Archive for the ‘Whatever’ Category
« Older Entries |Fred Wilson’s 10 golden principle for successful startups (FOWA)
Saturday, February 27th, 2010
I took some notes this year at FOWA, and I’d like to share with you some of the things I learned or found valuable at FOWA (Future of Web Apps). This first post is about what I learned from Fred Wilson’s presentation. Wilson is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures, a smaller ($125 million in capital under management), newly formed, New York City based venture capital firm with investments in Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, del.icio.us, Etsy, FeedBurner, Indeed.com, Disqus, Clickable and many others. In his presentation he highlighted ten points he finds critical for being a successful startup.
Speed: this is a critical factor for growth. Applications that aren’t fast don’t grow as fast as applications with better speed performances.
Instant Utility: your application has to be useful out of the box. Let the user see an immediate return for using your application.
Voice: you need to have a style, a personality. People need to feel like they are consuming a media. Just look at the way Wufoo communicates with their users, with very fun unusual messages.
Less is more: Your application has to be simple. Try to focus on one thing and do it very well. You can always add more features later. This helps speed as well.
Programmable: make it easy for other people to plug or build on top of your application. Your API should always be read/write. This is the reason why we integrated SquarePik with Foursquare only, and not Gowalla. Gowalla has a read-only API, making the applications built on it virtually useless.
Personal: make the experience feel personal. Even little things like avatars or personal profiles make users feel like they own part of the application. Think about how your perception of your Facebook page changed since they changed its URL from a number to your username. Now it’s not just a page in their system, it’s your personal page.
Restful: Fred used this term in a personal and incorrect way by his own admission. He thinks the entire application should have an easy URL system. You should be able to reach any page of your app via URL. That makes it easy to share and send to other people.
Discoverable: people need to be able to be find your application, via SEO or social media. At the end of the presentation, he also recommended the use of guerrilla marketing because of its cost effectiveness.
Clean: use big spaces, big fonts and don’t add too many functions on a page. It has to be very clear at any time what the user should do.
Playful: the ability to play in an application is very important. The game element can help the success of an application. Foursquare and Gowalla are really good examples of this. Even something as simple as a top contributor chart could be seen as a game.
What other things do you think are key for the success of a web application?
Tags: Business, FOWA, Web Applications
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The secret of happiness
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Brillant
Tags: Inspiration
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How to use Facebook Chat with iChat
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Finally Facebook Chat started supporting Jabber/XMPP, the open standard for instant messaging. Now developers can integrate Facebook Chat with their Web-based, desktop, or mobile instant messaging products.
That also means that we can chat with our Facebook friends using iChat. Just add a new account to your iChat following the settings in the picture below.
Tags: Facebook, How to, iChat, Jabber, Tip of Day
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What I think the new Apple device will be
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
I have been thinking about posting my thoughts about the upcoming new Apple device for a while. Because I didn’t have the time to do so, I will just make a list of features I think this device will have:
- It will be shipped in a single size, with 10″ screen
- It will have touch screen and, more important, touch recognition on the back of the case, where the fingers naturally rest when you hold the device
- It will use a dual-core ARM processor produced by Semi PA, an ARM licensee acquired by Apple.
- The OS will be a modified version of iPhone OS, so the final user will only have a superficial access to the device.
- Non optimized iPhone applications will work in iPhone size windows while the optimized one will run in full-screen mode. The device will support multi-tasking.
- It will be offered mobile operator free but it will be mobile operator ready. You will be able to pick the provider of your choice.
- Apple will offer free unlimited wireless connectivity with a MobileMe account to access to limited content like iTunes, iDisk, Mail and other Mobile Me services.
- It will offer unlimited connectivity for subscription applications like magazine and newspapers
- It will have GPS .
- It will not support Adobe Flash.
- It will have a front facing camera, with facial recognition for the users (remember that new feature in iPhoto?)
Tomorrow will find out the truth. I know I will get one no matter what, what about you?
Tags: Apple, Table
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The key of life
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
I found this image on internet and I decided to share it with you.
Tags: Inspiration
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2009 recap and 2010 goals
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
I guess it is time again to look back at what I have accomplished during the soon-to-be over year and set the goals for the upcoming one.
For me, 2009 was really full of surprises and unexpected changes. If you asked me where I would see myself in 12 months last January, I would never have expected to be where I am today, especially as far as personal life. But, I did accomplished some of my goals, mostly in my professional life, such as making Thirtynine my main focus, developing a few successful apps and growing my client base.
So what about 2010?
- Grow Thirtynine: This year I would like to grow the company even further still, which will require hiring a couple of new people in order to have more workforce to dedicate to internal projects. We have great ideas we want to develop, but, luckily, clients keep us busy with their projects.
- Publish a top 100 iPhone application: So far I’ve published several applications that hit the top 20 chart in their relative categories, but I was never able to break into the overall top 100 chart in the US. I have no preference at this point between the top paid or free apps chart, but I can’t hide that I would love to be in the top grossing chart.
- Clean up my digital closet: I really need to get rid of the things I don’t use and cost me money to maintain. I have hundreds of domains and several subscriptions that are not being used. Of course this also means that I have to stop buying a domain every time an idea pops in my brain. I would be lying to myself if said that I will eventually use it, because the truth is that I don’t have time to build it, and if I do, I surely don’t have time to maintain it.
- Be more productive: Too often I get distracted and lose focus on what I have to get done. In 2010, I definitely want to improve that, I don’t care if that means closing every single communication tool for hours at a time. Sorry, next time you need me while I’m working, you might have to come here and knock on my door (and I might still not open it).
- Improve my English: I’m sure that if you are reading this post, you won’t need me to explain to you why I need to improve my written English.
- Get back in shape: Thanks to a herniated disk and several other back problems, I haven’t done much in the past 6 months. My goal is to go back to some sport activity at least 3 times per week (if not 5 like I was used to).
- Do more charity: There are two things I’d like to do. The first one is to release a free application about the Alzheimer’s disease with the main goal to raise money through Paypal donation. My grand-mother is currently in the late stage of this terrible disease, and while there’s not much I can do to help her, I’d love to know that my efforts would have contributed somehow in helping somebody else’s grandmother or other family member to avoid (or cure) this disease. The second thing is to donate a freshwater well with Charity: Water for each single project or app that generates more than $25,000 in profits.
Tags: 2010, Goals
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Two weeks of Magic Mouse
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
It has been about two weeks since I received the Magic Mouse I won thanks to Mobclix, so I thought I’d share with you my impressions.
First of all, the object is beautiful. It could sit on my coffee table in the living room, and my guest would never guess it’s a mouse. As far as functionality, I think we are facing an evolution jump as big as switching from a mouse with a track ball (do you remember them?) to a laser mouse. No more cursing when the page doesn’t scrool, no more experimenting with new ways of cleaning the scroll-ball, it just works… Beautifully and flawlessly. When you first start using the mouse, the shape could make it a bit uncomfortable; it’s significantly flatter than its predecessor, and the movement to scroll the pages could feel awkward, but after a few days you won’t notice it anymore, and you’ll soon wonder why no one thought of this earlier.
On the downside, Apple decided to remove two of the four buttons: the middle and the “squeeze” buttons. Honestly, if I didn’t win the mouse I wouldn’t buy it for that exact reason. Button 3 and 4 were my access to Exposè, and I just couldn’t live without it. As far as multi-touch control, Apple only gives you two buttons (left and right), the 360 degrees scroll and a double swipe left and right to control the browser history and other stuff, like iChat tabs or to scroll through your e-mail messages in Mail. I was actually surprised Apple didn’t take more advantage of some functions they already enabled for the Macbook’s touchpad, such as multiple-finger movements to trigger Expose and Spaces. But luckily, just a couple of days ago, I found an awesome software that lets me set up all sort of multi-touch gestures and now I fully control Expose and more simply by “caressing” my mouse. I’m sure Apple will release an official driver to do all these things soon, but for now I’m happy with how Magic Mouse and BetterTouchTool are working together.
Tags: Apple, Magic Mouse, Multi-touch, Review
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Cool blogs I recently started reading
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Lately, I added few really good blogs to my RSS feed reader (yes, somebody still use them…).
Here’s a list with some of them:
Both Sides of the Table: I learned tons of things about startups and VC thanks to this blog. In his words: Mark Suster is a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC.
BijanSabet.com: general partner at Spark Capital, great tips for startups, awesome music.
Ignore the Code: written by Lukas Mathis, user interface and usability expert.
Make Cool Shit: a blog about creativity and productivity.
Minimal Mac: best tips to de-clutter your mac and your life.
Tapity: Learning and sharing strategies to build successful iPhone apps.
Uproar Blog: writing about software development and entrepreneurship with as much transparency as possible.
Tags: Link
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Readings and videos for new entrepreneurs
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
These are few blog posts and videos I think could be helpful and inspiration for people who is thinking to step into the entrepreneurial world.
- From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.
- The 5 Things I’d Tell My 21 Year Old Entrepreneurial Self
- You Aren’t Crazy, You’re Just an Entrepreneur
- How to Escape Mundanity
- Web 2.0 Expo NY: Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library), Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landsca
- David Heinemeier Hansson – FOWA Dublin 2009 (video)
If you have any suggestion of blog posts or videos you think I should read/watch, please share them!
Tags: Business, Entrepreneur, Video
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