If I was wondering why I went all the way to Los Angeles to listen to speakers at a three day conference, which has little to do with Internet Marketing, the question was just answered.I’m sitting in the main ballroom of the Beverly Hilton listening to Michael Milken moderate a panel with three speakers who are literally changing the world:

• Craig Venter - the guy who first mapped the human genome;
• Muhammad Yunus - the guy who invented micro loans and won the Nobel Peace Price; and
• Eric Schmidt - the CEO of Google

Very cool.

This is my second year attending the Milken Global Conference. It’s a pretty amazing three days, with world experts on every topic imaginable all in one place talking about solutions to world problems and trying to predict “What’s Next?”  As an example, here are the breakout sessions availble for the time slot after lunch today:

 Financial Convergence: The Changing Investment World Global Risk: What’s Keeping the Experts Up at Night? Lowering Barriers to Investing in China’s Small Businesses The Future of

Health Care: What Kind of Reform Makes Sense?

Innovator: Across the Universe With Physicist Lisa Randall

Harnessing Growth to Break Poverty’s Grip on the Developing World

Institutional Investor Activism

Giving It Away Takes Creative Effort: Philanthropy Tales From Those Who Know

Moving From Me to We: The New Competitive Edge

Eliminating Malaria: A Workshop

The Increasing Impact of Online Teaching in Primary and Secondary Schools

Book Signing: Dalia Mogahed - Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think

Book Signing: Jared Cohen - Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East

Book Signing: Reza Aslan - No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam

I received this email today. I haven’t had a chances to run it by Snopes or verify any of these.  But I thought some of them were pretty funny and you might enjoy them.

Classic but witty insults from some of the world’s wittiest . . .  .

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
Groucho Marx

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend… If you have one.”
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill… followed by Churchill’s response:

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second, if there is one.”
Winston Churchill

“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
Stephen Bishop

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”
John Bright

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
Irvin S. Cobb

“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”
Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
Paul Keating

“He had delusions of adequacy.”
Walter Kerr

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
Mae West

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
Oscar Wilde

Brand For Power is doing a seminar series with marketing experts on branding for your business.I’ll be one of the speakers and there will be many others who worked with online branding for companies such as Apple, PizzaHut and Staples. They’re free and you can get the link at http://www.freelinereport.com

Digg has released a new firefox extension that will allow you to see the current number of Diggs for every web page you visit. You can also see the last ten comments and the first sentence of the description. It will also show any previous stories submitted to Digg from that same domain.

Adobe is trying to bridge the gap between your online and offline data with Adobe Air. The idea is to no longer have data available only online by making a copy on your local hard drive.

Cake Financial has released a Facebook application that lets you view authentic stock portfolios of your friends.

http://www.FreeLineReport.com - Send news items to tips@freelinereport.com.

Kely McClung has been helping me create the daily video podcast, The Free Line, in Atlanta. He recently completed a four-year project of his first feature film.Called Blood Ties, it was shot on two continents in three countries and six major cities with a cast of 154 people — and a crew of three.  

Check out the trailer at bloodtiesmovie.com. He’s #15 on Google for “blood ties” and moving up fast. (While he’s teaching me video production, I’m showing him SEO. (Soon, he’ll be the Coolest Filmmaker on the Planet, heh.  :-)

He also recently sold his first short film to HBO; it’s called A.M. Session, and it’s currently playing on HBO. Check it out its web site – total budget for that production? $400.  Cool.

It’s my 40th birthday, and some of the guys in the office took the opportunity to create an online game, the object of which is to blow up my head as many times as possible in the allotted time. Nice. :-)The funny part is they took quotes from me from various videos and these Brad-ism’s play in the background while you’re playing. (Turn your speakers up.)Some excerpts:

• “Cash flow is like heroin. It’s freakin’ addictive.” (From Mike Filsaime’s 2007-Figure Business Event), introducing Free IQ.
• “All people talk about is money.” (From Joel Comm’s Next Internet Millionaire Classroom.)
• “Don’t let the word ‘free’ scare ya.” (Talking about the Free Line Report.)

You can see the game on the StomperNet blog, here. High scores so far:

• Our CTO, Leslie Rohde’s, son, Garrett: 27
• Julie Perry: 29
• Andy Jenkins: [Can’t say until this score is verified by screenshot. Seems high.]

Feel free to leave your high score in the comments!

This week Scribd launched a new online application called iPaper. This little application plans on being the YouTube of text documents, being able to embed into any website a PDF, MS Word or PowerPoint file. This program runs in flash and displays inline in the webpage, so the reader doesn’t have to download any special utilities to use it. And best of all, it’s free, fast, and easy to use.

If you’re one of the many that purchased HD-DVD’s in the last year, you might be a little upset that you will need to buy all those movies again just to get them to work in the Blu-Ray format. Fear not! We have uncovered an article that shows you step by step how to convert your HD-DVD discs to Blu-Ray format.

iPod Shuffle just got it’s price slashed down from $79 to $49. This is making room for the new 2 gigbyte shuffle, debuting later this month at just 69$.

Bungee Connect has officially moved out of private beta and into an open, public beta. The program is an online software creator for programmers who wish to create robust web based applications. The service is free until end users start using the products built with it.

GotVoice stores all of your voicemails in a list containing MP3 files. This allows you to sort through voicemails, looking at who sent what and when, and listen to them in the order you want, rather than shuffling through them listening to each one before moving to the next. There is a free service and a paid service that’s only about $10 a month.

The Free Line Report, a daily 2-minute video podcast about Web 2.0 and Internet Marketing, launched a wiki. It will have links to all the best free tools, tips and resources — and you can post your own content and links to your own favorite sites. Check out the Free Line Wiki here.

I recently joined the Board of Directors of a very worthy nonprofit in Atlanta. It’s called CURE Childhood Cancer, and their mission is to fund badly needed research and support families going through this terrible ordeal.

They recently made a short video that explains some of what they do:

Visit CUREChildhoodcancer.org (Download the video.)

Cancer kills more children than any other disease.

Founded in 1975, CURE Childhood Cancer is dedicated to conquering childhood cancer through research, education and support of patients and their families. Since its establishment as a grass-roots organization, CURE has focused its efforts on improving the care, quality of life, and survival rate of children with cancer.

The founders, parents and a dedicated pediatric oncologist, joined forces to support laboratory research that would translate into immediate care for children with cancer. Since that time, CURE has raised millions of dollars to fund cutting edge research at the Aflac Cancer Center Blood Disorders Service at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University School of Medicine.

Through innovative programming, CURE also provides support for stricken families, providing them comfort and support during their time of devastating need.

http://www.curechildhoodcancer.org

Bud Carter has been a Vistage Chair in Atlanta for 22 Years. Yesterday, I presented “Internet Marketing for CEO’s” to one of his CEO Groups. It was fun explaining Twitter to the group — the Internet makes a great demo!