Venture Chronicles

morning - 10/31/03

A little housekeeping, I am on vacation next week so the posting schedule will be a little erratic. I hope to have some guest bloggers to run while I am gone.

Here's a short post, check back later this afternoon for more stuff.

Main Dish:

- Sun is (desperately?) pushing forward with a utility pricing scheme. This stuff has been talked to death, I'm not going to used the tired "like a utility company" metaphor. It strikes me that technology companies should be careful about attempting to emulate a utility company pricing model, after all those are regulated industries where rates are reviewed and approved by public serving agencies.
http://news.com.com/2100-7784_3-5099815.html

- the wireless industry spent a total of $3.4 BILLION on advertising last year... a lot of people are, rightfully, suggesting that their customers would be a lot better off if they had spent that money on improving service.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44465-2003Oct30.html

- anyone know what the hell happened to BoingBoing?
http://boingboing.net/

- Intel is coming out with some interesting sensor grid technology to be used in, at least initially, in manufacturing plants.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1366756,00.asp

- M$oft isn't the only one with bug and security problems lately. First, it is reported in a variety of sources that Mac OS X has some security vulnerabilities that are only resolved by upgrading to Panther. Today, Wired is reporting a serious bug in Panther that wipes out external drives.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61031,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

- Lessig has a good article on blogs and politics
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/view.html?pg=5?tw=wn_tophead_4

- I looked at a really interesting deal a couple of months ago, they were building smart locks for shipping containers that used satellite, GPS, and RFID for electronic manifests, monitoring, and location tracking. It seems that this stuff is catching on in the ports.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/7150926.htm

- Pulver writes about too much asynchronous communications in our lives
http://192.246.69.231/jeff/personal/archives/000206.html

hoaxes

the hotel card thing I posted earlier is a urban legend, thanks to DG for getting me squared away!
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/bl_hotel_keycards2.htm

On a more serious note, there is a scam going around eBay that is disturbing. It's a variant of identity theft where a scammer sends a legitimate eBay user an email that appears to be from eBay security asking them to verify their username and password. When they reply with their password, the scammer changes the password, effectively locking out the real user. Then the scammer posts stuff for auction, collects money from unsuspecting buyers, who presume the seller is "stellar" because of positive feedback ratings. Of course, nothing is shipped and the money, and scam artist, is long gone.

Never respond to an email from anyone asking you for a password. Legitimate web sites will never ask you for a password, or social security number, or credit card number via email. If anyone calls you asking for information, call them back at the customer service number on your credit card, or get it off the business' website.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/index_popup.html?confidence=spoof-email.html

Morning - 11/30/03

New Fundings:

- Camwood Limited, a UK-based application packaging company, has today confirmed that it has secured a significant investment from VCF Partners, no details were disclosed.

Liquidity:

- SafeNet (Nasdaq: SFNT), a provider of security services for Internet and wide area networks, signed an agreement to merge with Rainbow Technologies (Nasdaq: RNBO), which offers information security systems used to protect data and applications. SafeNet will issue 0.374 shares of stock for each of Rainbow's common shares, for a total value of $457 million.

- Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS), an information technology provider, announced plans to acquire the security and identity management services business of ePresence (Nasdaq: EPRE), which will then liquidate its remaining business. Unisys is paying $11.5 million in cash. ePresence offers security and identity management services used to help companies control access to their networks and secure their connections to the Internet.

- Corio (Nasdaq: CRIO), an application service provider for business users, announced the acquisition of Nexus Technology, which offers hosted SAP applications. The transaction is valued at $10.0 million, $1.9 million of which is in cash and the rest in Corio common stock. Nexus Technology, which has operations in Banagalore, India, provides SAP applications to medium-sized companies.

Main Dish:

- M$oft has been pretty aggressive globally in the fight against software piracy. The Law of Unintended Consequences kicked in with regard to an agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam to crack down on software piracy in that country, an agreement that M$oft lobbyists had a lot to do with. It seems that Vietnam is indeed intent on reducing software piracy in their country, they are doing so by eliminating M$oft products as much as possible by going with Open Source solutions. Brilliant.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7139304.htm

- RJ Reynolds is now Altria, Worldcom is just MCI, and most recently, Gator is now Claria. In an attempt to clean up it's image, the spyware company (oops, my bad, hope I don't get sued) is hoping to get beyond the controversy they have been involved with on a number of ad-related topics.
http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5099212.html?tag=nefd_top

- an Israeli company has made an optical microprocessor commercially available for the first time. The processor combines optical and electronic circuits, and isn't a general purpose processor, but it is amazingly fast at about 8,000 billion operations (fpu?) per second.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994331

- from a memo distributed within a large Valley company about hotel room keys:

Although room keys differ from hotel to hotel, a key obtained from the "Double Tree" chain that was being used for a regional Identity Theft Presentation was found to contain the following the information:

a.. Customers (your) name
b.. Customers (your) partial home address
c.. Hotel room number
d.. Check in date and check out date
e.. Customers (your) credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information isthere for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner.

The bottom line is, keep the cards or destroy them! NEVER leave them behind and NEVER turn them in to the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card. (Information courtesy of: Sergeant K. Jorge, Detective Sergeant, Pasadena Police Department)

- Israel Venture Capital Association drafts a Code of Ethics for VC's.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=736546&fid=942

- the NYTimes did a piece on what inventions 11 prominent people would want to see invented. Donald Trump's is simple brilliance: "I would like a computer chip that I could attach to the brains of all my contractors so that they would know exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it, and at what price I wanted it. This would save me a lot of time and a lot of yelling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/technology/circuits/30idea.html?ex=1068094800&en=cebfaf99a95b22f1&ei=5062&partner=TECHDIRT

- a great essay titled "Deconstructing Knowledge: Content Management Replaces Social Engineering"
http://www.mindjack.com/feature/km.html

- another paper on knowledge management, this one looks at social networking software, blogs, and other tools in a "future of KM" discussion
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2003/10/29.html#a496

- best practices for benchmarking
http://www.hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=3746&t=operations

- Nortel is looking at mesh networking technology to provide sophisticated in-building Wifi that is self-configuring and secure.
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3101741

- finally, the FTC is saying that it's time to reform the patent system. The FTC asserts that the current system makes patents far too easy to get and difficult to challenge.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=257683

- email marketing appears to be effective at drawing customers to products, but it's also effective at alienating potential customers irrespective of the benefits of the product
http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/3101221

- good review of Nokia's n-Gage mobile game platform
http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20031030/index.html

- is molecular manufacturing possible now or in the near term?
http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2003_10_26_nanobot_archive.html#106746603743656518

- cellular-network industry faces period of steep decline, according to Morgan Stanley.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/dowjones/20031030/bs_dowjones/200310300036000109

- MIT's 4 year collaboration with industry in the RFID space, known as the Auto-ID Center, is disbanding.
http://news.com.com/2100-1008-5095957.html

- despite it's thriving software economy, India risks falling behind China in the knowledge economy according to this MIT researcher.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_hariharan102903.asp

Morning - 10/29/03

New Fundings:

- Collation, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of configuration management software for service-oriented architecture, said it has raised $8 million in its second round of financing.

- Netomat, a New York-based provider of personal communication software that enables consumers and business users to communicate and collaborate using online digital pictures, audio, voice, text, and animation, said it has raised $3 million in its Series B round.

- Mobular Technologies, Alabama, raised $2m in series B funding, details not disclosed. The company has developed a "data mobilization platform"... don't ask me, I have no idea

Liquidity:

- Launchpoint, a Portland, Ore.-based company that was formed to acquire businesses in the "hybrid mail" market, which defines businesses that enable mail to be created and routed electronically and then printed and mailed locally, has announced its launch and its acquisition of Portland-based Zairmail, a company that has been operating in this space for four years.

Main Dish:

- How much information is created each year? These Cal researchers assert thata about 5 exabytes of new information was created around the globe, about 800mb per person. To refresh your memory, it goes gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte and then exabyte. Basically, it's a lot of frickin information... most of it of little value.
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/

- The W3C is backing M$oft in it's fight against Eolas on that patent dispute. Berners-Lee wrote a letter to the US Patent Office asking them to invalidate the Eolas patent because of prior art that was not reviewed before granting it... I wonder why they waited so long to get involved in this, the case already went to trial and M$oft lost.
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/legalissues/story/0,10801,86631,00.html

- A look at hurdle rates in PE/VC funds. These are the return thresholds that the fund must return before the GP's start collecting distributions and profits via carried interest. It used to be that fund managers didn't pay a lot of attention to these provision, and clawback provisions, needless to say they are more focused on it now.
http://vcexperts.com/vce/news/buzz/

- next generation wireless video
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3099881

- KPMG is saying that LP's have a lot of resentment about management fees and carried interest... jeez, do ya think?
http://www.privateequityonline.com/TopStory.asp?ID=4113&strType=1

- Guy Kawasaki said... oh, who really cares.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/erp/article.php/3098461

- Bluetooth chipset shipments hit 1 million per week... I honestly never thought it would get this far
http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=15690

- is geek coolness bad for society?
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/10/29/dork/index_np.html

- wow, this is probably one of the quickest hype trends I've seen, everyone gets whipped into a lather about Friendster over the course of about 38 days, then nothing, and now BusinessWeek comes out with a critical article of the latest Valley darling. As a tangent, and a serious one, I think that what Socialtext is doing for collaboration in the enterprise is pretty cool, and I get a ton of invite to join Linkedin from other people I know.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2003/tc20031028_5136_tc047.htm

- Japanese researchers have come up with a pretty clever way to search audio and video files using speech recognition software, actually, it one of those "why didn't I think of that things". But what I really want to know if can I use it to find some sweet Hello Kitty stuff?
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/rnb_102803.asp

- I got this from Barry Briggs blog, it's about integrating enterprise information at the desktop. very interesting. I
http://www.looselycoupled.com/stories/2003/desktop-eii-ca1027.html

- Good commentary on Smalla about applying the Innovators Dilemma to the storage industry.
http://www.smalla.net/infofeed/2003/10/29/the_storage_industry.shtml

- journalism from the bottom up via gadget-equipped citizens.
http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2003_10_19_nanobot_archive.html#106687211005536213

- an advertisement showed up in a Vancouver newspaper that basically asked people who are angry at their local phone company not to take it out on workers, cuz it's not their fault. Interesting, kind of like saying "I just work here".
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/virgin/145680_virgin28.html?source=techdirt

- and finally, a great explanation of why California always burns worst in the fall, when the rest of the country is getting socked by rain and cold weather. Just to add a sidenote, those Santa Ana winds are also what makes for epic surf conditions... the offshore winds blown down on the ocean surface and into the wave, causing it to open up into a beautiful tube, aka "A frame", "the green room", "crystal palace". Onshore winds, which are prevalent through most of the summer bring nice moderate temperatures to California and relatively low humidity, which makes the California climate some of the best anywhere. Please donate the Red Cross to support their efforts in assisting fire victims... scroll down to yesterdays postings for a link.
http://www.pacificavc.com/blog/2003/10/28.html#a423

Afternoon - 10/28/03

New Fundings:

- End2End, a provider of managed hosting services for applications to European wireless network operators, completed a EUR 10.5 million fourth round of financing. Draper Fisher Jurvetson ePlanet Ventures led the round; DB Capital Venture Partners and Hewlett-Packard also contributed.

- Telco Exchange, a provider of software and services to large and medium-sized businesses to manage their telecom operations, completed a $5 million first round of financing. The round included investment from Valhalla Partners and Columbia Capital.

Liquidity:

- SkyGo, a provider of technology that enables instant interactive response to any traditional media ad on any wireless handset, was acquired by London-based Enpocket. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. SkyGo's prior investors included Ironweed Capital, Vanguard Ventures, and individuals. Enpocket is also venture backed and its investors include GrandBanks Capital and Nokia Venture Partners.

Main Dish:

- The Future of Money conference
http://www.isen.com/blog/archives/2003_10_01_archive.html#106735842921675721

- more notes from the Money conference
http://craphound.com/fom2003-decentralizedeconomicsystems.txt

- why bad things happen to good strategies... a collection of essays about business strategy
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/se.asp?seid=15

- I think I might have already posted this, but a Wifi gridlock is predicted. I don't know, this sounds like another version of the "we're going to run out of IP addresses soon" which of course was a variant on the "we're going to run out of telephone numbers soon"
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20031024S0011

- a pointless study about varying degrees of "politeness" among Americans when it comes to their cell phones. I wonder which part of the country is more likely to throw their cell phone out the car window because they can't get a @$$@%# good signal on i280 for that board call they had to take, or did Cingular not include that question?
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/10000.shtml

- Carly Fiorina pumps up HP's Adaptive Enterprise marketing, nobody knows what the hell she's talking about... news at 11. "Adaptive enterprise is the state in which fundamental technologies in the enterprise enable anything that business wants to do," Fiorina says... I think she should have run for Governor.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001_3-5098241.html?tag=nefd_top

- Novell tried to buy SuSe, accoding to LinuxWorld.
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/35554.htm

- Now SCO is saying the entire GPL is unconstitutional... I guess they are saying that giving something away is un-American. I have also heard them argue that you can't license something for nothing...
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031027193958740

- Nokia came out with a raft of Symbian phones, the 7700 is kind of weird.
http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?id=718

- Ubiquity Breeds Utility, an interesting looks at wireless by the Ventureblog guys. This reminds me of one of the truisms of the technology culture in that developers will find a way to fill bandwidth if they have the bandwidth. Remember back in the day when Intel was coming out with new and faster processors (this is going back to the i386 days) and "the experts" would chime in about how unneccessary all that power, and memory, was because people were just recalculating spreadsheets and such. The same arguments came with 10mb Ethernet, then 100mb, and lately gigabit Ethernet. What these critics miss is that in technology the applications backfill into the latest advances in the technology. Same with wireless technologies, many of the apps that will become mainstream will be developed in response to what wireless technology brings to the table. This is different than many industries where the "bandwidth" is developed in response to some advance in the end-user application.
http://www.ventureblog.com/articles/indiv/2003/000203.html

- This research paper suggests that the illegal copying and distribution of movies originates with industry insiders... perhaps the MPAA will hire the RIAA lawyers and start suing the Academy Awards voters?
http://intel.si.umich.edu/tprc/papers/2003/185/MovieSecVulnerable3.pdf

- VC investment tapers off in recent reporting period... not from my vantage point.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27871-2003Oct28.html

- electronic leashes for youngsters... weird.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7116015.htm

- the disposable DVD that Disney came out with last year has been a bomb... just like their other attempts to control the technology behind the content. Don't they get it that I'm not going to pay $7 for a DVD that expires when I can get all the DVD's I want from NetFlix for just over twice that amount?
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,60983,00.html

Follow up to Stats posting

We have an answer to the science question from yesterday. To recap, how does 1 pound of gasoline (approx. 1/6 of a gallon) generate 4.65 lbs. of pollutants (greenhouse gases).

Michael Diehl posted the formula this morning, but Jim McCoy sent me some email yesterday with the same formula worked out. The increase in atomic mass is 3.85, which is lower than the 4.65 derived from the statistics in the NPR report yesterday, but I must admit, much higher than I would have expected.

by the way, you should check out Jim's company, Hivecache, it's pretty cool.

From Jim:

"You need to remember that gasoline (a hydrocarbon blend that is composed of carbon chains 5-12 atoms long with hydrogen on all the open bonds on the C atoms) combines with oxygen when it is burned. In a 100% efficient engine, which we both know does not exist but works well for this example, your gasoline molecule would get combined with anywhere from 20-25 oxygen atoms: one for every pair of hydrogen atoms to create water, and two for every carbon atom to create carbon dioxide.

If we were to be generous about your gas and say that it was pure octane, the equation would look like this:

2 C8H18 + 25 O2 == 6 O2 + 18 H2O + heat/energy

A quick glance at the periodic table will show you that the oxygen grabbed out of the air has an atomic mass of 16 while the carbon and hydrogen from your gasoline have a mass of only 14 and 1 respectively.
To add up the atomic masses of the previous equation you would end up with 140 for the two octane molecules and 400 for the oxygen.

I am not sure where all of the other mass you mention comes from, but if the burn was not perfect (which we both know it not to be) then you would end up with outputs that would be only partially decomposed from octane and would have picked up sulfer, nitrogen, and other bits from the atmosphere and from the innards of your engine."

From Michael:

"If we assume complete combustion per atom of Carbon in your fuel you'll get one Molecule of
CO2. With the atomic weight of 12 for C and 16 for O you'll get ( C + O2 -> CO2 ) about a factor of 4 (CO2 has a molecular weight of 44) which is close to your data above.

The reality is much more complicated (fuel is a mixture and the combustion is a complex process)
but you need a lot of Oxygen to get your engine running."

SoCal Emergency Information

If you live in Southern California and are affected by the wildfires, here's a couple of links for emergency information that you should have.

http://www.sandiego.gov/newsflash/firealert.shtml

http://www.updatela.com/

FEMA aid services:
http://www.fema.gov/about/process/

Make a donation to the American Red Cross
http://www.kintera.org/site/pp.asp?cid={CB8D8928-0A24-4AED-8B07-E38E6BC390D2}&bin_id={DC885725-E7F5-4BF5-A44A-582B2712085A}

Morning - 10/26/03

New Fundings:

- Fabless chip startup Entropic Communications has raised an additional $29 million in Series B financing. Entropic has now raised $46 million from strategic and venture investors since its founding in 2001. It is developing chips that enable broadband multimedia networking over existing cable television outlets. Investors in Entropic include Cisco Systems, Comcast Interactive Capital, Motorola, Time Warner, Panasonic, Anthem Venture Partners, China Development Industrial Bank, MissionVentures, Redpoint Ventures and YAS Broadband Ventures.

- Corrigo, Redwood City, CA; provider of Web-, call center and wireless-based enterprise management software applications; $6.7m, round undisclosed; Sycamore Ventures, Amicus, Asset Management Company.

- LVL7 Systems, Morrisville, NC; provider of networking software that accelerates the development of turnkey systems of Ethernet switches, routers, access and networking appliance devices; $15.8m, Series B; Carlyle Venture Partners, Gabriel Ventures Partners, H.I.G. Ventures, Research Triangle Ventures.

- PLEJ, Boston, MA; provider of payment and marketing software for affinity groups and retailers; $2.5m, Series A; Draper Fisher Jurvetson New England, Navigator Technology Fund, CommonAngels.

- Qovia, Frederick, MD; provider of monitoring and management of enterprise Voice over IP phone systems; $5.5m, round undisclosed; Nokia Venture Partners, Anthem Capital Management, Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development Fund.

- IronPort Systems, a provider of email infrastructure products and services company, announced today the closing of their $29M Series C financing. $14M of new capital came from strategic investors and $15M came from existing investors (announced in July 2003). IronPort Systems’ strategic investors include General Motors Asset Management, Chevron Technology Ventures, LLC (a unit of ChevronTexaco Corporation) and NTT Leasing Co., Ltd. At first I thought "that's a lot of money" but then I remembered that Ironport's product is a hardware appliance, in addition to software. Hardware companies eat a lot of cash...

Liquidity:

- Internet security software maker Symantec Corp. of Cupertino says it's buying Waltham, Mass.-based software maker ON Technology Corp. in an all-cash deal worth about $100 million.

- Docent (Nasdaq:DCNT), a provider of integrated software solutions to drive business performance through learning, merged with Click2learn (Nasdaq:CLKS), a provider of enterprise productivity solutions.

- InfoSpace (Nasdaq:INSP), a provider of wireless and Internet software and application services, acquired Moviso, a provider of mobile media products and services in North America, for $25m.

- Infowave Software (TSX:IW), a developer of wireless software solutions, acquired the intellectual property assets of Sproqit Technologies, a wireless software company, for an undisclosed amount.

Main Dish:

- Gartner Group says that utility and grid computing are just new ways for vendors to lock in customers
http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=125913&liFlavourID=1&sp=1

- who wins in offshoring? Read on to find out who...
http://news.com.com/2030-7341_3-5096283.html?tag=techdirt

- California's new anti-spam law has been used for the first time to fine a SoCal couple $2 million
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2003/10/20/daily72.html

- 6 VoIP firms are doing battle with California regulators who want to tax them like telcos
http://news.com.com/2100-7352_3-5096966.html?tag=nefd_top

- jobless top level executives propelling startups, study finds.
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2003/10/27/daily6.html?jst=b_ln_hl

- the move by Mass to go open source has closed source software companies like M$oft, Autodesk, and Adobe up in arms. I have to say that despite my enthusiasm for open source, IT groups should go with the software that meets theirs needs at the best price point, irrespective of the development methodology employed to build it.
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/18_15/statelocal/22000-1.html

- Veritas and SuSe are getting a lot closer on the Linux front.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1364365,00.asp

- M$oft's Web services color of choice is Indigo... the new framework that picks up where .Net stopped.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1364236,00.asp

- yeah cool, hehehehe. Extreme pumpkin carving using a giant robotic arm and a drywall saw.
http://www.extremepumpkins.com/detsciencen.html

- flyblogging invading the blogsphere... more and more spam comments are showing up in blogs. I've had some issues with deleting these comments out, it takes time to monitor and remove them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3210623.stm

- really cool file sharing project out of MIT that treats music as library items that can be checked out of the schools cable TV network. I heard about it on NPR this morning.
http://lamp.mit.edu/

- yeah, who is behind SCO's attacks on Open Source and Linux? I'm going with the M$oft and Sun theory.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1358809,00.asp

- it will cost $18 quadrillion to stabilize and improve global environmental conditions. Read on, it's really a fascinating article.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60981,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5

- a review of 11 DVD burners
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20031027/index.html

- the DOJ released a report on workplace diversity in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Before releasing it, Justice blacked out sensitive parts using Word and then distilled the doc with Acrobat... guess what, a group dedicated to preserving documents "unmasked" the blacked out parts and re-released the full version.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7272

Stats

This morning I was on my drive to the office with NPR on the radio, as I normally do. I heard a story about car sharing programs and the reporter rattled off a list of statistics, along the lines of "saving 13,000 miles of travel a day, 720 gallons of gasoline, and 20,000 pounds of greenhouse gases". So I am assuming that the reporter was referring primarily to carbon dioxide as the greenhouse gases, but what I did not get at all is how 720 gallons of gasoline converts into 20,000 lbs of gas? I think that gasoline weighs about 6 lbs per gallon, which means that 720 gallons of gasoline is about 4,300 lbs in total weight. How does a pound of gasoline convert to 4.65 pounds of greenhouse gas?

The other issue I question is how many miles of road travel are actually saved if the people who are sharing the cars don't have cars of their own. All said, I think car sharing is a good idea, but I would appreciate if reporters do a little fact checking, or at least offer a few comments on how the stats are derived.

If anyone knows the algorithm for this conversion, please enlighten me by posting it.

PS- I also heard an interesting story about Indian casinos in Maine, one of the people interviewed made an analogy that was inspiring. He said that if the casinos were really nuclear waste dumps or some other polluting factory the debate would focus a lot more on the hidden costs of such businesses, rather than just how many jobs they are creating. It is true that in retail and service industries hidden costs are rarely talked about, such as crime, traffic, drug and alcohol abuse, and gambling addiction with casinos. It's interesting how service businesses are not considered "polluting industries".