GOOG In Perspective

Fortune had a great article this week about Google’s insane share price. Interesting to see some math applied to the irrational exuberance.

Un-Boned

I purchased my first bluetooth headset, a Motorola HS810, quite a few years ago now. I sometimes had problems pairing it with various devices, but otherwise it worked great for me. Unfortunately it went to headset-heaven a couple weeks ago.

On the prowl for a replacement (I almost went insane the 2-3 days I was without a bluetooth headset), I asked a bunch of friend-geeks what they recommended. The Jawbone kept coming up like a bad penny. I wasn’t sold on it a priori due to (a) its substantial size and (b) the slightly mechanical hue it seems to give voices speaking into it.

I visited the nice people at the Cingular AT&T Wireless store to get their advice. They pushed the Jawbone pretty hard. I gave in and decided to give it a whirl. I bought at retail to make sure I had a liberal return policy, since I knew I might be treading unfamiliar ground.

I tried for a week to make the Jawbone work, but ultimately returned it. I had three fundamental problems with the device.

1. It’s big. It won’t fit conveniently in your pocket. I used to toss the HS810 into my jeans’ pocket all the time when I was out and about, without any incident. Even putting the Jawbone into your shirt pocket is non-trivial (the ear loop “sticks out” quite a bit).
2. The mic/boom end of the Jawbone has to be touching your face in order for it to do its signal processing properly. This didn’t bother me per se, but what I found was that if I had any material beard growth (I’m not a huge fan of shaving ), the occasional movement of the Jawbone against my cheek caused insane noise on the other end. Folks would stop and say “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?!?!” if I adjusted the Jawbone.
3. Continuing that last thought, I was unable to configure the Jawbone so that it stayed in/on my ear. I tried the standard and long loops, and all the ear buds. I could get it nicely stable/solid for a few minutes, but it would inevitably ‘dislodge’ (and cf. my prior comment on adjusting when you’re not clean-shaven!). No combination of loop size and ear bud ultimately worked.

So I’m back to Motorola, having traded in the Jawbone for an H700. The H700 works exactly like my HS810 worked. It’s super-tiny and fits in any pocket with ease. Finally, it’s so small that it sits quite unobtrusively and solidly on my ear. I can’t have a conversation in the car with the top down, the kids screaming, and the radio blasting, but I’ll manage (well, maybe everything except the screaming kids!).

Left Coast / Right Coast Revisited

Scott Kirsner had an article in the Globe this weekend rekindling the East vs. West coast meme for early-stage startups; especially consumer-focused ones.

Nabeel Hyatt posted a great rant on the issue. I particularly like his comparison of east/west coast early-stage fundraising to the state of the world in the financial industry:

But the fact that it is harder [on the east coast] is nothing new. That’s like saying, “the financial industry in Boston is still not as big as New York’s.” That’s not news, that’s reality.

That’s spot on stuff, but I’m concerned that that attitude also limits where we on the right coast can take things to. The divide between left-coast and right-coast ventures is hardly as huge as the divide (and century of entrenchment) that splits NY and Boston in the financial industry. The General started here, folks.

Too often, I think that folks (yours truly included) fall prey to too simplistic a view of the situation. This is a very complicated system dynamics problem with a ton of moving parts. There are a lot of feedback loops in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the left coast does these loops better than the right coast. Period. End of story. The right coast needs to learn better and faster; adapt the good; flush the silly; and get better at what we all do.

I could drone on on this for days, and very much would like to, but I have a company to run . More in due time, I hope!

The YouTube Debate

I found the CNN/YouTube debate interesting, but ultimately unimpressive.

The concept of a participatory democracy is obviously a powerful one, but the editorial veils of the network (which videos get chosen) and the campaign staffers (how questions get answered) suggest crisply that the powers-that-be surely aren’t ready for frank, open dialogue yet.

What the evening was, was a testament to marketing prowess.

Kudos to YouTube for making this happen. I bet they worked their asses off to get this deal together and to execute on it. A zillion people over the age of 40 will, this week, come to know what YouTube is.

Non-Kudos to the Democratic candidate campaign handlers (their marketers) for sticking to the rote, repetitive responses like it was any other debate. What an opportunity missed to reach out to a younger demographic.

While there were a few moments where a few of the candidates shined, net-net, the evening was about the questions instead of the answers. Interesting, but not ultimately helpful.

Five Monsters

I was digging through my digital photos to find a snap of an old car for a friend when I stumbled across this cute shot. It’s one of my favorite kid photos – with four furry monsters added to the mix. The shot was taken on Thanksgiving Day 2000 – about 24 hours after we brought our son home from his six week stay in the NICU after deciding to pop considerably early. It was great to finally have him home, and it was extra-great that the kitties welcomed him into their fold and their space.

Counter-clockwise from the bottom left that’s Claudette, Callahan, Petie, and Daddy’s-little-girl, Cleo, who was probably least sure of the bunch what to make of this not-as-furry-as-the-others mewling creature.

Wondrous Dark Matter

Brad Feld wrote a great post over the weekend entitled “The Dark Matter of the Blogosphere“. It’s definitely worth checking out. While Brad’s primary focus was on blog comments, the fact of the matter is that there is all sorts of “dark matter” out there on the web (I really like that term- I hope it sticks!).

Some dark matter, like blog comments, are largely black holes of information that isn’t structured or enabled in a manner to easily permit analysis. Some dark matter though is ‘dark’ in that only a fraction of its value has been derived. At TrustPlus we are exploring existing web data to extract reputation signals. We like to say that we’re shining a light into the dark corners of the Internet to illuminate the people we encounter online.

The next few years of Internet evolution are going to be largely about horizontal services that tie together so so many pieces of the web, and in so doing, lots and lots of wondrous dark matter is going to get leveraged to the hilt.

I for one can’t wait for the blog comments infrastructure to stop sucking!

Fun with Depreciation

All modern Ferraris depreciate. Even Ferrari Enzos have come down in price. Particularly hard hit over the past dozen years or so have been the 12 cylinder cars, starting with the 456 and 550 Maranello in the mid 90s. Sometimes these cars could lose half their value in three or four years. Not as bad as, say, some of the six-figure British cruisers, but it’s unarguably real money.

An online acquaintance of mine owns a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, the latest 12 cylinder two-seater in the Ferrari line-up that has a $280,000 base MSRP. He’s put about 1,200 miles on it and isn’t the type to be washing and waxing it religiously every Sunday. He recently shared:

When it’s quiet in the garage, I can hear it depreciating.

I woke my kids up laughing at that one!

When is a Vice?

Is a vice a vice if you don’t indulge it? If not, then what is it?

Jeff Immelt on YHOO Message Boards :-)

Check it out – Jeff Immelt himself is posting on the Yahoo! GE stock message boards:

Smells to this boy like maybe he isn’t as long on his stock as he suggests. While we can’t afford the public relations staff that GE has, even our modest PR team has suggested I avoid posting online in language like that

Blue Horseshoe LOVES Whole Foods

Like a rubber-necker inching past a horrible highway accident, I’ve been watching the online news reports of the misbehavior of Whole Foods’ CEO. Yesterday I got a slew of emails about this issue now that it’s hit the New York Times. For those of you who spent a long weekend at the beach, John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, has apparently been hanging out online for about eight years, under various pseudonyms, talking up his company and bashing his competitors.

In the iconic film Wall Street, traders on the street are notified that “Blue Horseshoe loves Anacot Steel,” sending Anacot’s stock through the roof. It’s not clear whether or not the traders know who exactly Blue Horseshoe is; but what they do know is that past behavior has proven that Blue Horseshoe knows what’s going on – and that’s all that matters in that context.

Mackey’s behavior underlines some of the problems swirling around the Internet today regarding who you should trust, who you should believe, and who you should pay attention to — problems we’re solving at TrustPlus.

In the real world, each of us has a reputation that is built over time based primarily upon what others think of us and our prior behavior. Our friends, our loved ones, our business colleagues, our neighbors, and other communities we are all each a part of, work together to keep us all safe and informed. If we had similar tools online, Mackey’s pseudonyms would have likely been identifiable as the sock puppets they were.