April 2009
24 posts
PhoneTag named "5 best start-ups of 2009"
Image via CrunchBase
This is the kind of stuff that just makes being an entrepreneur so much fun. We were just named by Daleela Farina of AOL’s Blogginstocks.com on of the 5 best start-ups of 2009. [Full article here]
WatchThe Chinese Problem*
Until last week one of my favorite brands for outdoor gear (jackets/backpacks/etc.) Arc’teryx. Last week I had about an hour to kill before a meeting and saw an Arc’teryx retailer.
I found a shell that I liked and was about to buy it when I saw that it was made in China. I do business globally and believe strongly in the world being flat from a business...
Great demo of browser technology →
Click on the link. I really like the way that these guys made the browser so interactive. There are some really catchy ways of using this same method for ecommerce which would be really sticky I think (via hrrrthrrr)
Qik's roaming SIM
Image via CrunchBase
Yesterday Qik and Cubic Telecom announced a partnership for a roaming SIM card for Qwik’s service.
Qik is an application that lets you stream real time video from your cell phone to the web. The problem is that when you travel the data charges for using Qwik can be in the $1,000’s. By partnering with Cubic they now have a solution which allows for reasonable...
The Struggle bus... →
The above link is a definite must read for anyone who is out there dealing with the issues of the economic environment. The story is of a company Calliflower and the problems they ran into in hiring a 3rd party developer to build their iPhone app.
The problems center around Calliflowers need to stretch out payments to manage cash flow matched with a developers issues in getting the code done on...
Twitters Business Impact
My friend Andy Abramson put this list together of 7 business use cases on Twitter. It is a nice summary on the business impact that I have seen:
1. Monitor customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction as well as wants and needs (Opinion Research, Customer Service and Product Development)
2. Early warning system of potential news angles that may emerge. (Crisis Management)
3. Find happy customers who...
“Musk calls Stross a “huge douchebag…and an idiot” and says “What is he doing...”
– Elon Musk, founder Tesla Motors via TechCrunch
This makes Elon my new hero. Stross wrote an article in the NYT about Tesla that was really negative. It is so rare that CEO’s/Entrepreneurs call out guys like Stross and I am so happy that Elon did.
Managing Twitter for Business
Twitter for me is a total business tool. For some reason I am just not into using it, I concentrate all of my online presence both personal and business on this blog.
I am now managing 3 Twitter accounts, @JamieSiminoff, @SimulScribe and @Grid. Soon I will be adding a 4th which will be PhoneTag (still trying to secure the name on Twitter). I also watch a number of key words that when posted on...
So tired of NDA's
I would try to add up all of the time that my teams and I have spent reading and signing NDA’s but it would probably make me sick so I prefer not to.
Personally an NDA is just a waste of time and a worthless piece of crap. How many times have you sat in a meeting and someone says “I am under NDA so please do not tell anyone else about [insert highly confidential information about...
You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care? →
Nice article in the NYT about Voicemail that was int the print version last Thursday. PhoneTag got a nice mention in it as well.
Amex plays dirty
Image via Wikipedia
I was watching the local NBC news in LA last night and there was a story about Amex closing peoples cards down and taking all of their rewards points. One of the examples they had was a guy with 7,000,000 points which American Express admits was in good standing when his account was shut off. Each point is worth about $0.01 so Amex took a $70,000 profit on their books in...
