| This is an entry I made on the thefives blog. It summarizes everything succinctly.
I wanted to give you all an update on the status of thefives.tv. The support for this project has been nothing short of amazing. We have 5 confirmed hosts, and three referrals that I've yet to hear from. Based on the number of hosts we have, I'd think the audience for thefives.tv is definitely there.
THE GOAL
I've been asked a few times what the goal of the project is. I think it is important that everyone understand what my motivations were for wanting to get this thing off of the ground. I like people, and I like to hear their stories. I like the idea of seeing someone covered in tattoos and learning that they're a brain surgeon. I want other people to know that people aren't what we see, they're people - with different backgrounds, and problems, and families, and ideas - no matter what lives we make up for them. Understanding this may help others to be more respectful of their peers, and may encourage more thought and conversation. That is my goal - thought and conversation. What about you? Why are you involved?
LET'S GET STARTED, NOW!
Let's pick five questions from the list below, then make this thing happen. I envision three or four minutes of interviews, but if they're longer or shorter, they certainly won't be turned away. The idea is to give you the opportunity to talk to as many people as you want, while keeping the length of the production manageable and something fun. Remember, this is all about fun.
I'll take the videos and add pre and post roll branding for thefives.tv. I'll handle the credits, blog translation, and the encoding/uploads of the video to YouTube. If this gets too time consuming I may need some help. I'll arrange storage for these videos and give you instructions for where to upload them when you're ready.
The content will be released under the following license:
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States .
The tone should most definitely be as playful and fun as the subject being interviewed allows. Take a few still photos of the subject if you can. This will add additional interest to the subject.
EQUIPMENT
I've had feedback that some of you may not have the "proper" equipment to get started. I'm not worried about production quality, but more about the message that the interview sends. So, if you're like Jon Sullivan, you'll use a Macbook Pro's iSight focused on two people or a digital camera's movie mode to shoot. You may have a tripod and a DV camera (they're under $200 at Amazon). Jon and I even talked about doing Skype video interviews with a complete stranger and recording that as content for the project.
Ultimately, as long as we can hear the interview and get some idea of who you're interviewing, make it happen and don't worry about quality right now. The deployment target for this early content is Youtube, not a 100" HDTV.
THE HOSTS
I'm excited to say that participants are 50/50 on the sexes. The experience of the team varies from professional actors and people that make a living behind a camera to people that just really like to talk to other people. This variety will really add to the feel of the project.
COMMUNICATION
The last thing I want to say is that it is time that we all start the process of meeting each other and working together. I set the domain http://thefives.tv to forward to the Ning site. Each of you need to create a profiles there so we can move these emails to that site. That way things can happen without me.
THANKS!
Without you this thing would still be an idea. Your participation is really appreciated. Thank you.
See the original post here: Project update: thefives.tv | | Posted by Michael on 08/26/08. | |
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| | | I was listening to a podcast about a new concept for having news reported. The concept is that people put money into a pot, and when the pot reaches a given amount someone will write a story. The stories, from what I remember, aren't about typical local news, but more about local investigative journalism.
One of the arguments the creator mentioned was that local TV, newspapers, etc. spend a lot of time covering national and global stories, and have left meaningful local coverage mediocre. I don't read newspapers (or their sites for that matter), and seldom turn on TV news - but the times that I have seen them, he's spot on. One of the reasons I stopped reading/watching is that local news is about sensationalism... murder and mayhem, and celebrity.
Enter the blog.
When I stumble upon local blogs, they're usually covering topics of larger scope (maybe national) but with a local twist. How does the story affect them and what is the author's perspective on it. Sometimes though, it may be a story on a local sporting event, or a meetup of some kind. In my circles, these things also cover lots of business subjects... investing, entrepreneurship, etc. No matter the subject, there is a local flavor to the stories.
The idea:
Create an aggregation site that blog authors subscribe to (free of course) with the express goal of providing a local "newspaper" powered by the citizens of a given market. You would be able to drill down in a Craigslist style navigation to a city or town, then see stories in given subject areas from people that actually live and work in that area. All of the typical newspaper categories would exist: business, sports, arts, movies, activities, etc.
When an author writes a story, they would have to apply it to given categories. The readers could gauge whether or not the story is actually on topic, and stories and authors could be rated for quality. These ratings would determine what floats to the front page, digg style. If you want to have fun, you could offer a payment for the author based on the revenues they generate for the site... but that is a bonus for participating, not an expectation.
If you decide to build this, let me know... I'd subscribe to the RSS feed at the very least.
What do you think? | | Posted by Michael on 05/19/08. | |
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| | | Here's a funny one. Imagine being able to ask a historical figure a question about life. You'd probably start with one figure, then add them as you find experts that want to participate.
Of course this only works if you can get obsessed scholars to participate... but if they're that obsessed it wouldn't be too difficult to imagine that they'd want to participate. They'd love to share their knowledge.
"What do you think? Obama or Clinton?" could be asked of a virtual John F. Kennedy. Or "What should our next move in Iraq be?" to General Douglas Macarthur.
Bracken suggested that the site pick a figure a week, then have users vote on the best question for that figure to answer... I like it.
What about you? If you build this, let me know! | | Posted by Michael on 05/19/08. | |
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| | | I've been AFK for quite a while, focusing my work time on HyperSites exclusively. It is better than ever as a result... but now it is time to spend my off hours building my passion.
My passion is called Social Ingenuity. It is a huge project that centers directly in the social networking space. It has a few fundamental differences compared to most of what we're seeing in this space. First and foremost, it will allow people to leverage their social networks to build companies.
Social Ingenuity is so big in fact, that I've come up with a great way to get started slowly. Rather than try to build a monster application to support the company, I'm going to start it locally. This will allow us to find great talent to start the global version properly.
I'll have more news soon, but if your curiosity has been piqued, have a look at Social Ingenuity. Ping me with questions.
 | | Posted by Michael on 02/21/08. | |
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| | | I've come up with a term, and I'd like to start a conversation around it.
We're all familiar with the word "age." Typically this word is used to mark a place in something's chronological progression. For example, I'll turn 39 next week. Or a bottle of wine is 39 years old. My americano is ten minutes old.
I was trying to come up with a term that I could use to describe a phenomenon I've witnessed wherein a person is locked in to a particular workflow when it comes to productivity or communication. It can also be applied to how one views the internet and the tools available to them.
The time was about 1997/8... the world was significantly different. LCDs were for laptops only, Altavista was the search engine (or Yahoo! soon). Documents were created in Word, and stored on a server in the office, and possibly backed up personally on the good ole floppy or Zip disk. Email became the way to reach the people. Voicemail was hot too. Digital music was an up and comer, but the audio quality was horrid.
Today, I don't have Microsoft Office on my computer, I use Google Docs. Sure I have Pages just in case, but my documents are stored (and shared) with Google. Speaking of Google, are there other search engines today? Sure, but the big one is Google. Email is too slow, instead we've become a Twitterverse. It is instant, and always on. There are times that I could email, text, or IM someone, and instead choose to direct them with Twitter. Now is best, thanks. My wife has a 21" widescreen LCD as a secondary screen with her laptop, and I know plenty of people with those cheesy 30" LCDs (heh).
Ok, ok... the term. It is "Internet Age." Someone's Internet Age reflects how long ago they were introduced to the internet. I've noticed that typical people, certainly not those in the startup community, use the tools available today in exactly the same way they did when they were first introduced. Go ahead, ask someone that was introduced to the net in 1999 or so if they're on Facebook. Or if they know what Twitter is. Ask them why they use Office, or why they're using Yahoo to find http://www.google.com
One's Internet Age will tell you a lot about how they like to be contacted. If they're 3 or younger, IM is too slow... text them. From 4 to 7ish they'll prefer IM over email. Six to 10, email is still the preferred method. Over that, they'll check their email once or twice a week, so you'd better leave voice mail.
What do you think? The ages may be off a bit, but have you found the same thing? | | Posted by Michael on 11/19/07. | |
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| | | Someone make textcastr.com please. Yes, the domain is available.
The service is simple. A user creates an account at textcastr.com, enters their user names at twitter, pownce, facebook, etc. Textcastr.com provides their SMS short code to the user... messages sent to the short code are then relayed to the appropriate services.
The way you get the message to the available services will depend on the service of course. Twitter and Facebook have APIs, Pownce? No one knows yet.
There. Take it. And be sure to let me know when I can sign up. | | Posted by Michael on 09/12/07. | |
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| | | If you can dedicate the time, I highly recommend participating in a Startup Weekend. The concept is simple... people gather from all disciplines of business to create a company and product within 56 hours. No one knows at 0 hour Friday what the idea is, yet everyone that participates gets equal ownership in the result. There is a palpable energy in the room when deadlines are tight and there is no room for posturing or lobbying, and the social aspect of the event can't be beat. I expect Andrew and team to kick lots of butt - there are tons of people that have the startup bug and this is a great way to play in the space. Sixty-eight people generating a company over the course of a weekend.
So why should "user generated" be limited to content? What else are users willing to generate? Prosper.com allows people to generate loans (or buy debt) for people that think they need more debt to clear up other debt (yes, this is a crappy concept in my eyes, but that isn't the subject of this post). Users generate answers for people with burning questions at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Comments on blogs across the globe contribute to the quality of the original blog entry. There is a great company helping to aggregate that process too, have a look at Intense Debate
Imagine a blog post where the author seeks opinions on ideas for photos in a brochure. Users might generate some very useful ideas for the author to use, as well as post links directly to photos at iStockPhoto. I'm sure this happens all of the time... the readers help define the product.
Companies could use this system to solicit input from users of their products to perfect advertising materials. Users could be intimately involved in creating the feature set for the next version of that product. But companies still rely on R&D teams and hired guns rather than soliciting such input.
Imagine what would happen if Real hosted a weekend event where any user could come by and offer their opinion on what the next version of the platform should provide? Or maybe if Gap, Inc. took clothing designs from the public and allowed visitors to vote on which designs should be made. They could offer the designer a cash reward (I.E, purchase the design outright).
The possibilities are endless. If you have examples of user generated anything, let me know. I'd love to have a look.
| | Posted by Michael on 09/10/07. | |
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| | | While trying to come up with a usable solution for a friend of mine's mobile lifestyle requirements, it occurred to me that there is an untapped network of temporary living spaces around the world. It is just that the owners, the hotel chains, don't know it yet.
If you're untethered (single, no kids, can work anywhere there is wifi, and can travel) this idea might be interesting to you. Instead of paying rent to an apartment community or landlord, why not pay a flat package price for your living space... to a service? With the monthly price, you get total location flexibility with only a few days advance notice. You get housekeeping, coffee, laundry facilities, continental breakfasts, location independence, and all of the other benefits of staying at a hotel.
The inventory you're buying would be vacant hotel rooms in cities around the world. Imagine, one day you're in Denver, a few days later Colorado Springs. From there you may go to New Mexico, or Texas. The idea is that you're not at all tied to a city. Your home is the next place you decide to visit. You could use this plan with air travel of course to make it more interesting. If you find yourself in Seattle, but want to go to San Diego for a week, just choose the room you want and go.
I envision the interface as a Google Maps mashup of locations with availability. We already know that hotel inventory is accessible on the fly... just take it a step further and map it out.
There could be packages, from platinum down to silver, that determine what kind of rooms you'll get. You can always upgrade a stay so if you're a silver member, and want to upgrade for a week to platinum, you can do that.
If you open this idea to apartments and even individual home owners, add a ranking system for the accommodations and the hosts it could get really interesting. Want to stay a week in Ft. Lauderdale? Hit the map and look for the green thumbtacks.
What do you think? Does this idea work? | | Posted by Michael on 07/03/07. | |
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| | | Everyone has heard the term "micro-payment." It has been associated with monetizing websites for nearly as long as the internet has been commercialized. Here's an outline for a simple way to monetize a site, using modern web technology and micro-payments.
The key here is to think in terms of cents, rather than dollars. If you do, then $5 or $10 can go a long ways toward rewarding your favorite bloggers.
The first time you use the widget, you'll be asked to create and fund an account at the provider's website (a slick modern site, by the way). From then on you can move money – pennies at a time – to the "accounts" of others using nothing more than a simple secure widget. The widget might have a slider from $.05 to $1, or may have an text field for a value. After you choose the amount, enter your pin, then simply click send. To avoid the 1-Click patent from Amazon, you may have to confirm the payment. Even if you were to allow a single click transfer, you may be safe because it isn't a checkout process on the provider's website. Either way, this is really simple.
Sure there's Paypal, but Paypal has the whole interstitial popup page with the the login and confirmation process. This process is simple enough for anyone to use... you never leave the site, or the page for that matter. The trick here is to be logged in on the provider's site, and subsequently in the widget.
Where do you make money? Here are some ideas: commissions, ad sales on the widget, a one-time setup fee, monthly service fee to the blogger over $x in sales, pro features (lose the ads, stats, etc.)
If you decide to implement the idea, let me know so I can set it up on my blog. | | Posted by Michael on 06/26/07. | |
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| | | If you want to see the path to a cool company that could provide valuable services to prosumers and executives around the globe, follow this puzzle.
Read this then watch this. If you take this combine it with this and this you too can have your knowledge navigator service provider. Today. Anyone interested?
| | Posted by Michael on 06/25/07. | |
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