on SVW please contact me tom at foremski.com]

By Andrew Fowler

If there's anybody who has developed a successful model for charging for news content, it's the PR industry.

In 2007, press releases represented a $2.2 billion market, according to Fortune. This figure only covers distribution through companies such as PR Newswire and PR Web. It does not include the cost to write and pitch them to the media which, in my experience, almost always exceeds the cost of distribution.

Most companies have accepted press releases (or social media releases) as the main engine powering their news programs. PR agencies love them because it's the easiest way to generate revenue and there's little resistance on the client side.

But how many of these press releases are actually worth the time and money? Not many.

By Matt Grimshaw

It's sometimes depressing to be in the US and working in the chip industry, well at least for the last 10 years at any rate. This week's news that IDT is shutting its Oregon fab and becoming a Fabless chip company is about as welcome as a chocolate bar at a Diet Club; I have a lot of friends that work in that fab.

Chip manufacturing in the US has been eroding and shifting to the Far East where government incentives and (initially at least) cheaper labour costs have attracted almost all the new Fabrication Plants. There is of course another reason for this shift - the Fabless/Foundry model which was born in Taiwan.

To those not versed in this concept it's about fairly simple economics: Fabrication plants are horrendously expensive propositions, with the latest cutting edge fabs being in the region of $4.2bn US. That's more then the gross domestic product of a number of countries.

By Matt Grimshaw

Just as the post Semicon West hangover began to lift, the organizers of the Design Automation Conference, more commonly known as DAC, decided to not only put it in San Francisco this year but also within a fortnight of the Semicon West melee.

Most of my colleagues that cover the Semiconductor space don't care too much about this fact because most don't cover the design segment, but sadly for my inbox (which is again being crushed under the weight of press releases) we do and so I needed to spend at least a day there, which turned out to be Monday.

DAC Christmas

The difference between the first day of DAC and the first day of Semicon West was as contrasting as the day before Christmas and the day itself.

[Guest Post from Jason Mandell (@jmandell on Twitter) from LaunchSquad, which PR Week named Boutique PR Agency of 2009. Please send your guest post to Tom(at)Foremski.com]

By Jason Mandell

One idea that you allude to in your post, but do not outright say, is that this might be the best time ever to be in the PR industry.

Modern communications revolves around good stories that lead to interesting conversations that ultimately drive positive outcomes.

And no marketing discipline sits closer to a company's "story," and has the ability to engage with consumers both directly and through the media, better than public relations. PR people tend to understand "story" more deeply than any other marketing discipline, and as a result we have an advantage in figuring out how to inspire and engage in a credible way with people. The changes going on right now fit right into the sweet spot of skills that PR folks have been required to have.

The bigger question is not if PR will survive, it's how long it will take for the industry to evolve and what its next form will look like when the dust settles. One thing is for sure, it will look very different than today, and we're doubling down that PR will be a driving force within the greater sphere of marketing in helping companies compete and succeed. It's already clear from what many companies are doing that there's a lot of PR firms that understand this well and have embraced this exciting new landscape in very profound ways.

The PR firm of the future in our view is based on the following key elements:

[Matt Grimshaw is the Editorial Director of the Semiconductor Technical Journal; Future Fab International (www.future-fab.com). This week Matt writes about the Semicon West show for chip equipment makers. I remember when Semicon West used to be a huge show, it would regularly outgrow its venues.]

By Matt Grimshaw

Instead of reviewing the news this week I thought I'd try something different and just talk about my experiences at Semicon West; the semiconductor trade show that occurred last week.

Semicon West was, as has been commonly acknowledged by everyone in the media-sphere, much quieter this year then in those glory days of not too long ago, and by the way I'm talking about the Chip segment here not the jam packed Solar/PV exhibit.

Initially it was very sad to see how far the mighty had fallen; looking out across the vista of booths whilst coming down the escalator into the South hall the usual "fight for height" that had become the norm for decades with ever larger and more grandiose corporate logo's spinning, glowing or moving in a strange manner in order to gain attention in a crowded hall was very much muted.

[Today marks the first anniversary of the Intel Insider program, which brought together leaders in new/social media. I am a founding member of Intel Insiders. Ken Kaplan, is one of the key proponents of the Intel Insider program. Intel is a former sponsor of SVW.]

By Ken Kaplan - Intel

Two steps forward and a half step back to see if we're going in the right direction and bringing forward things that can help us leap into tomorrow. That's how we're celebrating the June 24 anniversary of our Intel Insiders social media adviser program.

Last year, my Global Communications teammates agreed that we'd benefit from fresh advice from people who are doing great things in the quickly advancing area of social media. We wanted to get more involved with the inspiration, talent and know-how we saw driving people to communicate and share experiences and knowledge online.

So we pulled together some long time acquaintances, invited a few new friends we admired and created the Intel Insiders.

Our goals remained steadfast, but 12 months of relationship building, meetups and feedback gathering has changed the way we think, act and plan our communications and events. Across my Global Communications team, each public relations manager has moved more time, resources and ambition toward communicating online...in addition to their work with traditional print, TV and radio.

[Guest post from Georges van Hoegaerden, an accomplished entrepreneur, CEO and venture catalyst "turned conservationist of the technology asset class." His articles also appear at http://venturecompany.com. Here are extracts from a longer essay: How LPs should deal with VC. ]

By Georges van Hoegaerden

The technology sector which is my passion for the last 30-years is at the beginning, not the end of its emergence. Perhaps the top-level indicator of the innovative runway we have ahead of us is the following: more than 5/6 of the world's population does not yet use a computer connected to high-speed/broadband internet today. And all should and will, given the right technology.

That's where technology innovation comes in; not just in connecting people to the internet but in deploying innovation that uses the internet as a distribution mechanism. The way we use the internet today is rudimentary, and many new technology stacks will emerge to improve its impact on everyday citizens.

[Matt Grimshaw offers a weekly roundup of news affecting the largest US tech industry.]

By Matt Grimshaw, Editorial Director, Future-Fab International

SIA & WSTS figures, TSMC hires, Fab spending to double, acquisitions and the Green Memory Movement…

As we all consign another week of 2009 to the rather flippant memory of history I’m struck by just how much has changed in the chip business in a scant 6 months or so.

Just half a year ago the world was collectively swallowing hard, gritting its teeth and taking hard blows to the solar-plexus on an almost daily basis. News was just too damned depressing to watch.

It was like those times when you’re in a low mood anyway and a commercial comes on the TV for an abandoned kitten shelter or something equally fluffy in that vein. Suddenly taking a swan dive off the Golden Gate Bridge no longer seems like an act of desperation but rather an appealing alternative lifestyle choice.

[Guest column by Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies and a serial entrepreneur.]

By Greg Gianforte

Raising venture capital for early stage start-ups seems to be the prevailing path for most entrepreneurs; however, most would-be founders should reconsider.

Here are some reasons why:

- If you start by selling your concept to potential prospects (rather than stock to VCs), you will either end up with initial customers or a conviction that your idea won't work. Why raise money and then find out which one it will be?

- Raising money takes time away from understanding your market and potential customers. Often more time than it would take to just go sell something to a customer. Let your customers fund your business through product orders.

- Adding VCs to the mix early gives you an additional set of masters you must serve in addition to your customers. It is always hard to serve two masters, especially in a startup.

- With no money you can't make a fatal mistake. This is a blessing. Without VC money, you are forced to figure out how to extract funds from your customers for value you deliver. Ultimately that is the only thing that really matters.

- Money removes spending discipline. If you have the money you will spend it - whether you have figured out your business model and market or not.

-Raising VC money determines your exit strategy. You will either sell the business or take it public. What if you end up with a very profitable, modest sized business that you want to just run? That is no longer an option once you raise VC money.

- You sell your precious equity very dearly before you have a proven business model. This is the worst time to raise money from a valuation perspective. I know this is a contrarian view. And some of you are saying that might be fine for a small company.

Don't forget Dell, HP, Microsoft all originally started without VC funding; you can build a big business with bootstrapping and without VC money. At RightNow, we doubled our revenue and employees every 90 days for two years before we took any outside money, and even then the employees retained more than 75% ownership after raising $32m.

- - -

[I see a lot of companies that are seeking VC money, or have VC money but need more, as if that would make their business viable. VC money isn't always smart money and it isn't always the smartest thing to do. I republish Greg's column at least once a year because it contains lots of common sense.]

Greg Gianforte is the author of: Eight to Great: Eight Steps to Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience

His previous book is: "Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money."

If you would like to contribute a quest column please let me know: Tom(at)Foremski.com.

[Guest post from Las Vegas and the Interop show by Jo Large and Laura Gonzalez]

One look around at the lunch tables at the conference did reinforce that the mood was very subdued at Interop, even compared with the recent RSA conference in San Francisco. In a conversation with one attendee, he remarked that the mood of Interop was "gloomy" compared with the previous 14 Interop conferences he had attended.

[Guest post from Georges van Hoegaerden, an accomplished entrepreneur, CEO and venture catalyst "turned conservationist of the technology asset class." His articles appear at http://venturecompany.com.]

The auto company's plan to fixing VC

By Georges van Hoegaerden

The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) has released its recovery plan (4-pillar plan) to fix Venture Capital that is eerily similar to that of the auto companies. It focuses on the prolongation of (their) life rather than on the quality of its product; the ability to spawn meaningful innovation.

Now I am sure Dixon Doll, from his perch atop a $1.6B Venture firm, means well but his purview is severely limited by his role as chairman as one of the most closely held investment clubs in the nation. Its members, ninety-something percent of the U.S. VCs are simply not incented to present all options for improvement, and certainly not one that would include self-cannibalization.

Nothing in this plan covers the stimulus and meritocracy required to spawn and monetize disruptive innovation. The plan mentions entrepreneurs, as the real value creator in this equation - in passing - only once (slide 11) amongst its thirty slides. The plan seems to forget that the entrepreneur is the real value creator, not the VC.

[Earlier today I met with Diane Mueller who has spent nearly ten years helping to develop the extensible business reporting language (XBRL) standard for financial reporting, which the SEC mandates that public companies must use from June 2009. XBRL is a markup language that tags financial information making it easy to search and analyze. She believes XBRL will democratize financial markets enabling anyone to access verified financial data and perform their own analysis. I will write up the interview later this week, in the meantime, here is a recent column by Ms Mueller on this topic. She writes at Just XBRL - "A Blog about unlocking XBRL's potential."]

Rebuilding Public Trust: The Case for Compliant Financial Data

By Diane Mueller

In the aftermath of banking failures, subprime mortgages, and bailouts across multiple industry sectors, it is a good time to examine the strategies it will take to rebuild public trust in our government and in the world's financial markets. I believe the answer depends both on what we can do and how we do it.

With all the financial information that corporations were obligated to report because of existing government regulations, how could we not have foreseen this financial disaster? Did we misread the data? Was the information in the reports incorrect? Is there more that should have been required to report? What was missing were regulations that properly addressed how the information was to be reported. Being specific on the "how" may very well have provided the warnings of the impending disaster rather than finding out how bad it was in the midst of it.

[On my recent trip to Portland I caught up with Kathleen Mazzocco from Clear PR. I mentioned one of my old posts (April, 2006) that every company is a media company. Every company has to learn how to publish using the new (two-way) media technologies, to reach their customers, their employees, partners, local communities, etc. And one role of PR is to help companies become media companies and help them tell their stories. Here is more on this theme.]

By Kathleen Mazzocco, Clear PR

I wanted to continue the conversation we'd started regarding the future of PR. It may seem passe at this point to talk about the need for companies to give up the old PR model and innovate on communications. But the reality is that many, perhaps the majority, of companies still want PR budgets focused to land them big stories in leading print publications. But this is a short term game that doesn't even yield the same results as it once did.

Let me continue by recreating a conversation I've had lately with clients:

"It's time. No more quibbling, no more dawdling. In this age of crumbling paradigms, it is time for you to think about how to become a media company.

Here's why: your favorite print media brands are under siege and quite a few will succumb. We have reached the proverbial tipping point in terms of Internet over print as a source of news. For the first time in a Pew Research survey, more people say they rely mostly on the Internet for news than cite newspapers (35%).

The latest recession has merely accelerated a trend that was already well underway and cannot be reversed even after the economy bounces back. Think of the changes this way: your college age children will never read a print newspaper or magazine. The fact is, information consumption habits have permanently changed: news is consumed in small bites 24/7 from a variety of sites and not always as text.   

Instead of media brands, it is now brand-agnostic Google that mediates access to information.

Media guru Michael Wolf recently stated that 80% of newspapers will disappear in 18 months. That is one (expert) opinion, but you don't have to be a seer to know that most newspapers won't survive, at least in their present print form, and that many magazines will disappear, shrink or decline in relevance as audiences shift, fragment. The pressure on editors and reporters to remain relevant, competitive and simply hold on to their jobs is intensifying. The news hole is very small, with simply less paper available for stories and fewer, more overworked reporters left to write them. (There is a certain tech reporter who, after recent layoffs at his paper, was assigned a second beat: dining. Is that demoralizing or what.) If your story does make it to the New York Times or Business Week, chances are it will be shorter than you think it deserves to be, or not even in print but in one of the newspaper's blogs.

It is becoming very difficult for traditional PR to predict which stories will get picked up in print, even among very good ones. As a way of illustrating the current situation, here's what I heard from two different reporters when I pitched what I knew to be great stories last week:

[This is a guest post by Todd Hogan founder of Surchur, which specializes in real-time search. Please see http://blog.surchur.com/. If you'd like to offer a guest post please contact tom(at)siliconvalleywatcher.com.]

- - -

By Todd Hogan

This past week you've seen the mighty Google show its interest in the upstart Twitter. Now, whether those discussions really were as serious as many at first believed, the takeaway is the same: what is happening "right now" is becoming increasingly important to many internet users. One important trend growing from this is the need to search through all of the "right now" content that is being generated every moment and make it accessible. Our team at surchur.com is one group trying to make that happen.

But who cares about what's happening "right now?" Here are 5 profiles of users that are very interested in real time search:

This is a guest column written for Silicon Valley Watcher by Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies and a serial entrepreneur:

Raising venture capital for early stage start-ups seems to be the prevailing path for most entrepreneurs; however, most would-be founders should reconsider.

Here are some reasons why:

-If you start by selling your concept to potential prospects (rather than stock to VCs), you will either end up with initial customers or a conviction that your idea won't work. Why raise money and then find out which one it will be?

-Raising money takes time away from understanding your market and potential customers. Often more time than it would take to just go sell something to a customer. Let your customers fund your business through product orders.

-Adding VCs to the mix early gives you an additional set of masters you must serve in addition to your customers. It is always hard to serve two masters, especially in a startup.

-With no money you can't make a fatal mistake. This is a blessing. Without VC money, you are forced to figure out how to extract funds from your customers for value you deliver. Ultimately that is the only thing that really matters.

-Money removes spending discipline. If you have the money you will spend it - whether you have figured out your business model and market or not. -Raising VC money determines your exit strategy. You will either sell the business or take it public. What if you end up with a very profitable, modest sized business that you want to just run? That is no longer an option once you raise VC money.

-You sell your precious equity very dearly before you have a proven business model. This is the worst time to raise money from a valuation perspective. I know this is a contrarian view. And some of you are saying that might be fine for a small company.

Don't forget Dell, HP, Microsoft all originally started without VC funding; you can build a big business with bootstrapping and without VC money. At RightNow, we doubled our revenue and employees every 90 days for two years before we took any outside money, and even then the employees retained more than 75% ownership after raising $32m.

- - -

Foremski's Take:

I see a lot of companies that are seeking VC money, or have VC money but need more, as if that would make their business viable. VC money isn't always smart money and it isn't always the smartest thing to do. Greg's column needs to be republished from time to time because it remains relevant.

Greg Gianforte is the author of a new book:Eight to Great: Eight Steps to Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience

His previous book is: "Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money."

If you would like to contribute a quest column please let me know: tom(at)SiliconValleyWatcher.com.

By Daniel Bernstein for Silicon Valley Watcher

Richard Edelman totally spoiled ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’ for me.

Edelman, well-respected president and CEO of Edelman PR Worldwide, wrote a blog post this last Monday recommending a few ways our industry can work towards improving how we’re portrayed in film and television. He references Jim Carrey’s latest, Fun with Dick and Jane, in which the comic portrays an underdog communications executive that eventually outsmarts everyone and becomes an unlikely hero to the defenseless everyman. I haven’t seen it.

Edelman asks, “How can we build on this new Hollywood persona, the action-hero PR person? Or better yet, how can we offset the negative images of the mealy-mouthed apologist in the Constant Gardner or the cynical opportunist in Thank You for Smoking?”

Bling, bling..... bling, bling, bling... BAM! Back on the
radar and back in the swing of things here at SVW. Time for
your Friday wrapper from Loco Luco.

Winter has been VERY kind to me: spent New Year's Eve on stage in SF,
singing in front of 7,000 withThe String
Cheese Incident;rocked an intimate, holiday show with Miss Sarah King
in Portland, OR; and sang silly love songs at the Corazon de Amor" Valentine's day event.
All the music has left me a wee bit
behind on the tech front and I'm only now catching up with the latest
and greatest in recent, new media developments(although it always seems
to be a revolving door!).


Ok, so, back on the scene... and 'bling, bling'... I'm addicted
again. Wearing my pho-chanell, pho-diamond studded
glasses(like, major bling, bling, yo!) passing through Vegas airport
this week, I was wishing I could pull up the network on the interior
lenses and kick it 'round the metaverse. I even pretended it
was happening, tapping my fingers against my thumbs, as if I had the
perfect user interface to sort data while I stood in line to board the
plane. yea, I read too much sci-fi.

But here's one step
in the right direction of interface design. Indeed, I'm tired
of sitting... and I've wondered if someday I'll be able to interact
with the machines while going through the primary series of Ashtanga...
or playing basketball.

Ok, but enough about me and my super future, fantasies.
Here's a list of some hot things happenin this weekend round the bay,
through the metaverse, and beyond:

Gogol Bordello in SF this weekend: Ok, so you probably can't get tickets to the show at this late notice(you should still try) but at least you'll know for next time. This incredible gypsy-punk-performance rock act will blow your mind!  By far, the best show EVERYONE I know has EVER experienced.

Then, if you're travelin through Chicago(as I am), check out Andy
Warhol at the MCA
'nough said.

Traveling round the country this week, you may have noticed a
swarm of hipsters stealin up all the bar stools at your favorite
airport bars. Indeed, some of them are headed to spring
break, but the other, more mature, variety(the ones that don't have
"nice ass" stenciled on their pants) are surely headed to Miami for the
music fest. Get an ear full, if you're near, at theWinter Music
Fest in Miami, Fl. 

And, on the home entertainment front... if you've had enough of main
stream, commercial-flix, check out some under-appreciated, indie flicks
at Greencine.com.
 I recently watched the CRAZIESTflick
'bout 'noodlin(the
age old sport of catchin' catfish wit yo bare hands)!  Nah,
you won't find that on netflix...

And, finally, a bit of eye candy from my latest obsession: street art.
  Check out the Wooster
CollectiveorWe make money
not art for some killer street art and underground beauty.
Or, if you're in the Bay Area, see Logan Hicks' and Adam5100's new show, "Layered," at the Urbis
Artium Gallery on Geary Street.

See ya on the flip, Luco

By Daniel Bernstein

Individuals are blogging in every profession, but one profession where citizen journalism seems to have caught on like warm cookies is Public Relations.

Maybe the popularity of the PR blogger isn’t that surprising to most people. For many of us, leaping to bloggerdom is a rather small leap because of the skills we share with journalists, like writing ability, basic smarts, wit, etc. I mean, scores of individual PR professionals blog regularly, most notably Edelman’s Steve Rubel, but there are many others, from fellow PR neophyte Blake Barbera of Horn Group to industry luminaries like Next Fifteen’s Tim Dyson and Richard Edelman. It also shouldn’t be surprising then that we, like many journalists, could become big-time influencers, especially given the profile and reputation of Dyson, Rubel, Edelman and the like.

I’ve been taught from a very young age to be skeptical of those influencing me...

. . .and ten predictions for 2006-the year of "Do it Yourself."
by Giovanni Rodriguez, Eastwick Communications

You can learn a great deal about a culture's greatest anxieties – i.e., the stuff that inspires all great product development and marketing – by examining its greatest fantasies and asking, "what's the opposite of that?"

Fortunately, you don't have to go far beyond your TV set to gather all the data you need for this exercise. The evolution of the modern-day reality show – a window into American fantasy life – reveals just how much we have changed over the past half century, and where our priorities lie today.

Consider: in 1955, a faux reality show called “The Millionaire” had the nifty plot device where each week the producers would surprise a lucky family with a check for $1 million. The opposite of that was the dominant fear of the 1950's working class...

[Here is a guest column/blog post)

By G.A. “Andy” Marken President Marken Communications Inc.

Take a look at the raw numbers and blogs are impressive. Imagine being able to reach, inform and influence millions of people around the globe. It looks like the ultimate in 1:1 corporate and marketing communications opportunity. A public tool tailor made for your organization.

By Steve W. Martin, author of The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White: Lessons in Business and Leadership for the Executive Team (www.storyofinformix.com)

Q. What do Microsoft, Oracle, Computer Associates, Veritas, Sybase, Symantec, I2, Red Hat, Macromedia, Microstrategy, BMC, and Informix Software all have in common?

A. They have all made financial restatements because of accounting irregularities that skewed previously released financial results.

According to a recent report from the Huron Consulting Group there were 203 financial restatements in the software industry between 2000 and 2004.

Approximately half of these restatements were made because of revenue recognition issues. As is usually the case, almost all of these revenue restatements were lower than the originally reported numbers.

Revenue restatements are more than just accounting reversals. Their impact affects a company in every possible way. Customers are hesitant to purchase products, investors watch stock prices free-fall, employee morale is ruined (along with the value of employees’ stock options), and flurries of class-action lawsuits are filed by lawyers eager to capitalize on misfortune.

It’s a devastating experience that almost always results in a management change and sometimes in bankruptcy. As I2’s CEO and chairman said about their company’s restatement, “Surely, the audit was no fun for us or our customers, and our customers were asked a lot of questions internally by their own people.”

If these restatements are “no fun,” then why are they commonplace today?

John Coffee Jr., professor of law at Columbia University, offers the following reasons: “First, there is intensifying or weakening of a particular company’s stock, which usually occurs during a stock market bubble. Second, there is an overall decline in business morality and in the words of Federal Reserve Chairman an atmosphere of ‘infectious greed.’ Third, the company has a weak board of directors who are not independent from senior management.

Finally and most importantly, it’s gatekeeper failure--the failure of the auditors, securities analysts, and securities attorneys, who prepare, review or analyze disclosure documents.”

While Professor Coffee would rightly argue these restatements are the result of greed, cronyism among the board of directors, and a gatekeeper that wasn’t independent, I would like to suggest four additional reasons for revenue restatements that are specific to the software industry.

Pride. The high-tech industry is filled with leaders who have a fundamental desire to become rich and, equally important, famous. Since one of their most important possessions is their pride, they will go to any length to prove they are right and to avoid embarrassment, even if they have to cheat.

I would argue that the CEOs’ desire to protect their egos is just as powerful a motivator as greed.

Pressure. The pressure starts at the local sales office, where proving oneself is a matter of survival. Pressure is exerted on the finance department to keep the numbers up. Pressure is on the gatekeeper to keep the client happy, and an incredible amount of pressure is placed on the CEO from investors, analysts, and the press alike. Pressure at all these points encourages revenue fraud.

Politics. When the management regime changes at a troubled technology company, it is in the best interest of the new leaders to restate earnings and make the largest restatement possible. By doing so, they reset expectations extremely low and improve their likelihood of turnaround success.

In other words, they debook as much revenue as possible, regardless of necessity, so that it can be recounted later and improve the financial numbers under their watch.

Past history. History naturally repeats itself. The Huron Consulting Group report also revealed that fifteen percent of all restatements filed in 2004 were by "repeat filers." These companies had encountered financial trouble in the past and reported erroneous financial information on more than one occasion since 1997.

The difference between greatness and infamy has never been smaller for today’s business leaders. Under the business climate of Sarbanes-Oxley, officers risk losing not only their careers but also their freedom, every time they sign off on their company’s numbers.

However, the real story behind the software industry’s restatements is about the humanness of its leaders and a value system based upon net-worth instead of self-worth. And unfortunately, there most assuredly will be more revenue restatements in the future because history has a way of repeating itself.

In the words of Machiavelli, “Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.”

By Steve W. Martin, author of The Real Story of Informix Software and Phil White: Lessons in Business and Leadership for the Executive Team www.storyofinformix.com

A guest column by Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies

How would you feel if your mechanic handed you a 125-piece wrench set rather than actually fixing your car? What if another mechanic then walked up to you with his tools and started arguing with the first guy about whose tools were better? You sure wouldn't feel like either of them was going to help you with your problem, would you?

Yet that's exactly what software vendors are doing today as they engage in platform wars – to the detriment of their customers and the industry.

-Oracle announces its Fusion platform, revealing a grand architectural chart that shows how they will exercise total control over their customers' computing environments.

-SalesForce.com unveils a platform dubbed "AppExchange" that enables customers to engage with unstable, third-rate software vendors more rapidly and conveniently than ever.

By Luke Maroney and Dawn Montefusco for SiliconValleyWatcher

While VCs were sailing their boats and enjoying the sunshine of Memorial Day weekend, 500-plus psychedelic geeks and silicon hippies gathered at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco for the 6th annual Mind States conference. Now that the buzz has worn off, it’s time to give a rundown of what happened at this unique event, subtitled Technology and Transcendence.

The West Coast conscious heard the latest developments in everything from techno-biological enhancement to current psychedelic research, herbiculture and visionary art. The most interesting thing, however, wasn’t the chill room or the mescaline-packed San Pedro Cacti but the substance of the sessions.

Marc Pesce, the writer, educator, and technological guru, gave a presentation called "Hyperpeople," in which he described a world interconnected by social technology where "we no longer need to rely on mass media to get our information."