Dick Morris on Democratic Nominating Contest

Morris’ take on all this is super crisp and clear-minded, on both sides.  Reminded me of Larry Ellison’s quote on the Economist: “I used to think for myself, now I just read the Economist.”  In same way, I used to think about politics, now I just tune into Morris. The audio below assesses the Democratic race, Oprah quote leads in for about 30 seconds.  (Note I’d write about the GOP race also, but I couldn’t find his segment on that on YouTube.) 

His key points:

• Oprah’s endorsement of Obama is very significant for Democratic nomination race.
• Hillary will get “creamed” in Iowa
• This will put Hillary at risk in NH
• Obama will win SC
• Hillary will win MI
• Then the Democratic party will give 30 days of assessment (pre-Florida) on whether they’re really ready to nominate him over Hillary

Interestingly (given that he was a former Clinton advisor) he also says:

“It’s very hard for anybody to be a front-runner for a year and take that kind of scrutiny.  And it’s particularly hard, when you know, for dead certainty, that if the American people knew what you were really like and what you are really for, they’d never vote for you.  So you need 12 months of artifice, and she hasn’t been able to pull it off.”

Evel Knievel’s epitaph

Explorer, motorcyclist, daredevil.

“Concerning my purpose in life
I feel that God put me here
to do the best,
to live the best,
and to be the best
at what I’ve chosen to do
and I am trying to do that.
And when He’s ready,
He’ll take me —
A human being cannot ask for a better deal
than that.”

Pretty good.

More Great Free Stuff: PBwiki.com

This week, I’ve put together several posts on the products that I’ve found and loved for their simplicity, speed, usefulness, and free-ness. These attributes are key, key, key when you are trying to start a company, and as a new first-time entrepreneur, I’ve had to find and filter fast. To save others time, I’m putting my greatest hits on the web.

Today, I’m doing a brief post on PBwiki.com. PBwiki solves the problem of making it easy for a group of people to collaborate and share information over the web. Wiki’s are an amazing set of technologies, and there’s really more in them than I can explain well, read something else if you want to understand what WIki’s are and why they are so powerful as productivity tools. Suffice to say that at Moonshoot, we use PBWiki extensively–people can keep track of key documents, find relevant market information, and post broad updates in the Wiki.

What PBWiki does is simplify and demystify teh whole thing. PB stands for peanut butter, and it reinforces their (true) claim that you can setup a wiki with them in less time than it takes to make a peanut butter sandwich.

It’s free and it’s almost literally instant. Kudos to them for a great and useful product.

Thanks PBWiki!

Awesome free stuff from Google that any entrepreneur can use

Yesterday, I talked in a post about Todoist, and what a great tool it is for entrepreneurs (or anyone else) who are looking for great tools that help them get their work done and are to be free, fast and simple. These three tenets more than any others are really the core attributes of what makes a compelling value proposition for entrepreneurs like me looking for a tools and software to help them get stuff done. I use these things everyday at Moonshoot.

Today, as much as it pains me given my strong and positive feelings towards Microsoft, my past employer, I’ve got to give up props to Google for a several things of theirs that’s free, fast, simple and very useful.

First, Google Apps deserves a shout-out. Here any start-up can get their hands on email, calendaring, and the equivalent to a front-end web portal (i use all this stuff) as well as a hosted home page (i don’t use this). This stuff is all easy to use, it’s free, and it looks great to customers and anyone else. My email comes through as jay@moonshoot.com, and we can send calendar requests / S+’s to anyone.

The mail not only looks professional, it’s snappy performance-wise, and you can access it from any PC. The calendaring feature is also well done. One of the very nice touches that I find very useful is how smart the Google apps are at taking context from my mail and pre-filling event details.

The screenshot below shows how this works. I write a mail saying “How about meeting at Starbucks tomorrow at 9am?” When the recipient looks at the mail, there’s the part on the right side, which suggests adding it to the calendar. I can merely click, and pow! it’s added to my calendar. Saves time, and very useful. Eerily accurate too!

All this being free is a no brainer, relative to Hosted Exchange. (Again, sorry Microsoft.)

Second, GrandCentral, now part of Google, is another great free tool for start-ups. It basically gives you one phone number that will ring on any phone you designate. It’s got a ton of other features (call screening, call blocking, call recording, etc.), but to me the thing I love is having one number that can ring anywhere. This simple feature gives me a big company PBX like presence, with a free, no money down cost. Very useful if you’re moving from the home office to the garage to a temporary office, or if you’re traveling. Awesome.

Third, Google Analytics for web site information. This free tool to track and analyze your web site traffic boggles my mind at its usefulness and simplicity. I’m not a technology guy, but I was able to get this integrated in my homespun web site in less than 3 minutes. The level of data and information it provides is outstanding.

So those are 3 free things that I recommend for any entrepreneur or start-up person from Goog.

Announcing: Moonshoot

Hello all–this is about my new company, Moonshoot. It’s been 3 months now since I’ve left Microsoft and moved the family to Palo Alto, California. I made this move to shift my career to working in start-ups, a passion that I’d had for some time.

I’m pleased today to update you with the news that I’m starting a company called Moonshoot. We’re located in Redwood City, California.

Moonshoot is in stealth mode, and so I won’t disclose much yet. What I will say is that it is focused on a massive global market in the Consumer Internet space. We have seed funding secured, and we will be entering alpha early in 2008.

I’ll keep this blog updated from time to time with info on Moonshoot, but in general, I’ll be posting to the Moonshoot Blog. This blog will focus on a superset of Moonshoot and non-Moonshoot topics.

Please keep in touch with me through my email: jay@moonshoot.com. Also, if you’d like to join our alpha / beta lists, please send us mail at contact@moonshoot.com.

Great task manager for start-ups : Todoist

One of the more interesting things about leaving a big company and striking out on your own is the opportunity to look around for software and tools that are free, useful, and low resources. There are a bunch of things I’ve found, and I’ll write about those from time to time, but Todoist is a worthy tool to start with. I love Todoist.

A quick caveat: I’m a hardcore task manager and I love having little To-Do-Lists that I can use to keep track of what I’m doing. Todoist wins in my book versus anything that I’ve used before, including Outlook’s Tasks (sorry Microsoft).

What it does that I love:

1. It’s fast and easy–you can add tasks very quickly
2. It’s accessible from any internet-based pc or mobile phone
3. It’s free

If you’re looking to keep your tasks managed and you want something that just works, try Todoist!

Onwards!

Simple todo list and task manager: Todoist

A VC: Facebook and The Privacy Backlash

From Fred Wilson’s Blog on Internet Privacy:

My view, for those who haven’t been reading this blog for a long time, is that all of this privacy stuff is way over the top. You need to disclose what you are doing and Facebook has done that. You need to give users a way to opt out and I believe but am not sure that Facebook has done that. Certainly the partner sites that are runnning Facebook’s beacon need to disclose and provide an opt out

But beyond that, tracking what we do and reporting it to our friends and using that data to target advertising and content is a good thing. In fact, its why the Internet is getting better and better every day

When the internet knows who you are, what you do, who your friends are, and what they do, it goes from the random bar you wander into to your favorite pub where your friends congregate and the bartender knows your drink and pours it for you when you walk in the door

To quote one of the all time great movies of all time Office Space, ‘uh, yeah… i’m going to have to ‘disagree’ with you there on that one.’  I expect that in a broader sense, Fred would agree that privacy is important and maintaining his vision of the above in a safe secure way is important.  Still, this strikes me as pretty naive, given what we see occurring. 

The fact is that privacy breeches are occurring all around us, with big risk.   Last week, for example, the UK government mistakenly compromised the personal information of roughly half its citizenry due to a low level staffer sending 2 CD-ROMs through the mail (source: Economist).  This is just the latest in a continuing string of privacy compromises that will continue to haunt people.

The case of the minor girl who met on MySpace the convicted sex offender who then kidnapped her in real life also comes to mind… 

Most people who don’t work in technology (the vast majority of the consumer internet btw)  have no idea the exposures they’re making, and controlling them with an ‘opt out’ seems way too simplistic a view to me. 

Its important that as an industry, we realize that most consumers are baffled by the amount of stuff going online and what’s private and what’s not.  As an industry, we need to do more to assure people that they can figure out how to be safe and secure. 

The above quote is far too cavalier IMHO.  A more reasonable view is one that say: while the benefits of sharing information in general are quite high, privacy is an important concern.  To always assure privacy, here’s a step you Mr./MS. consumer can take to assure you’re safe–<insert verbiage that’s readable by human being without law degree here>.

I think Mint.com (I have no affiliation with) does best in class job on this right now.  They take extremely sensitive data — your personal finances — manage it in a way that’s secure and private, and best of all explain their privacy approach in a human-understandable way.

A VC: Facebook and The Privacy Backlash