If you follow the tech wars then perhaps you’ve heard of the big clash between Blu-Ray and High Definition DVD. Certain movie producers have refused to release their movies on one or the other, I’m sure due to excessive amounts of cash under the table. I’ve always been a fan of Blu-Ray so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am happy with the latest development in the race for the new format.

Blockbuster Inc has announced that they will exclusively rent Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. This means that in order to rent a high definition movie from Blockbuster, you will have to be a Blu-Ray user. HD-DVD users will be stuck buying the movies, or going to an alternate source for rentals. This shouldn’t be a big problem, however, because according to Blockbuster, over 70% of their customers have been choosing Blu-Ray over HD-DVD when they carried both formats.

Staying on my Warren Buffet topic from yesterday I thought I’d post another interesting piece of Buffett news. This is a few months old, but, since nothing has come of it yet I figured it would make a nice update. A few months back Warren Buffett announced that he will be seeking to hire a “replacement” for himself. Obviously the new person will have to meet extremely high standards in order to actually replace what Buffet brings to the table.

Buffet stated that the ideal candidate should be somebody who can “avoid serious risks, including those never before encountered”. Somebody who is independent thinking, emotionally stable, as well as having a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior.

This got me thinking. If the world’s second richest man is looking for those traits in the next “Buffett”, these are traits that I want to work on for myself. Of course I don’t plan on applying for his “apprentice” position, but even so, if those are the traits he is looking for in his ideal replacement candidate, then obviously those are traits that he feels will be necessary in an individual in order to get the job done. As the world’s second richest man, any traits that he feels are needed are traits that I want to pay attention to.

Not all investors and business people follow basketball, so you may or may not know who LeBron James is. For those who don’t know, he is the 22-year old “Michael Jordan” of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Just recently he took his team to the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs. Cleveland was knocked out after 4 games, and the Spurs took the championship, but, don’t worry, I’m not going to write a play by play on my money blog. Instead, let’s talk about LeBron James some more.

He is perhaps one of the most business oriented guys in professional sports right now. Most athletes are happy with the millions upon millions of dollars.  LeBron James has set his sights a little higher.. well a LOT higher. He’s aiming to become the first professional athlete to be worth a billion dollars. How will he do this? Well it’s safe to say that even Michael Jordan with all of his sponsorships and product lines, not to mention the $300 and some thousand dollars he earned every game, has not yet reached the billion dollar mark. LeBron James understands that sports alone will not bring him to this goal. Instead he has turned to people like Warren Buffet for advice. He has a sizable amount of expendable income. Instead of just putting his money in the bank, James wants to invest in companies, businesses, and other endeavors outside of basketball.

I’ve been a member at Pool.com for years. For those unfamiliar with Pool.com, it’s a service that attempts to buy domain names the very second they are deleted (when their previous owner forgets or decides not to renew). The domains then go to auction and everybody who paid $60 in advance for the particular domain name gets to then attempt to outbid eachother. I’ve been on the bidding end before, but, just about a week or so ago I decided to put one of my domain names up for sale in their aftermarket auction system. Unlike the auctions for expired domain names, their aftermarket auction system is open to any bidder.

The way they have their system set up is pretty well thought out. To avoid fraud, they require all domains that are being auctioned to be transfered into their possession prior to the start of the auction. This way sellers can’t back out if they don’t get a high enough sale price. Instead, it’s simply up to the sellers to enter a good starting price.

If you are like me you hate video ads on webpages. There are a few times that I don’t mind seeing them though. For example, I was reading Forbes.com today and right on their front page I was hit with a streaming commercial in their in-page video network window. This went immediately into a “top of the hour” type news short with tidbits of the latest news items, much like a TV network would do. I do not mind video ads at all when they are in front of an interesting news piece that catches my attention. These are nothing more than commercials anyway. The main types of video ads that I don’t like are the ones that play randomly when you are clicking between pages. They are often called “intersital” ads and they usually take up the entire page, giving you only a small option to “click to skip”.

What about audio ads? Audio ads can even be found in what looks like a normal banner ad. Flash banner ads often times play music or speech to try and catch the viewers attention. Those ads catch my attention right away but I doubt they work on me. I close them as fast as I can. I hate having my surfing experience interrupted by obnoxious ringtone or dating ads. Anything with sound is really annoying. Actual commercials, as mentioned earlier do not bug me as much because I am used to those already. I just wouldn’t like to go to a forum and have a commercial playing at the top at all times. There is a time and place for those and it’s before something I want to see. When it comes to audio ads they are generally interrupting something I am already looking at, which is why they rank much higher on my annoyance scale.

Everybody on the internet knows about MySpace. In fact, almost as well known as MySpace is the fact that MySpace profiles have always been a royal pain to edit, customize, or make even bad looking. Yes bad looking. They start out looking horrible and with some careful tweaking you can move from horrible to bad. Then if you have too much time on your hands you can go from bad to decent. That’s about it though. That site is just plain ugly and no amount of profile tweaking can change that.

Well MySpace has just announced the first ever official “MySpace Profile Editor“. At first glance the new editor seems to be a good choice for anybody looking to tweak their profile. The bad news is that MySpace profile editor scripts and sites have always been very popular to own. Now that MySpace is promoting their own internal editor, I expect traffic to third party editors to drop like a rock. I’m glad I’m not in that market.

Yes, I am talking about Google, the search engine we all know and love.. well some of us at least. Internet watchdog “Privacy International” recently gave Google the lowest grade it gives out when it comes to how well companies deal with protecting the privacy of their users. Apparently Google is a little too caught up in the constant flow of internet information that they are having trouble remembering to block the flow of their member’s private information.

I find this surprising that Google would receive such a low rating, however, Google fans need not worry just yet. According to Google’s deputy general counsel Nicole Wong, Google claims that the report by Privacy International was based on “inaccuracies and misunderstandings” about Google’s services. She goes on to say “It’s a shame that Privacy International decided to publish its report before we had an opportunity to discuss our privacy practices with them.”

So you have a site about football. If another football related site wants to pay a handsome sum to advertise on your website do you take it? Some people have a strict policy when it comes to accepting ads from competitors. My personal policy is if the price is right (Bob Barker reference there for all you fans!), why not take the money? If somebody else selling widgets wants to advertise on my widget site, sure I might lose some sales, but hey who says I can’t charge competing sites more than neutral advertisers?

Not to mention I definitely don’t mind advertising competitors sites if mine is better. So if somebody wants to advertise their new widget site on my PR5 widget site, why would I worry? Even if their site is leaps and bounds better than mine I can always make back the money in advertising. If you are advertising a competitor website on your site you should always raise the price. After all, the target is nearly 100% targeted. It will convert a lot better for them due to the similar nature of their website.

So you’ve decided to sell a percentage of your company to Venture Capitalists? I’m sure you’ve had time to think through the potential pros and cons that can come with such a decision. Just in case, here are some things to consider.

1. Say you are looking at receiving an investment for a large stake in your company. At first you might be excited to have some extra money to put into new growth and marketing. After some more thought, you might start to second guess whether it’s a good idea to sell part of your company. You have good reason to question. After all, if somebody is willing to put X dollars into your company for partial ownership, is that same chunk of your company worth the investment price to you? Would you invest in your own company if you had the funds? If so then it’s probably not going to hurt you to sell, however, are you 100% positive that you even need the money? If you don’t necessarily need the money, your long term profits and worth will most likley be much higher if you don’t bring in outside investors.

I am a big believer in using catchy and reputable sounding names for websites. For example. I own MoneyForum.com. I get comments all the time about that domain name. Before I bought it I was brainstorming other ideas for domain names that might have been a lot cheaper. Then it dawned on me that I was planning to start a forum about money; a money forum. Sure I might have to fork over some cash, but, even so it made a lot of sense to me. The domain name was arguably one of the best options for what I wanted to do, so why mess with perfection? So in the end I went ahead and made the purchase. I’ve paid aftermarket prices on many of my domain names not because I like wasting money, but, because I feel that there is no better way to start your website off right than by giving your visitors a good first impressions. This is why I am a firm believer in buying .com domains only. Anything less than the .com is going to be mistaken for .com, and send traffic to the .com anyway. Why not be the person collecting that extra typo traffic? Pay the extra money upfront. It will pay off later.