Tough Day

If you think you are having a tough day… just take a look at this story.

From Erika Brown's "The Thin Green Line" story

Last month, an executive at a cellular technology startup in Israel was called up for duty by the Israeli Reserve Army to defend the country against attacks from Hezbollah. He headed north to the border between Israel and Lebanon, also known as "The Thin Blue Line," where bombs and bullets were flying from both sides. Determined to not let the war get in the way of his business, he worked on a complex technology deal with a European equipment maker via his BlackBerry from the inside of a tank. (The soldier-slash-entrepreneur asked not to be identified because he feared his client would be angry to learn he was in battle.)

Coolest Websites

Congrats to Three-Forty clients meebo and Yelp for making Time’s 50 Coolest Website Lists.

Party Crasher...

The Journal reports that big media companies are buying up some college newspapers.

Big Media on Campus

The article goes on to talk about how these newspapers are bucking the trend and are having success in their markets. So... this begs the questions will Dean Wormer be a buzz kill.

meebo us

Congrats to meebo – a client of ours, who announced a pretty cool release today. This is pretty significant for meebo as well as the IM world… meebo now enables you, me or anyone with a web page, a social networking page, a commerce page, etc. to put meebo into that page and engage in real-time, no-software required IM. Also, for the page owners, you can now track who is visiting your site. You can get it here: http://www.meebome.com/. Happy meebo me-ing. :)

Been meaning to get to this - VC investing

I was on the road last week and didn’t have a chance to get to this. The NVCA came out with the latest venture investing numbers. The good news is that there are investments being made, the bad news (if you are an entrepreneur) is that most of the investing is going to the later stage deals.

I find this very interesting. I hear from a lot of VCs that the early deals are the most interesting, it’s just that finding the right ones or getting in at the right time is proving to be trickier these days. It takes a lot less money to create a start-up right now and it’s easier for entrepreneurs to show some traction and growth on pennies before pulling down a big funding round. The entrepreneurs starting these companies now either have an established network, or don’t want to take on a first round from a VC. What typically ends up happening is that the next time they go to raise a round of funding, they’ve proven themselves, have more customers or users and their valuation is higher. This makes it more expensive for the VCs to get in and then the deal becomes less interesting or too expensive. So while it’s easy to blame Sarbanes Oxley, etc. but I think that valuations are playing a pretty big role in early stage financing – or lack thereof.

Pirate Radio (with the Church Lady)

Everyone has a “Meet-up” these days. (well at least out here in The Valley). I went down to the Third Thursday PR Meet-up to listen to a discussion about podcasts (not sure why they didn’t do it via a podcast? I guess it kind of defeats the purpose of the “meet-up” …)

Anyway, it was pretty interesting to listen to two of the woman who have podcasts and how/why they got started. One was from Palo Alto and seems to resemble my mom (in even more of Church-Lady sort of way and I mean that in the nicest way possible...) while the other was a younger woman from Fresno but both are pretty much doing the same thing. Their podcasts fill a void that traditional broadcast media can’t fill – in depth local issues. The issues aren’t necessarily “huge” like Korea pointing a nuke at me type-of-issues… but none the less, it serves a purpose – an alternative to what currently exists.

There are all sorts of flavors of podcasts that help lengthen the “Tail” but to me local seems interesting. Radio is still very much a local medium but just like everything else it is either getting swallowed up by the big guys or local stations are having a tough time keeping the lights on and the signal broadcasting. At some point when we have IP-based radios that can stream or store podcasts directly to our cars – it’s good to know that there will still be a place to listen for the local spin on things… and more importantly the opportunity to have multiple choices for the local spin.

Seeing Sound

This is just amazing. No matter how big/small, fast/smart a computer/gadget we can build the human body and brain still shows us how advance and adaptable it can be. This is a story about boy who can “See Sound.”

Another Sign of the Times

No pun intended… The New York Times is reducing the size of it’s paper and closing a print factory. The size reduction will take away about 5% of the space the paper devotes to news coverage. Earlier this year, the New York Times did a major facelift as well as added some necessary RSS feeds, blogging features, etc., in an effort to pursue a more strategic online strategy.

In a time where more and more people turn to the web for their news, traditional media sources *MUST* find a way to compete and adapt their business models. Always interesting watching these cycles evolve.

Do I really sound like this?

This is why I won't be doing too many podcasts or radio talk shows. This is from a recent interview with Lazlow. I started listening to Lazlow on the now defunct WDRE back in Philadelphia, almost 14 years ago (yikes). Lazlow probably had one of the first syndicated Consumer Tech Radio shows - you can now find his podcasts on his site and hear him on XM Radio.

New York

I am in New York this week. I am always amazed at how much energy this city has. I love it. I can't help but think of an article I read last week about NY regaining it's crown as the capital of capital...

According to Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times, "...In the past several years, New York has regained its magnetic force and is re-establishing its claim as the city of big bosses. The number of corporate headquarters and subsidiaries in Manhattan has more than doubled since 1990, according to the US Department of Labour. In the past few years, the number of Fortune 500 companies based in the city has been inching upwards, reversing a long, steep decline that accelerated during the financial crisis of the early 1970's."

I enjoy my trips to NY, they are often very productive, very busy and I sleep very well when I return back to San Francisco.

Slow Posting this week

We've been a bit behind in posting this week. I think we are either catching-up from the holiday or still in holiday mode. Either way, we'll be back with more next week.

NBC Gets It

AP has a story on NBC putting show promos on YouTube. This is a great move for NBC. Why? Because NBC will be able to promote shows to a captive audience and lure them into watching that program. It makes so much sense. It’s a commercial, but cheaper and much easier to measure. It’s great to see NBC taking the step to do this. I hope more content companies realize the power of these sites and what it can do to build awareness, viewer acquisition and more advertising dollars.

Ice Cream Truck

I heard the melody of the ice cream truck rolling by our house for the first time this year.... besides bringing up some very interesting memories... (like the time the ice cream truck driver when psychotic and chased us down the street, threatening my brother’s life – I hope they do background checks now a days)... it got me thinking about how that’s got to be a tough business with gas prices soaring so high. I am thinking a good gimmick would be the “Green Ice Cream Truck” - an electric powered machine. This would definitely be a hit in a place like San Francisco... but if you know what the summers are like in San Francisco – ice cream may not be the business.

Let's Go Racing

For those of you who know my husband and me, we’ve become big NASCAR fans. I am not quite sure how it happened, but we join the 75 million other fans that are dedicated to the Race for the Cup. So, this was our big weekend, our first NASCAR Race as Infineon Speedway in Petaluma, CA.

Our day began at 4:30 a.m. (yes, you read that correctly). The gates open at 6:00 a.m. and we heard that you see the best things early in the a.m. So we were out the door by 5:15 and on our way up to the racetrack.

It was a little chilly when we arrived and we were surprised at how many other people had our same plan. We were also surprised at how many people were camping out.

We walked around the whole race track. There were lots of corporate events being set-up and everything had a sponsor -- including the garbage cans. The sun started rising as we were walking so it was warming up. We thought about having a beer, after all, the car next to us cracked a Bud as soon as they arrived that morning around 6 as well, but I needed more caffeine before alcohol. (In fact, I was too tired to drink beer at all that day. Diet Coke was my beverage of choice -- 4:30 a.m. is too early to get up AND drink all day.)

The fans were all types – from us, to the hard core Dale Sr. fans and everything in between. This is a sport loyal to its drivers and supports them openly. Lines were 10 deep at some merchandise booths.

What has always fascinated me about NASCAR is how unapologetic it is about the commercialization of the sport. Hey, it’s an expensive sport, so they’ve done what they can to make it happen. Also, the drivers are some of the most-messaged spokespeople and at the same time are talking trash about the other drivers.

So it’s no surprise that Sprint/Nextel has come up with more ways to capitalize on the sport and the fan interest. We got the Fan View, which allowed us to listen to the drivers on their radios in their car. That was pretty cool, especially when there was a caution.

Overall the race was interesting. A road course is not the most common of racing these drivers do in the cup. It’s a different type of racing than Daytona or a short-track. While we thoroughly enjoyed the experience, we couldn’t see the whole course. We think our next race will be a short track where we can see the whole race.

Jeff Gordon won the race. The whole experience was very cool though. It was amazing to see how the whole operation works too. It’s a logistics nightmare. I couldn’t even imagine planning something on this level.

We’ve already got plans for next year, which includes camping. Who is in?

Here are some of our pictures from the day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/69038113@N00/

Here’s one of the videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udd6CbvPcpw
I’ll upload more later.

All in the Name

We often get asked, “How did you come up with the name Three-Forty?” So I’ll take a minute to explain here.

We believe that the world of communicating with consumers, partners, the press, anyone for that matter, is changing. Today there many ways to reach your customers and some are more powerful than others.
So when we started to think about the communications firm we wanted to be, we knew we needed to be different and understand these new mediums, which were more effective and which were the most powerful and which were the most efficient. And of course, which mediums were/are best for our clients.

So we came up with Three-Forty. Why? Because it’s the speed of sound (at sea level).

Outage

Ugh. I am a big Yahoo! fan, but this morning, I wasn't.

I was part of the outage that occurred this morning. I was hoping to get some work done early this a.m. (6:15 am) only to find that my email wasn't working. Ugh. Oh well. Up and running now. I still wonder how people worked before email. Much more slowly, I guess.

Ride A Wave

I am going to borrow from a post I did last year on one of my favorite things, Ride A Wave, because this weekend I was able to get down to Santa Cruz to help out.

Although there is some element of truth (and even idyllic quality) to the stereo type - there is definitely more to surfing then the Spicoli-esque version. Here is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about a nonprofit that I work with called Ride A Wave. The last couple of years I have only made a couple of the camps... but it is something that I have been doing for 5 years now and hope to continue to do for many more.

"Smartest" Cities

This story from the SF Business Journal says that San Francisco and Austin are tied for 2nd as the smartest city in the US. We are 2nd to Seattle. I guess what makes you smart, acc. to the survey is the how many residents hold a bachelor's degree. According to the article, "Forty-seven percent of Seattle's adults hold bachelor's degrees, the strongest proportion of college-educated residents in any big city. It's nearly double the U.S. average of 24.4 percent. "

Hmm... Does book smart = smart? And if you got a college degree does that make you smarter than someone else who didn't? I am not so sure. I knew my fair share of idiots at college. I also know that there are some very smart and successful folks that didn't get a college education.

Exceptions to every rule, I guess. However, I still don't think this survey is one that cities should be bragging about.

I'll Take a Boy for $20,000

Wow. Just read an article on affluent couples coming to the US so that they can choose the sex of their child. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am... Takes the spontaneity out of it as well.

I can just see the commercial now: Roundtrip Airline tickets for 2: $3000, Hotel Stay: $500, Doctor bills $20,000; 99.9% Certainty your bloodline will be carried through: Priceless.

Congrats to Om

If you haven't seen the news - he's leaving Business 2.0 to focus full-time on GigaOm. Good Luck and I look forward to reading more on GigaOm.

Read more here: http://gigaom.com/