Wesabe launched this morning. They also have a blog. Wow - I was looking forward to this, but not expecting it so soon. I’m excited to dig in.

Congratulations and good luck, Jason and Marc!

Welcome to the blogoshpere Willan Johnson, who has launched a blog along with his foray into the world of venture capital and published it under the intriguing header of Reputation, The Web, and Our Lives! I look forward to seeing what comes up in all three categories.

I’ve been meeting a lot of early-stage founders and companies lately - something I love to do.  Yesterday, someone pitched me his company, which had identified an interesting and valuable market problem and clearly had some interesting relationshiops, but had no customers, no users, no technology, no proof of concept, and no mockups to show.  Their BD lead was a research analyst, and they were in need of significant advice on “what languages and stuff to use” for their platform.  He was hoping for an investment of some kind (money, engineers, etc.) from Yahoo!

As supportive as I am of marketplace innovation, I was suddenly reminded of a something I’d dashed down in my Treo but forgotten until then.  Said by Farhad Mohit, the inimitable founder of Shopzilla, over beers at DEMO:

“There is no way around suffering like a pig.”

An entrepreneur, no matter what his métier, finds inspiration everywhere. There is never enough time to read all of the relevant books or dig into the parallels in other industries – you’re too busy trying to build things and stay above bog-line in the digital information swamp (and better off for it). But every once in a while, I come across something that captures just the right balance of engagement, instruction, and inspiration – and that, even if not profound, offers the right ROI on your time. (One such book, Philip & Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing, was signficantly responsible for my transition from book publishing to the internet.)

Recently a friend recommended Getting Real, from the folks at 37Signals (Backpack, etc.). I read it over my Oregon vacation and find it especially a propos after a couple of very exciting days at DEMO. I will stop wasting words and just tell you to just get it if you are at all inclined.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend the first open house at the Marmol-Radziner Prefab modular modern home factory in downtown LA. I’ve been excited about prefab for a couple of years now (after studying urban architecture and theory in college and getting very interested in cohousing thereafter), so I’ve been passively keeping tabs on this trend lately. After signing up for this tour, I realized Amy’s parents were going to be in town during it; delightfully, they were interested in joining. So we had an outing.

I couldn’t believe how many cars were in the makeshift parking lot for the reservation-only visit – easily 150 – and we met at least one person who had flown in for the tour. The factory itself was fascinating – basically they build tractor-trailer-sized steel frames in a yard out back, set them up on jacks, and wheel them slowly down two huge lanes where they’re prepped, coated, hung with SIP’s (Structural Insulated Panels, which are basically oreo sandwiches made of plywood and Styrofoam that offer plug-and-play rigidity and insulation) and/or windows and doors, and then have all the interior components (electric, ducts) installed. The third lane has areas for metal, wood (e.g., cabinetry), and materials prep. Cool stuff – makes you want to go learn to weld.

On the other hand, we were all shocked at how much custom work each of these modules actually involves. (There are some photos here.) Amy, her mom Julie (who has a sharp designer’s eye), her dad Jim (who’s got good engineering sense), and I spent much of the tour pointing out all the handwork – not just in the cabinets and trim but also in the most basic structural components. Four guys for several days to sand and coat one steel frame. Sheetrock and electrical installed the usual way in the interiors. 80 people working full-time for three and half months on one house – with hand-cut openings, custom welding, nails, and caulking everywhere. This does not fit any but the most literal definitions of pre-fab: Basically they’re building you a custom house, only they’re building it in an urban warehouse for a modest cost savings, and then shipping it at great expense to your site. And at upwards of $300 a square foot installed (assuming you don’t go too far), it’s hard to see the benefits as being worth the constraints, even in the epicenter of one of the frothiest real-estate markets in recent history.

As Jim put it, you hate to be negative about someone taking so much risk to be innovative. And their designs are stunning, especially in the context of an appropriate site, and managed carefully down to the details of the toilet-paper dispenser. (See photos of their prototype Desert House via FabPrefab.) But my line of the day was, “This is what you get when you put an architect in charge of a factory.”

Until it’s trending toward a price per square foot that makes it attractive relative with conventional construction, this won’t be interesting to me in any real way. I’d feel much more celebratory if the good folks at M/R were more focused on constraint-based development and positioning this as a prototype aiming at $150 a s/f by 2010 - and if all the Dwell magazine types stopped heaping praise on them until they did.

I’ll be in San Diego for DEMO for the next few days, watching emerging companies demonstrate their innovations.  Then I’m off to Yahoo! HQ for Open Hack Day, which you should definitely check out if you’re at all inclined.  If you’re going to be at either, please drop me a line!

I dreamed up this very idea years ago and am glad someone has finally determined the world is ready to participate: a site where you can report bad drivers via their license plate numbers. They even have a toll-free number (866-689-2155) you can use to report directly to the web.

Presumably the future holds enhancements and spinoffs allowing you to attach photos & video shot from your cellphone, audio narration, non-automotive misdemeanors, reputational elements, and who knows what other means of improving the quality and credibility of the data in these systems. Video speaks well enough for itself, like the photo below, which LAVoice (the source of this story) has made locally famous, but imagine if your reports were weighted by the quality of your driver record and credit scores as verified by open-API systems?

As I was just saying to a friend the other day, who knew that surveillance culture would come not from Big Brother, but from our friends and neighbors?