Firefox 3 is Almost Here

But early adopters can experience the new Mozilla code base now by trying out Flock 2.0, released in Beta1 today to great reviews. Flock needs a new trophy shelf, having recently added a Webby and the #6 slot on PC World's top 100 Products for 2008. (Also would have won a WhoHas if not disqualified by my vested interest!)

And now Flock runs even faster, with major enhancements to the news reader and media bar. Alana at Mashable wrote, "If people start getting used to using Flock to keep up with their different social networking profiles and to share and discover media easier, I don’t see how they could ever go back to Internet Explorer or regular Firefox."

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How Culture Evolves

I had the perfect holiday today, nestled in New England with lots of family, including my father. My 9-year-old kicked our butts at Risk, heeding his uncle's advice to always occupy Australia from the start.

But an unfortunate slip of the tongue may have forever changed our annual celebration. As my 5-year-old brought me breakfast in bed, he blurted out with excitement, "Happy Farter's Day!!"

The third Sunday in June will never be the same.

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More WhoHas Awards!

The WhoHas Award for Best Consumer Electronics

The Panasonic PtAE2000U Projector blasts out 1500 lumens of 1080P magic, with a contrast ratio of 15,000:1. Not only is it 40%+ brighter than any other 1080P projector on the market, but with most new HDMI projectors priced at or above $10,000, the Panasonic's $2,500 price tag is frankly suspicious. (Did these beauties "fall off a truck" on the way from the SONY plant?) Since I replaced my old Runco with this projector, my neighbors have been camping out in my basement.


The WhoHas Award for Best Security Product

I've experimented with just about every home automation gizmo available. Most of the time they languish unused due to complexity, bugs, or low utility. For example, I'm not sure I'll ever really get around to controlling my irrigation system through my browser. (Who has time for this?)

But my latest pet project has worked out just great. I've replaced the key locks on my doors with numeric keypads. Access is now faster, and no longer dependent upon carrying a key around. Keypad codes, unlike physical key locks, can be changed immediately. You can provision multiple key codes, and each with access at different times of day. A log is kept of which keys are used when.

I've got my keypads working off a server that connects to digital locks on the doors, which has the added feature of locking and unlocking doors around the house on demand or on schedule. But the core value can be had without the central server--just retrofit your old fashioned door with a locally controlled mechanism. They range in price from $100-400, depending upon quality and programmability.


The WhoHas Award for Best Pen

Why pay $500 for a shiny Montblanc when the same price will buy you a LiveScribe Pulse? The Pulse's internal memory stores every word you've written, and it even stores an audio recording of the conversation that took place in the room right at the time you wrote those words. It's so simple--you just take notes as usual in their spiral paper notebooks. Later on you click on a word and the pen's internal speaker starts playing the conversation!

The Pulse has an LED display, speaker, headset port, camera, and connector for transferring all its visual and audio contents to a PC or shared web space. It comes with some other very cool but not really practical apps, like the ability to play music (with accompanying repercussion!) on a hand-drawn piano keyboard, and real time language translation of what you're writing (both written and aural).



The WhoHas Award for Best Culinary Product

For our anniversary last year, Nathalie surprised me with a Citrus Press grapefruit juice squeezer from Williams Sonoma. It quickly captures every drop, enabling my juice addiction. This beautiful steel machine evokes the power of a '73 Buick--you'll want to park it on open counter right there between the Sub-Zero and the Thermador.


The WhoHas Award for Best Car

I own three cars: an electric GEM and two Odyssey minivans. Odyssey is the perfect family vehicle. It drives like a car, the third row seats and second row center seat can disappear into the floor, and it has all the bells and whistles you need with kids--like a rear-view cam and dual power sliding doors. It's affordable, fuel efficient, Honda-reliable, and damned sporty-lookin.


The WhoHas Award for Best Fashion Product

Even if you don't have frail Ashkenazi skin like mine, you need to ward off the skin cancer. So when you swim outdoors, consider wearing a sun shirt to partially obviate the sunscreen regimen. (Who has time for this?)

Coolibar has a great line. My favorite is the one on the right that zips off easily when wet and, more importantly, qualifies for Star Fleet as a Star Trek TNG uniform.


The WhoHas Award for Best Pharmaceutical

Sonata (or the generic zaleplon) sleeping pills are shorter acting than Ambien or Lunesta, so you don't wake up tired.

Legal disclaimer: Ignore my advice--I know nothing. I'm a blogger, not a doctor. Medicine has risks. For example, the manufacturer of Sonata advises:

"...discontinuation of Sonata should be strongly considered for patients who report a 'sleep-driving' episode."

Now that's good advice!

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Diving in Hawaii

With our streets blocked by the triathlon yesterday, there was only one way off the island...




Son snorkeling





Nathalie's the best swimmer in the family.




I'm feeling at one with the Spaghetti Monster.



Thank you Robert for taking us on this dive!

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The 2008 WhoHas Awards

The day has come--Just in time for the Father's Day shopping season--to announce the winners of this year's coveted WhoHas Awards for the best products of 2008, an annual tradition since earlier today.

(Click on the WhoHas trophy to the right to get your own Flying Spaghetti Monster medallion--a must-have spiritual connection to our Noodly Creator.)

The winning products of the WhoHas Awards have been carefully selected and tested at home by an esteemed, hand-picked panel of expert judges. And when I say "judges" I mean "judge", and when I say "judge" I mean me.

To maintain the high standards that the world has come to expect in a WhoHas Award, I've refrained from considering any Bessemer portfolio products. That's okay--Flock and Yelp will just have to settle for winning the PC World Best Products of 2008, also announced today (no doubt timed by PC World to get some PR lift by coinciding with the WhoHas Awards).


The WhoHas Award for Most Useful Product

After years of searching for a replacement to my trusted purse, I finally found a worthy successor. The Tumi  T-Tech Jane Flow Small Flap Bag has everything I've been looking for in a purse: quick access flap (with magnetic connector--easier than velcro); zipped compartments; waterproof and durable; and the perfect size (just big enough for a Kindle).





The WhoHas Award for Best Value

"You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there." -- George Burns

The shoehorn is an oldie but a goodie--a classic, yet timeless invention. This particular unit comes in attractive natural grain wood so you can leave it in plain sight. It's extra long so there's no unnecessary bending or delay as you rush out the door. Save your shoes, save your thumbs, and save your money with this value gift...




The WhoHas Award for Most Fun Product

This is the most fun toy my family has acquired for years. Gobble is a bank that eats coins and paper money. Gobble talks a lot (and belches, too, from too much money). I can't explain--you've just got to be there. For ages 3 to 42.




The WhoHas Award for Best Picture

Really, I'm not a foreign film snob, but this film was the best I've seen in a long time. Great story line, great acting.


Congratulations to the first group of this year's WhoHas Award winners!

Subscribe to this blog feed for more WhoHas Awards in the coming week...

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Open Letter to Ron Lieber

Dear Ron,

A month ago Experian sued Lifelock, and soon after some enterprising class action attorneys filed their own lawsuits. The lawsuits certainly make some disparaging claims about Lifelock. Since we at Lifelock know the claims to be false, we satisfied ourselves to gracefully wait for our day in court to present the compelling evidence, even though we expected the plaintiffs to sling mud at us in the meantime.

And sure enough, eager for a juicy story, a parade of journalists (and I use the term generously) lapped up the mud, seizing the opportunity to disparage a successful business (always an attention grabber). But what surprised me today is that you--a New York Times columnist--joined the lynch mob, and did so in a particularly naive way. Such fluky foolishness hurled from the bastion of good journalism demands a response.

In today's column on Your Money, you follow the herd in reporting Experian's claims as though they were true. You imply that Lifelock's service doesn't work because our CEO is one of the several dozen Lifelock customers (out of a million!) who once had to resort to our service guarantee for protection when a lender screwed up. (You do acknowledge that the CEO's single $500 exposure came after a year of publicizing his social security number on radio and TV.)

But then you add some original analysis, distinguishing yourself as a trustful friend of Experian:

"And if the alert repeatedly fires off false alarms, forcing creditors to constantly double-check the identities of LifeLock customers who have never been victims of fraud, it is possible that those credit issuers will pay less attention to them. Experian is so worried about this, along with other issues, that it has filed suit against LifeLock."

That is so sweet! Those kind-hearted execs at Experian were so concerned for consumer privacy that they launched a legal campaign to shut down Lifelock. That's just the sort of philanthropy we have come to expect from a fine credit bureau like Experian (who just reported $4 Billion in revenue last year primarily from selling consumer data). Someone should give those darlings a medal!

Unless... neah, there couldn't have been another motive to sue, could there?

Experian's juiciest market is the community of spammy direct marketers who push pre-approved credit cards on our debt-junkie nation. These loan sharks are so busy, er, serving the public that they can't bother themselves to verify the identities of the people to whom they're sending all those credit cards. (Who has time for this?) So naturally, they won't buy credit reports "crippled" with fraud alerts. Perhaps then, as a New York Times reporter, you might suspect that Experian is just a wee concerned about their $4 billion share of the industry.

And if that isn't motive enough, consider that Congress had to pass a law forcing the credit bureaus to issue fraud alerts. Obviously Experian doesn't want the expense and hassle of accommodating these consumer requests. (Again, who has time for this?) But now, thanks mostly to Lifelock, fraud alerts are common, and Experian is forced to actually incur the expense that Congress mandated. Shouldn't that motive also intrigue the Times?

Not only was your inference naive, but your basic point about the false alarms is also wrong. A fraud alert is not an alarm--it is a process check. And not even a double-check, as you call it, but the only one in the process. Don't we want lenders to verify the identities of ALL their applicants, even those not already reported as victims?

You conclude that Lifelock's service isn't worth $10 a month because you can simply protect yourself by following these 10 easy steps:

1. Mail all three credit bureaus a letter and pay each one a fee to issue a credit freeze on your account. (Oh, and you forgot to mention that the letters have to be certified.)
   
2. Anytime you get a new job, or credit card, or a cell phone, or a mortgage, etc, first call the credit bureaus three days in advance, give them your password, and pay a fee to lift the credit freeze. (You'll also need to do this on your way to the hospital if you ever need to be admitted.)
3. In some states, call the bureaus again and pay a fee each time to restore the credit freeze.
4. Replace your mailbox with a secure mailbox (on sale now for only $445).
5. Contact all your service providers and ask them for online accounts instead of paper bills (because no one can ever get to your online data).
6. Buy a shredder (they range in price from $100 to $800).
7. Every day shred all your mail. (Who has time for this?)
8. Lock up your social security card.
9. Stop carrying a checkbook. (Er, isn't that a bit inconvenient?)
10. Keep an eye on any relatives having financial difficulties. (Really, it's what you wrote.)

Thank you, Ron, for demonstrating just how valuable Lifelock's service really is!

But please tell me: do you still think that Experian is sincerely acting openly in the consumer's interest, or furtively in its own? Who's the real villain in this story? If I have given you cause to re-consider, I hope you'll follow through in print.

Yours truly (and you can call the number on my fraud alert to check),
David Cowan

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Wyse to Ignore Vista?

While VMware was virtualizing the server, Wyse was on the cusp of virtualizing the client. And so I had filled my home with those hot little Blazer terminals, severing the chains of PC maintenance. As I'd wander through the house, my Windows desktop followed me like a labrador, popping up with the push of a button faster than you could say Operating System. No fan noise, no power drain, no wires, no expensive upgrades, no added backup, no updates...

But now that my office PCs run Vista (for better or worse, the new standard), my Wyse terminals no longer work. It's not just that the Vista-compatible RDP software is late. No, it's not coming ever, according to the one Wyse rep who actually bothered to call me back as promised.

Is this what happens when financial buyout firms acquire a great technology company?

UPDATE: On the second business day following this post, Steve from Wyse returned my call from two months ago. He gave me access to new firmware for the S10 Blazer clients that include Vista-compatible drivers, so my home is one again Wysed up. Apparently, the problem I encountered was not in Wyse's technology, but in the customer support process. Having said that, if you do need any help from Wyse, Steve knows his stuff.

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"Clear the way for those rabbis!"

The Union Station Master shouted these words on October 6, 1943, when 200 rabbis marched on Washington, DC in the only rally ever held there in support of the victims of the Holocaust. FDR refused to meet the 200 protesters, but Congress later held hearings on the plight of European Jews and formed the War Refugee Board in 1944.



I was proud to learn today that my grandfather, Dr. Moshe Blech, was one of the 200.

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Albert Einstein

From my son's school presentation...


Another Proud Dad Moment... During the Q&A, the Oak Knoll School principal asked the little scientist his biggest regret in life. Answer: "The letter I wrote to the President telling him to build the bomb."

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Bessemer Pulls a Hat Trick!

Congratulations and thanks to the teams at Sirtris, PA Semi and Gracenote, three Bessemer portfolio companies who all signed and announced their acquisitions in the last 12 hours.

Sirtris, the startup that cheats death, fetched $720 million from GlaxoSmithKline. This company, whose sirtuin activators have been touted as the fountain of youth (at least for overweight laboratory mice), was the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Christoph Westphal, a Harvard trained doctor and geneticist. Chris Gabrieli (pictured right) and Steve Kraus led the investment for Bessemer (huge hat tip to Jonathan for the intro--we owe you one!).


Meanwhile, Gracenote--that music database in the sky that tells us all what song, artist and album we're listening to on our PCs, in our iPods, in our CD players, and increasingly in our cars--has fetched a $260 million price from Sony. Special congrats to founder Ty Roberts (pictured right), CEO Craig Palmer, my partner Jeremy Levine and our co-investor Sequoia Capital.


And finally, Forbes reported just minutes ago that Apple has disclosed its acquisition of PA Semi, the innovator in power efficient microprocessors. PA Semi was the brainchild of DEC's rock star chip designer and Sibyte founder Dan Dobberpuhl (pictured right). Thanks to my partner Rob Chandra, who led the A round with help along the way from Ted Lin, Devesh Garg, Umesh Padval and Derrick Lee. Congrats as well to our co-investors Venrock, Highland and Focus.

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Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table

It wasn't the usual crowd that filled the seats in Kepler's Bookstore on February 25, 2008. The evening's audience consisted mainly of families from all over the Bay Area for whom this was their first Author's Talk. Such standing-room-only would have been expected for a Secretary of State, an NFL quarterback, or a Nobel Laureate--not for a local teenage boy.

But Blake Taylor's recently published memoirs of growing up with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has already touched the lives of thousands of families, with the promise of reaching several million more in the US alone who strive to cope with the realities and myths of this widely misunderstood condition.  So this audience came keenly interested in meeting a family role model (now a freshman and molecular biology major at Berkeley), with written questions and no deficit of attention to his advice.

An out-of-the-box thinker, Taylor has authored a book, ADHD & Me: What I Learned From Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table, that defies typical categorizations.  Really, it's three books in one:

*       a heartening coming-of-age story whose hero's unique perspective shines through an authentic stream of consciousness similar to Mark Haddon's A Curious Incident in the Night-Time;

*       a field journal of the first-hand scientific observations that normally elude pediatric psychiatrists who must normally speculate about the intentions and feelings locked up inside relatively un-communicative kids (e.g. "what was he thinking when he lashed out at his sibling?"); and

*       a self-help book for kids and their parents who strive to understand and cope with ADHD.

But unlike the recent swarm of What-You-Need-To-Know-About-ADHD publications, this is not a science or medical book, and Blake makes no pretense otherwise. Readers are clearly advised to direct medical questions to their doctors, as Blake reinforced during the Q&A session at Kepler's. A clear-thinking, humble scientist at heart, Blake understands that it's okay to lack answers.

This honest self-awareness is critical to Blake's success at overcoming his disability. Among his many tips, Blake encourages open communication about ADHD among families, friends and teachers. His personal anecdotes demonstrate how such disclosures have prevented misunderstandings around his behavior, his medicines, and his tics. As he grew comfortable telling people that he has ADHD, they warmed up to him faster, and helped him solve his problems. It even tempered the bullies who prey on odd kids.

Obviously, the book itself exposes highly personal information, and in this way Blake sets an example for his reader. But by the very existence of ADHD & Me, Blake sets an even more profound example. Here's a kid whom several teachers were ready to write off as incapable of meeting normal academic expectations--with illegible penmanship and an inability to complete simple everyday tasks without the aid of psychotropic meds. And yet he authored a highly celebrated book while still in high school. This fact conveys hope, even before the reader has cracked open the cover.

The book itself is a quick and easy read. Each of the 15 chapters corresponds to one aspect of growing up with ADHD: being distracted (his "mind is surfing channels, but someone else has the remote"); being impulsive (e.g. setting the table on fire); being disorganized; being hyperactive; having tics;  being unpopular; being bullied; being isolated; being misunderstood; being blamed; being rigid; being disobedient; being discriminated against; taking control; and last but far from least, being gifted. Each chapter includes a memory, lessons learned, and tips on making the most of life with ADHD. For example, Blake explains how he overcame his poor social skills by approaching friendship like a science-through observation, experimentation and planning, he learned to develop scripts and techniques that helped him socially.

For any family coping with this disability, Blake's stories strengthen the bond between reader and author by sharing all the quirks that often characterize ADHD kids, such as an obsession with Legos and Knex toys, the inability to sit through a meal, hypersensitivity to noises, bright lights and crowds, an impaired sense of the body's boundaries, the tics, poor penmanship, the perception of disrespect from "trying to defend yourself," and the mysteriously cancelled playdates.  Many readers will recognize their own stories unfolding in the pages.

The stories follow Blake's inner dialogue as he struggles to behave normally and as he slowly improves with treatment and therapy. And so they stand as direct evidence refuting the widespread and harmful myth that ADHD is a figment of our imaginations. Egged on by sensationalist media hounds like Rush Limbaugh (who calls ADHD "a hoax"), most Americans believe that the true epidemic is not a mental health condition, but the aggressive medication of kids with unnecessary psychotropics merely because they act like "rowdy boys." They believe that parents and teachers, too lazy or liberal to exact some good old fashioned discipline, resort to doping up the children on "kiddie cocaine."

As evident in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM of Mental Health Disorders, the scientific community was long ago compelled by the preponderance of evidence from behavioral studies, brain scans, clinical trials, etc. But unfortunately for Blake and others, a gap between real science and popular science always persists, and ADHD is no exception. That's why Blake's first grade teacher, rejecting Blake's diagnosis, tried to "fix him" through repeated detention and humiliating punishments (e.g. cleaning the toilets).



Blake clearly goes after other myths as well: that the mother is to blame for bad behavior; that kids shouldn't seek assistance from adults (or "snitch") when harassed by other kids; and that disadvantaged kids should be left alone to build character, rather than be "coddled" with aids and special accommodations. He refutes the common misperception that he didn't care about the other kids. Recalling his first day of pre-school, Blake describes how the noises, fluorescent lights and crowds overwhelmed his senses-how he sought refuge in the quiet corner, which the teachers misinterpreted as lack of interest in making friends. Sometimes adults condemned Blake as violent when he tried to defend himself from bullying.

Nonetheless, ADHD & Me is ultimately upbeat. Blake's concluding message is that ADHD is a difference, not a disability. ADHD minds clearly present disadvantages that kids must learn to mitigate. But usually they also present gifts like intelligence, hyper-focus, passion, energy, creativity, an adventurous spirit, and love of nature. ADHD & Me reflects many of those gifts.

Blake's book is a good read for all. For kids with ADHD, it's a source of self-esteem and inspiration. For their families--including the lucky ones who met Blake at Kepler's--it's chock full of great advice. And for those who still dismiss ADHD kids as simply non-thinking derelicts, how can they refute Blake's testimony of his inner dialogue?

To them, Blake Taylor's story says: I write, therefore I think.

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Congratulations Bladelogic!

BMC announced today that it is acquiring Bladelogic for $28 per share, which values the company between $800 and $900 million.

Bladelogic was founded in 2001 by Dev Ittycheria, an EIR in our Massachusetts office. Prior, Dev had co-founded early SaaS pioneer Applica, which he sold handsomely to Breakaway Solutions.

Congratulations as well to my partner Bob Goodman, who continues to defy the bear market.

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RedHerring Interview: Security and VC Blogging

Airborne Losing Altitude

Airborne, the miracle cure to the common cold, has just lost a class action lawsuit by customers for deceptive advertising, with $23 million in damages. Aw, what a shame.

Thank you to the more than 100 readers who sent me an email alerting me to the news. Many asked if I had something to do with the lawsuit. Not directly, but I'm guessing that the plaintiffs submitted into evidence the Scientific American column featuring my blog post on Airborne's deceptive marketing.

And now that there's a scandal to report, suddenly people are paying attention to the experts. "Have you heard?" "It's all over the news." "Omigod! I can't believe it!" "It's true, I saw it on E!" The very pop science that elevated Airborne to a billion dollar company is now sending this rocket crashing back to earth. Here's what a popular Hollywood news site reports:

Airborne is shit!!!! The company has just settled a class action lawsuit for $23 million!!!!

"There's no credible evidence that what's in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment," David Schardt, a nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a written statement this week. "Airborne is basically an overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that's been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed."

We feel lied to!!!!!

Over the last two years I have received endless emails and blog comments (most of which, I confess, I "moderated" away) maligning the FDA as corrupt for refusing to approve "non-Western" medicine. Now that they can spin conspiracy theories around a new villain (a certain second grade school teacher's billion dollar corporation), perhaps they will acknowledge that the FDA has good reason not to approve scammy, new age, bullshit medical claims.

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TED Saturday: Thank You For Being Here

This is my final post on TED 2008. If you've made it this far, thank you for being here.

Oxford economist Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion, offered some clear advice on how to help developing nations transform natural resources into long-lasting social benefits. Obviously some nations have squandered their windfalls of oil, diamonds, copper, etc. while others have managed to leverage their advantages into broad, robust economies. The distinguishing factor is, according to Collier, the establishment of checks and balances in the nation's systems of governance. Populations will rise to the occasion if given the chance, as happened in Nigeria when a freed press led to skyrocketing newspaper sales. This advice is timely for Uganda, which just discovered oil, and Angola, which now sells about $50 billion a year of oil.

Collier's prescription is to establish a global agency that monitors and rates nations for best practices, in the same way, I guess, that Institutional Shareholder Services rates corporations for their governance practices. One example of a best practice is to sell national resources (oil rights, mining rights, frequency spectrum, etc.) through verified auctions rather than secret deals cut by the finance minister.

Vice-President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore was next. In a sure sign that he is NOT running for president, he blew a kiss to the flamboyant and flirtatious Tom Reilly. Gore's message was all about the need for civic activism. "I'm a big advocate of changing the light bulbs, but it's more important to change the laws." (I suppose this message justifies Gore's regular use of private jets.)

As we have come to expect, Big Al had some compelling slides with him:

• half the polar ice cap has melted in the past 25 years, and the rate of loss is increasing. Last year the ice caps lost an area the size of the eastern U.S.

• 68% of Americans believe that human activity causes significant global warming, and yet they rank global warming near the bottom of the 20 most important political issues.

• In the last year, the reporters from CNN, NBC, ABC, FOX and CBS were each televised asking the presidential candidates 956, 844, 601, 481, and 319 questions, respectively. For each network, no more than two of those questions related to global warming.

• Now that Australia has ratified Kyoto (responding to severe droughts), the US stands alone in opposition to the global treaty.

Al's final call was to put a price on carbon consumption. No brainer.

Chris Anderson: "Does it hurt that you're not in a political position to effect this yourself?"

Al: "You have no idea."


Jonathan Haidt, who claims an expertise in happiness and morality, spoke of conservatism and liberalism as the yin and yang. He cautioned us not to get too worked up in our opposition to the other side. What a wimp. Skip this talk.


Saturday's best speaker is a banjo player, watercolor artist, founder of www.planetwalk.org, and writer of Coast Guard oil spill regulations...

One day, at the age of 27, John Francis decided to take a break from talking. He was surprised at how much he learned that day. He decided not talk another day. And another... (This continued for 17 years). In 1971, the day two oil tankers collided and spilled half a million gallons into the San Francisco Bay, John Francis resolved to stop driving and riding in motor vehicles.

So he quietly walked to Ashland, Oregon and registered to study for a 2-year environmental degree. When he graduated, Dad said "You're gong to have to talk and ride in cars now." But instead he walked to another school in Montana. He had no money to register, so the Dean himself paid the $150 needed for one credit, and told John he could take the remaining courses and have the grades escrowed until he can pay for them. John got his master's degree there, and even taught a class by gesticulating and writing on the board.

John walked to Wisconsin where he got a PhD and wrote a lot about oil spills. When the Exxon Valdes spilled its charge, John's expertise was needed so he walked to the east coast. Later, when he worked for the UN, he sailed to Venezuela and walked the countryside to visit the prison town El Dorado. You can get a feel for John's unique story in this video.

In 1990, on the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Day, he resumed talking, to a crowd gathered in Washington, DC. Here's what he said to them: "Thank you for being here."

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TED Friday Afternoon: Shining Eyes

Friday afternoon at TED2008 culminated in TED's shining moment...

Jim Macgraff, founder of Livescribe, demonstrated the $149 pen-based computer that his startup will soon launch. Me want! It remembers what you write, along with the concurrent audio. A small, embedded LED display can be used for applications like real time language translation while you write.

Next we heard from author (and former arbitrage trader) Nassim Taleb. Nassim wrote Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan (thank you, Chini, for first introducing me to both those books), each of which explains a common cognitive pitfall in human reasoning. In this talk Taleb discussed Black Swan, a metaphor for the statistical outliers that invariably arise. The point of his book is that some outliers are safe to ignore--a hurricane that disrupts a store's weekend sales, for example, is a one-time event that doesn't threaten a business. But other outliers are too important to ignore--such as the hurricane that actually destroys the store. Too many people congratulate themselves for success, up until the inevitable point that inherent risk catches up with them.

Taleb reminded me of another book which, I think, better portrays the hubris that grips successful risk-takers--When Genius Failed, Roger Lowenstein's true story of Long Term Capital's demise. Eight years ago, at the peak of The Bubble, my partner (and Harvard professor) Felda Hardymon sent this book to me and our other partners at Bessemer as a cautionary tale.

Chris Anderson (no relation to the TED curator) came next, sharing his enthusiasm for building cheap Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. His first attempt was a LEGO Mindstorm drone, assembled for $1,000. His second attempt, at a $500 cost, was a model airplane with a cellphone attached that supplied all the electronics for processing, communications and imagery. His latest attempt is a mini-blimp that comes in at a $100 cost.

Professional Optimist Peter Schwartz, who wrote The Long Boom, asserted the contrarian position that in the coming century the world will become a better, safer place to live. The crux of his (un-compelling) argument is that things have to get better this century because there are no world wars brewing, billions of poor Asians are joining the middle class, and the economy should steadily grow as it has over the last century.

Ironically, the very next speaker took the stage to caution us that if we don't aggressively divert our scientific resources toward staving off neurological diseases, that they will reach dangerous, epidemic proportions over the next fifty years (primarily due to longer life spans). In the meantime, while we develop treatments, he advised us to consume caffeine (staves off Parkinson's) and fish (prevents Alzheimer's). He also cautioned us to maintain low blood pressure and to exercise our minds.

Larry Byrnes of General Motors gave a presentation on The Boss, a driverless car that won last year's DARPA challenge. To win, the GM Boss had to navigate to a destination through several miles of real urban streets, complete with complex intersections. One day, cars will not need drivers so we can finally write Blackberry emails without getting so distracted by the road. And oh yeah--no more accidents either.

Former Time Editor Walter Isaacson presented on the future of Narration in the digital age. I recommend you skip this one.

Harvard public health scientist gave a talk on the rise of STD viruses and the measures we can take to curtail them. I'd skip this one, too.

Helen Fisher's book Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love must be good because Richard Dawkins endorsed it. Fisher reports the clinical results of brain scans that show similar pathways among those who are in love as those who have just recently been dumped. The conclusion is that the "love chemicals" remain activated for some time after terminating a relationship--in fact they can even strengthen amidst unrequited love.

Other points of interest:

• the brain regions activated during thoughts of love are the same regions activated during the contemplation of highly risky behavior;
• a broken heart manifests the same physical symptoms as any other physical addiction; and
• all animals in the wild (not in captivity) are discriminating in their choice of mate (except perhaps those slutty, cheating crows).

X Prize founder Peter Diamandis, who took me on a zero-gravity flight last year, shared a slide show of his Zero-G flight with Stephen Hawking.

Author, poet and dissident Chris Abani was repeatedly imprisoned and tortured by Nigerian authorities. Some of his childhood tales are too awful to repeat. According to Abani, the Nigerian word for rape and marriage are the same word. Abani also told some wonderful stories about simple acts of kindness.

The last session of the day was the best of TED2008. Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, resolved to make every last TED attendee love classical music. He deconstructed a Chopin piece, playing it on the piano as a 7, 8, 9 and 10 year old would, so that we could appreciate the increasing nuance of play. Zander exudes enormous energy and charisma, reminiscent of Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful. As a conductor he assumes the responsibility of energizing his musicians, inspiring them to feel the music. He know he is getting their best only when he sees their shining eyes. Success in life, he shared, "is not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me."

Quickly he warmed up the audience, and handed out lyrics so that soon enough every single person stood up and belted out Ode to Joy in the original German! Everyone loved it--we cheered and danced around as if at a rock concert. There were shining eyes everywhere.

If you watch no other TED session, watch Ben Zander, preferably on a big screen with big-ass speakers. It's the only session that TED Curator Chris Andersen dared not cut off at the 18 minute mark.

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TED Friday Morning: Music, Shrooms and Crows

A work-related call kept me from Friday's first TED session, which I had thought was author Amy Tan. Unfortunately the speaker I missed was actually John Knoll, co-inventor of Photoshop and ILM's visual effects wizard behind several Star Wars and Pirates of the Carribean films. Everyone loved it. Damn! I'll have to watch the DVD.

Designer Yves Behard promoted the integration of product architecture, design and marketing. Regarding his jawbone bluetooth earpiece: "If it isn't beautiful it doesn't belong on your face." (Then how do you explain my nose?) Yves also co-designed the $100 Laptop, a climate-resistant, wireless, multimedia , brightly colored laptop-on-a-string. Yves talked about his packaging of the NYC Condom (tagline: "Get Some"), as well as Y water, a healthy kids' drink packaged in a creative toy.

Robert Lang is a mathematician and origami artist. This was a fascinating talk--a definite highlight of the day. Origami was once a cute little art, but in the last century it has been changed qualitatively by mathematicians like Lang.

Lang showed how the development of a formal language for describing the folds of a paper and Euclidean-like rules have created a rich platform for people to build creations upon creations, "putting dead people to work for you." The four simple rules yield valid origami (the specific rules went by too fast for me, but they have to do with the size of folds, the intersections of lines, the ability to maintain a 2-color map, and the sums of the various angles). With this basis in place, complexity emerged from the system in beautiful, incredible ways (photos show three sculptures, each folded from a single sheet of paper). Lang has even developed a CAD tool that renders any two dimensional stick figure drawing into a single sheet origami, making complex structure easy and limitless.

The punch line is that the mathematics developed for origami has in fact turned out to apply to medicine, electronics, and space exploration. Origami was used to design an air bag, as well as a heart stent that travels unfolded through the arteries and then unfolds at the point of blockage. Lang also shared schematics--and photos of prototypes--of a 100 meter diameter lens for Lawrence Livermore that can be deployed in space by unfolding it from within the delivery satellite. (The lens is designed to point both outward and inward!) Meanwhile, Japan has already launched a satellite with an origami solar sail.

I then got to hear novelist Amy Tan after all. I wasn't expecting much, but somehow she still disappointed. As far as I can tell, the entire point of her talk was "How did I come to be such a creative genius?" The possibilities seem to include "God's will, synchrony, or mysterious forces." And finally her Big Question: "Did someone intend for me to be this way?" My big question: Who Has Time For This?

The next talk was another highlight of the day, in a very surprising way. MIT Media Lab's Tod Machover, inventor of Guitar Hero, demonstrated new technologies for musical expression, such as toys that are also instruments, and a simple composing software tool called Hyperscore that anyone can use without knowing musical notation. Tod talked about the health benefits of music (though oddly, he seems to have missed the news that the Mozart effect was a scam), and about his team's contribution of time and technology to Tewksbury Hospital, where disabled patients have learned to compose and perform music using Hyperscore.

And then it got really interesting. Tewksbury patient Dan Ellsey, a quadraplegic, was wheeled onto stage. Dan is paralyzed below the neck and cannot speak. But Dan can communicate in the same way Hawking does, and he uses his mouth movements to control Hyperscore. With only one exception, Dan had never before left Massachusetts, but TED sponsor Bombardier Flexjet flew him across the country to perform a symphony at TED that he had composed using Hyperscore. Dan was beaming, bobbing his head back and forth with excitement. Using facial movements, he proceeded to engage the software in a laptop set before him, which somehow allows the user to act as the conductor of the score. Dan's symphony was interesting, coherent, even stirring. and when he finished, he smiled and literally moaned for joy as the crowd leapt to their feet in a long round of applause. Dan's euphoria was contagious.

Physicist Brian Cox delivered yet another talk about the elementary particles that physicists hope to find in the Hydron supercollider.

We then got a fascinating video tour of the ocean depths from geophysicist Robert Ballard, who delivered a provocative talk on our society's negligence of oceanic exploration. According to Ballard, 72% of the planet and 50% of US-owned territory is underwater, and yet we have better maps of Mars than our ocean floors. 99% of the planet's volcanoes, rich in minerals, are underwater. The Great Rift Valley mountain range covers 23% of the planet's surface area, and yet we explored the moon before we got there.

Ballard's video tour of the places he has explored (before anyone else in the world) include geothermal geysers, giant clams that host chemo-synthetic bacteria (because there's no light to support photosynthetic plants), methane volcanoes, and the remains of the Titanic, the Bismarck, and a shipwreck from 750 BC.

So, Ballard asks, why aren't we responding to the threat of rising oceans and dwindling land masses by preparing to build and colonize sea-based platforms? It's far more feasible and affordable than space colonization. Perhaps because NASA's budget is 1,600 times the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Next, a South American entrepreneur described a mind-opening exhibition he has developed in which blind people usher non-blind people through completely dark exhibits, reversing the advantage.

Paul Stamets has got to be the world's leading Mycologist (mushroom expert). Convinced that mushrooms hold the key to solving our biggest environmental challenges, Stemats cultivates various fungi that naturally kill pests, that pull CO2 from the atmosphere, that transform rocky landscapes into fertile ones, and that repair damage from toxic waste.

Little known mushroom facts: the largest living organism known to exist in the universe is a 2,200 acre field of mycellium fungus in Oregon. Mycellium fungus was the first organism on earth to migrate to land, where it paved the way for others by breaking down the rocks. It's now the fibrous binding agent in soil, and so, living underground away from light, it harvests radiation as its energy source. This means that if we ever do find alien life, it is more likely to resemble mycellium than human beings. And if we don't, we can export mycellium to other planets which could, according to Stamets, terraform them for human life.

Next came Joshua Klein, the "Crow Guy". Like rats and cockroaches, crows have evolved to live near people--it's extremely rare for crows to mate more than 5 miles from human settlement. They're also smarter than they look. We watched a film of one laboratory crow who hungered for food at the bottom of a vial, so the bird wrapped the end of a stick around the vial, and then used the curved portion to hook the food. (This was a new behavior that the bird, and the scientists, had never seen before.) Crows will remember the faces of the scientists who captured them, even for a day, and then incessantly caw at them years later on campus. (Now Joshua wears a mask.) Adulterous female crows will emit a false distress call so that when her mate flies off, she can have a secret rendezvous. We saw crows trained to find coins outside in the dirt, and insert them into a peanut vending machine. But here's the smartest behavior of all, which you can see for yourself in the video on the right: There is a Japanese city in which the crows have learned a way to crack nuts--they drop the nuts into a busy pedestrian crosswalk, the cars break the nuts open, and then the crows wait on the curb for the red light so they can safely walk into the street to collect the booty.

The next speaker, Hot Zone author Richard Preston, loves Redwoods so much that he and his family sometimes sleep at the tops of the trees, suspended in hammocks. Redwoods can grow 38 stories high, and live thousands of years. They are the tallest organisms in the world. Unfortunately, 96% of California's Redwoods have been clear cut in the past 30 years.

Bottom line: All good talks (except Amy Tan). The highlights were Robert Lang, Tod Machover, and, allegedly, John Knoll.

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Helpful Tips To Survive a Nuclear Explosion

Will Evil Prevail? described the next set of sessions, Thursday afternoon at TED.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, public health specialist and author of Americans at Risk, is a pioneer in the field of disaster medicine--the medical care needed after natural and man-made catastrophes. Redlener's talk focused on our lack of readiness for the likely day when terrorists attack our cities with nuclear weapons.

Is such an attack likely? Consider that: (i) The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported 18 instances of stolen plutonium or highly enriched uranium from the former Soviet Union. Only 13 pounds of plutonium or 25 pounds of highly enriched uranium is needed to build a bomb equivalent to the ones that destroyed Hiroshima. (ii) The schematics of nuclear bombs are readily available online. (iii) Organized but stateless terrorist organizations are retaliation-proof. And (iv) Russia cannot account for 84 of their 132 suitcase bombs.

To prepare for what would be a much more devastating nuclear attack during the Cold War, the US employed delusional defenses--Bert the Turtle told school kids to Duck and Cover! And FEMA prepared an urban evacuation plan that unfortunately required 4 days notice of a missile launch.

A terrorist attack would be far less damaging, but it's also far more likely to happen and there isn't a single US city prepared to respond because, Redlener speculates, city workers are still thinking about Cold War-style attacks in which the outcome was too devastating to even ponder. His job is to change that, but in the meantime he offered these Helpful Tips To Survive a Small Nuclear Explosion for anyone not vaporized:

• Avert your eyes from the blast
• Keep your mouth open (lest your eardrums pop)
• To avoid the fallout cloud, you have 10 to 20 minutes to walk at least a mile away from the blast, preferably heading cross wind and keeping your face covered.
• If you cannot reach that distance in time, seek shelter in either a basement or the upper stories (at least the 10th floor) of a building.

Next we heard from Phil Zimbardo, the social psychologist who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment in which college students displayed a 90% disposition to exact torture others when instructed by an authority. In his book The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo describes the short list of factors needed to turn most any nice person into an Abu Ghraib Prison Guard. Zimbardo also discussed his current work on the factors needed to turn someone into a hero who defies risk in adverse situations to help others. His examples of everyday heroes included the Abu Ghraib whistle blower, and the grad student who forced Zimbardo to terminate the Stanford Prison Experiment--a heroine whom Zimbardo later married.

Harvard political scientist Samantha Power, author of A Problem From Hell, raised our consciousness of Rwandan genocide, lamenting the apathy among our population and media. Just like it happened in 1941, the first American reports of widespread genocide in Rwanda were indeed covered by The New York Times, but not on the front page. Power's congressional representative reported that her office received hundreds of calls from constituents worried about the Rwandan apes, but none who mentioned the people.

The remainder of the day was dedicated to the TED Prize. The three winners were:

1. Dave Eggers, author of several non-conventional books, the best of which is (in my humble opinion, but apparently not his)  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. TED recognized Eggers for his campaign to build several inner city tutoring centers staffed by writers. The first one, named 826 Valencia in Dave's hometown of San Francisco, was sited in a storefront that had to sell something due to the neighborhood's zoning laws. So Dave and his friends sold Pirate Supplies (peg legs, planks, etc.), which, surprisingly, paid the rent. In the same spirit, their storefront operations in other cities sold  things too, such as Brooklyn SuperHero Supply (capes, secret identities, manuals...) and The Time Travel Store ("Whenever You Are, You're Already Then"). Since each prize winner also gets a wish, Dave's wish was to recruit 1,000 people to personally help their local public school in some meaningful way.

2. Neil Turok, particle physicist and co-author of Endless Universe, has advocated a theory that ascribes the Big Bang to a collision of two universes. TED recognized him for his founding a math and sciences university in Africa, where Neil grew up. Neil's wish was that the next Eisntein would hail from Africa, and enlisted TED's help to increase his university's enrollment across all the nations of that continent.

3. Karen Armstrong is listed as a "religious thinker." Hmmm. No doctorates, no helping kids. TED seems to be recognizing her with a $100,000 prize because she's a former nun turned TV exec (after she was fired from English teaching post), and she likes to write about religion. I'm not making this up. "Religion isn't about believing things," she said. "It's about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness." (What does that even mean? I think I need to suck on a Holymeter, or test my blood for Sacredness to see if I've got intimations.) Karen hailed the Golden Rule as the basis of the three Abarahamic religions, and directed us not to think about all the other commandments and rules, or all those beliefs, none of which have ever really been very important to religion. (Again, I'm not making this up.) Her wish was to enlist some Jewish, Muslim and Christian clergy in signing a document that calls for Compassion. (NOT making this up.)

What a letdown after an otherwise thrilling day at TED. Appropriately, the day closed with some stirring music by Vusi Mahlasela. You think you got
the blues? This veteran of Ladysmith Black Mambazo sings ballads about his war-torn African childhood that would make Dick
Cheney cry.

Bottom line: Redlener and Eggers were the highlights.

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TED Thursday Morning: Life Origami

One more item from TED Wednesday:

Alisa Miller discussed America's parochial, shallow perspective. She sampled news coverage one month, when the global news included a devastating flood in Indonesia and, in Paris, the release of conclusive data confirming the acceleration of global warming. In the U.S. these stories were completely dwarfed by coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death, a story that received more coverage than all the news associated with every country in the world other than the US and Iraq.

Yesterday, the first session, What is Life?, began with Craig Venter, who had first sequenced the human genome. Craig presented his current work synthesizing life. First he described a 5,000 letter (ATCG) bacteriophage that his lab was able to manufacture by inserting the sequence into e.coli. His lab then developed strings of protein that glued different genes together, so that they could now stitch together any of the 20 million genes that have since been discovered. They have already crafted a life form 500,000 letters long, based on algae methanococcus, that transforms carbon dioxide into methane fuel. The lab hopes to ultimately increase the original bacteria's metabolism a million fold, a scale that can potentially serve our energy needs.



TED Curator Chris Anderson asked Craig, "Can you be accused of playing God?" to which he answered "Oh, we're not playing." Other applications of life synthesis include production of vaccinations, and hardier food. Craig views himself in part as a spokesman to pave the way to public acceptance of these technologies. "Europeans now want DNA-free food."

Next, Microsoft announced World Wide Telescope, a 2.5D rendering of the universe based on all the available astronomical photographs available. Users can fly through the universe and zoom in, building tours for others. Interesting.



Paul Rothemund, a molecular programmer, then ilustrated the art and science of DNA origami, an organic nano-technology. His team has demonstrated that long strands of DNA can be folded into any shape at all by mixing in short strands of protein that pinch the long strand at just the right point. He showed a schematic he had drawn for folding a strand into a smiley face (or rather, a circle missing only two holes for eyes and a curved trench for the smile). Then he showed videos of the tiny molecules that resulted when he folded the DNA strand according to his schematic. Amazingly, we saw little yellow smiley faces floating around.

Rothemund's team then developed software so that anyone can fold DNA strands into shapes. Lulu Qian, a student in Shanghai, used the software to spell DNA (using DNA). Rothemund used the software to build a tiny switch, the equivalent of a transistor. He aggregated the switches into counters and memory cells, crafting organic memory chips of any arbitrary size.

I don't even know what to say about such genius. As one of the interstitial musical performers put it, TED presentations both inspire and depress as you realize how relatively little you've done with your own life.

Dr. Dean Ornish gave a short lesson on the importance of lifestyle in overcoming our genetic fates (at least for a short time). My takeaway: stress and saturated fats kill brain cells; chocolate, tea, and blueberries stimulate new brain cell growth.

Susan Blackmore presented her perspective on memetics, a framework for describing evolutionary systems beyond simply the one organic system Darwin discovered. Blackmore's work, based on an afterthought Richard Dawkins shared at the end of The Selfish Gene, is an interesting perspective for looking at any system that includes reproduction, mutation, and competition. Critics of memetics like to point out that memetics is hardly a useful science. Still it's a fun one to exercise. Personally I have come to view startups as mutated scions of incumbent companies that compete for dollars in the economy. Like most mutations, new business plans are usually doomed, but occasionally one thrives and dominates, breeding similar entrants.

I can't recall the name of the person who gave the next brief presentation, but it was an impressive description of a new technology called neuroimaging therapy. By showing a patient an MRI of her brain in real time, the patient can learn, through biofeedback, how to head off thoughts or sensations that lead to pain, anger, depression, or addictive impulses. He claims a 50% success rate in curing chronic pain through neuroimaging therapy.



Doris Goodwin, a scholar and author of presidential history, gave a wonderful talk comparing Abraham Lincoln to Lyndon Johnson. She framed the talk around the claim that personal happiness requires a commitment to work, love and play. Borrowing from her latest book, she shared anecdotes about Lincoln's bout with depression in his twenties. Doris weaved in wonderful stories about her own childhood and her times working for President Johnson. The talk didn't really make any sense--the stories and points did not coherently tie together--but it was still worthwhile to bask in her clever and amusing collage of words.

The late morning session of TED was titled Is Beauty Truth? With such a new age sounding theme, I really expected little of this session, but I was pleasantly surprised...

The flu prevented the Harvard evolutionary psychologist Nancy Etcoff from attending, but a stand-in presented the purpose of her book Survival of the Prettiest. By examining people's ideas of beauty, the book identifies commonalities across culture, and demonstrates the extent to which beauty is hard-wired in human beings, as observed even in infantile reactions to a pretty face. "Even babies are shallow." Etcoff's moral is that if we understand the elements of human attraction, we can enjoy beauty without letting it obsess us.

Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi came next. This time I was really ready to catch up on my email, especially as he began his rambling stream of consciousness. But the guy is amusing and he grew on me. He had lots of funny stories and he never took himself too seriously. "Style is great if it's amusing."

Particle physicist Garrett Lisi closed the session. Garrett is an avid surfer who lives and works in a van on the beaches of Maui. He compares physics experiments to startups, since they hold great promise but they usually don't work.

The connection to beauty is that Lisi is pursuing the grand unified theory of physics by advocating a mathematical model of the universe that isn't proven, but it's so elegant and beautiful that physicists like Lisi believe that it's most probably correct. (As Dr. Suess wrote about Horton's egg, "It should be, it should be, it should be like that.") Lisi proceeded to describe the 8-dimensional shape called an E8 that seems to frame the properties of the 226 different configurations of the known elementary particles. The vertices of an E8 also define several other particles that haven't yet been observed but, Lisi hopes, will be observed when the new 27-mile Hydron particle collider comes on line later this year. "If we don't find those particles, it won't be good for me personally."

Bottom line: Craig Venter and Paul Rothemund were Thursday morning's highlights.

As for the lowlights, I'd like to heckle but some of my neighbors have impaired senses of humor. Fortunately, Kedrosky has turned me on to Twitter... (twitter.com/davidcowan)

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