Great post up by Andrew Chen (EIR at Mohr Davidow Ventures) with some reminders to entrepreneurs:

5 Deadly Sins for Blind Business Creation
1. “I’m smart, I know this will work.”
2. “I’m introverted, and I like the technology more than the people.”
3. “I’ve spent too much time building already, I’m afraid of the results.”
4. “I think we should build all of it first, then figure out if it works.”
5. “I’m dumb, I don’t know what assumptions to verify.”

Read the full post — we all need these reminders (particularly if you haven’t lived in the trenches yet).

Ever wondered what you do all day? OK – you likely know that now, but curious what you were doing last month? Or last year? How about what your friends are up to? Excellent post by Emily Chang today regarding an RSS mashup she’s done for herself. She’s mashing up all her social RSS feeds — Flickr, Last.fm, her blogs, twitter, her events at upcoming.org, plazes, etc. They’re all being pulled together, timestamped, and stored in a database on her server — then fed out as one big data stream. Talk about a stalker’s paradise.

She’s using a plugin called feedgrab (odd it doesn’t have own URL) by Andrew Weaver. She mentions one of the problems she had run into in the past was hosted solutions (e.g. flickr RSS feed is hosted at flickr.com) — I also wonder how long those hosted RSS feeds last for (or how many items are in them). Also, multiple servers are going to have multiple timestamps. Her solution runs on her own server, pulls from the various RSS feeds in real-time, stores the entries on her server, and follows one consistent timestamp.

So who’s going to create this for the rest of us? (more…)

Here’s another SMS idea…

Former (yet current) TechCrunch contributor (editor) Marshall Kirkpatrick listed his demands for a SMS/IM/Email alerts system for RSS feeds:

I use services like this extensively, some of which I do pay for. Nobody quite gets it right yet as far as I’m concerned. I would gladly pay a monthly fee for a service that sends me IM and SMS alerts for any number of RSS feeds that I select – if it that company did it right. Here’s what I’m looking for:

1. IM me if I’m online, if I’m not then SMS *and* email me the URL of the feed item if I’m not online (Rasasa and zaptxt each fill different halves of this request)

2. Let me set the hours I want to recieve SMS alerts, outside those hours email me. (rasasa does that)

3. Send me the first 25 characters or however much is possible from the feed item, not just its title (anothr.com does that by Skype IM but no SMS is avail)
(more…)

There must be a way to turn Amazon.com’s userbase into a huge social network. Amazon offers an API that gives access to their user reviews (although it may just be per product — so you grab a product and then get the user reviews associated with that product; you can do 1 per second — thus you can’t just start grabbing user reviews; but you could start correlating popular products and grabbing that info). I believe there are tools to view wishlists — maybe those must be shared.

Must be a way based on the user reviews (if a user email / ID is provided) of aggregating all of that data and figuring out compatibility amongst the users. Thus, if I’ve given high ratings to various items and so has someone else — then we’d likely strike up some good conversation, and/or have some other product recommendations for each other. Might be strong similarities with our music tastes, or movie tastes, or book tastes, or anything else — but those 3 would be the ideal platforms to work from.

I realize Amazon has “state-of-the-art” product recommendations — that’s not the focus here. The focus is (more…)

If you recall, this original idea (“a HotOrNot for interests”) was all about the creation of a very simple (on the front-end) website for users. As soon as the user comes to the website, they’d be asked a question and immediately start answering them — simple questions like, “Do you like peanut butter?” (like/love/hate) or “Do you enjoy reading books?” (like/love/hate) — then depending on these answers, we might dig a bit deeper into a topic. So if the user says they love to read books, we might ask — “Do you prefer non-fiction or fiction?”, etc.

The addition: If you’re a member on the website Last.fm, then you’re aware of the “music compatibility rating” that you have with other users of the website. Basically, you’re logged in and as you browse other user profiles, it will show you your music compatibility.

I propose we do something similar with my idea — everyone has a (more…)

The Problem: What about all the commercials and advertisements you see — maybe you’re looking for a new car and see a billboard for the new Nissan 350z — and you’d like to check that out further online, but you’re in your car now. Or you’re watching a TV show and see a commercial for a new video game you’d like to check-out later. Or you’re reading the newspaper and see an ad for a new laundry detergent offering a $1 off coupon at their website.

But you’re likely not going to drop everything to hop on your computer — you’re likely going to forget about these things.You’ll likely have to see those ads several times (industry studies show 8 times), before you’ll really remember. However, there is potential to capture your attention the first time — in those few seconds. I call these, impulse interactions.

The Idea: Wouldn’t it be great if there was a unique code for each of those ads? I could simply send the code as a text message, or call a phone number and input the code. That’s it, done. The code gets tied to my account and next time I’m at my computer, I could login to my account to view all the ads/offers I had “bookmarked” offline. I’d see a link to the website for the Nissan 350z — and a link to that $1 off coupon for laundry detergent, etc.

The Competition: Well, this idea is being done already — but still hasn’t taken off. There’s Aboutcodes … (more…)

I guess it is just assumed by Yahoo that a staff-wide email would get leaked, so they’re not going to put any juicy strategy into those types of emails — but it got me thinking, wouldn’t they love to know who did in fact leak this? It’d be simple, really — well, until employees learned the secret.

I’d take the email and send it through a bulk email program that alters some of the words / characters in the email. Correspond each version to each employee and then if you ever see a leaked version, you would be able to match it. Especially an email of that size — although, maybe there couldn’t possibly be 9,800+ grammatical changes

Although what about all types of emails you send (to more than 1 person). Wouldn’t it be great if they were passed through a filter — just in case they were confidential and were leaked?

Ever run into that problem of trying to recall a website — and remembering what it looked like, but having no clue the name of it? Maybe you were lucky enough to bookmark it, but even then, that may not help you.

There should be a web app that pulls in your (RSS feed of) del.icio.us bookmarks and displays them as thumbnail screenshots. Something like this exists, but it’s limited — it’s called thumblicio.us, but it uses the limited thumbnail inventory of thumbshots.com.

Snap seems to have quite an inventory of thumbnails — maybe they could make a plugin or web app. Or maybe they have an API that I can’t find on their website. Or maybe you could build something that starts amassing tons of thumbnails yourself.

Not sure how you’d monetize this — I presume advertising; particularly if someone’s bookmarks contain certain websites, competitors could display their offerings right next to them.

If you’re into music or concerts (particularly hard rock), you’ve been to Hot Topic. They sell tons of band “swag” (fancy term for shirts, etc). But how many of those shirts do I want? None this past weekend — but I’m sure kids are buying them, because they have no other choice if they want to show their love (by way of a t-shirt) for a band. But the massive explosion of MySpace shows us that individuality is key — kids want to personalize their web space (and themselves). They want unique — and that’s what the bands and sports teams should provide them.

Bands/Artists/Sports Teams would provide an inventory of logos, artwork, photos, fonts, and a web-based tool that users could use to then create custom t-shirts. The printer, band, and user would all receive revenues from the sales — or maybe the user doesn’t get money, but rather they receive perks from the band (free concert tickets, their designed shirt, etc., based on sales goals). Heck, prior to an artist’s tour — do this, have kids create shirts, find the best ones, and then have THOSE printed and sold at your concerts (or sports events).

Provide the kiddies with widget embeds that they can post in their MySpace pages and let them promote the heck out of their creation — give a grand prize to the fan that sells the most. Maybe this embed also promotes the artist’s latest CD and latest concert tour dates.

Everyone has a cell phone these days — and haven’t you found yourself with some time on your hands, yet don’t know what to do? I know phone dating chat has existed for years — but couldn’t there be something similar (and free? or smaller fee?) for just normal chats? You could randomly chat with someone by phone — or get in on a conference call where people are discussing a particular subject? Users might be using a phone or using a microphone from their computer.

Maybe there’d be sponsored chats — where a topic is given (“Low-fat food at Fast Food restaurants”) and people discuss it. [That topic might be sponsored by McDonalds with/without knowledge of the people discussing -- kind of like a focus group where McDonalds can get some data.]
Particularly during or after a live event — such as a broadcast of a TV show, or live broadcasts of sports games, American Idol, etc.

Once again — social networking, profiles, etc, would be great.

Since it is Valentine’s Day… what about dating lines by phone? Don’t anyone take this personally, but I guess I find it a bit creepy. But I’d likely be game to do some sort of 3-minute per person speed dating by phone — where I can view the person’s profile online and chat with them for a few minutes by phone? I think if more singles were doing this — they’d be finding dates. It’s like sales — it’s a numbers game; you might need to chat with 30 people before you find one you’d like to go on a date with. Monetization could be various packages for sale — dinner at Applebee’s, movie at Regal Cinemas, etc. Maybe you charge the people up-front like $20 each and they end up selecting something to-do.