80: TZ Discussion – Get That Monkey!

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Justin and Jason discuss the successful start of the donation drive, the show’s grand patron Ben Boyter and executive producer Felix Leong, Rob Walling and the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast, why Justin moved Pluggio from Rackspace’s Cloudsites service to a VPS, password hashing and rainbow table attacks, a password strength meter in Javascript, a PHP password hashing framework, developing browser extensions and bookmarklets, the Startup Toolkithow champions push past the pain, avoiding toxic relationships, the new TechStars book Do More Faster, diffing startup advice and Jason’s idea for doing a startup advice cage match series, TwitterCounter and the growth rate of Justin’s Twitter following, why Jason think’s PHP is to Ruby as SF is to LA and some startup naming suggestions.

The “Tiny Software Company” Revolution

There’s a new phenomenon taking hold. This is the era of the “Tiny Software Company”.

Indi-developers are are starting their own “mom-and-pop” software companies all over the world.

And they’re leaving work. And they’re making a full time living.

Peldi started a million dollar industry with one simple Adobe air app. Patrick Mckenzie is making a full time living from his ridiculously nich app Bingo Card Creator. I’ve been pulling in $1000/month for the past year with Pluggio. Taylor Norish makes a great living from PrintFriendly. Pete Michaud became financially free at 25. The list goes on.

So what this all amounts to is…

“If you’re a software developer with an idea… GET OFF YOUR ASS and MAKE IT HAPPEN! There’s never been a better time! ;)”

(p.s. Post links to your projects in the comments below)

78: TZ Discussion – The 360 Degree Resume

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Justin and Jason discuss the BATF (big ass text file) method of storing information, building a beta email list for AppIgnite, Jason’s new blog Codus Operandi and Justin’s new blog JustinVincent.com, whether Twitter is worth the time and how to build a following when you’re not famous, why Swarm needs to be an everything app and not just an iPad app, why you should display your picture on your blog, using IndieGoGo for fund-raising, whether outsourcing email or tweets is a bad thing, blog posts about TechZing by Udi Mosayev and Karan Vasudeva, a La Critique of CodeBoff.in, a status update on Pluggio and AppIgnite, pricing and marketing possibilities for AppIgnite and why you should start marketing the day you start coding.

Don’t Confuse Self-Worth With Entrepreneurial Success

I dedicated 15 years to becoming a professional recording artist. My favorite musical time was spent with Doug, Eugene, & JP in the band called Moneypenny (1995-2000). We were predominantly a live band. We regularly played live gigs across Ireland and had huge amounts of fun doing so. We also played national TV and radio a number of times. We released an album and a few singles.

How we looked back in the day:

That was 10 years ago.

I haven’t been able to talk about music since then (until recently).

During that entire musical phase I placed so much of my self-worth on “musical success” that not achieving it was a huge blow.

It’s an important lesson for all want-to-be entrepreneurs.

When we undertake entrepreneurial endeavors we are told to put everything into it.

But how much is too much?

At what point do we draw the line and understand that our own self-worth will never be fulfilled by building a successful business, or by becoming an internet rock star?

I get the feeling this is the central theme of “The Social Network”.

No matter how much success Zuckerberg was able to achieve, no matter how rich he was able to become, he could never get the acceptance he craved from his peers. Finally, he understood this when he became the richest most famous graduate of his college class – yet the one girl he craved to accept him wouldn’t even return his Facebook friend request.

Put a Picture Of You On Your Blog

It’s only a small detail. But it can make a big difference.

On a side note.

A friend of mine saw the above picture and said “It’s a weird angle. Too much chin. Too much cheek.”

I politely explained.

“It’s not the angle. It’s too much chin and too much cheek!” 😉

It’s not an iPad app, it’s an EVERYTHING app

When I released my iPad app Swarm I didn’t know what to expect. I was very lucky because it instantly hit the front page of the app store in the games category. It stayed on the front page for 2-3 weeks.The below chart is an accurate trend chart showing exactly how Swarm sales have been doing for the past four months since launch.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to see what happened here. When the app is no longer on the front page sales are a non-event.

At first I thought:

How can I tell the world about Swarm and keep up my sales in the app store? I know, I can drum-up PR on the web. Then people will learn about Swarm and purchase it in the app store!

But… doesn’t that sound like a leaky bucket?

Think of all the people who will be reading about Swarm NOT using an iPad. In fact MOST people will be on a desktop, others on mobile, some will even be on Google TV or any number of other devices.

Hmm.

I shouldn’t be thinking in terms of iPad app, or iPhone app, or even mobile app. I should be thinking in terms of an EVERYTHING app.

No matter what device someone is using when they hear about Swarm , they should instantly and always be able to download and purchase it there and then. That’s the only possible way to capture 100% value from marketing & PR efforts.

CSS3 and .png’s Are Pretty Sweet

I recently created an iPad game using CSS3 and .png’s. The results are pretty nice. All the chrome is CSS3 (i.e boxes, curved corners and gradients). All the playing pieces are .png’s with glows and semi transparency. There are 8 sprites in total which are dynamically copied, and placed by jQuery when the game loads. These are screen shots form the iPad.

Why You Need a 360 Degree Resume

Little did I know – when I built this site – what I was really building was a 360 degree resume. I’d never heard the term before. Because it didn’t exist (until a few minutes ago). It was just coined by a friend of mine during a phone conversation. We were discussing the site that you’re looking at now.

Here’s what he said:

“Your site is very different from a traditional two dimensional resume. It’s a bit like walking around you and looking at you from different angles.

You have control over what you’re showing to people… but to them it feels like you’re standing there and they are able to inspect different aspects of your online persona at will.

It’s much more of a warts-and-all experience, which makes sense given today’s all access social media expectations. People don’t expect things to be hyped, polished and packaged in the same way as days of old.

The beauty of it is it enables you to pull in many different aspects of your working-self to create an overall picture of who you are.

For example a prospective employer can listen to your podcasts or view your tweet stream to get a sense of how you interact with people and what kind of ideas you have.

It’s very powerful and very compelling and it’s apparent that it’s genuine.

It’s sort of like a 360 degree resume.

Nice site.

I like it.”

Let The Blog Race Begin

For those of you who listen to the TechZing podcast, you’ll know that my co-host Jason has the idea that it will be faster (and easier) for him to build his blog from scratch in HTML rather than install WordPress. He talks about it here (35min. in) and here (23min. 35 sec. in).

Um. Ok.

I call that a Jasonism. So anyway – I set THIS blog up in about an hour and showed it to him. He liked it. He suggested we have a blog race. To see who can get the most blog views within a month. Ok. So starting Monday 11th Oct 2010 we’ll both be posting one blog a day for 30 days.

So let the blog race begin!

On Monday.

If he has a blog.

Update:

Aha! Here’s Jason’s newly built blog 😉

The west coast of the USA is about to fall off – Lex Luthor style

Lex Luthor: Now, call me foolish, call me irresponsible, but it occurs to me that a 500 megaton bomb planted at just the proper point would, uh…
Superman: Would destroy most of California. Millions of innocent people would be killed. The west coast as we know it would…
Lex Luthor: Fall into the sea.
Lex Luthor: Bye-bye, California. Hello, new west coast. My west coast.
Lex Luthor: Costa Del Lex. Luthorville. Marina del Lex.

Lex may have just gotten his way with the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a subduction zone that stretches from Northern “Vancouver Island” to “Northern California”.

An interesting little footnote on Wikipedia states there is a 37% risk of a 9 (or higher) earthquake along the entire west coast of the USA within the next 50 years!

My advice? Buy Nevada BUY!!!!