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"SYDNEY (Reuters) - A man in Australia is auctioning his life -- his house, his job, his clothes and his friends -- on eBay, after his marriage broke up, saying he wants to start a new life.
"SYDNEY (Reuters) - A man in Australia is auctioning his life -- his house, his job, his clothes and his friends -- on eBay, after his marriage broke up, saying he wants to start a new life.
"It's time to move. A completely fresh start. I want to see where life takes me," Ian Usher, 44, told Australian television on Tuesday from Perth in Western Australia state.
Usher said he was auctioning his life as "a package" with his house in Perth valued at around A$420,000 (US$385,000).
"Hi there, my name is Ian Usher, and I have had enough of my life! I don't want it any more! You can have it if you like!," reads his Web site www.alife4sale.com, which has a link to eBay for bidders.
Usher said his life auction, which starts on June 22, included not only his house, a car, a motorbike, a jet ski and a spa, but also an introduction to "great friends" and a job at a rug shop in Perth for a trial two-week period.
"When it's over, I will just walk out the front door, take my wallet, my passport and start a new life," he said.
Usher said his ex-wife had heard of his auction.
"Her last comment was, 'it seems a bit mental to me'," he said."
from "www.wsbtv.com"
"COBB COUNTY, Ga. -- It’s one thing to bounce a check and it’s another to be so far in the red Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Donald Trump combined couldn’t come close to bailing you out. A Cobb County man got a letter from his bank with that very shocking news.
“And I open up the letter and I look at it and I’m like, ‘No, you’ve got to be kidding me,’ said Joe Martins.
Martins said he recently closed an account at Wachovia Bank and made good on an outstanding check. He just got a letter about the closure and his negative balance -- $211,010,028,257,303.00. That’s $211 trillion.
The letter includes the clarification, “no cents.”
“I didn’t know what to think. Obviously $211 trillion is a little above what I put in my bank account,” said Martins.
$211 trillion is more than 70 times the entire federal budget.
Still, the letter said Wachovia was reporting him to an agency that rates risky bank customers.
“I don’t own $211 trillion but because it is automated and reported to check systems, I assume it will be reported to my credit at some point,” said Martins.
He said Wachovia had made mistakes on his accounts before so he called Channel 2 first. Wachovia blamed the letter on a word processing error and the office of the president is sending a letter of apology.
“They tell me it’s going to be resolved but I’m not sure that it will,” said Martins. “I closed my account today.”
Since it is a closed account it is now safe to say the dollar figure in the letter matched the account number.
Martins said Wachovia told him late Friday afternoon they never did report him for his negative balance. Wachovia vice president David Oliver told Channel 2, “We can certainly understand how our recent correspondence with Mr. Martins about his account would be cause for great concern. I can confirm that there will be no adverse effect on Mr. Martins’ credit report related to the letter he received. Also, I can confirm that this was an isolated error specifically related to his account.”"
"COBB COUNTY, Ga. -- It’s one thing to bounce a check and it’s another to be so far in the red Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Donald Trump combined couldn’t come close to bailing you out. A Cobb County man got a letter from his bank with that very shocking news.
“And I open up the letter and I look at it and I’m like, ‘No, you’ve got to be kidding me,’ said Joe Martins.
Martins said he recently closed an account at Wachovia Bank and made good on an outstanding check. He just got a letter about the closure and his negative balance -- $211,010,028,257,303.00. That’s $211 trillion.
The letter includes the clarification, “no cents.”
“I didn’t know what to think. Obviously $211 trillion is a little above what I put in my bank account,” said Martins.
$211 trillion is more than 70 times the entire federal budget.
Still, the letter said Wachovia was reporting him to an agency that rates risky bank customers.
“I don’t own $211 trillion but because it is automated and reported to check systems, I assume it will be reported to my credit at some point,” said Martins.
He said Wachovia had made mistakes on his accounts before so he called Channel 2 first. Wachovia blamed the letter on a word processing error and the office of the president is sending a letter of apology.
“They tell me it’s going to be resolved but I’m not sure that it will,” said Martins. “I closed my account today.”
Since it is a closed account it is now safe to say the dollar figure in the letter matched the account number.
Martins said Wachovia told him late Friday afternoon they never did report him for his negative balance. Wachovia vice president David Oliver told Channel 2, “We can certainly understand how our recent correspondence with Mr. Martins about his account would be cause for great concern. I can confirm that there will be no adverse effect on Mr. Martins’ credit report related to the letter he received. Also, I can confirm that this was an isolated error specifically related to his account.”"
from: tech.yahoo.com
"Want an unlocked version of the iPhone that's actually sanctioned by Apple? Then wing your way to France next month, when wireless operator Orange begins selling an unlocked iPhone—with Cupertino's blessing.
OK, "blessing" might be a bit of an overstatement. Apple's hand was forced by French law, which forbids the sale of cell phones that are tied to a particular carrier (hmmm, sounds like a good idea, no?). The International Herald Tribune reports that yesterday's announcement of Orange winning the iPhone deal in France was delayed for nearly a month as the carrier and Apple hammered out financial terms; an Orange rep denied that the unlocked iPhone was a factor in the delay.
Details about unlocked iPhone sales in France are still sketchy, however. What we do know is that a locked version of Orange's iPhone will retail for 399 euros (or about $560) when it debuts in November; the sticker price for an unlocked iPhone is still under wraps, but it "will cost more," the IHT reports. And here's a little something to consider for potential iPhone importers: the French iPhone will, of course, have all its menus written in French, and the last time I checked, I couldn't find a "Lauguage" setting on my iPhone. Any ideas out there, folks?"
"Want an unlocked version of the iPhone that's actually sanctioned by Apple? Then wing your way to France next month, when wireless operator Orange begins selling an unlocked iPhone—with Cupertino's blessing.
OK, "blessing" might be a bit of an overstatement. Apple's hand was forced by French law, which forbids the sale of cell phones that are tied to a particular carrier (hmmm, sounds like a good idea, no?). The International Herald Tribune reports that yesterday's announcement of Orange winning the iPhone deal in France was delayed for nearly a month as the carrier and Apple hammered out financial terms; an Orange rep denied that the unlocked iPhone was a factor in the delay.
Details about unlocked iPhone sales in France are still sketchy, however. What we do know is that a locked version of Orange's iPhone will retail for 399 euros (or about $560) when it debuts in November; the sticker price for an unlocked iPhone is still under wraps, but it "will cost more," the IHT reports. And here's a little something to consider for potential iPhone importers: the French iPhone will, of course, have all its menus written in French, and the last time I checked, I couldn't find a "Lauguage" setting on my iPhone. Any ideas out there, folks?"
from: tech.yahoo.com
"The enticing Sprint Touch is sexy, alright, what with its touch-screen display and iPhone-like appearance. I got some hands-on time with Touch here at CTIA, and while the initial 3D menu is certainly tap-worthy, I was reaching for the stylus once I got to the standard Windows Mobile interface.
The 3G-capable Touch ($250 with a two-year contract, available November 4) is definitely a sleek phone; it's small and slim enough to fit in a jeans pocket, and nearly featureless save for the nearly three-inch touch screen, a navigation pad and the twin soft keys. Hit the power button and you get the "TouchFlo" interface: a 3D cube that gives you quick access to the Touch's main functions (namely messaging, Web browsing, and multimedia), as well as favorite contacts. You can get to the TouchFlo cube any time by touching the Sprint logo just below the screen and swiping upward, while swiping left or right swivels the cube around; strangely, though, this "cube" really only has three sides (for apps, multimedia, and contacts), and there's nothing on the top or the bottom of the cube. Still, it's a cool-looking, clever interface, and I got a kick out of swiping and tapping it. Especially nice is the contacts pane; just click an empty box to add a contact, which appears as a photo (provided your contact has an image associated with it).
Pretty nice, but once you get beyond TouchFlo, you're left with...the pro version of Windows Mobile 6, a decidedly fingertip-averse interface. To be fair, HTC (the manufacturer of the Touch) has clearly done its best to make Windows Mobile at least a bit touch-friendly: for exampe, the home page features a handy tabbed app that gives you a quick view of your various inboxes, as well as the local weather, a program manager, and ringer profiles. The mobile Outlook also features a modified virtual keypad for tapping out messages; however, instead of getting a full set of virtual QWERTY keys, you get a pseudo-QWERTY key layout spread over 14 keys (similar to the SureType keypad on the BlackBerry Pearl). I tried typing out a few messages, and it was a tedious process; I had to press relatively hard for my taps to register, and the phone's predictave text software seemed a little twitchy (or at least it was on the demo model here at CTIA). I wouldn't be too eager to compose a lengthy e-mail on this thing.
Of course, the Touch comes with a stylus, so you'll be able to access all the other Windows Mobile 6 features with a few taps of the stick: Internet Explorer, the mobile Office suite, Windows Media Player, and other WM apps are present and accounted for. You also be able to watch streaming Sprint TV videos and download full music tracks from Sprint Music, which is always a nice bonus. That said, as I've noted before, the Touch lacks Wi-Fi, and I've yet to hear any mention of GPS.
So, does the Touch measure up to the iPhone? In my few minutes with the Touch, I'd have to say that its touch UI can't hold a candle to the iPhone's intuitive, easy-to-tap interface. But if you're looking for document editing, full Exchange support, and full-on streaming video (none of which are possible on the iPhone, save for its streaming YouTube app), the Touch could make for an interesting choice—provided you're not composing massive e-mails on the road. Now, if the Touch had a slide-out QWERTY keypad...well, that would be another thing altogether."
"The enticing Sprint Touch is sexy, alright, what with its touch-screen display and iPhone-like appearance. I got some hands-on time with Touch here at CTIA, and while the initial 3D menu is certainly tap-worthy, I was reaching for the stylus once I got to the standard Windows Mobile interface.
The 3G-capable Touch ($250 with a two-year contract, available November 4) is definitely a sleek phone; it's small and slim enough to fit in a jeans pocket, and nearly featureless save for the nearly three-inch touch screen, a navigation pad and the twin soft keys. Hit the power button and you get the "TouchFlo" interface: a 3D cube that gives you quick access to the Touch's main functions (namely messaging, Web browsing, and multimedia), as well as favorite contacts. You can get to the TouchFlo cube any time by touching the Sprint logo just below the screen and swiping upward, while swiping left or right swivels the cube around; strangely, though, this "cube" really only has three sides (for apps, multimedia, and contacts), and there's nothing on the top or the bottom of the cube. Still, it's a cool-looking, clever interface, and I got a kick out of swiping and tapping it. Especially nice is the contacts pane; just click an empty box to add a contact, which appears as a photo (provided your contact has an image associated with it).
Pretty nice, but once you get beyond TouchFlo, you're left with...the pro version of Windows Mobile 6, a decidedly fingertip-averse interface. To be fair, HTC (the manufacturer of the Touch) has clearly done its best to make Windows Mobile at least a bit touch-friendly: for exampe, the home page features a handy tabbed app that gives you a quick view of your various inboxes, as well as the local weather, a program manager, and ringer profiles. The mobile Outlook also features a modified virtual keypad for tapping out messages; however, instead of getting a full set of virtual QWERTY keys, you get a pseudo-QWERTY key layout spread over 14 keys (similar to the SureType keypad on the BlackBerry Pearl). I tried typing out a few messages, and it was a tedious process; I had to press relatively hard for my taps to register, and the phone's predictave text software seemed a little twitchy (or at least it was on the demo model here at CTIA). I wouldn't be too eager to compose a lengthy e-mail on this thing.
Of course, the Touch comes with a stylus, so you'll be able to access all the other Windows Mobile 6 features with a few taps of the stick: Internet Explorer, the mobile Office suite, Windows Media Player, and other WM apps are present and accounted for. You also be able to watch streaming Sprint TV videos and download full music tracks from Sprint Music, which is always a nice bonus. That said, as I've noted before, the Touch lacks Wi-Fi, and I've yet to hear any mention of GPS.
So, does the Touch measure up to the iPhone? In my few minutes with the Touch, I'd have to say that its touch UI can't hold a candle to the iPhone's intuitive, easy-to-tap interface. But if you're looking for document editing, full Exchange support, and full-on streaming video (none of which are possible on the iPhone, save for its streaming YouTube app), the Touch could make for an interesting choice—provided you're not composing massive e-mails on the road. Now, if the Touch had a slide-out QWERTY keypad...well, that would be another thing altogether."
from: Reuters
"11% of Americans Would Implant Internet into Brain Powered by BlogBurst
POSTED: Wednesday, October 24, 2007
FROM BLOG: IP Democracy - IP Democracy is a multi-media, blog-based forum that delivers innovative thinking about IP media and society.
The following blog post is from an independent writer and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.com.
The 463's Sean Garrett tipped me off to another fun poll conducted by his firm in conjunction with Zogby International. The survey of around 10,000 adults found out lots of interesting things that we probably didn't need to know in the first place, such as:
-- Around 11% of respondents said they would be "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to implant a device into their brains that enable them to use their minds to access the Internet if it could be done safely? Aside from the fact that the 463 is spinning this statistic as a low number ("only 11%" they say), who thought up this question?
--Around 25% of respondents think the Internet is a substitute for a significant other, at least for short periods of time.
On a more serious note, the poll also found an uncomfortably high but still minority level of support for government regulations that involve Internet content. Around 29% of the respondents think that TV-type indecency and obscenity regulations should be applied to the Internet and 25% think a ratings system should apply to Internet content."
"11% of Americans Would Implant Internet into Brain Powered by BlogBurst
POSTED: Wednesday, October 24, 2007
FROM BLOG: IP Democracy - IP Democracy is a multi-media, blog-based forum that delivers innovative thinking about IP media and society.
The following blog post is from an independent writer and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.com.
The 463's Sean Garrett tipped me off to another fun poll conducted by his firm in conjunction with Zogby International. The survey of around 10,000 adults found out lots of interesting things that we probably didn't need to know in the first place, such as:
-- Around 11% of respondents said they would be "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to implant a device into their brains that enable them to use their minds to access the Internet if it could be done safely? Aside from the fact that the 463 is spinning this statistic as a low number ("only 11%" they say), who thought up this question?
--Around 25% of respondents think the Internet is a substitute for a significant other, at least for short periods of time.
On a more serious note, the poll also found an uncomfortably high but still minority level of support for government regulations that involve Internet content. Around 29% of the respondents think that TV-type indecency and obscenity regulations should be applied to the Internet and 25% think a ratings system should apply to Internet content."
from: Reuters.com
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - The treasure that a New York City woman saved from the trash -- a stolen masterpiece by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo -- is expected to go for as much as $1 million at auction next month.
Elizabeth Gibson will get a $15,000 reward for returning "Tres Personajes" ("Three People") to its rightful owners, as well as an undisclosed percentage of the auction price.
Nearly four years ago Gibson was on her way to coffee when she spotted the painting among garbage bags set out for morning collection in her Upper West Side neighborhood.
She walked by it at first but said she "immediately knew I had to go back. I knew I had to take it!"
"It was a huge, powerful and beautiful painting and I said to myself, 'It is wrong to be in the garbage,'" Gibson told Reuters on Tuesday.
Gibson, who had hung up the painting after her discovery, said she learned of its worth when research led her to the Web site of "Antiques Roadshow FYI," a companion program to the PBS show "Antiques Roadshow."
Sotheby's expert August Uribe had featured the painting on "Antiques Roadshow FYI" after it was stolen more than 20 years ago.
"Tres Personajes" was returned to its owners, who wish to remain anonymous, and is expected to fetch between $750,000 and $1 million when Sotheby's auctions it on November 20.
If Gibson had not acted so quickly after spying the painting, it might have been lost forever. A doorman nearby later told her that garbage collectors had come along just 20 minutes after she had left with her new finding."
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - The treasure that a New York City woman saved from the trash -- a stolen masterpiece by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo -- is expected to go for as much as $1 million at auction next month.
Elizabeth Gibson will get a $15,000 reward for returning "Tres Personajes" ("Three People") to its rightful owners, as well as an undisclosed percentage of the auction price.
Nearly four years ago Gibson was on her way to coffee when she spotted the painting among garbage bags set out for morning collection in her Upper West Side neighborhood.
She walked by it at first but said she "immediately knew I had to go back. I knew I had to take it!"
"It was a huge, powerful and beautiful painting and I said to myself, 'It is wrong to be in the garbage,'" Gibson told Reuters on Tuesday.
Gibson, who had hung up the painting after her discovery, said she learned of its worth when research led her to the Web site of "Antiques Roadshow FYI," a companion program to the PBS show "Antiques Roadshow."
Sotheby's expert August Uribe had featured the painting on "Antiques Roadshow FYI" after it was stolen more than 20 years ago.
"Tres Personajes" was returned to its owners, who wish to remain anonymous, and is expected to fetch between $750,000 and $1 million when Sotheby's auctions it on November 20.
If Gibson had not acted so quickly after spying the painting, it might have been lost forever. A doorman nearby later told her that garbage collectors had come along just 20 minutes after she had left with her new finding."
from YahooNews
" KANO (AFP) - Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, a 24-year-old physics undergraduate in northern Nigeria, takes old cars and motorbikes to pieces in the back yard at home and builds his own helicopters from the parts.
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"It took me eight months to build this one," he said, sweat pouring from his forehead as he filled the radiator of the banana yellow four-seater which he now parks in the grounds of his university.
The chopper, which has flown briefly on six occasions, is made from scrap aluminium that Abdullahi bought with the money he makes from computer and mobile phone repairs, and a donation from his father, who teaches at Kano's Bayero university.
It is powered by a second-hand 133 horsepower Honda Civic car engine and kitted out with seats from an old Toyota saloon car. Its other parts come from the carcass of a Boeing 747 which crashed near Kano some years ago.
For a four-seater it is a big aircraft, measuring twelve metres (39 feet) long, seven metres high by five wide. It has never attained an altitude of more than seven feet.
The cockpit consists of a push-button ignition, an accelerator lever between the seats which controls vertical thrust, a joystick that provides balance and bearing.
A small screen on the dashboard connects to a camera underneath the helicopter for ground vision, a set of six buttons adjusts the screen's brightness while a small transmitter is used for communication.
"You start it, allow it to run for a minute or two and you then shift the accelerator forward and the propeller on top begins to spin. The further you shift the accelerator the faster it goes and once you reach 300 rmp you press the joystick and it takes off," Abdullahi explained from the cockpit.
He said he learned the rudiments of flying a helicopter from the Internet and first got the idea of building one from the films he watches on television.
"I watched action movies a lot and I was fascinated by the way choppers fly. I decided it would be easier to build one than to build a car," he said pacing the premises of the security division of the university which he uses as hanger for his helicopter.
He hoped -- and still does hope -- that the Nigerian government and his wealthy compatriots would turn to him and stop placing orders with western manufacturers.
So far, however, government response to his chopper project has been underwhelming to say the least.
Although some government officials got very excited when they saw him conduct a demonstration flight in neighbouring Katsina state, Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has so far shown no interest in his aircraft.
"No one from the NCAA has come to see what I've done. We don't reward talent in this country," he lamented.
Abdullahi does admit that his first helicopter lacks "some basic facilities like devices for measuring atmospheric pressure, altitude, humidity and the like."
In a country with Nigeria's abysmal air safety record officials may be loath to gamble on one student's home-made helicopter.
But Abdullahi, undeterred, has started work on a new flying machine, which, he says, "will be a radical improvement on the first one in terms of sophistication and aesthetics."
Currently just a spindly metal frame in the back yard, the helicopter will be a two-seater and Abdullahi calculates it will be able to fly at an altitude of 15 feet for three hours at a stretch.
It will be powered by a brand new motor -- albeit Taiwan-manufactured and destined for the Jincheng motorbike so common on the streets of Kano."
" KANO (AFP) - Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, a 24-year-old physics undergraduate in northern Nigeria, takes old cars and motorbikes to pieces in the back yard at home and builds his own helicopters from the parts.
ADVERTISEMENT
"It took me eight months to build this one," he said, sweat pouring from his forehead as he filled the radiator of the banana yellow four-seater which he now parks in the grounds of his university.
The chopper, which has flown briefly on six occasions, is made from scrap aluminium that Abdullahi bought with the money he makes from computer and mobile phone repairs, and a donation from his father, who teaches at Kano's Bayero university.
It is powered by a second-hand 133 horsepower Honda Civic car engine and kitted out with seats from an old Toyota saloon car. Its other parts come from the carcass of a Boeing 747 which crashed near Kano some years ago.
For a four-seater it is a big aircraft, measuring twelve metres (39 feet) long, seven metres high by five wide. It has never attained an altitude of more than seven feet.
The cockpit consists of a push-button ignition, an accelerator lever between the seats which controls vertical thrust, a joystick that provides balance and bearing.
A small screen on the dashboard connects to a camera underneath the helicopter for ground vision, a set of six buttons adjusts the screen's brightness while a small transmitter is used for communication.
"You start it, allow it to run for a minute or two and you then shift the accelerator forward and the propeller on top begins to spin. The further you shift the accelerator the faster it goes and once you reach 300 rmp you press the joystick and it takes off," Abdullahi explained from the cockpit.
He said he learned the rudiments of flying a helicopter from the Internet and first got the idea of building one from the films he watches on television.
"I watched action movies a lot and I was fascinated by the way choppers fly. I decided it would be easier to build one than to build a car," he said pacing the premises of the security division of the university which he uses as hanger for his helicopter.
He hoped -- and still does hope -- that the Nigerian government and his wealthy compatriots would turn to him and stop placing orders with western manufacturers.
So far, however, government response to his chopper project has been underwhelming to say the least.
Although some government officials got very excited when they saw him conduct a demonstration flight in neighbouring Katsina state, Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has so far shown no interest in his aircraft.
"No one from the NCAA has come to see what I've done. We don't reward talent in this country," he lamented.
Abdullahi does admit that his first helicopter lacks "some basic facilities like devices for measuring atmospheric pressure, altitude, humidity and the like."
In a country with Nigeria's abysmal air safety record officials may be loath to gamble on one student's home-made helicopter.
But Abdullahi, undeterred, has started work on a new flying machine, which, he says, "will be a radical improvement on the first one in terms of sophistication and aesthetics."
Currently just a spindly metal frame in the back yard, the helicopter will be a two-seater and Abdullahi calculates it will be able to fly at an altitude of 15 feet for three hours at a stretch.
It will be powered by a brand new motor -- albeit Taiwan-manufactured and destined for the Jincheng motorbike so common on the streets of Kano."
from: Yahoo News
" PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT
The city of more than 1.5 million people was also found to be among the least stylish, least active, least friendly and least worldly, according to the "America's Favorite Cities" survey by Travel & Leisure magazine and CNN Headline News.
About 60,000 people responded to the online survey -- at www.travelandleisure.com -- which ranked 25 cities in categories including shopping, food, culture, and cityscape, said Amy Farley, senior editor at the magazine.
For unattractiveness, Philadelphia just beat out Washington DC and Dallas/Fort Worth for the bottom spot. Miami and San Diego are home to the most attractive people, the poll found.
But Farley pointed out the results don't mean people in Philadelphia are ugly or the city is a bad place to visit.
"We were asking people to vote on attractiveness, not unattractiveness. Travel & Leisure editors believe there are a lot of attractive people in Philadelphia," she said.
"The relative attractiveness of its residents is only a minuscule factor in evaluating a city's merit."
Philadelphians' self-esteem has been undermined by national surveys showing they are among the fattest people in the United States. The American Obesity Association ranked the city in the top 10 for overweight people every year between 2000 and 2005.
And sporting pride in a city known for the fierce loyalty of its fans has been hurt by not having had a national champion in any of its four main sports since the 76ers won the National Basketball Association title in 1983."
" PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT
The city of more than 1.5 million people was also found to be among the least stylish, least active, least friendly and least worldly, according to the "America's Favorite Cities" survey by Travel & Leisure magazine and CNN Headline News.
About 60,000 people responded to the online survey -- at www.travelandleisure.com -- which ranked 25 cities in categories including shopping, food, culture, and cityscape, said Amy Farley, senior editor at the magazine.
For unattractiveness, Philadelphia just beat out Washington DC and Dallas/Fort Worth for the bottom spot. Miami and San Diego are home to the most attractive people, the poll found.
But Farley pointed out the results don't mean people in Philadelphia are ugly or the city is a bad place to visit.
"We were asking people to vote on attractiveness, not unattractiveness. Travel & Leisure editors believe there are a lot of attractive people in Philadelphia," she said.
"The relative attractiveness of its residents is only a minuscule factor in evaluating a city's merit."
Philadelphians' self-esteem has been undermined by national surveys showing they are among the fattest people in the United States. The American Obesity Association ranked the city in the top 10 for overweight people every year between 2000 and 2005.
And sporting pride in a city known for the fierce loyalty of its fans has been hurt by not having had a national champion in any of its four main sports since the 76ers won the National Basketball Association title in 1983."
from: Paulgraham.com
"There's something interesting happening right now. Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper.
It's a pattern we see over and over in technology. Initially there's some device that's very expensive and made in small quantities. Then someone discovers how to make them cheaply; many more get built; and as a result they can be used in new ways.
Computers are a familiar example. When I was a kid, computers were big, expensive machines built one at a time. Now they're a commodity. Now we can stick computers in everything.
This pattern is very old. Most of the turning points in economic history are instances of it. It happened to steel in the 1850s, and to power in the 1780s. It happened to cloth manufacture in the thirteenth century, generating the wealth that later brought about the Renaissance. Agriculture itself was an instance of this pattern.
Now as well as being produced by startups, this pattern is happening to startups. It's so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. If the pattern holds true, that should cause dramatic changes.
1. Lots of Startups
So my first prediction about the future of web startups is pretty straightforward: there will be a lot of them. When starting a startup was expensive, you had to get the permission of investors to do it. Now the only threshold is courage.
Even that threshold is getting lower, as people watch others take the plunge and survive. In the last batch of startups we funded, we had several founders who said they'd thought of applying before, but weren't sure and got jobs instead. It was only after hearing reports of friends who'd done it that they decided to try it themselves.
Starting a startup is hard, but having a 9 to 5 job is hard too, and in some ways a worse kind of hard. In a startup you have lots of worries, but you don't have that feeling that your life is flying by like you do in a big company. Plus in a startup you could make much more money.
As word spreads that startups work, the number may grow to a point that would now seem surprising.
We now think of it as normal to have a job at a company, but this is the thinnest of historical veneers. Just two or three lifetimes ago, most people in what are now called industrialized countries lived by farming. So while it may seem surprising to propose that large numbers of people will change the way they make a living, it would be more surprising if they didn't.
2. Standardization
When technology makes something dramatically cheaper, standardization always follows. When you make things in large volumes you tend to standardize everything that doesn't need to change.
At Y Combinator we still only have four people, so we try to standardize everything. We could hire employees, but we want to be forced to figure out how to scale investing.
We often tell startups to release a minimal version one quickly, then let the needs of the users determine what to do next. In essense, let the market design the product. We've done the same thing ourselves. We think of the techniques we're developing for dealing with large numbers of startups as like software. Sometimes it literally is software, like Hacker News and our application system.
One of the most important things we've been working on standardizing are investment terms. Till now investment terms have been individually negotiated. This is a problem for founders, because it makes raising money take longer and cost more in legal fees. So as well as using the same paperwork for every deal we do, we've commissioned generic angel paperwork that all the startups we fund can use for future rounds.
Some investors will still want to cook up their own deal terms. Series A rounds, where you raise a million dollars or more, will be custom deals for the forseeable future. But I think angel rounds will start to be done mostly with standardized agreements. An angel who wants to insert a bunch of complicated terms into the agreement is probably not one you want anyway.
3. New Attitude to Acquisition
Another thing I see starting to get standardized is acquisitions. As the volume of startups increases, big companies will start to develop standardized procedures that make acquisitions little more work than hiring someone.
Google is the leader here, as in so many areas of technology. They buy a lot of startups— more than most people realize, because they only announce a fraction of them. And being Google, they're figuring out how to do it efficiently.
One problem they've solved is how to think about acquisitions. For most companies, acquisitions still carry some stigma of inadequacy. Companies do them because they have to, but there's usually some feeling they shouldn't have to—that their own programmers should be able to build everything they need.
Google's example should cure the rest of the world of this idea. Google has by far the best programmers of any public technology company. If they don't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. However many Google does, Microsoft should do ten times as many.
One reason Google doesn't have a problem with acquisitions is that they know first-hand the quality of the people they can get that way. Larry and Sergey only started Google after making the rounds of the search engines trying to sell their idea and finding no takers. They've been the guys coming in to visit the big company, so they know who might be sitting across that conference table from them.
4. Riskier Strategies are Possible
Risk is always proportionate to reward. The way to get really big returns is to do things that seem crazy, like starting a new search engine in 1998, or turning down a billion dollar acquisition offer.
This has traditionally been a problem in venture funding. Founders and investors have different attitudes to risk. Knowing that risk is on average proportionate to reward, investors like risky strategies, while founders, who don't have a big enough sample size to care what's true on average, tend to be more conservative.
If startups are easy to start, this conflict goes away, because founders can start them younger, when it's rational to take more risk, and can start more startups total in their careers. When founders can do lots of startups, they can start to look at the world in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors. And that means the overall amount of wealth created can be greater, because strategies can be riskier.
5. Younger, Nerdier Founders
If startups become a cheap commodity, more people will be able to have them, just as more people could have computers once microprocessors made them cheap. And in particular, younger and more technical founders will be able to start startups than could before.
Back when it cost a lot to start a startup, you had to convince investors to let you do it. And that required very different skills from actually doing the startup. If investors were perfect judges, the two would require exactly the same skills. But unfortunately most investors are terrible judges. I know because I see behind the scenes what an enormous amount of work it takes to raise money, and the amount of selling required in an industry is always inversely proportional to the judgement of the buyers.
Fortunately, if startups get cheaper to start, there's another way to convince investors. Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business plan and trying to convince them to fund it, you can get a product launched on a few tens of thousands of dollars of seed money from us or your uncle, and approach them with a working company instead of a plan for one. Then instead of having to seem smooth and confident, you can just point them to Alexa.
This way of convincing investors is better suited to hackers, who often went into technology in part because they felt uncomfortable with the amount of fakeness required in other fields.
6. Startup Hubs Will Persist
It might seem that if startups get cheap to start, it will mean the end of startup hubs like Silicon Valley. If all you need to start a startup is rent money, you should be able to do it anywhere.
This is kind of true and kind of false. It's true that you can now start a startup anywhere. But you have to do more with a startup than just start it. You have to make it succeed. And that is more likely to happen in a startup hub.
I've thought a lot about this question, and it seems to me the increasing cheapness of web startups will if anything increase the importance of startup hubs. The value of startup hubs, like centers for any kind of business, lies in something very old-fashioned: face to face meetings. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who tells you how to fix a bug that's been bothering you all weekend, or visiting a friend's startup down the street and ending up in a conversation with one of their investors.
The question of whether to be in a startup hub is like the question of whether to take outside investment. The question is not whether you need it, but whether it brings any advantage at all. Because anything that brings an advantage will give your competitors an advantage over you if they do it and you don't. So if you hear someone saying "we don't need to be in Silicon Valley," that use of the word "need" is a sign they're not even thinking about the question right.
And while startup hubs are as powerful magnets as ever, the increasing cheapness of starting a startup means the particles they're attracting are getting lighter. A startup now can be just a pair of 22 year old guys. A company like that can move much more easily than one with 10 people, half of whom have kids.
We know because we make people move for Y Combinator, and it doesn't seem to be a problem. The advantage of being able to work together face to face for three months outweighs the inconvenience of moving. Ask anyone who's done it.
The mobility of seed-stage startups means that seed funding is a national business. One of the most common emails we get is from people asking if we can help them set up a local clone of Y Combinator. But this just wouldn't work. Seed funding isn't regional, just as big research universities aren't.
Is seed funding not merely national, but international? Interesting question. There are signs it may be. We've had an ongoing stream of founders from outside the US, and they tend to do particularly well, because they're all people who were so determined to succeed that they were willing to move to another country to do it.
The more mobile startups get, the harder it would be to start new silicon valleys. If startups are mobile, the best local talent will go to the real Silicon Valley, and all they'll get at the local one will be the people who didn't have the energy to move.
This is not a nationalistic idea, incidentally. It's cities that compete, not countries. Atlanta is just as hosed as Munich.
7. Better Judgement Needed
If the number of startups increases dramatically, then the people whose job is to judge them are going to have to get better at it. I'm thinking particularly of investors and acquirers. We now get on the order of 1000 applications a year. What are we going to do if we get 10,000?
That's actually an alarming idea. But we'll figure out some kind of answer. We'll have to. It will probably involve writing some software, but fortunately we can do that.
Acquirers will also have to get better at picking winners. They generally do better than investors, because they pick later, when there's more performance to measure. But even at the most advanced acquirers, identifying companies to buy is extremely ad hoc, and completing the acquisition often involves a great deal of unneccessary friction.
I think acquirers may eventually have chief acquisition officers who will both identify good acquisitions and make the deals happen. At the moment those two functions are separate. Promising new startups are often discovered by developers. If someone powerful enough wants to buy them, the deal is handed over to corp dev guys to negotiate. It would be better if both were combined in one group, headed by someone with a technical background and some vision of what they wanted to accomplish. Maybe in the future big companies will have both a VP of Engineering responsible for technology developed in-house, and a CAO responsible for bringing technology in from outside.
At the moment, there is no one within big companies who gets in trouble when they buy a startup for $200 million that they could have bought earlier for $20 million. There should start to be someone who gets in trouble for that.
8. College Will Change
If the best hackers start their own companies after college instead of getting jobs, that will change what happens in college. Most of these changes will be for the better. I think the experience of college is warped in a bad way by the expectation that afterward you'll be judged by potential employers.
One change will be in the meaning of "after college," which will switch from when one graduates from college to when one leaves it. If you're starting your own company, why do you need a degree? We don't encourage people to start startups during college, but the best founders are certainly capable of it. Some of the most successful companies we've funded were started by undergrads.
I grew up in a time where college degrees seemed really important, so I'm alarmed to be saying things like this, but there's nothing magical about a degree. There's nothing that magically changes after you take that last exam. The importance of degrees is due solely to the administrative needs of large organizations. These can certainly affect your life—it's hard to get into grad school, or to get a work visa in the US, without an undergraduate degree—but tests like this will matter less and less.
As well as mattering less whether students get degrees, it will also start to matter less where they go to college. In a startup you're judged by users, and they don't care where you went to college. So in a world of startups, elite universities will play less of a role as gatekeepers. In the US it's a national scandal how easily children of rich parents game college admissions. But the way this problem ultimately gets solved may not be by reforming the universities but by going around them. We in the technology world are used to that sort of solution: you don't beat the incumbents; you redefine the problem to make them irrelevant.
The greatest value of universities is not the brand name or perhaps even the classes so much as the people you meet. If it becomes common to start a startup after college, students may start trying to maximize this. Instead of focusing on getting internships at companies they want to work for, they may start to focus on working with other students they want as cofounders.
What students do in their classes will change too. Instead of trying to get good grades to impress future employers, students will try to learn things. We're talking about some pretty dramatic changes here.
9. Lots of Competitors
If it gets easier to start a startup, it's easier for competitors too. That doesn't erase the advantage of increased cheapness, however. You're not all playing a zero-sum game. There's not some fixed number of startups that can succeed, regardless of how many are started.
In fact, I don't think there's any limit to the number of startups that could succeed. Startups succeed by creating wealth, which is the satisfaction of people's desires. And people's desires seem to be effectively infinite, at least in the short term.
What the increasing number of startups does mean is that you won't be able to sit on a good idea. Other people have your idea, and they'll be increasingly likely to do something about it.
10. Faster Advances
There's a good side to that, at least for consumers of technology. If people get right to work implementing ideas instead of sitting on them, technology will evolve faster.
Some kinds of innovations happen a company at a time, like the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution. There are some kinds of ideas that are so threatening that it's hard for big companies even to think of them. Look at what a hard time Microsoft is having discovering web apps. They're like a character in a movie that everyone in the audience can see something bad is about to happen to, but who can't see it himself. The big innovations that happen a company at a time will obviously happen faster if the rate of new companies increases.
But in fact there will be a double speed increase. People won't wait as long to act on new ideas, but also those ideas will increasingly be developed within startups rather than big companies. Which means technology will evolve faster per company as well.
Big companies are just not a good place to make things happen fast. I talked recently to a founder whose startup had been acquired by a big company. He was a precise sort of guy, so he'd measured their productivity before and after. He counted lines of code, which can be a dubious measure, but in this case was meaningful because it was the same group of programmers. He found they were one thirteenth as productive after the acquisition.
The company that bought them was not a particularly stupid one. I think what he was measuring was mostly the cost of bigness. I experienced this myself, and his number sounds about right. There's something about big companies that just sucks the energy out of you.
Imagine what all that energy could do if it were put to use. There is an enormous latent capacity in the world's hackers that most people don't even realize is there. That's the main reason we do Y Combinator: to let loose all this energy by making it easy for hackers to start their own startups.
A Series of Tubes
The process of starting startups is currently like the plumbing in an old house. The pipes are narrow and twisty, and there are leaks in every joint. In the future this mess will gradually be replaced by a single, huge pipe. The water will still have to get from A to B, but it will get there faster and without the risk of spraying out through some random leak.
This will change a lot of things for the better. In a big, straight pipe like that, the force of being measured by one's performance will propagate back through the whole system. Performance is always the ultimate test, but there are so many kinks in the plumbing now that most people are insulated from it most of the time. So you end up with a world in which high school students think they need to get good grades to get into elite colleges, and college students think they need to get good grades to impress employers, within which the employees waste most of their time in political battles, and from which consumers have to buy anyway because there are so few choices. Imagine if that sequence became a big, straight pipe. Then the effects of being measured by performance would propagate all the way back to high school, flushing out all the arbitrary stuff people are measured by now. That is the future of web startups."
"There's something interesting happening right now. Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper.
It's a pattern we see over and over in technology. Initially there's some device that's very expensive and made in small quantities. Then someone discovers how to make them cheaply; many more get built; and as a result they can be used in new ways.
Computers are a familiar example. When I was a kid, computers were big, expensive machines built one at a time. Now they're a commodity. Now we can stick computers in everything.
This pattern is very old. Most of the turning points in economic history are instances of it. It happened to steel in the 1850s, and to power in the 1780s. It happened to cloth manufacture in the thirteenth century, generating the wealth that later brought about the Renaissance. Agriculture itself was an instance of this pattern.
Now as well as being produced by startups, this pattern is happening to startups. It's so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. If the pattern holds true, that should cause dramatic changes.
1. Lots of Startups
So my first prediction about the future of web startups is pretty straightforward: there will be a lot of them. When starting a startup was expensive, you had to get the permission of investors to do it. Now the only threshold is courage.
Even that threshold is getting lower, as people watch others take the plunge and survive. In the last batch of startups we funded, we had several founders who said they'd thought of applying before, but weren't sure and got jobs instead. It was only after hearing reports of friends who'd done it that they decided to try it themselves.
Starting a startup is hard, but having a 9 to 5 job is hard too, and in some ways a worse kind of hard. In a startup you have lots of worries, but you don't have that feeling that your life is flying by like you do in a big company. Plus in a startup you could make much more money.
As word spreads that startups work, the number may grow to a point that would now seem surprising.
We now think of it as normal to have a job at a company, but this is the thinnest of historical veneers. Just two or three lifetimes ago, most people in what are now called industrialized countries lived by farming. So while it may seem surprising to propose that large numbers of people will change the way they make a living, it would be more surprising if they didn't.
2. Standardization
When technology makes something dramatically cheaper, standardization always follows. When you make things in large volumes you tend to standardize everything that doesn't need to change.
At Y Combinator we still only have four people, so we try to standardize everything. We could hire employees, but we want to be forced to figure out how to scale investing.
We often tell startups to release a minimal version one quickly, then let the needs of the users determine what to do next. In essense, let the market design the product. We've done the same thing ourselves. We think of the techniques we're developing for dealing with large numbers of startups as like software. Sometimes it literally is software, like Hacker News and our application system.
One of the most important things we've been working on standardizing are investment terms. Till now investment terms have been individually negotiated. This is a problem for founders, because it makes raising money take longer and cost more in legal fees. So as well as using the same paperwork for every deal we do, we've commissioned generic angel paperwork that all the startups we fund can use for future rounds.
Some investors will still want to cook up their own deal terms. Series A rounds, where you raise a million dollars or more, will be custom deals for the forseeable future. But I think angel rounds will start to be done mostly with standardized agreements. An angel who wants to insert a bunch of complicated terms into the agreement is probably not one you want anyway.
3. New Attitude to Acquisition
Another thing I see starting to get standardized is acquisitions. As the volume of startups increases, big companies will start to develop standardized procedures that make acquisitions little more work than hiring someone.
Google is the leader here, as in so many areas of technology. They buy a lot of startups— more than most people realize, because they only announce a fraction of them. And being Google, they're figuring out how to do it efficiently.
One problem they've solved is how to think about acquisitions. For most companies, acquisitions still carry some stigma of inadequacy. Companies do them because they have to, but there's usually some feeling they shouldn't have to—that their own programmers should be able to build everything they need.
Google's example should cure the rest of the world of this idea. Google has by far the best programmers of any public technology company. If they don't have a problem doing acquisitions, the others should have even less problem. However many Google does, Microsoft should do ten times as many.
One reason Google doesn't have a problem with acquisitions is that they know first-hand the quality of the people they can get that way. Larry and Sergey only started Google after making the rounds of the search engines trying to sell their idea and finding no takers. They've been the guys coming in to visit the big company, so they know who might be sitting across that conference table from them.
4. Riskier Strategies are Possible
Risk is always proportionate to reward. The way to get really big returns is to do things that seem crazy, like starting a new search engine in 1998, or turning down a billion dollar acquisition offer.
This has traditionally been a problem in venture funding. Founders and investors have different attitudes to risk. Knowing that risk is on average proportionate to reward, investors like risky strategies, while founders, who don't have a big enough sample size to care what's true on average, tend to be more conservative.
If startups are easy to start, this conflict goes away, because founders can start them younger, when it's rational to take more risk, and can start more startups total in their careers. When founders can do lots of startups, they can start to look at the world in the same portfolio-optimizing way as investors. And that means the overall amount of wealth created can be greater, because strategies can be riskier.
5. Younger, Nerdier Founders
If startups become a cheap commodity, more people will be able to have them, just as more people could have computers once microprocessors made them cheap. And in particular, younger and more technical founders will be able to start startups than could before.
Back when it cost a lot to start a startup, you had to convince investors to let you do it. And that required very different skills from actually doing the startup. If investors were perfect judges, the two would require exactly the same skills. But unfortunately most investors are terrible judges. I know because I see behind the scenes what an enormous amount of work it takes to raise money, and the amount of selling required in an industry is always inversely proportional to the judgement of the buyers.
Fortunately, if startups get cheaper to start, there's another way to convince investors. Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business plan and trying to convince them to fund it, you can get a product launched on a few tens of thousands of dollars of seed money from us or your uncle, and approach them with a working company instead of a plan for one. Then instead of having to seem smooth and confident, you can just point them to Alexa.
This way of convincing investors is better suited to hackers, who often went into technology in part because they felt uncomfortable with the amount of fakeness required in other fields.
6. Startup Hubs Will Persist
It might seem that if startups get cheap to start, it will mean the end of startup hubs like Silicon Valley. If all you need to start a startup is rent money, you should be able to do it anywhere.
This is kind of true and kind of false. It's true that you can now start a startup anywhere. But you have to do more with a startup than just start it. You have to make it succeed. And that is more likely to happen in a startup hub.
I've thought a lot about this question, and it seems to me the increasing cheapness of web startups will if anything increase the importance of startup hubs. The value of startup hubs, like centers for any kind of business, lies in something very old-fashioned: face to face meetings. No technology in the immediate future will replace walking down University Ave and running into a friend who tells you how to fix a bug that's been bothering you all weekend, or visiting a friend's startup down the street and ending up in a conversation with one of their investors.
The question of whether to be in a startup hub is like the question of whether to take outside investment. The question is not whether you need it, but whether it brings any advantage at all. Because anything that brings an advantage will give your competitors an advantage over you if they do it and you don't. So if you hear someone saying "we don't need to be in Silicon Valley," that use of the word "need" is a sign they're not even thinking about the question right.
And while startup hubs are as powerful magnets as ever, the increasing cheapness of starting a startup means the particles they're attracting are getting lighter. A startup now can be just a pair of 22 year old guys. A company like that can move much more easily than one with 10 people, half of whom have kids.
We know because we make people move for Y Combinator, and it doesn't seem to be a problem. The advantage of being able to work together face to face for three months outweighs the inconvenience of moving. Ask anyone who's done it.
The mobility of seed-stage startups means that seed funding is a national business. One of the most common emails we get is from people asking if we can help them set up a local clone of Y Combinator. But this just wouldn't work. Seed funding isn't regional, just as big research universities aren't.
Is seed funding not merely national, but international? Interesting question. There are signs it may be. We've had an ongoing stream of founders from outside the US, and they tend to do particularly well, because they're all people who were so determined to succeed that they were willing to move to another country to do it.
The more mobile startups get, the harder it would be to start new silicon valleys. If startups are mobile, the best local talent will go to the real Silicon Valley, and all they'll get at the local one will be the people who didn't have the energy to move.
This is not a nationalistic idea, incidentally. It's cities that compete, not countries. Atlanta is just as hosed as Munich.
7. Better Judgement Needed
If the number of startups increases dramatically, then the people whose job is to judge them are going to have to get better at it. I'm thinking particularly of investors and acquirers. We now get on the order of 1000 applications a year. What are we going to do if we get 10,000?
That's actually an alarming idea. But we'll figure out some kind of answer. We'll have to. It will probably involve writing some software, but fortunately we can do that.
Acquirers will also have to get better at picking winners. They generally do better than investors, because they pick later, when there's more performance to measure. But even at the most advanced acquirers, identifying companies to buy is extremely ad hoc, and completing the acquisition often involves a great deal of unneccessary friction.
I think acquirers may eventually have chief acquisition officers who will both identify good acquisitions and make the deals happen. At the moment those two functions are separate. Promising new startups are often discovered by developers. If someone powerful enough wants to buy them, the deal is handed over to corp dev guys to negotiate. It would be better if both were combined in one group, headed by someone with a technical background and some vision of what they wanted to accomplish. Maybe in the future big companies will have both a VP of Engineering responsible for technology developed in-house, and a CAO responsible for bringing technology in from outside.
At the moment, there is no one within big companies who gets in trouble when they buy a startup for $200 million that they could have bought earlier for $20 million. There should start to be someone who gets in trouble for that.
8. College Will Change
If the best hackers start their own companies after college instead of getting jobs, that will change what happens in college. Most of these changes will be for the better. I think the experience of college is warped in a bad way by the expectation that afterward you'll be judged by potential employers.
One change will be in the meaning of "after college," which will switch from when one graduates from college to when one leaves it. If you're starting your own company, why do you need a degree? We don't encourage people to start startups during college, but the best founders are certainly capable of it. Some of the most successful companies we've funded were started by undergrads.
I grew up in a time where college degrees seemed really important, so I'm alarmed to be saying things like this, but there's nothing magical about a degree. There's nothing that magically changes after you take that last exam. The importance of degrees is due solely to the administrative needs of large organizations. These can certainly affect your life—it's hard to get into grad school, or to get a work visa in the US, without an undergraduate degree—but tests like this will matter less and less.
As well as mattering less whether students get degrees, it will also start to matter less where they go to college. In a startup you're judged by users, and they don't care where you went to college. So in a world of startups, elite universities will play less of a role as gatekeepers. In the US it's a national scandal how easily children of rich parents game college admissions. But the way this problem ultimately gets solved may not be by reforming the universities but by going around them. We in the technology world are used to that sort of solution: you don't beat the incumbents; you redefine the problem to make them irrelevant.
The greatest value of universities is not the brand name or perhaps even the classes so much as the people you meet. If it becomes common to start a startup after college, students may start trying to maximize this. Instead of focusing on getting internships at companies they want to work for, they may start to focus on working with other students they want as cofounders.
What students do in their classes will change too. Instead of trying to get good grades to impress future employers, students will try to learn things. We're talking about some pretty dramatic changes here.
9. Lots of Competitors
If it gets easier to start a startup, it's easier for competitors too. That doesn't erase the advantage of increased cheapness, however. You're not all playing a zero-sum game. There's not some fixed number of startups that can succeed, regardless of how many are started.
In fact, I don't think there's any limit to the number of startups that could succeed. Startups succeed by creating wealth, which is the satisfaction of people's desires. And people's desires seem to be effectively infinite, at least in the short term.
What the increasing number of startups does mean is that you won't be able to sit on a good idea. Other people have your idea, and they'll be increasingly likely to do something about it.
10. Faster Advances
There's a good side to that, at least for consumers of technology. If people get right to work implementing ideas instead of sitting on them, technology will evolve faster.
Some kinds of innovations happen a company at a time, like the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution. There are some kinds of ideas that are so threatening that it's hard for big companies even to think of them. Look at what a hard time Microsoft is having discovering web apps. They're like a character in a movie that everyone in the audience can see something bad is about to happen to, but who can't see it himself. The big innovations that happen a company at a time will obviously happen faster if the rate of new companies increases.
But in fact there will be a double speed increase. People won't wait as long to act on new ideas, but also those ideas will increasingly be developed within startups rather than big companies. Which means technology will evolve faster per company as well.
Big companies are just not a good place to make things happen fast. I talked recently to a founder whose startup had been acquired by a big company. He was a precise sort of guy, so he'd measured their productivity before and after. He counted lines of code, which can be a dubious measure, but in this case was meaningful because it was the same group of programmers. He found they were one thirteenth as productive after the acquisition.
The company that bought them was not a particularly stupid one. I think what he was measuring was mostly the cost of bigness. I experienced this myself, and his number sounds about right. There's something about big companies that just sucks the energy out of you.
Imagine what all that energy could do if it were put to use. There is an enormous latent capacity in the world's hackers that most people don't even realize is there. That's the main reason we do Y Combinator: to let loose all this energy by making it easy for hackers to start their own startups.
A Series of Tubes
The process of starting startups is currently like the plumbing in an old house. The pipes are narrow and twisty, and there are leaks in every joint. In the future this mess will gradually be replaced by a single, huge pipe. The water will still have to get from A to B, but it will get there faster and without the risk of spraying out through some random leak.
This will change a lot of things for the better. In a big, straight pipe like that, the force of being measured by one's performance will propagate back through the whole system. Performance is always the ultimate test, but there are so many kinks in the plumbing now that most people are insulated from it most of the time. So you end up with a world in which high school students think they need to get good grades to get into elite colleges, and college students think they need to get good grades to impress employers, within which the employees waste most of their time in political battles, and from which consumers have to buy anyway because there are so few choices. Imagine if that sequence became a big, straight pipe. Then the effects of being measured by performance would propagate all the way back to high school, flushing out all the arbitrary stuff people are measured by now. That is the future of web startups."
from Entrepreneur.com
"Marketocracy.com is more than a website where aspiring money managers can practice investing in stocks; the company also manages a very real and highly successful mutual fund. To make winning investment decisions, San Mateo, California-based Marketocracy examines which of its 80,000 members have the best fictional portfolios. About once a month, the top 100 are chosen as part of a paid advisory board. When an advisor makes a promising stock recommendation, Marketocracy vets the advice with all the members who have that stock in their online portfolios. While members don't play with real money, the company does. Co-founders Ken Kam, 47, and Mark Taguchi, 51, say the collective intelligence of their virtual advisory board has identified some hidden investment gems. "When that happens, I call [some of the board members] and ask, 'What is the conventional wisdom about this stock, and why is it wrong?'" says Kam.
The strategy seems to be working: The Marketocracy mutual fund has grown to $55 million under management and posted an 80 percent total return since its inception in November 2001."
"Marketocracy.com is more than a website where aspiring money managers can practice investing in stocks; the company also manages a very real and highly successful mutual fund. To make winning investment decisions, San Mateo, California-based Marketocracy examines which of its 80,000 members have the best fictional portfolios. About once a month, the top 100 are chosen as part of a paid advisory board. When an advisor makes a promising stock recommendation, Marketocracy vets the advice with all the members who have that stock in their online portfolios. While members don't play with real money, the company does. Co-founders Ken Kam, 47, and Mark Taguchi, 51, say the collective intelligence of their virtual advisory board has identified some hidden investment gems. "When that happens, I call [some of the board members] and ask, 'What is the conventional wisdom about this stock, and why is it wrong?'" says Kam.
The strategy seems to be working: The Marketocracy mutual fund has grown to $55 million under management and posted an 80 percent total return since its inception in November 2001."
from inquirer.net
"NEW DELHI--The deputy mayor of the Indian capital died on Sunday from a fatal fall he suffered after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys, doctors said.
S.S. Bajwa, 52, suffered serious head injuries when he tried to fight off the monkeys which attacked him while he was alone on the terrace of his home on Saturday.
The councillor, who was elected deputy mayor earlier this year, belonged to India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party which faces flak from city courts for not doing enough to rid the capital of wild monkeys.
In May, federal lawmakers demanded protection from the marauding simians which often invade the parliament building, ministries and even break into the fortified complex that houses Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office.
The defence ministry has, however, recruited bands of ferocious langurs trained to attack the smaller simians inside military facilities in New Delhi.
Several city residential districts petitioned local courts in 2001 to initiate steps to make New Delhi "monkey-free."
Culling is unacceptable to Hindus who revere the monkeys as a living link to the deity Hanuman, a monkey god who symbolizes strength."
"NEW DELHI--The deputy mayor of the Indian capital died on Sunday from a fatal fall he suffered after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys, doctors said.
S.S. Bajwa, 52, suffered serious head injuries when he tried to fight off the monkeys which attacked him while he was alone on the terrace of his home on Saturday.
The councillor, who was elected deputy mayor earlier this year, belonged to India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party which faces flak from city courts for not doing enough to rid the capital of wild monkeys.
In May, federal lawmakers demanded protection from the marauding simians which often invade the parliament building, ministries and even break into the fortified complex that houses Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office.
The defence ministry has, however, recruited bands of ferocious langurs trained to attack the smaller simians inside military facilities in New Delhi.
Several city residential districts petitioned local courts in 2001 to initiate steps to make New Delhi "monkey-free."
Culling is unacceptable to Hindus who revere the monkeys as a living link to the deity Hanuman, a monkey god who symbolizes strength."
From: Yahoo News
"Specialized blogs are all abuzz this week with rumors that Internet giant Google will soon launch the "Google Phone" or "GPhone," a cheap mobile phone equipped with a Google operating system.
ADVERTISEMENT
High-tech product specialist Engadget said a Google announcement would come next week, adding that a Google operating system would be tailor-made for the new cell phone.
According to another blog, CrunchGear, "Google is currently assessing over twenty (of Taiwan's) HTC models" and plans to launch its cell phone between January amd March of 2008.
Photographs of Google's touch-screen handset are already on the Internet, and according to Rizzn.com, it will cost a mere 100 dollars.
CrunchGear said the HTC/Google phone would have Google Talk enabled, allowing users to make free Internet phone calls.
The blog said the Google phone will not only be able to surf the net but also will include "a special version of Google Maps, compatible with built-in GPS, and compatibility with Gmail," Google's email service.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google has already shown its prototype to US companies AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, making it seem clear the Google Phone's launch will definitely take place in the United States.
Indian blog Rediff said the GPhone will be launched in two weeks simultaneously in the United States and Europe, adding that Google was talking with Indian telephone operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, and that Bharat Sanchar Nigam could be one of the manufacturers.
Google has refused to make any comment on the rumors.
The company, at any rate, is interested in telecommunications. It recently announced it would participate in an "open" frequencies auction next January in the United States that could cost it billions of dollars.
The owner of open frequencies could create a mobile phone network across the country accessible to any cell phone, and not restricted to models chosen by US operators, as is now the case.
The Wall Street Journal quoted sources familiar with the dealings who said Google has invested several hundred million dollars in the project and that a phone will be launched in early 2008.
Google also intends to develop special applications for mobile phones, such as a search engine for ringtones, and offer free telephone subscriptions that would be financed through advertising.
The persistent rumors about a GPhone reflect gadget fans' enormous interest for the iPhone Apple launched in late June, which has since generated a lot of buzz on the internet.
The idea of a cheap, touch-screen, internet-adaptible GPhone promoted by a company that advocates "open" frequencies seems to be in direct competition with Apple's iPhone.
Greatly valued for its design, the iPhone has its high price (500-600 dollars) going against it, as well as its exclusive contract with AT&T.
Several hackers have recently boasted of having found the way to "unblock" the iPhone and make it work with other telephone operators, and some have promised to put their unblocking software up for sale on the internet soon."
"Specialized blogs are all abuzz this week with rumors that Internet giant Google will soon launch the "Google Phone" or "GPhone," a cheap mobile phone equipped with a Google operating system.
ADVERTISEMENT
High-tech product specialist Engadget said a Google announcement would come next week, adding that a Google operating system would be tailor-made for the new cell phone.
According to another blog, CrunchGear, "Google is currently assessing over twenty (of Taiwan's) HTC models" and plans to launch its cell phone between January amd March of 2008.
Photographs of Google's touch-screen handset are already on the Internet, and according to Rizzn.com, it will cost a mere 100 dollars.
CrunchGear said the HTC/Google phone would have Google Talk enabled, allowing users to make free Internet phone calls.
The blog said the Google phone will not only be able to surf the net but also will include "a special version of Google Maps, compatible with built-in GPS, and compatibility with Gmail," Google's email service.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google has already shown its prototype to US companies AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, making it seem clear the Google Phone's launch will definitely take place in the United States.
Indian blog Rediff said the GPhone will be launched in two weeks simultaneously in the United States and Europe, adding that Google was talking with Indian telephone operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, and that Bharat Sanchar Nigam could be one of the manufacturers.
Google has refused to make any comment on the rumors.
The company, at any rate, is interested in telecommunications. It recently announced it would participate in an "open" frequencies auction next January in the United States that could cost it billions of dollars.
The owner of open frequencies could create a mobile phone network across the country accessible to any cell phone, and not restricted to models chosen by US operators, as is now the case.
The Wall Street Journal quoted sources familiar with the dealings who said Google has invested several hundred million dollars in the project and that a phone will be launched in early 2008.
Google also intends to develop special applications for mobile phones, such as a search engine for ringtones, and offer free telephone subscriptions that would be financed through advertising.
The persistent rumors about a GPhone reflect gadget fans' enormous interest for the iPhone Apple launched in late June, which has since generated a lot of buzz on the internet.
The idea of a cheap, touch-screen, internet-adaptible GPhone promoted by a company that advocates "open" frequencies seems to be in direct competition with Apple's iPhone.
Greatly valued for its design, the iPhone has its high price (500-600 dollars) going against it, as well as its exclusive contract with AT&T.
Several hackers have recently boasted of having found the way to "unblock" the iPhone and make it work with other telephone operators, and some have promised to put their unblocking software up for sale on the internet soon."
At the end of a job interview, the head of human resources asks the young engineer fresh out of MIT, "What starting salary were you looking for?"
The engineer decides to shoot for the moon. "I’m thinking in the range of $125,000 a year or so, depending on the benefits package."
"Hmm," says the interviewer. "Well, what would you say to five weeks’ vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, a retirement fund with company matching to 50 percent of salary, and a company car leased every two years–say, a Porsche?"
The engineer gapes and says, "Wow! Are you kidding?"
"Yeah," replies the interviewer, "but you started it."
The engineer decides to shoot for the moon. "I’m thinking in the range of $125,000 a year or so, depending on the benefits package."
"Hmm," says the interviewer. "Well, what would you say to five weeks’ vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, a retirement fund with company matching to 50 percent of salary, and a company car leased every two years–say, a Porsche?"
The engineer gapes and says, "Wow! Are you kidding?"
"Yeah," replies the interviewer, "but you started it."
From: Newsday
Couple Wins Millions in Lottery _ Twice
"Adeline and Eugene Angelo won $5 million Thursday after buying the winning ticket in last week's New York Lotto. In 1996, they won $2.5 million after splitting a $10 million jackpot with three other people.
Eugene Angelo, 81, said he and his wife would share their new fortune with their three sons and their families. Taking the lump-sum payment of $2.5 million, Eugene and Adeline and each of their sons will get about $513,000 before taxes.
"We're a little older, a little wiser and there are a few more of us, when you count the grandkids," Eugene Angelo said. "We're still the same old people. Still very excited. It's a great feeling."
Adeline Angelo, 74, a retired medical secretary, said she hoped the new money will "buy us good health and longevity."
With the winnings from their last big prize, the couple moved from the Bronx to Putnam County, about 50 miles north of the city. Eugene Angelo said they would continue to live modestly. And still buy lottery tickets, "just for the fun of it," his wife added.
Acting Lottery Director Gardner Gurney said this was only the third time in Lotto's history that a winner has hit the jackpot twice. The odds of winning just once were 22.5 million to one.
"The Angelos are living proof that lightning, or in this case, random luck, can strike twice," he said."
Couple Wins Millions in Lottery _ Twice
"Adeline and Eugene Angelo won $5 million Thursday after buying the winning ticket in last week's New York Lotto. In 1996, they won $2.5 million after splitting a $10 million jackpot with three other people.
Eugene Angelo, 81, said he and his wife would share their new fortune with their three sons and their families. Taking the lump-sum payment of $2.5 million, Eugene and Adeline and each of their sons will get about $513,000 before taxes.
"We're a little older, a little wiser and there are a few more of us, when you count the grandkids," Eugene Angelo said. "We're still the same old people. Still very excited. It's a great feeling."
Adeline Angelo, 74, a retired medical secretary, said she hoped the new money will "buy us good health and longevity."
With the winnings from their last big prize, the couple moved from the Bronx to Putnam County, about 50 miles north of the city. Eugene Angelo said they would continue to live modestly. And still buy lottery tickets, "just for the fun of it," his wife added.
Acting Lottery Director Gardner Gurney said this was only the third time in Lotto's history that a winner has hit the jackpot twice. The odds of winning just once were 22.5 million to one.
"The Angelos are living proof that lightning, or in this case, random luck, can strike twice," he said."
From: Springwise
"Launched in eleven Minneapolis suburbs this month, Get Home Free is a flat rate, prepaid cab card that gets its holder home safely. Mainly targeted at teenagers and college students, the concept's initiators are aiming to help out kids who are stuck with car trouble, have been drinking, or whose ride home has fallen through. Cardholders place a call to the Get Home Free hotline, and a car is immediately dispatched to bring them home, no questions asked.
Teen drinking and driving is a serious issue. As reported in the Star Tribune: "According to the 2004 Minnesota Student Survey, 28 percent of high school seniors reported having driven after using alcohol or drugs at least once in the previous year. Also, almost 40 percent of seniors reported that they had ridden with someone who had been using substances." Having a Get Home Free card as an emergency back-up should help keep some of them off the road.
Cards can be purchased online for USD 64.99 and are valid throughout the Twin Cities metro area, with statewide expansion to all key cities in Minnesota planned for 2008, and to high school and college campuses in all 50 states by 2010. In order to offer the service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Get Home Free has partnered with Airport Taxi and Town Taxi, Minnesota's largest fleet of taxis with over 300 vehicles. To spread the word, Get Home Free will give away one card every month to a random MySpace friend. Useful and straightforward, this is one to start up locally."
"Launched in eleven Minneapolis suburbs this month, Get Home Free is a flat rate, prepaid cab card that gets its holder home safely. Mainly targeted at teenagers and college students, the concept's initiators are aiming to help out kids who are stuck with car trouble, have been drinking, or whose ride home has fallen through. Cardholders place a call to the Get Home Free hotline, and a car is immediately dispatched to bring them home, no questions asked.
Teen drinking and driving is a serious issue. As reported in the Star Tribune: "According to the 2004 Minnesota Student Survey, 28 percent of high school seniors reported having driven after using alcohol or drugs at least once in the previous year. Also, almost 40 percent of seniors reported that they had ridden with someone who had been using substances." Having a Get Home Free card as an emergency back-up should help keep some of them off the road.
Cards can be purchased online for USD 64.99 and are valid throughout the Twin Cities metro area, with statewide expansion to all key cities in Minnesota planned for 2008, and to high school and college campuses in all 50 states by 2010. In order to offer the service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Get Home Free has partnered with Airport Taxi and Town Taxi, Minnesota's largest fleet of taxis with over 300 vehicles. To spread the word, Get Home Free will give away one card every month to a random MySpace friend. Useful and straightforward, this is one to start up locally."
From: the Wall Street Journal
What is too much to spend on a suit?![[Fashion]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/PJ-AK716_FASHIO_20070808205558.jpg)
What is too much to spend on a suit?
The question weighed on Barry Schwarz as he scanned the racks at Boyds men's store in Philadelphia, which were laden with $3,000 Brioni suits. "Their prices were just out of the world," recalls Mr. Schwarz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College.
We've all been there: A window display or a recommendation lures us into a store -- and we face unexpectedly astronomical price tags. It seems to happen more often these days as many luxury brands -- selling everything from $14,000 Ralph Lauren handbags to $899 Bugaboo baby strollers and $6,900 Beefeater barbecue grills -- push their top price points higher than they've ever gone before. What's priced below falls into that ever-expanding category: "affordable luxury."
Some people cut and run when confronted with prices that seem crazy. But many of us experience a sudden emotional-mathematical transformation. We set a new ceiling for a "reasonable" price. Disinclined to go all the way to buy the trophy, we instead settle for a consolation prize. Mr. Schwarz, a jeans-wearing type, walked out of Boyds with a suit that cost merely $800 -- the most he'd ever spent on an item of clothing.
"If you're in that world long enough, $800 stops even feeling like a lot of money," Mr. Schwarz says.
This concept is one of the reasons for the proliferation of $300 designer sunglasses these days. The fact that Ralph Lauren is charging $14,000 or so for an alligator "Ricky" handbag makes it easier for a consumer to justify in her mind paying $300 for a rather simple sweater. Many Chanel sunglass owners are actually would-be owners of Chanel suits. Something similar has happened to many owners of Tiffany keychains, Prada legwarmers, Coach wallets, and Frette tea towels.
When shoppers are confronted with prices they can't afford, a smart retailer will "move you right along to where you can salvage your pride," says Dan Hill, president of Sensory Logic, a Minneapolis consulting company that helps companies explore their sensory and emotional connections with customers.
Pride, Mr. Hill points out, "is a mixture of anger and happiness." That pretty much describes the whole shopping experience at those moments when we're outpriced (anger), then soothe ourselves with a smaller splurge (happiness).
In Mr. Hill's case, this played itself out in the purchase of a sweater when what he actually wanted was a certain pair of Jesus Jeans. A friend of mine remains sheepish about a smashing pair of high-waisted black Prada pants that seemed sensibly priced at $500 only after she had spent an hour eyeballing more expensive versions with the encouragement of a salesman at Barneys.
And yes, it's time to concede to my husband that I spent $87 on that T-shirt at Lost & Found in Los Angeles because I couldn't bring myself to spend $395 on a certain dress.
Given that accessories like sunglasses, fragrances, and logoed belts drive the sales of companies like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, such consolation prizes account for a very sizable chunk of the luxury business these days.
Indeed, this ploy is the soul of Las Vegas -- a town built on people who roll in on Southwest Airlines expecting to play $2 blackjack until they see the high rollers at the $200 tables. Next thing you know, they wake up in the baccarat lounge with their own private casino host and a stack of IOUs. After a while, it just doesn't seem like real money.
As for Prof. Schwarz, with his $800 suit, "I got sucked in. And I knew what was happening," he says. Mr. Schwarz has since written and spoken about this phenomenon to roughly 75 industry groups with audiences of as many as 8,000 over the past three years. He has found eager apostles in Microsoft, Google, the National Restaurant Association, General Electric, the Marines, Time Warner, the Dutch government, several health insurers, and Lehman Brothers.
Mr. Schwarz calls the top-priced goods "anchors." Anchors, he says, set the ceilings on prices of objects that don't have a clear value.
That is just about everything in luxury goods and fashion. In fact, that's one reason why some in the luxury fashion industry are irritated with retailers like Target and Zara: They're seen as setting the ceilings too low.
Retail-consulting guru Paco Underhill says, "This has been a strategy that goes back to the 17th century. You sold one thing to the king, but everyone in court had to have a lesser one." Today, we have Hermès, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci. "There's the $500 bag in the window, and what you walk away with is the T-shirt," says Mr. Underhill. "It's the same strategy as putting the sports car in the window to sell the sedan in the back."
Still, luxury brands today have fine-tuned the strategy. The folks at Coach are masters of this. Look for a notably expensive bag in one of the company's flagship stores. Only one or two of them are available for sale, a company spokeswoman pointed out to me. But scores of similar, smaller, less-elaborate bags are nearby, primed to walk out the door. And if you can't even go that far, try the wallet or the keychain.
As convenient as it might be to accuse these manufacturers of gouging when they set prices so high on their top goods, there's nothing nefarious going on here. Clothing is one of the most democratic marketplaces around. There's always another store, another pair of pants to turn to.
From: the Wall Street Journal
"“War is War and hell is hell. Between the two, war is worse.”
So sayeth Hawkeye Pierce, the wisecracking head surgeon of M*A*S*H 4077. Does Dr. Pierce need to revise his thinking? Capt. J. Dow Covey might think so. Why? Well consider the following interchange as relayed in this recent report from Michael Totten of Michaeltotten.com, a blogger about the Middle East. Totten has been embedded with various U.S. military units in Iraq of late, filing dispatches about military progress in that country. In his latest report Totten is visiting an Iraqi police station and talking to Capt. Covey of New York City:
“Do you know the Weekly Standard magazine?” Captain Covey asked me.
“Of course,” I said.
“My buddy Tom Cotton was just written up there,” he said. “It was pretty cool seeing him in that magazine.”
“What did he do to get in the magazine?” I said.
“He’s like me,” he said. “He’s a Harvard Law grad who joined the Army after 9/11. I’m an attorney.”
“You’re an attorney?” I said. “What are you doing out here in Iraq?”
“I practiced law for three years,” he said, “then got into investment banking. When 9/11 happened I just had to sign up with the Army. Investment banking is a lot more stressful than this.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I said.
“No,” he said, and laughed. “I am totally serious.
"“War is War and hell is hell. Between the two, war is worse.”
So sayeth Hawkeye Pierce, the wisecracking head surgeon of M*A*S*H 4077. Does Dr. Pierce need to revise his thinking? Capt. J. Dow Covey might think so. Why? Well consider the following interchange as relayed in this recent report from Michael Totten of Michaeltotten.com, a blogger about the Middle East. Totten has been embedded with various U.S. military units in Iraq of late, filing dispatches about military progress in that country. In his latest report Totten is visiting an Iraqi police station and talking to Capt. Covey of New York City:
“Do you know the Weekly Standard magazine?” Captain Covey asked me.
“Of course,” I said.
“My buddy Tom Cotton was just written up there,” he said. “It was pretty cool seeing him in that magazine.”
“What did he do to get in the magazine?” I said.
“He’s like me,” he said. “He’s a Harvard Law grad who joined the Army after 9/11. I’m an attorney.”
“You’re an attorney?” I said. “What are you doing out here in Iraq?”
“I practiced law for three years,” he said, “then got into investment banking. When 9/11 happened I just had to sign up with the Army. Investment banking is a lot more stressful than this.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I said.
“No,” he said, and laughed. “I am totally serious.
From: Entrepreneur.com
"Imagine turning an idea you hatched during your morning shower into a $5 million business--in just three years. That is precisely how Don McNeill, the Wilmington, Delaware, inventor of You've Been Sentenced, conceived of his now wildly popular board game for kids ages 8 and up, which uses a deck of 540 pentagon-shaped cards to come up with ingenious and hilarious sentences.
"I started with an idea, one investor and $50,000, which was just enough to pay the bills," says McNeill, 43. "My daughter drew the prototype on her computer, and I called people I knew from a 20-year career selling commercial printing and gave them one-quarter of 1 percent of the company to help me produce the game."
It's a success story you can emulate. With the right idea, enough upfront cash and sufficient market research, it's possible to turn your dreams of entering the $22 billion toy industry into a viable career--and have fun doing it. But while brilliant ideas and cash are certainly paramount to success, toy industry insiders say it's the research that can make or break your toy empire. "The industry is strong, but you need to find holes in the marketplace and target them," says Chris Byrne, aka "The Toy Guy," an independent researcher and strategic marketing planner for the youth industry. "You also need to make sure that what you're planning to do is consistent with current trends and consumption patterns. For instance, right now the hottest toy trends are in electronics [like Nintendo DS, Webkinz and Wii], arts and crafts, and ‘narrative' toys that expand a child's cognitive activity and inspire the imagination, so these are definitely areas you should explore. It's always easier to go in the direction of the market than to buck a trend.""
read full story at http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2007/august/181676.html
"Imagine turning an idea you hatched during your morning shower into a $5 million business--in just three years. That is precisely how Don McNeill, the Wilmington, Delaware, inventor of You've Been Sentenced, conceived of his now wildly popular board game for kids ages 8 and up, which uses a deck of 540 pentagon-shaped cards to come up with ingenious and hilarious sentences.
"I started with an idea, one investor and $50,000, which was just enough to pay the bills," says McNeill, 43. "My daughter drew the prototype on her computer, and I called people I knew from a 20-year career selling commercial printing and gave them one-quarter of 1 percent of the company to help me produce the game."
It's a success story you can emulate. With the right idea, enough upfront cash and sufficient market research, it's possible to turn your dreams of entering the $22 billion toy industry into a viable career--and have fun doing it. But while brilliant ideas and cash are certainly paramount to success, toy industry insiders say it's the research that can make or break your toy empire. "The industry is strong, but you need to find holes in the marketplace and target them," says Chris Byrne, aka "The Toy Guy," an independent researcher and strategic marketing planner for the youth industry. "You also need to make sure that what you're planning to do is consistent with current trends and consumption patterns. For instance, right now the hottest toy trends are in electronics [like Nintendo DS, Webkinz and Wii], arts and crafts, and ‘narrative' toys that expand a child's cognitive activity and inspire the imagination, so these are definitely areas you should explore. It's always easier to go in the direction of the market than to buck a trend.""
read full story at http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2007/august/181676.html
From Reuters:
BERLIN (Reuters) - A thief stole a briefcase and threw it away without noticing it contained 10,000 euros ($13,660) in cash, German authorities said Thursday.
"I think they'll be annoyed when they find out," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Duesseldorf.
The case's owner, a 57-year-old Iranian businessman, had reported it missing as he prepared to board a flight in Duesseldorf airport. A policewoman later found it -- ransacked, but still containing the two cash-filled envelopes.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A thief stole a briefcase and threw it away without noticing it contained 10,000 euros ($13,660) in cash, German authorities said Thursday.
"I think they'll be annoyed when they find out," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Duesseldorf.
The case's owner, a 57-year-old Iranian businessman, had reported it missing as he prepared to board a flight in Duesseldorf airport. A policewoman later found it -- ransacked, but still containing the two cash-filled envelopes.
From: the Wall Street Journal Online
"A 17-year-old “unlocked” the iPhone last week, making it possible to use the cell phone on networks operated by carriers other than its current exclusive carrier, AT&T. Now the lawyers and entrepreneurs are getting involved, highlighting how businesses are struggling to balance innovation with tech-savvy customers, and a legal system that isn’t designed for either.
Hackers have been trying to unlock the iPhone since it came out at the end of June. George Hotz, the teenager who finally pulled it off, just sold his unlocked iPhone to CertiCell, a mobile-phone repair company, for a Nissan 350Z and three new iPhones, according to the Washington Post. Hotz will also get a paid consulting job with the company.
Hotz could have held out for more. An anonymous entrepreneur is offering $100,000 for the rights to distribute software that unlocks the iPhone, according to Engadget, which establishes that there is – or at least should be – a market for it.
One person who probably hopes software that unlocks the iPhone becomes widely available is John Canning of Vermont. AT&T doesn’t provide service in Vermont or Alaska, and it has threatened to cancel the contracts of any residents in those states who buy an iPhone. Canning bought the iPhone anyway, according to USA Today. An AT&T spokesperson told USA Today that people who live in places where AT&T doesn’t offer service shouldn’t buy the iPhone – an attitude that the Business Technology Blog thinks largely explains why people are so eager to unlock the device.
The catch, of course, is that unlocking the iPhone is a legal gray area. There is an exception in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the major intellectual property law, which, believe it or not, specifies that it isn’t a crime to unlock a cell phone for personal use, according to an IDG New Service article. Several intellectual property lawyers told IDG that unlocking the iPhone for personal use was probably fine. But sharing the method with others – either for profit or not – is a gray area, the lawyers said, largely because no one has ever tried to use a copyright to enforce an exclusive contract. It may be legal, the lawyers say, but it is more or less inviting a lawsuit. Certainly, AT&T has every incentive to fight people who try to distribute the secret of unlocking the iPhone, since it risks losing customers otherwise. And, in fact, an Irish man who has also unlocked the iPhone says that he heard from AT&T lawyers this past weekend. "
"A 17-year-old “unlocked” the iPhone last week, making it possible to use the cell phone on networks operated by carriers other than its current exclusive carrier, AT&T. Now the lawyers and entrepreneurs are getting involved, highlighting how businesses are struggling to balance innovation with tech-savvy customers, and a legal system that isn’t designed for either.
Hackers have been trying to unlock the iPhone since it came out at the end of June. George Hotz, the teenager who finally pulled it off, just sold his unlocked iPhone to CertiCell, a mobile-phone repair company, for a Nissan 350Z and three new iPhones, according to the Washington Post. Hotz will also get a paid consulting job with the company.
Hotz could have held out for more. An anonymous entrepreneur is offering $100,000 for the rights to distribute software that unlocks the iPhone, according to Engadget, which establishes that there is – or at least should be – a market for it.
One person who probably hopes software that unlocks the iPhone becomes widely available is John Canning of Vermont. AT&T doesn’t provide service in Vermont or Alaska, and it has threatened to cancel the contracts of any residents in those states who buy an iPhone. Canning bought the iPhone anyway, according to USA Today. An AT&T spokesperson told USA Today that people who live in places where AT&T doesn’t offer service shouldn’t buy the iPhone – an attitude that the Business Technology Blog thinks largely explains why people are so eager to unlock the device.
The catch, of course, is that unlocking the iPhone is a legal gray area. There is an exception in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the major intellectual property law, which, believe it or not, specifies that it isn’t a crime to unlock a cell phone for personal use, according to an IDG New Service article. Several intellectual property lawyers told IDG that unlocking the iPhone for personal use was probably fine. But sharing the method with others – either for profit or not – is a gray area, the lawyers said, largely because no one has ever tried to use a copyright to enforce an exclusive contract. It may be legal, the lawyers say, but it is more or less inviting a lawsuit. Certainly, AT&T has every incentive to fight people who try to distribute the secret of unlocking the iPhone, since it risks losing customers otherwise. And, in fact, an Irish man who has also unlocked the iPhone says that he heard from AT&T lawyers this past weekend. "
From: the Wall Street Journal
LONDON -- Past-their-prime rock bands are used to being ignored by record labels and mocked by the music press. But, in Britain, they've found a new groupie: venture capital.
A boutique London investment bank, Ingenious Media PLC, is financing comeback albums. Last month, it signed UB40, a reggae band that had a No. 1 hit in 1988 with the song "Red Red Wine." Other artists working on CDs for Ingenious include veteran rocker Peter Gabriel, and the techno punk band the Prodigy.
The firm, which specializes in media and entertainment deals, pays for the acts' music production, marketing and CD distribution. Its partners came up with the idea to start two funds to back faded groups three years ago. It has raised $79 million.
Reggae band UB40 -- in 1987, at left and more recently, above -- is releasing an album that's financed by Ingenious Media, a boutique investment bank.
Fans often fill up concert venues to hear older acts perform their hits, but they typically shun their new record releases. Ingenious figured with the music industry suffering its worst downturn ever, record companies were reducing spending -- and some veteran acts would be eager for more support.
Duncan Reid, commercial director at Ingenious, says it targets British bands, from punk to pop, who aren't signed to big-name labels. Ingenious calculates that there is less upside with these old groups (which is often why record labels pass) but less risk of a bomb.
Ingenious and the artist or artist's manager discuss distribution and marketing strategies together and then hire third parties to do those tasks. "We are in there giving the benefit of our experience and advising and overseeing," Mr. Reid says. Ingenious' records are released globally.
So far, Ingenious has financed 15 albums and agreed to pay for seven more, spending roughly between $400,000 and $2 million each, according to regulatory filings. From that pipeline, two have been released. One, by a Welsh grunge band called The Heights, sold poorly. The other, by 1990s band Travis, is selling reasonably well, Ingenious says. Record labels typically expect 5% of their acts to be profitable.
Ingenious set up two music funds and receives an annual fee for managing the funds and 20% of any profits. But the funds aren't generating profits yet. Tax consultants say that most people are attracted because under United Kingdom law investors in the funds don't have to pay tax on any profits and get a one-time discount on their overall tax bill.
Ingenious's Mr. Reid, a former tax accountant himself, takes an approach to scouting that befits his graying stars. Mr. Reid, 49, doesn't go to concerts to check out bands. Instead, he and his partners at Ingenious rely on sources in the music industry to introduce them to acts looking for financing. The company has also found some new bands through contacts at independent labels.
"We spent awhile putting the word out there that we were doing these deals," Mr. Reid says.
UB40's investment advisers, Coutts, a London-based unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, suggested the band see if Ingenious would fund it. UB40's contract with EMI Group PLC's Virgin label ended in 2005. Their business manager, Lanval Storrod, says the eight band members felt other record companies weren't effective at promoting "heritage" musicians -- an industry term for performers over 40.
"The biggest problem for heritage bands is record labels tend to market everyone the same whether they are a boy band or have been around 20 years," says Mr. Storrod. An EMI spokesman said it has a good relationship with UB40.
As one of the world's best-selling reggae bands, UB40's members thought the group was a good bet because sales of its new album would likely cover production and marketing costs even if it wasn't a hit, Mr. Storrod says. The band had an idea that could be tough to market: Its new CD would focus on political and social issues.
Ingenious put up $2 million to make, distribute and promote the album, which is scheduled for release at the end of the year or early next year. Any initial profits will go to the Ingenious fund. Once the fund's investment has been paid back, the fund and UB40 will share any additional profits.
One aspect UB40 likes about the deal: Unlike a record label, Ingenious executives haven't asked for an update on the album or visited their recording studio in Birmingham.
Record labels, hit by rampant piracy and falling profits, have been cutting back on the number of bands they support. With the power of the big record companies diminishing, bands are trying new ways to put out music.
After a 40-year relationship with EMI's Capitol Records, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney announced in March he would join Starbucks Corp.'s label, Hear Music. Mr. McCartney released an album through 10,000 Starbucks coffee stores in June. The release sold 500,000 copies by early August according to Nielsen Soundscan.
In the U.S., some rock acts are also drawing on private-equity support. A & M/Octone Records, based in New York, has backed the rock band Maroon 5 and several other groups. The label is a joint venture with Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and several private investors.
Big record companies say they aren't threatened by the efforts to produce music without them. Bands "are not equipped with the necessary specialist skills to take care of business" such as hiring producers, designers, photographers and publicists, says Max Hole, an executive vice president at Universal Music Group International, the overseas arm of the world's largest music company by market share. "We are experts in providing these services and skills, which allows the artist to create and make music."
Ingenious was founded in 1998 by theater producer Andrew Lloyd Webber's accountant, Patrick McKenna, a former partner at accounting firm Deloitte & Touche. One of Mr. McKenna's early clients at Deloitte was English singer Peter Gabriel. The two men became friends, and Mr. Gabriel invested some of his own money in the Ingenious music venture-capital funds.
The two men agreed Ingenious would invest in Mr. Gabriel's next album, and in January, Ingenious paid $2 million for a 24.95% stake in Mr. Gabriel's 14th album, scheduled to be released next year. The deal gives Mr. Gabriel control over promotion and distribution of the still-untitled album in North America. Elsewhere, Mr. Gabriel is still signed to the Virgin record label.
Ingenious doesn't ask its rock stars to act like rock stars, something that appeals to the 57-year-old Mr. Gabriel, says Mike Large, chief operating officer of Peter Gabriel's management company, Real World Holdings Ltd. Musicians of Mr. Gabriel's age and experience are "not hungry for the circus of publicity, touring and autograph signing," he says.
"We know we have a great fan base who will buy the record if you tell them it's out there," Mr. Large says.
Dave Goldberg, a music entrepreneur at Benchmark Capital, a U.S. venture-capital investor, says it's too early to say if Ingenious's approach will take off in the U.S. "But we are going to see more and more of these different ways of creating financing for bands," he says.
LONDON -- Past-their-prime rock bands are used to being ignored by record labels and mocked by the music press. But, in Britain, they've found a new groupie: venture capital.
A boutique London investment bank, Ingenious Media PLC, is financing comeback albums. Last month, it signed UB40, a reggae band that had a No. 1 hit in 1988 with the song "Red Red Wine." Other artists working on CDs for Ingenious include veteran rocker Peter Gabriel, and the techno punk band the Prodigy.
The firm, which specializes in media and entertainment deals, pays for the acts' music production, marketing and CD distribution. Its partners came up with the idea to start two funds to back faded groups three years ago. It has raised $79 million.
Reggae band UB40 -- in 1987, at left and more recently, above -- is releasing an album that's financed by Ingenious Media, a boutique investment bank.
Fans often fill up concert venues to hear older acts perform their hits, but they typically shun their new record releases. Ingenious figured with the music industry suffering its worst downturn ever, record companies were reducing spending -- and some veteran acts would be eager for more support.
Duncan Reid, commercial director at Ingenious, says it targets British bands, from punk to pop, who aren't signed to big-name labels. Ingenious calculates that there is less upside with these old groups (which is often why record labels pass) but less risk of a bomb.
Ingenious and the artist or artist's manager discuss distribution and marketing strategies together and then hire third parties to do those tasks. "We are in there giving the benefit of our experience and advising and overseeing," Mr. Reid says. Ingenious' records are released globally.
So far, Ingenious has financed 15 albums and agreed to pay for seven more, spending roughly between $400,000 and $2 million each, according to regulatory filings. From that pipeline, two have been released. One, by a Welsh grunge band called The Heights, sold poorly. The other, by 1990s band Travis, is selling reasonably well, Ingenious says. Record labels typically expect 5% of their acts to be profitable.
Ingenious set up two music funds and receives an annual fee for managing the funds and 20% of any profits. But the funds aren't generating profits yet. Tax consultants say that most people are attracted because under United Kingdom law investors in the funds don't have to pay tax on any profits and get a one-time discount on their overall tax bill.
Ingenious's Mr. Reid, a former tax accountant himself, takes an approach to scouting that befits his graying stars. Mr. Reid, 49, doesn't go to concerts to check out bands. Instead, he and his partners at Ingenious rely on sources in the music industry to introduce them to acts looking for financing. The company has also found some new bands through contacts at independent labels.
"We spent awhile putting the word out there that we were doing these deals," Mr. Reid says.
UB40's investment advisers, Coutts, a London-based unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, suggested the band see if Ingenious would fund it. UB40's contract with EMI Group PLC's Virgin label ended in 2005. Their business manager, Lanval Storrod, says the eight band members felt other record companies weren't effective at promoting "heritage" musicians -- an industry term for performers over 40.
"The biggest problem for heritage bands is record labels tend to market everyone the same whether they are a boy band or have been around 20 years," says Mr. Storrod. An EMI spokesman said it has a good relationship with UB40.
As one of the world's best-selling reggae bands, UB40's members thought the group was a good bet because sales of its new album would likely cover production and marketing costs even if it wasn't a hit, Mr. Storrod says. The band had an idea that could be tough to market: Its new CD would focus on political and social issues.
Ingenious put up $2 million to make, distribute and promote the album, which is scheduled for release at the end of the year or early next year. Any initial profits will go to the Ingenious fund. Once the fund's investment has been paid back, the fund and UB40 will share any additional profits.
One aspect UB40 likes about the deal: Unlike a record label, Ingenious executives haven't asked for an update on the album or visited their recording studio in Birmingham.
Record labels, hit by rampant piracy and falling profits, have been cutting back on the number of bands they support. With the power of the big record companies diminishing, bands are trying new ways to put out music.
After a 40-year relationship with EMI's Capitol Records, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney announced in March he would join Starbucks Corp.'s label, Hear Music. Mr. McCartney released an album through 10,000 Starbucks coffee stores in June. The release sold 500,000 copies by early August according to Nielsen Soundscan.
In the U.S., some rock acts are also drawing on private-equity support. A & M/Octone Records, based in New York, has backed the rock band Maroon 5 and several other groups. The label is a joint venture with Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and several private investors.
Big record companies say they aren't threatened by the efforts to produce music without them. Bands "are not equipped with the necessary specialist skills to take care of business" such as hiring producers, designers, photographers and publicists, says Max Hole, an executive vice president at Universal Music Group International, the overseas arm of the world's largest music company by market share. "We are experts in providing these services and skills, which allows the artist to create and make music."
Ingenious was founded in 1998 by theater producer Andrew Lloyd Webber's accountant, Patrick McKenna, a former partner at accounting firm Deloitte & Touche. One of Mr. McKenna's early clients at Deloitte was English singer Peter Gabriel. The two men became friends, and Mr. Gabriel invested some of his own money in the Ingenious music venture-capital funds.
The two men agreed Ingenious would invest in Mr. Gabriel's next album, and in January, Ingenious paid $2 million for a 24.95% stake in Mr. Gabriel's 14th album, scheduled to be released next year. The deal gives Mr. Gabriel control over promotion and distribution of the still-untitled album in North America. Elsewhere, Mr. Gabriel is still signed to the Virgin record label.
Ingenious doesn't ask its rock stars to act like rock stars, something that appeals to the 57-year-old Mr. Gabriel, says Mike Large, chief operating officer of Peter Gabriel's management company, Real World Holdings Ltd. Musicians of Mr. Gabriel's age and experience are "not hungry for the circus of publicity, touring and autograph signing," he says.
"We know we have a great fan base who will buy the record if you tell them it's out there," Mr. Large says.
Dave Goldberg, a music entrepreneur at Benchmark Capital, a U.S. venture-capital investor, says it's too early to say if Ingenious's approach will take off in the U.S. "But we are going to see more and more of these different ways of creating financing for bands," he says.
From Springwise:
"It's no secret that one can save time, money and gas by doubling up on errands or swapping to-do's with people in other locations to cut down on driving. But the prospect of divvying up tasks among friends, family and coworkers might seem like more trouble than it's worth. That's where Sherrands comes in—a new tool that links to-do lists of close friends and associates in a secure online environment to facilitate errand sharing.
Here's how this lifehack works: customers sign up for subscriptions and invite others to join. Users set up lists of other members they trust to run their errands—each user can have multiple lists. They then enter information about their errands, including information on mileage and time, which can be used to calculate how much gas and time users are saving using the site. Once an errand is entered, the user can assign it to one or more lists, and each member on that list is alerted via email. If the errand happens to be convenient to one of those members, he or she can accept it, and an email notification will let the person know. Sherrands also lets users create offers—alerting a list of members that you will be running to a particular part of town, for instance, and offering to help with errands in that area for anyone who needs it. During its current testing phase, the service is free, however Sherrands will begin charging for use once testing is complete.
While its interface could be more appealing, the idea is promising. Sherrands offers a handy solution to coordinating what otherwise might take a tangled web of phone calls and individual emails, making it an efficient way to save time and spare the environment to boot. It could be an attractive concept for business owners, too, especially if adapted for project management purposes."
"It's no secret that one can save time, money and gas by doubling up on errands or swapping to-do's with people in other locations to cut down on driving. But the prospect of divvying up tasks among friends, family and coworkers might seem like more trouble than it's worth. That's where Sherrands comes in—a new tool that links to-do lists of close friends and associates in a secure online environment to facilitate errand sharing.
Here's how this lifehack works: customers sign up for subscriptions and invite others to join. Users set up lists of other members they trust to run their errands—each user can have multiple lists. They then enter information about their errands, including information on mileage and time, which can be used to calculate how much gas and time users are saving using the site. Once an errand is entered, the user can assign it to one or more lists, and each member on that list is alerted via email. If the errand happens to be convenient to one of those members, he or she can accept it, and an email notification will let the person know. Sherrands also lets users create offers—alerting a list of members that you will be running to a particular part of town, for instance, and offering to help with errands in that area for anyone who needs it. During its current testing phase, the service is free, however Sherrands will begin charging for use once testing is complete.
While its interface could be more appealing, the idea is promising. Sherrands offers a handy solution to coordinating what otherwise might take a tangled web of phone calls and individual emails, making it an efficient way to save time and spare the environment to boot. It could be an attractive concept for business owners, too, especially if adapted for project management purposes."
From http://www.sk-rt.com/
What is sk*rt anyway?
sk*rt is the place to find and/or link to anything and everything on the Web that you'd like to share. If sk*rt users like what you submit, they'll vote for it. The more votes, the more likely your link will make it to the front page. Links on the front page are seen by everybody and get lots of love. The front page content is ever-changing and always cool. Of course, no one person can keep track of every cool thing out there. So sk*rt users bring the content. Vote for the content. Determine what's good and what's bad. sk*rt works to make sure you don't miss any of the good stuff.
What is sk*rt anyway?
sk*rt is the place to find and/or link to anything and everything on the Web that you'd like to share. If sk*rt users like what you submit, they'll vote for it. The more votes, the more likely your link will make it to the front page. Links on the front page are seen by everybody and get lots of love. The front page content is ever-changing and always cool. Of course, no one person can keep track of every cool thing out there. So sk*rt users bring the content. Vote for the content. Determine what's good and what's bad. sk*rt works to make sure you don't miss any of the good stuff.
Admittedly, I've never had this problem, but you never know...
From KiroTV.com
A Houston-area woman filed a lawsuit against a porn star, claiming she stole her name.
Lara Madden, 25, is an actress in the pornography industry, Houston TV station KPRC reported. She is a former Houstonian who has appeared in about a dozen X-rated movies under the stage name "Syvette Wimberly." That's the problem.
The real Syvette Wimberly was one of Madden's classmates at Kingwood High School. The women knew each other in the ninth grade.
Wimberly said she does not believe it's a coincidence that her old classmate is now using her name.
"I imagine she knew the name and maybe thought it sounded catchy and was unique," Wimberly said.
Wimberly is suing Madden for invasion of privacy and emotional distress.
"Really on a weekly, if not daily basis, my client has had to deal with odd phone calls, former classmates that didn't know her that well sending her e-mails about whether she's now in the adult film industry and just a general lack of safety for her," attorney Caj D. Boatwright said.
Wimberly is also suing Vivid Entertainment, the porn distributor that produced Madden's videos.
She's asking for monetary damages and an injunction to stop Madden from using her name.
KPRC legal analyst Brian Wice said that's an appeal likely to win sympathy from a jury if the case goes to trial.
"It's not like they pulled the name "Jane Doe" or "Barbara Smith" out of thin air. They pulled a name that's fairly peculiar to one woman in Harris County, Texas, and that's the kind of coincidence or lack of coincidence that's going to get somebody's attention in this building behind us," Wice said.
Wimberly declined to talk on camera. Her attorney said she's already received more publicity than she wanted in the first place.
Calls to Madden and Vivid Entertainment for comment were not returned.
From KiroTV.com
A Houston-area woman filed a lawsuit against a porn star, claiming she stole her name.
Lara Madden, 25, is an actress in the pornography industry, Houston TV station KPRC reported. She is a former Houstonian who has appeared in about a dozen X-rated movies under the stage name "Syvette Wimberly." That's the problem.
The real Syvette Wimberly was one of Madden's classmates at Kingwood High School. The women knew each other in the ninth grade.
Wimberly said she does not believe it's a coincidence that her old classmate is now using her name.
"I imagine she knew the name and maybe thought it sounded catchy and was unique," Wimberly said.
Wimberly is suing Madden for invasion of privacy and emotional distress.
"Really on a weekly, if not daily basis, my client has had to deal with odd phone calls, former classmates that didn't know her that well sending her e-mails about whether she's now in the adult film industry and just a general lack of safety for her," attorney Caj D. Boatwright said.
Wimberly is also suing Vivid Entertainment, the porn distributor that produced Madden's videos.
She's asking for monetary damages and an injunction to stop Madden from using her name.
KPRC legal analyst Brian Wice said that's an appeal likely to win sympathy from a jury if the case goes to trial.
"It's not like they pulled the name "Jane Doe" or "Barbara Smith" out of thin air. They pulled a name that's fairly peculiar to one woman in Harris County, Texas, and that's the kind of coincidence or lack of coincidence that's going to get somebody's attention in this building behind us," Wice said.
Wimberly declined to talk on camera. Her attorney said she's already received more publicity than she wanted in the first place.
Calls to Madden and Vivid Entertainment for comment were not returned.