Floozy Speak!

People say I look like I'm 22, 25, 28.  Oh to always look like you are ten years younger than you are.  One year till 40 people, then I gotta get my act together. 

I'm still kinda of a kid. 

I'm finally decompressing from Startup Weekend Columbus, I've triend hard for the past 24 hours NOT to think about our teams idea, spotWurk.  It was simply just draining the life outa me over the week.  I finally tapped out last night after taking apart the concept and putting back together addressing every breakdown, issue, barrier I could find in it.

Looking back on SWC, it was an awesome event, probably the best birthday present I've received since Mary giving me a cool SuperMan lunch box after we fell in love..... awww super man, come on who can't love that. 

This week I've had a lot of time not only to re-conceptualize what spotWurk work is, how it works, makes money, and more importantly what the overall experience is for both the SAM, the client, and SPOTTER the consumer.  Sadly SWC didn't really prepare me for an idea that could really work.  That has been the most challenging aspect for the week following the event.

Our team is talking and thats good, we have agendas, thats good, we have roles, thats good.  Still the idea alone is like super sexy vampire lady in the room, you're curious about her but should could eat you alive in a second if you cant ya break out the wooden spike and threaten her to sit down or something.

An idea can kill you.  It can get too big, too unobtainable.  So large that what can you say, its everything.  I keep pulling myself down to the drive way, force myself to look at kids playing in a park and get some barrings.

I've always been an idea guy.  I have a backpackit page filled with ideas.  Some of them have dates, been made- here's the url.  Some ideas stick with me, they become like characters in a story I write.  In fact SAM in spotWurk is kind of an suprise homage to another idea I had called Sammy, a happy hour finder.  LOL. 

When I worked in anime as a video trailer editor and web guy and overall marketing dude, I created all kinds of stories of cartoon characters or shows I wanted to see.  Creative energy just comes, I can't stop it, the tap is open and it flows, not everyone can handle the spew, most don't and I just end up pouring my thoughts into a bucket and I see myself there with a bucket of thought.  Now it does have its price.  Sometimes the tap is dry, nada, got no idea, no energy, and thats usually when I have someone asking me for an idea. 

I always have the same problem though, the idea, and concept is only half of the equation.  Unless you can manifest it into something, the idea is basically trapped with in the walls of your head.  In anime I wasn't an artist, i couldn't draw.  I was a good video editor though.  Sometimes I really enjoyed making a movie trailer that projected to the audience that a different outcome was likely than what really happened in the movie.  I enjoyed editing, making shows look cool, action packed, fun, energy, something you watch and go, dude that is bad ass i wanna see that, thats how I want to feel when I watch a trailer.  It doesn't draw you a map, or tell you did it, or why, those days were fun. 

So yeah any my web ideas?  Well Lextant has been good to me in that most of my big ideas have been manifested into software with the help of local programmers.  I often find that programmers are on the other side of the coin, awesome skills no idea what to build.  Its same with video and 3d folks I think.  One time I met a guy who was a fricking WIZARD at 3d animation yet he hadn't had a clue on what to make, so he made nothing, just demo'd theories on how to do shaders and cool animation things. 

I'm the hacker oppostie when it comes to that.  In video, I'll hack together all my resources for an effect.  I'm a plugin whore.  I love any thing that can help me get this idea outa me head and closer to someone else so that they can see it.  On the web lately I love alot of these insta widget builders like: sproutbuilder, I love yahoopipes, and i really miss working with Fireworks.  I'll totally cheat too if I have to in order to get an idea put in front of someone.  Fake a live site with automated clip of something, its mix and match make it work. 

There are still ideas that are beyond reaches of santiy at work.  Sometimes they are offsets of stuff I wish I had to make work go easier, but not directly related Lextant's needs.  I'm always looking for an accelerator in the field when you do research.  I hate being surprised by you forgot something or your data is here but hard to analyze or you didnt grab time codes off a camera.  I guess those could be good things to make for work, some of them are on the list of things to do.  Others on that page, hanging out, wondering when I'll come back, oh yeah lets fix that. 

I like the wonder and reward ideas give when they work.  You just saved me 20 hours of real work.  I also love it when someone looks at something I helped conceptualize and put together and throws me curve ball.  Please break my stuff, that just fuels new ideas to occur.  I especially like it when someone comes up with a scenario thats pretty specific and I can say.. yep, got, thought of that.  On big ideas I attack them hard.  Sadly spotWurk is being crushed by every character in my head I can attack it with.  It helps me find weak points, and stuff to fix, and or stuff not to do at all. 

Some ideas are just full of holes, may not have a mass appeal application, in fact I rarely think about taking an idea to a billion people, that seems boring to me.  From a $$$ perspective its not what they wanna hear but for me, I like things that you can contain, spurs interest and over time goes wonderful.  You have a great story, you're attractive to large audience that wants to feel good in your story.  Your transparent and willing, listening, wondering. 

In the end, the experience of that thing you dreamed up has to have a purpose, fulfill a need, and create another story.  You create stories.  You start with a story, and whatever you make makes another story.  Thats what I like to do.  Create a story, and watch that story inspire another story. 

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Posted by dan at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok so what's in a name really, turkload, baconcloud, turkwurk, whatever, a name is just a name, the idea, now that is what rules the roost.

Today day 2 of Startup Weekend Columbus kicked off with a flurry of activity.

Nick, Tushar, Scott and a new member of the team Adam headed full speed ahead into the biz aspects of the app, while I created some napkin sketches of potential UI ideas for the iphone and web app, along with some of Tushar's help.  Jerry and Bob started breakin down the sketches and make reality and looks and feels come to life.  Joe and Matt took on the backend and starting working on the brain of the app.

Our team is cooking.  Its coming together.  We had several AH HA moments today where we all looked at eachother noticing the same spark in each others eyes of... holy frickin shit, this thing could work. 

More than just work, this concept has serious legs and serious upstart, right outa the gate potential.  Its that big, its almost fricking obvious but no one has connected the dots like we have this weekend. 

Every member of the team has brought something to the table to evolve the idea and make it fresh'o'licious.

We've had our debates, concepts and ideas had to kicked around the room several times, sometimes we got stuck, backed up, reworded and straightened out our ideas, BUT we have moved forward which is what this weekend is all about in my opinion, its do, not do how or do what or debate on doing, its simply the do. 

I was telling the team members today that when my idea got picked it was kinda like being back in highschool, i got picked to be team lead and then stood by while 7 souls strolled up to me goin.... umm hey.  We all had that initial gut twinge of will our personalities clash, can we do this, will our kickball team rock or get crushed by the seniors, we dont know but quickly we all got a read of each other and hit the ground running. 

Our concept is in motion, files are being traded and its happening. 

Just in thinking about insta-innovation, a concept i wanted to observe here at startup weekend, its a side project for me, how does insta-innovation occur, what can code-fests and startup weekends teach design researchers about generating ideas, avoiding negative soul wells and breaking through barriers- cause in design, you battle that every day, here at this weekend event, you dont have time to bicker, you gotta go go go go go, and go some more, so what are the attributes of these people here, what makes them go and not freeze, die, or stagnate, other than of course if you do, you die... that was a side observation i wanted to do, i'm still collecting my data, more on that later.. but i did want to mention some apps that we're using to keep team syngerized and rolling.

google docs, share data, docs etc

basecamp, organize files, to do lists, post code pieces etc

some firefox screenshot taker, taking pics of looks and feels

iphone/photoshop builder, create looks and feels

twhirl and twitter for sanity, when its not failing

prime, a research app i created at lextant to do some research for us

and of course, mechanical turk, to help us get to know an aspect of our audience

We narrowed down how it made money fast, we identifyed our customers fast, we exposed new ideas and upsells and advanced ideas fast.  Its all coming together fast.  What is it?  Its a microtask marketplace and we're gonna leverage it via the iPhone and more.

And by the way I'm not team captain by any stretch really, I am part of the puzzle and basically the subject matter expert on turk and how a market research firm or design firm can really benefit from it.  While the genesis of the idea has been in my head for a long time, spotWurk is everyones creation here and its far far beyond what my original concept was.  I'm very excited about what we can make. 

As a bonus for tomorrow we're considering collecting more research data to help back up some of our thoughts and concepts, thats right with real data from real people, and potentially producing a quick video of how our iphone app would work and play out as well as video of a client creator experience.... I'm debating dragging my imac in tomorrow and cranking out that video.  I think we could shoot it, at least get the concept down depends on how much there is to do, and theres alot, but I'm working away tonight to analyze this data, bring in some results, and try and create as much of the "promise" language of the overall concept.  Promise language is that warm fuzzy how i want feel piece.  Which again will be shared, bounced off of, mutated, corrrected and remixed with the team. 

Ok back to work, stay tuned and maybe you too can make a quick 3 spot.

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Posted by dan at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

46 ideas were pitched tonight at Startup Weekend Columbus and yours truly was on the list and made the to 17 or so of stuff to make.

The idea I presented was TurkLoader, an easy to use front end interface for amazons mechanical turk. Mechanical turk is a wonderful tool but its interface is less than desirable.  Generally you have to make tasks in a brute force primitive way and it could be done alot easier and simpler. 

That was genesis of the idea which of course has since morphed into an iphone app and slew of other things but so far its been really cool. It was totally wild to see turkloader picked and then you see 6 walk up to you and say.. ok dan whats next, that was a totally awesome. The idea was laid out, poked out, ripped apart, re-engineered, reborn, killed off, mutated and more.

But now, now we really have a good idea of what this thing is and what we need to make. 

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Posted by dan at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Before 2.0's arrival on the iPhone I was totally stoked, wired and infused with such enthuasiam about the locative based services capability in the iphone, no one could of talked me down from my cloud.  However now, after experiencing it.. its well.. ummmm not what I expected.

In previous posts I've talked about the various issues with LBS on the iPhone.  Now I can see some of that come through while reading reviews of the various apps in the app store.  One of the biggest hurdles locative apps have is to really fit into our daily grind, how do you arrive on the scene with an idea so perfect, so essential its not questioned or debated it just goes into pocket with your keys, wallet and everything else.  How do you become a need over night in todays far forward future like living?  I dunno.  Ya gotta hit all the right spots and make the user feel so happy that you are it, you're the one. 

Sadly locative apps are not there yet.  Some good ideas going around though.  Find like people near by, write on a virtual wall in front of a wendy's, geo-cache game, oh and find that starbucks.  It will be some time before we'll know what ideas are really sticking.  Right now, everybody and every developer is just diving in period, much like the 2.0 web craze itself.  It wasn't about making apps better for users, it was about mashups, and making new stuff just cause you could.  On the small screen, that is your desktop, you may be willing to go a few rounds on an idea, try it for a bit, I have a feeling on the phone screen your patenice is much shorter.  You download, test, play, and abandon fast- moving on to the next app you think could be interesting or, if you're not an app ho like myself you're waiting for your friends to tell you what to get, and they are waiting on us.  The cycle is never ending and that means more apps for all as well continue to stumble in the dark and figure out just what is the killer LBS app for the iphone.

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Posted by dan at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

No doubt the flood of apps on the iphone will start to wear down you're average user, myself included.  iPhone apps are just not as forgiving as I'd like apps to be.  First, there is no manaul, you don't really know what to do, ya just figure it out, ya add it all up as you go.  Second, you can't recover very well.  Its hard to recover from errors in an app, like you go full screen by accident or even on purpose and now, ya wonder how do I get the menu back.  You could just buttom smash the home button and start the app over, but thats hardly efficent.  What you want is a way to do it right.  Is it double touch, hold twist and touch, this gesture or that gesture, only the coder knows and he or she has been living with the app for a good six months before you ever laid eyes on it. 

Nope user experiences in the current iphone world will be happy and sad, one big rollercoaster of awesomeness and what the hell.  Should be fun really.

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Posted by dan at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The App Store represents a big high five to would be apple gamers.  Never before has there been so much praise or promise in the idea of games on an Apple device, at least not in a long while.  I don't know of anyone who has bought a mac in the past 5 years for games.  I know I didn't and yes, I'll admit it, I miss playing the endless amount of gaming options I had on the PC. 

But, now, I think with Apple iPhone 2.0, the App Store, well.. the game scene could get a big boost from that phone ya got there.  Why?  Well, clearly the intel tech on the desktops can make games happen, still no real new developers flocked to the box. But the iphone, the app store, the platform of the phone, a new venture in cashola has game developers raising a new eyebrow at the overall franchise available.

I mean think about it, develop for the iphone, win there, and then follow them to the desktop.  Seems like a win win all around.  Will developers go for it?  We'll see but it seems to me that the games on the iphone will continue to happen, and then folks are gonna be saying, well hell, why cant i get some good fun on my desktop as well, and then they'll be there, or at least they'll be playing Diablo 3, WoW and Starcraft 2 there for awhile.  I say, why let Blizzard dominate the Apple game share, get in there developers we're waiting!

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Posted by dan at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Its odd.  Facebook the site itself never really connected to me, it was just another place on the web to exist.  Yet another door stop on the web, this is dan, here I am.

Today I played around with the Facebook app on the iphone and it was kinda fun really, it somehow engaged me better than the web site does itself.  Maybe it slices up just enough to get interested for that moment on this small screen experience the iphone gives ya.

I can't explain it, but I was pretty happy with that bit experience there.

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Posted by dan at 07:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Since I've joined twitter and really poured myself into as part of my every day routine i've been noticing things.  Subtle things that make me smile.  Twitter makes me happy. 

I like getting notifications of being followed in twitter.  Its like a kid coming up to you on the playground and telling you, you're ok man, I'll follow.  As silly and stupid as that sounds, that is on the biggest hooks of this microconversation tool. 

Today I got a follow notice from the CEO of Zappos.  Probably cause over the weekend I've been going through all my google reader feeds and catching up on all of them as I surfed the web and digitized a bunch of video for a project I have at work.  It passes the time, I do some work and I manage to clean out google reader which is a huge challenge given how many blogs i'm subscribed to and how many items i had to read, some 1000+ by now easy.  So yeah, in one of those many items I read about, shared with the web, and or twittered to my friends was a video on Zappos that ABC did.  It was a good video, showing off Zappos creative culture and giving the public a key view into why they are a hot online retail business.  And in true fashion just 12 hrs after I posted that video back up on the web for my friends, I get a note that Zappos CEO is gonna follow me, heck I haven't bought anything from Zappos yet, but dang, this dude is gonna include my tweets in his stream?  Kinda cool really.

Taking a step back, this is another example of how todays web is changing the playing field between consumers and corporate brands.  On any given day before tools like twitter I would of never run into a CEO of a brand, never had the likelyhood of any real impact, yet here, in the twittering world, here's a brand that is listening, watching and consuming where people tread.  Hats off to Zappos for being there and showing other brands that a simple action like following me, can turn me from a maybe umm are ya Zappos customer to a fullfledged and interested one.

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Posted by dan at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I've been playing around with iPhone 2.0 and here are some thoughts.

As I thought location based awareness is great and all but its also sort of short sighted and limited.

Problems with location based apps.

1. If you're not traveling, odds are you know what's around you already.  Do you need a phone to tell you where you already know gas, starbucks and a good meal is at?  Not really.  Location based awareness apps don't bring much newness to your own hood.  Perhaps you'll meet some new people but thats only if everyones in the system.  Limbo has found 2 people on its network that live anywhere near ohio let alone columbus ohio.  Location based apps may be the bomb in cities where there will be a higher chance and multiple people participating in those apps.

2. I liked Limbo when I first looked at it, it seemed comprehensive and interesting and then it became work.  Again I want my phone to be self aware, figure out where I am and feed whatever network I tell it to feed.  Having to select, what I'm doing and go thru a selection of menus to somehow pick the right perfect thing seems tiring to me.  Plus, what if my activity isn't on there, then I feel like I'm not doing the right thing.

3. Use your location, cancel or allow.. allow.  Apple's video ads made fun of Vista and its overly secure operatorating system continually asking the users permission to access and app or web and they had a fun time making fun of it, it was an affective ad that is now coming back to haunt them.  With the iPhone 2.0 update, and locative apps, I'm continually asked whether or not an app can know where I am.  I'd rather have this set to yes somewhere in the settings vs having to see that screen pop up every time I do something in an app.  Takes me back to that hilarious apple ad, and then only to remember this time the jokes on Apple. 

So where will location based apps shine?

Again anywhere there participation on a massive scale or when traveling, or in an app like Yelp that gives you reviews of stuff near you.  Thats nice.  But still I'd wager that if you knew the area odds are you wouldn't need a phone to tell you where to go.

Some unique iPhone 2.0 location based apps.

Most of location based apps on the iphone are geared around social networks, but the application of location based awareness is pretty unlimited and there are a few apps with promise here.

Graffitio is another location based app I played with a bit on the iPhone. Actually when I first read about it on the app store its a brilliant distruptive idea that I myself had years ago with "air-posting", tagging a geo-location with text, picture, video, audio.  Graffito does the same, but kinda with a lackluster lame interface.  It allows you to tag a location with a note, thats it.  And then if you get near that location again, you'll see that note or other peoples notes near by.  There's lots of unknowns with Graffitio, first why the lameness in the UI, this could be so much more interesting.  Second, how big is a wall is it defined by feet, or miles, or what, is it down to the foot?  Third, wouldn't it be cooler to tag walls with more than just notes?  Why not audio, pictures, urls?  And lastly in order for Graffito to be really awesome, it should be running in the background all the time and auto sensing what wall you may of just ran into and alerting me.  Graffitio could definately be used for good or bad, great place to eat, did you know who died on this spot, or this lady at this residence never locks her door, its really a first attempt at peeking in on augmented reality where your space, the space you are in right now has far more potential meaning that you could imagine and how that meaning to could be interlinked with the vast web.

TalkingPics is another interesting app with a hefty price.  It was 9.99 in the app store but it did something no other app in the store appeared to do and from a researcher stand point it was a valuable ability.  Take a picture and record some audio to it.  In research we'd love to this every frickin day of the week.  The ability to capture a moment and annotate it with understanding, as crazy as that sounds, its not very easy unless you are filming or thinking about doing it ahead of time.  Researchers juggle with the single biggest obsticle in front of them every time they go and interview someone, time.  You have just a few moments with someone to capture that moment and freeze it in time to recall, remember and analyze is a big big challenge.  TalkingPics takes a stab at that, and after a few minutes with playing around it does it.  And as a bonus it also allows me to record audio bits on whatever location i'm at.  Thats not super location awareness per say but its a nice extra perk.  Sadly, the app has one serious flaw, one i thought it wouldn't- how do i get my newly audio annotated pics off my phone, i can't and that sucks.  At the moment, you can't get them off your phone.  You can recall them, and relive those moments, those locations on the map of something interesting but only on the phone- that blows and needs to be changed and I think they'll fix it. 

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Posted by dan at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well the iPhone app store peeked on the scene early this morning and it was well worth the wait.  As predicted they arrived with over 500+ apps, well beyond the estimates of a few nay sayers on the planet.  I never doubted that, I knew they'd clear 200 apps easy. 

App store is cool, its basically all your jail broken developers going whole hog into development to make some seriously good stuff, and get paid for it.  Win win really.

More to come as I'm sure I'll fill up my iPhone with as many apps as I can and slowly inch my way toward a new 3G GPS enabled iphone.  I'm really looking forward and sorta bummed heh, at all the various locative apps to arrive still thinking about my Sammy, and why I never got that off the ground it would of been great. 

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Posted by dan at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For some reason I just thought about this idea I call "hostage taking" and how it doesn't work on employeers, especially in small business.  Let's face it, small biz is tough stuff, its hella risky and its always a wild ride of credit card abuse, big risks and huge gambles.  Stand back a sec and think about that would be small biz game changer of a person. Think about the chances they took to get where they are, the risks, the personal sacrafices they made and now think about how futile it would be to try and threaten them with would be hostage like tactics in business. 

Hostage taking in business is basically threatening an employeer via the whole, well if I go, these other folks will go mentality.  The goal is to get the employeer to bow down to the would be pressure of a hostage taking scene, don't risk it.  But you're gonna do this to a guy or gal that bled risk to get where they are today.

I find that hilarious that you'd think hostage taking would have any affect on an employeer.  Maybe the affect is stronger on a larger employeer trying hard to appease a star employee but in a small operation, management just can't even entertain the idea of hostage taking.  It's not gonna fly.

I hate to see employees gamble with the hostage card, for one, its bad karma, and two, why go there?  You willingly open the gates of negativitity, you align yourself with the bad to what gain, to blackmail, or threaten for what? 

All too often we take for granted the expectional places we work at.  We forget about the subtle perks of our environment, the freedom our employeers give us to yes, inspire and create goodness and make them money. 

Sure, and thats a card you will pick up and thats the flue you will play, until you have your own business.

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Posted by dan at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hey that's a cool title right there.  I guess the point I wanted to get out in this post are some thoughts I had on location based services.  Right now, a few of the more savvy tech blogs are exploring the question of new frontier in mobile advertising and locative media. 

For me, I too am excited about location based services.  I think the realization point has arrived with iPhone 2.0. It actually arrived the minute the iPhone hit the scene and we saw it break out a bit in jail broken phones sporting various locative app efforts.  But now the phone is getting a full fledged GPS, 3g and a store for anyone to go make an application and set it free.  Expect location based services, championed by the iPhone scene to take off, and i mean TAKE OFF.  It will.  Why? Mainly because of the sheer number of players in the scene reminding you endlessly about their application.  Its not about usage or need really, in the beginning its gonna be "because" thats it.  Do you need it?  Probably not, but its here, and thats enough to possibily lure you into some new thinking on why you may need it.

So when thinking about LBS, I started to think about critical factors involved for its eventual success.  And it will be successful eventually, just like the mobile phone was, or the PC, or even this radical idea called the internet.  Given time, the masses will adopt, abeit slowly mind you.

1. established infrastructure

If you build the park, people will play in it.  If you give everyone phones they'll use them to talk to one another. LBS will need an established based of not only users to play in that park but data found in that park to entice people to play.  You can't have successful LBS without some base of data floating around to support it, and that data comes from different sources, users, geographical locations and attributes, and connective relationship data that occurs when there is interaction between data sets.

2. clearly identitfible need

Need not want.  Some would say todays need are our wants really.  But in general, I feel like we're shifting our wants into needs.  We talk about them as needs.  We need internet connectivity, we need a better phone, we need more space to create, we need a more fuel efficent car.  LBS will have to tap into our needs.  It will have to convey a sense of need fullfillment in order for it to be really embraced and ran with.

3. we will buy into advertising

Mobile ads are not going to pop up in our phones unless we buy into them first.  How do you get someone to sign up for ads?  Do you own a TV?  You just signed up.  Users will be enticed with cool new needs, and those new LBS services will true to the need of what they will do, will be transporters of the advertisement.  There may be even a way to pay off the onslaught of would be ads, only then to realize that you stopped one type of ad and opened yourself up to another kind.

4.  killer applications require killer platforms

And currently, Apple has the killer platform, so expect killer application dominance.

5. rise of the real virtual assistant

While many LBS ventures will look for cheap wins in mobile social networks, conversation tools, and generic location awareness the real golden nugget in the LBS scene will be the rise of real virtual assistant.  That is your phone is aware.  That's it.  The phone is aware, it knows where you are, what you're like, what you need, and how to help you get it.  Its a combination of preferences and awareness that a phone can now bring you realized abilities because context is shared with the phone.  You know you're headed home from work, passing through a certain part of town, and now your phone knows this too, it can help you, remind you, assist you, without you even blinking.  Sure you'll have to hand over some specifics of who you are but thats really not that different than what you pump into an average social networking site today. 

Some interesting things to think about.

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Posted by dan at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fans are scary people at times.  Especially internet fans.  Fans adopt, consume, preserve, debate, question, attack, reveal, reprocess, claim and ponder and gaggle over whatever they are fans of- anime, internet, brands, celebs, you name it.

I hate saying it, but hardcore fans of FriendFeed are attempting to prop the once simple clear idea of FF into a spectrum of godlyness not because its deserving of the title, its just more deserving than others it seems like.

I like FF, its a simple service I got right away when I first saw it.  Take all your haunts, all your social networking sites and cram them into one feed, and share that with a friend- hence friendfeed.  And it worked, all my various sites, crammed into one nice feed for people to see and follow. 

Then of course, like any new service they started adding bit details like, oh yeah and you can comment on various new events in a feed, and then you can share something anything in a feed, that's fun.  Harmless newness + cataclysmic events from another wildly popular service like Twitter make for sadly predictable pattern on the web these days. 

People are addicted to the cycle of newness.  Any web startup, no matter how perfect, how addicting, how just right, will fall to the cycle of newness.  Twitter, the micro messaging site that's been turning the whole web on its side lately like any giant web service, started to crumble to its knees over the bandwidth everyone was using.  So.. what'd they do?  Jump to something new.  And now an endless debate, not even that, its more of an endless gaggle, claim, and revealing idea popping up over and over again on FF about how its the new twitter but better.  The big question, for how long, and why do you care?  You shouldn't care really.  If you're not into the scene don't weigh yourself down with bit details on a service you'll never use, stop reading this now.  If you're into the scene, its really just an observation, you can go about your biz, if you're after the scene, well the scene just shifted, the party supposedly isn't on twitter any more, time to move down the block a ways to FriendFeed. 

Eventually FF will fall as well, maybe not now, but eventually it will fall to something else that's seemingly faster, newer, and cooler and the cycle of newness is restored. 

Die hard exploiters of social networking phenomena are addicting to enticing and epically telling the whole their point of view on how its all gonna change.  It makes for good blog posts, a few tasty headlines and lets everyone see how connected, how aware you are.  Hell this post itself is an example of that. 

In the end, the real user, the common denominator, what are they doing?  Hopefully going about their biz. 

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Posted by dan at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This weekend Mary and I watched a handful of odd movies and started watching the AMC series Mad Men.  Now I love period pieces, especially those 40's-50's looking type flicks.  The Hudsucker Proxy is still my favorite movie of all time.  I romantize the era of industrial america growing up, all that is possible, its endless and timeless to me. 

Mad Men is the story of advertising in the 50's and the "mad men" that ruled the advertising world with witty cheesy copy, commericals and print campaigns from everything to cars, dishwashers to cigarettes and more. 

What do I like?  Characters, production design, story, and the art of the sell of advertising itself.  Today advertising definitely isn't as romantic and its basically under seige from all sides from the internet to dying ads in print media.  Even still its a facsinating biz of selling a promise with a product or service.  In my line of work, we kinda dislike advertising, or at least we're told to dislike it cause in the end, the product or service should be what sells the product itself not some slogan or witty billboard or commerical with some bikini clad blond. 

Course I've always felt I've kinda walked the fine line of research, design and marketing.  I can see where advertising tees up the potential experience to be had.  That is attractive.  A product itself can't really inform anyone.  You need someone who understands its potential to place it into the stream where you'll get exposed to it. 

Maybe advertising is less about selling products these days and more about informing you of options, or better yet, introducing you to the cycle of newness.   I dunno, I guess I want stuff to deliver on the experience and have subtle advertising, yet I'll be the first to say I do like smart advertising when I see it.  It occurs naturally and like Donald Draper says, advertising is about happiness, it conveys happiness to you.  And isn't that want good design is as well?  Good design evokes happiness in who ever holds it, they get it, they appericate it, they want more of it.  Design could be just advertising amplifed into a physical state.  Dude that is deep!

Ok enough of that ramble. 

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Posted by dan at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I caught a webcast of Scooble interviewing Tim Ferriss, author of the popular time management/self help book- The 4 Hour Work week.  There were two video sessions, one hosted on Fast Company's webtv site and then a follow up discussion on Kyte.        

Overall entertaining stuff.. here are some take-aways..

On starting out and being a book author:

- keep in mind most self help biz type books sell 5000 copies or less, don't write a book for the $$$ write it for the personal reward

- don't try to write and appease everyone, write for your core niche audience and or you and others like you

- write a book, then get the word out via a blog/site and then lecture about it

- learn the art of book proposal writing, proposals can be 20-50 pages in length

- learn to write long form articles before just trying to write a book

- accept rejection because its part of the biz and don't let it keep ya down

- most biz books are under 80,000 words

On productivity and time management

- document how you spend your time via tools like rescuetime

- document how you impact the bottom line of the biz

- align yourself with what you do best

On managing and maintaining buzz on your blog / site

- do compulsive microtesting, hone in on what your content attracts

- use web analytic tools like google analytics, crazyegg

- test, test, and retest

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Posted by dan at 04:26 PM | Permalink

Sure I'm self confessed beta junkie and yes, I did join twitter the minute it appeared on the map only to ditch it a second later after struggling with the "why" to use it, only then to start using pownce and then leaving that for friendfeed which isn't really a twitter or pownce like tool when it started out but more of an overall lifestream aggerator and well now..  yes I'm back on twitter.

Like all these social networks I always have one big issue, who to follow, what to follow, what's in my network?  Lately my twitter list of folks following me and me following them has been growing.  But still I wonder umm where's the good buzz at, where can I sink my teeth into some serious tweets? 

I recalled some memories on seeing various posts from some of the top bloggers about who to follow for goodness.  And sure, google led me to some of those folks but still I kinda lacked the accurate context as to why I really wanted to follow them.  Then this morning while doing my various 2.0 leaping, going site to site, exploring a few new betas and what not I realized.. hey ya know, Summize could fill in the blanks pretty easily for me here.

Summize lets you search twitter in real time.  Its not the first web app to do this, several came before it, but its clearly the most polished of the hundred or so twitter tools out there.

I started out doing some basic searches on stuff i'm interested in, then started going after companies I liked, compeitiors, brands you name it, the more unique the better because I think its a word that is more droppable with meaning in a conversation than something that carries multiple meanings. 

So just doing a bit of search lets see who's talking about what, in regards to what I'm interested in following...

user experience

ideo

kaossilator

AAPL stock, hone in on some stock twittering folk

one of my favorite topics.. mechanical turk

maybe some buzzwords?  crowdsourcing, location based services,

and so on.. you get the idea, now follow.

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Posted by dan at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night I had a good talk with brother Paul.  He's a big wig Wendy's man, up on the top tier of VP like folks traveling from city to city on the west coast counting up those sales and making sure ends are met and forecast the future.

We had a bit future talk about the usual stuff we all seem to talk about, the changing reality for consumers.  Oil is sticking it to ya, SUV's are dropping off the radar in a BIG WAY, travel has gone up about $200 bucks a ticket with added personal abuse of baggage taxes and hey you can't fly if you're overweight like mentalities.  Luxury money is shifting from going to the beach which is now too expensive to fly to or even drive to, to just hanging out a home and BBQing. 

The winners right now, bike manufacturers, scooter dealers, cities that invest in infrastructure like light rail and street car outlooks. 

Of course we talked about fast food.  A Wendy's combo is going to get a buzz boost, upgrade it to a shake and pay about $8 in ohio, $10 on the east coast.  McDonalds wages war against Starbucks weakness and at first, I considered this a laughable concept since I can never see McDonalds as the "third place" for me, yet, seeing their coffee menus rolled out in the drive thru lane and seeing just $2 for a latte is damn enticing despite the perception that its probably inferior product.  But I never really went to Starbucks for the coffee, I went for the drinks.  Get me tall white mocha and odds are I'll be happy. 

McDonalds is cashing in on that idea and factoring in on what every consumer is thinking about right now- cash.  Who is sucking the cash outa me besides those frickin saudi's?  Maybe this explains why Starbucks is refocusing and getting out of the music PR biz and closing down some 600 stores to get back to a profitable place it can do war better with oncoming onslaught from McDonalds. 

The other day while watching a show on oil called something like, we're out of gas, another thing hit me.  Oil companies own the real estate that could usher in a era of energy use- meaning they could start building hydrogen fueling stations and what not, but they don't and probably won't until they've sucked this generation, and a few afterwards dry. 

Right now if I could put my money into anything I'd ge it to Telsa motors or anyone making smarter tech to get me free of oil.  Looks like the west coast will get to bask in electic concepts before they start to get to the midwest, but I tell ya what if they offered them in town right now I'd be in line. 

So the squeeze is on.  About the only goodness coming into the scene which should be interesting to watch is the coming realization and revolution in location based services via that 3G iphone that I tell you, will blow the doors off the compeition, force companies to rethink what the mobile experience is and continue to leverage and accelerate Apple as a fierce brand more than ever. 

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Posted by dan at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)