I cant wait to get my hands on the IPad. Its going to be a HUGE hit.

You can book it right now that it will be the product that kids of this generation grow up with and look back on with affection just like we did with the first video games. Video games changed how we grew up. The IPad will change how kids grow up.

Apple was brilliant in how they cultivated apps for the IPhone and Touch. With so many apps for kids, any parent with young kids and either of these 2 devices will tell you that their kids use and love them. In fact, it was this very reason that I helped create Puzzle Palace for the IPhone. It allows my kids to take the pictures they take and turn them into puzzles. My 3 year old loves it.

The IPad will take this to the next level. I recognize that its very expensive for most families right now. Hopefully that will change over time. If it does, you can bet every home with kids will have an IPad. And the first person to create the kidproof covering will make money as well (Hint to entrepreneurs) On the flipside, the minute these devices hit critical mass in families, the DVD market for kids, who watch the same movie over and over will end as we know it. Download Scooby Do one time and the need to hassle with all those DVDs for the kids at home or on trips becomes a distant memory. A relic of an older generation.

Thats big.

Whats also big is the exclusion of flash. The reason is obvious. No flash. Far less streaming over 3G. Less streaming over 3G means less bandwidth consumed. Less bandwidth consumed means ATT can offer a GREAT price on the 3G data service. I personally have never had problems with the ATT Network. The limits on 3G streaming probably means I wont going forward either. Thats a good thing.

Its big that there is no USB port. As a content producer thats not a good thing. It means that Apple wants to force us through ITunes to sell content. It will be the path of least resistance for consumers to add content to the IPad and a HUGE source of revenue for Apple. Im sure there will be work around alternatives, but they wont be able to match the simplicity of the ITunes Store.

Outside the Apple Universe, the company that should be licking its chops is Dish Network. Their SlingBox product just became a grand slam. I absolutely LOVE the sling box app I run on my IPod Touch to watch NBA League Pass games, HDNet in a hotel room and other shows that I record on my DVR. I cant wait to put it on the IPad and its big screen.

And finally, if i was just out of school and fluent in all things Wi Fi , networking and wireless, I would immediately go door to door offering to fine tune your home's wireless network. With new HDTVs coming out with Wi FI, the IPad, SlingBox, Netflix Streaming and other applications consuming tons of bandwidth in the home, it is an ABSOLUTE certainty that 99pct of home networks can be improved and perform significantly better. Be that kid in your neighborhood that comes in and fine tunes everyone's wi fi in their home for 50 or 100 bucks (or more if you live in a fancy part of town) and you will make some good money.

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Most of us are generally aware that television isn't the healthiest of activities. Yet, like cigarette smoking in the 1970s, it's one of those harms we continue to whitewash or worse exposing our children to it as though it were as innocent as playing with Tinkertoys.

Yet as today's Boston Globe reminds us, TV is not this passive device you sit your children in front of with no ill effects. Decades worth of research have shown the harmful effects of TV on your child's development. Most child psychologists and child development experts recommend no TV whatsoever for a child before the age of 2 or 3. None. Yet a whopping 43 percent of parents plop their toddler down in front of the television set, apparently blind to the consequence of their actions.

But don't take my word for it. Look at the research:

Countless studies have documented the inverse link between devotion to the boob tube and achievement in school. Researchers at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons concluded in 2007, for example, that 14-year-olds who watched one or more hours of television daily were at elevated risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-term academic failure.'' Those who watched three or more hours a day were at even greater risk for subsequent attention and learning difficulties,'' and were the least likely to go to college.

In 2005, a study published in the American Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that the harm caused by TV watching shows up even after correcting the data to account for students' intelligence, family conditions, and prior behavioral problems. The bottom line: Increased time spent watching television during childhood and adolescence was associated with a lower level of educational attainment by early adulthood.''

The baleful effects of TV aren't limited to education. The University of Michigan Health System notes on its extensive website that kids who watch TV are more likely to smoke, to be overweight, to suffer from sleep difficulties, and to have high cholesterol.

There are also the studies that show that teens who watch more sexual content on TV are twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy over the next three years than their peers. Imagine an illicit drug was resulting in twice the amount of teen pregnancies and how quickly parents would be an uproar to stop the peddling of that drug in their neighborhood.

Ah, but you argue, I grew up on TV and I came out okay! Sure, personal anecdotes and analogies are great, but not a great way to inform public policy or carry on a serious public health debate. What works for a single individual at a single point of time in a single household doesn't carry the same weight as a scientific study that examines data across families and neighborhoods, studies that were carried out over time and with attention to possible alternative explanations (such as the fact that maybe in your household, TV time was more strictly limited than you remember, or the content in the programs themselves was very different than today's content).

The upshot we Americans watch way too much TV and we raise our children on TV, somewhat oblivious to its negative effects on our children's development. While TV isn't evil, it is a powerful media that has a well-understood impact on a child's or teen's development. Like the Internet, it should be allowed with clear rules and conditions, and time doing it should be monitored and limited. What the right number for you and your family will vary, but it should not be whenever they want and as much as they want.

Read the full article: Silence that idiot box!

Depression tends to run in families, and even one depressed family member can cast a big shadow on how the family functions. As scientists work to figure out the genetics of the illness, some therapists say treatment works best if the whole family is involved.

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Neale S. Godfrey, author of the book Money Doesn't Grow On Trees, writes: "Kids don't get it if you don't talk about." Mr. Godfrey is talking to people like me, and if I don't start listening, I'm going to have a big problem on my hands. My four year old daughter is a born shopper. And, as the Co-Founder of a company fighting everyday to bring sensible saving back into the public consciousness after decades of absence, I often worry that I enable her in the very habits I'm encouraging SmartyPig customers to break.

Like most couples these days, my wife, Sara, and I have been engaging in serious discussions regarding money. How we spend money. How we save money. How we use credit. We are pretty normal in that these conversations, while productive, aren't all that much fun. That said, we force ourselves to sit down and talk about money and we are pretty diligent about maintaining healthy attitudes about spending and saving. But when it comes to how we use money with regard to our daughter, all common sense flies out the window.

Our daughter has a piggy bank. And while it's our pocket change that goes into it, she understands the value of what we put in it and that she is rewarded when it fills up. We also require that she perform simple tasks around the house for which, when a series of days are filled in as "complete," she gets a reward. If she plays her cards right, does as she's told, and is patient, she usually ends up with a "treat" every few weeks or so. Problem is she never stops wanting or asking for the most trivial things, and we end up like this episode of Dr. Phil - indulging her whims, rather than being responsible parents who model fiscal fitness.

I tell my wife, "It has to stop." Then I tell her again the next time and the next. But I'm just as guilty as she is. From my perspective, these little treats are almost immediately disregarded and considered "junk." If I sound frustrated, it's because I am. Our unplanned spending on small gifts for our daughter has gotten totally out of control. But it's easier to just go with it than to say no. Who doesn't want a smile and the baby blues? But what are we doing to her as a result? What kind of habits are we teaching her? Every other aspect of her life is meticulously dissected. We are completely focused on turning this healthy, intelligent, productive kid into a healthy, intelligent, productive adult. Why can't we be the same when it comes to teaching her about money?

A recent issue of Better Homes & Gardens offered us three easy tips to begin the process of taking control:

1. Don't Forget Who's In Charge - Marketing machine or not - and good God if there isn't a Disney princess on everything! - You can say "no."
2. Talk About Spending Decisions - Don't lie and say, "I can't afford it." Explain priorities - even to four-year-olds.
3. Hand Some Over - Give your kids the power. Let them make the transaction. Let them see the difference between need and want.

So, can Sara and I do this? Do we need a chart that we make an "X" on every day we don't wimp out and take the easy road? From time to time, I'm going to let you know how it's going. And, of course, time will tell. We at SmartyPig are spending a lot of time these days discussing money and children and families. And while I pride myself on being a good listener, this is one conversation I'd really like to begin truly contributing to.

And I'd like you all to contribute as well. I'd love any tips you might have or anecdotes about your successes or failures in teaching your kids smart savings habits, just send them here jgaskell(at)smartypig(dot)com. We may even feature your ideas or stories on our blog. Thanks!

No one seems to want to admit when American water isn't safe to drink. Instead, they try to hide it.
For years, U.S. health officials have claimed that although the drinking water at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune is contaminated, it poses no danger to Marines or their families. This April, the government reversed itself, saying that its assessment of the water contained omissions and inaccuracies, and adding that a million people over the course of three

Despite being three years old, the Dear Red States Craigslist posting from 2005 is suddenly circulating again. I guess it must be election season that has revived this. But I figured I'd take a quick shot at a response.

Dear Red States We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

Hot Damn. Thanks. You're like people who have stayed long after the rest of the party goers have gone home. We've been hoping you'd finally leave, but we're too polite to simply throw you out.

In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

Well, actually, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Washington are typically considered swing states, but you can have them. Congratulations. You got two states too cold to live in, a failing automotive industry, and Washington.

As for the beaches, we got the entire gulf coast an the Atlantic up to North Carolina. You got the rocky coast of the northwest and the Jersey Shore (whose tourism board just recently announced their new slogan Guidos in Speedos). Again. Congrats.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America 's venture capital and entrepreneurs.

I don't mean to quibble with your argument, but Bank of America is the nation's largest and one of the few solvent banks. It's located in North Carolina. We'll take that.

I also suspect that most of the corporate CEOs that built that wealth will move in with us since better than 75% of them vote Republican.

You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue; you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

You can have the tax revenue. We'll give the other 1/3 back to the people since they know how to spend it better than your army of bureaucrats.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire

Since our troops will be coming home in a year under President Bush's plan anyway, that's fine with us.

You're also likely impose strict gun control while we a) have a tendency to support regime change b) have a lot of guns. In addition, since most of America's nuclear arsenal sits in silos in the red states, if we ever decide we want New California back Well, let's just say, Sleep tight!

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90 % of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 % of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 %of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

You got me there. Let's just hope that all the Asian students who are attending those schools will let you mow their lawns when they graduate.

While I will miss the pineapple, I think I speak for my red state family when I say we're ok giving up the wine and stinky cheese. After all, we still have all the Jack Daniels from Tennesee, all the Coors and Budweiser beer products from Colorado and Missouri, most of America's steak, and all the cigars we can roll with that North Carolina tobacco.

You also seem to forget that a) we will get most of America's total acreage. We get America's strategic oil reserve, we get all the oil in Texas and Alaska. With a much smaller population, we'll have enough energy to last generations. If we run short, we have no problem drilling off the coast of New California since we know we won't run into you there. Even if we do, like I said, we have all the guns.

That is a shame about the condors. I hear they're good eatin'.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 % of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

I can live with that.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you. Additionally, 38 % of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico .

Peace out,
Blue States

Ugh! You get Hollywood? Bummer. You've just taken on a huge sector of the economy that creates little of actual value, yet gets paid better than most CEOs. But we're willing to accept that since you have agreed to permanently dispose of Paris Hilton, Rosie O'Donnell, and Britney Spears. Thanks for taking care of that for us.

In closing, let me simply say thank you again. I think this arrangement will work out beautifully.

I wrote this to my email list on Saturday the 27th of 2008. Two days before the single largest drop in the history of the stock market.

Now, I promised myself I was retired from blogging to focus on my email newsletter, but I'm getting pounded with so many requests for this essay that I'm giving up and posting it here. This does not mean my retirement from blogging is off, this means I'm posting this so I don't have to respond to hundreds of emails asking for a copy. If you want future missives like this signup for Jason's List: Jason's List signup.

For background, the goal of this post was not to spread fear, but rather inspire folks at startup companies to get focused and to save as many as possible from hitting the wall. Myself? We'll I funded Mahalo for the long-term and while the market down turn isn't good for anyone, we're largely immune from it because we are building on a five year plan that we're only 18 months into.

Doesn't mean I'm not hyper focused, I am. I'm just not panicking. Great entrepreneurs build value and market-share in down markets. They go to work seven days a week and the breakout when other folks check out.

Location: CalaCompound, Brentwood, CA
Monday, September 27th, 5:15PM PST.
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(The) Startup Depression

Since stock market gyrations and the elections seem to be making
everyone rightfully nauseous and depressed, I thought I would take
this email to discuss the biggest ramifications of these challenging
times: depression.

It's my believe that the economic downturn will be much worse than it
is today, and that 50-80% of the venture-backed startups currently
operating will shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working
on them) within the next 18 months.

Make a list of every Web 2.0 startup to raise an A or B round and
cross 80% of them off the list, because they will not make it to their
next round of funding or profitability.

Now, I could be totally wrong. No one can guess or time the markets
perfectly. However, planning for the worst is a virtuous idea, so I
encourage you to read on.

Everyone I talk to is feeling confused, paralyzed and anxiousmany
are in full-blown depression. People are scared, and they should be.
This could be the start of a very difficult time for our country and
the rest of the world.

In this email, we'll focus on the entrepreneurial and startup
depression and economic downturns/depressionsand how you can deal
with them.

Some background to get us started

Few things in the world are as exhilarating as starting a new company.
Metaphors abound, and we've all heard them: starting a company is like
having a baby, falling in love, and running a marathon. Few folks,
however, want to continue the metaphor when things go bad at a
startup. If they did, we would be having discussions about running a
startup being like divorcing your spouse, collapsing from exhaustion
in the 20th mile of the marathon, orGod forbidlosing a child.

Metaphors swing both ways.

Anxiety and depression from a failed, or failing, startup can be
intenseeven debilitating. When outside factors such as markets or
buildings collapsing are added to the mix, I've seen great
entrepreneurs just fold.

Now, I've never folded, and I don't say that as some badge of courage.
No, sometimes it's really, really stupid to keep fighting. Most
consider it especially stupid to fight when you know you're going to
lose. I don't.

The result of never folding is that I've had my ass kicked pretty bad.
Multiple times.

Depending on your DNA, getting your ass kicked is either complete
torture or deviantly rewarding. Truth be told, I like getting my ass
kicked because it makes me angry, motivated and focused. If I look
back on the couple of moments of success I've been lucky enough to
have in my life, they all seem to come after a good ass-kicking.

The darkest hour isin factright before the dawn.

Brief Disclaimer

I'd be lying if I said I understood the complexities of depression or
depressions. I'm not a psychologist nor am I an economist. I've never
suffered from clinical depression and I didn't live through the last
depression. However, I do have a BA in Psychology, have read many
books about the psychology of happiness, and I've felt the sting of
the last huge correction (2000-2002).

Consider these one (hu)man's notes on entrepreneurial depression and
anxiety. They are worth the price you've paid for them, but I hope
they are helpful to youespecially if you're suffering right now. If
you are suffering from depression or anxiety, go see a professional.

Really, it's the best thing to do. Feel free to print this out and
bring it with you and ask your newfound therapist what they think of
my observations and advice. Then email me back what they said I'm
curious where my thoughts rank.

Kurnit's Three Reasons Why Companies Fail

Scott Kurnit of the Mining Company (aka About.com) told me there are
three reasons why a business will fail: it's a bad idea, bad execution
or outside factors. If you examine your business with these three
filters right now, you can baseline where you're at: one, two or three
strikes.

His theory correlates well with the attribution theory in psychology.
The theory concerns itself with how an individual attributes the
things that happen to them (or others). For example, if you were
pulled over by a cop for speeding, you can attribute that to number of
factors, both internal and external.

Some folks might internalize the event and curse themselves for being
reckless: I should have known better! Others might blame an external
source, such as the cop or the bankrupt city they work for: Gosh darn
Los Angeles cops! They're just trying to balance the budget by
harassing us!

Kurnit's theory, as told to me, mentions two internal factors (bad
idea and execution) and one external (outside factors). When faced
with massive market uncertainty, like we are today, it's a virtuous
idea to assess each of these factors.

Right now, every single one of us has HUGE outside factors we must
consider. The market collapse is going to make the next couple of
years impossible and frustrating for many entrepreneurs. Even the
great companies - like Google, Microsoft and Apple - are going to hit
hard times.

One of the most important philosophical minds of our time summed it up
best: I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the
bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't
my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself? Yogi
Berra.

Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning

John Brockman, my dear friend and agent (if I ever get around to
writing a book), handed me one of the most important books of my life:
Authentic Happiness by Marty Seligman. That book led me to the most
important book of my life: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor
Frankl.

Frankl was a psychologist and Holocaust survivor.

He studied how people react to horrible circumstances that are beyond
their control. He studied why some people give up and others carry on.
While few of us can understand the level of suffering of people during
the Holocaust, Nanking or the Killing Fields, Frankl put his theories
forward so that we could carry them into our daily lives.

Logotherapy was what Frankl called his theories, and their major
tenants are that we choose how to find meaning in our circumstances
and that our experiences all have meaning.

My interpretation of Frankl is that you actually get to choose how you
feel about your circumstances.

The Worst Year of my life

It's still hard for me to talk about it seven years laterand I'm not
going to talk about it in too much detail right now. In the early
months of 2001, I watched my first business, Silicon Alley Reporter,
crash from 70 employees to 12. The $20m offer I'd received to buy the
business was a distant memory, as was the $11.6m in revenue we had in
2000.

Money was evaporating from the bank account, dotcoms were going bust
and wethe dotcom kidswent from visionaries to charlatans
overnight. I went from hosting multi-million dollar conferences, doing
Charlie Rose guest spots and being featured in a 6,000 word article in
the New Yorker to not being able to meet payroll.

Many folks said I was lucky with Silicon Alley Reporter, while others
said I was fraud who had finally been found out. I was broke, no one
cared about my work, and my life really sucked.

and that was just the start.

Then, the stock market crashed and the accounting scandals set in.
Enron, Adelpia, Worldcom, and Arthur Andersen made the fallout from
the dotcom bust look like nothing.

and that was still just the start.

While lying in bed listening to the radio, I heard that a private
pilot in a small plane had accidentally crashed into the World Trade
Center. Then, I watched the second one hit. Then, I watched them come
down.

To say things went from bad to worse would be a gross understatement.
As I started in disbelief with my fellow New Yorkers, I wondered where
my brother, a NYC Firefighter, was. Then it hit me: he was probably
dead.

Due to a simple twist of fate, he wasn't deadbut many of his friends
were. It was at that time I really took a deep look inside and found
meaning in what happened that day and what happened to me when my
first business collapsed.

In my mind, I was being tested. Horrible things happen in life and I
was faced with several at the same time. From that point forward, my
goal was to not only get back to the level I was at when I was at the
top of my game, but to exceed it.

My goal was to be truly happy every day doing what I loved: running a
startup company. A year later, we started Weblogs, Inc., and 18 months
after that, we sold it. The darkest hour became the dawn, and it was
glorious.

If you're failing right now, and if you're suffering, you need to take
Kurnit's test. You need to access where you're at and you need to
fight on. You can give up, sure, but the truth is that when you give
up, you have to live with that fact for the rest of your life. For me,
living with having given up in tough times is a much worse fate than
certain failure.

If you fail, then by definition you have tried. But if you give up,
you didn't.

Step One: How are you executing

It's fairly easy to tell how well you're executing, so let's tackle
that up front. First, take a look at your plan and see where you are
in executing against it. Are you ahead, behind or on schedule? Second,
you can have everyone in your organization rank your product and its
various features on a scale of one to ten. Third, you have an outsider
rank your product and features.

If you're executing at an seven or eight or above, then you know
you're doing well, but could be doing a little bit better. If you're
executing under a seven, your problems could be execution-based. You
just may not be delivering the goods. If you were a restaurant, the
analogy would be that you've got the right ingredients and product,
but you're just not preparing them well. This means you need to focus
on making the product better.

Another way to get a handle on how you're executing is to take your
product and put it up against your two top competitors and do the
one-to-ten rating process. Rate yourself and your competitors on the
top 10 features of all three offerings. How many are you winning? If
you're winning more than three, you're ahead of the game. If you're
three or behind, then you're average or losing.

Execution is the easiest thing to fix, and you can do it one of two
ways: get the people in your organization to perform at a higher
level, or get higher-level folks into your organization.

It really is that simple: folks can either step up or step out.

Step Two: How good is your idea

Determining if you have the right idea is a little more complicated
since most great businesses do not finish where they start. Google
started as a search engine but bought Applied Semantics in order to
create their real business: text-based advertising.

Microsoft started by building programming software (Altair Basic), but
went on to make it's business in operating systems, Microsoft Office
and servers.

If you're idea is wrong, it really doesn't matter. What matters is if
the original ideas allows you to evolve into your big idea.

In order to evolve, you must think like Darwin. Ask yourself: have you
adapted to your market? Have your customers asked you for something
different than you're currently providing? Have you given it to them?
After you give them what they want, can you anticipate what they'll
ask for next? Are those items following a theme?

At Silicon Alley Reporter, we started with a magazine and people loved
it. However, they wanted to get more frequent updates and asked us to
make it weekly. We reflected on this ask and came back with
something they didn't even know they wanted: the Silicon Alley Daily
email newsletter. 40,000 folks subscribed to it in the first year and
it was a much more usable product than the magazine or the requested
weekly print newsletter that we passed on doing.

The market will tell you what it wants. You just have to really
listen. Clearly, there was a market for the DEMO conference since it's
being going on for years. However, they never listened to the ask of
the market: let the companies be selected based on merit, not their
ability to pay almost $20,000. Yes, I know it's a self-serving
example, but those are the best ones.

When Mike Arrington and I founded the TechCrunch50 event, we didn't
think it would grow to be 2-3x as large as DEMO after only one
yearbut it did. The market had MASSIVE pent up demand for a
merit-based show and we tapped it. We evolved DEMO's business model,
not our own.

Now, I'm left asking myself, if I was trying to evolve TechCrunch50,
what would I do?

Another example from personal experience with start up evolution has
been with Mahalo. When we started, we were just doing hand-curated
links. The pages had very little actual content on them. In our user
lab, folks told us they loved the links, but they kept asking for more
content.

We studied the situation and realized that we could evolve and help
our customers more by writing more content on each page. To do this,
we studied what were the 10-15 things people wanted to know when they
did a searchthen we put them on the page. Doing this drove our
traffic from 300k monthly users last year to 4.6m uniques in August (a
record month).

Bottom line: Your first idea is rarely your best.

The first step in a journey is never the best either! Most folks hit
their stride two hours into the marathon. Don't be afraid to nuke your
first idea and run with your secondor third, forth or fifth.

Evolution is the revolution.

Step Three: Outside Factors

Outside factors are the toughest to deal with because, by definition,
they are outside of your control. Despite our deepest wishes, we can't
reverse the housing bubble, put the Towers back up or reverse the
accounting scandals.

All we can do is deal with outside factors, and knowing how to deal
with them is critical.

When the market is in the middle of correcting, as I believe it is
currently doing, people tend to underestimate everything including:

a) how bad it will be
b) how quickly it will get worse
c) how long it will take to recover

Chances are the market will get worse and that will happen sooner
rather than later. Watching folks on CNBC last month talking about a
two or three quarters of down market was just sad. It takes just as
long to clean up a mess as it does to make ittypically longer.

The housing mess took two or three years to develop (2004-2006). It
will take three years to unravel (2008-2010) from what I can see.
We're gonna be dealing with a bad market for at least two years.

10 Specific things you can do

Since the outside market is out of your control, the best you can do
is focus your energy inward. Here are some things you can do after
you've assessed where you company is at.

1. Execute better: This is fairly simple, as I describe above. Rank
yourself and your performance and improve it.

2. Grow the talent you have: When the market is down, it's a great
time to get your team educated and to the next level. Invest in
training and education of your top people, because they are the ones
who will lead your company through this mess.

3. Firing the average people: Again, it's totally politically
incorrect, but I highly recommend firing anyone who is good or
average. Startups are an Olympic sport and every slot on your team is
critical. You wouldn't put a good swimmer in a relay, would you?
Don't have one in your startup. Fire the good and replace them with
the great.

4. Cut spending every where you can: Recurring costs like
connectivity, phones, rent and insurance are things that you can
easily cut. Go to each of your providers and ask for 20% relief
immediately or you're leaving. Most, not all, will give it to you.

5. Find a revenue stream and ride it: If you don't have a revenue
stream right now, you'd better find one on Monday. Seriously, by the
end of the day. Once you find this revenue stream, ride it. Put at
least 25% of your effort into bringing in revenue.

6. Focus on your profitable clients: If you have revenue, start
focusing on which clients are most profitable. Take them to lunch and
figure out how you can over-service them and sell them another product
(or more of your current product). You're gonna want to protect these
accounts because the folks reading Point Five are going to be calling
them!

7. Make your top ten 10% better: Look at the top ten aspects of your
business and come up with a plan to make each 10% better in the next
30 days. Ask everyone in your company to make suggestions for the 10%
better program and execute on the ones that will provide the most bang
for the buck. Sometimes, there are things you can do today that will
make something 10% better for freeyou just haven't brainstormed
enough.

8. Hold an optional off-site breakfast meeting on a Sunday and see who
shows up: If folks don't show up for you to grow/save the company on a
Sunday for a two hour breakfast, they probably aren't going to step up
when the sh#$%t really hits the fan. You need to know who the real
killers on your team are and you need to get close with them now.
Again, it's fine to have 9-5ers on your teamif you're the Post
Office. You can't have them at a startup company. Note: if you reading
this and saying I'm anti-family, save it. Folks don't have to work at
startups and some of the hardest working folks I've met have families
and figure out how to balance things.

9. Build marketshare: One of the best things to do in the down market
is build marketshare. Look for competitors that are going out of
business and buy them or just steal their clients and talent (i.e.
pick them up).

10. Raise money: I know I said above most folks won't be able to raise
money in the down market, but that's not because the money isn't out
thereclearly it is. The issue is that the big money out there
doesn't want to fund small ideas that are in the death spiral. Build a
plan based on revenue and taking market share and folks will consider
funding you.

What ideas do you have for winning in a down market?

How do you stay inspired in bad times?

Send me your response and if you would like it quoted in a follow up
email, attributed or not.

all the best

Jason

If this is your first visit to my site, welcome. I hope you will take a few minutes to read a bit more about me and about how and why I live without credit cards. Now, today's post -

According to this article - some gas stations have stopped accepting credit cards! Why? From the article:

The National Retail Federation says gas prices point to the unfairness of the system: Gas stations are paying more in interchange fees because the price of gas has gone up, while the cost of processing credit or debit cards remains the same.

Credit card companies charge gas station owners (and all other merchants who accept credit cards) an interchange fee - usually about 2% - each and every time someone uses a credit card to purchase gas. Apparently, gas station owners have grown tired of sending credit card companies a cut of each sale - and some have gone to a cash only' policy.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with these changes, it might be time to start carrying a little more cash around, just in case you find yourself in an area where there aren't any gas stations that accept credit cards. (There are also interchange fees associated with the use of debit cards. I'll assume that a station that has stopped accepting credit cards has also stopped accepting debit cards, as well.)

For those, like me, who live in rural areas, this could be a very big deal. In our small town, there are only four or five places to buy gasoline. Personally, I use my debit card for most gasoline purchases, but I'm going to start adding a bit more cash to my Gasoline' envelope. (For those of you unfamiliar with the envelope system - a great system for managing your cash - I have created a video detailing what it is and how to use it.)

I'm sure that most stations will continue to accept credit cards. But, those who are traveling with children - or going out of town to unfamiliar places - you might consider keeping a few more greenbacks on hand, just in case.

Side Note: While I found this article very interesting, in my own experience, I've found that several gas stations appear to be encouraging the use of credit cards and discouraging the use of cash. Many now require that users pay at the pump' or prepay inside' when using cash. So, while the article is interesting, I'd really love to hear from my readers. Have you experienced this in your area? Are gas stations where you live going to a cash only' policy. And, if so, how has (or will) this affect you?

Sonic Solutions Buys Simple Star; Sonic's Roxio to incorporate platform that allows people to turn video clips into shows that are shareable to PCs, TVs and social networks. (VentureBeat)

Comcast iGuide Time Shifts Itself; glitch made guide listings off by two and a half hours for Bay Area channel NBC11, making programmed DVRs useless. (NBC11)

Macrovision Shareholders Approve TVGuide Buyout; the company reportedly will sell off the print and oldteevee assets, but retain the online portion. (paidContent)

Economic Slump Could be Boon for Movie Biz; families that can't afford a vacation could turn to theaters for summertime fun. (The LA Times)

FCC Chair Under Fire; Kevin Martin may be called by Congress to defend his leadership. (The Washington Post)

Motorola and Widevine Sign Reseller Agreement; pact allows Motorola to sell, service and support Widevine's DRM products. (release)

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Mix06 was when we heard about MySpace utilizing MS technology and Vista.

Mix07 was when we first heard about Silverlight, and witnessed a MS without Bill Gates giving the keynotes.

Mix08 promises to be another Silverlight oriented affair, but this time taken within the context of an open Microsoft. They're even putting on an open space'.

For those of us who have put in the years attending MS events (my first one was the MS CD-ROM developer's conference in 1986) - there's a fine art in understanding the koolaid and various ointments that get offered to us at these affairs. MS is really good at putting on shows, yet they cease to amaze me at how clueless they can be - while being (on the outside) well intentioned.

This year's faux paix has to do with asking Guy Kawasaki to keynote with Steve Ballmer (which is bad enough) but to add insult to injury they've asked Guy to chair the panel I'm on - about social networking. Now those of you who know Guy - know him to be the epitome of a blow hard marketing wonk, unable to back up anything he says with anything more than say it in 3 words. Brilliant.

Now I'm not that pissed off about this - as I figure I'll just answer all of Guy's questions in 3 words, that's simple. But they've loaded up the panel with 6 people, and including Guy - that makes 7 people doing a panel. In other words - I don't even really need to show up - it'll be a complete waste of time. Lets see 7 people, divided by :45-:50 minutes, that comes out to.. well you do the math.

Not really worth flying to Vegas - huh?

But its the rest of the show that'll be so amusing - I can't wait to go! Microsoft claiming that they're open? That's like saying George Bush now understands that women need abortions or that War is bad. It's like the Supreme Court going back and giving the election back to Gore. It's like Rush Limbaugh voting for Obama.

This is not how the world is supposed to be!

Microsoft is supposed to be the evil devil, so we have to wear garlic around our necks to protect our souls. But MS claiming that they're open is so against the grain of how our industry operates, that I'm afraid I might just break down and start crying.

So in the spirit of optimism, openness and willingness to work together, here are a few suggestions of what Microsoft could do to reach out and actually do something with this new openness (NOTE: suggestions on how to spend their $6B R&D budget to follow.)

1. Allot has been made lately of Microsoft joining the OpenID foundation board and in supporting DataPortability.org. So my first suggestion is easy: we need extensive testing and compatibility labs setup to make sure that OpenID inter-operates between various implementations! Nobody can do testing labs as good as Microsoft. They practically invented bugs. So I'm hoping that they'll do the right thing and fund these sorts of labs, which of course will then force Google to fund some labs as well. Nothing like dueling testing labs to make sure an open spec is solid and that end-users can guarantee a seamless experience!

2. How 'bout connecting Windows mobile to Google's Android, the iPhone and ALL the existing handsets in the world today? Instead of thinking of these other handset OSes as the competitors, the way we do things in the open world, is embrace and sing Kum-Bah-Yah! Wouldn't it be totally coolio to have a windows mobile device inter-operate with data devices and smartphones from around the world - and not be told sorry we are not compatible with that device? Wouldn't it be coolio for MS to exert some of its famous industry manipulative skills to get the carriers to open up more and inter-operate more? Remember - open is the new black.

3. and then there's the XBox. If there ever was a lesson in how to lose $5B and buy market share - its the XBox. How can MS turn its popular game console into a game changing device? I love the notion of the XBox set top box. And I love XBox live, which clearly needs to be completely open and allow anyone to run their own contests, tournaments, IM systems, etc. on it. The XBox is a gateway to the living room (see below) as well as a kickass real-time rendering device (see Second Life and all the opportunity of creating 100 Second Lives..) Then there's the reality of media downloads. How are ANY of these musicians and movie makers ever gonna stay in business as the new distribution channels which are just eating their lunch. Well the one thing an XBox can do - really well - is be a media player. You figure out what happens when the world's largest computer company gets open and has this device out there that costs $250 and is connected to the Internet and it's really smart too and knows about my digital lifestyle, what I like and is tied into targeted ad platforms. And monetizes attention.

4. With all the talk of being open, I wonder what MS thinks its enterprise customers will do when they're told go open old man. Its time for a change, here's the documentation for Windows and how to reverse engineer Office. I wonder what happens to their $25B a year in profits nest egg? This whole open thing smells like teen spirit. How does this all translate to the enterprise? I bet it doesn't. I bet they'll just forget to talk about it. Oooops - did we forget to talk about the open office of the future. Oooops. Sorry that wasn't a suggestion, just me falling back into being cynical. I still don't believe all this!

5. My favorite suggestion (which I've actually been making to Jeff Sandquist for several years now - ever since Scoble and Len Pryor invited me to the PDC on Lomnghorn in 2003) is that Microsoft needs to get open data flowing into the Windows Home Media system. That (by all accounts) is the leading Living Room platform and a place where families, singles and seniors can all unite together while gathering around the hearthfire of American life - the TV set. Sure videogames are hot in the living room, but most of those are relegated to the kids bedroom or family room downstairs. The Living room is the holey place, where new episodes of Lost and March Madness are consumed like so many buckets of koolaid propaganda. How 'bout doing some mashups around events or reviews? How 'bout establishing some shared, public XML servers filled with Event or Review data on it - so that a whole generation of family oriented Home Media apps can be built that tie into mobile, enable doctors appointments, shopping lists and TV guides? How come we don't have apps that understand what my favorite TV shows are and notify me when my fav shows have been recorded successfully or download my fav playlists of jams onto my car MP3 player (oh that's right - MS still does DRM.) Then there's the whole bevvy of APIs and inter-connected issues which will arise when we try and gateway open standards and shared platforms, like Twitter or OpenSocial? How's this all gonna work?

You can see that MS has its work cut out for it. But I don't see Google being anywhere near here - for a long time and just cause Yahoo bought Meedio, doesn't mean that's anything but yet another meaningless acquisition that'll get bured within the behemoth of non-execution.

So from my vantage point - MS is the ONLY player that can gateway all these coolio opportunities to the world of mainstream computing. And the ONLY way to do that - is by getting open.

And guess what?

That's actually what they're saying they wanna do! Now gee - how far does $1B go in helping to promote open activities? Open standards. Open mashups? Open data?

Only problem left is - that they're still Microsoft.

Q&A with graphics director for The NY Times

Steve Duenes, graphics director for The Times, is answering reader questions.

Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

The word is externalities, a concept that holds that money is not the only scarcity in the world. Chief among the others are your time and respect, two factors that we've always known about but have only recently been able to measure properlyThere is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later. Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

Top 10 Mistakes in High Tech Marketing

Why do so many high tech companies and products fail? We've had the opportunity to evaluate the management practices of hundreds of high tech companies and here are the primary reasons

Managing product development: Are your defects like potholes?

Defects, especially big ones, slow down other development or fixes. So, what do you do? If you have a ton of defects, I would choose a one-week timebox, and work on fixing them. For me, fixing means developing a fix along with a unit test (or two or three), getting some peer review, and then checking it in so the developer can do some around-the-area testing before system test. I don't care if the developers write the unit test first, I just care that they write some unit tests. Although, if you've got defects, you've got the makings of a bunch of great unit tests. I would not allow any development in this timebox, just fixing and checking the fixes in a variety of ways.

How spiderwebs work

An orb-spinning spider puts its elegant traps together pretty quickly, proceeding easily from step to step according to the instruction manual preprogrammed into its brain. The diagram below shows the major steps.

If It's on Super Wall, It May As Well Be Public Record

What You Say Online is Not Private

So What's a Social Networker To Do?

It's sad to hear about layoffs at companies like Yahoo. Right now it seems like a bad time to be laid off. I'm here to offer some hope.

I laid myself off in February 2002. Remember that time? It was far worse than what we've seen so far in the economic turmoil of 2008. It seemed like EVERYONE was laid off. There was even a Website, fuckedcompany.com, that tracked layoff after layoff. No good news, like the funding of Automattic, was coming out. 9/11 just happened and it seemed to be particularly dire.

But even in that tough time I found a job working at NEC. Here's some tips I learned from that time.

1. Don't get lazy. It might seem dire, but if you work it you WILL find a job. Some of my friends went on vacation, started drinking, or generally just hung out with their families. Those people took a LOT longer to find a job than the friends of mine who approached their time off with these tips.
2. Make sure you spend at least 30% of every day trying to find a job. That means working on your resume. Getting your cover letter finished. Sending out resumes. Searching the web for work. Networking. Etc. At first your time spent on these tasks should be a lot higher, but after weeks of watching the job sites for jobs and having your resume checked over by 10 of your friends you will naturally have more time to spend on other things.
3. Start a blog on the field you want to work in. Want to be a PHP programmer? Start a PHP blog and make sure you put world class stuff there. Link to EVERYONE who has a PHP blog. But that's only the beginning.
4. Do things that will get you to be recognized as a world leader in the field you want to be in. Are you a programmer? Build something and put it up! Share your knowledge on your blog (give tips you've learned). Are you a program manager? Those jobs will be tougher to find, but you should demonstrate that you are a great manager of people as well as that you're expert on the kinds of things you want to do. Demo! Demo! Demo!
5. Learn from Loic Le Meur. How did he get thousands of videos uploaded on Seesmic everyday? He networked. He visited tons of journalists, bloggers, executives. He is a consumate networker (you should watch him work the halls here at the World Economic Forum).
6. Do a video everyday on YouTube that demonstrates something you know. Loic does a video everyday. If you're laid off you have absolutely no excuses. Get a cheap Web cam and get over to YouTube or Seesmic.
7. Show your friends your resume and cover letter. Don't have any friends? Now is the time to make some. Call up some interesting people and ask for an informational interview. This is particularly key if you work at a big company and are getting laid off. I watched people at Microsoft get laid off and the ones who had tons of internal informational interviews got new jobs fast. The key is to meet people everyday and get in front of them. Not to beg for a job, but to do research on the industry you want to work in. You'd be amazed how showing some interest in your industry will get noticed itself.
8. Do the basics. I got my NEC job by sending a resume into a job that I found on Craig's List. Yes, my blog helped me AFTER I got the interview, but I got the interview just by having a great cover letter and an interesting resume.
9. Don't feel bad about taking government assistance. You'll need it to pay your bills. I took it and it helped me get over that tough period.
10. Go to any job networking session you learn about. All of them were valuable to me, even though they didn't necessarily bring me a job. Part of it is just feeling like you're doing everything you can to get back on your feet. It's an attitude thing. If you have an attitude that you're going to work at this that will come across and will bring opportunities to you.
11. Go where the money is. If you are laid off and you haven't sent your resume to Matt Mullenweg this morning, why not? People with new funding are the ones who are hiring. You want to work for them, so do what you can to at minimum get an informational interview. Why don't you interview Matt for your blog? You never know, he just might give you an interview and that might lead to a discussion about how you could fit into his company. Even if it doesn't, at least you get an interesting interview with someone in the industry who is seeing success. Other employers want to be like Matt, so if you have some insights to his success you might be surprised by how that gets you job interviews.
12. Take a little bit of time to work on family and health. You probably haven't been paying enough attention to these two things. This is the time to start some healthy habits. Give up smoking, if you're doing that. Drink less (the temptation will be to drink more, don't give in). Get more exercise. Yes, I should take my own advice (I went for a long walk this morning in Davos and had fish last night).
13. Volunteer. Let's say you are going to be out of work for six months. What could you do with six months of your time? Make sure you come away with it with a great project under your belt. Why not volunteer your time with a charity that could use your skills? Not only will you feel good about yourself, you'll come away with job experience so you won't have a hole in your resume (building an IT system for the Red Cross looks damn impressive saying you were on the beach for six months does not). Plus you'll make great friends with people who are trying to improve the world (they are typically the kinds of friends you should have anyway).
14. Make sure you take advantage of any help your former employer is offering. Sometimes they have retraining or other programs that might help you land an even better job.
15. See if you can keep coming into the office. This isn't open to everyone, but at Userland I kept coming into work everyday after the paychecks stopped. That made me feel better, plus it gave me the ability to use phones, stay away from negative situations (do you really want to be around family all day, everyday, who might remind you that you need to find a job?) as well as give you a place to work hard on finding your new job.
16. Go to every business event you can attend. Can't afford to get in? Me neither and I have a job! Hang out in the hallways. You never know who you might meet. At minimum you'll get interesting interviews for your blog. Have your resumes ready.
17. Always have your suit ready. Some interviews happen fast can you be here this afternoon? The one who is ready will get the interview.

On your resume and cover letter. I found a TON of tips online for how to improve yours. Those tips work. Listen to them. My cover letter is what got me my interview (the guy who ran the group told me that later). My cover letter's approach came off of tips I found online. Do Google searches for things like how to write a great cover letter.

Do you have any tips? Help out people by posting your own blogs and linking to them in my comment area here. Good luck and keep your head up. Lots of people have gotten fired. I've talked with quite a few CEOs here at the World Economic Forum and you'd be surprised at how many of them have had bad times in their careers.

I'll be asking business leaders this week for their tips and will come back to this topic later in the week.

Ahh, Andy Plesser broke my career news again (he was the guy who broke my news about leaving Microsoft too). Louis Gray got the story first, though, I think, although I told dozens of people at the BlogHaus last week at CES.

First of all, thanks to John Furrier, James McCormick, and the entire PodTech team. I grew a lot over the past year due to the opportunities they gave me and that turned into hundreds of interviews on ScobleShow.com.

Wednesday (today) Rocky Barbanica and I are moving to work for Mansuetto Ventures. They are the producers of Fast Company and Inc. magazines. What will we be doing? Helping to build a new, interactive, online video community called FastCompany.TV which will open on March 3.

UPDATE: Here's the official Fast Company press release and Lynne Johnson blogged about it here.

Back when my career moves were leaked over on TechCrunch I said I was considering another option. What was it? Starting my own business. Here's why I chose FastCompany.tv instead.

But, first let me back up and talk about what I've learned about the media business. Here's the four things you need to have to see success.

1. Content. This should be obvious, but you'll see where I'm going with this point later. Key here is to make content that no one else has. Content that's better quality. Special in some way. Gets viewers access to something they couldn't otherwise get access to.
2. Revenues. If you don't have them, it's hard to buy cameras, lights, microphones, or take the time to do things right. Yeah, you can bootstrap for a while like Rocketboom did in its early years, but at some point if you don't have cash coming in you'll need to find a real job and stop working on media production.
3. Distribution. If no one sees your videos you won't get revenues, so getting viewers/participants is key. Now, you can either get viewers by doing stunts (like Gawker Media did at CES) or you can get it by making deals to distribute your videos into places that have high viewership. Revision3, for instance, has reportedly made deals to distribute its videos into several airplane video systems. Mansuetto's magazines have more than a million readers, which will make it easier to get people to come visit the new network.
4. Scale. The SuperBowl has all the above three, right? But the place it really makes sense? Is part of a network. Why? Because then there's more for audiences to engage with than just one football game a year. Also, there's economies of scale since the camera crews can work on other stuff while they aren't working on the Super Bowl.

As I considered job opportunities I kept these four things in mind. Could the new company we'd join deliver on all of these? How about working for myself? Could I be successful? Both Mike Arrington and Om Malik (and others) urged me to start my own company. But, when I looked in the mirror I just didn't have that passion for doing it all myself. Why not?

1. I don't love doing much except for interviewing and blogging and my family. I've run the books at UserLand Software. I hated that. I've tried managing people at PodTech and found that I wasn't particularly interested in doing more of it (which is one reason why Rocky's going to play a key role in the development/production of the network it's important that we build a strong team, but I'd rather focus more of my energies on getting great content than on finding and keeping great people).
2. Building a diverse set of income requires a sales crew and attention to client happiness. It's one thing to take care of one sponsor. It's a whole nother thing to make magic happen for a wide range of sponsors. That takes a team of professionals. I don't have the time, nor the skills, to build a world-class sales team and if I took the time that'd cause me to take my eye off of doing my videos, which would be the life-blood of the organization.
3. Setting up a business requires a ton of other tasks. HR. Banking. Invoicing. All the other drudge work that takes time away from doing interviews, going on photowalks, reading feeds, hanging out and networking with industry leaders, etc that leads to great content.
4. Doing a business is stressful on everyone involved. Om Malik's heart attack had an impact on me. So did Marc Orchant's death. Life is too short and if that means I leave a few million on the table because I gave up equity in my own thing, so be it. I'm happiest when behind a camera talking with someone like Doug Engelbart or taking Patrick, my son, to MacWorld. Anything other than that I'm going to outsource, ala the Four Hour Workweek.
5. Brand extension is hard when running your ass off to build your own business. For instance, I want to build communities that lead to interesting events. But if I did my own business, running an event team would have to wait until I got my business on solid ground. That could be a year or more. That would mean opportunities lost. Fast Company and Inc have awesome event and marketing teams I've been to their events and if I wanted to build a team like that it'd take capital, time, and talent that I don't have.
6. Getting access to things, when running your own business, is tougher. Yeah, I can get access to a lot of things, but did Steve Jobs invite me to attend his keynote at MacWorld? No. If I was part of a bigger team with a more established brand, would it be more likely that I'd get invited? Yes.

So, why FastCompany.tv? Why not something else? Several reasons.

1. Fast Company (the magazine) has seen a resurgence in the past year. The content has gotten better. Ad sales were way up. They have new offices in New York City (I won't be moving, rather staying in Silicon Valley).
2. The editorial team at Fast Company and Inc. Magazines is getting cover articles that few others are able to get and the whole team will drive a lot of great content that'll show up on my show and on the network.
3. They have invested in a major new social networking site that'll be revealed soon. Fast Company was one of the first magazines with a social network, called The Company of Friends and the new site, built in open-source Drupal, excited me because of the distribution and community it brings.
4. They are working on a new magazine aimed at startups, too, which obviously I'm interested in.
5. They have a sales team that's already successful in selling to clients outside the tech industry (getting diversity is important to protect independence and also to bring fresh approaches to events and advertising).
6. They liked my participatory style of video better than other companies and want to expand it. Excited about technologies like Qik, Kyte, Seesmic, Mogulus, DotSub, etc. Other people/companies I talked with had blank stares when I talked about these technologies and how they might change the media business.
7. They have a tech team who understands how to integrate various Web technologies together. My column's page on Fast Company , for instance, has a calendar from Upcoming.org and a feed from Google Reader integrated into it along with video interviews and other things. We'll expand that kind of integration on the new network.

FastCompany.tv is not just me. They made a commitment to getting a great lineup of other stars in the industry to be part of the network my show won't be the only one on FastCompany.tv and we'll be adding more shows even after our March 3 start date.

Anyway, what's next? FastCompany.tv will start on March 3. Between now and then we're working on finding some great content (I'm working with editors of the magazines, as well as looking for the hottest emerging tech companies along with leading business executives/strategists and visionaries). I'll be going to the World Economic Forum and then to LIFT in Europe to find stories that are outside the United States and the tech bubble.

We'll have lots of surprises too, and will be stepping up the quality of my shows Rocky's already working on that as we speak. But most importantly I haven't seen a business network that treats viewers as partners. See, most of the TV (either mainstream, like CNBC, or new like that from Revision3 or elsewhere) treats viewers as, well, viewers. The thing is that the new technology lets you PARTICIPATE with the people who are in front of the camera. You got a taste of this while I was walking around CES with a cell phone and you could ask questions WHILE I WAS FILMING LIVE. That really changes the equation a lot and that'll be a key differentiator on FastCompany.tv. After all, if we're talking to Fast Companies, why shouldn't they answer YOUR questions live as well as mine?

Anyway, to wrap this all up. This was the best win-win for you, for me, my employers, and for my sponsors. That's why I'm proud to be a member of the Fast Company and Inc. families today and I'm looking forward to participating with you on March 3 on fastcompany.tv.

In between now and March 3? I'll continue to post videos (yesterday alone I posted about a dozen videos on my Qik channel from MacWorld conference) and other items I see in the industry on my blog on scobleizer.com.

If you're self-employed or thinking about it and you live in the U.S., one of your biggest concerns is likely to be health insurance. Most people in the U.S. about 60% according to the National Coalition on Health Care get health coverage through their employers.

But the health insurance outlook for the self-employed is not as bad as you might think. If you are reasonably healthy, you might be surprised how cheaply you can arrange coverage, especially if you choose a high-deductible health plan. And now that health insurers are looking for growth beyond their bread-and-butter large group policies, you could see even better rates as those insurers compete for your health coverage dollars.

The Wall Street Journal reports (behind the subscription firewall, unfortunately) that insurers are turning their attention to the individual insurance market as the large group plan market stagnates:

[Insurers'] core business selling group plans to large employers is stagnant. A Bain & Company analysis of the health-insurance sector shows that total commercial health-insurance enrollment has been flat at around 174 million people since 2001. In response to rising costs, employers have steadily pared back benefits, and the percent of businesses offering health insurance has fallen to 60% last year from 66% in 1999. Since the 2001 recession, the number of contractors, part-timers and small-business employees has grown two to six times faster than the economy overall. In contrast, traditional workers the full-time company employees that provide the insurance companies' bread and butter have declined 0.6%. As a result, profit pools in corporate-funded health plans are shrinking.

So what does that mean for you? It depends. It depends on what health issues you and your dependents have, what state you live in, and even what coverage you've had in the past, because some legal guarantees only kick in if you don't drop coverage for too long.

If you are looking for health insurance on the individual market, here are a few tips to guide you:

• Find a good health insurance broker. A broker who's knowledgeable about individual policies in your area will be able to help you find just the right health insurance plan for your situation. They can easily check rates at multiple insurance companies, inform you about laws that might apply to your situation, and counsel you about your best course of action.
• Consider a high-deductible health plan with a health savings account. These plans feature high annual deductibles but allow you to establish a health savings account to which you contribute pre-tax earnings. Because of the high deductibles, the policies are usually quite a bit cheaper than regular policies. And the health savings accounts have a variety of nice features, including long-term accumulation of savings and tax-free interest if you don't use up the money in the account. It's a great way to save for future health expenses while keeping the lid on current expenditures for your insurance.
• Don't drop coverage. Besides leaving you at risk for financial disaster should you have health problems while uncovered, it also means that if you later get coverage through an employer or other group plan, the insurer may not have to cover pre-existing conditions. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) says that if you maintain coverage without a significant break (generally defined as 63 days or more), a new group insurer cannot exclude pre-existing conditions, although an individual insurer may be able to, depending on your state's laws. Always maintain coverage, even if you do so with the most bare bones of policies.
• Consider COBRA health coverage continuation only as a last resort. The federal Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act provides for continuation of group health care coverage for up to 18 months (or longer if you are disabled) after you leave a job. Although it will cover you if you have no other options, it is time-limited and often very expensive. Do use it to keep unbroken coverage if you need to while waiting for eligibility for another plan, though.

For more advice on health insurance for the self-employed, check our open thread where readers shared their experiences. And let's hope that America's next president takes decisive action to help those who cannot obtain affordable health coverage for themselves and their families, even as we each (I hope) find the coverage we need for ourselves and our families.

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Watching VW's promo mood video for the new Microbus, circa 2001, it still just boggles my mind that the company ever derailed it in the first place:

So we had this idea...
What if we built
an honest
intelligently designed
multi-purpose vehicle
with that most elusive of qualities--
a soul...

Has anyone seen the sequel, What if we botched that idea and went with an inane Chrysler rebadge instead"?

Volkswagen Van Concept on Video, Circa 2001 [jalopnik]
Previously: VW's Real World - Malibu
Hippies getting mixed signals from VW