Sen Rand Paul Patriot Act Amendment Killed

As this blog post is written, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who this blogger considers to be a wacky guy on civil rights issues, is watching his Patriot Act amendment, called Amendment 348, go down in flames in the U.S. Senate.

Senator Paul, who worked to force an amendment to the Patriot Act that, if passed, would have effectively suspended the suspicious activity reports provision of the legislation, long and forcefully under the assertion that the basic rights of Americans were being violated.

But Mr. Paul's spirited presentation was greatly over-shadowed by fact that we live in a time of great fear of even possible terrorist attacks.

And when a deranged person is able to do harm to someone - as in the case of Jared Loughner's gun attack on Arizona Representative Gail Giffords - we ask 'How did they get the gun, and why wasn't law enforcement tracking them?'

Well, if Senator Paul had his way, America would have lost the ability to track any one who gave reasonable suspicion of terrorist behavior, by checking their gun purchasing records. Now are their abuses to the law? Yes. But throwing the 'baby out with the bathwater' isn't the answer.

Rand Paul sees the World via a rather narrow Libertarian lens. If he's to succeed beyond one term, he has to realize that view point, by design, is now always in accordance with America's desires.

Even hard-core conservative Republicans like Georgia's Saxby Chambliss (who said he owns more guns than anyone in the Senate) failed to support "my friend" Rand Paul in this vote, saying it would "harm law enforcement." 

Yeas 91, Nays, 4 Amendment 348 is withdrawn.  That means it's killed. 

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Vertex Incivek Patient Steve Goodwin On The FDA Approved Drug

In my last blog posts, I introduced the new drug INCIVEK by Vertex as a way to help people suffering from Hepatitis C. As I reported, Hepatitis C is a virus, particularly common among African Americans, and that causes inflammation of the liver.

Hepatitis C effects an estimated 270 million to 300 million people Worldwide, 30,000 people in Santa Clara County, 12,000 people in San Francisco City and County, and 2,400 new cases were reported in 2010.

For this blog post, and as promised, I interviewed the main advocate for the use of INCIVEK. His name is Steve Goodwin.

Steve Goodwin is a chief engineer and a one-person band, talking to anyone who will listen about INCIVEK. In the video, below, Goodwin eloquently explains how he came to find out about INCIVEK via the use of the website Clinical Trials, at clinicaltrials.gov, and how it's helped him to a more normal path of life.



Steve also wrote a paper of INCIVEK and how it's helped him, and all of this has been his doing because he's, frankly, happy to be alive. Here's what he wrote:

I am eternally grateful to Vertex Pharmaceuticals and the UCSF Medical Center, for providing me the opportunity to eradicate the virus that I likely had for over 35-years. I was part of a Phase 2b Study referred to as PROVE 3 in 2007. This study was designed for subjects with Genotype 1 Hepatitis C who had not achieved a Sustained Viral Response (SVR) with a prior course of interferon based therapy. I was most fortunate to be in the arm of the trial that has now been approved by the FDA. This included triple treatment of INCIVEK with the standard of care (SOC) for the first 12-weeks and then a continuation of pegylated interferon alpha 2a and ribavirin for the remaining 12-weeks. All said, my treatment was only 24-weeks compared to the previous SOC of 48-weeks.

Although I was asymptomatic for the approximate 35-years prior to obtaining the elusive cure, I knew that the viral infection was continuing to damage my liver in insidious ways that I was unaware of. I also educated myself on the disease and realized that I could not expect the disease to remain dormant forever. Recent studies have indicated that as an individual approaches the age of 60 and beyond, that the disease begins to progress at a much greater level, as compared to being young. The body’s ability to fight off the infection by replacing damaged liver cells is reduced with advancing age. I did not want to be part of those statistics and decided to do anything and everything I could to get the monkey off my back.

Regarding reported side effects, I would have to say that the worst thing for me was temporarily losing the ability to taste (hypogeusia) chocolate and coffee! As for the reports of rash, I had a slight increase in the sensation of itching (pruritus) but never broke out with any rash. I have inherited allergies and eczema, but found that I only needed to control myself from scratching. I found Gold Bond skin lotion as a great remedy for helping to reduce the itching and I wore white cotton socks over my hands while sleeping. I remembered the days when my daughters were babies! I tolerated the treatment quite well. I continued playing tennis, running the treadmill and traveled on vacation. So much of it has to do with attitude.

2007 was indeed a magical year for me. I was considered to be one of the most difficult groups of subjects to be treated: 1) treatment experienced – meaning that I had previously failed an interferon based treatment, and was a: 2) null responder - meaning that I had not achieved a 2-Log drop within the first 12-weeks of my previous treatment in 2003. I beat the odds and recognize that there are thousands of other people that remain infected today that did not achieve an SVR from a previous attempt at treatment.

Now does Steve's cheerleading benefit Vertex? Hell yes. But lost in that is the simple fact that the job of medicine to is save lives and help make our lives better. That's what happened for Steve Goodwin, and that's why he's so happy.

Tom Jones On American Idol, Mick Jagger On Grammys - Ageless Rockers

America got quite a cultural wake up call watching American Idol Wednesday night. After Scotty McCreery, who's bent is toward country music, won the singing competition, and got to meet Carrie Underwood backstage, the show ended with a performance by Sir Tom Jones.

Tom Jones, born June 7, 1940, is now 71 years old and from a time, the 1960s, of Go-Go Girls, James Bond, and his own show, demonstrated to a whole new audience that he's not only still got it, but at a high level.

The reaction to Mr. Jones was tremendous. "Tom Jones" as a keyword search was number one and listed as "Volcanic" on Google Trends and a top Twitter Topic, as well. When I shared a YouTube video of Jones' performance with my Mom - this one...



..My Mom's reaction was one of pure joy; she has been a big Tom Jones fan, and she raved about his performance, saying "He's from my time!"

With his American Idol presentation, Sir Tom effectively pushed together Americans who were 13, 33, 53, and 73 years old. Only a few performers can do that; Tom Jones and Mick Jagger are part of that club.

We're in a wonderful place where digital media has fused our culture in a way not possible 20 years ago. Jagger, The Rolling Stones front man, was rocking at the time of Tom Jones, and when he gave his rendition of "Everybody Needs Somebody," the reaction to 67-year-old Mick Jagger throwin' down at The 2011 Grammy's was equal to that of Tom Jones.

And, like Jones, young people who use Twitter to get their information, were sharing tweets about a person some in the media considered as getting too old to do his craft.

Forget it.

Mick Jagger and Tom Jones have shown that it's possible to have entertainers who transcend generations, and vast distances of time and culture, but that only could have happened with social media.

Social media has a larger and broader demographic distribution pattern than for standard media. So, a much larger part of the American culture is aware that Tom Jones and Mick Jagger kicked ass in the 21st Century, than would have been the case in the 20th Century.

Stay tuned.

Rob Woodall, Georgia GOP Congressman Health Care Hypocrisy

Georgia GOP Congressman Rob Woodall (GA District 7) was caught at a town hall meeting making a statement, or a series of them, that could only be borne of hypocrisy.

While lecturing a constituent about self-reliance, and saying "You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, 'When do I decide I'm going to take care of me?'"

But the woman he was trying to talk down to wasn't have any of it. She said I have a question about taking care of you. You have government subsidized health care, but you are not obligated to take that if you don't want to. Why aren't you going out on the free market in the state where you're a resident and buy your own health care? You lead by an example. Why aren't you leading by example?"

Congressman Woodall tried to dodge the question, but she's having none of it. Finally, after she pressed him regarding why he doesn't go and get health care on the open market, and takes the free, government-sponsored health care provided by the people of America, he says "Because it's free... Folks, if you give people something for free, you should expect them to take it."

Those are the words of a person who cares only about himself. The question is, does Congressman Woodall's selfishness represent the entire GOP?

Stay tuned.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan In Las Vegas For ICSC, Why Hide It?

This is a bit of news that wasn't in the newspapers, mentioned on blogs (until now), or covered on Twitter, save for one wayward tweet by the Washington DC Economic Partnership at International Council Of Shopping Centers Spring Convention in Las Vegas, and not by the Mayor of Oakland herself.

As you can tell by the photo with Washington DC Mayor Mayor Vincent C. Gray and the attendance registration image, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan was in Las Vegas for the same International Council Of Shopping Centers Spring Convention on Monday.

As one of four people who started the annual trend of the City of Oakland having a presence at ICSC to promote development in Oakland in 1997, it's great to know that Mayor Quan was there, but sad to know she's trying to hide the fact she attended.

Her name's on the file published by ICSC and you can see here, in addition to the photo.

And in the Twitter tweet, it's reported that Quan was at the Washington DC booth. Here's the tweet:

wdcep wdcep
DC's Mayor Gray and city of Oakland Mayor Quan at DC's booth #lasVegasICSC http://yfrog.com/h68f9opj

What happened in Vegas was that, according to sources, Oakland's Community and Economic Development Director Walter Cohen held a staff meeting this week and made what were described as "vague comments about the overwhelming size of the (Las Vegas) Convention Center and that some good things happened," and the source added "which of course means very little." Then one source added:

Don't expect anything solid to come out of this. The City, frankly, was unprepared to offer any opportunities / incentives that were particularly appealing. We were told by retail brokers that the Mayor should have been prepared to combat crime perceptions -- that if she were to dent these perceptions in any small way, it would be considered a success.

But at least he was there with Mayor Quan. But Walter should not be "media quiet" about such trips and efforts, because it's all good news that no one knows about.

Oakland's ICSC Started With Me, Sort Of

Now, all of that said, there's nothing wrong with the Mayor of Oakland attending ICSC, but everything wrong with hiding the trip. In 1997, California Capital Group Managing Partner Phil Tagami, Kofi Bonner, who was then Oakland's Economic Development Director, Oakland Councilmember (District Two), now former City Attorney, and now Alameda City Manager John Russo,  and I as the Economic Advisor To Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris, started Oakland's short, annual habit of attending the 32,000-strong event in Vegas.

The first year, we, Oakland, didn't have a booth, but by 1998, we did. And that year at Las Vegas ICSC, and with Mayor Harris, Councilmember Larry Reid (District Seven), Mr. Bonner, and Mr. Tagami, then-new City Manager Robert Bobb, Albert Ratner, Co-Chairman Of The Board of Forest City, and several staff members from both the City of Oakland's Office of Economic Development and Employment and Forest City in the room, I made a presentation to bring Forest City to Oakland, but not to do housing - to do retail development in the form of a "Times Square Of The West."

What happened can be described in two words: Jerry Brown.

It was clear then, that Brown was going to be Mayor of Oakland, and has this idea that became the "10,000 housing units in downtown" or "10K" project, but didn't share that with me at the time, as he wasn't officially Mayor.

But that year he won the primary election, and by November, because he had won by such a large margin there was no need for a runoff election.

Oakland had a new Mayor named Jerry Brown.

So, by the time in late September of 1998 Forest City's then-representative Greg Vilkin (who's now with real estate developer MacFarlane Partners as Managing Director) and I took a tour of what is now the Uptown District, and was then called The Uptown Entertainment District (a named coined by Mayor Harris), Greg popped up with "Actually, we were thinking about housing," after first agreeing that the retail plan we initiated was "exciting" while in Las Vegas, I figured that Jerry stuck his nose in my deal in some kind of way.

I was major league pissed off, but that's another story for another time.   The point is, we made a big effort, and we didn't hide the fact that we were in Las Vegas from the newspapers then.  I personally called the Oakland Tribune to tell them about it.

Tagami, Bonner, and I worked to do promote Oakland at ICSC way back in 1997 and in the late 90s. What's going on that Oakland has to reinvent the wheel 14 years later?

Considering that Walter Cohen was an occasional consultant to Mayor Harris in 1996, it's clear he learned nothing from watching what we did back then.

Walter, I'm disappointed in you, man.

ICSC is a place where real estate developers show off their latest shopping center and retail projects to potential retail tenants, investors, and cities. And cities show off their latest economic development projects for the same reasons.  It's all for business and economic development.

Many Oakland business friends I talk to say that Quan doesn't talk to the business community.  I don't think she's being mean about it, just that she may be afraid to do often so because she doesn't know how.

It seems Jean's more comfortable dealing with battling Oakland's social problems, than negotiating with businesses to come to Oakland, build the economy, and reduce the welfare state.

It's clear that Mayor Quan needs to know that a trip to Las Vegas ICSC is not only something a Mayor of Oakland should do, but Oakland itself should be do to.

It's too bad that what we -Tagami, Bonner, and I - started 14 years ago, an economic development effort for the city, hasn't continued into the 21st Century.

While it's true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, the Mayor of Oakland can't afford such secrecy.

Did Christopher Meloni Tip Law & Order: SVU Departure At NFL Draft?

Actor Christopher Meloni has stunned fans and observers with his decision to leave the long-running TV Show Law & Order: SVU, according to the blog TVLine, which broke the story.

And it makes this blogger wonder if Chris Meloni was giving a tip that he was leaving during this interview at the NFL Draft Red Carpet:

As you may have caught if you're able to hear the video, Mr. Meloni said, in response to my question about an Academy Award-level movie in the future "There you go. I like the way you think. We have a lot of things that, you know, we're shuffling around now, and figuring out. There's not to much time, left."

I thought the reference about "time" was related to the time I had been given to interview him, but perhaps that wasn't the case at all. We were being rushed at the time, because the NFL Draft was about to start.

The AP Needs To Credit TVLine

The Associated Press, which has accused bloggers of "taking" its stories just by linking to them, then in 2010 reported that it would "start" crediting blogs (an admission of theft, if you ask me) failed to link to, or even credit, TVLine. That's totally wrong and unethical. I've told many, especially at Google News, the AP does this on a regular basis, and here's proof.

TVLine reports that:

Chris Meloni will not be reporting back for duty when Law & Order: Special Victims Unit launches its 13th season this fall, TVLine has learned exclusively.


Protracted talks between the actor — who has played Detective Stabler since the NBC crime drama’s 1999 debut — and studio NBC Universal broke down on Tuesday, says a source. Franchise creator Dick Wolf is said to already be searching for a big name to bring in opposite the series’ female lead, Mariska Hargitay.


Hargitay’s own deal to return for Season 13 remains unaffected.

Good luck to Chris Meloni, and shame on the Associated Press.

Barack gets car stuck at Dublin Embassy; Presidential Limo should be high-riser

U.S. President Barack Obama got the latest, state-of-the-art Presidential Limosine in 2009, when GM produced a new version actually based not on a Cadillac unit-body, but on that of the GMC TopKick industrial-duty truck platform. But it's supposed to move and work like a limo, and not a truck, and not get caught stuck in a driveway.

But that's what happened to Barack's car as it got stuck while driving out of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, Ireland, and after President Obama's successful trip to that country. This blogger's still surprised.

The President's limo has everything from a compartment that is protected by a door as heavy as that for a 757 airplane, tear-gas guns, run-flat, Kevlar-protected tires, and pump-action shotguns for defense. But, with all that, and more, it's shocking to learn that the suspension system wasn't designed to compensate for extreme changes in terrain.

And leave the President's Limo a sitting duck.

What happened was the car's wheelbase, at around 160-inches and developed to withstand bomb-blasts, is so long that the car wasn't high enough to clear the change in the ramp's direction - it failed to clear the bump, and the result was a loud, and embarrassing "clang."

The solution: the same lifts used on street high-rider cars, like the one I saw in Miami's South Beach during the week of Super Bowl XLI in 2007. That car was at least three-feet off the ground, and could clear the sand dunes if called on to do so.

While the President's Cadillac Limo doesn't need to get that high, some kind of hydraulic lift system should be installed in it, and it's a shame it wasn't there already.

America can put a man on the moon, but we can't make a high-rider Presidential Limo.

That's not right.

Stay tuned.

Is It Racist to Pay Doctors Based on Patient Satisfaction?

Take a moment to ask yourself whether any of these categories describe you or someone you love:

• Never had cancer
• Psychologically distressed
• No regular health care provider
• No health insurance
• Lack confidence in self care
• Avoid doctors
• Minority race

If any of these terms describes you or a loved one, then you are statistically more likely to give a doctor a lower client satisfaction score. When a doctor will earn less by treating you than someone else, how long do you think it will be before you start having a hard time finding a primary care appointment?

Last week, the first article in the “Patients Rating Doctors: Let's Pay Popular People More” series discussed how paying doctors on the basis of client satisfaction surveys may actually undermine the care of our most vulnerable patients, as well as entire systems that struggle to address complex issues.

Disclaimer: Identifiable patients mentioned in this post were not served by R. Jan Gurley in her capacity as a physician at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, nor were they encountered through her position there. The views and opinions expressed by R. Jan Gurley are her own and do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the City and County of San Francisco; nor does mention of the San Francisco Department of Public Health imply its endorsement.

Read more...

John Russo - City Of Oakland Debt Plans Point To Bankruptcy

Originally, this blogger was planning to run Part Three of this video recap last Wednesday, but frankly elected to stretch out the content production opportunity. The video is over 38 minutes long, and only a handful of people will watch the whole presentation at once.

But for those who do, the video interview with John Russo has a lot of information, and that it's being both referred to by some media types, and ignored by others is a clear example of how personal issues, jealously, and prejudice can block the efficient reporting of a story.

Articles referencing this video should be on the front page of both the San Francisco Chronicle and The Oakland Tribune, but that's not the case.

Just telling the truth.

Ask yourself why. Then ask yourself why print media's losing out to blogs, video, and even some Twitter accounts for ad dollars.

But I digress, though I could go on for a book-length diatribe on that issue.

Where We Left Off:

The last blog post on the Russo interview concluded with this paragraph:

Russo says that Oakland's problems in public safety and finance are "gripping the city," and he's totally opposed to the debt-based solutions being considered. And he said "The directions that the government is moving now are morally...not..uhm... They are, I think, morally questionable, and I could no longer serve, ethically, as City Attorney..." Russo, struggling to find the right words, said.

That's essentially why John left the City of Oakland. He says that while the issues of public safety and finance are "gripping" Oakland, and while he disagrees with the direction of policy and the ethical standing of the decision makers, he felt he could not work in a way he described as "ethical."

Russo says that there are "contracting" and "budgetary" issues that have been in the news and that lay out his complaints, in long form. He points to the battle over the production of weed, and some Oakland elected officials who apparently wanted to push forward in defiance of the Federal Government. And he points to the issues surrounding the police and fire retirement system.

That was where he started to think about getting another job.

Russo says the police and fire retirement system is such that it was closed to new members 35 years ago. Not that everyone was retired 35 years ago, it meant any police or fire fighters hired after 1976 will go into the big state pension system - PERS, as it's called.

But anyone who was hired before '76 was in the Police And Fire Retirement System, or what John calls "PFRS." "The public has been paying, for thirty years, a special tax override that was supposed to cover pee-fers, Russo explained. "That (revenue) has either been inadequate or not placed into the system, and the system in under-funded."

As to where that money went if it was not, to quote John, "placed into the system," Russo says "You'd have to look." When I asked if that was legal to do, Russo said "I can't comment."

But he's not saying the money was stolen. Got that.

John continues: "In 1997, the city (of Oakland) voted on a split vote, where I voted 'no', to issue bonds for 15 years that would pay the city's annual pee-fers contribution. (And) basically on the idea that we will borrow money and we'll pay the stock market, then we'll make more money in the stock market than the interest we're paying on the bonds, we win, and get 15 years where the City's General Fund isn't called upon for pee-fers."

It didn't work out at all, because of the two stock market crashes.

But in retrospect, I remember that episode in the City of Oakland's history, because the bond issue was a large business deal for a number of investment banks, and I was then-Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris' Economic Advisor, when Russo was on the Oakland City Council.

What happened was that the city's then treasurer, Jan Mazyck, was then pushing a proposal by Goldman Sachs that I did not favor and advised the Mayor not to support. And for two reasons: first, after building a system dynamics model of the proposed swap-option to evaluate Goldman's proposal, I wasn't convinced that the swap-option derivative would be enough to protect Oakland in the case of a crash, and I preferred the selection of a minority investment banking firm to handle the deal, rather than Goldman, and in an entirely different way that offered better protection with redevelopment revenue as a "backing."

Elihu listened to me, and voted against the deal.

Eventually, the Council - but not Russo, Mayor Harris, and Councilmember's Dick Spees and Nancy Nadel from Districts Four and Three, respectively, selected Goldman to handle the deal and do the derivative financing system they proposed.

Back to Russo.

"It turns out, according to the (current) City Auditor (Courtney Ruby), that that decision cost the City (of Oakland) a quarter of a billion dollars," Russo continued. "The reason I wrote about it, is the city's 15 year payment holiday is up, next year. And what is the City's solution to that, according to the Mayor and the city staff? Float more debt. Use more debt, so use another credit card, to pay the interest on the second credit card, that was paying the interest on the first credit card. There's only one ending for that pyramid of debt, and it's bankruptcy. There's no other way out of it.

So what they're proposing is another five to seven year holiday, which is great because we don't have to pay the bill. Another five to seven years, we'll just push it off, push it off to the next generation, really."

Russo says that even if the City of Oakland makes a seven percent return, the City would still end up onwing $141 milllion in each year 2024, 2025, and 2026 - a total of $423 million.

The General Fund of Oakland will have to pay $141 million a year by that time. "It will break the bank," Russo says. It's also far beyond the revenue-producing capacity of the City of Oakland, given the population size and level of assessed value of property now, and into the future.

In this what Russo calls "paroxism of irresponsiblity," he claims we have the Oaklanders of the 2050s paying for people who worked for the City of Oakland in the 1950s.

A big mess, getting messier.

Russo House Cleaning

Before I end this segment of the blog posts on the Russo video interview, there's a small controversy that John did not attend City Council meetings and that he's in violation of the City Charter. He's not.

The City Charter does says that if the City Attorney misses ten meetings without being excused, he or she is in violation of the Charter, but the City Charter lacks a definition of what a meeting is. Plus, the second of the City Charter on the Police and Fire Retirement Board, which the City Attorney sits on, allows the City Attorney to send a representative.

So why doesn't that apply to the City Council? Well, by practice, it does. As not only Russo, but Jayne Williams before him, regularly appointed a representative for Oakland City Council meetings.

Also, we next look at Oakland Sports and we look at the observation that Russo bought his way into his job as Alameda's City Manager.

Stay tuned.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Hepatitis C Drug Incivek Gets FDA Approval

The company this blogger presented last week, Vertex, which announced a new drug called Incivek, was waiting for FDA approval. Well, on Monday, they got it.





According to the Associated Press,...

The Food and Drug Administration approved Vertex Pharmaceuticals's hepatitis C drug Incivek on Monday, making it the second new treatment to be approved in the last two weeks.

Incivek is a highly - anticipated pill that is expected to have annual sales in the billions. It is approved for patients who have some liver damage from hepatitis C who either have not been treated, or were not cured by other drugs. Patients on Incivek take two pills three times per day.

The Cambridge, Mass., company started a nationwide campaign to increase awareness of the disease in advance of Incivek's approval, and it said Incivek will be available in pharmacies later this week.

The company says a 12 - week course of treatment will cost $49,200, compared to $30,000 for standard therapies.

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease that is spread through the blood, including by sharing needles or having sex with an infected person. Vertex said about 4 million people in the U.S. have the disease, and many people do not know they are infected. Hepatitis C can cause liver damage, cirrhosis, liver failure or cancer.

As I reported, Hepatitis C effects an estimated 270 million to 300 million people Worldwide, 30,000 people in Santa Clara County12,000 people in San Francisco City and County, and 2,400 new cases were reported in 2010.

In my next installment on this, I will talk to a person who's actually used this drug.

Stay tuned.

Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do - Social Media

Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do - Social Media, a photo by zennie62 on Flickr.

Almost two years ago, this blogger wrote a blog post called "Top 10 Social Networking Things To Do." While watching TechCrunch Disrupt, I decided to revisit my video and blog post to see how well my top 10 tips held up, two years later.



Why?

Because there has been a lot of growth and change in social media over that time. Twitter has grown in use tremendously, and there are far more mobile apps for social, like Foursquare. But what do you absolutely need to be on to have a good social graph going for yourself?

Here's the original post:

Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do

1.Figure out your name. (I'm Zennie Abraham, Zenophon Abraham and Zennie62) There's a habit of using different and weird names by one person on different networks. If you want to get a job, that's a bad practice. It's better to have one name or set of related names; for all practical purposes that name set serves as the foundation of your personal brand, or who you are. It's also easier to find in a search, rather than your identity spread chaotically on the Internet.

2.What do you want to get out of this? (Business? pleasure? Information? If you're in the business of pleasure that's another story. You also need to ask yourself how you feel about having "you" out there as the negatives are the possibility of being stalked, but that written the positives far overwhelm that negative and we can talk about how to stop and expose stalkers online later.)

3.Figure out your title: CEO? Producer? Party Animal?

4.Develop an email list. Remember, email is still a form of social networking.

5.Find a photo you're proud of and nothing with you wearing a gorilla suit. (It does work for some but I don't recommend it.)

6.Business?

a.Join Linkedin

b.Join Ryze (Great small business membership base in the Bay Area.)

c.Join Plaxo

d.Join Facebook and turn off the relationship notifications. (We don't need know that you're dating Sven Nordgarden.)

7.Pleasure?

a.Join MySpace

b.Join Facebook

c.Join FriendFeed

8.Information?

a.Join FriendFeed

b.Join Facebook

c.Join Technorati (I recommend creating a blog and then posting it as your website of choice in their system.)

9.Set up a blog - put your resume in it without your phone number. That's your free website. I prefer Blogger.com. It's free. Make the blog title your name. Why? To mark your place with your name on cyberspace. Link to it from your social network profile. The point is to begin to protect your name and identity by having something out there you made about you, not someone else.

10.Use your email signature as the place for your links to your Linkedin Page and Blog page. (Now you have two places pointing at your blog page, which helps with SEO and to have others see your resume.)

A word about Twitter.

Twitter is not a social network, it's a communications system and you need to have something to say to use it. It's volume-based; the more you post the more valued your account because people will follow you looking for interesting posts, or what are called "tweets". I think of Twitter as an accessory to a social network not a replacement for one.

Now, I still stand behind my Twitter observation of two years ago, mostly because it's my strategy. For me, social networking is really social broadcasting, and I see all of these apps as tools to be integrated, not to replace each other.

I did not include Foursquare, because you can actually have a really good social graph without it. But that said, I use Foursquare to help broadcast favorite places and also my Zennie62 brand, and in a way that, when I'm done, will be ubiquitous.

I'm also on a total of over 200 blogs and websites, and social networks. It's all to the point of pushing one brand, Zennie62, as much as anything.

I don't recommend that everyone do that, but the Top 10 is necessary, and not just to have a "social graph" but to also protect your online identity.

There are too many people making fake accounts representing others online, and the moment you do anything that gets attention by media, which is different forms today, that chance that someone would do that is that much greater.

Protect yourself. Get online.

Bing Gordon Of Kleiner-Perkins Talks Zynga At TechCrunch Disrupt

Bing Gordon Of Kleiner-Perkins At TechCrunch Disrupt, a photo by zennie62 on Flickr.

As this blog is written, Bing Gordon of the Venture Capital Firm Kleiner-Perkins says he likes "games, and soy latte." Mr. Gordon's almost toying with TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington because he's not actually giving up any valuable information.

But he does make statements that do provide some news. For example, he says that since Reid Hoffman, "everyone's going to go public in four weeks."

The gaming investor says that he doesn't want to compete with Zynga, which he invested in (not enough he says), because it's got too many "smart people." And says that it's monetization's going to get to ten percent, even though it's reached that in Asia.

In other words, about 10 percent of Facebook social game users like the ones Zynga produces become paid users in Asia. That's about $60 per person, but he says it's going to be higher than that in America.

The Gamifcation of Everything

Arrington asked if that idea that everything is becoming "game oriented" or the process of "gamification," is real. Gordon says that people who've grown up since the 70s have to make choices not to game. But that person sees the World differently, you can "level up," for example. "The most powerful game system is Google Search SEO" because people are always trying to game it, or figure out how to do so.

Great point.

The Ecosystem of Zynga and Facebook

Arrington asked who needs the other more, Zynga or Facebook? Bing essentially agrees that they need each other, and because people who use Facebook and game are larger in number than those who don't.

On the matter of the sour relationship between Zynga and Facebook, he says that Zynga was thinking about starting its own portal as a "counter-strategy" to Facebook's new restrictions, and that Facebook Credits would be the only method of payment, where Facebook takes 30 percent of each spend from the money apps develop.

That this will happen, with Zynga taking its 246 million active users per month away from Facebook, is still apparently very real, because Arrington said "It looks like you're giving me a signal that you don't want to talk about this any more."

The Real Bing

"I'm pretty aware of my shortcomings and try to defend or deflect them every day."

Stay tuned.