I am an inveterate list maker, and for many years, my tool of choice has been Post-it Notes. But Post-its create clutter, and they tend to stay on my desk, so when I am at home or on the road, I can't easily access them.

In 2007, when I started "going Google" (see here and here), I looked for cleaner, more portable solutions. For long lists that I wanted to retain, I started using Google Notebook, which I still find very useful, even though Google announced earlier this year that they have stopped development of the product. (At some point, I will export my Notebook items to Google Docs, but it will have to be a slow day.)

For shorter, temporary lists ("to do lists"), Google didn't have a great option in 2007, so I turned to Remember the Milk. RTM seems like a fine program, and you can integrate it into Google Calendar, even if the result is a bit clunky. Nevertheless, though I have had RTM on Google Calendar for almost two years, I hardly ever use the program to guide my actions. The list is a pop-up, so I usually just ignore it, and maintaining the list is a bit of a hassle, even on the RTM site.

Today, I noticed the Tasks link in the sidebar of my Gmail. Tasks has been around for awhile, but just today it graduated from Google Labs. And the best part is that it can be integrated into Google Calendar. I have been fiddling around with the program tonight, and it is simple, fast, and versatile. You can make multiple lists, set due dates that automatically appear in both Tasks and on the calendar, and include notes on each task. It even includes limited formatting options to make the lists amenable to sub-tasks.

If you haven't already switched to Google Calendar, Tasks is yet another reason, but you might also be interested in some other new bells and whistles. The ability to include a background image is fun, but the coolest new feature allows you to attach a Google Doc to the Calendar. For example, I have a meeting this Friday with the Dean and some other professors, so I accessed the email in which the document we will be discussing was attached, opened the document into Google Docs, then added it to my meeting entry on Google Calendar. Wow!

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Public data. So far, you can retrieve only unemployment rates and populations, but they are promising more in the near future. Like cookie prices. Now that could be useful.

What's Popular? An iGoogle gadget. I have stopped using iGoogle, but if this gadget could be integrated into SSRN or limited to law review articles, that could be cool.

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From today's W$J, Google is planning to launch a venture capital fund. I was especially interested in this paragraph from the story:

With an abundance of venture-capital money available today, Google will have to convince entrepreneurs that it has something to offer that other investors don't. It has several advantages, including a brand admired by start-ups and the ability to offer sizable technical resources.

When I first started studying venture capital in the mid-1990s, most of the research assumed that entrepreneurs had something close to zero bargaining power because VCs had the money. Of course, in the buildup of the Internet, many hot startup found themselves in the then-surprising position of being able to choose among VCs. And many of them made that choice based on factors other than price. Now, it has become conventional wisdom that the best valuations come from the VC firms with the shortest records of success, while the successful firms are able to attract entrepreneurs despite having lower valuations.

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Google is the assignee of this patent, filed last week:

At a client, a video is received. The video includes one or more advertisement slots. The video is played back to a user. During the playback of the video, an impending advertisement slot is detected. One or more advertisements are requested for placement in the advertisement slot. The one or more advertisements are received and placed in the      advertisement slot.

Is this the future of YouTube? From a quick browse, I can't tell how this would differ from the television playbacks, which are now routine.

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As Christine notes below, Google.org, the philanthropic unit of Google, announced the focus of its core initiatives and more details about its strategic plan yesterday. The focus on the “venture capital model” that DotOrg (as the NYT reports Google employees refer to it) will be using is not particularly innovative. This model, frequently known as venture philanthropy or strategic philanthropy, has been kicking around for the past 10 years or so.  Although it has been embraced primarily by a handful of New York and Silcon Valley grantmakers, the concept’s origins date back to an outstanding 1997 Harvard Business Review article, "Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capital," by Christine Letts (Harvard Kennedy School), William Ryan (author, consultant, and researcher) and Allen Grossman (Harvard Business School). Here’s a description:

U.S. foundations and nonprofits work diligently on behalf of society's most needy and yet report that progress is slow and social problems persist. How can they learn to be more effective with their limited resources? Foundations should consider expanding their mission from investing only in program innovation to investing in the organizational needs of nonprofit organizations as well. Their overemphasis on program design has meant deteriorating organizational capacity at many nonprofits. If foundations are to help nonprofits be assured of making payroll, paying the rent, or buying a much-needed computer, they must develop hands-on partnering skills. Venture capital firms offer a helpful benchmark. In addition to putting up capital, they closely monitor the companies in which they have invested, provide management support, and stay involved long enough to see the company become strong.

This model as been used by several other grantmakers, including, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Omidyar Network, and even the Goldman Sachs Foundation (my former employer), to name just a few. Although it’s worth noting that critics argue that venture philanthropy is just a new name for old practices that well-run charities and foundations have always employed. Less charitable (no pun intended) critics of the approach describe it as a fad driven by wealthy venture capitalists and dot com types who smugly assume that their skills transfer to a field in which they had no experience.

But what seems interesting and new to me are some of the areas that Google.org plans to “invest” (i.e., make grants). Some of their priorities seem to address important problems/issues that few foundations, at least to my knowledge, are devoting significant resources toward addressing.  For example, the Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal (RE<C) and Accelerate the Commercialization of Plug-In Vehicles (RechargeIT) initiatives come to mind. As they describe these projects, RE<C is a collaborative effort within the company to produce a gigawatt of renewable energy capacity for less than it costs to produce it by burning coal. RechargeIT will work to reduce carbon emissions, cut oil use, and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology.

The most interesting (and innovative) thing about Google.org, however, is its legal status. Unlike every corporate foundation that I’m familiar with, Google.org is not an exempt, nonprofit entity recognized under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. (Although it’s important to note that Google.org manages the Google Foundation which is a 501(c)(3) private foundation facilitating grants to nonprofits.)  As such, it will be interesting to see if the DotOrg part of the enterprise uses its status (and the accompanying freedom from IRS restrictions) to innovate bringing both private and nonprofit resources to bear in order to generate societal benefits. It seems to me that the extent that Google.org relies exclusively (or even primarily) on partnerships with or grants to nonprofit organizations (who remain subject to nonprofit law and regulation), the real opportunity for true innovation of the model they tout remains limited. But as of today, the jury is still out.

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When Google announced its IPO, it promised potential investors that it would invest 1% of its profits into philanthropic ventures.  Google even included this promise in its registration statement.  Now, Google has launched Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google.  This branch of the organization analyzes proposals and decides which of many worthy projects will get funding.  As has been advertised from the start, the funding the company will provide will resemble venture capital more than traditional philanthropic grants.  Recipients will be more entrepreneurial than nonprofit.  NYT story here.

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That's Google's new formula, which means "electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from   coal." When your stock is trading at around $700/share, I suppose you must feel like a master of the universe:

In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development and related  investments in renewable energy. As part of its capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.

Not exactly sticking to their knitting, but this make sense to some people:

Leave it to Google to try to tackle an industry as seemingly out of their realm as energy. Of course, Google is a massive power consumer, so the connection is easy to make, and the feel-good Google execs haven’t likely felt right about their data center’s contribution to dirty-power generation. But if Google can actually successfully develop clean energy sources that are cheaper than coal and create a business around licensing them (through their investments or their own technology), it would do nothing short of revolutionizing the energy industry. Much like the situation the telecom world is facing with Google’s wireless plans, here’s to the old-world, slow-moving energy industry getting a kickstart from that 20 percent time!

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This past spring, I posted some rather tentative thoughts on "going Google," i.e., converting from Microsoft software to Google software. This morning, I reorganized my Personalized Homepage, so I thought the time was ripe for an update on my adventure.

Personalized Homepage. Love it. My efforts this morning were directed at simplifying my homepage. I had succumbed to widget exuberance, creating four tabs of widgets in different categories.  Now I have one tab, and it includes only widgets  that I actually use.  Four of those belong to Google (Calendar, Reader, Gmail, and Notebook), one is for the local weather, and one is a to-do list.

Gmail. The more I use it, the more I like it. I like the fact that it is online, so it is accessible to me from any connected computer. In most instances, finding old messages is easier via search than via folders, though I still use "tags" for important categories of email. The spam filter is great. The conversation threading is wonderful. It is, without doubt, the best email client I have ever used.

Calendar. Outstanding! My whole family is on board with this program. Each of us has a personal calendar and a family calendar. Stuff we all need to know goes on the family calendar, and I can view all of those items simultaneously, complete with color coding. This sure beats the old paper calendar on the refrigerator.

Reader. Incredibly easy to use, whether through the widget or on a dedicated Reader page. I am not sure this is better than Bloglines or other readers, but I like it more than other rss readers I have used. Learn the keyboard shortcuts here. And watch how Robert Scoble processes 622 feeds.

Notebook. This has been the big surprise to me. I didn't think I would use this program much, but I have found that it's a great place to store lists of all kinds: books I want to read, conferences I am planning to attend, potential guest bloggers, travel tips for an upcoming trip, etc. I don't use this as a to-do list, though you could do that. It also seems like it could be a useful research tool, though I haven't used it in this way, yet.

Desktop. I have been moving toward online storage gradually, but my hard drive still has a lot of documents and photos, and Desktop is far-and-away the best way to find these things.

Picasa. I recently moved a boatload of old photos from an old computer to a Picasa Web Album. I don't have much experience with online photo management, though I have accounts at Flickr and Photobucket. Anyway, Picasa seems fine for my needs.

Google Spreadsheets and Docs. Yuck. I still use Excel and Word or WordPerfect.

The bottom line question: is my life better now than it was six months ago because of the software that I use? Yes. Information that I need is easier to access, which leads to greater productivity and less frustration. All in all, I am a happier guy because of Google.

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Last night I was speaking with one of my new neighbors, who is a successful serial entrepreneur. I asked about his latest venture and whether he might be interested in taking the company public. "That's not for me," he responded. "I don't like living quarter to quarter." See Google.

Google's second-quarter revenues were $3.87 billion, up 58% over the second quarter of 2006 ... and it's stock is plummeting in after-hours trading.

The problem is pretty simple: Google's earnings came in below projections. Valleywag's account of the conference call: "Schmidt fesses up: Google has overhired, causing costs to rise. He says the company is going to be watching headcount going forward."

There's always next quarter.

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Since going Google last month, I have been adjusting to Gmail. The more I use it, the more I like it. That's a good sign for any service, especially one based on software.

But there are days when I wonder about email. William Birdthistle has a series of interesting posts on scholarly productivity over at Prawfs (see here, here, and here), and email is one of the villains: "My advice to new professors would be to ration your time on email and the web to the absolute minimum, perhaps even to the point of spending most of your day on an unconnected computer. I found email, in particular, a tremendous way to fritter away days of my life."

Fred Wilson also feels burdened by email, but he is not interested in unplugging. He is looking for options: "text messaging, instant messaging, and site messaging for one to one messaging. And blogging, twitttering, and social networking for one to many messaging." All of that seems like it would send William, already teetering, over the edge. Me, too.

In the end, I suppose this is all about maintaining communities -- or, if you prefer, networks -- right? Each of us is a member of multiple communities, and we need to figure out the best way to maintain those connections. Some thoughts on the relative merits of these technologies:

• At the moment, I use email and telephone for one to one messaging and blogging for one to many.
• I do not like text messaging, though it has the dual virtues of cheap mobility and asynchronicity. I am tempted to go this direction for my family communications, which are getting more complicated by the year with five growing children.
• IM is not asynchronous, which is a big problem for me.
• My children enjoy site messaging with their friends, but that seems like a generational thing. Can you imagine lawprofs communicating via Facebook? Ok, maybe it isn't unimaginable, but like any social networking service, it requires some critical mass before it becomes worthwhile.
• I don't use LinkedIn, either, even though I am registered and receive periodic invitiatons to link. So few people I care about use it that it just isn't worth the effort.
• Finally, I have experimented with twittering, and I like it. I think it has potential.

As always, I would be interested to hear others' experiences and recommendations on this score.

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Let me try to white-board this transaction for you.  Executive at BigCo has a girlfriend with a start-up company.  Executive makes loan to Start-Up in the amount of $2.6 million.  Then, Start-Up seeks outside investors for Series A financing.  BigCo invests $3.9 million in the financing round, and Start-Up repays Executive's $2.6 million loan.  Executive and girlfriend marry the same month.  The total amount of the Series A financing is undisclosed, but we know that a company controlled by another BigCo director is an investor.

Does this sound like another Andy Fastow transaction, maybe Project Princess Leia?  It's obviously not as brazen or large-scale.  Is it another example of Jeff Skilling investing $180,000 of his own money in his girlfriend's company, Photofete, while the company was a vendor to Enron -- a transaction jurors later said was particularly damning to Skilling's character?

Nope.  This is our beloved Google, and the tale of Sergey Brin and his new wife, Anne Wojcicki.  Wojcicki's start-up is called 23andMe.  NYT article here.  The company's sparse website gives very little information about what the company will actually do, but it does say they are hiring and one fringe benefit is complimentary beverages and honey roasted peanuts.  The website's one paragraph on its business plan states that the company will help clients take ownership of their genetic information and seems to promise to help clients map their own genomes.  The website lists three people in the "about us" section:  Wojcicki, another co-founder and a director.  All three have experience in health care industry sales, analysis and investing.

Google does invest in start-ups.  (Google was very public about its goal to invest in market-based socially responsible projects, but this doesn't seem to fall into that category.)  The outside investment part is not unusual.  But why this start-up?  Obviously, Brin picked a great start-up once, and maybe 23andMe is the next Google.  Could be.  But doesn't it raise more concerns than necessary?  Brin has his own $14 billion to invest in projects.  Why not just invest personally?  If he believes in the upside of Wojcicki's company so much, why isn't he on the equity side instead of the debt side that just got repaid?  Does having Google as an angel investor give 23andM3 some cachet?  Even though it's public knowledge that the head of one is married to the head of the other?  In today's culture of seeing scandal where none exists, this corporate investment seems to be unnecessary. 

Here is Google's Code of Conduct, which includes a section on "Conflicts of Interest."  Although the section begins with this "avoid conflicts" language

A conflict of interest occurs when, because of your role at Google, you are in a position to influence a decision or situation that may result in personal gain for you or your friends or family at the expense of the company or our users. All of us at Google should avoid situations that present actual or apparent conflicts of interest; it is our responsibility to act at all times with the best interests of Google and our users in mind. In no way should you personally profit from transactions based on your relationship with Google if it harms the company.

this admonition seems to be clearly waivable by a superior:

Similarly, business relationships with friends and relatives whose interests may conflict with Google's can easily leave you with the sort of conflict of interest that can be difficult to resolve happily. Our rule here is simple: you should not enter into a Google-related business relationship with a close relative, friend or significant other, or a business they manage or control, without first contacting our Chief Compliance Officer or General Counsel.

Obviously, the code is written for management employees who have the ability to steer work to vendors, etc. not for top management who have the ability to steer Google capital to outside investment opportunities -- or to repay loans to oneself with Google capital.  According to Google's 8K, probably required under SOX because of the waiver of the Code of Ethics for a senior officer, the transaction was approved by the directors after the Audit Committee received an evaluation of 23andMe.  So the transaction was duly approved and duly disclosed.  Let's hope that's enough these days.

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It's just a rumor, but it makes sense. Feedburner fills another niche for Google. Having recently switched to Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Reader, etc., I can see that my life is becoming quite dependent on Google. At least I don't use Blogger.

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Here.

After tinkering with various searches, I'm not impressed. For example, a regular search of "D. Gordon Smith" brings back my law school bio, my blog, my SSRN page, etc. That's excellent.

But the timeline view returned random dates from the text of an article that cited me (retrieved from JSTOR), a few "Date posted to database" entries from SSRN, and a whole bunch of inexplicable (and non-functioning) links to Amazon.com.

As for the map view, here it is:

Notice no flag in Wisconsin. Those flags are from some of my Conglomerate posts that mention various cites and from other blogs and websites that happen to mention me. Not very useful.

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Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons was speaking on a panel at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference. So did he plan this or was he speaking off the cuff?

The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war. The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.

Huh?

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I do. [Update: For both personal and professional meetings.] But if this W$J poll is accurate, I am in the minority.

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