One the homepage you'll notice that it says something like New Art (89), the number in the brackets gives the amount of new artwork added over the period selected i.e. 24 hours, 7 days, 1 month, 1 year. What do you think?

In the first of our artist interviews, we spoke to Pete Nawara about life and work. Pete, 28, was raised in the west suburbs of Chicago, although he spent a good deal of his summers traveling the globe with his family. His first 11 years were spent in Naperville before moving to Oak Brook, Illinois.

Pete mentions that he's always been a visual person and has been interested in art for as long as he can remember. As a child, he was often in trouble for drawing over his school papers. Realising that creativity was choosing him, he went to school in Chicago thinking he would study graphic design but soon found that he couldn't get away from the more artistic side of things. He would skip class to go free life-drawing classes. He then moved on to San Francisco where he studied graphic design and sculpture. From San Francisco he went on to Paris where he obtained his fine art degree with a focus on painting.

Pete now finds himself working and living back in Chicago, but only after a 2 year spell in London. He spends as much time as possible in the studio, where he is happiest, but tries to remain sane with a fine balance between everyday life and studio time.

I asked Pete about the motivation behind his work:

"The portraits are really an investigation of people and the ego and self consciousness. I find it fascinating how people regard themselves. Generally the people in my portraits are friends whom I know quiet well. Sometimes they're just acquaintances, and lately of been particularly fond of painting people I am meeting for the first time. It's interesting to note the difference in how I paint someone who I know and someone who I know not at all"

Some of the artists that have inspired Pete are Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt but he has many more inspirational sources outside of them including "Winsor McCay, Sandro Botticelli, Johannes Vermeer, Banksy, Doze Green, Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, Cecily Brown, Alex Katz, Francis Picabia, Amedeo Modigliani, Alphonse Mucha, Barry Mcgee, Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Hesse, Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Maurice Sendak, Bill Viola, Mikhail Bulgakov..." to name but a few.

Movies are always a great insight into a person, so if there's anything left to know about Pete, maybe these will help:

RAD, Night of the Hunter, A Hudsucker proxy, Office Space, The Jerk, The Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, A Night in Casablanca, A Night at the Opera, any of them really), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Where the Buffalo Roam, Rushmore, Royal Tennenbaums, Popeye (the movie), Beverly Hills Cop I, II, & III, Les Triplettes du Belleville, Les Naufrages de L'ile aux Pirates, The Mack, Life Aquatic, Brewster's Millions, The Searchers, Blade Runner, The Planet Of The Apes, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, Escape From The Planet Of The Apes, Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, The Graduate, Fantasia, Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, Blue Velvet, Raging Bull, Brazil, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Airplane!, Groundhog Day, Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, Grizzly Man, The Warriors, Idiocracy, and ANYTHING narrated by David Attenborough.

As for commercial success, Pete has some advice which I am inclined to agree with.

"Get it out there anyway you can. What's the point of making anything if no one gets to appreciate it with you. I'm all for 'making art for art's sake', but remember that you DO have an audience and that you should try to show them as much as you can. I take a lot of pride in what I do and am always eager to show as many people as possible."

You can see more of Pete Nawara's artwork on his ArtFlock.com Profile or at his own site www.petenawara.com

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Gyuri's route to painting was through a series of creative enterprises like decorations, t-shirt designs and a few years of art school but in 1992 he accepted that painting would be his life. He works every day starting in the morning for 6 - 7 hours until the heat gets too much in the studio, if he can bare it, you'll see him in there for 12.

He's inspired more by his own thoughts than by external forces. He's always had a vivid imagination, but he's able to focus that better now to produce his work. Gyuri is almost the stereotypical melancholy artist, he pours so much of his emotion into his work, but he hopes that viewers can find their own meaning in his paintings.

Having started out selling paintings to friends and family, he now has exhibitions in Romania , Hungary , Austria and France. He is also finding that the internet is playing an important role in promoting and selling his work.

He says he is a painter and it's for others to judge whether he is an artist, but this much he does know, when creating a painting you must be totally dedicated, not just flirting - it's obviously a quality that comes out in the intensity of his work.

Click here to see more of Gyuri Lohmuller's paintings.

Artists should think about how much care and attention they place on setting up an exhibition in a gallery or art fair. A great article demonstrating this has just been posted at Artist Hideout.

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Artflock.com would like to introduce our newest friend in the art business world, Imagekind. We think that they are a wonderful resource for all working artists and we endorse them to the Artflock.com community of buyers and sellers.

Imagekind.com is a print on demand art service launched in August of 2006. Completely free of charge, artists and photographers can post up their work, and start selling it within minutes. Artists can create a gallery, set their own markup for each individual image, and keep the profit for themselves. Imagekind makes its money solely on print production and framing. Imagekind sells digital reproductions and framing, whereas Artflock.com sells originals.

Artflock.com artists are invited to come over, and create a gallery. Now home to over 10,000 independent digital artists, Imagekind stands by its high print quality - and commitment to getting the best deal possible for its content providers.

Imagekind.com - Sell your prints online and keep the profit. Visit them on the web here.

The site launched in July, and bought about 850 items last month from consumers (up from 150 in August). The Waltham, Mass. startup has raised about $2 million in angel money and is working on raising another $1 million to $2 million for the third tranche of its A round of financing.

Here are the Top 20 items on traded in on the site and how much you can get for them:

1. Palm Treo 650 - $85
2. Blackberry 8700c - $66
3. Blackberry Pearl 8100 - $141
4. Motorola RAZR V3 - $36
5. Motorola RAZR V3i - $100
6. Palm Treo 600 - $52
7. Microsoft Xbox - $30
8. Siemens SX66 - $86
9. Motorola KRZR K1 - $117
10. Sony PSP - $69
11. Blackberry 8800 - $218
12. Motorola SLVR L7e
13. Apple iPhone, (non-Bricked! ) - 8gb - $242
14. Apple iPod mini 4gb - $39
15. Palm Treo 680 - $185
16. Apple iPod shuffle 1gb - $23
17. Canon Powershot G2 - $43
18. Blackberry Curve 8300 - $276
19. AT&T 8525 (HTC TyTN) - $215
20. Garmin Nuvi 660 Automobile Navigator - $313

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Nearly every VOIP related startup has their own click-to-call widget, Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, and even GrandCentral. These widgets let you easily and sometimes anonymously set up a call with friends over the web. They're very useful and come packed with features like voicemail and texting. However, each of these services connects phones to phones, which still eats away at your mobile minutes while you're talking to that business contact or MySpace hottie.

TringMe offers a bit more flexibility. Callers can ditch their phone and call directly through their Flash widget to your mobile phone, landline, and GTalk (Yahoo and Skype coming soon). All they need is a microphone and one click. Although they're still in private beta, you can try the demo widget to the right for an idea of the experience.

Similar to the other services, your phone number is kept private and the calls are free (now's the time for that overseas call). You can also set the widget to just receive voicemails, which are emailed to you, saved on your standard mailbox, or recorded and played back in GTalk. There is one major drawback, though. Since there is no virtual phone number involved, callers have to be at a computer and can't call you while they're on the go.

Naturally such an easy and anonymous calling service is susceptible to abuse, and I don't see any countermeasures in place to keep out prank calls and telemarketers. The other services have verified phone numbers and white/black lists to keep abuse to a minimum. I expect TringMe will have to incorporate similar controls to make people more comfortable with using the widget.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

The site launched in July, and bought about 850 items last month from consumers (up from 150 in August). The Waltham, Mass. startup has raised about $2 million in angel money and is working on raising another $1 million to $2 million for the third tranche of its A round of financing.

Here are the Top 20 items on traded in on the site and how much you can get for them:

1. Palm Treo 650 - $85
2. Blackberry 8700c - $66
3. Blackberry Pearl 8100 - $141
4. Motorola RAZR V3 - $36
5. Motorola RAZR V3i - $100
6. Palm Treo 600 - $52
7. Microsoft Xbox - $30
8. Siemens SX66 - $86
9. Motorola KRZR K1 - $117
10. Sony PSP - $69
11. Blackberry 8800 - $218
12. Motorola SLVR L7e
13. Apple iPhone, (non-Bricked! ) - 8gb - $242
14. Apple iPod mini 4gb - $39
15. Palm Treo 680 - $185
16. Apple iPod shuffle 1gb - $23
17. Canon Powershot G2 - $43
18. Blackberry Curve 8300 - $276
19. AT&T 8525 (HTC TyTN) - $215
20. Garmin Nuvi 660 Automobile Navigator - $313

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

But Blodget is a bit of a one trick pony, and he likes to stay in the headlines. So he continues build cases for big valuations of Internet companies. The only difference is he publishes these thoughts on his blogs. And people still listen to what he has to say.

He isn't always bullish (he's recently trashed Yahoo and eBay). But he can't seem to contain his regular predictive outbursts that such-and-such stock is worth massively more than it is now.

When he's talking about Facebook being worth $6-$20 billion that's ok, because it isn't a public stock and no one is going to go out and throw away their life savings. But when he builds a case for Google's stock to go to $2,000/share, he's crossing a line.

Remember a couple years back when some analyst floated the idea that Google could eventually be worth $2,000 a share-and was ridiculed from coast to coast? Well, first it's worth noting that Google is now almost a third of the way there. Second, it's worth noting that $2,000 a share would mean a market cap of about $750 billion, which-given a reasonable time horizon-just isn't that far-fetched.

The problem is that Blodget, like all analysts, build authoritative sounding but essentially bullshit predictive models to back up whatever prediction they've just pulled out of their ass. When Blodget predicted a massive Amazon price increase in 1998, for example, he used three models: price to revenue multiples, revenue growth assumption, and an earnings multiple growth model. When you read it, it sounds like he really knows what he's talking about. But he's really just predicting future growth based on past growth and backing it up with a lot of smoke and mirrors. If the data doesn't fit or doesn't exist, a common trick is to use a competitor's or analogous company's data instead. One way or another, a model can be built around that headline grabbing prediction.

Blodget builds his Google $2,000 prediction on similar models - in this case he talks about a multiple on free cash flow.

But market conditions change and these models just aren't capable of taking that into consideration. Anything could derail Google's current growth rates - a credit crunch, a housing collapse or a recession could all have a big impact on consumer spending and the advertising market, and impact Google massively. The market, over the long run, is fairly efficient at predicting the value of companies. If Google really was going to go to $2,000 per share, it would be priced there already, minus only a discount based on the time value of money. It isn't, and so if you're betting that Google is going to $2,000 that means you are betting against the market and all its participants. And all you have to go on are Blodget's bullshit predictive models.

We are often criticized for being overly optimistic about young startups. That's worth arguing over, but if we get it wrong at least we're not moving the market. Venture capitalists do their own due diligence and don't last long if they place too many incorrect bets. But when journalists start writing about public companies, stock prices can (and do) move, and people can lose a lot of money.

Blodget wants to stay in the headlines, but he has little concern for those that follow his advice. "If it doesn't happen, don't come whining to us," he says in the Google post. That's a disclaimer of sorts, but it also shows that he's not all that interested in the fallout that may occur from his words. And if his past predictions are any indicator of Blodget's ability to pick stocks, a fallout is almost certainly coming.

Update: Well, I sure was wrong. Blodget nails it in a new post valuing TechCrunch at a cool $100 million. My thoughts at Crunchnotes.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Nearly every VOIP related startup has their own click-to-call widget, Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, and even GrandCentral. These widgets let you easily and sometimes anonymously set up a call with friends over the web. They're very useful and come packed with features like voicemail and texting. However, each of these services connects phones to phones, which still eats away at your mobile minutes while you're talking to that business contact or MySpace hottie.

TringMe offers a bit more flexibility. Callers can ditch their phone and call directly through their Flash widget to your mobile phone, landline, and GTalk (Yahoo and Skype coming soon). All they need is a microphone and one click. Although they're still in private beta, you can try the demo widget to the right for an idea of the experience.

Similar to the other services, your phone number is kept private and the calls are free (now's the time for that overseas call). You can also set the widget to just receive voicemails, which are emailed to you, saved on your standard mailbox, or recorded and played back in GTalk. There is one major drawback, though. Since there is no virtual phone number involved, callers have to be at a computer and can't call you while they're on the go.

Naturally such an easy and anonymous calling service is susceptible to abuse, and I don't see any countermeasures in place to keep out prank calls and telemarketers. The other services have verified phone numbers and white/black lists to keep abuse to a minimum. I expect TringMe will have to incorporate similar controls to make people more comfortable with using the widget.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

Yahoo acquired Kelkoo in 2004 for EUR475 million ($670 million). Paris based Kelkoo has continued to offer a standalone comparative shopping service, whilst being used to power Yahoo Shopping sites for the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Taiwan.

Yahoo told FT that "One of the priorities we have identified is to improve the performance of Kelkoo...we are starting a process to give Kelkoo more independence - while we evaluate strategic options for the long-term future of the business."

Yahoo's restructure after the departure of CEO Terry Semel has continued to grow in pace, with a number of services being added to the Deadpool and talks of staff downsizing. The admission that Kelkoo is not performing well for Yahoo follows the massive write-down of Skype by eBay, although comes at a time where Microsoft is buying in this space.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

But what if Ballmer could be right?

Lets look at the exact quotes for some context:

"I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there's a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people,"

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this statement. Some social networking startups will have legs and will last for a long time, a whole lot of them wont. MySpace was hot 2 years ago, Facebook is hot today, what's to say the latest fad isn't around the corner tomorrow?

Consider the Dictionary definition of fad:

"A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze"

Hasn't the rush to embrace Facebook been a craze? and certainly people signing up to use Facebook are doing so with great enthusiasm. The question then becomes whether the craze is short term or long term? Anyone remember Friendster?

More from Ballmer:

There can't be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That's for sure,"

Mr Ballmer also noted that sites such as Geocities, an online community that was bought for $3 billion by Yahoo! in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, "had most of what Facebook has."

The Geocities comparison isn't totally accurate because as a Geocities user from around 1995-1998 I don't recall there being a lot of strong social networking aspects, although there were "neighborhoods" where you could connect with people. But in the broader context Geocities was a fad, a site that went supernova with traffic only to fall away when others provided (often better) alternatives.

Ballmers right on the tech side: Facebook's backend could be duplicated over time, so can Facebook last over the longer term and not be replaced by a new site/ fad?

That question is yet to be answered.

I've been positive on Facebook because unlike MySpace I get the appeal of Facebook, although unlike many others I'm not religiously using it every day. I think that Facebook will likely last the distance, but that's not a 100% sure bet.

What I can say with absolute certainty is that the management of Facebook will be considering the longer term viability of Facebook as well, particularly given the massive growth over the last 12 months that can't be sustained for ever. Facebook have the advantage of being able to learn from the mistakes of others in the past, but even with that knowledge history can often repeat itself. Facebook's number one challenge today is turning the Facebook fad into a long term, sustainable business.

Nothing of what Ballmer has said is intrinsically wrong, particularly from a business viewpoint. Ballmer's role at Microsoft in terms of investments and acquisitions is to try to pick the winners, and a big part of that is considering whether some (or all) social networking sites are fad, because there is one thing for certain: some of them will be, as many have been in the past.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

But Blodget is a bit of a one trick pony, and he likes to stay in the headlines. So he continues build cases for big valuations of Internet companies. The only difference is he publishes these thoughts on his blogs. And people still listen to what he has to say.

He isn't always bullish (he's recently trashed Yahoo and eBay). But he can't seem to contain his regular predictive outbursts that such-and-such stock is worth massively more than it is now.

When he's talking about Facebook being worth $6-$20 billion that's ok, because it isn't a public stock and no one is going to go out and throw away their life savings. But when he builds a case for Google's stock to go to $2,000/share, he's crossing a line.

Remember a couple years back when some analyst floated the idea that Google could eventually be worth $2,000 a share-and was ridiculed from coast to coast? Well, first it's worth noting that Google is now almost a third of the way there. Second, it's worth noting that $2,000 a share would mean a market cap of about $750 billion, which-given a reasonable time horizon-just isn't that far-fetched.

The problem is that Blodget, like all analysts, build authoritative sounding but essentially bullshit predictive models to back up whatever prediction they've just pulled out of their ass. When Blodget predicted a massive Amazon price increase in 1998, for example, he used three models: price to revenue multiples, revenue growth assumption, and an earnings multiple growth model. When you read it, it sounds like he really knows what he's talking about. But he's really just predicting future growth based on past growth and backing it up with a lot of smoke and mirrors. If the data doesn't fit or doesn't exist, a common trick is to use a competitor's or analogous company's data instead. One way or another, a model can be built around that headline grabbing prediction.

Blodget builds his Google $2,000 prediction on similar models - in this case he talks about a multiple on free cash flow.

But market conditions change and these models just aren't capable of taking that into consideration. Anything could derail Google's current growth rates - a credit crunch, a housing collapse or a recession could all have a big impact on consumer spending and the advertising market, and impact Google massively. The market, over the long run, is fairly efficient at predicting the value of companies. If Google really was going to go to $2,000 per share, it would be priced there already, minus only a discount based on the time value of money. It isn't, and so if you're betting that Google is going to $2,000 that means you are betting against the market and all its participants. And all you have to go on are Blodget's bullshit predictive models.

We are often criticized for being overly optimistic about young startups. That's worth arguing over, but if we get it wrong at least we're not moving the market. Venture capitalists do their own due diligence and don't last long if they place too many incorrect bets. But when journalists start writing about public companies, stock prices can (and do) move, and people can lose a lot of money.

Blodget wants to stay in the headlines, but he has little concern for those that follow his advice. "If it doesn't happen, don't come whining to us," he says in the Google post. That's a disclaimer of sorts, but it also shows that he's not all that interested in the fallout that may occur from his words. And if his past predictions are any indicator of Blodget's ability to pick stocks, a fallout is almost certainly coming.

Update: Well, I sure was wrong. Blodget nails it in a new post valuing TechCrunch at a cool $100 million. My thoughts at Crunchnotes.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Justin.tv, the first mobile lifecasting site, remained closed over the past couple of months as they experimented with the model. Today they've finally opened the site to anyone and partnered with On2 technologies for improved video compression. The new codec is supposed to deliver superior performance that yields higher quality video on a lower quality connection. On2's benchmarks say their codec has a 30% performance improvement over the Sorenson video codec (commonly used in Flash and Quicktime) and it looks like Justin.tv's streams are benefiting from it.

So why the wait? Justin.tv originally started with a rather elaborate lifecasting model where anyone could stream their life on the go with a webcam and a laptop in their backpack. It did a great job of getting them a lot of press and into a great deal of mischief, but the hardware turned out to be too costly for the average user.

Since then, the model has switched into kind of a MySpace for video casters. The site features an Apple "coverflow-style" directory of all the casters and list of top clips. Each caster gets an individually-stylized channel page with their own live cast, chat room, profile, twitter, and top highlights. They've also started adding professional content, like a behind the scenes cast of "One Tree Hill". Viewers play judge and jury of the video streams, voting content for the clips they like to the front page of the site and casters seem happy to play along.

As I've said before, I think the live streaming model has a lot of growing up to do before we see any stand out successes. There are several hurdles to mass consumption of the medium. User generated content is often not of the highest quality. Also, live streaming doesn't lend itself to the same embeddable distribution model that made YouTube so successful since you don't know what live content will show up (most sites have since tied in recorded video clips). Live streaming does shine when it comes to user interaction, which has led many startups to focus on shows and events. Ustream has embraced the tech community with a host of shows and event casts. While not "live" video, Kyte.tv's community around recently-live video is another strategy. However, Stickam, which launched in 2005, also has a MySpace look and feel and appears to be flat yet leading the pack according to Compete and Alexa. We have yet to see whether an open Justin.tv will have more success with the model.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

Yahoo acquired Kelkoo in 2004 for EUR475 million ($670 million). Paris based Kelkoo has continued to offer a standalone comparative shopping service, whilst being used to power Yahoo Shopping sites for the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Taiwan.

Yahoo told FT that "One of the priorities we have identified is to improve the performance of Kelkoo...we are starting a process to give Kelkoo more independence - while we evaluate strategic options for the long-term future of the business."

Yahoo's restructure after the departure of CEO Terry Semel has continued to grow in pace, with a number of services being added to the Deadpool and talks of staff downsizing. The admission that Kelkoo is not performing well for Yahoo follows the massive write-down of Skype by eBay, although comes at a time where Microsoft is buying in this space.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0