People email me all the time to sell the domain existence.com and in the past few months, the number of inquiries has gone up dramatically.
I’m not really interested in selling the domain, but if you want it for US$1M, just let me know.
The value of agile development has been espoused by many during the past decade, but for those not in the software industry(and for many that are), it’s sometimes hard to understand why quick iteration is a good idea, so I’ve come up with a few concrete, common sense examples to help anyone understand why several fast turnarounds are preferable to a single large deadline. Ready, think hard about this – would you rather:
For those having trouble deciding, I’ve put my suggestions in italics. If you disagree with my suggestions, you are likely an outlier or out lying to yourself about your capability.
I finally got around to reading John Maeda’s book “The Laws of Simplicity“. Under 100 pages, the book is an easy commitment and can be read over a couple of coffee breaks.
Simplicity and organization are near and dear topics to my heart, so I happy to report that I believe John creates clarity around some important topics that other efficiency books obfuscate somewhat. He also lends some humanity to the topic of organization, which is sorely lacking in other literature, which typically address information and habit. His seventh law, emotion, specifically addresses the concept of Aichaku, the Japanese term for the attachment one can feel for an item, and how this concept can lead to better design. Having carried a Palm device for a decade and now an iPhone, I can deeply relate to this concept. Each time I upgrade such a device to the newest model, it takes time for my old attachment to fade and a new one to grow, even if the device is theoretically identical to the last.
In addition to emotion, Maeda includes trust as one of his core laws, and he discusses the concept of omakase, translated “I leave it up to you.” I believe the short discussion of the concept alone is enough to warrant reading this book.
Watch out for acronyms, this book is full of them, and luckily also full of self-deprecating humor about them.
The many deep positives of the book outweigh the trivial negatives, so this book makes it to my definitely worth reading list.
If you do any serious thinking about startup companies, you’ll quickly recognize that they don’t consist of very much. In the beginning, there is only a group of people who may or may not have an idea they are looking to make a reality. So it’s the lucky group that’s got people, an idea, and maybe a nice pot of freshly brewed coffee and some day-old pizza.
Many first-time entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking their idea is their asset, but the reality is that the team of people working on the idea better be more valuable than the idea, or they’re in trouble. The world is built on people, and ideas, although important, are secondary.
So how do you know you’ve got the right people and that they make a good team? Skillsets, intra-team communications, personal networks, personal desires, and many other factors play into the effectiveness of a team. Only time working together can tell you, and the right team in the beginning isn’t necessarily the right team later in a venture’s life.
Investing time in your team is the only way to make your venture successful and keep it that way. Don’t ignore your greatest asset.
I put this blog into deep freeze on July 15th of last year because I was in the process of simplifying my life and narrowing my activities in an effort to produce more focus on a specific project. I realized that this decision was a major error on my part.
The act of personal publishing had been contributing both to my clarity of thought, personal focus, and to my quality of life. Imposing even a 30 minute requirement to write on a daily basis reduced the time available to me for other activities, but the focused thinking and writing time also improved the effectiveness of the rest of my day.
Writing conveys many benefits to the author, and publishing – the act of putting forth what one has written for anyone to read – creates additional rewards.
It’s time for me to claim those rewards once again.
If you are looking for a new neighborhood in your existing area or are moving to an area with which you are unfamiliar, look no further for the perfect tool to help you in your search for that perfect place to live. Neighborhood Scout a service by Woonsocket, RI, based Location Inc. just launched a complete revamp of their already popular neighborhood search service.
The new launch includes a much-improved user interface, some very unique nationally-comparable school district ratings, and crime statistics at the neighborhood level. Worth checking out.
Rentometer has just launched a free flash widget for folks who would like to add a Rentometer to their own website. In addition to the standard user search, the Rentometer widget also includes the ability to present local rent data for several locales. Colors are also configurable to match your site’s color scheme. It took me about 2 minutes to configure, including sign up time.
I’m typically a big fan of Google – the company does and enables amazing things, but I’ve always been a bit hesitant to fully trust all of my infrastructure to them because centralizing my entire life around a single platform or company always feels a bit dangerous to me.
I’ve recently had this fear confirmed by a recent experience of one of my ventures. Said venture uses Google Analytics(great product) and Google AdSense. Google Analytics is used to provide some very nice business metrics and Google AdSense has always been a side thing, not critical to the company, but we’ve got it on a few pages, and it generates coffee money. We’ve had it on various pages for around two years with no problems.
One day recently, the company receives an email from Google stating that our AdSense use has been turned off because it has been determined to “pose a significant risk” to Google advertisers – which by the way, the venture is one of. The email was very mysterious and pointed the company to form where it could file an appeal. A legitimate appeal was filed and quickly turned down without any further information. The venture continues to pursue recourse to clear it’s good name with Google.
I understand that Google has to protect it’s business aggressively, and luckily, the venture doesn’t depend on the revenue for it’s cashflow, but I did learn a few things from this experience:
1. Don’t use Google AdSense and Google Analytics at the same time. Not only did Google turn off AdSense completely(no access to previous revenue info, etc.), they also disabled our data collection/visibility for Google Analytics, so we have no way easy to get our business metrics for the four days they blanked out.
2. Using Google AdSense can lead to a big conflict of interest with Google that can cause them to shut off other services they provide. I understand why, Google must protect its revenue stream, but innocents get caught in the crossfire.
3. Know where conflicts of interest can arise. The venture had never even considered that using AdSense could eliminate access to key business data on Analytics.
Although I’m using a true story about Google as an example, this could happen with any large platform. The essence of this story is that centralizing one’s life around a powerful platform that is controlled by a single entity puts one’s life in the hands of that entity. Not a new revelation, but perhaps something people are forgetting as they upload their personalities and life onto Facebook. How many twentysomethings would find themselves cut off from their reality if Facebook suddenly cut off access to their account because of a mysterious conflict of interest?
After attempting to recruit a great “web developer” someone who can take a design, cut-and-code it pixel perfect, and spit out superb HTML/CSS, and maybe even dabble in a bit of Javascript/AJAX, I’ve decided that there are very few, if any, people that have superb skills and are looking for this type of job – essentially filling the gap between UX/Visual Design and back-end programming.
I have a theory about why folks don’t like to live only in this middle world: it’s tedious and not very creative, and requires a high degree of skill – two sets of things that don’t match well. If someone is skilled enough to do it well, they are likely creative and move on to more challenging jobs(like UX design or back-end server systems). People that move on quickly lose the entire spectrum of skills and are left with a good knowledge of part of the center stage. Those who are more naturally designers move towards UX/Visual design and end up knowing HTML/CSS, but not Javascript, and people who are more naturally inclined to code move toward back-end programming and may or may not stick with their Javascript knowledge, but most certainly abandon their HTML/CSS skillset.
So, web developers are by their very nature meta-stable. Once they are good enough to be really useful, they roll towards one end of the spectrum.
If you disagree with me, prove me wrong – show me a great web developer, and if I hire them, I’ll admit defeat and buy you a beer.
Martin Glenn recently pointed me to a site called BrainPOP, which contains some pretty nifty educational flash animations on topics ranging from the electromagnetic spectrum to Louis Armstrong. They are a subscription service and have a number of free animations, a few of which I checked out. My son isn’t quite old enough yet, but once he is, this site is definitely a resource I plan to use.
