Pintmaster

The site I’ve been working on, PrayAbout.com just got written up in the Boston Globe:

Internet start-up PrayAbout.com marries the ultimate in user-generated content — people’s deepest prayers — with the collective empathy of the crowd, in a variation on the social dynamics that have become common on secular sites.

“I was tired of seeing a video of a grandmother falling down or someone recommending a news story — this is trying to add some real value to peoples’ lives,” said Rodger Desai, who helped develop PrayAbout.

Read the whole Boston.com article ->

It’s the weekend, and that means it’s Business Time. Enjoy!

At least that’s what a segment I saw on the today show said:

…if someone’s friend becomes obese, that person’s chances of becoming obese increase by more than half.

Siblings and spouses also have an influence, although a reduced one — people whose siblings became obese were themselves 40 percent more likely to grow obese, while people whose spouses became obese were 37 percent more likely to.

To me it makes sense. We mirror ourselves on what we see in our friends. Let’s take that a little further:

• Lazy friends make you lazier?
• Rich friends make you richer?
• Smart friends make you smarter?

So, here’s my recommendation: (more…)

Business people are the scorn of developers. “What does she do? Without us developers, this project would be dead”. Are you going to sit there and be ignorant to the mysteries of development? Or are you going to learn something about it? (more…)

Apparently for start ups, a lot! Scott Kirsner has written a cheeky article in the Boston Globe “Will Boston ever catch up?“. In it he criticizes Massachusetts for focusing too much on corporate technology and not enough on consumer technology. How does a Boston startup get Boston VC funds? Move to California! (more…)

Looksmart is a smaller PPC (pay per click) advertising platform. Google is the gorilla in the room and offers great tools to track the conversions of other systems. Unfortunately, I cant give you specific numbers. I can tell you that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are all within 1 - 2 percentage points of each other. Looksmart is around 10% lower than the others on conversions. (more…)

Check out the picture below. Kevin Rose’s lead developer for Pownce, Leah Culver is Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) minus detective skills and plus computer skills. What skills would you use to win her? (more…)

They may have helped define it, but they don’t get it!

I was reading a review by Robby on Rails about Highrise. One of the responders, Will had this to say about 37 Signals:

It doesn’t make sense to me. On the web (2.0) the mantra is integration, and yet here we have a single company releases compartmentalized applications that are an ideal extension of one another.

(more…)

Washington (D.C. that is) has a social network for the young elite. Unfortunately, their debaucheries have been exposed in a scathing article by Angela Valdez, a reporter for the Washington City Paper.

Some highlights:

Then the bearded one in the middle busts out with this: “Do you like anal sex?” I squint. I’m confused. “Do you do anal?” he repeats, head bobbing with excitement. The litany continues. Do I want to take it in the ass? Have I ever taken it in the ass? My silence is taken as an affirmative and he announces that this interview will go no further unless he receives a hand job.

(more…)

Unless you’re living under a rock, you know Skype. Skype lets you call other people free using your computer. Im going to show you some ways to use Skype in your startup to maximize your effectiveness. (more…)

The BetaHouse (that’s what the co-working loft is called now) had a party for Friday the 13th of July. We think 13 is a pretty lucky number. You can check out the pics on flickr.

I couldn’t resist. Found this gem in a Slashdot thread on BeOS.

Iluvcapra said:

This is good, I like this political stuff:

MS-DOS 1.0 was Herbert Hoover, aloof to the problems of the common man but friend of the engineer in all of us. Also discovered Transformers.

Mac OS 7-8-9, all Franklin Roosevelt, very competent, lead us through difficult times, but left a legacy of programs which have become quite a mixed bag. (more…)

Unless your pockets are lined with gold, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty. This is the first in a series of software for business people in startups.

Use Case: You’ve outsourced the design of your startup site to a professional design firm (you’re smart enough to know not to hire an in-house designer yet). The website has a small change that needs to be made. You can either pay your design firm $500 to make the change, or do it yourself. (more…)

Im reading the 4-hour work week by Timothy Ferriss. Seth Godin recently touched upon a point Tim Ferriss talked about in 4HWW. Tim used a quote by the infamous Bill Gates to explain it. (more…)

I’ve spent several months researching and looking at properties in Boston. I can’t find a single property in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill or South End where the rental income covers the costs. Im looking at multiple unit buildings (4 - 6 units) with a cap at around $2 million. (more…)

Too long ago, I asked the question “What side job should an entrepreneur have?“. I also asked Dharmesh Shah, a software entrepreneur and angel investor the same. His recommendation: (more…)

Company: Slapvid
People: Bob DiMaggio, Matt Humphrey

Bob and Matt from Slapvid stopped by the loft today. They’re a couple of Carnegie Mellon MBA candidates. They’re in Boston for the summer as part of Y Combinator’s really early stage seed program. Spending a summer in a tiny apartment in Cambridge in a group of four working everyday sounds fun! (more…)

Are you ahead of the technology curve?
I’ve got five whole invites to Pownce, Kevin Rose’s new project. It’s a cool app built on Adobe’s AIR. The idea is to extend what twitter does a little further. Twitter is basically public status messages. Pownce aims to give you more control about how public you make messages, links, files and events.

It’s one of those tools that needs a lot of traction to take off. Kevin Rose’s godlike status in the geek world will likely give it that.

If you want to check it out first hand, drop me a comment.

At the end of June I attended Dev House Boston 2. Dev House is a fantastic one day event to bring a bunch of talented programmers together to do cool things in the space of a day. I worked on a team to build the very buggy Pairmatch facebook application. The event was held in a coworking space on Magazine St. in Cambridge. (more…)

This is quite a simple principle. If your products kill your customers, they can’t buy your product again. My friend Kristian sent me this crash test for a Chinese car, the Brilliance BS6. Don’t mind the German, turn off the sound and enjoy!

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