Two things really tweaked me in the past 24 hours.

1. The FTC rules to regulate product endorsements in blogs
2. The US Antitrust Inquiry of IBM

The FTC thing is just fucking stupid.  Jeff Jarvis does a better takedown of it than I could ever do on his post FTC Regulates Our Speech.  I’m not a journalist, nor do I pretend to be.  I’m involved in some way in virtually everything I write about on this blog.  While I don’t directly make money when you buy a product or service from one of the private companies I have an investment in, I have the potential of eventually making money if the company is more valuable.  I do get a share of the ad revenue that appears alongside the articles and I get affiliate fees from some services like Amazon whenever I write about a book or movie, link to Amazon, and remember to include my affiliate link.  These are all well known practices among bloggers that adding “disclosure to” in every post is tedious, pointless, and irrelevant.

Is this what the FTC should be spending it’s time on?  I completely agree with Jarvis – this is about “free speech” – presumably I should be able to write about whatever I want on this blog (it is “my blog” after all) and you can decide to ignore me if you want.  Oh – and no one pays me to write this blog so how does it become an FTC issue?  I’ve seen some comments that this is aimed at payola – only impacting bloggers that get paid to write about products and services.  But the language seems to include direct payments and indirect payments.  Call me perplexed and confused.  I wish there was a product called “perplexed and confused” that I could sell.

The The US Antitrust Inquiry of IBM is even weirder.  As I read the NY Times article, it looks like a bunch of companies whining that IBM won’t license their mainframe software to them.  This stems from a complaint filed by the Computer and Communication Industry Association whose members include Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, Fujitsu, and a bunch of others. IBM is conspicuously absent from the membership list – I guess they made a mistake not joining since it looks like the argument being made could easily apply – in my experience – to business practices of Google, Microsoft, and Oracle.   Two important quotes from the NY Times article.

“I.B.M.’s opposition to licensing its technology to outsiders is not enough to build a successful government antitrust case, said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. More likely,

and

In the ruling in the private case last week, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan found that I.B.M. had invested heavily in its modern mainframe technology and its decision not to license it “does not constitute anticompetitive conduct.”

The only logical conclusion to this one is Gavil’s speculation that “the Justice Department is investigating to see if I.B.M. is engaged in other tactics that might be anticompetitive.”  But based on what actual evidence?

I’m really proud of my Congressman Jared Polis.  Jared was one of the first people I met when I moved to Colorado in 1995 (we met in early 1996) and have been good friends ever since.  Jared has a great article about his first few weeks in Congress up on the CNN website titled Commentary: Congress is like going back to college.  There’s also a fun video.

Jared – you look very serious in that suit and tie.

Today’s Washington Post article titled Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages was no big surprise.  However, while I was taking a shower (in a hotel in the Houston suburbs of all places) it occurred to me that this presents an incredible marketing opportunity for Apple.

If I were king of Apple (or say, a board member with deep White House ties), I’d be on the phone with “the appropriate person” with the offer of “a Mac on every desk in the White House along with an iPhone for every White House staffer.”  I’m sure there is some law that prevents Apple from giving this away from free so I’d offer it “at cost” just to Mac-enable the White House.

You can’t buy better PR than “Apple computerizes the Obama Administration, displacing ancient PCs running Windows XP.”  Plus, the leader of the free world then would carry around an iPhone and a MacBook.

In addition, I see an executive order coming that completely changes the stupid, archaic, and limiting rules about archiving communications within the White House.  This is a regular excuse that is used to explain why it’s “hard” to use things like Blackberries if you are president.  Baloney – there are plenty of straightforward approaches that solve for whatever you want to do.  It’s not like someone archived all of Rumsfeld’s Snowflakes (or maybe someone did – if so – egads.)

While we are at it, did anyone notice that Apple reported record revenues and profits in the quarter ending 12/27/08?  Yeah, I guess you did but it’s worth repeating the numbers since all we’ve been hearing is bailouts and losses.  These are quarterly numbers.  Revenue: $10.17 billion.  Net Income: $1.61 billion.  These numbers are lower than reality because of the bullshit GAAP rules that force accounting for the iPhone to be reported ratably over the life of the iPhone contract.  If you actually accounted for this in a way that made sense, Revenue would be $11.8 billion and Net Income would be $2.3 billion.  As every good MBA knows, the key rule is to “follow the cash” which increased by $3.6 billion in the quarter.  It’s worth saying again – $3.6 billion.  Wowza.  Well done Apple.

I’ve been an unabashed Obama supporter for a while.  I’m glad he’s going to be our next president and am optimistic about his leadership.  I’ve been enjoying listening to some of the punditry ricocheting around about his coming administration now that I don’t have to listen (or – in my case – try to ignore) the endless analysis about the campaign.  A few requests on my part have come to mind as I start to synthesize what I’m hearing.  Of course, I’m not so arrogant to believe that President-elect Obama – or for that matter – anyone in the administration – will care about my specific requests, but since this is my blog afterall I thought I’d toss my thoughts out into the wild.

1. Appoint Some High Profile Republicans to Your Cabinet.  I believe we need to eliminate the extreme partisan divide that exists in the US today.  The best way to start to do that is from the top – if President Obama makes it clear that he has no interest in perpetuating the "partisan politics as usual" dynamic, we actually have a chance to start to change it.  The biggest, loudest way to send this message would be to get the absolute smartest and most capable people in the cabinet, regardless of their party affiliation.

2. Veto The First Pork Laden Bill.  I continue to be baffled by the dynamics around Pork in Congress.  I want my politicians to become vegetarians and reject Pork.  TARP is such a disgusting example of this – as far as I can tell, the only major difference between the TARP bill that failed the House and the one that came back from the Senate and passed was the addition of a bunch of Pork.  Disgusting.  When the first bill hits Obama’s desk that has one key issue in it that is covered with Pork, he should Veto it.  He should then get on TV and explain the bill in clear English to the American population.  He should describe the single issue in the bill, and then list the Pork – state by state, Congressman by Congressman.  He should then insist that Congress revisit the bill, take all the Pork out, and send it back to him for approval. 

3. Continue Being Confident But Not Certain: Amy and I had a great brunch in Chicago over the weekend with a bunch of folks from Wellesley.  The guest of honor was Madeleine Albright (Wellesley ’59) who was the US Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001.  Secretary Albright was amazing and it was so humbling to get to spend some time with her.  When asked what advice she’d give Obama, she said two things.  First – "listen".  Second – "be confident, but not certain."  She described Bush as a president who has been too "certain" – he’s "certain that he is correct on all issues and then never listens."  In contrast, she wants a president who is "confident" yet willing to listen, learn, and adjust his point of view based on the data presented.  That resonated with me – being confident but willing to listen is a key tenant of a great leader in my book.

Now – go download Zynga’s Live Poker on your iPhone and play a hand or two.  If you made it through this blog post, you deserve a break.

I didn’t come up with this idea – Om Malik did.  But he’s absolutely right – Obama needs to look outside the beltway for many key positions, including FCC Chair.  Tom Evslin is an absolute star in my book and as Om states:

"Tom Evslin, who is a retired telecom executive, is the kind of person I would expect to be in the FCC. He knows the machinations of the big companies and at the same time is an Internet liberal who can keep broadband providers and their anti-consumer tricks under check."

While Tom graciously responded in his post The Importance of the FCC that "[he's] flattered although neither a likely choice (that’s an understatement) nor a candidate" help me and Om start a real drumbeat.  Obama was elected on a platform of change – let’s bring some completely fresh leadership and thinking into the mix.