Google has mad cash

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Google is selling 5.3 Million class A shares, raising an estimated $2 billion. Whoa.

The decision to sell more shares to raise cash that could be used for operations does raise the question why Google needs to do so, since the search firm had $8 billion in cash and cash equivalents, and generated $2.45 billion in net cash from operations in 2005. – Marketwatch

Hrmmm. If I were Google, what would I do with $12 billion ?
After I bought an island made of tortilla chips, surrounded by a sea of queso, I’d be building my own internet. Sounds dumb ? Check this out :

Why should they (content providers)be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts! -Ed Whitaker SBC (now AT&T) CEO

So Goggle is making noise about free public wifi in San Fran. There, they have an effective businees model to serve their content and not go through the geriatric phone company pipes. This isnt exactly left-field either, a lot has been written about google buying up dark fiber for just such a purpose.

How much would it take to implement this strategy in major cities around the country? Say $12 Billion ? It bears watching.

And ok, this two-tier internet thing is stupidly confusing (I first started getting intrested at Burnie Burns keynote at SXSW). If you want a really good explanation, check out this post on reneysys.com. A most excelent explainer of how to pull revenue from both ends of the pipe.

Team Logo

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We did an adventure race. We needed a team name.

Oh yeah, and we rocked domes and came in second.

SXSWi – Last day at the geek airport

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The future of Radio
This panel featured one of the best (if a little over gesticulating) panel chairs who really directed the conversation regarding the interaction of internet radio vs. traditional terrestrial radio. The panel itself is pretty impressive, with a DJ from Soma, Roman Mars the guy from This American Life, the president of Bjorks label, Celia Hirschman, and the owner of Pandora, Tim Westergren.

Whether you like it or not starbucks is a gatekeeper of a certain type of culture…indy, non-tradtional radio does the same thing. -Hirschman

Interesting thought, that there are certain cultural entities that introduce us to whole cultural components, (e.g. Starbucks to Latte’s). Since you can have 80,000 songs at your finger tips in the form of your ipod these days, it becomes overwhelming and unmanageable. The radio stations act as the cultural gate keepers for music.

Bennie Burns Keynote

Who owns these (internet) clouds that are raining money ?
– Burns

What’s coming: the end of the free access to the network cloud. (interesting parallels between the the new AT&T logo and the second death star). Content providers will begin charging the users and original content producers for the privilege of using their networks. Of course everything the guy said last year was dead wrong, so here’s hoping he’s going for a repeat.

The End…

The music crowd has started to show up today, with a lot more distressed-emo-types with pink hair roaming the building (or hell a purple suit with purple boots, whatever flaots your boat, man). If anything this festival makes this town even weirder which is a good thing. I will say this about the interactive portion: Just because you know alot about a specific subject matter, doesn’t mean you should get up and talk about it…there’s been some really wretched public speakers at this thing. My overall experience is good, but there’s room for improvement.

That and $5.50 for a four inch pizza is just plain stupid.

Bruce Sterlings up next, and then a blessed day off…

He says it better than me:
Bruce Sterling

They bureaucrats are so busy trying to monetize this country, that they’re turning us into a bannana-republic with rockets…

Only in America do dying phone comapnies lobby the federal government successfully….

If I’ve learned anything hanging out with Eastern-European dissidents, it’s never make a descison out of fear…

When you can comprehend poetry, it means your hearts not broken…
-Sterling

At least that’s what I think he said. I was fairly engrossed. Man he opens up on American culture and the death of it by obesity, creationism and stupid politics.

SXSWi – Day Three

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Once again i’m struck by the intellgence of some of the folks presenting here.

TIVO will save democracy…
-Craig Newmark, Craigslist

His basic premiss here was if we can make politicians actually do their jobs instead of fundraising then the government would work a helluva lot better. TIVO and digital video recorders in general are making commercials an obsolete over-priced medium.

Again, smart, smart people.

And to finish up our day, here’s a bit of pirate Zen. I honestly have no earthly idea what this dude was about.

SXSWi – Day Two

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Round two of haunting the convention center. Snoozed through the first session on podcasting although Eric Meyer was on the panel, which was cool since he wrote most of our navigation code for the agency sites (check the style sheets we have attiributions). By and large I could have skipped that one.

The difference between A-list and C-(or maybe even G)list, like us is fairly remarkable here. We’re not a tech company, not even a design company, hell technically we’re not even a company. I think there’s definetly stuff we can learn here, and it’s very worthwhile, but whether it’s benfical from a networking standpoint remains to be seen.

However in the department o the absurdly cool, downstairs at the interactive playpen they have gianormous pens of legos. I’d post some pics but i forgot the camera cord (cords are fairly last year apparently).

Also, the people watching here is just plain crazy. It’s like an airport full of geeks although it’s not just your simpsons-comic-book-guy-analog (although there are a lot of those). The age range is shocking, I’ve seen people older than my folks and just as many women as men, which is very cool. It is rather white-washed though.

Oh and adding to the list of things we need next year to look cool here : British accents, smart phones and Scions.

Off to watch Henry Rollins talk…

Henry Rollins

In my p-funk-and-ramones-block-party-perfect world I want to live in we wouldn’t need a military…
I really want to kick Rumsfeld in the nuts…
– Henry Rollins

Man, this guy’s smart.
Other Great Ideas: does art flourish under an oppressive administration? Music itself isn’t the vehicle for change, if it was then Hendrix would have done it with his version of the national anthem. If it could have it would have. What changes things is people voting. Art can help do that. Famous people can get things done as well.

To be an american and not be angry about something is to be asleep on the job. If you truly do what you want to do, don’t expect a placid lake to sail across.

Jason Kottke & Heather Armstrong

I don’t know that anybody likes advertising accept advertisers….”-Jason Kottke on Ads

Interesting keynote regarding what you put into your site, and how much of yourself you put into your site. more about writing and self-disclosure, than about tthe technical aspects of blogging. It’s funny, Armstrong is ripping Kottke a new one regarding his leaving professional blogging.

SXSWi – Day One

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So it begins. I’m sitting in a meeting room in the Austin convention center, in a panel about being a web design superhero. I’ve got 15 people in front of me also updating their sites. More to come…

Update – Web design Superhero

A designer is not just someone who can draw a pretty picture.

-Andy Budd Creative Dir, Clearleft Ltd
An intresting thought about the future, while I’m not sure I like, i think it’s probably a reality. As a side note, I’ve never seen so many treo’s in one room.

Lunch
Adventure race before the conferfence: bad plan. Abdventure race and no lunch before first panel, just plain dumb. Noodle-ism to the rescue. Also, thank god/buddah/insert your diety here I’m a local…I saw Interactive folks headed for the Hilton for lunch. Poor bastards. Or at least they will be after thay pay their tab.

Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and Jason Fried of 37signals Keynote

The creative shall inherit the earth ? Maybe, but it’s probably more likely that the curious will inherit the earth.

-Jim Coudal
Coudal had some really intresitng things to say about design, and why are we doing work for other peoples products, when we could just make your own product. He also talked about how we should, with any project 1) be able to do good work, 2) be able to get well paid 3) and be able to learn something. Fried (who I was really looking forward to, cause their products are so aweosme) was a little bit of a let down, although he did have some intresting this to say about the theory of less is more. Might should have thought about that in his remarks.

Online vs Offline Spaces
how the online spaces affect (effect?) the real world. Whoa. Mappa mundi for the web. Essentially, we’re talking about the box of photos at your grandma’s house that show what the property was like 30,50,60 years ago. Accept making it mobile. Making a collective history of the world, that affects every square inch of the planet and make it annotated, by everyone. Think wikipedia, meets the scrapbook. Wild.

Passionate Users
The theory is your users either love you or hate you but either is good. It’s mediocre we’re your screwed
Also the concept of the brain as a legacy brain is very interesting. we’re saying there’s a ‘crap filter’ (her words not mine) to make an impact, to keep an image/concept/idea to stick. Also that the brain cares about conversational language over lecture.

Other SXSW observations.
The badge glance: Everbody you walk by gives a glance at the the badge to check if your somebody famous. funny.
The bag breakdown: People carrying Crumpler bags are westcoast, Texas folks, and middle people are Timbuk2 kids and all the East-Coasters are carrying ‘distressed’ leather satchels.

wow. I’m so done.

Kendra’s Ode to Coffee

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I like coffee. My sister likes coffee. She likes it enough to write poems about it.

When clanging bells awake me in the morn,
I curse and mumble at the fresh new day.
Beams of light fill my heart with bitter scorn.
No beauty can make the grouch go away.
Stumbling to the coffee make I go,
Hating every step, wishin sleeps embrace.
The only cure, a nice warm cup of jo
To ebb the anger to a gentle pace.
The drip and gurgle of wondrous coffee
Arouse my senses, starving for a taste.
O, taunting aromas how you mock me,
For without you mornings would be a waste.
At last one sip to quell the raging beast,
The sunshine’s blissful and I am at peace.

Awsome.

The Jeep

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This weekend was big times. We went to the Subaru dealership, signed some papers and they gave us a new car (there was something about monthly payments in there too , but I wasn’t really listening). Anyway, the sad part: the jeep has been traded in. An important era in my life has come to close. This car was my 23rd birthday/college graduation present. I’ve moved between cities 5 different times with that car. I’ve taken countless early morning drives to Austin (back when we’re were in College Station) to Paddle or climb. Here are some of the high and low points of my times with this fine vehicle.



The Windshield Incident

About a month after I got he car, I still didn’t have a roof rack to carry my boat, so I’d lay the seats flat and carefully set it in so that the nose of the kayak was setting on the passenger side dashboard. On our way to Houston I got cut off and had had to slam on the brakes, sending the boat into the windshield. It’s didn’t punch through the glass, but it was damn close. It’s one of the more impressive cracks I’ve seen. A spectacular strings of expletives ensued. The best part was, after I pulled over to get everything re-situated I left my carbon-fiber bladed paddle on the side of the road in the tall grass. Took me another 40 minutes to find it. Awesome.

 

The Colorado Trip

Ten days. Austin to Breckenridge (via Hueco Tanks) living out of the back of the car. Awesome.

 

Night Run on the Guad

We were making one of our typical late afternoon runs to the river and forgot to take into account the time change. By the time we put it in was pitch black, no moon, nothing. Not really a car story but I’ve never been so happy to get back to my vehicle alive.

The Colorado Bend Trip

The fuel pump started to give up on the way out of town for this trip, so the car would just randomly die while you were going 80 on the highway. It rained the entire time, we got a flat and I managed to lock my keys in the car, after a big hike but before our lunch. (poor timing). Epic trip.

The Feats of Strength

Brian and I made a run to do some paddling in the middle of winter. He was being particularly spastic, and kept messing with the heater. Somehow it turned into a bet that the first person to turn off the heater bought lunch. And we still had a bout an hour left to drive. Brian lost, even though he’d stripped down to his skivvies by the time the ride was over. It will forever be known as the feats of strength, even though all we did was sit in the car and sweat (yes we’re dumb).

Good times with the old car. She’ll be missed.