« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
photoshop album unlockJanuary 19, 2006
Jonah Peretti: Announcing the Huffington Post Contagious Festival
The Contagious Festival is a unique opportunity for talented designers, political activists, filmmakers, comics, and everyone else to reach millions of people with creative, viral online work. The Huffington Post is expanding our pool of contributors beyond bloggers and we are looking for contributors with creative ideas that could become the next JibJab, Numa Numa dance, Detroit Project or Black People Love Us. The contestants that create the best projects get Internet fame, prize money, and the chance to meet with friends of the Huffington Post from the worlds of entertainment and politics to discuss future projects and opportunities.
The first round of entries will go live starting February 1st, but you can enter now to reserve a spot on the official Contagious Festival server:
You simply create an account, build your project on the server and launch your site. Then you can watch the live rankings to see if your entry is being forwarded, linked, and IMed around the Internet.
Each month, the most popular entry will win the "People's Choice Award" and the "Jury Prize" will be selected by a panel including Noah Baumbach, John Cusack, Nora Ephron, The Yes Men, Jeremy Zimmer, Arianna Huffington, and Jim Bankoff.
We hope you will participate in the Contagious Festival by becoming a contributor or forward this post to friends who are designers, filmmakers, comics, political activists, or anyone else with the potential to create the next big online hit. For more information, visit the Festival site.
Posted by tshey at 04:33 PM
January 16, 2006
little thing noticed in the MacOs 10.4.4 update
Under "other applications" on the about page:
Improves framerates in Blizzard World of Warcraft for GeForce 4Ti video cards.
Apple has its priorities straight!
Posted by tshey at 12:00 PM
January 14, 2006
Amazing video of Japan's superconducting maglev trains hitting speeds of up to 502 kph. Watch for the part about halfway through when the trains shoot by. Found via digg.
Posted by tshey at 11:20 PM
Cronenberg at the AFI Silver
The AFI Silver, Silver Spring, MD's state-of-the-art, beautifully restored art deco theater, is currently showing a complete retrospective of the works of David Cronenberg. That's right, everything's playing over the next two months on the Silver's huge screens with dolby digital sound: SCANNERS. EXISTENZ. DEAD RINGERS. VIDEODROME. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, which I'd missed on its first run. And tonight - THE FLY!
This is bar none the best place to see a movie in the D.C. area, and while Silver Spring is on the serious up-and-up these days, the slightly creepy, industrial, deserted middle-America vibe that still persists downtown (or maybe it's just me?) would lend some great atmosphere to a night of Cronenbergian visions. Finish up with a nightcap and some Elvis mini-burgers and nachos at the seriously weird Jackie's.
[Full disclosure: through my pro bono work for them over the past six years, I'm an AFI corporate sponsor, and they do let me in free. Even without that, I'd love this damn theater. Check out the other great movies now playing.]
Posted by tshey at 03:47 PM
The Live Superheroes Of Indianapolis
Doktor DiscorD and Mr Silent are self-invented superheroes.
so tonight is the first night in a new era here in indianapolis. the dawn of the age of superheroes. after realizing the total lack of justice in the world, my friends and i have decided to become superheroes in order to balance this fracturing planet of ours. tonight, with my partner in crime fighting “Mr. Silent”, we went around the city helping people and stopping fights,drunk drivers,and a group of young dumb kids hitting an old woman’s car.
Here’s the note the good Doktor sent me the other day:
mr. ellis
hi,i’m a superhero…..seriously.
some friends and i have become tired of the muggers, rapists, and general riff raff causing problems in our city.
this is not a joke.
we’ve started a group called the Justice Society of Justice (offering twice the Justice as the leading competitors) and we go out and fight crime on a semi nightly basis.
we’ve only got about 8 hardcore members that go out with us right now,but we’re hoping to raise that number tenfold.
recently,some japanese street fashion kids have found our myspace pages and added us..so within 3 days we’ve had roughly 3-4 japanese weirdo kids adding us per hour…japan seems much more accepting of this concept than the states.
originally,we just thought it’d be funny to go out as superheroes and “fight crime” as a sort of street theater…but after the first hour and the sheer exhilaration of it all,we completely changed our mind. there are real problems,and no one wants to deal with them. some one has to do something.
many people have read about the adventures of your heroes, but soon (hopefully), they’ll be writing about their own adventures. i made a few blog entries about some of our patrols with pictures and stuff…so if you ever want to see how well superheroes work out in the regular world as opposed to paper one,check it out.
say a small prayer to jack kirby for us.
dokdiscord
Mr Silent @ MySpace | Doktor DiscorD @ MySpace
Posted by tshey at 02:07 PM
Scoop: The Inside Dope on Steve Jobs' Weird Keynote
There was something strange about Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote on Tuesday. The pacing was off.
It started off high energy with reports of unbelievable iPod sales and record revenues, which got the crowd whooping. Then it went into a doldrums with an interminable demo of new features in iLife, which had everyone dying for the One More Thing... "Come on Steve," we're all thinking. "Cut the crap and get to the good stuff."
So tonight I'm sitting in a bar when I run into an old friend, who is very highly placed in the Apple world. I hate to cite an anonymous source, but trust me, he knows.
And he tells me the keynote that Jobs gave was not the keynote he had planned. Some of the speech had been cut out. Key products were missing.
My source said there was some stuff, "some very, very cool stuff," that Jobs couldn't unveil because of "supply issues."
"They can't get enough Core Duo (chips)," said my source.
He also said that if he were me, he probably wouldn't order one of the new MacBook Pros. [highlighting mine --ts]
I asked if there would be MacBook replacements for the 17-inch and 12-inch PowerBooks, but he said, "Oh, it's much cooler than that. Much cooler."
Photo credit: Engadget.
Posted by tshey at 02:46 AM
January 13, 2006
The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs
(Since I've antagonized the venture capital community with last week's blog, I thought I would complete the picture and out entrepreneurs to begin this week. The hard part about writing this blog was narrowing down these lies to ten.)
I get pitched dozens of times every year, and every pitch contains at least three or four of these lies. I provide them not because I believe I can increase the level of honesty of entrepreneurs as much as to help entrepreneurs come up with new lies. At least new lies indicate a modicum of creativity!
- Our projections are conservative. An entrepreneur's projections are never conservative. If they were, they would be $0. I have never seen an entrepreneur achieve even her most conservative projections. Generally, an entrepreneur has no idea what sales will be, so she guesses: Too little will make my deal uninteresting; too big, and I'll look hallucinogenic. The result is that everyone's projections are $50 million in year four. As a rule of thumb, when I see a projection, I add one year to delivery time and multiply by .1.
- (Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010. Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.
- (Big name company) is going to sign our purchase order next week. This is the I heard I have to show traction at a conference lie of entrepreneurs. The funny thing is that next week, the purchase order still isn't signed. Nor the week after. The decision maker gets laid off, the CEO gets fired, there's a natural disaster, whatever. The only way to play this card if AFTER the purchase order is signed because no investor whose money you'd want will fall for this one.
- Key employees are set to join us as soon as we get funded. More often than not when a venture capitalist calls these key employees who are VPs are Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun, he gets the following response, Who said that? I recall meeting him at a Churchill Club meeting, but I certainly didn't say I would leave my cush $250,000/year job at Adobe to join his startup. If it's true that key employees are ready to rock and roll, have them call the venture capitalist after the meeting and testify to this effect.
- No one is doing what we're doing. This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can't even use Google to figure out he has competition. Suffice it to say that the lack of a market and cluelessness is not conducive to securing an investment. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing.
- No one can do what we're doing. If there's anything worse than the lack of a market and cluelessness, it's arrogance. No one else can do this until the first company does it, and ten others spring up in the next ninety days. Let's see, no one else ran a sub four-minute mile after Roger Bannister. (It took only a month before John Landy did). The world is a big place. There are lots of smart people in it. Entrepreneurs are kidding themselves if they think they have any kind of monopoly on knowledge. And, sure as I'm a Macintosh user, on the same day that an entrepreneur tells this lie, the venture capitalist will have met with another company that's doing the same thing.
- Hurry because several other venture capital firms are interested. The good news: There are maybe one hundred entrepreneurs in the world who can make this claim. The bad news: The fact that you are reading a blog about venture capital means you're not one of them. As my mother used to say, Never play Russian roulette with an Uzi. For the absolute cream of the crop, there is competition for a deal, and an entrepreneur can scare other investors to make a decision. For the rest of us, don't think one can create a sense of scarcity when it's not true. Re-read the previous blog about the lies of venture capitalists, to learn how entrepreneurs are hearing maybe when venture capitalists are saying no.
- Oracle is too big/dumb/slow to be a threat. Larry Ellison has his own jet. He can keep the San Jose Airport open for his late night landings. His boat is so big that it can barely get under the Golden Gate Bridge. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs are flying on Southwest out of Oakland and stealing the free peanuts. There's a reason why Larry is where he is, and entrepreneurs are where they are, and it's not that he's big, dumb, and slow. Competing with Oracle, Microsoft, and other large companies is a very difficult task. Entrepreneurs who utter this lie look at best naive. You think it's bravado, but venture capitalists think it's stupidity.
- We have a proven management team. Says who? Because the founder worked at Morgan Stanley for a summer? Or McKinsey for two years? Or he made sure that John Sculley's Macintosh could power on? Truly proven in a venture capitalist's eyes is founder of a company that returned billions to its investors. But if the entrepreneur were that proven, that he (a) probably wouldn't have to ask for money; (b) wouldn't be claiming that he's proven. (Do you think Wayne Gretzky went around saying, I am a good hockey player ?) A better strategy is for the entrepreneur to state that (a) she has relevant industry experience; (b) she is going to do whatever it takes to succeed; (c) she is going to surround herself with directors and advisors who are proven; and (d) she'll step aside whenever it becomes necessary. This is good enough for a venture capitalist that believes in what the entrepreneur is doing.
- Patents make our product defensible. The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, We have filed patents for what we are doing. Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, I am clueless. Sure, you should patent what you're doing--if for no other reason than to say it once in your presentation. But at the end of the patents are mostly good for impressing your parents. You won't have the time or money to sue anyone with a pocket deep enough to be worth suing.
- All we have to do is get 1% of the market. (Here's a bonus since I still have battery power.) This lie is the flip side of the market will be $50 billion. There are two problems with this lie. First, no venture capitalist is interested in a company that is looking to get 1% or so of a market. Frankly, we want our companies to face the wrath of the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice. Second, it's also not that easy to get 1% of any market, so you look silly pretending that it is. Generally, it's much better for entrepreneurs to show a realistic appreciation of the difficulty of building a successful company.
PS: here is an interesting commentary on this blog by Jason Fried.
Written at: Vallco Shopping Center, Cupertino, California
Posted by tshey at 11:47 PM
The Cartwheel Galaxy
Posted by tshey at 10:45 PM
January 11, 2006
the agony & the ecstasy
So we finally have an Intel-based laptop from Apple... what we've wished and waited for -- but how cruel the debut. Jonah was telling me last night how bummed Jason was about the news, having just bought a new PowerBook three weeks ago. I'm pretty torn myself... still using my old 1GHz PowerBook that's at least 2 years old, and now that I'm on the road all the time I really need a new one that can run Final Cut, Adobe Creative Suite, Flash Pro, maybe a little World of Warcraft, and encode an iPod movie in less than 10 hours. Despite everyone telling me just to buy a new Powerbook already, that Intels weren't coming out til June/Jan 2007/etc, I waited til MacWorld just in case... and sure enough, they're coming. Now I am really in a bind. I need a new PB now, and the MacBooks won't be in hand, you gotta figure, til at least March. Sure, I could pick up a refurbished PowerBook at a discount, or look for people unloading them on eBay, but for just a few hundred dollars more you could put down the money for a shiny new MacBook, that's benchmarked at up to four times the speed. What to do?
I guess there are worse problems to have.
Jason, some consolation (or how I might also justify getting a Powerbook like yours):
- the new MacBooks have a lower resolution than your top-of-the-line PowerBook - still the pinnacle of 15" PowerPC laptop engineering.
- yours has FireWire 800 support, so some video guy will want to buy it.
- the brighter screen would probably keep you up at night anyway.
- security! Who knows what bugs the Intel Macs will have in the first six months. We can't afford to have kottke.org offline.
update: according to my sister, who just sent a comment on this post -- I am a NERD.
Posted by tshey at 11:14 AM