I couldn’t resist sharing this video that my friend sent me earlier today.

Ryan Baebler at NextBillion wrote a great article worth reading — The Difference Between Entrepreneurship and a Lack Thereof in Rural South Africa.

I admit it 100% — I still don’t understand Twitter. However, with another round of funding in the works, it’s apparent many people do.

I just watched a screening of “The Price of Sugar” with a couple of friends. It was eye opening to say the least — especially since the documentary details the sugar industry in the Dominican Republic, a country I visited back in November and where my best friend from high school is currently working.

The treatment Haitian workers have experienced (and still are in many places) in the Dominican Republic is nothing short of criminal. Here’s one article from 2005 in the New York Times. Luring starving Haitians into the DR with the hope of a better life only to lock them in batteys under armed guard is horrific. Yet it continues to happen. If that’s not bad enough — on their way to the batteys where they are forced to cut sugarcane for 90 cents a day, Haitians are stripped of their papers when being smuggled by the Vicini family (who owns the sugar plantations) across the border, so they risk arrest if attempting to travel. Fortunately, Father Christopher Hartley has done outstanding work uniting some of the plantation workers amidst fierce opposition. Without him, the severity of the situation would certainly be a lot worse. If you want to learn more, you can head over to the Price of Sugar website.

If you do nothing else, realize that the sugar in your coffee in the morning is not without a cost — Haitians are slaving away in an almost hopeless environment to power the sugar industry in the Dominican Republic. Much of the sugarcane harvested is then imported into the United States for processing.

It think it goes without saying — but if you get the chance, I’d highly recommend seeing the documentary.

Michael Jordan is the greatest player in NBA history in my opinion, which is exactly why this commercial is so powerful. The commercial walks you through some of the mis perceptions about reaching greatness from Jordan’s perspective and relays the message that hard work and dedication are the core drivers. Reaching Jordan’s level on the court doesn’t just HAPPEN from raw athletic talent like some people think — he accomplished what he did by working harder (both mentally and physically) than others. I saw this commercial numerous times this weekend while watching the NBA Play-offs, so reaching young kids with the message of “If you work hard, you can achieve anything” is definitely a goal of the ad campaign.

via World Changing

Before heading off to Orange County tomorrow, I wanted to say congrats to the team over at PluggedIn for launching their website! Their CEO Jeff Somers is a former director at Zillow.com and, believe it or not, was actually the person who hired me in late 2005. Best of luck to them as they take on the very crowded & competitive online music industry!

Brier Dudley at the Seattle Times has more details on his blog.

I was just riding home on the bus tonight and overheard two twenty-something year olds talking about work tomorrow. One of them said something along the lines of “I have to get there at 8 and make sure I stay for the full eight hours.” By the tone of his voice, I could tell he hated his job.

Don’t get me wrong, work-life balance is important and you shouldn’t work 100 hours a week, but I’m thankful that rather than thinking “how many hours do I have to work tomorrow?” I’m thinking about “what cool new products we are working on (like Zillow Mortgage Marketplace) and what strategic partners we should be focusing on.” When you enjoy your job, work doesn’t seem so much like…well, work.

I just read a post by Charlie about the free cable he was getting from his cable company, which I found interesting. You can check it out here — The Reign of Free Cable in My House Comes to an End… Should I just stop watching TV?

Of course, what blogger doesn’t have opinions about topics other bloggers write about? So, here’s the piece of the post I wanted to comment on —

Was it unfair that I was getting the free cable? Illegal, perhaps, but to be honest, I hardly watch any TV at all. I’m never home. I don’t care about half the stations. If I could just get ESPN, SportsNet New York, Comedy Central and SpikeTV, I think I’d be all set, but you can’t buy that way. The cable company forces these bundles of crap on me. Even if I just wanted basic, it would cost me $57 a month. TV should not cost more than the internet. I get way more value out of the internet than I do out of TV. If I watch 10 hours of television a month, that’s a lot for me.

So what should I do now? I need to get my Met games… and ESPN, maybe a bit of Comedy Central. I can’t even go all internet, because MLB.tv doesn’t allow me to watch local games… Only my cable provider can get me access to local games… web video from local teams is blacked out.

I don’t pay for cable television — partly because I don’t watch that much tv, but mainly due to their flawed payment model. The cable company should let me pay for what I want to watch — the discovery channel, CNN, ESPN, Fox Sports Northwest, the History Channel — and not the other couple dozen stations that are of no interest to me.

I was stupid enough to pay the$120 for the MLB.tv without checking the fine print. I knew there were blackout restrictions, but had no idea it applied to away games as well. So, I can pretty much never watch the Mariners on MLB.com (but hey, at least I can listen to audio). Sweet, $120 down the drain — I’ll be sure not to do that next year.

With that said, I’ll end with this — CNN, ESPN, History Channel, and Discovery should stream their television programming live online and MLB.com should fix their damn blackout rules so I can actually watch the team (Mariners) I want to watch. Then there would be absolutely no need for cable (at least for me).

Seriously, if you have any interest in internet startups, the web 2.0 landscape, or the VC industry, Fred Wilson’s latest post is a must-read. Hands down, it’s the best blog post I’ve read in months.

Watching all these machinations between Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, AOL, News Corp/MySpace, and their ilk makes me sick. They are playing around with Internet assets like they are toys. And meanwhile the services we have come to rely on like Flickr, AIM, Delicious, Yahoo Groups, FeedBurner, etc are an afterthought.

The topic, the de-portalization of the web,  is certainly a fascinating one given the online landscape recently. There’s currently 133 comments, so get ready to get immersed in the discussion —- We Need A New Path To Liquidity. And, oh yeah, if you want to read even more commentary, head over to Techmeme.

Well done Fred!

I think I have a pretty good sense of what I want to accomplish in life, but my question is this –

Do I need to be setting specific short term goals to accomplish my goals?

Of course I could be wrong, but at this point in my life, my personal philosophy is that setting short term goals is not a “hard” requirement to achieving my goals. Sure, I do set short term goals from time to time (both in life and work), but I think the big picture is much more important overall. If I know where I want to get to and what I want to achieve, I can’t help but have a huge amount of confidence I’ll figure out how to get there.

So, do you think Michael Jordan had specific goals for each game — or do you think he just had the long-term goal of winning championships and being considered the greatest NBA player in history? Did Barry Bonds have a goal of hitting a home run every 3 games (or whatever the specific stat is) throughout his career to pass Hank Aaron?

Of course, I don’t know Michael Jordan or Barry Bonds, so I don’t have the answer to those questions. But if you do know them, or at least have a theory you want to share about the best way to achieve your goals, feel free to leave a comment.

Tonight, Zillow officially launched the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace!

I’ve been at Zillow for over 2 years, and this defintitely is the release I’ve been most excited for since Zestimates launched in February of 2006. When talking about this product with close friends and family (I know, I spilled the beans to a few people early), the general reaction was a mixture of “holy cow, this is going to work” and “WOW”. Both my step-dad and dad have filled out a loan request in the last year, and both have been hounded repeatedly with phone calls and e-mails from mortgage brokers wanting to sell them a loan. I’m not blaming mortgage lenders for wanting a return on the $60 (or whatever the $$ value is) they paid for the lead, but that doesn’t mean its a consumer friendly process. Zillow is putting the power back in the hands of the consumer during the mortgage request process, which I think is long overdue. I’ll spare the details about how the product works — you can read Rich’s overview at Zillow Blog or go check out the actual Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. Remember, if you know anyone currently looking for a loan, please tell them about Zillow’s mortgage offering!

I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to track everything, but here’s a list of coverage for Zillow Mortgage Marketplace:

• Spencer Rascoff — yes, he’s my boss’ boss and it might be considered cheating since he knew about it ahead of time — takes the nod for the 1st blog coverage.
• Todd Carpenter writes “Zillow Mortgage Marketplace launches. What it means to consumers and loan originators.”
• Mark Hendrickson at TechCrunch wrote “Zillow Disrupts Lending Market With Mortgage Marketplace.”
• The OC Register’s Matt Padilla posts “Zillow takes on mortgage industry.”
• Rhonda Porter posts “Zillow Launches On-Line Mortgage Rate Quotes” at Rain City Guide.
• Greg Swann writes “Zillow.com takes advertising demographics to never-before-seen places” and “Zillow.com’s long-awaited mortgage lending service offers anonymous customized loan quotes to consumers, affording loan originators the opportunity to compete transparently for free mortgage leads.”
• John Cook at the Seattlepi writes “Zillow unveils new mortgage marketplace.”
• Elinor Mills at CNET reports “Zillow Launches’Mortgage Marketplace’.”
• The Daily News Tribune writes “Real estate Web site Zillow launches mortgage site.”
• Joel Burslem at FOREM posts “Questions About New Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.”
• Kevin Boer over at 3Oceans posts “Irony Of Ironies: The Mechanical Turk Behind The “Zestimate of Mortgages” Turns Out To Be Not An Algorithm … But A Real Live Mortgage Person!“
• Jay Thompson posts “Zillow.com Releases Mortgage Marketplace.“

Update 4/3:

• Modelry presents “Zillow Mortgage MarketPlace Launches: LendingTree in Reverse, For Free“
• Trace Richardson writes “11.5 Reasons Why the Zillow Mortgage MarketPlace Will Not Work in its Current Form and Will Likely Move to Exclude Most Lenders in the Future.”
• Morgan Brown at Blown Mortgage posts “Zillow Mortgage Launches – How do you rate?“
• The USA Today reports “Zillow launches mortgage marketplace site.”
• Peter Viles at the LA Times writes “Zillow enters mortgage marketplace.”
• Kristin Nicole at Mashable posts “Zillow Marketplace Makes Home Loans More Transparent.“
• Dustin Luther posts “Zillow took the fun out of mortgages.”
• Greg Sterling writes “Real Estate Search Engine Zillow Opens “Mortgage Marketplace”” and “Zillow Creates Free Lead-Gen for Lenders.”
• David Rodnitzky posts “Zillow Enters The Lead Gen Fray for Mortgages.”
• Owen Raun writes “Zillow Mortgage Option – our first few hours.”
• Saul Hansell at the NYTimes posts “Zillow and the Idealism of Engineers Going Shopping.“
• Joseph Ferrara posts “Zillow Mortgage Marketplace is Lead Generator for Mortgage Lenders“
• Pat Kitano writes “Zillow Mortgages is essentially a free open marketplace.”