The following is a(nother) slightly-modified version of a post I wrote for BGR that will run this morning. I can’t stress how much I urge you to read Ouellette’s article and keep tabs on Muxtape…

Talk about great reads. Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette finally let the cat out of the bag today and published a lengthy report of his recent trials and tribulations. For outsiders looking in, reading about dealings with the unmitigated disaster that is the music industry is like a guilty pleasure. Rage seems to build with each passing paragraph and one can’t help but think, “are they really this stupid?” Ouellette’s recount of his experiences in recent history fits the mold perfectly. The behind the scenes plan for Muxtape was anything but ill-intentioned; Ouelette had some pretty big ideas and spent a great deal of time reaching out to labels in an effort to move music consumption forward in a very symbiotic manner. In fact in the midst of an extended series of meetings with major labels that seemed to be progressing, albeit slowly, the RIAA struck without warning and dropped an axe that would force Muxtape to go offline. It registered a complaint with Amazon Web Services, Muxtape’s host, that required Muxtape to dump a launrdy list of content within one business day or risk having his data deleted and servers shut down. The rest, as they say, is history.

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The following is a slightly-modified version of a post I wrote for BGR that will run this morning.

Well there you have it. Microsoft did in fact ditch its Seinfeld / Gates campaign at least temporarily, in favor of a new run directly targeting Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads. The new series of commercials features an eclectic bunch of people, all claiming to be PC users. The message in theory being that PCs don’t necessarily have to hide in pizza boxes to attract an interesting customer base. Instead, they are used by people in all walks of life and are “connected to over a billion others worldwide.” The slogan of this new campaign, “Life Without Walls,” is an effort to show viewers how versatile and capable PCs are – contrary to the notion conveyed in Apple’s ads. A few celebrity cameos within the first run of the “I’m a PC” series include William Gates himself, Mrs. and Mr. Eva Longoria and Pharrell Williams. The commercials also features a number of Microsoft employees and offers an email address along with each one, including Mac commercial “PC guy” look-alike Sean Siler (sean@windows.com).

Microsoft’s new “I’m a PC” ad run is fun and interesting but does it convey a $300 million message? While I think these new ads are fine and good, they’re still missing one of the key factors that makes Apple’s “I’m a Mac” commercials, and even it’s iPhone and other commercials so compelling – features. Apple’s commercials use interesting scenarios and catchy themes to highlight actual capabilities of its products. In fact the key theme behind just about every “I’m a Mac” commercial is, “I can do this, this and this. PC can’t.” Here’s to hoping that this first “I’m a PC” run is just a little taste to get us acclimated with the campaign and that eventually Microsoft might actually show us all of the great things about PCs as opposed to just telling us that “real people” use them.

Note the difference…

Apple: Macs can do this, this and this. PCs cannot do these things nearly as well, if at all. You should use a Mac.

Microsoft: Many people use PCs. You should too.

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This is just a quick note to my readers to apologize for the silence. I am currently in the final stages of initial development with regards to a project I’ve been working on and it is taking up a good deal of my time. In about a week I hope to be launching it here and elsewhere, and I hope you all will take some time to check out the site and provide feedback. It’s just “a little something” but I think the product will fill a certain gap nicely and it will do so in a very unique and interesting way.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing my best to send you all some interesting content by way of Delicious links coming through the Outsidr RSS feed. Are you guys enjoying them? Am I wasting my time by sharing them here? Feel free to let me know either way.

Yammer

–verb (used without object)

• to whine or complain.
• to make an outcry or clamor.
• to talk loudly and persistently.

–verb (used with object)

• to utter clamorously, persistently, or in complaint: They yammered their complaints until she let them see the movie.

–noun

• the act or noise of yammering.

Random House

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If you follow any VC blogs then the odds are just about 100% you have read several posts that respond to the ever-present question, “how do I connect with VCs to pitch them?” The answer is always the same; you can try to do this and you can try to do that but the only real way for a VC to take you seriously is through an introduction. In other words, for a real shot at pitching a VC you need to know a guy who knows a guy.

Fair enough, right? The old saying goes, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” In business, those with the ability to network and effectively sell themselves will excel 99 out of 100 times. In the world of Web however, this model is very broken in my opinion.

The Internet is currently traveling down a very bad road and VC money is a big part of the problem. Just as blogging exploded a while back and we now see 175,000 new blogs created every day, so too are the broader realms of social-focus and web applications exploding. Blogging has now become diluted to the max. The big boys got big by networking (link exchanges) and the little guys disappear into the vast wasteland that is the blogosphere. I can promise you that you have not found (and likely will never find) most of the blogs that have the potential to be among your favorites.

A big part of the problem in my humble opinion, is the system by which VCs invest in internet startups.

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