CEO's, Taxes, Failure and success

It is a shame that a few CEO's (quite a few actually) ruin the image of all others. There are a lot of CEO's that took risk, founded companies and built them up. These CEO's not only took huge risks but very often "bet the farm" in terms of investing in their own startups. These CEO's hire the most people in the world as most companies (90%) have 500 or less employees. These CEO's should be able to reap the fruits of their labor.
The problem is CEO's who get hired to run large companies that drive them to the ground, they never felt the pressure of starting from scratch and they get compensated through the roof even when their respective companies loose billions - that's wrong. This coupled with a very corrupt political system is the root of the evil.
We cannot survive without entrepreneurs and we certainly need a system that motivates them. That said, stockholders control the BOD and the BOD controls the CEO. In my house I sweep the stairs from the top while these guys sweep the stairs in the middle and at the bottom so the dirt stays on top and eventually gets dragged down again.
If you run a company to the ground and there's no private equity available then do not come and take money out of my pocket (tax-payer pocket), if my company fails I will not ask for a bailout from the public at large. If the GM stock tumbles that means there are more sellers than buyers, why should I then be forced to buy this stock by the folks on the hill?
We need a serious cleanup that inspires entrepreneurs while still keeps government at a minimum and taxes low - now our taxes are being used to bail out failed companies.
To Lee Iaccoca: yes, change the coach/quarterback when your team is losing, what in the world makes you think they can turn it around after having failed so miserably.

The Detroit Solution - give the cars away

Traditionally run companies such as GM, Ford and Chrysler need to "think outside the box" to survive in the future. A lesson can be learned from the internet where for example newspapers deliver the content for free to the "subscriber" but making the revenue up in banner ads.

The Detroit Solution:

Step 1: Let people lease cars priced at $30,000 or less for $0.00 per month for 3 years.
Revenue ideas: a. Wrap the cars in advertising from 3rd parties be it national brands or local advertisers. b. All cars should have GPS installed and then sell auto-ads to retailers so that the ad is displayed on the nav system and heard over the speakers when you approach a participating (and paying) retailer. For example: as you approach McDonald's an ad for McD is displayed on the Nav system and over the speakers you hear: 2nd right up ahead, get your $2.50 happy meal. I'm sure there are many other revenue avenues but all we need to make is about $400.00 per month for a $30K car.
Step 2: After 3 years the car comes back to the manufacturer who now leases it out as used for 3 new years at $0.00 and includes gas for the 3 years for 10K miles per year. The revenue stream will come from the same sources as those for the brand new cars.

Think people would lease cars for $0.00 per month? Think that would clear the lots? Think the dealers can be set up to do the wrapping etc? Think you could have local advertisers BID on ads each month (and of course the advertisers pay the wrapping cost to the dealer that does the work)?

Too simple? I think not. The companies that will survive in the uncertain economic times will be the companies that think way outside the box and if customers get products for free I believe they will all "sell" AND people will accept the ads/GPS.

Now, as these cars blow out the doors and Detroit turns into advertising-driven revenue companies they can use this to make BETTER cars.

Why should we bail out the non-inventive? Why can't these very highly paid executives think outside the box?

I am willing to bet that the first company to put such a plan into action will sell all inventory almost overnight!

Comments always welcome.

The mistakes are so obvious

I guess we learned nothing from Japan.
We just bailed out a few car manufacturers who make cars people will not buy and who pay their assembly-line workers $160K per year plus health plus pension plus plus plus. Jeez, they pay almost $3K more than Toyota per car and that's Toyota's build in the US. Top that off with the fact that Toyota makes cars people want.

Somebody got the ripple effect of bankruptcy all wrong. If a supplier goes away there's no effect on demand - the remaining suppliers will see increased business and hire more people and need more facilities.

The free market system rewards the companies that make products we will all buy with regards to quality and price - pretty darn simple.

we just spent $25b to fuel the same corporate jets, pay the people even when thry are NOT working (making SUV's that get 5 miles to the gallon), maintain pension plans etc etc.

See what you get when your administration is 95% attorney's and 5% Business graduates.

The good news - we can't go below zero.

Get out your tents and fishing poles and get ready for survival of the fittest.

or

REAL CHANGE:

no shorting allowed
remove all taxes
install a federal VAT of 5%
cut the fat off the government waste
get out of Iraq
build nuclear power plants and start drilling

I know, makes too much sense

nuff said

REH/keeping on warppin'

Make a stockmarket recovery

To resurrect the stock market just disallow shorting of stocks. Guess what, if you believe the stock will go down just don't buy it.

A possible solution that would heat up the economy

There's about 100 million taxpayers in the US. Let them all get a Government issued Debit Card with a balance of $100,000. If my math is correct this would total up to $10,000,000,000,000 or 10 Trillion dollars. This amount will not be much LESS than the planned (and not planned) bailout package.

No bailout's of anyone, period - let the markets figure this out, the market being the people who now have the US Debit Card. Some will spend wildly, some will invest, some will pay off debt but boy will the economy get going. I can't think of a more DEMOCRATIC way to straighten this ship.

President Obama will need to cut wasteful government spending in a big way. I also think that he should create the Department of Business, a department that will focus on making money for us, the taxpayers. How can the government make money? Like anyone else, create products that has a market. Take all the people in jail, why can't they create software, manufacture products (talk about cheap labor) etc? There's a lot of smart people in jail who can figure this out and there's plenty of hard labor potential.

The government also owns a lot of potential advertising space from their emails going out to the walls of their buildings - this space has value.

The more successful the combination of cutting spending and creating new revenue sources the more taxes can be reduced and eventually be eliminated - what a capitalistic and novel idea :-)

I know, it all sounds to simple but I will argue that so are the very best ideas.

nuff said

Political Restaurants - which to pick?

On Political street there are two large restaurants,s; The Republicano & Demo's.

Demo's:

As we walk in they ask us for our payslips, weird. We get seated and the waiter brings us menus but the prices for the items are not the same?? Each meny has our individual salary printed on top saying that all prices are based upon each patrons salary. I make $120K a year and my friend makes $60K. I order a steak for $50.00 and my friend orders the same steak but his is only $25.00 - what's up with that? All the waiters have union buttons on and 3 of them are on strike. The restaurant is pretty laid back and people are dressed leisurely. After getting the bill we leave a tip each of 20% of the bill and the waiter explains that they all pool their tips and divide it out equally to all the employees, even those that are not working or on strike so everybody is "equal".
The place was full of charm and we spotted quite a number of famous people. The Maitre D was extremely charismatic and well spoken, we really liked the guy. We asked him what would happen if the restaurant had a profit and decided to share this with the employees and he said that they would distribute most of the profit to the ones that were not working and those who slacked off and had a lower pay. We thought this was odd but he explained that the ones that worked really hard already made good money so why should they share any of the profits?

The Republicano:

Funny, but they have the same procedure when it comes to asking for payslips and then giving us customized priced menus. I still don't understand why I should pay more for having gone to college, worked hard and climbed upwards in my company. This restaurant is a little different, easy to tell from the emblem at the door which pictures two guns laying in a cross on top of a Bible. People seem to be a little more conservatively dressed as are the surroundings and many are wearing gun belts, some even have semi-automatics. Just about everybody has a Bible with them. We ask the waiter how the tips work and he says they all keep their individual tips and people who are not working does not get any portion of it. Then we asked what would happen if there was any profit-sharing and the Maitre D, an older gentleman that looked x-Navy, said that they would distribute it evenly amongst all employees based upon their contributions. This meant that whoever had contributed the most would get a higher percentage of the profits. This kinda made sense to us; the more you put in the more you get back.

Conclusion:

None of the Restaurants really appealed to all our desires. My friend liked the concept of getting a larger percentage of the profits even though he had contributed a lot less but I didn't think that was fair. My friend also liked that his food was cheaper than mine even though it was the same food; I sure didn't think that made any sense - next will be that I pay more for everything I buy since I have more money, not very motivational.
I didn't like the guns and bibles - I think that's something that can stay at home and not be flaunted.

I really have no clue which Restaurant to go to next, maybe I should start my own where everybody pays the same for the same goods, where hard work is rewarded, where everyone would be welcome, where talking among different tables are encouraged and where guns and bibles are forbidden? Sure sounds like an uphill battle as I all my attorney friends on the Hill will see this as too simple a concept - what will the poeple that normally handle all the paperwork of the other systems do now?

Vote?

This is not easy, what's a voter to do?

Can't really trust any politician.

My dilemma:

I think taxes are unconstitutional, "the land of the free" should not have taxes at all and not be in the very top of tax rates worldwide. Get rid of the word "tax" and rather have a "fee" on consumption - the more you buy the more you put into the common pot to help with infrastructure etc.

Lobbying is legal corruption, don't like it. Pay people on the hill more so they're not tempted

I don't need a semi-automatic weapon

Women should decide the abortion issue to a large extent

Less government and more private enterprise BUT if the private business fails let it fail

If an individual succeeds in building a business and make good money, let him/her keep it

Any tax-breaks should be dished out proportionally based on taxes paid, i.e. someone who pays more taxes will get more back - only seems fair. Case-in-point: If I go to dinner with someone with more money than me we still split the tab - we consumed the same amount so that's only fair.

Drill for oil off shore - look to Norway as an example of a very clean country with off shore drilling. Build nuclear power plants and explore any other alternative energy source that makes fiscal sense.

The North Pole is not melting and humans have minuscule effect on the climate - when did Hollywood become our leading scientists?

Separate religion and politics/state - the alternative is war it seems.

Stop pissing off the rest of the world - we owe them more money than you can imagine.

Keep your enemies close, talk to them to find out what they're all about.

Who to vote for? Really no clue - Obama's got charisma and can move the masses like Kennedy did but I don't like taxes and more government. McCain's a war hero but do we need a warrior? Palin does not come across as ready to lead this very large and diverse nation.

I have no clue...........maybe Ron Paul is closest to my thinking...where's Ross?

The single largest internet advertising venue is unused

Amazingly enough the single largest internet advertising venue is not being utilized! We have adverting on websites and we have email newsletters BUT the most obvious, and I would argue the most effective, venue is not being used: The regular external emails sent from both office and personal email accounts.
Think about it:

There's currently close to 1 billion corporate email accounts in the world and at least as many (if not more) individual email accounts. An April, 2008 USA Today article cites ComScore Media Metrix figures for February, 2008:

Microsoft webmail properties: 256.2 million users
Yahoo: 254.6 million users
Google: 91.6 million users
AOL webmail properties: 48.9 million users

Google has an average of 4 million unique hits per day BUT compared to the number of emails sent it pales (and we all know what Google is worth and why: advertising). IDC predicts that nearly 100 billion emails, over 40 billion of which will be spam messages, will be sent daily worldwide in 2008. This means that over 60 billion email messages are NOT spam and emails between people that know each other.

Google: 4 million hits per day (unique)
email: about 164 million sent every day (SPAM NOT included), even if 75% would be internal emails it would leave 40 million emails daily or 10 times the unique visitors to Google.

Who would advertise in these emails?

Office email: this one is obvious, the Companies/Institutions would advertise for their own business, why not as the employees are sending these emails anyway. The recipients probably knows the sender but that does NOT mean they are aware of everything the sender's employer has to offer. In addition one would make everyone help the sales efforts since they send emails, talk about doubling your sales staff many times over.

Individual email: Just as obvious as these emails could be used to push out 3rd party advertising. Microsoft and Yahoo combined represent over 500 million email accounts, imagine what that could be worth in advertising revenue. Of course motivation is needed for acceptance of the users and that motivation could be as simple as revenue sharing. One could also offer the users to WRAP these emails with their own images with links to various places on the web (facebook, linkedin, eBay come to mind) so the email really become personalized.

One company makes all this possible: WrapMail

WrapMail offers this for both Business at $5 per user per month and for individuals for free. Businesses obviously send from their existing domain email address while individuals get a free email account @wrapmail.com.

The cool thing is that in neither case need anything be installed on anyone's desktop or cell phone.

WrapMail's Business Solution even has full reporting on when recipients click on the wrap and specifically what they clicked on (also available instantly via email or sms).

WrapMail also includes a tool; WrapMaker, where users can make unlimited wraps using their own images and links and for Businesses they include a rule set so wraps can vary based on several factors such as time, rotation, sender etc.

Websites are obvious today, wraps will be come obvious in the very near future. Why not, you're sending the email anyway.

How to save the US economy - plan A

This seems to be a pretty hot topic these days but if the politicians could look beyond politics and actually use this opportunity to REALLY fix the system they could come out smelling like roses. Never mind that the people on the hill have it pretty darn good no matter what as we, the people, pay for their every necessity and luxury.

Plan A:

1. Abolish income and corporate taxes
2. Abolish the IRS
3. Create a flat Federal CF (Consumption Fee)on all consumer goods of 5%
The US consumption is about 7 trillion dollars so 5% would represent $350 billion. This is about the same number as the tax gap (not collected taxes). Of course there would be no gap if we went to CF as the 5% will be part of the price we would have to pay for products. The big winner here would be lower income who couldn't possibly spend as much on goods and services to make the 5% come close to their current tax rate.
4. Make "Naked Shorting" illegal as it once was - this mechanism has only lead to a few making fortunes by driving down stock-prices selling shares that do not exist.
5. Look for alternative revenue sources government should try to focus on making money as opposed to taking money. Where is the Department of Business?
6. The exponential effect from zero taxation will come in the form of consumption rising, businesses growing and new businesses forming.

These are changing times and for the US to remain a superpower and a great place to live and work calls for drastic, yet simplistic and understandable, measures.

New Browsers - Google Chrome and Explorer 8

Google enters the market with a new browser pretty much at the same time as Microsoft releases latest beta of IE8. Of course I had to try both:

Chrome: Loved it at first, best feature being the combination of the search and url bar BUT as I found out that autofill, word memory and spelling was not available I had to abandon it. Spelling and autofill is something I use many times every day. This actually is a feature in the Google Toolbar I am now using in Firefox 3 (yeah, back to Firefox for now). I had some Java-problems at first but got that solved.

IE8: Downloaded but before I explored further I noticed that the same Google toolbar I use so much with IE7/Firefox was not available for IE8 I went back to Firefox again.

The lesson for users: Don't jump on the first releases

The lesson for Google/Microsoft: Don't release these products without features (at least electable features) that you KNOW are commonly used and how you grabbed, increased or maintained market share in the first place.

I did manage to test the WrapMail email marketing Control Panel with Chrome and found it to be 100% compatible so that was pleasing.

email marketing - the more obvious way

eMail marketing is VERY effective yet it is always mass emails and often come from “do-not-reply” addresses. These emails also arrive with a red x where there are pictures and then the recipient must right-click to download – this is where over 50% are lost as people hit the delete button.
Seems like WrapMail is the only company that seamlessly focuses on the REGULAR external emails we all send every day:

You have a website.
You send emails.

WrapMail, without installing anything on any desktop or cell phone facilitates:

Every email becomes a showpiece for the organization.
Every employee becomes a marketer.

No other marketing or advertising medium is as targeted as an email between people that know each other (as opposed to mass emails). These emails are always read and typically kept.
WrapMail turns your everyday email into a branding and research tool (yes, the system reports who is clicking on what and when) for your business at a cost of $5 per user per month. That includes the WrapMaker™ where clients make their own wraps.
And……..WrapMail’s show up WITHOUT the red x and message to download images!

Now, that works - as obvious as wrapping a car in advertising!

millions of unused ad impressions

I had to post this post posted by WrapMail's CMO - kudos to Dave!

The element that makes our web based product so interesting is the fact that we can “push” advertising out within emails. No other web based email system currently does this. Yes, there are advertisements where you manage your folders, but that is where it begins and ends. If Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail, for instance, had our technology, they would, in effect, increase their number of “sellable” impressions by a factor of whatever their daily email traffic is. Whatever that number is, it’s a lot.

As mentioned in a previous post, WrapMail is currently evaluating relationships with a number of colleges and universities with the goal of 1) creating a “college advertising” network using student email traffic as the vehicle, and 2) creating a model where WrapMail shares the revenue with participating colleges/universities.

Big Picture: create a network where not only “tier 1″ advertisers like Apple, Dell and Verizon could reach the very important college demographic, but also a network where local advertisers can serve their own ads. Yes, Johnny’s Pizza in College Town USA could log into the portal and upload an ad that would appear in local emails of college students. He could control the ad, choose what to spend and check the response. Pretty cool.

Look at this example of a possible scenario. Dave emails Joe about the big game and within that email is an ad for Dell.



Here is an example featuring local businesses.



This is new ground in the world of advertising, but such an obvious way to generate impressions. Wrap it up!

from websites to wrapped emails

In the early days of the internet companies saw no need for having a website. Today it is very hard to find a business without one, one would actually be taken less seriously.

Today all organizations have employees that send external emails every day yet most have these emails looking very bare - almost the same as not having a website:



In a VERY short time all these emails will be wrapped as companies become aware of the huge profiling opportunity that lies in surrounding every external email with images that showcase the company and its offerings:



Bottom line:

1. Organizations have websites.

2. Employees send external emails every day.

WrapMail connect these two dots without installing anything on any desktop, thus:

1. Turning every email into a promotional piece for the organization

2. Turn every employee into a marketer.

Letter to Governor Charlie Crist

I sent this letter to the Governor today:

Governor:

I read in the Sun Sentinel on almost a daily basis how more funding is needed for the public school system and believe that I have an “outside the box” solution. I have always been an entrepreneur of sorts and as such look for alternative ways to make money. When I look at government anywhere in the world then the mentality is pretty one of “taking money” – read: tax. I would love somebody in Government to look at the other side of the equation: make money. All government institutions have opportunities to make money, some in more obvious ways than others and deploying such new ideas combined with more efficiency could result in lower taxes, better schools and happier people.

You notice how this email is “wrapped” in an interactive letterhead which consist of images with embedded links to various portions of our website. WrapMail currently performs this service for Broward College and every email sent from faculty or staff brands the college, promotes the many different educational programs, the foundation etc and links back to various portions of BC’s website. The basic principle behind WrapMail (which has been developed in-house in our Fort Lauderdale headquarter) is to connect two obvious dots: organizations have websites and employees that send emails. WrapMail turns every email into a branding tool for the organization, drives people to the website AND turns into a research tool as the system matches up sender and receiver when a link is clicked (telling our clients who is interested in what and when). WrapMail is server based so nothing is installed on any desktop or cell phone, i.e. senders have no new routines to learn.

Here’s where I’d like to connect the opening statement and the quick overview of WrapMail and Broward College:

BC has about 2,000 faculty and staff, in addition they have close to 150,000 student email accounts.

The NEW idea: Solicit advertising from major corporations to be in the BC wrap. Imagine what it would be worth to say, Apple, to be featured in every external email sent from broward.edu. We believe it is worth about $5.00 per click or 5 cents per impression. The reason these ads are worth much more than banner ads is the fact that they appear in an email between people that know each other. WrapMail is not a mass email system, it is all about using the emails employees send every day anyway – why not use these to promote your own organization. Another potential advertiser in the BC wrap is also very obvious: The State of Florida.

The numbers:

BC sends about 200,000 emails daily
5 cents per impression of one advertisement: $10,000 daily “revenue” or $2.5M per year (and that’s only for one advertisement).
Even with some hefty discounts this could become a major funding source for Broward College.

Imagine rolling this program out to all public educational institutions in Florida.

WrapMail would be willing to provide the technology for free against sharing the advertising revenue.

There’s more: you will notice on the bottom of this email that there’s an amber alert for a Florida missing child. We feed these alerts automatically into all of our emails to increase the impressions of missing kids in the hope that more visibility increases the chances of finding them.

The bottom line is that I wanted to make you aware of our little technology company down here in Fort Lauderdale and how this technology combined with some outside the box thinking could provide great opportunities for the entire State.

I would love to discuss this in more detail so feel free to contact me at any time.

Thank you

________________
Rolv E. Heggenhougen, CEO
305 S. Andrews Ave., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
US Office: (954)-376-4750

Why not do it now?

There's been a change in work attitude with most, they don't answer emails right away or return phone calls. This quickly leads to things being forgotten and follow-up never happens. I like to do everything right away, this might sound strange BUT if I don't I know there's a very high chance it won't get done at all. We were working on a couple of prospects and one of them would email and ask if we could have a phone meeting 3 weeks from that date. I replied immediately in my usual fashion and said sure we could, I said I could also do it the same day! The proposed week for this phone meeting came and went and a week after the week when the meeting was supposed to be held I got a new email suggesting a date 3 weeks into the future for this 10-minute phone meeting. What's with these people, are they that important or what is it? This time the meeting did happen and it took 10 minutes. I followed up immediately with an email and got a response 2 months later. No kidding! When I read in the paper that this (very large) company was losing a lot of money I was not surprised at all after my experience of their incredible inefficiency.

The world moves pretty fast and in my opinion these "important" people will not be able to keep up.

Do it right away, you never know when tables are turned.

Classic startup dilemma - when to ask for the umbrella?

There's an old saying that you should ask to borrow an umbrella when it is not raining because when it is indeed raining nobody will lend you one. Having started north of a dozen companies on 3 continents I can verify that this is true. My latest venture, WrapMail, is looking to raise some money and it is not raining so to speak. In this effort (which we yet have to put focus on as building the business takes just about all available time) I've come across some interesting responses:

Bank: If you deposit $1M with us in an escrow account (that you can't touch) then we would consider lending you $1M. Does this make sense to anyone? Assuming I have the million why do I need the bank for this exercise?

VC: Why don't you build the Sales Team and get to cash-flow positive and then we'll talk. Duh - this is exactly what we would use most of the funding for.

I have many times been on the other side of the table and I view it as one party has an idea and people to execute a part of the way, the investor has money. The risk is always high at these levels where there's zero liquidity in the investment so one tries to balance that risk looking at the validity of the idea, the potential, the team and the potential exit strategies (liquid event). Then, in my case, I jump or I don't.

There's always the old fashioned way of building the business with blood,sweat and ones own money (which I am doing currently), it is less dilutive and a great feeling when success is established. However, it is normally a slower process and being in the viral internet advertising space SPEED is Job 1.

I guess we plug on, the more no's we get means we get that much closer to a yes OR better yet success without sharing.

What's the revenue model?

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was asked what the revenue model was for Twitter and he replied: "I don't know. I'm making this up as I go,"
How do companies such as this raise 10's of millions? Is this 1999 all over again.

I started WrapMail in 2005 (actually started operations in 2006) and right our of the gate there was a very clear revenue model and pitch:
----------------

You have a website and your employees send emails every day.
WrapMail makes every external email into a marketing tool without anything to install on any desktop – nothing to learn BUT when the email arrives the recipient is now exposed to your interactive letterhead!
Every external email can show your brand, your products/services and of course the images are clickable so you will drive more people to your website.
When your wrapped emails are clicked the system tells you who is clicking on what and when!
You’re going to send emails every day anyway, why not show people what you have to offer – just click on this email to experience for yourself. Every employee becomes part of the marketing effort with WrapMail.
Cost: $40 to sign up, thereafter $5 per sender per month
---------------
We're approaching 1b corporate email accounts worldwide, pretty easy to multiply this with $5/month to see a colossal market. An added bonus is the fact that our model is residual!

I can understand that start ups fly by the seats of their pants in the beginning BUT there's got to be more to it than just building an audience, at least for me to invest.

Brick and mortar can learn from online companies

In the beginning most internet companies charged for information (newspapers for example) and then it changed as they found alternative ways to drive revenue. This lead to a lot of good information becoming free to the user while others footed the bill.

The "brick and mortar" world could take a lesson here and improve their position in the competitive landscape.

Imagine for example if travel was free. Who would pay for it?

Hint: Take a look at what's footing the bill online for the most part and you're in the right arena but it is not as obvious as just "advertising".

This might be my next project BUT to get people thinking outside the box wont hurt.

Have a nice weekend :-)

How to fix the US economy

Bureaucrats like to complicate things, I like them simple (which the former of course view as radical thinking).

1. Plan to drill for oil off shore (look to Norway for any environmental concerns)and start drilling asap (just look at oil prices after Bush said he wanted to get going on this!).
2. Plan new nuclear facilities
3. Enforce laws on the books that currently are being ignored such as:
a. Immigration
b. Naked short selling - this is a BIG one - this has been illegal since 1933 but still happens in massive volume every single day and is a huge burden on the stock market
4. Fix the tax-system, preferably eliminate income and corporate tax but at the very least change individual tax to a flat tax of no more than 15%
5. Change the mentality of government to find ways to earn money selling the public services they want or that someone is willing to pay for.

There once was a Swedish Business Leader who stated "when you sweep dirty stairs you start on top" and then he fired almost all his business leaders.

The US should be looked upon as the largest Corporation in the world and run as such focusing on profitability while at the same time taking care of both the employees and the stockholders (tax-payers). The thinking needs to change or this "Free" society will be outpaced by other continents and the "Empire" will indeed crumble.

Innovation is the mother of capitalism and as such needs to be sufficiently motivated and not, as today, be discouraged by red tape and bureaucracy. Intellectual property creates independence and that coupled with energy independence...now you got something.

maybe less attorneys and a few more entrepreneurs :-) would do the trick?

are emails secure?

I recently spoke to a CEO who really believed that his email was totally secure since they had their own "extremely secure" data center. Total nonsense! When the email leaves that very secure server in the data center it will go through a minimum of 2 service providers and very often numerous routers and switches on its way to the recipient. These "boxes" that the email passes through can be accesses by a large amount of people (typically support people) and of course these people can read these emails if they wanted to (just make a copy). Actually many ISP's do keep copies of all the emails that pass through their server!

Emails are NOT secure (encrypted emails are more secure BUT that requires decryption on the other end, a daunting task).

The root of the problem here is really the lack of understanding IT in its basic form at the CEO level, a subject for a separate post. Lack of knowledge is costly.

US Banking

I don't get it! I go online to my bank, Citibank, and pay my Landscaper. The bank turns around a few days later and prints a check that they send via the US Postal system. Is this 2008 in a modern world where internet is abundant and I can watch TV on my cell phone? I happen to also have an account in Europe and there internet banking works a little differently:

I go online, enter the recipients account number (nobody writes checks there anymore, every bill is electronic and always has the recipients account number on it), the amount and confirm. Within seconds the funds have arrived in the recipients account. Furthermore, most bills now show up in my bank account (that's right, not in the mailbox) and there I can approve or not - it's one click. These transactions are bank-independent! There's no such thing as waiting for a week or two for a check to clear.

When will the US Banks get coordinated and make this simple for their clients? Of course the banks like to ride the money and make interest but I'm afraid that this hurts them in the long run: Let the clients have immediate access to THEIR money and as such become more effecient and more profitable - this will lead to larger deposits and need for other banking services.

Efficiency on all levels is what will grow the economy.

iPhone - what's missing?

Got the latest iPhone and yes, it is better with 3G. I still do not like the fact that these phones are locked so I cannot use other SIM-cards but that should go away next year.

So, what's missing?

Why can not somebody make a cell phone that becomes a complete mobile device that contains every function one use other remotes or methods to transfer data? Here's what I'd like to see my ONE device be able to do:

Phone
Remote for any electric device (from my TV to garage door)
Credit/Debit card - this way a code must be punshed with every purchase (there goes a lot of the fraud in the garbage)
Vital data (Drivers Licence, Health info etc etc)
Frequent Flyer cards
Internet/Browser
TWO SIM slots

I basically want one device that contains everything in my wallet, acts as a phone and a PC and replaces any other remote device.
Security will be important so it needs to have information be protected and also store vital information online somewhere for retrieval.

The iPhone is as close as what I've seen and the technology to do everything on my whish-list is already there. I would think especially banks would love to drop the physical credit card and replace it with the one stored in my cell that requires a code on every purchase.

Politicians: Make money, don't take money!

I have a dream that one day a "politician" (and this will not be the run-of.the-mill-in-somebody's-pocket-politician) will get on the barricades and say:

We the government should start to MAKE money instead of TAKE money.

Imagine if the government (who employs about half the people directly or indirectly in this country) would look at the other side of the equation: Revenue (NO, that's not TAX).

How can the various pieces of the government MAKE money? How can they sell something that we will buy?

Example: Prisons

1. Have people in prison MAKE something that we would buy. Maybe take all the smart white collar crooks and start a software company (PrisonSoft). They could develop software for all kinds of applications and the talent pool is enormous! The not so smart guys can also make something sellable and put it up for sale on eBay or other places.

2. Any prison located next to a highway - put advertising on the walls

3.Government cars could have advertising on them

4. Government run casinos

etc etc etc - some ideas might be WAY out there but the bottom line should be: MAKE money don't TAKE money.

Now, combine this with cutting the fat of the pencil-pushers (you know who I'm talking about, the crowd that spent a few million dollars in their cubicles and came up with the brilliant idea to call Car Pool lanes HOV - what's the deal with that???). Abolish the word TAX and IRS (there's a few hundred thousand people that can do something else).

We the People should be able to build our businesses and the country without the interference of some dude in a cubicle making it difficult for us. Of course there are laws to stop the crooks but don't make the environment such that innovation is killed before it gets started. 98% of this country's business are small business and that's how any company starts out - MOTIVATE us to keep innovating and let us reap the fruits of our labor without your stinking hand grabbing stronghold of our wallet!

Musings - Intro

ok, figured I'd write a blog also and muse about what I see, hear, think etc. who knows, somebody might actually read it sometime.

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