Main Dish:

- bummer, I hate flossing and was not feeling guilty about it lately.

- new blog I've been reading about digital identities. This post is worth reading, the 5th law of identity.

- WSJ tells the saga of the Z06 Corvette rollout and how GM was unable to stop the avalanche of spy photos of the car from appearing on websites, depriving them of the usual suspense filled rollout. How can GM possibly compete with cell phone cameras and the web? You can bet that Bob Lutz won't be posting pre-launch pics on his blog.

- Halo2 online gamers consumed 69 million hours of gaming pleasure since it's release. Tell me again how enterprise applications (e.g. CRM) are not impacted by this phenomena?

- the numbering scheme the interstate highway system. Still doesn't explain why Hawaii has interstate highways.

- you almost have to admire their persistence... MN is joining CA in an effort to tax VoIP users.

- It's somewhat ironic that the founder of Wikipedia thinks an open collaborative process is required to keep journalism honest when Wikipedia itself is rapidly becoming perverted by the bias of the authors and an inability to correct pages that have been "locked down". As is pointed out in this post, Wikipedia is a system and not an authority.

- Engadget is the place to go for CES news.

- blogs for business. I had to laugh at myself a month ago when in a board meeting I almost said to the CEO that the company should get a blog. It was funny because I realized that blogs are just another communication channel, you still have to have something to communicate. You also need to be able to engage readers, and I think that most marketing and product organizations are ill prepared to do this. I do think that blogs are an excellent way to communicate with employees.

- book review, Good to Great. Also, interesting background on the Stockdale Paradox.

- Google recruiting challenges and the culture of the have's and the have nots.

- SAP delays key decisions on SOA infrastructure. Lot's of information here, if you are interested in web services it's a good read.

- You would think that M$oft could come up with some decent designs for their new SPOT watches. I was willing to give them a pass on the first generation because it was new, but crikey they still look like crap. Take a roadtrip to Beaverton next time.

- hiring good people is by far the most difficult task facing any startup, and sometimes you hire people who are good or bad and there is nothing you could have done to predict it.

- VC forecasts for 2005. I think it's gonna be a good year, the deal pipeline is full with interesting companies backed by seasoned management teams.

- funny to read this. Ed Sim and I were talking the other day about new home theater gear that we bought over the holidays and the mind boggling complexity and cost associated with making it all work. We came to the conclusion that the consumer markets are offering much better unit economics than their enterprise counterparts.