Read more at preview.windows.com.

Nobody knows for sure what the company is supposed to do but new offices, computers and furniture are already acquired. It’s located within a short distance from Gates private “palace” just outside Seattle.

What’s on the agenda?

Some believe the company is attached to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – the charity organization run together with his wife. Others believe it could be related to a new form of nuclear reactor which he’s developing with his friend Nathan Myhrvold.

Holding company?

Some has even suggested that it’s a pure holding company offering financial help to new start-up companies.

According to insiders the “bg” in the company name stands for “Bill Gates”, the “C” for «catalyst» and the number 3 refers to Gates third company separated from Microsoft and the charity foundation.

Gates has previously said that he wishes to help younger people following in his footsteps when it comes to revolutionize the global technology. So the main question now is where do we apply for start-up funds

Source: Techflash

Could this be true?

Does it sound insane? Well, maybe a little. But then again Google breathes mainly on adverts and Valve’s netdistro application Steam would be a fantastic way of delivering just that. Not to mention ads in games!

The Inquirer claim to have the news from reliable sources, but have no evidence besides this.

Valve denies – Google wont comment

Valve claims this is not true. However, when there’s a leakage this is normally the standard response from the companies involved. What does Google say? “We do not make comments on rumours and speculations”. So in other words, they’re not denying it, which somewhat strengthens the theory.

Google owns game ad technology

There’s been speculations earlier about Google entering the game market. As previously mentioned there could be a lot of money in game ads. Forbes article last Tuesday speculated about this exact topic.

Also, Google’s recent acquisition, Adscape Media, completes the picture. Adscape is a company that creates applications that enables the possibility for ads in games.

So will all games be free?

If the advertisers paid for the game development, will we get the games for free? Probably not! And would you play a game if you were constantly annoyed by ads?? Feel free to share your thoughts on this one in the comments.

Sources: The Inquirer, Gizmodo, Shacknews and Mcvuk

Plaxo will remain an independent operation in Silicon Valley, reporting into Comcast Interactive Media, which is a division of Comcast that develops and operates Internet businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication. All the 50 employees will continue to innovate on and grow both the networked address book service and the next-generation social network, Pulse.

More information is found in the press release.

Put about 100 bricks in some Particular order in a closed Room with an Open window.

Then send 2 or 3 candidates in the room and close the door. Leave them alone and come back after 6 hours and then analyze the situation.

If they are counting the bricks. Put them in the accounts Department.

If they are recounting them… Put them in auditing .

If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks. Put them in engineering.

If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order. Put them in planning.

If they are throwing the bricks at each other. Put them in operations.

If they are sleeping. Put them in security.

If they have broken the bricks Into pieces. Put them in information Technology.

If they are sitting idle. Put them in human resources.

If they say they have tried different combinations, yet not a brick has been moved. Put them in sales.

If they have already left for the day. Put them in marketing.

If they are staring out of the window. Put them on strategic Planning.

And then last but not least…

If they are talking to each other and not a single brick has been moved. Congratulate them and put them in top management.

I know Microsoft’s been doing this for years (try installing Live Messenger and see what happens), but I really don’t like the way things are turning. Imagine downloading Adobe Reader and then get an update option to download all the other products Adobe has to offer (both free and paid).

I assume this is all part of Apple’s marketing strategy. They know a lot of people are using iTunes which is a nice software to sync your iPod. However, this seams to have opened a new door for Apple to force people to download and (hopefully) use their other products, which in the end perhaps would lead to more people converting to a Mac.

To be honest I hate it when the auto-updater gives you options not related to the product you’re using. It’s like Firefox would dump Thunderbird in the same update as Firefox 3. So Apple, please stick with advertising and “normal” marketing, don’t just throw things at people!

What’s your take on this?

Update: This just popped up on my screen (I only have Safari installed for browser compatibility testing).

The report from SIIA includes a top 10 list of the titles most pirated by companies and titles most pirated via the internet, much of which consisted of security tools from Symantec and productivity and design tools from Adobe – makes you wonder if Adobe’s high price points have anything to do with them being a prime piracy target. Ironically I also suspect the need for proper AV solutions could be the result of running infected key generators and patches. Funny how this works isn’t it…

2007 Software Titles Most Frequently Pirated By Companies

1. Symantec Norton Anti-Virus
2. Adobe Acrobat
3. Symantec PC Anywhere
4. Adobe PhotoShop
5. Autodesk AutoCAD
6. Adobe DreamWeaver
7. Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator
8. Roxio Toast Titanium
9. Ipswitch WS_FTP
10. Nero Ultra Edition

2007 Software Titles Most Frequently Pirated on the Internet

1. McAfee VirusScan
2. Symantec Norton Anti-Virus
3. McAfee Internet Security Suite
4. Intuit TurboTax
5. Adobe Photoshop
6. Adobe Acrobat
7. Intuit Quicken Home and Business
8. Symantec Norton pcAnywhere
9. Symantec Norton Ghost
10. Adobe Creative Suite

The trade association for the software and digital content industry said it received 427 reports claiming corporate end-user piracy and 17% of the tips were “judged sufficiently reliable to pursue.” The SIIA said that most of the pirated software consisted of productivity tools, including word processing, office suites, report design, and Web design.

In the report, SIIA touted its corporate software piracy case against Florida Benchmark, which cooperated with SIIA, conducted an audit, found it used unlicensed software, and settled with SIIA for $150,000. And, under its Auction Litigation Program, SIIA scored a $250,000 settlement forSymantec (NSDQ: SYMC) software in Symantec, et al. v. Chan, et al.

Also last year, SIIA expanded public education and outreach through new campaigns like: “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even,” which encourages consumers duped into buying counterfeit software to provide tips in exchange for cash. The industry group also published three new Software Buyer’s Guides on how to spot and avoid illegal software on auction sites.

The initial LEGO Automatic Binding Brick was introduced in 1949, but the current LEGO stud-and-tube coupling system was not patented until 1958. The new coupling principle makes models much more stable and since then LEGO has produced an impressive 400 billion bricks.

One of my personal favourites is the yellow castle I got for Christmas 1978. The really cool thing about it is that it’s all made of small parts which made it possible to rebuild it into almost anything.

Also the LEGO Space, Train and Technic series kept me busy when growing up. Visit Brickfactory and browse through all the old products, sure brings back some good memories…

Fun LEGO facts [Source]

• More than 400 million children and adults will play with LEGO bricks this year
• LEGO products are on sale in more than 130 countries
• If you built a column of about 40,000,000,000 LEGO bricks, it would reach the moon
• Approx. seven LEGO sets are sold each second
• Approx. 19 billion LEGO elements are made every year in Billund – equivalent to approx. 2m elements an hour or 36,000 a minute.
• If all LEGO sets sold in a year were stacked on top of each other, they would fill a football field to a height of 77.8 m
• Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times round the world
• On average there are 62 LEGO bricks for every person on earth
• Since BIONICLE figures first appeared in 2001, more than 150 million BIONICLE “beings” have been born.
• That’s more than the population of France and Britain put together
• The eight robots and 15 automatic cranes that work in the LEGO warehouse in Billund can shift 660 crates of bricks in and out every hour
• The world’s children spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks
• With a production of about 306 million tyres a year, the LEGO Group is the world’s largest tyre manufacturer
• In the manufacture of LEGO bricks the machine tolerance is as small as 0.002 mm
• The LEGO Club has 2.4m members worldwide
• Approx. 400 billion LEGO elements have been manufactured since 1949

The complete time line can be seen at LEGO.com, and is also visualized at gizmodo.com (US version). Even though they’ve struggled for a few years it looks like LEGO is back to stay. I wish them the best of luck in the future.

Feel free to mention one or two of your favourites below

The way you do partnerships here, everyone’s a block away or 20 minutes away in Palo Alto. If I need to set up a partnership with [micro-blogging service] Twitter, I call them, we have coffee, and two hours later the deal is done. If I were in France, there’s a nine-hour time difference and it’s like you don’t matter.

Included in the post are his ten rules for start-up success. Reprinted below:

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognise a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

These “rules” may not fit any business profile, but they do make sense and could very well serve as guidelines for anyone. Feel free to add to these rules or share your success story!