Google Chrome

My obligatory chime on Google Chrome will be brief because it isn't available for Mac OS yet.

Thus far, my insight comes from my bevy of super-internet-friends on Twitter (those that I follow, but don't actually know personally) who assure me that it is REALLY fast and can handle heavy web-apps with ease.

I can't imagine that it will be anything less that successful...eventually.  Considering its success with web apps - and its steaming piles of cash - it makes perfect sense that Google forward integrate its business to include the delivery mechanism.  Will be interesting to see if/how this pays off in the long run considering the price Google has paid to get into the browser game.

I suspect that I'll be hesitant to make the switch for a while, at least until I can replicate the browsing experience I'm able to create with my assortment of Firefox extensions.

On a related note, check out the search phrase in one of the Chrome tutorials:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRqmfCFU_AI]

Too bad they misspelled "Tar Heel".

Shacking Up With Google

After careful consideration, I've decided to move my entire "work" life - my email, calendar, to-do list, and documents - into Google.

I've tip-toed around the commitment for awhile and decided to take the plunge last week.  I'm still waiting on the Kenan-Flagler IT people to resolve a mail forwarding issue - otherwise I'm already settled in and getting comfortable...and wondering why I didn't do this a long time ago.

Truth be told, inspiration for the move came from the good people at Shoeboxed.  They run their entire office (mostly) through Google apps and seem to do pretty well.  For the 4 weeks I was there on a regular basis this summer, I only used MS Office for a couple complicated spreadsheets - everything else went through Docs.  Couldn't believe how easy and productive it was...

For now, I foresee two problems with the changeover.  One - the "to-do list" add-on I plugged into iGoogle is much weaker than iCal's feature. (Wonder why Google Calendar doesn't have a built-in to-do list feature?  Am I missing something?)  Two - I'll need to work out the attachment issue.  Invariably, I'll have to share a document with a classmate or professor that doesn't use Docs and/or will prefer to use MS Office.  I'll figure it out as I go...

So it is "so long" to the Thunderbird/iCal/MS Office combo I've used for the past few years - at least "mostly so long" to MS Office, I hope.  The juggling act was a little clunky at times, but I grew to love it.  I guess I'll miss the flying bluebird icon that has so cheerfully and dutifully delivered my mail for the past couple years, but I sure as heck won't miss opening and managing so many attachments locally.

Plus, I'll retain the smug satisfaction of not using Outlook in a school addicted to Microsoft's productivity soma.

Canadian Expat Network

I had coffee this morning with my friend Sean to catch up and to learn about his venture, the Canadian Expat Network.

Quite simply, CEN is a free social network and resource portal for Canadian expats living the US.  Users can connect by geography, common interest, etc. to discuss expat issues and build social and business relationships with their countrymen/women.  Plus, Sean does a great job of writing articles and features of interest, such as this piece on the head coach of the Canadian National Baseball team.

I was admittedly surprised to learn that he is well on his way to having 1K registered users by the end of the year and has already booked some strong Canadian brands as sponsors, including Air Canada, the Ottawa Senators, and the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Considering the niche-ification of online networks and, more importantly, his passion for all things Canada, I think that Sean has a great chance to build a significant site.

Shoeboxed

I recently picked up some part-time work with Shoeboxed.com - a Durham-based start-up aiming to become "Netflix for receipts".

The idea is a smart one:



I like the company for several reasons, the chief of which is its simple solution to an otherwise painful problem.  Until now, receipt solutions have ranged from expensive desktop receipt scanners (that require tons of time and effort to operate) to paying someone else to deal with the receipt mess to doing nothing at all.

Shoeboxed simplifies things by doing all of the scanning dirty work and giving you the tools you need to organize your receipts online - all through the power of your friendly neighborhood mailman and the Internets.

The company has quite a few customers now and I think that we'll find lots more love from traveling salespeople that need help organizing receipts for expense report, accountants that need help managing client receipts, and small businesses that need help separating business and personal expenses.

...and also from OCD "receipt people" that keep every receipt they've ever acquired.  (These are our favorite customers.)

Give the service a look and let me know what you think.  If you're interested in giving it a go, I'll make sure you get a great price.

I (heart) Compete.com

Wow - such a great tool.  It makes benchmarking sooo easy, at least in instances in which site traffic characteristics indicate market strength, engagement, etc.  I've found a few inconsistencies between Compete.com and Alexa.com, but the data usually seems on point.

The search analytics feature is especially interesting.  It's pretty funny to see the strange keywords that actually drive traffic to a site...

An Increasingly Dominant Player

From Ballmer's email to the Microsoft troops regarding the Yahoo! offer:
Together, we’ll create a company that is in a much better position to compete against an increasingly dominant player in this market.

I guess it doesn't get any clearer than that.

This is a questionable, but reasonable, move for Microsoft in my opinion. They've had a hard time turning the corner in their effort to become a seriously player in the online advertising and Internet software space and will make significant progress if they can successfully integrate Yahoo! into their operation. The price tag is awfully high, but, then again, MS has more money than Jesus.

For Yahoo!, they better jump at the offer. No one else is going to put up this kind of cash at such an inflated valuation for a sinking ship.  Taking the offer might not be in the best interest of the Internet community as a whole, but it gives Yahoo! a much needed 2nd lease on life...

Having said all of that, I (dipped into my student loan and) bought more GOOG after the recent correction and will probably buy again if the share price keeps dipping. Google is already working on the next big thing(s) (mobile devices, social web, wireless) while MS/Yahoo is just trying to keep up.

What Makes A Good Facebook App?

Here's a fairly fascinating article from Inc about ChipIn, the makers of the incredibly popular - and incredibly irritating and pointless - "Pirates vs. Ninjas" and "Werewolves vs. Vampires" Facebook apps.

Props to them for having the courage and focus to junk the apps to instead focus on their core business, which seems like it has legs.

ChipIn's decision to unload indirectly answers (or poses?) two fairly difficult questions I recently tried to answer:
What makes a good Facebook app?


How can developers monetize their Facebook apps?

Regarding "good" Facebook apps, I don't think that there are very many yet. However, my favorite by far is the FriendFeed app. It aggregates my activity from other sites/services - NetFlix, LastFM, WordPress, etc. - and displays it in my FB news feed, along with all of the other FB news feed activity. I like the app because it helps me represent the "me" that extends beyond FB.

I had a thought about synchronizing offline activity through a Facebook application, but that seems a little complicated. For example, I really like old school Nike basketball shoes. Through some nifty web services integration with FB, Nike could build an app that shows my shoe collection - or at least the shoes I purchased from Nike.com. Something like this is at least tied to reality, plus it facilitates the "look at me" conspicuous consumption that characterizes social network users...or just about anyone that is passionate about something - shoes, artists, apparel brands, etc.

Another thought is a light weight "ticker" application that users could install on their computer that shows their news feed. Such an app would enable FB users to see their friends' activity even when they're not logged in and also provides them a mechanism to "stealthily" use the site while at work. Facebook could serve social ads through the feed, as well as embedded ads within the app. In addition to extending Facebook's reach beyond the site and mobile platforms, the concept would drive more page views and enhance the overall stickiness/addictiveness of the site. I imagine that this type of application would have to come directly from Facebook and would work best as a part of an IM platform.

Presently, it seems that "show more about yourself and your individuality" and "have a lame excuse to contact your friends" are the largest/only "problems" that FB apps are trying to solve, neither of which I find very pressing. I'm not exactly sure what the "real" problems - at least not yet - but I'm sure they're out there.

Re: $$$, the fact that the developer of one of the most popular apps in the platform dumped the application side of their business illustrates the monetization challenges facing FB app developers. These guys had a large, fairly captive audience and could only sell banner ads embedded in their applications. (Not that I have a better idea.) You gotta think there is something else there, though I guess at least the buyer does...

In my opinion, the company that figures out how to conduct commerce through Facebook stands to do quite well. For example, Facebook already has my credit card and other purchase information from the ad campaigns that I've recently run, so it seems to make sense that I should be able to use the same information to buy from a 3rd party through an app. If it works, online retailers are happy because they have a new channel and Facebook is happy because they can skim a little off the top of each transaction.

(Note - I have no idea if the application platform supports e-commerce transactions. If it doesn't, it should.)

Otherwise, ads or some sort of ad revenue share with Facebook are pretty obvious ideas.

OK - this is way longer and way more fragmented than I intended. I'm going to bed. Perhaps I'll finish my thoughts tomorrow.

LinkedIn Freaks Me Out

As a result of my recently accelerated networking efforts, I've spent a fair amount of time wandering through LinkedIn over the past few weeks.

Inevitably, I'm blown away by the "recommended connections" that the site suggests. The steady stream of people that LinkedIn suggests that I actually know is mind-boggling.  I'm sure that the recommendations are all simply connections of connections somehow prioritized according to a handful of attributes.

Still, the number of old school Bronto customers that I haven't talked to in years, random people from undergrad, and other long lost connections that I actually know and connect freaks me out just a little bit...and speaks to the immense power and business opportunity for the site.

3 Game Changers

Three game-changers hit the street over the past week or so. I can't sleep, so I figured I'd drop a few thoughts on each.

OpenSocial doesn't pose any threat to Facebook, but it does pose a threat to users, such as myself, that have a low tolerance for stupid, pointless online apps. (Does this mean that I'll be able to play Pirates vs. Ninjas in LinkedIn?)

It might pose a threat if someone develops a seriously innovative app outside of the Facebook ecosystem...but I simply don't see that happening.

Also - it's interesting to see SalesForce.com - the original SAAS platform player - on the list and funny to see MySpace adopt the idea shortly after they announced plans to launch their own platform initiative. Those guys (MyS) were really lucky to be first to the party...

Google's Android is positively genius...and a cool product name. Assuming the platform gets traction with phone providers - which it seems to already be happening - Google will have simultaneously opened and optimized a new market for their ads and, more importantly, found LOTS more eyes to see them.

I suspect that Durham-darling Motricity is less-than-thrilled by the announcement.

Facebook Ads officially launched. Per a previous post, I've already given this a look - I guess during a beta launch period when it was "Flyers Pro". As far as I can tell, Facebook Ads looks like Flyers Pro with a new UI, contextual placements with user photos, and WAY better analytics and campaign mgmt. Which I guess is to say that it really isn't anything like Flyers Pro at all.

It's funny that the whole concept is simply an inversion of Yahoo's old school directory. Instead of users browsing a content directory, marketers can target content to a directory of users.

The next big opportunity here will be an application that pulls ad campaign data out of Facebook and into Google Analytics or other online marketing automation tools.

Bob Young at UNC

Bert and I are at ibilio's Bob Young lecture at the Stone Center at UNC.  I've never blogged a live event and only have about 20 minutes of battery left - so this should be an enjoyable experiment. All quotes are paraphrased.

Here goes...

Oh yeah, just in case you don't know - Bob Young is the co-founder of Red Hat, founder and CEO of LuLu, and owner of the Canadian Football League's Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

I knew we were in the right place when I saw the guy with long hair wearing an ill-fitting suit and white socks. Most of the people here are engineers or computer science students. It's great to be in a room full of nerds again...

"If you work in technology, you have to spend 8 hours working and then another 8 hours working at home just so that you'll remain relevant when you go back to work tomorrow. If that 2nd 8 hours is a burden - then you should look into selling life insurance."

Bob and Mark Ewing started the Center for Public Domain because all of the money thrown at open source projects in the early '90s. In their opinion, it didn't make sense to "thank" the open source community with more money. Instead, they founded a non-profit to help influence intellectual property laws, which they saw as the most likely demise of the open source movement.

"Google wants to own the world just as badly as Microsoft does. They are the fastest company on the planet to go from a company that says "Do no evil." to a company that implies just the opposite. I love Google, they just have no idea about the evil things that do or might have to do."

The hardest part about turning his first ideas into real businesses:

- "Lulu has been the hardest."
- "Raising funds as a young entrepreneur. 'He's 26. He has no idea what the hell he's doing.'"
- "It takes time, vision, commitment to build a technology before you actually have the customers. It takes 6 months before you realized that you just wasted the last 6 months."
- "The be a successful entrepreneur - to be a successful anything - you have to be a good learner."

Bob's good-humored cracks at professors and university administration have been hilarious:

- "If these teachers knew so much about their field, then they'd be Bill Gates! Who are they to tell you what you need to know?"

- "If I wasn't such a terrible student and therefore constantly motivated to work hard to prove my teachers and classmates wrong, who knows, I might be the director of ibiblio."

"Love relates to other people; not to what you do. I love Linux and open source because of what it enables me to do."

"Patents should be limited to inventions, not ideas. One-click shopping is the worst patent ever. It's stupid no matter how you look at it - there are an infinite number of ways to code one-click shopping."

"Had there been Ritalin when I was a kid, I too could have gone to UNC Chapel-Hill."

Best line of the talk - very facetiously - "My failures? I haven't had any. Next question."

Great talk.

NetFlix Gets it

I loved reading about NetFlix's drive to improve customer service. I think that their efforts will turn out to be yet another illustration of how it's always right to do the right thing for the customer...and another nail in BlockBuster's coffin.

The quick access code seems particularly friendly:
To lessen any wait time, Netflix has developed a system where customers can get a unique identification number off the Web site. Customers punch in the code after reaching the call center so an employee can access a subscriber's billing information and rental activity.

The company announces Q3 earnings this afternoon. I invested a portion of my student loan in NFLX shares at $18, so I look forward to the call. :-)

FriendFeed, Madden, Etc.

So Fall Break is almost over and here's what I have to show for it:

- I've gotten extremely/pathetically good at Madden '08 on PlayStation 2.

I like to reward myself for doing something well, in this case finishing finals, by un-boxing my PS2 and regressing back to the "13 year-old Eric playing Tecmo Bowl for 6 straight hours" days. It usually goes like this:

  1. I buy a video game at Target, usually a basketball or football game.

  2. I play it every spare minute of the day for ~2/3 days.

  3. I become an absolutely unstoppable force in the game.

  4. I realize that it is pathetic that I've played so much that I've gotten so good.

  5. I never play the game again.


I've realized my supremacy (Step 3) and the incredible amounts of time I've wasted to achieve it (Step 4), I'm just not quite ready for Step 5. Perhaps after a few more games...

- I finally got my invitation to beta test FriendFeed. The service is quite handy and more or less exactly what I thought/hoped it would be. Essentially, its a "here's what I'm doing" app that aggregates my activity across numerous web applications (Flickr, LastFM, NetFlix, etc.) and spits it out as a webpage and RSS feed. (Think Facebook news feed for activites beyond Facebook...)

The company was started by a handful of ex-Googlers and will probably pick up some (more) buzz fairly soon.

If you're interested, here's my feed.

- I rediscovered my love for making music with friends. My family was in town this past weekend, so my brother and I rocked out like we usually do. We played "Foxy Lady" so loud that everyone else in the house went outside.

Charlie came over yesterday and we sang a number of tunes together. It's such fun to sing along with a good singer and to unexpectedly discover that you have so much in common with someone you've only recently met.

- I watched the Heels nearly eek out a big win over the Lamecocks with Kelly, my dad, my brother, Andrew, Dave and my numerous other tailgating dudes. The Heels are so close to becoming a relevant football team again...

- I watched "Thank You For Smoking".  Easily the funniest movie I've seen in months...

- I made inroads on the summer internship search. (No details that I can publicly divulge.)

- I realized that having nothing to do gets boring fast.

Who Uses Mahalo?

Nosing through CNN's "Most Popular" headlines has long been a favorite past time of mine. In my opinion, nothing illustrates our nation's collective mindset more so than the stories we click on CNN.com.

(FYI - Britney Spears, Rascal Flats, and Princess Diana are all in today's top 10.)

This morning, I spent some time trolling through Mahalo.com to get a sense of what the fuss is all about it and to gauge its traction in the search space.

Turns out that Mahalo has the loser market cornered:

Mahalo Top 10

A Billion Dollar Write-Off

We've been talking asset impairment in Prof. Mark Lang's accounting class, so the news of EBay's $1.4 billion write-off related to its Skype acquisition is pretty timely.

(Thanks to the class discussions and Prof. Lang's habit of beginning every class with a video, I actually know how a write-off works and how I would explain it to Kramer.)

The NYT post makes some insightful observations regarding the situation, particularly by couching the EBay/Skype fiasco as a warning sign for the pending Microsoft/Facebook transaction.

37Signals Grows Responsibly

In a world of Constant Contact IPOs, this is refreshing to read:

Will you ever hire more people?

Absolutely. We could use another person or two right now, but we also like feeling the stretch. The edge is where you are forced to be creative. It’s where your decisions are sharper and more informed. You make calls because you have to, not because they are convenient. “We can’t do this right now because that is more important.” Being at the limit forces you to think about value and we think that’s a great place to be.

Read the full post at Signal Vs. Noise.

Minty Fresh!

Mint won the TechCrunch (something or other) Award, so I gave it a look.

Wowzers! It's good now, but has a chance to be great very soon.

Simply put, the service allows you to link your online bank accounts to your Mint account through web services. Mint then automatically works its magic by categorizing, graphing, pie-charting, trending, etc. your financials 15 ways 'til Tuesday. For example, grocery expenses this month as compared to last month, as compared to total expenses, as compared to the GDP of Guatemala, etc.

I've only spent 20 or so minutes on the site, but have particularly enjoyed a couple of the helpful features. One, I got an email reminding me that my credit card payment is coming due next week. (Nevermind that I'd already paid it. That's an easy one for them to figure out.) I would LOVE it if the company could aggregate other online payments and provide similar reminders/payment help. Quicken already does this at some level with BillPay.

Two, the service makes suggestions for saving money. For example, it links me to credit cards with a lower interest rate and a cheaper phone provider. There's an interesting opportunity here, both for AI generated results and sponsored recommendations.

The categorization algorithm needs a little work, though. All of my credit card transactions that include the word "Chapel" from Chapel Hill are categorized as "church". I'm sure there is (or will be) some way that I can re-tune this to correctly ID my transactions.

Also - why don't financial institutions do this already?  My credit card company has several years of my spending data, yet all they provide is some lame EOY report mailed to me at the end of the year.  The data is there, they just need to build the reporting.  On the contrary, Mint has the pretty pictures, but doesn't have the wealth of data.  I suspect that this will be a challenge for the firm going forward.

I use a grotesquely unmanageable spreadsheet to track Boggs Family, Inc's finances.  I look forward to giving Mint a try in hopes of dumping my spreadsheet.

Last.fm

I've enjoyed wasting much of today with Last.fm. Finally, a streaming audio site gets it right. (More than half of the time, at least.)

The Last.fm player lets you customize a stream based on genre tags - for example, a playlist of songs tagged as "honky tonk", "alt country", and "americana". Also, you can select a group of artists and enjoy a stream of their music and music from related artists.

This is a great way to dig new music. I've already added a few records to my "to buy on iTunes" list.

Plus - Last.fm "scrobbles" - (their word, not mine) - your listening habits such that you can easily make one of these things to broadcast the artificially generated depth, diversity, and intelligence of your musical interests to the world. This feature detects your listening habits in the Last.fm player, iTunes, and other players.

There is also a fairly deep website with wiki-driven artist bios (very cool) and a community element. I'm sure I could waste countless hours tweaking artist bios, thus, I intend to stay away from the site and just stick to the player...

It remains worth nothing that there are some (somewhat humorous) problems. For instance, "Magical Mystery Tour" just popped up on my "honky tonk" playlist. Not cool. (Perhaps The Beatles pop up on every stream because Last.fm is based in the UK?) A few tunes later, right after a Johnny Cash track, I get Dean Martin. What the heck? Just the beauty - or stupidity - of the community, I suppose.

I've been "testing" the community with other keywords and artists and, like so many community-based streaming services, the stream starts out on point, but eventually wanders into left field. Unfortunately, left field is littered with vapid, watered-down crapola like Coldplay, The Killers and, of course, the crappiest of all crapola, Aerosmith.

Despite it all, I strongly recommend Last.fm. It makes it so easy to wade through the world's great music.