I am going to start this posting out with a quick anecdote. Around 10pm last night, I was talking over IM with a founder of one of the companies I am actively advising and she has her mind spinning about a new project that she wants to actively and quickly get off the ground. This posting won’t go into whether or not the idea is good, or whether or not she should be focusing on her own current project at it’s infancy phase, but will talk about her mindset about how she was going to market with her idea.

Essentially, she wanted to have the website built quickly by someone she knew, and release it as soon as possible as she had a need for the application. She then mentioned to me a few things about fundraising and so forth – all around this particular new venture.

I quickly applied the brakes. It was almost as if we were driving 100 miles per hour and I pulled the e-brake (emergency brake for those non-car enthusiasts). The conversation quickly went from a fair amount of agreement to a considerable amount of disagreement. My thoughts about this subject are as follows:

1. You do not have a business if you just have a website. I have a blog that gets traffic (albeit not much), but it’s not my business.
2. A business must have a financial/business model around it. The for-profit sector, the majority of businesses, all look to make money. Launching a site blindly without any financials is not just a bad idea, but irresponsible.
3. The operational side of launching a business is time intensive and laborious (filing paperwork, insurance, staffing, etc) and must be done before launch. I personally hate this part, but hey – it must get done.
4. Funding – its one thing to build a website by yourself or employ your cousin/aunt but what happens when the website takes off and you need to pull the resources together and scale it? Who is going to pay for that? Who is going to pay for the filing fees to the government for business formation? Insurance? Liabilities? Where is the money coming from?

The web cuts down the time to market for many businesses. If you’re launching a web-only venture, you can technically be online in a few hours (if you put up a landing page) but make sure before you launch to the world, you have all your ducks aligned. Not only does it make your job easier, but also allows potential partners (business development, funding, sales, etc) to work with you more efficiently.

Steve Jobs took the bull by its horns and made a bold statement through Apple.com today (you can see the full version here).

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

It’s about time! Lets see what the big 4 labels say….

I was cruising around the Internet after the festivities this evening (congrats Peyton and the Colts), checked my RSS feeds and saw a posting from my friend, Greg Verdino about a video he uncovered. The online video was created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and it shows how the Internet has changed over the years and how “Web 2.0″ is helping change culture. This is a must watch video for anyone who is interested in Digital Media, Ethnography, or the technology. Enjoy it!

Because Wordpress can’t embed video files (at least mine can’t), you can click this link to view the video on GooTube. It’s roughly 5 minutes. All I have to say is, “wow.”

A fantastic graphical representation of the 2007 trends on the Internet. The official website can be found here.

I’d like to round up a great group of entrepreneurs and media folks and get together one last time for 2006. Ideally, the group will be a round table to discuss what are the trends going into 2007 and WHY. We all can forecast trends (pull things out of thin air), but I’d like to talk about WHY we expect these trends to occur.

I’d personally like to host this at Le Pain Quotidien on 77th between 2 & 3rd Ave (Subway: 6) on Wednesday, December 27 at 3:30pm EST. The get-together will have 1 hour of formal discussion and then a schmooze fest. Feel free to spread the word but please RSVP by leaving a comment on this blog. Since I’ll be hosting (coffees, teas, pastries), I’d like to know how many folks will be coming… also, no egos please as ideally there will be serial, parallel, and brand spankin new entrepreneurs and I’d like there to be a level playing field for all to participate. Online folks and offline folks welcome!

Again, please leave a comment on this blog if you plan on attending…

Diane Mermigas has written a nice piece on the early stage adoption of Hollywood within video games which was featured in The Hollywood Reporter today.Â

Key insights from the article:

As lucrative as advertising can be, video game developers and Hollywood producers should be determined foremost to preserve the platform for creative purposes, even if it means sharing it with amateur creators. The impact of what Wright calls “the second processor at work — the player’s imagination” marks a return to grass-roots creativity.

“You never know where the next great piece of content will come from as it bubbles its way up from the Internet or a mobile device,” Fox Interactive Media president Ross Levinsohn said during a panel at last week’s onHollywood conference in Los Angeles.

Sony and Microsoft have grander goals in mind as their respective PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles battle such far-flung rivals as Dell, Intel, Comcast and DirecTV for living room and in-home network server domination. Even such popular social-networking sites as YouTube and MySpace are integrating games as a way to further engage their members.

Within five years, game developers and players will have 10 times more memory and processing capacity, enabling them to draw from the same well of creativity as film producers, experts say.