iPhone vs. BlackBerry Curve

I’ve been coveting the iPhone 3G for it’s sleek interface, slim frame, fully functional browser and especially for visual voice mail. But I was also unwilling to stand in line for several hours to get one. I get why the thing is so cool but after realizing that the ability to get any mail easily pushed would not work (with out Apple’s “Mobile Me“) and the blissful business functionality that comes with the BlackBerry I’ve decided to stick with my Curve 8310 for now. I’ll probably switch eventually but I’ll give them time to work out more of the kinks.

To be sure, the iPhone interface kills anything else out there but the essential functionality for me is great email, messaging and a great phone, all of which the 8310 does with ease. I never thought that day would come when my need for reliable and practical (at least in a phone/PDA) would outstrip my need to feel cool!

The other downer about the I phone is expandability. I can drop a micro SD card into the 8310 to expand the memory but no such luck on the iPhone. And given the nominal cost of memory these days it bothers me that Apple charges such a premium for 16GB vs 8GB. I probably wouldn’t carry quite that much media on the device at onetime anyway but it really is the principal of the matter. I’ve already paid for Apple “coolness” when I chunk down $200 for the device, why should doubling the memory add $200? Of course they got it by selling millions of the things in the first weekend so I guess I’d take everyone’s money too but it seems to me to be a short sighted purchase by many consumers and a bit pompous on Apple’s part.

I may eventually get one because they are so damn cool but then again I might just want to see what those Google guys pull off with Android. I love disruptive technology and Google might just make the iPhone popularity a  short-lived event in it’s current form. Plus I like Google’s “Don’t be evil” philosophy, and I’ll bet I can add extra memory.

All of that said, this might have changed my mind. It’s WordPress for iPhone and as a big WordPress user this is a major turn on.

http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/21/mobile-bloggings-next-step-wordpress-for-the-iphone-about-to-launch/

lijit - Search Based On Your Content

lijit is a new search application designed for publishers, which, with the advent of applications like Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc… we all are to some degree.

lijit enables you to add a search widget (er.. wijit) to your site or blog and return results based on your network of content. For example, if someone searched this site through the lijit search (very top right) for “Community Crush” (shameless plug I know, you might experiment with “Wordcamp” too and get a lot back) you would get results from all of my content sources (Facebook, twitter, this blog, Linkedin, stories I’ve dug, …). In another tab, you can see search results from my “network” or sites that I follow and/or trust. Of course you can get plain ol’ web results too or you can get results that are specific only to this site.

The idea is that it aggregates all of my content and trusted sources so you can find it in one place while still differentiating between my content (in the case of me) or content from my network.

It’s a clever idea and one which should do well. I’m going to continue testing it for a while but if all goes well I’ll remove the default search for this site and use only the lijit wijit.

I learned about lijit at WordCamp 2008 while talking to Aaron Brazel who is now working with lijit.

lijit has also secured $7.1M in Series C funding so they should be araound and doing well for sometime. I’m looking forward to seeing how this grows and evolves.

If you’re a WordPress user they also have a lijit search plugin with integrated statistics to replace the default WordPress search. I’ll be pluggin that in shortly. Note: ***This plug-in is only available for those WordPress users with versions 2.3-2.6.***

Do some lijit searches and let me know how it works for you.

Tripit

I don’t get caught up in every cool new business idea as I often did during the dot com hey day which is a shame as there are probably more good ideas now than there were then. Still, several good ideas make it through and Tripit is one that recently caught my attention. As someone used to traveling extensively for business and pleasure I’ve had the fortune of randomly running into people I know in locations from from home but the idea of knowing when you are going to be close to someone due to travel schedules can make the process of traveling a bit more of a pleasure knowing you can take in dinner or catch lunch with a friend.

Enter Tripit. The service works by simply setting up your account and then when you book travel, such as with an airlines, you just send the same confirmation e-mail to Tripit that you receive and their system will parse the information and add it to your Tripit calendar which can also be syndicated to another application such as to your Google Calendar. The first time I sent an itinirary in I was surprised at how quickly and accurately everything showed up. Next, Tripit will compare your travel itinirary to people with whom you choose to share your information and let you know when you will be in close proximity to someone else, either because they live there or because of their travel.

I love Tripit on two fronts. One, the ease of getting my travle schedule into my calendar which I previously had to manually type in from whatever obscure form it was sent and the ability to know whhen I’m close to other people I know who are also traveling.

I’m not sure how Tripit will fare (har har) as a standalone business but they seem like a likely acquisition target or would do well to license or otherwise sell their technology to the big travel sites by creating an integration point between them. Hopefully they have a patent or other protection on their idea as the idea would not be difficult to replicate.

Firefox 3

The long awaited release of Firefox 3 has finally left Beta and is ready for you to download. I’ve been using the new browser for a couple of days now and am very happy with the overall performance. Anyone who has used Firefox for any length of time knows that it could be a memory hog. There were several memory leaks and FF2 was generally un-optimized for efficient memory usage which has been resolved in this release.

The first thing I noticed was the modified look and feel. While I like it and it continues to grow on me my first reaction was that it reminded me a little more of Internet Explorer than I had expected but I believe that is due to the fact that I am running on Windows Vista right now and FF3 adapts to your native look and feel. I also lost several plug-ins which are not compatible with FF3 though nothing that would prevent me from making the upgrade.  One of my favorite plug-ins, GMarks, which synchronizes your Google Bookmarks with Firefox (as  you have your Google Book marks tagged, very useful!) still works flawlessly.

The inclusion of page title and favicons in the url drop-down or during url entry is nice as are the small but noticeable improvements to the download manager and one click bookmarking if you use the browser bookmarks as opposed to something like Google bookmarks. There are really too many changes in productivity, security, memory and customization and improvements to mention but overall the new and improved Firefox is definitely an upgrade from FF2 and continues to provide a far superior browsing experience to Internet Explorer.

If you haven’t made the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, now would be a gret time to do it. You won’t be sorry and will be impressed at how much more you can do with it.

Woopra Review

While taking part in the Dallas WordCamp a couple of weeks ago we were introduced to Woopra but one of the company founders John Pozadzides and given an opportunity to take part in the beta trial of the hosted, real-time website analytics program.

The first reaction to Woopra by almost everyone is WOW! Visually the application is very engaging and includes features such as a world map that shows a ping wherever someone is hitting your website from in real time and a stock-type ticker at the bottom with scrolling statistics among a myriad of other things. You can drill down into your statistics any number of ways, tag visitors (i.e. if you know who they are you can always know when they come to visit) and even start a real time chat with them (could be creepy or fun depending on how you look at it and use it).

For any stats geeks out there Woopra will be a must. You can sign up now and as soon as they have openings in the Beta trial they’ll let you in. Otherwise, you’ll have to want until general availability. Some noise has been made about the usefulness of “real-time” statistics but I can easily imagine situations where real time stats could be very useful such as during a campaign or product launch, or for monitoring sudden bandwidth issues and requesting real-time increase of bandwidth from your host. If you have ever observed the “Digg effect” on your website you know what I am talking about. I’d also like to say, it’s just cool…

Cali Lewis, host of GeekBrief.tv had an opportunity to interview John P. at WordCamp and provide a more in depth demo of the platform which will include API’s for expansion.

GBTV #337 | Introducing Woopra from Neal Campbell on Vimeo.

One thing I would personally like to see built in (hint hint if you read this John) would be real time threshold notices so that if my traffic suddenly spikes while I’m not watching the screen I get an SMS message, that way I can call up my webhost and increase bandwidth on the fly preventing a site crash (or crash of anyone else’s if on a shared server).

This would make a nice integration point between Woopra and Layered Technology’s ability to throttle bandwidth on the fly and leverage their gridLayer computing system.

I’ll hold off on a full review until the product is out of Beta and generally available.

Some other good posts on Woopra:
TechCrunch Review
DownloadSquad Review
Lorelle Review
CrunchBase Review

Blackberry Curve 8310

I’ve been an avid Blackberry user for years now. Despite some of the limitations and the fact that it doesn’t have the cool appeal of an iPhone, for the combination of business and personal use, speed, efficiency, form-factor and reliability I’ve yet to find anything to beat it. While my 7290 was getting a bit tired, and historically Blackberry’s were not great phones, it was still a great device overall.

With the Curve, RIM has really outdone themselves. I got the 8310 about a month ago now and the only changes have been positive. Internet applications, which I rarely use save for Google Maps when I get confused in downtown Dallas are exponentially faster, the screen is several magnitudes brighter and even the little trackball, which I thought I would be challenging has turned out to be faster and a easer to use than the old scroll wheel with an adjustment curve of about a day. The keypad is still a full QWERTY board but a bit smaller than before so typing is a touch more challenging but it’s really a small trade off. If anything, it’s encouraged me to be even more succinct it my e-mail and text messages which is probably a good thing.

The 8310 has embedded GPS which I have yet to use and the camera is acceptably good for a phone camera, which I almost never use anyway. I haven’t used the media player extensively and don’t foresee it replacing my iPod anytime soon but I can imagine it being useful in some instances and I’m glad to have one on-board; it’s a feature I’ve felt belonged on all phones for sometime. The built in speaker-phone is surprisingly clear and loud which again, as a business user is quite nice. It’s got push-to-talk, ala the old Nextel phones but I could care less about that.

As mobile devices go you would be hard pressed to beat the 8310 on almost any account so if you have been on the fence about the Curve, I would recommend it. If you are a more casual user and have been pondering an iPhone that might be a preferable choice for you. I’ll re-investigate the iPhone once they get it on 3G and speed up the data side. At that point the iPhone could become pretty compelling even for business users but until then, Blackberry still wins.

Woopra Review

While taking part in the Dallas WordCamp a couple of weeks ago we were introduced to Woopra but one of the company founders John Pozadzides and given an opportunity to take part in the beta trial of the hosted, real-time website analytics program.

The first reaction to Woopra by almost everyone is WOW! Visually the application is very engaging and includes features such as a world map that shows a ping wherever someone is hitting your website from in real time and a stock-type ticker at the bottom with scrolling statistics among a myriad of other things. You can drill down into your statistics any number of ways, tag visitors (i.e. if you know who they are you can always know when they come to visit) and even start a real time chat with them (could be creepy or fun depending on how you look at it and use it).

For any stats geeks out there Woopra will be a must. You can sign up now and as soon as they have openings in the Beta trial they’ll let you in. Otherwise, you’ll have to want until general availability. Some noise has been made about the usefulness of “real-time” statistics but I can easily imagine situations where real time stats could be very useful such as during a campaign or product launch, or for monitoring sudden bandwidth issues and requesting real-time increase of bandwidth from your host. If you have ever observed the “Digg effect” on your website you know what I am talking about. I’d also like to say, it’s just cool…

Cali Lewis, host of GeekBrief.tv had an opportunity to interview John P. at WordCamp and provide a more in depth demo of the platform which will include API’s for expansion.

GBTV #337 | Introducing Woopra from Neal Campbell on Vimeo.

One thing I would personally like to see built in (hint hint if you read this John) would be real time threshold notices so that if my traffic suddenly spikes while I’m not watching the screen I get an SMS message, that way I can call up my webhost and increase bandwidth on the fly preventing a site crash (or crash of anyone else’s if on a shared server).

This would make a nice integration point between Woopra and Layered Technology’s ability to throttle bandwidth on the fly and leverage their gridLayer computing system.

I’ll hold off on a full review until the product is out of Beta and generally available.

Some other good posts on Woopra:
TechCrunch Review
DownloadSquad Review
Lorelle Review
CrunchBase Review

37 Google AdWords Secrets

Building a business is tough business, even in the on-line world. Unfortunately, as we are looking for resources to help us learn how to grow our businesses on-line, we are faced with an overwhelming number of options and it can be difficult to tell the good from the bad. As a part of the “Net Generation,” actively online since about 1994 (but partially on-line since 1990), I have seen a lot of “Net” things come and go. The internet has lowered some barriers to entry for entrepreneurs but also created new learning challenges requiring new skills to remain competitive. I am still learning everyday and have yet to feel even the slightest degree of complacency with it.

One of the common learning challenges to internet-entrepreneurs is that of on-line advertising. In particular, the now ubiquitous pay-per-click (PPC) advertising such as that which Google has popularized is flooded with competition and pitfalls. There are a lot (and I mean a LOT) of publications, e-books, websites and other sources which promise to teach you how PPC works. My experience so far has been that some of those resources are useful and some are total junk often set up only to sell you something. So be careful! I read all of these publications with a healthy degree of skepticism but occasionally find some that are useful and worthwhile.

You can easily spend a lot of money on useless information but you can spend even more on your PPC advertising without getting much if anything in return if you don’t know what you are doing. The point is that PPC works, and we need to learn how to make it work for us, but it isn’t as simple as putting up and ad and “they will buy” any more than you can just put up a site and expect a million visitors to find it. Advertise without direction and watch your wallet shrink, do it right and watch it grow. It’s like anything else, constant learning and applying yourself will pay off.

So how do we learn from good resources while avoiding the pitfalls of the bad? The simple answer is do your research. In my continued pursuit to bring to you tools and information that are worthwhile I’ll mention the first of the PPC e-books I’ve found that have been well worth the cost. I’ll preface the rest of this by telling you that I have actually been using the suggestions in this book and it has kept it’s promises. “37 AdWords Secrets” by Roger Hall is a collection of (surprise) 37 techniques for improving your Google AdWords performance. Roger is a Google Certified AdWords Professional and his e-book sells for $37 or about $1 per “secret.” I have been using the techniques in Roger’s book for over a month and have seen the performance of my own AdWords campaigns improve making the book a bargain at that price. Whether you are selling your own stuff or an affiliate marketer selling someone else’s product, this book will easily pay for itself. When you buy there are also several follow on bonuses that will come after your purchase which are also quite useful (and free). If you want to try before you buy there is a “5 Secrets” primer which is free and can be found here. If you would like to purchase the full 37 Secrets you can click on the link inside the free “5 Secrets” e-book or download it here.

You don’t have to go alone. There are more tools to come but if you do ANY on-line advertising, 37 AdWords Secrets is a great place to start.

Tools of the Trade

I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of business books. I have read plenty of them but find that all too often they fail in on one of two areas:

1) All theory and what you “should” do but no practical application, or
2) Great tactical steps and “how to’s” but no way of helping you understand how those things translate to the nuances of your business or idea.

Have you ever read a great business book, finished it feeling motivated and excited about the future only to realize that understanding how to apply all that stuff was as cloudy as ever? That is because one of the greatest challenges for anyone writing on business is helping readers understand how to apply what they are learning, a task so daunting that I think most books don’t really try as doing so becomes less a business lesson and more of a lesson in creative thinking. It’s not that the books don’t contain great content and ingenious thinking, often they do, but they just don’t cross the bridge to practical application. The best tools, explanations and teachers take complex ideas and make them look simple, even when they are not and in doing so make it easier for the reader or student to apply it to their own unique situation.

One of the my goals for vsellis.com is to pick up where some of those great ideas leave off and help you figure out how to apply what you have learned. Of course every business is different but how we think about those ideas and learn to apply them is pretty universal. To achieve that I’ll be developing and publishing various types of IP (intellectual property in the form of applications, whitepapers, tools, …) to help cross the bridge from theory to application. The catch is to change the way we think about and learn the translation process, not to necessarily to do the translation for you, though the best road to that end will be through examples and explanation. Along the way we’ll address problems and solutions and help you move from sitting on your couch reading a book to running your business.

But before we begin, allow me to set your expectations; you still have to do the work. I’m simply going to help you develop the idea, then move past the idea and excitement to actually working on your business, and in the process, more quickly get over the inevitable bumps in the road.

I’ll add to this discussion that I won’t recommend any books, blogs, papers or tools that I haven’t read or used myself and that I wouldn’t be willing to pay for myself. Also, I don’t judge any of those things based on popularity or lack thereof, but rather on the content and the value it brings to what we are trying to accomplish.