July 22, 2009
When does an Alpha become a Beta?
Today it seems like all web sites and web services start out as Beta. Some (can you say GMail) seem to stay in Beta FOREVER. You rarely see Alpha on anything. I have seen sites in “Beta” that totally don’t work and are missing major check the box features. There seems to be a wide variance on what people call Alpha, Beta and “live” software. In the Greek Alphabet, it goes Alpha, Beta, Gamma. Have you ever seen a software version in Gamma? Believe it or not, I have an opinion on all this.
Back in the old waterfall package software business, we used release numbers 1.0, 2.0, etc. Major releases were whole numbers, minor releases were fractions (.1, .2, etc.). In that world as a software consumer I had a policy to never use anything lower than 3.0. Remember Windows 1.0? It wasn’t until Windows for Workgroups (actually 3.1) that it actually worked more than it failed. With web sites, where you can upgrade very day, the lines are less clear. At Kashless.org, we update the live site 3-7 times a week. The traditional release numbering system would get crazy fast. Here is how we do it at Kashless.org.
When designing Kashless.org, we identified 12 major features which when added together would make the Kashless.org marketplace 10X better than existing marketplaces. So a version 1.0 of each of those 12 features is what the Alpha dev schedule included. My system for release of a web service is a four step process:
Private Alpha – This is the first version of your site that you want your friends to see. Put a password on it. Make people request an invite. This has LOTS of bugs, has only about 10-20% of the features you are planning to run. Limit this to < 500 people. 1-3 months. At Kashless.org we opened the private Alpha in January 2009.
Public Alpha – When the site is mostly stable and 20-30% feature complete, take the password off and let the public pound on it. If your site is geographical, limit the Alpha to one geography. Keep adding major features ever couple of weeks. Alpha should be 3-12 months depending on how much dev work you have. At Kashless.org we entered public alpha in late February 2009 for Seattle only.
Public Beta – When the site is feature complete with a version 1.0 of every major feature you hope to develop, you are done with the Alpha. The Beta is about getting users, expanding geographically and focusing on scalability. Beta should be between 6-24 months depending on how long it takes to get to scale. Kashless.org is going into Beta this week with the launch of Portland, New York, and Spokane.
Gamma – no qualifier – When you have whipped most of the scalability issues, have reached critical mass on users (whatever that is for you) and have a stable version 1.0 of every major feature you planned to build, you have a live, fully released product. Take all qualifiers off and just use your brand. You can of course add more features later and you don’t need to make revision notations.
So your initial feature set is your Alpha development work. The Alpha is for major feature development. The Beta is for scalability, usability and geographic expansion. That’s how we do it at Kashless.org.
Posted by Martin at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 21, 2009
kashless.org begins national roll-out
logo on NASAQ reader board in Times Square. Yea…
still working on navigation UI, but be one of the first to check out
Posted by Martin at 4:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 1, 2009
New features over at Kashless.org and why they matter…
It has been awhile since I have posted about the new features we have been building at Kashless.org. The Krew has been heads down for the last two months. I have been saving up. Over the weekend we released all the new code.
Lets start with a review of some of the business problems Kashless.org is trying to solve for our members who post and search for free items.
Search and browse. There are multiple sites with free listings. Many sites lump all free into one category. Or they make you read every e-mail searching for what you want. Or subscribe to multiple lists. No easy way to browse free listings by category, neighborhood, city, distance from where you are, or have the system search for you.
Everything is done only in email. While I love my email client, it is a pretty blunt instrument with which to perform ecommerce. Giving and getting free stuff is ecommerce. That is why eBay, Amazon etal have lots of ways to do business with a browser based application.
User transparency is lacking. Many marketplaces today are anonymous or you only have an e-mail from someone. No context as to that person’s reputation, feedback in prior transactions, history, etc. When I am giving something away or going over to someone’s house to pick something up, I want to know something about who I am dealing with and have the software application help me establish trust.
Those aren’t the only problems we are solving, but some of the big ones. So lets check out some of the new KL Alpha features with this context.
Way better UI. The whole look and feel of the site has been re-designed by Krew member Jordan. Better colors, fonts, more intuitive navigation, standardized buttons, more tab, all the bells and whistles of a professionally designed consumer ecommerce web site.
New Browse tab. When you mouse over or click on the “Browse” tab, you now get a list of product categories and neighborhoods/towns to browse. With a count of how many items in each. So for example if you live on Queen Anne in Seattle and want to see how many free items are in your neighborhood, you now can.
Manage Conversation through the site. We have implemented a very sophisticated message handling system that now allows you to send and receive e-mails as you always do about free items, but a copy of each message is saved on the Kashless site. So now you can see all the messages relating to one of your listings in one place. You can respond to many people at once. Coming soon, you can have the system tell new offers when an item is taken. These are very powerful features when dealing with the large volume of responses you typically receive on free offers. The Krew was also worked very hard so that you can use e-mail OR the Kashless site to interact on listings. This is probably our coolest feature.
Requirement to be logged into Kashless.org. During the initial part of the Kashless Alpha, we let anyone who came to the site see all listings, make offers, and use most of the features without an account. But then we started thinking about transparency. Every Kashless.org member has a public profile page. Many of our third party sites that provide listings also only allow individual use of those listings. So we made the change to require users to be valid Kashless members in more cases. While this is a pain in many ways, it leads to more trustworthy transactions and a more efficient market.
Posted by Martin at 3:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 25, 2009
Frustrated by Craig’s list flagging system
CraigsList has what is called a “user moderated” system. Users can flag listings in any number of categories, the results being the listing gets removed. Their site boasts “millions of inappropriate listings removed every month”. It further claims that “98% of the removals are for violations of Craigslist TOU”. I don’t know how they can say that since there is no company oversight. Any user of any reputation with or without an account can flag anything for any reason. The owner of the offending post receives a mail saying their post has been removed. No repost button. No explanation other than a link to the standard explanation of the flagging system. No knowledge of who flagged it, how many times, for what reason. Nothing. Zero transparency.
In my personal experience zero of my posts have been removed for actual CL terms violation and 100% of them have been flagged by haters. There are competitors on CL that can flag your posts with impunity and no repercussions. I have a friend in the rental business and this is a constant war between her and competitors flagging her listings. Her listings have about a 2 hour life on CL. Today I posted a “Gig” for some BRoll video footage. Completely a valid job paying $2K. I received a stock email from a video production company which was basically spam and did not address any of the specific needs of my project. I replied that I thought it was unprofessional to respond with a form letter and please address my RFP directly. Five minutes later my post was flagged and removed. A hater. “Well if I can’t get the job, no-one will". No visibility for me, nothing.
This system is bad for both sides. The crazy minority can ruin the market for the majority. Craig’s list could really use a reputation system.
Posted by Martin at 1:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 5, 2009
Sometimes less is more
Today in the development meeting at Kashless.org we were discussion our \TALK feature. Basically the user support forums. A skinned implementation of Vanilla forums. When initially setting up the site I added discussion forums because everyone else had them. Also they seemed a good way to do customer support, answer FAQ questions and allow your community to interact with each other. I installed and maintained them myself. But then we installed TenderApp for customer support ticketing. TenderApp is private labeled as well, but has the advantage of single sign-on and integration into our development ticketing process to fix bugs. So \Talk languished without our attention and requiring a separate log-on. Last week there were a couple posts there and two e-mails directly to me asking “hey are you guys here?”
There was a dull pain growing in the back of my head. “Is a half implemented, unsupported feature better than no feature at all?” “What is the real goal of having discussions forums?” “Is the site better with or without them?” The feature was poorly integrated into the site without clear goals and lacking company support. Since we implemented Vanilla we also integrated FaceBook and Twitter which provide some of the community building aspects we had hoped to get through the forums. It was clear to me that in the rush to check the feature box we had half assed it. That led to a couple decision points
#1: Keep current feature implementation? yes/no
#2: Upgrade current discussion boards for cleaner technical integration? yes/no
#3: Allocate Customer Service resources to make the discussion boards active and engaging? yes/no
#4: Is \TALK fulfilling our customer service goals? yes/no
#5: Is \TALK fulfilling our community building member to member goals? yes/no
At Kashless, we like to have pride in everything on the site and be providing incremental member value with each thing we do, so the answers (after lots of spirited discussion) were:
#1: NO, remove \TALK from site
#2: NO, Vanilla doesn’t allow for single sign-on with our application, has a different look and feel and would require duplication of effort now being devoted to TenderAPP, so upgrading would not achieve any benefit.
#3: NO, customer service resources are better spend fully supporting TenderApp for customer service.
#4: NO, customer service is being well delivered through TenderApp.
#5: NO, community building goals are being pursued through Twitter, FaceBook and other applications at this time. At some point in the future if we can design a well integrated set of features for member to member community building as part of Kashless.org, think about adding it then.
I would rather focus on great integration and support for features that provide clear member value than to simply have a box checked on a feature list somewhere. In this case, taking the discussion boards out is best.
Posted by Martin at 8:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 1, 2009
CL grows despite the CLK
Craig’s list grew 11.69% in uniques last month despite the CLK. It is a bit surprising. But maybe it proves the old adage that any PR is good PR.
Posted by Martin at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sneak Peak at new profiles page coming this weekend on Kashless.org
Jordan, our new designer is really sprucing things up! And now with Gravatar support ya know!
Posted by Martin at 10:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 30, 2009
Pump’n up the video over at Kashless.org
Courtney is making the slick video mixes…
Posted by Martin at 9:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 6, 2009
Watch your TV tomorrow
There will be a story about Kashless.org by Tim Robinson, KING 5 reporter. It was filmed last week and will be showing a couple of times tomorrow on a couple of different stations.
It will be shown several times....
* 6:40 a.m. - KING (teaser version)
* 7:45 a.m. - KONG
* 8:45 a.m. - KONG
* KING 5 News at Noon - KING
* KING 5 News at 10 - KONG
Additionally, a version of the story may run during KING 5 News at 5 (5-6 p.m., KING) or KING 5 News at 6:30 (6:30-7, KING) and it will be posted at KING5.com.
Posted by Martin at 4:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 27, 2009
Presentations from Green:Net
Very good videos and powerpoint presentations from the GigaOM Green:Net conference at which I spoke Tuesday this week. If you can only watch one, watch Saul Griffith. If you haven’t gotten enough of my mug, watch me.
Posted by Martin at 2:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New Features at Kashless.org for spring!
Posted by Martin at 9:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 25, 2009
Yahoo Green points to all free stuff sites
Very good overview article. No mention of Kashless, but we are still in development.
Posted by Martin at 5:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 13, 2009
Well they have done it again
put me on the 5:00 evening news tonite.
Posted by Martin at 8:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 11, 2009
Very inspirational article over at Earth911
about the Waste hierarchy. In our opinion, Reuse is the most underdeveloped bar in this whole scheme. Sure, you re-use shopping bags, but what about all that stuff in your garage that isn’t really trash yet. That is the problem Kashless.org is solving. Have a read. Earlier this year they also did a primer on REUSE specifically.
highlights:
- According to the U.S. EPA, in 2006, Americans generated about 251 million tons of trash. That’s about 4.6 pounds per person, every day. Of this 251 million, 82 million tons of it was recycled. This recycling saved “the energy equivalent of more than 10 billion gallons of gasoline.”
Reuse
Reuse is simply the act of finding a second (or third, or tenth or hundredth) use for a product to prolong its life. Reuse is an important step after you’ve already reduced, but before you are ready to recycle.
Most of us reuse everyday without realizing it. Any time you buy or sell a product secondhand, such as from Craigslist, eBay or Goodwill, you are providing an additional use for this product, while at the same time, not requiring another one to be created.
To really get in the habit of reusing, focus on:
- Reusable shopping bags
- Lunch boxes and Tupperware containers
- Buying in bulk
- Borrowing from others instead of purchasing
- Rethinking your “trash” – you may be able to make something new out of that old desk
Posted by Martin at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 3, 2009
New features released last night
The Kashless Krew continues to crank out the features and respond to your feedback. We had a mini-release last night including stuff like:
- Separate account “preferences” and “Activity” pages. The “my account” page was getting a bit long and busy.
- Fixed a bug in account funding that showed incomplete paypal transfers as funds added to your account (I Wish!)
- You can now add multiple profile credentials to your account preferences page including your FreeCycle email address, Craig’s list, and Twitter. More coming soon! These will default to your post creation when posting a new item
- Saved searches in navigation now estimate the number of results. Handy eh? Still looking for that skull highball glass…
- improved post an item workflow, including the ability to e-mail notify people directly and post pictures from KL directly to CL.
- added our slogans “Because you’re broke…” and “Set your stuff FREE!” thanks !
- more frequent SMS notifications.
- you can now get to the service at either kashless.com OR kashless.org (finally :)
- you can now join FreeCycle directly from Kashless.org (still just Seattle).
More to come!
Posted by Martin at 8:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Results of my ebay/CL/Kashless trial
So last week I posted a Tour of California side bag on Kashless, Craig’s list (for sale) and ebay (for sale). I was interested in comparing the marketplaces. The results are in:
Ebay: auction ended with no offers: about 30 views, cost : $.50
CL: listing expired with no offers. no traffic stats given
KL: still active but no offers yet.
Humm. Can’t give this away eh?
Posted by Martin at 9:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2009
The Coffee Cup that is causing so much comotion
over at Kashless. I have SEVEN people who want it. How to decide…
hummm
Posted by Martin at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2009
Alpha 2.1 ships on Kashless.org
The Krew has been busy this past week and a half. We love that Ruby and Agile development lets us rapidly respond to user requirements and provide continuous updates. Alpha 2 is all about posting your own gently used items for giving through Kashless and other markets. 2.0 supported Kashless and Seattle FreeCycle. 2.1 adds:
- Posting to all Washington Craig’s list Free categories.
- Search highlighting
- Improved account management pages
- Bug fixes that delayed saved searches being sent. You now get immediate SMS messages when we find a match!
Oh, and Martin is multi tasking so much, he must take conference calls while eating Indian food.
and Martin is even installing Jen’s new video card to support two monitors (but John had to actually get it to work)
Posted by Martin at 2:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 13, 2009
New tagline for Kashless.org
“Because You’re broke…” from here
Posted by Martin at 9:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 12, 2009
Get a tax deduction for donating through Kashless.org
We have implemented a 0.5 version of this feature. Under certain conditions, you will be able to claim a tax deduction for Recycling stuff through Kashless. Check out the FAQ on how to now.
Posted by Martin at 1:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 10, 2009
Posting of your stuff is here at Kashless!
Last night we pushed to production the next major feature set enabling
you to post your own stuff to give away. Highlights include,
1. New "Give Away" link to post your extra stuff.
2. The Kashless system will now automatically repost to FreeCycle and Twitter.
3. The password has been removed so anyone can browse!
4. Improved offer management.
5. A few A3 related upgrades (donuts for those of you who find them).
A special shout out to those of you who helped with our last user survey,
you probably notice changes on the site that reflect the feedback. At Kashless.org, the community makes the site.
As we get ready to launch in the wild, we would like your help choosing a tagline that communicates
to the world what Kashless.org is all about. We have been brainstorming for the last three months,
and our finalists have been put in a quick 20 second ballot. Click HERE to place your votes, or fill it out below.
As always e-mail at support@kashless.org or see you on the site!
Thanks!
Martin and the Krew
Posted by Martin at 2:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 7, 2009
Everything is awesome and nobody is happy
Louis CK tells it like it is to Conan.
Posted by Martin at 10:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 2, 2009
Free is a very good price
looking forward to Chris Anderson’s new book
The Economics of Giving It Away
In a battered economy, free goods and services online are more attractive than ever. So how can the suppliers make a business model out of nothing?
By CHRIS ANDERSON
Over the past decade, we have built a country-sized economy online where the default price is zero -- nothing, nada, zip. Digital goods -- from music and video to Wikipedia -- can be produced and distributed at virtually no marginal cost, and so, by the laws of economics, price has gone the same way, to $0.00. For the Google Generation, the Internet is the land of the free.
Which is not to say companies can't make money from nothing. Gratis can be a good business. How? Pretty simple: The minority of customers who pay subsidize the majority who do not. Sometimes that's two different sets of customers, as in the traditional media model: A few advertisers pay for content so lots of consumers can get it cheap or free. The concept isn't new, but now that same model is powering everything from photo sharing to online bingo. The last decade has seen the extension of this "two-sided market" model far beyond media, and today it is the revenue engine for all of the biggest Web companies, from Facebook and MySpace to Google itself.
View Full Image
John Kuczala
In other cases, the same digital economics have spurred entirely new business models, such as "Freemium," a free version supported by a paid premium version. This model uses free as a form of marketing to put the product in the hands of the maximum number of people, converting just a small fraction to paying customers. It's an inversion of the old free sample promotion: Rather than giving away one brownie to sell 99 others, you give away 99 virtual penguins to sell one virtual igloo. (Confused? Ask a child: This is the business model for the phenomenally successful Club Penguin.)
With physical stuff, samples must be doled out sparingly -- there are real costs to be paid. With bits, the free versions are too cheap to meter and can be spread far and wide. That's why so many people businesses (expensive!) are turning into software businesses (cheap!), which is why your cranky tax accountant has morphed into free TurboTax online, your stockbroker is now a trading Web site and your travel agent is more likely a glorified search engine.
All this worked well in a rising economy, where non-monetary riches such as attention (Web traffic) and reputation (Google PageRank, which determines how high your site will appear in a search) could be turned into cash with the wave of a venture capitalist's wand or a well-timed acquisition. But this year, for the first time since 2001, the overall tide of investment and advertising won't rise. Indeed, it will almost certainly fall. Venture capital has dried up, Google is killing products rather than buying them, and Yahoo can barely support itself, much less look for others to fund. What does that do to Free as an economic model?
Something for Nothing
The Hype Machine monitors hundreds of music-related blogs, and lets users listen to songs posted on those blogs for free -- just type in the name of a band or track. (It's also a good place to find out what's new and popular in the music blogosphere.) Songs can't be downloaded, but Amazon and iTunes links appear next to most tracks.
Compare fares from multiple vendors, including airlines and online travel agencies, on this fare-search site. Kayak breaks down itineraries by airline, time of day, number of stops and length of layovers. It also lets users exclude turboprop aircraft or regional jets from searches. You have to go directly to the vendor to buy the ticket though (a link is provided).
A free photo-editing site that doesn't require registration or software downloads. Users crop and adjust photos within their browser window -- special effects and frames are available, too -- and can post images to sites like Flickr or Facebook without leaving Picnik. A premium account ($24.95 a year) offers features including batch photo uploading, advanced editing tools and no ads.
Play free online or downloadable games -- including card, puzzle, word and board varieties -- at this ad-supported site from Electronic Arts. More than 100 games are available including Scrabble, Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. A paid account ($5.99 per month, or $39.99 per year) gets rid of ads and provides access to more games.
Billed as the online alternative to a personal shopper, this service emails members when retailers mark down their favorite designers. Users specify their preferred sizes and brands, and choose how frequently they want to be alerted. Tracked brands include Prada and Theory; the site searches a limited number of retailers including Saks, Nordstrom and shopbop.
-- Juliet Chung
From a consumer perspective, it should only help. After all, when you have no money, $0.00 is a very good price. Expect the shift toward open source software (which is free) and Web-based productivity tools such as Google Docs (also free) to accelerate. The cheapest and coolest computers today are "netbooks," which sell for as little as $250 and either ship with free versions of Linux or super-cheap old versions of Windows. The people who buy them don't load Office and pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars for the privilege. Instead, they use online equivalents, as the netbook name implies, and those tend to be free.
These same consumers are saving their money and playing free online games, listening to free music on Pandora, canceling basic cable and watching free video on Hulu, and killing their landlines in favor of Skype. It's a consumer's paradise: The Web has become the biggest store in history and everything is 100% off.
What about those companies trying to build a business on the Web? In the old days (that would be until September of last year) the model was pretty simple. 1. Have a great idea. 2. Raise money to bring it to market, ideally free to reach the largest possible market. 3. If it proves popular, raise more money to scale it up. 4. Repeat until you're bought by a bigger company.
Now steps 2 through 4 are no longer available. So Web startups are having to do the unthinkable: come up with a business model that brings in real money while they're still young.
This is, of course, nothing new in the world of business. But it is a bit of a shock in the Web world, where "attention" and "reputation" are the currencies most in demand, with the expectation that a sufficient amount of either would turn into money someday, somehow.
The standard business model for Web companies that don't actually have a business model is advertising. A popular service will have lots of users, and a few ads on the side will pay the bills. Two problems have emerged with that model: the price of online ads and click-through rates. Facebook is an amazingly popular service, but it also an amazingly ineffective advertising platform. Even if you could figure out what the right ad to serve next to a high-school girl's party pictures might be, she and her friends probably won't click on it. No wonder Facebook applications get less than $1 per 1,000 views (compared to around $20 on big media Web sites).
Google has built an enviable economic engine on the back of its targeted text ads, but the sites on which they run rarely feel as flush. Running Google's Adsense ads on the side of your blog, no matter how popular it may be, will not pay you even minimum wage for the time you spend writing it. On a good month it might cover your hosting fees. I speak from experience.
What about the oldest trick in the book: actually charging people for your goods and services? This is where the real innovation will flourish in a down economy. It's now time for entrepreneurs to innovate, not just with new products, but new business models.
Take Tapulous, the creator of Tap Tap Revenge, a popular music game program for the iPhone. As in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, notes stream down the screen and you have to hit them on the beat. Millions of people have tried the free version, and a sizable fraction of them were ready and willing to pay when Tapulous offered paid versions built around specific bands, such as Weezer and Nine Inch Nails, along with add-on songs. (The Wall Street Journal is pursuing a strategy of blending free and paid content on its Web site.)
At the other end of the business spectrum there's Microsoft, which now has to compete with the free word processors and spreadsheets of online competitors such as Google. Rather than complain about the unfair competition (which would be ironic), Microsoft created Web versions of its business software and offered them free to small and young companies. If your firm is less than three years old and under $1 million in revenues, you can use Microsoft's software without charge under its BizSpark program. When those companies get bigger, Microsoft is betting that they'll keep using its software as paying customers. In the meantime, the program costs it almost nothing.
But extracting a business model from free is not always easy, especially when your users have come to expect gratis. Take Twitter, the fantastically popular (and free, of course) 140-character messaging service where people update the world on what they're doing, one haiku-like snippet at a time. After taking over the world, or at least the geeky side of it, it now finds itself having to actually make enough money to cover its bandwidth bills. Last year it hired a revenue guru to try to find a business model and has announced that it intends to reveal its strategy early this year. Speculation as to what that will be ranges from charging companies to have their "tweets" recommended to consumers (which is a bit like "friending" the Burger King on Facebook) to certifying identity to avoid impersonation. The revenue officer has his work cut out for him.
View Full Image
Mirko Ilic
Meanwhile YouTube is still struggling to match its popularity with revenues and Facebook is selling commodity ads for pennies after its effort to charge for intrusive advertising led to a user backlash. And news-sharing site Digg, for all its millions of users, still doesn't make a dime. A year ago, that hardly mattered: The business model was "build to a lucrative exit, preferably in cash." But now the exit doors are closed and cash flow is king.
Does this mean that Free will retreat in a down economy? Probably not. The psychological and economic case for it remains as good as ever -- the marginal cost of anything digital falls by 50% every year, making pricing a race to the bottom, and "Free" has as much power over the consumer psyche as ever. But it does mean that Free is not enough. It also has to be matched with Paid. Just as King Gillette's free razors only made business sense paired with expensive blades, so will today's Web entrepreneurs have to not just invent products that people love, but also those that they will pay for. Not all of the people or even most of them -- free is still great marketing and bits are still too cheap to meter -- but enough to pay the bills. Free may be the best price, but it can't be the only one.
Chris Anderson is the editor in chief of Wired magazine, and the author of "The Long Tail" and "Free," which will be published in July.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W1
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Posted by Martin at 9:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 25, 2009
A recycling Robot
It had to come some time.
Sorts for you, weighs, compacts, and sends your poundage to a web site. Wow.
Posted by Martin at 7:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 2, 2009
New features for the New Year over at Kashless.org
the details here.
Posted by Martin at 9:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 18, 2008
The Trail of Toxic waste
Most of you have probably seen it, but if not, you must click over to CBS RIGHT NOW and watch the 60 minutes story on toxic e-Waste. Hundreds of thousands of computers and hundreds of millions of cell phones are “outdated” each year. Where do they go? Consumers are getting more concerned about this question and land-fills are actively trying to keep that stuff out of their dumps, but are these systems working? It seems that there are still plenty of “recyclers” who just want to make a buck.
With Kashless, hopefully these last year models can go to someone who actually uses them for a bit longer. One of the best ways to keep things out of the landfill is to keep using them.
Posted by Martin at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 16, 2008
Recycle your drugs
What do you do with old drugs? Expired prescriptions? Washington state has been running a return program with manufacturers and retailers for the last two years. As with ewaste this is an area I believe where more manufacturers are going to be put on notice to take lifecycle responsibility for their products. Interesting area.
Posted by Martin at 4:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 8, 2008
Some background on Freecycle
In researching recommerce, I came across a well written article from Grist on Freecycle and the conflict they had with Waste Management as a sponsor. When WM first sponsored, Freecycle was 1.2M users, now it is > 6M. The "fracas" doesn't seem to have hurt them.
Posted by Martin at 9:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 7, 2008
Buzz is thinking about recommerce too
The problem of used books. Where to go with them?
Kashless.org will have a solution soon.
Posted by Martin at 10:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 14, 2008
Chris Pirillo on barter.
the geek layman’s explanation of barter ala SwapTree.
Posted by Martin at 2:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What is the stuff in my garage worth?
Kijiji recently commissioned a study to figure out if American’s had stuff lying around the house they didn’t use (duh) and what it might be worth (that was more interesting).
Now I have a second observation. What level of cash is your cut-off for “not worth my time”? For me it is < $100. Anything for which I will receive less than $100 it is not worth my time to deal with posting, offers, shipping, etc. Just not worth it. The fourth column that would be interesting there is the tax receipt value. I would bet you that the tax benefit of donating say a Video Game console is greater than $4.
Posted by Martin at 8:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 11, 2008
trying out iList
here is their widgetPosted by Martin at 6:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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
October 17, 2008
some new jobs on nPost
Posted by Martin at 1:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 8, 2008
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
October 2, 2008
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
October 1, 2008
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
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
September 26, 2008
washington Ewaste recycling law
over 17 states have passed laws requiring ewaste recycling funded by the manufacturers. Washington's law is here. e-takeback.org has the full list and tracks all these laws. I believe these laws will create lots of business opportunities.
Posted by Martin at 4:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 23, 2008
ShopGoodWill has its own auctions
Goodwill has it's own auction site because they don't want to pay 11-15% to ebay. good for them.
thanks KK for pointer
Thrift store hunting isn't just a pasttime. It can be an honest living. Finding and flipping used goods for profit has been the main source of income for one of my friends for more than a decade. Though picking through racks of clothing, bins of electronics and boxes of watches -- or trolling eBay and Craigslist -- can be fruitful, another weekend-thrifter friend also swears by Goodwill's online auction site, which features 18,000 items daily that have been handpicked by several stores nationwide. You're getting access to the cream of the crop, but not every storeworker knows the value of what they have or how to describe it -- and every bidder doesn't necessarily know either (the market for vintage Levi's has become so lucrative that people try to pass off faux-jeans to less-discerning eBayers). Whether you're looking to join the flip economy or you enjoy stumbling on old, rare, cheap stuff, Goodwill's site is a great resource. Here's a bit of what I found recently (followed by current bids): Kodak Colorburst 50 Polaroid ($4.99), Ronco Rhinestone & Stud Setter ($5), Harley-Davidson Men's Boots - size 11 ($11), Nintendo 64 System ($15), Hohner Student IV Accordion w/Case ($9.59), and a Minolta Hi-Matic F 35mm ($8).Warning: shipping can be expensive. Also, items are purchased 'as is' and cannot be returned.-- Steven LeckartGoodwill Online Auctionshttp://www.shopgoodwill.com/listings/listbycat.asp?catid=8
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September 22, 2008
how to be an evangelist
Guy Kawasaki reminds us of the basics of a good product evangelist....
I am looking for one by the way....
Posted by Martin at 8:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
interesting traffic graph
of paperbackswap, swapthing, swaptree, freecycle.org
freecycle tends to get a hit when they get press. Swaptree is steadilly growing. Swapthing has much smaller traffic than their PR would lead you to believe. And the vertical market around books is actually larger than the general markets.
click here
Posted by Martin at 11:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
review of Zwaggle
Been reviewing swap sites lately. One that has been sent across my radar is Zwaggle. Here is a first impression:
good:
- have virtual currency "zoints"
- have wish lists
- have simple "items in my neighborhood" button (searches zip codes near you).
- has ability for charities to register and for you to direct your gift to a charity.
- condition of items having drop down values
- some algroythm used year of purchase, condition and original value to calculate "zoints".
- four options on shipping, drop off, shipper pays, pick up, receipent pays.
- choose fed ex or usps media mail
- groups is good.
- decent marketing, press coverage, but very thin for how long the site has been up.
bad:
- terrible UI, very 1980.
- Too long a sign-up procedure, ask for too much information before I can use the site. Ask for duplicate information.
- no standard for Zoints assignment.
- national footprint from get go means only 700 active listings, very thin geographically.
- no integration with meta data provider
- forces you into massive item categorization. This is good for search results, but bad as a user experience. User should have option to use lots of categorization or little.
- five screens to fill out when posting an item. way too many.
- when you donate to charity, you don't actually donate the item to charity, you donate your "zoints" to charity. Apparently then the charity can come to the site and get stuff it wants from the site. This is a weird transaction.
- no ezplanation of how zoints are calculated or how they are valuable. The zoints calculation does not relate to any real world "garage sale" value. For example it estimated my VHS tape was worth 11 zoints, when that tape would be worth $.25 from good will.
- internal message system very kludgy.
- way to many clicks to do anything.
- when making an offer for an item, you can only choose shipping methods that the "giver" clicked. what if i want to offer to pay shipping but the giver didn't select that? i should be able to make that offer. Maybe the giver would change their mind.
- i tried to "take" five things. 100% failure rate. Nothing was available. Got back messages from the system saying the items were no longer available.
- the site crashed 3 out of 5 times I used it.
- very limited product focus to "family" items.
- facebook applicaiton is confusing and takes you to another app.
- twitter integration is lame.
Conclusion: Missed the mark. ignore for now.
Posted by Martin at 8:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 15, 2008
trying out catch the best
one of the keys to consuming less resources is to use virtual copies of everything you used to buy and spend resources for. One of those is employee recruiting. I am trying a new web site with some workflow in it. Want to work for my new startup? I have the free account so they have their branding on the page. They should have a free private label version. The branding sucks.
Posted by Martin at 8:06 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 11, 2008
eztradein
there are lots of sites where you can try to sell your ewaste yourself. Then there are sites that will buy it from you and even send you pre-paid postage. They basically then resell it on ebay and make a margin, but it is no longer your problem. The best of these is probably eztradein.com. just joined their affiliate program. I like the recommerce aspect of it. They take care of everything. I just put in my laptop, a three year old IBM thinkpad that cost $2,800 and they said they would give me $101, while new ones on ebay are $900-$1200. I bet a used one would be $500. That would be a 5x their money. Not bad.
Posted by Martin at 12:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 10, 2008
more frustration on craigs list
this one is funny and has alot of "f" words in it, so i am linking for the family audience.
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/5267/blocksjb0.png
Posted by Martin at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 8, 2008
Here is a cool widget
estimates your trade in value for electronics in the future. Of course, you have to buy INSURANCE from TechForward to get these values, but that is the cost of being green dudes!
Posted by Martin at 5:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ecycling gets mandate
Thanks EcoGeek. While companies will be required to buy back e-waste. I am sure they would prefer to have it reused for as long as possible. I smell opportunity.
Posted by Martin at 5:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
craig's list humor
ok, really potty humor.
1960's era round toilet, light-beige color. This seemingly uncloggable toilet is in good working condition (replaced by a white toilet) and in the year that I have known it, has never clogged, backed-up, or otherwise inconvenienced me.
Posted by Martin at 10:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
more frustration on craig's list
people have a pile of stuff and they want someone to take it all and to show up. From Craig's list free listing. You can hear the frustration in this post (one of many).
Big pile of free items, but you MUST TAKE ALL, not just what you want.. Bag full of misc. size shoes for girls,, bags of girls toys, new pictures for girls room (like Hillary Duff and Brittany Spears) new stuffed animals, etc. Must go today!! or going to thrift store first thing in morning, if not tonight . Will not hold, if you email and say you are coming, I will give you enough time to get here, then will offer to next person, my time is important too.
Posted by Martin at 8:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
now this is neighborly
Nice to see people are sharing the fruits of their bounty locally. Seen on Craig's list free section:
I've got a 1 1/2 trees of plums, much more than I'll use. Probably fill a 5 gallon bucket or two. I'm up the hill from the Old Cannery. Email for specific address. If you've got excess fruit/vegi's, bring them with you and I'll trade ya picked plums, otherwise, it's a u-pick deal. If you've got to ask where Edgewood is, it's probably too far away for you to come!
Posted by Martin at 7:43 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
frustration with Craig's list
While I love Craig's list, there seems to be growing frustration with the flakes on there. See this post today:
This is a repost due to liars - please do not say you want these unless you intend on picking them up. Most people on craigslist are honest, it would be nice if we could weed out the bad ones. If you change your mind, all you have to do is send an email! No big deal. Why is this so hard to do for some people? Oh well, here it is again: these are picture frames, very nice, new -
2 5x7
2 8x10
3 of 4 of them still wrapped in plastic
free - you pick up in Spanaway/Graham area
Posted by Martin at 7:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 2, 2008
Bad free searching experience
Ok, i need a couple new white boards for my office. Thoughts drift back to the couple dozen at Imperium where there are now no employees. White boards just hanging in empty offices. So I go to Craig's list free listings. Search for "white board" lots of results, but nothing that is actually a "white board". Lots of things with the words "white" and "Board" separate, but no white boards and no way to search for the two words together. So I go to SharingisGiving.org. Seattle site. Last post of something was from July 31, 2008. No traffic. Ugh. Same problem, nothing. But at least there I have the Yahoo Group targeted adds where I get three very specific white board ads. WhiteboardDepot.com, Murerase.com, billyboardsmfg.com. All highly relevant if I wanted to buy. This is actually more helpful to me than Craigs list who just left me with nothing. That is good, but I still want it for free. So I go to Freecycle.org. Lots more traffic and postings. Since they are on Yahoo, I get the same three sponsored ads. Good. No "offered" white boards but a coupel Wanted. So I take that way. I post a "Wanted". Notice this "Wanted" is only there for other "givers" to notice and maybe take pity on me by giving me what I "want". "Wanted" postings are discouraged in the guidelines. What I would really like is to save my search for white board and be notified when one comes available. If I don't get an offer by tomorrow, I will unfortunately be forced to go buy some whiteboards from china. Another consumption needlessly enabled by an inefficient reuse market.
Posted by Martin at 8:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
saw on craigslist
the reverse guilt trip on a free stuff listing:
"Remember, if you don't come and pick up all of this crap that I don't want to haul around or take responsibility for any more, it will wind up in the dump and on your soul come judgement day, and somehow it will all be your fault, and not mine, so come and save it (and your soul) now!"
Posted by Martin at 8:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
recycling by making new product
Making something new out of something old is another way to reuse a thing. Thanks Rob for sending over Recycled Waders. they take old fly fishing waders and make wallets, messenger bags and other things out of them. I love this idea, not sure it is a big business. This is one step beyond just making a messenger bag out of fabric spun from recycled PET bottles like the Fleurville bag. My favorite recycled messenger bag is the one from Alchemy Goods made from old bike innertubes.
Posted by Martin at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New Area of interest for me
I have been thinking over the last couple of months about what problem to focus my brain cycles on now. I still worry about renewable energy and biodiesel quite a bit and will continue to post on that, but am looking for something a bit more actionable. My thoughts have drifted back toward technology a bit and to that intersection of technology and energy. I am also much more interested in flanking maneuvers versus full frontal attacks. Imperium Renewables was a full frontal attack on diesel. Frontal attacks are very costly and the defender has the advantage of being dug in with heavy fortifications. While I love the thrill of the frontal attack, I don't have the stomach for another one of those just yet.
While casting around for a flanking move against big oil, I got to thinking about the overall consumerism culture which has been enabled by cheap oil and how that may change with sustainably higher price oil. When labor and transportation from China are both cheap, outsourcing makes sense. But what about when transportaion (fueled by oil) becomes expensive? And the labor starts to want the modern conviences requiring oil? I watched the video over at the Story of Stuff and wondered how that cycle will be affected by long term expensive distribution cycles and higher commodity prices across the board. Then I hear that EBay listings from individuals are up significantly as the economic downturn causes people to try to monitize their extra stuff. After tripping over an old work out bench of mine in the garage one to many times, I decided to get rid of it. It was basically new three years ago and hardly used. Not land fill material yet. It cost $399 new. I listed it on Craig's list for $50. Taking the picture and posting was kind painful for such a small priced item. No takers. Two weeks later I listed for $25. Two takers, five phone calls and three missed pick-ups later both buyers flaked. My time spent was now more than the revenue I would garner. So I decided to give it away for free. I posted on both Craigslist and Freecycle.org. Got about 10 calls/emails. Another 30 emails later and multiple phone calls, all five people I offered it to flaked. It still sits in my garage. I am now have about 20 hours invested in giving something away for free and have multiple failed transactions.
Yesterday a friend sent me an e-mail with a recommendation of a book to read. One cut and paste and two clicks on Amazon and the book is wizzing my way. Less than 30 seconds of work. Wow, something is really wrong in the low end of transactions. Especially person to person transactions.
So my new area of interst I am calling "Recommerce". Recycling, reuse, sharing, bartering, loaning of stuff. Keep it out of the landfill. Prevent purchasing. Share with your neighbors. Extend the life of goods beyond 6 months. I have created a "Recommerce" category on the blog and will be posting to that category.
Some of my favorite/inspirational sites in this area include:
Craigslist free listings
Freecycle.org
Freesharing.org
Paperbackswap.com
Sharething.com
RecycleBank
this is going to be fun
Posted by Martin at 1:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack