Since ThingShare is a new business which needs scale to succeed we’ve gone the route of pursuing funding for our idea. Part of that journey might take us to an accelerator. We’ve applied to a bunch and are still applying to more accelerators. TechStars is the biggest accelerator we’ve applied to and the one that we’d benefit the most from.

In preparation for applying to TechStars I did my research, and figured out that while some funds/accelerators give priority to the business model/idea, TechStars puts a large emphasis on the team. Essentially they believe in raising/supporting great entrepreneurs no matter what the current idea/business is that they’re working on.

We’ve applied to both Boston and now NYC TechStars. But I’ve learned something in the 4 weeks in-between each application. The lesson I learned came from the movie 21.

Lessons learned from “21″

In the [based on true facts] movie the main character Ben had denied himself the pleasures of this world to seek after one goal, getting into Harvard Medical, the only thing in Ben’s way is finances. He has all the perfect scores, has everything lined up, and even is accepted into Harvard Med, and now he’s competing in a full ride scholarship. The professor explains to him that Ben’s life and in turn Ben himself is boring. In Ben’s final essay he needs to “Jump off the page” and the professor needs to be dazzled.

Dazzling TechStars

Like Ben needed to explain to the professor why he was impressive, I needed to explain to TechStars how I and my teammate are incredible  It’s like filling out a form on a dating website and needing to sound attractive, rich, etc. You shouldn’t lie. But you need to sexy up the stories a bit.

So what do I have that is impressive? What would make an indivitual going through hundreds or thousands of applications see our application and say, “Wow I want to meet these guys!” or “Holy cow, Bob did you read this application?” In short, How do I Jump off the page, or how do I dazzle the TechStars team?

The Basics

On the surface these details don’t make me jump off the page, but they should.

• I’m from the midwest
  • I’m outside the Valley Echo, and I have the midwestern work ethic.
• I live in the woods, 40 miles away from the nearest city and that city isn’t very large either.
  • While city life provides connections, life in the country is significantly more healthy – and I raise as much of my own food as possible
• I went to a small unheard of college, got a degree in youth ministry
  • All the successes I’ve had in IT/Business have come from bootstrapping and being self taught.
• I have a wife and four kids
  • While some assume that makes me tied down and less fundable, having a family makes me connected with our target audience
• I’ve worked for various small and medium businesses that TechStars has never heard of, and do not directly apply to ThingShare
  • I know how to run small teams well and to work hard with nothing given to me.
• I’m 32, that’s 4 years older than Mark Zuckerberg
  • LinkedIn found that 40% of founders are in their 30′s, and 65% are 30 or older at their first startup.
• We convinced a billionaire to invest $25,000 in ThingShare
  • While that seems low, everyone has to start somewhere, and a $25k convertible note is a form of validation.

But I’m not bitter, I’m just trying to show you how on the surface I don’t dazzle, I’m not the Stanford educated former Google employee who is connected to every VC in the valley, instead I’m  an average hard working midwesterner dad/husband who is pitbull-like in my pursuit of an idea that I get behind.

But let me try it again, what follows are the parts of my story that do jump off the page. And are all true.

Jumping off of the Page

In this list I am not trying to brag or promote myself, but I put it here to let you be the judge. The ultimate question is at the end of the the list.

• I traveled around the world when I was 13, without my parents or family.
• I hand wrote html in vi on a Sun UNIX box in 1994 (aka started “coding” at age 14)
• An insurance company gave me $5,000 for a car that wouldn’t run.
• My wife and I were deported from Kazakhstan, and we returned a week later.
• As an english-only speaker I taught algebra to a woman who only spoke korean.
• I walked away from an incredible job to pursue the Startup world two years ago.
• I’ve sung in a funeral processional for a South African AIDS victim, in South Africa.
• I built a training application… in Microsoft Access, prior to Visual Basic.
• I turned a 2 week temporary job into a 9 month long engagement which I then left.
• My wife and I delivered our son at home. Alone. Unassisted. Unplanned.
• I built a Facebook page fan base of 60k in 2008.
• I’ve built a digital marketing agency that has billed a quarter million. Annually. Every Year.
• I chose to parent another man’s child cause he wasn’t willing to do it.

So, did I dazzle you? Did I Jump off of the Page?

The post Jumping off of the Page appeared first on Paul Kortman.

I’ve been reading, discussing, and learning the Lean Startup Methodology for the last 3 years now. When most people hear the concept of Lean Startup, they think bootstrap startup, ya know lean on funding. While this isn’t always true it’s suprisingly still prevelant thinking. Perhaps Eric Ries should have done an MVP of the movement’s name and received some user feedback on it before writing the book.

The basics of the lean startup philosophy are to get user feedback, do user testing, and discover if people are willing to use (and pay for) the product you are creating both before and throughout the creation process. It’s called lean not due to lack of funding but due to efficiencies inherent in the process. It’ll cost well over $60,000 to build anything of value (app or physical product). Most often ideators (co-founders) will donate their time to the development which brings down the hard costs, but does not effect the cost of those hours given. Lean Startup philosophy asks: What if you found out that people didn’t want this product after only spending $500 versus spending $60,000 (in time and money). That’s where the lean (efficient) comes in.

So the theory of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is born. We all understand what Product means, and Minimum makes sense: what is the bare essentials that you can get away with?

But Viable. That is the issue.

Eric Writes:

“The idea of minimum viable product is useful because you can basically say: our vision is to build a product that solves this core problem for customers and we think that for those who are early adopters for this kind of solution, they will be the most forgiving. And they will fill in their minds the features that aren’t quite there if we give them the core, tent-pole features that point the direction of where we’re trying to go. So, the minimum viable product is that product which has just those features (and no more) that allows you to ship a product that resonates with early adopters; some of whom will pay you money or give you feedback.” source

How much do you need to solve of the core problem to be “viable”? For example to solve a dating issue by creating the next match.com:

• Do you need profiles?
• Do you need a matching algorithm?
• Do you need a date idea generator?
• Do you need user feedback/ratings/reviews?

At what point does this become Viable? When do you have the Core built to say yes our early adopters will forgive us and we can hold up a tent with these poles we have. Who is the judge of this?

The key with MVP is that you iterate and test. You need to get a feature out in the wild and find out: Do people want this? Does it solve an issue? Will they use this? Find out the answer and either fix/improve the feature or add on another feature that continues to solve the problem. Do this cycle a few times and perhaps then you have a viable product? How many cycles till it’s viable, and haven’t you already been launching MVPs, yet they’re not “Viable.”

When is an MVP Viable?

That is the question I have been struggling with on ThingShare all summer. We built an MVP to test if people would want to use it, if they’d like it. Yes we invested more than $500 in both time and hard costs, so perhaps we went to market with more than a minimum viable product, but I’d argue that we went to market with smoke and mirrors.

I’ve been waiting to write this post until we had two more features implimented (just last week) because as Joe (my co-founder) and I often discussed there’s a cliff in the process inside ThingShare and we’re pushing our users off this cliff. “Oh you didn’t have your own parachute?… Sorry.”

That’s what MVP means to me, smoke and mirrors.

Can you sell a product to people before building the product? Can you convince people to use a car with no brakes or no steering wheel?

Yup, we’ve done that.

Success! We’re a Lean Startup.

And somehow I’m not okay with this. Strangers who use ThingShare to rent video games are now my friends and I have had to appologize to them for our lack of product completeness. Then it gets even richer: The users suggest features which already are on our roadmap but were cut due to the word minimum.

Rubber meets road in Lean Startup:

An Example Minimum Viable Product Process

ThingShare is a peer to peer video game renting platform. At least that’s the vision for it. I could argue that it still doesn’t “work.” But I’ll let you push it around and find the dark alleys of where the site breaks down.

The first MVP we launched with was a signup form, could we get 10 people to signup.

Check

Next iteration was being able to list your video games and gear, could we get 10 people to list their video games and gear.

Check But how strange, we now have over 30 users and yet you could do nothing more than list video games and gear you owned… some rental site this was! It could be argued that our initial users signed up because they felt safe showing their Games & Gear to their friends. Check and fail. You couldn’t even rent a game yet. So how was this site viable? I argue that it was indeed not viable. It was an iteration, a test in the Lean Startup style, but viable it was not. Yet users were still signing up and listing their stuff.

So we added the ability to rent something (and a bonus wish list, public profiles, and all kinds of other goodies) We asked the question again: Will people actually use this?

Check! they sure enough did, about 20% of our user-base tried renting something. Can I emphasize that they tried, but we pushed them off a cliff. You see we were testing if they would try to rent a game, We weren’t testing a user to user messaging system, or an item checkin-checkout process, just “will users actually try and rent a game?”

Thus if in those days you tried renting a game you’d receive an email saying “Congrats! your rental of Assassin’s Creed 3 has been approved! Connect with the lender via Facebook to work out the details.” User? Meet cliff, here let me help… *shove*

Turns out Facebook has a spam filter and if you try to send a message to someone whom you’re not friends with it ends up in their “other” box and they never see it :(

So our earliest adopters, the people who trusted us, we pushed off a cliff in the name of Lean Startup. What am I supposed to tell them… “Sorry it was an MVP?”

Last week we added a messaging system, and a check-in/checkout process. The next iteration. Our users have already thanked us, and have suggested the next couple of features (which we had already listed on our internal road-map).

At what point does our product become viable?

• When we reach critical mass?
• When we have no other features to build? (ha that’ll never happen, I’m a visionary don’t you know)
• When we bring in revenue?
• When we make profit?

Definition of Viable: “capable of living” source. Uh, well I don’t exactly want Frankenstein’s Monster. So at what point can a platform sustain life? And did we “launch” too early?

No answers, just questions. Questions to test and iterate on.

The post The problem with a Lean Startup: the Minimum Viable Product. appeared first on Paul Kortman.

Yet I have this dilemma, a war wages inside. I like inbox zero, or at least inbox <5. I also have anywhere from 20-50 things on my todo list at any given time.

This is where Boomerang for gmail comes in handy. But first what is boomerang typically used for? Most people I’ve spoken to about boomerang know it as the “send an email later” utility. Which is what people use to delay emails for people who respond too quickly. But Boomerang for Gmail offers so much more than that.

The function in Boomerang that I use the most is the bring it back to my inbox. If I know that the email from a client I won’t be able to get to until tomorrow afternoon I boomerang it for tomorrow afternoon. Now it’s out of my inbox, and I don’t have to worry about forgetting it. There is something refreshing about not even looking at a todo you know you cannot do yet.

When the message reappears in my inbox I can choose to deal with it then, or of course I could boomerang it for a later date/time.

One of the side benefits

As I approach the end of a working session (I have 3-5 sessions a day) I typically choose which emails to boomerang for a later working session. That way when I check my email from a mobile device while between sessions I’m only looking at the new stuff or stuff that I’ve chosen to keep in my active todo list.

Too often before using boomerang i would reply to a client with an acknowledgement of the todo item and then archive the message because I responded. Using boomerang in this workflow I’ve been able to keep the same practice but also have the email pop back up as a reminder at a specific time/date.

The other thing I use boomerang for is to ensure that I follow up on emails. If I send an email to a person who I need to respond but I doubt they will right away I boomerang my email so that it reminds me to call or send another email.

Have you used boomerang? Do have other functions/features of it you use?

The post Boomerang is a must use for Inbox-todo method appeared first on Paul Kortman.

What is Facebook’s EdgeRank?

Facebook introduced an algorithm called EdgeRank that determines which content to show in each persons news feed. The effects on a person to person level is that no longer will you see everything your friends post to Facebook in your news feed  unless you look at their profile/timeline.

This EdgeRank algorithm also effects content posted from a Facebook page (formerly called a fan page). So when the administrator posts an announcement to the page Facebook’s EdgeRank determines who should see the content in their news feed.

What are the factors of EdgeRank?

Most sites point to three factors: User Interactions, Weight, and Time Decay. The basic factor of EdgeRank is a User Interaction which is an umbrella term including one of the following actions: message, viewing the timeline/page/profile, liking a piece of content, sharing a piece of content or commenting on anything from the page or user. So the more you interact with content from a friend or from a page the more likely content from that person or page will show up in your news feed.

Outside of your personal interactions, there are other factors of EdgeRank:

• Total Interactions, the more likes, shares, or comments a piece of content has the more likely it will show up in more news feeds
• Content Weight, videos and pictures have more EdgeRank than just plain text
• Time Decay, the longer a peice of content is out there the less likely it will show up in your news feed (news isn’t old right :)
• Your network, if a friend you interact with has interactions with a piece of content it will be more likely to show up in your news feed. Technically this is bundled under the “User Interactions” factor but is pulled out for our discussion today.

So we’ll boil EdgeRank all down to a simple statement: Content is more likely to show up in your news feed if you have previously interacted with the page, if the content has a lot of interactions on it,  if it’s a photo or video, if it’s within the last hour, and if your friends have interacted with it.

How can we help?

The people behind the Facebook Page which sent you here is passionate about something and the fact that you came here you are passionate about helping them, for that we thank you. Since you clicked on the link to get here you probably already have a high EdgeRank between you and the Page which sent you here. But as we know the page has a larger audience which isn’t seeing their content. This is where the Network Effect may play a role.

What you can do to effect the EdgeRank factor of a piece of content:

• Interact with the content (like, comment, or share)
• Do your interaction soon after the content is posted (seconds count)

Lets get real, you have a life and aren’t on Facebook enough to see all the content this Page has posted, so how do you cut through all the clutter and get your interaction to be timely? We’re so glad you asked!

SMS and Facebook’s EdgeRank

Did you know you can subscribe to a Facebook Page’s updates (and a person’s updates) through sms? And when you get a text from Facebook it will contain the first 100 or so characters of the update. You can comment on it by replying via text/sms or you can reply with “like” (without the quotes) to Like it. Both of these actions will contribute as an personal interaction on that piece of content and will increase it’s EdgeRank for your network and for the page’s connections.

That’s it, that’s the secret way to help a page beat the EdgeRank algorithm. Simply subscribe via sms to the page and like or comment (via text message) to content. Your participation will increase the content’s EdgeRank and will serve to further the mission of the Facebook Page you are subscribed to. What follows is a step-by-step method of how to setup sms and subscribe to a page.

Setup SMS and Facebook

1. Configure Mobile
   • Go to Account Settings, then click Mobile in the left sidebar (or go here)
   • Click Add a Phone
   • Choose your Country and Carrier and click Next
   • Text the letter F to 32665 (FBOOK)
   • Type in the confirmation code
   • (clear the checkboxes if you want to)
   • Click Next
   • Verify that you have Notifications enabled: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=mobile&section=notifications&t
2. Subscribe to the page via SMS
   • Visit the Facebook page which sent you here (or any Facebook page/user profile  you want to subscribe to)
   • In the left sidebar find the “Get Updates via SMS” Link and click it

Thats it, now when you receive a status update you can simply type like from your phone or a comment and send it back. Viola EdgeRank effected.

Thanks for your support!

The post How to beat Facebook’s Edgerank appeared first on Paul Kortman.

Recently I celebrated with a few other contractors my first official year of being a freelance digital marketer. It’s been over a year and I’ve seen some crazy things happen. The largest one being that I intended to be a freelancer, and now I’m running a virtual digital agency. (Connex pays/represents 5 contractors, I happen to be the salesman, account manager and one of the contractors :)

I try to live my life with no regrets, and I do not regret leaving the best job I’ve ever had, however the road, the journey this first year has not proved to be easy. I’ve made many mistakes and my failures have become brighter, louder and more annoying to me.

So if you want some background on me quitting my job last year  or the second company I started in the past year  check those posts out, or the inspiration for this post, but if you want to know a fraction of the lessons I’ve learned in my first year read on.

The First Year: 10 Lessons Learned

1. I don’t scale.

I try my hardest to work more and work harder but I still fall behind. I cannot be around for my wife, available for my kids, work 80+ hours a week and keep in touch with all my friends. I owe apologies to many clients, friends, aquaintances and more for not being able to scale. (The Connex tean was birthed out of this lesson, and frankly working with a team is much better.)

2. I’m not perfect.

Don’t get me wrong, I think I’m pretty great. But when you jump from a perfectly good job to be a freelance contractor you have to have a healthy dose of ego. I admit that there are days when I doubt every decision I have ever made, from the house we bought to the career I’m in to the college I went to. But in general, people find me to be a very assured person. However the challenges I’ve faced in the last year have led me to take a slightly more humble approach to clients, people, friends and more.

3. I’ve met incredible people.

Right here would be the opprotunity to name drop.. like James Altucher did here. But I’d rather leave it to your imagination, from millionares to winners of the best father of the year award, from anti-social really gifted contractors, to highly sucessful beer-entrapreneurs. None of these I’ve mentioned would have talked to me in my previous “job” but being a contractor, and an entrepreneur starting a business opens doors you’d never believe. I even consult with my competition on a weekly basis!

4. Taxes suck!

Need I say more? When you are watching every penny coming and going, thinking you’re doing well by paying bills on time etc and then find out that you owe Uncle Sam more than 10 months of one project’s revenues… well that hypotentical situation just may have taken the wind out of my sales and my sails.

5. I have the best wife in the world.

Today happens to be our 8th anniversary and she’s been with me through some of my most critical moments in career and personal life. She’s seen me get downsized (lets call it fired) and seen me quit a job after only working there 3 days. Shoot we got engaged while I was unemployeed and living at my Mom’s place accumulating debt daily. Today, the picture is a different story, but I could never have made it half way here without her. So my love, happy anniversary and thank you for believing in my potential even when I doubt it. I’m looking forward to our date tonight!

6. Search still sells.

I named my company Connex Social, after what I thought was hot, Social Media marketing. However after 12 months of doing social media for various clients and Search Engine Optimization for some of those and many others I’ve come to realize I was a little bit ahead of my time. Real businesses, where watching the bottom line is important are still buying SEO services. The “search problem” is far from solved and thanks to Panda continues to generate a revenue for my company and many others.

7. You can ride the wave of sucess.

Each project that expeiences sucess has brought in more projects and more clients. Perhaps the wave of success only lasts 12 months, or 3 years. But however long it lasts I’m gonna ride it.

8. Marketing yourself is hard.

Before starting my own gig, I was frustrated with marketing agencies who failed to market themselves. I now resemble that. It’s a factor of the billable hour. (I’ve got an ego that encourages me to market myself and my business, that’s not hard. But justifying the time is.)

9. There is no way to do a service business without the billable hour.

I think my long term quest of which this “first year” has been my social media agency is to move away from the billable hour. I think Noah Kagen has it right playing more disc golf.

10. I have some of the best people in the state working with and for me.

Connex’s sucess wouldn’t be a fraction of what it is today without them.

So raise your glasses, here’s to the next first year, to my contractors, and the next 10 lessons learned.

What about your first year?

What lessons have you learned as a freelancer, as a contractor, or in the first year of your business?

The post The First Year: Freelance and Agency Digital Marketing appeared first on Paul Kortman.

Why Twitter List Management?

There is only so much data one can consume in a day. With twitter there are reasons you may need or want to follow accounts that you don’t actually want to read their content on a regular basis. You really have two options, ignore the content they are posting, or add everyone else to a list and just watch that list.

Essentially twitter lists help you to curate content and consume it when you want to. If you were interested in travel deals you could create a travel-deals list and put all the discount travel twitter accounts into it. Or if you want to find spiritual inspiration you could create a list for that and put pastors, theologians, thinkers, and other spiritual leaders into it.

Other types of twitter lists (they are endless):

• friends you know or have met in real life
• customers/clients/audience/ etc.
• family
• co-workers (can spy on them)
• news/media (always nice to have to find out what’s going on)
• local people
• famous people (in your sphere, or in social media, or in traditional media, or musicians etc)
• funny  accounts (lolcats and more)

Do I have to follow someone to add them to a list?

Simple answer: no. You can add anyone to a list and keep them from ever showing up in your main twitter timeline.  (There are longer more drawn out answers to this question that refer to twitter follow building strategy and more)

Do they get notified when I add them to a list?

Simple answer: That depends. You have the option of making the list public or private. For example you may have a friends list as public, but a “people I’m spying on” list as private.  Lists that are private are just that, only you know what the list name is, the description and how is in the list. No one else (except the employees of twitter of course, and any application you’ve given permission to your account) can see this information on a private list.

If it’s a public list, users can get notified via tools if they’ve been added to a list. Or anyone can click on the list to see who is in the list. Users can also see which lists an account has been added to. This calls for pictures and examples:

How to see who is in a list:

First you have to find a list… view any user (in this case @cspenn) and notice the tabs right above the first tweet:

See the “Lists” section to the right? click on that to reveal the public lists this user has created:

Fun set of lists eh? My favorite is the sent-me-dm-spam… Anyways, click on one of those list links to view the curated content of that list, I went with the first one, and the URL looks like: http://twitter.com/#!/cspenn/replied you can now see the curated content of @cspenn in his replied list. Note the top gives you some interesting information:

At the time of this post, there were 17 users listed in the “replied” list for @cspenn, and one person is subscribed to the list (yes you can follow lists which means you are not following each of the 17 people in this list but you will get their content in your timeline because you are following a list they are in…. )

To see who is in this replied list click on the “Following: 17″ tab.  which brings you to this URL: http://twitter.com/#!/cspenn/replied/members

And thats how you can see who is in a list (any public list)

How to see what twitter lists a user is in?

This is actually more simple. Click to a user, (Still picking on @cspenn here) find their stats area in the top of the right hand column:

You’ll see that as of this writing Christopher has been added to 2,758 Public lists. (yup that’s right, private lists are private and are not counted in this number) Click on that number to see the 2,758 lists.

So there you have it, via the web you can see lists, see who are in a given list, see the content in a given list and see where a given user is listed.

But How do I create a twitter list?

Simple, sign into twitter, find the lists tab (just above your timeline) click on it and then choose “create a list”

From the resulting window you can fill in the name, description and choose if it’s to be public or private.

Ok but how do I add a user to a Twitter list?

Go to a user’s  profile, and find the little man button.

Click on it

Choose “Add to list”

Done.

Remember you don’t have to be following a user to add them to a list.

And that’s the basics of twitter list management via the web.

What about twitter lists on my iPhone/Andrioid App?

• From your home timeline, click the three-dot … icon on lower right hand side of your screen (hint: it’s next to the magnifying glass icon.)
• Clicking on that icon will bring you to a menu that includes, down at the bottom, all of the lists you’ve created and the lists you’re following. You can add a new list right here.
• Or, once you’ve clicked on a list you can then touch the icon in the lower right hand corner of your screen to bring up a list of options such as sharing, editing, or deleting the list. Win!

Advanced tools for Twitter List Management

I have some lists which I manage manually and some which I manages using these tools, it just depends on the needs, but I have to admit I find Formulists to be the best twitter list management tool out there:

• formulists – too many functions to mention
• listorious - twitter list directory
• tweepML –  find more twitter lists
• more list tools from oneforty

The post Twitter List Management appeared first on Paul Kortman.

************* original post ***************

This is a developing story… but too many people have been asking so I’m writing this to explain a few things.

Dreamhost is not having problems which is what their status sites are not reporting anything.

However there is a network issue. So far I have Verizon 3g, ATT 3g, Comcast are able to connect to the dreamhost services (all in the US) networks like ATT DSL, Telecom in New Zealand, and movistar/telefonica in spain. It appears that things are stopping at NTT’s routers. Keynote doesn’t seem to be reporting the problem however.

Traceroute NTT to Dreamhost

Below is my Traceroute which stops at NTT (I’ve confirmed this from other users.)

4  dist2-vlan50.klmzmi.ameritech.net (67.36.55.227)  11.312 ms  11.565 ms  11.258 ms

5  bb2-10g4-0.klmzmi.sbcglobal.net (151.164.38.108)  11.540 ms  11.713 ms  11.293 ms

6  ppp-151-164-55-186.eulstx.swbell.net (151.164.55.186)  16.000 ms  16.473 ms  22.581 ms

7  xe-0-2-0-6.r06.chcgil09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.9.73)  16.794 ms    as2914-ntt.eqchil.sbcglobal.net (151.164.251.114)  16.731 ms    xe-0-2-0-5.r06.chcgil09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.8.53)  17.411 ms

8  ae-7.r21.chcgil09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.201)  17.886 ms  18.064 ms  17.121 ms

9  ae-4.r21.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.200)  79.086 ms  62.567 ms  47.831 ms

10  ae-0.r20.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.58)  47.189 ms  47.805 ms  43.454 ms

11  ae-5.r20.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.168)  75.436 ms  74.784 ms  76.309 ms

12  ae-1.r04.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.2)  74.678 ms  74.117 ms  74.571 ms

13  * * *

14  * * *

15  * * *

I’d love to see your traceroutes and what ISPs are working or not working for you. For now I’m running over 3g, slow but at least my requests work.

The post Dreamhost is not Down appeared first on Paul Kortman.

and I didn’t know it :)

The below is copied and pasted from a piece of spam email that I received. It made it through two email spam filters including Google’s. So I imagine I’m not the only one who has received it. When I did a quick search I didn’t find any examples, so I’m adding this to the interwebs as official spam documentation.

It’s too bad, I always thought my uncle was a rich Oil Tycoon ;)

Dear Paul Kortman, I am Barr. Toya Aboke a legal practitioner, I am the personal attorney to Eng. M. C. Kortman an oil consultant. On the 21sth of April 2003, our deceased customer, his wife and their only daughter were involved in a motor accident and It was unfortunate that our deceased customer and his family all lost their lives in that accident. Do kindly contact me directly on my private email address below thus; (toyaboke@gmail.com) for more details in respect for the claim of his Estate/Fund valued (US$11.5Million)left behind before it gets confiscated or declared unserviceable by the Finance Firm. Best Regards Toya Aboke (Esq) Principal Attorney, Lome Togo.

————————————————————-

This message was sent to you from your Google profile. The sender does not have your email address.

If you no longer wish to receive messages from your Google profile, you may edit your settings.

It was well written, but still spam. So folks are spamming Google Profiles now….. lovely.

Just doing my part to document the spam on the interwebs… and now back to your regularly scheduled tube surfing.

Image Source

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But for those of you who didn’t click those links, keep reading here to witness me rant about a few things. But first I do have to explain what FutureMidwest is:

What is Future Midwest?

Pitched on it’s website as “The region’s largest digital business conference.” Future Midwest is like a regional South by Southwest. (SXSW) They explain further on the website and most of their marketing has been around the concept of Midwest being the region and that the conference will be: “professionals with extensive digital, marketing and strategic backgrounds teaching attendees “what” they should expect to see in the coming years and “how” to successfully capitalize on the trends with marketing and business strategies.” Plus “the opportunity to network with each other, presenters and professionals from the startup community, VC firms and a variety of other industries and backgrounds.”

I’ve been able to network with VCs, startups, presenters, and professionals in the startup community. I’ve also heard a couple of engaging talks on business and the future of digital business (mobil and social). I’ve seen some really amazing talent represented here.

Are you waiting for the other shoe to drop?

The Problem with Future MIDWEST

Is that this has been all about Detroit. Yes I understand that there are a lot of people from Detroit here, and that the founders are Detroit focused etc. But for those of us not from Detroit I didn’t pay to come to a cheerleading session about how Woodward Ave will be changed to Webward Ave. (Which is stupid on so many levels). And I didn’t pay to hear speakers show me how things are terrible in Detroit, why they are and what D Town needs to do to revitalize.

I’m not from Detroit.

I’m a West Sider, and while I think we should all get along and play well together, I expected this conference to contain more information about the region, about the Midwest. Something that I can be proud of to talk to my friends in Chicago and explain what is coming out of Michigan, or explain to my Californian friends what is cool and coming out of the MidWest.

I also expected to see people brainstorming how we can unite across barriers such as states and geography to get the midwest into the mobile-social playing field. Lets talk about 4G and why the MidWest is being over looked.

Instead I’m pitched the fact that light rail is coming to Detroit and will not ever reach outside of Detroit.

If thist conference were named Future Detroit I could understand all the cheerleading about Mo Town, but since it’s called Future MidWest can we please please discuss the region? @davemurr one of the co-chair’s for Future MidWest even had the balls to post this tweet: “Michigan still suffers from pocketed communities. #Detroit, #AnnArbor, #GrandRapids, #Lansing are you listening? #FMW11″  I wanted to scream so bad when I read that. If Future Midwest is truly about the midwest then get off the D Town cheerleading squad and start the open dialog.

And that’s day one.

Oh there was also this thing called Funded by Night. So, So, So worth my money for the whole conference, and then some. Sorry to the 20 something startups who presented and didn’t win. But wow what an event!

Have you even been to a conference that pimped out the city you were not from, and did it in a way that wasn’t attractive? What did you do?

The post Future Midwest 2011 appeared first on Paul Kortman.

Buffer Twitter App Review

Twitter’s latest evaluation of $7.7 billion goes far beyond it’s monetary value. Making a difference on Twitter is more important than ever. What you best avoid at all times is annoying your followers by sending them too many tweets at once.

If you feel you could do with spreading out your tweets a bit more and tweet more consistently every day, let me introduce you to Buffer a new Twitter App.

Buffer? Can you just give me a quick description?

Buffer lets you add many tweets at once to your Buffer account and then spreads them out over the day for you. I find this particularly useful when you read the news. I put my 5 favourite articles into the Buffer and the app will tweet them well spread out over the course of the day. No individual scheduling or time setting. One click and it’s in your Buffer.

I am interested – What does it do in more detail?

The easiest way to put tweets into your Buffer is by using one of the browser extensions. Whenever you find an interesting article, you give it one click on the Buffer icon.

Buffer, by default, gives you the title and the link of the site you are on. You can edit the tweet some more or simply hit “add to Buffer” right away.

See an example of Colin’s post below:

Track the impact of your buffered tweets with analytics too

Conveniently Buffer has also just launched an analytics feature. It will help you to track the impact for your tweets. It shows you the retweets of all your tweets sent via Buffer. The service will have click rate and other handy insights ready real soon too.

What happens to my tweets when Buffered?

Once you added tweets to your Buffer, they will be scheduled for you. This means your updates will be tweeted for you during the day. When? Here is how it works:

When you first sign up you set a couple of fixed tweeting times. Now at each time, one of your tweets will go out every day. The good thing is that there is no need to schedule each tweet individually, like you would do with other tweet scheduling services. Oh and of course you can always change your daily tweeting times any time.

As an example, here are my daily tweeting times, where each one of my buffered tweets will go out:

What makes Buffer “killer”?

If you have similar habits like me, reading many great blogposts every day and trying to get the most out of Twitter, you will love to use Buffer.

The thing you will appreciate most about Buffer is that all it takes is one click on the icon to have another tweet scheduled in your Buffer. On top of that you share great articles with your followers consistently all day and you don’t flood them with too many tweets at once.

Finally I also want to point out that Buffer is no “instead of Tweetdeck or Hootsuite” tool. You can seamlessly integrate the use of Buffer with your favourite client.

You should try out Buffer and let me know your views below. I am very curious if you find it useful too.

Paul Here

So let’s hear it, was this a benificial review? Do you like the guest post format? Have you tried Buffer? Shout out in the comments below. Oh, and here is a handy Twitter search to find out who is using buffer

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