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October 29, 2008
Searching for project management tool
Every startup has too much work and not enough resources. Most startups fail due to poor execution versus market. I have used alot of different tools over the years and have never found one that I totally love. Starting a new company gives me an excuse to check out the latest offerings. Here are a couple early impressions of a few.
What I am looking for
- a tool for me (CEO) to manage company goals and tasks at a high level across departments
- something light weight but still useful
- Hopefully some kind of mobile strategy since 1/2 my time thinking about to-do/goals I only have my mobile device.
- Integration with email /calendar (outlook) that works.
Initial thoughts: Liquid Planner
met the CEO at barbecue this weekend. Billed as "where basecamp leaves off and replacement for MS Project". I was intrigued as I found basecamp way too lightweight and toyish and MS project WAY too gandt chart old schoolish. The key to this online system is their intelligent scheduling engine. You can tell right away that is designed to manage big projects with lots of resources and lots of management time to manage schedules. It is really a software or web site development project management tool. I tried setting up general business goals but a couple of things were lacking.
1. no goal/task relationship. just tasks and how those tasks relate to a project folder.
2. No good import feature (my current task list in MS Tasks).
3. my (one employee) is not very technical and the interface was too developerish, she couldn't easilly figure it out.
4. The tool wants you to associate lots of docs and links in their tool with a task. I tend to want separate the company document store from the task manager. Going back to find stuff later is easier that way.
Initial reaction: Too development focused, not general business management tool. Pass.
PlanHQ.com. billed as a start-up goal/task manager it delivers just that. No fancy doc storage or sophisticated scheduling, but some neat board report stuff and basic goal/task management. What i like
1. goal/task relationship
2. good email integration and calendar (although iCal not outlook)
3. simple set up.
4. cross department task managment.
What it still needs
1. ability to make more departments (they only offer three)
2. full screen goal list (only support drop down, no clear priority)
3. better outlook integration
4. more printing or output options for goals/tasks by person, etc.
5. more area for notes.
Initial impression: This is a good basic C level goal/task manager. Works fine for now. I have set up all our company goals and tasks in it. Will try it for a month and report back.
Posted by Martin at 3:52 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A nice couch is a good thing
Over at a friend's house. One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is read the paper and maybe nap on the couch. This is one of the most comfortable I have found. Dania. Reminds me of when I used to run the Seattle Couch Museum, but that is another story entirely. ![IMG_0030[1].jpg](http://www.deepgreencrystals.com/IMG_0030%5B1%5D.jpg)
Posted by Martin at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2008
Fred Thompson makes it clear what is at stake
Posted by Martin at 9:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 23, 2008
Some formative experiences that lead to Kashless.org
Early in 2008 I was cleaning out my garage and had a bunch of stuff that hadn't been used in forever. A seven year old mountain bike, a twice ridden wake board, a lightly used work out bench, a blow up pool, two snow sleds, a beginner kids bike, some garage shelves, a garden hose, an old pair of skis, a too small snowboard, you know the kinda stuff I'm talking about. Since the stuff had originally cost me quite a bit and it wasn't really trash yet, I thought to sell it. Two weeks and tens of hours spent posting stuff on multiple sites, emailing and calling tons of people, waiting around the house, dealing with no-shows, flakes, bounced checks and some downright scary people I had only sold one thing - the mountain bike - for half the asking price.
So I decided to give it away, but I wanted it to go to someone who actually needed the stuff and would use it. I tried the free sharing/giving networks my friends recommended. More posting to multiple sites, three weeks and even MORE waiting, no shows, flakes, (no bounced checks Yea!) and no information about the people who were asking for my cherished stuff. In the end I got rid of everything but it was WAY TOO HARD and took way too much time/energy/effort. Heck, I was trying to give something away for free!
During this time I was also looking for a white board for my home office. I know there are lots of white boards lying around after office moves, in my friend's basements, etc. After visiting multiple sites, doing multiple searches (no saved searches - ARGH!), and blogging the need of a white board, none came into my life. So I went out and bought a new one. Two days later a friend who follows my Twitter feed said "hey I wish I knew you were looking for a white board, I have an extra one under my desk!" Oops, more consumption where it was not necessary.
These are some the formative experiences that have led to the idea of Kashless.org.
The Workout Bench:
The blow Up Pool
An extra harley Davidson Fatboy Seat
7 year old Canyondale Jekyll (originally $3,700)
The too small wakeboard
Posted by Martin at 9:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Well broken in fixie in SFO two weeks ago
gotta love the seat (brooks@!) and the basket!
Posted by Martin at 5:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cool fixie seen in Value Village last week
Posted by Martin at 5:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Look ma, me and Sarah and John
Posted by Martin at 5:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Oddly agreeing with Friedman
He has been wrong on alot of economic and tax policy, but he is right on renewables and clean tech. Today in the Treason Times, he rightly points out that the economic crisis is going to be the beginning or the end of green. Either we will continue our revised habits from $4.50/gal gas and demands for the end of oil addiction or we will lapse into complacency (again) like the last time. Americans need to understand that this is not the last time. Oil prices are going back to $150/barrel very soon. I predict within two years. The fundamentals of supply/demand have not changed. The only thing that changed is a strengthening US dollar and an unwinding of extreeme financial leverage causing a rush out of commodities into cash. We still can't afford the SUVs.
Posted by Martin at 9:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 20, 2008
TED spread shrinking, money moving again
Thank Ben. Down 5.136% today. 2.83. Money moving again, especially america to europe. Still historically high, but better. This had better keep going down. If it goes back into the 1.5 range we are starting to see light.
Posted by Martin at 8:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2008
Second Chrome bug
I have been watching alot of stuff on Hulu. It uses Adobe Flash player. Hulu plays fine on Firefox under vista. It finds the right speakers and plays videos. In Chrome, the video plays and the audio is silent. There is no place I can find to reset where the audio is going to. In Chrome, the regular windows sounds work, as does Pandora. Maybe it has something to do with the interaction between Hulu and Chrome which I haven't figured out yet. Back to Firefox.
Posted by Martin at 12:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 17, 2008
some new jobs on nPost
Posted by Martin at 1:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 15, 2008
McCain flubs it
I have been concerned about McCain's debate performance for the last week, but have been keeping silent. While I am going to vote for him, I don't think he is doing a very eloquent job putting the conservative approach out there in opposition to the union hugging, protectionist, big government Obama. One clip that really showed the difference in communication style is the question in the debate about how the new president would prioritize energy, health care and entitlement reform. Watch here
McCain asks to repeat the question and writes down the issues. He then gives a "we can do it all" answer. A very old school politically correct answer short on details, promises to everyone. Obama actually gave priorities. And said "we need to prioritize just like a family". He answered the question and very eloquently. His policies are wrong. They are government hand-outs and higher taxes, but they sounded better.
Come on McCain, get it together.
Posted by Martin at 7:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Who needs XM?
XM is dead. No not for what you think. Not because it is a bad business with high overhead and a scale problem. Not because the two satellite radio companies had to merge to cut cost and fix prices. No the whole model has been killed by the iPhone. Sure XM has some unique content, but if there is any life at all, it will be as a content network like HBO rather than as as an operator of a physical network.
So how did the iPhone hollow out XM's business? Pandora. I was driving up to the mountains Friday to go camping. Out in the woods the radio stations all got scratchy and country. So I plugged in the iPod to the car stereo and played the Genius playlist for awhile. I have over 8GB of music on the iPhone, lots of playlists, and the Genius playlist generator which does a great job. Do I really need to pay another $9.99/mo for someone else's playlists over another network? So I already have most of all the music content I want in the car resident locally. Strike one against XM. Well what if I want something I don't have in the car? What networks are available? Well XM is, but the cellular data network is available more places and it is ALWAYS with me, not just in my car. So I click over to the Pandora application and choose a station. It starts streaming immediately over the cellular network through my car speakers. All free (included in a device I am already paying for). No new car hardware needed, no additional subscription. Strike 2. Want to listen to your favorite radio stations back home while on the road? Download radio 105 or NPR radio iPhone application and you are set. Strike 3. XM is dead.
Posted by Martin at 6:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
An over the top sucess: KIVA
I have a $234.56 credit over at KIVA. There are not enough loans to fund. Over 10,000 people last week made loans to over 1,500 entrepreneurs around the world. I have had 100% of my loans paid back. There is more money to lend than qualified entrepreneurs to borrow. A good problem to have if you are KIVA. Their challenge is to find more microlending partners to generate more loan requests. Not a bad problem to have. This is one marketplace that seems to be working VERY WELL. Lots of participation, very efficient, just need more product. There are lessons here for economic development on many levels. What if the government distributed economic development aid through a highly efficient organization like KIVA instead of loosing 30-40% to overhead and only funding large projects? The world would be a different place from the bottom up. That is the only way, in my experience, things work. From the bottom up. Teach the people to fish.
Posted by Martin at 5:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 14, 2008
Problems with the MT 4.21 upgrade
It was a painful process as always. Here are the problems I had that were not adequately addressed in the documentation:
1. I am using a windows client to FTP up the files. In Windows there are just check boxes for the permissions on the .cgi files so when MT says "set permissions to "755", that doesn't help me as a Windows guy. I had to get my ISP to go into Unix shell and set the permissions correctly. I know some windows FTP third party clients support the UNIX number designations on file permissions but Vista does not. Come on MT, help a poor Vista user out.
2. My MT install is on a box that hosts multiple domains. MT still doesn't work well out of the box if you have multiple domains, especially if you are publishing blogs to different domains than your cgi-bin and \mt-static directories. The style sheets didnt apply the styles correctly. I just got one screen, with everything wrapped and no formatting. The support forums (very helpful) pointed me to the styles.css file and a path entry for MT-Static. But no-one there said exactly how to reformat this path entry to point to a different domain.
3. Getting the Styles.css to get formatted with the correct domain is a nightmare. You can manually edit it in the template edit screen (to a fully qualified path), but the "smarter than you style setter" overrides that in the background and resets it to the default path (not fully qualified). This took me a couple times testing and changing to figure out that the system was doing and why the published file didn't match the source screen. So now I have to figure out how to move MT-Static to whereever the system assumes it should be for the other domain. Finally had to change the styles.css global template to have th mt:StaticWebPath variable in it and then figure out what that is (there is no clear way to set it in MT 4.2, you used to be able to edit the .cgi file). then I moved a copy of MT-static directory to that place, and Voila it works!. Ugly. I hope I remember to replace that on the next upgrade...
this is too hard.
Posted by Martin at 8:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Excellent article on GE
Think Freddie and Fannie are big? GE is multiple times big. And two weeks ago it had to go begging to Buffett and common. Here is a great article on what happened. I pulled all my money out of my deposit account at GE.
Posted by Martin at 1:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 13, 2008
TED spread widening
OK, the stock market rocketed today, but the TED spread is up to 4.57 (market closed today) from 3.91 when I posted about it five days ago. up 20% more. This is our real problem. Until that TED spread comes down, we are not heading out of the woods.
Posted by Martin at 7:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 11, 2008
the tunnel is getting smaller
Check outthe list of Global IPO's and M&A activity over the last four quarters here. Down and to the right. In q4 08 only 3 tec IPO's globally, down from 456 in 2007 (ok, quarter is just started, but I think it won't break 20).
Posted by Martin at 3:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
read this
the Sequoia CEO sumit notes. Batten down the hatches. It is going to be a long darkness.
Posted by Martin at 10:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 9, 2008
My first Chrome bug
Well, other than the usual that many sites won't support it because it is not identified as IE or Firefox. That isn't so bad, because if you say go ahead anyway, Chrome does a fine job. No this one is on evite. When you click on "add to my Outlook Calendar", it tries to open an evite.vcs file. Chrome opens the file in a browser window and shows you the plain text (the wrong answer). Firefox gives you an "open with" prompt suggesting MS Outlook (the right answer). Not a bad bug and I bet with poking around in configuration I could fix it, but that is a bit of a rookie mistake.
Posted by Martin at 12:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
don't lie to your board
I have invested in over 30 companies. Have sit on five boards. Been a CEO four times. I have been an optimistic CEO, but have never lied to any investor or board member about anything. Today, the CEO and CFO (both of whom I know) of the Ignition Partners (where I am affiliated) funded company Entellium did the perp walk for cooking the books to the tune of almost $12M in non-existent revenue over the last three years. This is actually very easy for me. As CEO you are always responsible for everything that you say to the board and all the performance of the company regardless of if you actually had any knowledge of it (see Enron). Keeping two sets of books in the hopes that you can raise lots of venture money on lies and "make up the difference" in later quarters is the most bizzare strategy I have ever heard of. I hope Paul and Parrish have a better defense than they put in their e-mail admitting the scheme to the board "it seemed like a good idea at the time." I am hoping drugs and hookers were at least involved. But this was not a one time thing. This was month by month fraud for three years. That was only discovered by confession. I can see more private company audits coming..... This sucks for the entire start-up community. You can't blame that on the credit crunch.
Posted by Martin at 12:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 8, 2008
just a little tech tidbit
Matt found out that Lenovo's FN+F5 control panel needs to be enabled to get bluetooth running. Thanks matt!!
Posted by Martin at 3:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
TED Spread up another 10% today
For those who haven't been following what Paulsen and Bernanke follow, start tracking the TED spread. The bloomberg link is here. This is the best real time measurement of how reluctant banks are to lend to each other. It is the spread between the rate investors get loaning to the fed (the Tbill) and the rate they get loaning on an interday basis in Euro Dollars to each other (the big ones) - the ED. This has historically been about even. Maybe .19-.25. It is today 3.91, up 10% today. That means banks want 391 basis points MORE to loan to each other than to the fed. That has for all intensive purposes put the kibosh on interbank lending. No-one would pay that rate. And those who must borrow at that rate are in BIG trouble. Watch this rate. If it goes back down to around 1, we have restored enough confidence and money should start to move again. But we ain't there yet folks. No where near.
Posted by Martin at 2:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New Kashless.org landing page
Kashless.org is starting to have a pulse. Sign up to be invited to the Alpha and join the team!
Posted by Martin at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
the new we can solve it ad that is banned from ABC
unbelieveable the influence of big oil. They are blocking ads from this non profit
Posted by Martin at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 2, 2008
Sign of the economic times
so I have a bunch of money over at Prosper earning about 11.66%. I only loan to AA and A credit rating. Up till sept. I had zero late and 100% payment. Out of 28 loans I now have 2 that are more than 1 month late. These are unsecured personal loans, so I suspect more defaults. Oh, well.
Posted by Martin at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Review of GoodReads
Starting to review some of the vertical markets that have created community around certain product categories. Like Books. One of the first of these was AllConsuming.net started by my friends in Seattle, now owned by RobotCoop. While AllConsuming was one of the first, there hasn't been much investment in it for some time.
The clear leader in non-amazon book community sites is GoodReads. There are alot of things to like about the site. Here in my normal terse fashion are my likes and dislikes and summary:
Likes:
clean look and feel.
complete, rhobust search.
lots and lots of content, very active site. Very cool.
Good global connection ability to other readers.
facebook application is not too horrible, but doesn't do anything interesting either. it only imports facebook friends. No matches leaves me with nothing else to do.
have a basic swap feature.
Explore section is nice. Shows me some relevant books. Gives me lots of different ways to browse, popular, most read, unpolupar, listopia, ebooks, etc.
like the event section, auto propogate from bookTour. I don't get the impression that these are many user generated events though. Very cool local search.
good bookclub group functions.
they had my mother's book, Great walks in Florida.
they do all the right retention things to keep people engaged on the site.
the search for people is very good, easy and relevant.
in the find new people section, there is a "rate the book" quiz that takes you through 20 books and you see how your ratings match up with the other person's. Cool.
Dislikes:
stop pestering me to invite friends.
not very local. No clear way to connect with other book lovers of my interestes locally.
why don't they have outlook "friend" integration?
swap feature is hard to find, not promoted and i can't find anything or anyone to swap with.
many places they make you copy and paste HTML code instead of opening your mail client, etc. This is annoying.
a quick search of people profiles shows that many are inactive.
Summary: Useful site, needs a few more features, but I will keep coming back. Useful in the end.
Posted by Martin at 9:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Read The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny by Robin Sharma
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Read on the recommendation of a friend. Pretty fluffy sometimes condescending writing. The author is trying too hard to be "mystical". The basic concepts are pretty solid zen stuff. I liked it. But wouldn't recommend it or read it again.
View all my reviews.
Posted by Martin at 8:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Trying Widgetbucks but underwhelmed for now
changed from Google adsense to my friend Matt's widgetbucks on wend. I don't like the quality of ads they display, it is a noticable downgrade from Google. And too many image ads. Maybe I just need to reconfigure. After two days I earned $.01. On Adsense I was earning a couple of dollars a day. This is not a good start. Well matt just got there, so maybe he needs some time to get their network on track.
Posted by Martin at 8:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 1, 2008
trying out windows writer
i really need a drag and drop editor that makes it easier to add photos and doesn't require me to edit the tags. w.Bloggar has served me well, but fails in this area. With more media being posted, I am trying windows Writer. I like the GUI so far.
ok, first default publishing using the MT upload api for images gave the wrong path. So i changed uploading to FTP. Windows writer did a VERY good job of navigating the FTP site and letting me click through directories to pick the right one and to choose the link path. It even validated the link path. Way better than w.bloggar where this part is never explained. I am thinking I am going to switch to windows writer for now.
Posted by Martin at 4:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
RRE doing the right thing
tried to reblog through Zemanta. It doesn't integrate with my self hosted typepad. I just copied. Will try more later.
I found this fascinating quote today:
RecycleBank will pay you for recycling. Tendril will save you money on electricity costs. Peek will give you cheaper mobile email service. These companies should thrive in a down economy. I am working on a seed deal that entails free items for consumers. What could be better for those who have been downsized? In addition, companies that make capital available when banks dry up such as PrimeRevenue or On Deck Capital should be huge benefactors. There are lots of opportunities out there for startup companies. We at RRE intend to take full advantage of them.Five Years Too late, Sep 2008
You should read the whole article.
Posted by Martin at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Review of MeOwns
I thought MeOwns might be in the Recommerce space somehow, but it looks like it is squarely in the vanity bling space. And for programmers and people who can read Arabic as well. At this point, the site is totally useless to me. Here is my good/bad review.
Good:
there is a widget
there is a bookmarklet neatly tucked in the top of the screen for easy dragging up to the browser.
the idea of wish lists is good. The idea of showing people your wish lists is good.
bad:
only 364 books on site. No ability to search amazon and add something. No ability to import from anywhere.
No ability to search any catalogue of products to add your products.
when adding you have to start with a picture. I guess the owners think everyone wants to show pictures of themselves with their stuff.
the widget just shows everyone lists of crap you own, but has no actionable work to be done.
they try to force you to invite your friends at sign-up.
a search for "Moby" resulted in nothing. I understand there is nothing on the site, but Moby is somewhere on the internet, come on.
when they said "share your stuff" i thought they would actually let me share stuff. But they only let you share lists of your stuff. Stupid.
there seems to be about 50 people total on the site. (actually the "owners" section says 439, mostly overseas) one in china.
what exactly is the point of having me claim my copy of "Internet Explorer 7"????
summary: keep working boys.
Posted by Martin at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
styrophobia....
One of the largest contributors to the landfill is all that disposable packaging we get with our food. Especially take out and bags. There are alternatives made from fiber and corn starch for ALL THAT STUFF TODAY. No need to wait. I have seen in Seattle Taco del Mar go all green with packaging. And Wahoo's in Hawaii. Check out your favorite fast food joint and ask them why they are still using non-biodegradable packaging.
Posted by Martin at 3:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Paul brake levers...a thing of beauty
check out this minimal brake lever.
saw on this cool fixie today.
Posted by Martin at 12:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
gadget recycling sites
There seems to be an explosion lately of gadget recycling sites. The latest a friend sent me is NextWorth. They are all basically the same. Enter your gadget type, age, condition and they will give you a trade in or purchase price. They will send you a box and you sell it to them. Some get a bit creative and try to upsell you the new gadget right there, but most just offer you cash. The idea is that the early adopters need somewhere to get rid of their new old toys. What these sites all do is basically have a database of pricing trends off of ebay and other resale sites and offer to buy items for approximately 50% of the trailing 4 weeks price (a rough estimate on my own). They plan to resell the item immediately and make 100% profit. Not a bad business. But I wonder how hard it is for these gadget people to just post it on ebay themselves. It will be interesting if any of these guys make any money.
I doubt they will make money on the "newly used" stuff < 1 year. but they may be able to act as a collector of the longer tail of stuff in the states where the manufacturers are being forced to provide total lifecycle managment.
Posted by Martin at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Tax and Spend Democrats still running in Washington
my washington. Washington state. One hour after out D governor was sworn in in 2004 after promising no tax increases, she signed a huge one. She presided over a 35% increase in state spending in 4 years. Don't let her have another 4 years. Change is good.
Posted by Martin at 6:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack