There's a group of 10-15 MIT MBAs coming into the city today to learn about opportunities in the NYC tech world.  We're meeting up after work for happy hour at Link Lounge by Union Square if you're interested.

Here's the link on NYCtechevents.com.

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Re: Founder's Club

"Oh well, you should create your own club. Oh, that's right. You did. And it's open. Nice." - Nate

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"How many times can you watch a kid get hit in the groin?"

paidContent.org - The Economics of Content - @ Media & Money: Keynote: Michael Eisner: Strike is ‘Insanity,’ No Profit Online—Yet

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I saw David Karp present Tumblr last night and its posting interface was really slick. It even allows people to suck in RSS feeds of other blogs.

I asked David whether he ever intended on making it go from suck to blow.

In other words, I have ZERO interest in maintaining two places for posting, like Fred and Michael are doing. I find it really annoying that I need to subscribe to two feeds for someone for basically the same stuff. I consider Tumblr a blog, mostly because I read it in a feedreader. Sure, I also consume Fred's last.fm feed and his Flickr feed, but I consume it in the context of those sites, which is what I want. I don't want my whole content experience dulled down to RSS...just blogs.

If the best part about Tumblr is the ease and format of posting, why not separate the two? Let me post a Tumblr style post to my Typepad account. Who cares where it's hosted?

Actually, to be honest, Flock already does some of what Tumblr does. I can right click a picture and autopost it to my blog and the same with a link. Still, Tumblr supports more formats.

And if Oddcast was paying attention, they'd propose a way to allow Tumblr users to quickpost a Voki. Perhaps that could be part of the business model there...paid inclusion. If you want a "post an X" button on Tumblr, you can pay them for it. The group of Tumblr users out there is a very influential and cool group...definitely people you want to market your widgets to.

Live from New York, it's Founders Club--with M.C. Hammer | The Social - CNET News.com

Caroline writes, "So who was there? It was more like "who wasn't there?""

Um...  Alex and I weren't.  We were too busy hitting the refresh button continuously so we could be one of the exclusive group of 400 people to eek our way into to the Tech Meetup. 

I mean, who wants to hangout with Lindsay Campbell and Hammer anyway?  Yawn.  Besides, the horse drawn pumpkin that we were riding in last night got a flat on 23rd, so we never would have made it over in time.

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Nothing like buzz over a Yahoo! social network focused on careers to remind you that, even on the day you close some money for angel financing, you have exactly zero seconds in the life of a startup to sit back and relax.

I will absolutely be writing lots about KickStart, but for now, we're focused on building Path 101, not competitor watching.

I have to be honest, though, I thought it was going to be a little bit more of a competitor.  Yahoo! seems bent on getting attention away from Facebook and LinkedIn, rather than trying to work with them, and we're happy to let them play that game.  A social network around jobs is the last thing we want to be.

That being said, if anyone wants to be my KickStart friend, I'm here.  In case you're on mobile RSS, and can't see the link, just remember, the web address is:

http://kickstart.yahoo.com/profile/?QOiLyFc.jlgCr_MDRvWLjlE-

Got it?

"We wanted you to know we are holding an exclusive event for New York area bloggers and editors (if you happen to be in town) at Olives Restaurant at the W Hotel Union Square on Wednesday, November 14th and would love for you to attend. Should be a first-class affair sponsored by Staples (who will have all of their latest holiday tech offerings there). 

Tory Johnson, of Good Morning America, will be speaking about "How to Shop for Tech Gifts…When You Don't Understand Tech," as well as giving an informal hands-on demonstration of the hottest, newest tech gifts on the market for this holiday season. "

... Jeez... Is my tech blogging that bad??

"You will learn tech lingo, tips on decoding buzzwords, how these can apply to your life, and be the first to check-out these new gadgets to share with your family, friends, and readers!"

Decoding buzzwords?  Yeah... like what's that RSS thing everyone keeps talking about?  And Web 2.0?   Please enlighten me. 

Can I send my parents?

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There may be some legislation in the works to ban tracking of consumers for behavioral targeting on the web.

Great!

It really bothers me when I'm in Gmail, talking about kayaking, and I get offered kayaking gear in an ad.

Or when I'm looking at a small printer for the office, then I go check a free weather site, and there's an ad for a great deal on exactly the kind of printer I'm looking for.

It's invasive and I'm just not going to stand for it anymore.  I don't want anyone to know anything about me. I want my ad experience online to be just like my television experience, completely untargeted and irrelevant. 

Bring on the mortgage ads!

If AOL/Tacoda gives me a chance to opt in to sharing more about myself, I'm on it.

I'll give them my del.icio.us tags, my Twitter stream, fill out a survey, whatever they need me to do... as long as it doesn't mean MORE ads... just better ones.

This is different than Do Not Call.   Phone calls interrupt my day and they're annoying.  Web ads... web ads currently suck and they NEED more data about me... and at least on the web I know that you can engineer privacy controls like Tacoda has so that they don't need to know who I am exactly to target me.

Hey privacy wonks... go work on something useful, like helping people opt out of cellphone contracts without paying $200.

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Nope.

But if I link to this post, I'll wind up on Techmeme and you'll all get drawn to this post like lemmings.

Silly lemmings.

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Tags: facebook

"When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer." - Hans Gruber (Or Plutarch, take your pick.)

Are there stupid ideas out there?  Sure.

Are there great ideas out there?  Absolutely.

Most of the time, you can hardly tell the difference.

Twitter?  At first, I didn't get it.  Now, I'd pay for the service.

Flock?  Why the hell would I need a new browser?  Turns out I did... and it has changed how I work on the web.

I still don't get Tumblr, but everytime I recommend it to a non-techie friend, they eat it up, so I won't go all Bogatin on it and dismiss it out of hand without some additional thought.

Steve Rubel thinks we're in a bubble.

1. Companies that have way too much money to spend and can afford to hire big fancy PR firms, show up at conferences, and throw big parties. 
2. Companies that have no clue how to do marketing, so they just mindlessly throw themselves at the inboxes of popular, but completely irrelevant bloggers.

Not only that, but smart companies are realizing that they're better off spending time in their niche than out in the blogosphere circle jerk.  Phillip from Snooth, the wine recommendation service told me that he doesn't go to tech events.  He goes to wine events.  Unless Steve's a wine connoisseur, there's another company he's likely never to meet.

If we're in a bubble, why aren't these guys fully funded yet?  Oh... wait.. .that's because they're not anti-stealth.  They're not stealth either...  They're just a bit lax in telling the the world about their cool app.  Impact Games is taking their award winning concept from a game about the middle east they built called Peace Maker to the web, and turning the news intro an interactive, community driven game experience.  Imagine fantasy baseball meets CNN.  They're not looking for ridiculous amounts of money either, and Asi and Eric are great guys...  so someone go fund them.

There are lots of cool, innovative companies that are completely under the radar of big tech/pr bloggers who only collect press releases instead of getting out there in the community--the real community, not the community of people who can spend $1000 on a conference.  Take PeerDecision.  (See Jack, two posts in a row.)  They're trying to break open the whole college admissions process and if they keep at it, and figure it out, that could make a HUGE impact on millions of people.  They're not likely to see Steve at an expensive trade show, but they would have met him at StartupCamp, if he went, which was free and sponsored by Sun, or a nextNY event, which is always free.  But bigshot PR bloggers rarely attend these kinds of community events so the Web 2.0 that they see is the heavily funded, heavily hyped world of people who can afford to play in the same circles of events.

John Heilemann is in the same boat.  In his recent piece for NY Magazine, he calls New Work "a sad-assed backwater when it comes to the Internet industry".  How does he know?  Caroline McCarthy is just about the only journalist that spends any time with the "two people in a garage" stage crowd.  Maybe if John or any other bubble breaker journalist showed up at a nextNY event, you know, with the little people, he'd get a better sense of the crowd here.  At least he could fly around NYC in 3D in UpNext (another cool NYC company).

Are we better than the Valley?  We're different.  So is Boston, Seattle, and Denver.  It's not a competition, the last time I checked.  Are we serious about the internet?  Very much so.  I mean, if we weren't, why would Google keep buying up more and more real estate here?  Why would AOL move its headquarters here?  

Hey, check it out, Donna's actually on the right side of this one.  See, people aren't all bad.  She corrects Steve's assertion that "No one’s casting a cynical eye anymore."  Aren't you reading, Steve?  She casted a cynical eye on us just the other day! 

It's like I tell umpires in softball...

"Open your eyes, blue...  You're missing a good game, here!"

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Tags: web2.0, nyc, startups

In the same way that Path 101 wants to bust open the data lockbox for the job market, showing you what others like you are doing with their careers, PeerDecision is aiming shed light on college admissions.  This is fascinating, because I don't think there's anything more competitive and cutthroat than college admissions (except maybe Upper East Side Nursery School admissions), and so I could imagine students swarming on this in a hurry. 

I wonder if the anti-stealth nature of it might cause a little fudging.  I'm sure Jack actually got a 1480 on his SAT, but how do we really know for sure?  :)

This is data I think everyone wants to see, but perhaps this is a case where public profiles aren't a good idea.  If people start comparing themselves to others, is that going to open up some really negative interactions?  I think people want to compare aggregate numbers, but I think singling out individuals might get too personal, and maybe even downright ugly. 

They also have voting, where you could vote people up or down depending on whether or not you'd make certain schools.  Again, this might bring out the worst in people.

So, I REALLY like PeerDecision, I just think people are evil... especially overambitious high school kids.

One thing I might consider is flipping the voting a little.  Have people try to gauge themselves...  vote which schools you think you have a good shot of making and then show me the aggregate data.   This way, I don't have a reason to mess up the voting, because I'd only be screwing up my own account.

Another thing they need to nail that Path 101 needs to nail as well is a reason to get people to add this data.  I could join and tell people what schools I made, but what do I get back immediately from that?  For Path 101, we can do some job skills and trend data, but PD is tackling something that's even a bigger data black hole... so I'm not sure how you could even prime the pump here.

What about maybe a way to gripe?  "What's the school that turned you down?  Tell us about it...add other schools".

It's interesting... check out their site...  It's a process I'd love to see them succeed in opening up more, but I'm not sure how to do that.

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Perhaps I'm being too defensive here, but I can't help but feel the need to respond to a recent post I sawon InsideChatter.   I first came upon InsideChatter when Donna ripped on Nick O'Neill's post on LinkedIn vs. Facebook.

Aren't most blogs indistinguishable and unreliable?  I mean, I guess mine's pretty special because I like kayaking (j/k) but other than that, it's no better or worse than anything else out there.   There aren't very many great blogs out there, except maybe danah, Scott Adams, or Marc Andreessen.  Eric's and Fred's blogs are pretty good, too...  but I'd be careful saying that other people's blogs are indistinguishable.  I think we're all lucky to have any readers at all, but I digress.

What she failed to see was that amid all the Facebook ra-ra! from Nick, which I actually disagreed with, because I do think there's a point to a network for each of my different selves, was a really good point...   If Facebook can present several faces of you to different people, then it's a real challenge to any social network out there, not just LinkedIn.  Dismissing that point out of hand may prove to be the death knell for many networks. 

Today, she wrote about Path 101, which is to be expected of course.  I mean, come on, did we honestly expect we wouldn't get negative feedback to putting ourselves out there so early?  I would have written a response in the comments to her post about us, but she doesn't allow comments.

First, Donna did a nice job of catching my slip up in saying that it was "top 10" within the post.  Nice job.. I started out with ten, but didn't really feel like all ten were strong, so I shed a few, and forgot to re-edit.  I fixed that.  Thanks!

I think if you check the overview, you'll see that there isn't much of our business that has anything to do with LinkedIn.  All we were trying to do is not add in features that already exist elsewhere and cause users to sign up for yet another social network.    Connecting professionals isn't our business.  That's theirs.  We just figured it makes sense to be discovering careers and connecting to professionals in an integrated way, that's all...a nice feature.  If we just have to create links to say, "Go here and create a LinkedIn account while you're discovering careers on our site, you'll thank us for it", we'll do that, but it seems silly. 

Path 101 on its “status,” as of October 11: “NO assets, NO revenues, a two day old empty checking account…and now, back to actually building this service.”"

Just to update, we'll have money in our checking account by the end of the week, from Fred Wilson (who leaked his own involvement before we were even ready!) and others.  As for what else we can do today, that's not what this post was about, mostly because the LinkedIn API isn't ready today either.  If we're building the service TODAY, does it make sense to speak up when we're done, or when we actually have time to integrate with their proposed API based on our proposed vision?  This is something that happens in the startup world all the time.  Someone plans on building something and they talk to others in the same space to get a sense of how they could work together in the future.  It's pretty commonplace.

This post also seems to imply that if you're friends or family with someone, they don't belong in your LinkedIn network.

Yo, did you say my family is not professional??  Oh, snap!  :)   Actually, I got my first job in the Waterhouse Securities mailroom through my older (by 17 years) brother, who was their Regional Vice President of the whole 30+ office Midwest branch at the time... and his network would probably be highly accretive to LinkedIn.  Perhaps if there was an easier way for his techie little brother to show him the ropes on it, they'd benefit. 

But you're the expert on LinkedIn, right?  You and your.. um...wait... 14 connections???   Are you serious?  I was assuming I'd get ripped apart by someone who is even a more passionate user of the service than I am.  (See my "Getting Started with LinkedIn" post.)  Don't get me wrong, I love a good back and forth about what that service needs or doesn't need, but I was assuming it would come from someone who uses it a little more.

Ok, so maybe it was better off that there are no comments on InsideChatter, because I had more to say and it wouldn't have fit. 

We did get some good positive comments, too.  Its nice to know that others seem to be behind what we're doing:

Comments from Fred's post

Comments on our post

Thanks to all who've been really supportive and even those who haven't!  I'll definitely be adding Donna's blog to my blogroll to get her feedback in the future...  because just listening to praise is never a good idea.

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Tags: linkedinpath101

The Uber Anti-Stealth Meme is spreading....

"Inspired by Path 101 anti-stealth startup philosophy, I decided to make public some of the business documents I wrote for Nouncer. Reading the Path 101 blog, I really enjoyed following their progress. My first reaction was they are making a mistake by revealing too much, but when I actually considered what they might be losing, I could not come up with a single point. At the end of the day, it takes a lot of storytelling to get a startup off the ground and you end up telling people everything anyway, with or without an NDA."

from Hueniverse: What’s the Plan, Stan?

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Tags: anti-stealthweb2.0 entrepreneurship startups

Nukes!

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Here's my "poke the bear" post for the week....  This is mostly reprinted from a fantastic thread going on over on the nextNY listserv.  16 authors, 33 replies so far....(Join up to see it)

"The space issue is BS.

The lack of technical people issue as a NYC specific issue is BS. 

The good lawyer issue is BS.

The lack of funding issue is BS.

:)

Here's my theory:

If you are aiming to build a successful startup, anywhere, I feel like you need to know your niche through and through.  If you are building an events database for uber-trendy clubs, not only should you be a club kid (or have one on your team) but every single last club owner and club promoter in NYC should not only know who you are, but think you are the shizzle.

If you're just someone with an idea for someone else's community, don't expect anyone to help you out.  But if you're an athlete with an idea for a sports related service, someone who deals with wealthy museum patrons who wants to build enterprise software for galleries, or a hedge fund analyst that wants to build a Lamborghini aggregator, you'll have no trouble finding these resources.

On Space:  When I left Oddcast, I hung out at the extra desk at Union Square Ventures because I had a good relationship with them.  Surely there is some company on the face of the earth that you have built enough goodwill with that they'd let you hangout at a desk or two for a short while to get on your feet.  If you don't even have that kind of a network, I question whether or not you're ever going to gather enough resources to succeed or whether you have the network needed to really catapult your business.  When you have 5 people, you're at a different stage and not many people are building something with a team of 5 without at least a little angel money.  If you have angel money, you should be able to afford Techspace or Sunshine Suites.

On Finding Tech Talent:  No, there aren't people hanging around with "Free agent" slapped across their forehead dying to work on your company...  you need to find the perfect guy and convince them that they have to work on your idea.  If you can't convince a tech person to work with you, then maybe your idea isn't as good as you think it is.  There are plenty of freelancers around and people who work at big boring companies who would commit to a project if it excited them.  If you cannot find them with your pick axe and shovel, good luck finding the right people in your client's organizations to sell your product to or finding your first biz dev person, sales person, marketing person... good people don't fall from the sky.  Go build out your network.  If you're an entrepreneur with less than 50 LinkedIn connections, don't expect to find anyone to do anything.

And yes, anti-stealth works for this.  Talk to everyone you can about this.  It turns out that one of my college roommates (this random guy who filled in someone else's spot last minute) was one of the first employees at a successful NYC area startup... he just wrote me yesterday asking if there's a spot at Path 101...  I asked him about his availability back in the summer and he turned me down, but then I think he's been lingering on the blog and our last post seems to have seeped in... we're having lunch next week to talk about it.

The lack of lawyers... also bs.  You can go two ways on this...One, you can go ultra cheap to get your company incorporated, but that's not even a must, unless you try for funding.  del.icio.us was not a company until AFTER it had 10,000 users.  Are cheap lawyers good?  Probably not.. but can they do a simple incorporation and basic angel agreements...  sure...  and if you get enough traction to do a real round, a good lawyer will fix all those mistakes, but it doesn't matter because you'll have money and traction at that point.  Or, if you have the afformentioned network, you can find one of the 4 or 5 good startup lawyers in NYC and get them to work with you.  And they're available, too... Wilson Sonsini does their free startup classes, Jay Rand has volunteered his time at a nextNY event...people within this group have worked with this caliber of legal professional before... they're not that hard to find.

Lack of funding?  Are you serious?  In NYC?  Has anyone seen the sheer number of luxury apartment buildings going up around us?  There's no shortage of money going around this city.  Is it tech angel money? Nope.   BUT, go back to the network point.  If you don't have anyone in your network that could chip in to help based on your reputation with them or that could make an introduction, I fall back on the idea that you're going to have an absolutely terrible time getting just about every other kind of resource you need. 

Entrepreneurs are not lone rangers! 

They're more like that stupid Verizon commerical where the cell user walks around with the whole Verizon team behind them.  I know a guy who used to work at an ibank who went back to his former bosses to get funding...  the guy worked his but off for them for a few years and not only did they come through, but one of the guys got so interested in his business that he joined it.

Frankly, I think too many wanna-be entrepreneurs are just lazy... and that's a lot of what I saw in the crowd at StartupCamp... lazy entrepreneurs who didn't want to do the legwork of getting others behind their idea to support it.  They just complain that there are no tech people, no VCs who want to take risk, no space.  Excuse excuse excuse.  (PS... If your response to this is, "Hey, I'm working hard on getting people to support my idea and talking the talk and walking the walk... I'm not lazy!" then that part didn't apply to you... you're right, you're not lazy.)

Its not hard to build yourself into one of the most widely known people in your market...  Take Scott Karp, for example.  He's jumped into the startup scene after years of working and building his name up  on the publishing industry as the Director of Digital Strategy for Atlantic Monthly and through the Publishing 2.0 blog.  I'm sure he didn't struggle for funding, space, lawyers or tech people because he became a leader in his field first, THEN went out and harvested his network and goodwill to help him with his startup.

In the Valley, I think you can just code something and someone will bet on your idea...  here, most of the time, you actually need the additional qualification of being someone to somebody (even just one supportive angel) in order to get them to help you out.  I don't actually think that's such bad hurdle to have in front of scarce resources, because ideas (like lightweight Web 2.0 apps) are a dime a dozen.

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Tags: web2.0, startups, entrepreneurship, nyc

One of the most interesting encounters I have with people is when they figure out that I was the front line of business plan defense at Union Square Ventures in 2005-06--roughly the time period they submitted their business plan. "Ah...I know your name....You turned my business plan down."

:)

What's a guy to say there, "Um...yeah...sorry."

Once in a while, you get someone who bashes all VCs...at least all the ones who turned them down. My favorite thing is to ask them what they learned about their interactions with VCs, like this exchange I had the other night.

"So what did you learn?"

"I learned that VCs only like to invest when all the risk is off the table."

"Ok, and what did you learn about your idea?"

"I learned that we're going to be bigger than Facebook and we don't need those guys to be successful."

Ummm...ok. Not exactly the learning experience I was hoping for.

I've said this before but if you can't take anything away from a conversation with someone who turns you down...no lessons learned, you're not backable. Period. Its fine if you believe strongly in your idea, but you have to respect the fact that the guy on the other side of the table is no slouch either, and has seen way more startup ideas than just yours. So, perhaps that person is terribly wrong about your business, but even then, it points to an issue in your presentation. How could you have made a more convincing argument?

Try and take something more away from every "no" than just frustration and spite.

I saw Fred's post on Flock so I decided to try it out again.

It's actually very cool...

First off, I've got all my various friend feeds automatically updating along the sidebar.

Twitter?  Check.
Facebook?  Check.
Flickr?  Check.

Then, I've finally got a web plugin for blogging that works, because Sribefire/Performancing never would for me.

I can automatically upload pictures to Flickr, from the web for from anywhere on my computer.

There's a favorites button that can be configured to post to del.icio.us.

Even a feed reader, but I don't use that because I need Newsgator to sync to my phone... otherwise I would.

Best part about it is most of the Firefox plugins work with it, like my Forecastfox. 

I think I'm a convert... this is a very cool browsing experience and it combines a lot of things I needed to use separate sites and clients to do.

Go get the 1.0 beta and check it out.

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Tags: flockbrowser web blogging

Here's something from the "This should just friggin' work" file.

I've been using Gmail on WM6 Outlook through its POP3 connection and it barely works.  Downloading mail usually works, but sending is terrible. On Friday, I accidentally left someone hanging at lunch because he never got the e-mail I sent from my phone. 

So, instead, I tried downloading the Gmail Java client.  It downloads fine, but when I try to run it, it says I have the wrong certificate.  After some Google searches, I thought I found the right one straight from Verisign, installed it, but I still get the same message.  Ridiculous!  The client downloads but it just won't connect with the server. 

I've looked at a few mobile web apps for e-mail, like OneMail, but I feel pretty stupid shelling out $30 for a mail client when the one I have should already just work!

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Seth Goldstein told CNN/Money that he, ""figured out a way to get companies started in New York." It was never easy, though. "People there are always dragging you down," he says. "They don't want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.""

He added, "Because New York is so mercenary, I always overindexed toward the missionary," he explains. "Out here, I'm way more comfortable being mercenary. Hyperbole and philosophy don't go very far in the Valley."

Meanwhile, Steph, a graphic designer muses about the difference on her blog:

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Tags: nextNYgraphicdesign web2.0 nyc

Ever since we wound up at Return Path, I've been thinking a lot about the model of an incubator.  We heard at the recent city council hearing that incubators were tough to keep up from an economic perspective and required all sorts of subsidies, either from government or academic institution.

But my situation isn't like that.  Does having us use two empty desk cost Return Path real money?  Sure... but how much?  We use normal bandwidth for our regular office activities and hardly ever use the phone.  We borrow a conference room about twice a week and we probably take two sodas/juices a day each from the free machine.  I'd be surprised if our actual incremental cash cost was $150 a month.  That's because there's already an existing, revenue generating organization in place there.  When you try and create an incubator from scratch in an incubator-only space, you couldn't possibly get anywhere near that.

Think about the conference rooms alone.  We would have never rented a place on our own with conference rooms, because we'd never use them enough.  However, a mid-size company probably only use their own conference rooms, at most, half the time.

That's not to mention that RP could potentially get from us.  We do like to think of ourselves as two cutting edge startup guys that are "in the know" about things like social media, data (Alex's specialty), etc., and we're pretty well connected into the community of entrepreneurs.  I've already spoken some people here about doing some knowledge sharing sessions and we're happy to pitch in with some feedback where we can, because we're grateful for the space.

If we were social media consultants, what would that have cost the company?  Certainly a lot more than the desks did.   Seems to me that it could very well balance out if the exchange was a couple of desks for 5-10 hours of mindshare a month.  Now, Return Path may not need that from us, because they're pretty savvy themselves, but what about a big print media company looking to expand their web presence?  I'm sure Jeff Jarvis would agree that rather than move forward in an echo chamber, a media company like that might benefit from having a few startup folks around the office to help them out.  Perhaps they could be instilled as  VPs of Common Web Sense.

So here's the deal I propose that companies with 50 or more people think about:

Give:

• 1-3 desks per seed stage startup
• Internet connection for normal office usage
• Reasonable access to unused conference rooms (prob not more than 5-7 hours/wk, but could be more if they're usually pretty empty)
• Building security passes

Get:

• Goodwill in the startup community
• 5-10 hours of mindshare from people who are thinking out of the box (which is why it makes sense to find startups in your vertical, too)

Similar models have worked in the art world, where artists occupy unused commercial real estate spaces as studios and galleries. 

It's also a very green model, too, if you think about it.  It's about efficient use of existing space.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Questions?  Diggs?  Tags?  Any companies want to sign up?