May 2012
7 posts
Gawk.it - making conversations searchable.
I’m the cub master for my kids school cub scout group, an assistant coach for one son’s baseball team, and an assistant coach for the other son’s track & field team. So this past weekend I was busy with a camping trip for the scouts Sat. night, a baseball game Sunday, and a track meet Sunday (the typical fun filled weekend for me these days).
Anyway - because of my...
Today's random idea: Disqus search
First a disclosure: I believe there are a few people already working on this idea (actually I know for a fact that at least one company already has a working prototype in this realm ‘in stealth’). Still, I don’t believe anyone is purely focused on it as a stand-alone service or with the specific details I would like to see, so I thought I would dump out my random thoughts for the...
picking a revenue model
Step back from your project and clear your mind for a second…now without thinking about what you are already doing, or could be doing, think about this:
How would you like to make money? What would you like to be paid for?
Once you’ve got the answer for that, dig back into your project and start making a plan to connect the two.
Explore how the things you are doing now can or will...
Some random thoughts on the social web...
I’ve been meaning to flesh out some thoughts on the ‘social web’, but haven’t found the time to sit down and actually do it. So instead of the nice, clean, thoughtful post I wanted to do, I’m just going to do the rough cut version and dump the basic notes I’ve got floating around in my head…
Social is really all about showing that you care and that you...
The biggest mistake I made with knowabout.it?
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot for the last six months or so (which is how long it took to take my gut feeling that we needed to shut it down and actually shut it down).
While I can honestly say I have no regrets with the decisions we made or the efforts we put in (the positives of the experience and the work FAR outweigh any negatives)…I do have a handful of things I...
A few cool, new, turfd features.
I continue to hack away on turfd.com as I find extra time here and there. Tonight was one of those times, and so I’ve just released a handful of small updates. I’m pretty excited about this latest batch and just wanted to share a few details with you:
1. Improved sharing and social features.
If you create a turfd account, you can now associate your Twitter and Facebook accounts to...
Twitter's updated discovery efforts
Twitter announced an update to their Discover tab today.
As you can imagine, this is something I have a lot of opinions and thoughts around. I’m not going to put them all out here right now (mostly because I don’t feel like writing that much right now — or boring you to death), but I do want to at least take a minute to share some of my quick reactions/thoughts:
1. It’s...
April 2012
8 posts
Some of my 'big' problems with the current state...
1. There’s still no great tool to help me categorize and organize everything that I’ve got access to. Though I now have access to it all, I can’t actually keep up with everything everyone is saying and doing. There isn’t even a decent tool to quickly summarize/review everything when I’ve got time/interest to catch up.
2. I’ve got to be proactive. It’s all...
Today's random idea: alphalist.me
One of the many domains I own is alhpalist.me - I got it about a year ago, with the intention of building out a very basic email list service.
The idea is that it’s a way for users to identify themselves as ‘early adopters’ who would like to be alerted of new/interesting projects that they can sign up for (before the general public).
And of course, the advantage to any project...
The godfather of social media.
The year is 1991. Television is the common thread of most Americans. Shows like Saturday Night Live are experienced, in real time, by the majority of the viewing public.
It’s on one of these SNL episodes, on February 9th, 1991 to be specific, that a character played by Al Franken was introduced to the world. The character’s name was Stuart Smalley, and in hindsight, I think...
Some rambling on Push notifications.
Push notifications should be the digital equivelant of the candy rack at the check out counter. Hitting me up with stuff I don’t really need or want, at just the moment when, and in just the right way so that, I might actually buy something.
The candy rack works I think, because of it’s location and timing. Put it in any location that doesn’t have forced traffic with forced down...
some additional thoughts on hiring.
Just catching up on a few blogs and I ran across the latest nugget* from Nate Westheimer where he talks a little bit about hiring and what he’s currently focusing on as they build the team up at picturelife.
We are just starting to build out the team a bit more at PubGears** as well, so this topic is very much on my mind these days.
At this specific moment in time, we are looking for an...
Today's random idea: mobile video review app.
Purpose: to get quick, human, feedback/reviews/opinions/suggestions on any product, brand, or service.
Basic Features:
1. Record feature: app gives user simple feature to record 30 seconds to 1 minute of video (with audio), add some quick and simple tags, and then release it to the network (basically move it into the app cloud where it awaits searches/views/votes). The instructions around using...
My basic understanding of OOP
I keep the number of mailing lists I monitor pretty small, and generally when I add one, I remove another. Lately one that I’ve got on my list and have been paying attention to is the PUG-IP (Python User Group In Princeton)…and lately there has been a small thread going on about what is object oriented programming (OOP) and how can a beginner understand and actually use it.
I find...
February 2012
3 posts
Conversationlist is back!
OK I gave in to the massive outcry (and when I say massive, I really just mean the three or four people that pinged me with quick questions about the closing of conversationlist)…Conversationlist is back.
As I mentioned before, the primary reason I shut it down in the first place was that it’s a complete side project…and it had been costing me about $70/month in server fees.
...
How's that whoclicked.it project going?
Since releasing an early beta version of my whoclicked.it project about a month ago, and gumroad getting a bit of press, I’ve had a few people randomly ask me about how it’s working out.
So I thought I would share some quick additional details.
First, the project is really just built around a personal desire I have had for a long time to know who is clicking on certain links I share....
Hey, are you a sports fan?
As of late I’ve been head’s down in a handful of really interesting things (more details to come on just what I’m digging into soon I promise)…and while it’s tons-o-fun to be building something new and exciting from scratch, it also generally means I lose almost all touch with the outside world.
I don’t pay attention to much news anyway, and I get enough of the...
January 2012
2 posts
The end of conversationlist...for now.
Today I’ve finally decided to shut down the current version of conversationlist.com.
It’s been a fun project to build and maintain over the past couple of years, but interest seems to have plateaued over the past six months and we’ve never bothered to try and turn the project into a profit center (honestly, I’ve never tried to make any money with it at all - instead I just...
How would you like to know who clicks on the links...
Today I’m making the first public mention of a new little service I’ve built called whoclicked.it. A simple service designed to tell you who actually clicks on the links you share around the web.
It’s an idea that’s been on my mind for a couple of years now, but was primarily driven by two things:
1. Prior to building whoclicked.it, I used bit.ly for almost all my link...
December 2011
4 posts
Andy Swan: 7 rules for pitching to investors that... →
andyswan:
So you want an investor in your business. Here are some rules that I, as both an angel investor and entrepreneur have found valuable:
Don’t pitch to strangers: People very rarely invest in an idea. They invest in people with ideas. If you don’t know anyone, get started now. Investors are more…
love it all.
Twitter : StumbleUpon :: Google :...
porchdog:
Twitter’s gigantic freakin’ revenue opportunity is promoted tweets. And similar to how Google found its business model at Goto.com/Overture, Twitter is taking its cue from StumbleUpon. But first….
Remember when Google didn’t have a business model? Yeah, the Internet and media giant with a valuation of $150-200 billion, $35+ billion in annual revenue, and ~$15 billion in annual cash...
why I think knowabout.it is a world changing...
Consider this sentence: “I am a Giant fan” Are you talking about the NFL, the MLB, a grocery store…or maybe a person, a place, or even a thing that you just like a lot? Without any additional clues, which conversation do you think occurred? “What is your favorite NFL team?” “I am a Giant fan” “What baseball team do you follow?” “I am a...
November 2011
9 posts
Where's the beef?
I haven’t had a chance to really dig into the Google music news much yet, but I have to say that my first impression is “meh”.
It just seems too much like a ‘me too’ product, they don’t seem to have anything really ground breaking or interesting above and beyond what iTunes already does (pretty well).
Sure it’s backed by Google, and that brings some...
playing with interfaces
I’m playing with some alternate interface ideas for knowabout.it tonight…nothing I’m quite ready to release yet, but something that I think some power users (like me) will really get a lot of value out of.
My recent reading list...
When it comes to reading, I generally go in spurts.
I’ll go for months without finding time to read much of anything (not counting blogs and links to awesome content knowabout.it points out to me) and then, I’ll suddenly read a handful of books almost all at once. The past few weeks, I’ve been in the ‘read’ mode and have powered through four books, all of which I...
simplicity.
I think the key to being ‘good’ at anything is directly proportional to how much simplicity you can bring to the table.
Indexing server crash
While I was out catching up with a few people in NYC last night, our main indexing server for knowabout.it decided to completely die…after spending a few hours trying to revive it, I finally gave in and pronounced it.
Of course, it’s the one server that had some code on that was not in version control, or apparently backed up anywhere…so now I’m left with rebuilding the...
I obsess over the 'why'.
One thing I’ve noticed over my career as a developer is that I’m generally way more concerned about the ‘why’ than the ‘how’. Don’t get me wrong, figuring out the ‘how’ is always a fun part of any project…but it’s never where my brain starts. At the start, I am always way more concerned with understanding the problem or the idea...
poorsquare.us →
maddynovich:
In the last 24 hours, my husband jeff (tech entrepreneur-extraordinaire) and his college friend Pinzler, hacked a site called Poorsquare.us. Based on where you are going, it scans Foursquare freebies and puts them into a single organized list (which you can automatically add to your Google calender!). It’s brilliant - next time we go out, we are totally using it to find free...
Stay active...
I’m going to try and get back into blogging at least some random thoughts each day…when I first started blogging, I was able to generate about a post a day for almost a year…but then I got into Twitter and my random thoughts were scattered out there instead of aggregated here (and, yes, I still plan to scatter my thoughts there when I can)…beyond Twitter, I also just got...
October 2011
3 posts
Keeping busy this past year...
12 months ago I was primarily doing consulting work for Bit.ly and putting together the beginnings of my own start up Digital Mechanical (the corp. entity behind knowabout.it). Since that time, I applied for and got rejected for the initial NYC TechStars program, ended my contract with bit.ly to focus on Digital Mechanical, pitched in with some consulting work for PlayPhilo, and am now also...
Introducing SantaHelp.me
For a little over a year now I’ve had this idea for a dead-simple mobile app called ‘report to Santa’…and this past weekend I finally found a couple of hours to actually build a first version of it (and a very lightweight website for it too). You should be able to get the app by following the links on http://www.santahelp.me (the iPhone link may not work yet as I’m...
Introducing fuzzypop.com
I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my head for awhile now about trying to cross Tumblr.com with Letter.ly…and what would it look like, how should it act, what could it be used for?
Well, I finally got a chance to sit down and code out an initial working prototype for it at http://fuzzypop.com (and blog a little bit more about the idea at http://blog.fuzzypop.com - btw would love...
September 2011
307 posts
Make sure a certain number of scripts remain...
Ever need to make sure a certain number of scripts remain running on your server? Here’s a quick shell script that migh help you out:
#!/bin/bash count=0 for x in `ps ax | grep -v grep | grep my_cool_service | cut -c1-2` do count=`expr $count + 1` done if [ $count -lt 35 ] then echo $count echo “time to start some more services” while [ $count -lt 35 ]; do ...
Mapping an EC2 instance to a local drive on Mac
If you’re already using EC2, you’re probably familiar with SSH’ing to your box via Terminal with something like this: ssh -i your_ec2_pem.pem your_ec2_instance_username_like_ubuntu@your_ec2_host.com But did you know you can avoid this by creating a ~/.ssh/config file with details like this (obviously replacing the values with your specific EC2 details): Host your_ec2_host...
Some things on my mind.
Now that summer is all but over, and my kids are officially back in school (K and 3rd grade already!), it’s time to do a quick reality check and get myself organized again.
As part of that, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and moved my blog over to Tumblr. Overally a pretty simple and clean process of just exporting my old posts from my legacy DB (a PostrgreSQL datastore with a PHP...
Updated version of the AVC PDF
I’ve been working my way through the massive AVC PDF I put together a week or so ago (I’m up to Mar of 2005 - so about 1/6th of the way through it)…and as I do that I’ve noticed a handful of little glitches that I wanted fixed.
So I took some time today to clean up a few little things and have uploaded a new, cleaner, version:
http://blog.botfu.com/avc.pdf
The main...
I feel like RSS feeds will make a bit of comeback.
Over the past few days I added better/more RSS support to http://knowabout.it and so now you can easily hook in all the feeds you follow on Google Reader.
Since I was doing that, I was also just thinking a lot about RSS feeds in general…and how it’s really such a shame that they never *really* caught on with the general population. They contain so much great content, and they make it...
as a fan of avc.com
I’ve been a long time fan of Fred Wilson and all that he shares with us at avc.com…but Fred’s been blogging for a really long time (at least since 2003)…and at best I discovered his blog in *maybe* 2007…so I missed at least four years of meat (and to be honest I don’t remember to read his blog every day even now).
So I wanted an easy, offline, way to go back...
My quick bio/introduction
Kevin Marshall is a developer putting together a new company around his knowabout.it project (the basic idea is ‘priority inbox for your social data’). Prior to starting knowabout.it, Kevin had been playing around in the social data space via his wow.ly set of tools that include things like conversationlist.com, pu.ly, eli.st, and instapaperfeed.com among others.
Kevin has also...
Blog with emotion...
One of the really interesting things to me about music is the fact that while most songs are fairly short pieces of work…the really good ones, you are happy to experience over and over and over. And as you experience them again and again, you often find yourself reliving a specific point in time, or experiencing a specific emotion that you had when you first heard the song.
Most digital...
Office space...
Recently, I’ve taken to sharing a photo via flicker to my twitter/facebook stream (I really only use Twitter and it synchs over to facebook automatically for me).
Mostly I do this just to give people a small peek into what my home office/world is like (I have finished basement that we use as 1/2 office space for me, 1/2 man cave, and 1/2 kids play area — you figure out the math).
...
Disqus is truly a disruptive company.
A conversation involving Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, and Roger Ehrenberg - 3 of the most respected VC online.
I’ve touted it a few times in the past, but for anyone that’s doubted the amazing value that Disqus is generating…answer me this:
Where else can you listen in on a conversation among the top venture capital partners in the world? But it’s gets even better...
Google isn't broken...the key assumption is.
There has been a large amount of chatter growing around the inernet that Google search may have reached a tipping point…that the search results are starting to be less and less useful as more and more low quality/spam finds it’s way towards the top of many search result screens. *
I’ve long been fascinated by Google’s approach, and the math (as well as the overall...
Getting distinct records out of Mongo and sorting...
It’s been a really long time since I’ve posted any actual code up here…so I figured I would share a little snippet that I’ve been using quite a bit in the knowabout.it processing stuff lately.
One of the things that happens a lot on the backend is indexing links or users…to save on processing, I don’t want to just loop through every user ever time the process...
Making a variable available to all my Python...
As of late I’ve been working on a handful of Python projects using the Tornado framework (which I love by the way). In that work, I’ve often run into a situation where I want to use a variable within my wrapper template and I don’t want to have to define and pass that variable within each of my python methods. So how do I do that? The answer is actually pretty simple, just...