All right, without further ado, here’s my selection.

Mixergy. Andrew Warner interviews entrepreneurs from around the world and digs into their stories to find out how they made it (or are going to make it). He pumps out almost one new 1 hour interview a day, which for me, is a bit too much but fair enough. It’s not like you have an obligation to watch everything. Anyway, I highly suggest to subscribe to it on iTunes.

This Week In Startups. I’ll just borrow their own description since it hits the nail on the head: “Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and a rotating group of guest experts bring you this weekly take on the best, worst, most outrageous and interesting stories from the world of Web companies. Calacanis, a podcasting pioneer, gives you an insider’s look at what’s happening in the tech industry with his trademark blunt style and good humor. Looking to start your own company? Need strategies for improving your business or motivating your team? Just want to catch up on what’s happening in Silicon Valley and beyond? Your journey begins here.”

This Week In Venture Capital is my second show on Thisweekin.com. Basically it’s a weekly wrap up of what has been going on in the (mostly) valley VC scene. However, even if you are not in California or some other hot spot like NYC, this show has lots of good information about venture capital, how the industry works, how to raise money and more. Weekly, about an hour, worth watching.

Not much to say about Leo Laporte and his This Week in Tech (careful, iTunes link). Basically a tech talk show with not too much substance, but entertaining nevertheless.

Now on to something different in the sense that it is not a podcast per se. Khan Academy is a non-profit website that provides quality education videos, mostly hosted on YouTube. All the content is produced by Salman Khan, who runs the site. Topics range from Statistics, to History, to Finance and much much more. I have seen Salman on Mixergy and checked out his site. Since then, I have been nothing but impressed by his effort and his commitment. I am currently enjoying some of his videos on “Differential Equations”, feel free to join me

Ok, so now I’m down 5 of the things I watch (there’s way more) and we haven’t even started with music podcasts. This is taking more time than I thought so I call it a day. There will definitely be a part 2 so stay tuned.

Oh, and just quick side note. I honestly believe that internet TV, in whatever form, be it podcasts, on demand shows, independent productions or what not, will seriously kick mainstream TV’s ass. In 5 years from now, smart people will watch stuff they can learn something from on the internet (and maybe a bit Dexter etc. , while stupid people will still watch silly talk shows on whatever breakfast TV network. Ok, that’s it, sorry for the side rant.

We’ve also had a couple of good ideas in the discussion. Someone recommended Splunk for log analysis. I haven’t really checked it out yet but it looks like it might be worth looking at. Also, there was a suggestion to use file logs instead of database tables for logging, since DB writes tend to be not super fast.

In addition to the coverage of the hacking incident, there has been much talk about how business will become difficult for Google in China and how China might retaliate against Google. While some of this might be true, what I saw this morning in Shanghai’s subway line 2 is fairly surprising. Check this out:

Yes, a Google ad (click to enlarge), for their G.cn domain. In fact, the whole train was plastered with those ads. For those who don’t know, line 2 isn’t some rural country side subway line. It’s like the main line that connects Puxi with Lujiazui financial district and transports about a buzzillion people every day (my estimate).

Once you open G.cn, you get forwarded to Google.cn which then forwards you to their HK site. Doesn’t make much sense to me but I guess Google has it’s reasons for this. One thing is for sure though, Google hasn’t left China and it sure doesn’t look like they intend to do so.

And, if black and white seems a bit boring, we can also do something like this

or this

or maybe this

Below is just a small collection of videos that are related to entrepreneurship and internet startups in general. There’s tons of other stuff out there but I consider these videos a good starting point. So, if you have anything to do with internet startups, watch these videos! If not, watch them anyway. They are 100% better than all the crap that’s on TV (including “news”).

The 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps from Carsonified on Vimeo.

Sean Ellis at Lean Startup Circle Meeting from David Binetti on Vimeo.

It has been a while since I posted last time and I am really more of a blog reader than a writer. However, I recently started using Posterous and since I actually quite enjoy using it, I decided to post something here as well.

Since leaving my job at The NetCircle, I have been busy working on my new startup called DUQI.COM. Getting back into startup mode was quite a change but so far I really enjoy my 14+ hour working days. There is a lot going on here in our office and it’s amazing to see how much you can actually get done in a fairly short period of time.

One of the things that are a bit frustrating is the “speed difference” between a startup and bigger companies or government authorities. Things can take long here, really long. It is still unclear to me how opening a corporate bank account takes like 10 working days but apparently even at ICBC, China’s biggest bank, things don’t exactly move at the speed of light. On the upside, knowing that certain things take longer makes you plan ahead a bit more, which certainly is a good thing.

Anyway, we are on track to launching our first version of the site in the beginning of April and I am really really looking forward to this. Until then, here is a relatively early mockup of our home page. I’ll post more details about the actual site later.

ad:tech Singapore

All right, here we go:

• Benchmade
  Really cool knives. Might buy one of those soon (not that I need one anyway).
• Fitbit
  A thing that tracks your fitness and sleep. Might produce enough pressure to finally get me into a gym.
• CureTogether
  Just a cool idea. Crowd sourced health research.
• Just Play
  Article about Harmonix, the creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band – must read!
• Sonos
  Multi-room sound system. MUST HAVE!
• thesixtyone
  Don’t know, interesting music site.
• foursquare
  Must copy for China…

Being Swiss, I was always quite optimistic that Zurich could become one of these places. It’s a beautiful city, it’s home to the ETH, it has a nice lake, an international airport, nearby mountains to go skiing and, last but not least, a “flexible” tax system for high net worth individuals.

Unfortunately, my high hopes took somewhat of a hit a couple of weeks ago when I was invited to speak (video conference) at an event of the EPFL, the French speaking counterpart to the ETH. The event was dubbed “Managing Risk of/for New Ventures” and was a mix between presentations and shorts pitches from local entrepreneurs. The event being part of the university’s “Executive MBA in Management of Technology” program, I had quite high expectations and I was looking forward to seeing some good pitches.

Sadly, I thought that the presentations were quite disappointing and I was almost shocked by the way these entrepreneurs pitched their products and services. Out of 6 two minute pitches there was only one pitch where I understood what the company is doing and what their value proposition is that will help them succeed. The other 5 pitches all had the following “features”:

• Slides with so much size 12 Arial text that you could write a book out of it.
• Graphics that came straight out of the word art gallery.
• Speakers with very limited English skills.
• Inability to tell the audience what the company is doing within two minutes.

I do think that some companies might actually have a good product but I strongly recommend that they all start broadening their horizons, start reading some English blogs about entrepreneurship, get their pitches right and live up to international standards because Switzerland just isn’t that big of a market. Granted, Lausanne (EPFL) is not Zurich but I fear that the level at ETH isn’t really all that different.