A week from today Cloudbrain will be packing our bags and heading north for the Affiliate Summit East 2010 conference.  We are hoping to meet some of our great affiliates and connect with new ones.  If you are going to be there, come find us!  You can learn more about becoming and TidySongs affiliate here.  You should also follow us on Twitter (we are super cool): Daniel, Kelly, Jenn, Kyle.

(That’s a picture of us testing out our new booth in the office…)

A recent Pentagon memo, reported by the NY Times this weekend, describes the discovery of vast mineral deposits in Afghanistan containing important metals such as lithium – a mineral critical to high-tech batteries like the ones in all our phones and cameras.  The Pentagon estimates the deposits could be worth nearly a trillion dollars, transforming the country in to one of the most important mining centers in the world.  As they put it – “the Saudia Arabia of lithium”. Wow.

This could be a perfect example of a “Black Swan” – a theory arguing that history and culture does not progress slowly over time (like we imagine) but LEAPS forward to due massively disruptive and unpredictable events.  Events like the discovery of the new world and September 11th that no one saw coming and rendered previous predictions about the future meaningless.  Nassim Nicholas Taleb first described the theory in his book, predictably named:  The Black Swan.

The essential takeaway from the book is: don’t try to predict the future.  Instead, build robustness in to your plans so that when the Black Swan happens, you will able to adjust accordingly.

You should read the book.

Say hello to Mya – our summer intern for 2010.  Mya is a senior at that other school down the road where she is majoring in communications.  She’ll be writing, blogging tweeting and doing market research for us.  We just got the first blog she’ll be working on up and running: Traveling With Music.  Mya is good.  Seriously.  I don’t know how we find these people.  You should follow Mya here.

My wife loves Diapers.com.  Same price as Target, free overnight shipping.  How do they do it?  How does their warehouse process millions of orders for thousands of products and get them off a shelf, in to a box and out the door fast enough for next-day delivery?  Robots.

That video reminds me too much of SkyNet.

If you haven’t already, you should check out @BPGlobalPR on Twitter.  It is satirical account poking fun at BP’s disastrous PR efforts in the wake of the recent oil spill.  The twitter account’s author recently wrote an open letter to the Media explaining is efforts:

Dearest Media,

My name is Leroy Stick and I am the man behind @BPGlobalPR.  First, let me begin by explaining my name.

When I was growing up, there was a dog that lived on my block named Leroy.  Leroy was a big dog with a disdain for leashes and a thirst for blood.  He made a habit of running around our block attacking anything he saw, biting my dad and my dogs basically whenever he had the chance.  He chased me a few times, but I always escaped because I was/am an amazing tree climber…

Read the rest of the letter.

Today is Becky’s last day at Cloudbrain.  She is headed to Berlin to continue a career in journalism.  Some newspaper-of-the-future is going to be lucky to her writing for them.  During Becky’s time here, we launched TidySongs – for which Becky created all our multimedia marketing content – as well as several marketing campaigns including Save The Songs.  This has been a great year, due in no small part to Becky’s amazing gift of communication and charm.

Thanks for everything Becky.  We’ll miss you.

Nike’s best ad ever? I love the globalism perspective: Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Landon Donovan, Ronaldinho, Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer and Homer Simpson. Read more here.

When asked if he had anything to say, Lance Orton, the hero street vendor that first noticed and alerted police to the suspicious car replied: “If you see something, say something”. Which, of course, is the slogan New York has been using in subway posters ever since September 11th. Not only did Lance see the ads, but in the moment of truth, they caused him to act.

Never underestimate the power of a simple message.

“Get rid of the crap” – That was Apple CEO Steve Job’s advice to Mark Parker, CEO of Nike when Mark asked Steve for advice shortly after landing the top job at Nike. Get rid of the crappy stuff, and focus on the good stuff.