Fantasy Olympics: Go For the Gold in Beijing

Just a quick post to share a time-sensitive find. My girls and I are planning to chart the Olympic medals by event, so I went looking for Olympic data online. Given my fantasy baseball involvement, I looked to see if there was a fantasy league for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. There is -- if interested, check out TheFantasyOlympics.net.

Alzheimer's Memory Walk: Coming to a Town Near You

For those of you in Gainesville and Ocala, FL, what are you and your family doing Saturday morning, October 4 (note: Gators are in Arkansas)? What about my readers in Jacksonville (9/20) and Orlando (10/11)? How about a short walk, just 1-3 miles, for a good cause: The Alzheimer's Memory Walk.

Before I share more, go ahead and stick a placeholder on your calendar for those dates/locations, or check the walk dates near your ZIP below. I'll wait...

By ZIP: Within 10 MilesWithin 20 MilesWithin 30 MilesWithin 40 MilesWithin 50 MilesWithin 75 MilesWithin 100 Miles Search by state or by chapter

OK, now that you've saved the date I can share some more. The Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk is the largest event in the nation dedicated to raising funds and awareness for Alzheimer's -- expecting over 200,000 participants this year alone.

One of the ways they get so much participation is because of their "team" concept; whereby a team captain invites a few friends, who invite a few friends. They are looking for all participants, but especially team captains. I'm focused on getting family involved. You can learn about all the options to help by clicking "Learn how" below -- they even have "virtual" teams, for anyone who can't find a Walk nearby.

Over 5 million people have Alzheimer's and most of us already know someone who has it. If you don't, I've done some research of my own (via About) -- you might know some of these:

Joe Adcock, baseball player
Mabel Albertson, actor
Dana Andrews, actor
Rudolph Bing, opera impresario
James Brooks, artist
Charles Bronson actor, film director
Abe Burrows,author
Carroll Campbell, Former Rebublican Senator
Joyce Chen, chef
Perry Como, Singer entertainer
Aaron Copland, composer
Willem DeKooning, artist
James Doohan, actor
Thomas Dorsey, singer
Tom Fears, professional football player and coach
Louis Feraud, fashion designer
Arlene Francis, actor
Mike Frankovich, film producer
John Douglas French, physician
Barry Goldwater, Senator of Arizona
Rita Hayworth, actress
Raul Silva Henriquez, Roman Catholic cardinal, human rights advocate
Charlton Heston actor and political activist
Mervyn Leroy, director
Jack Lord, actor
Ross MacDonald, author
Burgess Meredith, actor
Iris Murdoch, author
Edmond O’Brien, actor
Arthur O’Connell, actor
Marv Owen, baseball player
Molly Picon, actor
Otto Preminger, director
Bill Quackenbush, professional hockey player
Ronald Reagan, 40th President of USA
Harry Ritz, performer
Sugar Ray Robinson, boxer
Norman Rockwell, artist
Simon Scott, actor
Irving Shulman, screenwriter
Betty Schwartz, Olympic gold medal winner in track events
Kay Swift,composer
Alfred Van Vogt, science fiction writer
E.B. White, author
Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister

This video includes others touched by Alzheimer's:

Please help if you can.

Related images: alzheimers, memory walk

VCDB: Venture Funds by Keyword, Geography, Assets and Blogs?

Matt Winn has executed on a mashup idea I've had for some time: a VC database, searchable by keyword, partner, location and assets under management. He even has the option of searching for VCs who blog. I'm not sure how he's accessing the data (scraping NVCA, BOSS, ?) and some of it needs some scrubbing, but the resulting mashup is another great step behind the curtain of raising venture capital.

If you search for Florida venture capital firms you'll find something like:
(you can see VCDB is missing a Managing Partner and a Venture Partner for our fund)

I really like what Matt's created and want to encourage/support the "entrepreneur friendly" ecosystem he's trying to create. Give Matt's VCDB a spin and help make it better...great job Matt!

(via @magical_trevor)

Sunscreen, for Fruit?

Given Florida's roots in agriculture, PurFresh caught my attention recently. Their product, PurShade, is an SPF 45 spray to protect fruit from solar radiation -- yes, sunscreen for fruit. Evidently, the sun can destroy 20-40% of some crops. In the words of a Florida distributor:

"Growers in South Florida can experience severe sunburn or sun-scald on watermelons, peppers and tomatoes," said Frisbie, who works for Howard Fertilizer and Chemical. "The higher SPF factor found in Purshade offers better sun protection on exposed fruit."

The Fremont, CA-company even closed $25M from Foundation Capital earlier this year. What'll they think of next...

Channel Intelligence CEO: "Read the Patent"

Staying with my patent theme for the week, I noticed Etan Horowitz's interview with Celebration, FL-based Channel Intelligence CEO, Rob Wight. Channel Intelligence recently filed lawsuits against a variety of ecommerce companies, claiming patent infringement on some of their list technology.

I don't know all the details, but I appreciate Rob's core sentiment:

"When someone comes in and develops something that steals one of your core ideas, it's incumbent on the company to protect its core technology."

As you can see from Etan's questions, and other blogosphere chatter, there are plenty of skeptics about CI's stance, particularly as it relates to "wishlists" seen on a variety of ecommerce sites, for a number of years. Although Rob was hesitant to say much, you can tell he is anchoring on a broad reading of "multi-sourced" lists. Unfortunately, when patents get written too broadly, it can actually make them weaker to enforce...stay tuned...

Google's PageRank Patent in Jeopardy?

John Duffy has written an intriguing article over at PatentlyO about a set of recent cases/decisions putting all software patents running on general purpose computers in question; using Google's PageRank patent to demonstrate what's at stake. There's been a running debate in IP circles whether software patents would hold long-term, and as more online innovation focuses on just collecting and combining data in new ways, the attacks on software patents are getting more precise.

John shares some cases/quotes of note including:

In re Bilski: "[USPTO] takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they 'result in a physical transformation of an article' or are 'tied to a particular machine'."

Ex parte Langemyr: “Any and all computing systems will suffice, indicating that the claim is not directed to the function of any particular machine. … Thus, the claimed method is not tied to ‘a particular machine,’ but rather is tied only to a general purpose computer.”

Ex parte Wasynczuk: “the sole structural limitation recited is the ‘computer-implemented system’ of the preamble” and that limitation “is not any particular apparatus” because the computer could be “essentially any conventional apparatus that performs the claimed functions.”

If you're in the software business, this is a topic worth watching...

Gainesville is Titletown: Back-to-Back National Champs -- AGAIN!

Just in time for ESPN's Titletown contest, Gainesville just landed another back-to-back national title to go along with it's back-to-back NCAA basketball titles, multiple NCAA football titles and reigning Heisman Trophy Winner, Tim Tebow. Gainesville's Buchholz High School Math Team just won its second consecutive national championship in Sacramento, CA.

And, they didn't just win, they dominated. The 29 member team racked up 147 trophies while sweeping all three divisions: calculus, pre-calculus, and algebra/geometry. They won by 450 points, a larger margin than separated 2nd place from 9th place, and the largest margin of victory in the history of the national competition.

Congratulations to head coach Will Frazer and the whole Mu Alpha Theta team:

Mu (calculus coached by Jason Wiggins) - Kevin Fan, David Jia, Jonathan Mei, Mark Simon, Louie Wu, Tony Wu, Jimmy Wong and Shu Zheng.

Alpha (pre-calculus coached by Ziwei “Louis” Lu) - Youjin Jang, John Lu, Daniel Steffee, James Tan, Mariya Toneva, Wenda Ye, Jerome Yoon and Lucy Zhong.

Theta (algebra and geometry coached by Frazer) - Ming Cao, Bob Chen, Hansol Kang, Grace Kim, Brian Li, Jackson Looney, Katherine Qiu, Alexander Sappington, Emily Shroads, Alex Soucek, Kirsten Soucek, George Tedder and Shuyun Xue.

Lead Conversion at the Heart of RichFX Acquisition by ChannelAdvisor

ChannelAdvisor CEO, Scot Wingo, wrote a great post today about their acquisition of RichFX. At first blush, RichFX appears to be all about sexy rich media sizzle (PDF), but Scot's post zeros in on the meat he's after: lead conversions.

RichFX brings to ChannelAdvisor a stable of top internet retailers, but more importantly, brings a suite of rich solutions that grow sales conversions. Some examples Scot provided are:

• Saks - jewelry example (zoom/pan/multi-image view)
• Saks - shoe example
• Men's Warehouse - build your own tux.
• Lillian Vernon - rich catalog
• Disney - custom rich catalog
• Wal-mart - rich circular

Scot calls the category "conversion enhancers" -- I think his marketing guys will find a better term. He then does some algebraic simplification to show why conversion rates are so important, resulting in:

Return on Marketing Spend (ROS) = Conversion Rate (CR) * Average Order Value (AOV) / Cost Per Click

Therefore, ROS goes up when CR or AOV go up, or CPC goes down. ChannelAdvisor's suite already had AOV and CPC optimize tools. The RichFX acquisition completes the trifecta, ramping CR (and further boosting AOV).

Scot's post concludes with a couple examples with real dollars worth reviewing. Congrats Scot on the acquisition and the greater capability to maximize etailer ROS...