Several months ago, I wrote my initial "shorts and longs" blog entry covering a few things I'd bet against (shorts) and a few things I like (longs). Here's a new entry in the longs column: the US economy relative to the rest of the world. There has been a lot of talk about the US losing its leadership position to China and/or India over the next few decades. I think it's going to take a lot

The Wall Street Journal's reporting that Facebook's in acquisition talks with Yahoo! This isn't the first time there's been such speculation.

The WSJ repeats a familiar line when describing Facebook in its subhead: "Youthful Audience Is Fickle." The article goes on to say "As the Internet has sped up the life cycle of success and failure, it is possible some of these sites will flame out as their young devotees flock to the next thing."

Margaret Atwood has been quoted as saying "wanting to meet a writer because you like their books is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté." If her advice applies to podcasters, and if you want to do something unwise, then I thought I might share my upcoming speaking schedule for the next month with you:

• 9/19/06 Greater New York Alumni Career Panel & Networking Event: “Getting From There to Here”
  
• 9/30/06 Podcast & Portable Media Expo
  
• 10/11/06 Hofstra School of Communication: "Entrepreneur Journalism and Podcasting"

In July 2005, Ev Williams broke the news on our show that he closed a round of venture capital for his podcasting business ODEO. This was a very different style of business building than he had with his first startup, Blogger, that was bootstrapped and understaffed. Recently in a speech that was summarized by GigaOM's Liz Gannes, Ev issues a mea culpa and "went through a tidy list of the top five Odeo screw-ups."

One of the most frequent compliments we get about Venture Voice is that we let the guests speak for most of the time by asking concise and focused questions. So in essence I’m being patted on the back for shutting up. Some would take that as a blessing, but because I do enjoy talking it’s nice to have a pulpit now and then. Eric Schwartzman provided me that opportunity by interviewing me for On the Record... Online.