Richard Keith Latman - The Blog

So What's Wrong with DealerSocket and how can you fix it?

**UPDATE**

When I originally posted this piece I never dreamed that other competitors like VINSolutions would use it to slam DealerSocket. I hate smoke but I hate fakers even more: If you are not considering iMagicLab the only other real CRM in our industry that comes close is DealerSocket (mind you I don't think they come close to us). They have a real company with real vision and although I don't believe in their current plans I would buy them anyday before I thought about VINSolutions. VIN is really the only CRM in our space that delivers nearly nothing to the marketplace. Just my opinion but I'd love to face off against them to prove it :)

**Original Post**

It's funny that today I write about a competitor on this BLOG because normally all I do is bash the Obama Administration. Since Barak is getting his teleprompters fixed today, I figured I had time to talk about the curse of the venture capitalist and how it affects businesses like DealerSocket (or Dealer Socket, I am never really sure if there is supposed to be a space between the words).

For those of you who don't follow the CRM business and more specifically the CRM business targeting car dealers, the players move and disappear as fast as a Hollywood starlet with a hit song. Seems every year or two some big money comes into a company like DealerSocket or BZ Results, they con a lot of dealers into buying old stale technology before selling the company to the highest bidder. Then, true to form, the new owner see's the smoke and mirrors and lets it wither on the vine until the revenue can be transferred to the next acquisition. This cycle has hit every CRM company in our space and even the good firms like AVV and Autobase have not been spared: Sold to "professional investors" and ruined.

Enter DealerSocket, or Dealer Socket, who's ample "investor" money is today buying every salesperson and advertisement they can lay their checkbook on. Nevermind that they haven't made a significant technology improvement since Clinton was President, their Microsoft-based product has signed more dealers to the program in the past 6 months than they can handle (according to a well placed spy I have in their management team) and is fast moving to surpass the big guys on promises unfulfilled and dissatisfied customers.

Here's where the rub is: Explosive sales targets and the mentality to sell at "any cost" does not come from technology founders, it's the profiteers or the venture capitalists that push for this. I've been there and I'm sure Jonathan Ord and the other founders of DealerSocket heard lines like "You need to ramp up sales and act like a billion dollar company" or "The Board feels that you should take any deal the locks a competitor out regardless of profit". It's not the way you build a business, not the way you built a solid reputation and in the end I promise the only people that will be happy will be the "professional" investors. Did we not learn anything from the Wall Street fiasco? It's sad that dealers will have to change their CRM again because some VC needed a new Ferrari.

So, why am I writing about this? Am I looking for a competitive slam here? No, I think it's imperative that where possible we blow the smoke away and see the truth (besides they'll be sold soon). DealerSocket just hired the ENTIRE sales team from the last failed CRM company in our space, HigherGear, and have begun to use the same tired lies and dishonesty that Higher Gear made famous during their short time fleecing dealers. When will dealers learn? When will they pick the best technology over the best dinner and party at NADA?

Keith

P.S. The headline asks how we can fix DealerSocket and the answer is clear: Reduce spending on salespeople and kick the VC's out. Then, after terminating all the liars-for-hire on their payroll they can focus on building the best software they can and making dealers happy. Not rocket science really but for those who only care about the money made when a CRM company changes hands it's an unnecessary distraction.

Need an Economic Revival? Simple: Stop Taxing Small Business

What has impacted my decision on whether or not to start a business is the amount of paperwork involved and the local, state and employer taxes involved. Its complicated and expensive to start even the smallest business in the real world. The real world of course is different than the Internet world. The state of business, and in particular, entrepreneurship in the US has devolved into two worlds, the Internet and the real world.

In the Internet world, all you have to do is setup an account with an ad network, put it on your website, generate some traffic and they send you a check. . No licenses, no tax id, no announcements in the newspaper. It took me minutes. Its exactly what millions of people do as well and its created an entire Internet economy that lives off of Google, Yahoo, MIcroSoft, AOL, Ebay and others. Its the entrepreneurs path of least resistance, which is exactly why most take this route.

Compare that with setting up a real world business. This is from the State of Texas: (Which I have to say makes it far easier than most states to start a business).

Step 1:Legal Structure and Registrations
Step 2:Business Tax Responsibilities
Step 3:Licenses Permits and Registrations (Note to State of TX, this link was broken, I had to find the destination page )
Step 4:Business Employer Requirements

As an entrepreneur , I can tell you that working through the requirements of these four steps is scary and intimidating. Why ? Because to merely start your business, you have to deal with lawyers and accountants, which not only costs a lot of money, but more importantly, requires you to trust those lawyers and accountants to make decisions that could have make or break consequences on your business. You may have the best idea with the ability to execute on that idea, but one little snafu by these professionals and your business is down the tubes.

Even worse, if you mess up on any of this, you could get in legal trouble. You could get sued, or find yourself in the middle of some legal nightmare (I should know).

Then of course, there is the financial reality of having to pay all of the business and employer taxes and ever increasing insurance premiums.

Which brings us back to How to Jump Start the Economy.

If you want to see an immediate re invigoration of the economy, open the door back up for individual entrepreneurs to enter the real world without fear and without an immediate financial burden that pre empts their ability to be successful.

If we really want to stimulate job creation in this country, take the same approach to small business with 25 or fewer employees that we take to Internet taxes. Outlaw them.

No taxes or license fees of any kind on small businesses with 25 or fewer employees. No employer payroll tax. No state or local taxes. No taxes on earnings. No Payroll taxes. Nada. Use the money from the proposed taxes on the trade of public shares to fund not only this, but healthcare insurance premiums as well. The business owners and their employees will pay income taxes on their personal income , but not corporate earnings

The only taxes they would collect and remit are sales taxes and of course they would still file personal income taxes on their individual earnings.

Make this available exclusively to owner operated companies and only allow the operator to own and operate a single company (to prevent gaming the system).

The impact on the economy would be amazing and immediate. Those without jobs would be able to work for themselves. They would be able to join together and start companies. They would be able to take risks with far less capital and far less fear of failure. Sweat Equity would be all it takes to start a business. In addition, we would see many cash only propreiters go legit.

Not only would we see hundreds of thousands of new businesses started seemingly overnight, with millions of new hires, but from those new businesses would come new ideas that hopefully would give us our next engine for economic growth that super cedes today’s ideas.

For Congress, the challenge will be to keep the process simple. A simple no cost, online registration for the businesses, with information about the who, what, where and ownership of the companies so that they can track and help fund them. Which in turn would create the information base from which to fund the state and local revenue that would be lost. Easy ? No. But a far greater reward in job creation and growth for the country than the Government creating Job Funds and public works efforts.

In this economy we should open the door to our country’s Intellectual capital and the entrepreneurial energy that separates us from the rest of the world. Make it easy for entrepreneurs to do what entrepreneurs do, and great things happen. Voters and politicians alike seem to have forgotten what has made this country an economic powerhouse. We need to focus on creating a friction free environment for small businesses. That is exactly what will create jobs

Obamamania Based on Luck?

Sure, it didn’t rain on his nomination speech held outdoors in Denver. Though the charms once stuffed in the candidate’s pocket — a bracelet belonging to a soldier serving in Iraq, a gambler’s lucky chit and figurines of monkey gods and the Madonna and child, may have helped Obama win the job, they can’t help him now. Our new president is tasked with leading America through the worst times a majority of us have ever known. That swine flu threatens to hit roughly 40 percent of the population in the coming months is patty-cake compared to what things will be like once benefits run out for more than a million jobless Americans at year’s end and job loss completes its downward spiral years from now.

When he took office on Jan. 20, 2009, Obama took the reins not only of commanding two wars but of seeking to reverse the greatest recession since the Great Depression. The government had spent its way into a deficit of more than $1 trillion. In the six quick months that followed, the debt has increased more than a trillion dollars, something that took more than two and a half years during the previous administration. The recession has eaten into whatever revenue the government had left, with tax revenues shrinking at an alarming rate. According to new estimates by The Associated Press, tax revenue will decline by 18 percent this year, the greatest loss since the Great Depression. Corporate income taxes have dropped 57 percent, and individual income taxes have dropped 22 percent since last year.

Amid the struggle to keep existing programs afloat, little response from the stimulus program and the nation poised to hit 10 percent unemployment, Obama is attempting to pass his signature promise of healthcare reform. Though it is no longer popular, with 72 percent of Americans not believing it will be deficit-neutral, members of Obama’s party are attempting to sell reform to constituents at home while being assaulted by angry mobs.

This week began with pushback, bright and early on Monday morning, from the White House press operation against comments Obama’s own top economic advisers made on Sunday shows about nothing being off the table when it comes to eventually tackling deficits. The emergency clarification was made — that Obama won’t raise taxes on the middle class whatsoever — lest the unruly protesters board buses for the nation’s capital to hurl things onto the White House lawn.

Last Tuesday Obama celebrated his 48th birthday by having Democratic senators to lunch at the White House, begging them to hang together on healthcare, while former President Bill Clinton was securing the pardon of two jailed American journalists from North Korea. It was more than ironic that as Obama flew to Elkhart, Ind., Wednesday to tout the effects of the recovery program to residents dealing with 17 percent unemployment, a triumphant reunion was unfolding with the two women and their families at an airport in California. The stars of the show were President Clinton and his partner from the good old days of creating more than 22 million new jobs, former Vice President Al Gore.

Clearly, Obama’s luck ran out on Inauguration Day. Happy birthday, Mr. President. Better luck next year.

Success & Motivation – If(Cash In < Cash Out)= You are a Consultant

Business is a very simple concept.  You have to pay your bills.  If you have anything left over, you get to smile and spend it as the principals of your business see fit. If you don’t have enough to pay your bills, you either have to raise money to cover the deficit, file bankruptcy and try it again, or go out of business.Simple.

There are no other options. Sure, you can sell, give or throw the business on someone else and make it their problem, but that doesn’t change the math. If(totalcashin<totalbizcashout)=You are now officially a consultant. No exceptions.

No matter what kind of business you have, you absolutely, positively must have a revenue strategy.  No revvie, no survivee.

In the digital world not everyone, particularly those in Silicon Valley, seem to understand that. There seem to be two kinds of startup companies. The first understands this concept and knows going in exactly what they are going to sell, to who, what they hope to sell it for, their hoped for margins and just as importantly, who will sell it and how. When they model their business, they model the least expensive way to get into and stay in business with the focus on reaching profitability within months rather than years.  They aren’t modeling in an exit strategy. They recognize that any company that is profitable gives them choices. They can meximize their ownership percentages. They can pay themselves an amount commensurate with their profitability. They can go public. Or they can sell.  Profits provide choice.

The 2nd kind of startup relies purely on financial models to justify their future revenue streams.  They create a company hoping to generate enough volume in whatever it is they hope to sell around, traffic, users,  whatever. The goal is to then find a way to monetize all the volume or to execute on an exit strategy. They spend a ton of time playing with spreadsheet models. They are experts at plugging in CPMs, pageviews, unique users, sell through rates.  They also know how to list “comps”. Companies that they hope to emulate and if they have only some subset of their success will more than generate enough revenue to fulfill their exit strategy. They are projection warriors.  Perfectly reasonable, right ? Right, if you understand the reasoning of the people who fund these types of startups.

Entrepreneurs who start companies with the required, expected and motivating stars in their eyes usually forget  the  VC model for funding these types of companies. What’s the Venture Capital funding model ? Fund 10, hope the 1 or 2 winners more than makes up for the 8 or 9 losers.  That’s right. Most VCs expect to have at least an  80pct failure rate.  Which in turn means that 9 out of 10 of the entrepreneurs behind these types of “make it up on volume’ companies will end up as “consultants” .

On the flipside, if you talk to any company I have ever invested in, the only thing I care about are profitable sales. What are you selling?  How hard are you working at selling? What are your revenues ? Why are you paying yourselves a salary rather than a commission ? What unique initiatives are you working on to generate sales TODAY.

Whats the point of all this and how does it apply to success and motivation ?

If you are an entrepreneur and looking at starting a company, its VERY easy to put off the hard part.  Which is generating sales for your company and making a profit.  Believe it or not, its  far easier to go out and raise enough money so you are “in the game”. You can raise the money, start the company and take your chances.  If you run out of money, you can raise more. Until you can’t. At which point you enter the world of consulting, having learned from your experience.

On the flip side, if you want to start and grow a business that you retain control of, put money in the bank from  and can make a long term commitment to, then always remember that sales should be the first thing you focus on when you wake up in the morning.  Profitable Sales to happy customers is the best path to making money. If you go to bed at night thinking about how to sell more and how to make your customers happy. You probably are in a good place.  If you go to bed and wake up thinking about how to raise money to stay in business, you might as well get the new business cards and think about what your new consulting blog is going to look like

Obama's Middle East Speech = Worthless

Barack Obama had a head start when he stepped onto the stage in Cairo on Thursday. He had already pledged a "new beginning" to the American people, and now the same grand concept was on offer to the Muslim world: the policies of the Bush administration, in other words, were history. The symbolism was better too. It wasn't just the fact that an American president whose middle name is Hussein was extending a hand to his father's coreligionists, but also that among those in attendance in Cairo were representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as some Egyptian dissidents. Both groups had been conspicuously absent from Condoleezza Rice's 2005 speech in Cairo, which was delivered at American University 

The president also came off much better than George W. Bush did with his own big outreach speech in January 2008, delivered from the opulent Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi to an audience of sleepy petro-moguls. Obama's choice citations from the "holy Qur'an"—"Whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind"—worked well. So did his deft historical references to Islam's role in "paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment." To loud applause, he even pronounced "Assalamu alaikum" correctly.

Still, as Obama himself seemed to acknowledge, his speech won't have a shelf life of more than a few days unless it is accompanied by real policy changes. There have been some signs of that, notably the administration's stark rhetoric toward Israel about freezing West Bank settlements and the president's commitment to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011. But this is really only the beginning. For if Obama's outreach is ever to amount to anything more than swiftly forgotten words, he needs to begin to roll back nearly a century's worth of Arab-Western history.

Let's start with now. Israel and the Palestinians are still dug in against each other, and Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri seized the moment to remind their fellow Muslims that Obama's "elegant words" can't disguise the fact that the president is pushing Pakistan to drive Muslim militants out of Swat. Beyond that, the Muslim Brotherhood and other dissident groups are still banned from politics. Obama's glad-handing with Saudi King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were reminders that the fundamental political structure of the Arab world hasn't changed.

Obama delivered some fine-sounding sentiments on how governing through "consent, not coercion" and providing "the freedom to live as you choose ... are not just American ideas. They are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere." But that sounded all too similar to Bush's oft-repeated assertion that democracy is not "America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to mankind," and Rice's declaration in Cairo that "democracy is the ideal path for every nation."

The president was right to focus on the essential "truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap and share common principles, principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." Despite bin Laden's rants about grievances going back to the Crusades, the enmity between the West and the Arab world is a relatively modern phenomenon. As Fawaz Gerges, a scholar at Sarah Lawrence College, told me a few years back, there have been many "interalliances between the world of Islam and the West. There has never been a Muslim umma, or community, except for 23 years during the time of Muhammad. Except in the theoretical minds of the jihadists, the Muslim world was always split. Many Muslim leaders even allied themselves with the Crusaders."

No, the enmity between the West and the Arab world really began nearly 100 years ago with the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, by which the British and French agreed to divvy up the Arabic-speaking countries after World War I. Things got progressively worse after the creation, by the Europeans, of corrupt, kleptocratic tyrannies in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan; the endemic poverty and underdevelopment that resulted for most of the 20th century; the U.N.-imposed creation of Israel in 1948; and finally, in recent decades, American support for this status quo.

Obama can't begin to undo even a little of this, which means that his fine words in Cairo are likely to be remembered as just that—words.

Would You Buy a Car from Barack Obama?

The real test of Barack Obama's sex appeal is coming soon to an automobile showroom near you - Would you buy a new car from this man?

The president has given his personal warranty on cars from Detroit - if a fuel pump on your new Pontiac falls apart and the dealer won't make it good, just call the White House and ask for the president. Happy days are here again.

The transformation of the American automobile industry into a government operation, managed from Europe, may be the preview of how Mr. Obama intends to remake America in the image of the Old Country. London's Financial Times reported Monday that Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of Fiat, has big plans for consolidating Fiat, Chrysler and General Motors Europe into an enormous new publicly traded European car company.

Joining the Opel, Vauxhall and Saab models from GM with Fiat and Chrysler would create a company that could generate revenues of $106 billion annually on sales of 7 million cars, making Fiat/Opel, as the company would be called, second only to Toyota as the world's largest automobile company. Note the weasel words "would" and "could."

"From an engineering and industrial point of view," Mr. Marchionne told the newspaper, "this is a marriage made in heaven." Mr. Marchionne says the new company would reap "synergies" by borrowing, merging and adapting the various models. But "synergies" don't always translate to good cars. Nobody walks into a showroom to kick the tires of synergy.

All hail Fiat/Chrysler, of course, and may all the little Fiats run forever. But Fiat's reputation in America is not great; those who remember them at all remember Fiats are underpowered tin cans, shoddy and unaccountably ugly given the Italian gift of good design, tolerable for the relatively short distances typical of European road trips. But not at all happy with running at high speeds on the interstates all day, 600 miles from dawn to a destination in early evening.

The Fiat scheme, like most European ventures into the marketplace, requires a caress from the dead hand of government. Mr. Marchionne must first persuade the governments in Britain, Germany and others where Opels, Fiats, Vauxhalls and Saabs are built under the GM umbrella to lend a hand - and a lot of cash. The "market" is mistrusted in the European social-welfare states because it swiftly and efficiently separates winners and losers.

GM and Chrysler collapsed just as they have actually begun to build good cars. The automakers are learning to their considerable pain that destroying a reputation - a "brand," in the pretentious jargon of the marketing men - is a lot easier than building one. Putting together loans backed by greedy governments will be considerably easier than fixing what went wrong in Detroit. The further irony is that the United Auto Workers, which extracted the featherbed contracts a quarter of a century ago that doomed GM and Chrysler, will now hold a majority stake in Chrysler and a slightly smaller stake in GM.

We'll see now how the UAW deals with self-abuse. In the early '70s GM imagined that it could stay rich forever selling junk if only it could avoid strikes that shut down the junk-assembly lines. So it agreed to anything the unions demanded.

Then the Japanese arrived with cars of modest size and high quality; the impact on Detroit was of a reprise of Pearl Harbor. This time there was no wake-up call. Good times continued in the junkyard. Soon the Japanese were through with lunch and beginning to sup on Detroit's dinner.

The news Monday from Tokyo was hardly heartening for Detroit. The Japanese car factories have reduced a glut of inventory and are building cars in numbers again. Toyota said it built 472,000 cars in March, many of them in the United States, up 40,000 over February. Honda and Nissan said they built more cars in March, too. Toyota, which has replaced GM as the world's biggest auto manufacturer, has negotiated a 26-percent cut in the wages of its union workers and announced Monday that it would cut bonuses for nonunion managers by 60 percent.

"Buying American" is not as simple as it once was; Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, BMW and Mercedes are built in America, too. Buying from GM and Chrysler may be an act of good citizenship, anyway. But if you buy a Pontiac Vibe or a Chrysler convertible, keep Barack Obama's telephone number at hand.

iMagicLab Credibility or My Credibility or Something Like That ;)

I haven't written about the Microworkz days in a while but once again there is some moron on the web writing a bunch of crap about who I am or what iMagicLab is. I guess it goes without saying that when you put yourself out into the media or public eye you have to be prepared to take or shot or two. Those faithful readers of this BLOG know that I've taken more than my share over the past decade and my decisions as a young guy will color who I am forever. As I've written before: Don't judge a person by the way they fall, judge them by the way they get up.

I am actually very proud of the way I learned from my mistakes in life and maybe just for a moment I'd like to get on my soapbox and tell you about a few. Those that have read here for a long time maybe go on to the Obama post, it's much more fun :)

1. iMagicLab or iCarMagic is the exact opposite of Microworkz.com. At Microworkz we billed first for hardware, built the hardware and then tried to deliver. At iMagicLab we spent years building the product FIRST, making sure we could deliver BEFORE we were paid and now our reputation amoung our customers is impeccable. Run iMagicLab with the BBB, with the courts, with whatever forum you wish: A perfect record and a lesson clearly learned.

2. Our business model is pay as you go at iMagicLab and there is never a contract or commitment. Again the point is we promise what we deliver each and every day to our customers: Another lesson learned.

3. iMagicLab employs seasoned professionals across the organization and not the young agressive folks we had at Microworkz.com. Don't get me wrong, our Microworkz staff worked hard every day, but this time I chose people with a track record of success in every department: Do I have to say it again? Lesson learned.

You know, it hit me very hard back in 2000 when then Judge Overstreet said that bankruptcy was for honest debtors and I wasn't being honest. It was not only true (I hid my ex-wife's wedding ring from the court) but it was indicative of who I was at the time. Those words were the proverbial "rock bottom" for me and, like the story goes, there was only one direction I could go. Another lesson learned and it set the stage for the great success that is iMagicLab.

Now, we're not perfect here at iMagicLab and no software ever is. Over the past 5 years we've served tens of thousands of users every day, grown to be one of the largest CRM companies aimed at the automobile retailer and are certainly the technology leader in our field. Our customers are loyal, the team is fanatical and our products speak for themselves.

I got up from my failure and I'm proud to be standing tall... this is the last time I am going to write about the subject. Next? I'm thinking politics....

Obama - Mistake #1 - Already... here we go

Its great to see President Elect Obama aggressively taking on the economy prior to his taking office. Unfortunately, the economic advisory team that he has put together looks more like a semester’s worth of great guest speakers  for an MBA class than an economic advisory team that can truly help him.

There are a lot of great minds on the list.

“Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Laura Tyson, who served as Clinton’s top economic adviser; former Fed Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson; Time Warner Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons; former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson and Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy.

Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Roel Campos, an ex-SEC commissioner, and Warren Buffett are also on the advisory board.”

Notice anything missing ?

Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren Buffett started a business, but he will be the first to tell you that he “doesn’t do start ups”. Which means there isn’t a single person advising PE Obama that we know of that knows that its like to start and run a business in this or any economic climate. That’s a huge problem.

If we are going to solve our current economic problems, our President needs to get first hand information on the impact his proposed policies will have on real Joe the Plumbers. People who are 1 person companies living job to job, hoping they get paid on time.  We need to know what the impact of his policies will be on the individually owned Chrysler Dealership in Iowa. The bodego in Manhattan. The mobile phone software startup out of Carnegie Mellon. The event planner in Dallas. The barbershop in LA. The restaurant in Boston.

Entrepreneurs that start and run small businesses will be the propellant in this economy. PE Obama needs to have the counsel of those who will take the real risk inherent in creating companies and jobs. Those who put their money and lives on the line with their business.

Without it, the rules of unintended consequences of any economic policy could hit you in the mouth in ways you never expected. Things like forcing companies from being taxpayers to the underground cash economy, or forcing new hires to be independent contractors to avoid having to pay their insurance or higher matching social security amounts. Your current group has no one with 100pct of their networth on the line. I promise you that the possibility of losing it all will provide a completely different perspective than any of the “knowledge” the esteemed, learned members of his current advisory team offer.

PE Obama, I’m always available to help, but my recommendation would be to randomly go through the new incorporation filings  and ask for volunteers to give feedback. Ask the people who are actually starting new businesses what they need.

Entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. Talk to them.

Smart Car Finds Richard Keith Latman - Keeps Him

OK so there is a continuing debate throughout this country about small cars and most notably about hybrids vs smaller engine combustion engine vehicles. I've read all the articles and being as attached to the car business as I am, have just bought a new Smart car to commute back and forth to work in. Why? I hoped you'd ask that:

1. Recyclable. Do I need to say anything else? 98% of this car will never see a landfill or junkyard. Unlike the millions of spent caustic batteries that Toyota will leave INSIDE the landscape in the name of "green" technology, my Smart will melt down into water bottles.

2. Economy. No it doesn't get the best mileage on the planet but it's darn good and much better than almost every other vehicle on the road.

3. Fun. Drive one and you will see what I mean. It's unrefined like a very old motorcycle and just as much fun. The pop comes down with ease, it fits everywhere and although slow, it feels like you have been transported to a simpler World, if only until you get to Starbucks. Anybody remember the Suzuki Samari from the 80's or the early Miata?

4. Carbon Emissions. Gonna shock you here but in America we get our electricity mostly from coal. Now as any of you who have worked in a coal mine recently can attest to: coal is some dirty stuff. It is burned to make your power which just reduces that dirty crap into minute particles and injects it into the atmosphere for the ozone layer to drink like cool aid at a Jim Jones party. I could go on for hours about this and I welcome the comments of any of the coal industry to refute the cancer rates of coal miners but I personally don't want any more of that in the air than need be. I tell you this because the new GM Volt or any of the other pure electric cars just remove one problem and replace it with another. I know, let's build "safe" nuclear power plants like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl to power our cars: that's a great legacy for the kids I'd be proud of.

5. Cost. OK so the Prius gets better mileage but besides being an environmental disaster (ever seen a battery leak acid?) it's more expensive to operate because of the cost of the car itself. The Smart is under $20k and the Toyota can run almost $30,000. We don't know how long the Toyota batteries will last but I'll bet they're around $5K to replace (with the old batteries polluting the ground water). It's not enough to make up the extra 5 miles to the gallon you get, don't be fooled.

Buying a Smart was the obvious choice for today and until the new Honda Fuel Cell vehicles come out, I believe this is correct for tomorrow too. It's the best balance of environmental concerns, cost benefit and fun in the marketplace. No doubt the little two-seater is not for everyone but as a commuter it's hard to beat.

Is there anybody who can beat Google?

Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google ?
Better search ? Too subjective. Better monetization ? After the fact. Better User Interface ? Will we know it when we see it ? A new and different search ? Semantic ? Human powered ? We won't know till we know.

But what about the Google Index, all the websites that are indexed by Google ? What is it worth to be in the Google Index ? What would you, as a website owner require in order to remove your site from the Google Index and no longer be available when someone does a google search ?

It should just be a matter of dollars and cents and sense, shouldn't it ?

How many websites would have to recuse themselves from the Google Index  before Google Search was negatively impacted ?

Mahalo.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index ?

A theoretical maximum of 125k sites, but with overlap, probably closer to 100k or less, times how much per site on average ?

The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars. The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?

Given the stakes, why stop at $ 1 Billion Dollars ? Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $1mm each, plus a committment from MicroSoft or Yahoo to drive traffic through their search engines to more than make up for the lost Google Traffic. After all, once consumers realized that Google no longer had valid search results for the top 25k searchs, that traffic would most likely go to MicroSoft and Yahoo.

And why we are at it, why not require that these 100k sites switch from Googles Publisher Network to Yahoo's or MicroSofts ? It would start to earn back the $1 Billion paid out very quickly.

On top of that, in order to grease the skids even further, why not issue advertising credits to the sites that switched off Google ? Its soft dollars, that would sweeten the pot and drive more traffic.

IN essence, its no different that any other content aggregation play. Its paying for content . But, It would take some big ones to go for it and see if it worked. However, without question, every search engine has some number of core sites, that when removed from its index , destabilizes the value of its search.

The question is how many ? What would it cost to get that number of sites to turn Google off and stay off, and would the traffic created as users switch from Google more than compensate for the cost ?

Or would Google recognize the risk and jump in and offer more to websites to stay ?

Sure would be interesting to find out.