I was having lunch with a friend recently who was telling me about some of his dealings with Google over the last year. As an ex-Wall Street guy, it struck him that some of the meetings he had with Google were like the ones he had at Long Term Capital years ago. Even when LTC was about to crater, he remembers going to their offices, being sequestered into an off-campus conference room, and not being able to get any information out of them to even help bail them out. In addition, people would show up and leave during the meeting, take notes, and not even introduce themselves. Well, it turns out that his meetings with Google over the last year were pretty similar. While the Google employees were clearly bright and technical, my friend was not sure who the decision maker was and what they actually wanted to do with the company.

Very interesting article drawing parallels between LTCM ("When Genius Failed") and Google.

BeyondVC: Remember Long Term Capital?

What this really means: TV is grabbing a share of online advertising by redefining TV as both broadcast and broadband. Advertisers have always been more comfortable spending big money on TV. Now they can continue to spend their money with those familiar players and get broadband, too. And TV is doing this so as not to lose money to other media even as broadcast — and next, cable — shrink; this is how they rescue upfront. And if TV succeeds at holding advertisers’ attention and money, other players — online companies, magazines, newspapers — may not be able to break in. This an effort for both networks and ad agencies to keep ahead.

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Exploding TV: KA-BLOOM!

His point, to paraphrase it, is that it doesn’t matter what information you have, it’s how you use it that makes the difference. This was always my biggest bitch about analytics apps, they always stopped short of allowing the user to turn the knobs and dials in the transaction system to effect some kind of change as a result of the dashboard the BI app provided.

Venture Chronicles

Red Hat, the leading Linux distributor, announced on April 10 that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire open-source Java middleware company JBoss.

JBoss has been rumored to be on the acquisition block for months. Earlier this year there was much speculation that Oracle was going to acquire the Atlanta-based JBoss, but JBoss CEO Marc Fleury said he had no immediate plans to sell the company.

Red Hat will pay at least $350 million for JBoss. That will be made up of 40 percent cash and 60 percent Red Hat stock. An additional $70 million may be paid depending upon JBoss' financial performance. Oracle had been alleged to have been looking to pay from $300 million to $480 million for JBoss.

I think that's better than Oracle buying them.

Print Story: Red Hat to Acquire JBoss on Yahoo! News

The Walt Disney Co. said Monday its TV group plans to offer four ABC prime-time shows including "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" online for free beginning in May.
...
The TV group also said it will launch a broadband channel for soap opera viewers on April 17, available to Verizon Communications Inc. consumer broadband customers, called Soapnetic.

So it begins. What begins? First, it is formal offering of free shows from a major network. Ad supported, and likely to be better supported when they realize they can do better targetted advertising (the listing is all the Major Brands, like P&G and Unilever) online. I expect these shows will become more scarce on the P2P nets if it is faster and as cheap to download it with the ads.

But more significantly, this is a formal offering of a free TV network over the Internet, for a single high-speed provider. The broadband commodity game is changing...

Print Story: Disney to Make 4 ABC Shows Free Online on Yahoo! News

This analysis is by no means comprehensive. But in general, I believe that if an entrepreneur wants a seed-investor who can add real value, it is not productive to economically penalize that investor when they add it. Structuring a seed-round as equity allows the investor and entrepreneur to be completely aligned and share one goal - to create as much value as possible for the company.

Redeye VC: Bridge Loans vs. Preferred Equity

Benzene can also form in soft drinks made with Vitamin C and sodium or potassium benzoate. Heat, light and shelf life can affect whether benzene will form, according to FDA.

A spokesman for the American Beverage Association said the amount of soft drinks people consume is far less than the amount of tap water they are exposed to.

Really? Is that what they tell their shareholders, too?

"You can crunch the numbers any way you want; it's still adding up to safe products," said the spokesman, Kevin Keane. "We're going to continue to work with FDA to ensure the safety of our products."

Benzene Levels in Soft Drinks Above Limit - Yahoo! News

The Texas comptroller's Office suspected for years that well-heeled Lone Star citizens were buying big-ticket private planes out of state to dodge sales taxes. But the tax collector couldn't prove it. Then the agency installed new computer technology that matched federal airplane registrations with state tax records. In just the past six months, Texas has collected $5 million in unpaid taxes from 43 scofflaws.

As tax season nears its Apr. 15 peak, revenue agencies are reaching for a software tool kit that has long been popular in Silicon Valley and in the back offices of big retailers. A combination of advanced data mining programs and vast repositories called data warehouses is allowing the taxman in about a dozen states to gather and analyze unprecedented heaps of information about individuals and businesses, especially small companies.

If You're Cheating on Your Taxes... - Yahoo! News

Apple has set up a company based in Nevada with the purpose of managing its cash and short-term investments in a tax-advantageous manner, BusinessWeek Online has learned.

According to public documents, Apple has incorporated Braeburn Capital, an asset management company based in Reno, (Nev.) Braeburn -- named for a variety of apple that's uniquely sweet and tart -- will be a vehicle for managing Apple's investment portfolio. By incorporating in Nevada, Apple will be shielded from certain taxes imposed by the state of California

Apple Takes Its Bankroll to Reno

It seems like every other day my RSS is filling up with these anti meme memes. Anti memes come in all shapes and sizes. The anti 4 Things meme is what is getting waved around the most now.

Can we all just agree that anti meme memes are pretty damn stupid. I mean first we waste time with the original meme and then we waste more time with the anti meme meme and even more time going back to the anti meme meme meme. And so on. RSS readers everywhere are being flooded, the kids are all confused and damnit no one is doing the wave anymore.

Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: Anti Meme Memes in My RSS Reader