Fake Steve Jobs to Join Forbes.com on August 6th

/ Adam Nash

The 14-month quest for the identity of Fake Steve Jobs is at an end, and the answer is somewhat of a surprise.

I won’t spoil it here, but you can read about it directly on the FSJ blog.   The announcement from Forbes.com is here.  The New York Times coverage that outed him is here.

I find the FSJ blog extremely humorous on most days.  It’s a little sad to have the illusion popped.

I feel like he deserves one of those “Real American Hero” spoof commercials for Bud Light…

So here’s to you, Mr. Fake Steve Jobs… 

New York Times Article on Silicon Valley Millionaires

/ Adam Nash

I almost called this article: “The New York Times Gets the Valley… Wrong”, but I decided that there was both good & bad in the piece.

The article I’m referring to was the cover story of the New York Times, Sunday August 5th Edition:

New York Times: The Silicon Valley Rat Race

The piece is designed to be inflammatory, like a lot of media pieces. It’s meant to get people to smack their heads and go, “My goodness, this is definitely in Bubble 2.0. How could people be so misguided to not be satisfied with millions of dollars!”.

Well, the bait took. This blog fell for it.  Blogging Stocks fell for it hook, line and sinker also. Check out their piece today.

Why can’t the Silicon Valley rat racers just kick back and enjoy their lives? As the article points out, many have contemplated moving “to a small town like Elko, NV and being a ski bum or to the middle of the country and living like a prince in a spacious McMansion in the nicest neighborhood in town.” But the need to reach the top of the wealth pyramid drives them to stay in their small houses, commute long hours to and from work, and put in 70 hour work weeks.

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the reaction the New York Times piece was looking for. Too bad that is not actually reflective of what drives & motivates most of the people in the article or in Silicon Valley as a whole.

Dave Winer wrote this piece today, basically explaining that everyone in the Valley is after the almighty dollar, and that’s why he escaped to Berkeley. (As an aside, it’s an interesting implication that Berkeley isn’t part of Silicon Valley). Sorry, Dave. I’ve been reading your commentary since the early 1990’s, when I wrote my first Lasso scripts. But I think you were so eager to jump on your point here, you missed the actual truth behind the piece.

I guess I would be reacting a bit differently here if I didn’t have some personal insight here, but I do. Not only was I born & raised here in Silicon Valley, but I happen to have met the main character of the story. I don’t know him well, mind you, but my wife did work with his wife, and we even enjoyed a wonderful going away party at their house a few years ago. These are good people, solid people, with incredibly solid values. Painting them as some sort of money-hungry Silicon Valley spoiled brats who aren’t satisfied with a few million dollars is so far off-base as to be offensive. Now mind you, I don’t think the article actually did that. But it’s clear that the article was tilted to elicit that reaction.

But, to be generous, let’s start with what this article got right:

Real estate in Silicon Valley is expensive. Incomes here might be 50% higher than the national average, but housing prices are approximately 250% higher. The average home is over $780,000 now, and that’s not for some McMansion. That’s a pretty plain-vanilla, modest home. That’s more than 10x the average household income. I know I’m not going to get any sympathy from the New York, LA or Boston crowds here, but living costs are high. What’s more, that’s nothing compared to the prices of houses in good school districts.

Some people are always chasing the next “wealth” level. There are, in fact, people who are never satisfied. They want millions when they have hundreds of thousands, and they wants tens of millions when they have millions. I’ve worked with people before who were worth over $50M, but were aspiring for $100M+ where private jet ownership is realistic. These people are usually not from the Bay Area, and are rarely engineers, but they are definitely around. Fortunately, they are a relatively small minority.

A few million is not “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” by any stretch here. See above, but how can it be, when a fairly standard 2000 square foot house in Los Altos is over $1.5 Million? If you’ve read my other pieces about managing money in retirement, a “nest egg” of $2M might sound like a lot, but it really can only be reliably counted on for $80K – $100K of ongoing annual income. It likely guarantees a solid, middle-class lifestyle on an ongoing basis, and is something to be thankful for, to be sure. But it’s not an opulent Hollywood lifestyle by any stretch.

Now, a few thoughts on what this article go wrong:

Age matters when talking about wealth. A couple in their 20s and a couple in their 50s are in very different stages of their lives. When you talk about wealth, you can’t just compare stories from different age groups. A 20-year old with a couple million in the bank is in a very different situation than a 50-year old. Of course, both are in very good situations, but the 50-year old is likely thinking about whether or not they’ll be able to retire in 10 years in their current home, with their current lifestyle. A 20-year old has their whole career ahead of them, and likely sees the money as either a safety net or as a license to make career choices based on passion rather than money. The New York Times article throws together people from different age brackets, and thus yields misleading results. For the record, though, a 50-year old with $200K in income who is planning to retire in 15 years actually needs to have a couple million saved at that point to have a shot at maintaining their lifestyle in retirement.

Most people in Silicon Valley aren’t gunning for the next wealth level. This might be hard to believe, especially if you live in New York and you are used to seeing money in the hands of wealthy families, investment bankers, private equity partners, and hedge fund managers. But the truth is, most of the financially successful in Silicon Valley with a few million are likely engineers who worked for a company that grew tremendously in value. Thanks to the fact that Silicon Valley emphasizes a culture where employees are typically shareholders in their companies, sometimes your company grows in value 10x or even 100x or more in value. A stock option grant of 2000 shares in 1997 in Apple is now worth over $1 Million.

Most of the people who work for Silicon Valley firms are technical, and most technical people have spent a lot of time working long hours to earn degrees in engineering and the sciences. Most of these people cannot imagine anything more motivating that working on the cutting edge of technology, and creating new products and services that would have been impossible as recently as five years ago. That is the primary excitement and driver of so much of the innovation in Silicon Valley.

That is the reason why, in many cases, earning significant money, like the families in this article, doesn’t lead people to leave and rest of their laurels. In fact, for many, the money enables them to feel a little more secure about their families and their career choices. And that, ironically, it makes it easier for them to sign up to work even harder on the next opportunity.

That’s not true in all cases, of course. There are plenty of people who take their good fortune and build new lives in areas with lower costs, a slower pace, and more time. It’s common enough, but clearly not the majority case. There are also people who will never get enough, and are always looking for the next financial rung to climb. I feel like I met more of them when I was in venture capital than I do now, but they are certainly a visible minority.

Ironically, that type of drive is what makes costs in the Bay Area so high. Similar to Manhattan, you end up implicitly competing with these people for housing, services, and even restaurant prices.

Just to bring this rather length missive to a close, let me just say the following:

I recommend that people read the original New York Times piece. Despite the negative aspersions, there is a lot to be learned from a personal finance perspective by thinking about “what if” scenarios. I’ve posted here in the past about the notoriously terrible outcomes that await most lottery winners, professional athletes, and Hollywood stars who come into sudden fortunes.

Silicon Valley is no exception. People can make a lot of money here suddenly, with no real significant financial education or preparation for how to manage it. $1 Million is a lot of money, but spread over a lifetime it really doesn’t change a person’s financial position as much as you might think. In many ways, the people in Silicon Valley who make significant small fortunes and yet don’t let it fundamentally change their day-to-day lives are likely in a much better state of mind than those who treat their new found wealth like lottery winners.

VMware (VMW) IPO Countdown Begins

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

The hottest software IPO of 2007 is likely just two weeks away.

VMware (VMW) has begun its official IPO roadshow, and has set tentative pricing of it’s IPO at $23 to $25 per share.  EMC will be retaining an 87% stake in the company.  The shares released to the public will be Class A shares, while EMC will retain Class B shares that have a 10:1 voting ratio to Class A shares.

That structure tells me that EMC wants to maintain control of VMware, while reserving the ability to liquidate a majority of the shares.  With that voting ratio, EMC could liquidate its stake down to just 9.1% of the company, while still maintaining control.  More details are available from 24/7 Wall Street:

The final pre-IPO range is for 33 million shares of class A common stock at an expected price range of $23.00 to $25.00.   That price can change ahead of the IPO and is not set in stone.  Book runners are Citigroup, J.P.Morgan, and Lehman; co-managers are listed as Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, and Deutsche Bank.  After the offering EMC will own 26.5 million shares of Class A common stock but will own all 300 million shares of the Class B common stock, representing approximately 87% of the outstanding shares.  The rights of A & B shares are identical, except when it comes to who gets the final say: Class B shares have 10 votes, or then-times the 1 vote per share of class A common stock.

As a sign of the times, you can actually watch the entire IPO roadshow here, on the web.  The stock will begin trading as VMW, and will likely issue the week of August 13th.

There has been plenty of blog coverage of the IPO.  Here is a Google Blog Search link to the most recent articles.

EMC has already run up by over $10 Billion in market capitalization since the IPO was announced.  Not surprisingly, that is roughly in the range of the expected value of VMware.  With $289 Million in revenue in Q2 2007, VMware is on fire, growing at near triple-digit rates year-over-year.

Even if you have no interest in investing, it’s likely worth watching the roadshow if you are interested in the virtualization space.  VMware is a smart aggressive company, and they keep moving the bar higher.

Hard to believe that EMC acquired them for just $623 Million in 2004.  Now that was a good buy.

DirecTV Tivo Declares “I’m Not Dead”… Yet

/ Adam Nash

Saw this article yesterday announcing new features for DirecTivo boxes still in service (like mine).  For some reason, it reminded me of this Monty Python sketch where the guy tells the dead collector that he’s “not dead yet”.

Engadget: DirecTivo Owners to Get Update in Early ’08

The article details new features that DirecTV customers using Tivo can expect in early 2008:

  • Online scheduling (finally)
  • Deleted items folder
  • Overlap protection

Yes, all these features have been available for years on other Tivo boxes.  Yes, DirecTV is still not providing access to home media options, Tivo To Go, Amazon Unbox, or any of the other cool services from Tivo.  Yes, DirecTV apparently has no interest in actually pleasing its customers.

I’ve written before about the mistake DirecTV made to abandon Tivo effectively for the inferior NDS-based solution.   They took a fairly proprietary advantage that led to incredibly low customer churn rates, and turned it into a powerful driver to force some of their most valuable customers to move to their cable competitors.

In any case, with the announcement of the new, $299 Tivo HD, I can’t imagine why anyone who moves to HD would stick with DirecTV… except maybe if you have to have the sports package.  I have friends who are still working off the old HD DirecTivo.  Maybe they can ride that out until DirecTV gets serious again about Tivo support.

Fun Site of the Day: StateTris (Tetris with the United States)

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

This one was too fun not to pass along.  I love web-based geography games.

This is a Flash game called “StateTris”… it’s Tetris with the 48 continental United States.

The controls took a little getting used to, but I managed to finish the medium level in under 8 minutes.  Not a great score, but not bad for a combination of spatial recognition of the states, and a bit of fancy fingerwork for the complicated shapes… 🙂

Try StateTris yourself!  Let me know what your score is.

Repeat After Me… I Will Not Read Harry Potter Spoilers…

/ Adam Nash / 3 Comments

Just one more day until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out. The original post on the book is still this blog’s most viewed page, and is soaring in page views daily.

I’ve had my pre-order in with Amazon for over three months… and yet I am still considering going down to Borders at midnight on Friday. Yes, it’s a sickness.

The net is full of leaked pages, scanned images, quotes and comments.

Repeat after me:

“I will not read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Spoilers…”

🙂

Update (7/21/2007): Still waiting for the mail man with my Amazon order… so … hard … to …. resist … Wikpedia summary …

Update (7/21/2007):  Got the special edition in the mail just a half-hour after the last update.  About 150 pages into the book …

eBay Should Buy Ning… But Can They Afford It?

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

There was an interesting post yesterday by Don Dodge on the recent financing for Ning.

Marc Andreessen’s Ning raises $44M – Social Network on a Freemium business model

Wow. $44M is a lot of money, and a $214M post-money is a lot for a company at the stage Ning is at financially. Not sure what the end game would be to justify it, unless they either see a multi-billion dollar company on the horizon of 3-5 years, or a quick flip for $500-750M in 2008.

This is one of the areas of Web 2.0, however, that eBay should be a part of. eBay, after all, was built on community. Not just one community, but thousands – coin collectors, auto parts dealers, book sellers.

When I look at Ning, I see a product that eBay should have built – a single profile for a user (much more Web 2.0 savvy and current than the current eBay My World product), and the ability for users to create and join as many groups as they want, with full social networking features. Rather than Google Adwords, the free groups could easily be featuring actually product & item recommendations. The natural search indexing benefits of the groups would be excellent. eBay could build features to help members share searches, classify products, highlight Stores, and make vibrant mini-communities on the eBay/Ning platform.

A couple of years ago, eBay tried to update it’s incredibly dated eBay Forums with the new eBay Groups product. But compare that effort to Ning, and I think you’ll see why I believe that eBay should be courting the Ning team actively. Ironically, the eBay Alumni network is on Ning already.

If the price is too high now, maybe there is a way for eBay to just do a deal to bring Ning functionality to its members, and merge the Ning profile with My World.

Try it out for yourself, and I think you’ll see. The combination of the eBay member base and the functionality of Ning could easily 10x the number of social networks on Ning, and bring the number of users into the tens of millions. The eBay community has always wanted to form social networks… they’ve just lacked modern tools to do so.  eBay & Ning could reach a scale together on a time table that wouldn’t be possible independently.

Please note: In the interest of full disclosure, I do have some good friends at Ning. And I do have some good friends at eBay. So, while I’m not a truly disinterested party, I have no financial stake in Ning. I am a current shareholder of eBay.

US Mint: 2007 Platinum Eagles Available at 12:00pm EST on July 17, 2007

/ Adam Nash / 3 Comments

Don’t say they didn’t warn you!

2007 American Eagle Platinum Proof and Uncirculated Coins Available July 17

From the press release:

Pricing and mintages of the 2007 American Eagle Platinum Proof and Platinum Coins are listed below:

Coin

Price

Maximum Mintage

Product Limit

Proof one ounce

$1,599.95

16,000

6,000
Proof Half-Ounce

$809.95

15,000

5,000
Proof Quarter-Ounce

$439.95

15,000

5,000
Proof Tenth-Ounce

$229.95

20,000

10,000
Proof Four-Coin Set

$2,949.95

N/A

10,000
Uncirculated One Ounce

$1,489.95

N/A

N/A
Uncirculated Half-Ounce

$759.95

N/A

N/A
Uncirculated Quarter-Ounce

$399.95

N/A

N/A
Uncirculated Tenth-Ounce

$189.95

N/A

N/A
Uncirculated Four-Coin Set

2,769.95

N/A

N/A

Note: Maximum mintages reflect the total number of individual product options and the coins included in the four-coin sets.

Orders for the platinum proof coins should be submitted early, as mintages are limited. There is no mintage limit for the platinum uncirculated coins. Household limits have not been set for these options. Additionally, the United States Mint reserves the right to limit quantities and may discontinue accepting orders at any time.

Wow. And you thought the First Spouse gold coins were expensive. $3000 for the proof set, and now there is an uncirculated version for collectors as well.

I don’t know what to make of the very low mintage. On the one hand, a low mintage usually means a good solid path to appreciation and rarity. On the other hand, how many people are really collecting the Platinum eagles? There has to be a diminishing return on pricing of coins. It’s the same issue I have with the First Spouse coins… how many people are really going to shell out $16,000 to own the whole set? And how much can it appreciate from there, since that’s just the up front cost?

In any case, don’t whine if you want these coins and you’re not there at 12pm to place your order. It’s as easy as going to:

http://www.usmint.gov

Happy hunting.

P.S. If you happen to pick up an extra 4-coin proof set, feel free to send it my way.

How to Search LinkedIn Like a Pro

/ Adam Nash

Just a quick pointer to my new post over on LinkedIn’s blog:

5 Tips on How to Search LinkedIn Like a Pro

For regular readers of my blog, you may find some of the concepts familar, as I used the same approach to help people earlier this year learn how to search eBay like a pro.

In both cases, similar concepts can help you use the search engines much more effectively.  And although different sites use different search technology, once you learn these types of tricks with one, it is fairly easy to learn to apply them to another.

LinkedIn is a great search engine for people.  Check out this earlier post where I compare LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and Google for people search.  Something to think about the next time you are looking to learn a little bit more about someone you know (or someone you don’t).

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any particular tips about using LinkedIn search!

Tough Choice: Picking an International REIT ETF

/ Adam Nash / 2 Comments

Tough choices tonight on the personal finance front.

I recently rolled over my 401k from eBay into an IRA. As a result, I now have the ability to better balance out my retirement portfolio across different asset classes.

In a previous post here, I discussed the launch of the first international REIT index ETF, the SPDR DJ Wilshire International Real Estate ETF (RWX).

Of course, in the months since then, a new fund has launched, provided by WisdomTree, the WisdomTree International Real Estate Fund (DRW).

The question is, which to choose?

Let’s assume first, for the purpose of this article, that we’re not going to debate whether or not now is the time to invest in real estate, international real estate, or whether ETFs are the right vehicle. Another time, another post. For tonight, the question is between these two funds.

Normally, picking ETF funds that track the same index is trivial – go with the one with lower expenses, unless the fund has a history of failing to track the index accurately.

However, when ETFs follow different indeces to track the same asset class, it gets a bit more complicated. In this case, there is a fairly radical difference in the two indeces that form the basis of these two funds.

I found this excellent table outlining the historical performance of the two on this Seeking Alpha post:

The first place anyone starts when comparing ETFs is performance, and here, it’s a mixed bag. For the 10 years ending March 31, 2007, the performance differential for the underlying indexes looks like this.

DRW 1

It’s worth noting that these returns are backtested, and do not reflect fees for the ETFs. But because the two ETFs have similar fees – 0.60% for RWX and 0.58% for DRW – the real-time returns should have been similar.

Mixed… DRW has lagged in the past 5 years, but is significantly higher over 10 years. Of course, this is backtested theory – neither fund existed that long.

In terms of the philosophy of the two funds, the question really outlines how truly you hold to indexing ideals versus value-philosophy in your investing. The SPDR is market-cap weighted, like the S&P 500 or the Wilshire 5000. The biggest percentage of the fund goes to the stock with the highest market cap. The WisdomTree fund is dividend-weighted. The biggest percentage of the fund goes to the stock with the highest dividend.

Personally, I’m normally biased towards simple, market-weighted indeces for the US market. However, deep down, I’m a value investor at heart, and the concept of dividend weighting, particularly in foreign markets where security enforcement may vary, is fairly appealing to me, especially in a dividend-focused asset class like real estate.

As another nod to DRW, the WisdomTree fund has both REITs (Real Estate Investment Trust) and REOCs (Real Estate Operating Companies) in it. Not all countries have the REIT structure, which originated in the US. As a result, DRW also has far more stocks (224) in it than RWX (154).

I found a lot of good articles comparing these two:

In the end, I was very close to just splitting my cash between the two funds. That might actually be the right answer if you have sufficient assets. However, I decided that since the real estate market has been anything but value oriented for the past five years, my bias is towards the WisdomTree approach for this asset class.

If you are interested in these funds, I suggest you read all the above material yourself. Post here if you reach a different conclusion – I’m interested to know why.

P.S. In case you are curious, I went with a straight, market-weighted index (Vanguard REIT Index ETF, VNQ) for the US REIT portion of the portfolio.

Gizmodo: Tivo Series 3 Lite: HD Tivo for under $300

/ Adam Nash

As usual, 100% rumor, but worth passing on just because the quest for a reasonably priced, HD Tivo is worth the time and the text.

Very inexpensive case, likely due to the fact that this is a demo unit. Hard to believe these would be the final designs. Sounds like some enhancement to the CableCard support, including a multi-stream card slot (on-demand?)

This is a demo unit we have been provided so the actual units they put into retail may differ (they haven’t said one way or another) but for their sake, I certainly hope the actual units look better than this. I personally have a current S3 box at home and can say that this unit is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper looking and is lighter in overall weight (feels substantially so for some reason). Just my first impressions though&mdas;haven’t fired this unit up yet to see what other differences might be. The remote that came with it is also ‘cheap’—is lighter and not as good looking as the original shiny unit that comes with the current S3. As you can see the cable card slots have been moved up front and one slot supports the new m-card while the other supports only the traditional s-card.

From Gizmodo.

Review: Tab Energy

/ Adam Nash

Yes, I know Tab is not Diet Coke.

Tab is a drink that I don’t even remember… after all, I was all of 7 years old when Diet Coke came out and crushed Tab into the pavement.  Tab was the 70s, Diet Coke was the 80s, and lets be honest, you’d rather have the 80s ten times than the 70s even once. Tab was saccherine, Diet Coke was Nutrasweet.  A triumph of technology and taste.

So it’s a little weird, but the truth is that I have a soft spot in my heart for the Tab brand.  I’m not really sure why.  Maybe it’s the hot pink can.  Maybe it’s the cool pseudo-high-tech, Star Wars font for the logo.  Don’t know.

When I heard that Coke was going to revive the brand, I was intrigued.   An energy drink made sense to me – why not turn Tab into a low-calorie, high-caffeine brand, like Jolt cola but with style, finesse, and no calories.

Tab Energy.

I hadn’t seen it anywhere, and I can’t confess to looking that hard.  But when I was buying ice for my 4th of July BBQ, I bought a couple at the local Albertsons.

The good news?  I liked it.  Oh sure, as a guy, you have to get over the pink.  The can is hot pink and slender.  The drink itself is pink.  It might as well be called “Barbie Energy” for the masculinity it eminates.  Check out the corporate website… safe to say, it doesn’t speak to me.

But it tastes good.  Something like Strawberry/Watermelon.  And it has a kick.  If you’ve ever tried any of the diet energy drinks, they are absolutely foul.  I tried Diet Red Bull at the eBay Leadership conference in December, and I literally almost threw up.  But Tab Energy is really drinkable…

Unfortunately, I can read the tea leaves, and my guess is that it isn’t doing well.  It’s not stocked in many places, and the price is high.   The marketing campaign for it has been terrible – so ultra feminine and pseudo-urban, it feels like they were trying to make it a fashion accessory instead of a drink.  Oh well.  If Coke can drop Diet Vanilla Coke, the best Diet Coke ever, they can easily lose Tab Energy.

Too bad really, because I could easily see making this my energy drink.  Super low calorie, tastes great, good kick.  I’d happily give up the Diet Mountain Dew for it, and pay more in the process.

Go try it while you have the chance.  🙂

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5)

/ Adam Nash

On Tuesday night, I did something I haven’t done since high school.  I stayed up to see a midnight premiere of a movie at Century 16 on Shoreline.  In fact, the last time I did this, it was Century 10 on Shoreline, because they hadn’t added on the last 6 theaters yet.

I wasn’t planning on it, but I was offered free tickets by my Mom, a Harry Potter fan, and I couldn’t let her stay up that late and wait out in the cold.   So, after arriving at the theater at 10:30pm, and getting into the theater at 11:15pm, watching trailers start at 12:15am, at 12:35am, we began watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Overall rating: B+.  It was a good movie, and I’m fairly sure I will watch it several more times when it comes out on cable and DVD.

In fact, the only problem with the movie really is the problem with the last two Harry Potter movies… the books have become so large that there is no reasonable way to capture them in a 2-hour movie.  I feel like they keep getting trapped in the middle:  too long and with too little context for a viewer who hasn’t read the books, but too short and with too little detail for someone who has.

I really wish they would learn from the Lord of the Rings success, and make an extended 4-hour version of the movie, mini-series length, for DVD.  Tens of millions of Harry Potter fans would buy it, and it would be a better movie to stand the test of time 10 or 20 years from now.

In any case, it was worth seeing, and I’m glad I’ve re-read the fifth and sixth books in the series.  I’m all fresh and ready for the infamous Book 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, due to arrive in less than 10 days.

Adam Nash Gets NAS: The Infrant ReadyNAS NV+

/ Adam Nash / 7 Comments

It has been a long while since I reviewed any high tech device on this blog, but I am so delighted with my new Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ that I had to post about it.

The Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ is one of the new generation of simple, easy-to-setup storage servers available for home and home office use.  Although individual hard drives are getting cheaper every day (I regularly see 500GB drives for $99 on NewEgg now), storage of large media files (like video and DVDs) are outstripping even the biggest drives.

The Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ is a really interesting solution.  For about $600 you get an shiny, empty case, about the size of two large Harry Potter hardcover books.  The case has a plug for power, 3 USB ports, and a single Gigabit ethernet port.  The little server has a cute little LCD, hidden behind a mirror, which displays status in plain English.  The case has room for up to four SATA hard drives, although it will function with only one if needed.  However, the magic really starts when you install multiple drives.

You see, the Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ is actually a little genius of a server.  It is built to magically turn multiple hard drives into a single, large volume, with professional-class protection from data loss, and the ability to be accessed from anywhere on the network, by any Mac, PC or Unix machine.  For techies out there, the device seamless handles RAID 0, 1, 5 and “RAID X” configurations. By default, the machine comes configured for RAID X.  More on RAID X in a second.

The Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ offers the amazing feature of data protection.  If any one of the hard drives crash, you won’t lose one byte.  In fact, you can just pop out the drive, insert a new one, and voila, everything is back to normal.  Fantastic for anyone who has dealt with the struggles of trying to back up hundreds of gigabytes of data.

Even better, the “RAID X” virtualization software in the ReadyNAS allows you to start out with as few as two drives, and still have complete data protection.  When you run out of space, you can just add a third drive, and voila, more storage!

This data protection costs you in terms of GB… one drive is utilized completely for protection.  So if you have just two drives, you only get access to a single drive worth of storage.  However, drives are cheap, and losing data isn’t, so these days it is worth.

I have had two major hard drive crashes in the past two years – each one was almost tragic.  The first cost me about 5% of my photo library – that may not sound like much, but it meant whole event albums were lost… (sorry, Rebecca, your prom photos are gone).  The second cost me about 1/3 of my music library, leading to many hours of re-ripping CDs.

Those events led me to the conclusion that it was worth spending the extra dollars on more robust storage.  Now that we have multiple computers in the house, and devices like the AppleTV, it makes more sense than ever to have cheap, reliable, massive network storage.

The Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ has a lot of professional-class features.  The OS is on flash, and is thus protected from any drive failure.  The LED gives great status, and the device has a lot of file-server configuration tools on it’s web based administration.  You can even plug an addition USB drive into the device to automatically backup the ReadyNAS!  The NV+ is quieter, and has improved technology for compatibility and speed with Mac OS-based machines.   It supports full duplex Gigabit ethernet with large frames, making it as fast as possible for network storage.

I configured my device with 2 750GB Seagate 7200.10 drives, each with 16MB cache.  Over my Gigabit network (I’m using a NetGear 8-port 1000/100/10 Switch), I am seeing speeds of about 500MB per minute, but the ReadyNAS hasn’t finished synching yet, so I expect speeds may improve a bit.  At this speed, I can do an incremental 1-4GB backup easily in minutes.

The machine is relatively silent, louder than a Tivo though, quieter than a PC.  It’s small, and I’ve actually installed it not next to my computer like a hard drive, but on a shelf near my ethernet switch.

When I mount the drive, I see the shares on my PowerMac G5 just like any other server, with 666GB of storage available.  (Yes, weird how the 750GB drives come out that way… just an artifact of the fact that hard drive manufacturers continue to label their hard drive sizes incorrectly, pretending that 1 Kilobyte is 1000 bytes instead of 1024.)  I paid a lot more for the 750GB drives – about $200 each vs. $100 for the 500GB versions.  Still, this gives me room for an additional 1.5 TB of storage over time, and I really think I’m going to need the space.  At this point, my backup needs about 300GB, and I have 60GB of photos, 100GB of iTunes music & video, and 400GB of ripped DVDs… and that’s just right now!

Anyway, I love the device, despite the cost.  There are cheaper boxes out there, but this server lets me start with the storage I need, and painlessly expand over time.   I also considered the Drobo, which is about $200 cheaper, and connects via USB 2.0.  The Drobo has an even better trick with storage – it will let you use drives of different sizes!  Use 2 500GB drives today, and add 2 1TB drives in a year when those are available.   Still, in the end, I wasn’t comfortable with a drive that had to depend on a computer to be used by other machines – I like betting on the future of Gigabit ethernet more than on USB 2.0.

You could always buy a cheap PC, get a RAID 5 card, and try to build this yourself… but when I priced it out, it was hard for me to save much money, and the time & quality of the end result was just not compelling.  I was able to install the 2 drives and set up the ReadyNAS in less than 45 minutes.  It would have been faster, but I of course insist on tweaking the security and network settings.

Anyway, I can’t say enough good things about the ReadyNAS NV+.  It took a bit of work and confidence to get the drives to slide in properly, but it really is a great product.

Dr. Sharon Nash, Ph.D. Blogs About LinkedIn

/ Adam Nash / 3 Comments

It sounds so much more official that way… much better than, “My mom posted on the LinkedIn blog today…”

Either version is true – today’s post on the LinkedIn corporate blog is from my mother, Dr. Sharon Nash, Ph.D. After my initial post on the corporate blog, I was surprised at how many people sent in comments about the fact that my mother was on LinkedIn. Since she is a relatively new user to the site, and a professional expert on relationships and people, we thought it would be an interesting user story to tell.

Considering that it is her first blog post ever, I think she did quite well. In fact, I think the bigger dilemma for her was picking the right picture to use. 🙂

The fact that my mother has enjoyed LinkedIn so much that she has recommended it to over 85 (and counting) colleagues and friends is incredibly validating. I spent four years at eBay trying to break her of the typical e-commerce habit, and never succeeded. Not even eBay Express, I’m afraid.

I’ve become increasingly convinced that the opportunity for LinkedIn goes far beyond the site as it stands today. There is a very real human interest in connecting with your trusted colleagues and friends in a professional environment. We have only scratched the surface of the interesting and useful applications for professionals built over this platform. Right now, most software and web applications are still based around a model that assumes that data & information are the basis for getting things done. However, in the real world, most problems are solved by referral and advice from the people that you trust & respect. LinkedIn enables exactly that type of model, and that makes me incredibly optimistic about the future for the site and the platform.

Or if you don’t believe me, ask my Mom. 🙂