I found one of my notebooks from the late 90’s; - when I was working on starting my first company (skateboard.com). That notebook had a list of companies and websites that were offering productivity tools and start-up information. It got me to thinking about how starting a company today is very different than it was then.

There are so many reasons to start a company today, but the biggest one is because it’s cheap. You can now rule out having to pay Microsoft for anything because of open source software, like Linux and MYSQL, and all of the free - or almost free - productivity and communication tools like Basecamp and Skype. And, let’s not forget how inexpensive hardware and Bandwidth is. In 1999, we had to spend $500k to build a website that, today, would only cost $20k-$30k . Operational costs haven’t changed that much, but the point is it takes a lot less money than it did only 5 years ago.

Additionally, now with blogging taking hold, you have, at your fingertips, a vast resource of information from CEO’s, VC’s and programmers that you didn’t have then. That information, that you can get from blogs, basically gives you details on the tools to use in starting your business and, even ideas on what companies to start. Below is a list of some useful information that has been blogged about recently. With the vast amount of information and resources that are out there today, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be starting a company. So, why wait? I forgot to mention this when I wrote this earlier but, of course you also need a good idea.

Evan Williams CEO of Odeo, INC posted his “Ten Rules for Startups”. Click Here to view the list.

Nick Denton Ceo of Gawker Media posted his links to what he calls his “Start-up Kit”. Click Here to view the list.

Michael Arrington from Techcrunch Posted a list of companies that he would like to profile but don’t exist yet. Click Here to read his post.

Business 2.0 magzine went so far as to interview VC’s and have them desicribe companies that don’t exist but they’re wanting to invest in. They even give the VC’s email info so that you can email them your Business plan. Click Here to read the article.

technorati tags: startup, web2.0, CEO, techcrunch, basecamp, odeo, gawker+media, tools

I remember, just a short time ago, that just about every tech related site that I looked at had some sort of mention about Flock. In case you didn’t know, Flock is an open source web browser that incorporates some cool social features. However, I’ve noticed, lately, that I haven’t seen or heard anything more since Flock opened up its Developer Preview. I took a look at Alexa to see what was going on with their traffic. I know Alexa’s not the most accurate source, but it does give a pretty good representation. Looks like they had a huge spike in traffic for the month of October, which is the same time they started releasing the browser to those of us who were interested. The initial release was by invite only but now, I see they have it open to anyone willing to download. I wonder why, then, after a little more than a month, we haven’t seen more people rushing over to try out Flock ? Or, at least, why aren’t Tech sites talking about Flock like they once were?

Does the Flock browser suck? No, it doesn’t. Actually, it’s pretty nice. I was one of the early people to download Flock and try it out. Like any product in developer preview, it has bugs, but they’re being worked out. For me, I’ve tried to use the Flock browser at least once a week and keep up with the current version. I have no major complaints about the browser that hasn’t already been addressed. However, the big problem that I see for Flock overall is trying to convince people to switch from Firefox. I know for me, it’s been a joy to use Firefox for the last few years and, let’s face it; most of us are creatures of habit. It took me a long enough time to get MS Explorer out of life and it was a horrible product. What is Flock going to do to convince me and other people that their browser is superior? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, I’ll keep using Flock at least once a week.

technorati tags: flock, firefox, browser, web2.0, web20, social

I came across this very COOL Google Maps mashup last night called Fotogopo. It’s not the most useful mashup, but is very creative. Basically Fotogopo is a MASHUP of Google Maps, geocoder.us, and over 800,000 street level photos arranged by latitude and longitude. The cool thing about this is that it has street level photo/video of almost every street here in Austin and a few other cities. CLICK HERE to check it out.

technorati tags: google, google+maps, mashup, mash-up, fotogopo

With everyone adding tagging to their web applications, blogs and searches, it would be nice to see some sort of standardization. For example, I was looking at the Feedster’s top 500 blogs the other day. They have a tag cloud on the page for an easy way to find the blogs that you’re interested in. Well, I noticed several variations for the same thing like: web2.0/web20; startup/startups; pr/pr, ; geek/geeks; foreign/policy/foreignpolicy (I think you get the picture). Another problem I see with tagging and specifically, with companies like Technorati, are misspelled words. As for myself, I’m not the best at spelling, and I’m pretty sure I, too, have tagged some of my posts with misspelled words. It happens, I know, but unless someone comes up with a way to standardize tags it’s going to keep compounding itself to a much bigger problem. I noticed that Del.icio.us has added a “recommendation” tool to its service which is a great idea. I would like to see other companies do this as well. This way, when you search for web+2.0, you will get the results that you’re looking for and not have to search for web20 and web2.0 as well. If people are going to continue to use tags as a way to organize and find information then, I think, web applications should come up with a way to standardize the tags.

technorati tags: tags, web2.0, web20, business, favorites , feedster , Del.icio.us

I was just doing some research on alternative ways to make money for operational expenses for my next venture. I have some great ideas which I’ll share at a later time. Whenever you bootstrap a company you have to get revenue as quickly as possible. After your money runs out…you got to get a job or get an angel. Hopefully when I get my “new deal” off the ground in the next few months I’ll be able to generate enough revenue immediately to sustain. Yeah right!

Anyway, I was reading Kevin Burton’s blog (Feed Blog) and he had a great idea. By the way Kevin runs a great company called Tailrank. His idea was to get sites to donate traffic to Tailrank via Adsense in order for him to get a little extra money to keep improving Tailrank. I think it’s a great idea. It’s the same concept that the big ad networks use. Except, in this case you’re not sharing the revenue but instead are donating to a cool company. This could be something like “Pay It Forward”; you know the dumb movie with Helen Hunt. I would like to see this work out for Kevin and TailRank. By the way I’ve placed Kevin’s Adsense code at the top of every page on this site. Maybe someone can organize a network of 100 sites or more that can do this for several companies, including mine one day. To read all of the details CLICK HERE.

technorati tags: tailrank, adsense, kevin+burton, community, funding

I just did a quick look on eBay for the Xbox 360 and to my “surprise” there are 100’s available. Well, they’re available but for a premium price. You can get the premium pack for $1,000+ or the standard 360 with-out the hard drive for $500 +. Some have even sold for more than $9,000. Is the Xbox 360 really worth it? The questions keeps coming up about weather the limited availability of the 360 is a marketing ploy or slow manufacturing. Well, it’s all about building buzz for the product= marketing. It’s working.
Click Here to view what’s available on eBay.

technorati tags: xbox+360, ebay, marketing, hype, xbox

I noticed today that Google threw up another service. It’s called Click-to-call. It’s a service that’s supposed to make it easy for consumers to contact Adwords advertisers. Basically it works like this: when you see a Google ad you’ll see a phone icon in the ad. You can click on that phone icon and enter you phone number and Google will, for free, connect you to that advertiser. I’m not sure if I see the point to this but I suppose some people might. To learn more about click-to-call Click Here for FAQ.

technorati tags: click-to-call, google, adwords, VOIP

I finally received my invite to the private alpha test of Measure Map. I got it all set-up last night and it only took a couple of minutes. I’ve been using; or trying to use Google Analytics for the past few weeks. But, honestly I can’t really trust it at this point. Some days it works and some days it doesn’t. With Measure Map up and running, I’ve been very impressed so far. The cool thing (one of) about Measure Map is that it’s tailored for Blog sites. It gives you stats on Visitors, Links, Comments and posts. You can really learn a lot about what’s going on, on your site with measure map. I was going to try and do a comparison between Google Analytics and Measure Map but honestly it would be like comparing apples to oranges. Google Analytics is really a analytic application that’s built for a ecommerce site or anything other than a blog site. Don’t get me wrong, you could certainly set-up Google Analytics to get the same kind of data that you’re getting with Measure Map but it would take a long, long, time. I wish that Google Analytics was around when I was doing my ecommerce company. It would have been a great FREE tool for us. Anyway, back to Measure Map; If you have a blog and are interested in who’s reading your posts and why. Then I highly recommend getting Measure Map. I’ll do a more in-depth post about Measure Map after I’ve given it some time to collect stats and for me to dig a little deeper.

Read more about Measure Map from the following sites:

Techcrunch, librarycrunch, spitting llamas, waterfall web, drink cold

technorati tags: measure+map , analytics , blogs , adaptive+path

This post is probably to late considering on how much Xbox 360 press I’ve seen this morning. But, if you’re lucky you might still be able to find one. Chris Lambert put together a Google map for you to locate the 360 at you local Best Buy. The map even shows the quantity on hand by each store. It’s kind of strange though, in Austin, where I live, no Best Buy store has more than 66 units to start with. If that’s true then good luck finding a Xbox 360 in Austin, TX or another place. Nevertheless, CLICK HERE to take a look at Chris Lambert’s Xbox 360 map.

technorati tags: xbox+360, xbox, google+maps, best buy, mash-up

I have to start by saying that I’m not a big Holiday person, especially Christmas. In my experience with gift giving at Christmas, someone always gets their feelings hurt. Because, they didn’t get the gift they wanted or you forgot to send a family member a gift. Anyway, you get the picture. I don’t see myself changing my opinion anytime soon but a new web application called Giftbox could make your gift giving life easier. GiftBox lets you keep track of gifts you want to give, gifts you want to get, send eCard thank you notes, and more. It’s a simple to use an aesthetically pleasing. It’s free for up to three holidays or $19/year for unlimited holidays. CLICK HERE to watch a demo movie or CLICK HERE to check out Giftbox for yourself.

technorati tags: giftboxhome, wishlist, web2.0, eCard, web+application