Summation

consevative activists detest Tom DeLay

i spent last week (Oct 31 - Nov 4) in DC meeting with various folks in govt and helping out one of my portfolio companies.

throughout my conversations with many grassroots activists, i was struck by how much they hated Tom DeLay. this was a shock to me as Congressman DeLay is generally seen as being supported by those in the grassroots. And while my activist survey was far from scientific, I found he had extremely little support. most people actually thought he should resign from Congress. i was shocked ... this wasn't coming from the left but was coming from the heart and soul of the conservative right.

and it had little to do with the current ethics violation ... it seems that most activists are not as troubled by that as most of the media. the activists blame Mr. DeLay for the spending excesses in Congress ... especially the recent highway bill which DeLay was instrumental in passing. This bill has become a national joke with the Bridge to Nowhere. Much has been discussed including a good George Will column.

if you really want to learn about the heart and soul of the conservative movement, spend some time surfing Townhall.com and you'll get a sense of what people feel ... and see a great article about this by Tim Chapman.

Mark Pincus likes to call the activists the "ants." Well, the ants are definitely rising in the conservative party. it is possible they might get trampled but they seem very determined to take back the "small government" mantle.

six years away ...

thanks for all of you who emailed me yesterday about the party on Nov 11, 2011 at 11:11 am on the Golden Gate Bridge. only six years away.

trip down memory lane ...
i sent out the original eVite (sent in 2001 -- check out:http://evite.citysearch.com/ggparty@eudoramail.com/2011Party) at 3am after laughing so hard. i actually thought eVite had taken down the site but alas, no such luck. there were 2-3 other parody eVites that got formed from this one ... including the 12/12/12 eVite.

Here is an article in the SJ Mercury ...

And here are the Top 6 Reasons I am planning the 2011 Party now:

6. Annoying 98 year old guy who shows up at all my parties will probably be dead.

5. I met this girl at a bar and she said 'give me a call in 6 years.' I said, 'Great. I know just the party to take you.'

4. Planning on making this a regular get together -- every hundred years.

3. I really wanted to put an event together for 2010, but I was just feeling too rushed.

2. Party in 1011 cancelled due to Bubonic Plague.

1. Need to get party out of the way and clean up before 3033 party.

COW: Ning...

my brother Jonathan Hoffman is my source for all new cool things tech. when he was in college at Carnegie Mellon, he was the first person to tell me about Napster. throughout his stint programming at CMU, he gave me the scoop on all the new developments.

when he graduated college in 2002, i thought i might have to adopt a new brother in college because i was under the impression that Jonathan only knew about all the cool things because he was a student. boy was i wrong. i continue to get a steady stream of cool sites from him to this day.

One site he sent me last month is Ning. This is another site combining mash-ups, tagging, etc (like Frappr, Trulia, etc.) to do something useful. i love how people are taking some data and a few plug-ins from places like Google and building cool tools.

thanks Jonathan!

book: Ugly Americans

Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich

A modern day Liar's Poker story of trading in japan and the rise of a new BSD. Though the author claims it is a true story, some of the scenes are a bit fanciful though they are all incredibly entertaining. This book would no doubt make a good movie (and is read by a great reader if you listen to it, as I did, from Audible).

COW: kSolo

wow. check out this hosted Karaoke service (salesforce.com for karaoke):
kSolo

Saar Gur told me about this site ... really amazing what they put together. another great Internet business.

metric system and paper

One thing the Europeans do right is the metric system … it is so easy to figure our measurements, distances, weights, etc (everything except time is really easy to calculate). We use the English system … which has long since been abandoned by the English …

But their ingenuity even applies to the size of paper (as Alan Peterson informed me). Our standard 8 1/2 x 11" paper makes no sense in the grand scheme of things …

In Europe, all paper is in the shape of a perfect rectangle (supposedly the most beautiful shape -- basically the length = width * Phi constant). The biggest size of paper is A1 -- which is in the shape of a perfect rectangle and is a total of a square meter (it is very big). Half of that is A2. half of A2 is A3. half of A3 is A4 (the standard European paper that is a competitor to our inferior American 8 1/2 x 11" paper).

Half of A4 is A5 (which is the common large European envelop size) …

SimplyFIRED video & contest

check out the SimplyFIRED video & contest ... Dave McClure from SimplyHired emailed me about it ...

FYI: SimplyHired is a terrific company ... they've got a great team in Dave, Gautam Godhwani, Peter Weck, Anil Godhwani, and Dion Lim