We’re in the right business.

I’ve been to all previous Sacramento Executive events, and there’s another one coming up September 20th in oldtown Sac. Everytime I’ve gone to these things I’ve met some really cool people, gotten lost in great conversations and ended up missing the food and drinks. No more I tell you! This time I’m making up for the lack of alcohol consumption, and any and all good food will be in my belly. Speaking of food take a look at the restaurant’s website. If you’re around the Sacramento area then you don’t want to miss this one, and you might even want to consider the trip if you’re in the Bay Area.

A lot of the investing and business community gathers at these events, and the Sacramento Executive events in particular. I think it’s because the only people that know about it are already involved somehow with investors or companies in the area. If you’re an entreprenuer looking for investors, management, advisors, etc, or an investor looking to find that special startup with crazy potential (like mine!), then get your ass to this party. Come to have a good time and meet people who might be able to help you, or people you might be able to help. I’ll be there, you can find me near the buffet table. Details and registration info are at the top of the front page at Sacramento Executive.

I know I’m late to the table with this one, but that’s what happens when I don’t get lots of comments. Maybe if my readers threw a word or two my way then I’d be much more likely to talk about dumptrucks… I mean Tubes.

If you haven’t already heard, Senator Ted Stevens recently shared his very unique view of how the Internet works, and it involves not just one, but a whole series of tubes. What he failed to share is that they’re actually Music Tubes.

This whole mockery has obviously been very traumatic to the Tubes team, and we’ve had to shut down 3 out of our 10 research facilities due to bouts of depression.

Hopefully this whole thing blows over soon and we can keep our name, and I can focus my energy back on M&A activities.

Go ahead and watch the videos for yourself, but don’t think for one minute that those aren’t Music Tubes because they are. Either Ted Stevens is a deceptive little bugger or he’s a $%^&*(&^%$#$% liar.

Jon Stewart on Net Nutrality (incl Ted Stevens)

Also related and which may be of interest, is a very informative piece on how TCP/IP and packet switching works. You can watch that here:

The Daily Show Revisits Net Nutrality

Not really, but there are no girlfriends around the Meetro HQ. Last time I checked women weren’t too fond of urine stains on the couches Okay kidding aside, this is a great article on how the employees of social IM company Meetro live and work. I know Paul Braigel because we talked a bit about stuff before they moved out here to Cali. He’s a cool guy and I really do think that Meetro is ahead of it’s time. When the Meetro-style functionality reaches a critical mass it’s going to be MySpace all over again, at least I hope. I wouldn’t mind meeting the single women who live down the street from me Props to Dan the Tubes designer who sent me the link for the article which you can read here.

I apologize for not blogging much lately, I’ve been spending every waking hour coding. Today I took a short break to read my feed reader which I haven’t done in about a month, and I got completely stuck on this one blog. It’s called Creating Passionate Users and there looks to be about 4 writers, all authors of Head First books. I’ve actually been subscribing for a while, but it just really caught my attention today. Most of the blog’s content seems to be a mix of articles about marketing, usability, management, code, and psychology. I really had to make myself stop reading because I have to get back into the code, but the last article I read is worth mentioning.

It’s about a new diet called the Shangri-La Diet, and the idea is to trick your body into not thinking it needs to store fat. I think. Part of the hypothesis is that even though we live in this modern society, our minds and bodies still know that we don’t have to watch for tigers and make sure we’re fat enough to survive the coming winter. I’ve been trying to get into shape with mixed results for a long time, so I’m intrigued enough to get the book.

Read the article here.

This is a very well done film by Canadian Julien McArdle. Links to torrents and other download sources can be found at the Celcius Studios website, or you can just watch it here.

Very recently formed is this new organization comprised of Canadian musicians, who all disagree with how the music industry is treating their customers. It’s called the Canadian Music Creators Coalition and members include the Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Stars, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), Billy Talent, John K. Samson (Weakerthans), Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Andrew Cash and Bob Wiseman (Co-founder Blue Rodeo). They’re against the lawsuits filed against downloaders, and against copyright laws that affect when and how fans listen to music via Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies talks about the coalition in a video interview here.

Part of what we’re doing with Tubes is creating a new model of digital music distribution and marketing, in an effort to solve many of these issues. I went into a bit of detail on a friend’s blog, so be sure to check that out.

This new coalition is great and everything, but where the hell is Rush on that list?

Baidu is a highly successful Chinese search engine, basically the Chinese equivalent of Google (who is also invested in it, more details here including market share). A couple of days ago they released a wiki encyclopedia called Baidu Baike (via China Web 2.0 Review). It seems to be growing fairly quickly so this will be interesting to watch. FYI China has supposedly blocked access to Wikipedia, so Baidu Baike is the only option for many people.

Scott Johnson likes to talk, and if you’re smart you’ll listen to his stories and his advice. Check out this recent interview that covers:

• his background
• his new company Ookles
• why Ookles should NOT set up in Silicon Valley
• the remedy for logfile issues that affect Google to Friendster to Feedster
• the Bill Gates rule
• the Bob Metcalfe rule
• why it’s smart to raise money early and raise a lot

More details
Download the mp3 (right click to save)

This last Saturday I was a speaker at the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy, along with geof lambert of the California IPv6 Task Force and Dave Kovar who has a chain of martial arts studios in the Sacramento area.

When I started Tubes I went into it head first without any experience, so I was bound to do my share of spinning my wheels and making mistakes. In fact I think there’s no better or faster way to learn, but if I had known about the SEA and how great of a resource it is I would have gone through the program. How many places and people are out there to truly help you as an entrepreneur? The answer is “not very many” if you don’t already know. Trust me I know first hand that most entrepreneur resources and “help,” are most often somebody else’s business and they do want your money. The people behind SEA do it because it needs doing, and as a result entreprenuers and companies are created. Wow. This is probably the best thing you can do as an entrepreneur getting started.

I already knew geof lambert because he puts on a Tuesday Dinner once a month, and from our conversations he and I are almost completely on the same wavelength. Well… except for the fact that he thinks “blogworking” is going to be a big deal, and I am 100% certain nobody will ever give a #$%& about the word Actually the concept holds water because it’s a dynamic that is very much alive inside of MySpace and LiveJournal, but the word definitely sucks.

I did not know Dave Kovar, and honestly my first impression was that he was a complete beefcake and that his profession gave him an excuse to beat up little kids Well little did I know this guy really has it together, and soon enough I find myself taking notes. I never take notes! FYI they plan to change the studio name from Kovars Martial Arts, to “Satori” which is Japanese for “enlightenment.” So one thing I learned is that you’re supposed to drink enough water every day to equal half your weight in grams. I know I don’t drink enough water so I’m going to buy myself a trendy Nalgene water bottle, and I’ll probably be making trips to the can every 15 minutes.

One of Dave’s mentors is Dan Millman, who is famous for being the author of “Way of the Peaceful Warrior.” Dan has a system which Dave has adopted, and if everybody adopted it the world would be a better place. The rules are as follows:

Pretty basic but the implications can be astounding. In business this is particularly smart because acting out of emotion in a situation will usually result in doing or saying something regrettable. Here’s a quote by Benjamin Franklin that Dave said that is worth relaying:

Dave actually added some lines of his own to this: “Who is brave? He who is smart enough to be afraid but does it anyway. Who is mighty? He who has control over his emotions and can make friends with the enemy.”

One last thing that really hit home with me, is that he said people for the most part want only the best for you and eachother. In the context of public speaking and performance, if somebody isn’t really being 100%, then the audience is mostly sending them good thoughts. Of course there are times when every person is critical or mean, but most of the time most people are not. I don’t know how much truth there is to this but it’s certainly something to think about. If there happens to be only one guy rooting for you or your team, that should be enough.