Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Startup Entrepreneur?

If you’ve applied for a job before, you’ve probably fretted over how to answer questions like “are you inclined to rely more on improvisation than on careful planning?” or “do you like to create challenges for yourself when you take on a new project?”. Companies commonly use personality tests filled with questions like these to assess the fit of a potential employees with the company.

There’s a whole laundry list of these personality tests here. Some companies, like Google, have even developed their own.

All of these tests are sets of written questions meant to poke and prod at a candidates mind to get a real sense of their ability and personality. However, the meaning behind these questions is relatively transparent, motivating candidates to give the answers they think their employer wants to hear.

Startup Pairwise is taking a different approach to personality tests.

Instead of words, Pairwise will use images to test a candidates mentality using data gleaned from their LikeBetter picture game. LikeBetter is a flash based game that shows you a series of pairs of images uploaded by users. For each pair, you pick which image you prefer. Based on the choices you make, LikeBetter makes a guess about your personal traits, which you then confirm or correct. As more people use the system, LikeBetter discovers the strong correlations between the choices people make and the attributes they express.

Based on this data, Pairwise creates a quiz using some of the most highly discriminating pairs, chosen to have the strongest and most confident predictive power across the broadest spectrum of personality traits. They can then track a candidate’s behavior through the test and make an educated guess about their personality based on the correlations they made in LikeBetter. Pairwise does their best to make the test harder to read into by being a completely image based test and using non-obvious pairs (no GI Joe vs. Barbie).

Under the hood, LikeBetter is using an iterative application of Bayes rule called Naive Bayesian inference. The method uses a lot of dense statistics involving proposing hypotheses and dependent probabilities. If you really want to learn about it, check out the Wikipedia entry. On the other hand, the employment quiz is not making and testing hypotheses, but comparing the user’s behavior with the statistics they collected through LikeBetter and determining the the applicants tendency toward either extreme of an attribute (i.e cleanliness vs. messiness).

Pairwise’s first customer is Y Combinator, for whom they crafted this little Y Combinator founder quiz based on personality tests done on all their current founders. Y Combinator will be using the test in their application drive ending April 2nd. We’ve included the test for you to take below. Here’s how I fared.

Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Startup Entrepreneur?

New fiction ... Ian McEwan, Beach music - back to the top of his game?

IAN McEWAN is back on form. Following “Saturday”, his enjoyable but overly safe previous novel, this master of fiction has written a poignant new book that in terms of its diminutive size—though not its emotional range—is reminiscent of his Man Booker-prize-winning “Amsterdam”.

It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, both 22 years old, educated yet innocent, have been married for just eight hours after a courtship bound by unspoken protocols. In their honeymoon suite overlooking Chesil Beach on the Dorset coast they are served a formal dinner of long-ago roasted beef in thickened gravy, soft-boiled vegetables and white wine: “It would not have crossed Edward's mind to order a red.” Neither has any appetite. There is a starched, stilted feeling in the tepid evening air as, almost strangers, they stand, “strangely together, on a new pinnacle of existence”.

They believe their marriage will bring them happiness and the freedom to realise the plans “heaped up before them in the misty future”. Yet, despite this joyful promise neither is able to suppress fully the anxieties about the moment when, after dinner, they must “reveal themselves fully to one another” on the narrow four-poster bed with pure white covers.

For Edward, who is suffering first-night nerves, this moment will be the resolution of a prospect that has mesmerised him for more than a year. But for Florence a “visceral dread, a helpless disgust as palpable as seasickness” is overwhelming her. Here is a woman who knows that sex will never be the “summation of her joy” but the price she must pay for love—an emotion she sees as “a comforting broth...a thick winter blanket of kindness and trust”.

Mr McEwan's prose is, as always, intense and visually descriptive, but in this elegantly crafted novel his skill lies in his illumination of an evening taut with emotional paralysis and in his portrayal of missed opportunity. As events move forward to the book's dénouement, “On Chesil Beach” becomes much more than a simple story of emotions held in check by convention. It is a memorable exposé of how terrible wounds can be inflicted and the entire course of a life changed—by doing nothing.


New fiction Beach music Economist.com

The Onion - America's Finest News Source (ahem) - Now available via Online Video

Where do you get your news? CNN, ABC, FOX, Comedy Central? As American maintain loyalty to these mainstream news outlets, there is a growing audience (19% online political news consumers) of younger audience that seek their news from humor sites like The Daily Show and The Onion.

Not missing a step, The Onion is responding to its surge in print and online readers and advertisers by committing major investment into its soon to be launched Onion News Networka 24-hour fake news net marketing itself as, "faster, harder, scarier and all-knowing."

Nicely executed ad-supported video and site will lean heavily on the popularity of its iTunes podcasts and the power of viral. Unlike it's Viacom backed, Comedy Central, ONN will encourage video embedding and fan distribution on YouTube, My Space and others like Helio Mobile, iTunes or TiVo. More news to come - appropriately timed to launch - April 1!

Immigration: The Human Cost


Immigration: The Human Cost The Onion - America's Finest News Source

The new Wembley stadium - hosts its first real football match, at last ...

At last, the new Wembley is hosting a real football match*, so one can safely (famous last words?!) assume that the FA Cup final will be hosted at the new Wembley in just a few weeks time?

I have happy memories of the Cardiff Millennium stadium (ie, Sheffield Wednesday securing promotion to the Championship in the play-off final) which was as an excellent substitute national stadium, but I suppose for all the delays and outrageous amount of money it has cost, the new Wembley looks set to be a stadium worthy of our national game. Personally, I find its design somewhat anonymous and rather too conservative. Aesthetically, the Cardiff Millennium is more inspiring.

Roll on the FA Cup final, and hopefully Manchester United will win it - inevitably it will be a big money clash between Man U and Chelsea, and not many neutral fans want to see the $$$$ over-indulged 'Chelski' win - the prospect of seeing Ronaldo's sublime talents at the new Wembley is certainly an appealing one. Don't miss it.

*ps, the England vs Italy under-21's match has just finished - a rather exciting 3-3 draw. Italy's Pazzini scoring a hat-trick; there's one for the new stadium's record-books. Match that, Man Utd, Chelsea or England seniors, eh?

Still, let's beat Israel tonight first .....


BBC SPORT Football Wembley pictures

The Fall, The Picturedome and Holmfirth ....

Well, my ears are still ringing today after seeing The Fall at the Picturedome in Holmfirth last night; an enigmatic venue for a very enigmatic band.

It's the fourth time I have seen The Fall (twice in New York and now twice in the UK) and each time it is fascinating, challenging and rewarding - sure, their music is an assault on the senses - if you don't know them they do not produce happygolucky-singalongs, that's for sure - but they are a very skilled, powerful and cohesive band and produce incredibly visceral sounds.

It's very rewarding to see a concert where you're not waiting for the next singalong tune with an easily accessible chorus, etc - The Fall makes you think about music, what it means to you and what it does to your senses. For that alone I shall continue to go and see The Fall for many more years, I hope.

And as for the venue, the Picturedome at Holmfirth - well, it's had a turbulent time recently, falling into a bit of a state of disrepair along with a ubiquitous pub chain trying to take control of it - thankfully that has fallen-through and the Picturedome remains independent and will stay as a unique venue for concerts such as this.

It's awash with lovely architectural details and in a lovely setting; the stage is never more than a few feet away, there's a bar, cinema-style seats (if you need to sit down as a result of excessive bopping and/or drinking) and just outside there's the river/weir - all in the tranquil setting of sleepy Holmfirth (where much of 'Last of the Summer Wine' was filmed, if you're familiar with that show).


The Fall

Wired News: Apple of Our Eye: Macs Save Money

Well, well ... who'd have anticipated this?

--

There's been a distinct sea change in the way people think about Apple in the last few weeks.
Recently, people have been saying the strangest things about Apple and the Mac. Everything is topsy-turvy. Pundits aren't trotting out the old conventional wisdoms any more. They're saying odd stuff, like Macs are good for business; Macs can save money; and that Apple's stock -- at $90 a share -- is a bargain.

In fact, there seems to be a widespread re-evaluation of Apple going on, a cultural shift that's changing the way people think about the company. It's been building for a while but it has reached a tipping point in the last couple of months.

Here's what people are saying now:

Macs will save you money

Macs have always been derided as more expensive than PCs, but now Wilkes University in Pennsylvania is dumping its Windows machines for Macs -- to save money! A few years ago, universities like Dartmouth College, one of the biggest Mac-centric colleges, couldn't dump their Macs fast enough.

Macs are good for business

Macs in the workplace used to be just for the artsy types in the design department. But now they're appropriate for regular desk jockeys of every stripe. In Computerworld, consultant Seth Weintraub recommends Macs for the enterprise because they're easy to learn, easy to administer and not as prone to viruses and other nasties. Weintraub says IT managers who bought Macs for home use are increasingly looking to deploy them at work.

Less is more

At one time, loading on more features was the mantra. When the iPod came out, critics said it didn't match rival devices, which boasted FM radios and bigger hard drives. But users wanted fewer features, and better ease of use. "That's why the iPod succeeded where its predecessor products bombed," writes Chris Taylor, Business 2.0's senior editor, in a recent piece titled "The Trouble With Gee-Whiz Gadgets."

Closed is good

Apple's traditional closed system -- proprietary hardware, software and online services -- is now a selling point. A couple of years ago, many confidently predicted Apple would fail if it didn't open up the iPod/iTunes system to rivals, who would "hybridize" the platform with interoperable hardware and software from multiple companies. "It's absolutely clear now why five years from now, Apple will have 3 (percent) to 5 percent of the player market,'' Rob Glaser, CEO of Apple rival RealNetworks, told The New York Times in 2003. "The history of the world is that hybridization yields better results."

But consumers seem to want the opposite -- products and services from one company that are guaranteed to work well together.

Look at Microsoft's attempt to copy the iPod's top-to-bottom integration with the Zune. And customers are embracing that "closed" system. "I just switched from a Dell to an Apple laptop and love the Mac lifestyle," student Priya Sanghvi told USA Today.

Story continued on Page 2 »

Wired News: Apple of Our Eye: Macs Save Money

Squeeze - they're back ....!

Much as I love new music and am of the belief one should not overtly spend too much time wallowing in past favourite music (it's too comfortable, too easy), it's great to see that Squeeze are back - a very significant band, with cleverly crafted classic pop song ballads; I put them on a par with The Kinks.

The Enlightened Bracketologist reveals the best ad slogan of all time, the greatest film death, and more. - By Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir - Slate Magazine

What is enlightenment?

Better question: What is Bracketology?



Let's bring it down to a real-world level. Has this ever happened to you? Someone asks, "What's your favorite movie?" Not a deep question, but a probing one, something that comes up occasionally among reasonably curious folk—or men and women on their second date. Your favorite movie is a classic single-question personality profile that "reveals" you. Your answer signals your worldliness and sophistication, your sense of humor, and, most particularly, your individuality.

If you're like most people, you have a default response that is The Godfather, The Godfather II, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, or The Wizard of Oz. But have you ever methodically listed all the movies that have charmed you or that you've seen more than a dozen times—and pitted them against each other in an intellectual knockout tournament to determine, once and for all, your definitive personal champion? If you haven't, how can you say you truly know yourself? If you haven't systematically eliminated all the other worthy contenders for favorite movie, how can you blithely pick, say, My Cousin Vinny and hope to achieve enlightenment?

Bracketology—the practice of parsing people, places, and things into discrete one-on-one matchups to determine which of the two is superior or preferable—works because it is simple. It is a system that helps us make clearer and cleaner decisions about what is good, better, best in our world. What could be simpler than breaking down a choice into either/or, black or white, this one or that one?


The Enlightened Bracketologist reveals the best ad slogan of all time, the greatest film death, and more. - By Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir - Slate Magazine

: : : : : : : THE CAUTESE NATIONÁL POSTAL DISSERVICE : : : : : : :

"Operation Magic Kingdom" - powerful, emotive artwork appearing on London's streets ... what does it make you think?

: : : : : : : THE CAUTESE NATIONÁL POSTAL DISSERVICE : : : : : : :

The New Yorker

At last, the splendid New Yorker magazine has had a web make-over - long overdue.

It now has - shock! - animated cartoons (see above - you will need to go to their web site to play the video, though).

Still, The New Yorker is more about substance than style, really, anyway - and long may it continue ...

The New Yorker

Wired 15.03: Bright Stuff

With three buildings under construction this year, Thomas Heatherwick is one of the UK’s most closely watched young architects. Just don’t call him an architect — he’s also responsible for a 55-ton staircase of undulating steel in New York City, a hydraulic bridge across a canal feeding the River Thames that can curl itself into a ball to make way for passing boats, and the tallest sculpture in England.

The eclectic assortment of projects makes it impossible to pin a label on Heatherwick: The Tate Modern lists him with other artists, but the UK Design Council sees him as an engineer. “He often achieves his projects by defying gravity, and there’s an enormous amount of engineering wizardry involved,” says David Kester, chief executive of the council, which recently awarded Heatherwick the coveted Prince Philip Prize. Flummoxed, the BBC referred to him simply as “the new Leonardo da Vinci” in a recent documentary. No matter what the title — and Heatherwick, for the record, prefers designer — he has taken aim at the intersection of art, engineering, design, and architecture.

When he was 6, Heatherwick would sketch plans in notebooks while sprawled on the living room floor. He would come up with designs for remote-controlled drawbridges and toboggans with pneumatic suspension — and then try to piece them together from scavenged junk and hand-me-down parts from the mechanic near his London home. In those early days, he was inspired by the work of cartoonist W. Heath Robinson, who depicted absurd contraptions for simple tasks, like a massive machine driven by pulleys and a foot pedal that would peel a potato. “I was excited about thinking up things that didn’t exist,” he says. “But as I got older, I found that inventors were considered mad.

They were recluses — weird, disheveled hermits.” To avoid such a fate, Heatherwick studied 3-D design at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal College of Art. But school wasn’t a perfect fit: “You get all these boxes to choose from, and none of them are right. I tried to make my own line through the middle.”

Today, Heatherwick, 37, works out of a London studio on a quiet residential street just around the corner from the urban crush of King’s Cross station. Scattered around the two-story space are the remains of his creative process: Miniature models of canal crossings and other structures take up nearly every available surface; sample pieces of buildings lean against walls. “I think of this studio as one big research project,” he says. The results of this research are on display across the UK and in New York, and in the next year or so, he’ll complete a curvaceous Buddhist temple in Japan and revamp a sprawling sports and recreational facility in Hong Kong.

Heatherwick tests his most outrageous ideas in a workshop crammed with racks of tools and equipment on the ground floor of his studio. As a project takes off, he often moves it offsite, sometimes to warehouses and factories, sometimes to the public space where the work will eventually be installed. On a cold winter morning, he showed me a photo of one such installation, a prototype bridge built at London’s science-focused Imperial College. In the snapshot, one of his designers is standing atop a long row of glass panels that seem to hover in midair. There’s no support underneath; the 1,000-plus pieces of glass will stay in place because they’re jammed together by 800 tons of pressure supplied by an enormous underground mechanical vice that squeezes the assembly from both sides.

One recent Heatherwick project is a long, narrow building of rippling corroded steel that appears to have washed up on the pebbled shore of Littlehampton, England, like some storm-twisted tanker. Plunked on a plateau between the community’s beach and its ivory Georgian town houses, the structure is actually a restaurant — the East Beach Café — that serves greasy comfort food in a dining room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and dishes up Mr. Whippy soft-serve ice cream at a take-out bar. Looking more like the hull of a ship than a conventional building, the interior has the feel of an underwater cave. “It’s a test piece,” Heatherwick says. “Every project is an experiment.”

Wired 15.03: Bright Stuff

FastCompany.com - Video, Audio and Podcasts

FastCompany.com - Video, Audio and Podcasts

The eight pillars of enjoyment as applied to workflow - Lifehacker

We all experience happiness through various methods, but how about work? What can you do to make that part of your life more pleasurable? Try asking yourself questions based on the eight pillars of enjoyment.

Basically, these are premises based on the optimum productivity workflow: you enjoy the task set before you, you are focused, you have clear goals, etc. The point of this is that we need to try to cut the work that does not result in a good flow (if possible), and jump headlong into the work that does. Yep, it sounds a bit Zen, but if it works, why not? How about you - do you have tried and true methods that make your work more of a joy and less of a drag? Thoughts in the comments

The eight pillars of enjoyment as applied to workflow - Lifehacker

Why the Treasury loves a gambler | Dt Opinion | Opinion | Telegraph

If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss, I admire you inordinately. Despite myself, I love a heroic gambler. (Except the ones who are running my country, or the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.) So I much enjoyed the story of the "Fat Man", the Syrian businessman Fouad al-Zayat, who has lost £23 million on London's ritzier gambling tables.

I loved his grandstanding sound bite ("This is the only sin I have"), though on further reading, I didn't believe it: Mr al-Zayat has other sins. Having lost £2 million to Aspinall's in a single night, he paid by cheque and then rang up his bank afterwards to tell them to cancel it. Aspinall's had to take him to court to get its £2 million (plus costs), in a case that was finally settled last month.

Tut-tut. From the little I know about high-stakes gambling (from Victorian novels, mostly), welshing on one's gaming debts is unheroic. Still, you have to admire the weight of numbers.

The only time I ever gambled heroically was in a town called Robinsonville in Tunica County, Mississippi. I went with a Mississippi native, who'd never been to Las-Vegas-on-the-Delta and wanted to go.

The Horseshoe is a neon-lit building the size of Terminal 4 rising up from the vast flatlands; we picked it from a dozen others. We picked a blackjack table (from around 400) and a man said: "Hi, my name's Alvin, I'll be your croupier for this evening." It was 11 o'clock. As soon as we sat down, a woman asked what we wanted to drink. We said Tennessee whiskey sours; she brought them; they were free. As soon as we drank them, she brought more, also free. She kept coming till four in the morning.

Alvin doled out two cards to everyone on the table and we put down $10 each. After a minute, Alvin said: "Bank wins". We did it again. He said: "Bank wins again, ma'am." After 10 minutes, Alvin became gloomier and gloomier. By 4am, our wallets were empty. I asked Alvin, somewhat unsoberly, why he was being so sour-faced when he kept winning and we kept losing. He said: "Because I'm on the minimum wage and tips, ma'am. People tip me when they win. When you lose money, I lose money." We reeled away.

The thing is that Tunica County chose to gamble. Once the poorest county in America, it's now the US's richest per capita. In Mississippi, gambling was legal so long as you did it "on the water" (hence the river boat casinos). Tunica, being well inland, didn't have much to float on, but a couple of entrepreneurs put a small boat-casino on an irrigation channel off the Mississippi.

The locals noticed that "people from Memphis" were driving down in hordes to chuck money at it, so the whole county upped and voted for gambling. The huge Las Vegas casino chains paid the cotton farmers a lot of money for their land but megabucks for drainage ditches on which to "float" the casinos. You'd never know you were "on the water", but your croupier will point out a small well-like arrangement, with black water gleaming at the bottom.

What became Las-Vegas-on-the-Delta was not a decision thrust on Tunica County by the federal government. They didn't get gambling because President Reagan thought a supercasino was a good idea, but because some locals thought was a good idea.

In Blackpool, some locals thought it was a good idea as well. In the very early 1990s the billionaire Trevor Hemmings, who owns Leisure Parcs, floated the idea of Blackpool becoming a casino resort. He thought it would regenerate the place (and something had to). All sorts of people got behind him and the Blackpool bidders lobbied Parliament for a "resort casino". They provided MPs with much documentation about regeneration.

Meanwhile, Mr Hemmings spent £74 million on a big chunk of the Golden Mile, where he thought a resort casino would sit nicely.

What happened next is so depressing it hardly bears recalling. The Government, in the person of Tessa Jowell, seized on the Blackpool bid and ran off to Tony with it. She was just loving the whole idea of "regeneration", frankly. Regenerating depressed parts of Britain was a fabulous idea. Doing it at no cost to the Chancellor's purse was too fantastic for words. In minutes, there was a government plan for "resort casinos". Why stop at one?

Blackpool should have noticed that the Government's documentation immediately dropped "resort" from its documents and changed it to "regional" casinos. Perhaps they did notice. "Regional", like "regeneration", is one of New Labour's keywords.

Once "Blackjack-Lil" Jowell had highjacked the Blackpool bid and turned it into the baffling and bothersome Gambling Bill 2005, there was no stopping the lunacy that followed: the cowboy boots, the croupier poses, the ranch, the Dome, the snapping in Parliament about "not bringing Las Vegas style tricks of the trade into Britain". (Some hope. Those guys know what they're doing, even if she doesn't.)
I don't care what Fat Men do with their squillions at Aspinall's: good luck to them. I don't believe that a supercasino will "regenerate" an already regenerated Manchester, or pay for the Olympics, or provide jobs for thousands in depressed parts of Britain. (British casinos don't allow tipping.)

What I hate is when every aspect of British life becomes an arm of government and a Treasury resource, to be fleeced at will (the Chancellor is looking forward to the many £££s he will make from online gambling). Jowell famously said her Bill was "100 per cent regulation and 99 per cent protection". Makes the flesh creep, that sort of remark.


Why the Treasury loves a gambler Dt Opinion Opinion Telegraph

Achievement - Forbes.com

We all have our own measure of success. For a high-powered Wall Street trader, a $10 million payday might not be enough--although most of us would be satisfied with a fraction of that. Mozart composed more than 600 works, while novelist Harper Lee wrote just one great book.

Great people judge themselves failures, and those who accomplish nothing swell with pride. What, then, is the measure of a life well led? Our special report on achievement offers context but no simple answers. Why do some succeed while others don't? Are we all failures? Perhaps ultimately the greatest achievement is simply a sense of dissatisfaction that makes us strive to do great things.

Read on ...

Achievement - Forbes.com

T r A C e Y t H o R n | o U T o f T h E W o O d S

Remember Everything But The Girl? Well, they're still much-missed for their unique fusion of electro-pop-dance-soul-mixes, etc, but the rather lovely Tracey Thorn is back with a new album. Ben Watt, her long-standing partner in music as well as life, has continued to create (Lazy Dog, etc) ever since the demise of their EBTG persona, but it's great to hear Tracey's beautiful voice once again. Enjoy ...





T r A C e Y t H o R n o U T o f T h E W o O d S

BBC Signs Content Deal With YouTube - WSJ.com

Interesting development ... YouTube may at last start to have some quality content - I mean, there's only so many times you can watch a cat falling over, or a teeenager running into a fence. If YouTube hearlded a brand new world of creativity/media, then I am a banana ...

--

LONDON -- British Broadcasting Corp. said Friday it has signed a deal with YouTube, a unit of Google Inc., which will make clips of its programs available on the video-sharing Web site.

The publicly funded United Kingdom broadcaster said it will offer branded "channels" on YouTube, some of which will be funded by advertising.

The BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, said YouTube was "a key gateway through which to engage new audiences in the U.K. and abroad."

The deal will create a channel called "BBC Worldwide" on YouTube which will show hit shows, including Top Gear, Spooks and nature documentaries presented by David Attenborough.

It also will create a channel to be called "BBC World," that will show news clips from the BBC's commercially operated international news channel. The corporation will make available clips from some current popular series such as Doctor Who and Life On Mars.

The BBC said in a statement that the partnership "reflects YouTube's commitment to work with content owners to make compelling video accessible online, and the BBC's commitment to increase reach through the partnership."

Some large media and entertainment companies have objected to YouTube's use of their material on an unauthorized basis. YouTube's Web site features video clips, both made by private individuals and from corporations. Viacom Inc. recently forced the company to take down more than 100,000 video clips from the YouTube site.

The plan is likely to be controversial in the U.K., where the BBC has been criticized by rivals for extending its footprint too far into commercial territory. The deal comes as the BBC Trust, the corporation's new governance body, considers whether to allow the corporation to advertise on its international Web sites. The BBC is funded through a universal license fee in the U.K. and advertising isn't permitted on its domestic broadcast platforms or Web site.


BBC Signs Content Deal With YouTube - WSJ.com

The World According to John K.

John Kricfalusi, the mind that gave us The Ren and Stimpy Show, The Ripping Friends and The Goddamn George Liquor Program has a plan to make you watch the ads you see online. In fact, his goal is to make it so you won't even realize you're watching a commercial.

Kricfalusi -- better known as John K. -- isn't exactly known for bending to the will of studios or censors. This is, after all, the guy who was dismissed from Ren and Stimpy after producing an episode that ended with a character being savagely beaten with a boat oar. Now, he's devised a series of Flash-animated advertisements for VOIP provider Raketu. But this isn't the typical case of selling out. Kricfalusi genuinely wants to bring creativity back to advertising while promoting his animation. Plus, he gets to be way naughtier online than on the TV.

It all started a few years ago when he produced a series of web shorts for Tower Records -- for free.

This led to animation deals with Old Navy and then Raketu. The one-minute shorts hawking the virtues of Raketu feature some of Kricfalusi's most bombastic characters (including the hilarious George Liquor) and are punctuated by Kricfalusi's signature style of bright, entertaining and somewhat retro animation.

This form of advertising has been around for decades. Remember when Fred Flintstone peddled Winston cigarettes? But Kricfalusi thinks that his online offering, which carries his distinctive storytelling, will change attitudes toward advertising on the web, kind of like what HBO did for TV. Starting Thursday, you can be the judge.

That's when Kricfalusi's ads go live on , as well as his blog, all kinds of stuff.

Wired News sat down with John K. and chatted about the future of online advertisement, his new project with Raketu and, of course, the fate of Ren and Stimpy. (To check out John K.'s Raketu shorts, click here and here.)

Wired News: You make the cartoons for the love of it. Any guilt about making ads?

John K.: Guilt? This is America. I'm a capitalist. I would feel guilty if I didn't sell the product well and if I bored the audience. I have a duty to the sponsor and the audience. Making those two people happy is a lot easier than making a hundred TV execs happy while making the audience and sponsor unhappy. That makes me feel really guilty.

Wired News: The World According to John K.