I woke up to three good posts on the 80–19–1 Rule. Digg that Fat Belly: Robert Young talks about the “Fat Belly” of the Long Tail. The three C’s: Jason Calacanis reminds us that he’s been talking about this for the past few months and calls the 1% the creatives, the 19% the contributors, and the 80% the consumers. Life on The Long Tail – The Power of Groups: Tom Evslin – who started a FeedBurner Network for entrepreneurs called My Way – has an excellent post up about the power of Networks (plus a bonus Excel spreadsheet for those of you out there that want to play with a model.)

I nailed my 8th marathon today in Albuquerque on my quest to a marathon in every state, on every continent, and at the North Pole by the time I’m 50. I’m going to call it 4:52* as my chip time was 5:02 but I lost a total of 10 minutes to five bathroom breaks (too much water before the start and some serious trouble in the middle.) Considering that I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs 7 days ago because of a gout attack, I’m pretty psyched.

If you found my golden retriever eyes post to be helpful for your relationship, I’ve got another tip for you. I call it “Random Answers.” I’m in Santa Fe with Amy and my friends Raj and Stefanie Bhargava. We’re about to head to Albuquerque for tomorrow’s marathon (I’ve got my cheerleading team in tow this weekend.) We spent a bunch of time yesterday wandering up and down Canyon Road looking at art before having a superb dinner at Geronimo.

I’ve gotten to know my neighbors in Homer, Alaska – the Schallock’s – over the past two summers. They are great folks and the two kids – Jessica and Eric – are stars. Eric and I are learning Ruby together (and about to graduate to Ruby on Rails) and Jessica is turning into a super blogger. She’s also got a monthly column in The Homer Tribune – pretty cool for a senior in high school. Jessica is a great writer, extremely smart, and very thoughtful – her column this month titled Information Can Prevent Further Harm is well stated. I’m proud of Jessica and I wish I knew more teenagers that would take the same intellectual risks she takes.

I expect that many of you are familiar with the Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule.) If you aren’t, the simple definition is that for many phenomena 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes. Or – more practically – 80% of your company’s revenue comes from 20% of your customers, or 80% of your problems come from 20% of your customers, or 80% of your employee problems come from 20% of your employees. While it’s overused, it’s a good rule of thumb.

As I start to get my head into the Albuquerque Marathon (which I’m running on Sunday), I thought I’d start the day off with some running stuff. I’ve had a rough taper – starting off with a smashed toe 9 days ago (fourth toe on left foot – turned completely purple to the base of the third metatarsal) followed by a gout attack in my right knee (never had one in the knee before – that sucked). After about 100 advil, 50 gallons of water, and a gallon of cherry juice over the following four days, it vanished, to be replaced by a sore MCL from walking around funny for four days. I woke up this morning with three days to go, feeling great and completely refreshed since I haven’t run in 9 days! I’m not even cranky anymore.

When I was a teenager in Dallas hanging out at the shopping mall and the skating rink, one of my favorite songs was Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust. Another one bites the dust Another one bites the dust And another one gone and another one gone Another one bites the dust hey Hey I’m gonna get you too Another one bites the dust Today, Tandberg Data announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Exabyte for $28m. This is a sad ending for a company that is a key part of Colorado’s technology ecosystem. Exabyte was started in 1985 by a number of StorageTek (now owned by Sun) veterans including Juan Rodriguez – a firmament in the Colorado tech and worldwide storage industry. The company has had numerous ups and downs over the years, including several that I watched since I moved to Boulder in 1995. 

I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past six months thinking about the current dynamics of information on the web. I wrote briefly about TAR (trust, attention, and relevance) at the end of last year and have intermittently sprinkled tidbits about what I’ve been thinking about and seeing in other posts. However, I decided to spend some real time thinking about this, work with several of my portfolio companies on both the publisher and subscriber sides of this problem, and explore lots of new potential investments around this issue. I’ve chosen to call it “dynamics of information” deliberately – what I’ve been pondering is a broader issue than any of the specific TAR topics, although there is definitely value in attacking them one by one (which several of the companies I’m working with are doing.)

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