Main Dish:

- oh, this is just about the funniest thing I've seen in ages (well at least since the terrorists holding the action figure hostage). hat tip Joe Beda

- this is damn close to the freakiest thing I've ever seen... I don't think I'll sleep well for a week. I looks like something that would happen to Wile E. Coyote. Here's the New Scientist link that I found later while reading that pub.

- I never would have guessed that the conversion rate for spam is 4%... would have expected something closer to .25%. At 4% I can see why it's such a big business. I wonder how many people respond to the guy in Nigeria who's sitting on a fortune and can't get to it.

- The Finnish-Russian Business Chamber of Commerce has published a handy guide to bribery in Russia. Specifically, the topic is the proper etiquette for giving bribes... hat tip to Winds of Change.

- President Bush called for electronic patient records in the SOTU speech last night, and he previously called for electronic prescriptions as well. Much of this is about doing what HIPAA was supposed to do and has yet to deliver, make patient records portable, secure, and the property of the patient. It's baffling that electronic prescriptions have yet to be implemented, and it's equally baffling that the medical profession resists technology advances unless they can charge new fees for it.

- pretty interesting story about how a honeypot project trapped a prolific spammer (10 million emails a day... that's 150 a second).

- M$oft's data access technology roadmap.

- Rethinking conventional marketing... Steve, you will dig this. The comments about brands not having to have a consistent message were interesting, and it's worth noting that in the case of BMW they have had record sales numbers in recent quarters, despite have a lineup of cars with a totally screwed up design (thanks that that American guy who is their head designer). Give me a 3.0csi or nothing at all.

- pitching a new idea. There is a LOT of good info in this article, far more than is the typical pitch guidelines. via Evelyn (I need to start maintaining my del.icio.us site...)

- unlimited SMS on t-mobile... here's how. This is only relevant to me because the new phone I recently acquired is not supported by T-Mobile (which is only to say they don't sell it). But fortunately for me, I got on the phone with a deep tech rep (probably located in Blackrock) who worked with me to get it going. As a consequence, I learned a lot about the settings for their network and when I switched everything over to GPRS I was pleasantly surprised to learn that everything worked. Imagine that... their advertising slogan "get more" actual means something.

- adding cellular to mp3 players... why not add a decent mp3 player to a phone?

- who will buy TiVo for scrap. Again, I think Netflix should merge with them, but Apple could be interesting as well.

- New blog called Wired Home. They are also picking on TiVo.

- looks like the Europeans are starting their software patent process from the start, one more time. The phrase "pushing a string" comes to mind.

- And also in Groklaw this piece about Sun's hostility to the GPL. I guess that Sun has to pick fights with IBM now they can't fight with M$oft anymore.

- That IS bullshit.

- Nanotech and Smartpants. YES! I was due for a smart pants reference, it's been too long.

- the podcast movement is gaining steam, I gotta learn more about this

- Registries hold the key to SOA success. Agree, and David Longworth does a far better job of explaining why, at least far better than I could ever muster.

- This week I upgraded by Flickr subscription to the "pro" level for $50 (or whatever it was). Coincidentally, Om writes about some of the flack he took from commenting on Flickr's business model and the opportunities. As a user, the decision to pay for this service was a no-brainer (it works) and the cost-of-sale to Flickr: $0 (unless you count the cost of the free service, then it's not $0). I'm not so quick to write off these business models anymore, am thinking there's real meat on the bone here and the unit economics can be quite good if the conversion rate is meaningful. As for the complexity of the infrastructure, but considering that the infrastructure appears limited to bandwidth and storage, Flickr's partners in this area have as much a vested interest as does Flickr. It's like the airline industry, there is a reason why GE has been loaning money to bankrupt airlines in order to keep planes (and jet engines) in the air.

- Scientist have found missing matter... I'm going to have to apologize to Lisa for blaming her, she's always "touching my stuff" in an effort to "organize" it.

Comments

[Steve Shu]

Jeff wrote "I wonder how many people respond to the guy in Nigeria who's sitting on a fortune and can't get to it."

I was trying to set up a sales rep in Latin America once. To make a long story short, I was a little skeptical about the arrangements being laid out so I called some special unit of the FBI or something to see if the sort of scheme I was seeing had ever played out before. The agent said that he had never heard of anything like what I was seeing but that the FBI had something like 4 full-time people servicing calls for the Nigeria thing.

As for the finding of 4%, its hard to know exactly how to look at that number, but it does seem high ... I guess since the volume of spam is so darn large that it amounts to miniscule % return on a per spam mail basis. Printing money I guess ...

[Charlie Kemper]

The Main Dish is possibly one of the greatest blog postings out there, one I regularly read. Thanks!

[AbdulAzeez]

i wonder my people still dying despite the fact that we have some better food in Nigeria

[AbdulAzeez]

i wonder my people still dying despite the fact that we have some better food in Nigeria