Archive for June, 2006

First genealogy post in a long time

paulballen — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 23:54:36 -0700

Today my World Vital Records team let me see a sneak peek of what they have been working on for the last few weeks. We've been talking with genealogists around the world, attending conferences, and trying to create our company strategy. We have been acquiring large and small databases.

There are so many wonderful companies and individuals in the genealogy industry that we are excited to partner with. We have been telling everyone that we are going to build the #2 genealogy company in the world. I guess we'll see if we can pull that off with the help of good partners and customers.

Now I'm sitting here thinking I have one last blog post in me before I start my weekend. I'm wrestling with this question: "should I let my readers since a tiny sneak peek of what my development team showed me today?" Or should I wait till next week when we actually official launch our version one web site?

On the one hand, I really want to start the weekend now. Tonight is the Freedom Festival gala dinner. This is my favorite annual event in Provo, Utah, a very patriotic and inspiring evening where we celebrate supporters of freedom from around the world.

Tomorrow night, American Idol winner Taylor Hicks will be performing at the BYU Football Stadium in the annual Stadium of Fire event, the most popular event of the Freedom Festival. I actually edited the Wikipedia article about Provo when we found out Taylor Hicks would be here.

Last night, would you believe, we could hear him rehearsing at the stadium well into the night?!? I live very close to the football stadium and it was amazing to have world renowned Taylor Hicks just down the street.

On the other hand, I'm exciting about our new online genealogy initiative. I'm excited, 10 years from the date we launched the first searchable SSDI database at Ancestry.com, to be back in the industry, with a great team, some funding, and a goal to help people all over the world find their ancestors in the vital records of the world.

It's kind of neat to see a glimpse, even one screen shot, of what our new web site might look like. (It's so much more interesting than just reading a press release that says we are planning to do something.) Our site is not ready for primetime, but still, it inspires confidence when you start getting a little peak at what our team will be able to do.

So should I pack it in now and go get all dressed up for the gala, or should I link to one page on our development server just to give a few people over the weekend the chance to take a peak and comment on what they saw?

It's really not a big deal. We are really just barely getting started. But at the same time, it is the first thing our team has done. They are excited about it. And it is the beginning of a long-term commitment to online genealogy that we hope will produce significant results in years to come.

So I think I will actually just link to one record and invite you to look at one screen shot. The final design is being finalized this weekend. The initial databases for our launch are being prepped. But I don't see any harm in creating the first link to the site

Okay, I just got off the phone with two of our World Vital Records executives and neither of them mind if I link to the dev server, so here goes. (Again, we haven't done anything world changing yet, but we are taking the first step. When we launch Phase II of our World Vital Records strategy in the coming weeks, we will be doing something extremely important for the industry. At least we hope.)

So here is a link to my grandfather's social security death index entry.

Some of the web design isn't even complete and I can't guarantee that everything will function right, since this is just being hosted temporarily on a development server. But here it is. Tell me what you think. Tell us what you hope to see us do at World Vital Records that isn't being done elsewhere. And most of all, please give our content and development team some emotional support and kudos for the efforts they are making to provide a valuable service to the genealogy community.

After all, it's kind of a David and Goliath world in the genealogy industry right now. Anyone would be nuts to try to start an online genealogy company when it's already game over, right? (Mary Meeker actually said it was "game over" in this space clear back in 2000, because MyFamily.com was already the clear winner in the space. And since then, MyFamily acquired both Rootsweb and Genealogy.com/Family Tree Maker, firmly consolidating its position as the world leader in this industry.)

But we aren't saying we'll ever challenge them in any significant way. We're just aiming to be #2 in this space. Like Avis, we'll have to "try harder" to actually get a foothold in this industry.

But with this first link to this first record, we are pledging to try hard, and we are hoping to make a difference.

Note: I left MyFamily.com in February 2002, so I have no official role at the company and all of my opinions are simply my own. (I'm supposed to make this clear every time I mention them in my blog.)

WebEvident Offers PPC Management

paulballen — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 23:12:25 -0700

WebEvident, one of Provo Labs portfolio companies, provides SEO technology that is used by companies around the world to manage their keyword optimization strategies and improve their search engine rankings. But recently we've added Analytics Based PPC Management to the mix of services.

PPC means pay-per-click. We help you find dozens or hundreds or thousands of keywords that you should bid on, so that people searching Google, Yahoo, and MSN will find your ad and click on it. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. You don't pay for just impressions.

Management means that we do all the work for you. You give us a budget. And we do all the work, reporting back every step of the way.

Analytics means that we'll set up your web site analytics program to give us feedback on which keywords are generating leads or sales for you. The beauty of online marketing is that you can track everything and know what works and what doesn't work. Traditional advertisers know that "half of their advertising dollars are wasted--they just don't know which half."

Now you can know.

If you are interested in an analytics-based pay-per-click strategy being developed for you, contact our team at WebEvident and ask for a free SEO analysis and report.

Explosive Growth of Online Video

paulballen — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 22:57:12 -0700

Revenge of the Nerds

Here's an excerpt from this Fast Company article showing how explosive the online video industry is:

With some 18 billion videos streamed online in 2005--up 50% from 2004--it's not surprising that new businesses are sprouting up around this digital explosion. Each day on YouTube, more than 40 million video views are delivered and 35,000 new clips are uploaded. Google and Yahoo have video search sites and large caches of moving content. Apple's iTunes Music Store sold 12 million video clips for $1.99 each over the span of just a few months. A new company out of Berkeley, California, called Dabble is vying to become a micro movie studio for the masses by inviting users to create, remix, browse, and organize video online. These aggregators are fast becoming the central nodes of an entirely new video marketing and distribution system, one far from Hollywood's control.

Like Wayne Gretzy reportedly said, "I skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been."

If you want to have fun and make it big, start a company in a fast growth industry. Do something new, something innovative. Don't just go copy some other business model that anyone else could do just as well. Be different. Be cutting edge.

At Provo Labs (an incubator), we try to invest in areas where there is significant growth. Starting a business in an explosive growth industry gives you a much better chance to get to profitability than if you are trying to compete with a lot of other players in a no-growth industry, where you are all fighting each other for the same customers.

But with online video, there will be billions spent in this space over the next few years, and a lot of new companies will succeed. Look at what has just happened in the last six months. YouTube's Alexa chart is the best I have ever seen. It validates the online video space like nothing else.

It's really quite exciting for us to have a startup company in the online video space. We can benefit from YouTube, Google Video, and even the increasing popularity of video iPods.

Our company 10Speed Media began last year as Blastyx, a renegade video company patterned after Microsoft's Channel 9.

In addition to renegade videos we will be launching some new technology and an innovative distribution model in the next 60 days.

The company is building a great management team. We are working with some great customers, and our revenues are growing each month. We are launching a major partnership with a well known online company in July. We have some new technology and distribution announcements coming soon as well.

We think we have a very cool and unique business concept. Nothing is unique on the internet for long, however, so we know we will be in a race with players large and small.

If you want to get a flavor for the kind of work 10Speed Media can do, check out this video our team produced for the Winter at Westminster program, hosted by YouTube.com.

I launched 10x Marketing, a search engine marketing company, back in early 2002. We were pretty early in that space and the company has been fairly successful.

But our feeling is that 10Speed Media is catching this online video wave even earlier than 10x Marketing caught the search engine wave.

Hopefully 10Speed will end up 10x or 100x bigger than 10x Marketing.

(Don't ask me why we keep starting companies that being with 10. Originally it was because in any alphabetical list, digits are ranked higher than letters. So 10x outranks just about any other company, including AAA Plumbing.) If you look in the yellow pages, most companies seem to start with an A. You always want to be listed first.

Well online, the numbers help a lot. Back in 1997, at Ancestry.com we were very happy when AGLL (American Genealogical Lending Library) changed its name to Heritage Quest. That gave us a slight advantage whenever people showed genealogy companies in an alphabetical list.

The advantage today is much smaller that it was a few years ago because a lot of directories are not alphabetical anymore, they are sorted by something else. Like Google's directory is sorted by Page Rank. (See this example from Google's Directory of Online Broadcast Video Shows.) Other directories are sorted by popularity. So this 10x strategy really isn't a big deal anymore. (And the branding is getting confusing!)

Shutterfly Files for IPO

paulballen — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:57:00 -0700

A few highlights from the Shutterfly S-1:

$83.9 million in revenue last year with net income of $28.9 million (But $24 million was from a one-time tax benefit recognized in Q4 2005. The revenue growth is strong year over year.
They have stored more than 900 million customer photos in their archives.
They have sold 300 million prints in 11 million customer orders.
84% of their customers are female.

This is a bit surprising to me.

98% of the revenue comes from the U.S. Even more surprising. Who is doing online print processing internationally?
4.1 million unique visitors in May 2006

Since I tend to focus on marketing strategies, here is the text from the S-1 about Marketing, Advertising and Promotion:

We use a variety of advertising, direct marketing technologies, channels, methods and strategic alliances to attract and retain our customers. These methods include direct marketing over the Internet, e-mail marketing to prospects and existing customers, search engine marketing, and traditional direct marketing mailings such as postcards and seasonal catalogs. In addition, because many of our products are either shared via the Internet or given as gifts, the appearance of our brand on the products and packaging provides ongoing distribution as well as viral advertising.

We place advertisements that cater to women and families on websites and in publications, contract for targeted e-mail marketing services and contract for advertising placement on leading search engines. We also maintain an affiliate program under which we pay program participants for referral sales generated from hyperlinks to our website from the affiliate

Omniture IPO!

paulballen — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:35:19 -0700

I'm so happy for everyone associated with Omniture for successfully completing its IPO today. The shares opened at $6.50 and ended the day up slightly at $6.53 per share. Visit Yahoo Finance for more. This high tech IPO is a big deal for Utah, which needs more IPOs. And Omniture now has a war chest to help it maintain its leadership position in the web analytics space. This is a great company with a great product that many of my companies (and many of the really big online companies) rely on for real-time decision making, and for optimizing revenues.

Full Disclosure: I am a shareholder in Omniture. Do bloggers have to disclose that when blogging about a publicly traded company? Somebody tell me the rules ...

Phil Burns and Provo Labs Consulting

paulballen — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:24:56 -0700

Phil Burns, whom I have described in the past as a Web 2.0 native that makes me feel like an old, slow, immigrant, is now heading up one of the most exciting things we are doing at Provo Labs. He describes in a recent blog our new Provo Labs Consulting services and how we will are utilizing our employees, our portfolio companies, and their extended networks to provide excellent technology and business solutions for its customers. Phil is on fire with this concept. He has had a very successful career as a business analyst and applications developer. But never has he had hundreds of resources (our employees, their contacts, our portfolio companies, and all their solutions, including hundreds of open source projects and Web services APIs) at his fingertips. His ability to solve business problems is magnified many times because of all these connections and resources. As Phil is able to hire more developers and consultants, if he can train them to think like he thinks, and act as quickly as he acts to match up solutions (people and companies and software that we know) to problems (business needs), this system may become the greatest asset we have at Provo Labs, because we'll use it for customers as well as for our own startup companies.

Senator Clinton Hires Experienced BLogger

paulballen — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:02:29 -0700

The New York Times reports that Senator Clinton's campaign has hired an experienced political blogger. The 2008 Presidential Election is going to heat up the blogosphere in the next two years. But I'm really afraid most of the candidates won't actually do it right. I'm afraid they'll try to use the web as a top-down communication tool, and not a giant listening device and organizing device that actually empowers citizens to be involved in government. The Dean campaign really energized voters, most of whom are dissatisfied with both political parties. (According to Joe Trippi's book, the number is 70%.) The web offers hope for politics and government, but only if it is used in the right way.

After I finished Joe Trippi's book in July 2004 (which ought to be required reading for every political candidate in this country) I wrote this impassioned post about how the internet will affect politics and government. It may be one of my best posts ever. Unfortunately, our political social networking site iCount was never fully funded or fully developed. So it sits today as a site that aggregates political feeds. Fortunately, Phil Windley has kept it alive. When Provo Labs has more bandwidth, perhaps we should revitalize it.

I hope to see the day when most elected officials and political candidates in this country have their own blog and actually write their own posts and read feedback from their constituents. I would love to see them continually in touch with the people they represent and serve.

My hopes for our political future are inspired by my own personal experience at MyFamily.com, where I was in touch in a remarkable way with millions of customers. One of my favorite things to do at MyFamily.com was to write daily surveys on any imaginable topic to see what our users thought about things. We had about 100,000 users logging in each day back in 2001. And we had a pop-up survey that came up whenever someone logged in. So we could get 6-8,000 responses per day on one or many surveys.

I wrote more than 300 surveys in a one or two year period. I knew what my customers thought about digital cameras, genealogy, languages classes, cooking, hobbies, how many yearbooks they had in their homes, what genealogy software they used, their plans to buy a new computer, how many had high-speed internet, scanners in their homes, how many relatives they kept in touch with, where they planned to vacation next summer, etc, etc, etc. And those are just a handful of the survey topics that I can remember off the top of my head.

I could write a survey, post it, and within a few hours have more than 1,000 responses. It was amazingly powerful! I felt completely in tune with my customers needs, wants, desires, plans, thoughts and feelings. (To supplement the quantitative feedback from these surveys, we did weekly phone calls with actual customers and we read emails and listened to calls in the call center for qualitative feedback.)

(The only thing close to this feeling that I've felt since is from blogging. But the feedback I get is on a much smaller scale. I can't wait to have 10,000 blog readers a day and a survey tool that will allow me to do the same thing. I love to know what people think about new ideas. But that may never happen.)

Imagine if every elected official could get 1,000 responses from constituents on any question that came up. A personal, instant poll. And imagine if they could write their own survey questions, point to it from their blog, and get the survey results in hours as well as comments on their blog to provide them with texture.

The web provides this power. The question is, will any candidate embrace it and use it in a way that empowers the rest of us and could create the most energized campaign in history?

Read my 2004 post and tell me what you think about all this. Which candidate do you think will be the darling of the blogosphere in the 2008 election?

The Future of Cell Phones: Point, Click, Learn

paulballen — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 06:06:55 -0700

Here's a great NY Times article about how Japanese cell phone users are able to point their specialized phones at buildings and monuments and get information about the location. More than 700,000 locations have information or advertisements associated with them already. or A San Francisco-based company called GeoVector is involved. This is exactly the kind of advance I have been hoping for, so that worldhistory.com, with its growing database of geocoded data, can find a way to deliver it to cell phone users. I'm looking forward to more advances in the U.S., but according to one of GeoVector's founders, Peter Ellenby, they may be slow in coming here. (Release 1.0 interviewed him late last year.)

While I'm at it, I ought to mention two other interesting location-based services. One is Plazes.com, a German web 2.0 startup with funding, 5 employees, some traffic growth and an API. The other is Socialight, run by New York-based Kamida. It allows people to create StickyShadows, or geotagged notes, which can be viewed by others when they visit the same location later.

My favorite book about society and mobile phones is Smart Mobs. Can anyone recommend any other books about where mobile phones and location based services are heading?

Blog Promotes Mitt Romney in 2008

paulballen — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:54:16 -0700

I recently found a great blog promoting Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate for 2008. Mitt and his team saved the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics from financial disaster. As Governor of Massachusetts he has not only helped the state go from major deficits to a budget surplus, but he is vigiliant about helping the state stay out of the red. He vetoed $290 million in spending just this past week. I wonder what he, as a brilliant investor and business strategist -- a turn-around artist really -- might be able to do for the United States with its ominous $8.4 trillion debt. That would be fun to watch.

My guess is that if Romney were elected President and had a line-item veto (President Bush called for a line item veto last week in his radio address), he would use it effectively and in no time get our national spending in line with our income. I can't imagine any other president could do as much to reduce our national debt as Mitt Romney, given his amazing background in business, and his desire to be of public service in the tradition of his father.

(Hey, I just realized how fun a Mitt Romney vs. Bill Gates presidential election would be. It would be so much more interesting than John McCain vs. Hilary Clinton! And I understand Gates might just be available in 2008 ...)

According to Wikipedia, all but 7 state governors have a line-item veto.

Buffett and Gates Team Up To Solve World Problems

paulballen — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:47:55 -0700

I noticed two interesting articles in the NY Times today. The juxtaposition made me think.

One article says up to $2 billion in taxpayers money has been wasted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It gives several examples of how money has been misspent.

When the government steps in to manage any program, especially when it tries to do it quickly (in response to the public demand for relief!), I think it is inevitable that fraud and corruption and mismanagement will result in squandered funds. The government is simply not as efficient as the private sector. And when waste and fraud happen, everyone blames everyone else. (Except no one will blame the public for demanding the Katrina funding in the first place.)

Contrast this with the personal responsibility that Bill Gates will be taking for the $31 billion donated by Warren Buffett to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the goals of the Foundation is to find cures for the 20 leading diseases in the world. Gates will be leaving Microsoft in 2008. Imagine the good he and Melinda can do with $61 billion. Imagine how carefully they will invest these funds and measure the impact that their investments are making.

The Times reported how seriously Bill Gates is taking this donation from Buffett.

Later in the exchange, which was in front of 200 philanthropy executives, scientists, students and a few reporters, Mr. Gates got in his own reflection on the partnership. "It's scary," he said. "If I make a mistake with my own money, it isn't as big as making a mistake with Warren's money."

If Worldhistory.com had an editorial page (we don't yet) and could highlight the most important news stories, the ones that will make it into tomorrow's history books, I would wager that the Bill Gates retirement story and the Warren Buffett $31 billion donation will be key factors in some future textbook's chapter on how the world's major diseases were eradicated. This is an incredibly exciting story! I can't wait to watch it unfold.

I applaud Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates for these bold moves and I wish them well in their new focus on philanthropy. I'm especially excited that Melinda Gates mentioned microcredit in her discussion of the Foundation's goals, since it is such a promising approach to alleviating poverty in the developing world.

Shutterfly IPO?

paulballen — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 11:03:56 -0700

While living in Silicon Valley in 1999-2000 and because MyFamily.com was in the photo-sharing space, I had the privilege of meeting with key people at most of the early photo-sharing sites. I remember one meeting in our Howard Street office with some folks from Shutterfly.com. Lots of companies wanted to partner with MyFamily.com because we had millions of photos (in private family websites) and they had ways of getting those photos into prints, calendars, mugs, and other products.)

Shutterfly had just launched. They didn't really have a lot to talk about since they were brand new but I swear they used the name "Jim Clark" in our meeting at least a dozen times. (Not a bad strategy when your company founder/investor is the only person in history to have ever founded 3 companies that reached a $1 billion market cap.)

It's interesting to fast forward to 2006. MyFamily.com is never even mentioned as a photo-sharing site, even though we probably one of the first sites to attract 10 million photos. (We did it by early 2001.)

Now Shutterfly is reportedly considering an IPO or potentially shopping for an acquisition deal in the $400-500 million range. Oh, how I wish MyFamily.com had stayed active in the photo sharing space!

If you want an interesting walk down internet memory lane, check out some of the site design changes at Shutterfly from 1999 to the present at archive.org. I well remember the 50 free prints offer for every new member. An expensive customer acquisition strategy (had to be funded by outside investment capital, of course.) But a very effective one. Today, the offer is 15 free prints for new members.

Note: I have not been involved with MyFamily.com as an employee since February 2002 or board member since December 2001. My blog simply contains personal opinions.

Can't Live Without Web Analytics

paulballen — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:31:54 -0700

I've been using web analytics from Omniture this morning (Provo Labs uses it in our more mature portfolio companies) to discover some really interesting (and disturbing) customer usage patterns.

LDSMedia.com -- our LDS search engine -- has a new subscribe page. Using SiteCatalyst, I can run a report showing every visitor in June who hit the signup.php page, and using the Next Page Flow Report, see visually what each of them did next.

16.3% of our visitors who hit the signup.php page exited the site. Not good. 4.7% went to the home page (using the ClickMap I would be able to see if they clicked on the logo in the upper left corner of the landing page.) 2.1% went to the login page. The vast majority of visitors left the signup page and went back to the content page they were looking at. In the few seconds they take to look at our signup page, we lost almost all of them. Only 1.8% clicked through on one of the green "Sign Up Now" buttons.

1.8% would be an okay conversion rate for a content subscription web site. But this isn't the site's conversion rate. Only a small percentage of these people who clicked through actually completed the credit card process, so the overall site conversion rate is extremely low.

To me, this is a huge opportunity. Fortunately, we're only a week into offering the subscription and this is the first landing page we've tested. The good news is that we are an internet company. We can make a few changes, test the results, make a few more changes, test again, and over a period of time optimize our subscription process so that the messaging is just right and the signup process is easy and appealing. I can't wait to blog in a week or two about how our next landing page doubled or tripled our conversion rates!

With hundreds of thousands of people searching the internet for important LDS religious content, much of which is only available on this web site, our conversion rate should be (and will be) much higher.

By using web analytics, we have a starting point from which to measure our progress.

Web analytics is one of those essential ingredients to online marketing success that most people aren't familiar with. There are a lot of free web stats packages out there that just don't give you what you need. And more commonly, there is so much data available that it is nearly impossible for the untrained webmaster or marketer to know which web analytics reports are really important.

This morning I came across this excellent article about web analytics. I've been using web server log files and custom analytics reports since 1997 and SiteCatalyst since 2002, so I'm extremely familiar with hundreds of different reports.

But I love how this article focuses on six practical reports that online businesses should run regularly in order to understand their customers and how their web site is working (or is not working).

I think in all the years that I've been involved in online marketing, this is the best introductory article on web analytics that I've ever read. I'm definitely going to be using this in my BYU internet marketing class this fall.

I would like every Provo Labs employee to read this article and run each of these reports of one or more of our web sites.

We're going to have some Omniture SiteCatalyst training in an upcoming meeting, but in the meantime, try to run each of these six reports and carefully review them to determine what we should do differently or what we should do next on our web sites.

Most importantly, if you're on the LDS Media team, let's put up a new landing page today or tomorrow that isn't so complicated. The one we are using right now has Basic and Premium packages (too complicated) and has way too much text. It was patterned somewhat after a popular genealogy subscription web site's signup page, but it is obviously not working for us.

I would like us to test a completely different page layout that is patterned after RealNetwork's SuperPass 14-day free trial signup page.

What I love about this page is that it offers a 14-day free trial and captures an email address at the very beginning of the subscription process. Since growing our email database is a high priority, this approach makes a lot of sense.

We don't have to try to convert a visitor into a paying customer on the first visit. If we can capture their email address and permission to contact them again, then we will have many opportunities to interest them in our premium content in the future.

Let's launch this new 14-day trial email capture landing page and start reporting on how many new email addresses we get each day in addition to the number of daily subscribers.

Neal: I'd like an email or SMS every day with those two stats in them.

Geek Dinner Thursday Night

paulballen — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:39:05 -0700

Phil Burns' DevUtah is putting on another Geek Dinner Thursday night, this time at Tucano's with a movie afterwards. Click here to learn more and RSVP (and add your name to the Wiki).

We've got tons of talent in Utah. There is no question about that. The best way for us to become more like Silicon Vally (in good ways) is to have tons of networking events like this, where talented people with great ideas can start working on the new, new thing.

MarketingSherpa Readers Choosing Best Blogs and Podcasts

paulballen — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 06:05:14 -0700

My favorite content for internet marketers comes from MarketingSherpa. They publish incredibly valuable case studies. Their reporters interview the top marketers who reveal their secrets to success. I am a huge fan of Anne Holland and her wonderful team at MarketingSherpa. I sent three people to the Subscription Summit last month, and I buy quite a few of their reports, so I support them financially too.

A reader notified me this week that MarketingSherpa has asked its readers to rate the top blogs and podcasts in several categories. He pointed out that my Paul Allen (the lesser) blog is listed in the General Marketing category, right up there with Seth Godin!

While I'm thrilled to be included in this survey, I don't necessarily think of my blog as a General Marketing blog. It's more personal than that. I cover dozens of topics I'm interested in, particularly entrepreneurship, but I do cover a lot of marketing topics. (I think the best formula to blogging success (i.e. fame and fortune) is to focus on one topic and go very deep. But I blog for a lot of personal reasons, not for "blogging success" per se.)

But even more important than being included in this contest, I'm excited to see how MarketingSherpa readers rank all the other blogs, most of which I haven't heard of. I've been good over the years at finding true experts on different subjects and taking the time to learn from them -- at conferences, through their books and blogs, etc.

So out of this survey, I suspect I will end up with a list of "must read" blogs and some podcasts that will be more valuable to me than the ones I subscribe to currently.

In case you want to vote or see the list of candidate blogs/podcasts, here is the info:

June 22, 2006

An Apology from MarketingSherpa:

We're sorry. Many of you who've been trying to cast your Vote for
Best Blog & Podcast have been bounced off our server.

Here's a new link for folks who could not get in:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=803032287919

#1. If you've already voted, your vote is STILL ARCHIVED and SAFE.
You do *not* need to vote for the same blogs or podcasts again.

#2. We're *extending* the deadline to Monday, June 26th, at
midnight ET because so many of you could not get in when you
wanted to.

Then our team of research statisticians will gather the data from
the old form and this new form and do their magic to tabulate the
final results as fairly as possible.

Rural Broadband Penetration Too Low

paulballen — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:47:24 -0700

A friend forwarded to me a good article from the Rural Policy Research Institute on the need for broadband availability in rural communities and the frustrating lack of private sector initiative to provide it.

I am spoiled by the fiber-to-the-home initiative where I live in Provo as many Utahns are with UTOPIA. Our state and communities will benefit enormously by low cost broadband access. As I met with rural economic development leaders and entrepreneurs, access to broadband is a big issue for rural communities.

As Jefferson couldn't "live without books", I can't live without books or broadband. In fact, in 1995 when I first discovered that the internet would be my most important tool for business success, I bought a satellite dish (a DirecPC dish) from CompUSA and have had high speed internet ever since. This was way before DSL or Cable was available in Provo. DirecPC is now part of HughesNet, the largest satellite internet access provider.

So my advice to rural communities is to try to get your county and city planners to realize that the economic benefits of rural broadband are significant, and that investing in this can do a lot for economic growth. Have them study public and public/private initiatives. But at the same time, take personal initiative to make sure you can get broadband somehow or other to your workplace if not to your home.

Speaking of high speed internet, I'm just switching from my T-Mobile wireless card (I think it gives me about 150kbit access) to a Verizon 1MBit network, so that my laptop access can be several times faster. I had the T-Mobile Merlin card, which was really slow, then upgraded to the EDGE network, which is better, but I understand Verizon is now the fastest network.

Entrepreneur Brainstorm Lunch

paulballen — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:31:16 -0700

13 impressive entrepreneurs showed up for our Provo Labs Entrepreneur Brainstorm Lunch today. It was well worth it. Some of the entrepreneurs were seeking funding and needed ideas about who to talk to. Several good suggestions were made. Another entrepreneur with a good retail business idea is looking to recruit some management. A software company that just received significant funding from NSF needs a product manager.

I think every entrepreneur got some excellent advice from the others. I was impressed with the quality of the people that came. They are hungry to network, to make new contacts, and to learn how to make their businesses successful.

I learned a lot of things today. I was reminded of Josh Coates' excellent approach to enterprise software development: how to interview potential customers (a lot of them) in order to design a product that they actually want. I met a man who is writing a dissertation on usability. He's a fan of 37signals.com approach. I learned about a marketing agency in Maine called Imagocreative.com that markets exclusively to Baby Boomer women (who have the most buyer power). I met an entrepreneur with an RSS feed for daily scripture study (a chapter a day from the Bible, Book of Mormon, and potentially other scriptures from world religions).

I hope some of the advice and contacts that I shared were valuable. Next time I may bring a couple handouts that list my favorite books and experts on important business and marketing topics, just because in 5-10 minutes you can't share all the free advice that you'd like to share.

It's kind of cool to think that today I may have met a couple future finalists of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Competition. Give a couple of these entrepreneurs five years and I believe they will be ready for an award.

I am going to continue doing these lunches weekly, whenever I'm not travelling.

Our next Brainstorm Lunch will be next Thursday, June 29th. These events are free. You just pay for your own lunch. First priority will be given to those who haven't attended one before.

If you want to meet some up-and-coming entrepreneurs (potential strategic partners) and brainstorm ideas for helping each other succeed in business, you should sign up. Contact Michael Eagar at Provo Labs to RSVP. (michaeleagar "AT" gmail.com)

Phil Windley\'s Technometria | Utah CTO Breakfast

paulballen — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:18:00 -0700

Phil Windley's Technometria | Utah CTO Breakfast

I've heard great things about Phil Windley's monthly CTO breakfasts. The next one is this coming Friday. I'm going to try to make it, but it kind of interrupts my morning marathon training routine.

Famous Bloggers from History

paulballen — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 20:38:06 -0700

Have you ever wondered what Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson might say if they were alive today?

Some of the great, wise leaders of the past are slowly being forgotten as their words get overshadowed by the proliferation of words in books, magazines and web sites, and as popular culture renders these figures less than heroic or overlooks them entirely.

I have believed for a long time that unless we learn lessons from history that we will find ourselves repeating mistakes of the past and end up in difficulties from which it may be impossible to escape. I actually think civilization is at risk for a lot of reasons, from the low birth rate in Europe (as pointed out in the book "The Death of the West" based on United Nations forecasts), to the addictions to gambling, pornography, and drugs that are becoming more prevalent, and the resulting breakdown of traditional families and family values, to the huge national debt and the looming economic problems that may occur when the ratio of workers to retired falls to 2:1 or even lower. (In 1950 there were 16 workers for every retiree receiving social security benefits.)

In the 2005 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, Charlie Munger opined that "we are at or near the apex of a great civilization." Coming from one of the smartest investors in world history, this is something to pay attention to.

Most of all, the hatred towards the United States and all it stands for in many regions around the world may lead to another "war to end all wars." This time the outcome may be far worse because of the weaponry that may be used.

I think we are a target for hatred because of our prosperity and also because of misguided foreign policies, in some cases going back decades. We have too often been a bully. At other times we have been weak because of entangling alliances which make it difficult to take a stand.

But more than all of this, I believe the U. S. helps generates the most hatred for our nation and our way of life by by producing content that celebrates violence, sex, and wealth and broadcasting it without any restraint or sensitivity to societies all over the world (including poor nations and highly religious nations), thus creating both jealousy (for our prosperity) and hatred towards us for attacking the values that they hold most dear.

After watching some movies and TV shows, which glamorize evil, it's no surprise that some fundamental religious societies think of the U. S. as the Great Satan.

But, under the banner of Freedom of Speech, which we rightly enjoy in this country, our media producers seem to utterly disregard the impact of their creative works on young minds and old in the Middle East and elsewhere, who come away with an image of America that is completely distorted. And it's one that is easy to despise. Too bad the Andy Griffith show doesn't get watched worldwide. Instead it's Dallas, Baywatch, and every other pirated R-rated movie that young people can get their hands on. I was told that the first satellite TV broadcast in Afghanistan after the Taliban fell was something from MTV.

(It's ironic that so many Hollywood producers and actors speak out against our foreign policies without acknowleding that their content leads to inaccurate stereotypes of the ugly American and all kinds of misperception about what kind of people we are.)

I've met many people from foreign countries who knew almost nothing about the United States except what they saw on television. They discovered that people in this country (at least in middle America) are totally different from what they had anticipated.

I've wanted to team up with Michael Medved or someone and publish a book about how the media we produce and distribute worldwide helps creates the anti-American hatred that threatens our civilization.

Okay, so what does this have to do with famous bloggers from history?

Well, one way to export a more favorable view of the United States and its original values is to proliferate the writings of all our greatest leaders and thinkers.

So Worldhistory.com is going to be recruiting bloggers who will each adopt a great historic figure and start blogging each day about what that person would say if he or she were alive today. We will start blogs for many of the founding fathers and early presidents, supreme court leaders, congressional leaders, as well as leading business figures, inventors, scientists, educators, and religious leaders.

Our bloggers won't make stuff up. Instead, they will find current events or topics that are in the news, and then they will find actual quotes from the writings or speeches of the historic figure and try to find one or more statements that sheds light on the contemporary issue. And we won't be limiting our history blogger network to American historical figures. Worldhistory.com is about world history, and the great ideas from thinkers and leaders all over the world are sorely needed to help us achieve balance, tolerance, and a sustainable future for our civilization.

We will provide bloggers with access to electronic libraries and search engines that will make it easy to find any quote and blog it.

Blake Snow will be organizing this new blogger network, so if you are interested, please contact him at blake "AT" griffio.com.

Oh, and the bloggers will keep the majority of the advertising revenue that they can generate from AdSense or other ads. We'll host the blogs and promote them on our other sites, including worldhistory.com.

But it's not the money, it's the cause that really matters the most. It is really important, in my view, for all of us to ocassionally remember what Abraham Lincoln, or Winston Churchill or Mother Theresa might say if they were with us today.

Utah Entrepreneur of the Year Winners

paulballen — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:10:12 -0700

Congratulations to the winners and finalists in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Competition for Utah. The Deseret News had a nice article about the black tie awards ceremony on Friday evening and listed the 15 winners.

The whole evening was inspiring for me. I especially liked seeing Greg Warnock honored for his incredible support of entrepreneurship in Utah. And presenting Will West with his Master Entrepreneur award for his unprecedented accomplishments in forming companies and attracting venture capital to them was a real honor.

I think the most memorable quote of the evening for me was in the video about one of the finalists who runs a distribution business to supply car wash equipment. His business is in a small community. Over the years, he has gained a profile in the community as a business owner, obviously, one who is doing well financially. In his interview he said the most satisfying thing for him is that he inspires others in his community to believe that they can be more than just a laborer, they can aspire to higher goals, because he proved that it could be done.

Perhaps the greatest contribution entrepreneurs make to the world is inspiring others to believe that they can make a difference too!

I love entrepreneurs. I love the mind set. I love the passion and the desire to succeed. It is definitely contagious.

I wish I could convince everyone who wants to start a business (recent surveys show that 12% of adult Americans would like to quit what they are doing now and start their own business) that they really can do it. And then I'd like to provide them with tools that will help them to succeed.

Most new businesses don't succeed, for a variety of reasons. I really want to find a way to increase the chances of success by giving more startups better access to best practices, case studies, angel investors, and inspiring examples of never-say-die entrepreneurs. There are ways to overcome almost every business challenge.

Provo Labs Academy will be training local entrepreneurs every week. We'll be offering lectures on internet marketing and recording guest lectures on other business topics. We will create a curriculum that we hope will help entrepreneurs worldwide find greater chances to succeed.

Let me know if you'd like more information about our upcoming incubator space and training classes.

Entrepreneur Brainstorm Lunch on Thursday in Provo

paulballen — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:56:25 -0700

We are restarting the Entrepreneur Brainstorm lunches again. Next one will be Thursday, June 22nd, at noon.

The first 15 entrepreneurs to sign up will be invited to join me for lunch at a local restaurant. (Everyone pays their own way.)

The format is informal. Each of us will introduce ourself and our business to the group and share with the group our biggest challenge or issue. Then the group will brainstorm with us to try to find solutions or possible answers to help us with our problem.

In the past these have been extremely interesting, with insights and good ideas coming from a diverse group of attendees.

Usually we give priority seating to people who have never attended before. But in this case, since it has been months since we've had one of these brainstorm lunches, we'll invite anyone new or old to attend.

To RSVP, please contact Michael Eagar at Provo Labs. His email address is michaeleagar "AT" gmail.com. His phone number is 801-310-8255.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Utah Entrepreneur of the Year

paulballen — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 17:45:34 -0700

I was honored to be a judge in this year's Utah Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition. I joined a distinguished panel of judges and really enjoyed the process.

Tonight is the big awards event in Salt Lake City. I rented a tux for it, which I haven't done in probably 10 years. I'm excited for it.

The Deseret News had a nice article on Sunday about what the Entrepreneur of the Year awards mean to our community and to the companies involved. Several of the judges were quoted in the article.

Hopefully I'll see some of you tonight.

Laptop Blogging

paulballen — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 17:38:54 -0700

So one reason I haven't blogged much lately is that I'm on the go all the time, I hardly ever sit at my desktop computer to do email (since I do it almost all on my blackberry) and I'm using my laptop more and more. For months I have been unable to blog from my laptop, due to some WordPress error -- I've needed to "enable sending referrers" but couldn't on my laptop for some reason.

But WordPress 2.0.3 solves this problem, so I can once again blog from my laptop. Next, I'd like to be able to blog from my blackberry (by sending an email to WordPress.) Blake: can you help me with that next?

The Utah Bloggers conference Tuesday night was fun. Ryan Money and Phil Burns did a good job putting this together. The panel was interesting. I only wish that everyone there could have introduced themselves and their blog (if they have one). I guess a lot of the attendees blogged about the night and got listed at utahbloggers.com.

My favorite was the post with a photo of Richard Miller enjoying his Utah Bloggers t-shirt.

I think organized bloggers can become very influential, so I like the idea of a Bloggers Association. I heard that Utah podcasters might be organizing.

I'm looking forward to future Utah Bloggers events.

Top Writers Move to Startups

paulballen — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 16:21:35 -0700

I thought it was interesting to learn on the same day that both Robert Scoble, the pre-eminent Microsoft blogger, and Om Malik, the top writer at Business 2.0, were leaving their positions to join startup companies.

Robert Scoble will join venture-backed podtech.net (I first learned about them when they did a great interview of Paul Ahlstrom from vSpring a few months back) and Om Malik has received funding from True Ventures, a San Francisco venture fund. Jon Callaghan, one of the CMGI venture guys who invested in MyFamily.com in 1998, is with the fund and will be on the board of Om's new company Gigaom. Cool name.

Utah Bloggers Unite!

paulballen — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 16:15:05 -0700

Tonight in Sandy there is an event for all Utah bloggers or wanna-be Utah bloggers. Ryan Money helped organize it and has been blogging about it.

v|100 Meeting Today -- Ellen Levy from Stanford

paulballen — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 22:13:20 -0700

vSpring Capital's top 100 Utah venture entrepreneurs (the v|100) met today at Thanksgiving Point's Garden Room for a lunch and social.

I saw dozens of people that I know (what a powerful gathering!) but only had a chance to briefly chat with a few: Dennis Wood (the most LinkedIn person in Utah), Phil Windley (the man who inspired me to start blogging!) John Pestana, Josh James and Brett Error of Omniture, Glen Mella (Control4), Cydni Tetro (NextPage), Brent Bishop (Dollar Tree and Content Watch), Gavin Christensen. I met Scott McDonough, now with vSpring, who was the President and COO of LoveSac.

I think the v|100 would have even more value if Corporate Alliance could introduce its learn-serve-grow philosophy to this group and if we were guided in our networking and given more time to network. We had only about 15-20 minutes before lunch and maybe 10 after before everyone was gone.

The invited speaker was Ellen Levy, a well-connected Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned VC who now runs the Media X program at Stanford and consults for DFJ, a top Silicon Valley VC fund.

Ellen came at the invitation of NextPage's Tom Gno. They worked together at Paul Allen's Interval Research Group as the internet was emerging. Ellen left and founded WhoWhere, sold it to Lycos, and has done a dozen interesting things since, including NeoCarta Ventures. I sat at Ellen's table. She and Tom were apparently laughing at my name.

Speaking of my name, I've dropped to #6 on Google for "paul allen", even though I recently switched domain names for my blog (from infobaseventures.com to paulallen.net), which should help my rankings in the long run.

What I really need is for a few hundred of my friends and readers to please link to my new blog site at www.paulallen.net, so that I can regain my former #3 position. Maybe even sometime, if my blog gets enough incoming links, I'll be the #1 Paul Allen in Google. And then I'll have to change my name from "The Lesser" to something else, maybe "The Prominent". (I'll accept nominations for a name change if and when this happens.)

Ellen said some very interesting things. First, she said that as a Silicon Valley VC she really thought she had her ear to the ground and knew everything that was going on. But in her role at Stanford as a "connector" between students, faculty, industry partners, and VCs, she actually feels that her access to information is even better. She encouraged everyone to do something in social entrepreneurship, such as teach at a university, or work with non-profits or do community service. (Because there is more to life than making money.)

She told us about the mission of Media X at Stanford and mentioned some of the 25 affiliates (almost all were very large corporations) who are interacting with Media X in order to map their R&D interests with the projects that are being done by the Stanford research community. She feels that she has made many connections that were win-win.

(I had hoped she would talk more about how small technology companies -- not just huge corporations who can afford the annual fees -- could partner with Stanford's Media X.)

Ellen said Media X is sometimes described as an "intellectual match making service" and she seemed to like that.

She mentioned several topics that seem to come up frequently these days in conversations with industry:

Technology and the Aging. For example, how the aging population will change automobile transporation and health care.
Distributed Media and Online Content. This includes trying to understand consumers as publishers, the role of big media companies, how copyright should work, how people consume and manage information.
Human Machine Interaction and Sensing Technology. She mentioned sensors and RFID and the marriage of the analog and digital worlds.
Mobile computing.
Collaboration.
All Things Gaming. She said that the Online Entertainment industry is now bigger than the Movie Industry and that a lot of thought is going into discovering the role of gaming in learning. Should gaming principles be applied into enterprise software? The next generation that grew up on interactive games might not like the limited interactivity of SAP, for example.

Finally, Ellen made some interesting comments about time, which I found very timely, given the stage I'm at in my career.

She says that time is the most important resource of a risk-taking, company building entrepreneur, and that it is very important to be careful about how you use your time.

In 1999 she conducted a year long experiment, by journalling every day for a year about every thing that happened each day. She didn't make judgements about what was worth writing about--she wrote about everything. She also took a photograph of everyone she met that year.

What she discovered was that she wasted a lot of time on things that she didn't want to do and didn't enjoy. At the end of the day she would write about everything she spent her time on and realized she had to waste time writing about things that had been a waste of time doing. She learned how to become a better director of her time.

Ellen believes that how you use your time will determine the level of impact that you will have in your life. She cautioned us against the tyranny of the urgent.

As I listened to Ellen talk about her 1999 life chronicle, I thought if she kept this up, she'd be the world's greatest blogger.

She talked about how on a plane trip she visited with a man (has never seen him since) and asked the flight attendant to take their picture together since she was "chronicling her life" that year.

He was in magazine publishing and apparently told a friend about this woman, who told another friend, who mentioned it at a party, where a Wall Street Journal reporter found it curious. So she ended up being mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, which led to old friends finding her and other interesting things happening.

Now all of us can blog (chronicle our life) and use social networking services to meet new people and connect with old friends. But Ellen was 5-6 years ahead of her time.

(I found it interesting that she has served on the advisory board of eVite and LinkedIn.)

I also had feelings of regret while listening to Ellen, because I have been an avid journal-keeper since age 15. I have a couple dozen journals and then since 1991 I've been keeping my journal using Folio VIEWS software, with it's amazing full-text retrieval capabilities.

I have found huge benefits from keeping a journal -- personal, intellectual, spiritual, social and career benefits. But in the last 18 months, my schedule has gotten so full, that I have probably only written a dozen times in my journal. How ironic that at a time of life where I'm actually working on more interesting projects and meeting more interesting people and having more profound experiences than ever before that my journal writing is suffering for the first time.

I know some people keep a journal so their posterity can read it someday. That might happen, but in my opinion is quite unlikely. I think our descendants will be so busy (even more than we are) with what technology and prosperity enables that they won't be all that interested in our 20th century chronicles. It might seem rather dull to them, compared to what the Always On world of the 21st century will offer.

So while I hope that a few words of wisdom from my writings might someday touch some of my descendants, I primarily keep a journal for personal benefits. It helps me remember people and events. It helps me be more grateful. It gives me perspective during difficult times. And as Spencer W. Kimball said about journalling, it helps me keep the Lord in remembrance daily.

I hope I can arrange my schedule (be a director of my time, as Ellen said) so that I can fit in consistent daily blogging and journalling.

I may have to return fewer phone calls and fewer emails in order to make time for more blogging and journalling. But as Phil Windley said today, I should let those one-to-one communications slip in order to do the more important one-to-many communications. That makes sense to me.

So let me apologize in advance to all the people whose phone calls and emails I might not return ...