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New indieconf speaker – Doug Foster

October 18th, 2010

We’re pleased to announce Doug Foster joining our lineup of presenters at this year’s indieconf.

Doug Foster

As an Idea Mechanic, Doug Foster helps people sell. He is an imaginative strategist, conversational storyteller, demonstration engineer, experience architect, and customer advocate. “Convince Me!” – his unique approach to selling and customer education – helps individuals or companies sell their products, services, and points-of-view.

In his 30 year career, Doug has been successful as an engineer, manager, vice president, board director, international liaison, and entrepreneur. He has worked in sales, marketing, manufacturing, information technology, telecommunications, engineering, systems quality, and IP management. Doug is also an expert in the area of Internet voice, video, and data convergence. With John Deere, he helped transform a worldwide SNA network into a multi-protocol Intranet. At Cisco Systems, he served as one of the company’s original Video and Voice Over IP consulting engineers. Doug holds a BSME from Iowa State University with postgraduate work in numerical calculations at the University of Iowa.

Doug’s session is titled “Convince Me! Why should I buy what you’re selling”

“Everyone sells, even you. Learn a simple, easy way to sell by thinking like a buyer, not a seller. Every sales cycle has four phases, but learn why the second one  – educating your buyer – can make or break the deal. I’ll teach you the 5 step CM!™ process, set you up with a toolbox full of ideas, and get you started on how to become a convincing expert.”

Register for indieconf today at http://indieconf.com/register

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Posted in Conferences, Ideas, indieconf, Software, Web

Authorization by social graph

October 14th, 2010

I’ve been kicking around an idea for a while now, discussed with some friends, but don’t have time to implement this just yet.  I may use this at the core of a project early next year, but I wanted to get the main idea out there now.  Perhaps others are already doing this, but I haven’t seen it anywhere (yet?).

Currently, many apps tie in with twitter/facebook/etc for authentication – a third party openid server indicates to the original app that you are who you say you are.  In some cases, there’s even a degree of sharing of data or allowing of control of a remote app (posting tweets via oauth, updating facebook wall, etc).  What I’ve not seen yet is something which allows for collaboration, with degrees of permissions defined by relations in your personal social graph.

For example, consider google docs.  Rather than inviting and granting permission on specific docs to specific people,  allowing anyone who is following me on Google Buzz or FriendFeed to have read access to my document would be useful.  Take that a step further – anyone who I’m following back – a two-way relationship – would automatically have read *and* write permissions on that document.

This is a somewhat simplified example, but the notion of permissions being automatically granted/revoked based on position and status in my social graph seems relatively unique (if also a probably rather obvious evolution in the coming near term).

Are there examples of this behaviour out there already I’m not seeing?

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Posted in Business, Ideas, indieconf, Social, Society, Software, Web

a few new ideas

September 22nd, 2010

Was just kicking around these ideas today a bit – we’ll see if anything comes of them:

Social ‘to do’ list

Rough idea: a service to allow people to agree to do things together. That could really be taken in many directions, and I’m not sure which (if any) I’d take, but I haven’t seen anything quite like what’s in my head yet.

Social media profile disambiguator

Perhaps there’s some API service already, but I’d like to be able to look up someone by name and get a list of all their SM profiles. looking up “@waynesutton” I’d get some commonly known ones, but I don’t know of something that would automatically know or detect that @socialwayne is related.

Restaurant customer service numbers

A service to give local restaurants a feedback phone/sms number to distribute. Call and leave your feedback via phone tree, or via text, and see the results logged/reported.

Homeowner Association Issue Tracker

This came up today talking with a friend who’s the president of his area HOA. They need a custom issue tracker. Well, need is perhaps too strong, but it’s something they’d pay for.

Any ideas you’ve had you care to share?

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Posted in Business, Ideas, Software, Web

Airport security idea

December 26th, 2009

My recent thoughts turned to airline security last night after learning of the flight coming in to Detroit in which a man tried to blow up the plane. (link and link, though I’m sure there’s thousands more now).

I’ve never subscribed to the theory that our US airport security did all that much in terms of preventing actual threats.  I’m old enough to remember pre 9/11 flying, and the security measures don’t seem to be doing that much better at stopping potential violent threats.  In the past two years I’ve flown to San Francisco, Miami, London, Copenhagen, Sydney, Shanghai and probably a couple other places I can’t recall right now.  Most of these trips had several layovers, so I’ve seen security measures at many more airports than just these.  A few things initially surprised me soon after 9/11, but fail to surprise me now:

1.  How differently my carry-on bags are treated during screening every single time I travel, even at the same airports.  I travel with a wide variety of stuff – often a laptop, ipod, chargers, cables, headphones, microphones, video camera, small microphone and other assorted electronic goodies.  Sometimes I pack them in checked luggage, but often there’s not room (or I don’t quite trust TSA bag handlers to not take something of value).  So it comes on as hand-luggage.  A couple of times the cabled mess has triggered a thorough hand search of all the bag contents.  While annoying, I understand their need – it’s not clear what the materials are, and if something’s unknown, it’s better to check it out.  Annoying, but reasonable.  Why that particular mess of cables and such doesn’t trigger the same response at different airports is what’s troubling to me.  Each checkpoint area seems to be having their own guidelines as to what is ‘suspicious’ and what isn’t.  To be certain, it may be the experience and judgement level of those involved, but based on the behaviour I witness of security checkpoint personnel (see below), I’m not convinced that’s the reason.

2.  How lax the staff appear at various screening areas.  I don’t particularly want hard-nosed drill sergeants barking orders at me, but I also don’t want people falling asleep.  It seems I generally find both extremes at security checkpoints, which annoys me.  I’m not saying these are the *only* people – there’s also typically a mix of seemingly decent, diligent people staffing these areas.  But that’s not enough.  I’ve watched my bags going through x-ray machines, showing a vast array of weird cables and devices (I travel with a lot of weird stuff!) and watched as the person sitting at the x-ray machine simply let it pass right through *without looking at the screen*, either with their head turned while talking to a colleague, or eating.

I’ve observed that behaviour at least 4 times over the last 12-18 months of travel.  Coming up with extremely conservative numbers, those particular screeners might be letting 3-5% of the baggage go by essentially unchecked.  If 5% of the bags can get by unchecked at a checkpoint, what’s the purpose of having it?  The only substantive answer I can arrive at is “theater for the masses”.

My idea centers on this carry-on bag checkpoint process.  Specifically, my idea would be to have the bag images be fed to an internet site and allow multiple people to judge whether something was ‘suspicious’ enough to warrant a hand investigation.  However, the speed of this might not be enough to work in real time.  So, the next step would be to associate a passenger picture with the bags specifically at the checkpoint, and if it’s determined through the ‘crowdsourced’ site that a particular bag should be inspected, the bag’s owner could more easily be tracked down in the airport.

While this seems like it might be a lot more work, personally, I’d trust the accuracy of dozens or hundreds of people of varying backgrounds giving their votes on a bag rather than one person who might not even be *looking* at the bag to pass judgement.

Lastly, is there a way to *report* on TSA or security staff who appear to be negligent at their post?  I’d try to take pictures, but I suspect I’d be labelled a terrorist rather than someone who’s simply trying to report on someone not doing their job (which, incidentally, is supposed to be about securing my life and safety).

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Posted in Business, Ideas, Society, Travel

Next magazine topic survey – winner announced

December 23rd, 2009

A few weeks ago, I posted a survey asking for input on the next magazine topic for Web Dev Publishing to pursue.  The results were interesting, but unfortunately the results were not definitive, and I’m left with the same quandry as before – which topic to choose.

The winner of the survey, selected at random, was Mark McDonnell.  Congrats Mark, I’ll be sending your Amazon Gift Card over today.

The top vote getters were (in no particular order)

  • MySQL
  • NoSQL
  • JVM Languages (jruby, jython, scala, clojure, etc)
  • Zend Framework
  • Database technologies

The votes were pretty evenly split between all of these topics, which leaves me with no clear direction as to which, if any, of these topics would make sense to pursue (from a demand standpoint).   There already was a MySQL PDF magazine, which has transitioned in to a “open source database magazine”, covering more technologies than just MySQL.  NoSQL, while interesting, has been criticized as just a ‘flavor of the month’ (though the interest shown in this survey was significant).  Zend Framework and JVM Languages are the two that seem the most promising.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

6 comments »

Posted in Business, Development, Ideas, Java, PHP, Software, Web

PDF Watermarking web service

October 22nd, 2009

I’ve got a PDF watermarking web service I’m considering opening up as a service for others (currently using it internally for my own projects).  If this is something that sounds like it would be of interest to you, let me know.  It should be a pretty easy integration piece, but I’d be interested in getting some feedback on how you’d be planning to use it (what tech, mainly).  Also, this would likely be a paid service, either on a ‘per use’ limit basis, or some flat monthly pricing.  Frankly, I’m a little surprised that I can’t find one out there – I’ve got to think this exists already, but I’ve not seen one.  If you know of one, let me know.

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Posted in Business, Ideas, Software, Web

Six week test progress update

October 11th, 2009

My first post back in August identified a project I was going to start, and my goal was to have it done in six weeks. I’m *close*, and closer than last week, but probably another week off. Not happy with myself for missing my initial deadline, and I know even when it ‘launches’ there will still be more work to do, but I’ve taken some positives out of this so far.

I’ve not spent six full weeks on this, or even 7-8 now. This has definitely been a part time ‘after hours’ project, and there’s been a lot of ups and down the past two months which have interfered. So, to that extent, I don’t feel like I have yet ‘failed’. I know if I’d spent 6 full time weeks on this, it would have been done in less than 4. Additionally, it’s given me a bit more time to think about the UI. I know it won’t be perfect, but I’ve gone through 2 iterations of the process sign up, talking with more than a few people, taking their feedback, and generally shortening and tightening up the process. Had I launched 3 weeks ago with the first pass patched together, it would have been much worse. Lastly, I still struggle with PayPal – I hit a snag tonight that cost me more time than I would have liked, and I can’t really see where the problem was (code was copied from jsmag.com, and should have worked fine!)

So, stay tuned for more updates. Also, authors – especially self-published ones – drop me a line if you want to be part of the testing/beta phase.

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Posted in Business, Ideas

Six week test followup – custom business cards

August 17th, 2009

I’m taking my own advice and plunging ahead with a small, focused six-weeker. I’m not sure this counts or not because A) I’ve had the idea for several months and B) I did a bit of work on it several weeks ago. With that said, perhaps I should only give myself five weeks on this one?

The crux of the project is selling custom business cards to self-published authors. If you’re a self-published author and would like to be part of the beta program, let me know. There will probably be some free or discounted cards in it for you in exchange for helping work out the kinks (and helping to promote it!).

Six weeks from now is Sept 28 – five weeks is Sept 21. I’ve got a lot of other work planned in between now and then, so hitting this will be a challenge, but I think it’s doable.  When I said “plunging ahead” above, I meant I contacted a designer and should have an initial comp or two to review in the next few days.  From there, I’d be doing some of the programming, tying in with paypal and google and such, and then finding ways to promote it.  I should be in a position to take money from customers and deliver product by the end of September.

I’ll keep you all posted as this progresses.

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Posted in Business, Ideas, Web

The six week test

August 15th, 2009

I’ve been speaking with a number of local entrepreneurs over the past few weeks, and they all have a few things in common.  All are sharp, smart, have good taste (hey, they’re talking to me, right?), have some killer ideas, and seem to be stuck.  Taking definitive action on the ideas seems to be the next key step that is holding each of them back.

During our discussions, each idea was solid, but not necessarily reaching for the sky as in “I’m developing the next Google killer” (and that’s a good thing, in my view).  All were certainly achievable with enough effort and time, but time is the killer factor here.  Most of the ideas had very long time horizons – there was no plan to be even ‘launching’ for several months – usually 6-12 months from starting.  That’s a workable plan for some people, but in these cases, I didn’t think it was.

I began asking this simple question.  “Now that you’ve identified a target market to serve, what could you do in the next six weeks to be able to serve the people in that market in exchange for money?”  The question brings everything to a short pause.

The motivation behind the question isn’t to force people to only do something that will result in cashflow within six weeks.  Six weeks *is* a fairly short time period, but it’s also possible for many projects to be started and have revenue in that window. The idea is to get people thinking about short term goals, and to focus on small achievements, testing the marketplace, and so on.

If you have an idea that may take 8-10 weeks, that’s fine too.  Hey, it’s even fine if you have an idea that really *will* take 10 months – go for it!  But for the majority of people I talk to, they’re very likely to get lost during those 10 months, stumble around, and eventually give up on the idea altogether.

Does this approach work?  Well, it can.  I’m living proof that it can.

My own GroovyMag and JSMag ventures took longer than six weeks to start up, but they definitely weren’t 10 month ventures.  I started looking in to the idea in earnest in late June 2008, started serious planning in August 2008, and launched GroovyMag in November 2008.  That was probably 12 weeks total, but much of that time was working with others – writers, layout, etc. And at the 6 week mark it was in full swing, with a defined launch date.  During that time I wasn’t quiet about it either – I engaged the community for feedback and input, created a signup form to collect contact info on those interested in the idea, and had a ready-built customer list on day one.

Similarly, my brother recently launched a small project, and it took about two weeks from idea to cashflow.  Will this take over the world and let him retire on just this project?  Probably not, but it’s also given him a customer base of people who have an interest in that particular topic.  As that grows, he’ll have better insight as to what those customers want and need, and can serve them better with other related products.

On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve followed a couple of people working on projects over the last 12 months, and neither of them have launched yet.  They’re doing everything possible *except* putting the product out there for sale, which is a shame.  Had they started smaller, gotten better feedback from potential customers in the first few weeks, and changed course accordingly, I think both people would have had better products after all this time.

This “six week test” isn’t anything new.  Many of us have heard the phrases “release early, release often” or “ready, fire, aim” or similar ideas.  My only twist on this is phrasing the concept with a specific time limit attached.  Six weeks wasn’t an arbitrary choice, mind you.  It was longer than ‘two weeks’ (very few people can organize themselves enough to be productive in just two weeks), longer than ‘a month’ (months have different days in them), and not ‘two months’ (which often ends up being something people feel is so far in the future that they can put it off).  “Six weeks” is, to me, concrete enough for people to realize it’s a short time period, but long enough to accomplish something in.  It’s also 42 days, and we all know the benefits of 42.

What could you accomplish in the next six weeks?  Do you have an idea for a new product or service you’re thinking of putting together?  Does six weeks seem doable to you for your ideas?

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Posted in Business, Development, Ideas, Software, Web

DVR functionality on the web?

June 18th, 2009

Just saw on TechCrunch tonight that Justin.TV has taken a first step towards DVR functionality in their player. Good to see it, and I just felt like posting that I did call this out as a need last fall :)   It’s not quite what I was hoping for just yet, but it sounds like they’re moving in that direction.

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Posted in Business, Ideas, Web