With all the hoopla and madness of the recent NBA free agency, it is always interesting to see what players ultimately get paid the most.

Like other sports, the NBA has their own salary rules and guidelines. Ultimately this make it so players who stay with their team and/or have been in the league longer are eligible to make more money than others. Moreover, thanks to bad general managers there are also players who are grossly overpaid.

In Miami, LeBron James ($14.5 million), Dwayne Wade ($14 million), and Chris Bosh ($14.5 million) all took less to play on the same team, which barely gets them into the top 20 highest paid NBA players.

Top 10 highest paid NBA players for 2010-11 season

Championships won are in parenthesizes.

1. Kobe Bryant (5) – $24,806,250
2. Rashard Lewis (0) – $20,514,000
3. Kevin Garnet (1) – $18,800,000
4. Tim Duncan (4) – $18,700,000
5. Michael Redd (0) – $18,300,000
6. Pau Gasol (2) – $17,822,187
7. Andrei Kerilenko (0) – $17,822,187
8. Yao Ming (0) – $17,686,100
9. Gilbert Arenas (0) – $17,686,100
10. Dirk Nowitski (0) – $17,300,000

Are there any players that surprised you who made this list… or didn’t?

Top 5 highest payrolls in NBA for 2010-11 season

Still updating as players are signed.

1. Los Angeles Lakers – $95,218,987
2. Orlando Magic – $89,855,582
3. Dallas Mavericks – $85,761,280
4. Boston Celtics – $83,317,155
5. Denver Nuggets – $83,020,059

Below are the 10 biggest pollution payouts by corporations (not adjusted for inflation).

1. British Petroleum (BP) – $21.7 billion; While it looks like this problem is far from being solved, BP has already claimed the top spot by spending $1.6 billion on the Deepwater Horizon oil. With an added $20 billion fund to compensate Gulf-area victims of the spill and a $100 million fund for laid off oil workers.

2. Exxon (XOM) – $3.5 billion; In 1989, 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilt into Alaska’s Prince William sound and tainted 11,000 square miles of ocean and 1,300 miles of shoreline.

3. Union Carbide – $470 million; In 1984, methyl isocyanante gas flooded Bhopal, India and killed an estimated 15,000 people. After the spill, Union Carbide CEO, Warren Anderson, fled India and was not required to come back to face charges. This ultimately forced victims to take a claim of $470 million compared to the $3 billion they were seeking.

4. Honeywell (HON) – $451 million; With 165,000 pounds of mercury and other toxins in New York’s Onondaga Lake, the most polluted lake in America, Honeywell agreed to pay for cleanup and plans to move millions of cubic tons of soil from the lake bed to a nearby storage facility.

5. Pacific Gas and Electric – $335 million; In 2006, it was found that PG&E’s compressor plan had leaked metal into the groundwater around Kettleman Hills, CA.

6. Pacific Gas and Electric Redux – $333 million;  In 1996, waste from a compressor station seeped into the surrounding groundwater in Hinkley, CA. This poisoned a 2-mile by 1-mile area and caused a host of chromium-related health issues.

7. ASARCO – $1.79 billion; In 2009, ASARCO agreed to pay funds to clean up 80 sites across 19 states due to hazardous debris blanketing surrounding towns.

8. General Electric (GE) – $250 million; For 45 years, a plant in Pittsfield, MA released organic compounds linked to brain damage, liver disease, and cancer – into the Housatonic river. In 1999, GE agreed to pay to clean up the mess.

9. Trafigura – $244 million; In 2006, Trafigura dumped more than 500 tons of toxic waste near Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. Chemicals from the waste released gases that killed 17 and injured more than 100,000. A settlement was later agreed upon to pay for damages and cleanup.

10. ARCO – $187 million; Since the 1800′s, mining companies in Butte, MT have produced thousands of tons of sulfur, arsenic, lead, and other pollutants, which also found their way into the Clark Fork River. In 2008, ARCO agreed to pay to clean up the 120 miles of river.

source – dailyfinance

Then again 6 years in the online/technology world can be the same as 20 years.

We already know about how quickly new social networks like Facebook and Bebo have quickly caught up and, in most cases, already surpassed the value of MySpace. In fact, even LinkedIn has a value of nearly twice that of MySpace. Throw in the fact that many are hating the spamming touches of MySpace, and it seems like these other social networks are slowly cutting Tom and his MySpace out of the money.

You might remember that Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. (NWSA) picked up MySpace for $550 million back in 2005. Since than the company has been struggling to keep its lead ahead of its major competitor in Facebook.

Most recently, Myspace laid off 30% of their staff. While that still brings the total to about 1000 employees (the same as Facebook), it marks MySpace of somewhat conceding their problems. For too long, they have stayed with the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” theme that the once highly adored company now seems rather outdated and antiquated. As the number of MySpace users declines, so does advertising revenue. EMarketer projects that U.S. revenue will fall 15% to $495 million in 2009 from $585 million last year.

If history has taught us anything is that lay offs are usually the first step in trying to bring a company back to life. The problem is that lay offs alone won’t fix anything. While we don’t want to cut all hopes for MySpace, lay offs can also lead to more lay offs, more changes, and eventually just a failed business.

In the world of social media and social networking, there are new sites and services being developed almost every minute it seems. Some fail and some prosper, but one thing we know is that the lack of ability to stay ahead of the curve and innovate will ultimately kill not just Myspace, but any business who follows the same strategy.

Further reading (LA Times) – MySpace Fell Off The Pace

The problem is that too many start-ups die everybody. According to Sramana Mitra, an idea called “bootstrapping” is the way for new businesses to go. Mitra is the author of the book, Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction, a technology entrepreneur, strategy consultant in Silicon Valley, and writes a business blog.

This idea of “bootstrapping” basically means that you buckle down, hustle, and try to grow your business, while using relatively less help.

“Bootstrapping is a discovery process. Rather than building an ark, waiting for animals to come, and hoping the tide rises – you take an incremental approach and discover a legitimate, real-world value proposition.”

One of the examples include not rushing to receive venture capital funding. With early capital, these start-ups get a false sense about how much money they are really generating. Getting funding early can also lead to a bigger chunk of your say going out the window because these venture capitalist will want to direct more.

Overall, Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction, is a great read for anybody looking to start or already running a new start-up. Mitra uses interviews with a dozen of successul entreprenuers and combines them with lessons these business owners used to make their start-up sucessful.

When you have so many users, creating a sound plan to make money off them wouldn’t seem so hard, except when it comes to Twitter. How can you create a sound monetary business plan for a service that is often used through third party applications?

If you haven’t used Twitter yet, basically a profile page consists of the users image, name, location, web site, and brief description. If you are artistically savvy, you can also create your own background. The original Twitter feed page itself is just a simple list of the latest twits. If Twitter wanted to they could easily add some ads here and there, but the beauty of Twitter is that you can use it anywhere anytime.

If you have a Twitter account, take a second to look down the list of latest Tweets. You will notice that almost 90% of the tweets come from some third party application. The reason Twitter has grown so quickly is because it is basically a simple and easy tool to use directly from your phone or other mediums.

Now if many of your users are using the service, but through third party apps, haven’t you basically lost them?

If you look at Facebook, you will notice the ads are located usually to the right of the profile and mixed in with feeds, and they are targeted to the same keywords that are in the profile. If Twitter was to try this same approach and throw up some ads on your Twitter page, what good would it do if most users are not even using the page?

Another idea I have heard about was to charge for premium accounts, but what could they offer that would drive people to want to move from free to pay? If anything they would have to take something away, such as a limit on how many people can follow you.

The easiest option would seem to just insert ads blended in as tweets. You could have these ads targeted by what a specific user has been tweeting about and they could show up every so many tweets, but now you come to the problem of revenue sharing. If other companies are making these third party apps to use on Twitter, then shouldn’t Twitter have to share some of the revenue with them?

Whatever the solution Twitter comes up with will definitely be an interesting and one many are anticipating. While you can’t really trust the figures that are being thrown around, many top analysts are valuing the social network at $1 billion dollar plus. Seems like a reach for a company yet to actually derive money from the service.

Follow me on twitter.

First off, most of these projects took years longer to build than they were expected too. Secondly, it seemed like the same people were buying the different properities. Now Dubai has created too many things and funds have dried up.

Now people are fleeing the country. It has even be reported that cars are being stranded at the hotel with keys in the ignition. Contrary to what many thinks, there is no oil there. The weather is not even pleasing. You got sand storms, high winds, and excessive heat. If you ask me Dubai is on the verge of becoming a ghost town, but with massive skyscrapers.

If it wasn’t for the numourous oil/royalty money that is invested into the city, Dubai would have probably gone bye bye long ago. The video below says it all [VIDEO ENCLOSED].

The top 10 include (start-up costs):

1. Subway ($78.6K-238.3K)
2. McDonald’s ($950.2K-1.8M)
3. Liberty Tax Service ($53.8K-66.9K)
4. Sonic Drive In ($1.2M-3.2M)
5. Intercontinental Hotels Group (Varies)
6. Ace Hardware ($243.5K-1M)
7. Pizza Hut ($638K-2.97M)
8. UPS Store ($171.2K-280K)
9. Circle K ($161K-1.4M)
10. Papa John’s ($135.8K-491.6K)

While I have never heard of Liberty Tax Service and Circle K, the other 8 franchise seem reasonable with what I would expect to top the list. Obviously most of them are fast food joints, which makes sense because these people will always have business regardless of the economy.

Subway to me is a no brainer if only for the fact that I eat there 1-2 times a week. Also Subway is expected to surpass McDonald’s for number of outlets in 5 years. If that is not an accomplishment, then I don’t know what is. According to their CEO, 2008 was their best year! No surprise that there are public stock holdings for the company.

Another thing that stood out to me was that, out of the top 10, Sonic seemed to have the highest start-up costs. To me it seems weird because all there really is to the building itself is the kitchen, and the rest is outdoors; however, perhaps the wiring for each car station is more expensive than I think.

Looking to buy into any franchises in the near future?

Entrepreneur.com – 2009 Franchise 500

Now TiVo has taken the competition to the next level by giving users the option of ordering Domino’s pizza through the convenience of their TiVo box.

With the rapid onslaught of current media and consumer integration, it is only a matter of time before companies like Comcast (CMCSA) offer these capabilities and the selection between Domino’s and others will grow.

If there is one trend that holds true in any market, is that if something works everybody will flood the market and try to duplicate or innovate. While the combination of Domino’s and TiVo is unique, imagine how far this one little idea can run.

A good example to see here is YouTube (GOOG). With the massive increase in users and exposure the site received, in order to try and maximize profits YouTube embedded ads within the video, and they are usually related to the subject. What is stopping this process from not venturing into the television world?

If TiVo has the capabilities of connecting with Domino’s to receive orders, then couldn’t they connect with Best Buy, Target, or any other type of retailer? What if we are watching those iPhone (AAPL) commercials, and we could order it right then and there?

Usually down economies spark new innovation. More people are trying to find new ideas that work. The internet allowed us the pleasure of not having to leave the house, but now we might not even have to leave the couch.

Do you like the integration between Domino’s and TiVo? Do you see this working with other retailers? Would you even want to see it?

It seems like the credit crunch is hurting everything and anything even if they are nowhere near directly related. Long time player Death Row Records is looking to sell the label’s trademarks, copyrights, videos, master recordings, compositions, digital and merchandise rights, and artist agreements.

Yeah record companies are going out of business everyday, but very rarely do we see a label with a significant background call it quits.

For those unaware, Death Row has launched and managed careers of some of the greatest. A few include: Tupac, Snoop Dogg, and Dr. Dre.

Although Death Row had a huge impact on the popularizing of hip-hop, the company was constantly associated with its shady dealings and forceful nature of co-founder and president, Suge Knight.

In the late 90′s, Death Row was shook up from multiple deaths and countless run ins with the law. Eventually major stars like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre parted ways with Death Row, which ultimately caused the current actions of the company.

While many people are probably ignoring this whole ordeal, what was once an intregal part of our culture is up for the right price.

So just how are these small business coping with the recession-like atmosphere?

Inc.com has a great article that shares some of the ways small businesses have dealt with and adjusted to the trash can that is our economy.

We have definitely cut back on our spending, and we are cutting down on our advertising and trying to reduce our costs just to be cautious, since we don’t know what’s going to happen down the road. We would hate to have any of our staff laid off, so…

Check out the full article over at Inc.com – The View from Main Street.