Groundhog Day

Just a short post tonight, since I spent so much time cruising my blogroll and filling my head with ideas from across the world wide weeb tonight. The good news is it’s not all just reading, there are some great videos in the mix.

Up First: Guy Kawasaki

Always entertaining, Guy was on a roll on the day he filmed this run through his The Art of the Start talk. It’s about 40 minutes long, and worth the time, even if you’re familiar with some of his material already. Lots of gems:

• “Don’t do better sameness…”
• “Who is my customer and how do I get my money out of her purse?”

Next Up: Hugh MacLeod

Then I caught Austin Hill’s valentine to Hugh MacLeod and the link to the HughTrain Manifesto therein. The (now two-year-old) HughTrain was inspired by and in many ways echoed the original Cluetrain (which is now pushing 8 years old, yowza). It didn’t hit me as hard as it did Austin, but again, gems to be found throughout:

• “I donʼt want to know why your brand is good, or very good, or even great. I want to know why your brand is totally frickinʼ amazing.”
• Q: “Why do you blog?” A: “To make money, you stupid –”
• “A bad carpenter thinks his shiny, new tools are going to save his sorry ass from oblivion.”
• “Business is change. There is nothing else.”
• “The Customer is a human being. The Consumer is a metaphor.”

Third Up: Digital Ethnography

Steve Poland’s TechCrunch post today featured a cool video by anthropology prof Michael Wesch. It caught my eye because Steve referred to the widgetizing of the web (a bandwagon I hope to hop aboard later this year), but Prof. Wesch’s presentation had a lot more going on than just that. Take the five minutes to check it out, it’s definitely worthwhile.

Funnies

I also caught some non-work-related videos this weekend, and thought I’d queue them up and get in the habit of ending each of my posts with some fun / amusing / entertaining video you may not have seen before. That way, if I’m boring you out of your tree, you’ll still have something to look forward to.

Have you already seen Jedi Breakfast? Be warned… as with some of the business content linked above, there’s some foul language.

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Podcasts are a great way to get up to speed on a topic, keep up with a field. These days we can even “attend” a conference we missed via the MP3s that organizers put online to promote next year’s event. So podcasts can save you a ton of money in travel, conference fees, even university tuition… but this post is about saving time, so let’s cut to it.

I listen to a lot of spoken word MP3s, and sometimes listening to them in “real time” (that is, at 1.0x speed) can be painful. If you’re like me, you’ve probably wished on more than one occasion that you could speed them up. Time is precious, and the ums, uhs, pauses, intros and outros can get on my nerves when I’m in a rush.

So here are a few ways you can listen faster, upping the tempo without a change in the pitch of what you’re listening to (that is, there’s no “chipmunk effect”). You might use any or all of these under different circumstances.

Approach #1 - iPod

If you have a 4GB iPod, apparently there’s an easy setting to listen to your spoken audio at 1.25x. Levi Wallach of Twelve Black Code Monkeys posted about this back in May 2006, and the comment thread proved as useful as the post itself. Since I don’t have an iPod, and 1.25x isn’t fast enough for me, let’s move on to…

Approach #2 - Audacity

If I have a long drive ahead of me, I’ll load up my wife’s MP3 player with interviews and podcasts. Her Our MP3 player (a sweet little Samsung YP-U2JXB) can actually speed audio files up to 1.3x, but the pitch changes too, the chipmunk effect. I usually want to go faster than 1.3x anyway, so I have to speed up the MP3s before transferring them to the player — which has the side benefit of shrinking the files, allowing me to fit more on the player.

A comment on the Levi’s blog post mentioned Audacity’s Change Tempo effect. I already had Audacity 1.2 on my system for recording audio, so I tried it out, and it worked really well… but I have to import the MP3 into Audacity (wait), apply the effect (wait), then export the file to MP3 again (wait). Each step can take a minute or several minutes on a long podcast. It’s doable if I let it run in the background, but a bit of a pain since I tend to forget about it after going off to work on something else while Audacity chugs away.

Bryan Villarin picked up on that Audacity comment too, and in June 2006 posted a handy Flickr slideshow along with detailed instructions on how to use the Audacity 1.3 beta to batch these tasks to operate on a set of files all at once, saving a lot of repetitive manual steps. Thank you Bryan!

Approach #3 - Quicktime Player

When I’m on my laptop, I don’t need to speed up the MP3s in advance — it turns out there’s a painless way to do it on the fly. This real time option also has the added advantage that if miss something someone said too quickly, I can slow things down a bit and rewind, listen to that moment again, then quickly get right back up to the accelerated pace.

I came across this approach courtesy of Phil Windley’s August 2006 blog post about using the QuickTime Player’s Playback Speed slider to kick MP3s up a notch. Check his iTunes-centric instructions out, which I’ve rephrased here for folks who don’t have iTunes:

1. Open an audio file in the QuickTime Player.
2. Choose Show A/V Controls from the Window menu.
3. Drag the Playback Speed slider from 1x to say 1.5x and give it a listen.

In my experience, going past about 1.7x with any of these methods gets pretty much incomprehensible. So while I can’t quite listen to podcasts in half the time, I’ve got it down to about 60%, which means I can listen to an hour of audio in about 36 minutes.

The time I save adds up pretty quickly, allowing me to listen to more and learn more.

Approach #4 - Here’s a micro startup idea for ya… Podcast Accelerator

Take Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services and build a nice web UI (and API) to something like Audacity’s batch processing capabilities, and/or the SoX libraries on Linux. Make sure it works with Yahoo’s supersexy Pipes application that just came out this week. There’s plenty of Pipes coverage here, here, and here (thanks to Mathew Ingram for the links, even though he admits he “doesn’t get” Pipes yet).

Back to the Podcast Accelerator idea… Users shouldn’t have to download, upload, and re-download a podcast, so let them pick an URL from the web, choose an effect (or multiple effects) like Change Tempo (and they could select a new tempo), and download/stream the processed file.

Let users store files in their accounts or in the online drive accounts of their choice. Cache popular selections so they don’t have to be processed more than once.

That would quickly evolve into yet another podcast directory, but user-driven. Existing directories and aggregators could compete by providing (say) 1.25x and 1.50x accelerated download links alongside their standard 1.0x links.

If you know of a service that does this, let me know. I don’t think I’d pay much a year for such a minor convenience (maybe $13 a quarter, or $39 a year for 1000 compressions) , so I don’t think it’ll make anyone rich.

But you know what they say about niches and the long tail… so please do go ahead and prove me wrong. At least you’ll save me some time in the process.

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So… how does one find time to blog, write software, learn new technologies, meet client deadlines and still spend some time with family? I don’t claim to have it down, but I know one thing: I have to be ruthless about saving time.

I originally had a nice high-tech timesaver I’d planned to write about today, but given today’s snow squalls, plans have changed for everyone around here, and I just have to write about one obvious, low-tech timesaver first.

It’s not quite three in the afternoon as I write this, and my next door neighbours, who are in their late 60’s or early 70’s, are out snowblowing their driveway for the third time today. No, it’s not that they’re neat freaks… we’ve just had that much snow come down.

When I did our driveway this morning, I was so grateful for the little Toro PowerCurve 1800 electric snowblower that my wife and I got ourselves for Christmas. That’s right, I said electric… but this is not some little “electric power shovel” or “electric broom”, it can really hurl.

I know, there’s nothing new or Web 2.0 about snowthrowers… but I post this in case there’s anyone else out there like me, who put off getting one because you assumed an expensive, pollution-belching monstrosity was your only option.

When we first moved here over five years ago, into the heart of Ontario’s snow belt, our neighbours looked at us like we were crazy when we said we didn’t plan to get a snowblower. I’d had a gas-powered monster before and just hated it. The smell, the hassle, the pollution… I’m a programmer, not a small engine repairman.

For five years I got some nice winter exercise, sweating it out and cursing the snowplow as he went by. But with a growing toddler and a growing business, we knew that time would be more precious than ever this winter. When we saw a couple of electric models in the stores, we finally made the leap.

I was worried that an electric snowblower would be underpowered. Both models had 12-Amp motors, but the Toro had a narrower 18″ cutting width and a lighter, mostly plastic body, so that’s what we went with. Far from underpowered, this baby is overkill 90% of the time, and even on snow days like today, it’s plenty powerful.

And it’s far quicker than shoveling, so it saves me time and helps me do a better job. When I see the plow coming, I have no fear, because I know I’ll make short work of that mountain at the end of the drive without risking my back.

Now sure, I have to fuss with a long extension cord, but that’s no big whup. Two advantages of a small electric unit more than make up for it:

• The Toro has a grab handle on the main body, as well as the long push handle. Together, these allow me to pick up the unit and shave a top layer off of the truly deep snowbanks. It’s that light — I’m no bodybuilder — and it works like a charm.
• Snowblowers by their very nature get snow in their nooks and crannies that can thaw and refreeze and damage the unit if you start it up frozen, shearing pins or tearing belts. The Toro is so compact and light that I can carry it in the front door and let it warm up for an hour before I do the driveway. I don’t have to, but it’s nice preventative (read: maintenance-avoiding, time-saving) measure that you would never want to try with a stinky gas-powered unit.

If you’re thinking of buying a snowblower, try out an electric one, you won’t regret it. And if you’re like me and don’t want a snowblower because they stink and they’re a pain in the keister, go electric. It’ll save your back and heart and it’ll save you $300 or $600 or $1600 compared to a gas model. Not to mention you’ll never need to buy gas for it.

I’ll get back to technology next time around… now, though, it’s time to wade back out into the white stuff.

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My previous post marked the firing of the starter’s pistol on the design and development of Datonia a few days ago. This post looks ahead to the finish line.

In Built To Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras identified the Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) as a “powerful mechanism to stimulate progress”, and one of the key elements in the makeup of companies that will be around for the long run. And these guys define the long run as a really long run, as in generations. Our piddling 12 years in business might as well be 12 months when you compare it to a Citicorp (founded in 1812), Procter & Gamble (1837), Merck (1891), or GE (1892).

Every long run is really a series of races, and if we’re ever to consider Datonia a successful startup, we’re going to need to define a finish line for our first race, a deadline for getting a whiz-bang first release out to the world.

Like most programmers and all entrepreneurs, I tend towards the optimistic end of the spectrum, and my wife tells me I can sometimes be a little unrealistic. I can’t argue with that… and so if this post comes back to haunt me later this year, so be it. It won’t be for a lack of trying.

I got to thinking about BHAGs again this past week when Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis announced The TechCrunch20 Conference for sometime in September 2007:

Jason and I are going to do something a lot different than the pay-to-demo model. The TechCrunch20 conference will be a two day event, held this fall (more details soon), where twenty hot startups will demo their new products—and they don’t pay a dime to do this.

The startups will be invited based on the recommendation of a committee of expert analysts, entrepreneurs and journalists. Twenty companies will be invited, plus a couple of alternates. If a selected startup isn’t ready to launch ten days or so before the event, they’ll be bumped and one of the alternates will take its place.

So here’s Datonia’s BHAG… I’d like our little quintet to be one of the 20 firms selected to debut at that conference. There will a lot of other firms gunning for those positions. Judging by the 800-plus sites at Go2Web20.net, I’d guess that Mike and Jason will be looking at at least 2,000 serious submissions when they open the application process.

To the casual observer, that gives us 1 in 100 odds, a 1% chance, assuming we have our software built in time. But the truth is we’ll really have either a 0% chance (if we’re not ready in time), or a 5-10% chance if we are ready in time (because lots of other applicants won’t be, and many that are ready will not impress the review committee, which will almost certainly be made up of folks who’ve seen it all).

Whether it’s ego, optimism, blind faith, or just plain stupidity, I think we can pull this off. The starting shot has already been fired, so we might as well run. Strictly speaking, this isn’t what Jim Collins would call a Good BHAG, but hopefully knowing that distinction will be a good first step, since we don’t have the recommended 10+ years, at least not for this leg of the race.

When it comes to difficult odds, I try not to forget the wisdom of Lloyd Christmas:

Lloyd: What are the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me… ending up together?
Mary: Well, that’s pretty difficult to say.
Lloyd: Hit me with it! I’ve come a long way to see you, Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?
Mary: Not good.
Lloyd: You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?
Mary: I’d say more like one out of a million.
[pause]
Lloyd: So you’re telling me… there’s a chance!

Further reading: Built To Last and Good To Great are reknowned best-sellers from a few years back, so you could do worse than to check them out if you haven’t already. But truth be told I haven’t completely finished either of them.

Based on what I have read so far, though, I was more impressed with Peter Keen’s The eProcess Edge. Keen doesn’t get nearly the press and buzz of Jim Collins, but this book was so good that I’ll soon buy a third copy as I’ve loaned my first two out and am now without one.

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Welcome to the Datonia development blog, where we’ll be recording our progress, documenting our learning process, and discussing the tech we’re using as we go from 0 to 60 — from vapourware to a live app — with our new web application.

I’ve named this blog Groundhog Day in honour of today’s holiday. It’s fitting that we’re launching our development blog today, because Datonia really feels like a do-over for us. If you’ve ever seen the movie named after today, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

During the “Web 1.0″ boom, we started a B2B dot-com that survived the bust unscathed and is still chugging along nicely and paying the bills. It’ll remain nameless for now, but probably not for long (there are no secrets on the web). In that world, where I still live 9-5, all of our coding effort goes into behind-the-scenes tools and private client apps that we can’t show off to the world.

We deliberately and consciously took a full-service, people-centric path with that business, an approach that meant it would never scale to web proportions: we’d never have 1,000 clients, let alone 100,000. And I don’t regret that… we paid off our mortgage a year ago, and we now employ five people. We have clients in the UK, Europe, Canada and the US, and we get to work on interesting projects in all sorts of industries. There’s no commute, and we can have lunch with our kids.

So life is good… but like most hard-core software developers, we’re never satisfied. We always wonder “What if?” and refactor, tweak, fiddle. We have ideas we want to explore, tools we want to build.

After watching the Web 2.0 buzz build — first to cliché, and then bubble proportions — we couldn’t sit still any longer. The dot-com déja vu is overwhelming… but at least this time around, some really useful and usable applications are being built, apps like Blinksale that serve a need well and will stand the test of time.

For the first time in years, we’re actually inspired by some of the new sites and apps we’re seeing out there. Not so much by the specific technologies behind them — no Ruby for me, thank you… and if I hear the word framework one more time, I think I’ll snap (more on that in another post, I’m sure). But people are out there pragmatically solving real problems, and that shouldn’t get lost in all the chatter.

Our business is a huge industry that could be better served. Our old firm (which, to be clear, we still own, love and work in), will never serve more than 0.01% of our market, one project at a time. So it’s time to join the current wave of niche problem-solvers who are driving the current productivity boom (YouTube aside, a productivity boost is really what’s going on, at least on the business side of Web 2.0).

So we’re going to build a new web app for all the clients who couldn’t afford or had never heard of our full-service solution. Parts of it will suck at first and then we’ll make them better. Hopefully some people will like it, talk about it, and help us improve it.

Hopefully it’ll go live later this year and be a big hit in our marketplace sometime next year. But it’s a whole lot of nothing at the moment, so I’d better get back to work.

If you’re still looking for something to read, I heartily recommend Paul Graham’s How To Make Wealth.

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