Mark Pincus Blog

Tony robbins rocks!

I'm sitting here at day 2 of the tony
robbins 'unleash your power' seminar. I'm here after withstanding serious mocking by many friends. The only way to do this is to leave your ego and self-judgement behind.

Despite my (attempted) open minded approach, I still walked in skeptical. My adult side didn't want to participate. Too silly. Jumping and cheering for what? Is this a cult? Is he trying to mind mold us into some rahrah utopian society that is always up and dancing and clapping?

I have to say that tony can help us all if we let him. By day two I'm finding myself totally engaged and clapping and cheering too. For what? For ouselves. We're all here because we want to make every day on this planet count. Tony is here to help us do it.

Do we all know tony's message? Yes. How often do we live it? Rarely.

Tony's energy is inspiring. He's going non stop for hrs and the crowd loves it.

Ok. Back to listening to tony.
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Bobby maxwell is my hero

Todays nytimes reported that bobby maxwell, a former interior dept auditor sued kerr-mcgee as a private citizen for cheating the govt out of royalties on oil and gas drilling. A judge ruled the corp underpaid by $7.5m and may now be liable for $30m. The best part, mr maxwell is entitled to 30 pct under a federal whistle blower law.

Apparently, the dept has been blocking its auditors from chasing oil comnpanies that are underpaying millions in royalties.

Wonder why a federal dept would tell its auditors to stop pursuing funds from major oil companies, a year after having public hearings on whether these companies are paying enough taxes? Anyone want to bet on whether these same companies are major bush contributors?

We should build statues of men like bobby maxwell!
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Bobby maxwell is my hero

Todays nytimes reported that bobby maxwell, a former interior dept auditor sued kerr-mcgee as a private citizen for cheating the govt out of royalties on oil and gas drilling. A judge ruled the corp underpaid by $7.5m and may now be liable for $30m. The best part, mr maxwell is entitled to 30 pct under a federal whistle blower law.

Apparently, the dept has been blocking its auditors from chasing oil comnpanies that are underpaying millions in royalties.

Wonder why a federal dept would tell its auditors to stop pursuing funds from major oil companies, a year after having public hearings on whether these companies are paying enough taxes? Anyone want to bet on whether these same companies are major bush contributors?

We should build statues of men like bobby maxwell!
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Bobby maxwell is my hero

Todays nytimes reported that bobby maxwell, a former interior dept auditor sued kerr-mcgee as a private citizen for cheating the govt out of royalties on oil and gas drilling. A judge ruled the corp underpaid by $7.5m and may now be liable for $30m. The best part, mr maxwell is entitled to 30 pct under a federal whistle blower law.

Apparently, the dept has been blocking its auditors from chasing oil comnpanies that are underpaying millions in royalties.

Wonder why a federal dept would tell its auditors to stop pursuing funds from major oil companies, a year after having public hearings on whether these companies are paying enough taxes? Anyone want to bet on whether these same companies are major bush contributors?

We should build statues of men like bobby maxwell!
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

wondering if/when the windows pc will reach extinction

i just bought a new ibm (lenovo) laptop. it has been a ridiculous experience and leads me to believe that other than supporting the many corporate IT jobs, these products may have reached the end of their life.

• the machine required an IT guy to spend a day (and night) moving and setting up.
• the increased resolution also means that your outlook email is too small to read.
• it has problems and bugs like the wireless connection going on and off.
• it resets many of my defaults to things helpful to the manufacturer like changing my home page to lenovo. (now that's a great idea. i'm sure many people will get value from that.)
• finally, there is no noticable improvement in performance (the original reason for upgrading!)

anyway, the lesson is that i'm an idiot for a) still being dependent on windows computing and b) upgrading to a new one. i hope you can avoid my pitfalls. pls buy a mac and save yourselves. i may be too late.

Jon Stewart best coverage of viacom lawsuit

awesome daily show clip on the viacom youtube lawsuit. really funny and easy to follow.

Is true.com spreading untruth?

Brad Stone had a provacative piece in sundays nytimes on true.com. Apparently, its founder, Herb Vest, is pursuing political lobbying to force cometing online dating sites to do background checks while also admitting that his company employs questionable business practices. These include generating fake 'winks' between members as well as making it very hard to cancel memberships.

While I'm impressed that mr vest has built true to 3.8m monthly visitors (though we don't know how many are paying members) it is strange that someone would be so openly hypocritical.

Mr Vest employed a similar tactic in building his last company by changing the law in 50 states to enable his accounting offices to sell commission based services.

This is further evidence that political lobbying remains the best ROI in US business.

I was surprised that the reporter (brad stone) stopped short of pushing the founder to justify his hypocracy or to delve into the business story - how has the site grown? What is the consumer prop?
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Deleted a TEDster comment

tonight, for the first time, i deleted a non-spam comment to this blog. it was a personal attack made by someone without the nerve to use their real identity. i will say to that person, that if you choose to resubmit your comment with your real name and email i will allow you to post it and respond. it is unfortunate that it was made by a member of the TED community. this was clearly not a person who gets the ethos of that community. it actually blows my mind that one of my peers would stoop to making a personal attack in an anonymous way. at least when i'm out of line, my name is attached.

Jason Alexander buys dinner...

just to maintain my partying, cheapskate image on valleywag, i had  jason alexander pay for dinner tonight. (joking)

turns out he's a really funny, down to earth guy who can definitely take a joke. i had a perfect foot-in-mouth when i told him i had passed on investing in a film ("ira and abbey") which it turns out he eventually starred in. he said it's really funny so i'll have to go see it now.

Most fun at TED...

i got to meet cameron diaz, tracy chapman and a cool guy from the black eyed peas at TED. the picture below shows her with the waitstaff who treated her like the queen of england. i have to say that she was fun and charming and insisted on paying the tab which doesnt help my cheapskate reputation valleywag has been promoting.

tracy chapman seemed almost overwhelmed by the level of geek intensity, especially so many people wanting to meet her and ask her not just what city she lived in (sf) or neighborhood but cross streets (can you say geek stalkers:).