Fantastic Four

I’m going to go watch the movie.  I’ll let you know how it is when I get back.

In other news, what a boring weekend.  Again.

/rizzn

Conversations and links

I had some decent conversation with the Finkelstein brothers over the last couple days.  Joel and I spoke last night, and Matthew and I spoke this morning.  I’m going to give them access to post to this blog until I get their domain done.  I’ve been working on their blog for a couple months, but actual work has been pushing it to the backburner for a while now.  They’re itching to shout to the world, so I had better let them.

Matthew almost has me sold on dropping the $500 it’s going to take for me to go to Burning Man this year.  Who saw that coming? Matthew also sent me a great link this morning – iRP. If you roleplay, and you have Sundays and Thursdays off, this is a good place to go.  It’s run by a couple of folks who are famous for their good games in our hometown.

I’m aggressively recruiting salespeople for a variety of products this week.  We’re beefing up our sales team for both companies.  Both products tend to sell themselves, but we need to take everything to the next level, hence the big sales push.  Enquire within (between $50–250 commission on one product per sale, and the other is a lifetime residual product).

In other news, scroll down and see the beauty which is Joel’s kid.  Can’t get over that.

Want to waste about twenty minutes or more?  Enjoy the erotic mystery of the falling bikini girl. Truely entrancing.  Hat tip to Lish on that one.

In other news, I’m generally not in the habit of quoting other people’s works word for word, but I got a LiquidGeneration newsletter in the mail today – it’s this newsletter that I somehow got subscribed to.  I’ve never been to their site, but from what I can tell it has something to do with transexuals and flash design.  At any rate, they send out funny emails, so I don’t make a big deal of it. All that to say, check out what was in my inbox this morning:

Hiya People! Monkey Here,

So, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are adopting an Ethiopian child! This got me wondering, "Would it be cool to be the love child of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?" One might automatically think "Yes" without a second thought, but let's look at the facts here:

1. You will never be as good looking as your parents.

Instead of people coming up to your parents and saying "What a cute child you have," people will be coming up to you saying, "Son of a bitch! Your parents are frickin' retarded hot! I'm not gay but I would have sex with your dad, that's how retarded hot he is! I just glanced at your mom for like two seconds and I crapped my pants...she's so hot I crapped my pants!"

2. Your ex-girlfriends are going to suck compared to your dad's.

Brad Pitt was engaged to Gwenyth Paltrow and married to Jennifer Aniston. They're real nice looking. Your ex-girlfriends will probably be ugly and if they're not it's because they just want to meet your parents. Let's be honest, It's not very often that I see a bone-skinny Ethiopian with a distended stomach wearing a diaper walking down the street with a wicked hot girl. You neither? Exactly.

3. Your dad was in Fight Club. You will be in the Chess Club.

Again, I don't see many bone-skinny Ethiopian dudes with a distended stomach wearing a diaper being a football star. You will be a nerd. Good luck with chess.

4. Your mom won an academy award at age 25. You will never win anything.

Chances are, when you get into your teens you will probably be so jaded by your parent's universal celebrity, you will be a universal loser. Expect years of drug addiction and many failed attempts at rehab. Enjoy!

I wish you luck, young man. Just remember: Angelina is not your real mom...you can make out with her!

Cheers,

Smonkey

Great stuff.  Jon and Matthew – your affiliate agreements are on their way.

/rizzn

My buddy Joel has a little one now.

Annika, Joel’s little one.

Joel, with his little one on his lap.

FlyDLUX Related: Khashoggi retires from EarthShell Corp. board

[Rizzn’s Note: If you remember, Simon Hodson and Essam Khashoggi were big investors in the whole FlyDLUX debacle.]

In news that’s only semi-related to FlyDLUX in that respect, I found this on the wires today:

July 7 -- Essam Khashoggi, the co-founder and chairman of EarthShell Corp., is stepping down from the company´s board of directors.

Khashoggi said June 7 that he would not seek re-election to the board as part of his scheduled plan to retire. He will provide assistance and guidance to the company on an as-needed basis. Khashoggi, EarthShell´s largest shareholder, plans to maintain his holdings in the company, he said.

EarthShell, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., is involved in licensing and commercializing disposable food-service utensils and wraps that are biodegradable and can be composted. The products are made primarily from limestone and starch from potatoes, corn and wheat.

In a different press release, I found the following public statements made by Hodson and Khashoggi:

 Mr. Khashoggi stated, "We have strong executive leadership in place that has effectively dealt with many challenges to bring the Company to its current level of accomplishment. EarthShell will be implementing changes that will enable top management to perform to even higher standards and increase shareholder value. I will always feel that I am a part of EarthShell. It is a dynamic and important part of my business life, and I want to stay as close as possible to the Company as product commercialization begins. I believe that EarthShell has a bright future."

"Mr. Khashoggi helped establish EarthShell's environmental vision and mission," commented Simon Hodson, EarthShell co-founder and chief executive officer. "He has seen the Company through many transitions and the achievement of milestones, including development of its comprehensive patent portfolio and the establishment of important business relationships in both the public and private sectors. We all genuinely appreciate Mr. Khashoggi's contributions to the creation and development of EarthShell. EarthShell's success, through its new plans for the future, will always reflect the legacy of his passion and commitment."

Simon Hodson and Essam Khashoggi played a very interesting part in the whole FlyDLUX debacle.  Almost half of the money lost by FlyDLUX was Simon Hodson’s and Essam Khashoggi’s, and it was in the millions.  About halfway into their adventures with FlyDLUX, they began sending money directly to either Lida Benham or James “Tony” Wimmer.

If I understand their original stated intent in buying massive quantities of underpriced ticket vouchers through FlyDLUX, it was to force the airlines to go into bankruptcy, and then subsequently purchase the airline itself at a devalued rate.  Apparently, many years ago, I’m told, when Delta Airlines was in bankruptcy, they were the second or third highest bidder on it’s purchase, and unfortunately for them, did not end up pocketing the airline.

A lot of our financial problems stemmed from the Hodson deal.  If it were not for Hodson/Khashoggi continuously stringing us along for the last few months we attempted to remain operating, we would have closed up shop.  It’s hard to do that when you constantly have millions of dollars dangled in front of your face.

The last I heard, Hodson/Khashoggi were buying tickets directly from Wimmer as recently as a year ago.  I have no validation on this, only rumor and innuendo (which is what the majority of the post-FlyDLUX crowd lives on, apparently.  I mean, you are reading this, right?)

As for my own personal opinions of Hodson/Khashoggi – I don’t like them.  I don’t suppose I can say too much bad about Khashoggi as a person, as Hodson et. al. kept us pretty insulated from him.  I think we were on one phone call with Essam, and a conference call at that.  Hodson, however, is an imbecile of the highest order, or a shark of the most devious variety.  I’m not sure which, and given his family member’s opinion of him, I’m more likely to say shark.  All of his money was made, so the grapevine tells me, by either defrauding or cheating his sisters out of their inheritance.  As for my personal experience with the man, he kept us on and past the edge of bankruptcy for so long that we’d have to offer him majority ownership in the company.

In retrospect, we should have signed that deal instead of folding shop.  I’d love to have the legal team Simon’s money could buy pursuing the likes of Tony Wimmer.  But then again, I’m just as happy that I have been able to put all of this behind me.

/rizzn

VoIP service unaffected by London blasts and Is Vonage doing a stupid thing?

Yesterday's tragic bomb blasts resulted in overloaded cellular and landline voice networks as Londoners used their phones to contact family members, friends and business colleagues. Major carriers reported call rates at more than double the usual volumes, which led to service delays and bandwidth reductions. VoIP systems, on the other hand, weren't affected by the increased network traffic volumes, according to UK carriers.

For more on VoIP's performance during the London emergency:
- read this Toronto Globe and Mail article
- and this Toronto Globe and Mail column

That Vonage is pouring money into advertising in an effort to attract customers and raise its profile isn't news. What is interesting is that as Vonage reportedly spends about $10 million each month to add some 15,000 new subscribers, it is still lagging behind Skype in terms of both usage and public perception. One estimate finds that at its current spending rate, Vonage is paying about $400 for each new subscriber it acquires. At that pace, in order to simply to break even, Vonage will need to retain each of those customers for about 2 1/2 years. Therefore, Vonage's VC investors must hope that the company is on the verge of releasing some type of technological or strategic breakthrough that will allow it to cuts costs and leap far ahead of its competitors. Otherwise, it's uh-oh, oh, oh, oh.

For more details on Vonage's marketing strategy:
- read this KarnellKnowledge blog entry

Paris Hilton, Phones Closed, Podcasting Book and Pooped Out

Well, here’s the post July 4 update.

As it turns out, the Paris Hilton party was postponed and people failed to inform us of the cancellation.  I’m still waiting on word back from the Paris Hilton club people as to when it’s actually going to be opened.  No biggie, I suppose.  I didn’t get the scoop, but no one else did either. Sour grapes supreme.

We’re supposed to close two more big buisness VoIP accounts today, bringing us close to achieving one third of our sales goal for the year. This is a good thing.  If we close a couple more sales, I’ll be able to hire a programmer or two to help me out with r.Podcaster.

I’m writing a podcasting book.  I’m about forty pages into it right now, and it’s mostly crap, but hey, at least it is something, right?  It keeps me off the streets, so it can’t be too bad.

Summer is officially here in sunny South Florida.  Temperatures have been unbearably hot recently, and the daily rain has stopped.  I’m hesitant to complain about it because I don’t want to encourage the hurricane fates to hit here again.  On the other hand, I certainly would enjoy a few degrees cooler around here.

I’ll keep you guys in the loop on everything.  I’ve got to get back to work.  I’m bugfixing the BlogTracker on blipmedia.org right now, and hopefully by end of day it should be actually displaying everyone’s rss feeds properly, instead of getting all confruzzled like it does now (sometimes it will put someone elses blog posts in your xml feeds).

/rizzn

Boring Freakin' Weekend

Not a whole hell of a lot going on this weekend for me.  Not right now, at least.  Putting together the final CDs for the Paris Hilton party.  Still haven’t received my passes and tip sheets yet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.

Got some other stuff to tell you about, but no time right now.  Gotta finish this site I’m working on.

/rizzn