If you are a Firefox user, the About This Site Firefox Extension by Gina Trapani is worth checking out. With one click, you can get the following info for the site you are visiting (if you are into history, the Wayback Machine archive is “way cool.”)
I just watched two Tarantino movies from 1994 that have held up incredibly well.
Friday night’s bloodfest was Natural Born Killers. I had forgotten Tarantino wrote the story – Oliver Stone got all the glory on this one. Woody Harrelson is unbelievable and – a decade later – the movie matches the evening news more than I’d ever care to have imagined.
Tonight, we watched Pulp Fiction. I’ve only seen this movie about 30 times (a few less then Caddyshack) and I was delighted to find the script on the Internet. My favorite scene is the the one when Butch (the boxer played by Bruce Willis) has finally reconciled with Marsellus after blowing away Zed and Maynard and is trying to get Fabian on the chopper to get out of town. Fabian starts to cry and the following dialogue ensues.
BUTCH: I’m sorry, baby-love.
FABIAN: (crying) You were gone so long, I started to think dreadful thoughts.
BUTCH: I’m sorry I worried you, sweetie. Everything’s fine. Hey, how was breakfast?
FABIAN: (waterworks drying a little) It was good —
BUTCH: — did you get the blueberry pancakes?
FABIAN: No, they didn’t have blueberry pancakes, I had to get buttermilk — are you sure you’re okay?
BUTCH: Baby-love, from the moment I left you, this has been without a doubt the single weirdest day of my entire life. Climb on an’ I’ll tell ya about it.
Fabian does climb on. Butch STARTS her up.
FABIAN: Butch, whose motorcycle is this?
BUTCH: It’s a chopper.
FABIAN: Whose chopper is this?
BUTCH: Zed’s.
FABIAN: Who’s Zed?
BUTCH: Zed’s dead, baby, Zed’s dead.
And with that, the two lovebirds PEEL AWAY on Grace, as the SONG on the BOOM BOX RISES.
I empathize with Butch.
While I always have thought I wanted to be The Wolf when I grew up, I turned out to be Marsellus when I took the “What Pulp Fiction Character Are You?” survey.
Your name alone strikes fear into others; but maybe, just maybe, there’s a little vulnerability and weakness beneath that stoic, fierce exterior of yours. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz. |
Ed Sim from Dawntreader Ventures has a good post on selling software into the enterprise and the difference between a pilot / trial that matters and can turn into revenue vs. one that is just play time for developers.
Rally Software announced that is has closed a $4.5m round of financing. We co-led the financing with Boulder Ventures. Rally’s progress can be directly linked to their outstanding team of ex-BEA and ex-Rational folks who know the software startup drill really well.
Seth Levine – who works with me in Colorado – launched his blog yesterday. Seth becomes the fifth Mobius Venture Capital blogger – joining me, Ryan McIntyre, Ross Carlson, and Robin Bordoli. It’ll be fun to watch Seth try to string words into sentences (and more importantly, sentences into paragraphs.)
Even though he’s just launched his blog, Seth has been very deep into the blog-stuff. He works closely with me on NewsGator and has had a big role in our investment there. We recently promoted Seth to principal, so he must be doing something right.
Welcome – Seth – to the blogosphere.
NewsGator has been having fun with RSS on TV’s for a while via the NewsGator Media Center edition (if you are running either Microsoft Windows XP Media Center or SnapStream Spotlight, check it out.) Today, NewsGator announced that it is supporting DivXNetworks Connected Certification Program. We want to help you get your RSS feeds any time, any place, and on any device.
Technorati has just launched its Keyword Watchlist service which allows you to track and subscribe via RSS to live searches on keywords and phrases. They’ve also added boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and grouping operators (parens) to their search, making it much more powerful than simple keyword search. Dave Sifry talks about it on his blog – try it out.
I commend all of the companies (and people) who have stepped up to contribute financially to the relief and reconstruction efforts that are needed as a result of the devastating Tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The blogosphere has been very active here and I’m proud to announce that NewsGator has joined in by committing 3% of their revenue for the next 90 days to this effort via the American Red Cross.
I just received an email from a blog reader asking for a recommendation for a book that addresses the “importance of intellectual property with regard to building successful technology companies.” I’ve read several IP-related books in the past (one of the guest lectures I used to give at MIT Sloan School for 15.351: Managing the Innovation Process was titled “Copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets” – the online lecture notes from 2002 have some references to readings on Standards, Patents, & Open Source) but I’ve never found one that I would call my “go to book.”
I passed on the request to Jason Mendelson (our general counsel and my co-conspirator on the Term Sheet series of posts) and he recommended The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law. While this book isn’t specifically about IP, there is a large section on general IP law. It’s also a superb book that should be in every entrepreneur’s library.
Craig Dauchy – one of the co-authors – is a long time friend and collegue of ours and one of the managing partners at Cooley Godward – one of the premium law firms for VC-backed companies. So – Craig knows of what he speaks.