overstand

many of you know that i spend a good part of my "free time" working on sen. obama's presidential campaign. my efforts are focused with Generation Obama, the campaign's young professionals arm. below is a really cool widget that one member (sue young) put together - check it out:

in the world of search technology, the topic of google's dominance - and the future of that dominance - is often a topic of heated discussions. those arguments in defense of the top dog, can usually be dropped into one of three buckets:

• "they're good enough" - they're not perfect, but people usually find everything they need
  
• "they're too big" - google is has too much market share, and it's brand is too entrenched to be overcome
  
• "they've already thought of it" - google has thousands of employees, working on a number of technologies. there's nothing in search that they don't have hidden in their "labs"

i've heard these arguments from a number of folks, including current employees, former employees, competitior employees, VCs, lay people, journalists and many more.

now there's nothing wrong with these arguments. there's a degree of validity to all of them.

when you are king, there's always someone eyeing the thrown. in markets where barriers to entry are low enough, technology impacts ability and a user experience comes into play, resting on your laurels is ill advised. the thrown is never safe. if you don't believe me, just ask: GM (or toyota), yahoo (or google), dell (or HP), motorola (or nokia) or smart phone manufacturers (or apple).

that said, i invite you first to read saul hansell's article titled google and the real search for meaning on the web. you won't find any mind blowing revelations when reading his defense of Google, but he makes sensible assertions.

afterwards, read riza berkan's (CEO of hakia) post on the company's blog titled if google had semantic technology. he provides some "see for yourself" examples which make this a fun post to read.

after reading both sides, what do you think?...

- as always, i like to disclose when i'm writing about any company in which I'm involved or invested. hakia is a portfolio company of my employer, and i sit on the board of directors. but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm biased.

i know my posts have been far and few between lately. to be honest, they will continue to be sporadic for the time being. i hope to move to a new URL, and increase consistency during the fall. thanks for continuing to read...

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that aside, i recommend a quick read of sen. obama's op-ed in today's nytimes. the senator highlights one of the most divisive issues between the two candidates: the iraq war.

there are consistent accusations that sen. obama's plan is hasty and entails leaving "before the job is done". the senator's plan does not appear to reveal any signs of rash decision making or suggestions of a hasty exit:

We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

the oft made argument that exiting = surrender is addressed by obama as well:

They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government. But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States.

i'd be interested to know whether any of you believe there are major holes in sen. obama's approach. i'm sure sen mccain will argue as such, and i await to see how directly he refutes this op-ed piece.

yesterday (june 4th), fed chairman ben bernanke finally made a pitch for a stronger dollar. while we have been enjoying a bull market for a number of years, the dollar has lost considerable value since 2002 - nearly 40% - as illustrated by the us dollar index chart below:

Dollar

many folks have touted that a weak dollar doesn't mean a weak market (see the bull market run from end of '02 until now) and that a weak dollar means our exports are more affordable to the rest of the world. both these points are true, but both are short sighted. there are number of negative impacts of a weak dollar.

roger ehrenberg does a great job in summarizing (3 bullets below) why a weak dollar is bad on his blog information arbitrage:

• The U.S. is a debtor nation. We rely on foreign governments to finance our deficits. If the value of those dollar-denominated holdings keep falling, at some point they will either stop buying or demand an increasingly high interest rate to offset currency losses;

• The U.S. financial system is in a badly weakened state. We need both onshore and offshore sources of capital to bolster bank balance sheets burdened with busted ABS and retained LBO loans. If foreign investors lack confidence in the dollar, this erects an extremely high barrier for investment.

• The U.S. imports a lot of stuff. Paying for this stuff with depreciated dollars means only one thing - rising prices. A weak dollar is fundamentally inflationary and something that could bring us back to a time we'd all rather forget - the 1970s.

can you remember the last time you heard about a country suffering economically because of a strong currency?. me neither.

carpe diem tipped me off to a great map posted on strange maps. africa, in my opinon, remains the last true untamed frontier - it covers an enormous area, with tremendous natural resources and relatively untouched land, and many areas teeming with positive growth. conversely, it is also a continent rife with poverty, political corruption, war and genocide. nonetheless, the opportunity for progress is immeasurable.

Africa

After not having posted for 7 days, I would like to divert from my typical modus operandi to write about something a little more personal and immeasurably more important. A dear friend of mine, Michelle Maykin, has been valiantly fighting leukemia for over a year. There have been victories and setbacks both - the current battle she is facing is finding a bone marrow match for a transplant in the next 5 weeks. It's a battle I know I can help help her fight, and I ask you all to help join this battle also. Your help can take as little as 5 minutes of your time. Please read on.

Background.
Michelle has been battling Leukemia since early 2007. After her 5th round of chemotherapy, her cancer finally "went away." For the past several months she was finally able to return to normal life. However, just last she learned she had relapsed with her blood levels worse off than before.

What this means: Michelle needs to find a bone marrow match for a transplant within 5 weeks.

Finding a Match.
Michelle is of Vietnamese / Chinese decent, and the probability is higher that her match will come from a person of one or both of these ethnic backgrounds. However, a match could be from any ethnic descent (even non-Asian or Caucasian). Consequently, "Project Michelle" volunteers are targeting ALL ASIANS to increase the odds of finding a match. By getting more people to register to be potential bone marrow donors, we are increasing the chance of saving Michelle and any one of the 6,000 people in the US currently searching for a donor.

How You Can Help.

1. 5 minutes: Direct your friends / family to this post to get them involved
   
2. 30 minutes: Register, it's simple: 1) fill out a few forms and 2) run a cotton swab on the inside of your cheek
• The Ideal Way: Go to a local drive. This ensures your cotton swab samples are processed fastest. Click here for a calendar of drives
• At Home: If you can't make it to a drive, order a home kit here (free for ethnic minorities). Make sure to note that it's for Michelle to expedite the process!
3. 1+ Hours: Volunteer at a drive and help people register - email savemichelle@gmail.com
4. 3-4 Hours: Help set up a drive in your community (church, temple, school, workplace, etc) - email savemichelle@gmail.com

the impact cyclone nargis on burma's people as been tragic and it's impact on the geographic landscape has been tremendous.

slight aside: burma is an east asian country, bordered by china, laos, thailand, bangladesh and india. the country is ruled a military junta since 1988. this junta, named the country the Union of Myanamar, the latter of which is often used in reference to the country. recent attention on burma followed protests of the military rule by buddhist monks (begging in August '07), and the subsequent crackdown on these protesters by the ruling junta.

the people (source):

Burma's state media said Cyclone Nargis on Saturday killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing, but a top US diplomat said on Wednesday that more than 100,000 may have perished.

the geography - before and after photos below. note how much of country is now under water:

it's no secret that the market has loved the fed's bailout of bear stearns as it supposedly removed the systematic risk of a large u.s.-based financial institution falling victim to it's own subprime lending blunders. you don't have to look farther than the market's performance since the announcement of the bear stearns transaction to see this:

many of you will agree with me that patchwork bailouts (such as the one i mentioned above) do not help to solve two major, interdependent issues in our financial system: 1) flaws in risk management and 2) operation under the assumption of a "fed put" - a belief that the federal reserve will make policy adjustments to bailout the stock market and financial institutions from a potential crisis, even if that crisis is of there own making (which leads to a question of moral hazard).

i wanted to discuss the problems with the fed's numerous rate cuts since september of last year, and how these reactive measures will ultimately prove to be in vain. instead, i came across this intelligent cartoon in this week's economist that does it for me:

we have yet to feel the full weight of a pull back in consumer spending. while the fed exhausts what little ammo to delay this phenomenon, it is an inevitability. all we can do is wait.

twitter + twittergram + flickr + twittersync = today's closest semblance to true mobile, social networking. with this combination:

• i have kept friends updated on my canvassing trip to pennsylvania with notes and pictures real-time from my iphone
• while in pennsylvania, i knew that my buddy was at sharpkuts in SF, considering getting something shaved in his head
• i have almost on two occasions, if not for scheduled meetings, met someone for lunch at shake shack who i've only communicated with via twitter / email a couple of times
• while on my way to a soccer game in brooklyn, i saw a picture of what my friend was having for lunch in the east village

real time updates, enriched with pictures from mobile devices, distributed to a network of friends -- irrespective of your locations -- truly helps to bring others into your life in a more efficient and effective way than other platforms (email, SMS, web based social networking sites, etc.).

if you want to be able to do this, read my instructional post here.

i'm sure some of you might disagree - let me know if i've overlooked another service (or package of services).

note of clarification: mobile social networking entails, to me, entails not only being able to use a mobile device, but to be able to effectively be connected with the lives of others in my social network while on the go.

i've become a big fan of twitter as of late, primarily after i setup functionality that lets me take a pic from my phone, attach a message to it, and have the message (with a link to the picture) twittered to all my friends. here's a recent example of a twitter message with a picture link.

for the unanointed,  twitter is a micro-blogging service which allows you to write 140 character messages (aks "tweets"), which are distributed to your friends. wikipedia has a better explanation.

there's a few steps to setting this up, but it's very simple to use once you are done. i've expanded on fred wilson's post on this topic (which is where I picked up on this).

UPDATE: there are a few other services which i've found to be easy to use to post pictures directly to twitter: twitpic and natuba (for iphone only). i am sticking with the process layed out below, however, as i still like the idea of sending one message to a single email address, and having it posted to twitter and flickr both. here's a way to use twitpic and flickr but requires sending messages to two email addresses.

1) setup twitter account here.  once you're setup, keep in mind that twitter defaults to showing you updates through the web interface. when i'm at work, i like to receive twitters via IM and on my phone when i'm not at work. this can be setup here. once you've done that, you must select which connections you want to show up on the "devices (IM and / or phone) by activating them here.

2) setup flickr account here.  flickr is a photo sharing site which will serve as repository for the pictures in your tweets. once you've got your flickr account, setup up the functionality for your flickr account to receive pictures (via email or MMS) here. take the email address, and put it into your phone's address book or contact list so its easily accessible under the name "flickr". under the "Add these tags each time" slot, add a tag which will indicate the source of your pictures (i use "iphone").

3) setup twittergram here.  twittergram is the middle man. it picks up the message/picture sent to flickr, and transports it to twitter. you'll enter your twitter login / password, flickr username and the "tag" for your pictures you entered in step 2 (in my case, "iphone"). you must add this tag exactly the same as in step 2.

4) send message's with picture link.  take a picture on your phone, enter up to 140 characters for a title, and send it to your flickr email address. twittergram will pick up the message and it'll appear on twitter within 15 minutes.

5) OPTIONAL. setup twittersync here.  twittersync automatically syncs your facebook status with your latest tweet. it makes my facebook more current. unfortunately, it probably also makes people wonder why i'm updating my facebook status all the time.