I’ll have to keep a close eye on 9rules if you’ve got some stuff in store. I’d certainly be interested if anything relating to advertising comes up, provided it’s not restricted to 9rules members (seeing as none of my sites are in the network).

Re: Apple stuff – You’re right, I’m totally optimistic about the launch of Intel Macs, based partly on all the buzz and rumors, but also on my own selfish motivations. I sold my G4 iBook in the fall with the hope that by Spring I could pick up a new one with an Intel processor, so that’s what I’m really hoping. I figure that the PowerMacs won’t be updated with Intel processors until they can get the computing speeds to really jump ahead of where they currently are, which is pretty high.

The iTunes price prediction is based on some stuff I’ve read in the past few months about music industry pressure coming down on Jobs now. Apple doesn’t make a lot of money per song because they have to hand a majority of it over to the artists and labels, and we all know how greedy the labels are, so maybe they’ll want even more. Who knows.

Re: C|Net – I don’t know many people at C|Net, but I can assume that they see Yahoo and Google snatching up great “pre-revenue” companies and probably want to get in on the act. Lately nobody has paid any attention to all the C|Net properties, and if they want to compete in the GYM world (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) then they need to either 1) come out with some new killer services, or 2) purchase existing or up-and-coming killer services. My bet’s on the latter.

Re: Digg – I believe that Digg received about $2.8MM in venture capital funding, and normally investors don’t sign off on a buyout unless they make a substantial amount on their investment. Say the agreed upon Digg pre-money valuation was $10MM (making the investor’s cut about 35%), that means that for the investors to make any dough on the deal, Digg would have to be sold for more than the valuation in order for the VCs to get paid.

I don’t really know any specifics, but I’m guessing that the $2.8MM raised came at a lower valuation (aka, the investors own more of Digg, maybe 40%, maybe 45%) so it could be bought at a lower price. Damn, talking about all of this makes me want to write a weblog entry haha

Re: 37s Launches – I’m friends with Jason Fried, and he’s spoken with me in the past a bit about their strategy… no details, only vague information. On their blog they’ve announced two new products currently in development—Sunrise and Campfire, so those are coming out soon. I can only imagine that they will come out with those in Q1-Q2, so that leaves 6 additional months to pump out one more product to match my prediction. Good odds!

Re: Web Publishing App – The only application area that nobody has dropped real innovation on in the past year or so has been the web publishing arena. WordPress has been out for awhile, and they’re moving strong, but I suspect that a new player will get into the game with a killer 1.0 or beta release that adds all the features that everyone wishes their app had. Imagine a backend as solid as WordPress, with a templatting system as easy to use as MovableType, that has a killer user interface like Blinksale or Campaign Monitor. I think that combination could really clean up.

Re: Advertising Model – We’ve got lots of cool stuff in store for 9rules this coming year, so I’m obliged to say “no comment”

Best-
Mike