Cool App for Powerpoint

This is a way too cool app add-in for Powerpoint.
http://www.indezine.com/addin/thermometer/index.html

Thermometer for PowerPoint is a free add-in that creates a thermometer style bar in the bottom area of the slide that shows how much of a presentation has progressed and how much more is remaining.

It's a very simple add-in and using it is so easy: one click on an icon and you can add or update your thermometer; another click and the thermometer is gone!

It automatically selects the colour based on the slide decks colour pallete.

It wont make your ppt slide deck go faster if it's boring but at least your audience will know how much longer they need to endure. Seriously though, you need to install this today, there is no reason why this shouldn't be added to every deck you show.

Great work Geetesh.

Cheers,
Dean

Spam - What is it good for??

"Where are you from, son....?"

"why does it matter? I'm a law abiding tax paying resident of the USA"


"Where are you from, son? Us Texans like to know who we are dealing with...?"

"i'm a member of the Coalition-oil guzzling- Freedom fighters siiirr"


Today's mood song of the day goes out to you :)

"Spam - what is it good for.... huaw"


Cheers,
Dean

Mexuar

The Mexuar Corraleta technology was launched at Astricon in London last Monday. I’m working with Mexuar to commercialise this technology and we are looking for opportunities now.

There is a brochure and demo on the website below. If you have an opportunity or you think you know someone who might have an opportunity please forward this url on and ask them to get in touch with me.


Cheers,
Dean


www.cognation.net/mexuar

Cognation has been representing Mexuar here in the USA and are looking to commercialize this technology with partners from various industries and applications.

A number of companies have been looking to introduce some form of “click to call” technology however this server side technology leapfrogs all other technologies including the recently introduced Google click to call beta trials which uses a flawed method of two way calls originating from a central server that connects both legs.

The Mexuar technology allows a user to initiate a call simply by clicking on a java applet that may take the form of a picture, text, or other graphical representation. The browser then initiates a connection to the Mexuar server which then connects into the pstn network.

















The Mexuar technology is licensed on a per server basis with the volume of simultaneous calls dependant on hardware configuration.

Example applications for the deployment of this technology are;

Click to call banner advertisements
Click to call website advertisements
Click to call website connectivity for contact us pages
Click to call for specific product support (eg replacement to java text2chat product support).

I look forward to demonstrating this technology at your earliest possible convenience and look forward to discussing your specific commercial opportunities

Regards,

Dean Collins
Cognation Pty Ltd

The Fish Rots From The Head

One of the pieces of advice that I've made in a number of consulting roles is the Danish proverb "The Fish Rots From The Head".

It's one of the truisms that I was told a long time ago by someone far wiser than myself and I'm continually still surprised to see it rings true each and every time.

Al Dunlap was a great example of how a single CEO can walk into a business and instantly change the dynamics (for good or for bad is the subject of another post).

Ok so lets just stick with Jack Welch for this post, every time GE bought a new company the acquired entity would change each and every time. It was the same people still checking into the same desks, for the very same jobs as last week, but something ethereal was always different.

A well known VC once told me that the reason the true "change merchants" (IPO flippers depending on where you sit) were so good at their jobs (and so dammed bankable) was that they had done the same process over and over again, and once you have done it 4 or 5 times it's almost irrelevant what the product is, they walk in, they evaluate, they process, the change occurs, the momentum builds, they partner, they seal the deal and then they do it all over again.

Which brings me to today's post.

Have you ever walked into a company and just felt...something is wrong, there's nothing obvious in the staff or the processes, little things you would change here or there but just minor issues.

Sit and look at the "Head" - the answers you need will always be there.

How the person handles day to day events will tell you how successful this company will be. You want to see the perfect example (apologies to the non-aussies reading this blog).

Eddie Mcguire. WTF happened!!!!

Here is a guy who has practically crashed sideways one of the most level, steady earning media properties in Australia.

Apart from a few rash decisions he hasn't made any decisions that were terrible but the day to day running (and quickly escaping rumors) are just getting insane.

KP must be spinning in his very large grave. He sat at the number one desk for years and apart from a few choice phone calls to dress down someone who caught his ire he left the very smart and very capable people to do their thing.

There is no way he would have put up with this http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/mcguire , it's just not his style.

His omnipresence reached far and wide, it was smooth sailing all the way because that's the way he liked it, and being the head that's the way it was.

Now admittedly KP's control was far and above most other heads (but he had more divisions/businesses to manage than most heads), and maybe from such a strong controlling force it's just a natural 'rebound' for things to go awry before it will settle back into equilibrium but the markets have a short attention span I think it's the beginning of the end.

So what have we learnt here apart from it's now possible to do some neat IPTV projects in Australia that would have been quashed a few years ago with a quiet word or two that you never saw coming.

1/ Want to know about a company to invest in/work for - watch the head.
2/ All things come to an end - (good, smell the roses while you can - bad, plan for the worst).
3/ Think you've got what it takes? - then lead from example because you are always someones head.

Cheers,
Dean

TagJag.com

Chris Pirillo just announced this new site www.tagjag.com

Basically a new search engine for automated searching of automated of rss feeds http://tagjag.com/d/asterisk

Could be very much the next big thing and this list is the easiest way for me to get it out there.

We're a free "metasearch" service! Instead of having to browse to hundreds of different search engines, we enable you to retrieve results from all of them through a single search. There are several benefits to using tagjag alongside some of your favorite search providers:

When you're on the go and in need of search results, you need to maximize time and minimize bandwidth. It typically takes a minimum two page loads before you can get to your results on a mobile device. tagjag enables you to use your query as the subdomain (tagjag.com/p/term), and specify the search category with a single letter (tagjag/p).


Cheers,
Dean

New York State Flooding and Global Warming

bloomberg.com
bizjournals.com
usatoday.com

With all the flooding that has been happening in upstate NY this week I wonder if Americans are starting to think there might be something to this global warming 'thing'.

I mean we all know half of Florida and Texas became water front property last summer but no one of any real consequence lives down there but now we are talking about 2 of the worst floods in New York states history in the last 50 years.

I'm still stunned that SUV's seem to be selling in record numbers even though oil is now at $70 a barrell but to be honest nothing surprises me about Americas narrow focus anymore (I'll save the rest for my next post on why USA will be the number 2 super power within the next 10 years).

As a side matter we went and saw Al Gores movie last week, not bad but I couldn't help but thinking the entire time....where was this enviromentally friendly platform the entire time you were in office, it's easy to scream from the bleachers now he is out of politics (though I'm happy to admit maybe this was his stance all the way through 8 years-but anyways...lets not ruin a good story).

Check it out as you might learn something (also a good link for a technical discussion on ice cores below :) - all the stuff you never thought you'd want to know.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0497116
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie

Cheers,
Dean

Cisco invests in Akimbo

tvweek
itworld
lightreading

hmmm I'm not sure if I'm happy or pissed about this development but Akimbo has just received $15.5 million from Cisco.

I'm wondering if Akimbo will get back into the hardware market after dropping out to become just another channel on the Microsoft Media Center Platform or if they will become just another line of technology built into the Scientific Atlanta boxes.

Either way, congratulations and you have my phone number for when you are ready to invite me back for export discussions.


Cheers,
Dean

Murder in NY

This post started by Jodie asking.... hmm you don't see as many murders in NY reported in the press, well not as much as you would think when we moved from Australia to NY (we only see about 1 murder a week on the news).

hmmm .... a bit of googling lead me to this page (do you drop the 'e' when referring to the verb of using google?)

http://www.nytimes.com/HOMICIDE

it's a link to a google map mashup between various crime databases (have I told you recently how much I love mashups).

The basics of the information is that there are approx 500 murders each year in the 5 Manhattan boroughs for the last 3 years and they are fairly roughly spread out at 100 per borough (so any thoughts of the Bronx being a pit of murder is just plain wrong) however what is really interesting is the 'collectivity' around certain blocks, what also surprised (well maybe not) was the lack oh physical murders (strangulation or beatings) vs shooting.

On average there are only 10 strangulations in NY each year, for 20 million people that seems kind of low.

BTW in case you are interested, Washington DC has the highest murder rate per capita and I found that Honolulu is at 32nd with only 18 last year (for 900,000 people).

Looks like those Hawaiins know how to have a good time hanging out enjoying life.


Dean

Ethanol - the next great savior?

There has been a lot of hype here in the USA about Ethanol being the great saviour (one thing I have really noticed in the USA is how dominant the farming lobby is...you think Australian farmers get some decent political deals, in the USA they have their foot in a truly organised and militant way of the neck of the politicians).

The USA's refusal to conform to the WTO over farming subsidies (or outright cheat) is an example of basically wanting their cake and eating it too.

Ethanol production in the USA (where the subsidies almost totally cover the cost of production) is just another way of getting around growing subsidies, I'm sure at the next round of talks they'll argue for something else but in the mean time this article is a great overview of where we are at.

http://money.cnn.com/ethanol

Ethanol war brewing
Grain alcohol is seen as the new gasoline. But which recipe is the one for investors to bet on?
By Chris Taylor, Business 2.0 Magazine senior editor

SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - Everywhere you look these days, tech and business world luminaries - like Richard Branson, Paul Allen, Steve Case, Vinod Khosla, John Doerr, and Bill Gates - are laying down big bets on ethanol, a substitute for gasoline that's already finding its way into pumps.

The price of the stuff has shot up 65 percent since May from $2.65 a gallon to $4.50, largely thanks to the oil companies who have started to put small quantities of it in our gas as a clean-air additive (most cars can handle a blend of up to 10 percent ethanol in their tanks).

That means the fuel for our cars is now about 60 cents a gallon more expensive than it would be if it were just gas, according to analysts at JPMorgan. As drivers, ethanol is lightening our wallets; as investors, though, it could well fatten them.

But before you jump on the ethanol bandwagon, consider this: There is an ethanol format war looming that will make the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD tussle look like a schoolyard spat. If you're making an investment for the long term, you have to ask yourself whether the future's dominant fuel is going to come from corn, sugar, rape seed, or switchgrass - or if it's going to be synthesized from scratch.

The winner is going to be whoever can make ethanol in mass quantities for as little money per gallon as possible - a tall order, no matter how you go about it.

Prices as high as an elephant's eye
First of all, consider corn - which, thanks to the farm lobby and the importance of Iowa in presidential politics, is the source of nearly all the ethanol in the US. It has the most government subsidies, and is the form of the fuel that Richard Branson says he will invest in, and market, to the tune of $400 million. Last month, Kleiner Perkins – the VC firm where Doerr and Khosla are partners, and which brought us Amazon.com (Charts) and Google (Charts) - invested in Altra, a Los Angeles-based corn ethanol company.

Corn has the advantage of being planted in the ground now. But it has one vast economical disadvantage: Corn, according to a much-cited Cornell study, takes more energy to grow, harvest, transport and refine than you get out of it at the pump. The Department of Energy is more generous, putting the ratio of energy in to energy out at 1 to 1.4. Whatever the exact numbers, the costs grow considerably for those of us living in coastal states, so far away from the amber waves of grain in the heartland.

Sweet alternatives
There is already a sweeter alternative. "Ethanol from sugar cane is far more efficient," says Steven Schneider, CEO of San Rafael, Calif.-based Zap, an alternative transportation outfit. That's why ethanol-fueled cars are all the rage in Brazil, where 70 percent of new cars are equipped to run on the stuff. Zap has started importing a particularly popular Brazilian model of "tribrid," a gas-electric hybrid car that can also run on ethanol.

In theory, sugar cane is the cheapest substance you can make ethanol out of - unless you live in the U.S., that is, where import tariffs make it prohibitively costly. (Blame the corn lobby, which doesn't want a competitor to high-fructose corn syrup, and domestic sugar interests.)

So where is the better corn alternative? Step forward, cellulosic ethanol. This is the kind of ethanol that's produced from any part of a plant that you don't eat - straw, stalks, corn husks. All of that waste is rich in cellulose, which, in theory, can be converted into sugar, and then ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol has more than its fair share of eager investors. Last month Goldman Sachs (Charts) put $27 million into a Canadian company called Iogen, which wants to produce ethanol from switchgrass, a perennial grass that's cheap to grow. Iogen is building the world's first cellulose-to-ethanol factory.

Microsoft (Charts) co-founder Paul Allen is investing in a Seattle firm that wants to use canola oil, which comes from rapeseed, to create ethanol. And Vinod Khosla, the Kleiner Perkins partner and Sun Microsystems (Charts) co-founder, has investments in two cellulosic ethanol companies.

The advantage of cellulosic ethanol is its potential efficiency. It can use wild-growing plants that we wouldn't have to cultivate - and it promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 percent.

The problem: Making it involves a complicated process that breaks down plant material into sugars using enzymes that aren't yet commercially available. The most promising methods, like one at the University of California at Berkeley to use an enzyme derived from a cotton-eating fungus, are still at the laboratory stage, and the first commercial enzymes aren't expected until 2009 at the earliest, according to some experts.

Brewing ethanol from scratch
So keep your eye on Craig Venter, the scientist who helped map the human genome. His latest venture, Synthetic Genomics, is using $31 million in venture-capital funding to make genetically modified plants and plant-eating enzymes. Such an ambitious, DNA-level project will take a lot longer than three years.

And by then, Bill Gates' bet may prove to be the smartest of all. Microsoft's chairman, who will step down from his day-to-day role at the company in a couple of years, has bought 25 percent of Pacific Ethanol, a Fresno, Calif. company that is planning to build dozens of ethanol refineries in the U.S.

Those refineries will be easy to adapt to whichever ethanol production method ultimately wins out. That could put Gates in a familiar spot – as the gatekeeper to a must-have product.

And he's a pro at winning format wars.


I'm also not sure where this leaves us with greehouse gases, and production costs per kilojoule against the environment but it is what it is, and until we decide to invade Canada for their black oil sand (hmm I wonder if there are terrorists in Canada) if you are not familiar with black oil sands read this article http://www.counterpunch.org/oil it's been 'discovered' that Canada now has more oil than all of Saudi Aribia, unfortunately the process of recovery is only profitable if oil costs are above $50 a barrel but I love how this sizable reserve has only become widely known since the oil in the middle east has peaked.

Either way, it's obvious that the USA will bend the rules to change their lifestyle, not change their lifestyle to meet both the financial and physical environment we live in.


Cheers,
Dean

P.S. when I was involved with my first dotcom in 99 someone who had been through a boom/bust cycle before gave me the words of wisdom "when the cab drivers start talking stocks it's time to get out".

All I can say about ethanol is ... when every man and his dog is googling ethanol, it's overpriced.

I've had 40 hits to this blog in the last 24 hours that have come from people googling the term "ethanol" be warned this market space is overpriced with the suburban mum's and dads - you read it here first.

Red Bull X-Alps Challenge

www.redbullxalps.com

Red Bull X-Alps is a competition where the task is to cross the Alps as fast as possible by flying with a paraglider and then hiking up the next mountain range to get enough height to take off all over again, starting in the East (Dachstein Mountain Range, Austria) and finishing in the West (Monaco).

They can have only 1 support member who carries food supplies, navigation advice etc but generally the athlete is either flying or hiking 20 hours out of every 24 trying to fly as far as possible in the turbulent air high over the Alps, land safely, walk most of the night with a 20 kg pack containing their flying gear, sleep as little as possible, hike 1500M up a peak (always with the glider!) before breakfast, take-off... and repeat until reaching the beaches of Monaco, 800 km to the west!

Video
www.redbullxalps.com/xalps05/videos05/mpgs05/01_08_05.mpg

way cool, almost makes me want to go for a jog tomorrow morning.

Cheers,
Dean