I also posted this over at myKRO.org.

[via ONE.org]

Yup, you read that right — the number of millionaries worldwide surpassed the 10 million mark. And that’s WITHOUT home values factored into the equation.

Update 6/25:  Just imagine what the number would be if it included home values. For instance, real estate assets such as Trump’s Palm Beach Mansion are a considerable piece of many people’s portfolios.

I HIGHLY suggest you read both of the following posts (and the comments) –

• A Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution – Umair Haque
• Am I Bored With “Web 2.0”? – Fred Wilson

FriendRank is certainly an interesting concept, but I’m not sold. At least for me, seeing an ad with my friend’s face on it would NOT make me more likely to click on the ad.

I hope Hillary is because I’m thinking this is a tough sell.

I’ll be the 1st to say I think it’s a stupid idea for the government to give everyone $600. The US is over 9 trillion of dollars in debt, which comes out to roughly 30k per person in the US. And then we decide to add another $600 per person to that debt? This financial strategy doesn’t make sense to me — shouldn’t we be focusing on paying down our debt rather than expanding it? To me, it’s pretty damn clear that the stimulus checks are a band-aid and will not solve any long-term problems with the economy, so why do it?

Though I clearly disagree with the stimulus payments, what is done is done and I got my check in the mail this past week. That said, how am I using my $600? Sure, I could go buy some new clothes or a new iPhone. Or I could put it toward either my car loan or student loan. But what I actually did was put the money to good use and donate it all to people who really need the money — via Kiva.org. Helping others less fortunate than myself realize their dreams just seemed like the right thing to do with free money from the government.

Though I’m more of a cat person, my friend brought THIS to my attention and I thought the picture was too cute to not post.

Damn — the Lakers pulled it off tonight.

Yes, Paul Pierce, KG, and Ray are unbelievable players, but I really have to wonder where the Celtics would be without James Posey? That guy is unbelievable. His box score numbers don’t stand out, but the guy plays amazing defense and is always in the right position for a critical rebound, charge, or deflection.

Looking forward to Game 6 on Tuesday at the Garden!

Celtics 97. Lakers 91. The NBA Finals doesn’t get much better than tonight’s Lakers-Celtics game.

Now you can let your boss know what you really think — seriously!! Glassdoor.com launched into Beta tonight. What is it you may ask?

Glassdoor.com is a career and workplace community where anyone can find and anonymously share real-time reviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs for specific employers — all for free.

I’ll leave the majority of the commentary for those who have already covered the launch:

• Stealth Startup Glassdoor.com Launches: Employment Conditions
• Glassdoor: Let your boss (and the world) know what you really think
• Looking for a big salary? See what this start-up has to say
• Glassdoor.com:TripAdvisor for the Workplace
• At Glassdoor, Find Out How Much People Really Make At Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, And Everywhere Else.

I will say this — personally, I think it’s really cool that employees can anonymously leave reviews and salary information about their company and, in turn, see that information about other companies. If the company gains traction (and I hope it does), transparency will be brought into an area of business that doesn’t see much of it currently; compensation. The “rate the CEO” feature is pretty compelling as well. I haven’t left a review for Zillow yet, but will do so at some point in the near future.

Zillow’s CEO, Rich Barton, is Chairman of the Board. As a longtime entrepreneur and part-time venture capitalist for Benchmark Capitol, Rich has been involved in multiple companies via board seats and investments throughout his career, so this is nothing new for him. For the sake of full disclosure, note Zillow is my employer and Rich is the boss of my boss’ boss (not sure if the grammar is right on that sentence).

I agree with Tim Kurkjian — Griffey was unbelievable in his prime.

I think this is smart move by Facebook.

You might have seen this post where I alluded to the fact that I’ve had a crappy experience with MLB.com. Over a month later, I have STILL not been able to watch a single baseball game on MLB.com. I just tried to turn on the Mets-Giants game a couple minutes ago, but no luck — blackout message again. Here is the text of the page that pops up saying that the game is blacked out:

Based on the information that you have provided, you are blocked from watching the game you selected. Please consult our FAQs for complete blackout restriction information.Note: If you are traveling and are accessing the Internet connection through your company’s VPN connection, you might be getting a blackout message because your company’s host IP Address is within the restricted range for the game that you are trying to access. In this case you can simply log off your company’s VPN connection and access the Internet through a local connection.If you believe that you have received this failure message in error, please include the necessary information listed below in an e-mail to Customer Service at blackouts@website.mlb.com:1) IP Address (your IP Address will be automatically rendered when you log-on to www.whatismyip.com);
2) e-mail address associated with your account;
3) Team name you have been blocked from watching; and
4) The street address and ZIP code from which you are attempting to watch the game.
We will look into this query within 48 hours and if you have been mistakenly blacked out, your account will be updated.

Reminder: you can always listen LIVE to the game that you selected (no blackout restrictions apply). For a full listing of games Click here

I sent an e-mail to the e-mail address listed on that page a couple months ago, but have yet to receive a reply. It may just be me, but when I pay $120 for a service, I at least expect a reply to a billing inquiry. I can understand if there is a valid reason behind this — MLB.com just needs to explain it to me.

If you’re curious, below is the text of the e-mail I sent:

To whom it may concern:

I don’t have cable television, so watching the my home team mariners on tv is not an option — hence the reason I wanted to sign up for MLB.tv. However, I have yet to be able to watch a game when I’ve tried. I keep getting the blackout message and occasionally a site outage message, so here are my details.

1) [my ip address]
2) [my e-mail address]
3) Mariners (and many other games). At 7 pm pacific time, I just tried the yankees game, the yankees-cleveland game, houston-arizona, and the oak-laa game — none of them worked for me.
4) [my address]

Is there any way I can just get a refund, or switch to the audio-only subscription and get credited for the difference? I knew there were blackout rules, but I was under the assumption I would at least be able to watch away games of my hometeam (mariners) and games of other teams playing while the mariners were on tv. With the current restrictions, I’d maybe be able to watch a couple games this year.

Regards,

Drew Meyers

I was absolutely thrilled tonight when I opened up CNN to find out that Barack Obama is the Democratic Nominee for the Presidential Election.

Congratulation Barack!