I’ve recently been hacking around with a couple of applications, or platforms if you will, that look really interesting and got my creative juices flowing: Twilio and Trello (and yes, they sound a lot alike but that’s just a coincidence).

Twilio provides infrastructure APIs for developers to build scalable voice and text messaging apps. Think of Twilio as cloud-based telephony. They’ve built a very easy to use and flexible platform for developers to dream up all sorts of applications. It took me a while to “get it”, but here’s how I see it: Twilio approaches telephony from the perspective of what a user wants to do. It’s not really for making simple telephone calls – although it can do that – it’s more for building integrated and interactive apps that use telephony as a feature. I see this user-driven approach as refreshing from the traditional telecommunications company.

Trello is a very flexible, multi-purpose collaboration tool. Two things really impress me about Trello: first the incredibly responsive and dynamic interface. The developers, Fog Creek Software, have deployed the latest bleeding edge technologies to build Trello: node.js, Coffeescript, WebSockets, MongoDB, HTML5 and CSS3. I can make a change on the screen of my laptop and see the change propagate to my iPad in less than a second. No need to save and update. Trello gets me dreaming about the whole new generation of web apps that these technologies could spawn.

The other thing that’s impressive about Trello is its multi-purpose functionality; you could use it for anything from keeping a personal todo list to managing a complex business process to building a house to designing a new product. Trello is working on an API and I could envision integrating Trello with other business applications.

Hopefully you’ll share my excitement.

What new platforms have you looked at lately? I’d love to hear from you.

-Chris

For the 3rd year in a row, here are the TeamCamp predictions for 2012:

Brad – Responsive websites that respond to either mobile or desktop applications. This will create more work for developers but will save companies money overall. Prediction 2: The Facebook IPO will make it one of the most over valued companies.

Sylvain – Prediction 1: we’ll finally see the emergence of software as a service (SAS), i.e. people will buy terminals rather than computers and run apps on the cloud. Prediction 2: Within the next 15 years there will be a total collapse of the economy worldwide and currency as we know it will cease to exist. I guess we’ll need to wait a few years to see if this will happen.

Ian – The global meltdown comes to Ottawa next year and there will be across the board cuts in the federal government (merry Christmas to you too Ian!). Ian cites cuts in DND and the elimination of the Wheat Board as leading indicators. Other indicators: the economy in general is suffering and housing pricing is 3 times higher than in the US.  However, as a result of all of this there will be a rise in entrepreneurship (ok, we feel better now, I think).

JC - The current multiplication of social networks significantly increases the signal to noise ratio which makes them, at best not as useful as they could be and at worst, very distracting. We’ll see the emergence of independent “social filters”, as opposed to the ones (built by and for the benefit of the major players) that currently dictate what gets into our news feed. This will hopefully bring better ways of reducing the social clutter while keeping it meaningful and human.  Also, Apple TV with integrated screen etc. will be launched and will be Siri enabled.

Zeeshan – Web apps will continue to proliferate despite the popularity of mobile apps. Prediction 2: Windows will launch an app store but it will not be successful.

Alain – TeamCamp will explode into a massive enterprise pumping out 100s, no 1000s, no 10,000s of new startups all over the world. And, as a result, The Code Factory will need more space. Now, the real prediction: The automobile industry will finally get with it and introduce truly innovative (and useful) technology in vehicles. Prediction 3: someone will invent a technology to make your voice sound like anyone else’s voice, an actor for example. (It sounds like you better patent that one Alain)

Christopher – Paying with your mobile phone will take off. Bitcoin will do really well.

Chris – I’m going out on a limb this year: Microsoft will start to make a comeback (gulp!).

All of our predictions started to get a little off the wall at that point. So, I guess we’ll have to see what happens next year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

- Chris

On Thursday, Dec 1st, Pascal Laliberté (@pascallaliberte) will show you how to gauge the market for a startup idea using analytics tools and a promo page.

Pascal is a Business Analyst at the University of Ottawa and maintains a blog at pascallaliberte.info.  The is the second time Pascal will be presenting at TeamCamp. You’ll love his enthusiasm and his passion for usability.

In this session, you’ll learn how to use analytics tools to help you widdle down to a killer promo page. You’ll learn how to track clicks to gauge user interest, how to discover your audience by learning how they got to your page and how to know which version of your promo page creates the best response.

Part 1 : Analytics tools and how to use them

We’ll look at approaches for analytics, some definitions, a round up of a few tools you can use like Google Analytics, Clicktale, Google Website Optimizer and Adwords. We’ll also get technical with a few examples of click tracking code and A/B testing tricks.

Part 2 : Group exercise

By working with one or two of your examples, we’ll figure out together the steps to get to a testable promo page. This will be a group exercise, so bring your ideas!

When: Thursday, Dec 1st, 6pm – networking, 6:15 – start

Where: The Code Factory, 234 Queen St., Ottawa, 2nd floor (ring the buzzer to take the elevator)

RSVP: http://twegather.com/events/1816

For example, the idea for Twegather came from the experience of planning a “geek” BBQ. We used Twitter to communicate the BBQ and soon we found that people were replying to and retweeting the invitation. The word spread quickly.  The problem was we had no way to easily track how many were coming, how many were thinking about it and how many couldn’t make it. Our idea was to build an application that would keep track of this for us.

Now I’m not saying that telling a great yarn means you’ve got a great idea. Others may not feel the same urgency as you did to solve the problem. But at least it won’t be because they didn’t “get it”.

All great ideas originate this way. They solve a concrete problem in a simple way. Now it’s up to you to explain your idea in a way that people will understand.

Care to try your hand at telling your idea as a story? Come out to TeamCamp this Thursday, November 3rd. RSVP here.

- Chris

PS – For more great ideas on pitching ideas  read the book “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. The Heath brothers reveal the anatomy of ideas that “stick” and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier. You can download the first chapter here. Interestingly, the process of making an idea sticky, i.e. keeping it simple; making it unexpected, concrete, credible and emotional; and then telling it as a story; is a great way to test if you’re on to something.

Mike will be talking about building a business around a technology idea using the iPricedit.com launch as an example. He’ll  focus on bringing out the transferable lessons learned from the misses, fixes and successes that transformed his original idea into iPricedit.com. A Q&A session will follow the presentation.

When: Thursday, Sept. 15th at 6pm (presentation starts at 6:15 sharp)

Where: The Code Factory, 246 Queen St. West (ring the buzzer to take the elevator to the 2nd floor)

RSVP:  here

While I wasn’t at all surprised when I saw that statistic, I still think it’s interesting and worth talking about, in particular, why are so many web developers working on services that make things easier – which is a hard sell if you want to make money – as opposed to working on a service that makes something expensive cheap, which at least has a clear justification for paying for? I think the reason is twofold:

1. Techies are good at making things easier – if you’re a software developer it’s “hardwired” into your brain. You build some code that helps you do something faster and the thinking is that others will find it easier too.

2. There’s a lot less risk involved in building a product that makes things simpler than ones that make expensive things less so. If you make something easier, and folks don’t agree with you, well they can just go back to the way they were doing things before. If you make something expensive cheap, my bet is that they’ve justified the purchase of your product based on future savings, and probably went to some trouble to switch to your product, and if they don’t get those savings you will have one unhappy customer who will want their money back and maybe some of your blood along with it.

What’s the best type of idea to go with if your trying to build a viable, money-making service? I think the latter: making something expensive cheap. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. Plus charging for said service should be an easier sell.

Now, one could argue that making something complicated easier is the same as making something expensive cheap on the basis of the axiom “time is money”. But I don’t think that’s what Kapil is talking about here. For one thing, people tend to undervalue their own time (otherwise we would all have personal assistants) and second, if there’s a direct relationship to money it really belongs in the second category, making something expensive cheap.

There’s too many developers out there working on applications that make things easier, and not a enough working on things that make something expensive cheap.

If Y Combinator has 83% of their participants working on this first kind of idea – and I think Y-Combinator does a pretty amazing job at weeding out poor ideas – then think about how many developers are working on “making things easier” as apposed to “cheap”. That might explain why there are so many free apps in the app stores.

I believe the future of the North America’s competitiveness depends on the latter, i.e. making things that are costly less so.

I’m not saying that you should drop whatever you’re working on and look for ways to save people/businesses money. Go ahead if you want: it’s less risky and probably a lot more fun;  and you’re gaining good experience. But if you want to earn a living out of your business, I suggest you focus on the latter.

- Chris

They’ve done a nice job of identifying all of the key elements of a good landing page and why they’re important. But is it the “perfect” landing page?

There’s really no way to tell because the “puck” is always moving. What might have been considered the perfect landing page 10, 5 or even 2 years ago, might be considered ugly and ineffective today. Web technology is constantly changing and more importantly, design is constantly evolving. Why? HTML is evolving, devices are changing, UI is improving, bandwidth is cheaper, etc. etc. To paraphrase Wanyne Gretzky, somehow we need to figure out where the puck is going to be rather than where it is now.

One of my favourite landing pages is Boxee.com.

It’s innovative, it’s attractive, I understand exactly what they’re selling, and it’s obvious where I sign up. I come away thinking Boxee is cool (for a geek anyway) and I’d like to have one. I’m amazed I even spent as much time on the site as I did because, well, I already have enough devices in my house to choke a horse. But they did attract my attention, that’s for sure so from a design objective I think they did a good job (it’s also where I first discovered Foster the People .

On the other hand, there’s Netflix.

It seems to have all the elements of a “perfect” landing page, but it looks like something out of a Readers Digest Ad.  But who cares?  Netflix has gained a considerable market share in Canada and I think it’s a great service. It get’s the job done.

I think the difference is that if you’re a new startup, and nobody knows you, you better put the time and effort into your landing page. It will likely be the first impression of your service. And don’t dismiss how important that is, no matter how great you think your service is.

Formstack’s pdf is serves as a great reminder the kinds of things you need to consider for your landing page. But don’t copy it, otherwise I guarantee that by the time you’re ready to launch, the “puck” will have moved to another spot.

What do you think? What is your idea of a perfect landing page, now and into the future?

- Chris

There’s so much value in watching this video, I hardly know where to begin. Elevation Partners director and co-founder Roger McNamee gives The Paley Center For Media his 10 hypotheses for technology investing.  At his core of his hypotheses is that HTML5 will bring incredible changes to the web. Some highlights:

On HTML5

• The way the world wide web is responding is to “out Apple, Apple”.
• This is an environment where all of us have a chance to be market leaders.
• In HTML5 everything is an App.
• Instead of flitting around, an HTML enabled page becomes a control panel.
• The message to media companies: “The time to diversify what your doing is right now.”

On the iPad:

• If you don’t have an iPad yet, your job today is to get one.
• iPad is as big or bigger than the introduction of the IBM PC

On arhictecture:

• Cloud allows you to get access to content no matter what screen your using (a smart phone, your laptop, your TV etc.)
• Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple have demonstrated no talent what so ever in exploiting this
• This opens up opportunities for new companies that can exploit the cloud and HTML5

Six ways to save the internet

The word “fail” brings with it connotations of ‘F’ grades and wasted time on canceled projects. Fail is a negative word; it generally means “you suck”. That leaves us with a bad feeling. Having an objective of failing fast is simply another way of saying: give up when the going gets rough. In my view, if you start with the idea of failing fast you’ll lack the perseverance and tenacity you’ll need to make a go of it.

Instead, when developing a new idea for a startup set realistic goals and then test against them. In his book “Start Small, Stay Small” Rob Walling suggests setting a goal of generating $500 in revenue for the first year of your online startup. Five hundred bucks. How hard can that be? (Actually it is, but that’s a subject for another post.)

The point is, if you pick a number, it makes you think about what you would need to charge, how many customers you would need to sign up every month, and working backwards, how many visits you would need to your site and what channels will bring visits.

Now you can start forming a hypothesis, i.e. if I my product reaches a target market of x people and I spend y on advertising (or whatever) it will generate z in revenue. This is something you can literally do on the back of an envelop. It won’t take long for you long to see whether your idea is viable. If your hypothesis passes scrutiny then go for it.

Now you have an objective. Every website visit you get, every conversion that translates into a sign-up tests your hypothesis. From there you make adjustments, you tweak your idea, you work with your customers, you try different channels, etc., etc., but you don’t fail fast. You persevere.

I’m not saying you spend the next 3 years banging your head against a wall. Nor am I suggesting you mortgage your house trying to make a bad idea work. If you need 100 signups per month and you’re only getting 1, then you better rethink things, and perhaps abandoning your idea is the right thing to do.

But even then, you haven’t failed. Think of what you learned from your mistakes and how you’ll be able to apply them next time. That’s what they mean by the “school of hard knocks”. But it’s not failing.

So abandon the idea of failing fast. Instead, think about starting right: have a hypothesis, test against it and adapt.

- Chris

PS – thanks to Ian at The Code Factory for inspiring this post.

Robert tells how he first started his cold calls by asking for a 10-15 minute interview as someone who had a business idea around solving their problems. People smelled a sales pitch and “checked out”.

Then he changed his script. Robert decided he need to understand his customers better and that a better way to do that would be to write a blog on the subject.  When he explained to people that he wanted to know more about what they learned through running their business, every person he spoke with said “yes”.

Why? Because people love to share their successes, and their problems, along the way. Robert’s approach allowed him to first gain trust that he was truly interested in their business and not just out to make a quick buck.

As software developers, and entrepreneurs, we need to “get into our customers’ heads” to really understand how we can use our skills and expertise to help make our customers’ lives easier.

Stop thinking about the “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow and start thinking about helping your customers to be successful and you will automatically create value. In turn, people will be happy to pay you fairly for your services.

RSVP: on Twegather – a TeamCamp product