Sean's Blog

Techcrunch and Interstitials

I've been introduced twice today to the new interstitials from Techcrunch - once this morning while trying to go through a link on Twitter and the other when I opened my browser and brought up my favourite sites.  Both times the interstitial didn't function properly.  The first one with Twitter didn't take me to the link I clicked on, it dumped me on the homepage.  The second one just sat there showing me the interstitial - clicking on "Skip this Ad" or waiting didn't matter, after about 45 seconds, I ditched Techcrunch and came here to write this rant.

I hate interstitials on the web.  I think it is nothing more than spam and clickjacking.  Even more than that, when a blog like Techcrunch posts EVERY link on Twitter directly and then hijacks my session to an advertisement, that's just complete abuse.  I think that's unethical and something perhaps even Twitter should look on cracking down on - you posted a link to take me somewhere to show me something, don't interrupt it with an Ad!  That's just spam as far as I'm concerned.

Interstitials are a fancy name for commercials.  They divert you away from the content you intended to view and show you something you didn't want to see in an effort to make you buy something.  I hate them on TV, I hate them before movies and I hate them even more on the web.

Interestingly, there's been a debate recently between Jason Calcanais (@jason) and Comscore about making sites pay for an accurate reflection of their traffic.  Without going into the detail, the thing that is related about these two issues is that what sites like Techcrunch and Mahalo have in common is that they absolutely are fully dependent on our "attention".  I go to your site, I "lend you" my attention in exchange for content I'm interested in and if you choose to put some ads around the side of that content, then so be it.  My "attention" and everyone who visits these sites are chopped up and ranked and called a million different things like CPMs or impressions or whatever, but at the end of the day, the "score" is a reflection of the attention paid by individuals to the content presented.  The most important part of this is, the content on its own has no value, the value is the amount of attention paid to the content!  You can write the best blog posts in the world, but if nobody clicks on them, you won't get advertising dollars for it.

I'm by no means some kind of uber-genius who's just come up with this, people like Steve Gillmor have been talking about the "attention economy" for the last five years.  And I mention Steve Gillmor specifically because of his association with Michael Arrington (who runs Techcrunch) and their relationship via the Gillmor Gang.  I would have thought that Arrington would have picked up a few lessons and ideas about the value of attention and ways not to lose it before making a decision on these commercials that have been stuck up on Techcrunch.

Look at TV.  DVRs are massively popular because they allow people to do a couple of simple things: one, record the content so they can watch it when they want; and two, fast forward through commercials.  Some people will talk about digital programming guides and stuff like that, nonsense, those two things are the killer features of DVR.  Traditional newspapers are suffering along similar lines, I can get the content when I want it without the overhead of a whole newspaper.  It boils down to the same thing: my attention is valuable to me and my time is precious, I will reward you with my attention if you make it easy and convenient for me to view content that I'm interested in.  

I find these interstitials/commercials to be a perversion.  It is like paying an attention toll just for the chance to view the content - it is an attention "paywall".  If I don't like the content, I've paid you for it largely in advance whereas if I am on your page and there isn't anything I'm interested I leave and my time on your site is diminished.  I guess the only way now to protect my "asset" in this relationship is for me not to go to Techcrunch as a primary source of information, but as a last resort.

In my "Morning Coffee" extension of Firefox, the first page up was Techcrunch - it got my attention first.  Sites like Mashable, RWW and GigaOm were always towards the end of the tabs, because I felt I was getting my fair share of tech news from Techcrunch.  There are only so many stories about Foursquare and Gowalla a person needs to read. Similarly, if something from Techcrunch popped up along with a similar story on Mashable and RWW, I'd always click the Techcrunch link.  After my experience this morning of having this stupid commercial popup and then waste more of my time to navigate to the story I wanted, I'm going to rethink that strategy - I had to pay money for that, my 3G isn't free for my iPhone.  Ultimately, I'll just have to re-organise my "Morning Coffee" tabs and change how I use Twitter so that people who value my attention more, get more of it.

Leafs Are Embarrassing

Living in Australia, it is hard to be an NHL fan.  Regular TV coverage on Foxtel is terrible, but thankfully Gamcenter from the NHL has made it very easy to watch every game live.  I am taking this opportunity to introduce my six year old to the Leafs and more importantly hockey in general.  Unforunately, he was subjected to Florida Panthers trap on the weekend.

The little fella did really well, he sat through two full periods.  As the Leafs/Panthers were a few minutes in front of the Habs/Rangers game, it let me flip back and also introduce him to Don Cherry and in the second intermission the Hot Stove.  He took it all in, pretty much sat still the entire time and is gaining a better understanding of the finer details of the game, like offsides and icing - things the PA Announcer in hockey mad Miami has to tell the crows about.  

Then a moment of sheer brilliance happened - mid-way through the second period he said to me, "Why are Florida all standing around in the middle?"  Even to a six year old with almost no understanding of the game he could spot the trap and what a nightmare it is.  I tried explaining the defensive strategy behind it and his response was simple, "Florida look slow."

Which turns us over to the Leafs.  They used their team speed to get around the trap fairly effectively.  They used their team speed to create plenty of time on the puck in the offensive zone.  They didn't use either of those things to create good scoring chances.  To me, it all boils down to their unwillingness to drive to the goal and contentment to fire shots from the perimeter with nobody screening the goalie or available to pick up rebounds.  Their best moment of the game came when Colton Orr moved to the slot, took a shot and Jeff Finger broke to the goal and bounced the rebound off the post.

The biggest area of embarrassment for the Leafs though has to be specialty teams.  The umbrella shooting is ridiculous because nobody is creating traffic in front of the goalie and Tomas Kaberle must be paying for his own sticks because he appears fearful of shooting and breaking one.  The Leafs consistently passed themselves into lower percentage shooting spots on their powerplay.  Even Bill Lindsay doing colour commentary for the Panthers asked why they were making low percentage cross ice passes instead of firing it from the point and using their numbers advantage down low.  Phil Kessel is more or less useless out on the hashmarks - he's never going to score from out there.  They've got to get back to basics - two point men staying out high to spread the defenders, one man screening the goalie and two wingers buzzing in and out as appropriate to try and pull a penalty killer out of position to create a higher pecentage shot.  This is coaching - draw it on the whiteboard before practice and spend fifteen minutes working on it and it will improve.

Moving on to the penalty kill and again, Lindsay nailed it - the Leafs may end up being the worst penalty killing team in the history of the NHL since they began keeping these type of statistics.  Again it is coaching.  Blind Freddy can see that the Leafs forwards are playing too deep - they are giving up plenty of point shots and goals are coming off either the players running round or rebounds.  Cory Stillman's goal was the classic example, the point shot was easy as the player had nobody on him, three Leafs were inside the hashmarks and not one took the man standing at the top of the crease who tapped in a shot that banked off the end boards.  Simple stuff, make the powerplay team play outside the box and take low percentage shots OR force them into risky passes  across the ice to find the open man.

I think part of the problem is the Leafs terrible powerplay must practice against their terrible penalty kill.  They seem to be just getting worse and worse.  Ron Wilson MUST get involved and sort this out - just go back to basics, do the easy stuff right before focussing on the complex.

Which leads us to personnel.  I can honestly say, I've never seen a player out of position as much as Francois Beauchamin was against Florida, and for that matter, just about every time I watch the Leafs.  He pinches at the wrong time, he wanders around aimlessly in his own end and he's prone to stupid passes up the middle.  He is proof positive that Scott Neidermeyer is a Hall of Famer - anyone who can make Beauchamin look that good deserves a spot in the Hall.  

Here's a stunning thought - Komisarek and Kaberle are the two best defensemen on the Leafs.  The way Luke Schenn has played the last couple of games, he seems to have gotten the simplicity back in his game and is looking good, so he's number three for me.  That means that at best Beauchamin is your number four and over the course of the year, Ian White has been arguably the best defenseman on the club, so does that not put him ahead on the depth chart meaning Beauchamin is the fifth best defenseman on the third worst team in the league.  Oh dear, Brian Burke - not good at all.

Speaking of Ian White, he was terrible against Florida and teaming him with Luke Schenn is a disaster for the young Schenn.  Ian White gave the puck away on bad passes out of his own end at least a half dozen times.  Then because of his smaller stature, he's unable to physically make up for his mistake by rubbing someone out.  On more than one occasion Schenn had to recover the situation for White, but with a young guy like that, struggling for confidence, making him do extra is a bad recipe.  I've watched White the last few games and his play has been average.

One thing that surprises me is how ordinary many of these Leaf pending free agents have played.  Ponikarovsky just doesn't go to the net like a big man should.  When he does, he tends to score, but watch him in front of goal, he never screens properly, he stays slightly off to the side so that he doesn't get hit with a shot.  Goalies on streaks like Vokoun is in right now eat that up.  There's talk the Leafs will move Stajan and Ponikarovsky pre-deadline, I'd move Ian White too, I think long term he's more of a question than an answer.  I'd re-sign Gustavsson because he's shown glimpses, although his lateral movement on the second goal was brutal, he had two chances to move sideways before the shot came and didn't get over fast enough, but on the three on one he stoned them - he's worth another season with a seasoned backup behind him who could step in if he fails.

Overall, my six year old is getting the same treatment from the Leafs that I got as a kid in the 80's.  The team was so awful that any sign of hope, no matter how small, made the day a bit brighter.  Hopefully the next game he watches doesn't involve Florida and their horrible trap.

Controlling Google

One thing that is seemingly being lost in this whole Google vs China debate is the essence of what the Chinese were trying to breach.  it has been widely known now for sometime that Google is a massive information hoarder - in fact, I don't think any government body anywhere in the world really knows just how much information Google is keeping about its citizens.  We now have a situation where the Chinese have tried to infiltrate the honeypot and have seemingly had some success.

Google immediately went on the offensive and threatened to pull out of China, but now most accounts are saying that they are looking to just pull their underperforming search page, while maintaining their profitable international sales and technology groups in China.  So effectively they're now looking at closing their loser search portal, but keeping their profitable business - way to be tough Google!  I hope the Chinese revoke your right to trade there and give you the full on punt.

Much of the "social medial" tripped over itself to applaud Google for having the courage to take on China and while they did allow themselves to be censored, it was never too late to do the right thing, seemed to be the sentiment.  In amongst all of the fawning, I haven't read one single piece where someone has questioned whether or not Google should be allowed to hoard all of that data.  They created a massive target of private information about us users, they refuse to tell us exactly what it is they collect and the descriptions of how it is used is vague at best and insulting at worst - "We use it to provide our customers with a better experience".

I say that the US and European governments should now step in and demand to understand EXACTLY what it is Google tracks, what it does or doesn't do with it and an elected group somewhere needs to put some rules in place to protect people from Google.  They have been breached by a foreign government and people's private information has been stolen.  If this kind of widescale espionage had happened to the US or UK governments there would be considerable gnashing of teeth and public inquiries.  The media would be all over them, demanding resignations.  Now it is a company who aren't elected by anyone, have almost no transparency when it comes to this issue and the "social media" at the very least are rallying behind the company for being such freedom advocates.

There has been ALOT of barbs from people like Jeff Jarvis towards the traditional media about how they've lost their edge and are dying.  Well when do one of these new, Online Media Moguls step up and call Google out about this issue.

What would Google do if they were breached by a foreign government and private citizen information of users was stolen?  We now have the answer - make statements filled with bluster and rhetoric to distract from the real issue and then when the dust settles look for a compromise solution that keeps the ad revenue flowing in, allows them to save face by taking down their search page and run for the moral high ground before anyone realises they've been duped.

Making Hockey Safe

I watched Patrice Cormier's hit on Mikael Tam - sickening is the only word I can use to describe it.  That was a vicious elbow that would make Gordie Howe wince.  That kind of thing must be removed from the game, full stop and Cormier, needs to be made an example of.  I don't think the Q suspending him for the remainder of the year and the playoffs is too harsh at all - I think that's fair.

I think people in the hockey establishment need to look at a few aspects of the game and maybe make some changes to start protecting the overall health of the players:

1. Four on Four - I know it is a big change, but the players are getting so much bigger at the professional level and the NHL refused to move to Olympic size ice fifteen years ago before all the new arenas started popping up, so now few players on the ice is the only way to create more room.  Also, it creates a more entertaining form of the game, less obstruction, more skill.  Change like this is scary, but it needs to happen!
2. Equipment - Shoulder pads and elbow pads are now out of control.  Some players in the NHL look like NFL linebackers their shoulder pads are so big.  More importantly is the materials these things are made out of - space age plastics and foams that have nearly the density of steel without the weight.  I also am not aware of any specific safety advantage that those monster shoulder pads have.  Same with elbow pads, they are huge pieces of foam and plastic fastened with super velcro.  I think they can certainly diminish in size with little impact on player safety.
3. Government Regulation - I don't mean government's making laws about headshots.  I think the Canadian government really needs to give the CSA a mandate to rigourously test all helmets, shoulder pads and elbow pads on the market today.  With helmets, they need to work out if the current designs are protecting players from concussion and maybe the government should fund some research with a few leading universities around the country to potentially come up with a better industrial design for helmets.  Look at everything, materials, design, usability, etc.  With elbow pads and shoulder pads, they should be compared to models from the 80's and work out what, if any the safety advantages are in the newer equipment versus some of the potential dangers.

I'm not against hitting or anything like that.  I think the recent hit Ryan Wilson of Colorado put on Patrik Elias of the Devils was totally clean.  Elias came through the neutral zone at speed and the WHOLE TIME if you look closely he had his head down.  Then as he comes towards the blue line he looks up and it is far too late - he doesn't take a peek up until he's dumped the puck.  Sorry folks, teach your kids to skate with their heads up.

Personally, I'm not hopeful that any of these changes will happen.  I think the biggest opposition would come from equipment manufacturers and strangely, the NHLPA.  The NHLPA would lose membership because in a four on four league, you could reduce the number of players required.  I believe this would get rid of the Colton Orr's and the Derek Boogaard's of the NHL - I'm not saying it would eliminate fighting, but you couldn't carry those kind of players in a faster, more skilled league with a smaller bench.

I think that being the case, the people who should drive it are the three men I reckon are the most powerful people in the game: Bob Nicholson, David Branch and John Gardner.  Nicholson, through Hockey Canada could revolutionise coaching standards that put an emphasis on 4-on-4 player tactically and really focus on player safety.  David Branch could work with the WHL, OHL and QMJHL to move to 4-on-4 straight away and change the NHL's main feeder system.  John Gardner controls the largest minor hockey organisation in the world, an organisation with a $3.5m running cost that gets ZERO government funding, yet for the past 30 years under Gardner's leadership, the GTHL (formerly MTHL) has thrived and grown to develop some of the best players in the world - Rick Nash, Jason Spezza, John Tavares, Sam Gagne, Andrew Cogliano, etc.  If Gardner could find a way to turn the GTHL into a safer, 4-on-4 league, then it would be a fait accomplis that hockey would change.

I believe this revolution in safety must come from below and not from on high.  The NHL doesn't care about the several hundred thousand kids playing the game in small parts of Canada.  Those kids will see on TV and YouTube some of the outlandish cheap shots to the head that have become part of today's game and think that's ok.  Then thousands of those kids will be concussed each year.  That's a price too high to pay so that Easton can sell "cool" shoulder pads and the NHLPA can keep the worst 10% of its players around.

Pull the Trigger!

CU2M2J4XPM9Z

Ok, Brian Burke - time to step up and pull the trigger.  Ron Wilson's tenure in Toronto most certainly has to be finished now.  Losing to Buffalo 3-2 was bad - made worse by the fact that all three Buffalo goals were on the powerplay further emphasising Wilson's inability to put out an effective unit of penalty killers.  I'm trying not to harp on it, but the Leafs players aren't THAT bad!  They are a bottom six or seven team, but they aren't an expansion team - no team should be so miserable on the penalty kill based on a lack of skill.  It is purely mental now and the coach can't fix it.  It is costing games regularly.  Wilson absolutely must go now - if the Leafs continue to bumble along until after the Olympics and THEN Burke fires Wilson, I would be the first to vote for firing Burke next.  He would simply have not been firing Wilson to allow him to save face running the US Olympic team.

Burke is in all sorts of strife in my books.  If the Leafs finish bottom five and somehow come out with the #1 pick and that goes to Boston, Burke is done.  You would absolutely have to fire him.  Taylor Hall, another first rounder and a second rounder for Phil Kessel is getting fleeced.  I like Kessel and I think he'll be an all-star one day (on merit, not just because each team needs a rep), but Taylor Hall AND two more picks would be a bad deal.

Burke either needs to punt Wilson now and get a new bench staff or bring in some troops to help them out.  Why not bring a guy like Dominic Moore back - he'd cost nothing to acquire I'd bet and he can penalty kill.  He might even bring back some scoring touch to Jason Blake.  Bringing in someone with a scoring touch might not hurt - someone like Jonathan Cheechoo who wouldn't cost alot, has scored in the NHL and is willing to go to the net.

Something has got to give.  While it might be impossible in today's NHL with the salary cap to make big trades, it isn't impossible to shake things up by bringing in a new coach.

Calling Out Ron Wilson!

Yesterday I wrote that Ron Wilson needs to be sacked along with his coaching staff because the team isn't progressing.  I think that's a fair call.  Today I read that Wilson has gone on the practice ice and bagged out Phil Kessel "within earshot" of the media.  This is the same Ron Wilson who gets grumpy whenever the media questions him, yet he's quite willing to throw his 22 year old star player to the wolves.  Wow!

I accept that Kessel isn't scoring.  I accept that he makes millions of dollars. I accept that he's a professional athlete and criticism and media spotlight are part of the job.

HOWEVER!

He's 22! He's still a young man!  He's still learning who he is.  He's moved to the biggest hockey market in the world and become the biggest star on a rubbish team - that's a considerable amount to deal with for anyone, let alone one so young.

Why didn't Wilson call out the pylons he's playing with?  Come on Matt Stajan, lift your game!  Or how about calling himself out for putting Rickard Wallin (zero goals this season) on his line.  What about calling out his boss, Brian Burke for signing Wallin and not getting a true first line centre to play with Kessel.

Wilson is trying to employ backyard psychology, shaming the young man into focusing and lifting his game.  What if Kessel came out and said, "I'm not playing for the US in the Olympics, I want to be traded from Toronto, Ron Wilson has no class."  I think he'd be well within his rights to do that now.  Why not?  If my boss has something to say to me, I sure hope he doesn't do it in front of my staff or colleagues - let alone tell the news media (who wouldn't care).  If Kessel came out and said he didn't appreciate Wilson's diatribe or his style, Burke would be in a pickle - he'd never get his two first rounders back and he'd either have to fire Wilson (and give into a player) or turn the blow torch on his best young player.

It all comes back to something Don Cherry was criticised heavily for saying, "Ron Wilson is a bully."  Like all bullies, he's also a coward.  Rather than admitting that his terrible coaching has lead to an inept penalty killing unit and he's unable to instill disciplined play in his defencemen, he blames Kessel for not scoring.  When you get your ass handed to you by the Flyers 6-2, Kessel could have been the best player on the ice and they still would have lost.  The problem there is, you gave up six goals!

Burke needs to fire Wilson now before he makes things worse.

Leafs not Progressing

I'm a Brian Burke fan.  I like the kind of teams he chooses to ice - they compete, they are tough, they tend to play an open style of the game that's attractive to watch and they more often than not have a bona fide mean streak to them, a real edge.  This Leafs team is a rabble and more and more, Burke's fingerprints are starting to appear at the scene of the crime.

The loss today against Philly was a good indication of what's wrong.  Undisciplined penalties are not to be confused with a mean streak or an edge.  High sticking a guy is not being tough.  Scott Hartnell beatdown Jeff Finger.  Dan Carcillo mocked them after not being able to engage with Colton Orr, who serves no other purpose than to engage the likes of Carcillo.  Exelby did manage to give it to Carcillo and despite his antics, getting your ass whooped in a fight and running around "like a rock star" is still deflating to your team.  However Exelby is what, the Leafs seventh or eighth defenceman on a pretty below average Leafs team is something and he was a Burke acquisition.

The Leafs do not compete at the drop of the puck - you cannot fall behind 2-0 in 22 games out of 43 and expect to make the playoffs.  I think you can look at the players all you like, but the bottom line is the coaching staff are not getting them properly prepared.  I know it is easy to blame the coach, but let's face it there are a few things in hockey that coaches have some influence over: special teams, goals against (team defence) and mental preparedness.  

The Leafs are 14th in the NHL right now on the power play with 18.8% efficiency.  Strangely enough, they finished the year last year in 16th with, 18.8% efficiency.  No improvement there.

On penalty kill, Toronto are 30th with a woeful 70.5%!  They are nearly 6% behind the 29th ranked team Edmonton!  Boston, who are ranked #1 at 87.5% have been shorthanded more than the Leafs (152 to 149) and have given up less than half the same number of goals (19 to 44).  That's just embarrassing.  It gets worse, Toronto were 30th last year with a 74.7% efficiency rating - so they've gone significantly backwards.

They say your primary penalty killer is your goalie, well let's face it, Jonas Gustavsson looks like he'll be a good one and Toskala is slightly better than he was last year, so really, the Leafs have upgraded their primary penalty killer.  

This leads into goals against. The Leafs were the worst in the NHL last year with a 3.49 GAA.  At this point they are 29th with 3.36 GAA - so there is a slight improvement.  I do think if Gustavsson had not had two heart issues and a groin problem, he'd be the clear starter in Toronto and that GAA would be lower, but only marginally.

Which ultimately brings us back to the causes of the problem, mental preparedness.  I don't think anyone would argue that the Leafs defence corps this year on paper looks alot better than last year's.  Yet, Beauchemin and Komisarik are a bit all over the place.  Luke Schenn seems to have traded in for a new pair of cement skates and blinkers.  Kaberle is doing his thing and Ian White has proven he is an NHL defenceman.  So with Beauchemin and Komisarik the issue is one of two things, Brian Burke signed two guys for top four money who aren't really top four or Ron Wilson and staff can't seem to get the best out of them - again, our old friend mental preparedness.  Luke Schenn is baffling, how did he lose his hockey sense over a summer or get slower?  He needs to go to the Marlies and get some seasoning.  

It all comes down to Brian Burke and he's been around long enough that things should be getting better and they are not.  The penalty kill and the falling behind are in my books down to poor coaching.  Killing penalties is about patience and applying pressure.  They routinely end up running around, getting out of position and leaving open men for tap ins.  You can teach NHLers and Wilson for two years has proven incapable of doing that.

So if your theory is to build a young team you need a coach who can teach - clearly, Wilson isn't doing the job.  He's seemingly taught a lightweight offensive player in Nikolai Kulemin to forecheck and backcheck, but really, that's marginal stuff.  Wilson and Burke are friends, but maybe Burke needs to clear the decks behind the bench, including Keith Acton who's been behind the bench as assistant in all five consecutive years of non-playoff hockey.

If Burke doesn't decide to bring in a coach who can get some consistent effort and have the team competing from the opening faceoff for sixty minutes, then we need to look at his recruitment.  None of the college players he's signed seem good enough at this stage to crack one of the worst line-ups in the NHL.  The leading scorer for the Marlies is tough guy, Andre Deveaux - that's not promising.  Christian Hanson looks like he could be a second line player one day is scoring at almost a point per game, but Tyler Bozak has only 4 goals.  Gustavsson in goal looks like he'll become a #1 in the NHL, so full marks to Burke there, but he's a restricted free-agent next season.  The jury is out on Beauchemin and Komisarik - they are just inconsistent.  Colton Orr is doing exactly what Colton Orr was signed for.  Finally, Phil Kessel is in a slump and after tonight's game, Wilson dumped on him to the press without naming him.  I don't think Kessel is the kind of player who can take that kind of heat in the Toronto media at this point in his career.  If the guy takes it the wrong way and shuts the engines down, those two first round picks are going to look pretty expensive, especially if one ends up being Tyler Hall.  

Personally, I think Burke has to can Wilson and his staff now.  I can go into statistics and everything else, but the truth is, the team isn't improving.  Your stud young defenceman is going backwards.  Your star young forward is slumping, playing on a line with third liners at best and the coach dumps on him publicly - and he's promoted Rickard Wallin (of no goals) to the first line to play with him.  Your veteran defencemen who everyone knows are solid players are playing silly undisciplined hockey.  I don't know who you replace the coaching staff with, but its time for them to go.  Toronto fans shouldn't have to wait until after the Olympics (to avoid making Ron Wilson look bad) for Brian Burke to start improving the hockey club right away!

Bring Back The IPO Market

The US economy is struggling and as someone interested in the technology sector, Silicon Valley has totally lost its mojo in my view.  I think these things are related - Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002.

SarbOx was put in place to stop companies like Tyco, Enron and WorldCom from defrauding investors by overstating their numbers and cooking the books.  SarbOx also put some tough regulations in place for the traditional audit firms who were also very culpable in the disasterous frauds of the early 2000's.  The audit firms were "overlooking" some irregularities and were accepting their clients "interpretations" on strange items to curry favour so that they could continue to win lucrative professional services work on top of their audit work.  Basically, ethics were forgotten about by a few companies and their accountants.

Some of the biggest losers from this were pension funds.  That's a sensitive topic and politicians never lose votes by protecting working people's pensions.  As a result, a complete knee-jerk law came into place with SarbOx.  In fact, the US Supreme Court heard arguments back in early December about whether or not the law has created a body that is unconstitutional.  The law is a mess and it is by no means doing what it was intended to do.

Right now, the cost of complying with SarbOx is so high and onerous that most small to medium size companies just can't be bothered.  The auditors are making their fees they lost in professional services back in cumbersome administrative audit paperwork.  The whole thing has made it all too hard for small growth companies to list.

Accounting firm Grant Thornton have released a report that talks about creating a "new" private equity market that is open to small caps and "qualified investors".  The report says there's no need to get rid of ANY of the current regulation by the SEC or SarbOx - in fact, they couch this premise in political expediency, "Let's just get on with fixing the market".  That's a handy position for an audit/accounting firm, it keeps their lucrative audit market intact.

The GT report also seems to point the blame largely at online brokerages and day traders which is crazy.  The decline in IPOs has nothing to do with the growth in online trading.  The GT proposal would require people go back to using the telephone and meeting with brokers before they could invest in this class of stock - how odd that their suggestion to free up the IPO market for small cap companies, which are largely technology companies, has them eschewing the use of modern technology.  From memory, eTrade in 1996 along with Netscape were some of the companies that kicked off the massive increase in IPOs.

My feeling is that the GT report confuses several issues: the dotcom bust, the frauds at WorldCom, Tyco and Enron and the impact of SarbOx on IPOs.  GT implies that having "qualified" investors handle new small caps will ensure that proper research and diligence is carried out.  There is almost a muddying of the water here as though the dotcom bust and the big Frauds were related and simply a lack of proper research by untrained day traders was the reason so much money way lost.  Let's clear that up: the dotcom bust was a bubble caused by speculation, often ramped up by the very same "qualified" investors that GT refers to, but there were really very few cases of fraud.  Conversely, qualified auditors were signing off the statements of Enron and Tyco saying they were legitimate and within the bounds of the accounting guidelines.

SarbOx was created to deal with the frauds, not the dotcom bust.  It has put in place restrictions, hurdles and impediments that are preventing HONEST small and medium size companies from going to IPO.  The companies that were listing in the dotcom era, they weren't lying to anyone - they would often say in the prospectus that they had no future profit projections.  They were however creating jobs, adding value and building things which is something America needs right now.  Repeal SarbOx, give the SEC some clout to deal with criminals who defraud shareholders (be they executives or auditors) and get Silicon Valley back in business.

Shopping Centre Changes

I've found myself having to spend a few hours this morning at a rather large shopping centre. While wandering about aimlessly, I realised that I was lamenting the lack of quality music stores and book stores. One thing I used to enjoy about going to a place like this is that they usually had two or three good music stores and a really big book store. 

Those days are long gone I guess. This shopping centre is one of the largest in Sydney and when the do a planned renovation it will be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. It now has one discount book retailer and one small below average shop selling CDs. 

Strangely it has a few stores selling games. Obviously I'm part of the problem because I buy all my music on iTunes now and since the Kindle arrived, every book comes from Amazon electronically. I presume the next generation of game platforms will all have some electronic delivery model like Steam. That will certainly kill the game stores. 

It makes me wonder what the shopping centre of the future is going to look like. The Internet is coming! More and more the clothing stores all look similar. How many hair salons and mobile phone stores do you need? If I owned this centre, I wouldn't make a major investment in it - you might end up owning the Southern Hemisphere's biggest monument to 20th century shopping.