Links for the Day

Meg Whitman stepping down from eBay. Ebay - if you need a new CEO I'm right here!

Mint.com is the "axe body spray" of web start-ups. I actually worked on a project that is pretty much identical to what Mint ended up being a few years back. If only my bosses had the vision to see beyond an immediate paycheck and get something funded and running I could be rich right now.

TechCrunch on what makes Digg work.

Some random bits as I catch up on the news

Network Solutions has to find ways to get people to buy domains from them given that they charge three to four times as much as other registrars. Valleywag reports that if someone searches for a domain on NetSol they register it, effectively locking it up for five days. Bastards. Glad I don't use them anymore. I'm not happy with GoDaddy's treatment of me but at least they let me know when they are going to be ripping me off.

TechCrunch reports that Zillow.com is adding millions of listings to their database. I tried it once, didn't give me any useful info whatsoever. Maybe I'll check it out when I'm looking to sell my house, if they are still around.

Paul Boutin gives his opinions of people on Valleywag. Something to do with Nick Denton's new pay structure. Hopefully this gives you a little bit of extra traffic, Paul.

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.

More from Friday

Google is apparently getting kind of desperate to get it's radio advertising program, Google Audio, adopted. They are now offering $2,000 free to anyone who spends $1,000. Tech Crunch reports.

This is but the latest piece of evidence that, while Google may be golden in online advertising, its forays into off-line advertising have yet to catch on. Google must be having a real hard time selling those radio ads to have to resort to such a blatant attempt to buy market share. It’s not the first time it’s tried such tactics either. Last year, in an effort to jumpstart Google Checkout, for instance, Google paid $10 for every $30 in sales that merchants directed through its PayPal competitor. I’m not sure how well that went. But last time I checked, PayPal was still around.

Just because Google has cash to burn doesn’t mean it should use that cash to try to buy market share. If it truly has a better way of buying and selling radio ads, advertisers and radio stations will quickly figure that out on their own. It is not a good sign when Google has to resort to paying customers to try out a new product.

And for some bizarre reason Google is placing ads for rehab centers and drug addiction treatment on this blog. There is only one mention of drugs, which is yesterdays post about Count Bismarck's OD. So that is odd.

My wife just called me having seen a commercial for a drug for restless leg syndrome, that mentioned side effects including the urge to gamble or have sex. So I looked it up and there it is. At least it doesn't make your arms turn purple and fall off, or cause instant death like some other medications we see advertised.

And, from Valleywag, Jason Calacanis finally says something that makes sense!

An interesting chart from the WSJ about P/E and dividend yields.

Webb Alert

This is the only video podcast I watch. I am not a big fan of video podcasts - they take too much time. An audio podcast I can listen to while doing something else but a video I can not do other stuff - I need my full attention on it.

This one is less than five minutes long, so it doesn't take a whole lot of time to watch it, it is about tech news, which I am of course extremely interested in, and it doesn't hurt that the host, Morgan Webb, is unbelievably gorgeous. And a geek to boot! She also hosts some gaming TV show - X-Play, I think - on the G4 network, which I have never heard of.

Morgan, if you ever happen to stumble on this site, I will divorce my wife to go out with you! Well, not really (except that I would.) Please don't make me sleep on the couch tonight!

Here is today's cast, conveniently embeddable:



A list of business changing videos. As per my aforementioned aversion to watching anything longer than 5 minutes on the internet I have not watched these videos. But they seem interesting.