start small.Think Big.

Plan your new product or service the smart way

Adam Wallace — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:19:39 +0000

I’ve been working on a new product concept which now needs collaborative input so I was looking for a solution to capture feedback from the crew, the only problem is they’re located in different countries.

Enter RivalMap, a platform to share and manage information about your competitors or in my case, potential competitors.

These guys seem to have got it right from the start, the interface is intuitive and ajax snappy, you can drill down on each competitor and then use the wiki to summarise their products or add notes, concerns, threat levels, SWOT and tags. The product comparison matrix is extremely effective for bringing together a range of ideas to help identify and prioritise which ones to pursue for your new product or service.

A drop box email even allows you to automatically add notes via email which other team member can keep track of via an RSS feed.

It’s free for 3 users but then jumps to USD$49 for 5 users with file storage. The way to make this product even better would be to combine their other offering called Competitious, which tracks blogs and site traffic data about each competitor, into the core. This move would make it a truly impressive analysis market research platform for the masses although it’s getting the job done for me as is.

Moving Insurance – Don’t use the mover’s policy!

Adam Wallace — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:27:58 +0000

Ok I agree, it would be hard to find a dryer topic but you may be surprised how easy it is to save $1350 when moving, especially as that extra money can go into funding your business. In fact that’s almost exactly the development cost to build a small Dotnetnuke module via my offshore team.

Anyway, we’re moving from Melbourne to Brisbane in a week and I needed to organise insurance for the move. I completed the insurance declaration and was surprised to find it was going to cost $1700 for premium insurance. Premium basically means that if your electronics good such as LCD TV or computers don’t work at the other end you will be covered. This seemed far too high so I decided to shop around.

I came across www.removalsinsurance.com.au and completed their online quotation to compare. Surprisingly it came to $450 including storage at the other end. It sounded a little too good to be true so I called them up and checked a coherent ‘real person’ existed at the other end. After battering them with a few scenarios it sounded like the same policy underwritten by Allianz, just a lot cheaper. It took only 5 minutes to fill out the online form and you didn’t need to itemise everything. I’ll post an update if it turns pear shaped.

Slightly random but hopefully helpful.

A better way to blog? – Windows Live Writer

Adam Wallace — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:58:23 +0000

I’m finding myself writing more and more online content such as software specifications for my offshore development team so anything that makes this job easier grabs my attention. I was recently made aware of Windows Live Writer via a DotNetNuke (DNN) module plug-in called Digmeta and this post is my first attempt at seeing how it works prior to purchasing the plug-in for DNN.

So far so good. If you can read this then the post has made it to word press and it’s passed the first test.

The World Map of Social Networks

Adam Wallace — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:35:06 +0000

A group of blogger’s complied this world map showing which social networks dominate by country and as you can see it’s quite a mixed bag. It will be interesting to see if convergence happens and the drivers behind this. They have a textual breakdown on the original post as I found it difficult to distinguish between the shades of blue.

While I’m on social networks, if you’re intending on developing applications for the face book platform Dave McClure wrote a good post on how to market your application, with the key take out point being- “I’m 110% convinced that consistent & creative app marketing & event notification via the Feed is the key to unlocking the viral power of Facebook”

Find your new domain name with ease

Adam Wallace — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:10:46 +0000

www.bustaname.com - You add a series of words and Bust a Name mashes together combinations of domain names that are actually available to purchase. The alternative word suggest features also does away with the need for Visual Thesaurus. It’s great!

Development and Productivity Tools – Web 2.0 Style

Adam Wallace — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 05:27:48 +0000

I stumbled across a blog summerising a range of web development tools that’s worth referencing. It’s split in the following categories:

Project planning
Development
Code search and manuals
Issue tracking
Usability testing and tracking
Widgets and Web services

I’m trying to find a robust source code management solution for a project I’m about to start which will enable multiple developers creating Dotnetnuke modules using ASP.NET to collaborate effectively online. Can anyone recommend one?

I see http://www.springloops.com/ have a source code management tool focused on web development so I will trial that.

Google Maps now a Drag

Adam Wallace — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:42:04 +0000

Google Maps has improved its directions feature dramatically by adding “Click and Drag”: after laying out a route, click and drag any point to have Google Maps recalculate the route with updated distance and time. It works great when you don’t like the suggested route, want to take a detour or need to avoid traffic jams and the like. This video walks you through the new features.

It promoted me to have another attempt at configuring my EMTAC GPS receiver with Google Maps for mobile. Previously the mobile version hasn’t been able to locate my GPS receiver so with a bit more searching i found the solution.

The trick was to edit the registry on my Dopod 838 Pro, as described in the blog post above and delete the “Hide” key located under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ControlPanel\GPS Settings. A soft reset was required before the GPS icon would show up under Start/Settings/System/GPS. By following the instructions for Pocket PC and configuring the intermediate driver Google Maps successfully picked up my GPS and started working.

This post from Google Groups provides more details on the setup process.

I have yet to test this in the car and see how it compares to CoPilot Live or whether there will be any conflicts with the Bluetooth port. I remember the guy at OW advising not to create a separate Bluetooth connection (as I have done above) but instead configure it through CoPilot Live so you can keep the port free for a Bluetooth headset. However it sounds like setting up the intermediate driver remedies this, so we shall see.

Of course using Google Maps on the move is only good if you have a cheap mobile data plan or Wifi access.

Business Plan, Funding? Who needs that…

Adam Wallace — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:30:57 +0000

Guy Kawasaki moderated a five-person panel where founders from the following 5 companies spoke about what it takes to get started and how they have delt with many of the issiues startups face:

    Marcus Kazmierczak, vp of engineering, Maya’s Mom
    Markus Frind, Founder, PlentyofFish.com
    James Hong, Co-Founder, HotorNot.com
    Dave Lu, CEO, Fanpop
    Karen Northup, CEO and Founder, CoreFino

PlentyOfFish.com - amazing - Markus Frind is the only employee and makes $5-6 million/year with Google ads.

Lots of ideas weaved into the conversations – worth a watch!

Skype launches new service in New Zealand

Adam Wallace — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:41:21 +0000

Skype offers domestic calls for zero cents per minute and international calls from mobile phones at local rates

As reported by ComputerWorld- Skype has launched a new subscription package in New Zealand, called Skype Pro. For a monthly fee of $3.55, the package offers free calls to domestic landlines – Great news but that’s got to start hurting Telecom.

When I was in NZ last month I used Skype and Skype out frequently to report back home with good call quality 95% of the time. I set my wife up with a webcam and purchased the Logitech Quick Cam for Notebooks Pro to use when travelling. Previously I’ve been a bit ambivalent to using a webcam for conversations (who wants to look at me!), but this time, being away for over a month made me appreciate the improvement video adds for conversation enjoyment when calling home.

This could border on a bit geeky but using my wireless laptop and a Plantronics Pulsar 590A Bluetooth headset i could put the laptop on the kitchen bench and have a conversation with my wife while making dinner. Almost like she was there except i had to do the cooking…

Photosynth – Wow Factor

Adam Wallace — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:56:17 +0000

The Photosyth demo at ted.com would be one of the best technology demo’s I’ve seen this year. Taking the demo for a run over at labs.live.com only added to my wonder as the application seamlessly allowed you to zoom and navigate between images.

Truly impressive, that old scrapbook is destined to continue sitting on the shelf once this technology becomes mainstream and allows you to import flicker images based on tags. The movie Deja Vu springs to mind.

I’ve added the video to my list on the right.