Davie's Blog

Here's an article from the Midwest Business with more information on Bob's passing on Feb 2nd.

Some very sad news reported by The May Report.  It seems as though there has been confirmations that Bob Bernard has passed away.

Some very sad news: Bob Bernard died at 8:30pm Friday night, February 2, 2007 at Hinsdale Hospital, possibly of a heart attack or brain aneurysm.

As many of you know Bob was responsible for beginning Whittman Hart in the 80's and later acquired USWeb to form marchFIRST.

This was recieved from the Chapter 7 Trustee marchFIRST, Inc:

To Whom It May Concern:
We are in the process of mailing out the Priority claim payments and W2s to
follow for the m1 claims. The following information may help your members.

CLAIMANTS HAVE MOVED-
If individuals have moved and didn't update their address they should. All
checks were sent to the address on file with the claim, unless changes were
made with Donlin Recano.
As checks get returned to us we are trying to resend them. After 90 days all
funds get turned over to the court.

You can update your address at marchFIRST_trustee@hotmail.com or
m1claims@hotmail.com.


TAXES-
There were taxes withheld on the 507a3 taxable checks so the amount doesn't
match what you may have thought you were getting. For example, the $4650
cap really turned into about $3000 after taxes. If the tax rate, as
determined by an accounting firm, was too high, you should be able to get
some of it back when you file your 2006 return. W2s are being printed this
week and should go out within 10 business days.

NO CLAIM ON RECORD-
Former employees can check on Donlin Recano's website to see if their claim
is posted.
If it doesn't appear you filed a claim with Donlin Recano and your name
doesn't appear in our claims database- you should do the following :

If you believe you should have a valid claim you may check with Donlin
Recano to see if they have it. Otherwise, send a claim form, all your back
up and a letter as to why you didn't file a timely claim (deadline was Oct.
11, 2001) to Donlin Recano. Your claim will be reviewed, as all others were,
and will go through the court system before any distribution is sent.

www.donlinrecano.com

Donlin Recano & Company
419 Park Avenue South
Suite 1206
New York, NY 10016

Case No, 01-24742



We will do our best to respond to all questions and appreciate your
patience.

Thank you,
The Estate of marchFIRST

Here is the email which was sent out to all registered users:

Hello from marchFIRSTAlumni.com -

We have been notified that the trustee has begun distributing checks to
former employees.

For more information, please email the trustee:

marchfirst_trustee@hotmail.com

Or call the trustee's office @ 312-368-1138

Information provided by the trustee thusfar:

* They are cutting checks for claims in batches. The checks must be
handsigned by the Trustee, hence the batches
* They have sent some checks but more are on the way - they should be
sending more checks out over the next few weeks
* You may receive more than one check - the different types of claims
are not grouped together

Thats all the information we currently have.

Please contact us at support@marchfirstalumni.com with any questions or
additional information you might have.

And a reminder to visit marchFIRSTAlumni.com to update your profile and
re-connect with former colleagues!

- marchFIRSTalumni.com

Internet legend John Audette launched, grew, and sold four successful companies during his Internet career. He is best known for founding the Internet News Bureau, an early press release service that was sold to Internet.com, and for his online agency Multimedia Marketing Group, which Outrider.com bought.

Link to article

Robert Scoble outlines some good advice for creating the best business cards.  I thought the most interesting was #8... "Put your picture on it."

From TechCrunch article:

The first TECH cocktail event took place on July 6 in Chicago at STATE Restaurant and Café. The event featured Stormhoek South African wine and united over 225 Midwest participants — including venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, developers and tech enthusiasts. Nine Chicago-area companies presented. Pictures from the event are here.

The nine companies outlined are:
ChicagoCrime.org
Coastr
ExtraTasty
FeedBurner
Gritwire
Naymz
RipIt Digital
TableTop Interactive
ZapTix

Business 2.0 has release an article outlining who they think are the most influential people.  And topping that list is me!  Well not me me, but me as a part of you.  As a part of the consumer and creator of the content that makes up the internet.  There's also Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and about 48 more. 

Now, not only did they outline the 50 most influential but they also decided to outline the 10 least influential.  Topping that list is Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.  They also outline Jeffrey Citron of Vonage, Reed Hastings of Netflix as well as Linus Torvalds.  My thought is I hope these guys weren't sponsors of Business 2.0, cause I imagine they won't be any longer. 

Davie

Here's an interesting article on the concept of crowdsourcing.  Worried about outsourcing?  Well look at this.

Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing.

If you find your self interviewing or being interviewed take a look at this post on 20 good questions to ask a web developer.  Overall, not very technical but great set of questions to gauge some things which are as important as technical skills.  Take for example my favorite:

What industry sites and blogs do you read regularly?
This question can give you an idea of how in-tune they are with the latest industry trends and technologies, as well as how passionate they are about webdev. It'll help separate the people who do it as a career AS WELL as a hobby from those who might simply be in it for the big developer paychecks.

I insist on always asking this question.  You always want to look for someone who can keep up with trends and what better way to do that than reading!

Here's an interesting article discussing the massive amounts of email which is clogging our interenet.

Internet users around the world send an estimated 60 billion emails every day and many of these are spam or scam attempts, business leaders said on Tuesday.

That's ridiculous.  It would be great to know what the percentage of that is really spam since "many" is not that descriptive.

 

It's only about 8 seconds but I definitely had to watch it again and again.

 

To go along with the apprentice episode Chevy has release ChevyApprentice.com which allows you the user to create your own Tahoe ad.  Well along with the videos that were positive there were a number of them that took aim at Chevy.  This is great and I'm not sure what to make of it.  Chevy seems to think this is great publicity considering the amount of traffic and submissions they are receiving:

The contest is a success as a marketing campaign, according to Melisa Tezanos, a GM spokeswoman. Consumers have submitted more than 21,000 ads and have e-mailed commercials over 40,000 times, she said. Chevyapprentice.com has generated 2.4 million page views, and the average visit to the site lasts more than 9 minutes. The company anticipated before launching the contest that it may see some negative ads, but Tezanos noted that more than 80 percent of the commercials depict the Tahoe in a favorable light.

-- Davie

So the big news today was mac released an official beta which allows users of the Macbooks to dual boot into Windows as well.  This is pretty exciting news and probably the kind that will push me into buying one. 

You have to wonder though, who is this deal actually hurting?  Not Microsoft because they will be getting the revenue from the OS and definitely not Macs for the obvoius reasons.  The only people it leaves are the PC based hardware vendors such as Dell, HP and Lenovo.  What would be interesting to see is these guys start pushing Linux with base installs much harder than previously seen. 

Also what's great about the Bootcamp page on Mac is the sidebar nuggets.  As one reads:

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Good stuff!

-- Davie

Here's an interesting graph on the use of the major browsers.  Seems as though Firefox has snatched 10% of the users out there with Safari in with about 4%.  Two thoughts:

1. I'd like to see this graph about 2 yrs ago, i'm sure that's the reason that IE has been feature stale.
2. Do you think the user base that IE lost is gone forever?  With the growing use of Macs and Opera getting released for free that has to take a toll on them.

-- Davie