There was a note in today’s NY Times saying that European Soccer leaders have unanimously backed a proposal to limit participation in future Olympics to players under the age of 21. (Currently, the Olympics are limited to under 23 plus 3 overage players. ).

All I can say is Amen.

I have argued why its crazy for the NBA to loan its best players to the USOC , which is first, last and middle a for profit organization that is using our players to generate billions of dollars of revenues. Not millions, BILLIONs.

Its crazy on every level.

Now that the European Soccer Community is pushing to remove their most highly paid and best players from the Olympics, we should support their efforts.

For the major revenue generating sports, the Olympics are no longer about Patriotism. They are a business.

If we want to find out which country has the best basketball, lets create a competitive tournament that is honest about why it exists and make it a profit making entity that shares the profits with its participants. A notion that is foreign to the Olympic Committee .

When we sent the Dream Team in 1992,  it was the right thing to do at the right time.  Our competition was sending what were essentially professional teams to face our collegiate players. Today, that is no longer the case. The NBA and professional basketball has become an international sport.

We could still send our under 21 players to the Olympics.  They will represent our country admirably, Im sure.  More importantly, it would be a great business move for the NBA. Those players we send will get far more branding and marketing assigned to them then their current one and done collegiate careers (and the prospects of playing in the Olympics may incent them to stay in college as well).

The incremental branding the Olympics would provide the players would make them far more valuable to, and marketable by the NBA should they make it to our level. To those who can’t, as young Olympians, their opportunity to continue their careers as pro players in other leagues would improve as well.

NBA fans, and this owner are tired of players who are unable to play to their full potential because they play for other profit seeking enterprises . Its not just about Mavs players. Its about players for all NBA teams. Its harder to sell tickets when a star on the other team cant play due to injury. Its time we follow the lead of these European Soccer leaders and ask our players to only play for  the profit seeking enterprise that pays them and limit the Olympics to players under 21. IF the Olympics can make billions using our under 21 players, more power to them.

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More than a year ago I wrote a post (see below) about taxing stock transactions. I suggested 10c per share on both sides. Some of our politicians are suggesting .025pct.  There really is no reason not to do it either way. Spreads have narrowed in the past several years to pennies from nickels, dimes and quarters. So we know that the market can operate with the wider spreads.  Historically spreads are the profit margin of market makers. Well in this era, who is a bigger market maker than the US Treasury ? They are providing liquidity at every corner, so why shouldn’t they (we) get paid for it ?

Of course like any other government attempt to raise taxes, how they use the money is where they will absolutely screw it up. In this example they want to use half the money to fund a Job Creation Fund.  A government run Job Creation Fund is the ultimate Oxymoron.  Let me offer another post of mine that suggests that we open the doors to entrepreneurs and simplify and cheapen their cost to start businesses. The process of creating a company in this  country has become so burdensome at the hand of regulation, insurance, taxes and administrivia, that we are slowing the true job creation engine that this country needs right now. Instead of the Government funding jobs, if the focus is on job creation, which is what it should be today, these funds should be used to remove all friction to those who start, fund and run companies.

This is from an excerpt from a  post of mine and it is exactly what a smart politician should propose today in order to stimulate the creation of jobs in this country

How to Jumpstart the Economy – Tax Free Small Businesses

Jul 28th 2008 10:13AM

What has impacted my decision on whether or not to start a business is the amount of paperwork involved and the local, state and employer taxes involved. Its complicated and expensive to start even the smallest business in the real world. The real world of course is different than the Internet world. The state of business, and in particular, entrepreneurship in the US has devolved into two worlds, the Internet and the real world.

In the Internet world, all you have to do is setup an account with an ad network, put it on your website, generate some traffic and they send you a check. . No licenses, no tax id, no announcements in the newspaper. It took me minutes. Its exactly what millions of people do as well and its created an entire Internet economy that lives off of Google, Yahoo, MIcroSoft, AOL, Ebay and others. Its the entrepreneurs path of least resistance, which is exactly why most take this route.

Compare that with setting up a real world business. This is from the State of Texas: (Which I am proud to say makes it far easier than most states to start a business).

Step 1:Legal Structure and Registrations
Step 2:Business Tax Responsibilities
Step 3:Licenses Permits and Registrations (Note to State of TX, this link was broken, I had to find the destination page )
Step 4:Business Employer Requirements

As an entrepreneur , I can tell you that working through the requirements of these four steps is scary and intimidating. Why ? Because to merely start your business, you have to deal with lawyers and accountants, which not only costs a lot of money, but more importantly, requires you to trust those lawyers and accountants to make decisions that could have make or break consequences on your business. You may have the best idea with the ability to execute on that idea, but one little snafu by these professionals and your business is down the tubes.

Even worse, if you mess up on any of this, you could get in legal trouble. You could get sued, or find yourself in the middle of some legal nightmare.

Then of course, there is the financial reality of having to pay all of the business and employer taxes and ever increasing insurance premiums.

Which brings us back to How to Jump Start the Economy.

If you want to see an immediate re invigoration of the economy, open the door back up for individual entrepreneurs to enter the real world without fear and without an immediate financial burden that pre empts their ability to be successful.

If we really want to stimulate job creation in this country, take the same approach to small business with 25 or fewer employees that we take to Internet taxes. Outlaw them.

No taxes or license fees of any kind on small businesses with 25 or fewer employees. No employer payroll tax. No state or local taxes. No taxes on earnings. No Payroll taxes.  Nada. Use the money from the proposed taxes on the trade of public shares to fund not only this, but healthcare insurance premiums as well. The business owners and their employees will pay income taxes on their personal income , but not corporate earnings

The only taxes they would collect and remit are sales taxes and of course they would still file personal income taxes on their individual earnings.

Make this available exclusively to owner operated companies and only allow the operator to own and operate a single company (to prevent gaming the system).

The impact on the economy would be amazing and immediate. Those without jobs would be able to work for themselves. They would be able to join together and start companies. They would be able to take risks with far less capital and far less fear of failure.  Sweat Equity would be all it takes to start a business. In addition, we would see many cash only propreiters go legit.

Not only would we see hundreds of thousands of new businesses started seemingly overnight, with millions of new hires, but from those new businesses would come new ideas that hopefully would give us our next engine for economic growth that super cedes today’s ideas.

For Congress, the challenge will be to keep the process simple. A simple no cost, online registration for the businesses, with information about the who, what, where and ownership of the companies so that they can track and help fund them. Which in turn would create the information base from which to fund the state  and local revenue that would be lost. Easy  ? No. But a far greater reward in job creation and growth for the country than the Government creating Job Funds and public works efforts.

In this economy  we should open the door to our country’s Intellectual capital and the entrepreneurial energy that separates us from the rest of the world. Make it easy for entrepreneurs to do what entrepreneurs do, and great things happen. Voters and politicians alike seem to have forgotten what has made this country an economic powerhouse. We need to focus on creating a friction free environment for small businesses. That is exactly what will create jobs

Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street; Give it to Main Street

Sep 30th 2008 9:02AM

Tax every single share of stock that is bought and sold 10 cents per transaction. One dime. If you buy a share of stock, your brokerage pays a 10c tax. If you sell a share, your brokerage pays a 10c tax. 1 share, 100 million shares. Its 10 cents per share.

Of course the  tax will be paid for by those of us who are buying and selling stocks. So what. Here is the reality. If you are a true investor. Someone who wants to own a share of stock in a company you believe in, then its an amount that is not going to impact your investment decision making process.

If you are a professional trader or an institutional trader that trades continuously, then it may impact your decision making process, but only to the point of reducing your returns by a minimal amount. Its not going to change your inclination to trade. If you make 9.9pct instead of 10pct, you aren’t going to stop trading.

Whats the economic impact ?

If the NYSE, Nasdaq, Amex and OTC are trading 2 Billion shares a day, thats $ 200 Million Dollars PER DAY. If there are 260 trading days a year. Thats about 52 Billion dollars a year.

Thats real money.

Of course there has to be some fine print. You could reduce the tax per share for stocks under $5 dollars to 5cents. But i would leave it at 5cents even for stocks priced at pennies per share or less. This tax would act as a protection for investors and traders who get pitched unregulated penny stocks and who are more often than not the victims of rip off artists.

Take this $52 Billion Dollars and ????. I will open it to the floor for suggestions and save my conclusion for a later post.

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Ok,  I am getting bored talking about fox and google.  But as things pop up, like news in the media saying that MicroSoft is trying to entice Fox to “de-list” from Google, I cant pass up posting on it. Particularly when it makes so much sense

Here is why Bing paying Fox to De-list from Google can be a significant first step and can work:

First, Bing doesn’t  need to get the most popular sites to join fox in de-listing. They need the most popular searches in the categories they want to impact.

Bing just has to corner the market on specific categories. If they are  able to corner some little corners, say sites about auto news, by paying bloggers and news sites in this category to go exclusive with Bing, they can trumpet it loud and far that if you want information about a new car, you have to go to Bing because “they dont take Google”. (did Visa’s They Dont Take Amex ad campaign work ?”)

Or they can target to pay sites about mesothelioma and other diseases that ambulance chasers covet and pay huge dollars per click through, or other high paying PPC searches. The advertisers for these categories go where they can get the most clicks. It wont change marketshare, but it could change how the battle between Googe and Bing is fought. If they can win enough categories, all of the sudden they have some bragging rights that set a platform for people to question googles positioning.

Then consider MicroSofts first move on twitter and their investment in Facebook as an indicator they  could be looking to stake out a position in the value of realtime information.

Which makes  the public positions of AP and Reuters and other top news sites all the more interesting. One thing they all have in common ? They dont like the way google has treated them and they all need  money.  To think they wont jump aboard and grab a cash offer from MicroSoft that precludes Google is crazy. For the right amount of money you can get them to shut out Google and restrict downstream access of their content to Google faster than they can say “Google Who?” Thats how bad they need the money AND dislike Google (this isnt just about news, Google Scholar is going after  Reuter’s Westlaw as an example). Just as critical, I dont think it takes a relatively large amount to get them onboard.  Given the volume of news these two companies create, impacting the positioning of Google is not as far fetched as some may like to think.

Many, like Henry Blodgett on Silicon Insider correctly make the point that news from de-listed sites will eventually find its way on to other sites and into the Google Index. But  after how long ?

If Reuters and AP de-list, it will be a lot longer than you think. If you havent noticed the number of reporters generating original reporting is falling like a rock.  Much of the news you think is original content is reposted from Reuters and AP.  If Google doesnt have access to their output, they will have to wait for someone to actually re-write the story, probably after reading it on an AP or Reuters customer site (its called  plagiarism to some, fair use to others) and post it. Without question there will be  a lag time. Which may be all that MicroSing needs.  You can get ALL the news you need on Bing NOW, or you can wait, and wait, and wait for it on Google.

Getting news first has been a position of value that has worked for a long, long  time. No reason to think it might not work again here.

And finally, Google already has a problem in that they do a horrible job of blocking spam in their date sorted results. Removing valid results is going to make their date sorted results look even worse.

De-List a few key sites. Win a few categories. Offer the news first. Make the people you pay to de-list also make Bing their default on site search engine.  You just never know. Stranger things have happened. Like we say in sports. Thats why we play the games

So bing just might have a shot

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Hows that for a title.  Just thought it would be a fun day to rehash some old posts that made me look a little prescient

Today the feds arrested 2 programmers that worked for Madoff. I wrote this in January:

Jan 18th 2009 10:11AM

Im taking a flyer here, but if they were to put me on the case, the first people I would talk to are the software developers.  Somewhere along the line there was a software program written or modified that allowed Madoff to enter the numbers he made up, who they were paying out cash to and would print the checks and  statements.  Its very unlikely that it was off the shelf software because it would be impossible for all the numbers to balance, or he would need to use suspense type of accounts that would raise red flags for even the smallest of accounting firms.

Maybe I have missed it, but I have yet to see an article written or any commentary about the software Madoff Investments used or read about any programmers that have come forward that worked for him. Someone had to outline the details of what they wanted the software to do, and in a scam of this size, could it be anyone but Madoff himself ? Someone had to take that information and either create or modify software to keep the whole mess running smoothly for him.

Find the programmers who wrote the software and you will find out how the whole thing worked.

And as the Google, Murdoch discussions continue, some people have actually started to recognize there might be something to what I wrote in May of 08

Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google ?
Better search ? Too subjective. Better monetization ? After the fact. Better User Interface ? Will we know it when we see it ? A new and different search ? Semantic ? Human powered ? We won’t know till we know.

But what about the Google Index, all the websites that are indexed by Google ? What is it worth to be in the Google Index ? What would you, as a website owner require in order to remove your site from the Google Index and no longer be available when someone does a google search ?

It should just be a matter of dollars and cents and sense, shouldn’t it ?

How many websites would have to recuse themselves from the Google Index before Google Search was negatively impacted ?

Mahalo.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index ?

A theoretical maximum of 125k sites, but with overlap, probably closer to 100k or less, times how much per site on average ?

The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars. The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?

Given the stakes, why stop at $ 1 Billion Dollars ? Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $1mm each, plus a committment from MicroSoft or Yahoo to drive traffic through their search engines to more than make up for the lost Google Traffic. After all, once consumers realized that Google no longer had valid search results for the top 25k searchs, that traffic would most likely go to MicroSoft and Yahoo.

And why we are at it, why not require that these 100k sites switch from Googles Publisher Network to Yahoo’s or MicroSofts ? It would start to earn back the $1 Billion paid out very quickly.

On top of that, in order to grease the skids even further, why not issue advertising credits to the sites that switched off Google ? Its soft dollars, that would sweeten the pot and drive more traffic.

IN essence, its no different that any other content aggregation play. Its paying for content . But, It would take some big ones to go for it and see if it worked. However, without question, every search engine has some number of core sites, that when removed from its index , destabilizes the value of its search.

The question is how many ? What would it cost to get that number of sites to turn Google off and stay off, and would the traffic created as users switch from Google more than compensate for the cost ?

Or would Google recognize the risk and jump in and offer more to websites to stay ?

Sure would be interesting to find out.

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Im going to simplify this as much as possible. I probably should have just included this in the first post. Here are the best and worst cases of Newscorp opting out of the Google Index

1. Best Case: They opt out and see an increase in revenues and commitment to their sites because people choose to go directly to their sites. For those sites behind a paywall, they generate more revenue than when the site was free.   Other sites notice their success and copy Newscorp, choosing to opt out of the Google index. The opt out choice turns out to be the better business move for any and all sites looking to increase revenues. Google’s position as the leading search engine is called into question.  The Search business becomes competitive again. Content companies now understand how to best monetize their content efforts.

Far fetched ? Maybe. But not totally inconceivable.

2. Worst Case: They opt out of Google’s Index. Their traffic drops 99pct. No one buys their pay offerings. They all feel like idiots. Then the last idiot left in the office gets out the text editor and changes the robots.txt file or completely deletes it.  They turn off the paywalls. Make the content free again.  Life as they knew it before they opted out and started charging for content returns to normal as quickly as Google can reindex the Newscorp sites.

The upside of Option 1 is far more impactful than the downside is bad. There is no reason not to take the chance.

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Rupert Murdoch has said that his Newscorp sites are going to block Google indexes.  Of course, all the netizens freak out when this happens. Which I love.

I love to tweak all the internet information must be free bigots. They get so damn religious about information on the net that they lose what little objectivity and awareness of the real world they had in the first place.  First a little enlightenment for all of you that think Murdoch is making a mistake. This is not 1999, nor is it 2004, nor is it 2006, nor is it 2008.  The calendar is about to turn to 2010.  What worked and made sense 3,5 and 10 years ago, no longer does.

What has changed  ? Quite a bit, but lets start with this.  TWITTER IS SURPASSING  GOOGLE as a destination for finding information on breaking and recent news  of all types. Whats more,   TWITTER POSSES NO THREAT to any destination news site. 140 characters does not a story make.  Find it on twitter, link to a story on say, FoxNews and everyone is happy. The same concept applies to Facebook Links. Twitter and Facebook are not news  destinations that can compete with traditional news sources.  Google is.   Rupert loves him some twitter. Google, not so much.

Not only are Twitter and Facebook becoming strong competitors for referrals to news sources from topical searches, they both have one HUGE HUGE HUGE advantage for news outlets that Google does not:

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK are platforms that allow the news sources, like newscorp to post breaking news and gain value from their brand. Google does not.  In other words, if I trust a newspaper, tv or any  brand, I can follow it on twitter and expect the news to come to me.  The concept  of “If the news is important, it will find me” works better by the day.  If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter feeds I follow.

Having to search for and find news in search engines is so 2008.

Twitter and Facebook have become the ultimate real time programming guides.  Look at it like this. “Hear about bubble boy from a follow”. If: “its a news source, go to that news source” If not: “Look it up on twitter (or i use icerocket.com it shows tweeter authority) to see if there are any 1st hand accouts or check my FB wall to see what my friends have to say,  if anything”  “See tweets/posts to determine how I want to get more information:  from  TV ( stream, regular, phone), or from online written or audio source” if online: “go to that source from link in twitter or facebook”

All of the above complements everything Rupert and Newscorp are doing.   Google is no where to be found in that equation.

Thats not to say Twitter is perfect. Its not. It has  a HUGE and growing problem with spam (unlike Facebook updates and another reason why I pimp Icerocket.com). Nor am I saying that Google is toast and has no role. Non real time feed users will continue to source news through Google.  I just see that as a declining number in an era where much of our first crack at news is via our phone.  But, perfect or not, the bottom line is that in this new era of twitter, things have changed.

News sites blocking Google ain’t what it used to be.  Rupert is right. Deal with it.

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I was thinking of ideas on how to add twitter and/or facebook fan page followers. I dont have a real need to have to do so. I was just curious about ways to do so.

Think of it as one of those things my minds wanders off to while Im working out.

One thing that poppedup as what I thought was a decent idea was the idea of  rewarding those who refer and/or generate followers to my pages on twitter (@mcuban), or on FAcebook (/markcuban) a unique page where they were the only person approved to have access and for some period of time, they would have exclusive access for questions and answers.

So for instance, if you helped me add 1k followers on twitter, i would create a new ,private account on twitter and you would be the only approved follower. You could ask me anything and I would respond for some period, probably 24 hours. After which I would replace you with another follower. I could do the same on facebook.  I would set up a private account and only friend this person.  Using the wall, we could have an exchange about any subject.

Good idea or bad idea ?

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Some people wondered why I stayed with my Sidekick despite still not getting my contacts back and all the troubles the network had. The answer is easy. They keyboard is so above any beyond any other phone, I can type a good 50 words per minute on it. (Its amazing how fast my thumbs are on this thing)  Which in turn allows me to answer emails quickly and accurately.  I dont lose any productivity when Im on my Sidekick compared to sitting  in front of my desktop or full sized laptop.  To me, thats money in the bank.

Thats not to say I never stray and try new phones and alternatives. I do.  I have tried any make and model of phone, with slideout keyboard, touchscreen, you name it. None match the sidekick.

Recently I bought a couple netbooks for my kids.  The kids love them.  I cant type of them to save my life.  Trying to pop over to check and respond to some emails is a frustrating experience.  Maybe I could learn to get used to them, but the keyboards are so small, it takes real concentration to try to touch type.

All of which got me thinking. Im not the only person who has mastered their phone keyboard. Regardless of model.  Plus, like most of us, I have an investment in “conforming” to the typing platform of my phone.  Texting is so popular, we quickly become productive typists on our phones. So rather than creating an entirely new “typing platform” like most Netbooks do, why not create a line of Netbooks that merely are an extension of our phones ? Do Netbooks need, or should they even have Keyboards ?  Why not a “monitor” that can travel and be tethered via bluetooth to any and all manner of phone ?

I would love nothing better than to be able to take a nice monitor with some PC/Netbook like features that pairs with my SideKick.  Less to carry. Less cost.  Just as I can send the sound to an external device, why not allow me to connect from my phone to the monitor , using my phone as my keyboard and even have the option of using the storage on my phone as the hard drive ?

Am I the only one who would prefer this approach ?

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I got this email today.  Of course Im being marginally facetious about the following idea. Why only marginally ? Because all he has to do is find one sucker to say yes. Enjoy.

I have an idea to solve all of Americas problems, just as all great ideas are really very simple so is this.  I am self made, retired, age 45 and financially independant.  I will sell this idea for $5,000,000.  When you learn of this plan, you will be shocked at how simple and effective it will be.  I want a cashiers check up front and I will give you the idea once it is cleared.  I have it written on an index card here on my desk.  This idea will probably be the biggest proponent of postitve change in American History.  I give you 24 hours to respond and I am going to start shopping this around.  Next is Rupert Murdoch, he will love i

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