Comments on “January Mobile Design Update”

2008-12-17T11:42:33-08:00

I put up a quick prototype site at http://wire.sixsites.com. I’m just importing the NYTimes for now http://wire.sixsites.com/nytimes

~~I need to figure out how to get the description into each post (aka “dent”) and truncate it~~
I need to figure out how to attach the username as a body class so I can each feed page
I need to setup the cronjobs for each feed (painful. there has to be an easier way to do that).
Once the functional to-dos are done, will play around with theming the users stream page into something more newsy.

2008-12-17T11:43:22-08:00

Business Week article talking about how PR is infesting Twitter. Kind of shows the need for a service like this.

2008-12-17T15:56:10-08:00

I fear the 140 character limit of Laconica might hinder the value of a news service, though I do like the idea of abbreviated news and most news feeds don’t offer much in their feeds.

Might want to consider increasing the max char limit of each post. Here are the changes needed to increase the max-size of posts.

2008-12-17T16:11:55-08:00

This is a pretty interesting idea. I think if you combine this with virtualization, it might make the business model even more attractive. If more people want to use Expression Engine as opposed to Mephisto, you can manage server instances proportional to users/usage.

Apps accessible by subdomain:

wordpress.mywebapp.com/username
expressionengine.mywebapp.com/username
chyrp.mywebapp.com/username

I might want to think more about this one…

kevin

2008-12-17T16:13:33-08:00

I think you meant “… at the $0.99 or $1.99 price point.” I’m going to have a hard time justifying a $99 iPhone blogging app! :-)

kevin

2008-12-17T16:20:23-08:00

By itself, this is a pretty good idea. I am wondering how this could be used one level down… at the freelancer level. Not freelancer to employer, but freelancer to freelancer. How can we encourage more people to look for interesting PROJECTS as opposed to (or in addition to) jobs? Sort of the Hollywood studio model applied to knowledge work…

kevin

140 Characters

2008-12-17T16:27:03-08:00

I think the pros have more to do with focus and providing constraints for people, more than technical limitations. I agree that the technical issues can be worked around or handled differently. But, when people are given constraints it tends to drive more creative thinking on how to communicate their ideas, which usually leads to crisp and concise communication.

Unlike this comment. :-)

kevin

140 Characters

2008-12-17T16:59:44-08:00

or my original post, but agreed.

2008-12-17T17:02:44-08:00

interesting take. basically what GitHub is doing for following open source projects. I think you might be right, target a more active audience that is likely to have a lot more frequent transactions.

well Laconica has pretty simple to setup. just not sure how easy it is to customize yet.

2008-12-17T17:03:38-08:00

right. of course my iPhone apps would be 99 dollars good ;)

2008-12-17T17:08:30-08:00

I can look at that. Although I wonder how much of this app will have the microblogging/messaging architecture. I think there may need to be a wiki component for the job/project pages. But, I’d rather get the interaction design figured out first before I geek out on it.

2008-12-18T15:00:20-08:00

Found a cool site today, http://www.ohloh.net which is kinda of like I Use This for open source software.

2008-12-19T21:44:51-08:00

I’ve seen that site before, but it looks like they’ve redesigned it since. I’ll need to revisit it and see what’s new.

2008-12-20T15:34:48-08:00

This may be of interest:

http://www.webvanta.com/

Founded by two former Adobe engineering managers that were working on hosted applications and got sick of Adobe’s conservatism and bureaucracy…

2009-01-05T07:33:53-08:00

Over the break I setup Laconica and starting importing a few feeds. It is a bit of a pain to create each account, but provides a nice proof of concept of what news might be like in a more Twitter like fashion.

http://wire.sixsites.com

Customization of Laconica is a complete pain in the ass. I can customize the CSS, but the code itself is buried. The nice thing about Laconica is that it has all the Jabber and mobile hooks ready to roll, but it would probably be easier to roll a custom system.

I installed and played around with a bunch of open source microblogging tools. While most of them provided more flexibility in theming than Laconica, they lacked stable core features, making them ill suited for even a prototype.

I also created a prototype news page, basically what would a personal news page look like. After I completed the homepage design & code I realized that the design probably wasn’t a good fit for this idea. That an advantage of the news streams concept would be its familiarity with Twitter. The design I create might be more suited for a web version of Leaflets.

I feel like I’ve taking this idea as far as I can without committing to it fully to make it happen. Either I would need to move forward with Laconica, theme it and setup a number of feeds, equalling about a weeks worth of time, or create something new from scratch which would like take 2-3 weeks with a developer.

The problem with moving forward with Laconica is that is would do little more than prove a concept. It would be difficult to monetize or add features once it is launched.

Why I hate Investors

2009-05-06T15:57:31-07:00

Like you I hate investors. So much so that I won’t talk to them or take their money. Bootstrapping has worked for you and I swear by it. If I meet an “investor” I talk about the baseball, weather, whatever but not my current project. I don’t care for their venom. Time is better spent talking to prospective customers and I don’t want idiots for customers. They require too much stroking, let my competitors have them.

Why I hate Investors

2009-05-06T16:52:38-07:00

I would totally buy a miniature giraffe. When you work out how to do it, put me down for 2….

Hey asshole investors, look familiar?

2009-05-28T21:40:01-07:00

Amen, brother. Amen. Signal is the product I want and think still has a place, but you’re absolutely right that investors would be absolutely terrified now trying to fund a product that would be squarely in Google’s crosshairs (even though Google has been first to market with several products that a smaller, nimbler competitor has displaced. Blogger vs. Wordpress, anyone?)

This is why I am a firm believer in bootstrapping wherever possible.

Hey asshole investors, look familiar?

2009-05-29T07:19:47-07:00

Agreed. There needs to be a better way for small agile firms to be given the opportunity to innovate and develop products like Signal.

The current landscape of the web doesn’t do a good job of fostering game changing ideas. While I love the bootstrap too, big ideas require time to invest in, which is hard to get when you have to worry about who is paying your bills this month.

As web products become more commoditized, the ability to create a truly revolutionary (as opposed to evolutionary) product from your garage is getting harder, not easier.

This is the problem we had with Signal. We needed a room to fail. To riff on new ideas without the fear of running out of runway. That is hard to do on the bootstrap.

There has to be a middle ground between the pure bootstrap and dealing with investors who are too slow and you end up spending most your time explaining your idea.

Five Myths about Financing Start-ups that Hurt Entrepreneurs

2010-02-17T16:11:17-08:00

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