I'd give it a big "eh." Tonight's strategy seemed right, but the execution could have been better.

My hope tonight was that Obama would focus more on the human side. The debate has been getting bogged down lately in costs, and CBO reports, and new commissions, etc. All that stuff is extremely important -- but it's also very hard for the public to follow these types of policy minutiae.

And so I liked Obama's initial focus on "what's in it for you." That side of the debate should be more loudly emphasized because, at the end of the day, it's the most important. But Obama just didn't pull it off very well, either in the initial delivery or in the questions (Kevin Drum seems to agree).

Maybe none of this matters if the only point is to get quotes in tomorrow's papers and to refocus coverage. Regardless, as a live performance, he could have done better.

One last point on the whole "shouldn't we slow down" question... We don't have to analyze this question in the abstract. The stimulus debate provides good guidance.

Remember that the Republicans were saying "let's think about this," "let's slow down," etc. Now, if they had actually been interested in stimulating the economy more efficiently, fine. But that's not what they used the delay for -- they used it to drag things out and to try to kill the stimulus by a thousand cuts. Each day brought new attacks on things like honeybees.

If we were living in some sort of Platonic ideal of The Republic, fine. We could study things and enact the very best plan possible. But in this world, we have John Boehner. And delay at this point means death to reform.

This is part of our success story series where users share their tips and tricks on using LinkedIn more effectively. Today's user experience story comes from Divya Gugnani, a venture capitalist and principal at First Mark Capital who provides companies with strategic and operational guidance to achieve their visions. Read more on one of her more recent sponsorship deals she closed, with the help of a LinkedIn connection.

I'm a LinkedIn evangelist, and as a startup CEO, I've become an even bigger fan. I love all things social media and happily ride the Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Yahoo! Buzz wave. What makes LinkedIn different and incredibly helpful is the instant access to my professional network with an easy to use interface. As a former venture capitalist I used LinkedIn to source deals, check references for management, and connect with entrepreneurs. Today I run a media company in the culinary space, Behind the Burner, where we leverage a network of over 250 culinary experts to package their best tips, tricks and techniques in the form of short videos, articles and blogs. We also offer tools and ingredients the experts recommend at a discount. We actively virally market our food and beverage tips learned Behind the Burner and I take this same sharing approach on LinkedIn.

I've networked and participated in various entrepreneur, startup, food and wine enthusiast groups on the site, from ONEKO Internet Entrepreneurs to Slow Food to Food Service Professionals Network. People regularly send me inMail for culinary how-tos, restaurant insights, small business questions and entrepreneurial advice. Sometimes these interactions result in new business relationships.

Last month, Michael Gross (CEO of AJ Madison) one of the country's largest e-commerce appliance retailers, reached out to partner with us on one Behind the Burner's video segments through LinkedIn. He wanted to further market his appliance brand and we were considering doing a piece on summer grilling, and so we made a deal. They sponsored the segment and offered a e-commerce deal so our members can enjoy free shipping on appliances through Labor Day and as a result, they got a great professional, widely syndicated video segment highlighting their high end outdoor grills and how to use them.

I also use LinkedIn to generate buzz about my new business and keep my personal and professional network up-to-speed on my culinary happenings. Adding my profile link in outgoing emails adds credibility and the extra qualification nudge with certain requests. Your LinkedIn profile is like a mini resume, that snapshots your skills, experience and offerings and I like being able to subtly sell my expertise, as well as investigate other people's potential by reviewing their profiles. This has been great resource for recruiting new talent, including writers, videographers, graphic designers and interns.

Here's a really fascinating piece on the BBC about NASA programmer Don Eyles and the team behind the infamous AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer). Don was only 23 when he got the gig. Maybe it was good that he was young and naive. As he says: "I don't recall the risk and the responsibility and the fact that other people's lives were to some extent in our hands."

There are few instances in which I'm happy to be as old as I am. The fact that I got to live through and be an active observer (aka space geek!) during the Apollo program is one of those times. I still get chills reliving some of that footage.

There's a great jargon term in here, too: "LOL memory." It stands for "Little Old Lady memory" and refers to the "rope core memory" used in the AGC that required teams of (women) employees to weave meters and meters of copper wire around magnetic cores.

Weaving the way to the Moon [Thanks, Brian Jepson and Mike Loukides!]

A 1950s ranch-style dollhouse went up on eBay today. One of our favorite sellers, momoderne, is opening the bids at $125, or buy it now for $135. It's not entirely modernist (the drapes and bedroom furniture are traditional remnants) but there are many progressive details such as the walls of glass, the built-in woodwork and room divider, the fireplace, and the pedestal chairs.

Update: Thanks to Anne's comment below, we have the original name: Magnetic Doll House by Child Guidance. TimeWarp Toys says it was produced in 1964.

Hope you'll pardon the big fat Picnik logo above. I'm beta testing a new slideshow feature. What do you think? Do you prefer this preview of eBay listings, or is the standard column of static photos (below) better?

Eschewing the publisher focus of Issuu, or the broad business focus of DocStoc, the boot-strapped Edocr focuses on corporates and organisations. So for instance, companies can upload all their public-facing documents, whether they be company reports, press releases, guidance documents, you name it. Admittedly the slightly dull-but-necessary focus is not going to set the world alight, but with plenty of enterprises still getting their heads around the basics of blogging, RSS and even social networks like Twitter, edocr is a simple way for companies to share their PDFs without being lumped alongside a pirated copy of a Harry Potter novel.

New features include an improved design, bulk uploading of documents, an API, document categories, better search and the ability to auto-tweet to a Twitter account when new documents get uploaded. The question is, will that be enough to set it apart from the many players in this field?

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

In August, I blogged about the SEC's most recent guidance regarding companies' liability for linking to third party content. Today, I submitted comments to the SEC pointing out that their general position regarding linking contravenes 47 USC 230 with respect to civil lliability. (I believe the SEC guidance also pertains to SEC criminal enforcement actions, and those would not be preempted by 230). Unfortunately, I ran out of time to attack the overall illogic of trying to treat outlinks as the basis of liability in any circumstance. That will have to wait for another day. You can read my comments in PDF (that's the best because of the formatting and footnotes). Or, you can read the comments below.
_________________

November 5, 2008

Secretary
Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F Street, NE
Washington, DC 20549-1090

Re: File No. S7-23-08, Commission Guidance on the Use of Company Web Sites

I am an Associate Professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and Director of the school's High Tech Law Institute.[FN1] My research focuses on Internet law, especially Internet marketing law and search engine law. I have taught an Internet law course every year since 1995-96, and I practiced as an Internet lawyer in the Silicon Valley for 8 years before becoming a full-time professor.

My comments pertain to Section II(B)(2) of Release No. 34-58288. I write to point out that 47 U.S.C. 230 preempts the SEC's imposition of civil liability for hyperlinked material.

In 1996, Congress enacted 47 U.S.C. 230 to immunize websites and other online entities from liability for third party content. 230(c)(1) says:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

As the statute's plain language indicates, the SEC cannot treat a company as the publisher or speaker of third party online content under any circumstance. As applied to the SEC's proposed guidance, 230 means that the SEC cannot hold companies responsible for any content they hyperlink to.[FN2] Although I am not aware of a 230 case that specifically addressed hyperlinked content,[FN3] the case law has been virtually unanimous that websites are not responsible for third party content even when they exercise significant editorial control over the content. For example:

In D'Alonzo v. Truscello, 2006 Phila. Ct. Com. Pl. LEXIS 244 (Phila. Ct. C.P. 2006), a blogger copied the entire contents of a newspaper article and republished those contents, apparently without authorization, on his blog. The newspaper article was allegedly defamatory (and the newspaper retracted it), but 230 immunized the blogger from any defamation liability even though the blogger affirmatively republished the article.

In Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal. 4th 33 (2006), an email list operator made the editorial decision to forward a third party's allegedly defamatory email to the entire email list. The California Supreme Court held that the email list operator was not liable for defamation for forwarding the email.

In Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F. Supp. 44 (D.D.C. 1998), AOL was not liable for republishing a contractor's allegedly defamatory content even though AOL had the express contractual right to exercise editorial control over the content.

Although these cases all involved defamation claims, the statute is not limited to those. Instead, 230 preempts all civil causes of action based on third party online content[FN4] even causes of action enforced by the SECunless otherwise specified in 230(e).[FN5]

Further, the immunization applies even when a website explicitly or implicitly adopts the third party content. For example, in Global Royalties, Ltd. v. Xcentric Ventures, LLC, 2007 WL 2949002 (D. Ariz. 2007), a website was not liable for continuing to publish third party content that the author had asked the website to withdraw, even if the website had adopted the content as its own.;[FN6] Accordingly, the SEC's standards for adoption of third party content may need some revamping for the online context.

Finally, 230 may protect websites' self-authored characterizations when third parties cause those statements to become untrue. For example, in Doe v. SexSearch.com, 502 F. Supp. 2d 719 (N.D. Ohio 2007), 230 immunized a website's marketing representation that all of its users were over 18 when a user rendered that statement false by lying about her age.[FN7]

Therefore, the SEC's proposed guidance may contravene 230 to the extent that it tries to establish civil liability based on a company linking to third party content or for the company's characterizations of that content. I encourage the SEC to consider revising Section II(B)(2) to reflect 230 and, as appropriate, acknowledge that companies do not face civil liability for hyperlinking to third party content.

I appreciate the opportunity to submit these comments, and I would be happy to elaborate on them further if that would be helpful. Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully submitted,

Eric Goldman
Associate Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law
Director, High Tech Law Institute
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95053
(408) 554-4369
egoldman@gmail.com
http://www.ericgoldman.org

FOOTNOTES

1. I am speaking only for myself. I provide my affiliation for identification purposes only.
2. See, e.g., Christopher J. Volkmer, HyperLinks to and from Commercial Websites, 7 COMP. L. REV. & TECH. J. 65, 67-68 (2002).
3. The most analogous precedent that came to mind is Smith v. Intercosmos Media Group, Inc., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24251 (E.D. La. 2002), which held that a domain name registrar was not liable for an allegedly defamatory website hosted at a domain name registered by its customer. Also analogous is Doe v. MySpace Inc., 528 F.3d 413 (5th Cir. 2008), which held that MySpace was not liable for tortious conduct (sexual abuse) that took place beyond its premises, even though the parties had met each other and communicated via the website.
4. See, e.g., Ben Ezra Weinstein & Co. v. Am. Online Inc., 206 F.3d 980 (10th Cir. 2000) (AOL was not liable for publishing inaccurate stock information provided by third parties).
5. 230(e) excludes federal criminal law from the 230(c) immunizations, so 230 does not preempt the SEC's criminal laws. However, civil claims based on those laws are preempted. See Doe v. Bates, 2006 WL 3813758 (E.D. Tex. 2006); cf. Voicenet Commc'ns, Inc. v. Corbett, 2006 WL 2506318 (E.D. Pa. 2006).
6. However, I should note that the recent Roommates.com en banc opinion, which addressed facts the SEC is unlikely to encounter, has some ambiguous but arguably contrary discussion regarding adoption of third party content. See Fair Hous. Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008). Similarly, I am not addressing the application of 47 U.S.C. 230 to the SEC's entanglement discussion.
7. See also Prickett v. infoUSA, Inc., 561 F. Supp. 2d 646 (E.D. Tex. 2006) ( 230 immunized information syndicator for its representation that it had verified the syndicated information); Mazur v. eBay Inc., 2008 WL 618988 (N.D. Cal. 2008) ( 230 immunized eBay for its representation that its live auction service vendors were screened). But see Anthony v. Yahoo! Inc., 421 F. Supp. 2d 1257 (N.D. Cal. 2006) ( 230 does not immunize the dissemination of expired dating profiles with the implicit representation that they were still active); Mazur v. eBay Inc., 2008 WL 618988 (N.D. Cal. 2008) ( 230 does not immunize marketing representations that live bidding is safe, is conducted against floor bidders and involves international auction houses).

www.emergenow.com

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, Emerging Solutions was recently named to Microsoft's crme de la crme group of partners the 2008 Microsoft Dynamics Presidents Club! My best congratulations to all of my fellow colleagues in the Microsoft Consulting Group.

If you're looking for a reliable partner to help you with your business and technology needs, please visit the Emerging Solutions Contact Us page.

For more details about this prestigious status, see the press release below.

Microsoft Honors Emerging Solutions for Outstanding Customer Commitment and Sales Achievement

Chicago, IL - July 10, 2008 - Emerging Solutions has been named to the 2008 Microsoft Dynamics President's Club receiving recognition from Microsoft Corp. for its dedicated commitment to customers. This honor reflects the company's success in extending the Microsoft Dynamics platform to drive business advantages in companies worldwide.

This recognition came during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 in Houston. The elite club recognizes the top 5 percent of Microsoft Business Solutions partners worldwide and their constant dedication to delivering solutions that meet their customers' unique needs, active pursuit of product and technological advancement, and impressive sales performance.

Microsoft is proud to congratulate Emerging Solutions on being named to this year's Microsoft Dynamics President's Club, said Doug Kennedy, vice president, Microsoft Dynamics Partners. Emerging Solutions not only has demonstrated a high level of product expertise, but also has provided a superior level of service and commitment to our Microsoft Dynamics customers, ultimately contributing to the overall success of Microsoft Dynamics and companies worldwide.

We draw on a unique combination of competencies in Microsoft Dynamics. Our comprehensive coverage of these solutions and unique processes allow our consultants to better understand customer business needs and how technologies fit into the big picture of an organization. We will continue to work closely with Microsoft and the Dynamics suite of products to provide leading-edge solutions for our customers, said Don Sweeney, Emerging Solutions Co-Founder and Microsoft Practice Lead.

With applications experts focused in Microsoft Dynamics GP, AX, CRM and SL, Emerging Solutions' consultants provide the necessary guidance not only in individual application strategy and deployment, but also in complete rollout and integration of these diverse solutions.

About Emerging Solutions
Emerging Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is an established professional services firm that helps global and mid-market firms maximize the benefits of business applications through leading technology. We provide strategic guidance, implementation and innovative integration solutions for business and technology applications from leading software vendors. For more information visit Emerging Solutions at www.emergenow.com.

By sharing my statistics openly, it will now be obvious to the world how little real traffic I get, opening me to ridicule. The emperor has no clothes, it could be said. Also, maybe the traffic I receive isn't seen as "quality" traffic? I still get a lot of visitors from Google image searches looking for R-rated material in vain. Maybe I don't want everybody to see that, and, therefore, take the site less seriously?

By sharing my statistics openly, it could be shown we're bragging, highlighting traffic, growth, and the trends. Smaller bloggers just getting started might see the data as unattainable and could throw potshots.

Just as it makes sense to visit Salary.com and determine what other people with your title in your geography are commanding, viewing other's statistics can give you a reference point for how you are performing against your peers.

One of the most interesting things I find from my statistics are where people are coming from, in the referral logs. It's likely that those people caring enough to send a link my way might be interested in the same topics I am, and, using the transitive property, my readers would be interested in what they are as well.

Despite one's best efforts, not every single story gets the same amount of solid traffic. There are peaks and valleys. Making this data public could better give guidance to other writers as to what topics are most interesting, might get the most engagement, or views.

Whether the total number of unique visitors, page views, referrals is in the hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands, by establishing that data publicly, your traffic now becomes part of the conversation, relative to yourself and relative to others, so you'll need to come to terms with this in advance.

A good blogger who knows their statistics can get used to specific readers. With a good combination of MyBlogLog, and location-based visits, I have a good idea of who the most frequent visitors are, and I think I know what stories they read, if I get the time to look it up. Maybe others could be as aggressive and figure out the same information. Some visitors might not like having this potential to be snooped expanded to the masses.

It's one thing to post data at your peak when things are going well. But if you have a slow week or months, and your numbers collapse, there's no hiding it. You can't undo a number once it's out, so that too would be a risk.

This week, then, Cisco Systems announced a new class of enterprise switches called the Nexus 7000 intended to replace its Catalyst router family, which is reaching its End of Life. To me the Nexus 7000, which costs from $75,000-$200,000, looks a heck of a lot like a mainframe computer. To Cisco it looks like a frigging gold mine.

These chances to tell customers they should throw out their perfectly fine equipment come along rarely, and in this case the opportunity to throw out the old and replace with new is particularly huge and gratifying because there is so much of the old stuff to get rid of. The equipment that will be replaced with Nexus 7000 racks was generally installed during the glory days of 1999-2000, when dot-coms and V.90 modems ruled the world, there was little streaming video, and we didn't really buy all that much stuff over the Internet. In anticipation of future growth back then (and just because they could), companies like Cisco pushed so much network hardware into the sales channel that it has taken until now for most of that equipment to finally become obsolete. So now they can push a boatload of new equipment into data centers in exactly the same way.

I'm not saying the Nexus 7000 is not needed or that it is bad in any way. Quite the contrary. Cisco has spent four years and $1 billion building a new generation of routers with new capabilities that are intended to be so compelling they'll keep customers from jumping to Juniper or some other competitor. And along with ensuring customer loyalty, the Nexus 7000s that start rolling out shortly will eventually enable whole new kinds of data services, most importantly robust IP multicasting as I described in this space a few weeks ago.

One huge difference between the Nexus and Catalyst lines, for example, is that Nexus comes with IP multicast turned "on," while Catalyst came with multicast turned "off" as a default. A Nexus 7000 chassis can pump up to 15 terabits per second, which is a heck of a lot of bits. Just for example, if we imagine a DVD-quality H.264 video stream running typically at one megabit per second, that Nexus 7000 could seemingly support 15 MILLION such data streams. In practical service, however, where the Nexus 7000 would be providing bandwidth for storage and network management in addition to pure file service, it is more reasonable to expect a fully tricked-out Nexus 7000 to support more like one million or so concurrent users. It is difficult at this point to even estimate the total cost of that tricked-out Nexus loaded with 10-gigabit-per-second network cards and hundreds of terabytes of storage, but it will undoubtedly set a new low cost point for per-subscriber hardware. Cisco is going to sell a lot of these puppies to telephone companies upgrading their DSL plants to offer IP TV.

What strikes me from reading the Nexus specs and that of the associated NX-OS operating system is how this new switch reminds me of an old mainframe. Nearly all services are virtualized, with multiple copies of the OS starting and stopping as needed. Everything is redundant, isolated, and intended for nonstop service. It is hard to imagine when, if ever, you'd even need to reboot. And while the Nexus supports network connections up to 10 gigabits per second, the really fast networking takes place in parallel between cards over a passive backplane. The Nexus 7000 is a data center in a rack, only with dramatically reduced cooling and power requirements which suggest to me that Cisco has a growth strategy for this architecture that will, over time, make it look more and more like a big computer and less like a router. Throw on a virtualized AIX or Solaris and the Nexus will eventually reveal that its true competition is less likely to be Juniper than it is IBM, HP, and Sun.

Remember this new platform has to last for a decade. From today's perspective making it still attractive 10 years from now requires subsuming as many computing services as one can imagine, not just undermining cable TV.

And speaking of undermining, many readers have been asking me to put in context IBM's recent move to cut pay for almost 8,000 service and support employees. I have resisted commenting to this point mainly because I see my job here as covering stories that AREN'T being handled well (or at all) elsewhere. But in the case of this story the Associated Press and others have done a good job of explaining the problem from the perspective of the employees, so I haven't had to.

But readers keep asking and there does seem to be an arm's length view of the situation that hasn't been well explained to date, so here goes.

If you aren't familiar with the story, IBM was sued several years ago by employees who were classified as exempt and therefore not entitled to overtime pay, yet those employees felt that had they worked at some other company their duties would have been considered non-exempt. IBM lost the case, paid a $65 million settlement in 2006, but took until now to decide that it ought to reduce by 15 percent the base pay of the affected employees in order to keep the settlement revenue-neutral for the company. If IBM had to pay overtime, it would tie that overtime to a lower base pay, thus keeping its costs steady.

While this probably makes total sense in the IBM accounting department, the change was a surprise to the affected workers, who say they are hurt by the lower base since it also cuts their vacation pay and IBM's contribution to their 401K. It might be easy to point to that $65 million settlement as making up for some of this, except that many IBM employees who were eligible to participate in the settlement for some reason didn't sign up for it and no longer can. Now there's a communication problem that needs exploration.

What the big picture shows here is the apparent end of IBM's tradition of respect for the individual. For most of its corporate history IBM has been a pioneer -- a model -- for corporate responsibility, but that era seems to be over. Maybe there is no more fat left to trim so the company is cutting muscle, instead. But I think there is more to it than that. I think this is a logical eventuality of IBM becoming a truly global corporation, not just an American company that does business abroad.

Despite the dark stories I have written about IBM over the last couple years, the company's latest financial reports were very good and the earnings guidance it gave to Wall Street was positively glowing. This makes little sense looking at the company from a U.S. perspective, where customers are upset and profits appear to be fleeting. Cutting through the recent IBM financials shows, in fact, that the company makes little or no money in the U.S. and quite a bit of money internationally. Nearly all of IBM's current profit, in fact, can be attributed to a single condition -- the weak dollar. International sales and profits are bigger mainly because the dollar is so much smaller than it used to be -- a condition that is likely to continue, hence the glowing earnings forecast.

Maybe what IBM is doing is turning itself into a business that is mainly NOT in the U.S. Those rosy forecasts could be based on an active plan to essentially abandon the bottom of the U.S. market in favor of the top of every international market. It hurts the U.S. employees (especially those in services) but makes sense in so many ways. The model it scarily reminds me of is Tyco, which went so far as to switch its incorporation to Bermuda.

And what if this strategy fails or the dollar recovers? Then they'll ramp up production of those vampire robots, I'm sure.

The deal follows the recent investment by parent Omnicom Group's BBDO, in a significant minority stake in the Shunya Communications Group. This partnership is designed to provide highly-skilled Chinese resources and market access to Porter Novelli and to create international scale and development opportunities for Shunya International's multinational clients and staff.

The creation of Shunya International as a member of the Porter Novelli global network follows the integration of Porter Novelli and Shunya consultants in China into a 60-person agency team, based in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu. The team has already won clients in China including P&G's Pampers program as well as providing additional resources to Porter Novelli global clients such as The Dow Chemical Company.

Shunya International's management team is led by Michael Song, managing director, and John Orme, president. Michael has led a number of client teams since joining the Shunya Group in 2000 as one of the agency's first employees. John, who joined Porter Novelli's UK business in 1982, spent six years in the agency's Brussels' office before moving to China in April 2007 to focus on the development of Porter Novelli's resources for clients in China.

The new agency will provide a portfolio of stakeholder relationship services to national and international clients, including strategic research and planning, issues counsel and interactive communications skills, as well as media relations, event management and internal communications.

We have taken a deliberately pragmatic approach to building our presence in China, said Helen Ostrowski, chairman of Porter Novelli. In the Shunya International team, we now have the right combination of local expertise and global best practices to provide the kind of guidance and executional support that multinational clients are looking for in China.

Ostrowski noted that the formation of Shunya International is the latest significant step in the development of Porter Novelli Asia Pacific. Over the past decade, the agency has focused on key markets such as Japan, Korea, India and Singapore, as well as the more recent development of its partner network in the ASEAN region.

Shunya International President John Orme said: This is great news for our growing portfolio of clients in China. Our relationship with Shunya will enable Porter Novelli to provide national and international clients with unparalleled skills and reach. Added Michael Song, Shunya International Managing Director: The public relations market in China is experiencing accelerated growth into its third decade, coupled with an immense appetite for best practice learning and knowledge transfer.

About Porter Novelli

Porter Novelli is one of the world's leading public relations agencies and is represented in all major markets. With a focus on effective stakeholder communications and adopting a holistic, media-neutral approach, Porter Novelli develops public relations programs that deliver value and impact to its clients' business. Porter Novelli was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1972 and is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com). Omnicom is a leading global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.porternovelli.com.

About Shunya Communications Group

BBDO Asia Pacific (www.bbdoasia.com), part of BBDO Worldwide, operates in 14 countries throughout Asia for clients such as FedEx, Visa, Pepsi, KFC, ICI, DaimlerChrysler and Fonterra. BBDO Asia Pacific won Campaign Brief Agency of the year from 2004 to 2006 and was the most awarded agency for print and TV at Adfest in 2006.

Google ber Allies

A Sliced Apple

Dance of the Elephants

Sun Sets on Palm?

Facing the Music

A really effective way of bootstrapping your start-up is to offshore and outsource your development. But doing this also carries risks, how can you be sure that you are going to get a developer who'll see it through and has the right experience? This post lays out an effective process to find the right developer.

From starting the search, to the first developer writing code, should take around 3-5 months and there may be further delays whilst you complete your documentation. In this article I'll talk you through what you should be doing at each stage, and what the objective of each stage should be. Here's an overview of the process:

• Build a long list of development companies
• NDA all the companies on the long-list
• Issue a Request for Information (RFI)
• Analyse responses and short-list the developers
• Issue a Request for Quotation (RFQ)
• Analyse responses and select a preferred vendor and a spare
• Negotiate contract with preferred vendor
• Commence development based on your documentation

This is a long process, and therefore I've split it up into 4 sections. These will be posted each week for the next four weeks. Regular readers of this series can relax: the whole lot has been written in advance, so there won't be any month long gaps in between!

Finding a great development company is one of the most important decisions your company will make. Changing developers mid-way through a development is near impossible and so it is important that you select a company which you are confident has the ability to see it through. The purpose of this 8-step process is to stack the odds in your favor by finding out as much as possible about the development company before you sign the contract.

At several stages I've included sample documentation to give you more guidance on what should be included. You can download these examples from the documentation bank on Aroxo.

Before we start, one word of advice. Running a vendor selection process will involve giving a large number of developers bad news (and only one company good news). When I first started doing this I found the process of giving bad news quite unpleasant. It is, but it is still important to do it. Vendors are used to receiving rejections, so they tend to take it more easily than expected and I also find that giving the bad news, along with some personalised feedback, is always much appreciated.

Step 1: Build a long-list

Before we start populating a long-list, it is worth spending a few minutes getting properly organised, as running a vendor selection process involves a lot of time, organisation and communication. I find it easiest to run these off a spreadsheet. There's a sample vendor dashboard included in the documentation bank.

Building a long list involves populating this dashboard. The aim is to get 20-30 companies into the dashboard that satisfy your broad requirements for the type of system you want to build. You want to make sure that each company has:

• Experience in building the type of system you're looking for (if you think your system is entirely new, it almost certainly isn't, there will be parallels which you can look for - even if those are purely functional elements)
• Experience working with start-ups
• Offices somewhere in the world where you are happy doing business
• Experience in the technology you want your system built in (if you don't have a preference, then ignore this)

By far and away the hardest of these objectives to meet is the first. You may need to contact many companies to determine whether they have built a similar application to the one you're looking for.

In order to find companies, there are a few tricks you can employ:

• Use your network: ask anyone you know who works in the software industry for 2-3 development company recommendations
• Use referral companies to provide connections and act as a filter
• Use associations to help pinpoint development companies
• Use tools like eLance, Scriptlance and Rentacoder to find developers
• Use Google to help find companies
• When you've found a company you like, do a reverse search for their homepage on Google to see if they belong to any associations with links to other companies

You may need to look through a large number before you've found 20-30 companies which can meet the 4 requirements set out above.

Step 2: NDA everyone

You're a start-up (I'll return to this point later), so an NDA offers no protection. If you've got funds to sue a company then, frankly, they would be better spent fixing the mistake with a new developer. However, it is still essential that you NDA all the vendors, even though you are not going to be providing them with any confidential information (other than of your existence, just yet).

First thing you'll need is an actual NDA. There are plenty you can download for free on the web, so I've not provided one. Read it to make sure that you are comfortable with everything included in it. If you've selected a lawyer at this stage, ask them to provide an NDA, but don't pay them to write out a new one.

Email it to all the developers on your long-list and ask them to fax or scan signed copies back; and make sure there's a deadline for return in your email. When you receive one back, open up the Vendor Dashboard and update it so that you don't forget you've received it. Then print it out and file it.

When you hit the deadline, ignore any further submissions. If the development company can't meet this simple deadline. they are not going to meet any further deadlines.

In next week's post I'll detail how to write and issue an RFI; and then short-list your developers.

Since it was founded in 1998 to oversee the distribution of domain names and IP addresses, ICANN has weathered a number of storms, including calls by some world leaders in 2003 to remove the organization's control over how domain names are assigned. In part due to Cerf's leadership, the group remained intact and has even managed to grow its budget. Approximately 100 people now work at ICANN.

What does life after ICANN hold for the 64-year-old winner of both the National Medal of Technology and the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Cerf will maintain his role at Google as "chief Internet evangelist," which he has held since 2005. He also has "five books in various stages of completion," according to the AP, though perhaps somewhat surprisingly, only one of those books will be about the Internet. "I hesitate to say the definitive history, but I will try very hard to characterize the first 10 years of it," Cerf said about the subject of his book project.

Cerf also plans books of poetry, on relationships, and a biography of his wife.

"I don't regret at all the time spent, (but) I'm looking forward to having the time back," Cerf told the AP of his days at ICANN, which he estimates took up 25-40% of his time. "If you multiply eight years by a quarter to 40 percent, that's a lot of years."

Reuters reports that potential successors for Cerf at ICANN include telecommunications expert Roberto Gaetano and lawyer Peter Dengate Thrush -- neither of whom have the celebrity star-power of Cerf. "The bad news is we're not going to find another Vint," said Steve Crocker, a childhood friend of Cerf's and the inventor of the Request for Comments (RFC) series. "It's equally a form of good news. We're now going to go through a period where ordinary mortals are managing things."

Even though Cerf will still have an integral role in shaping the future of the Internet via his positions at Google, the IPv6 Forum, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Labratory, he does not plan to stay involved in ICANN. "I absolutely need this time back, and I don't want to hover over the process," he said. "I want them to feel the pressure to organize themselves and not imagine they can turn back and look for guidance from me."

Photo credit: jdlasica.