Aaron White

The Barefoot Professor: by Nature Video (via...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:44:03 -0500

The Barefoot Professor: by Nature Video (via NatureVideoChannel)

This is a great video on barefoot running (and why I’m running barefoot in the Boston Marathon this year!)

"It takes a loose grip on reality to create new ones"

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:41:09 -0500

“It takes a loose grip on reality to create new ones”

- quoting myself on the topic of good artists

infoneer-pulse:slantback: In Vast.com’s testing, Mad Libs...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:13:34 -0500

infoneer-pulse:slantback:

In Vast.com’s testing, Mad Libs style forms increased conversion across the board by 25-40%. (via LukeW | “Mad Libs” Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%)

Now that’s kinda clever! :)

Boston Marathon, Barefoot - Donate for Prizes & Charity

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:59:07 -0500

I’ve teamed up with my friends at RunKeeper to run the Boston Marathon, wearing my Vibrams. This is my first marathon ever, and RunKeeper’s planning to boil this event into something really big!

Now is the time for charitable folks to help me kick off my fund raising… and potentially win some cool prizes.

For every $10 donated to Jason Jacobs (RunKeeper CEO, this will be his 3rd marathon) or to myself, you’ll be entered in the

RunKeeper Marathon Sweepstakes!

I’d be infinitely grateful if you’d donate to my most awesome cause (educating Dorcestor youth on health & welnesss issues)

PS: You could donate to Jason’s cause, but that’s not nearly as much fun. He’s wimping out and running in sneakers.

robgo.org: What Lean Startups are NOT

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:26:00 -0500

robgo.org: What Lean Startups are NOT:

The Lean Startup movement isn’t terribly new, but the level of hype is reaching pretty significant levels. The contrarian in me is always a little wary when anything gets overly hyped. To be clear, I really really like the concepts of the lean startup and customer development. I’d recommend any…

My response to Rob’s thoughtful post:

Agreed on the lack of magic formula, and certainly official-looking charts are deceptive. On the other hand, the charts are a useful too to communicate differences against other startup / development approaches.

re: big opportunities vs lean; this a point a lot of smart, lean-wary startup friends bring up, and I think it’s a good one. My thoughts: in the spirit of “there is no one size fits all”, if we do away w/ all the CD/Lean ‘stuff’ except the core principle, learn fast, then I think that logic applies to any organization pursuing any particular vision, no matter the scope.

Make sure your team is learning fast & furious, and if you aren’t capable of articulating what you learned last week, recognize that it’s unclear if you’ve made forward progress. If it wasn’t possible to learn, fine, but if it was, you’re at risk of ‘straying’. If that persists week over week, where’s the forcing function to keep you in check? Months & months of ‘work’ without external validation is clearly a company killer.

Startups Have Too Many Engineers

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:27:00 -0500

Startups Have Too Many Engineers:

jjacobs22:

I enjoyed this post by Tom Loverro, nice contrast to the ‘no place for an MBA in a startup’ rhetoric that I’ve heard so much about. No doubt engineers are the critical lifeblood of an early stage company, but as a non-technical founder (w/ an MBA), I like to think that our roles are important too.

I agree that non-technical founders are important, which is to say: all founders, no matter their type, are critically important. They craft vision, work hard to understand customers, and provide the right solution.

Tom’s real point appears earlier in his post: “the single greatest cause of startup failure is not understanding the customer’s needs, EVEN THOUGH THE FOUNDERS THINK THEY DO”. If you are thinking about hiring in a marketing person (non-founder) to help close that customer understanding gap… I worry it’s a little late for the startup.

markitecht: Remove features, increase engagement! Hypothesis:...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:00:42 -0500

markitecht:

Remove features, increase engagement! Hypothesis: feature set changes (removal of 50% of information presented and possible actions) will increase user engagement. This is one data point suggesting that this hypothesis may be true. Deeper analytics also running.

Love this stuff. Hurry through that loop again, Christopher! The more learning you can share the better.

What makes Apple's App Store tick?

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:06:13 -0500

The App Store removes a ton of muck. Most importantly (from this survey at least), dealing with credit cards and payments is one of the biggest pains for developers, and the App Store completely shields developers from it.

The iPhone platform succeeds because the App Store “removes the muck.”

iseffcom (via caterpillarcowboy)

Handling payments is one of the gnarlier pieces website infrastructure from a technical perspective, but also from the perspective of conversion: it’s really, really hard to grease the wheels of payment online. How do you accept credit cards? What about gift certificates? What about building trust? What about re-using a customers billing data instead of losing some % of them by asking for it?

The App Store is the ultimate conduit to $$ across tons of interesting demographics. Amazon is right up there with it. Turns out there is another 800lb gorilla gearing to shake things up: Facebook; and Facebook is equipped to do it web-wide.

(PS: Where the f**k are the credit card companies during all this? Why aren’t they playing in this space? Why didn’t they invent PayPal for website payment processing?)

"Why does Buzz even exist? Is it because Google wants to make my life better in some way? No. Buzz..."

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:44:42 -0500

“Why does Buzz even exist? Is it because Google wants to make my life better in some way? No. Buzz exists because Google feels threatened by Twitter and Facebook and wants to kill them. Google has become what Microsoft used to be—the Borg, the company that gobbles up ideas from smaller rivals and cranks out lame imitations in an attempt to put the little guys out of business.  ”

- - Daniel Lyons from Newsweek

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/techtonicshifts/archive/2010/02/10/google-buzz-more-like-buzz-kill.aspx

(via dpstyles) (via tedr)

Lean Startups Panel - 2/24 @ MIT

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:29:15 -0500

February 24th (exactly two weeks from today) I’ll be part of a Lean Startups panel discussion at MIT. You can find the information here.

I’ll be joining Boston’s David Cancel & Palle Pederson to talk about the ‘new theory’ of startups, and to share success (& horror) stories from my experiences in the trenches with DoInk.com.

Hope to see you there!

Til Death Do Us Part ?!?!? by suh_blim_uh_nal, made at...

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:54:18 -0500

Til Death Do Us Part ?!?!? by suh_blim_uh_nal, made at DoInk.com

Valentine’s day is right around the corner. Let your loved ones know exactly how deranged you are for them!

(be sure to hit full-screen icon, it makes it ‘pop’ even better)

hiten: iPad Camera rumor becoming a reality? We think so....

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:26:40 -0500

hiten: iPad Camera rumor becoming a reality? We think so. « Mission:Repair Blog

Not surprising, and somehow still cool :)

The Apple iPad: First Impressions

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:58:00 -0500

infoneer-pulse: jeffrock: David Pogue:

At the same time, the bashers should be careful, too. As we enter Phase 2, remember how silly you all looked when you all predicted the iPhone’s demise in that period before it went on sale.

Like the iPhone, the iPad is really a vessel, a tool, a 1.5-pound sack of potential. It may become many things. It may change an industry or two, or it may not. It may introduce a new category — something between phone and laptop — or it may not. And anyone who claims to know what will happen will wind up looking like a fool.

I wasn’t fully convinced during the presentation, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more niches it seems to effortlessly fill, the more creative apps I can imagine, the better it seems for ANY form of non-movie-night media consumption (Which means other movies, tv, books, magazines, web-content, etc).

To beat a dead horse, it’s not about features, it’s about experience, and the combination of a touch-educated public, developers who are motivated and enabled to continue capitalizing on that, as well as accessible pricing creates scenarios we aren’t capable of fully predicting.

I am willing to establish a base-line however: a successful hit by Apple sales definitions.

Product Market Fit & DoInk.com

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:40:00 -0500

We at DoInk.com recently ran a customer development survey to gain some insight from our users; word on the street is that if greater than 40% of surveyed users would be “very disappointed” if your service no longer existed, you’ve achieved product/market fit.

At greater than 75%, I’d say we have something special on our hands! Now that I’ve shared that minor success, back to the task of helping more discover the great tools & community we’ve built.

Good developers share a lot in common with super-villains: both are highly intelligent, incredibly...

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:42:23 -0500

Good developers share a lot in common with super-villains: both are highly intelligent, incredibly confident, and completely unable to estimate the chances of success.

(Also, don’t forget the shared love of sarcasm)

Running the Boston Marathon this April

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:38:00 -0500

A friend of mine gave me a *unique* opportunity to run the Boston Marathon this April, and I’m (overly) excited about it.

While I can’t share the details (yet), it’s going to be a memorable & highly visible experience.

So please pardon the temporary increase in running-related posts, hopefully you’ll find my 3-month journey from runner to ‘Marathoner’ interesting & entertaining.

PS: Did I mention I plan on running it barefoot?

caterpillarcowboy: fishy: meldoesgradschool:prostheticknowledge:...

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:57:00 -0500

caterpillarcowboy: fishy: meldoesgradschool:prostheticknowledge: via HomeTone

AOK Apple Calendar

Here, the German agency, Serviceplan has exploited the concept of “an apple a day for better health” on behalf of the insurance company AOK and has come up with an amazing wall calendar shaped dispenser that holds up to 31 apples in a Plexiglas tube resistant UVA and UVB. The AOK insurance company has very well brought the saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” To life in a very attractive way. In the beginning of the month there are 31 apples in this UVA-and UVB-resistant Plexiglas. You remove one apple from the tube and eat it each day and give a boost to your health. The rest of the move up and reveal the date on a calendar fastened behind the apples. Same goes on each month depending on the number of days, the number of apple varies. Hanging smartly on the walls of your room the apple calender will remind you of having an apple each time you look at it to know the date.

Mmmm, I love 30 day old apples. So delicious!

I think I’d be better served by the 7-day version as well. Nice kitchen/office concept though; anything that automates success = win.

giantrobotlasers: The averages are uglier. Median filtering on...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:49:00 -0500

giantrobotlasers:

The averages are uglier. Median filtering on the top %0.000001 of faces will likely produce a better result.

The average face of these people famous in part because of their pretty faces is more attractive than the slightly androgynous average.

Fascinating. On an objective, scientific note: Fox-Bellucci-Portman-Johansson merge is a total hottie.

Today we launched PoketyPoke

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:21:52 -0500

siminoff:

PoketyPoke is like Tripit for conference calls. Once you sign up you just forward any free form email or calendar invite to calls@poketypoke.com. At the time of the conference call PoketyPoke calls you (on the number of your choosing) and bridges you into the conference call. PoketyPoke does all of the deep dialing so that you do not have to remember all of the bridge pins, etc.

Doesn’t just solve a pain point for me, but for those on the other end of the call :) Cool.

giantrobotlasers: #lookatthisfuckingproductivityboom

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:51:00 -0500

giantrobotlasers: #lookatthisfuckingproductivityboom