This week I want to talk about one of the hands-down best sites on the internet. Mint.com, in case you haven’t heard about Mint yet, it’s like Quicken or Microsoft Money just online. You create an account on the website, login, add your account information. From there mint connects to each of your accounts, pulls down your transaction history, automatically categorizes your spending into categories, and then will send you alerts for budgets or other settings via text or email. Oh, and best of all since it knows where you’re spending your money, it tells you how you can save.

There’s been a lot of buzz in the valley lately around this very small startup, that has a few pretty heavy hitters. Between the four founders they have worked on nearly all of the Google products so many know and love, with the exception of search. Paul Bucheit, is even responsible for Google’s current motto, “don’t be evil”. These four guys not only are visionaries within the web space, they also know how to deliver a product, having helped build and scale gmail and google maps is indeed a noteworthy accomplishment.

So this week they announced what many expected was coming the iPhone 3g. However off the shelf it’s still not web  2.0, while a great device its not a web 2.0 device yet. Apple without a doubt understands user experience, but they do not fully grasp web 2.0 yet. Microsoft seems to even have a better understanding with the products they are looking to role out with Mesh and their enterprise social/collaboration tools. Lot’s of great applications were highlighted at the keynote, but only one of those talking about publishing content (with the exception of mobileme, which is a paid service). While there’s no doubt I will be getting the new iPhone when it is released in July, I will not talk about how it is a great web 2.0 device.

While I may or may not know how to be successful in silicon valley, I feel pretty confident that I can point out a few ways to not be successful in valley terms. What follows is my thoughts on how you can best limit yourself to own, run, or be involved in the entrepreneurial spirit of the valley.

The first is keeping yourself in a bubble, by not diving into the new technologies, new services, and new age of the web there’s little possibility you can be at the next steps of it. While I concede you don’t always have to explain it or understand it, you at least need to use it. The prestigious attitude of standing against something just for the sake of it won’t get you very far when people attempt to find you and communicate and can’t. There will be few individuals in the future similar to Jobs and Ellison that are a box of mysteries that no one has access to. Instead you will simply filter out noise that is relevant, but regardless your presence will be felt. It’s not only about making your life easier with useful tools like mint or dropbox and thinking about the next useful utility, but also about communicating and relating to others. Final thought … facebook be on it, twitter use it (don’t understand it, don’t explain it, just use it), friendfeed (jury’s out, but you better know what it is).

There was a recent post over at ReadWriteWeb about how content is becoming a commodity. I don’t believe many people would argue with this. While at first this wasn’t something I viewed in a positive light the more I think over it the more I see some value in it. As content does become more and more of a commodity the value in who is publishing or producing that content goes up. Five years ago if someone would have talked about some trade-secret they learned about from Google many people would have perked up and listened. Today however rumors spread faster than ever and before you know it google calendars now predicts when your appointments are, puts them in your calendar, and sends you text messages with directions 30 minutes before each meeting. While this may very well happen some day, I’m pretty sure they won’t be rolling it out next week.

Adobe’s former CEO, Bruce Chizen, when asked ‘What advice do you have for new/young public companies?’, gave a response of ‘Go private’. While partially a joke he went on to elaborate something that many businesses seem to miss on. The main idea is that businesses are very nearsighted in their focus, they look at quarterly goals and in some cases yearly, but not where they want to be in 10 years. When companies become worried that head count is high they simply freeze hiring across the board without thinking of its ramifications. Good people, well great people are truly hard to find, and when a company enforces a blanket hiring freeze they miss out on those few great people that they truly need to grow. Meanwhile when they decide they have bandwidth for 1000 new employees they open the flood gates and let the first 1000 that can spell their name correctly in, because they can. This short term focus in the long run greatly limits the ability of what a company can achieve.

So yesterday I posted around blurring the lines around your personal and professional life. Today I’d like to discuss a bit of the opposite of when companies blur the lines. Hopefully you don’t, but at first you may think how is this possible. Well first let me highlight some of what many feel are negative pieces, such as when an HR Rep who went to the same university as you looks up your facebook profile. You thinking this is private to friends at school may not regularly monitor the content that goes up there. This specific case is a very interesting one, and for the moment I’d like to stay clear of it.

Someone recently commented on by tweeting after having given my two weeks notice to my company, that it may not have been the best idea. So as a result I’d like to post my reasoning and thought why I feel it is actually a great idea. Even a month before my giving two weeks notice many knew it was likely going to happen, and I personally hope that this allowed those that may have needed to, to better plan accordingly. This also I believe allows me to be more evaluated on my actual merit in some terms. You see if I made it clear that I might be looking at another opportunity, and was not wanted I believe there may have been good reason hints would have been given that I should look harder and more. Instead in was a reasonable bit of the opposite.

I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before, but in case I haven’t voiced it on here yet, watch out for Adobe. They look like they’re firing on all cylinders lately and don’t look to be slowing down. At Adobe MAX 2007, I saw a preview of many things that were coming up for them. Though from already having worked with Adobe Flex was a fan, at least of the Flex and AIR products. Adobe now seems to be doing as much to drive adoption of the products as they expect from developers.

A recent conversation of someone that was offended when the were introduced to someone new, then was not greeted first since they were a female brought what follows to mind. The above is a train of thought that came from a 70 year old military wife. I do not believe this is common practice today and is quite rarely found as the common etiquette, but nonetheless I think what is proper etiquette in business is changing quite rapidly. Though I’m not sure if all of the older ideas and principles have gone away.