• Customer data stored by different service providers will be combined to create more intelligent services.
• Oil will have increasing difficulty competing with biofuels made from cheap nonfood crops for transportation.
• Water technology will replace abating global warming as a global priority.
• The mobile device industry's migration to smart phones will produce great disruption for big industry players.
• Booming market for healthy aging technologies.
• Four-fifths of the world population will carry mobile Internet devices within five to 10 years.
• Algorithms will be constructed to develop new industrial chemicals, new biofuels and eventually artificial intelligence.
• The mobile phone is your most important device.
• There is going to be a venture capital shakeout.
• Within five years everything that matters to you will be available on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse

The best advice my old man gave, and the advice he drilled most emphatically and repeatedly was, ASK FOR THE ORDER. You'd be amazed how many people talk to customers forever and never actually say ask for the order.

Before we launched Half.com, we needed inventory. We reached out to stores and shops, sending them our three-page seller agreement. Retailers were either intimidated or didn't want to spend the money to have a lawyer review it. 60% of sellers would drop out. We made a change and asked the seller to agree to our terms of service by clicking a box. We didn't change what we asked for — we just changed the way we asked for it. One of my portfolio companies [was] talking with prospects about a big ad deal, sending out an "Advertising Partnership Agreement." They learned that all nonstandard agreements had to go to legal — which added weeks/months to the process. Instead, they sent over "Ad Insertion Agreement" which had the same terms of our prior agreement, [but] our marketing contact had full authority to sign.

What's Kopelman sick of? First, what he calls "hamburger companies," or the kind that are built to flip with business plans to depend on getting acquired by Google. He's also done with plans that monetize through Google's AdSense.

Finally, even though Kopelman sits on the board of Facebook's new $10 million fund for Facebook application developers, don't come to him with some measly little app.

"Just because I Super-Poked you or bit you and turned you into a zombie doesn't really give me anything as an advertiser to figure out your intent or something to target against," Kopelman told Miller.

So, no AdSense publishers and no Facebook apps. That doesn't leave the current crop of entrepreneurs with very much to go on, from the pitches we get daily.

True Ventures, the firm which counts WordPress maker Automattic and tech-blog network GigaOm among its holdings, hosted people at its offices on Pier 38 right by the Bay Bridge. Spotted at the party: GigaOm reporters Katie Fehrenbacher and Liz Gannes in conversation with Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb. The effortlessly charming Jared Kopf of AdRoll tried to duck having a specific launch date for his ad software company. (Before December 31, he promised.) On my way out the door, I spied First Round Capital VC Josh Kopelman chatting with angel investor Ron Conway, VC Stewart Alsop, and TeeBeeDee's Robin Wolaner. (I recognized Wolaner because she recently blogged about having eye surgery complete with mid-surgery pictures. Ew! In a Discovery Channel can't-stop-looking sort of way.)

I spoke with Kopelman for a moment as he explained the reason why he tried indoor skydiving — the activity which broke his shoulder. His wife thought it seemed safer than the zero-gravity flights currently in vogue with the Sand Hill set. Oops.

Onto the Rickshaw Stop across town, to a music session for hacks and flacks. The open mike jam session starred jounalist rock star Don Clark of the Wall Street Journal and Kevin Maney of Portfolio. Here's a secret for you — whenever Don Clark plays, a gaggle of PR fans mob the audience. Last night? No different. Spotted in the crowd, flacks from big firms, like Voce Communications, and PR consultants aplenty. Ali Partovi, founder of music application service iLike, came out to support the scene. PR goddess Brooke Hammerling appeared and greeted Le Web 3 conference producer Cathy Brooks effusively.

To SoMa and Fluid for the the last stop of the night, where Mike Jung of Panorama Capital and Eric Chin of Bay Partners brought together alums from their Alpha dinners in Woodside for a drink special. Spotted: First Round Capital director Howard Morgan, who spoke briefly about his investment into the Zero-G airlines. (He's been on three of those flights already!) The crowd was full of founders. Among the crowd were Mint's Aaron Patzer, HotorNot founder James Hong, former Greylock VC turned Chirpscreen founder Eve Phillips and the guy blowing kisses above, PBWiki founder David Weekly. Eric and Mike told me that they aim to have their Alpha dinners bring together founders and VCs with a common thread, with the hopes of making connections that pay off. And it's happened. Oren Michels of Mashery reports that his widget-software startup received a check in the midst of one of the Alpha dinners. The Alpha luck might have struck again. At the end of the night, Mike Jung snuck away for a phone call. Rumor was that a deal was in the works. Heard anything about it? Let us know.