Startup

Highlight = Wow

Every now and then I am amazed by a piece of technology. I’m a gadget guy and has a 64GB iPhone completely loaded with apps. It takes a bit to stand out from the crowd but today, that app is Highlight. I know that Highlight isn’t exactly new but I live in Ithaca, NY and no [...]

Dave Grohl – Software Visionary

Dave Grohl may have inadvertently discovered the formula for mobile app sales.  Yes, the lead singer to the Foo Fighters.  Watch this video to see what I’m talking about. Okay, so the video is about music.  Sure.  And the interview starts off with “most white people dance to the lyrics”.   He then takes that and [...]

Response: Splash screens == sloth

I was reading my favorite news aggregator this morning and an article from assertTrue() popped up about splash screens and bloatware. The summary of the article is that applications are slow to start and that is disrespectful to the user. I think he makes a great point – why does Photoshop need to load every [...]

My Next Idea

A personal atomic clock.

PEN TYPE-A

On Monday Aug 15, 2:16pm EDT, I contributed to the PEN TYPE-A on Kickstarter.  Well, tomorrow is February 1st and so that means that it has been roughly five and a half months since I funded the project.  And you know what – that’s fine with me. An hour ago I got an invitation to [...]

Cornell Venture Challenge / $10,000

BR Venture Fund is seeking applications for the Cornell Venture Challenge (CVC)! The Cornell Venture Challenge (CVC) is Cornell University’s prestigious Business Plan Competition. On April 19, 2012, during the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration event a select group of applicants will get the chance to pitch new and exciting business ideas to a panel of professional investors [...]

Update: Outsourced Development

It turns out that some people disagree with me Read Part 1 The other day I posted an article about my aversion to using outsourced software development firms for new product development. Well, I got a few private emails and comments (which didn’t make it past my filter) telling me that I was wrong. So [...]

I’m in a textbook

I’m in a textbook.  Yup – one of those expensive things that you’re required to buy, that took three trees to make, and that you will resell for 20% of what you paid.  This particular textbook is called Marketing by McGraw Hill and I contributed to the social media chapter.  I took all of the [...]

Life is short

Cynical advice to entrepreneurs: Believe it or not, a lot of people want to be involved with a start up.  Of those, most people don’t want to take any of the risk.  Of course, they still want to take all of the credit for success and that creates a problem for you.  You will find [...]

Outsourced Development

Why I won’t touch a company that doesn’t have in-house development The headline might sound like a bit of an exaggeration but in the last 8 years of my life working on and with startups, I’ve found plenty of examples why fully outsourced IT has failed but no good example of when it has worked [...]