KaZuum: Messages and Musings

good article on importance of safety and security regarding your online brand

2009-10-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/342446/Scams_Spams_Shams

Good advice includes:
Proactively registering your own brand names on social networks to lock them in.

Addressing griefers and scammers that would abuse your brand.

-alex

we're tweeting

2009-04-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

i figure it might be faster for me to put up our system updates on kazuum via the twitter feed

you can follow us at

http://www.twitter.com/kztwitz

on Susan Boyle and the power of dreaming

2009-04-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Just another "inspired by Susan Boyle" post to add to the growing collective out there.

I'm amazed at how much hope and inspiration seem to be sweeping the globe regarding this fine lady. How her determination and tenacity in the face of life itself, the ultimate judge has overcome not only our own wayward perceptions of humanity but really a beautiful thought for us to input into our own consciousness.

Here we have a 47 year old, way past what the young and modern web2.0 world would consider "prime". Even me, at 33, probably stretching what it means to be a young web startupper, by about 10 years. But she shows us that the race is not always to the swift, the battle not always to the strong. It is to those who are faithful in the face of adversity, who cling to hope in times of trepidation, that trudge forward steadfast in struggle- they overcome.

The nature of this world is that not everything overcomes - I'm not overly optimistic to believe that failure does not rear its head every now and then. So much more the reason for celebration- when someone looks perceived destiny in the eye and gives a smirk and a hip shake, then goes on to pummel perception in the face and step into something well earned and received.

A hope for all of us- yes. Something to cheer for- most definitely. Score one for the little guys- keep dreaming!

refreshing integrity

2009-03-04T20:32:00.000-08:00

http://consumerist.com/5164505/ben--jerrys-announces-their-grocery-shrink-ray-immunity

ben and jerrys refuses to shrink their pint of ice cream down to 14 oz and still charge pint prices.

this is notable because ben and jerrys could just have gone along with the flow and reaped additional profits.

but further tells what it means to make a company with heart.

interesting development

2009-03-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

an interesting development...

Actually I saw this coming.

There's been a lot of upheaval regarding social classifieds lately - people still stabbing at it to see where the best place on the beast is to spit and roast it.

I like how Oodle is trying to become more social - I think the key to trust within social classifieds is the usage of social graphs to provide a "degrees of separation" factor between posters as KaZuum does to help build connections between those who might be interested in a classifieds ad. Certainly having Facebook's graph does make things a lot easier.

But of course still the necessity for any classified site's success is scale - the number of posts every day that users are able to sift through.

I'd like to say that traction is not an issue right now, but hey, when you're small, honesty is all you really have, and in all honesty it would be nice if everyone who read this signed up and invited all their friends. I can understand that it might be troublesome for you to signup, but really keep in mind that it's something you can help your friends out in doing. By being connections between friends, you help facilitate and organize trust on the internet in a new way that wasn't there before.

How many times would you go to a craigslist site, look at the user (if they're not anonymous) then check on facebook for their username and see if you know them or any friends know them? This is due diligence that should really occur - if we were smart we would do this automatically. But we're trying to help make that happen.

Facebook teams up with Oodle

By Scott Duke Harris

Mercury News

Posted: 03/02/2009 07:34:39 PM PST

Every time they visit Facebook, users are asked, "What are you doing right now?" And they get constant updates from friends who feel compelled to answer that question.

Now the tight economy has Facebook and a "social classifieds" startup called Oodle anticipating posts like "I'm selling my old mountain bike" or "Anyone got a secondhand laptop cheap?"

More than a decade after Craigslist, eBay and other online entities began to gobble up an ad market once dominated by newspapers, Oodle hopes to nibble at Craigslist and eBay by helping sites like Facebook and MySpace become bustling venues for buying and selling stuff.

Facebook today turned over operation of its Marketplace application to the San Mateo-based startup, which already has similar deals with MySpace and AOL, as well as its own destination site. An Oodle news release likens it to "a Craigslist for Facebook members.''

The recession could make for apt timing as people hunt for bargains and try to make money on the side. "People might want to buy a used car instead of a new car," said Craig Donato, a co-founder and chief executive of Oodle.

Bloggers who track Facebook have noted that most users won't notice the change, if only because Facebook Marketplace has generated so little interest since its launch in May 2007. Three months ago, Facebook announced the deal with Oodle expressly to invigorate this corner of Facebook's universe.

"Turning the development and management of Marketplace over to an innovator in online classifieds will give users more advanced ways to create and share listings on Facebook," Ethan Beard, Facebook's director of business development, said in a December news release announcing the partnership.

It is unclear if Facebook intends to use the arrangement with Oodle to generate revenue, but Oodle presumably would profit by driving traffic to its own site, where it posts paid advertisements.

Oodle's Donato told the Mercury News that the aim is to make the user experience "as lightweight and conversational as possible." Users, for example, are encouraged to explain why they are selling something, in hopes of sparking a conversation within their Facebook circle.

The revisions to Facebook Marketplace, Donato said, also invite users to donate proceeds to a designated charity by checking a box marked "sell it for a cause."

"You can think of it as a virtual garage sale for every charity on our database," Donato said. The database includes about 1.5 million charities. Once a pledged donation is fulfilled, Oodle generates a receipt to users for tax purposes.

Facebook first introduced its Marketplace application in May 2007 "as a way for Facebook users to easily create, share and respond to listings across categories such as "Furniture'' and "Roommates," the company noted in a news release. But even as Facebook grew to 175 million users worldwide, Craigslist has remained the dominant "go-to" site for such transactions.

Craigslist pioneered the free online classifieds sector in the mid-1990s. Its devotees also partake in the site's own social aspects, such as discussion groups. Craigslist, unlike many rivals, prohibits other sites from "scraping" and reposting its listings.

"Social classifieds" enhance trust, Donato said. "I don't necessarily want to buy a car from a friend. But I want to know who the person is before I invite him to my home," he said.

Oodle hopes its relationships with social networks may also attract users to its destination site at www.oodle.com, which it says aggregates more than 500,000 listings from 80,000 different sites. Oodle accepts free classified listings and, unlike Craigslist, prominently places paid advertisements from commercial entities such as car dealers.

Oodle's business relationships reach far beyond social networks. Its technology powers classifieds on sites for 200 different brands, including Wal-Mart, Washington Post Express and Military.com.

Oodle, backed by venture funding from Greylock Partners and Redpoint Venture, was founded in 2004 and launched its destination site in 2005. The company, which has about 40 employees, expects to reach profitability in the near future. "This should be our year," Donato said. "We're doing pretty well."

new layout

2009-01-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

lots going on in the economy right now, there's a lot of people hoping for a new year to bring a good start.

meanwhile I'm back on the job, trying to make KaZuum a better site for everyone.

trying to make the data presentation wider, originally I thought it'd be the best for everyone if it was a limited 800x600 presentation, but obviously with the growth of technology it seems that wider is more appealing to a large audience.

I know browsing is difficult at the moment, going to implement an autogrowing craigslist style category listing to search through. The Top10 list was merely a placeholder while we were growing in information, now that there's more to present, things have to change.

Hope everyone has a great new years, and hope everyone can help out by inviting their friends to join the site.

Sincerely,

Alex

Directions

2008-10-26T20:25:00.000-07:00

Many things can go awry when businesses shift gears and directions.

I'm sure many of you have experienced this sort of thing - scrambing for customers or users, a site signs up with as many as possibly can whenever it can, however the directions of the idea start to take a differing turn from what was originally anticipated.

Part of it lies in marketing - if you make a product that sells to flamingos, but then market it towards penguins, naturally you'll end up seeing your product used a lot more than penguins than flamingos. The question is whether or not having birds of all sorts is what you initially wanted in your aviary.

This is not to say it's a bad thing - having one bird over the other is not bad, but sometimes it can start to be a defining moment in your business. And it's at this point that you have to step back and check your bearings - what is more important, your idea or your business.

In a way the two are inextricably linked - without one there is not the other. But sometimes there can become the pursuit of business for the sake of business. That's akin to cooking for the idea that you have to eat. Sure it will fill your tummy, but in my humble opinion it will not satisfy your desire.

I'm a huge foodie, so one of the things I focus on is flavor, even a simple dinner to me has to be appealing in flavor or enjoyment. I don't do this all the time, sometimes I will scarf down a burger when pressed for time. But the enjoyment of a meal is one of my life's guilty pleasures.

In the same way a business has its drive to satisfy the bottom line. But when it no longer satisfies your idea, when your purpose goes to something else, then I think some of that enjoyment and soul leaves with it.

The winds are blowing differently now than when KaZuum was first founded - the economy has soured, there's a myriad of social classifieds networks out there. We want to move forward and create something valuable and useful without ending up like the ones that failed before us. One of my great fears is that we end up just being a site overrun with spam and useless information, a storybook tale for a site that aspired to be something different but ended up being the same.

So I'm reflecting on the directions we're choosing, and the decisions we've made coming to this juncture.

As always if you want to leave us feedback, feel free.

best regards,

-Ag.

ok KaZuum can't help you with this...

2008-06-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.wftv.com/news/16425860/detail.html

So what can we do?

Well lately I've been retooling the site to handle one particularly under-served market:

garage sales and flea markets.

On most classifieds sites, the process of selling a garage full of stuff (or lawn or driveway, for that matter) is an arduous task:

You list out all the stuff that you have for sale:

xbox360 RROD

parted out Ps2

dead calalily

fishbowl

old socks

black and white 13" RCA tv

2x bookshelves

Ruby on Rails book

AJAX for dummies

used McDonalds cup

Excel 4.0 handbook

and you get a flurry of email responses

when one item is sold, frequently there's many requests for the same item, although it's been promised to someone else.

with the upcoming "Batch Post" feature, you're able to create batches of items

for sale, or free,

and as they're spoken for, they're made unavailable, or the quantity changes.

This allows you to have a Garage Sale, without actually even having a garage.

Post what you want to get rid of in batch, then come saturday people just show up with money and hands ready to carry things away.

Useful also for people who go to flea markets - know exactly how much inventory you need to bring by the number of responses, and show up ready to empty your trunk.

Hopefully this is something people will find useful in all seasons.

Meanwhile I'll be wary of those lingerie housemaids.

the gap between haves and have nots

2008-05-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

http://spotlightonpoverty.org/news.aspx?id=b81ae2be-9132-4c7b-87e6-ca65eaec1735

This is why we are here

2008-05-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've all realized that transactions for us average joes on the interwebs now is a broken process.

In case you haven't, read this article.

http://consumerist.com/5007790/its-now-completely-impossible-to-sell-a-laptop-on-ebay

"eBay seems now to be essentially broken. What used to be a 'virtual yard-sale' where one could hunt for - and potentially find - a good deal on a broad variety of eclectic items has now turned (in my opinion at least) into a hybrid mass of scammers and shady garage-retailers, clumped together with a straggling, dying breed of people who used to be excited about eBay, but who are now wishing it would return to what it used to be."

This is one of the pain points I'm trying to fix -

Try creating an auction on KaZuum, and constraining views of your auction to people within your social network. (Only 2nd and 3rd degree friends are allowed to bid, for example)

Sure it cuts back on the # of people that can see your auction - it's the eventual trade off of cost.
But we can do other interesting things as well - later constrain Bidders by user account age (nobody who created an account in the past month?) or even by geography. Or by trustworthiness metrics (like they know at least 3 of my friends).

We know the internet might be messed up a bit from what we originally hoped it to be, but we're trying to clear them out here.

KaZuum - Like Pipe Cleaners for your Internet Tubes.

PG on Benevolence

2008-05-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/paul-graham-at-startup-school-08

This is definitely up our alley.

I'm glad to say I also reached these conclusions with KaZuum.
Commitment, easy to run (THANK YOU RUBY ON RAILS!) , and a fanatical commitment to our values.

DHH on Pricing

2008-05-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hansson-at-startup-school-08

Stanford Startup School presentation on pricing given by DHH (with typical DHH humor)

he brings up some interesting points - but this is hardly a class on pricing theory, but a good primer for those who haven't had performed pricing attempts on innovative and virtual products.

Brings to mind that you don't have to make HUGE ideas but Niche something decently well.

I think the key point that he glosses over is SUSTAINABLE CUSTOMERS. They go after the large accounts and fixes their problems. Landing the big fish for them is key, and it's quite difficult.

37Signals is a great company - they have a great product that solves some strong customer pains, obviously if you're writing a Facebook app that helps you turn vampires into zombies and zombies into vampires...you might not be able to pull this off.

Gives a good reminder too that you don't need to make a BILLION dollars in your company (if it's small like 37 Signals). This of course is in line with the RoR philosophy - small # of developers, frequent iteration, and lower rewards vs huge architectures and large numbers of coders, who then need the homeruns to pay the bills.

Totally agree with his take on the startup lifestyle - if you don't take outside money, you can call your own shots, you can have your own life. There's nothing wrong with a lifestyle business (small) but profitable.

why aren't there more googles?

2008-04-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

paul graham seems to think that it's because startups will sell out and then end up being smothered in bureaucracy.

definitely I think this is true - when the founders are in a tired state, perhaps dipped in hope and no longer focused on the true prize - changing the world. They turn to the easy out - get paid and get out.

I wonder if this is also true for the ideas that Google itself has bought - it seems that those companies as well have not done well either.

That essay was written in response to this posting, How to Fix Venture Capital. This article touches on my previous posts regarding the idea of selling out and letting others call the shots, or really setting on yourself in pursuing true change. Once you take someone else's money, it becomes their game.

Well, back to work .

happy 1 year

2008-04-04T00:56:00.000-07:00

Officially we are 1 year old, having incorporated last year on the 4th.

Evidently we're not the only ones having a birthday today, Happy Birthday to the Bill Gates and Paul Allen Micro-Soft Partnership.

No, we didn't plan that.

yelp? say it ain't so!

2008-04-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

Today I checked my inbox and scanned through my usual Yelp digest email. To my shock and horror, I saw:

You haven't really lived here until you've been to the places that give Silicon Valley its local flavor. That's why you turn to Yelp - to find out about the best of the best and exactly how we keep it real in the Bay Area. Santana Row is our favorite place to start off a perfect day.Mia N regularly frequents The Row, "where everyone can find something" to do. Fashionistas like Cristina I flock toH&M when they want to make a unique statement, but Jason T breaks out of suburbia at Urban Outfitters - he likes their duds so much he likens it to a "cute, bohemian chic girl" he'd marry. After all that shopping, you'll be sure to have worked up an appetite! Looking for a sure thing? Kathy T "steaks" her claim at Claim Jumper, a saloon of sorts that has "yummy food and a great place to come with a large group of people or even on a date." At The Old Spaghetti Factory, Camille R has "never been disappointed" with the "spaghetti with marinara sauce and a side of mizithra cheese." It's also worth noting that this factory doesn't use child labor, either. Forget OzzFest, Lobsterfest at Red Lobster is here! Seafood lover Rinne R was glad she didn't miss out on it last year, and we're sure you won't want to miss out on this year's irresistible menu either. If you're craving some turf with your surf,Geomar R recommends Sizzler's succulent "Big Appetite Combo, which includes steak, shrimp, ribs, and a baked potato;" he also reminds us not to forget their salad bar, which is "actually one of the best in town." Sounds health-tastic to us, Geomar!Archie R loves to "chow" down on all the authentic Chinese food at Mr. Chau's, where they "serve so much food in one container that it requires a rubber band to contain all of their wonderful creations." Miss your family? Do like Mary A and head to Italian eatery Olive Garden, and even if you don't want to hang out with Tony, Junior and Paulie, how can you resist "unlimited salad and breadsticks!" And we certainly know Tam H has no problem finishing his and his girlfriend's "gargantuan full slab" of baby back ribs at Tony Roma's; with 35 years of business under his belt, Mr. Roma proves that great taste never goes out of style. Like so many Yelp foodies, Maritel C appreciates culinary innovations. Taco Bell/Pizza Hut does it best by fusing both Italian and Mexican delicacies, offering a late-night drive-thru as well. Now that's thinking outside the slice - the only thing missing from the culinary United Nations is a bucket of fried chicken and a root beer to wash it down...

-----

every link underlined there is a big box / corporate run identity. Nothing local, nothing mom and pop.

I am all for walmart and lower costs of goods and services through scale efficiencies, but there is something beautiful and wonderful as well in being a patron of your local shops. If a business is well run, then yes it can survive in the face of the Goliath corporations, but there is more than just costs involved when you get down to it.

When you find someone who's poured their life into doing what they do, vs a large corporation that shoulders most of the risk and involvement, paying out minimum (not always a living) wage to employees to robotically sell goods and services, it's frequently better to pay a premium for these things.

Not all things are worth paying premiums for - toilet paper is going to be toilet paper whether I buy it from a local independent supermarket, vs a big box. But things like a good butcher, a hardware store owner, a car parts retailer, dry cleaner, and definitely restaurants, are all small scale operations that offer value far beyond just the price tag. By choosing these establishments you reap the benefits and rewards of experience and wisdom that can only come through a passion that causes them to open their own shops, and a faith that they can make a business through them better than some corporation.

They also have their own networks of professionals that can be tapped for further guidance and wisdom. For example, my mechanic works out of a 76 station from which he rents space. I take my car to him not because he has the lowest prices, but because I know he's got experience, and will give me a straight price. He's not there to feed a corporate bottom line, he does it because he loves working on cars. When I took my CRX to him to have an Integra Type R intake manifold attached to my Honda Del Sol JDM block, it's an operation definitely not in any manual, but I paid him for was his long time experience and that of his friends who do know how to monkey on those things. If I had gone to a dealer (heaven forbid), I would have been turned away as it's not a stock modification. And no way I would take it to a speedy-lube-in-a-jiffy type place where they have no experience dealing with such things.

It's great to talk to a butcher and tell them what you're making and let them pick out the best piece or cut for your dish. A shank with a bit more bone for stew flavor, a more marbled cut and a wine recommendation. Try that at Safeway with the guys behind the counter.

How many times have the Geek Squad called you up after they fixed your computer to check if everything is ok? Have they ever emailed you to let you know you could download a patch or tried to just fix things for you over the phone? Their object is just to get you in the shop and bill you for as many hours as you will let them. (And search your hard drive for mp3s, movies, and pr0n to copy).

Why does this happen? Because they're not invested in the business. They have no need to act honorably, someone already reaps the rewards of their hard work. And that person is out playing golf at the moment.

---

So back to Yelp.
I love Yelp, my wife loves Yelp, and because our baby is on the breastmilk right now, he seems to love Yelp.

And it's an obviously easy way to monetize once you get to a decent size, but I don't think it's really fair. Yelp is supposed to be review based democrazy - you rise to the top based on your performance. In this case, you rise to the top if you pay them money, which I find troubling to say the least.

I guess my message to them is: Come on guys, you have an enormous amount of user data, preferential information, and reviews, you CAN do better than that, otherwise you're no better than the Yellow Pages.

--------------------------OK Yelp, you've totally sold out ----------------

I've excerpted Mia N's review and highlighted what was taken out of context from her post.

Love/Hate relationship with this place! I find myself coming here too much.All depends on when you go, your company, and who you meet!It's a place where everyone can find something (or someone..harhar) to do.Crazy night with the girls? Straits, Vbar, Rosie's, Blowfish. Bonus: cute bartender at Straits. Another bonus: potential hookup. I kid.

-------------
Is it because you couldn't find any positive reviews about Santana Row that Yelp had to edit this post? I'll be analyzing the next post with a fine tooth comb.

bebo and temptation

2008-03-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

opinion editorial in NYTimes

this article speaks about Bebo's recent acquisition by AOL and temptation #3.

lasermonks

2008-03-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/03/24/moneytales.DTL

They've been around for a long time, but I find their business entirely wonderful and amazing - creating value for everyone involved. If all business was only this lucrative!

temptations with social networks

2008-03-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

I've blogged about things before, and on this day before Easter, one of my readings pointed out to me an important aspect of human life - temptation.

I'm not here to debate morality, but I am here to talk about ethics.

To me ethics are rules that are chosen and determined by ones person, or codified in some sort of document as they pertain to a business (usually either in the mission statement or in some training document).

When it comes to temptations with social networks, we are faced with contrasting desires.

On one hand, the size of an social network can frequently determine its usefulness to its users. For every user past the first, the social network increases in value for each user at first with an exponential rate, then trailing off to flattening to a modicum, along an "S" curve. This is typically because the addition of close friends is more valuable than the addition of unknowns, and on the average the amount of utility that a friend brings will always be higher than a stranger - issues of trust and authority taken into account.

The temptation is that while growing this network as quick as possible, there are various shortcuts you may take.

First off is involuntarily adding people to your network. Several sites do this, I've blogged about them and you can find info about them on google.

The benefits of simply scanning the internet for user profiles, taking them, parsing and then adding them to your database is simple- you get users regardless of whether or not they want to join your service. The con is that they did not agree, and frequently will find your solicitation annoying to say the least. So you simply don't tell them.

What does this strategy get you?

It gets you information but not 'heart'. And 'heart' is what I believe makes a social network worth belonging to. Simply scanning through the intarweb and picking up users' data does not sum up to any sort of 'heart' in the information at all. 'heart' is what causes your users to invite their friends, 'heart' is what gives them empowerment to help police and shape their own network, 'heart' is what makes a social network a home for its users, and not for the corporation running it. The moment anyone gets any idea that they are being used for something, they will cease to give any 'heart' and pull back, as well as forget why they came and blow your popsicle stand.

The book I was reading gave this example to me: After the Chernobyl aftermath, the Russian government called upon citizens of the USSR to donate to the children of the families affected by the disaster. It was like pulling teeth, because you cannot legislate generosity. In the same way as the US attempts to legislate morality, you cannot cause people to care about contributing to your developing community of you just add them. Leading your users to water does not make them drink.

Another temptation is to incentivize people to join your network - giving them a reason to sign up that does not exist in your value proposition. This is akin to hiring employees that will work for you purely because of the salary.

And as anyone who knows the attitude of that type of person (I can, having been that type of person) you show up and do exactly as you're told, no more, no less. There is no such thing as the extra mile, there is no pride in your work, no need to innovate or show off, just everything cut and dry, grab the paycheck and get out of there.

And that's the type of users you'll have in your community - if they stay. More than likely they'll bounce and take off once they realize their probability of getting the reward, the door-prize, or the max user accounts they could have created is gone. You'll get a flood of users at the beginning - expanding at a dizzying pace, then all of a sudden, your sign up rates will floor and trickle.

Your users will not contribute, they'll only send emails to friends to join so they can possibly get in on the loot, and once that is up, you'll have a bunch of junk throwaway emails and no user participation.

Temptation 3: Selling what was given to you freely
Let's face it, as the operators of social networks, we're given tremendous amounts of data, in trust between owners of a site and those that reside on it- when you give me your data, you know that I will have it, but hope that I won't use it to do anything funny.
This temptation exists after "hitting it big", which is to use that information in a way that either invades your privacy, or allows me to monetize off the data unfairly.
Sites that I've seen this happen - have started out as cool, fun and easy to use sites that provide use and value to the residents as well as visitors. Then all of a sudden the word "monetize" enters their brains and they somehow feel justified in reaping the rewards owed to the hard workers who made their site so rich with information to begin with.

----
Temptation is out there, but weathering it and making correct choices at every fork in the road not only gives you the ability to sleep well, it also exposes your character.

I have a great deal of respect for Craigslist, they have created a site of extreme value, ensuring that the value exists to their users, not shareholders. They pull a moderate (ok, savage) salary from charging people who already would have paid more at other venues, and yet maintain an air of freedom and community that is hard to match in any other network.

They've faced temptation, and stuck to their guns, which I guess is what being ethical is all about.

a very exciting time

2008-03-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

My faithful beta testers out there have been giving the site a good smashing, and hopefully our efforts will produce a site worthy of KaZuum users everywhere.

I'm trying to keep a strong rein on my imagination, there's so many functions and "cool stuff" that I want to add to the site, but know that there's a line where it stops being cool and just becomes bloated.

I really do believe that this site has the opportunity to really push everyones' social networks into a new level of usefulness - and my first tests are of course my parents. If my mom can use it and find it useful, then I know that I'm at least headed in the right direction.

But this is the part I love about being in a startup - running on 3 hours of sleep, waking up before your alarm clock because you don't want to let go of the code process that you're holding on to. In the stillness between bug squashing discovering more interesting and cool uses for your work, and recognizing there is nothing but time and my limited typing speed (~100wpm) standing between me and that idea coming to life.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

On my 3rd cup of coffee this morning, trying to switch to splenda.

-regards

&lex

commentary on Calacanis and Cuban

2008-03-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.calacanis.com/2008/03/07/how-to-save-money-running-a-startup-17-really-good-tips

Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department
- repurpose your old computers and run linux.

Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year... which is at least $2,000 a year.... which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you're getting 10-20x return on your investment... and you've got a happy team member.
- good advice, i can attest to using dual monitors adding leagues of productivity - if it's excel spreadsheets across monitors or code/trace/webpage across the board.

Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy. Going out for food or ording in takes at least 20-60 minutes more than walking up to the buffet and eating. If you do meetings over lunch you also save that time. So, 30 minutes a day across say four days a week is two hours a week... which is 100 hours a year. You get the idea.
-yeah definitely no need to have meetings - you should be in a semi-meeting - always synched anyways

Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters... invest in it.
-amen - in our case it's a dining table. good chairs a must- they take emphasis off your discomfort and allow emphasis on getting stuff done.

Don't buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person... 50 people over three years? $75-100k
- phone systems are so 1980.

Rent out your extra space. Many folks have extra space in their office. If you rent 5-10 desks for $500 each you can cut your burn $2,500 to $5,000 a month, or $30-60,000 a year. That's big money.
- work out of my house - so the wife might be pissed at this one.

Outsource accounting and HR---such a no brainer.
- if you're too busy working at real value creating business opportunities, you won't have time anyways.

Don't buy everyone Microsoft Office--it's too much money. Put Office on three or four common computers and use Google Docs.
- YARP thank you google.

Use Google hosted email. $50 or free per user.... how can you beat that?!?! Why screw with an exchange server!?!?
- Free is yum!

Buy your hardest working folks computers for home. If you have folks who are willing to work an extra hour a day a week you should get them a computer for home. Once you get to three hours of work a week from home you're at 150 hours a year and that's a no brainer. Invest in equipment *if* the person is a workaholic.
- laptop = computer from work and from home, with codebase on it is another way to subtly say "you have your code in front of you, and you can't sleep at 5am. shouldn't you be working?" But handing out free laptops to people is just a dumb idea too- they should be a badge of honor for those who have productivity patterns you want to encourage others to aspire to.

Fire people who are not workaholics. don't love their work... come on folks, this is startup life, it's not a game. don't work at a startup if you're not into it--go work at the post office or stabucks if you're not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.
-this note got a lot of flak on techcrunch, but it's definitely true. Jesus didn't spend half of his last 3 years twiddling His thumbs - He was out pounding the pavement till the day they hung Him up. This is your life's passion, if it's not then why are you doing it? If you're not waking up to do this every day of your life then why are you doing it? If you just want to be in it for the money, go work for Microsoft (gasp) or GE or something.

Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office. Going to starbucks twice a day cost $4 each time, but more importantly it costs 20 minutes. Buy a $3-5,000 Jura industrial, get the good beans, and supply the coffee room with soy, low fat, etc. 50 people making one trip a day is 20 hours of wasted time for the company, and $150 in coffee costs for the employees. Makes no sense.
- yeah that is a bit out of our price range, but this makes sense. Me- I just work at mcdonalds - free refills, GoogleWifi.

Stock the fridge with sodas---same drill as above.
- costco.

Allow folks to work off hours. Commuting sucks and is a waste of time for everyone. Let folks start at 6am or 11am and you'll cut their commute in half (at least in LA).
- allowing them to work off hours lets you work off hours too.

Go to each of your vendors every 6-9 months and ask for 10-30% off. If half of them say yes you'll save 5-15% on fixed costs. People will give you a discount if they think they are going to lose the business.
- vendors? what vendors? everything's free! well except hosting.

Don't waste money on recruiters. Get inside of linkedin and Facebook and start looking for people--it works better anyway.
- if you have to ask someone to join your company and pay them to join, they're probably in the wrong spot to begin with.

Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm. Perhaps you can get a PR consultant to work on 2-3 projects a year for $10-15k each and save 75%. More PR firms are wasted half the year while you build up your product anyway.{I'm going to add a couple more of mine as I remember them }
- not at this stage, but will remember this advice.

Outsource to middle America: There are tons of brilliant people living between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York who don't live in a $4,000 one bedroom apartment and pay $8 to dry clean a shirt--hire them!
- dont' know anyone there, but will keep an eye open.

-------------------------------------------
http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/03/09/my-rules-for-startups/

1. Don't start a company unless its an obsession and something you love.
- this goes back to the Jesus point. If you're not all in, willing to lay your life down for it, then you shouldn't be doing it, and you owe yourself, your family, and friends and relationships you'll be sacrificing for this venture to make darn sure you're all in, bought and sold out for this idea.

2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.
- never thought about this, but it seems to make sense. KaZuum is definitely one of those things I want to work on for the rest of my life.

3. Hire people who you think will love working there.
- Ah but how to tell if they will love working here?

4. Sales Cures All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.
- sales is the STFU for anyone who has questions about marketing plans.

5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap
- here's a hint - ours is not web design.

6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.
- I disagree on this one- one cup of coffee is like 3 of soda. Coffee stains your teeth, soda eats them away. Plus saying "i'll buy you a cup of coffee" and walking over to the machine sounds so much better than "I'll buy you a soda". Lunch is a perfect time for people to get together and eat and hang out and talk about work.

7. No offices. Open offices keeps everyone in tune with what is going on and keeps the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show them how to use the lock on the john. There is nothing private in a start up. This is also a good way to keep from hiring execs who can not operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over their secretary, run away. If an exec wont go on salescalls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company.
- yeah agreed - if you're here to build an empire, go DIAF.

8. As far as technology, go with what you know. That is always the cheapest way. If you know Apple, use it. If you know Vista... ask yourself why, then use it. Its a startup, there are just a few employees. Let people use what they know.
- actually you should hire people who are firmly rooted in their own technologies - forcing them to play together is something any deeply religious OSX / linux / windows / BeOS person would know how to do anyways. And if you're using distributed apps like googleapps or smb or ftp even then you don't have to worry.

9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.
- middle management is the heel that stamps on the neck of your startup. You're either doing work or you're dead weight. There's no one that should be "making sure it gets done", only "making it done".

10. NEVER EVER EVER buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, its ok to buy for your own folks, but if you really think someone is going to wear your Yobaby.com polo you sent them in public, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money
- Personally I think you should get swag depending on your business and target audience. Like graffiti is cool- skateboarder stickers, pens, and of course, an orange elephant with a Kz logo.

11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications, shows and websites you already watch, listen to and read. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them an email introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communications with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.
- yes yes heard you guys the first time

12. Make the job fun for employees. Keep a pulse on the stress levels and accomplishments of your people and reward them. My first company, MicroSolutions, when we had a record sales month, or someone did something special, I would walk around handing out 100 dollar bills to salespeople. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, we had a company shot. Kamikaze. We would take people to a bar every now and then and buy one or 10 for everyone. At MicroSolutions, more often than not we had vendors cover the tab. Vendors always love a good party :0
- this is a really hard task but really important - if you don't validate peoples' hard work, reward them in obvious and visible ways, it can really crimp your morale. When people are always charging up the hill, you have to let them take in the view.

thanks guys for the inspiring advice. now back to work, you scalawags!

getting awfully crowded in my sky

2008-02-20T11:07:00.000-08:00

seems like there's a lot of interest in the local services/listings/advertisements categories.
In many ways this is great validation, and for the end user, this will definitely make services better for everyone.
Of course, for us, it makes acquisition harder, but also kinda muddies the waters a bit. The emphasis on pizzaz and marketing does detract from a site's purpose, but humans are built that way. Hopefully building a strong set of core users, being honest, pure in intent and maintaining strong "guanxi" with them will cause more likeminded people to join.

But we'll see if that occurs, I'll be giving myself an expiring hourglass on this after the next rev comes out.

The lines are drawn, just waiting for dawn to come to shine light on what we've made.

Exciting isn't it?

lesson learned from retooling

2008-02-18T00:54:00.001-08:00

"Don't retool, build it right the first time."

In theory, this is the best line of advice you can take, in practice, especially with startups that continually must rev their ideas, it's a light at end of tunnel never reached.

There's a fine line of balance between "overengineering" and rapid design with a startup, in most of my mind I tend to err on the side of "get it done yesterday, make it work and neatly." But on occasion, I will try to force us to "over engineer" a feature, especially if I know that it can be used for more than one thing in the future, and especially if it's going to be something we will have to tune. This is when we put the game on pause, come together over chinese food lunch and argue the afternoon away on one core module - a linchpin that holds many core tasks and logic steps together. (Typically forcing marketing out of the room to boot)

Overengineering, however, takes time. It takes thought and prescience that is typically unknown in startups, and pisses off engineers because they're asked to create code that at the time seems unnecessary, preventing them from more well defined projects.

One could argue that well designed code requires no over-engineering, as it's simple to retool, because the core modules are easily switched out like boards on a shelf. But they who argue that fail to take into account the one thing that measures startups - time. A larger establishment can throw engineers or teams at problems, then spawn off other processes. Typical startup - one engineer, 5 modules, all due yesterday, but hopefully flexible enough to extend to tomorrow.

So I guess an intelligent thought process is:
1) is this module core to the operation of the system - does the whole idea fall apart without this module in place?
2) How certain is this module from a user standpoint? Are all the user requirements and specs set in stone, or is it basically a stab into the unknown?

If both these are yes, then spend the time engineering it with hooks and imperfections to give it that edge of fluidity.

retooling the site

2008-01-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

hey everyone

haven't posted in a while, but been quite busy, which I'm hoping you'll be able to understand soon. The long and short of it is, I've been retooling what the site does around a different paradigm which I think will be more useful than everyone's typical Classifieds type of site, and a direction I think the future of social networking is moving.

We'll let you know soon!

-a

secrets of successful entrepreneurs

2008-01-10T16:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.rd.com/content/secrets-of-successful-entrepreneurs/

This article covers most of the things that we would all think to do as business owners. But as in all things - tis not the idea that comes hard, but the execution.

I think everyone wants to be a success in life, no one sits around all day to figure out how to reduce progress in their life. It's just the matter of doing, not just reading or thinking about things that keeps me locked up.

Social Networks, Web 2.0 and Small Business

2008-01-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

The words are honking around like geese during the fall - every day you hear Web 2.0 buzzwords like Network Graph, Mashup, or Social Advertising. But in the end most of these buzzwords fall to the wayside when it comes to actual business, they aren't helping people live lives of richer experience or greater opportunity.
That's because most social networks today revolve around 3 steps:

1) Get big, fast
Get as many users as you can as fast as you can. With valuations like Facebook's, each user becomes enormously (over?)valued in terms of the ad revenue they project to bring in and potential sales they could have through the network. Sign people up, spam their friends, find ways to force them to bring their friends to the table so you can reach particular numbers that your financial backing satisfactory.

2) Lock in, lock out
Once you've got users in, lock them in - force them to manually delete every post they've ever made, make sure your system doesn't play well with others, much like your cel phone provider or your semi-best-friend's-new-year's parties - make it horrendously difficult for you to break away from them, or at least give them some sort of guilt trip for leaving. As for those who want to use your info, lock them out - only let people in that you know will bring you money.

3) Advertise, advertise, advertise!
Once you've got tons of people, sell the adspace to large companies - Coca Cola, Sprint, GM. Advertise to the companies that your model allows for specific targetting, allowing them to make the most effective granular marketing pitches. Advertise to non-users that they're hot or not, especially not if they're not posting pictures of them at the last office party on your site. Then advertise your IPO.

But all this leaves out the other guys - companies who don't have devoted marketing teams or no need to know exactly when some GenYer's friends recently bought tickets on Fandango and are looking for the opportunity to upsell. Businesses that deal with the original "social network", the one that shares information over dinners, on the phone, in church, through handshakes, smiles, high fives, and a job well done. They're left out in this grand scheme - "Get Big Fast" doesn't work in the world of quality relationships.

But that's what we're building here - a place where people can meet people, make friends, and help one another out. We're a tool to better the lives of our users and those around them. We want everyone to know directly or indirectly who they're dealing with. We want to help people fulfill their needs, as well as find fulfilling for themselves. And if people happen to have fun in the process, then so be it.

I'm a firm believer in Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, the idea that we're indirectly guided to better society by an "invisible hand" which causes us to pursue our own best interests in a free market. I also believe that it's truly a gift that anyone can enjoy the fruits of their labors. I believe in the power of friends helping friends, and I do think that together we can make our own spaces better places.

-alex

updating from Rails 1.2.3 to 2.0.1

2007-12-18T17:27:00.001-08:00

So I decided during Christmas downtime to update the site from Rails 1.2.3 to 2.0.1
Wow talk about biting off more than I could chew.

But basically to chronicle the event, I'm using this post to help pay forward any help that I've received in the past.

Quick fixes:
undefined method `extract_options_from_args!' for #
does not work anymore in 2.0.x
instead, replace those lines that have:
options = extract_options_from_args!(args)

with
options = args.extract_options!

Acts_as_Authenticated
change the redirect_to_url to redirect_to

---
other useful links:
http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2007/12/7/rails-2-0-final-released-summary-of-features
http://blog.reciprocallattice.com/2007/12/auto-completion-and-in-place-editor.html
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2007/12/17/rails-2-0-2-some-new-defaults-and-a-few-fixes

Murders and Executions

2007-12-13T15:22:00.000-08:00

In the comedy noir "American Psycho", Christian Bale's character Patrick Bateman answers a girl at a club when asked what he does.

"I'm a VP at so and so company."
"What do you do?"
"I'm into Murders and Executions."
"Oh, how do you like it?"
"Like what?"
"Like the work, a lot of my friends in Mergers and Acquisitions hate it..."

In my humble view, startups do a lot of M&E, we murder ideas and execute on the ones that escape our grasp. At least that's how it is at KaZuum. It's a sort of natural selection process to find good ideas, kill them off with small prototype tests, basic common sense, convenience surveys, simple market tests, or user stickiness, before attempting to execute on them.

Let's face it, with a 3 guy shop, there's only 504 hours a week available for us to really execute on any particular idea. It's in our best interest to try to give any idea that crosses our way a dirt nap.

Sure we might be overreacting, sure we might not be working on full 100% complete definite knowledge, and we might kill something that would have been awesome if we had let it grow a bit, but it's a high velocity environment out there, we don't really have that option.

We're lucky the idea of Craigslist + Ebay + (Insert Social Network of your Choice) = KaZuum is easy to wrap your brain around. It's easy to explain, and people get it. Which is great to sell, but it's sorta like...having your first baby.

Everyone who has their first baby is bombarded with advice from everyone else who believe they're qualified to give advice - they were at one point a baby, and obviously know exactly what to do.
Take this eagerness to expound on idea, and add Founders Fanaticism to it, where you think your idea is the greatest thing since sliced bread (actually we believe KaZuum to be BETTER than sliced bread). We know this because we have actual focus group data confirming this. That we commissioned. With pizza and beer. Lots of beer. But add that zeal to take your idea and make it super-cool, L33T, with LOLCATZ dancing on the boxes, and a satellite uplink to a moon-base uplink. (Think Dilberty Pointy Haired)

We have a ton of ideas that we come up with all the time, most of which end up being shot in the head. Of course you can't be thin skinned about these things, and I think it's one of the greatest assets any founder can have - the ability to tap into iterative creativity like a fire hose and keep those ideas coming. And it's not with a callous brutality that we kill ideas here, we foster an environment that encourages new ideas, no matter how outlandish, strange, or weird. Every idea gets its chance in the Octagon, so to speak, to make its validity and relevance known to us through analysis and decision processing.

In the galaxy of entrepreneurial ideas out there, you're going to find many that will be the same or along the same lines. The differing factors are whether or not they've murdered the same ideas that you have, and how they're executing on the ones they've allowed to live.

My thoughts on executions are for another post.

Time management Techniques

2007-12-13T15:18:00.000-08:00

http://wishful.fileburst.com/creativetime.pdf

Mark McGuinness wrote about some of the time management techniques (with my answers in italics):

1. Creating organization, structure, discipline, and habit in one’s daily routine.
Ideally, a structured, organized routine is very nice to have, but interruptions can seriously disrupt a person’s creativity, and a person who is used to a routine will suffer a lot more in an unstructured environment.

2. Prioritizing work that is important but not urgent, instead of spending bulk of time on work that is important and urgent. This is the only way to progress toward your own goals and dreams instead of reacting to what other people throw at you.
Doing work that is important and not urgent. Well, that explains why I am writing this blog rather than working on our new Marketing Requirement Document, which I feel is pretty important and urgent.

3. Pick your most creative time of the day and work in an environment that is ideal for creatively, this could be in the morning before the daily interruptions comes to play.
Usually my most creative time is between 6am to 10pm, 1pm to 5pm, 6pm to 10pm, and 11pm to 2am. In other word, I have a roughly 4 hours worth of battery life after each meals where I am most happy and creative. Then again, I eat TV dinner so I am low maintenance.

4. Avoid the “Sisyphus effect” of endless to-do lists—create a limited list of things to do everyday, so you are more motivated to complete them.
Sisyphus, who was condemned in ancient Greek Underworld with a never-ending task of pushing rock up a hill and watching it roll back down. That might seem boring, at least it is a manual job that doesn’t require too much creativity, and it is nice to be able to live forever. It might seem like a never-ending list of answering emails, but at least you build your network and connection that way. If something that is repetitive and does not contribute toward your goals, why would you be doing them?

5. Do it tomorrow—avoid the endless to-do list, segment tasks like answering email each day, and finish answering a day worth of email at a time rather than trying to answer all the emails at once.
Do it tomorrow? Why not work overtime and do it today? I am sorry, but I was the type of student who tries to guess what will be the math homework 2 weeks from today and try to finish them. Most of the time nowadays though, I cannot do everything I want to do in one day, and I break down my tasks into tiny segments. If miraculous I actually get what I want to do done, I will start (even just write a few line) on tomorrow’s work.

6. Get things off mind—setup “bucket” to put into information, demands, and commitment so you don’t forget them. In-tray, email box, iGTD software, answer phones, text messages to self,
Get things off mind—I try to have at least a record of stuff that needs to be done, if not in more than one location. I also have 3 alarm clocks that set off at 5 minutes intervals in case I don’t get up on time; I am a bit paranoid in that regard.

7. Review commitments—review what is needed to be done before tackling the tasks, and think about how to approach your work. Step back to see the big picture.
I don’t always write my commitments down, unless there are too many to memorize. Against large number of tasks, I do what a good test taker would do, quickly finish up the simple problems that I can do (also helps me to build confidence) while brainstorming for ideas of how to deal with the more difficult problems.

pizza vs banquet frozen dinners

2007-12-06T13:20:00.000-08:00

Which of these is worse for you?

that was our lunch debate today - cofounder Alex was eating a banquet frozen dinner, other cofounder Alex eating into the official pizza of the Silicon Valley Startup - Red Baron Frozen Pizza.

Not that we can't appreciate great food, but after just launching OPEN BETA yesterday we're hard at work cracking down on bugs.

So you can find trusted, local services in peace and quiet.

Wow when will people learn?! How Not to make invites, part 2

2007-12-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

You figure after the most recent opt-out/in debacle with Facebook's Beacon that people would have learned to respect others' privacy by now.

Obviously that's not true across the social networking scene (I don't dare call it an industry).

Here's the TOS from a site which sent me 2 spam emails this morning:

By registering for Yaari and agreeing to the Terms of Use, you
authorize Yaari to send an email notification to all the contacts
listed in the address book of the email address you provide during
registration. The email will notify your friends that you have
registered for Yaari and will encourage them to register for the site.
Yaari will never store your email password or login to your email
account without your consent. If you do not want Yaari to send an
email notification to your email contacts, do not register for Yaari.

and the emails -------

************** wants you to join Yaari!

Is ************** your friend?

Yes, ************** is my friend! Â Â Â Â No, ************** isn't my friend.

Please respond or ************** might think you said no :(

Thanks,
The Yaari Team

Notice:

You have to sign up for both accounts to make them not your friend.

WTF, how annoying/shady/evil is this?

Facebook's $15B valuation

2007-10-25T10:41:00.000-07:00

Wow, what can I say.

I'm of the mindset where you should take what you can, when you can, and obviously Facebook at this time is the web 2.0 darling. But still, the massive valuation that they received from this deal sets them up for huge expectations. A downround after this could seriously destroy their credibility. Not that they really need it with the hundreds of millions of dollars they've received from MSFT as well as other hedge funds.

But with Google hiring up all the fresh talent in the valley, I wonder if they'll be able to actually make good on this investment. Microsoft's throw in is just a smidge of what they're capable of, it's a great deal for them as they receive dedicated advertisement rates. Especially granted they're going to be forecasting $150M in revenues. A 100x revenue valuation on a company that's yet to even post numbers of a profit definitely smells of a bubble to me.

I would hope and dream to have such a huge valuation for KaZuum, but hey, let's be realistic here, we don't have 43M users and a fast growth rate. Yet. :)

But regardless, in true pirate fashion I herald Facebook - Take what you can, Give nothing back!

How NOT to get new users

2007-09-04T10:27:00.001-07:00

Trouble viewing this e-mail - click here

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
has invited you as a friend on Quechup...
...the social networking platform sweeping the globe

Click here to accept XXXXXX's invite

You can use Quechup to meet new people, catch up with old friends, maintain a blog, share videos & photos, chat with other members, play games, and more. It's no wonder Quechup is fast becoming 'The Social Networking site to be on'.

Join W and his friends today:

http://quechup.com/join.php/gwMjU%3D

You received this because W X XXXXXXXXXXXknows and agreed to invite you. You will only receive one invite from XXXXXXXXXXX. Quechup will not spam or sell your email address - privacy policy. © Quechup 2007.
Click here if you do not wish to receive any more emails from Quechup

------------
So basically quechup goes and scans through your email box and then sends an email out to everyone with this information, as if the end user agreed to invite you through their box.

Every website out there has a net amount of social goodwill, the culmination of its positive value and negative drawbacks. In the case of Quechup, this outrageous violation of user trust definitely sinks it in my mind. In fact, it tips it past the inflection point that separates it from being a good website to one of malicious value. Which is why my friend blogged to her friends that she's deleting her user account and focusing her points on how violated she feels by their attempts to spam her friends.

Sort of a good news travels fast, bad news travels faster.

RoR forums with Savage Beast

2007-08-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

Part of the fun of developing in RoR is the great community of coders out there. I'm not a serious ruby hacker- I'm more of the lazy/pragmatic type. Thank goodness there's people out there like Jodi at http://the-soup.net/. Jodi's created a plugin version of Josh Grobel and Rick Olson's excellent Beast Forum, called Savage Beast, which promises to let us plug it into KaZuum and give a place for people to ~~complain~~, comment about our services.

Jodi's excellent writeup is located here, I'll be following it.

Look for an update soon.

oish.

2007-08-21T03:56:00.000-07:00

Wow what a busy weekend.

First, my brother in law gets married and I have the honor of DJ'ing his wedding. Everything went well, the bride did not kill me for playing one too many trance tracks, and in fact, she I think she rather enjoyed my transitions from Gloria Estefan's Conga to Nelly Furtado's Promiscuous Girl. But definitely weddings can be a joy and a curse to those throwing them. Having gone through the whole process myself, I can really say that getting married is one of those big hoops that you really just put yourself through in life.

The basest alternative is going down to your local judge and having him do it, and besides that the sky's the limit. You really get to plan out and make it the best experience that you want it to be, it's your chance (rather, it's the bride's chance) to make it her day of days. I'm glad everything turned out well for him and that they're having a blast in Hawaii.

But if you've ever looked for vendors for wedding stuff, the methodologies can be quite tedious and time consuming. When my wife and I started planning our wedding, we relied heavily on friends and family to help give pointers as to who to talk to, which shops to choose, from invitations, to decoration, to chair covers, and musicians. Of course, being the cost conscious and detail oriented woman she is, she managed to get us within budget and within what I consider a splendid ceremony. If we didn't have so much help, so many wedding TV shows, and other resources, I daresay I'd be typing this from a different relationship standpoint.

The second gala was a wonderful baby shower thrown for my wife by some of the awesome girls at our church. Once again I realized what a blessing it is to have so many supportive people helping us celebrate this special time in our lives.

As another week of beta continues, I'm just glad for all these timeouts that remind me why we're trying to do what we're doing here- to make everyone's lives a little bit less stressful, and helping people stop to smell the roses along the way.

First post first post!

2007-08-16T18:12:00.001-07:00

TAKE THAT SUCKAS.

oh. You're here. Ahem.

I came to the realization that it was better to have this than try to force a blog to integrated with our RoR environment. Not that we didn't want one, but that we had so many other things to prioritize over this. And we're not great fans of wheel reinvention. Unless it includes spinnahz.

This is the blog here on out for the KaZuum team, we hope to entertain you with our witty musings and messages so you can get to know us and we can hopefully get to know you through commentary. We'll post latest developments and new features of the site here, along with any issues and problems we might have along the way.

So check this place as often as you can, the Google/Blogger team has done a great job of incorporating this sort of thing, so subscribing to the feed will also help keep you informed.

James, our resident codemonkey, er, developer, has never ever kept a blog before, so all this is rather new to him. Feel free to spice up his life.

-alex