A group of technopreneurs made it out to the University of Maryland campus for Bootstrap Maryland.The aim of the conference is to teach budding entrepreneurs “the necessary tools for running a lean and successful technology business.†The event had 4 main panels covering a variety of topics from marketing and public relations to picking the right technology. I learned a lot from the anecdotes of the local entrepreneur panelists. While I ‘m more HTML than MBA, the event inspired me to keep thinking about the business angle on the projects I take on.
Panelists of the third session at Bootstrap Maryland
Since every seat in the business school lecture hall had a power plug and the WiFi was strong throughout the entire event, I managed to take a copious amount of notes on my wiki. Here are some of the highlights:
When it comes to a business plan, do you need one? Whole panel answers “Meehh… not really.”
Recessions are a great time to start a business because everything is cheaper and there is a ton of talent available.
Businesses don’t fail because of the technology, businesses fail because they don’t understand their market.
How to better understand your market: Experiment, Evaluate, adapt.
MYTH: Experience in the corporate world translates to the start-up world. The start up world is a totally different beast.
Want to get rich quickly? Rob a bank. Sell crack. Don’t start a company.
Best brand right now is “swine flu”, “susan boyle”
If considering outsourcing, go with a brand name firm.
That last point is big. If you are looking for a local group of people who are interested in media/technology/business, the DC metropolitan area has something for you. After all, where else would 200 people get together to share ideas and stories about starting businesses on the cheap on a Saturday. Jared Goralnick did a great job organizing everything and I would expect the attendance to double for the next one.
Jared Goralnick polls the audience of Bootstrap MD
Drinking a Diet Coke with pizza and salad for lunch.
Genius Rocket (lunch sponsor) distributes fliers while everyone is out in the hallway eating pizza.
Panelists mingle with the audience after the 2nd session at Bootstrap MD
Every Friday my co-workers and I go to Chipotle for lunch. Today the guy who asked for my order was particularly chatty so I mentioned it was my birthday after being prodded by my co-worker. He said he would take care of me and ended up giving me two extra helpings of steak in my burrito. On top of that my meal was on the house as was hers. Needless to say, finishing this swollen sack of rice, meat and cheese was a little bit more challenging than most Chipotle outtings but I managed to cram it all down while only making a slight mess. Morale of the story: Don’t eat breakfast and go eat lunch at Chipotle while mentioning it’s your special day. If the guy serving you is nice it just might be free and filled to the brim with goodness.
Kristina managed to bake these cookie monster cupcakes and homemade Hershey kisses for my coworkers and I without me even knowing. She even drove me in to work this morning so she could secretly hand off the goods. I even got a fake meeting request, which I fell for, luring me in for the surprise. After a hectic week prepping for the launch of Best Graduate Schools, this was a welcomed surprise.
P.S. My birthday is really tomorrow, the 24th, for those keeping track.
Today is the launch day of America’s Best Graduate Schools. I decided to wear my mortar board while I work on it this week until it launches. The cap has been a big hit at meetings and around the office. This is probably the smoothest rankings project I have ever worked on here at U.S News & World Report. Be sure to check out http://www.usnews.com/grad later on this evening to see the new grad school rankings that I’ve been busy with.
A couple of weeks ago I needed to fix a friends computer that suffered from an incurable case of BSoD syndrome. He had all of his data backed up to an external hard drive so the coast was clear to reformat and reinstall Windows. Piece of cake. The problem was how was I going to find all the right drivers to make his laptop useable again? He lost the drivers & utilities CD that came with his laptop. Enter DriverMax.
DriverMax is a free program that scans your system and provides links to the latest version of drivers for the particular hardware you have. The process is straightforward as DriverMax handles downloading and installing the files for you. It can even generate reports of all the hardware devices in your computer as well as what driver version is being used. This handy tool saved me loads of time by not having to scour the Internet for the right driver or figuring out which one is compatible with my system. You can leave it running in the system tray and it will notify you when a driver update is available but for my purposes, once the computer is up and humming along normally, I simply uninstall DriverMax.
The only downside I could think of is you have to sign-up for a free account to their forums in order to download drivers. It worked well for my friends laptop so if you need to do a clean sweep of a PC and you lost the driver disc that came with it, give DriverMax a whirl.
Some officemates and I decided to enjoy our burritos outside due to the nice weather. This duck waddled up to us without hesitation so one of my co-workers gave it her leftover burrito bits. Note the guacamole all over its beak.
Twhirl has been my favorite Twitter client until today when the Seesmic Desktop preview launched. Seesmic, who bought the Twhirl client a year ago, has taken the product to the next level. Taking a few hints from Tweetdeck, this update brings the ability to create groups for who you follow as well as display multiple columns to help cut through the stream of noise. The grouping feature is a nice addition but is a little bit clunky without a way to see all the people you are following in one place so you can easily sort people into groups. The only way to add someone is clicking an icon over their avatar. In addition to people you can also add columns for search terms. People with multiple Twitter accounts will be happy to know that you can manage different usernames from one interface with the option to view them combined or separate.
Like any new release, there are a few things that can be improved. Customization features are sparse. Things missing are the ability to adjust font size and styling (important when you want to optimize scanability) as well as colors of the interface. The notification pop-up (my favorite part of Twhirl) no longer shows a preview of the incoming tweets but merely indicates what type of tweet has arrived (reply, direct message, or “friend update”) and for which account that tweet was sent to. I hope in future releases they add this functionality.
For people who use Twitter as an information fire hose, the Seesmic Desktop client will be a handy tool for managing the information overload. I always liked Twhirl for it’s lightweight memory usage which really turned me off to the sluggish Tweetdeck. We’ll see how well this tool performs after a couple days of usage. And I’ll continue to follow the developments as Seesmic brings their video-conversation service into the mix with Twitter updates. Just imagine how cool that would be to view and respond to video comments Twitter style in a dedicated application like this!
When Kristina and I went to California two weeks ago, we got to meet my new niece for the first time. One of the unique things about little Lacey is she was born with an extra toe on each foot, for a total of 12 little piggies. In the medical world this is called hexadactyly and is quite common. Lacey’s older sister was also born with 12 toes.
Sometimes the extra toes can be tied shortly after birth where they simply fall off. Otherwise doctors advise having surgery to remove the extra digit before the crawling stage. Lacey’s is scheduled sometime in June.
Finally, a toolbar I might actually use. Digg unveiled their new toolbar/URL shortner today, though it’s not a toolbar in the traditional sense. Instead of downloading an add-on all you have to do is add digg.com/ to the front of the URL you’re currently viewing. How clever is that? The service will take you to a shortened URL, suitable for sharing on Twitter, as well as bringing all the goodness of Digg into a subtle, compact toolbar above the page. From there you can digg or submit a story, view comments from other diggers, bury the story, see related stories or peruse random stories that have already made the front page of Digg.com. Your Facebook and Twitter friends don’t have to be out of the loop since share buttons for the two services are also included. Check out the video below for a demo:
I really like this new feature which aims to take on Stumbleupon and tinyURL at the same time. To make it even easier to use I wrote a bookmarklet that you can use to add digg.com/ to the front of any URL with the click of a button. Just like a real toolbar! To use it drag the link below to your bookmark toolbar. Update: Nevermind, you’re probably better off using the official DiggBar bookmarklet.
Drew Wilson is proposing the HTML IMG tag get a new attribute called fullsize. The fullsize attribute would reference “a larger (or fullsize) version of the SRC image. Browsers could then include native support to display the fullsize image in a [modal] pop-up.” according to addfullsize.com, Wilson’s site dedicated to the effort. Mr. Wilson has even gone to the trouble of creating a jQuery plug-in that simulates how the behavior would work. He hopes the Internet will make enough buzz about it to get the attention of the W3C in order to get the fullsize attribute included in the official HTML spec. As of this writing, the petition to add a fullsize attribute has 185 “signatures”. I am not one of them.
I’m not against the idea of including a reference to a larger version of an image right inside the tag. HTML is all about structuring and describing content, and the fullsize attribute is just another piece of meta-data. My biggest problem is this is already possible today by wrapping a link pointing to the fullsize image around the original image. Is it sexy? No. But it is still flexible. It can be customized and jazzed up with JavaScript and CSS but for devices that don’t support those technologies, a link around an image would still be accessible.
What I’m weary wary about is letting the browser manufacturers determine the default pop-up behavior and then relying on them for easier customization options. Take drop down input elements for example. Getting these to look consistent across all of the different browsers and operating systems in the world today is impossible. Roger Johansson went through the effort and documented them on his blog 456bereastreet.com. Any saved time from browsers handling a pop-up would be wasted trying to work around the different limitations for each browser.
To summarize:
I’m all for a fullsize attribute for meta-data purposes
Browsers handling the pop-up functionality will do more harm than good
