social stock picks

Here's an interview on Wallstrip from 1/18 with the founder of StockPickr, James Altucher. Interestingly he's short on Digg and long on blogs and blogging. Obviously he likes social networking and crowd sourcing since that's the basis for StockPickr. It will be interesting to watch the adoption rate of this type of services and others like it including Motley Fool Caps, BullPoo, and SocialPicks.

24, so good it's scary

The sixth season of the critically acclaimed show, "24" is about to begin next weekend on Fox. How much better can this show get? We fans of the show have been waiting since mid 2006 to find out what has happened to Jack Bauer since his abduction by the chinese in the final season 5 episode. Reportedly we're in for another stellar opening in season 6. Writer Stephen King got an early look at the season opener and recently wrote about the show in this piece posted on Entertainment Weekly.


Get ready to grab a seat and hold on!

Spraying the Plane

I was on a flight from Austin - Houston - Kansas City on 12/20. At the end of the first leg, we were waiting to pull into the gate after landing. On the right side of the plane were four fire trucks and other emergency vehicles, all lights flashing. Fireman were hosing down the plane. The captain pointed out what was happening, perhaps thinking the passengers might be concerned. I think the phrase he used was "Spraying the Plane", and explained it is a customary ritual when a captain is retiring upon pulling into the gate on his final flight.

We are by nature ritualistic.

Man's Search for Meaning

I just finished Victor Frankl's book, "Man's Search for Meaning" This book is one of the most deeply spiritual books I've read. It's short and describes Dr Frankl's experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz and other concentration camps across Europe. Dr Frankl is also a Neurologist and Psychotherapist and lays out in the second part of the book his model of psychotherapy he termed Logotherapy. The experiential part forms the authoritative basis for the second therapeutic section. As opposed to Freudian psychoanalysis which is based on man's need for pleasure or others founded on man's need for power, Logotherapy's basis is man's search for meaning in life and focuses on the future rather than the past. I'm certain that there are much more erudite reviews of this hugely important work, but I consider this to be one of those experiences or works that crosses ones path and depending on the timing can be a critical evolutionary influence on one's life, so thought I would pass on my own clumsy thoughts on the chance that others would pick it up and read it as a result.

Logotherapy encompasses an entirely new way to encounter life. It focuses on responsibility, responsibility to find meaning and live within the implied tenets of that meaning. It avoids judgement. Anyone is capable of great good and great evil it is their choice which path they follow. Someone having chosen a path of evil may yet change based upon their own cathartic experiences and follow a separate path later in life. Meaning in life is achieved through love and suffering. If you can avoid suffering you should do so. Abiding suffering with alternate choice is not heroic, but masochistic. When it is not a choice, such as in the case of having a terminal or disabling illness, the way in which the victim suffers is a choice and the way he conducts himself gives meaning to his life, "we are challenged to challenge ourselves."

"Love is the only way to grasp a human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is able to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more see that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he should become he makes these potentialities come true." This is a powerful concept. Through love comes understanding, understanding together with love breeds encouragement. And encouragement is all that is sometimes necessary to get a person moving towards their potential.

Logotherapy (it seems to me) is a way to point someone towards recognizing tangible meaning in their lives and as part of doing so will then realize their potential in actualization of that meaning. He will then knock down the stumbling blocks scattering the path to that actualization by the shear power and force of that vision.

Some of those stumbling blocks can be neurosis: fear of speaking, fear of bacteria, anxiety over not being able to sleep. Frankl describes a way of overcoming these neurosis using a Logotherapy technique described as "Paradoxical Intention" whereby the patient intends for a short time that which they fear. For example the person who has trouble sleeping and is dreading going to bed for fear that they will not sleep would use Paradoxical Intention to try not to go to sleep, in which case they will soon fall to sleep. I'm certain this is not as easy as it sounds, but makes a helluva lot of sense. The anticipation of the response becomes a greater problem than the problem itself. This is a way to fool the mind into diffusing the anticipatory anxiety.

"At any moment, man must decide for better or worse, what will be the monument of his existence."

slingboxmas

I just gave out SlingBox Pros to all of the employees at my company. It's always a fun thing to do and I get a kick out of picking out the gift each year and previewing it at home (to test its worthiness ;) before donning the Santa hat. It took me a little bit to get set up to work remotely, but once done, it works extremely slick. To those not in the know, the SlingBox location shifts your programming, so you can hook it up to your cable box, plug it into your router, and voila you can watch and control your cable from anywhere on the planet that you have connectivity. If you go the extra step of hooking to your Tivo (DVR) you are no longer constrained by time or space, just your television :)

Important safety tip: Comcast blocks port 5001 so I had to set up as 443.

SITI - Search for Intraterrestrial Intelligence

I posted on the corporate blog last night regarding the search for "mavens" in the blogosphere. The interesting tidbit is that it was in response to a post about Collective Intellect from an ex exec at Pfizer who we found through our intelligent filtering platform for institutional investors.

Business Travel and Bono

Business travel sucks in general. It is a tiring, arduous, lonely affair. Don't get me wrong, I love to travel as much as the next guy, but business travel is usually as fun as the sex you have when you've been trying to get pregnant for 6 months. Sure there are some fun parts, but it's over quickly and is according to someone else's schedule. I was in Chicago a few weeks ago and stayed downtown at the Hard Rock Hotel. It's a pretty cool place with rock paraphernalia everywhere. The floor I stayed on had a floor to ceiling close up of Mick Jagger pulling his shirt up in full strut. It also had the outfit Keith Richards wore during some particular tour. The best was the bathroom though. Over the toilet sat a triptych of Bono, one foot in the air, screaming into the mic. The other funny thing is the place was filled with accountants. I met one coming up the elevator. He had a drink in hand from the bar. I asked him where the bar was and after he told me, replied, "geez the drinks are expensive here." You can put the accountant in Rock and Roll but you can't put Rock and Roll into the accountant.

Company Blog

That is affirmative. Collective Intellect has officially jumped onto the corporate blog bandwagon. We are sharing some of the blogging duties, so hopefully will be a good mix of technical and business insights!

Entrepreneur's Idea Journal

As with most companies, I started mine with an idea. Ideas always seem great when they first arrive. Most are tossed around casually during conversation and never followed up. I try to keep a notebook of ideas and the ones which seem worth following up I will write down a hypothesis for. The hypothesis is a simple statement that captures the gist of the solution.

Mice can be driven away, eliminating the need for a trap.

I would then add a date, a few notes about the idea and a "next step." Most of these ideas never make it to the next step either, due to lack of time or dependence on a resource that is currently unavailable.

For those that do make it to the next step I would recommend starting a separate journal. This journal should be date stamped and the hypothesis restated as a problem/solution pair.

P. Mice are a problem and traps only provide a temporary and messy solution
S. Create a device that discourage mice from coming on the property

The next step then takes two paths dependent upon your personality type. If you are a solution oriented tinkerer then write down some ways to solve the problem. If the problem appears to have a feasible solution work towards creating a prototype, carefully noting the paths you go down in your journal. This invention chronology can be used later for the patent process. If you are market oriented then answer the following four questions and then go back and pursue the technology feasibility question

1. Who does the idea benefit
2. How much will they benefit
3. How many of these people are there
4. Is anyone else providing a solution

Logging all of this data in your journal will help give you the discipline to follow through and encourage the rigor to test your hypothesis.

Walker Evans exhibit in NYC

I was in New York City this week visiting with VCs and our channel partner Soleil. I love coming to New York and am always amazed by the density and variety of the population, the vibrancy, the beauty of the skyline, and central park. I usually go for a Central Park run in the morning. It's a great place to clear my thoughts and soak in the vibe of the city before starting my work day. I also usually try to get in a couple of new things that I haven't experienced each trip. On this visit I stopped by the Walker Evans exhibit at the UBS building on 6th Avenue.

A couple of weeks before I left I was having coffee with someone in Boulder who mentioned the Walker Evans exhibit (thanks for the recommendation Dave). I am an art enthusiast but have never really followed photographic art, so I didn't know who Walker Evans was. The back ground from the brochure found at the beginning of the exhibit sums him up this way:

"His greatest single body of work was documenting the effects of the Great Depression on rural families for the Farm Security Administration in 1935-36. The FSA mission was to generate visual evidence reinforcing Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Evans loudly resisted anything political - right or left - but soon realized the futility of his denial. He wisely compromised and seized the opportunity to work incognito as a photojournalist, producing work satisfying his own vision plus the job's demands."

As I walked along the corridor the pictures jumped off the panels and grabbed something deep inside me. Seeing the faces of sharecropper families, knees, feet, and hands worn by careless circumstance, their expressions resolute, neither happy nor sad, struck a strong chord of reality. In most cases life is forced down the throat of the living and you just have to deal with it. There is something sublime about the non-biased view that the lens provides, taking the viewer voyeuristically back to a different place and time and shreds the perspective of today's assumptions.

If you get the chance, I would highly recommend taking in this exhibit.