Using LMRC To Pick NCAA Basketball Tournament Bracket

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Last year I wrote about Logistic Regression Markov Chain (LMRC).  LMRC is a Markov Chain that is purpose built as a college basketball ranking system based on basic scoreboard data.  LMRC is a tool to that can be used to help you fill out your NCAA basketball tournament bracket.  LRMC was created by Dr. Joel Sokol and Dr. Paul Kvam, professors at Georgia Tech's H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.  It is now maintained, updated, and improved by Dr. Sokol and Dr. George Nemhauser. 

LMRC is right more often then other ranking methods and effective at sorting out the top teams in the later rounds.  Here is Sokol's and Nemhauser's presentation that highlights the power of the methodology. 

I used LMRC to pick my Final Four this year. Louisville, Memphis, Pittsburgh, and North Carolina were the result. Below is a pure play LMRC bracket up to the Final Four.  LMRC puts Memphis and North Carolina in the final with the Tar Heels prevailing… shudder the thought.  So I went had to go with my heart and my hope once LMRC delivered the Final Four.

2009 NCAA Bracket

Having been weaned on Louisville basketball at Freedom Hall, I took the Cards over Memphis in the semis and again over North Carolina in the final. 76 – 68. Terrance Williams gets the most outstanding player.

Go Cards!

March 16, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Computing, Fun, Sports

Regator: The Blog Aggregator For Everyone

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This past week I had an opportunity to sit down and have lunch with Scott Lockart and Kimberly Turner, the founding team of Regator (they left co-founder Chris Turner at home to code).  Regator is a horizontal human powered blog aggregator. Kimberly is the the human editor of the service.  She selects all the blogs that are included on the Regator service. In an effort to keep the quality of the content high she is very selective about the blogs that are included on Regator. 

When Regator released their private beta last summer TechCrunch described the service as a "blog reader for the masses… best suited for users who aren't interested in heavy-duty blog reading."  As a pretty heavy consuming blog kinda guy, I dismissed the service for personal use.  Since then the company had a launch party, a facelift, a nice profile in the Atlanta paper, and participated in Startup Riot.

It was Scott's presentation at Startup Riot that made me start thinking of Regator in a new light.  Within the first 30 seconds of his talk Scott mentioned "information overload." Information overload has been a subject of keen interest for me for quite some time. Most the the approaches that I have seen to overcome this for RSS feeds have been filter based thus far. Is editorial the solution? It works for Techmeme in a single vertical.  Regardless, I believe in the short-term the answer to info overload may lie in organization versus filtering or semanitcs.  As Tufte says "There is no such thing as information overload, only poor design."

Will Regator get me reading RSS feeds again? I don't know. But I am going to be spending a little time with it to see.  And a little time with the Regator team to see if I can help them move their company along.

If you want to give Regator a whirl, the Demogirl walk through is a good place to start.

And those crazy Regator crocs are going to continue their partying ways. They have partnered with Mashable to bring a Mashable Mixer to Atlanta on May 14th.

March 14, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Startups

Quote of the Week

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“If I dump $2,000 into Lala and they go down next month, that’s it.”

Greg Schnese

In a Business Week article on “The Music Industry’s New Internet Problem.”  While the subject of the article is interesting I find Greg’s sentiment even more so.  The laissez–faire approach that entrepreneurs have taken in creating available and reliable Web applications is eroding trust.

March 13, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Quotes

The Timbuk2 Bag Design Goes To…

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On March 2 I announced the Build My Timbuk2 Bag contest and promised to announce the winner by midnight.  Twenty four people joined in the fun and one person was even inspired to go get a Bag In A Box Gift Card for their wife's birthday.  Thanks to everyone that participated and special thanks to Erika Brookes and SJ for helping me judge the entries.  There were some tough calls.

Andy Macdonald, a 23 year old Graphic Communications student at Clemson University, earned honorable mention with his subtle semi-monochromatic design.  It matches my car nicely, and if this was going to be my use all the time bag it would have won.  But I have a standard issue Tumi that I use when things get serious, so while a valiant effort Andy did not take home the grand prize.

2nd Runner Up

Ajai Karthikeyan, a second year College of Computing student at Georgia Tech, went bold with a design that mixed the FoG color palette with a tribute to my MindSpring heritage.  Very nicely done. Another worthy mention.

1st Runner Up

Ultimately the judges landed on Clark Griffiths' design as the winner.  Clark is an urban designer/planner and aspiring professional photographer out of Tampa Bay. The bag's blue/white/spinach scheme is both bold and fresh.  It builds upon the equity that I have built in my FoG color palette.  It is just smoking hot.  A great bag for when I am hanging with the up and coming Atlanta startup crowd. 

Winner

Congratulations to Clark for the winning design! And thanks again for everyone that played and helped out.

March 11, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Fun, Games, Open Source, Personal

Online Identity Management: You.com

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Somehow or the other I came to be known as a quasi-expert on personal branding.  And with the unemployment rate topping 8% the pace of people coming to me and asking about personal branding has taken quite a spike in the past month of so.  Surprisingly, all of the people that are doing so are currently gainfully employed (those that are not just want job leads, which is a bad strategy).

Also surprising is that they are really coming to ask me about online identity management, which is just one facet of a holistic personal branding effort.  While I may save the broader personal branding discussion for a real expert or a later day, personal branding is essentially the way an individual communicates their unique promise in value in the same manner a company would.  Online identity management focuses on creating a positive and distinguished Web presence of a person on the Internet.

Here are ten steps I recommend to manage your online identity.

1.  Conduct An Vanity Search Audit

Have one of your friends do a vanity
search audit (Google, LIve & Yahoo!).  I recently had a meeting with a young lady to discuss
managing her online brand.  She was a little surprised I googled her
before our meeting.  Even more surprised that I found one of her niche
social networking profiles with a reference to drinking and partying.

2. Clean Up Your Debris

If the audit uncovers anything unseemly, pick it up and discard it. 

3.  Control Your Social Network Audiences

Control is not a bad thing.  Close down your more social social network profiles to your real friends.  You don't want people that are searching for you as part of a background check to see comments from your college roommate on Facebook or MySpace.  Maybe that is just me.  Then again, maybe not.

4.  Be You

Cleaning up your debris and making sure some potential hiring company or business partner does not have full access to all your social networks does not mean losing your personality and becoming some sterile drone (discretion is a good quality).  Be nice, be helpful, demonstrate a little expertise, and above all be yourself.  It is the only way that you can be consistent enough to create a brand of you.

5.  Create Home Base

A place where you put all the stuff that you want people to find out about you. It can just be a collection of links to other places to find you on the Web, an online portfolio, a blog, or all of the above.  You can do this on the cheap with tools such as blogger.com but you don't want a cheap personal brand and…

6.  Home is Really Google

Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester Research believes that a company's home page is really google.com. So is your personal home page.  Professionals are googling you. Before they meet you. Before they interview you.  As an example the number one keyword phrase driving traffic to FoG is "Lance Weatherby".  It has the second keyword phrase beat by 100%

In his article Jeremiah points to some research that indicates the top three search results are clicked on 75% of the time.  You want to own those SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) and if at all possible you want to dominate the entire default preference of 10 results.  How can you do that?

7.  Register a Personal Domain

I can not think of a single person that I know that has a personal domain that does not have the number one SERP on a vanity search.  Fifty six percent of the people that search for you are going to click on that number one link.  Own it and control you online identity destiny.

8.  Customize Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is purely professional and can be effectively managed as a pillar of your online identity.  Personalize your LinkedIn public profile to the form http://www.linkedin.com/in/lanceweatherby.  It will return better search results.  Instructions for doing so as well as other methods to promote your public profile are here.  To expose your profile to anyone using LinkedIn go to the Edit Public Profile Settings and select Full View.  Make your profile as complete as your resume.

9.  Scribd It

Great place to post your bio, resume and other portfolio materials.  Make sure the files you upload are saved with your full name in the file name.  I put my resume up in January.  It is currently the fifth SERP on my name.

10.  Use Niche Social Media

You can use niche sites to fill out your top SERPS.  ClaimID (which I really like a lot), Naymz, and Rapleaf are all online identity management services that could be utilized.  If you are really active and social online a number of niche sites could fill this void.  Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, you name it.  Just be aware if it is searchable people will search and find it.

And everything else.  To create a positive online identity that highlights your achievements and skills you must actively manage your Web presence.  Hopefully these steps will get you moving down that road.

March 10, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Internet, Marketing, Personal, Web/Tech

A Presentation On Online Personal Brands

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On Friday Patrick Clements tweeted out that I had linked to a presentation about personal marketing.  He could not find it.  Either could I.  Made a comment to me that it was something edgy.  The only thing I could think of was Marta Kagan's social media marketing deck.

But my Startups in 12 Quotes deck attracted a follower that had faved "how we all become ELVIS, a note on personal brands."

More to come.

March 9, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Internet, Marketing, Personal, Web/Tech

Sunday Wag: A Broken Promise

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Back in September of 2008 in the heat of the political campaign for president, Barrack Obama changed his stance on capital gains taxes (Here is a captial gains primer.)  In Barrack Obama’s Comprehensive Tax Plan it stated he would:

Eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses, cut corporate taxes
for firms that invest and create jobs in the United States, and provide
tax credits to reduce the cost of healthcare and to reward investments
in innovation. (Factsheet_Tax_Plan_FINAL pdf)

The eliminate capital gains for small businesses was very interesting to me.  I declared such a policy was “something I could live with.”

But alas, that was then. This is now. Erik Peterson pointed me to this article by PolitFact.  Deep within the 285 page Joint Explanatory Statement: Section B on pages 60 and 61 new capital gain tax treatments for small businesses are outlined.  This is in part what it says.

Under present law, individuals may exclude 50 percent (60 percent for certain
empowerment zone businesses) of the gain from the sale of certain small business stock acquired at original issue and held for at least five years. The portion of the gain includible in taxable income is taxed at a maximum rate of 28 percent under the regular tax. A percentage of the excluded gain is an alternative minimum tax preference; the portion of the gain includible in alternative minimum taxable income is taxed at a maximum rate of 28 percent under the alternative minimum tax.

Thus, under present law, gain from the sale of qualified small business stock is taxed at effective rates of 14 percent under the regular tax.

The amount of gain eligible for the exclusion by an individual with respect to any corporation is the greater of (1) ten times the taxpayer’s basis in the stock or (2) $10 million. In order to qualify as a small business, when the stock is issued, the gross assets of the corporation may not exceed $50 million.

And.

Under the Senate amendment, the percentage exclusion for qualified small business stock sold by an individual is increased from 50 percent (60 percent for certain empowerment zone businesses) to 75 percent.

To generalize what the above lays out, the effective capital gains tax rate for investments in small businesses is going from 14% to 7%.  Seven percent is not eliminate.  I am disappointed.

President Obama inspired hope by making the big promise of change.  Like all good leaders, President Obama must remain true to his words. While the above is just a single example, if breaking smaller promises becomes a habit for this administration, the people are going to stop believing.  And that would be a sad day for America.

March 8, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Politics

Echo: Changing Our World One Block At A Time

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Yesterday I spent one of the most exciting 30 minutes of my week talking with Lila King and Karyn Lu of Echo. Echo is an art and civic journalism project that will produce and collect stories tied to physical locations throughout Atlanta.

Karyn and Lila believe everyone has a fascinating story to tell. The interview below gives a little peek into the Echo story.

Karyn and Lila won $10,000 in seed money from the New Media Women Entrepreneurs. During the day Lila leads the online team behind CNN's iReport.com where Karyn is the user experience lead. It's great to see this kind of big thinking emerge from the people behind the scenes at the established media companies in Atlanta.

March 7, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Fun, Startups, Web/Tech

Atlanta Roundup

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Busy time in the ATL.  A brief roundup starting with three big happenings on Tuesday alone.

Georgia Technology Summit

Everybody that was anybody showed up for the biggest and best Georgia Technology Summit.  The past two years
I have written posts about the GTS entitlled "The Good, The Bad, &
The Ugly." This year I am just going to say good.  TAG listens to
constructive feedback and is always working to improve. Paul Stamatiou has a great summary.  He even put on a suit to go to the show.

Shotput Ventures Open House

While the dichotomy with the Georgia Technology Summit is striking, the Shotput Ventures
open house was also a huge success.  Much younger, happening crowd. 
They start accepting applications on Friday.  Paul again has a stellar writeup (somebody remind me to throw down some more serious Skribit objectives on him).

TwitPay Moves Money

Twitpay
went live on Tuesday.  Twitpay is a simple way to send payments in 140
characters or less. The service is powered by Amazon Payments which
called the service "innovative".  Michael Ivey announced this on twitter and then followed up with a longer blog post.  Both Michael and Don Brown are excited.  So am I and the rest of the team. 
The most frequently asked question we received is "when can I use
real money."  The answer is now.  Twitpay is the most secure,
trustworthy, and dare I say unlike some others, regulatory compliant
social payment platform.  Twitpay is an Atlanta Startup Weekend
company.  I am an advisor.  Good to see it out the door.  It will be
interesting to see where it goes.

Meet The VC

The next version of Meet the VC takes place on March 11 and features John Glushik of Intersouth Partners.  If you have any intentions of raising capital this year you need to be on hand to get John's insights. Register to attend.

Southeast Venture Conference

While Meet the VC will be a great show it is just a warm up for SEVC which cranks up a bit later in the day. Produced by TechJournal South
SEVC will
highlight the most promising emerging tech firms in the South.  The
opening keynote is by Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  Big VC
hob nob.

StartupChicks

A bit on the other end of the spectrum is StartupChicks. A StartupChick is a female entrepreneur who is interested in creating,
building, growing an innovative business that creates value for its
customers, employees, shareholders and ideally, the world-at-large. They are having their launch party
on March 18.  I am not exactly a qualified member.  However, I totally
support their aim to connect and inspire entrepreneurial women.

Young Entrepreneurs Society

The Young Entrepreneurs Society is a group of Georgia Tech students focused on providing the resources and access needed to be successful entrepreneurs.  I went and spoke to the group on Monday. They have great energy and are attracting some attention.  You can find the founder Ajai on twitter and he recently wrote about the backstory on the group.  If you are an entrepreneurial student this is a great group to find some like thinking people.

March 5, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Angels, Entrepreneurship, Startups, Venture Capital