Oops thats $5 billion gone......

John Battelle reports from Barrons that "As Google starts to spend the $5 billion it raised through two stock offerings in the past year and a half, its senior executives have aggressively sold shares. Co-founders Brin and Page have each sold more than $1.5 billion of stock. CEO Eric Schmidt sold $493 million. Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of global sales and business development, sold $793 million, and Ram Shriram, a director, pocketed $442 million, according to Thomson Financial.

All very interesting especially when you read here the tricks Google are playing with their bottom line. "But since Google calls them "GSU"s instead of "stock grants" they can claim they aren't technically breaking FASB rules by not expensing them at the time of issuance- because the FASB rules didn't spell out the phrase "Google Stock Unit" in its new regulations. This is important because if all those GSUs were properly expensed NOW, Google would be showing massive losses per quarter instead of a profit."

Be interesting to see how low the stock will go....

Technorati Search: brrreeeport

Robert Scoble suggested, as an experiment we should all blog the expression brrreeeport to see how it travels around the world on on this technorati page.

I guess it all fits in well with what Samuel Blanning of Southampton mentioned in The Times letter page "apart from its penchant for nauseating neologisms, such as “blogosphere” — is that, rather like academia, it is an incestuous community consisting mainly of people reading each other’s work, with success judged on how many links you can get to your site from people who are just as boring as you."

Thanks to Ellee for emailing me The Times story.

Blocked drains

Well done to Anglian Water. Woke up this morning to find that when flushing the toilet the water backed right up the bowl. Ah I thought the pesky drain blocked again (at one time it was always getting blocked) so I took my trusty rods to the end of my drain (we share it with our two neighbours) No luck although the manhole was getting full so it was definitly an AW problem. After some searching I found the number to call 08457 145 145 explained the problem emphazing the toilets couldnt be used. One hour later the Anglian Water men turn up - incredibly polite and very knowledgable as well. They couldnt unblock it. So they looked in the street - Yep the whole street is backed up. Eventually they found the problem in the main drain at Hills road Coronation street junction so in fact a huge part of the south of Cambridge was affected and the amazing thing is that I was the only complaint they had. Even though a huge area of Cambridge was affected......

Dan Hussey - English Chair Maker

Suzanne forwarded me along the web address of her chairmaker.

If anyone could benefit from a good blog like English Cut did then Dan could!

Just imagine a blog eulogising about the creation of an English chair made from coppiced ash. It could follow the cycle of tree management to the creation of the chair with descriptions of the different competitors and what to look for. Maybe we should get Hugh McLeod into the seat.

Tuesdays

What is so special about Tuesdays? Why does everyone seem to want to organise events for Tuesday evenings! Tomorrow night I have the choice, in Cambridge UK, of the following events:-

CHASE Postwatch - The postal services - Tue 7th Feb, Meet first Tuesday in every month
CFEL David Cleevely (Serial Entrepreneur & Founder of Analysys) speaking on "Building a Great Team" Meet every Tuesday in term time.
Toastmasters meet up at The Gonville Hotel, Cambridge every second Tuesday

Naked Conversations

Arrived home, in the UK, from LIFT06 to discover that Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's book has arrived, delivered from Amazon, Frankfurt, Germany. Pity it didnt arrive before LIFT as it would have been good to get it signed by Robert.

Now just need to read it and see how it compares to their original blog version. The original chapters as posted, are here.

Chapter 1 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 2 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 3 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 4 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 5 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 6 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 7 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 8 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 9 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 10 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 11 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 12 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 13 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 14 Naked Conversations (Draft)
Chapter 15 Naked Conversations (Draft)

Its really cool to see my website getting a mention in the Acknowledgments.
I see that Amazon now have it on special offer for £11.21 instead of the $33.93 I paid for it :-( . With free delivery if you buy another book as well.

del.icio.us feeds

For all those of you, including me!, who where fans of Robert Scoble's link blog. Here is its latest reincarnation at del.icio.us

I met Robert at LIFT06 where I mentioned my enthuasism for del.icio.us, my page at del.icio.us is here although it can also be seen, with all my blogs on the superglu mashup here

Also thanks Robert for adjusting my tablets screens resolution its taking a lot of getting used to, but it is clearer, although for some reason the text within Firefox can appear very small sometimes.

Xavier Comtesse

Xavier has just finished his talk, here at LIFT06, The ordinarys people revolution.

He has introduced two new words:-

Transformactors are people who transform human action into an algorithm.
Consumactors are doer's who takes an unfinished product eg ipod easyjet and complete it.

He highly recommends a book by Alain de Vulpian
From a rigidly regulated mass society .to a living networked society

Model of disruption

Interesting talk tonight with Anina, the French blogging model, at the LIFT06 pre conference drinks party in Les Enfants Terribles here in Geneva.

As reported previously, her French agency has issued some sort of ultimatum on the lines of stop blogging or stop modeling.

Apparently in modeling you have a 'mother' agency who in turn have satellite agencies, one for each country, eg in France she has (had) Frames whereas in the UK the agency is Isis Models. However, this assumes that you are living and working in one country (If another country wants you - they have to ring your local agency to get your 'card' and if the local agency feels like it you will be released to work in the other country. Supermodels, by the way, have their own private agents.

It is easy to see where the potential disruptive effects of blogging come into play here. As a 'lowly' model, access to you is carefully controlled by your local agency. they decide who and when you work!

Imagine now, that you blog and even worse blog rather well and start to get a name for yourself, especially with techie companies. Your local agency will start to lose control as you are inundated with 'potential' work from foreign agencies. Not only that , shock horror, the foreign companies might realize that models have brains and start to get into contact with you direct so no more little white lies (she's busy unavailable!) from your local agency.

What does this mean, this is the conflict facing Anina. Does she have to accept that she is now a supermodel and needs her own agent or does it mean that the 'mother' agency has to start handling her on a day by day basis or does it mean that she to accept she is a French 'local' model.

As I say interesting.