Most people are still trying to get their heads around Web 2.0. Warning: techies are already buzzing about the coming of Web 3.0. Normally, I would wait for them to get their head out of the clouds, but it's all about the clouds and, frankly, it's something to think about.

Before I go any further; no I'm not this smart. But Mark Benioff, the Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com is. You must check out Benioff's treatise on Web 3.0. It's wonderful food for thought.

Benioff sums it up this way.

Web 1.0 was "anyone can transact:

Web 2.0 was "anyone can participate"

Web 3.0 is "anyone can innovate"

Web 3.0 is here, sort of. It's a perfect storm of factors; cloud computing, open source solutions and loads of people getting laid off that need to do something to stay afloat.

With Web 3.0, as Benioff notes, anyone can now develop and mashup applications into something completely new and useful. With cloud computing, IT departments are spared all the hardware issues - like reworking the network, adding on servers, configuration, etc. Smaller businesses, especially, can harness far more computing power through the cloud for elaborate development projects without making the investment in extra servers, etc.

If you're looking for evidence that this cloud computing thing is more than thin air; just look at who's throwing their hat into the ring.

- Amazon
- Google
- Microsoft (just announced this week)
- Salesforce.com
- IBM (Blue Cloud - cute!)

That's a short list, not an exhaustive list.

Sorry, it's a high tech thing; obnoxious acronyms. I don't come up with these things, I just report on them.

Okay, what is OLED and why should you care?

OLED stands for Organic Light Emiting Diode (well, maybe acronyms aren't so bad)
.
OLED, as opposed to the current liquid color display (LCD), is apparantly going to be finding its way into laptop screens sometime next year here in the States.

This is something worth waiting for. Here's why:

1. OLED's don't require a backlight, which makes for a thinner laptop. It also uses less battery power without the backlight. Energy efficiency - good. Longer battery life - even better!

2. OLED's are brighter and can be seen from wider angles (that may be good or bad).

3. OLED's allow for touchscreen technology.

Word is, PC Makers will start showing off ther laptops with OLED screens early next year at the big Consumer Electronics Show.

Just launched; LinkedIn is now offering more than half a dozen new applications to give users something more to do than network and do recon on collegues.

LinkedIn is now offering a host of apps for sharing files and presentations, syncing your blog postings with your profile page, even booking business travel.

I played around with a few of them. The first was something called "Company Buzz" which offers the latest "twitters" about a specific organization, historical charts of the intensity of buzz around a company, along with keywords and trends (look for the word "layoff" to spike across the board for the forseeable future). Unfortunately when I tried to install "Company Buzz", it wasn't working (Launch days aren't easy. I'll try again another day and follow up.).

There's also an application called TripIt that you can keep a running intinerary of all your upcoming business trips on your profile and likewise follow the comings and goings of co-workers and contacts. Why would this be handy? It's a great way to see who's going to the same tradeshow, plan conference calls optimized to best serve the time zones of all those involved and, of course, snoop.

Parting thoughts

LinkedIn is an interesting company. It's a social network that isn't publicly held and actually makes money. However given the economy and the rising popularity of Facebook; LinkedIn needs to do something to differentiate itself more from the other guys.

This just might be the ticket.

A new site has hundreds of videos, (including one of me), with interviews of lots of tech
luminaries in Austin, TX (among other locales).

They're pushing this content out thru various mechanisms and I think these guys
may be on to something.

While Amazon.com has just formally lifted the "beta" caveat off its two-year old cloud computing service, EC2; fashionably-late Microsoft has just announced details of its forthcoming cloud computing service called "Azure".

The announcement comes as no shock. CEO Steve Ballmer let it be known back on October 1st that such an announcement was about a month away.

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's head of software architecture, says Azure will be available for free while in beta and then priced "competitively" thereafter. He acknowledged that it will be designed to compete against services like Amazon's EC2.

Ozzie says eventually all of Microsoft's web-based applications will be hosted on "the cloud" and through their virtualization technology this will enable them to seamlessly update and patch applications helping companies further streamline their IT departments.

The one detail not given at Ozzie's keynote speech at a professional developer's conference, where all this took place; when? No word on when Azure will be launched publicly in beta.

This is all but the death knell in Vista's coffin. Speaking at the Gartner Symposium ITexpo in Orlando, Fla last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer acknowledged all those companies that still haven't made the upgrade to Vista and that "if people want to wait, they really can... Windows 7 will be Vista, but a lot better."

He said a mouthful.

First of all, this is a not so subtle admission - finally- that Vista is a turkey.

Second, it would appear, Microsoft is finally willing to admit it.

Let's review some recent reports.

- According to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, Windows 7 is ramping up a lot faster than most realize. The inside dope is it could get released by late 2009.

- This little tidbit is leaked out on the heels of Microsoft's announcement just a few weeks ago that once again, they are extending "downgrading rights" another six months to the PC Makers to still swap out Vista for XP to appease reluctant customers. Those rights were supposed to finally expire in January of 2009, now it's June of 2009. Hmmm... wouldn't that be around the same time they release Windows 7?

- It's the economy. For all those businesses who couldn't pull the trigger on Vista over the past couple of years when times were much better, what are the chances that anyone is going to commit to a Vista rollout now?

Ballmer describes Windows 7 as Vista, but a whole lot better. Danger! Danger!

Wouldn't that sort of be like McCain saying he would basiclly be George W. Bush, but a whole lot better?

I wonder what operating system Joe the Plumber uses?

Barack Obama thinks so and has promised, if elected, to make a cabinet level Chief Technology Officer (CTO) position for the first time. (McCain, meanwhile, doesn't really do "the e-mail" that much).

Obama says he is especially committed to using this proposed cabinet position to push for a greater broadband build-out nationwide. The United States currently ranks #15 in broadband penetration among industrialized nations. A shockingly low number of only 23 out of 100 Americans actually have a broadband connection, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Increasingly, how do you reach your customers? Getting serious about better deploying broadband domestically can only help domestic sales.

Does America need a CTO? H-E-Double hockey sticks, yes! Regardless of who wins in November, let's hope this is one idea that becomes reality.

DLA Piper released the following survey of global technology leaders this week. Add these folks to your gloomy gus list.

Among the low lights of the survey:

- 75% of respondents claim they've been affected by the economic downturn.
- 55% don't expect the IPO market to improve until 2010 at the earliest.
- Two thirds expect their revenues to decline due to the economic crisis.
- Just under 50% of Venture Capital firms surveyed say this is worse than the tech bubble bursting in 2000.

Why does this matter to non-tech firms:

New technologies are perhaps the greatest way to streamline your business to run lean and mean for survival in this downturn. If tech goes south, your tech toolbag will get lighter and lighter.

No surprises here, either, from that same DLA Piper survey: the brightest spots for opportunity right now is green/clean technologies.

Who has the money to actually pay for a traditional marketing campaign right now? Thought so!

Here are five ways to market and advertise for free (or mostly free) and save your powder for real life and death survival in this economy:

1. Cultivate link backs. A recent study shows only about half of all traffic is driven to sites by search engines. Where do you think the rest are coming from? Here's a handy little site to get an idea of where your corporate site stands in the crowd.

2. YouTube, baby! Survey after survey shows site visitors are gravitating towards streaming video. But, keep it short. They want it short and sweet. YouTube is a great place to park your videos and just link to them from your site (let YouTube carry the freight on all that extra bandwidth). YouTube, with 20 million unique visitors a month, is also a great place to draw in new eyeballs to view your products and services.

3. Social Networking. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo are all great ways to generate some buzz within your immediate industry circle and expand out from there.

4. Keep an eye out for new tips and tricks. I recommend John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing site.

5. The more you freshen your site content, the hire you'll rise in search engine rankings. This is why people blog, folks. A good blog heavy laden with the right keywords and frequent helpings of fresh postings is one of the best ways to skyrocket in the search engines.

Keep an eye on this scrappy little startup from North Carolina called Merchant's Mirror.

Merchant's Mirror isn't even in beta yet, but is accepting willing product testers to try out their new online accounting software designed to go toe-to-toe in a David and Goliath battle with Quickbooks.

It's nice to know innovation and bootstrap chutzpah is still around despite all the dire talk and dismay in this new shaky economy.

No word on pricing, etc. or when Merchant's Mirror will actually launch. They probably don't know themselves at this point. But, it might be interesting to sign up and play around with their product as they work out the bugs.

Jakob Nielsen is well known and lauded for his web site usability expertise. He's been called the "guru of web page usability" by the New York Times, "the next best thing to a true time machine" by USA Today, "the Web's usability czar" by WebReference.com and one of the "top ten minds in small business" by Fortune.

When Jakob speaks about web site design, people listen.

Jakob recently released an exhaustive study and survey on "About Us" pages. Just about every corporate site on the planet has one. Are they effective?

Summary: We found a 9% improvement in the usability of About Us information on websites over the past 5 years. But companies and organizations still can't explain what they do in one paragraph.

- Jakob Nielsen

That one capsule of the study is enough to get tongues wagging in web site usability circles to question whether "About Us" pages should go the way of the Doh Doh bird.

Note: B.L. Ochman's well thought out plea to just outright ban "About Us" pages.

I'll let you read both pieces from the links above; but here are a few of my personal walkaways:

1. From the survey; "About Us" pages are getting better from a pure usability standpoint; but visitor satisfaction is going down and the success rate of "task success" for actually finding out what an organization does is also going down. Nielsen attributes this strange contradiction in findings to the web user's rising expectations in what they expect to get out of a typical web site.

2. Ochman makes a great point: what goes on your "About Us" page should probably be on your front page summed up in a one or two line elevator pitch statement anyway. I agree that what your organization is or does should be easily communicated on the home page. I wouldn't give up the 'About Us" page, however. People always want more and to dig deeper. I often look for that page to get a sense of who's behind the company: who are its executives, is their a parent company; company history, etc.

3. I am frustrated with an organization's site when I can't easily find out: who runs it, who owns it, where it's based and what is the core mission.

Quick books, etc. is still going to cost you. But for the self-employed professional or very small business; Quicken Online just might be the right (and cheap choice) way to go.

It's a nice little interface that even includes bill-paying alerts. There's also an iPhone app in the works to access your account on the fly.

Sweet! Note the video demo on the Quicken Online site.

Tool Time

Check out MailChimp!

MailChimp is a web-based tool to create eNewsletters. But wait there's more.

What I like about MailChimp:

- It integrates with Google analytics.
- Before sending out your newsletter, you can see what your newsletter will look like in all the major browsers, including mobile browsers.
- It also goes through your newsletter looking for potential problems that will keep your e-mail from getting through the spam filters of your subscribers.
- There's a free version and then, like everything else, scales up for a price.
- It integrates with blogs making it easy to migrate content straight from posting to newsletter.

Check it out and have a great weekend.

Seems like only yesterday that John McCain was declaring the economy fundamentally sound and ker-woot! Well it's not so sound, now is it?

I've spent quite a bit of time and real estate on this blog in recent weeks talking about what this means to start-ups and small to midsize businesses operating on a shoestring.

Top of my list: don't count on VC money for your next round of funding.

Here's proof, I'm not all wet.

The National Venture Capitol Association has just put out its third quarter figures for VC money raised in 2008 versus the same time period a year ago. Ouch! It's down 29%.

Don't expect it to get any better, any time soon.

“The third quarter fundraising statistics reflect the already anticipated trend that is likely to be pervasive in the coming year – fewer firms raising larger funds,” - Mark Heesen, President of the NVCA.

Best advice: Slow down your burn rate or risk flaming out before you get your business off the ground. This is where exploring new technologies can be your friend. IT is likely a big line item in the company budget where serious bucks can be saved.

Think cloud computing, software as a service, farming out data storage to an off-site vendor. Virtualize those servers and consider hiring one of those companies to tease out all the fat in your telco bills.

10 million iPhone users are a fertile source of research subjects for IBM.

IBM is seeding the Apple iPhone store with free applications so they can try out
experiments on the phone that gobbled up 17% of the market after little over one year.

One app, WritingPad, is all about easier data entry (faster typing) and another is designed
to sync multiple devices.

When Google's Android phone OS becomes prevalent (as it no doubt will) IBM will be
doing some research there as well.

Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx, a company that makes project resource management software.

Hats off to Israel. As usual they are eons ahead of the rest of us when it comes to air travel security.

Ever since Richard-What's-His-Name, the so-called shoe bomber, tried to light up his sneaks mid-flight (right after 9/11), the rest of us have been sentenced to the tedious and demeaning ritual of de-nuding our feet at airport security checkpoints.

Let me count the ways that this is a major pain for road warriors.

1. It's a time suck.
2. It requires shoe selection strategy for the flight (Cowboy boots that require sitting in the floor and straining to pull them off with your face beet red - no! Slip-on loafers and flats - yes!)
3. Stinky feet. 'Nuf said.
4. One has to wonder what kind of cooties your feet can pick up off the airport floor through panty hose or thin socks (or no socks).
5. Who wants to shed shoes in front of co-workers that are also travelmates?
6. Isn't it safe to say we all work with a few people WE KNOW that we have no desire to see their feet, either.

But I digress...

Enter MagShoe!

MagShoe, sold by IDO Security, costs about $5000. Travelers simply step into it (with their shoes on) and MagShoe scans both foot and shoe for fishy stuff.

The Israelis are one of the the few countries, so far, using MagShoe. Apparantly the Budapest airport is using it, as well. $5000 sounds like chump change to me when you consider the additional hours airports are paying security staff to supervise passengers to hand over there shoes for inspection.

Besides if Budapest can afford it; please explain to me how LAX, Atlanta, JFK, etc.can't?

Can you blame them? I don't think that I'm going out on a limb by saying Windows Vista is the Edsel of operating systems. I would say it's Microsoft's biggest bust since "Microsoft Bob". Bob, however, was harmless. On the other hand, in the world of headaches; Vista is a carrier.

Microsoft has a long-standing cycle of putting out a new version of Windows every three years. Vista went public in January of 2007. So here we are now very close to completing year two and due to consumer pressure and PC Makers caught in the middle; Windows XP lives on, while Vista flounders.

Tech companies love code names for products that are in development. Vista's code name was, regretably, Longhorn. (I can only hope it had nothing to do with my beloved University of Texas).

The next version of Windows officially due out in a year and some change is code-named "Windows 7".

Guess what? Microsoft has decided NOT to call it anything that makes you think "Vista" when it hits a download button near you. They've decided to call it.. drum roll please.. Windows 7.

Windows 7 will be released in "pre-beta" to developers in the next few weeks. So, we can expect to hear a lot more about it in short time.

Arcane trivia alert: Here's another famous example of a code name that became brand name. Tab!

I'm told by my sister-in-law, who has worked in the soft drink industry for 20+ years, that TAB was an acronym cooked up by the R&D folks that developed the drink back in the 70's (the Carol Brady years). It stood for "Totally Artificial Beverage". It stuck and is somehow still around after all these years. Go figure!

Forget the markets! Forget that the world is on the verge of a global worldwide financial meltdown!

Stop!

Apple is expected to unveil its long-anticipated (weeks, months even) MacBook Pro. The technorati is all abuzz and agog with leaked pictures .

While other techies are pondering how many Firewire ports will be on the new MacBook Pro and the shift to aluminum casing; my question is cost. Some weeks ago there was speculation the new MacBooks would come with a lower price.

In this economy, this is what Apple needs to be addressing. Have you compared the price of a MacBook to just about any laptop PC lately?

Also launching today: the latest, greatest version of the Blackberry Pearl from T-Mobile..

The Blackberry Pearl 8220 is priced at $149 with a two year contract, launching just in time to beat the rush before the new Google Android comes out later this month.

Was that my outside voice, again?

File this under "you get what you pay for". You know all those nifty Web 2.0 tools you've implemented into your company as business tools? Some, you may be using for free and then others you may be using for a modest subscription fee.

Many (Most?) of those tools are offered by fledgling companies; depending on their next round of funding to survive. Others may be a little safer; having been acquired by a larger company (ex. EBay owns Skype. But there's some speculation EBay is looking to dump Skype.). Bottom line: in this economy, you can expect a lot of these little companies to do a fast fade with VC money drying up faster than quilted Bounty quicker picker-upper. If this happens to the company behind your "little app that can", where does that leave your business?

Best advice:

Chances are your employees are using Web 2.0 tools from fledgling companies that you don't even know about right now. Now is the time to find out who is using what. How critical has that tool become for them to get their work done. What tools are being used company-wide that you do know about and how secure is the provider? Now is the time to do a little home work on those companies (The good news is that Google's not going anywhere anytime soon. So, research should be a breeze.).

After taking an inventory, weigh the risks and migrate to the tools of a more stable company as common sense would dictate. Do it now. It will be a lot less painful than getting caught flat-footed.

When I say new economy, of course, I'm referring to a very fragile, precarious economy you might describe as heading over a bridge to nowhere fast.

No one is in the mood to talk about spending right now. Here's some other keywords in your blog postings, youtube videos, etc. that may up your rankings in Google; but won't endear you to new customers or help you retain the old ones:

- Upgrade
- Product launch
- New version
- Expansion
- Beta
- Pilot program
- New tool
- Venture capitol
- Second round of funding
- Cutting edge
- Implementation

You're getting the idea, I'm sure.

The thing is that the technology sector is poised to be the real heroes helping businesses stay alive these days. Here are some keywords to help make that point:

- Streamline
- Off load
- Elasticity
- Scalable
- Pay per use
- Minimal start-up costs
- Outsource
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Cloud Computing
- Business Intelligence
- Thin clients
- Energy efficient
- Reduce costs
- Lower head count
- Virtualization
- Free tools

Notice the second list is longer the first.

I rest my case.

The market research firm NPD has released its most recent U.S. sales figures for mobile devices (from June to August 2008). The iPhone hasn't made it to the top spot (and I'm not convinced it will; more on that later), but it has impressively catapulted itself to the #2 position. Would you like to guess which handset is #1?

Hint: It's not a Blackberry,

Or one of the fancy Nokia models.

It's the RAZR V3 by Motorola

The story behind the story

While everyone looks to Apple, bragging that they've already hit their goal to sell 10 million iPhones this year, it may be that AT&T is the even bigger winner in all of this. Apple remains locked in that five year exclusive deal with AT&T.

While Apple is racking up the iPhone sales, AT&T is stealing customers left and right from the other carriers. 30% of those new iPhone owners switched carriers during that same sales period. Verizon took the biggest hit with 47% of those iPhone converts jumping ship. T-Mobile was the second biggest loser, followed by Sprint. Ouch!

Why the iPhone juggernaut may not last:

- Two words: Google Android. The first handset with the new Google mobile operating system, Android, debuts later this month and will be sold by T-Mobile. Android is not locked in with an exclusive deal with T-Mobile. Look for the other carriers to quickly start offering mobile devices with Android. The iPhone may find itself suddenly very limited by being hitched to one single carrier for a remaining four years.

- Smartphones are coming down in price. NPD reports that the average price has dropped to about $174 from $236 during those same summer months a year ago.

- The economy. Money to throw down on a new iPhone and a pricey AT&T service contract is becoming more scarce. For businesses, owners would be wise to not lock themselves into any long contracts with a single carrier. Given the economy, the telcos will only become more competitive in the months, if not the next couple of years.

- Don't count out Blackberry. Blackberry is hurting right now. Just look at what parent company, RIMM, was trading at a few months ago and now. It's dropped by more than half since July (about the time the iPhone 3G launched). Another immediate problem for Blackberry; what was once a blessing is now a curse. Blackberry's bread and butter has always been the corporate crowd. You know, the people facing layoffs right now! Still, Blackberry has great products and a loyal base (a.k.a. Crackberries).

Coming full circle

Why the RAZR sits at the top of the heap and may be there for awhile:

- even though it's not a smartphone.
- even though it doesn't have a touch screen.
- even though it's not a show stopper at every networking cocktail party.

It's cheap!

As if the "R" word wasn't bad enough, the "D" word is apparantly being discussed at more than a mere whisper.

A new poll put out by CNN found that 60% of the American public thinks it's likely we're heading into a depression; not a recession, but depression. And I don't mean the kind that can be eased by Prozac.

At the same time, the Small Business Association (SBA) says small business loans have dropped 30% this fiscal year (which just ended on September 30) from a year ago.

Get Smart

Now that I've depressed the H-E-double hockey sticks out of you; here's where technology comes in to help tighten the budget for a bumpy ride. Look for technologies that shave money off the bottomline:

-Software as a Service
-Cloud Computing
-Off-site data storage
-Thin clients

By offloading as much of the IT department somewhere else; businesses can save on lower head count, less money on IT consultants, fewer servers and other racks of hardware taking up valuable office square footage. Less gear means less money. Less gear means less money on utilities to keep all those boxes cool.

Whether we're heading into a protracted recession or depression is up to the economists to call. But, it doesn't take the ghost of Milton Friedman to see our ox is in a ditch.

Three words: simplify, simplify, simplify. What you do with your IT department now could mean the difference between life or death for your company in the months to come.

For businesses with a fleet of delivery trucks or account executives who burn a lot of miles making client calls, the price of gas is obviously taking a toll.

Here's a way to at least budget for the pain at the pump.

AAA has a great little online calculator for tallying the cost in gas from here to there based on mileage, the make and model of the car and the cost per gallon by the region.

For businesses looking to switch out cars and trucks that get lower gas mileage, this little calculator is a good reality check in calculating savings. For example, I compared my mini-van to a Camry Hybrid driving round trip from Connecticut to Florida (Hi Mom!). The savings added up to more than a hundred dollars round trip. Not bad!

Note: there is also a service for cell phone users to search for the lowest gas prices in their zip code from their mobile device. Tip: make sure your drivers know about it. Companies with a dispatcher can look up the price for drivers and tell them where to divert to for a fill-up.

Weird Science

I'm all for thinking out the box. It's why I enjoy writing for this site; a perfect mashup of tech innovation and entrepreneural spirit. But every once in awhile I hear of someone's pipe dream and wonder just how much of the pipe they've been smoking.

CNN is reporting that a conference of scientists from allover the world will be held in Japan next month to seriously (keyword: seriously) discuss the possiblity of building an elevator to outer space. Yes, you read correctly; an elevator.

That's a lot of titanium (Callaway will have to find something else for manufacturing all those Big Bertha clubs).

Questions that come to mind:

1, What happens when the elevator gets stuck on the 76,000th floor?
2. Will this change elevator music as a genre? (Rocket Man, Space Oddity, Love in an Elevator, etc.)
3. Why not an escalator?
4. Is there a food court off the top floor?
5. Is it me or would this mean Earth would look like a ball of yarn with a knitting needle sticking out of it from the other planets? Why don't we just put a goofy sweater on mother earth while we're at it. Isn't global warming bad enough? Must we add insult to injury.
6. If we install an elevator to the moon and one from the moon to Mars, etc.; how long before we've built the universe's largest high school chemistry class molecular model of salt?

But I digress...

Wakcopa is yet another Web 2.0 tool; one among gazillions. But, this one is worth a look.

Wakcopa is a mashup/social network that combines a time management tool to monitor what apps you are using the most on your PC (And I do mean PC, it's for Windows only) and a way to see what other apps subscribers are using and recommending. It's a way to find new apps and add-ons through word of mouth.

I don't really care about the social network part of the site.

Must everything be a social network now?

However, I do like the time tracker that tells me how much time I'm spending using each app on my computer. Let's face it; much of our day is spent tippy-tapping on a keyboard or thumbing away on a little bitty keypad. This is a way to get a reality check on just how much time you're spending on Facebook, dinking with fonts and backgrounds on a PowerPoint file, etc.

There's something about Wakcopa that I like even better. I don't know about you; but my computer is always running much slower than it seems like it should. The culprit(s) slowing things down can usually be found in that little strip of icons in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.

Wakcopa also tracks what apps are running in the background and for how long. It's a great way to figure out what needs to be turned off and what shouldn't be there in the first place.

Check it out!

If you have more than 1000 e-mails currently sitting in your inbox, then this posting is for you. Believe me, I've been there.

Here are some of the biggest reasons it happens:

1. I don't have time to read this now. I better save it to read later, just in case. (You probably won't. Ever.)

5. I may need to document this conversation some day. CYA! (question: what are the chances? Solution: folder)

The market went up from 1920-1929, rambled until 1941, up until 1965 and sideways until 1982.

Then it went up for 18 years until 2000. We've been in another sideways motion since 2000 and I've felt this will continue until at least 2010 or even 2020. Contrarian strategies work best when the market is flopping along sideways for decades. CANSLIM works great in bull markets.

What causes these 20 year trends. Human nature. When the market roars for 20 years, inefficiencies are created. People feel they can't lose and bid prices up crazily, as in the dot-bomb bubble. As the NASDAQ retreated from it's March 2000 high of 5000, money flowed into real-estate, creating a bubble there, which ultimately contributed to our current financial issues.

Knocking out the bubbles is like playing wack-a-mole. Greenspan killed inflation of the dollar, so we got dotbomb asset inflation instead. Then it moved to real estate. Each one gets bigger.
This one is $700 billion, the next is $7 trillion, and after that the whole world goes bankrupt.

That's if you try to fix it fast. Let it work itself out and you have what we've had for the last 8 years for another 12. That's my best guess as to what will probably occur here.

Take another look at that graph. Those 20 year cycles are hard to argue with. They seem to
just be a fact of financial life.

Curt is an author and CEO in Texas

IF YOU drop your laptop computer, a chip built into it will sense the acceleration and protect the delicate moving parts of its hard disk before it hits the ground. A group of researchers led by Jesse Lawrence of Stanford University are putting the same accelerometer chip to an intriguing new use: detecting earthquakes. They plan to create a network of volunteer laptops that can map out future quakes in far greater detail than traditional seismometers manage.

So soon we will have dramatically more interesting data about earthquakes, and you can get involved too at this Stanford website.

Curt Finch runs a project management software company in Austin, Texas.

While Washington fiddles while Wall Street burns, many start-ups and smaller businesses are bracing themselves to see how this is going to play out in the weeks, months and even years to come.

At this site, we focus on technology solutions for small to midsize businesses, entrepreneurs and start-ups.

We're going to need them. I forsee many new problems begging for answers.

Some thoughts on recent events and you, dear reader:

- There's goes your next round of funding. Time to start thinking about "Plan B". For starters, slow down the burn rate. Figure out how to do more with less capitol up front, like pay-as-you go cloud computing and off-site data storage.

- If you're a fledgling eTailer... I won't even finish that sentence.

- I've recently been turned onto USC Professor Jon Taplin's blog. He has some interesting rants about the financial crisis making the case that a recovery will require more than a government bailout. He contends IT and energy technology are our best hope of restoring and overhauling this badly bruised, if not broken economy. IT and ET; that means you folks! Why? How?

"Just recapitalizing the banks is not going to revive the economy, The economy is going to have to be spurred to be a much more production-oriented economy, rather than a consumer-oriented economy. Seventy two percent of our economy is based on people going to the mall. That's not a competitive situation when you have a Chinese economy in which 65% of the economy is based on producing real stuff." - Professor Jon Taplin

That real stuff would be IT and ET products and services.

I'll leave it here for for now.

p.s. Today's headline is, of course, an homage to Bette Davis from the movie, "All About Eve".