OK, these Obama Baby videos are too cute… I think he’s gonna win based on these.

The how to group at Mahalo had a really great week…. if you’re interested in freelance work writing how to articles please check out the How to Group in the Mahalo Greenhouse.

How to Poach Chicken

How to Speak Russian

How to Make a Long Island Iced Tea

How to Bleach Hair

How to Arrange Flowers

Tesla Chairman Elon Musk gives a test drive to Fox Business and reports they’ve sold over 1,000 cars!

Most important they show the orange version! I’m thinking I picked the right color.

In another month to six weeks I should receive delivery of my Tesla Roadster. Right now I’ve got production model #16 in the Signature 100 collection.

My plan is to do a daily video blog about the car, what kind of millage I’m getting, reactions from people, and my thoughts on going green. I’m also going to be looking into solar panels for my garage (and maybe Mahalo HQ) which I’m hoping will give me the ability to charge the Tesla and be 100% OFF THE GRID.

As you can see I’ve selected orange for my Telsa (orange and blue are my favorite colors).

I’d say I’m excited… but that would be an understatement.

I’ve also got a crazy idea: figuring out a way to GIVE AWAY on Tesla on Mahalo. I’m thinking if I can come up with a contest that drives $150,000 in value for Mahalo. My math is that if we can generate like 30-60M page views based on a $2.50 to $5 CPM for an ad unit or something we could do it. Of course, the person would have to pay tax on $125k car, which would be a LARGE chunk of change I’m thinking.

Thoughts on running a contest?

The DEMO conference isn’t the only payola game in town…. looks like Tony Perkins is trying to get a $1,000 a minute from startup companies to present at his conference. Now, that’s like $2,000 less than DEMO charges per minute, so I guess it’s a deal!

Losers.
Here’s how they get you… first they send you a “congratulations!” email (just like a spammer), then they break the news of the fee to you.

——————–
from Erin Elton <erin@alwayson-network.com>
to jason at mahalo.com
date Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 10:12 AM
subject Opportunity to Present at Stanford Summit July 22nd-24th

Dear Jason,

AlwaysOn is pleased to Present the 6th Annual Stanford Summit, the Premier Event of the year for VCs and CEOs of Private Emerging Technology Companies, July 22-24.

Produced by AlwaysOn in conjunction with the Stanford Univerisity Technology Ventures Program http://stvp.stanford.edu/, the Stanford Summit will take place on the historic Stanford Campus in Palo Alto, the birthplace of Silicon Valley and hundreds of companies — from Hewlett Packard to Google — over the past 75 years! Over 1,000 VCs, Corporate Buyers, Entrepreneurs, Investment Bankers, Analysts, Lawyers, Limited Partners, and Media from the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East will attend this event. AlwaysOn will deliver a first rate Program consisting of Panels and CEO Presentations, creating a great environment for networking, deal making, and transacting. Attached is the Agenda for the Conference, to date http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/24549.

We would like to Invite you to Present a CEO Showcase at the Stanford Summit — A Six Minute Pitch in front of Conference Attendees — one of the most Influential Audience’s of Investors and Technology Executives assembled Anywhere!

Whether you are looking for Funding or to Build Brand Awareness, a CEO Showcase at Stanford is one of the Best Investments you can make.

To learn more about this Opportunity, please Email me at erin@alwayson-network.com, or feel free to call me at
714-474-4761.

We Look Forward to seeing you at the Stanford Summit!

— Erin

Erin Elton, Sr. Associate, Business Development
AlwaysOn, 714-474-4761 www.alwayson.goingon.com

———————-

Then I ask for more details and they let me know that SPACE IS FILLING FAST!!!

———————-

Hi Jason,

———————-

Here’s their form to signup now after the jump….

———————-

We’re playing with the Spore Creature Creator right now… check out the Spore Creature Creator Live Video Stream.

More on spore:

Spore is a life simulation video game based on evolution and the universe, where you can develop a single-celled organism into a much more complex type of animal, from generation to generation.

Fast Facts

1. Developer: Maxis
2. Publisher: Electronic Arts
3. Lead Designer: Will Wright
4. Platforms: PC, Mac OS X, Nintendo DS, Cell Phones
5. Unconfirmed Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, Sony PSP, Game Boy Advance
6. Genre: Life Simulation
7. Modes: Massively single player
8. ESRB Rating: Everyone (E)
9. Release Date: September 7, 2008

Every week or so we announce a couple of more experts for the TechCrunch50.com conference. Today we’re announcing two amazing technology journalists–heck pundits–and one of the best up and coming startup founders in Web 2.0. Really thrilled that Digg founder Kevin Rose, CNET’s Editor in Chief Dan Farber, and the legendary Om Malik of GigaOm (previously Red Herring, Forbes, and Business 2.0) are joining us as well.

These three are joining the killer expert panel that already includes Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, Chris DeWolf, Marissa Mayer, Sean Parker, Sheryl Sandberg, Yossi Vardi and Jeff Weiner.

Very exciting. If you haven’t bought a ticket they are available at the TechCrunch50 site. Note: buy your ticket now while it’s early bird $1,995. It jumps up to $2,995 regular price real soon.

Special thanks to our *partners* (they’re not sponsors, they’re really working partners as they are helping make this event happen):

Partners

Service Partners

From the TechCrunch.com announcement.

Kevin Rose is the founder and chief architect of Digg. Kevin started Digg in September 2004 as a personal project. His initial idea was to conduct a social experiment in how masses of users could control and promote news and other content on the Web, without external editorial control. After a very short time, he realized the power of his idea, as Digg was becoming a resource for breaking news stories and developed a strong user following. Kevin is also a co-founder of the Internet Television Network Revision3 where as a member of the board he provides strategic direction to the company. Crunchbase profile.

Dan Farber was named Editor-in-chief of CNET’s News.com in February 2008. Previously he was vice-president of editorial at CNET Networks and editor in chief of ZDNet. Dan has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. He joined ZDNet in 1996, and led the development of ZDNet’s worldwide network of more than 70 technology-focused sites. Prior to joining ZDNet, Dan served as vice president and editor-in-chief at Ziff-Davis’ flagship computing news publications, PC Week and MacWeek. He was also a founding editor at MacWorld and part of the editorial staffs of PC World and PC Magazine. Crunchbase profile.

Om Malik has over 15 years of experience as a journalist covering technology and business news. Most notably, he was a Writer at Red Herring during its glory days. He then went on to be part of the founding team of Forbes.com as a Senior Editor. Most recently, he was a Senior Writer for Business 2.0 magazine covering telecom and broadband stories. His contributions have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and MIT Technology Review. Additionally, Malik is the author of Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist. He is the founder of Giga Omni Media, the company behind popular blogs such as GigaOM, NewTeeVee, WebWorkerDaily, Earth2Tech & OStatic. Crunchbase profile.

Stay up to date on TechCrunch50 at the conference blog.

There is a magical time in the relationship between products and peoples I referrer to as “the moment.”

“The moment” is the exact time when an individual, after engaging your product, “gets it.” By “gets it” I mean they understand your product’s value proposition at such a deep level that they:

1. get excited
2. have an epiphany of sorts
3. can explain the value of your product to others easily

It’s a great exercise to look back at various services and “the moment” at which you got them. Here are some common examples:

• “The Windows Moment” happened for me in the 80s when I realized I could cut and paste information from one program into another, and that I could leave one application open all the time.
• “The Blackberry Moment” happened for me when I realized that email was actually pushed–rather than pulled–to the device AND that I could simply forward my email to the device.
• “The GMAIL Moment” happened for me when I realized that I would never have to delete or archive email again, and that a search index was built on the fly (as opposed to say Eudora which I used for years and which had VERY slow search).
• “The Linkedin Moment” happened for me when I realized that I could search for people with PHP skill, in Los Angeles, and that worked at Shopzilla or Yahoo (i.e. local companies). I never liked headhunters, and I had realized LinkedIn’s value: you could hire folks quickly and easily.
• “The Silicon Alley Reporter Moment” happened for me when we created the Silicon Alley 100 list. At that moment we realized people would have no choice but pay attention to us.
• “The blog/Weblogs, Inc. Moment” happened for me when I realized you could remove 70% of the cost of traditional publishing by NOT having editors, office space, a printer, or stamps. Before this I ran a magazine (Silicon Alley Reporter–wish it had a better wikipedia page) and so I couldn’t understand a publishing business without editors. Really glad I had that moment.

Recently, by doing massive user testing in our lab and by watching twitter, we figured out what “the Mahalo moment” is. The Mahalo moment happens when someone is desperate for a comprehensive overview of a subject and our page is of *extremely* high quality in terms of two things: a) a fact-filled Guide Note and b) amazing, well-organized links.

To be frank, we weren’t having half the Mahalo moments before we started writing 300-400 word Guide Notes with citations. However, after we retrained and recomposed out team to focus on writing great guide notes, we’ve seen a MASSIVE spike in people understanding the value of Mahalo.

Today’s NewAssignment.net had their Mahalo moment.

It’s a glorious feeling when this happens to be sure. The light from God above shines down on you and bake in warm glory that is threading the entrepreneurial needle. When I did the Silicon Alley Reporter 100 list I felt this warm glow, and when Peter Rojas’ blazing star showed up at Weblogs, Inc. and we started creating blogs with their own highly branded domain names and LARGE staffs.

It took me about a year to find the “Mahalo moment,” and interestingly, that is almost EXACTLY how long it took to come up with the idea for the Silicon Alley 100 and Engadget.

What’s the lesson here? For me it’s that you have to just frackin’ start. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll find your moment. When you do find the moment DOUBLE DOWN, THEN TRIPLE DOWN, and THEN DOUBLE DOWN AGAIN ON IT! Slam it home.

…. and for a startup company there is nothing warmer then that moment. Feels so good.

{ Photo via CC: breakthrough }

File this under fun: There are three folks named Jason in the top 10 on Google’s result for the search Jason. My pal Jason Shellen is #10, Jason Kottke who I’ve met a few times (and enjoy his blogging) is number nine, and I just noticed today I’m number six. I don’t even think I was in the top 20 a year ago. A natural body company is number one, and fictional camp killer Jason Voorhees’ Wikipedia page is number two.

This is one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard of: Zappos pays customer support people $1,000 to quit a month after they’ve been hired (and 10% of the folks take it). Although I wonder if folks are starting the job at Zappos in order to just quit.