Microsoft: No Plans To Raise Yahoo Bid (Yet) [Silicon Alley Insider]

Microsoft (MSFT) plans to continue to stand firm on its Yahoo (YHOO) bid, the WSJ says--a report that will likely come as a disappointment to those hoping for a pre-emptive hike. We still expect Microsoft to raise its bid at the eleventh hour, when the companies are already deep in negotiation, but there is no reason to do it before then.

Any time information like this appears in the press, one has to ask why the sources wanted it there, and in this case, Microsoft is obviously using the WSJ to tell Yahoo shareholders that they're not going to get rewarded for playing hard to get. Yahoo shareholders have been pretty patient on the whole, and Microsoft is probably hoping they will now tell Yahoo to get on with it.

According to the WSJ, the two companies have had only one face-to-face meeting (and, presumably, many backchannel phone-calls). Although the WSJ's Microsoft sources are quick to point out that time is working against Yahoo--deteriorating economy, Yahoo exhausting all other options, etc.--time is working against Microsoft, too. Every day that it waits is another day before the deal closes and the combined company gets down to business.

Kara Swisher says major Yahoo investors are increasingly dismayed by Yahoo's intransigence, which some chalk up to Jerry Yang's "Founderitis." We think Jerry's actually handling a tough situation well, and in any other industry, we'd have no problem with his waiting another couple of months to try to bore Microsoft to death. In this industry, though, the competition is just moving way too fast.

Links for 2008-03-31 [del.icio.us] [localglo.be]

• ZenithOptimedia Upgrades Online Ad Spend To 23.4 Percent In ‘08

• ZenithOptimedia Upgrades Online Ad Spend To 23.4 Percent In ‘08

Mosaic Communications Corp [Feld Thoughts]

Thanks to my friend Bruce Wyman (who is rapidly turning into my "discoverer of cool things") I have experienced a major back to the future moment with the Mosaic Communications Corporation web site.  The "Founders" page was fun as was the "What is the Internet?" page.  There are some "scary looking" pictures on the "Homepage Central" and none of the old FTP download mirrors seemed to work (or maybe Firefox is just programmed to reject downloads of Netscape 0.9 beta.)

Best of all, the Search page brings up Architext.  A search (say - on "Feld") then brings up a query.cgi page.  Ryan - do you think you can get that working for me by tomorrow?

Time to get back to getting ready for April Fools Day.

Am I the Key to a Secret CIA Conspiracy? [Florida Venture Blog by Dan Rua]

This has to be an April Fool's Joke, but it got a chuckle nonetheless. It seems two of the companies I'm on the board of (PayPerPost & CallMiner) have a secret joint venture with the CIA to identify and undermine radical, dissident bloggers. Hey, I know some of those. Why didn't my entrepreneurs tell me so I could watch what I say here at FVB? Maybe I'm a spy and don't even realize it?

Connect the Dots for Your VCs and Board [Florida Venture Blog by Dan Rua]

I've been lucky in my venture career to typically lead deals as the local VC. This has allowed me to be very close and active with the entrepreneurs I back -- some may even suggest 'too active'.

There are many benefits from such a relationship, but one I particular appreciate is the opportunity to see both sides of typical entrepreneur/VC misunderstandings. The large majority of misunderstandings are about communication and little more. In particular, remote VCs/Directors either specifically yearn for more communication or, more often, they take issue with key business decisions that they don't completely understand because of poor entrepreneur communication.

Here's why it happens:
1) Entrepreneur lives their business 24/7, developing an intuitive sense for their market, customers, products and competitors -- and blindspots to what others don't already understand about their business;
2) Remote VC/Director focuses on the business at best one week per month, and more likely 2-3 days per month.

Now, if I'm right about this, think about how easy it is for an entrepreneur to forget to communicate 90% of what he/she has learned to inform their decisions. Likewise, think about how skewed/narrow a remote VC's perspective can be on the details -- some of which are critical to significant strategic decisions.

Given the realities of startups and funds, you're not going to change the typical time commitment of a remote VC board member. A couple things you can do is:
1) Make sure you have a local VC who can help you and remote VCs see the same things; and
2) Over-communicate by 'Connecting the Dots' for your VCs. Don't just share your vision, but share why it's your vision, how you plan to reach that vision and how you plan to track your progress/forks on the plan.

There are reasons you make the big decisions you do, and you need to share those reasons with your VCs. They may not agree with your conclusions, but at least everyone will have the same key datapoints in front of them. If you've done this well, your VCs will be happier, your VCs will provide better guidance and you'll have even greater trust in the guidance you receive.

The Tale Of Two Endemic Cultures [From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road]

One thing I didn't mention in my previous post is that endemic species in the rainforest are especially resistant to introduced species, which are species brought to an island by people.  Often times, introduced species, like the brown tree snake in Guam and cats on Mauritius, wreak havoc on endemic species and drive them to extinction.  This is harder to do in a tropical rainforest.  Like I said earlier the rainforest ecosystem is especailly severe, yet the environment (climate...) is relatively stable so animals living in the rainforest have evolved to be exceptionally suited to it, making it harder for introduced species to survive. That is why the Philippines is still one of the most biodiverse areas of the world despite a lot of forest destruction.  The endemic birds have a strong culture of their own.

However, the success of the endemic bird species have not been replicated by the people of the Philippines.  While the endemic birds have kept whats unique to them alive, the people of the Philippines, sadly, have not in general.  The endemic island cultures have been mostly wiped out by introduced cultural elements, in the form or McDonald's, KFC, Pepsi, you name it.  These introduced cultural "species" or memes have driven indigenous Philippine culture nearlt to extinction.  The island's history gives us a hint on that.

SInce Magellan, who was killed here in the 16th century, the island was first in Spanish control, then American, then Japanese, and then largely American again.  Add to that, crooks like the Marcos family that have nothing but taken from the island, and a population that the island can't sustain (in every house in every village we saw 5-6 kids), and what you have left isn't much.  It has become a land where you just can't find the endemic, unique culture anymore.  It is easier to find the Celestial Monarch bird, than it is to find something truly unique to the Philippines.

It seems like American marketing campaigns that are past their time in the US, go to the Philippines to find new life (who sees Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar in the US anymore?  They are in the Philippines).  Their famous Jeepneys are a proof of the same phenomenon.  This was the sad part of the trip, and it doesn't end there.

The end is the destruction of the rainforest.  The introduced human culture now, in turn, is wiping out the forest and eliminating the endemic animal culture that's done a much better job remaining true to itself than the people.  Unfortunately, if you cut all the trees a bird eats on that bird goes extinct.  Some birds are so rare now, that it takes an expert like Tim Fisher to find them.  So at the end of the day, the one thing that's stayed unique to the Philippines is being wiped out by the on thing that's not stayed unique to the Philippines. 

The next post will have our top 10 photos of birds.

One thing I didn't mention in my previous post is that endemic species in the rainforest are especially resistant to introduced species, which are species brought to an island by people. Often times, introduced species, like the brown tree snake in Guam and cats on Mauritius, wreak havoc on endemic species and drive them to extinction. This is harder to do in a tropical rainforest. Like I said earlier the rainforest ecosystem is especailly severe, yet the environment (climate...) is relatively stable so animals living in the rainforest have evolved to be exceptionally suited to it, making it harder for introduced species to survive. That is why the Philippines is still one of the most biodiverse areas of the world despite a lot of forest destruction. The endemic birds have a strong culture of their own. However, the success of the endemic bird species have not been replicated by the people of the Philippines. While the endemic birds have kept whats unique to them alive, the people of the Philippines, sadly, have not in general. The endemic island cultures have been mostly wiped out by introduced cultural elements, in the form or McDonald's, KFC, Pepsi, you name it. These introduced cultural "species" or memes have driven indigenous Philippine culture nearlt to extinction. The island's history gives us a hint on that. SInce Magellan, who was killed here in the 16th century, the island was first in Spanish control, then American, then Japanese, and then largely American again. Add to that, crooks like the Marcos family that have nothing but taken from the island, and a population that the island can't sustain (in every house in every village we saw 5-6 kids), and what you have left isn't much. It has become a land where you just can't find the endemic, unique culture anymore. It is easier to find the Celestial Monarch bird, than it is to find something truly unique to the Philippines. It seems like American marketing campaigns that are past their time in the US, go to the Philippines to find new life (who sees Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar in the US anymore? They are in the Philippines). Their famous Jeepneys are a proof of the same phenomenon. This was the sad part of the trip, and it doesn't end there. The end is the destruction of the rainforest. The introduced human culture now, in turn, is wiping out the forest and eliminating the endemic animal culture that's done a much better job remaining true to itself than the people. Unfortunately, if you cut all the trees a bird eats on that bird goes extinct. Some birds are so rare now, that it takes an expert like Tim Fisher to find them. So at the end of the day, the one thing that's stayed unique to the Philippines is being wiped out by the on thing that's not stayed unique to the Philippines. The next post will have our top 10 photos of birds.

More from the Excite Archives [McInblog]

A tip of the hat to Scott Epstein for digging this one out of the archives. Scott and I had lunch a few weeks ago and he brought this along for me after seeing my post of the old Excite TV commercials. Sun ran this ad promoting their server and our search engine after Excite's multi-million dollar purchases of Sun hardware to power the launch of Excite.com in October 1995.

If memory serves, the server we purchased from Sun to handle the search traffic during the launch of Excite was an eight-CPU box with a gig or two of RAM, which cost around $250k, of which $50k - $70k was the price for the RAM alone! Happily, Mr. Moore has been hard at work since then, bringing the price of a gig of RAM down to around $30.

The Philippine Birding Trip 2008 [From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road]

When my ornithologist friend Cagan Sekercioglu asked me to join him and our expert local guide Tim Fisher, on a birding trip to the Philippines, he told me that the Philippine rainforests were among the most biodiverse and unfortunately among the most destroyed.  The trip would take us through a number of islands with the hope of seeing and photographing a lot of the birds of the Philippines. The thought of seeing a new country, and doing it in a non-traditional way appealed to me and I took the trip. It turned out to be one of the most interesting trips I ever took. What made it interesting was how we did it, where we did it and the emergent mindset the two created.

First, the 'how we did it'.  It was my first time birdwatching, and I was lucky to be with two experts.  I always thought of birdwatching as a leisurely sport for which the minimum age to start was over 50.  I was wrong, very very wrong.  It is an intense sport, and gets more so if you are with experts.  If you are competitive about it (my friend is in the world top 100) it requires a lot of strategy.  There are two big variables and one consttraint.  The variables are the total number of birds you want to see, and the number of rare birds you want to see.  The constraint is the time you have in each region.  If you focus on the rare birds, you have to spend a lot of time in specific places.  You may or may not see them but then you miss many common ones, but if you focus only on common ones you may miss that one elusive bird that may just go extinct before you get around to do the trip again.  They all count toward your overall global bird score.  In either case you have to study the birds, read previous trip reports and create the optimum path that takes you through the right elevation and right kinds of habitats.

Our strategy was to spend a lot of time in the rainforest to get all the birds, especially endemics and/or species threatened with extinction.  After all, the number of birds you see and photograph is directly proportional to the time you spend on the field.  That is why almost every day we woke up sharp at 3:00 am, had breakfast at 3:30, went on the field at 4:00 so that after a 2 hour hike (often up a mountain) in the dark, we would be ready to see the crepuscular birds just as the sun is rising.  If you are even 30 minutes late you could miss whole categories of animals.  We had lunch on the field and returned every day around 5-6 pm giving us some time after dinner to do night birding for owls.  Almost every day we went to bed before 9pm. 

Getting the rare birds is tricky.  There are 600+ birds in the Philippines, of which nearly 200 are endemic, which means that they are ONLY found in the Philippines.  You want to focus entirely on those, others can be seen elsewhere.  The problem with endemics is that they are endemic, you can't see them elsewhere.  If you miss that one rare endemic bird that lives on the top of Mt. Kitanglad, guess where you have to go again to see it?  And there is no guarantee you'll see it each time so focus is razor sharp when searching for these birds, and everybody is silent.  Some of these waits took us more than 5 hours.  You have a lot of time to think when you are waiting to hear the call of a bird for five hours on a mountain.

It was during one of these long waits that I realized that birdwatching is much like venture capital .  You look at a vast landscape, whether it is a dense jungle with figs and mahogany, or a wetland with Mangroves, and most of the time the landscape is barren.  It seems like there is nothing to see, or everything you see is something you've seen before.  But then, in the distance among a flock of common birds, you see something unique like a Scale-crested Malkoha camouflaged among a bunch of similar trees.  That's the company you want to invest in.  You focus right away to make sure the bird you are seeing is the real one, you look for identifying characteristics; that's what diligence is.  Once you are sure you get close with your camera and binoculars and take the picture.  There is your investment.  Often times the bird flies away or hides before you get a shot, so you have to sometimes be patient to find the investment or run fast to chase it down, this means getting off the trail path and into the wilderness where you can easily get lost.  Yes, you have to get out of your comfort zone sometimes to find the best investments.  Most importantly, good birds don't show up in a linear way, just like good investments, and you always always have to keep your eyes open.  Luckily for entrepreneurs, VC's often do more than just take a picture but I digress.

A little bit about the rainforest, which is the "where we did it" part.  We all know documentaries about rainforests where we are shown vividly colorful animals displaying all sorts of dazzling behaviors.  Well those documentaries take years to make, and most of the time when you look at a rainforest, especially a lowland tropical one like the one in the island of Palawan, you see nothing but dense, dense flora.  What amazed me beyond anything else is the speed at which plants rot and decay in the forest.  Life is so active that nothing stays on the ground for long.  With the help of constant rain and fungus like I've never seen anywhere, dead plants decay fast.  It's not when they are dead that they start decaying either.  As soon as a new leaf forms, there are 3-4 different fungi on them eating it alive and 2-3 different animals doing the same.  To survive in the forest, natural selection forces you to reproduce fast, develop fast, and spread fast.  Otherwise you are eaten.  Ants and termites are everywhere (including in your socks) and when they bite, they draw blood.  Interestingly this dense activity of life is what gives endemic species an advantage, it's hard for introduced species to make their way in.    You don't have a lot of time to wonder around and take breaks when you are walking in a lowland tropical rainforest, which brings me to my final point about the emergent effect of both birdwatching in a dense rainforest.

Simplify your life!  That's what it boils down to.  Places we stayed often did not have electricity (that simplifies things a lot, though we had to carry ice on horses to enjoy a cold beer), they have little or no cell phone coverage.  The forest is so dense that focusing on the path and the birds is all what you have energy for.  The result for me was a vast simplification of my life for two weeks.  Eat, walk, find birds, sleep.  That's it.  With such simplification comes focus.  Pictures of the birds you are looking for are clear in your head, what you are doing, and why you are doing it is crystal clear.  We slept in very modest housing, on a sponge bed 10cm thick, but nobody cared.  The result of all this clarity is that it is addictive.  You start thinking that the mountain life is your normal life and that all this civilization is temporary.  Maybe it appeals to a primal need, which is hunting of course.  Whatever it is, I highly recommend that you do such a trip, even do it looking for birds, but do it in a harsh environment that forces you to focus and simplify.  You will love the feeling.

As for our trip result, we observed 255 species of bird of which 122 were endemic, a Philippine record for the 13 days we had, according to our guide who'se been the premier birder in the philippines for the last 30 years.

When my ornithologist friend Cagan Sekercioglu asked me to join him and our expert local guide Tim Fisher, on a birding trip to the Philippines, he told me that the Philippine rainforests were among the most biodiverse and unfortunately among the most destroyed. The trip would take us through a number of islands with the hope of seeing and photographing a lot of the birds of the Philippines. The thought of seeing a new country, and doing it in a non-traditional way appealed to me and I took the trip. It turned out to be one of the most interesting trips I ever took. What made it interesting was how we did it, where we did it and the emergent mindset the two created. First, the 'how we did it'. It was my first time birdwatching, and I was lucky to be with two experts. I always thought of birdwatching as a leisurely sport for which the minimum age to start was over 50. I was wrong, very very wrong. It is an intense sport, and gets more so if you are with experts. If you are competitive about it (my friend is in the world top 100) it requires a lot of strategy. There are two big variables and one consttraint. The variables are the total number of birds you want to see, and the number of rare birds you want to see. The constraint is the time you have in each region. If you focus on the rare birds, you have to spend a lot of time in specific places. You may or may not see them but then you miss many common ones, but if you focus only on common ones you may miss that one elusive bird that may just go extinct before you get around to do the trip again. They all count toward your overall global bird score. In either case you have to study the birds, read previous trip reports and create the optimum path that takes you through the right elevation and right kinds of habitats. Our strategy was to spend a lot of time in the rainforest to get all the birds, especially endemics and/or species threatened with extinction. After all, the number of birds you see and photograph is directly proportional to the time you spend on the field. That is why almost every day we woke up sharp at 3:00 am, had breakfast at 3:30, went on the field at 4:00 so that after a 2 hour hike (often up a mountain) in the dark, we would be ready to see the crepuscular birds just as the sun is rising. If you are even 30 minutes late you could miss whole categories of animals. We had lunch on the field and returned every day around 5-6 pm giving us some time after dinner to do night birding for owls. Almost every day we went to bed before 9pm. Getting the rare birds is tricky. There are 600+ birds in...

Sony BMG Sued For Using Pirated Software [Silicon Alley Insider]

You read that headline right -- Sony BMG, ardent foe of music piracy, is in trouble for using pirated software.

The company is being sued by PointDev, a French software company that makes Windows administration tools, after an IT worker at Sony BMG called and supplied the company with a pirated license number for one of its products.

A subsequent raid of Sony BMG offices in France turned up pirated PointDev software on four servers, and quite a bit more suspect software. The Business Software Alliance thinks that up to 47% of the software installed on French business computers could be pirated. For its part, PointDev is claiming $475,000 in damages. Sony BMG declined to comment.

The CEO of tiny PointDev (six employees), Agustoni Paul-Henry, doesn't think it was an oversight, or the work of one person. "I think piracy is linked to the policy of a company," he said. But who cares if it is? We can almost hear everybody who's been sued by Sony BMG for dowloading music laughing.

Apple Sued For Saying New iMac Is Cool When It Isn't [Silicon Alley Insider]

Or something like that:

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