Dec
15
Lost my Kindle…what’s next?
Filed Under Favorite Books, Technology
I lost my Kindle on my last business trip and I’ve been super upset about it. I need my screen back for doing research because normal computer use causes me a great deal of grief. I nearly turned around and bought another Kindle, but hesitated because I believe the next wave of these products is coming out 1st quarter next year, thanks to the Pixel Qi screen that I’ve been following. I’m also hopeful that the Plastic Logic Que’s form factor will serve my purposes better than the Kindle (and I think that the reason for the profile shots of the Que are because it’s going to sport the Pixel Qi screen itself).
Yet, in the long run, if I like the Pixel Qi screen and Microsoft or Apple launch a tablet I can use for reading and for my email, I’ll probably head that route over a dedicated reader.
In the meanwhile, the wait and staring into the flashlight of my flat screen are both killing me.
Nov
18
Great questions Perry. Yes, Yes and Yes.
Entrepreneurs driven by GREED?
Whatever each entrepreneur’s motive…apparently, they are twice as giving as people in the same income brackets all the way from the poor to the wealthy.
Why are business owners not portrayed more favorably in the media?
Perry, you’ll enjoy this talk (audio available) and this article on Why Giving Matters.
Nov
11
What is your favorite child entrepreneur hero story?
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Education and Love for Learning, Entrepreneurship, Favorite Books, Ideas and Thoughts
My son has become interested in business at a very young age (he’s 6 right now) and I would like to introduce him to inspiring stories of young entrepreneurs to give him ideas.
A little background. My son, of his own accord, has successfully sold his jokes by giving 1 for free and charging a $1 for more. He set up a toy sale out by the driveway at 5. He asks questions about the difference between Walmart’s and Apple’s margins. He hires his sisters (with his Halloween candy) to do work for him to make more money. This is a greater level of interest than his Dad for his age.
I want to encourage his interests in business and need some help.
We recently read of James C. Penny (founder of J.C. Penny) who set up a watermelon stand near the fairgrounds (his Dad scolded him for taking advantage of those within the fairgrounds who paid for selling permits). We read of Orville Wright and when he partnered with his 8-year-old sister to collect scrap iron from the neighbors and sell it to the junk yard (they had a bully attach them when they took the metal to the yard). Great stories.
This morning it occurred to me that if we could read together inspiring stories of young entrepreneurs, then it would give us both ideas.
Particularly, he wants to sell something this year for a project and has discovered from his toy sale (that only earned him $0.25 because he did it on a country road with little traffic) that he needs to find something he can sell and a place with more people to sell it. He needs ideas.
So, what are your favorite child entrepreneurial stories that my son and I can share together?
– Something a famous entrepreneur did when s/he was a child (famous examples).
– Something someone close to you has done that was interesting (non-famous examples).
– Stories you’ve heard as alternatives to the lemonade or toy stand (perhaps ideas that could work for a boy who lives in the country).
– Any children who’ve created very successful enterprises.
Please answer on LinkedIn, via a trackback from a post on your blog or in the comments. We’ll both be grateful!
Sep
16
Kindle Hint – FREE Mp3 Audiobooks that use the audible player
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Home, Family and Church, Ideas and Thoughts, Technology
Thank you Robin for letting me know that the Audible folder supports Mp3 files. Thank you Paul for the great place to find FREE Mp3 audio books.
I dream of the day when Kindle is opened up for developers and someone creates an application that combines text-to-speech, Audio books and the actual text. What a killer application for teaching my children to read. I know the technical difficulties of syncing the actor’s voice with the actual text. But one can dream 
Sep
11
Digital Content Markets Set on Fire
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Entrepreneurship, Ideas and Thoughts
Mark Cuban’s recent post is extremely thought provoking and, as an avid Kindle fan/user since its launch, I believe he’s onto something for the content business. I’m saving the link here for future reference.
Sep
2
Pogopalooza Professional Big Air and Extreme Sport Awareness
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Entrepreneurship, Ideas and Thoughts
A friend of mine from my very own Burley, Idaho, Biff Hutchison, just won the Professional Big Air competition at the Pogopalooza in Pittsburg. I’m thrilled for him.
When Paul Allen offerred to let the first 10 entrepreneurs who contact him to run a survey on his 50 million users, I took him up on it and decided to gauge the publics awareness of pogo as a sport.
Here are the results (I’m thinking these stats will look very different over the next year as I see this sport taking off).
I’ll post the final after all 1000 responses come in…
What do you know about pogo as an extreme sport? (1215 responses) September 2nd, 2009
| I want a FlyBar or other stunt pogo stick | 1% |
| I’ve heard of Pogopalooza | 4% |
| I know some punk kids who do tricks on pogo sticks | 4% |
| I don’t know anything about pogo as a sport | 90% |
| I have a family member who wants or has a pogo stick for stunts | 2% |
Here’s a plug for FamilyLink (thanks for the survey Paul!)…
If your business would like to run a targeted survey with our 50 million users, please contact info@admazing.com. We can provide hundreds of thousands of responses in a very short time period with demographic targeting.
Aug
28
Favorite Kindle Web Services – kindlefeeder and FeedBooks
Filed Under Education and Love for Learning, Technology
I recently discovered two excellent web services for the Kindle.
- kindlefeeder is a RSS reader for the Kindle. Anyone who has used Google Reader or Bloglines on the Kindle knows how cumbersome normal rss readers through the Kindle browser. kindlefeeder compiles your feeds into a “book” that you can download everyday, week or whenever you want (or have sent to your kindle email addresses). The site has a premium service provides a download through the kindle browser. Then you can read your content without worrying about the Internet connection on the wonderful, easy-on-the-eyes eInk screen. I made a “favorites” feature request and the developer already responded.
- FeedBooks provides a way for you to download free books through your kindle, as well as a way to prepare rss feeds as books. It gets really exciting when you see the way they’ve put together their catalogue.
It’s been a while since I’ve looked over the Kindle space (even though I use my Kindle more than my Blackberry) and I’m pleased to see innovation and interest growing around the platform.
Apr
11
Undertaking evaluation of open source software for the ? time (too many times), I decided to look for new insights into evaluating software.
As a little background, I always try to understand first what I absolutely need for my personal project. Then, as I compile a list of software that most closely solves the needs of my personal project, I’ve always reviewed open source software projects for a business model to drive growth and hints of momentum. I comb in the search engine indices and the projects’ forums (one great gauge is that many of the projects with the best momentum are inside my CPanel, and others are on simplescripts via Bluehost). But I’ve never compiled a list of criteria to systematize my evaluation and this morning I decided to tackle the problem for a couple hours.
I hoped that by 2009 some one had put together a reliable, systematic way of evaluating open source projects. I got excited when I discovered OpenBRR, backed by the likes of O’Reilly and Intel. Then I realized my excitement was premature as the last news on the initiative was in 2006 and the home page hadn’t been updated since May 2007. Finally, the phpBB forum powering the community section of the website wasn’t even working.
phpBB : Critical Error
Error creating new session
DEBUG MODE
SQL Error : 1016 Can’t open file: ‘phpbb_sessions.MYI’ (errno: 145)
INSERT INTO phpbb_sessions (session_id, session_user_id, session_start, session_time, session_ip, session_page, session_logged_in, session_admin) VALUES (‘7900ec6a20082801c3ed5e2cc176727e’, -1, 1239455790, 1239455790, ‘d839a34e’, 0, 0, 0)
Line : 187
File : sessions.php
It’s a little ironic that an initiative established to help companies know which open source projects have momentum and are trustworthy has neither momentum nor reliable, up-to-date information. Oh well.
I was much more encouraged by the direction and momentum of Coverity’s Architecture Library. It provides quick insights into a project’s feature set, but not exactly what I’m after. I’m looking more at how to choose from my list of potential solutions.
Hands-down, David Wheeler has compiled the most comprehensive document for evaluation. It’s also the most up-to-date (revised March 14, 2009). It’s a little overwhelming for the scale I’m working on, but has a well-thought out methodology for a high-stakes decision with the budget to do this level of research.
On a pratical level, my favorite insights came Matt Johnston, a JAVA engineer. He suggests:
- studying the documentation
- checking the community for activity outside the sponsoring company
- reviewing the project lifetime and release cycle
- and looking for signs of momentum (this is much more important for younger projects)
For example, with last release date of 2005, osCommerce, by his criteria, is dead and does not have momentum. Magento Commerce, on the other hand, is backed by a business model and has had two major version since it’s 2007 launch. It is also being talked about a lot in the community.
I found some great insights from the comments on a CIO article, Evaluating an Open-Source Project’s Business Model. In addition to Matt’s ideas, these insights included:
- checking for formal support
- a roadmap that can be influenced by the community
- ISV endorsements
- partners
- and local user groups.
Interestingly, the comment authors’ companies (Pentaho, Alfresco, etc.) I’ve seen pop-up in articles in many places online, signs of active, vibrant open source companies.
Finally, Keith Harrison-Broninski recommends:
- looking for a standard license (especially important for corporate adoption)
- number of committers who post regular updates
- and whether the project is backed by major VCs or companies.
I’m now going to conquer my current problems with these insights. Enjoy.
Mar
5
New Facebook Homepage and Status Updates on Pages
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Genealogy to Family History to FamilyLearn, Technology
If you’ve logged into Facebook recently or have seen this webcast, you know a new Facebook home page design and status updates on Pages are coming this week. The new homepage is centered around sorting information from people important to you — family (I’d be nervous if I were We’re Related on this one as this level of integration might render them a lot less relevant), coworkers, friends and public figures (new home page tour). The new page design allows page owners to communicate to their fans via news feeds.
AllFacebook.com represents the new change with the following graphic.
You are at the center, viewing the information you want. We are already working on great ideas for integrating these features into our new Facebook application, Status King (as status updates are now more central to Facebook, there are real benefits for Status King) and our future application, MemoryPress. I want to mention a couple things on both here.
Immediate Status King Changes
Appropriately, the text prompting status updates is becoming “What’s on your mind?” rather than “What are you doing right now?” I suspect this is to reflect the way people are sharing links, information, insights, jokes and more via their status updates. Our hot new Status Tees will need to have an option to include the new phrase.
MemoryPress
MemoryPress fans know that we’re planning to bring MemoryPress to Facebook. Used for years for retirements, weddings, anniversaries, etc., we’re anticipating some great ways for MemoryPress to leverage the new segregation of friends, family, coworkers and public figures on the home page, because that’s the way our books have naturally organized themselves over the years.
We’re excited for how these changes will roll over into the API and what developers can do with the Facebook platform.
Feb
9
Status King Facebook Obama Bailout Ads – Costly
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Freedom, Government, Politics, etc.
I’ve spent a lot of time on Facebook recently because my family and I launched an app that helps you find a funny Facebook status for your friend feed and then print the most clever Facebook statuses onto a T-Shirt.
Although some think social media is worthless for business, we opted to create a business that lives inside the culture of Facebook rather than try to capitalize on poor-performing ads I’m viewing constantly on the right side of Facebook. The visitor loyalty rates are astounding and the T-Shirt sales growing, and so it seems that you can make money with social media.
While spending this time on Facebook, I’ve noticed changes in the right ads that have made me sick about the state of our nation. Our debt, our “future money” disquised as government bailout money “from Obama” has crowded out all real innovation and commerce on the ads. This screenshot only captures two of the three ads on the page that were ALL take-advantage-of-the-bailout ads. It also sports a status about the bailout. Oh, Amerika…what has happened? Where is your honor, self-respect and personal responsibility for living beyond your means? (the “k” is intentional, think immigrant)
If we only understood how costly those Facebook ads will be to our country.
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