Music Artist Fantasy Stock Exchange (MAFSE)

I feel some sort of an emotion when I see artists that I found really quite good, go main stream. For example, Owl City (number one on iTunes) and to an extent Little Boots (on all the front covers in UK). If they were stocks, I may have bought them and got rich. Seriously, I feel like I'm better than all you guys for finding them before they were big. Let's me be cocky for a bit.

My Music Artist Fantasy Stock Exchange (MAFSE for short) works like a Sport Fantasy game. Except you play with fake money and music stock prices depends on the artist's popularity on Google trends. You can get credit by referring friends (something you might do anyway, telling your friends about music you discovered). You can spend credits on music, spotify subscriptions, iTunes, and other stuff.

Click here to build your Music Portfolio, you big shot producer all rejecting Britney Spears' proposal, you.

Mobile Commerce: Same Basic Idea, Different Approaches, Results

Let's look at a few businesses that thought, "Wow look at all these people with cellphones and smartphones. They could use them for so much more than calls. Maybe even as currency."

My analysis on the basic idea and how companies stemmed from them and their differing approaches and results.

Company	Success	Differentiating factor	Growth strategy	Status and Latest News	What they did right or wrong
paypal	IIII	integrate with paypal account	tie business in with paypal.com, convert users, convert partners	releasing APIs; getting more merchants to accept it; http://bit.ly/1OAKQ9	logical extension of their business; lack of innovating and solving a imminent need; lots of money and influence
mytango	I	order and pay for meals and have it ready for pick up	sign up restaurants, look for big partnerships	limited growth; testing new business models	dismissed P2P market and focused on restaurant ordering; relied on partnerships excessively; high learning curve for users; not enough focus on technology; limited dedication by small team
obopay	IIIII	strong focus on sending money between people	grow network of users; social networks & gaming	Nokia & other investments; Social Network Market; Bank partnerships	great dedication, persistence, and belief in their idea; made key partnerships; continue to raise funding; growing network effect
opentable	IIIIIIIIIIIIII	make restaurant reservations	online; pull strategy	IPO	presented a straightforward value proposition; simply; online focus initially
verrus	IIIIIIII	pay parking	partner with local governments	growing contracts and clients	picked up on a very simple and sensible use; picked up great visibility and publicity through partnership with municipalities
Boku	IIII	social networks and gaming sites; purchases show on phone bill	less serious but just as safe	partnering with social networks; virtual goods; micropayments	international presence; digital goods
Zong	IIII	facebook	TV-voting using cellphones; relationship with carriers	http://bit.ly/3wHfyE	delivered on a need; recognised an opportunity and a fit with their technology
TextPayMe	II	Amazon support	get acquired?	Amazon is supporting it but the technology is old like MyTango and not intuitive	Very similar technology as MyTango; relied on partners; got acquired

I have not included any private information that I was privileged to and all information are public. My analysis is completely my own interpretation and prediction. In 2007, I interned at MyTango and they had some flashes of potential be successful. In 2007, they were on par with Obopay. However, since then these companies have gone very different paths.

With all respect and admiration for the MyTango team Terry and Randy, I will attempt to determine why one is looking hopeful and the other is seemingly floundering. All great entrepreneurs and engineers value honest criticism and honesty, so I hope my frank analysis is more constructive than offensive.

It isn't a far off idea that one day, we will be tied to our phones. It can pretty much do everything now. Wallets may be disappearing. Both of these companies recognised it. Both of them had the capacity to allow users to send money to other users.

Obopay thought that was a good enough function. MyTango thought it wasn't enough and decided to provide more value to customers by focusing on allowing users to bypass the line through ordering/paying with a phone. It did not market the P2P payment system much.

Logically, what MyTango did made sense. It provided value in a way Obopay couldn't. However, implementing it and getting user adoption would be a lot more challenging. The low volumes and commissions did not entice restaurants to sign up, and the high learning curve prevented users from adopting it. They would much rather stand in line for 10 minutes 3 times a week than spend 15 minutes learning a new technology that wouldn't be accepted everywhere else. And there was no big partner to support it.

While MyTango cornered its market (not the best, I felt in-seat ordering at stadiums would have been better and that's what Verrus pursued with minor success), Obopay kept it open and kept looking for new ways for their service to be relevant. They looked at banks. They looked at merchants. They looked at social networks. However confused and low traction Obopay was, they were dedicated to making it work. You could see that. The major difference is they were saying to everyone who would listen 'Hey we have a mobile payment solution for you, how can we work together?' Basically, they knew mobile commerce would take off one day, and they just want to be around when that actually happens.

Although still a bit far off, it's looking hopeful. With the popularity of the iPhone and rise of smartphones and internet ubiquity and potentially NFC (if the iPhone implements it), this is something to be excited about. Companies are not sure where the market is going and how the rules of the game will be changing, so they're trying to cover their bases by investing in everything. No one knows for sure if Twitter is just a fade or the future of how businesses and people communicate. No one know what Google Wave will do to email, mobiles, and social networks. It's a chaotic time. Maybe one day we'll just hold the iPhone up to each other to transfer money or exchange contacts.

That's why the future of Obopay is looking hopeful. Just looking at their website you can see how many people and partners they have working on the idea and ways for it to be profitable.

However, picking a niche market doesn't mean failure. It just means, you had better pick the right one. Verrus picked the right one. Who carries quarters in a jar anymore? Or coins for that matter. What if you had to extend your time on the meter? Verrus picked the right partners and got the right support, and now they are expanding. We even have the Canadian company here in the UK.

What does this mean for a mobile-related business in these exciting times?

1. Make sure you have a team that's dedicated to the idea and in the business 100%. I think this can make even a poor idea work.

2. Make sure it's simple. We are spoiled. We don't want to read the instructions. We think everything should be intuitive and easy. And that's the customer.

3. Get the market right. It's scary because you can't just go in there and copy your competitors because there aren't any, and if there are, they are just as confused.

TextPayMe got lucky and was acquired and got Amazon support. MyTango wasn't so lucky. However, it almost seems they have given up. The website hasn't changed in two years. It just doesn't seem they have the urgency and drive to keep trying and experimenting to make it work.

Here's what I think MyTango could do. Have an off-the-shelf iPhone app that you can customise and sell to businesses. Make the back-end payment system tight and charge for the app and monthly subscription/commission. Everyone wants to be on the iPhone. Everyone wants to have an iPhone app, even if it's just so you can have your logo in a glossy square with rounded corners. But seriously. Many businesses don't have the IT prowess or personnel to develop for the iPhone, so they can't get on it. What if you had a pizza restaurant and wanted to allow your customers to order a Pizza and pay using the iPhone? Have it ready for pick up or delivered? Or even send them a time-senstive coupon through the app? Or do a push notification when the person is close to you?

Make an off-the-shelf app for restaurants, allow them to customise the menu and logos. And there you go, MyTango 2.0. On the iPhone and Android. I realise that's fairly close to starting from scratch.

BTW you can do off the shelf apps for all sorts of businesses :) Check out AppBreeder, GameSalad.com, and MyAppBuilder.com

Bank Symbiosis

This is an idea I really believe in (although most of my friends don't think it's that good, and actually prefer my idea for a concept restaurant with a napping lounge in the back.) However, everyday I don’t see this happen, it's annoying. Unfortunately I don’t own or work for a bank.

Banks and food places should be combined. Like Citibank + Itsu. HSBC + Eat. Barclay’s + Pret.

It’s not a merger, but a symbiosis. Banks don’t have to formidable places anymore--made out of marble, and super quiet, and cold. They don’t have to convey that image of power and soundness. We all know unsound they can be and how our government will come to rescue. Come on, now some banks look like college kid’s room with overly cutesy furniture. What’s driving deposits now are location, marketing, rates and offering, and innovation.

Now comes the advantages of my Bank Symbiosis idea.

1. Banks can expand into more location at less costs. We’ve all seen banks shuttering up in London to save money. Sharing the costs such as lease, maintenance, utilities, etc. can produce saving of up to 50%. Seriously, what good is that college-kid living area without food to eat?
2. People love to multi-task. This allows for multi-tasking such as the wait time and the need to go to two places. You wait once, but you’re waiting for two things. Plus, as a restaurant you can just say, the nearest ATM is here. Not that I condone anywhere that doesn’t accept cards.
3. Increase foot traffic. Imagine you had to deposit some cash. You walk in to a bank what’s the likelihood you’ll want to grab some food? Or a coffee? Banks already serve coffee and tea to customers for free. Let’s turn that from a cost to a profit. And it works the other way too.
4. Hours of operation are synchronized. Some banks and food places open and close at around the same time. And hopefully, restaurants can abolish the Eat-In premium which may lead to more sales.
5. Interest levels are heightened. People will love the concept and the time saved! Plus food makes people happy.

Some drawbacks

1. People might not like the eating environment. After all, it’s not about the coffee at Starbucks. This is a risk that could result in a failure if not done right. There are several ways of doing it right. The easiest of which could just be a food place with no eat-in space. The other option is to have space outside for eating. Or work together to create an atmosphere that is both relaxing and enjoyable, while functionally practical for a bank.
2. Marketing ambiguity. People might get the wrong idea that Citibank is endorsing Itsu. Also a small risk that people might hate one partner.
3. Interdependency. If one goes under, the other goes under or scrambles to find a new partner. But it’s the same with many partnerships and celebrity endorsements.

I think that’s about it. I mean if you could put a McDonald’s in a Wal-mart and a Starbucks in a Borders, I’m sure you can fit a Eat in a NatWest.

Ocean Sounds from Across the World

My room is pretty awesome. The only thing that could make it even more awesome is a suspension hot tub or ocean sounds playing in the background for when I am sleeping or doing some amazingly productive work. However, there aren't any good ocean background sounds in the free mp3 market or iTunes. Some are too staticky or too abrsive or doesn't have the right qualities.

I don't know if you've ever fell asleep on a beach listening to the waves. I have and it's really special. Currently nothing I found have captured that peaceful, eternal, and raw aural quality.

You don't get that from the crappy mp3s out there. You might get it from some movie soundtracks that are like Dolby Surround or what not, but then violins start playing and bullets start whizzing and you got to find this Private named Ryan.

So what I want to do is to rent some high quality audio equipment and go on holidays to different beaches across the world and record the sound of different oceans. Believe me they are different. Each track would be a different ocean/beach.

1. Swansea beach, Wales
2. Some beach in Spain I will go to.
3. Lake Zurich, Switzerland
4. Santa Monica, USA
5. Beach in Croatia
6. Venice Beach, USA
7. Lake Ontario, Canada
8. Some Ocean in Egypt, Africa right?
9. Some Indian flavoured beach, India
10. Some French beach maybe Monaco or Ville Franche, France
11. Carins, Australia

Then I will put it on iTunes and make lots of money :) unless you beat me to it. In that case, I will buy your music :)

iMix Gift Cards

Does anyone know if Apple allows you to make iMix playlist, buy the songs, and choose a gift card to put it on? It's not a gift card but rather a "mixtape" card that that has a code on it. When the recipient types the code, she can download the carefully compiled playlist for free. My mom's birthday is coming up in October~


When buying an ipod online as a gift, the user could be notified of this option. The buyer won't have to open the box to put music on the iPod or handle it in anyway. But he can still send individualised music for a friend, and we're bypassing the iTunes 1-way sync problem. Right now we sell gift cards, but why not sell iMix Cards? Let people create their playlists and pick a card to put it on (almost like making a physical yet digital CD). You can even allow them to upload their own photos or create a mosaic of pictures (you know how popular slide.com is).

Books Summarized

I had this idea when I was in high school, but suddenly remembered it now because when I read I always summarize the book to digest it better. Also so I can refresh my memory in the future. I'm reading a book right now called Yes! I might post my summary when I'm done.

There should be a website that allows you to write your own book summary. And the community votes it up or down, like on IMDB or Amazon on it's helpfulness. It'll be super helpful to students and people who love to skim. It'll be helpful to people like me who like to summarize books (as you can see here) and those people that wrote the wikipedia book. And it should reward those summaries at the top, with ad revenue split.

P2P Book Library

Wouldn't it be great if we had a free mail-order book rental system in the UK? I used to have a constant stream of 7 or more books on my floor from Palo Alto, Los Altos, Fremont, and Mountain View libraries. Information and knowledge was cheap and free in California. (Even DVDs of popular movies). Now I hardly read because I have to buy books which I have no use for after reading. Not even for furniture. It would be cool to make a chair out of books. But I digress. So let's have an online service where users join and contribute their books to the online system and the system matches books with readers kind of like a NetFlix queue. People pay the shipping only. Discounted of course. See if we can get volume rates and government subsidy. UK library are very poor.

Or we could just create a Kindle library that allows people to "rent" books. Yes libraries would have to buy them and we could have to have library cards to "download" those books.

Or just stop hating on Google Books and work with them.

Twitter for Music

I think it'll be cool to have a twitter like service or a filtering of tweets service for music discovery. Basically instead of twittering random thoughts. You just twitter about new music discoveries you made. For example, your favorite song that day. Integrate with Shazam to automate your tweets. Build functionality around what songs you 'tweeted'. You can follow people who have musical tastes you respect.

Idea to be developed further. Up for grabs since I'm already crazy busy. Would like to play a part in it though.

Another thing people should do

I had this idea before but never did anything about it. Still won't. But wouldn't it be cool if...

We could give homeless people jobs selling used, second-hand, charity, and other junk items? Instead of having a boot sale. Just donate it to a charity centre, which in turn distributes these goods to homeless people to sell. Homeless people will have a good source of income, and charity shops can reduce the cost of selling.

If you can get them to sell magazines, I'm sure you can get them to sell second hand items. Currently, police do not allow people to sell items on the street without a license. So issue them a license like those "Big Issue" sellers.

Problem is the average homeless guy makes 5 GBP an hour of panhandling... so there's limited incentive for them to do any more work.

Twitter Comics

We need some twitter comics. Like comics for us to follow and once we click we get a place that has the comic... man do I have to do everything myself? I already have 3 startups going.

Commenting, better.

How about making a blog interface that allow people to comment directly on the blog by selecting the text they are responding to? It's been so standard to just make comments at the end of blogs. It would be good to be like Flickr. Select an area. Comment on an selected area.

So select section youre referring to. Add comment.

Then a reader can toggle comments on or off. If on, the selected area will be underlined and clicking it, shows comment on the right. You can also then click on the commentator to see all his comments.

Two new ideas and lots of questions

1. You know how they over built so many cargo ships because it takes a long time to build and are very costly? Now no one is buying them. For example, hundreds of vessels are still under construction in Greece. There are massive cancellations. They dropped 20% in price and are still falling. (Robert McDonald of FT says) Global order book doubled over 2004 to 2008, leaving large overhang of ships waiting to be delivered, equivalent to 70 percent of the existing bulker fleet, and 42 percent of container fleet.

We should totally buy them. There's so much you can do with them!

• Make them into a mobile factory. Why don't you manufacture and deliver at the same time? Need to do a cost analysis on that. Actually probably cheaper to build and then deliver... well depends on the product. Or you could do it both ways. Build what you're delivering and when you go back, haul raw materials and start building. You wouldn't even have to delivery to final destination. You can just delivery it to Singapore or Dubai and let some other ship take it the rest of the way.
• Make it into an apartment complex. Like the Dutch that live in their riverboats, but convert it. Just like they did with some of the Toronto factories, when the city grew in size. You could actually anchor the boat to something and add an electricity generator such as this Pelamis Wave. Of course, it would be expensive to dock it in a large port, so you would have to find some suburb, where rent would be lower. But come on. Who wouldn't want to take their friends onto their boat apartment? Maybe in Alaska or Antartica where no one really wants to build a house.
  
• Make it into a prision. Over crowding of the prision system? No problem. Samalis be like oh hell no! These are the worst hostages ever. We've been punk'd! You took my dawgs?
  
• Make it into a ferry. Cargo demand has dropped but still people traveling.
• Make it into a fishing boat or a fishing boat hub. For example, many fishing boats have onboard processing but would need to go back to drop off the fish. Now these fishing boats can stay out even longer because we can pick up your fish for you. Imagine 10 fishing boats in the Pacific all fishing around, then bamb we come in. Take their fish and deliver it. At the same go we can delivery supply and oil to them.
  

2. Second idea. I was designing my dream house this morning and believe me it's so amazing. It has a sunken living room. The sunken pit is interchangeable between sand and water at a push of a button. So basically, I can lie on "the beach" and watch TV when I feel like it (by the way there's sky light that goes through two floors). And then when you want more of a nautical theme, you can rotate the sand pit in the sunken living room to under the kitchen floor and bring up the water pit. Of course you need a glass screen on top if you need to use that space to entertain guests.

But that's not the cool part. The cool part is that my some of my walls will be clear and see through, except when you want privacy when it turns dark and opaque. Imagine transitional lens but for walls. Walls that are see through and multifunctional. For example, maybe you want to be able to see the jacuzzi or the baby's play pen from the masterbed room? Or what if you don't want to see the kitchen when you're in the dinning room? Anyways, they have clear offices at Apple and they're pretty cool. You feel like you're in a room but you can see through walls. Just an awesome feeling. And to have that kind of control. To partition a room at a touch of a button.

3. You know how it is possible that a product from a big electronics company can have many factories in its supply chain? For example, they make digital cameras, call it G5. Although most of them are made in China, some are made in the US factories. But all the G5s say "Made in China." Is this legal and what would happen if they labeled some G5s made in America, and some made in China? What effect would that have?

Gmail Delayed Send

Gmail needs a delayed send button so you can schedule when your email will be sent. Like on birthdays and when you know the person will be at his desk, not on BB. I don't know why they don't introduce that. Just like I don't know why Facebook don't allow you to pay for tickets when you RSVP for FB events. I guess it's bureaucracy or legal issues.

I even suggested it as a feature on Gmail labs (although it seems to have deleted my original post... very strange but follow ups are here.)

The only way to do it now is to use gmail through Outlook and use its Do Not Deliver Before function. For your benefit.

Gmail on Outlook

1. Enable POP in your email account. Don't forget to click Save Changes when you're done.
2. Open Outlook.
3. Click the Tools menu, and select E-mail Accounts...
4. Click Add a new e-mail account, and click Next.
5. Choose POP3 as your server type by clicking the radio button, and click Next.
6. Fill in all necessary fields to include the following information:

   User Information
   Your Name: Enter your name as you would like it to appear in the From: field of outgoing messages.
   Email Address: Enter your full email address (username@gmail.com or username@your_domain.com)

   Server Information
   Google Apps users, enter the server names provided, don't add your domain name in this step.
   Incoming mail server (POP3): pop.gmail.com
   Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com

   Login Information
   User Name: Enter your Gmail username (including @gmail.com). Google Apps users, enter your full address in the format username@your_domain.com
   Password: Enter your email password
   
   
   

7. Click More Settings... and then click the Outgoing Server tab.
8. Check the box next to My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication and select Use same settings as my incoming mail server.
   
   
   
9. Click the Advanced tab, and check the box next to This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) under Incoming Server (POP3).
   
   
   
10. Check the box next to This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) under Outgoing Server (SMTP), and enter 465 in the Outgoing server (SMTP) box.
11. Click OK.
12. Click Test Account Settings... After receiving Congratulations! All tests completed successfully, click Close.
13. Click Next, and then click Finish.
14. Download the latest updates for Outlook from Microsoft. This will help prevent the most common Outlook errors Gmail users see.

Congratulations! You're done configuring your client to send and retrieve Gmail messages.

Using Outlook Delayed Send

1. In the Message window (where you type your email content), click the Options button. Alternatively, click on View -> Options.
2. In the Message Options dialog window, select and tick the “Do Not Deliver Before” check box, under the Delivery Options. Then choose the desired send date and time to deliver the email by using the calendar and time drop down list.
3. Click Close and then click OK.

The email message that is delayed sending in future date will be held in the Outbox folder after you clicking on Send button. Once the specified assigned date and time is reached, the email will be sent and delivered, and email been moved to Sent Items folder automatically, provided you’re connected to Internet.

The delay email sending trick works in most version of Microsoft Outlook, i.e Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2003, XP and 2000. Beside, as the Do Not Deliver Before delay sending function is a feature of Microsoft Outlook (but not Outlook Express), works independently of email account providers, and Outlook can be configured to access many popular free email accounts, thus the postponement of email sending feature can be extend to these free mail accounts, as long as these email providers support one of the email transfer protocols that Outlook supports, such as POP3, SMTP, IMAP, Microsoft Exchange Server and HTTP (for MSN and Hotmail or Windows Live Mail). In quick glance, almost all of the most popular free webmail such as Google Gmail, Yahoo (only paid premium account), Hotmail (Windows Live Mail), Fastmail, AOL, Inbox.com, AIM, HotPOP, can delay sending message by configuring Outlook to access the email account instead of using webmail interface.

How to Monetize Facebook? Groups, Events, Music

Businessweek is going to ask COO of Facebook some questions. I asked one. But it's not approved yet so I can't link to it.

Basically, I wanted to know why Facebook doesn't do anything to monetize other than social ads and virtual gifts.

If you think about it. Facebook has millions of groups. Some groups want to charge membership or fees for services. Facebook should make it easy for group admin to charge membership fees via facebook. Imagine getting 3-4% of membership dues. That's huge. Meetup.com charges a monthly fee just to have a group. Of course this would be up to the group organizers to decide, if they want a fee or not.

Then imagine events. How great would it be for the users and organizers to use facebook to not only RSVP but also to pay for tickets all at the same time? I know my fashion group uses facebook to message members when they can buy tickets at our fashion stands (physical locations). Then we got to staff those booths with officers. Not only would this be a huge benefit to all users and source of revenue, Facebook will actually get people to link their accounts to paypal or their creditcards. Then whimsical purchases are just around the corner.

Just imagine all the bands and musicians out there. If they could sell tickets to their shows and gigs via Facebook, you could steal some more market share from MySpace. There's so much money in this. And so much convenience for the users. Then imagine allowing bands to sell digital music through their "pages".

There's tons more stuff you could do to make it more valuable.

Maybe even sell "Apps" instead of making every app be advertising based.

In summary, I want to see this in the news:

Facebook allows groups to charge membership and fees.

Facebook allows users to RSVP and buy tickets on Events.

Facebook allows musicians to sell digital music from their facebook pages.

Facebook brings back old layout.

Stop wasting your time trying to optimize the layout so you get more click-throughs and start innovating and creating value for your users.

Email is broken. Fixing Email. Fee-Mail?

This is it. I've spent my entire Friday night going through my inbox for this week and I'm still only 50% done.

I know I just started FilmGL. Am doing with a map project. Am involved in real estate website project. And working on research project and papers and Seedcamp and Connexion. Sailing and swimming. But here's my most awesome idea yet.

I'm not scared if someone takes it. I mean I had the idea for Scribd before it was released but they could pull it off, while I couldn't. An idea can not be protected. Plus I think Bill Gates had this basic idea years ago.

Why don't we create a fee-based email service provider? Basically, you create an email account such as taige@fee-mail.com or something. Then when you get a email it's prioritized based on the cost of the email. For example 5 cents for urgent, 2c for immediate action required, and 1c for normal email. Then you can add people on a contact list such as friends and they get to bypass the 1 cent fee for normal mail. Then you have a semantic prioritize to prioritize it even further. Those that pass it get sent you your blackberry. Then you can install the e-secretary plugin (monthly fee) to handle a percentage or all your correspondences.

I've actually copied and pasted someone's email to me. Changed my name for someone else's and another keyword. And pasted and sent it. That's where I've been ok?

Basically e-sectary can be some sort of "smart" away message.

For example, it'll say

"Dear [sender],

Thanks for contacting [receiver] regarding [get.subject] and as [receiver]'s personal e-secretary I have prioritized your mail as non-urgent and of a social nature. He is currently [get.status from facebook or twitter] and may be unable to get back to you for [get.non-urgent response time].

Since you are on his [get.contactlist], you may [get.permission action1] him on his mobile [get. personal mobile number] or on skype [get. skype name].

[if find."how are you" then print.personal update set] [receiver] is doing well. He is busy with work and started a new group. It's a group for movie-goers who want to see free films and advanced screenings. If you like films, you should check it out. It's called filmgrouplondon.com. He'll be traveling to California at the end of the month and will return in about 2 weeks.

He will get in touch with you shortly. Thanks for the email.


Sincerely,


Jenny, e-secretary.




So basically, if you have a fee-mail address and someone tries to send you a email. This is a great email address to give out to marketers and people you don't want to bother you. Or it doesn't even have to be a email address. It can just be a provider and you use your custom domain. Basically an alias. Then fee mail will hold a non-paying email it receives and relegate it to the bottom, and send the sender a email back saying your email is currently low priority ranked and the receiver may not be able to see it for 2 weeks. To send a normal rank email, please install this plugin to gmail, outlook, thunderbird, whatever. Or sign up for a feemail account, where you'll accumulate cash/credits for receiving mail and be able to send priority emails.

Booyah. I just made FedEx for email.

Then again. Maybe it's because I have 20 email address that all get forwarded to one place. Maybe that's my problem. But I think email is broken. It can't just be a simple ranking by time anymore. Not went everyone has 1000 contacts. I read some where we can only have 120 friends. Anymore we can't really manage.

dumb ads, convertible taxis, secondary mp3 market

Start music, then start reading:

Old Navy Commercial by Lights, who is from Toronto. Love the music, hate the subliminal ads.

OK I haven't even started on my Starbucks case study yet and it's 00:31... Three thoughts I had on my way home: Why are they advertising "Visit London" on London double deckers. That's really bad targeting. Really awful. I'm already here. Also why aren't there convertible taxis? I mean is it safety? I would love to be in a Lexus SC Black Taxicab. Why isn't there a secondary market for Mp3s? I want to sell my old James Blunt Mp3 for 35p. It's in like new condition! Some startups better get that one.

Lastly I'm zuber excited to see my best friends Daccuzi and Shiny on Dec 25th 2008 in London. The gang is back.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

new top level domain name suffix coming 2009

Just got back from BootLaw at Winston and Strawn London. Very intriguing talk about IP lawsuits between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, copyrights, and patents. It brought me way back: Grokster, Netscape, Kazaa, Napster, uTube V. Youtube.

This may be old news but I learned that even with the ever expanding number of domain name suffixes (TLDs), 2009 will unleash the mother load. Scary times we live in. It's like buying the right to name stars, and then they're like you know what, there's more of them. I also had Dominos pizza for the first time in London and it doesn't taste the same. Just like vitaminwater doesn't taste the same. And I miss not having smartwater.

Takeaways: Get some good digital real estate. Start a domain registrar company.

From ICANN:

"The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net," said Dr Twomey. "It's a massive increase in the 'real estate' of the Internet."

Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we are all familiar with like .com, .org, .info.

This proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. It is expected that applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based top level domain, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris.

"One of the most exciting prospect before us is that the expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Chairman. "This is going to be very important for the future of the Internet in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia." The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.

Upon approval of the implementation plan, it is planned that applications for new names will be available in the second quarter of 2009.

Frequently asked questions on the process

1. Are you selling these new names?

ICANN is not "selling" new top level domain names. There will be a limited application period where any established entity from anywhere in the world can submit an application that will go through an evaluation process. It is anticipated that there will be additional rounds relatively soon after the close of the first application round.

2. What's to stop others registering my brand name?

Trademarks will not be automatically reserved. But there will be an objection-based mechanism for trademark owners where their arguments for protection will be considered.

3. How did this proposal get developed?

ICANN has a multi-stakeholder policy development process that served as the foundation for the process design. It involved consultation with domain name industry, trade mark attorneys, the business sector, users, governments and technicians.

4. How will offensive names be prevented?

Offensive names will be subject to an objection-based process based on public morality and order. This process will be conducted by an international arbitration body utilizing criteria drawing on provisions in a number of international treaties. ICANN will not be the decision maker on these objections.

5. When will all this happen?

ICANN is working towards accepting the first applications in the second quarter of 2009.