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I’ve decided to sign up for the international practicum class next semester.  That basically means we meet once a week for 3 hours, and then spend Spring Break in either Prague or Costa Rica helping on a consulting project.  I’m choosing Prague.

In the end, it’s estimated to cost an extra $2500 for everything.  However, we don’t have to start “working” til Monday so a lot of people fly out the Wednesday before, just skipping Thursday classes and have an extra 4 days to hang around in Europe.  So, I’m estimating I’ll need ~$3000 total.

And, since I don’t have any significant income or huge swaths of available credit I want to dip in to, I’m going to start pokering it up again to make the money.  I’ve got about $300 online currently, with another $300 in bonuses waiting for me to play them out so we’ll say $600.

All I have to do is double that, then triple it.  Expect updates.

I’m feeling kinda out of it lately, so excuse me if the posts slow down a bit this week.  I haven’t figured out exactly what’s up yet, but I’m going to try to recharge for a bit.

Anyway, on to the links:

Chimpanzee on a Segway (Gizmodo)
I have no idea what’s going on in this video, but a chimp steals a Segway, rides away on it, and then crashes in the woods.

What Apple could buy with it’s cash (VentureBeat)
Apple has $24.5 billion in cash or cash equivalents, so someone decided to figure out what companies they could buy with that.  The most surprising to me: they could buy Blockbuster 100 times.

Bill Gates has a new company.  That’s all we know.  (Gizmodo)
Obviously dude got bored quick after leaving Microsoft.  If nothing else they’ve got a pretty sweet logo:

School teacher runs the fastest marathon.  Doesn’t win. (Deadspin)
At the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco Arien O’Connell ran the fastest time by 11 minutes, but didn’t get anything because she had not registered in the Elite group.  Well that kinda sucks.

We already know that Sal Paolantonio went off this morning, including ripping on Brett Favre, the Cowboys, and Troy Smith.

Well, here’s a video of three clips cut from the interview.

If you’re interested this is a link to the full 12 minutes from 790 The Zone (mp3 file)

I heard maybe the greatest radio interview ever on 790 The Zone while on the way in to school this morning as Sal Pal let fly on some things that were obviously upsetting to him.

Among the things he said:

Brett Favre didn’t help Green Bay by toying with them all summer and he’s not helping the Jets play better right now, so he should just shut up about talking to Matt Millen.

He’s glad Ed Werder works at ESPN because that means he doesn’t have to talk about the Cowboys, TO the cancer, their overrated quarterback, or their meddling owner who traded a first and a third round draft pick for a soft wide receiver.

“Troy Smith sucks.” and “He will never evolve into an NFL quarterback.  Never.”

The morning guys on 790 were loving it.  Needless to say, I doubt he’ll be welcome in a few NFL circles for a while.

Alright, here’s what I found interesting or entertaining in the last 7 days.

World’s Smallest 8GB USB Drive – ThinkGeek
You can buy this drive that’s about the size of a knuckle for $40.  That’s ridiculous.  I remember buying a 1GB flash drive for my brother for Christmas last year for $45.  Soon it’ll be cheap enough and small enough that you can just buy a 32GB flash drive and keep it permanently attached to your computer to act as a second hard drive.

Devin Harris Will Never Live This Down – Deadspin
Devin Harris gets schooled by an unassuming British guy wearing a v-neck sweater.

Is Steve Jobs Preparing His Farewell? – Gizmodo
A look at the latest Apple product launch and pointing out some differences in the presentation.  Mostly the fact that this time Steve Jobs actually let other people talk.

Oklahoma City Thunder Owner Get What He Deserves – Deadspin
Aubrey McClendon stole the Sonics out of Seattle and lied about it the whole time.  Last week that bastard lost almost two billion dollars when his loans came due and his stock price had tanked.  Suck it.

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy – Paul Graham
You know I love his stuff, so just read it.

Buy American. I Am. – Warren Buffett (NYT OpEd)
Warren Buffett explains why he thinks that now is a great time to invest in solid American companies that have become undervalued as everything else has plummeted lately.

My first ACC away game was nerve racking to say the least, but we won, so I’m happy.  We stayed at one of our classmate’s friend’s place in Anderson, SC.  Obviously this meant when we went out to eat that night I had to try to convince anyone I could (no one) that my family settled the place.  Interesting note, the guy we stayed with is dating KC Chiefs assistant o-line coach and former GT o-line coach Joe D’Alessandris.  She was very adamant about Tommy Bowden being a punk for quitting halfway through the season when Chan finished out the year for Tech last year despite knowing pretty well he was toast.

As I had heard, despite being the loudest  and arguable best supporters in the ACC, Clemson fans were the nicest I’ve ever come into contact with.  Very hospitable before the game, standard chippiness during the game, but wonderful and congratulatory after the game.  I hope they do well the rest of the year.

Anyway, I won’t bore anyone with pictures of the drives up/back or me, so here is gameday, Clemson style.

Death Valley is a ridiculous stadium.  It’s loud, it’s intimidating, it’s orange.  I wasn’t in my seat yet for the run down the hill, but I could hear it from the gate.  Wish I could’ve seen that.

This is the main reason for anyone from Georgia to ever make their way into South Carolina.  Yuengling is very very good, but for some reason they don’t have a distributor in Georgia.  Someone get on that.

This was head and shoulders above every other personalized jersey I’ve ever seen from Tech.  Unless someone gets a 21 jersey with “MEGATRON” on the back, this will continue to win.

So we get inside the stadium and our seats are in the endzone directly behind the band (thank you Brian for using your connections to get us out of the upper deck).  I look over to my left, and who do I see but Elsberry and his brother Ken.  Random.

The first play for the GT offense in a sea of orange.  Things were slow going the entire game on offense, but the team picked it up a bit at the end of each half to score the points that mattered.

We were right by the players’ entrance so I snapped a pic of Dwyer coming out to warm up after halftime.  I was too busy cheering when the whole team went by to get any pictures of that unfortunately.

Second half saw a lot of ups and downs.  3rd quarter was pretty much all down as Cullen Harper almost looked like a decent QB and Jahi went down with something to do with his hamstring and, to add insult to injury, gave up a touchdown pass.  No biggie though, Josh led them back in the 4th and Bebe made up for his terrible drop by getting in the endzone for a 21-17 victory.

After the big 4th down stop with about 3 minutes left (thanks holding call!) the Clemson fans were a little dejected.

And there it is, the beautiful final score.

Well done guys.

Heading up to Clemson with 4 classmates for the GT game tomorrow at noon.  Els is going up tomorrow morning with his brother, so I’m sure we’ll run in to each other before game time.  Pictures to certainly follow.

We owe them a little something from the last time up there.

In case you forgot who you are Clemson, let me remind you.

Go Jackets!

Today was the Venture Atlanta conference so obviously 3 classmates and I played hookie from school to attend.  It was a very nice event with some really interesting companies, here are a few highlights.

The kick-off speaker was Carlos Dominguez, senior vice president at Cisco.  He gave an amazing presentation about the quickly changing technological landscape that businesses have to operate in right now.  A big focus of the talk was about how companies need to integrate video, blogs, and the rest of the social web to allow young workers from all over the world to collaborate on projects and present ideas.  I would hope that in a room full of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that many of them already felt this way, but if they didn’t I bet they’re rethinking their stance after that presentation.

About 20 companies were there and each was given 6-minutes to give a presentation/pitch on their business and what they offer to customers and investors.  One thing that surprised me was the disparity in presentation quality between companies.  Some were very comfortable with the material and the crowd, and some were relegated to reading off the slides the whole time.  Now, I’m no expert, but I have to think that having someone with a strong presence up there presenting can make a big difference in your ability to get funding.

Another problem with some presentations was that people spent too much of their time explaining either the problem or the solution, but not both.  Given the user bases some of these companies already have, they obviously know what they’re doing, but only a few seemed able to give a nice high level description of what they do and why.

Anyway, enough with that, here are the five companies that impressed me the most:

Vocalocity

This company offers VoIP service to small business who want a phone system, but who don’t have the money to put in a system like those used in large corporations.  I should note that I really like their CEO Boris Jerkunica not only because he had the best stage presence and a very informative high-level presentation, but because he owns the Atlanta Silverbacks.

2080 Media/PlayOn Sports

What a good segue from a USL owner to the company whose technology powers USLlive.com!  They basically offer a way for sports organizations with no television contracts (high school sports, small colleges, lower pro leagues) to get live video to users with minimal investment.  Having used their services and linked them on this blog before even knowing who they were, I will definitely attest for the quality of video.

Nexidia

The coolest software at the conference, no doubt.  Developed with help from Georgia Tech, Nexidia takes voice recordings and indexes them phonetically so you can search for not only words, but any phonetic sound.  Amazing demo really, and the most impressive part to me was that they can fully integrate a new language pack with written characters in about 4 months time.

silverPOP

So I’ve been getting more and more into the idea of doing something with marketing analytics and silverPOP looks like they are doing it how I hope I would’ve figured out.  They offer email marketing services and, as I was happy to learn, have repeatedly dropped customers who spam users.

purewire

This is the company I have the most faith in succeeding.  Their team consists of everyone who was a part of their first security company CipherTrust that was acquired in 2006.  This time, however, they’ve changed from email security to the web as a whole, and it seems like very interesting technology with easy implementation.  Unfortunately, the presentation was cut short because, while they did address the problem and solution, they had two speakers which took up the six minutes.

The other companies were good, and some seemed very promising, but these 5 are were I would put my money if I actually had any.

Also, Bernie Marcus may be crazy.

Oh. My. God.

Greatest day for fall break ever.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

Everyone knows what I’m talking about.  There are certain movies that, when they come on tv because you probably don’t own them, you can’t stop yourself from watching the whole thing.

I’ve got two that are quashing my productivity right now

Gone in 60 Seconds

This movie is terrible.  The plot is ridiculous, there are too many characters and it’s overacted by everyone involved.  And yet, whenever it comes on I’m done for the next 2 hours.  Car chases, baby.

Bee Movie

Watched it twice in the last week, thank you Starz.  Surprisingly not bad at all and the human female is pretty cute, there I said it.  Productivity bonuses: it only runs an hour and a half and it’s on the premium channels so no commercials.