Saturday night I watched a great movie called ‚ÄúThe Secret‚Äù. The movie, which follows its written counterpart, discusses how to utilize the power of the mind to get whatever your heart desires. I have read many books on this topic, and ultimately this movie reiterates much of what is covered in books such as Napoleon Hill’s ‚ÄúThink and Grow Rich‚Äù. I am a true follower of such ideas and this movie helps get you back on track. I’m not quite sure if I should be revealing ‚ÄúThe Secret‚Äù but I figured I might as well share some of the main points with you.

Summary
The overall concept of “The Secret” as well as most self-help ideas is that a positive mind results in a positive life. Through visualization, anything that you desire can become yours. Whether it be health, wealth, or happiness, all things can become yours. In order to receive anything you must first be able to ask for what you want. This comes through writing down what you want in addition to visualizing it. Visualization is a major component that I had previously not applied. This is something that I personally am going to strive to become better at. Second you must believe that what you want is already yours and combine this with unwaivering faith that you will obtain whatever it is that you are asking for. Finally, receive what you were working toward obtaining.

Whatever you can do to generate the feelings of you obtaining your goals, you must experience those feelings now. Coupling your vision with the emotion will create an unbreakable force that guides you to accomplishment. Along the path toward success and obtaining your goals, you will face hurdles. In order to overcome hurdles and to maintain a positive attitude you must express gratitude. Being thankful for what you already have is huge.

Even I have failed to express gratitude on any sort of regular basis. Today was the first time that I can recall actually expressing thanks for what I have. It is sad but true. Too often we proceed through life without realizing all the great things that have been provided for us. If you are a reader of my blog than chances are you also have some pretty incredible things to be thankful for as well. So next time you get a chance (perhaps waking up the morning), take a few minutes to think of what you have to be grateful for as you go about your daily routines. I have the feeling that practicing this with any sort of normalcy will produce incredible results. I am going to begin practicing what I learned from “The Secret” and as I do I will be sure to keep you informed of any revelations that occur. In the mean time, you should check out “The Secret” and have a small revelation yourself.

Word on the street is that Google is in talks to acquire Feedburner. On some fronts this makes sense while on others it doesn’t. Google is always looking to acquire new companies that can contribute to expanding their online advertising empire. If anybody can help them further their presence in the RSS market, Feedburner is definitely the company that can do it. Such an acquisition is somewhat questionable though.

Google’s feed reader has been highly successful. Google could simply add in text ads to each post if they really wanted to. That definitely wouldn’t be well received given that the content producers wouldn’t be sharing the revenue being generated. Given that this is still just a rumor, and recent rumors have quickly proven to be false, I will refrain from further analyzing such an acquisition.

Tech Cocktail DC was a huge success. Thanks to everyone for coming out last night. Thanks to the following companies for sponsoring the event:

• Wine Library TV
• AN Hosting
• AOL
• BuzzXYZ powered by Blogdigger
• Blue Sky Factory

Also thanks to all of the great demos from the event.

• Animal Attraction
• BuzzXYZ powered by Blogdigger
• Sportsvite
• PatentMonkey.com
• Wine Library TV

Additionally we were fortunate enough to have Gabe Rivera of Techmeme show up at the event. Gabe is one of the industry leaders and it was great to have him present. We will definitely continue to host future Tech Cocktail events in Washington, DC. There was a great response and it seems like we are truly amplifying the signal in DC. I cannot say thank you enough to all of the people that supported the event as well as my close friends that helped make this event a success.

We are looking for future supporters of the event so if you are looking to increase your company’s exposure please get in touch. There will be plenty of pictures on flickr throughout the day and I will be sure to update this post with all the pics. Thanks agian to everyone! A massive thank you to Frank Gruber and Eric Olson for coming up with the idea for the event and willingness to expand into new locations. These guys are truly super connectors and I am fortunate enough to have met them. Thanks!

Update
Here are some pictures of last night:
Frank’s photos
Raoul’s photos

According to Read/Write Web, a new study from Forrester Research has emerged that suggests that 2007 will bring about the end of significant growth in the online video sales market. What?!?!? I trust Forrester Research on a lot of things but in terms of online video sales I think they are slightly off. Although I disagree with the initial findings, there are some rational arguments against the growth of paid video download.

Video On-Demand From Cable Providers
Video on demand poses serious competition to web based video download sales. As the saying goes ‚Äúcouch potatoes will be couch potatoes.‚Äù Wait, is that a saying? Oh well! Either way as cable and satellite companies improve their technologies consumers will have rapid access to all video via their television. Let’s be honest, the majority of the world still prefers using their television over their computer. According to the recent Forrester report on social technographics a whopping 52% of the population is practically inactive on the net, or at least not significant participants.

Advertising Supported Video Services
Services such as Joost are paving the way for free video content delivered via the web, all supported by ad revenue. This is practically tv for your computer. (Speaking of which if you’d like to try out Joost than go fill out this form.) If you don’t mind flipping through the channels then you are good to go, but what if you don’t want to flip channels and there is a specific movie that you want to watch?

Consumers still want to watch their movies and tv shows on their own time. To suggest that we won’t see much growth in this is slightly skewed. Given that the technology still has yet to be perfected, and no online services are using bittorrent or similar technologies to increase the speed of download, I think we still have plenty of room to grow. While there are more people that want to watch videos in front of their television (or home theater), there are still a large number of people that want to watch video while on the go. If that market is saturated by the end of the year then Forrester is right, but I have to disagree on this one. I think this market is far from saturated and as we make it easier for web users to download videos quicker and more effortless we will be headed toward the peak. Apparently the Forrester research that was published a couple days ago thinks that we are closer to the peak than I do.

Tech Cocktail is coming to DC tomorrow! If you haven’t already signed up then go sign up now!!! There are only a few more spots left. Frank Gruber, Eric Olson, and myself will be hosting the first ever DC Tech Cocktail at MCCXXIII which is located at 1223 Connecticut Avenue NW from 6:30 to 9:00 pm. This will surely be a great event. We are fortunate enough to have the following exhibitors at the event:

• Animal Attractions – an online dating site that connects pet lovers
• AudioSnacks – a community powered site to find, purchase and download audio tours
• BuzzXYZ – helps track the online buzz
• Clearspring – provides services for building, deploying, and tracking widgets
• Sportsvite – helps people organize sport events and meet other athletes
• PatentMonkey – fully search-able US patent text database
• Wine Library TV – provides a wine videocast and just yesterday acquired Cork’d which is a social network for wine lovers.

I look forward to seeing you at the event!

No matter how many posts there are on the web about tips for becoming more productive, last Friday I experienced a totally unproductive day. These days happen and I think we should just accept them as they come and bask in the glory of doing nowhere near the amount of work we need to get done. So what things can you do to make sure that you experience a totally unproductive day? Here are 10 things that I suggest doing:

1. Create a blog – If you are an avid blogger than blogging will make its way into most aspects of your life. There are number of things that will become impacted but ultimately you will constantly be looking for the next post in addition to analyzing how each post impacts your overall traffic. So take a break every once in a while and check how many visitors are coming to your blog. This will surely contribute to an unproductive day.
2. Check your blackberry every time the light starts blinking – People want to get in touch with you, so you got a blackberry to make it easier for them. Place the blackberry on your desk with the top facing you so you can see the notification light every time you get a new message. Every few minutes take a look to see if you have a new email. If you do, you have to read it right then because every message you get is urgent. You are a very important person so people have important things to tell you. Lift up that blackberry, read the message, and then don’t respond right now because you have other things to do such as ….
3. Stay up to date on breaking news – On unproductive days it is your duty to know what is going on in the world at all times. In this state you will realize that not even CNN.com updates their site as often as you would imagine. If you want a couple sites to waste some time at check out Techmeme and OriginalSignal.
4. Glance at emails but answer them later – Seriously, I know you see those emails, but do they really need to be answered right now? You have more important things to do such as keeping up to date on the news.
5. Answer your phone when friends call – It’s Friday and it’s time to go out. Most likely your friends will be calling you.
6. Respond to your friend’s and family’s urgent IMs – Not only will your friends try to contact you by phone but they’ll also pop up on your computer. So when those urgent messages such as ‚ÄúWhat’s going on?‚Äù and ‚ÄúHey!‚Äù start popping up, you better answer them immediately.
7. Multitask – You have a ton of things on your plate? Here’s the solution: accomplish everything at once. That’s right. If you try doing everything at once you will surely get things done sooner.
8. Run a personal errand – You start walking into your office and realize that you forgot to mail something. That envelope is an urgent matter so hop to it and get it mailed, your professional life can wait, trust me!
9. Eat lunch outside – Most people that I work with eat at their desks as though there is something that needs to get done. That’s for losers. Go take a stroll outside with your favorite co-workers and chat it up. It’s a beautiful day so enjoy it!
10. Play a game – So you just found a really cool game on the web? Play it for a few minutes to give it a trial. You need to make sure that it’s worth playing when you get home. If you don’t know of any good games to play try these out: Bible Fight Game and Desktop Tower Defense.

When you get done with work for the day, give yourself a pat on the back because you have done practically nothing. You have successfully lived a day in the life of a slacker. Doesn’t it feel great?

After being shut down, AllFreeCalls has returned as yak4ever. After signing up and filling in phone numbers of your friends and family you can make international calls for free. AllFreeCalls shut down around the same time that Futurephone.com shut down. Both services utilized regulatory-fee arbitrage to generate revenue. Ultimately it is financed via tax subsidies. The new area code seems to be based out of Deluth, Minnesota while the old one was based in Iowa. I’m not quite sure how long this site will manage to be up for but I’ll surely use it to call my family living abroad.

Yak4Ever.com is a product of serial telcom entrepreneur, Pat Phelan. Pat also has a successful business called Roam4Free . Roam4Free enables users to receive free calls via mobile. I purchased a Roam4Free when I travelled to Europe earlier this year but unfortunately I left the card at home! I haven’t had the opportunity to test it out but I’m sure it’s great! While I’m not sure how long Yak4Ever will stay around for, go sign up and yack for now.

Apparently MC Hammer has been added to the list of panel experts at the TechCrunch20 Conference. I’m not quite sure what startup needs advice from MC Hammer but it was a good way to get some coverage of the upcoming conference. If anybody is going to use ruthless tactics for promoting their own conference, you can bet it would be Mike Arrington. When it comes down to business promotion is the most important thing to getting conference attendees. I’m not quite sure that MC Hammer is the guy to convince entrepreneurs (webpreneurs), tech enthusiasts, and others in the field to a tech conference. In all honesty this is probably a great link bait tactic used as a “May Fools” joke. Regardless, it will surely get the buzz going and expand the current advertising reach to new attendees. Good luck Mike!

Trying to figure out why some blogs do better than others even though both blogs provide intriguing content? The reason can be summarized in one word: marketing. If you blog on a regular basis and have high quality content then you have just as much potential for success as all the other blogs. While there are a few other factors contributing to the success of a blog (a valuable niche for example), marketing is the key differentiator. Luckily for you, I stumbled across a great ebook today that helps novice and intermediate bloggers get introduced to blog marketing in a web 2.0 environment. The ebook is called “2007 Authority Black Book: The Best Web 2.0 Resources for Generating Traffic and Winning Customers”. Not exactly the shortest of titles but it will do for being a free ebook.

The Black Book highlights a few key factors critical to the success of a blog. A few of these include:

• Blogging Platform – In order to have a successful blog, it helps to have a powerful platform to blog from. While many choose blogger or livejournal as a starting point, the author highly recommends using Wordpress. I use wordpress to publish this blog and wouldn’t switch to any other platform.
• RSS Marketing – While the author doesn’t make many suggestions on how to build your RSS subscriber base besides installing the ‚ÄúWhat would Seth Godin do‚Äù plugin. I haven’t installed this plugin because I think it would probably be annoying to visitors, but hey maybe I’ll give it a try at some point.
• Social Bookmarking – Jack Humphry (the author) suggests submitting each of your posts to every social bookmarking site. While I’m not too sure about the value of this, it may be worth a shot for getting the buzz going about your site.
• Video Marketing – This is one of the last marketing methods covered in the ebook. By creating videos and publishing them on sites such as YouTube or Blip.tv you can direct viewers directly to your blog. The only problem I have with this one is that it takes a significant amount of time to create a catch video whereas it takes significantly less time bookmarking and pinging content syndication sites.

Overall the ebook is definitely worth a read, especially since it is free. The bottom line is that blogging takes a significant amount of time with or without marketing. Marketing is necessary though to get your site over the initial hurdles. Once you have reached the “tipping point” for your blog, you are well on your way to success. Good luck!

Thanks to Samuel Huleatt who informed me of a pretty cool event taking place in DC this Friday morning. The first OpenCoffee Club in DC will be taking place Friday from 9am to 11am at Caribou Coffee on 17th and L. Luckily this is next door to my office at Fleishman-Hillard so I will be in attendance. After checking out the OpenCoffee Club website I found out what the event is about.

The OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow.

It definitely sounds like my type of event. While they would like to have demonstrations I’m not sure how many demonstrations will be taking place in a Caribou Coffee on a Friday morning. Either way I am definitely looking forward to checking it out. If you are in the area then I highly suggest you stop by as well. Also, if you are interested in local events for entrepreneurs, investors, and tech enthusiasts then check out the upcoming Tech Cocktail event that I am co-hosting with Frank Gruber next Thursday. If you would like to sign up then head on over to the registration form now! There are only a few spots left so if you are interested then you should sign up ASAP. At the beginning of next week we will be announcing all of the final details about the companies demoing and sponsers.

Starting up a business with the idea of tricking the tv industry is a formidable plan to say the least. That’s exactly what Joost is aiming to do. Joost, which is currently in beta, is aiming to bring full-screen streaming television to your personal computer. As of now, many television companies are providing high quality downloads of their shows via Itunes, as well as providing streaming versions of their shows in lower quality via their websites. With all the hype surrounding Joost I was fairly skeptical. To be honest I still am. Joost is furiously signing agreements with major media companies including MTV, Comedy Central, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, CNN, and others. What I’m really trying to grasp is why on earth these companies are signing agreements with Joost. Well I’ve concluded that the answer is quite simple.

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are about to successfully pull off one of the biggest fear driven deals in history. After successfully launching and selling one of the world’s largest peer to peer networks, Kazaa, Zennstrom and Friis are sparking fear throughout the television industry. The television industry has witnessed the music industry suffer a catastrophic downfall in their sales and they don’t want to be next. Unfortunately, early warning signs suggest they may be next. As a result, many mainstream video content providers are rushing to sign deals with the up and coming Joost. The big guys aren’t the only ones signing on and that is part of the reason that they are scared. On Monday, Joost announced a partnership with Heavy.com to provide content for three channels on Joost. What I find to be phenomenal though is how the large media companies have been practically tricked in to signing agreements.

Would Joost be able to survive solely on user-generated video? I doubt it. They need real content if they are going to truly become the internet based television. Given that YouTube is currently the largest source of user-generated video and there is no way they will sign a deal with Joost, what edge does Joost truly have when it comes down to it? Fear. That is all I can conclude. By creating a magnificent amount of buzz surrounding their pre-beta release, and now beta-release they appear as a threatening entity to the television industry. Honestly I think it is all hype. Why would mainstream media want to give someone else a cut of the pie when they could go develop the technology themself? If Joost keeps the hype going and can successfully snatch up agreements with a few other critical partners they may just succeed, but their success is truly reliant upon the remaining partners. Without the overwhelming support of a currently threatened industry, their odds for success are pretty low. Ultimately we will have to wait and see what happens, but my opinion is Joost is frantically trying to acquire partners before it’s too late. If they can get enough partners while all the buzz is going on then they might have a shot, otherwise I see a bleak future ahead.

Why pay for conferences when you can go for free? An upcoming Business Week article discusses the impact that unconferences are having on the convention industry. If you don’t already know what an unconference is, it is an event in which the attendees are the presenters. The overall concept is that the attendees have more knowledge on the topics being discussed then the few “expert” presenters.

I was fortunate enough to attend a recent unconference in New York City, “Podcamp NYC”. While many of the presenters were not professional speakers, they did have experience in their given fields. I found most of the value of the unconference to be the opportunity to attend a free event and meet a lot of people.

What is the point of a conference anyways? While some conferences have the goal of teaching the attendees about a new technology most conferences are basically an opportunity to network with other attendees. In my article ‚Äú10 Steps to Become a Perfect Conference Attendee‚Äù I highlighted the point that most people attend conferences to network with other people in the same industry. Will unconferences bring about the end of traditional conferences? Definitely not, but it is a new format that deserves attention. If you haven’t had the opportunity to attend an unconference then I highly suggest that you check one out.