MissingMethod

Sneakerplay is a “sneaker-based social network which has been in private beta for the past few months” and just opened up. According to Mashable.com it’s “an incredibly simple network that lets you create a profile, add pictures of sneakers and put two pics head to head using the “battle” feature.” Better still, they managed to get a promotional deal with Nike Air.

Things that are funny about this to me:

1. We built practically the same thing with Sneakology.
2. We built it in 24 hours, as part of the RailsDay2006 competition (which, by the way, still hasn’t announced winners).
3. We didn’t get a deal with Nike.

Anyway, props to Robleh, Mohamed and Rob (the developers) for executing on a nice idea and getting the promotional buy in from a major player.  When we developed Sneakology, it was  mostly for fun, and  we didn’t imagine it had much business potential. I’m glad to see we may have been mistaken.

The scary thing about being an entrepreneur right now is that you risk being swallowed by all the hype. For a primer on what’s wrong with Web 2.0, check out Zeldman’s article, Web 3.0, or Russle Beatie’s WTF 2.0.

There’s so much excitement (much of it legitimate) about new technologies (like Rails), new ways of using old technologies (AJAX), and new communications vehicles (MySpace, blogs, RSS, podcasts, etc.), that’s it’s easy to think that any idea can be successful. But’s that wrong.

The fundementals of business haven’t changed. You still have to sell something people want to buy. People don’t buy Ruby on Rails or AJAX or podcasting. Russle said it best:

Break it down - it seems pretty simple. You create a product or service with some inherent value, and then make money from that value and if the money you earn is more than it took you to produce that value, you’ve got a business.

Matt Mower was kind enough to tease out a reasonable top ten list out of this post on suggestions for not being a dot-bomb 2.0:

1. Have a revenue model
2. Be a complete business not a feature
3. Affect real people not just bloggers
4. Get a real memorable name
5. Don’t intertwine your fate with Web2.0
6. Get honest feedback
7. Make sure your revolution really is coming
8. Make sure your market can support you
9. Don’t expect to be (or be bought by) Google
10. Have fun

I agree with these for the most part, although I’m not sure about the order. I’d put #10, “Have fun” much higher on the list; having fun makes everything else easier.

One point that’s missing is “Build something people will pay for”. Maybe it’s implied in #1, but I worry that a lot of people set out to build something they think people will want, rather than figuring out what the market needs first and then building that. If you’re building a product for yourself first and others second (i.e. 37signals’ Basecamp or my own Feedmarker), that’s fine, because you already know what the customer wants. But if not, you need to validate that your idea fills a market need.

Another one I would have liked to see on there is “Try building something that doesn’t depend on the internet”. Maybe this belongs after #3 (affect real people). It’s a big world out there, and most of it still happens off-line. I know it sounds counterintuitive these days, but I think there are still a lot of great ways to make money that aren’t based online. Of course most business will have (or should have) and online component. But I’d like to hear more about the ones that work in the “old world”.

Um, how many times do I need the ‘Update Field’ item in one context menu? Probably less than four:

You know when you’re walking to work and your banana starts getting tossed around in your pants? Then when you take a look, it’s all bruised up and nasty? Well, now there’s a solution:

OK, so it’s got an unfortunately evocative shape, and it lends itself to lewd comparisons, but the Banana Guard is a really cool, useful solution to a real problem (at least for me). I bike to work every day, and often by the time I get there, my bananas are all bruised up and unappealing (sorry for the pun).

The Banana Guard solves that by protecting the fruit in a strong rubbery casing that is even perforated for ventilation. It’s a perfect example of a simple product solving an annoying problem and bringing value to the buyer.

It’s just $9.95 for a single guard, or $35 for a 5-pack.

These days, more and more new computers are shipping with built in webcams and microphones. That means new business opportunities are opening up around letting people create content with their computer over the web. Odeo and its child venture/experiment, Hellodeo are two of these; Odeo lets you record audio through your built in mic and save it to the web, Hellodeo does the same with video.

Most people think that to be able to do something like this, you need to purchase Adobe/Macromedia’s Flash Media Server, which is so expensive they don’t even list the price on the site (think thousands of dollars).
Red5 is an open source Flash server. It’s the open source counterpart to Flash Media Server, and it can do a lot of the same things, for free! With Red5, you can accomplish the kinds of advanced user interaction you never thought were within your reach:

• Real-time Multi-player gaming
  • No more turn based gaming for Flash
  • Say goodbye to polling a server for updates
• Multi-user video chat
• Stream Music/Audio
  • Ondemand entertainment
• Stream video
  • Ondemand education
  • Ondemand entertainment
• Broacast Live Streams to anyone with a flash client
  • Live Concerts
  • Online conferences
  • Exranet company meetings
  • Screensharing / whiteboard applications
• Record Video
  • Online Resume’s for job seekers
  • Online tutorials
  • Online Lectures
• Record Audio
  • Online music colaboration

Getting started requires a little work (you’ll have to install and setup the server on your machine). But once it’s running, you can try out the packaged examples for a taste of what’s possible.

If you’re just itching for the next big Web 2.0 idea to build, start thinking about user-generated, real-time, collaborative audio and video. Red5 makes it possible.

‘Start pages’ are a solution in search of a problem. The new kid on this block is webwag, which has few differences from all the others (Google, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Protopage). Like the others, it’s well-executed, and like them, it doesn’t address a real need.

Personalized ’start pages’ are not new. Excite has had this feature for more than six years, and I don’t see anyone adding anything significant to the idea (no, prettier layouts and AJAX don’t count). It’s not an application most people need, and it’s not something I see many people using.

So why are so many companies still investing time and money trying to build a business around what, to me, seems like such a blatantly useless and uninteresting idea? I guess the idea of aggregating a person’s entire internet experience (mail, feeds, photos, search, etc.) would provide a lot of leverage with advertisers. And I suppose that’s exciting for venture capitalists, corporate leaders and entrepreneurs.
But it’s not exciting to me, and I get the feeling it’s not exciting to anyone else.

Check out the add that showed up on Feedmarker today:

I have no clue what it means, and I’m only guessing it’s in Chinese (anyone know for sure?). I’m assuming it’s a promotion for AdSense and not actually an ad someone purchased.

Still, it’s pretty cool to think that an advertiser from China (or Japan, or Egypt, or anywhere else) would end up buying ads on Feedmarker.com.

I stumbled on this article describing the steps to becoming a Rails hacker, and I have to say I disagree with most of it. Read the whole article and see what you think. Here are some excerpts, and my responses.

Before you start, well, you have to go into some sort of Zen retreat. You have to rid yourself of all legacy notions you might have about writing software. Leave your best practices behind you.

I don’t know if this is tongue-in-cheek or not, but it’s wrong. Unless you’re terribly closed-minded about web development already, there’s nothing special you need to do to prepare for working in Rails. Most people I know actually find the opposite; it’s easy and intuitive, and things just make sense.

Next pick up the Pickaxe or Ruby for Rails, preferably both.

OK, I’ll admit I like programming books less than the average developer, but come on… do you really need to go out and spend money on a book to learn build an application in Ruby on Rails? There are tons of completely free references online, including Why’s Poignant Guide, Snippets, the Ruby On Rails Wiki, Try Ruby, PeepCode, the Ruby Quiz, and countless others I can’t even begin to name (feel free to leave them in the comments). If you’re into holding a stack of paper while you code, that’s fine, but it’s definitely not a precursor to ACTUALLY CODING SOMETHING.

Now what, ah, yes, get a mac. Not because they look cool or anything but get it because you can use the text editor TextMate. TextMate is a Rails’ progger main tool, it’s text editing on steroids and again you will love it.

I agree: TextMate rocks. Hard. But you don’t need to buy a Mac to get started with Rails. Rails is open source and platform independent. MySQL too. RadRails is an Eclipse-based IDE that works on Mac, Windows and Linux, and you could do a lot worse than my favorite Windows IDE, NotePad2.

Bottom line: the best thing you can do to become a sucessfull Rails hacker is … START HACKING. Build something. Release it to the public. Even it’s crappy and buggy, you’ll learn a lot and you’ll have SomethingRealThatYouBuilt to point to when trying to convince someone to hire you. That’s more than most hackers have.

How many ways can you write the letter ‘M’? I can do about six (most are illegible, and I don’t count cursive, because I can barely write my name in cursive). But this post by Rabble (of Odeo fame) got me thinking; how many ways can you do a logo based off of the same letter? The MetroBits site has gone a pretty long way toward answering that question, check out this page:

Often, when I talk to people about new ideas (for businesses, applications, etc.) the common reaction is “Oh, that’s been done before.” I think this page of logos is a good example of why I disagree with that mindset. Just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done again, or done again better. That’s the nature of evolution and innovation; the same processes get repeated over and over again, improving slightly each time, until the final result is much different than the starting point.

So if you’re thinking about building something, don’t let the fact that someone else has done it before discourage you. It should just motivate you to do it better.

Sneakology Updates

September 6th, 2006 / Ruby on Rails, Web2.0, Entrepreneurship / No comments

Just wanted to point out that I’ve made a few updates to Sneakology.com, the sneaker-afficionado social-networking site I helped build for RailsDay. I tweaked some of the copy and added a tips section that appears when you log in, all in hopes of lowering the initial barrier to entry and making the site a little more intuitive. Check it out and let me know what you think!

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