Colin Osburn
Software CIO
Data, Big Data, Infographics. Robotics. Cloud Computing. Gravity Probe B Project Confirms Einstein Space-Time Ideas. Venture Capital / Angels. Startup America – Dead On Arrival. For its first few decades Silicon Valley was content flying under the radar of Washington politics.
It wasn’t until Fairchild and Intel were almost bankrupted by Japanese semiconductor manufacturers in the early 1980’s that they formed Silicon Valley’s first lobbying group. Microsoft did not open a Washington office until 1995. Fast forward to today. The words “startup,” “entrepreneur,” and “innovation” are used fast, loose and furious by both parties in Washington. Last week the White House announced Startup America, a public/private initiative to accelerate accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship in the U.S. by expanding startups access to capital (with two $1 billion programs); creating a national network of entrepreneurship education, commercializing federally-funded research and development programs and getting rid of tax and paperwork barriers for startups. What’s not to like?
My observation. I hope it succeeds. There are three problems. 1. 2. 3. 4. So What? Lessons Learned. Stealth Startups.
A random walk of interesting stuff. CIO Stuff. Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets. Open Site Explorer: Link Popularity & Backlink Analysis Tool. TNX.net beta - Text Links MarketPlace. Professional Website Design & SEO Company. AdWords: Traffic Estimator. Web Design/Tools. New Media Business Models. New Facebook Patent: the Huge Implications of Curated Search. Last Updated Apr 26, 2011 7:56 PM EDT For some time, Facebook has been interested in semantic search -- using its social graph and immense amount of information about its users to deliver search results.
Some have dismissed the effort, but that's premature and doesn't take into account what Facebook could do with a new hybrid: automatically curated search. A patent granted last month to Facebook describes an approach to search that combines any type of search engine results with the popularity of each result among members of a user's social network. Although some thought the patent was on photo tags, it isn't. The implications are actually quite broad and could affect conventional search; specialty interest search topics like travel; publishing; and e-commerce; just to name a few.
The patent is called Visual tags for search results generated from social network information. Now's the time to erase the misconception. [Update: As J. Related: © 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.. Spinnakr - Effortless social acceleration. Ahhha wants to turn your great idea into money. There’s a good chance that you’ve had some random product ideas throughout your life.
Like, “Boy, it would be great if there was a tortilla chip that didn’t get soggy when you put salsa on it?” But unless you’re a startup CEO (and hey, maybe even if you are), you probably haven’t done anything with those ideas. A new company called Ahhha wants to change that. The goal is to take all those random idea and crowdsource the process of turning them into designs and products that you can actually make money from. People enter their ideas into the website, then other users can weigh in, voting ideas up or down and also contributing their own thoughts. At a certain point, the most popular ideas will be refined to the the point that they’re monetizable. The money made from the product or licensing deal is then split among Ahhha users based on a set terms.
“If this is your one great idea that you’re convinced you’re going to make your fortune from, then go do that, I don’t want it,” Crowe said. Social Media. How ThatHigh.com Solved the Chicken and Egg Problem and Grew to 1 Million Pageviews a Month with No SEO « insight.io blog. Picking a Complete Social Marketing Platform – Does it Exist? Posted on 07 February 2011 by Colin Osburn The day job has a new twist. I have to find a social media & marketing platform which can do the following: Centralized platform for managing our outlets (Facebook/Twitter/etc.) and scale with our different businesses ( Trademotion , Parts.com , the new portals we are building, other business lines, etc.)
It has to come in a ‘box’. We aren’t just looking for our own use but to package as part of our offerings for 7,000+ car dealerships and millions of customers for Parts.com. Nice to have’s include newsletter/email management, phone number (because part of your online presence should be a way for customers to call you), live chat, the ability to do Facebook stores and twitter sales/ads, etc. Basically the kitchen sink……. So far I’m looking at (no particular order): Moxiesoft Parature Rightnow Kickapps (though with the recent acquisition this may be moot) Shopigniter and 8th Bridge (Facebook sales platforms) PSSHelp.
Help.