With The Band

Facebook Platform is awesome.

Late one night, a couple months ago, my girlfriend and her best friend called me up with an idea for a Facebook application (this was just after the Facebook platform, a way for people to make mini-sites that live within Facebook and are used/shared by people with Facebook accounts). I initially ignored it, as I was busy on my own projects. But then, undeterred, they told my best friend. He called me up, and all of a sudden, I found myself deep in the Facebook API, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

We opened up our application last week, and invited a few of our friends to join it. Just now, less than a week later, we hit 100 users.  I’m not going to say what it is or what it does, you can go on Facebook and check it out yourself.

We anticipated some friction with this, especially among our friends, as this application addresses something that some consider very private. Some of our friends refused to add it because they are afraid that I am going to look into their private data. Hah. We’re going to submit it to the public application directory in the coming days, in the hope that doing that causes our membership to expand exponentially, as it does with other applications. After that, we may look towards some form of sponsorship. This has been a great learning experience, not to mention a good exercise of working with someone else, bug-testing, user-testing, privacy issues, etc. This is the first, and definitely won’t be the last, thing you’ll see out of me.

I have 101 items in my toread queue on del.icio.us. eeks!

Living here for six years, I had never seen any kind of entrepreneurial community. After graduating, I kept up that assumption.

And wow. I was so wrong. So very wrong. So unbelievably wrong. I’m an idiot.

Too bad I found out about this too late so I’m on the waiting list, and for this I’ll be at this.

It’ll be nice finding a group of like-minded people, and hopefully this experience will motivate me to do something more. But for now, I am very happy… and very busy.

Sorry for the link fun.

Awesome.

Search Engine Optimization has become one of the more recent hot topics in the web world, based around how high up a site appears in search results (namely Google). A lot of companies will pay insane amounts of money to make sure they show up. I believe that it’s best to leave it to organic growth, in the hopes that, by having people legitimately link to you, your ranking will rise. But sometimes, you just have to do something about it. Take a look at the third and fourth results.

Or so they say. Haven’t blogged in a while. Been too busy with life and everything. Then started working on my own theme for this blog, which is a sinkhole I always seem to dive in to. Then found a nice pretty theme online, loaded that up, loaded most of my regularly read blogs on the side, and poof… Here I am.

Haven’t posted in a while. Been busy in work, in life, and in other stuff….

Callwave asked me if I wanted to try out their new Vtxt feature. Callwave is a relatively new service that replaces your cell phone carrier’s existing voicemail, adding on e-mail/text message notification and web access. It’s a great service, with one caveat: you still had to listen to the message! Their new Vtxt feature is revolutionary in that it will transcribe the message and e-mail/txt you the transcript. Amazing.

I signed up for Callwave and Jott at the same time many months ago, and was wondering when the two features both of these offered would be combined. (By the way Jott, how about some search engine optimization? Do a google search for Jott, and see what comes up first).

A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.

J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

I Chat, Therefore I am

… MY ASS

CAIRO — Soon after a firebomb exploded at 3 a.m.
and destroyed four computers in the Al-Shawa Online Internet Cafe in
Gaza, owner Alaa al-Shawa clicked onto his e-mail at an undamaged
machine.

The first message surprised
him: It was from the bombers themselves, explaining that establishments
such as his were keeping Muslims away from prayer and providing
pornography. That’s why it was hit.

“This
just shows how confused these fanatics are,” said Al-Shawa, 27. “Even
they use the Internet to circulate their statements, but they think
everyone else uses it for porno.”

About 45 Internet outlets have been bombed since Dec. 1, according to figures from Gaza’s Central Police Office.

“In chaotic Gaza, the Internet is a Target” - Daily Herald

The only thing worse than a paranoid entrepreneur is a paranoid entrepreneur who talks to his dog.

I fully admit it. I am paranoid as hell. I am someone who (I guess?) is lucky enough to have a very active and creative mind, and is always coming up with new “things.” A lot of it is crap. A lot of it is whack. But I believe the best thing I can do for the community is share my ideas. I have been inspired by Steve Poland’s Techquila Shots and Idea Is Queen! and have seen that, besides ideas for “the next big thing” being a dime a dozen, but the best thing is to share it. By writing about it, you yourself are putting your idea into some semi-solid form. Furthermore, by blogging it you are allowing people to actively contribute and participate in your ideas. I think I will start doing the same.