Cloudmark. Met with Karl Jacob yesterday to catch up with his life post-Microsoft and DimensionX. Cloudmark seems pretty cool and something I will try in the next couple weeks.

Business Plans. Saw a great business plan presentation this week. Crisp, to the point, fact based, clear demonstration of the distinctive assets of the company. Little in the way of hyperbole about the market, the product architecture. I think some companies must forget that, as a vc, I’ve seen literally thousands of plans and presentations (and thousands more in my life pre-vc). My patience for fluff is gone.

Please please hone your plans and presentations. Tell us about the key people on the team and why they are winners. Tell us about the real customer and product progress you’ve made so far, not what you wish will happen. Be honest about what you don’t know – be honest about the risks and unknowns in your plan, and tell us how you will adapt if plans don’t come true. Be a skinflint in your plans and needs. Focus wins – be clear about your focus.

Now I’d love to hear from folks about how I can be a better prospective investor, from the viewpoint of a startup…

Video Ripping Update.

So I am in the midst of moving all my DV and VHS-C home movies to DVD. Here’s my learning so far:

A. Allocate a lot of time. Ripping generally runs in realtime, and you make mistakes and need to rerip, and then you will want to analyze and clean up all the video and chapterize it. And I haven’t even gotten to dvd burning yet. Generally I would say you need to allocate at least 3-4 hours of time for every hour of video you bring in, and that is just to do the basics. If you want to really futz around with editting, add more. B. Buy a big hard disk. No, bigger. One 60minute DV tape was a 13Gig file on my system. my 120Gig NAS is going to disappear fast. C. The ATI all-in-wonder card is working well at the hardware level. But the bundled software is pretty indifferent. In particular the video capture stuff didn’t seem to handle DV well or analog well (it captured my analog in some wierd proprietary file type). D. Win XP Moviemaker was fine for DV capture. Tho slow – why does it go in realtime? I have a 1394 connection, the captured stream is 25Mbps, 1394 is 400Mbps, i should be able to move over the stream 16x faster than realtime but it didn’t seem to allow this? And it didn’t work at all for analog capture, it couldn’t seem to see my S-video input. E. The HP DVD writer (200 external) installed very easy. F. The Arcsoft Showbiz software bundled with the DVD has a goofy interface but seems easy to use to do basic chapterization and editting. But note – do not use the auto scene detection feature. It takes a LONG time to process a 13G file, and it doesn’t work – it split my file up into hundreds of snippets that didn’t match with the real scene delineation points at all. Maybe there is something smart I am supposed to do at filming time to tag the scenes.

Another Utility. Traces Viewer (freeware)

Adventure Travel. Recommended by Laura Butler – Adventure Travel and Active Vacations. Explore the World with Mountain Travel Sobek.

Servos Sale. At Servocity -- ending today.

Presentation Judo. Sound advice on presentations from Plover. Noticed on Aaron Swartz’s blog

Redd Stripes. Fun with the White Stripes – Redd Stripes

What Martha Should Do. She doesn’t need the money from the IMClone transaction. She should call a press conference and announce:

- She did not do anything wrong and will cooperate fully with any investigation - But to remove any suspicion that she benefitted from this transaction, she is giving the entire proceeds to charity. Her original principal and any gain. - She will give it to a charity to help workers displaced by all the recent ceo/cfo shenanigans - Because she is as sickened by these shenanigans as anyone and particularly so as a ceo herself.

This would stop the media circus and they would move on to someone more vulnerable.

Ripping Video. I am step one into my attempt to rip all my home movies onto my PC, and then reburn them into a DVD that I can distribute to the family. I installed an ATI All-in-Wonder and used the Windows XP Movie Maker to transfer over the full digital content from my Canon GL1 via the 1394 connection. This worked very painlessly, tho the transfers happened at playback speed and I couldn’t seem to find any way to just bulk copy over the digital content.

Next up is to transfer all my old VHS-C analog content over via the all-in-wonder analog capture interfaces.

And I bought the HP DVD +RW writer (external), so i will then burn it all to a dvd. I’ll keep updating the blog with status.

Great game. I’ve been burning lots of time playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault -- awesome game. The Normandy Beach scenario feels amazing. My son is bugging me to start playing Warcraft III on our lan, but I have to get thru Medal of Honor first.

5 Things You Wouldn’t Know About Me From Reading My Blog

1. I once inhaled an aspirin tablet. 2. Related to the above, I have had multiple bronchoscopies. 3. I worked for the company that built the Saturn V rocket transporters. 4. I was the Polar Bear champ at Lost Trails Camp in 1973, awarded for swimming the longest time in a glacier-fed lake. 5. I am a charter member of the Lower Shawanaga Bay Bums Association.

Glowing Bubbles. I am not sure how I would use this at Halloween but it seems cool – Steel Blue Antari Blacklight Glow Bubble Juice

Simple Fog Chiller. A nice description of how to build a fog chiller – Fog, On The Rocks