Benchmark is investing in both Zopa and its primary rival Prosper.com? Clones of each other.

Benchmark also invested in Linden Labs (Second Life) in California, and The HabboHotel which is basically a competitor overseas. Both develop virtual 3d worlds on the internet.

Hmm, those board meetings must be tense. The folks at Benchmark must be pretty smooth talkers…or, is this a new VC tactic that’s bound to stick?

Members of Congress (and their aides) are legally allowed to trade stocks using insider information. Pretty much the same government that locked Martha Stewart up. No, I’m not kidding.

The French have brought this on themselves. Do you see what happens when you raise people in a nation of entitlement? People think they have a right to a job. People don’t have a right to a job. People have a right to compete for a job. It’s a very different thing. Young french kids are living in a dreamworld. Don’t get me wrong. I love the place. Paris has to be one of the best cities on earth. But, this degree of socialism is not the right model for the modern world. Employers by nature are more capitalistic than others surrounding them in a socialist environment. Demonstrate value to them which translates into better business and more often than not you will have job security. This isn’t to say that every young employee who is valuable will not be fired. Some could very well be fired for reasons which have nothing to do with their contribution. Yes, no system is perfect but the French model of “job for life” is about the furthest from perfect that one can get. The French government is (finally) beginning to figure this out but now is the time to see if they have the backbone to back it up. My guess is that they will capitulate.

A few weeks back somebody trashed my Audi by running into me. We rented a new Mini. Since we live in Seattle and in a fairly congested urban neighborhood I’ve come to really enjoy this little car. It’s pretty clear to me why people living in Paris have their “urban combat cars” and then a second (nicer) “weekend” car. For cruising around in the city during the weekdays, this just might be the ideal car. You can park it anywhere. And, it’s fast and handles well. Further, it looks small but actually has decent room. I might have to buy one of these.

This post about someone new taking over the Windows team is really just another way of saying that Chris Jones and team are embarrassing the top brass by making them announce yet another Vista delay. Frankly, I kind of feel sorry for Chris and team because the reality is that Microsoft should have used what they have learned to this point and started a new OS from scratch…made it smaller, faster, lighter…you get the idea.

This is a really interesting story. And people wonder why Hollywood is still a bit skeptical about using these kinds of technologies for movie distribution? Now, I know that Skype is all about the phone and not movies but read the article and you’ll see what I mean. This has definately been a great month for tech personality soap operas.

My site was down for a few days because HostRocket said my credit card had been failing for two months. True enough. Losing your wallet isn’t much fun because it takes months to restore everything back to normal. Updating my hosting account was one that I had forgotten. I must say though, every time I call HostRocket’s tech support they always pick up. Pretty nice. These guys do a good job.

So here’s the recap. My name and a website I helped pull together (by subbing it out to another friend) get acusssed as being a rip of PixelSurgeon. I get hundreds of flame mails (because they posted this claim to a bunch of forums before contacting me about it.) My company site gets targeted. So do the sites of companies where I am on the advisory board. I get mad. Some folks agree with me. Web terrorism is never justified. I push back. So ultimately I get this email from PixelSurgeon this morning. It is intact except for a part about his family getting email threats. I left that out because a) I don’t support it and b) I don’t think I know anyone personally who would say such things.

The apology is nice and I appreciate it.

Next time someone has an issue with me, I’d also really appreciate it if you’d take it up with me directly. Trying to use the web against me makes me really, really, really angry.

Peace out.

—–Original Message—–
From: Jason Arber {Pixelsurgeon} [mailto:jason@pixelsurgeon.com]
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 8:27 AM
To: Kelly E. Smith
Subject: Re: 2nd Avenue Partners and Pixelsurgeon

Well, this whole situation has brought out the best in people. I find
myself on the receiving end of a long line of a string of hate
emails. It appears we both have a classy set of friends.

I regret my actions, which were done rashly, and apologise for the
pain in the ass caused. I’m not normally a vindictive person, but
another example of a site ripping off my design was the straw the
broke the camel’s back. However, this situation has turned extremely
ugly and have left an extremely unpleasant taste in my mouth. But as
I can’t turn back time, I thought the least I could do was offer my
apologies. Whether or not you accept, or even care one way or the
other is down to you.

And in response to your blog, Pixelsurgeon recently celebrated its
5th birthday (you can examine news posts, reviews and interviews
going back that far) and predates the 2nd Avenue site by three years.

Today has been a fairly humorous day for me. I’ve worked in this industry for quite awhile now and have never (until now) witnessed web terrorism personally.

Web terrorism is where people send you anonymous emails without their real names or links to their URLs and say things they couldn’t or wouldn’t possibly say to a human being in person. It’s sort of like targeted spam with personality. You get flooded with the stuff. In the 200 or so emails I got this morning, just a handful were from people who used real names and emails. Most looked like secondary AOL accounts and such.

No explanation whatsoever matters to web terrorists. Web terrorist ring leaders start the process by posting a claim (all over the place) that they didn’t bother to confirm with their target first. Are they targeting the right person? Matters not to web terrorists! Are they targeting the correct person whom might have a valid explanation? Matters not to a web terrorist! Could the ring-leading bin Ladens of web terrorism have achieved their goals using civil means? Of course but it matters not to web terrorists. Because to a web terrorist it’s all lies. And digital jihad is ALWAYS justified to web terrorists. When a handful of innocents get included in the digital bomb (spam) blasts it matters not to a web terrorist!

Here’s my advice to those who are targets of these teen terrorists. Apologize if you’re wrong. Yep, apologize! But don’t be tempted to retaliate in the future using similar public tactics. It isn’t civil.

If your rationale and explanation is valid, then how do we deal with terrorists? Walk away? Bow down? Get freaked out over these al jazeera type spam broadcasts? Don’t even be tempted! Terrorists WANT to freak you out. Unfortunately, I’m already a jaded bastard so my skin is thicker than most.

Post what you believe and forget spam terrorists. Think the world should stop using CSS? Say so! Think Explorer is better than Firefox? You’re confused but say so anyway. Think Ashley Simpson is a great singer? You may have bad taste but say so! Let the hate mail pile up but stand up and never back down.

So I wake up this morning to about 100 spam messages about me copying the secondave.com site.
I’m simply amazed at the hate mail I got over this topic. Guess what folks. Somebody had submitted a single html page and CSS sheet which was the basis of that design two years ago to some open-source freely downloadable site. In fact, I use this technique quite often when I need to do something for a friend. Consider my other site at www.curiousoffice.com. Open source. Because some joker uploaded that stylesheet somewhere else two years ago isn’t my fault or my problem. I don’t even know who pixelsurgeon is and when I went to the front page I thought you were all crazy. It was only after drilling into the body pages that I could figure out what all you people were even talking about.

Nonetheless, it is so freakin easy to redo that site that I’m quite happy to have them pull it down. Thank you all for the very kind messages. Not.

No, I’m not going away. No, I’m not getting intimidated. No, I DO respect design. See this very site? I BEG you to find one like it. All me. All mine.

Now, you’re all very welcome to EMAIL me if you wish to go on further about this but I’m not letting my site get marked up with a bunch of hate spam.

—————————————

I also thought you might all be interested in the email I got from PixelSurgeon and my response:

—————————————

Jason:

It’s a shame how you work.

Before posting stuff all over the place why not give me an email? A phone call? My information is all there on the site isn’t it?

Fact is, I DIDN’T actually do the site. I subbed it out to someone (a contractor though I take responsibility).
And they tell me they got the design from an open-source template site two years ago. Now, either someone uploaded a template that was yours (or like yours) or the guy I subbed the job to used yours. Either way, the way you work is pretty lame.

You should check in with people first before going ballistic. This day, you’re out of line and wrong. And, I’m sure it will happen again if you don’t have the courtesy to check in with people BEFORE creating web-wide spam tactics.

Kelly

—–Original Message—–
From: Jason Arber {Pixelsurgeon} [mailto:jason@pixelsurgeon.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 1:00 PM
To: Kelly E. Smith
Subject: Re: 2nd Avenue Partners and Pixelsurgeon

Perhaps you’re right I should have called first, and I was
particularly rash (although the emails to 2nd Avenue bounced back, so
they never got them - perhaps their mail server didn’t like the .png
attachments). However, as I explained previously, this has happened a
lot and my patience snapped. I’m sorry you ended up with a shitstorm,
but perhaps you might want to have a word with your suppliers and
explain that they just cost you some goodwill.

—–Original Message—–
From: Jason Arber {Pixelsurgeon} [mailto:jason@pixelsurgeon.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 1:45 AM
To: kellysmith@kellysmith.com
Subject: 2nd Avenue Partners and Pixelsurgeon

Hi Kelly

It has been pointed out to me by several people that the site you
designed for 2nd Avenue Partners is actually a carbon copy of
Pixelsurgeon’s site, bar a subtle colour change. I hope that 2nd
Avenue Partners didn’t actually pay you for this “design” as it was
actually created by me. I have enclosed a side-by-side screenshot
comparison of your site and mine. I have also CC-ed 2nd Avenue
Partners, newsed the rip on Pixelsurgeon and alerted several forums.

Hopefully this name and shame procedure will teach you that if you
steal someone’s design you will be found out, and to encourage you to
be more original in the future. I’m sure 2nd Avenue Partners would
take an extremely dim view of passing off someone else’s design as an
original one.