Troy SimpsonToronto == California 2.0
Buying some beachfront property in Toronto...
23 · 08
Supporting Entrepreneurship via Kickstarter
If you haven't heard of Kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/ go check it out.
Anyone can post a project idea and crowds of people can 'back' that project.
For example, I backed http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/705847536/coffee-joulies-your-coffee-just-right?ref=live which involved throwing down a small amount of cash in return for an early order of their product. It is a win-win situation for backers and entrepreneurs.
Almost 5000 people backed this project. For the folks running Joulies, this means they can rely on 5000 preorders. This type of support allows individuals to get an otherwise cost-prohibative project off the ground. Joulies required fairly difficult manufacturing to put some gel into stainless steel shells, ending up with a completely smooth finish similar to silverware.
There is some lag time in this process - I pledged my purchase in March and today just received the product. However in those 5 months the two entrepreneurs managed to figure out manufacturing, quality control, shipping and many other challenges.
Onwards to the unwrapping.
Package:
Easy open tab reminds me how convenient packaging could be (in lieu of those hard plastic shells)
Teaser shot...
And here we go. A small information card, a bag for the Joulies and the Joulies themselves in bubble wrap.
Information card is short and sweet.
Dave and Dave, the entrepreneurs running the Joulie project.
Quite a nice bag to hold the Joulies, and a great logo.
Well wrapped product.
The money shot. The engineering quality on these are much higher than I expected. Zero seams, and they really do look like flawless stainless steel. You could never guess they somehow crammed some gel inside those. They have a beautiful mirror finish.
And finally, the full product.
Congrats to the Joulies team for producing such a high grade product and thanks the the entire community that supports projects like this. I can't imagine how they would get their company off the ground without the help of the Internet.
29 · 06
Trying out Google+
Just got the invite. Thanks giant man, I owe you one.
Obviously the first picture had to be geeky. A meta-picture.
The circles concept is a great one. I don't share the same things with my mom as I do with people who read this blog. There is an inherent context in conversations that Facebook/Twitter do not capture.
Looking forward to see how much traction this 'Field Testing Phase' gets.
-troy
14 · 06
Funny charting or charting funny
You may have seen these before, but these are my favorite charts. They are able to transcend the chart form to create a joke based on existing items you can identify. They are simple jokes, but impressively embedded into a usually 'boring' visual form - charts. Enough commentary, enjoy the lols. Figure A.
Figure B
Figure C
30 · 03
Google +1 will be Google's first big success in social
Google takes the exact opposite approach releasing +1 that they took with Wave and Buzz. Very limited sharing/spamming and very high privacy levels - you must opt in.
Also just earlier today they made a rather late announcement that seems positioned towards the new privacy focus with +1:
3/30/2011 07:30:00 AMWe’d like to apologize again for the mistakes we made with Buzz. While today’s announcement thankfully put this incident behind us, we are 100 percent focused on ensuring that our new privacy procedures effectively protect the interests of all our users going forward.
Shortly after they announced +1 which a simple liking system similar to Facebook's "likes".
It seems like they have over-simplified the first version of this launch, but answered my immediate question in their launch post on their public blog. The big question is why bother +1'ing things - how will they be useful. If they only show up on my Google profile it has very limited value and I have limited motivation to use the service.
+1 in action:
3/30/2011 11:07:00 AMSo how do we know which +1’s to show you? Like social search, we use many signals to identify the most useful recommendations, including things like the people you are already connected to through Google (your chat buddies and contacts, for example). Soon we may also incorporate other signals, such as your connections on sites like Twitter, to ensure your recommendations are as relevant as possible. If you want to know who you're connected to, and how, visit the “Social Circle and Content” section of the Google Dashboard.
Will +1 have a higher rate of user adoption than Buzz and the mothballed Wave? I think it will as it is focused around their core competency - search. If I can +1 travel sites and my friends travelling with me see those suggested sites in their own searches, that has amazingly high value. It both increases the signal to noise ratio and leverages my social graph with one simple click. They appear to use your connections on twitter rather than spamming your connections on twitter with every +1 - that is a huge distinction and I believe the most important one of this launch.
Only time will tell - but I am betting this product will be a big winner for Google in two ways. It will improve the quality of their search over time, and it will get a foot in the door for passive social networking (using your twitter connections to decide what to show you during search instead of blasting twitter with each +1).
Signup to use +1 at http://www.google.com/experimental
View my +1's in your search if you are following me on twitter @troysimpson
Or view my Google Profile at https://profiles.google.com/troy.simpson/plusones
29 · 03
Evolving from online Hunter-gatherers
Early web experiences required a user to do extensive hunting to find information and people. As the online ecosystem matures, users are able to more efficiently manage their online experience. In a decade the web has matured from a loose collection of low resolution data to a high definition mapping of the world. The best individual data point to articulate the changes is online mapping. Web based maps have advanced from static pictures to high resolution satellite images with Google's Street View providing 360' imagery in almost every major city worldwide.
Search
The improvements in search have vastly improved the online experience. Only a few years back before 'googling' was a verb users often resorted to visiting multiple search engines when seeking answers online. Eventually search evolved to meta-searches, where a single site would aggregate results from multiple search engines to save repetitive searches across engines for users. Finally Google came along with a search engine robust enough to solve most peoples' needs catapulting themselves into the search leader. Search plays a primary role in users web experience, and has matured to a point where users can quickly find information they seek.
Communtiies
Community sites have done a great job organizing genres of data. Wikipedia is the simplest example where a community of users have created an extensive encyclopedia of information that rivals traditional expertly written Encyclopædia Britannica per subject. Wikipedia shines at an unrivalled speed of edits and breadth of subject matter. Recently there has been a resurgence of quality on question and answer sites, most notably the StackExchange question and answer network of sites. These sites provide an unparalleled quality of answers on a particular subject matter, with content entirely derived from their user community. Old forum based sites may have had a similar community, but the new format of Q&A sites enables its users to provide more detailed information on particular questions along with providing advanced tagging and search-ability of their content.
Social Communication
Social networks have greatly advanced the ability of individuals to share information to each other. Newsgroups and IRC traditionally allowed groups of people to connect to each other and share information to numerous other users. Most of the time these online chats were focused around a particular topic rather than individuals and their real life social graph. Eventually facebook came along and now with hundreds of millions of users people can instantly share pictures, statuses, play games with each other and socialize. Even facebook itself as evolved from a directory type listing of friends and photos to its new focus on a central queue of updates relevant to your social graph. Sites like Reddit allow communities to aggregate news and interesting links into a directory that suits your personal interests. This has vastly reduced the need for individuals to scour the web themselves, and is the meta-news model similar to how search engines evolved.
Trends
The common trend as information, communities and people organize online shift from a hunter-gatherer experience to 'farms' and 'cities'. Content farming exists on sites such as Wikipedia where information is carefully curated and organically grown by a community. Social networks are essentially community meeting points where people can share their lives with their relationships.
As the web continues to evolve and mobile apps enter the playing field the evolution continues. The web is moving towards a more individualized user-centric data funnel where users are able to rapidly find information relevant to their interests and social graph. As these communities form around subject matter the depth and complexity of data available is rapidly expanding and becoming accessible. Mobile apps excel when they provide users a queue of relevant realtime data. Twitter has already proven the value of this model in its simplest form and is a step towards providing individual users a highly personalized river of information mapped to their particular online fingerprint.
As a user I continue to evolve my online experience by increasing the information pushed to me, and reducing the amount of time running around seeking information. An example is using a mobile or desktop twitter client instead of checking twitter.com periodically. Sites are increasingly sending daily summaries of updates that are easily skimmed. A good web experience is defined by a high signal to noise ratio.
If you enjoyed reading this, perhaps you will find my twitter posts relevant. Follow me @ http://twitter.com/troysimpson
About
Random thoughts from Troy Simpson
Pages
Subscribe
