“When I was a little kid I loved playing with LEGOs. You’ve got to build whatever your mind can
create. And entrepreneurship is the same thing. You build what you want to build and through this process of building all these amazing ideas you change the world.” The Entrepreneurial Spirit – a film by Justing Gutwein
There is a lot of buzz around startups and sometimes you can see too many young people spending too much money on something that brings little value. But if you look globally, there are thousands of great entrepreneurs around the world bringing change through making ideas happen.
Getting an idea is an intangible impulse. After that you bring the right people and resources into one place to make it happen. To make it tangible. And it is easier than ever before because the entry level is so low these days. You invest the time of a small group of geeks and after a few months you’ve got a product out on the market.
A documentary film that was shot during StartUp Weekend Baltimore gives you a flavour of 4 groups of people that want to bring idea into life. Delivery is the hardest parts. There are many passionate dreamers but persistency is the hardest part.
“Every company is a Startup, at some point it started up”
When I first found out about Quora I thought that the concept was nothing new – there were plenty of Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. But when I started exploring the topic and use Quora I quickly changed my mind.
There was no Q&A site for new technology professionals before Quora. Or maybe not the site that brought so many specialists and experts into one place. From Sillicon Valley companies CEOs to small business entrepreneurs from all around the world. The target audience has one thing in common - hungry for expertise and eager to share their knowledge with others.
I had an occasion to watch a keynote of John Matheny, Senior Vice President Communications & Communities from Yahoo! on this year’s CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. It was part of a Global Conference program. John presented Yahoo! Livestand one of their latest solutions for iPad and Android tables which is a “personalized newsstand”. What it basically do it provides you with personalized news feeds from all around the web in a visually appealing way. It is quite similar to the world class iPad app called Flipboard – the only difference is that Livestand relies more on content providers than on social media sources. Watch the video below.
Although Livestand from Yahoo! looks quite promissing I wasn’t convinced by Matheny’s keynote – he pretended he likes this whole social media concept and that Yahoo! is doing really well with this. He wanted to sound “cool” and “passionate” like Steve Jobs but was far from it. He also read the whole presentation and wasn’t convincing at all – it looked like if it was prepared by someone else and he didn’t even have the time to go through it on a plane to Germany. This just proves why Yahoo is doing so badly with Web 2.0 with over $13.3B spent on acquisitions that pretty much failed.
Smashing Magazine is a source of great content and information for web designers and developers. They are extremely popular and respected by a design community. Every month they offer inspiring and creative wallpapers for you desktop created by artists from around the world.
While working on your online business you will probably consider using email marketing to leverage products or services. I had a chance to write a post on SEOmoz.org about a few crucial areas you should take into consideration while managing newsletter campaign: 7 Things to Know About Email Marketing. Enjoy your reading!
After great popularity of del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati it was the time for niche link building platforms. Specialised social bookmarking focusing on specific topics, like Sphinn for SEO gives often better results that promoting on crowded Digg. Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal confirms this theory:
For example, in Search Engine Journal??Â?Â?s case, 100 Sphinn visitors could be much more powerful than 5,000 Digg users as Sphinn members are search engine marketers, tuned into the search world, and highly receptive to our material and sponsorship messages.
If you are interested in building your own social bookmarking platform and gather community around it, you don’t have to write it yourself. There is an open source solution right there for you, called Pligg. And if you have some webmaster skills you can build your own template. Otherwise just find some free ones on the Net. Before you go to download Pligg, have a look on one of the nicely designed pages based on Pligg.
Copyblogger has recently published a post regarding text formatting with a very specific picture in the beginning. This example is to demonstrate why you should be creative in using images on your website. Just have a read the second comment to this post:
Eric: Best. picture. ever.
The article was OK too
What is our target, Sir?!
Be a bit tricky, show some humorous pictures and entertain your visitors – make them laugh or make them think, play on their emotions
If you have a website or a blog you quite likely visit Google Analytics or any other stats often wondering how to improve the following:
number of visitors and visits
pages/visit rank
avg. time on site
bounce rate
Probably you are addicted to these stats, like I am, checking them to often wondering if you are closer to your targets.
I finally decided to reorganize this blog and start writing regularly. Thank you for all positive feedback I received. I appreciate your support and I can promise that from now on you will see more serious content.
After my first months in blogging I found my way in doing this and I hope you will like it.
Redesign needed
My first decision was to change WP theme. I didn??Â?Â?t like the previous one and I couldn??Â?Â?t improve it as easy as I would expect. So I was looking for some well-prepared theme and, lucky me, I found it ??Â?Â? Copyblogger theme! While reading different blogs I stopped on Pearsonified.com and it took me just a few seconds on the site to realize this page is going to end in my Blogroll.
I like tools that make my life easier. I was already writing about Docs & Spreasheet application from Google. I have been using it for a while and the function I really like is sharing documents with others. It is very useful for me as I can work with my colleagues on different projects and there is no longer need of sending documents over emails back and forth. And with the latest updates you can organise all your documents in folders. It is not a rocket science – just a functionality that works for me.
Google has just introduced an upgrade to the well known Google Maps – My Maps. Now you have an opportunity to create your own personalized maps with marks, lines, shapes, texts, photos and videos. When they are ready you can publish them to the web and share with your family and friends.
What a great tool to prepare a tourist guide, tell a story about an interesting place or just go and learn something about places you have never been to from other users and the maps they have created.
Have you ever been to Kauai, the oldest Hawaiian island? No? Does not matter, now you have a chance to explore it.
Paul Montwill specializes in Digital and E-commerce Strategies, Online Marketing and industry analysis. He is an E-commerce Sales Director in one of the European IT companies, a blogger and he offers consultancy.
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My first decision was to change WP theme. I didn??Â?Â?t like the previous one and I couldn??Â?Â?t improve it as easy as I would expect. So I was looking for some well-prepared theme and, lucky me, I found it ??Â?Â? 
