“My software works great when there aren’t any users around to screw it up.” Any developer will tell you that the biggest challenge on any project is the end user. They’re demanding, unforgiving, and often completely technically inept. They never read whatever instructions we provide — they read even less when the software is web-based. Their patience is nil, giving up after encountering a single hurdle. The silver lining to this cloud of endless user head-banging is that anybody can do a great job putting together awesome software if they only have the patience to listen and then implement.
Since announcing my work on Fwd:Vault, a few friends have come forward expressing interest in being angel investors. From what I’ve read, most entrepreneurs have to seek such people out, so I’ll take it as a compliment that these friends either (a) really like me, or (b) really trust my technical and prowess. I’m leaning towards (a)… Anyway, despite my obvious flattery at the offer, I always answer the same way…
If you missed my post a few days ago detailing the pros and cons of four major social networking tools — AddThis, ShareThis, Add to Any, and iBegin Share — you owe it to yourself to quickly review it and then get to the comments. First Pat Diven, Founder of Add to Any, responded with some great counter-arguments to my claims. We went back and forth several times comparing Add to Any and iBegin Share, and ended up covering a ton of ground on the best practices for these tools.
PHP includes some handy functions to find the first or last occurrence of a given string token in a string: <a href="http://www.php.net/strpos">strpos</a> and <a href="http://www.php.net/strrpos">strrpos</a>. However these functions are limited to just the first occurrence; what if I want to know the location of the second token’s position, or the third? These problems usually result in some serious coding acrobatics. Well no need for code-jitsu anymore. Based almost completely on a post I found at another blog — which is now down, how’s that for timing?
Update: Make sure you check out the comments! My post is just a launching point for some great commentary from staff at iBegin Share and Add to Any. Every site with timely or useful content should utilize some on-site bookmark sharing tool. I’m talking about the bar of links to social networking sites like Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, etc. that you find at the end of a post. These buttons are preset to recognize the URL of the page they appear on, allowing visitors to quickly propagate your content to their digital lifestream.
I purchased Mario Kart Wii and decided to register it at Club Nintendo. It’s an interesting service and I’m playing along to see where they go with it. If you want to register your own Nintendo games, you can find it on the back of a bifold pamphlet included in the game case. Some older games refer to the service as “My Nintendo” — if you had an account there, the system will automatically send you through a transfer process when you log in.
Voting ended a few days ago for StartupNation’s 2009 Elevator Pitch Competition, and Fwd:Vault had a pretty good showing! Here’s a final tally on the top 10…
* CineCore - 1573 * My Sales Finder - 1264 * WorkingMomLifeline - 1225 * PublicStuff.org - 1172 * TBD - Michael Shipe - 879 * Spider Climbing - 765 * iSyndica USA Incorporated - 638 * BidWilly - 628 ** Fwd:Vault - 525** EasyEvaluations - 505 That’s out of about 110 entries, so I’m very happy with Fwd:Vault’s showing!
During the networking hour at my last entrepreneurial networking event, I had the pleasure of meeting two fellow young starters who are starting their own identity consultancy (I’d love to link, but there’s no site yet). We had a great talk about the challenges of properly pricing your goods and services. They were nervous about over-pricing their services, driving off customers. At the same time, they didn’t want to leave significant money on the table.
Fwd:Vault’s got some press, woohoo! I was approached by Philadelphia Startup Blog for an interview on Fwd:Vault. The interview was done via email and just went live today. Check it out and let me know how I did.
In case you haven’t looked at my sidebar in the last month or so, my new startup Fwd:Vault is entered in StartupNation’s 2009 Elevator Pitch Competition. Through endless harassment support of friends, family, and professional colleagues, we’ve been able to hold down a spot in the top 10 (6th as of this writing). That’s simply fantastic in and of itself. Now we are down to the wire. The contest ends on March 20, just about 2 weeks away.
