nick has a blog!

Greg McAdoo

Elements of a sustainable company

• Clarity of purpose
  • How concise are you? Know your business. Define Problem and solution. Know the problem Get out early and interate. Don’t expect a perfect product with initial release. Get feedback. Know your competition. Exploit a hole in your competition. Do something they they’re afraid to do. Understand the market
• Spectacular market
• Alleviate customer pain
  
  • “Look for someone whose hair is on fire and sell them a firehose.”
    • They won’t care about the details
    • It’s ok to cut corners if necessary
• Incredible Product Focus
• Real Operating Margins
• Frugality
• Inferno with a single match
• Know demographics, statistics, etc.
• Know yourself – functional contributor, go the distance, be honest.

If you’re going into a gray area with your business idea, Show the current trajectory of law when presenting to a VC.

Mark Zuckerberg

Importance of being technical

• Instead of answer questions – build tools

Give power to the people on the organization who can do the things they need to do. Technical people for marketing roles, support, etc.

Joel Lehrer

Do’s and Don’ts of Patents for Micro-statups Patents encourage innovation

• Must not have been disclosed public for one year.
• You need to be the inventor
• Takes about a year and can cost a lot of money
• Does not guarantee you can practice the invention.
• Exclude others from using your idea/invention.

Why does anyone care?

• Wall out competitors
• Defense
• Potential income – licensing
• Value on exit
• Credibility to investors – makes you think about what you’re doing that’s different
• Articulated description of market differentiation.

Joel on Patents

• Work on your own time and equipment
• Understand your current obligations
• Document code provence
• Get assignments
• File something before you launch
• Do some (but not too much) searching.
  • Google Patents
• Focus on the product, not patents
• do not worry about the big boys (for patent infringement that is)

Patents on $500/year

• Monitor blogs and bulletin boards ($0)
• Monitor newly issued patents and publications ($0)
• Hire a search firm (NERAC, INREA) ($500 or less)
• Learn how to write a provisional ($0)
• Draft and file your own provisional ($100)

Hadi and Ali Partovi

Is my Idea a Winner?

• Can you explain customer need in 1 or 2 sentences?
• Does the idea/business scale?
• Are you creating added value? What would’ve people lost without you?
• If you’re dependent on 1 supplier or customer, they have you by the balls.
• Will users recruit other users?
  • Viral marketing.
• Will value increase when customer’s increase?
  • Social networking
• Are you passionate about the idea?
  • Can you hang on when things go downhill?

Do’s

• Listen to your customers and and identify with them.
  • Do it personally.
  • Have everyone do customer support at one point.
• Rank top problems and your top people.
  • Assign these problems to the right people.
  • Use effective delegation.
• Cut spending where you can. Make frugality and profitablity a part of the culture.
  • For example, don’t buy paper clips and paper cups. Reuse ones on incoming documents and have people bring in their own cups.
• Move quickly and make decisions fast.
  • Avoid committees.
  • Avoid 12-month development projects and delegate decision making.
• Have a strong CEO.
  • This person should be a salesperson and a good speaker.
• Focus. Have 1 main idea. Do this 1 idea well.
• Hiring great people is critical. Put this at the top of your list.

Don’ts

• Don’t be distracted by the press. Don’t make decisions to get press.
  • Goals of PR – recruiting and strategic partnerships.
• Don’t take the company culture for granted. Don’t let politics set in. Keep and set the culture while you’re small.
  • As the company grow, there will be a tendency to introduce politics into the culture.
• Don’t be greedy in negotiations. Don’t go for the perfect deal. A deal is better than no deal.
• Don’t ignore your gut feeling about an employee or candidate.
  • Recommendations and resume aren’t the only judgment factors. Fire people if they’re not in the right position.

Rahoul Seth

Financing for Start-ups

• Funding – Bring business partner(s).
• Finding the right business partner will bring professional advice from experience.

• Potential investors known people and can advise you.
• “Smart money” wants you to succeed. This is why you should get VC funding. If you make money, they make money.

Financing comes in stages

• Seed – Need to first figure out strategy, cash requirement, and market requirements
• First – Get a beta product, “go to market” plan.
• Second – Road map to growth and profit.
• Third – Expand business. Risk taken out.
• Mezzanine – Working capital needed for liquidity event
• IPO – Have liquidity for investors

Type of Investment

• Debt – Borrow $, pay back with Internet.
• Equity – Sell share of company. Investors make money from liquidity
  • Common stock – founders (stock), employees (options)
  • Preferred stock – Investors (stock and warrants). Preference over common at liquidity events. Don’t give this out early on.
  • Goal for founders should be to retain 5-10% shares of the company.



• Dilution

Liquidity Events

• acquisition – most likely outcome
• IPO – high risk in today’s legal environment

Debt Financing

• Fixed assets – hardware/software
• security deposits
• working capital – only after company is profitable

Mitch Kapor

“It doesn’t matter where you start, it’s that you started.”

• People Culture
  • More inviting work places. People feel there contributions are respected and will make a change.
  • Not always true – startups have more inappropriate conduct.

Common Dynamics

• Valuing face-time more than productivity.
• People have trouble getting information to do their job.
• Reliance on rumor mill as best source of information.

Meritocracy

• Talent vs. “People like us”
• Research shows diverse teams are more innovative.

What can you do?

• Take culture seriously. Every action/inaction sends a message.
• Walk the walk yourself. Do as you say and set an example.
• Hold people accountable for their actions. If you don’t, it may harm company morale.

Entrepreneurs and Investors

• Experienced investor knows more than young entrepreneur.

Alignments of Interests

• Investors can be great partners.
• Interests can and do diverge.
• Issues
  • Who is CEO?
  • Unanticipated events? - Investors may decide their interests differ from yours.
  • Stay private, sell, merge or go public?

Trust matters a lot with the person you’re taking money from.

Chris Anderson

• As more content/choices come out, the demand is distributed among the population.
• Most of your market will be in the middle of a bell curve. Niche markets on the other hand are away from the middle and thus smaller.
• In our current market, 20% of the products account for 80% of the sales.
  • Caused by networks and word of mouth.
  • “Word of mouth travels at the speed of light.”
• The other 80% of the products are now coming to market and become popular due to sites like youtube. This is content that would not normally be seen on television.
• Online stores, such as Amazon or Netflix, offer products retail markets don’t have. These products account for a large slice of overall sales.
  • Offer a variety of products for people of diverse taste.
  • “Instead of focusing on dozens of markets of millions, focus on millions of markets of dozens.”
  • The Long Tail

Paul Graham

• 0% of the people who do startups would not want to trade their job for a cubicle.
• Why don’t people do it?
  1. Too Young
     • Some people are 19 when they first get funded.
     • Age isn’t important, maturity is.
     • Difference between a kid and adult:
       • Kid - “I can’t do it, will you do it?
       • Adult – Doesn’t flake.
       • Kid – Submission when given a different opinion or criticism.
       • Adult – Asks why when given criticism.
  2. Too inexperienced
     • Do it anyways and learn from your mistakes.
  3. Not determined enough.
     • This is a problem because determination is one of the largest factors of success.
  4. Not smart enough.
     • People who worry whether or not they are smart enough are probably smart enough. Don’t underestimate your intelligence.
  5. Don’t understand business.
     • Business should not be the hard aspect. Instead concentrate on building something great. You’ll learn the business aspect along the way.
     • Businesses buy startups for their ideas anyways.
  6. No co-founders
     • People prefer to invest in a startup with a co-founder. If you can’t find a co-founder, then change your idea. This problem should be one of the most important when starting out.
  7. No idea
     • No problem. Ideas are a dime-a-dozen. People will give you ideas along the way.
  8. No room for more startups.
     • There is always room for valuable ideas to evolve.
  9. Family to support.
     • This is a problem. Instead think about starting a consulting firm.
  10. Independently Wealthy
      • “Why the fuck would I do that again?”
  11. Need for structure
      • Some people just need someone to tell them what to do. If this is the case, then don’t do a startup. People in startups don’t tell other people what to do.
  12. Fear of uncertainty
      • Who knows what will happen? You will probably fail. However, it will be interesting and you’ll learn something along the way.
  13. Some people don’t realize what they’re avoiding
      • Real Work.
      • Startups work from real pressure.
  14. Parents have aspirations for you, such as being a Doctor.
      • They want you to be rich.
  15. A job is the default.
      • What is normal is awful

Michael Mandel

• Innovation makes big companies skin crawl due to the uncertainty of the success.
• In an economics 101 class, it does not mention innovation.
• Innovation on the other hand is the reason for growth in the economy.
• Faster innovation = more start ups.
• Governments can’t innovate, but they cant prevent it.

Max Levchin

Product Management

• Most start ups fail.
  • Why? Engineers suck at details.
• Most of product management is the UI.
  • If you have a good idea, but a bad UI, you will fail.
• Think like the person you are designing for.
  • Become the user. Out of body experience.
  • Observe the user.
  • Study group (Expensive alternative)
• Measure everything about a product.
  • Look at Google analytics and find trends and patterns.
  • Develop your own program to do this.
• Don’t use Red/Green contrast (color blind people).
  • Use blue instead.
• Overcommitment (forms) drops most users. Use 1-click systems.

On Saturday, March 24, 20007, I had the pleasure of attending Startup School at Stanford University. Here I saw many presenters including Paul Buchheit (Creator of Gmail), Paul Graham (Founder of YCombinator), Mitch Kapor (Founder of Lotus and Co-Founder of the EFF), and many more.

It was inspiring to say the least. It opened my eyes and I saw that working for someone else is not the only route to take in life. Not only that, but but bringing your idea to life and working for yourself is closer than one might expect. I wish to share what I learned by posting my notes taken, followed by a list of themes I noticed and my own thoughts on everything. Anyways, let’s start from the beginning with notes from Mark Macenka and Paul Buchheit.

Mark Macenka

Patterns of startups

• Understand your market and your customers.
• Known your competition. Do not underestimate them.
• Stay focused.
  • “Eat, sleep, fornicate with the business.”
• Don’t pay attention to how much of the business you own; This will distract you from the business.
• Listen to people in industry.

Capital Structure:

• Keep it simple.
• Choice of Entity – Corporation, partnership, etc.
  • Decide this early on.
  • Choice is tax driven.
  • Some choices make it difficult to allow people to invest in you.
  • Think of the long-term consequences when making this choice.

Intellectual Property Problem – Do past employers actually own your intellectual property?

• Look at agreements with past employers.
• Did you use company equipment when working on your idea?
• Avoid Joint ownership of Intellectual Property.
• Own your IT department. If you use consultants for some of your code, have them sign that you own the code or that you can license it.
• Usage of open source or 3^rd party code can cause licensing conflicts.
• Protect trade secrets such as source code and algorithms.
  • Use NDAs with employees and friends.
  • Be consistent with protecting your IP.
  • If you don’t, you may lose them.

Founder Issues:

• Who owns what? Figure this out early on and get it in writing while the company is worthless.
• Who is on the board? Choose people who understand the business like the founder.

Paul Buchheit

Advice on advice

• Helpful advice opens your eyes.
• Everyone has a piece of a puzzle. Use their piece to understand the full picture.
• Weigh the advice that people give you. Remember, Advice = Limited Life Experiences + Over-generalization.
• Ignore the people who say something is impossible. Impossible = “According to my very limited experience and narrow understanding of reality, that’s very unlikely.”
• No one has it all figured out.

Quit your job.

• Especially if you’re doing a startup.
• You can’t follow your goals working for someone else.

The secret to success is to Redefine Success

• Remember: startups do fail.
• Old definition of success: Making a lot of money
• New definition of success: You learned a lot.
• Seek out information that no one knows.
• Invest in yourself and your future.
• A startup is like school, but you actually learn something.

Attempt things with uncertain outcome

• You will learn from this

Startups are a great place to learn

• Things will happen fast.
• You’ll do things you’re unqualified for. Paul was unqualified for writing Gmail, but he was successful anyways.

Build something different

• When Apple released the iPod, they weren’t releasing an mp3 player. Instead they released a high capacity device that holds all of your music, fits in your pocket and syncs with your computer.

Look how people using an existing product and build upon that.

• Add the words “that actually works.”
  • Search that actually works – Google
  • Email that actually works – Gmail

Make changes of great magnitude

• When email providers were giving people 10-20 MB of storage, Gmail gave people 1 Gigabyte of storage.

Scaling Web Services

• No matter how large your disk is, disk seek time remains the same.
• There are two types of data:
  • Big – Photos, video, music. This type of data should be hosted on Amazon S3.
  • Small – Tags, text. This should be stored in DRAM.

In the previous article I demonstrated a practical application of RSS with Google Reader.

Now that we have a working example of RSS in action, let’s dig a bit deeper and see what’s inside an RSS feed. For this article, we’re going to use RSS 2.0 as our primary example.

An RSS feed is made up of two main parts: information about our feed and the items in our feed.

Information about our feed describe what the feed is all about.  It includes elements such as the blog title, link to our blog and description of our blog. All of this information is mandatory.

The other part (items) can be thought of as each individual blog post. Each item has elements that describe the post. These elements include the title of the post, the link to the full post, the full content or snippet of the post, the author, and date published. All of these elements except the author and publication date is mandatory.

Let’s take a look at a sample RSS file

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
        <channel>
        <title>nickpeters.net</title>
        <link>http://www.nickpeters.net</link>
        <description>Blog of Nick Peters</description>
        <item>
                <title>Blog Post 1</title>
                <link>http://www.nickpeters.net/blog-post-1</link>
                <author>Nick Peters</author>
                <description>This is a Blog Post!</description>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:39:21 GMT</pubDate>

        </item>
	<item>
                <title>Blog Post 2</title>
                <link>http://www.nickpeters.net/blog-post-2</link>
                <author>Nick Peters</author>
                <description>This is a another Blog Post!</description>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Mar 2007 011:52:38 GMT</pubDate>

        </item>
        </channel>
</rss>

Let’s first take note that this information is very minimal, but it should be enough to get key ideas across. A full list of elements can be found here.

From looking at the information above we can see that the name our blog is “nickpeters.net,” the URL of the blog is http://www.nickpeters.net and the description is “Blog of Nick Peters.”

This blog has two posts: “Blog Post 1” and “Blog Post 2.” Each post has a link, author, description and publication date.

RSS feeds are pretty self explanatory; it’s an XML file that describes the contents of a blog for easy manipulation in clients such as RSS readers.

Next we will see how easy it is to create an RSS feed using PHP and MySQL.

Adam Darowski recently asked to pick my brain about writing a PHP script to create an RSS feed from a database. As one of my favorite “Web 2.0” technologies, I figured I would write a 3-part introductory series on RSS and PHP.

In this series I want to cover a couple topics:

• What is RSS?

• Digging deeper into RSS
• Creating an RSS feed with PHP

Before we begin, let me pose a question: Are there sites you check frequently? Perhaps you check a friend’s blog on a daily basis or refresh a news site to get all of the latest headlines. This in itself can be time consuming, especially if you check multiple sites on a daily basis. RSS’s most popular application solves this problem; it will notify you when a site has been updated. Instead of checking your friend’s blog, you can subscribe and be notified of updates.

In order to use RSS for this purpose, we will need two things:

• RSS Reader

• RSS Feed

I prefer to use a web-based RSS reader such as Google Reader. (See this post to find out why)

To add an RSS feed to Google Reader, click on “Add Subscription” and type in the URL of the site (nickpeters.net for example).

When we click “Add” we will now be subscribed and notified when nickpeters.net has been updated; It’s that simple.

Firefox2.0 has built in support for adding an RSS feed to the reader of your choice. See that RSS Icon in the corner of the address bar? What happens if we click on it? We’ll be redirected to another page that allows you to subscribe to the site using an RSS Reader of our choice.

Now that you have two ways to subscribe to a site, try this out for blogs or news sites you visit on a regular basis.

Next, we will take a look inside a basic RSS feed.

I had some free time today, so I decided to start on a proof-of-concept for my OpenID + Microformats idea. Holy $^#@ am I rusty with PHP. It’s now been about a year since I last done any sort of programming with it and I find myself having to reference the books I was reading when I first began learning PHP 2 years ago. I really need to start fitting time into my schedule for working on programming projects because I’m finding myself having to look up information that has been lost over time.

On another note, I REALLY need to sit down and learn regular expressions. I’m tired of having to google search this sort of thing. I heard O’Reilly’s book on Regular Expressions is a good resource; perhaps I should pick it up. I’m going to have to learn them anyways, the sooner the better I suppose.

Afterthought: Perhaps instead of re-learning everything, I should just learn the PEAR library instead and fill in the gaps along the way. Anyways, I guess I know what books I’ll be ordering soon.

Songbird is a cross-platform, open-source iTunes replacement that is built off of Mozilla. It has a similar look and feel to iTunes, but it extends many of the features. The site actually has a great screencast that introduces the unique features found.

I was introduced to Songbird by Ian McKellar at SHDH15. I’ve been using it for about a week (Version 0.2 Developer Edition on Windows XP) and here are some of my initial thoughts, starting off with things that I like.

1. Integration with MP3 Blogs. I’ve actually never subscribed to any MP3 blogs before, but I can see that easily changing now. Songbird comes with a list of 6 MP3 blogs. With these blogs, Songbird will scan the posts for MP3s and show them to you in a form of a list at the bottom. From there you can play the MP3s as if they were local media. This is a very handy feature for quickly listening to new music.
2. Cross platform. I love the fact that I can go from OS to OS and this program will be available. It’s always such a bummer going between my Mac and PC and having to use different programs because one isn’t supported on one OS. Being a cross-platform application eliminates those frustrations.
3. Works just like iTunes. If you know how to use iTunes, you know the basic functionality of Songbird. This eliminates the frustration of learning a new program, let alone the extra/hidden features. This is a smart move by the developers since their target audience seems to be iTunes users. Any transition will be very smooth (including the fact that you can easily import your iTunes library).
4. Mozilla updater. When I start the program it will automatically check for updates for the program or any add-ons. Since this program is still in development, this is a very handy feature for distributing bug-fixes or new features without having to go to the site and download an installer.
5. Last.fm integration. This is only one of many add-ons for Songbird. However, I like this because I don’t need to load a separate application for scrobbling my songs to Last.fm. These guys know what their audience wants.
6. Ogg Vorbis Support. Unlike iTunes, Songbird supports the open-source MP3 alternative Ogg Vorbis format. Although it’s not as popular as the MP3 format, it’s nice to have support for those alternative formats.

There were a few things I didn’t like or felt were missing. These were mostly features of iTunes that I would like to see implemented.

1. iPod Sync Support. This should be a no-brainer.
2. Airtunes Support. I love how I can wirelessly stream music to my speakers with iTunes + Airtunes. I would love the same feature in Songbird
3. iTunes Share Support. As someone who has multiple libraries, this feature is a very convinient feature on iTunes I would like to see in Songbird. It would be great if somehow a feature was also added to copy music from library to library via shares!
4. Better Bookmark Support. When bookmarking a site, it doesn’t give me the option of where I would like to save it to. For example, if I want to bookmark a new MP3 blog, I’d prefer it go into that section rather than the bookmark section. Further, how do you add a new MP3 blog?
5. More Radio Station Support. This kind of goes along with the previous suggestion. I have a few radio station sites I listen to sometimes; it would be nice to be able to easily add those to the radio section when bookmarking.
6. More Smart Playlists. One smart playlist I would like to see is one that has a list of all MP3s found on MP3 blogs. That way I can play a variety of MP3s on random without much effort.
7. Last.fm/Audioscrobbler Authentication Confirmation. As someone who uses a variety of passwords, I always forget which password I use where. I started to use Songbird and checked my Last.fm account to see if my tracks were getting scrobbled properly. When I saw they were not, I figured it could either be the feature itself or my password. It turned out that I used the wrong password, but I had no way of knowing. I think a confirmation or a button to test your login credentials should be added to prevent this issue.
8. Highlighting song in library. When I go between tracks, the library stays at the beginning. Most applications move the library to the location of the currently playing song for you. This is convenient if you want to play other songs of the same artist.

Lastly, here is a list of bugs that I found while playing around.

1. Full Screen Error. When I close my laptop lid, and open it back up, the application goes into a full screen mode that is bigger than my actual screen.
2. Last.fm Error. Sometimes the following error is triggered: “Some tracks you submitted have not been added to your profile for the following reason: Spam protection triggered: You submitted a track dated earlier than your last submission.”

There is one last note I would like to add. The ability to find and play MP3s found in MP3 blogs makes Songbird a very powerful, and perhaps even revolutionary program. Maybe I’m behind, but I have not seen a program with that sort of functionality. Perhaps this is the time to bring up the idea of implementing semantics within HTML for the purpose of labeling music and finding music in MP3 blogs. I propose the idea of a Microformat-like way of labeling MP3 information within HTML for programs like Songbird. Currently it looks like Songbird gets its information from ID3 tag information, but for the MP3s that are not properly labeled, it shows only the filename. Sometimes the filename doesn’t even hint at the songname or artist of the song! Another benefit of using semantic information within HTML is the fact that you don’t need to download the MP3 (or part of the MP3) to get the information. This can save a lot of bandwidth for the host of the blog and the person browsing the site. The last benefit is that this makes for a format-neutral way of labeling data. You can put an MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Real Media, or WAV file on a site, and still have the information come up.

As a program that’s still being developed, Songbird feels like a very complete cross-platform media player. I can see this easily taking the place of iTunes as new features are developed. I for one have started the transition from iTunes to Songbird. Of course, there are missing features, like the ones noted above, that would seal the deal once implemented.

As a computer technician and programmer, if I don’t know the answer to a question, I turn to Google.  I may not know every answer to every question, but I sure know how to get it.  I’ve started to apply this concept to classes I’m taking right now; calculus in particular.

I was stuck on the section titled “The Precise Definition of a Limit.”  My professor breezed over it in class and told us to read the chapter.  As I started to read the chapter, there were parts that did not make sense.  How did they get from step a to step b?  What does that symbol mean?  To answer these questions, I turned to my old friend Google.  From doing a little bit of research I was able to find a forum I could post questions to (if they weren’t already answered in the archive) AND I found a the lecture notes of a professor in Indiana who is using the same book as my professor.  After reading his lecture notes, the concept was clear and the book started to make sense again!

If I never had this mindset when it comes to learning, I would’ve been reading that section in the book over and over again.  I would be right where I was before except with a higher level of stress.  Not all books/professors will teach in a way that I can easily understand, so it’s nice to know there are alternative routes in the journey of understanding a concept.

UPDATE: After an email discussion with Adam Darowski, I revised this post to make it a bit more user-friendly.

I think I might be going about this idea of consolidating your online identity with the OpenID simple registration extension and microformats wrong. I found this microformat library for PHP; It works by by retrieving the microformatted data (in this case hCard) by simply feeding it a URL and it then saves the hCard data for future manipulation. I’m starting to realize this same practice may be another way to consolidate your online identity with OpenID.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s see how the applicable portion of the OpenID protocol works. The first step is to supply our OpenID URL to the consumer site and hit “submit.” For example, I would enter “nickpeters.net” as my OpenID URL to the consumer site ma.gnolia. What is a consumer site exactly? According to the OpenID Specification, the consumer is:

A web service that wants proof that the End User owns the Claimed Identifier.

Pretty much it means a site that wants to find out whether or not we are who we say we are by first asking for our OpenID URL.

After we hit the “Submit” button, an internal script on the consumer site will redirect itself to the given URL and look for two link tags in the head of the given HTML document. For the sake of simplicity, we’re only going to discuss the one of them: rel=”openid.server.” The href value of this link tag is going to be the script that actually authenticates you by asking you for the username and password you use on all OpenID-enabled sites. This practice is useful because you can offload the authentication process to a site like Vox or livejournal instead of setting up a server on your own server. This means I can enter the URL for the livejournal authentication script or a script hosted on my site. It also means your username and password isn’t sent to the consumer site and is only sent to the specified script.

That should be enough information for now, so let’s see how hCards can fit into this. Let’s say we log in to our OpenID consumer site (ma.gnolia) and go through the login process as normal. While the consumer site looks for the and OpenID.server URL in the head of our page, it would also look for some sort of clue as to the location of your hCard information. Perhaps this “clue” could follow in the steps of the existing OpenID protocol and also be a link tag, such as rel=”hcard” in the head of the document. From there, the consumer-site script can retrieve the hCard location by looking at the href value, properly redirect itself, and retrieve your information (Perhaps even using the hKit library).

The pros of this is that you can add as much or as little information as you want about yourself in your hCard. The simple registration data fields are very limited and there maybe some information in there that you don’t want to be shared (such as email address).

The cons is that it requires more administrative overhead. You’ll have to edit the header information of your site. You may not even be able to do this on all OpenID identifiers (such as ones on livejournal) because you don’t have permission to edit the header information.

Right now there are discussions going on in the microformat community about authoritative hCards that could possibly guide this idea in the right direction. I will continue to think about this and would appreciate any ideas from others.