Here's a funny one. Imagine being able to ask a historical figure a question about life. You'd probably start with one figure, then add them as you find experts that want to participate.
Of course this only works if you can get obsessed scholars to participate... but if they're that obsessed it wouldn't be too difficult to imagine that they'd want to participate. They'd love to share their knowledge.
"What do you think? Obama or Clinton?" could be asked of a virtual John F. Kennedy. Or "What should our next move in Iraq be?" to General Douglas Macarthur.
Bracken suggested that the site pick a figure a week, then have users vote on the best question for that figure to answer... I like it.
I was listening to a podcast about a new concept for having news reported. The concept is that people put money into a pot, and when the pot reaches a given amount someone will write a story. The stories, from what I remember, aren't about typical local news, but more about local investigative journalism.
One of the arguments the creator mentioned was that local TV, newspapers, etc. spend a lot of time covering national and global stories, and have left meaningful local coverage mediocre. I don't read newspapers (or their sites for that matter), and seldom turn on TV news - but the times that I have seen them, he's spot on. One of the reasons I stopped reading/watching is that local news is about sensationalism... murder and mayhem, and celebrity.
Enter the blog.
When I stumble upon local blogs, they're usually covering topics of larger scope (maybe national) but with a local twist. How does the story affect them and what is the author's perspective on it. Sometimes though, it may be a story on a local sporting event, or a meetup of some kind. In my circles, these things also cover lots of business subjects... investing, entrepreneurship, etc. No matter the subject, there is a local flavor to the stories.
The idea:
Create an aggregation site that blog authors subscribe to (free of course) with the express goal of providing a local "newspaper" powered by the citizens of a given market. You would be able to drill down in a Craigslist style navigation to a city or town, then see stories in given subject areas from people that actually live and work in that area. All of the typical newspaper categories would exist: business, sports, arts, movies, activities, etc.
When an author writes a story, they would have to apply it to given categories. The readers could gauge whether or not the story is actually on topic, and stories and authors could be rated for quality. These ratings would determine what floats to the front page, digg style. If you want to have fun, you could offer a payment for the author based on the revenues they generate for the site... but that is a bonus for participating, not an expectation.
If you decide to build this, let me know... I'd subscribe to the RSS feed at the very least.
I'm in an unbelievably cool place. Not only can we (my friends the collective) come up with fantastic ideas, but we can actually build them, market them, and sell them. The network is the idea.
So begins the curse.
The curse is having these ideas and knowing that there is always something fun to do. To make it worse, clearly there is not enough time to do them all.
Take zerologic.com for example. At one point, in addition to HyperSites, I was building PCs for friends, training people in Second Life, and doing a video experiment... and those were the things I put on the site. Add to those my responsibilities as a father, husband, friend, etc. it was way too complicated.
Focus. This is an area that I will admit I'm lacking in. Don't get me wrong, I focus on the task at hand - these days I think to a fault. Just ask Chris. What I'm talking about is taming my entrepreneurial wild thing.
I've whittled my pro life down to two things: HyperSites and Social Ingenuity. Anything else that comes along is weighed against those in areas of passion and desire. This hasn't been a problem... until now.
A friend of mine approached me with an idea that crosses a threshold I've been thinking a lot about: the geek threshold. Most of the things I see in my circle are targeted specifically at geeks. People that are already familiar with technology and geek out on all things social. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. One local company has even made it easier to see what all of your friends are doing on all of those networks in one consistent feed. You can post to several at once using their software.
But to what end? Is keeping up with your friends the point? Or is it telling a story? Publishing, or subscribing? Creating, or consuming?
We have an idea that makes everyone in your life (literally everyone with a computer) a participant in your life's story. More soon.
I've been participating in conversations around finding one's passion, then monetizing it as a means to improve your quality of life. If you're doing what you love, then the rest will come.
This is Jon Sullivan. I've known Jon for years... I met him (and his now wife) while working in one of our "offices" (read, Starbucks) in Plano, Texas. Coincidentally, this is the same Starbucks that we plucked Chris out of, but I digress.
Jon works at a major mobile phone company by day, but by night and weekends? He makes guitars... by hand. He was a part of the metal revolution in the late 80s, and knew several of the guys that ended up making it big. Jon also played in a KISS cover band... KISS was my favorite group for years. He's a fantastic guitarist, and hasn't been out in the world in a while with his music.
I'm including this clip to give you an idea of what can happen when you practice your passion. The video is fun, and the song of course great, but neither are the point of my post. My post is about a guy playing with video, in a room, recording himself practicing his passion.
I've been AFK for quite a while, focusing my work time on HyperSites exclusively. It is better than ever as a result... but now it is time to spend my off hours building my passion.
My passion is called Social Ingenuity. It is a huge project that centers directly in the social networking space. It has a few fundamental differences compared to most of what we're seeing in this space. First and foremost, it will allow people to leverage their social networks to build companies.
Social Ingenuity is so big in fact, that I've come up with a great way to get started slowly. Rather than try to build a monster application to support the company, I'm going to start it locally. This will allow us to find great talent to start the global version properly.
I'll have more news soon, but if your curiosity has been piqued, have a look at Social Ingenuity. Ping me with questions.
I've come up with a term, and I'd like to start a conversation around it.
We're all familiar with the word "age." Typically this word is used to mark a place in something's chronological progression. For example, I'll turn 39 next week. Or a bottle of wine is 39 years old. My americano is ten minutes old.
I was trying to come up with a term that I could use to describe a phenomenon I've witnessed wherein a person is locked in to a particular workflow when it comes to productivity or communication. It can also be applied to how one views the internet and the tools available to them.
The time was about 1997/8... the world was significantly different. LCDs were for laptops only, Altavista was the search engine (or Yahoo! soon). Documents were created in Word, and stored on a server in the office, and possibly backed up personally on the good ole floppy or Zip disk. Email became the way to reach the people. Voicemail was hot too. Digital music was an up and comer, but the audio quality was horrid.
Today, I don't have Microsoft Office on my computer, I use Google Docs. Sure I have Pages just in case, but my documents are stored (and shared) with Google. Speaking of Google, are there other search engines today? Sure, but the big one is Google. Email is too slow, instead we've become a Twitterverse. It is instant, and always on. There are times that I could email, text, or IM someone, and instead choose to direct them with Twitter. Now is best, thanks. My wife has a 21" widescreen LCD as a secondary screen with her laptop, and I know plenty of people with those cheesy 30" LCDs (heh).
Ok, ok... the term. It is "Internet Age." Someone's Internet Age reflects how long ago they were introduced to the internet. I've noticed that typical people, certainly not those in the startup community, use the tools available today in exactly the same way they did when they were first introduced. Go ahead, ask someone that was introduced to the net in 1999 or so if they're on Facebook. Or if they know what Twitter is. Ask them why they use Office, or why they're using Yahoo to find http://www.google.com
One's Internet Age will tell you a lot about how they like to be contacted. If they're 3 or younger, IM is too slow... text them. From 4 to 7ish they'll prefer IM over email. Six to 10, email is still the preferred method. Over that, they'll check their email once or twice a week, so you'd better leave voice mail.
What do you think? The ages may be off a bit, but have you found the same thing?
Great news for those of you that want to start building web apps that utilize the new client-side database storage system in HTML5... Webkit supports an initial implementation now. Check it out.
Webkit is the open-source foundation of the Safari web browser. It is cross platform on the desktop (Mac and Windows), and has two mobile cousins, Mobile Safari, and Webkit Series 60
My wife and I were up late this past Saturday night when a horribly produced commercial came on. It had a green background and some random person chanting nonsense about Ministry. See for yourself on Ministry's YouTube channel: The Last Sucker
I have lots of music from Ministry, but none in my current listening ecosystem. I haven't listened to music much at all since Podcasts became usable. But I was curious... what does Al sound like these days?
Here's the process I used to find out:
1. Pull iPhone out of pocket. 2. Click iTunes. 3. Search for Ministry. 4. Listen to 30 second previews of new music.
Back in June of 2007 I wrote a post that asked a simple question: "Does your email inbox reflect your productivity level?". I mentioned that I had just successfully cleaned out my inbox, and that I was going to keep it that way.
Today, three months later, I still have zero (0) emails in my inbox. Sure there are times when I'm out and about and it gets up to 10 or so, but they're quickly dealt with, and I go back to zero. See the screenshot below.
David Cohen just put up a post about his success with the Inbox Zero system and how he feels about his productivity.
I can't stress enough how right he is. Having an out of control inbox was like having a constant reminder that my life wasn't was well organized (chaotic?) as it could be. Now, I know without a doubt in the world that no one is waiting on a reply to an email from me. I know that support email for HyperSites is answered in minutes. It just feels great.
Today I decided to drop in on the Dr. Dobbs Life 2.0 Summit. It was packed... packed with people from all over the globe, across many time zones. The session I attended was the Introduction to LSL course.
If you don't "get" Second Life and what it means to remote presence, then I encourage you to find and attend just one event in-world. I can't explain it in words, you actually have to experience it.
