Here’s what happens with highly paid people with big egos and small imaginations make decisions – They solve problems that don’t exist.

Amazon.com, rightful owner of Alexa.com data, shut down the very helpful Statsaholic.com Web service.  Statsaholic only exists because the people at Alexa weren’t building all the features that people wanted to use.  Now Amazon has blocked Statsaholic, and are copying those features into Alexa.com.   

In a MBA Case Study (especially a Harvard one), this is probably the smart response.  And in 2 years, will anyone really care?  But we start losing innovation when the "Microsoft problem" permeates across other companies.  When people think, ‘Well it’s useless to do something new because someone big will just steal it from me later anyway," the whole web economy takes a step backward.  Out of all the challenges Amazon can go solve, I don’t get why "Screwing Statsaholic" should be at the top of the list.  Plus, marketing guru Seth Godin is somehow associated with Statsaholic, so I’m not sure why you would want to make an enemy of him.

In the meantime, there’s a Mozilla hack that gets Statsaholic working again.  Check it out here. 

News from ESPN comes that Don King (yes that Don King) was able to got a front row seat at Pope Benedict XVI’s general audience Wednesday. (yes, that Pope.) 

According to the report, "the Vatican visit was arranged through a boxer King represents — Italian super welterweight champion Luca Messi, whose brother Alessandro is a Catholic priest."  So yes, even if you go go to church ever day and live the holiest of lives, Don King is about 4 clicks closer to the pope than you are. 

My favorite sentence from the report: "King, who spent four years in prison for manslaughter, had hoped for a personal meeting with Benedict."

A few places have picked up the story that Movaya launched a service to make it equally easy for large retailers or small web sites (like this one) to add Mobile games for sale. 

Brier Dudley writes a blurb here. 

GameProducer.net received some comments here. 

NW Innovation profiles it here.

More links to come…. 

A lot of talk has been generated about the "You Tube Effect" on the U.S.  Presidential election in 2008. I think the most interesting aspect is the total lack of control that the campaigns will have over their suporters. We are going to see "campaign extremists" completely convolute the message and intentions of the high paid campaign managers.

Here could be the first salvo between the supporters of the two main Dem candidates.  In one corner, a slickly produced anti-Hllary video based on the Apple commercial 1984. This is nicely done, and by all accounts, the Obama campaign had nothing to do with it. In response, a Hillary supporter hacks together a low budget retaliation that well, just looks dumb. How will the candidates keep their supporters under control? Check out both videos.

Vote for Obama:

Vote for Hillary:

Only in Vegas.

I’m not sure why I’m so late to the game on Prosper.com, a web site designed so that people who need loans can receive funds from ordinary people who are looking to make a return on their reserve cash.

The concept is pretty simple, people with money become parts of "mutual fund-like" loans to individuals who can’t or don’t want to go through a bank.  There is research that people are more likely to repay loans when they know there is a human behind it, and they know who those humans are. The lenders get good returns – 10-25% and their money is spread among a bunch of different loans so the risks are mitigated.   

My initial thought was that there is an issue where people who need the loans may not have the broadband or even Internet connection to take part, but that’s probably a subtle qualifying factor.  If you can’t find a broadband internet connection these days, I probably don’t want to loan money to you.   

From the Seattle Times:

Summarized: John Cornwell graduated from Duke University last year, and built a refrigerator that can toss a can of beer to his couch with the click of a remote control.  It took about 150 hours and $400 in parts to modify a mini-fridge common to many college dorm rooms into the beer-tossing machine, which can launch 10 cans of beer from its magazine before needing a reload. With a click of the remote, fashioned from a car’s keyless entry device, a small elevator inside the refrigerator lifts a beer can through a hole and loads it into the fridge’s catapult arm. A second click fires the device, tossing the beer up to 20 feet — "far enough to get to the couch," he said. In developing his beer catapult, Cornwell said he dented a few walls and came close to accidentally throwing a can through his television. He’s since fine-tuned the machine to land a beer where he usually sits at home, on what he called "a right-angle couch system."  For now, the machine throws only cans, although Cornwell has thought about making a version that can throw a bottle. The most beer he has run through the machine was at a party, when he launched a couple of 24-can cases.  A video featuring the device is a hit on the Internet, where more than 600,000 people have watched it at metacafe.com, earning Cornwell more than $3,000 from the Web site.

I love it.  Guy builds a totally usueless contraption.  Films himself using it.  Posts it online – makes $3k for his troubles.  Also, talk about something that doesn’t make any sense – a guy too lazy to walk 10 feet for about 15 seconds of travel time, spends the equivalent of a week building a solution to the problem.  And they say American ingenuity is dead…

Update:  He also has his own Web site: www.beerlauncher.com