Owen, you had me at 'hello'

So Steely Dan accused Owen Wilson's new movie of having stolen its plot from one of their songs. Mr. Wilson responded most excellently:

In a statement released by his spokeswoman, Ina Treciokas, Wilson said: "I have never heard the song 'Cousin Dupree' and I don't even know who this gentleman, Mr. Steely Dan, is. I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, 'HEY 19.' "

A-Rod thoughts

As Alex Rodriguez's woes continue and the boos get louder we seem to be approaching an inflection point where he'll either start performing or possibly be driven nuts by the New York fans.

Two thoughts:
- it's telling that Derek Jeter hasn't come to his teammates defense since as captain and a respected ballplayer, he could likely tell the fans to tune it down. Either Jeter agrees with the booing or there's still bad blood between him and A-Rod from years back.
- if you're a true fan, booing A-Rod cannot help the cause. You're not going yell him into greatness.

Em-me

Happy to share that I was recently named to the Advanced Media Committee of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. I'm hoping this means I get to give out an Emmy or something.

That $100 is working for me

So finally funded two $50 loans on Prosper. I was outbid several times as it took me a while to understand the market rates being offered. My selection criteria was:
* Loans that were already at least 50% funded by Prosper lenders
* Grade B credit or better
* A reason for borrowing that made sense to me - I focused specifically on people looking to pay off their credit card debt

One loan is at 8.45%, the other 8.94% for an average of 8.7%. Since this is more of an experiment for me, I wasn't really focused on maximizing return. Since the market is still relatively small and participants are new, I've gotta believe there's a wide disparity of interest rates being paid out and very little internal consistency.

Some of the Prosper guys came and spoke at Google -- haven't watched it yet but there was some good email chatter afterwards.

Snickering

It's been really exciting to watch major brands (American Apparel, Major League Baseball) start to experiment with Second Life. AdAge just published an article where one agency claims it gets "an inquiry about Second Life basically every day." That's pretty cool, but later on another industry wonk says "think if Snickers puts its candy bars in Second Life, and they gave players real energy." And I can respond with two statements - one, that's not all that creative and two "be careful (brands and Linden Lab)."

The magic of Second Life has always been rooted in the idea that an object's properties (is it cool, does it work well, is it beautiful) are a product of the creator's ability to build something amazing in a virtual environment, not hard coded because of a business deal. Ask failed game The Sims Online about user reaction to the invasion of brands, where Intel and McDonalds were to make your character smart and satisfied quicker than their respective virtual world generics. Ask implosion There.com (which to be fair has recapitalized and righted itself) about doing a deal to make virtual Nike sneakers cause your avatar to run faster than sneakers which could be created by a There subscriber. The message was clear to users of these two systems - "you don't own this world, we do. And we're willing to sell you out."

Let me guess that Linden Lab would never do a deal with Snickers that causes their virtual candy bar to be "better" than anything else in the world. In fact, I'm pretty sure that all these deals have little to do with Linden except maybe some co-marketing/PR effort and enhanced technical support.

So is it a truly level playing field in Second Life? Well, kinda. Where Snickers has an advantage is in the resources to hire the best coder in Second Life and give their energy bar some cool properties that are very difficult for another resident to recreate. Even then though it wouldn't surprise me if Snickers finds itself second fiddle to a random virtual candy bar developed by a 22 year old resident from Australia. It's just that kind of place.

Friends don't make friends pay service fees

While not exactly the level of dilemma handled by The Ethicist (check out The New York Times Magazine), here's a question where I'd like a modern age Emily Post to weigh in with an opinion. When collecting money from friends via PayPal is it okay to gross up the amount requested in order to compensate for the service fees?

Important distinction - I'm not talking about selling something to a friend and then taking on a service charge. I'm geared solely towards the repayment of debts such as splitting of a restaurant bill. Historically I've always eaten the PayPal surcharge myself but here's how I'm going to proceed going forward.

If I ask you to pay me via PayPal: Request the actual amount owed and I'll eat the fees

If you insist paying me via PayPal: Gross up the amount owed to offset the fees I'm charged

If there hasn't been a method of repayment discussed: Offer a cash/check option for the actual amount or a PayPal option for the amount plus fees

Next week, whether it's okay to register URLs of your friends names and offer them for resale at inflated prices.

Screen Name: aLL3n m0rg3N

Great article in today's WSJ about VCs trying to "young it up" in an effort to increase their appeal to the 20-something entrepreneur set. Lightspeed invited a bunch of folks to a Bow Wow concert (hey Jeremy and Eric, throw me a ticket!), a few firms hired fresh faced associates who "get it," and my friend Auren Hoffman is trying his best to keep the grey hairs from crashing his founders brunch.

Love it. What's next - KPCB doing a Lazy Sunday spoof? Holla at me if you want a series A.

Prosper: the bids

ok, with $100 transferred into my Prosper lender account i've now bid on two loans - $50 each. I was pretty conservative in my selection - both have A credit ratings and reasonable debt to asset ratios. Both loans are 70%+ funded and close within the next few days so we'll see if I "win."