This is pretty amazing! [from readnrock blog] — Which way is she turning in the image above?

If you see this lady turning clockwise you are using your right brain.

If you see her turning anti-clockwise, you are using your left brain.

Some people can see her turning both ways, but most people see her only one way.

See if you can make her go one way and then the other by shifting the brain’s current.

If you can switch between seeing her turn either way at will without shifting your gaze, your IQ is above 160 … which is almost at genius level!

This was devised at Yale University for a 5 year study on the human brain and its functions.

Only 14% of the US population can see her move both ways

Apologies to all, especially Matt, for a lack of blog posts.

I’m freshly returned from Austin, Texas where I attended South by Southwest (2008).  The event was absolutely awesome and next year I will be back. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend many panels due to a project Heighs Media Group has been working on in conjunction with Peter Corbett at iStragtegy Labs.

We’ve been working on a really fun project for Geico building a Cavemen dating website called I Heart Cavemen.It’s a spoof on the Cavemen commercials and it’s been a blast to work on. As part of the site’s launch we organized a big “Crush” party and Marty (Geico’s main Caveman) even showed up, arriving stylishly in a limo. It was all a blast, but a lot of work went into the launch so I’m looking forward to next year being more relaxed.

As far as panels go, one of the most interesting is now likely to go down as the most notorious. The whole Lacey debacle was one of the more amazing things I have witnessed in person, from the awkwardness of the actual interview with Mark to seeing Twitter empower a group to take action. It was fascinating to watch the audience move from exchanging mystified facial expression, to murmurs, to rapid twittering and then to collective and outspoken annoyance.

I also really loved the talk by Frank Warren, the creator of Post Secret. Frank’s story of how Post Secret came to be was so humble and eloquent; it was the perfect example of how media and art can free when we use it in non-assuming ways.

Can’t wait for next year and I really look forward to covering panels focused specifically on startup metrics and the continually evolving nature of venture funding.

I once had a professor who believed that if you are not directly impacting revenues at your company, you should find another job. For most companies, revenues result from two things: sales and marketing. Maybe if you are the lead product developer, or primary service provider you also directly impact revenues — but not always. In the world of 9 to 5 jobs, you need to get yourself as close to the revenue cycle as possible. If you want the company to think of you as a long-term investment, you must figure out how to make yourself essential to the firm’s lifeblood. By doing so, you greatly increase your monetary worth and ability to leverage your position to achieve future freedoms.

Found this little nugget embedded within a VentureBeat article relating to the Facebook Application KissMe:

“[KissMe has] almost become a self-sustaining Facebook app business, already. It has 36,916 daily active users (an impressive 38 percent of the total users), and is running Facebook ads. A rule of thumb is that an app with at least 50,000 daily active users will make enough on advertising to pay for the developers’ room, board and servers.â€�

I wonder why they are using Facebook ads to monetize, rather than socialmedia.com which pays on installs?

What is really cool here though, is the fact that students built this application as part of a class being offered at Stanford University.

• Looking to work for one of the hottest web startups in the world?
• Want a boss who is universally known as technology genius?
• Want to work from the comfort of your own home?
• Want the opportunity to research and learn about new topics?
• Want to work for a company where you can see your results?
• Want to set your own hours (i.e. sleep until 10am?)
• Want to make $30+ per hour?

You Can! Sort of’ Jason Calacanis has announced the launch of Mahalo Greenhouse. The Greenhouse program allows members of public (basically Mahalo interns) to build search result pages for keywords not currently included in Mahalo results. If accepted, participants will be paid $10 to $15 per search result. More details are available here.

If I was a student with a typical boring summer job looking to supplement my income and/or add something from the hot new hot realm of ‘search engines’ and SEM to my resume, I would jump all over this! Hmm…maybe I will anyway.

Currently the most-emailed New York Times article is ’omg my mom joined Facebook!!’ The article is a humorous recount of a Mom who, feeling disconnected from her daughter, joins Facebook (now open to everyone) only to find that her daughter isn’t exactly happy with her decision’

The article highlights an issue that became apparent to me tonight while talking with my youngest sister. A college senior who has been on with Facebook from its very beginnings, my sister shocked me tonight by announcing that she was DONE with Facebook and plans to delete her profile. ’It sucks now’ was her exact statement.

What I realized tonight is that Facebook has three worlds of users ’“ its core community of college students who made it popular, the VCs and tech people who love Facebook from a technology and investment perspective and then ’everybody else.’

The problem is that the core users like my sister don’t really care for all the new feeds, applications and 24/7 updates. We as the tech/investment community have been singing the praises of new applications, such as iLike with 486,000+ users. Guess what, that’s just a tiny fraction of the total Facebook community. Could be that the people adding these applications are not core users, but in fact the ’everyone elses’ who core users despise? YES!

Reality check. College students detest the ’everyone else crowd.’ They resent people like their parents invading their turf and who can blame them? Here we are thinking that Facebook is the next Google because people never have to leave their profile pages’ VCs are excited because maybe Facebook is the next big IPO. The new F8 platform could be the key to social media monetization. And, now that Facebook is ’open to all’ membership growth will be through the roof! MySpace lookout! Right?….

Well guess what? When you loose the core, the people who made you famous, it’s not a good sign. Facebook became popular because it was simple and its community was engaged with each other. Increasingly teh emphasis on Facebook is shifting away from interaction among people, to interaction with widgets and advertising and outsiders. I think Facebook ought to bear in mind that young people are fickle and an account can be deleted much faster than it can be created.

My sister is currently looking a job and she’s two years out of college. My other sister will be graduating from college next year and she’s already thinking about her impending job search…

It got me thinking that there is a lot in common between entrepreneurs looking for funding and recent college graduates looking for jobs. As an analogy, think of a recent graduate (and his or her resume) as a business plan ’“ a potential gamble or risk for some company looking to hire. The recent graduate, like the entrepreneur, must sell themselves and show how his or her skills and experience are worth a company’s trust and long-term investment.

Here are my thoughts/advice for my sisters:

• The best approach is to meet people and network in person
• A connection who physically hands your resume to a Hiring Manager (bplan to a VC) is invaluable
• Pedigree (college name/GPA) matters, but ultimately people invest in people
• Finding a fit with the right synergies is more important than the actual salary (i.e.valuation)
• Location can be the difference between opportunity vs. opportunities
• Never settle – do something you can be passionate about
• Understand that rejection is inevitable and a good learning experience

Can anyone think of others?

Darren Herman recently blogged about his experience of attending the DFJ East Coast Venture Challenge at Columbia University. The awards for the winners included $250k in seed funding (with the option for more) and many other perks such as office space at Sunshine Suites. Damn!

Darren’s take was that while some of the ideas were good, he was shocked ’that many of the companies presenting had little to no traction.’Â�

Darren goes on to say ’lots of people in the digital media space always talk about how cheap it is to start a company for $50k, why couldn’t any of these folks have done so? They are certainly smart enough’ ’Â�

Well here are my reasons why this may be the case:

Hunger. To start a company on less than $50k, while feasible, does require a level of hunger that might not be present among budding MBAs at Columbia. Undoubtedly these kids have multiple high-paying opportunities at Hedge Funds, PE, etc…Convincing themselves to forgo homework assignments and commit 100% of their time and resources to a startup is not the type of ’risk management’ they are learning.

Technology. My guess is while many of these kids presented great ideas, few if any of the presenters were programmers. Programmers are necessary to make most new businesses happen. Not only do B-schools not enroll many technical people, but they also fail to provide them as resources.

Surprising Lack of Resources/Support. Even though these are MBA students from one of the wealthiest endowed B-Schools around, I guarantee you that the kids still suffer from a lack of resources and support. While some B-schools are better than others, most business schools still do not have the resources or support systems available to students that they should (at least in terms of entrepreneurship). At top schools it’s impossible to get teachers to help you, it’s competitive among students and time for brainstorming and creativity (when ideas would be hatched) are limited. Plus even the highest GMAT scorers still need the balls and the suaveness to use their diplomas and connections to meet the right people. That’s something they can’t teach in the classroom.

Overall I agree with Darren that it’s a shame there were not demos and more traction among the students. But, I’m not surprised. As a current MBA student myself, more often than not I have had to look outside my school to find the connections and resources necessary to learn about startups and technology. I think there is big opportunity for cross-school collaboration and I think there are significant prospects for tech savvy programmers willing to team with sharp and creative MBAs.

If anyone has suggestions or would like to help address this problem, please contact me. This is something I am passionate about, have witnessed firsthand and an area I see major opportunities to make substantial, positive impacts.

OpenCoffee is a great concept and we’re bringing it to DC! On Friday May 11^th from 9am to 11am we’ll be informally gathering at the Caribou Coffee on 17^th and L (Location Map). Feel free to drop by for 10 minutes or for the full two hours ’“ whatever your schedule allows. The idea is to provide a set meeting place and time so that people can network and talk about topics ranging from entrepreneurship to technology.

If you think you’ll be able to stop by, send me an email and we can keep track of potential numbers. No RSVP is necessary, but it’s always nice to know in advance who might be able to make it so we can be on the lookout.

Hope to see you there and please forward this onto friends and colleagues.

***A reminder that if you want to win a subscription to FastCompany, you have 5 days left to enter my contest!

Today was what may have been my last final ever. Afterwards I proceeded to watch Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drifters…complete garbage, but I can’t say I completely hated it.

Tomorrow I am off the New York City and I promise very soon to have a slew of better, insightful blog posts so stay tuned.

Also, if you are not familiar with Tim Ferriss and his new book, the Four Hour Work Week, I highly recommend you listen to this podcast Tim gave at SXSW and pick up the book.

Finally, we are planning for the first ever OpenCoffee event in DC to occur on Friday May 11th. Essentially the OpenCoffee concept involves picking a coffee shop and people are free to drop by, network and discuss issues of tech and entrepreneurship. I’ll post more details soon.