As an ex-drinker I'm not generally a militant straight-laced stick-in-the-mud (like the way I am a militant ex-smoker). I couldn't care less if people drink or what they think drinking does for them.

But the new Canadian Club Whiskey ad campaign just cracks me up on a lot of levels ad for some reason, maybe you as well. If so, you may enjoy this ad parody.

I had to laugh out loud when I watched Jim Rogers interviewed on CNBC, after he lambasted Bernanke for his abject mishandling of the credit market implosion, one interviewer asked: "Tell me two things you would you do if you were Bernanke tomorrow?" - Without missing a beat he said 1: Abolish the fed and 2: Resign
Continue reading "Q: How do you get out of a mess? A: don't cause one."

Trivial but handy: I found myself having to email out some Fedex tracking ID's today, so I thought what would make it easy would be a way to create a redirect to the Fedex tracking page for that ID without having to visit a URL shortener site to create the redirect.


That's the core idea behind the "URL Widgets" or "Redirect Widgets" of easyURL, which are described here We also have them setup for Amazon products, domain lookups (surprise), Wikipedia pages and RFC's.

Many Ayromlou does it again, publishing another step-by-step tutorial, complete with screen shots on how to use your own domain name on easyDNS with Google Apps..

LTCM, Bre-x, Enron, Subprime, oh my, will we wake up before the Visa IPO scam plays out?

Last week while I watched Orwell Rolls in His Grave and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room I began to experience the feeling that I was hearing the same story again, only describing a different setting and different characters. There was a great line by an obscure singer named Tony Carey which sums it up: "Nothing changes but the names, one more ace shot down in flames, in Tinseltown".

It seems to be happening on both macro and micro scales at all levels of our society: whether it's billion dollar hedge-funds imploding because they can't mark their bullshit derivatives to market, or some Hollywood glam-addicted celeb whose exterior life is coveted by the masses publicly unravels or dies with a whimper and a thud; the consistant theme of today's Zeitgeist is The Flameout. It's been happening for years, their intensity is quickening while their ramifications expand and compound and yet, we rarely learn a damn thing from any of them.

Continue reading "The Grand Swindle"

I didn’t see the Fortune article Are domain names recession proof until the weekend, and being the author of the now infamous Domain aftermarket overdue for an asset repricing last year I feel somewhat obligated to comment on it.

There can be no doubt now that the recession is here. I went on record nearly a year ago that it was coming, so I nearly gagged when I saw Jim Cramer say something along the lines of “I told you all this was coming” over the Christmas holidays. So now it’s ok to say “recession” in polite company although the politicians and the pundits still try to soften it up by making sure they modify it with words like “maybe”, “slight”, “mild” and “possible”. Make no mistake, it’s underway and I think we’re far closer to the beginning of it than the end.

So, how will domain names fare in a recession? The Fortune article was upbeat:

Continue reading "Are domain names recession-proof? Probably not, next question?"

As a child, my mother remembers peaking through a window into the bedroom of her grandfather, my great-grandfather, who would sit at a table frantically counting and recounting a few gold coins in a bag. He had gone off his nut, basically, and this was his obsession: emptying a few coins out of his bag and recounting them into it. I was told this tale at a fairly young age and had taken it as a cautionary tale against being miserly or otherwise obsessed with money.

It was only during a recent visit from my mom that I learned the other piece of my great-grandfather's story. He was rich, already a wealthy man before all that "Great War" unpleasantness. WWI ended and he had all of his wealth in (wait for it...) gold. What happened next is what broke the man. A business partner of his convinced him that gold was old news and about as valuable as it was ever going to get (A "barbarous relic" in today's parlance). My great-grandfather agreed he may be right and liquidated the vast majority of his gold bullion and coins into cash. This was in around 1920's Germany, better known then as "The Weimar Republic". Ask any halfway competent student of history about the Weimar Republic and they will all say the one thing it was remembered for the most: HYPERINFLATION.

What is the best possible thing to have oodles of during a period of hyperinflation? Gold What's the worst thing you can do with gold just prior to an episode of hyperinflation? Sell it for cash.

That's what my great-grandfather did and he spent the rest of his days a crazed pauper with OCD. For some reason that story really, I mean really resonates with me on a lot of levels. If I believed in re-incarnation, I would say "I'm that guy, and this time I'm going to get it right goddammit. "


When I flipped past Larry King's show last night and the headline was "The Economy: Time to Panic?" I realized just how badly spoiled we are here in the west.
Continue reading "The Economy: Time to Panic? (Not yet, but wear diapers)"

I don't know who Jesse Larner is, I don't own a gun, and I may be the only card carrying libertarian in the world who has never read an Ayn Rand book. But I felt I had to put down my thoughts in response to his "Sinister Folly of Ayn Rand" rant on the Huffington Post. Specifically this comment:

In her insistence that she owed nothing to the state, nothing to any human being other than herself, Rand epitomized the kind of childishness shown by libertarians who insist that they have every legal and moral right to own as many guns as they please, pay no taxes, educate their children at home, and live free of any law except those governing, in the most direct manner, their own security and that of their neighbors. A watered-down form of this nonsense today exists in the platform of presidential candidate Ron Paul...

Continue reading "He says that like it's a bad thing..."

I've changed my blog name again. I realized I really like the "private world" meme and plan to expand on it at length and that "privateworld.com" was just a way better domain name than "mark.jeftovic.net".

I also ditched the "Under the Radar" caption because I found out awhile back that there is another tech blog that calls itself that. So after some consideration I've gone with "Exile From the Herd" because it follows on some thinking I've been doing about the very rough division of all people into three groups:

1. The Herd If you're aware of it, you do not want to be in it. This is the vast majority of the population who live in a comatose dreamworld, delegate their thinking to others and will happily follow their next door neighbour or somebody they perceive to be "in charge" off the edge of a cliff if they think everybody else is doing it.
   
   
2. Predators These guys love the herd because they prey on them. For the most part it's like shooting fish in a barrel or clubbing baby seals to death. Amoral, easy and lucrative. Predators can be found in many guises: televangalists, snake-oil salesmen, cult leaders and all politicians are predators. If everybody got smart, these guys would all be hung from meathooks. An informed citizenry is the bane of the predator's existance.
   
   
3. Sovereign Individuals These are people who have separated themselves from the herd and have built up suitable defenses around themselves to be largely free from predation. Predators for the most part leave these guys alone and move onto easier pastures. Sovereign Individuals don't care who thinks they're in charge of what. All that matters is that they can run their own lives. For the most part, they write their own tickets and mind their own business.
   

I of course aspire to the third group. It is largely an ideal and can only be progressed toward but never truly attained.

In thinking on this I also came up with another one of my silly "socialist, conservative, libertarian" jokes because the three groups align very roughly along those definitions.

Question: What happens when a libertarian, a conservative and a socialist witness a fisherman overturning his boat on a lake?

Answer: The libertarian tries to help the guy. The conservative pontificates that the fisherman needs to take responsibility for his own life circumstances and the socialist argues that the fisherman suffers from an unfair disadvantage compared to people on shore and suggests we should all jump into the lake to make everybody even.

Anyway, this is more or less a test post, people subscribed via the old URL RSS feed should still see posts, and new subscribers should end up under the new URL.

I'm currently reading Joseph H Ellis' Ahead of the Curve - A Commonsense Guide To Forecasting Business and Economic Cycles. So far there are a couple of refreshing departures from conventional consensus, like his views on "recession".

The idea of an economic recession should be an objective measurement of reality, instead, in today's climate it simply isn't discussed in polite company. According to the politicians, it'll never happen.

Ellis argues that whether we are headed for recession is academic, because recessions are lagging indicators of a down cycle, not leading ones. By the time a recession hits, he says, a lot of the economic damage has already taken place.

What really matters, according to Ellis, are a series of leading economic indicators and a shift in the way we measure economic data....
Continue reading "Are economic cycles that easy to predict?"

Just kidding Rick, I saw one of your posts the other day and couldn't resist For those unfamiliar, Rick pens one of the premier VC point-of-view blogs at Post Money Value

• The CEO is way smarter than I am
  
  
• The CEO has built a team of people way smarter than he is
  
  
• The CEO has assembled an advisory board of incredibly smart people who just "get it". They're brilliant. Doc Searls, Rick Scoble, Seth Goodin, and Guy Kawasaki. Just to name a few.
  
  
• The CEO works 16 hours a day, 7 days a week and is driven by total passion and intensity. He doesn't draw a salary and drives a 1983 Lada. He donated his founders shares to charity and his family hasn't seen him in nearly a year.
  
  
• The first three funding rounds all took place at successively higher valuations.
  
  
• The developers are amazing. You should see the mashups these guys are cranking out. They came up with a very neat facebook application that's going to be just killer!
  
  
• The guy we brought in to replace the CEO made the company very attractive for subsequent funding rounds.
  
  
• The revenue projections look very promising.
  
  
  And then....
  
  
• We sold the company for $400 million, a great exit. Congrats to all involved.
  
  or
  
  
• Microsoft buys a 0.25% stake for $200 million, valuing us at 800 billion dollars, not bad for a pre-revenue venture with oodles of mindshare.
  
  

Just a quick observation, I was just out running an errand and I was in a grocery store. As I was cashing out I heard a cashier behind me calling for a "carry out" for a customer. A few moments later, I heard it again. Then she called over to my cashier, "I'm having a hard time getting a carry out".

My cashier turned to a guy over a couple aisles and asked "Nick, can you do a carry out?" and he just shook his head, expressionless, "I'm on lunch" and started walking away, past the customer waiting for a carry out, past that cashier looking for somebody to do it. I here a yell from the back of the store "Tell Nick to do the carry out", and yell back "He's on lunch" to which I heard a retort from the back "How long have you been on lunch anyway?".

I actually don't fault the business itself for this absolutely disgraceful display of employee complacency. It's rampant almost everywhere (except, I am happy to report, in my company) and for the most part gets rewarded rather than penalized in today's business climate.

The customer seemed to accept it all in good humor. I wouldn't have. Being a dour crusty bastard I would have basically gotten my money back and left the store, leaving the goods in the checkout aisle.

But not only was this a slap in the face to the customer, it was an insulting act of disrespect to one's co-workers, and employer. Granted, it's probably some kind of union gig where being lazy, insensitive and devoid of initiative is not only tolerated but probably a requirement; it was yet another moment where I marvel at these blow-off levels of complacency and entitlement that saturates our culture.

I only lament this because I fear these easy breezy days of pink cloud economics are nearing an end.

In light of the recent ICANN advisory on domain lookup frontrunning we've made the guarantee that your domain lookups on easyWhois have and always will be, private.


What is domain lookup front running? It is when an unscrupulous operator between you and a domain lookup tool, such as a whois lookup website, perhaps even the site operators themselves, monitor your domain name searches and then go and grab some of the available domain names you search on before you get the chance to.


I never thought anybody would be so brazen, but silly me, I once again underestimated the widespread use of sleazeball tactics on the internet.


You can read the easyDNS press release on the subject and our new Guaranteed Lookup Privacy Policy at easyWhois. We've also added SSL encryption to easyWHOiS to eliminate the possibility of queries being eavesdropped.

Back in my previous life as a failed musician, I wrote a song called Multi-Media World and the title of this post were the closing lyrics in the outro of that song. Around the same period of my life, I had zero financial literacy, was being hounded by debt collectors for my student loans and maxed out credit cards and had zero prospects.

I realize in retrospect, I had no business having credit cards back then. I also realize that most people have no business having a credit card today. Easy credit destroys lives. I was lucky, because 1) I was a middle class brat who had financially solvent parents to bail him out and 2) I was young enough to have the luxury of time on my side when it came to rebuilding my life from near bankruptcy, and most fortunate of all 3) the scenario I foresee in our collective near futures hadn't transpired yet.


Continue reading "Buy now, pay later, buy now, pay forever..."

It was one of the comedians off an old "Women of the Night" tape I used to have, after a particular zinger against an ex quipped "some of these I do just for me". Which probably applies to this entire category which I've just created: How to lose customers. I've had one of those mornings which leaves me simply astounded. How can half the businesses I have interacted with today survive let alone turn a profit?

In the macro objective Vulcan view of things, times must simply be too good right now. Too much easy money sloshing around the economy, people clamoring to buy things they don't need with money they don't have. A sense of entitlement prevails among many businesses, kind of like "Give me your money. Shut up. We're doing you a favor. Now get stuffed".

In today's case the overall winners:


Continue reading "Screw you, you're just the customer, go to hell"