ChiaTown

So there I was watching the Vice Presidential debates last night. Had the PowerBook on my lap, cleaning out a few emails, taking care of menial tasks while catching key points in the debate. Something struck me as particularly funny in the debate so I updated my status on Facebook and within 30 seconds I had two people replying to that comment. I had also grabbed my cell phone and sent a text to a few people and ended up engaging in a political discussion via text with a friend.

Normally, I would have waited ’til after the debate or until the next morning to send a few emails back and forth with friends, maybe post to one of the groups I’m affiliated with, and that would be that. 

Compare this to a few elections ago. Hell, compare it to the last election. As more people utilize the internet and become increasingly comfortable with their cell phones, we tend to expand our social reach and become more active in different aspects of life.

The thing that strikes me is that statistics show that it is the younger crowd that use their cell phones to send text messages more than the older crowd. The same holds true for some of the social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. This brings up an interesting thought…are the younger folks actually becoming more interested in politics? Obama did a great job with his fundraising utilizing the web…is this the beginning of a new era? I applaud MTV back in the day for trying to get the youngsters to vote, but with TV being such a passive medium, the random twenty-something person watching TV and seeing the “vote or die” ad probably won’t be inclined to look up the facts. However, as politics take to the internet, it’s only natural that the internet users (generally a younger crowd…I’m just speaking in generalities here…don’t get all pissy with me, but the statistics do help prove this generalization) will become more active. 

The next few elections could prove to be very interesting. There could be an increase in younger voters. There could be a shift in power, a shift issues that are viewed as important, and obviously a shift in the way campaigning is done. What the TV did for politics in the past, the internet is doing now. 

Business and technology moves abound. Yes, I know, it’s been a while since I’ve posted and there’s been quite a few things I wanted to comment on such as Google’s Chrome browser, Best Buy selling the Samsung Instinct, the iPhone vs Instinct debate, and of course T-Mobile’s Android-based phone called the G1.

So why have I been remiss in my duties? It’s been busy out there. In case nobody has noticed, our economy is going in the shitter. Luckily I wasn’t one of those that bought a house during the bubble so I’m not affected too much by that, however the ensuing stock market meltdown has hit me. Thus I’ve been busy working on some side projects and on the new gig I’m doing at an EDI company.

One interesting thing to note is an article I read in a small business/entrepreneurial focused magazine. They noted that many small business owners were closing down shop and returning to Corporate America. I found that rather ironic as I was just finishing up my paperwork to start another company. I’d much rather build something solid, something I trust, something I know the ins and outs of and how it is affected by market conditions, the economy, the competition, and so forth instead of being an underling in some company that cuts jobs reacting to those forces. The new gig is still in the works…a lot depends on me getting back to the Bay Area and simply being in close proximity to the tech geeks, the VCs, and just a culture that fosters such innovative thought. With a mix of a couple big ideas and enough smaller ones I think I’ll be able to sustain life while working on the small ones and hopefully hitting one out of the park if one or more of the big ones take off.

I must give credit to a longtime friend from Carnegie Mellon who sent me a text message tonight. His text not only supplied yet another good business idea for me to mull over but it also inspired me to hop on here and let my readers know I’m still alive and kickin’. Thanks Stu…I owe ya one.

Just a few more random thoughts before signing off for the night.

1) The process for getting Apple to sign off on selling apps for the iPhone is ridiculous. I’ve been talking to a few friends about various ideas (three or four good ones to start things off) but after seeing the time and brain drain we’re rethinking that. Can we say Android anyone?

2) Android phones…I didn’t really plan on getting giddy about them but after seeing HTC’s G-1 phone…good…freakin’…googly. I want that. I’m looking forward to seeing how it fares out in the real market.

3) “What about the Samsung Instinct that you’ve been talking so much about?” Eh…after picking it up and using it for a bit, I was less than impressed. I still love my Treo (Palm OS-based…not the new Windows version) and love Sprint’s plans and service. I just hope Palm comes out with a new OS soon or I will be tempted to wander…

I think you’ve got enough of my rambling for now. I’ll try not to let side projects keep me from posting. As always, if anyone has a question or a comment please feel free to write. Interaction makes life much more enjoyable.

I posted something very similar to this on Wax Porhetoric but that had much more of personal slant to it, one on how to live life. Yet when we think about this, it is very relevant when searching for a new job, a new opportunity, or even associates in which you would like to do business with.

I was talking to a friend last night and she asked “Do you think I have high expectations?” It wasn’t a tough question…I replied “yes”. However, I noticed the tone in which she asked me this. She asked as if it was a bad thing to have high expectations and almost sounded a bit disappointed when I said she did.

Having high expectations is a good thing. I’ve got crazy high expectations of myself and in others. Of course, there are a few things that must be taken into consideration for having high expectations to be considered a good thing. First, one must be aware that they have high expectations. If you aren’t aware of this, you could be in for a lot of disappointment as you wonder why nobody lives up to your expectations or why you aren’t getting what you want out of life. For instance, in a simple way you may prefer a hamburger with good seasonings on a good bun. These expectations are a bit higher than a fast food burger will provide you. Fine. Just be aware that it may take a bit longer to find this burger than it will to hit any of the fast food joints that pepper the land. This holds true in all aspects of life…finding a good job, a compatible mate, a nice house. Chances are you won’t find the perfect one for you right away but don’t get discouraged. Your expectations are higher and it will take just a bit longer to find that one that satisfies all your requirements.

Next up is to make sure your expectations are realistic. Sure it’s fine to hold yourself to a higher standard or to expect more out of others. But c’mon…make sure these expectations are achievable. Not everyone can live up to what you expect. Perhaps you are a surfer and expect to surf the best waves around. That’s fine. Just don’t expect to do that off the Georgia coast. That’s an unrealistic expectation. It’s probably unrealistic to find a 4 bedroom house in Santa Cruz for under $300,000…yet it’s not unrealistic in other parts of the country. 

Once we take these two key points into consideration and accept these for what they are, not only is it acceptable to have high expectations but I actually feel it’s better to have them. I’d much rather surround myself with people who expect more out of themselves and out of life than with people who are content to live status quo and who set the bar low. 

Even as new technologies continue to flood the marketplace signaling death for older technologies, some older technologies simply refuse to die. I was reminded of this recently as I read a release touting IBM Lotus would be available on mobile phones. Wow. And here I was thinking Lotus was going to die a slow death…continuing to exist where it was already installed but eventually being replaced as systems got upgraded. Guess I was wrong on that one. Mobile compatibility may be one of the things that keep Lotus around just a bit longer as IBM shows Lotus’ relevance in the marketplace, mainly with enterprise customers.

Another technology that perplexes me, one that I thought was on its way out a decade ago, is Cold Fusion. New coding standards, richer XHTML capabilities, and new languages would surely make this closed system obsolete, right? Wrong. A decade after thinking its days were limited (I had no timeframe in mind, I just saw the writing on the wall. Well, at least I THOUGHT I did…) I still see .cfm on many pages that I hit as I’m surfing around.

It’s tough to predict the future when it comes to the Internet and other computer-related technologies. Things that seem like a sure hit can fail for a variety of reasons (marketing, bad implementation, politics, etc) while other technologies that seem as if they are becoming obsolete continue to exist, and sometimes thrive. For now I guess the safe bet would be to use the technologies that have the most compatibility and sadly, the most backing. I say sadly because backing can come from deep wallets wanting to push a particular standard for reasons of profit rather than promoting the most useful and promising technology. Goodbye Betamax, sorry Minidisk, you had a chance Ogg Vorbis but not good enough, you were fun while you lasted HD-DVD. There goes that semester of programming I took in Pascal…

What kind of business should you start? Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? How about one that makes you loads of money? Sounds nice. Or one that involves something you enjoy doing…it sounds pretty good to get paid for doing a hobby. 

As fine as these all sound, chances are the business won’t survive on its own merit if it doesn’t do one thing: ease a pain/fill a niche. Think about it…all the successful businesses out there fulfill someone’s need in one way or another. Food is served, clothes are made and sold, broken plumbing is fixed, and so forth.

This seems like such a basic principle of business but it’s one worth repeating as we all tend to try to find the “latest, greatest thing”. We need to sit back for a minute and look at our own pains or desires and see if there’s anything that we can do to fill those needs or ease that pain.

I was reminded of this simple concept (one that was taught to me back in my Entrepreneur class back at Carnegie Mellon way back in the ’90s) just last week as I was dealing with a not-so-great issue with my current boarding situation. I ended up buying a particular domain name, setting up a website that I hope grows into a community where people share these similar stories of pain and advice on how to get past it, and even set up a storefront to sell related merchandise. After my initial knee-jerk reaction I thought “holy crap…duh…this could be huge. There are thousands of people in similar situations. This could be the de facto site for dealing with these issues.” 

Once again…a simple idea that fills a need.

I often spend hour upon hour discussing possible business ideas with various people. I can’t tell you how many man-hours have been spent doing this…and we’re still discussing them. Yet a late night idea and purchase with barely any overhead could actually amount to something.

To all you aspiring entrepreneurs out there…don’t worry about coming up with the most complex product or service out there. For those already existing entrepreneurs let’s think about how to make your product, service, or even business simpler. The Apple iPod didn’t become the dominant player in the market because it was more complex. Conversely so…this more expensive, less-featured (at the time), late player to the game became a success because of its ease of use. 

Find that pain…and ease it. Find that unserved niche…and serve it. It really is that easy.

We’ve heard over and over again how painfully slow the U.S. Patent Office is. I was reminded again today as I was copied on an email to a patent attorney regarding an application we sent in THREE YEARS AGO. What the hell? This wasn’t even a very complex product that we are dealing with here. It’s a patch cord…a patch cord! How tough is it to examine past art (which we already did ourselves AND had patent attorneys work on) and determine if this simple product is patentable or not?

The discouraging thing is that in this day and time, business and technology moves along at a MUCH faster pace than it did even just a couple decades ago. Our product could be obsolete by the time this patent gets granted. Every month that goes by is tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of missed revenue.

We’ve heard of the USPTO reforms that are supposed to be taking place. When will we actually see these changes? How many millions of dollars must be lost before the USPTO becomes an efficient machine? The economy of the U.S. would benefit from these changes and the U.S. would also become competitive in the international marketplace. Until these changes take place, thousands of good ideas will fail to make it to market at a relevant time, businesses will fail to have a chance to succeed, and our competitive advantage will continue to deteriorate. 

Will the big oil companies change their revenue models? This is a question that popped into my head as I saw a commercial for a petroleum company (it may have been Exxon…I don’t really watch enough TV to see commercials enough to remember who does what) talking about their commitment to finding new energy sources for cars and other such non-gasoline related items. It also reminded me of BP ads pointing out they were interested in other energy sources too.

What do you make of these commercials? Do you believe that Exxon, the company that posted $10.89 BILLION in profits in quarter…not a year…but a mere three months…is dedicated to other energy sources? Why should they? $10.89 billion. Staggering.

There has been talk of alternate energy sources (bio-diesel, electric, solar, etc) but none have taken off. Even with oil prices where they are, these alternate sources have gone nowhere. Why is that? Well…let’s think of the infrastructure we’ve got right now. We have cars that run on gasoline. We have gas stations peppering our lands. Buy an electric car, where are you going to recharge it? Bio-diesel? Can’t really find those gas stations anywhere either. So we’re stuck with what’s readily available.

Ponder this though. These petrol companies know consumers are feeling disenchanted with current gas prices. Hybrid vehicles and scooter sales are on the upswing. More people are taking mass transit. This means less gasoline is sold. So perhaps these companies WILL look for alternate sources of energy to sell to consumers. But…are you ready…here’s where it’s all about to make sense.

Let’s go back to that $10.89 billion in profits in three months. They easily have enough money to dump into R&D. They could come up with a product to sell to consumers. Next, they already have the most expansive distribution network available in the land. You hear people complaining about a Starbucks or a Wal-Mart on every corner, but what you REALLY see is a gas station on every corner. And in the most remote lands as long as there is a highway. 

So there you go. I would actually be surprised if I didn’t see one of the oil companies introduce a new non-petroleum based product. They’ve got the money, they’ve got the distribution, they’ve got the willing consumer. It’s only a matter of time before we see the next retro-fitting of our gas stations and what they will offer for their new methods of revenue generation.

Flickr and Getty Images are working together to make it possible for all those budding amateur (and professional) photographers to make a name for themselves. Basically, you put your stuff up on Flickr as usual. Getty editors will be surfing Flickr and when they come across something they think could be marketable and usable, they’ll contact the photographer to see if the photographer will allow Getty to make those images available for licensing on Getty Images. If the photographer says yes then the images will included in Getty’s library. The photographers can then be paid the same rates that Getty pays their regular photographers.

This is a great opportunity for those that have talent but don’t know how to break into the field. Blogging has produced a multitude of writers…some good, some not-so-good. Flickr has been a great depot of pictures…again, some good and others make you wonder why they’ve been posted online. However, it appears true talent may be recognized and these people (the photographers) can be compensated for their work. This can help encourage some photographers to continue their passion and possibly change a career. Needless to say, I’m hoping a few of my images will be picked up by Getty. I find this to be an exciting deal that offers a great opportunity for millions of photographers (whether they know they are or not) around the world to gain recognition and possibly move to a career that they enjoy.

The Samsung Instinct is just loaded with features. It’s won “best of show” awards. It’s been regarded as the best of the “iPhone competitors”. Sadly, as great of a phone that it is, it will be just another competitor that gets left in the dust as the iPhone gains traction.

Chia Town readers know I have this odd obsession with Sprint and the Instinct. I love Sprint’s service, have been keeping a keen eye on their business practices, love what the Instinct has, and am quite curious to see how it will fare against the other smartphones out there. I’ve seen all the ads (print and TV mainly…and they’re all over the place) So why do I say the Instinct will be another has-been? The main reason is the developer community. I have heard nothing of the Instinct’s developer community yet have heard quite a bit about the iPhone’s community, the iPhone app store, and other such developer resources. The most telling item however was what I did this past weekend.

I was visiting with a friend from Carnegie Mellon this past weekend and in between watching the Tour de France and bowling on the Nintendo Wii (I play soccer at least once a week, yet I’m embarassed to say that I’m still sore from hours of Wii bowling) we discussed business ideas. One of the ideas we came up with was an app for the iPhone. My friend is a programmer. He’s never developed for a Mac and doesn’t really know what is involved. He doesn’t own an iPhone (nor do I). Yet here we were discussing various business ideas and the one that stuck was an app for a product neither of us own, that he’s never developed for, and working on a platform that we’ll have an eventual tie-in to. Multiply this by the thousands of other developers out there that have no iPhone or Mac experience then add a boatload more of Mac fanatics and you’ve got one hell of a pool of apps that are about to be available for the iPhone.

The Instinct is good…but it just can’t compare to the current and future following that the iPhone has.

We’re all pursuing the American Dream, aren’t we? Or are we? Just what exactly IS the American Dream? Is it still alive?

Think back to the early days of the U.S. and what people meant when they meant when they said they were going to America to pursue the American Dream. I have a hunch it meant a lot more meaning back then than it does now. There was vast opportunity…undiscovered lands to be explored, undeveloped lands to be developed, gold to be discovered, ideas and views to be followed through without persecution. I fear however that such is not the case anymore. Do people still pursue “The American Dream”?

I think it is possible for people to pursue this dream but it is much harder than it was for the early pioneers and settlers. A vast majority of the people today are content with their 9-5 jobs and everything that this content life entails…a mortgage, a commute, material possesions, watching life go by as they enjoy the security of their current life. Yet…is there really security?

To me, there is a new American Dream and it involves stepping outside and taking a riskier road, many times bucking convention of societal norms, and pursuing a dream or passion that not everyone may understand. To many, leaving the security of a full time job is too risky to go out on their own and implement a new business idea. That’s a shame as this new idea may revolutionize a current way of doing business or even create an entire new ecosystem based around one product or idea (think the Apple iPod…how many companies now base all or a large portion of their revenue on iPod-related products?). Athletes would also fall in this category to me. Sure, they could graduate from college and get a job making $50,000/year but they’re taking the risks of something physical, sometimes risking career-ending injuries, to pursue their own dreams. Musicians and artists fall into this set in my mind also. This one is much tougher as this set generally must live in a completely different realm than the rest the nation. No 9-5 job, a “corporate look” is definitely out, yet they’re out there working, trying to find their own American Dream.

It’s an interesting time we live in. Pursuing a “regular job” probably won’t give you that financial independence anymore. You may be able to get a comfortable living as you climb up the corporate ladder, but to be truly independent you’ll probably have to pursue the new American Dream. There are still opportunities out there but given the complacency of most Americans and the teachings of society and the instructions we receive in our universities it is a hard thing for many people to grasp that these opportunities exist.

I’ve pondered all this as I was working on another business plan and thinking about the recent list of inspirations I’ve witnessed in my life. These inspirations were discussed at Waxporhetoric if you’re interested. I feel fortunate enough to be surrounded by people that are striving for their own American Dream…which in my eyes has become synonymous with “pursuing your passions” (despite the fact one friend once told me the American Dream was to become a home owner). This so-called American Dream is not what it was once defined to be and now has a new meaning for each person you come across in the streets. I’m curious enough now to find out what this dream is. I may have to poll a number of people and do a follow-up. I invite all the readers to give input as to what they believe the dream to be.