Super Happy Dev House 9

Again another great event by PB Wiki's David Weekly (thanks!). Some interesting people attended and I made some new contacts:

1) Nick Douglas of Valleywag, a new gossip blog on Silicon Valley. They've gotten some mileage lately and its hard to imagine they came out only last Feb.
2) Sanford Barr of Stirr.net. His networking activities are well-attended, and has a good mix or technologies, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
3) Gabe Rivera, Memeorandum. A tech and political news site that is powered by a black box. Gabe tried explaining his algorithm to me. I didn't get it - makes it more powerful if you ask me.
4) Scott Beale of Laughing Squid. I really envy this guy - he gets to cover the fun events around SF. Its because he has a business model. Run a webhosting company.

If you've got time, you should really make it to SHDH (more details here). Its an opporunity to be productive and to hook up with other smart people to work on your project. Of course, I always end up hanging around the food and drink and bugging the attendees...but that's another story.

StartUp School AM

Start-Up School jumpstarted with Joe Krauss of Jotspot. He has 7 good start-up lessons, most of it not new. What struck me most was his push for putting the business model on beta when you have your product on beta. This makes your service more “real” and gets people to give you the real compliments. Another good speaker was Bloglines founder Mark Fletcher. He has some technical recommendations on software, hardware, etc. Pretty useful to me since most of the topics talked about were something I’ve taken up during my Cal MBA. I think Atom will find the recommendations useful.

I’m looking forward to the afternoon sessions – they have Tim O’Reilly, Om Malik, Caterina Fake and Joshua Schacter!

Startup School + Other Events

The 2006 Startup School happens tomorrow and includes a cool line-up of speakers - Caterina Fake of Flickr, Joshua Schacter of Delicious, Om Malik of Busines 2.0, and Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Network. I managed to get an invite so I'm really excited to go! These events as just hubs of ideas and energy. I am looking forward to talking to the folks who are attending and to listen to their stuff.

Two other noteworthy activities around the Bay:

1) Stirr.net - gets full easy. I got a early sound-off but managed to get my self on the wait-list. Bummer.

2) SF Win - Albert Lai of BubbleShare sounded me off to this. Interested in it and will try to go. A bit far (SF) from me. $25 entrance fee too.

Nintendo Wii

Some people say that a rose by any other name is still a rose. If so, then Nintendo Wii (formerly known as the Nintendo Revolution shouldn't have anything to worry about. Nintendo drops Revolution, renames next gen console Wii.

Don't think so. Branding is all about image - and I don't think Wii is getting the good impressions. The first is that nobody knows how to pronounce it (it's "we" as in "us"; of course, I should be getting this flack too since Rrove is pronounced "rove" and not "R_rove"). The other issue is that Wii is_just_lame. Can't they come up with something else? Looking back, Revolution is much more powerful.

The right thing they've managed to do is get the media talking about them. Talk about lots of PR! And PR is, like branding, part of marketing. Hmm...maybe this was intentional?

SketchUp & Google Earth

Came over this today - SketchUp - Home. It somehow reminds me of Second Life, and how you can create virtual stuff in it. For those who are not familiar with this company, they've been getting a lot of press lately because of new VC investment. Talking points are how people are creating digital clothes, houses, vehicles and selling them for Linden dollars. Of course, Linden dollars can be bought by using US dollars (what can't?). Check out this Business Week article on them.

Anyways, maybe this guy is thinking of creating a virtual world in Google Earth. With its large user base, he can get a small minority and have something going. Of course, there are problems - working with Google being the most obvious. Its a long-shot/far from happening but its an interesting project to think about.

ShopWiki

Came about this new service via Search Engine Watch. ShopWiki is yet another shopping comparison engine. At first I thought it was a wiki where people can collaborate/review products (ala Wikipedia). I liked the idea, specially since I've been looking at affiliate marketing and how much you can make on it. Yet when I came to ShopWiki, it seemed like a search engine. And I don't see where you can change content like a wiki.

Doesn't work for me. It seems that its taking whatever buzz a wiki has. Or something like that.

The New Viral Marketing

I recently came about a viral marketing article. Its interesting how this is being done today. Previously, it was all about emailing forwarding, games, and cards. Today, with the additional sophistication of users, its all about microsites and videos. I guess the easiness allows more people to create these interesting sites (here's an example from Simply Hired and Xmen 3) while the white-hot video sharing business allows better distribution of content (you dont really want to email a video right?)

Some viral videos went the Web 2.0 way - have user-generated content. A small subset have been lucky as in the case of Logitech webcameras. After this video came out, their products were the most searched for and most bought webcams off Amazon. Other were not so lucky, see this case of the Chevy Tahoe.

Its a new era, and there are new ways of doing things.