Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

I had my wisdom teeth out on Thursday which explains the lack of posting this week and the amount of movies I watched. Since I had the operation at 8am Thursday I got home at a point where there wasn’t anything on TV (pretty much the only thing worth watching on daytime TV is The Price is Right). That reality lead me to my movie collection which I hasn’t had much time to enjoy since I moved to Chicago. I rifled through the films and found three that I hadn’t watched in a while. Three of my favorite films of all time.

Beverly Hills Cop

Probably Eddie Murphy’s best work, Beverly Hills Cop, the first in a series of three (possibly four…) films, is the story of a Detriot cop named Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) who is trying to being his friend’s killers to justice. As Axel starts to investigate the murder of his friend he is lead to Beverly Hills where mystery, intrigue and hilarity ensue. The whole movie is put together well with the right balance of humor and seriousness. Oh, and the soundtrack is great!

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Indiana Jones)

George Lucas’ second best known series is the Indiana Jones trilogy (a fourth is coming soon) which starts off with Raiders of the Lost Ark. A younger Harrison Ford plays Indiana Jones, an archeology professor and renegade archaeologist. In Raiders of the Lost Ark Jones is informed that the Nazi’s are on the verge of finding the Ark of the Covenant and that he is being in sent in to find it first. The movie is an incredible roller coaster ride with many memorable characters and is no doubt a piece of cinema history. I could watch this film hundreds of times and it would still be as good as the first.

The Mummy

I am a sucker for any adventure story involving archaeological objects and especially ones involving Egypt. This is probably why I was drawn to The Mummy to begin with and it didn’t let me down. Richard O’Connell, played by Brendan Fraser, is an American who, while fighting with the French Foreign Legion, discovers Hamunaptra which is where the books of the living and the dead were supposedly buried. Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) then hires O’Connell to lead her to Hamunaptra which is where the Mummy is awakened. This film also has a nice blend of humor and suspense and was well conceived. It’s enjoyable from beginning to end and over and over again.

Those are all of the movies I watched and by the end I was pretty much pain free. Not bad! Before I finish this post I also want to mention a movie that is in theaters now.

Children of Men

I don’t want to say too much about Children of Men since I really want you all to go check it out so here’s the basic premise: For the last 18 years all human women have been infertile. In those same 18 years the world has gone to hell. However, there is now a woman who is pregnant and she needs to be brought across England to safety in a ship offshore. Oh, and England is pretty much a battle ground where you can’t trust anyone.

The film was well done and the story was great. Also, for you film geeks out there, my friend Don pointed out that there is a scene toward the end of the movie where there are no cuts for about 10 minutes as the hero is followed through a battle ground as he tries to find the baby and mother. It is pretty incredible. Check it out if you get a chance.

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

DonorsChoose is a site I learned about recently that allows people like you and I to help teachers get what they need for their classrooms. The process to find and help a teacher is very simple:

Head to DonorsChoose.org and search their database of needs. The search is actually pretty comprehensive as you can see below.

Once you find an opportunity you can fund all or part of the request giving you flexibility. After the request has been fully funded, DonorsChoose will buy the supplies and send them along to the teacher. If that wasn’t cool enough you’ll then receive a package of letters and photographs from the students.

One of my best buds is currently a teacher in the NYC public school system and my aunt is a public school teacher in Massachusetts so this system hits home to me. That said, I was a little upset when I learned that some school systems aren’t allowing teachers to use DonorsChoose due to beurocratic issues (i.e. school committee needs to approve everything, worried about bribery or people influencing kids with certain products, etc.). However, I think DonorsChoose has a set up in which most of these concerns are quelled.

Hopefully more schools will embrace DonorsChoose and similar concepts over time because the kids will ultimately benefit and that’s what’s important.

Side Note: The good people over at the Omidyar Network are backing DonorsChoose.  If you weren’t convinced of the quality of this program already that should do it for you.

Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

Mochila, a New York City based start-up, has launched a marketplace for newspaper, magazine and other articles. The basic gist is this: if I want to run content from Entrepreneur Magazine on Olson’s Observations, for example, I can head to Mochila, grab the Entrepreneur Magazine content I would like to use and publish the content on the site for free.

How can they do this you ask? Mochila inserts and ad (served by one of their advertising partners) into the content you insert on your site and splits the revenue with you and the publisher 40 – 30 – 30. The publisher, Entrepreneur Magazine in my example, gets 40%.

This is a fantastic idea considering that the alternative would involve me approaching Entrepreneur Magazine about using their content and then working through a deal that would cost me a lot of money over a long period of time. In the Mochila scenario I can just use the content and I even get to keep some of the ad revenue. Getting paid to use quality content – not bad! Check out the image below for the “look and feel.”

The one downside that Matt Marshall of VentureBeat points out is that the advertising is currently in a set spot dictated by the Mochila platform. However, Matt reports that the Mochila CEO says there will be more advertising options coming soon.

The big publishers also have a lot of say to how their media is distributed (terms, geographies where the stories can run, press embargoes and the like). They can even decide to offer their content in a paid model only.

Overall I think Mochila is moving things in the right direction. There are services out there that help bloggers get their content into the large publications but that doesn’t seem to be what is needed. It’s nice that larger publishers are starting to include the content that us small guys produce but the larger publishers are looking to grow and adding their content to a lot of other sites is a good way to do it.

Key point: Larger publishers need to get their content onto the sites of the smaller guys. In short, they need to start distributing their media in many forms and finding ways to monetize the new distribution channels. Smaller publishers don’t necessarily need to get their content into the larger publications but they do need and want the credibility that content from larger publishers brings.

Mochila helps publishers large and small do just those things which should put Mochila in a good position. Definitely a smart move by the Mochila guys (for more on their history check out Matt’s post – long story short they are a re-start and used to be called Snapbridge).

A couple smaller issues to note about Mochila’s platform:

1. The smaller publishers using the content may want some control over the ads that display. However, I suppose this could be a situation where smaller publishers would, for the most part, accept pretty much any ad happily since it pays them and allows them to use good quality content on their sites.
2. Larger publishers will want control over the sites that are allowed to use their content. I was unable to see if Mochila is already addressing this but I bet they are considering the impressive list of large publishers they are working with.

I would love to hear some feedback from all of you. It sure seems like Mochila is doing a lot of things right.

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

The Rider by Tim Krabbe chronicles a fictional 137 kilometer bike race or more specifically, the Tour de Mont Aigoual, through the eyes of Krabbe himself. We quickly learn that cycling is more than just a sport to Krabbe when he glances up from his gear before the start, sees some spectators and thinks “Non-racers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me.” From that moment on we are swept up into the race with Krabbe and never look back. Nothing else seems to matter.

Kilometer after kilometer Krabbe pushes along, calculating his moves and recounting both races he’s participated in and tidbits from famous races like the Tour de France, Giro de Italia and Milan – San Remo. Not only is the reader able to pick up a lot of cycling history they are also able to see what really happens inside a road race – all of the things that we aren’t privy to as spectators.

What stood out to me most after finishing the book is the pure suffering cyclists endure in a race and determination they have to have to overcome their suffering. I always knew that the suffering was intense but watching cycling races never conveyed to me quite what Krabbe’s words did.

Cyclists and cycling fans will definitely love this book. However, I would recommend it to non-cyclists as well. If you’re a fan of good clean writing and enjoy a captivating fast-paced story this book is for you. Who knows, it may even make you a cycling fan!

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

Anyone using FeedBurner to manage their feed can now add site stats tracking to their site. We’re super excited about this new capability here at FeedBurner HQ and for good reason.

Media is becoming more and more decentralized over time and, as a publisher, it is increasingly hard to keep track of where everything is going. With FeedBurner you can now track what is happening on your site and in your feed including tracking places where your content is being resyndicated.

Widgets are the next step. As some of you may know we have partnered with SpringWidgets to allow FeedBurner users to easily create a widget that contains their feed content (check mine out). These widgets can be placed on desktops, other sites, MySpace, etc. You name it and the widget can go there.

We are thinking of, and working on, ways to provide complete analytics at all points of consumption including the site, feed, widgets and beyond. A one-stop-shop for analytics will be crucial to publishers in the brave new world of media decentralization and we hope to be there with a top notch solution.

Congrats to the dev and design teams who put out great products time after time and continually make my job easier and thank you to all of the beta testers for kicking the tires and giving us some good feedback. Onward!

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

I read an interesting post by my friend Ed Kohler of Technology Evangelist today (you may remember all of the video he and his team shot for TECH cocktail 2 – thanks again guys!). Ed wonders whether a lot of budding entrepreneurs never get to carry out their business dreams because they need to pay off educational debt.

The story that Ed thinks may be the case all to often is as follows: Student has a great idea but has to put it off in order to take a “safe” job that allows him/her to whittle down their debt. While he/she works this safe job they may meet someone, get married, have kids, take out a mortgage, etc. which forces him/her to further put off their idea since they now have dependents and a mortgage and maybe even have some debt from school left. The dream is crushed and the world is left with one less exciting idea.

Ed sees this as an opportunity for VCs to innovate. He suggests VCs find exceptional students with good ideas coming out of school and offer to:

1. Pay off their debt
2. Pay them a salary – maybe $30,000/year
3. Cover their housing

The VC would get equity in the new venture as usual and would shell out $100,000 per student on average according to Ed which, if even a few of the companies made it would be a good deal for the VCs.

I think Ed’s idea is a great one and very innovative. I have no doubt that a lot of ideas go to waste each day due to college debt and this would help to alleviate that problem. The ideas that are saved could also end up as huge wins for the VCs that came with low investment cost. Everyone wins. However, there are a couple issues to consider.

1. VC Fund Sizes
2. Inexperienced Entrepreneurs

VCs have differing fund sizes and numbers of partners so not all VCs will be able to put small amounts like we’re talking about to work. Perhaps angel networks and angels in general are in a better position to take this innovation and run with it. They can generally put smaller amounts of money to work and don’t have other constraints that come with a VC fund.

Since the entrepreneurs will be very inexperienced good advice will be very useful. Investors that try this innovative approach will need to be able to advise and mentor the entrepreneurs they pluck out of their cap and gowns. The better the investor can mentor and provide connections to the entrepreneur the higher likelihood the venture will succeed.

All in all I think finding students just out of school and taking care of their debt in exchange for equity in their company is a great idea. It allows good students to become entrepreneurs. Investors will see more deal flow. More interesting ideas will come to light and benefit the world.

As always, I would love to get a discussion going on this topic. The more we can talk through new ideas and refine them the better.

Photo Credit: KrassyCanDoIt on flickr

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

When I first saw the MySpace – Cingular deal I thought it made a lot of sense. It is very logical for MySpace to head into the mobile arena considering that their target demographic is increasingly mobile and willing to pay $2.99 per month to be hooked into MySpace wherever they are (read: are addicted to MySpace). However, when I started to ponder the deal further something didn’t feel right. What about all of the other cellular providers and their users?
Answer: They’re screwed, at least for now.

While I am not sure whether Cingular has an exclusive and for how long that exclusive might be I still question a deal like this. Sure, MySpace stands to make a good amount of money as does Cingular but all of the loyal MySpace users that use wireless providers other than Cingular are left in the dark. Surely that does not propagate user loyalty and it sets MySpace up for some trouble if Cingular loses ground. In fact, while Cingular is currently the top carrier in the U.S. it is projected that Verizon will surpass Cingular in Q3 2007 if current trends hold (source).

That aside, partnering with just one wireless carrier hurts the user experience and slows adoption. User experience is crucial for a service like MySpace since the user base is fickle and will move at a moments notice to the next best thing. It seems to me that compromising the user experience for a deal that helps the company now is a bit short sighted. Keeping the user experience unbiased should help web services companies in the long run.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Side Note: CBS has also partnered with Cingular for mobile SNL video clips. Cingular is really racking them up!