Some more stuff for the long weekend

Apparently everyone in Silicon Valley in on drugs. That explains a lot. Also - I want some!

Stinking rich hedge fund managers drink at little dive bars in NYC - they're just like us!

A not very funny interview with the very funny Sacha Baron Cohen.

And a review of a book that sounds very interesting to me.

Year end market summary

Today's Wallstrip. Kind of stupid but slightly amusing.

Take the Wallstrip survey!

There are only two vlogs I watch regularly - this one and Webb Alert. We already know my feelings on Morgan however I actually find this one entertaining and informative.

Some stuff from yesterday

Interesting article on Starbucks, from the NYT.

Goldman reports huge profits. Average bonus to be about $600k. Why didn't I get a job there? Oh yeah, it was because of the ridiculous work hours and the fact that I don't think I'd fit in at an i-bank as I am not a total ass. But interesting article.

Carl from Aqua Teen on the Mitchell Report:

Dave Winer giving some good thoughts on software design. Very interesting stuff.

A less interesting article on how much money people make in NYC.

Squidoo, Knols and Wikipedia.

And about drug addicted doctors. Lovely. Something else to worry about.

Some tidbits for Monday

Google is launching something called "knols" which are basically a cross between Mahalo, Wikipedia and Squidoo. TechCrunch has some good thoughts on this idea.

From Valleywag comes Google CEO Eric Schmidts latest extramarital relationship.

Philip Kaplan, founder of AdBrite, is apparently the same Pud that everyone loved to hate back in the last bubble when he was doing Fucked Company. Good for him. AdBrite seems like a pretty solid service.

Is the Wii shortage bad planning on Nintendo's part or a smart scheme to build up buzz? While the former may seem incredibly stupid I believe it to be the case, as people are buying other gaming systems when they can't get a Wii.

Update on GoDaddy Situation

I now have my domains parked at a couple different places - parked.com, sedo.com and I'm waiting for confirmation on another.

I like parked.com the best so far because it has the nicest interface - not as nice as GoDaddy's but way better features. The only thing I don't like is that you don't get ads right away - you get a list of categories, related words, etc. which you have to click on to get ads.

I am going to start transferring my domains elsewhere when the registrations start to expire on March of 2008. I am trying to find a cheap registrar but the only ones cheaper than GoDaddy are places I've never heard of like MadDog, PlanetOnline, ipowerweb, netfirms, and some others.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to cheap, good registrars?

How GoDaddy screwed me and why I am done with them

A few months ago I started using GoDaddy's cashparking program. It basically lets you put Google ads on your parked domains, which GoDaddy does anyway, but they give you a cut of the amount you make. So you pay them $3.99 a month to get a cut of the money they make off of your domain anyway.

It doesn't sound like such a good deal... Why use it? Why not just park your own domain? Well Google's AdSense for Domains is closed and you would have to set up each individual domain on it's own. And it wasn't such a bad deal. After two months I had added all 100 or so off my domains to this program, and I was making a couple hundred a month.

A few weeks ago I started having problems with some of the CashParked pages. Some were showing blank, others were showing links which did not work. I was in frequent contact with GoDaddy's tech support and they were unable to help me and Google still has not responded to me. But I spent a lot of time looking at my domains and clicking on them - and getting errors for each click.

Last night I receive an email from GoDaddy saying that due to a pattern of fraudulent activity they were suspending my account. I have no idea what that pattern may be other than my testing the sites constantly for about two weeks. And here's the kicker - they not only cancel my account, they also keep the money they owe me, and any unpaid money as well. They pay about a month or two behind so they are keeping two or three months of my money.

I can easily find another registrar with a similar program, and I actually did find a third party that offers a much better deal than GoDaddy. But I liked GoDaddy. Well, I don't like them any more. Unless they get this resolved I am going to transfer all of my domains elsewhere, at great expense to me, just to prove a point.

I read an interview with GoDaddy's CEO, whose name I can not recall, and he was very much into customer service and providing the user with a great experience. His name is Bob Parons. Well this is a spectacular example of screwing the user and not providing any decent service. I have not been able to get any information on what patterns they saw that caused them to do this, I have gotten no response regarding my requests for them to look at my emails to tech support.

So basically GoDaddy just stole my money. I am extremely angry and I will not ever register anything with GoDaddy again. I'd rather pay the extra money elsewhere and be dealing with a registrar who is not going to screw me over and steal my money.

Isn't this time of year supposed to be slow?

The traditional holiday slow-down is not occurring at my job, so I haven't had time to keep up with the news or post here. I'm living on Provigil, which is the greatest thing ever. Except that I am totally exhausted when it wears off.

Some tidbits to hold you over until my workload eases up:

Fark allegedly tries to trademark NSFW. Good luck with that.

On the future of Ajax.

New startup does something to help people decide whether to buy or rent. I haven't quite figured out what that is yet or how it works, but it's a cool idea for people living in big, expensive cities.

Silicon Alley Insider names Top 100 Most Influential people, and there's also a "People's Choice" with less votes than nominees.

Robert Scoble leaves PodTech. Why this is interesting I have no idea. I have never heard of PodTech outside the confines of Scoble.

Fred Wilson throws a party? Why wasn't I invited? Maybe I should have nominated myself to the Silicon Alley Insider's 100 most influential people list.

Facebook's guerilla marketing bible or some such ridiculous thing.

Random Stuff for the Weekend

Carl from Aqua Teen discussing sports and just being awesome in general:

Reporter tests airline security by blowing up a plane, from the ONN:


Reporters Expose Airport Security Lapses By Blowing Up Plane

Old cartoon mashup of X-Men's Juggernaut. Something to do with the latest Brett Ratner craptacular movie. My boss loves Juggernaut so I find this amusing:

Google Adsense Outage?

A bunch of my domains that run AdSense are showing up with:

Sorry, there are no results for your search. Search again

I don't know if there is a problem with the keywords, or if there is an outage or what. A bunch of my other domains are working fine. It seems to be about half of them that are not working.

Does anyone know what is going on? I emailed Google this morning but no response.

Web 2.0 Bubble Song and Video

Plus Facebook Beacon steals and transmits data around. There's a surprise.

And an article about how Facebook is dying! I like this guy! Let the feeding frenzy begin.

And here is my comment on the article linked above:

I agree that the article is correct. I have been saying the exact same thing for months now - and I am not a member of the press.

The problem is not that Facebook doesn't play nice with the press. The problem is that it has very little revenue and with advertisers jumping ship now that will likely stay the same or go down in the future.

The thing is that while everyone uses Facebook - people don't seem to click on ads on it. That is not an opinion, check the research or take a look at Facebook's revenue, which is expected to be $150 mil for 2007, which is not a whole lot for a company valued at $15b.

If things start to go bad and the VCs jump ship Facebook will be hung out to dry with no way of raising capital. I don't think they will go out of business but I would expect them to be bought by a Microsoft or something.

Jakob and Julia Parody from Vimeo

Jakob and Julia from Loren Feldman on Vimeo.

And Hank Azaria discussing the Simpsons with some random guy:



And there were some bikini pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt and apparently she was getting grief for being fat? Well she has a decent and intelligent response. I hate this culture that makes women think that anything bigger than a size 0 is fat. I don't know a single man who doesn't like a nice curvy woman. Actually I do know one but that's not a lot!

And finally, the internets cats and dogs are going on strike to support the WGA:



UPDATE - Valleywag knows why Jakob was really fired, and it has nothing to do with Julia's breasts or bong hits! They speculate that it is because no one actually uses Vimeo. Even though it is technically better than YouTube no users is not good.

And that is all I have to say on this subject.

Vimeo and an Employee

So apparently a few days ago one of Vimeo's founders left the company after a tiff with IACI President Barry Diller. I'm not going to name this guy because every time I do he comes here and writes a stupid post, but here is a picture of him doing a bong hit. Apparently this picture has something to do with his exit.

As does this one, allegedly of his girlfriend Julia Allison's breasts, which I like very much:



Good for him. Sticking it to the man. Except he doesn't have a job now. And oh yeah... Bong hits are cool because we are all 15 years old. Drugs are cool! Unemployment is cool! Julia's breasts I can't really comment sarcastically about because they are cool, very cool.

Noncompete Clauses, Advertising and Natalie Del Conte

Natalie Del Conte is moving to NY! Sweet! She is so cute. Although I will likely never meet her it is nice knowing that she is close by.

AdBrite is switching AVN Ads over to Black Label Ads and Etology is taking over AVN Ads. I use both AdBrite and Etology so it doesn't really effect me at all.

Fred Wilson on why start-ups fail, from a VCs perspective.

Some guy wants to get rid of non-compete clauses. That would be nice as I have one in my contract. However I have heard that they are extremely difficult to enforce from the company's perspective. Apparently the courts are not too keen on letting companies deny people the right to make a living. Something about the Constitution.

Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero - everyone loves it, but I just don't get it. On today's Wallstrip Lindsay asks a good question - "Why not just learn to play the real guitar?" I already know how to play guitar and while I might be a decade or so out of practice I think that playing Guitar Hero would just confuse my real guitar playing.

Are there any people out there who know how to play the real guitar who also play guitar hero? Doesn't it seem a bit silly if you can actually play the instrument to play a video game where you push buttons?

Feedback or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the Wallstrip in question:



And here is a text message I got from a friend/coworker who is really into Guitar Hero last night: "going to be laate. Drunkar sis weddimg"