Day Job

In its day, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, first published in 1855, was an impressive accomplishment. Thousands of quotes were traced back to their authors, and the results combined into a hardbound meta-book of human wisdom, wit, and sloganeering.

Today, Internet entrepreneur Drew Olanoff is trying to create the modern version: A crowdsourced, online quote archive that’s easy for readers of blogs and Twitter to update with whatever strikes them as worth saving for the ages.

Olanoff, who made an Internet meme out of his battle with cancer last year, has a reputation in startup circles as the sort of always-on, five-project-juggling guy who drives Internet innovation. He self-funds Qwotebook, a database-driven site that lets anyone enter a quote, plus some context as to where and when it was said by whom.

“I had the idea three years ago, and registered the domain in 2007,” Olanoff told me in a phone interview. I always felt someone was going to put a stake in the ground and build a quote site that wasn’t just about SEO,” by which he means that many quote sites seem to be Internet traffic traps more than gifts to humanity.

Olanoff’s day job is director of community for GOGII, a game company that also makes the group-texting textPlus iPhone app. But he’s best known for Blame Drew’s Cancer, a goofball response to what could have been a fatal medical condition. Olanoff says he’s now cancer-free, and unlikely to log off this mortal coil anytime soon. But the cancer “definitely made me do it,” turning Qwotebook from an idea into live site.

Qwotebook’s gimmick is that it mixes the famous with the pseudonymous. “I think it’s great that a quote of mind can appear next to a quote by Albert Einstein,” Olanoff said. ”Everything I’ve done on the web, and everything I use on the web is utility, it helps me with my life. I needed a place to put my quotes.”

A quick sampling of Qwotebook entries:

• “Some men see things as they are and say, why? I dream of things that never were and say, why not? — John F. Kennedy
• “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein
• “You taste like fish biscuits.” — Kate from Lost

I have one quibble: If you’re not a Twitter user, you may struggle to figure out where to find the permalink URL to a quote. It’s hiding under the timestamp, e.g. the link that says “Qwoted two weeks ago.”

Does Olanoff plan to turn it into a business? “I think there is potential for investment,” he said. “When I talk about it, I bring up music lyrics. They sell DVDs and CDs by being findable online.”

Companies: Qwotebook

People: Drew Olanoff

Hobby artist creates paintings on the iPad —

Filed under: iPad

Obama Pacman's got a few cool paintings by an artist named John Haasl. The unique thing about these paintings is that Haasl created them exclusively with the iPad. While a lot of the talk around the iPad has centered on the device as a content consumer, content creation is definitely easier in one big area with a much larger touchscreen, and of course, that's art. Not only does the extra screen space help out would-be artists, but the processing power makes things quick and easy, too.

Haasl is using ArtStudio for iPad for his work, and there's other good software available as well (SketchBook Pro is another popular app, though it's a little more expensive, with ArtStudio on sale for just a buck). Haasl says that he takes about two days to put a painting together, and it's totally a hobby -- his day job is in IT.

It's very cool, anyway. It will also be interesting to see what professional artists end up doing with the iPad's screen, and if some of the new interfaces for art make their way back to traditional computers.

TUAWHobby artist creates paintings on the iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 13 May 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hearsay Labs CEO Clara Shih may be a brand-new entrepreneur with her first startup still in stealth mode, but she’s elevated herself to the main stage after writing last year’s influential book on how businesses can use social networks, “The Facebook Era.” After she delivered a keynote speech today at the Web 2.0 Expo, I sat down with Shih to get an inkling of what she’s doing with Hearsay, which bills itself as a provider of social media marketing automation and fan management tools.

Shih became interested in how to use Facebook for business when the company launched its platform back in 2007. Through her day job at Salesforce she introduced an unsanctioned side product called Faceforce (later renamed Faceconnector), the first business application for Facebook. Shih then got the contract to write her book, but although she received corporate go-ahead to work on such projects internally, she eventually decided she could best tackle the intersection of social networking and businesses by starting her own company.

So Shih teamed up with Stanford classmate and Microsoft program manager Steve Garrity to start Hearsay last June. They have since raised a Series A round (on which she would not elaborate) and moved into their own office in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood (the company had been working out of Dogpatch Labs nearby). A full launch is planned for this fall but the service is already live and has customers, according to Shih.

Shih said Hearsay has been closely aligned with Facebook from the start. Her internal contacts warned her away from her first idea, she said, which was around coupons and hypertargeting, because it was in Facebook’s road map, and a later idea, because it was too niche.

What it comes down to, said Shih, is that all businesses are seeking three things from social networking: fans, measurement and security.

As for more detail, Hearsay says on its own Facebook Page that it offers “custom lead referral forms.” On its jobs listing page, the company states:

“Hearsay Labs is building software to help small and medium-sized businesses market and sell to their customers on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc. Although we are early-stage, we have working code, paying customers, world-class investors, big dreams, and a bestselling book.“

Hearsay is targeting small and medium businesses such as realtors, Shih said, rather than brands. In lieu of a generic web page, it will help them capture customer relationships for long-term engagement. It’s a promising concept, for sure, and I look forward to seeing the actual product. But it’s going to be a tough space to compete in, judging by the number of social CRM providers, brand monitors, social media dashboards, engagement analytics, custom app builders and other similar companies we get pitched on every day. Which might explain the whole stealth mode thing.

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Photo by James Duncan Davidson for the Web 2.0 Expo used with permission.

We’ve gone through a strange change, from people not realizing that they need to be their own brand, to people not realizing how being the brand impacts the way they do business. It’s interesting, really. Tom Peters was the first person I recall talking about it, back in the Alan Webber days of FastCompany (The Brand Called You). Back then, we were all cubicle farmers and beige employees of the cog-world (okay, not true, but that’s what it felt like). But now, we’re getting the opposite, where people have all the tools to make a brand and do so, but don’t really know how to leverage that brand into anything resembling a business. So, in some ways, there’s been a bit of a see-saw. We used to have people that would prosper by turning their wonderfulness into a personal brand.

We Got There – Kinda

In a way, lots of us have found our way to the tools that allow us to try and build a brand. I meet finance professionals with blogs. I know videobloggers who have a day job doing research for the research and quantification sector. We have access to the tools. Not everyone’s getting themselves to the promised land by blogging, but the tools are there. We CAN try and build personal brands and that’s something.

But What About Business and Personal Branding?

The trick of being in a personal brand is that there’s a big difference between being known, being known for something, and also being able to turn that into business.

I’ve got a recognizable personal brand. It took years to build it. From that, it took years to figure out how best to make business from it. Because just being known doesn’t transform instantly into business.

I met Kathy Ireland a few months ago. She went from being a model into running a successful business with over $1 Billion in sales. Her speech at the Disney Social Media Moms event made no bones about the fact that it was hard going from being known for being beautiful into being respected for her business acumen. She told lots of stories about times when she and her business partner slept on the chairs in an airport to save money between business flights. The end point: no one just hands you money and business because they know you.

Your first takeaway: make sure you’re progressing from being known into being known for something you’ve done, and then work at finding a way to build a business from that. Your second takeaway: no one wants to hand you money just because people know who you are.

It’s Still Not About You

Being a personal brand isn’t all that useful to anyone else, if it’s just about you. It just doesn’t get people as fired up to be “supporters of Chris,” for instance. But instead, if you’re “human business workers,” all committed to improving relationship-minded sustainable human business practices, well, then I’ve got the sense that we’ll do a lot more.

As a personal brand, it’s really important to talk about everyone else as much as you can. It’s just too boring and unhelpful to tell everyone about you. It’s okay to “model the change you want to be,” or even let people learn from the lessons you’ve suffered through, but make sure you bring it back to them, and be helpful. It’s about the community you can touch and help succeed.

Be a Value Brand, Not a Name

I just had a great stay at the Renaissance Hotel in Las Vegas a few days back. Every single staffer treated me like I was a friend, and like they were so happy I was part of their experience. They gave me such value. They had advice for where I could go. They knew some ins and outs I needed to know. It was pure value for me as a frequent traveler.

I try to be a value brand. I try to give everyone so much more than what I ask for, that you think, “wow, I really DO want to help Chris promote Invisible People, because he’s given me lots of actionable business ideas over the years.” That’s my angle, and it’s working really damned well. Be a value.

Story Story Story

Connect folks to the story that brings them passion. I wrote about a charter school I visited, and learned tons about people’s take on education in the US (and abroad). That’s a story I could bring via my brand, but then let go so that it found the people who are passionate about such matters. See? I become the elbow of every “deal,” where in this case, stories of meanings become the deal.

You can do that. Don’t make the brand about you. Make it about the stories you can tell, adding your value and insight and passion, and then build on that. (This is where the business comes from, you know.)

Think Community Every Day

As a personal brand, it’s not YOUR community, but it’s a loosely joined group of people who feel affinity for some of your ideas or for the space you represent. In a way, I’m saying, “make sure you realize that it’s never your community; it’s a place you’re privileged to access.” People who throw “MY” around before the word “community” are often surprised when that community doesn’t march in the same order that you intend. Surprise! The trick of this is that you have to recognize that you’re in service of the community, not the other way around. You’re possibly a leader, or at least someone that’s known, but that doesn’t make you the important part of the equation. With me?

Brands Need Refreshing

Never rest on your laurels. Madonna never did. She changed up her game every year. Soda pop companies tidy up their brand all the time. Now, think of a few brands that don’t do that, who are still in the past. Where are they?

The same is true with your brand. You. Lord knows I work on my brand that way. You think I’m the social media guy? I’m building myself to be the human business guy. I used to be the podcamp guy. I used to be just a blogger. I’m always working on the angle of the brand. Now, it won’t be there for you yet, because I’m talking about my planning, not my current situation. But that’s the very point I’m making. This isn’t accidental, or it isn’t for people who use brand as part of their success.

Brand is Only ONE Asset

A brand is an asset. But it’s only ONE asset. You can’t feed your family on a personal brand. You have to deliver something of value. You have to have a product or a service or something else where you make the real money. The brand is just the powerful emotional flag that people can rally around. If you don’t have more assets, or aren’t developing the other assets, well… enjoy that flag.

What Else?

What else did I miss? What else can I help you with on this? How have you put this into service?

It’s been 2 years since the release of my second book, FBML Essentials, and everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to write my next.  I admit I’m a little addicted – it’s why I write on this blog.  I hated writing for others in High School and College, but since I started writing for myself I have really gained a sincere appreciation for writing.  Once I wrote my first book, I’m on Facebook–Now What??? with Jason Alba, I was addicted.  I love writing!  That’s why I’m proud to announce that I have signed an agreement with Wiley to write Facebook Application Development For Dummies.

What will it be about?  To tell you the truth, I’m still working that out.  My thought is to keep this one extremely simple.  I want it to be so simple even marketers and brand managers can learn at least a few ways to integrate Facebook Connect on their own websites, or find ways to integrate their brand straight into Facebook.  I’d like to hear from you though – what would you like to learn about Facebook Application Development?  What would you like to learn about the Facebook Platform?

I’m honored to be working with Wiley in this effort.  They are my biggest publisher yet, and from my dealings with them thus far they are going to be a joy to work with.  My wife has agreed to not see me for the next 6-9 months (I love you honey!), and I’m still keeping my day job and running SocialToo.  Yes, I’m crazy.  I think in the end though, based on my interactions with each of you, we need a completely simple instruction on how to get started with the Facebook Platform and what it means for developers and brands.  My hope is that with the time I spend on this book I might be able to benefit each of you in getting started with this incredible platform.

Facebook Application Development For Dummies will go to print some time at the end of this year, and, having learned from my last 2 books, you can bet this book will be very up to date and will have ways of remaining up to date long from its publish date.  Tell me what you want it to include!

I’ll be at Facebook’s F8 developers conference tomorrow (I’ll be one of the only guys with a FriendFeed T-Shirt on) – come look for me!  The first 4 people to mention this post to me at the conference get a free, signed copy of FBML Essentials.

In the meantime, be sure to become a fan of FBML Essentials and I’m on Facebook–Now What??? on Facebook, subscribe to this blog, and I’ll be sure you get updated when we have a home for my new book.

Peppermint, a new Linux-based operating system with a focus on cloud computing and web applications, is launching into a private beta this week to a limited number of participants, and will open up later next month to even more. The OS is a fork of Lubuntu and uses some of Linux Mint's configuration files, hence the name "Peppermint." Unlike desktop-focused Linux distributions, running applications on Peppermint won't require "installing countless numbers of software packages and reading wikis all Saturday afternoon," reads the product homepage. Instead, users will run web apps in their own windows via Mozilla's Prism technology.

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The idea for a Linux-based cloud operating system isn't anything new. Numerous builds, including popular consumer-targeted brands like Jolicloud, gOS and even Google's Chrome OS, are based on Linux kernels. What's fun, though, is seeing how each flavor interprets what Linux cloud computing should look like.

In Peppermint's case, the vision is more of a mashup of cloud computing and desktop computing than the others mentioned above. Its desktop environment is LXDE, an environment designed for cloud computing and lightweight computers like netbooks and MIDs (mobile Internet devices). Also included in Peppermint's plans is the use of Mozilla Prism, a technology which runs web apps as if they were native desktop software applications. A project from Mozilla Labs, Prism blurs the line between desktop and cloud as apps can run from a system taskbar or dock and they can even be configured to display alerts and status messages.

The Peppermint distro is being developed by Kendall Weaver, the maintainer for the Linux Mint Fluxbox and LXDE Editions, and Shane Remington, who works alongside Weaver as a developer at their day job at Astral IX Media in Asheville, N.C.

There isn't much additional information about Peppermint at this time, and since it's in a closed beta right now, we can't get our hands on it yet. But those who are interested can follow the official Peppermint Twitter account or Facebook page to stay tuned for more details as to its public availability.

(Hat tip: ResearchBuzz)

Discuss

Thinking Inside the Box: Eric Ries On Creating Startups Within Large Organizations —

Every now and then we hear the story of the entrepreneur who left his or her steady job at a large company to follow their dreams and create a startup, but we aren't all as daring and brave to quit steady work, especially in a time of economic uncertainty. If you have the entrepreneurial itch but aren't in a situation that would allow you to sacrifice your day job, there are still ways you can scratch said itch and bring innovation to a "startup" within a larger company.

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This morning I talked with Eric Ries, the driving force behind the "lean startup" movement, which encourages high efficiency and meticulous metrics tracking within entrepreneurial ventures. Ries, who is often asked to speak on the subject, says he noticed a trend among some of the people attending his talks. Many managers from large companies were coming to his sessions to learn what they could, because, as Ries discovered, the principals of lean startups can exist within larger corporations that are attempting to innovate.

"A startup is a human institution designed to create something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty," Ries told ReadWriteWeb. "There is nothing in there about the size of the company, or what industry you're in, or whether you're the manager of a division or if you're two guys in a garage, its just about the conditions in which you operate."

As he points out, there are times in larger corporations when divisions are created to work on a new project, and similar rules and guidelines for managing that project which come from startups can be used here as well. Ries says that managers, like entrepreneurs, are taking risks on new ideas, and when they create a new division, they are essentially investing the company's time and money as a VC would invest funds in a startup.

"The more I started to work with those managers [...] I started to notice that they were having very familiar sounding arguments," Ries says. "The arguments between a venture-backed entrepreneur and a venture capitalist are almost exactly the same word for word as between these 'intrepreneurs' and their CFOs because the same issues come up."

One of the ways larger corporations can implement entrepreneurial innovation into their businesses is to allow for what Ries calls "innovation inside the box," or a fenced off sandbox for experimentation with new products. By creating a place where employees with ideas can test a tweak to a feature, or where new ideas can be built within certain constraints, companies can greatly increase their potential for innovation.

"The real value is [this] starts to catalyze change because by changing the way you work you start to accelerate that feedback loop [...] and that can become the basis for making other changes," Ries says.

Unfortunately, most larger corporations aren't allowing for this open sandbox of innovation within their companies, and choose to buy up technology and talent from startups. Ries agrees that many entrepreneurs get frustrated working inside a larger company, but he says the combination of these entrepreneurs with a walled off innovation playground could provide for some amazing innovations.

Companies could also benefit from the addition of a sandbox by inspiring their existing employees to be innovative, instead of wrangling up entrepreneurs from a startup, which would save them money in the end.

"They have this idea that a certain alchemy will happen that 'if I bring these special people into my organization, they will teach my regular people how to be special,' and that's just a formula for breeding resentment," Ries told ReadWriteWeb. "If the people doing the acquiring had more of a theory about how entrepreneurship is supposed to work [...] they could start to think of better ways to plug an acquired company into the larger organization, taking advantage of what they're good at without destroying it."

If you're a budding entrepreneur or a manager at a large company, there is an excellent chance to hear from Ries and others on these concepts and others this Friday at the Startup Lessons Learned conference in San Francisco. If you can't make it to the Bay Area, there are simulcasts occurring Friday in nearly 50 cities worldwide, many of which are free or very inexpensive, so RSVP and bask in the lean startup goodness.

Photo by Flickr user longhorndave.

Discuss

Though the Twitter developer ecosystem, brought together at the company’s Chirp conference this week, is doing its best to move forward after Twitter bought an iPhone client, there’s still fallout to be had. The day after Twitter bought Tweetie, the maker of competing mobile client Tweetarena put its assets up on eBay.

Tweetarena was not one of the most popular Twitter clients — it had around 50,000 users — but developer Andrew Weekes clearly hadn’t lost interest in it. Just this month, he built a new version of Tweetarena for release the same day as the iPad launch, and it already has more than 1,500 purchases. The eBay auction, which has a starting price of $15,000 and no bids so far, includes the brand and source code for iPhone, Android, iPad and other additions, including the unreleased next version of the Tweetarena iPhone/iPod touch app.

Weekes didn’t directly explain the timing of his offloading the project, but he did say that:

Up until now Tweeterena has been a bit of a hobby, I have been putting every bit of spare time into the project. Believe it or not, I do have a day job and due to this and various other new commitments in my life I feel it is time to move this ongoing project into the hands of somebody else who will be able to put the time in to developing it further.

Interested parties have less than 24 hours left to place their bids — but at this point it’s not clear that anyone other than Twitter is buying up Twitter clients.

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I meet young, creative people all the time, just out of college. They’re tending bar, they’re waiting tables, they’re stacking shelves in bookstores, all trying to get by, all trying to figure out what to do next, where they fit in this big ol’ world of ours. And it’s tough for most of them. Of course it is.

My advice to them is always the same: “Make Art Every Day”.

When I say “Art”, I don’t necessarily mean paintings or literature or music or whatever. I mean, whatever it is that’s meaningful and powerful to them. Like the old song said, “T’ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It).

Only they can know what that is, of course. For me, it was always drawing cartoons. But for others, it could be about business or cooking or carpentry or screenprinting tee-shirts or raising money for charity.

That was my M.O. for years. I remember in my early mid-twenties, working my ass off all day long at the ad agency in Chicago. Then after work, instead of going home to watch TV and hang out with roommates or whatever, I’d head for my local coffee shop, pull a seat up at the bar, and sit there for hours on end, drawing cartoons. Even if my cartoons weren’t very good, even if they weren’t commercial. Even if some of the waiters and fellow customers used to made subtle and frequent quips about me “needing to get a life”.

It paid off eventually. Eventually they got good, eventually they got commercial. Eventually I didn’t need a day job anymore, eventually I got a life. Happy Ending.

I didn’t wait for the money, I didn’t wait to “be discovered”, I didn’t wait for the approval from others. I just got on with it, every day. Regardless of what the rest of the world needed from me on any given day, I found the time, somehow. Simply because I made the decision to do so, somehow.

Whatever your EVIL PLAN might be, “Make Art Every Day”.

Yes.

Fancy Hands: Like Aardvark for Virtual Assistants —

"It's not about the value of the task, it's about the value of me not having to do it, or even think about it anymore." That's how Ted Roden describes Fancy Hands, his new side project that provides virtual personal assistants in the cloud for a low monthly fee.

Need an appointment made for you? Research done on Fantasy Baseball players you might want to draft onto your team? Roden has hired more than 100 people based in the US and England who can perform almost any quick, legal task for you, within minutes, at any hour day or night. You can send them 15 emails with task requests per month for a $30 fee. An algorithm sorts the tasks and routes each one to the most appropriate person.

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Roden says the people he's hired include retired lawyers, actors waiting with time to spare before going on camera and former employees of competitor ChaCha. He wrote a program to sift through piles of applications and plans on using the company's own service providers to select new hires in the future as well.

Roden himself has a day job in the R&D department of the New York Times. He's a creative dynamo whose energy spills out in side projects like the visually compelling social bookmarking service EnjoysThin.gs and an O'Reilly book about building real-time websites, due out this Summer. Previously, he was the 2nd full-time programmer at art-video portal Vimeo.

Roden says he built Fancy Hands because he wanted to build something big. He calls it that just because it was the filename for his first bit of code, a tradition across all his projects. He's bootstrapping it himself "and my wife says it's ok," he says.

Casting The Tasks

Fancy Hands is easy for customers to use. I asked the service to find where in town I could buy a "sweater bag" to run sweaters through the washing machine and got a great response, complete with multiple options online and a personal recommendation, within an hour. I asked for links to reviews of iPad RSS reading applications and the first response I got was terrible. I emailed back complaining and the person on the other end sent me back something even worse. Then Roden noticed and reassigned the request to someone who filled it beautifully.

Roden says that for now he's doing the quality control himself and generally well after the tasks have been completed. He's got a complex series of tubes and pulleys rigged up to sort tasks, though. He calls it "the eHarmony of Getting Things Done."

In that way it's a little reminiscent of Aardvark, the social search startup that began as a human bucket brigade behind a facade of technology and ended up a complex web of computer science that Google acquired this Winter for millions of dollars.

At its core Fancy Hands is people, though. And the people are paid by the task. Roden has created a system that ranks tasks by complexity and rewards assistants with higher pay when they complete harder tasks. Once they reach a particular pay grade, all their tasks become better paying, thus incentivizing them to dive in to harder and harder work.

The people behind the scenes are often surprisingly enthusiastic. Roden says that compared to other, similar systems, Fancy Hands is more affordable, competitive on price and often surprisingly superior in quality of results. At least at launch, the people he's hired seem relatively interested in the project and the work.

This afternoon I asked Fancy Hands to make me an appointment with "Bob's Heating System Repair" and gave the system my own phone number to call, just to see how it went down. I answered my next inbound call with "hello, Bob's heating repair, this is Bob." And went through a few minutes of appointment conversation before telling the virtual assistant what I was really doing. I think he felt a little bit toyed with, but he was very professional before and after I disclosed my true identity.

He said he had interacted just a little bit with Ted and that he was very interested to see what kind of research he was tasked with doing. He was very cautious about telling me anything specific about what the system was like on his end because "we're a brand new company, just starting." I thought it was charming that one of the 100 people hired to do tasks for a fee so closely associated with the business.

These Hands Are Fancy

People familiar with this kind of "human powered micro-outsourcing" will no doubt be familiar with Amazon's Mechanical Turk. All kinds of businesses bid for Turk users to perform rapid little tasks that require just a touch of human intelligence. Spammers pay Turkers to leave spammy spam around the web, podcasters pay Turkers to transcribe tiny fragments of audio files, businesses like Citysearch and Yelp pay Turkers to confirm changes to local business listings submitted by users. It's a big business, a platform that other businesses are being built on top of.

These services can be taken too far, of course. Author Tim Ferriss famously paid a team of assistants to pretend to be him on dating websites. They vetted women for intelligence and appearance before scheduling a day full of short first dates all in a row. That's just dishonest, an interpersonal crime of convenience.

There's something both more and less human about what Fancy Hands is doing, though. Its algorithmic task sorting could become very complex but the people on both ends are more invested, too. Roden says his model of $30 for 15 tasks per month makes people stop and ponder whether a task is really one they want to expend part of their monthly subscription on. There's something intriguing about that.

For himself, Ted Roden has a simple rule for using the system he built. "If I think about anything twice, I just put it into Fancy Hands," he says. It will be interesting to see how often his customers think about Fancy Hands and whether enough of them will renew their subscriptions to make this a sustainable service. If nothing else, this mix of human and machine is thought provoking, and perhaps prescient, in the way it strategically blends the online and offline worlds.

Photo by Justin Ouellette.

Discuss

Underlying the constant search for tactics by bloggers out there, there is a huge perceived lack of time.

You’ve got a day job. A family. A life. How are you supposed to have enough time to create a successful blog?

Personally, I think our perceptions of time are completely arbitrary (more on that viewpoint on time here). A lot of our approach to time comes from within, so time management tips are usually ways to outsmart ourselves into getting more done despite our self-imposed limitations of how much we can get done.

So, prefaced with my strongly-held belief that it ultimately comes down to mindset, I’ve compiled a list of 21 tips to help you with your efficiency as bloggers.

1. Don’t check email first thing in the morning. Get some work done first since mornings are often when we function best.
2. Switch to Google Voice. An invite is required, yes, but it allows you to screen your calls and have messages delivered to your email. Phone interruptions are the worse.
3. Disown Your Phone. Set up a voice mail message which explains your schedule for checking messages, then disconnect the phone to avoid interruptions. Train others to work with you on this for enhanced efficiency.
4. Limit Reading Time. As I covered before, you cannot consume and produce at the same time. So, limit the amount you ingest in order to be able to output more. Information overload is an extremely controllable problem.
5. Use Evernote. It is a free and awesome way to take notes, tag them, categorize them, etc. Don’t keep ideas in your head. Free your mind and store the details in Evernote so you can get them when you need to. Get an idea while reading a blog post? Record it in Evernote – don’t keep it in your head.
6. Use Remember The Milk for online task management. Get the premium option (only $25/year) and you can sync with your mobile phone. Very handy.
7. Practice Inbox Zero. Your email inbox should be just that – an INbox. Not a big collective storage place for forgotten BS. Learn to handle, delegate or move emails and get them out of your inbox.
8. Practice TRAF. This is trash, refer, act, file. These are the 4 choices you have when dealing with any incoming communication or action item.
9. Assign Times To Tasks. When adding a task to your todo list, assign a time estimate to it on how long it will take. Then schedule it in accordingly.
10. Reward Efficiency With Downtime. Your daily todo list shouldn’t be a list of things you HOPE to get done (if the stars align just right). It should be a realistic list of things you WILL get done. And if you get them all done with time to spare, take time off. Reward yourself for good work ethic.
11. Work in Focused Batches. You’re not working when you sit at your computer and move your hands. Instead of this long-winded work-day, break it up into focused batches. Work in 1-hour batches, with full focus on a single task at a time. At the end of that hour, go take a break. Then, repeat.
12. Turn OFF auto-notifications by email. There is no reason why you need email notifications when somebody follows you on Twitter, or when somebody requests friendship on Facebook. Turn off all such email notifications. If you absolutely MUST have them sent to you, then at least filter them out of your inbox automatically so they are hidden from view and don’t take up any time unless you WANT them to.
13. Work with a timer. Assign yourself a certain time block to get a task done, then use an actual timer. Have it count down to zero from the time you set aside for that task. Visually seeing that timer tick down makes a game out of getting things done faster and not screwing around.
14. Use A White Board For Your Active Task. In combination with the timer above, use a small white board at your desk. Write down the task you’re working on then start the timer. Any time you start feeling distracted, that white board will remind you what you’re supposed to be working on.
15. Think About Leverage. Any task that you do, how can you utilize the time spent working on that task to either accomplish another thing or alleviate the need to do that task again? For example, create a procedure list for a task while you do it. Might take a bit longer, but it is then outsourcable. Or, if you get the same question via email a lot, create a video with your answer, send it to the requester, then use the video as blog content.
16. Lean Toward Outsourcing. Focus on what you’re good at, outsource the rest.
17. Vary Your Workspace. Instead of always working in your home office, consider taking a laptop down to a local coffee shop instead. Often, just that change of environment can positively affect your efficiency.
18. Schedule Fun. Life isn’t all about work. Actually scheduling in things you enjoy will have a positive effect for you. It will also lead you to being more efficient with the time you ARE working.
19. Don’t Watch The News. It is pure negativity designed specifically to rob you of your life and instead keep you glued to THEM, to their ads, to their content. Pardon my French, but f**k those losers. Turn it off, take back your happiness and create the life you want rather than having those asshats remind you of other people’s problems. You’ll be happier and get more done.
20. Dismiss Negativity. Doing anything positive for your life and your goals is always going to make other people try to suppress you. Perhaps it is fear on their part, or just outright animosity. It doesn’t necessarily make them bad people, for it could just be reactive on their part. But, learn to control it. If a family member is chastising you about your efforts to build up an online business, then confront them about it and get their agreement to knock it off. You have the right to control what enters your space via others.
21. Treat Yourself Right. It is a challenge for all of us, but treating your body right is integral to having a balanced and efficient life. Your mind won’t be all there when you’re coasting on coffee and Red Bulls. Instead, drink lots of water. Start your day off with some stretches or light exercise to get your heart rate up a bit. Take walks. Eat well. The time spent doing those things will come back in the form of lighter mind and increased focus.

So, would you like to add any advice of your own to this list?

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Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner.

Ask the attorney: M&A waters can be dangerous – especially for the buyer – Buying a competitor is a sign of strength, but one that also carries a lot of risk. Attorney Scott Edward Walker runs down four more things to watch out for – and ways to keep the upper hand.

5 ways startups can slay giants – Entrepreneurs regularly face off against companies significantly larger than them. It’s an uphill battle, but not an impossible one. Dave Kellogg, CEO of Mark Logic, offers five ways to maximize the odds of your success.

6 critical tips for launching a startup while holding a day job – It’s not uncommon to launch your first startup while you still hold a day job. That’s fine, says angel investor Jason Cohen, but there are some legal landmines you need to watch out for. Here’s how to protect yourself – and your startup.

Thinking IPO? Old underwriter rules no longer apply – The traditional wisdom of picking banks has become outdated in this recession. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley still have plenty to offer companies going public, but if you’re giving some thought to making the jump, Greenberg Traurig’s Tom Klein says it’s worth your time to examine other options as well.

The perfect startup team? Grey hair and Mohawks – Want to attract the eye of a Venture Capitalist? You’ll need a team that has a blend of young and old, mixing fresh ideas with proven experience, says Heidi Roizen, managing director for Mobius Venture Capital.

Tags: entrepreneur corner

(Editor’s note: Jason Cohen is an angel investor and the founder of Smart Bear Software. This story originally appeared on his blog.)

Most people start their first company while they still have a day job. It makes sense: You don’t need loans. You don’t need funding. And if you “fail,” all you’ve lost is time.

But you’ve also placed yourself in a hazardous – potentially legally ambiguous – situation. If managed improperly, you’re unnecessarily risking lawsuits and worse.

I’ve been on both sides of the table: I’ve done a startup while working and I’ve employed people who either were or are very capable of having their own startup on the side. And I’ve known people who were sued because of it, and not all of them won.

Recognizing in advance that I’m not a lawyer – and that none of this qualifies as legal advice – here are my tips for how to pull off the balancing act:

Pick a business that can thrive within your constraints – Your side venture has constraints a “normal” business doesn’t have:

• You can’t answer the phone during normal business hours.
• You can’t answer emails during normal business hours.
• You can’t afford to hire three developers to add features and bugs.
• You have to work in fits and spurts.

Your natural tendency is to fight these constraints, but that’s the wrong approach. For example, you know that to avoid social media shitstorms you’re supposed to have stupendous customer service, so you claim as much on your website. But then you don’t have a phone number and emails sent to you at 10:00am don’t get answered until that night (which means they’re not viewed until the following day).

That’s called a “missed expectation.” It’s also called pissing in the wind — it’s just going to come right back at you.

The right attitude is not only to work inside your constraints, but to turn them into competitive advantages.

For example, your regular income affords you the luxury of underpricing your service. So if anyone complains that there’s no phone number, you can just point out that for $5/mo you can’t afford a phone staff. Or pick a product in which simplicity and having very few features is an advantage. “We do only one thing and we do it better than anyone” is a great marketing slogan. You don’t have the time to make a Microsoft Excel knock-off, so don’t!

Embrace slow growth – We all have dreams of stratospheric growth, but it’s not a “plan,” especially not for a business you’re running in your spare time. In fact, any bootstrapped company should be aiming for slow, consistent growth rather than explosive growth.

This is not a bad thing. Slow growth maximizes your chance for success. Slow means your success is not dependent on some unlikely, massive event that’s totally outside your control. Slow means you can change drastically during the early days without sinking the company. You have a job, so you don’t require explosive growth to be successful anyway.

Remember, your immediate goal isn’t to make millions of dollars, it’s to build a business just solid enough to quit your day job. That might mean enough profits that you can already live (frugally) off the company. Or it might mean you have enough customers to have “proved” you have a viable business model, so now you can raise money with sensible terms.

Don’t lie at work – The best way to avoid a lawsuit is to prove that your employer knows you have a side project.

I know, you really really want to ignore me and operate in secret. You’re afraid to tell them because they’re might do something — fire you, distrust you, or look at you funny at lunch.

That might happen, but what’s worse — one of those things or a lawsuit? If you don’t think they’ll sue you, then you shouldn’t be afraid of telling them, because they are ultimately going to find out anyway. Better to tell them on your own terms.

Write a simple document explaining what you’re doing. Here’s my template:

To Whom it may Concern:

I have a hobby which does not in any way conflict with work. I’m writing this letter to make sure you’re aware of it so there’s no misunderstanding.

My hobby is ….

I work on my hobby only at home and on my own time; it is not in conflict with my employee agreement. I own it; [Company] has no ownership or rights to it. Like any hobby, it could generate a small amount of income.

Although I don’t anticipate it, I understand that if my hobby ever became in conflict with my job that it’s my responsibility to notify you immediately.

Thank you.

Then you get this letter signed by someone with authority. ”Authority” means someone who can legally represent the company. This will of course depend on the company, but typically C*Os or the company’s legal council is a good bet. Getting a supportive boss to sign it isn’t good enough. He can’t speak for the company.

Check your employment agreement – Employment agreements are typically biased in favor of the employer, sometimes with outrageous clauses saying that anything you do, even at home and on your own time and unrelated to anything at work, is automatically owned by the company. Furthermore, you’re responsible for identifying and reporting on those things.

Courts have thrown out some of these egregious contracts, but that’s unusual, and you can’t depend on that. You don’t want to go to court at all. Besides, you signed it.

Read over your agreement and make sure it’s legal to have the side business. If it isn’t, you mustwrite a letter like the one above specifically stating that this is a valid exception to your employment agreement.

Don’t use company property or Internet, ever - Another clause in most employment agreements is that anything you do physically at work, or on software and equipment owned by the company (e.g. laptop, customer lists, Photoshop) is automatically the property of the company.

This clause is fair. If your project is really on the side, you have no business doing business at work.

When it comes to company property, be paranoid. Assume every laptop has a secret program that records all keystrokes, mouse clicks, screen shots, web sites and emails you read or write. Assume everything you do on the Internet is recorded, cataloged, tagged, and monitored continuously.

Now I realize you’re super clever. You want to sneak in some tech support emails during the day, so you use a cocktail of  Anonymizer plus GMail-over-SSL to confound the network admin. Because, of course, covering up your activity is a sure sign you’re doing something legal.

Even that is not enough. If they decide to sue, they get to look through your email records (it’s called “discovery”). Then they have 100 emails you sent during work hours. You lose.

Just don’t do it.

Time management is critical – I’m naturally awful at personal time management. I procrastinate, I’m disorganized, and if I’m not careful I’ll burn two hours at FailBlog with nothing to show for it but tears of laughter puddled under my keyboard.

A startup already generates an infinite amount of work. It takes all your time, which for you is 40 hours/week less than it ought to be. You can’t afford to waste time, whether that means bad habits or working on the wrong tasks.

Photo by Cayusa via Flickr

Tags: working two jobs

During my recent trip to India, I flew down to Bangalore for one reason: To meet N.R. Narayana Murthy. Murthy is the co-founder, executive chairman and former CEO for 21 years of Infosys, the first Indian company to go public on Nasdaq and effectively the company that began the $30 billion Indian IT outsourcing market.

Murthy’s idea was so successful that it quickly became controversial—not only within the United States where some Americans feel Indians are “stealing jobs,” but also in India where many are concerned about a tech economy that doesn’t make anything. I wanted to meet with Murthy, because in many ways he’s the best person to address what Indians at home and abroad are facing and where Indian entrepreneurship goes from here.

Here are a few highlights from our meeting:

His Day Job. Murthy thought he was stepping down from Infosys back in 2002, but he couldn’t fully let go. As such, he still works pretty much full time for the company, traveling to meet with customers and running a lot of the company’s mentoring and training programs. The more surprising aspect of his job: He personally signs off on the architecture of every building on each one of Infosys’ campuses that employ some 17,000 people around the world. The one we were sitting in was spread of eight acres and had some remarkable buildings, including one that looked like the Luxor casino in Las Vegas.

I asked why this was a top priority—after all, many Valley campuses are plush but from an architecture standpoint look about the same. He said when GE and other American multinationals were starting to come into his business everyone thought Infosys would lose the local talent war. So Murthy studied why people want to work at a particular place. One of the results was the comfort and design of the facilities. That was in 1994 when Infosys was designing the very building we were sitting in as we had this conversation. “I’ve been in charge of every building since– all over the world,” he says.

Hurting or Helping Local Entrepreneurship? Given exactly how plush Murthy and his colleagues have worked to make Infosys, has he indirectly hurt Bangalore’s entrepreneurship scene by making the risk of leaving so daunting? He smiled when I asked this and said, “We may have unwittingly. But I do feel like the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and kicking in Bangalore.”

Further, I asked about Bangalore’s Zippo-flipping, free-spending generation of young techies who’ve graduated to a huge wave of multinational jobs that pay them far more than their parents ever made, in many cases more than the rest of their families combined. Murthy didn’t deny that that instant-gratification, “gimmie” contingent was strong in the city he helped build, economically speaking. But he blames the Internet and the mass-cross-pollination of Western pop culture, not the bigger paycheck from companies like his.

“We are moving towards a uniform, global culture with an intense competitive spirit and an intense desire for instant gratification,” he says. “But I have a firm belief that each generation is better than the previous one. The Indian entrepreneurs today are more daring than we were.” (This from a man who became a capitalist after after hitchhiking across communist Eastern Europe and getting thrown in jail for chatting up someone’s girlfriend on a train. “More daring” is a tall order, young Indian techies.)

Is India’s Tech Community Too Addicted to Services? Clearly, services has been a great business for Infosys and the hundreds of dollar-millionaires and even more rupee-millionaires that the company’s generous stock program has created. But a lot of Indian CEOs and investors complain that in most cases services-based tech businesses are a great way to get revenues quick, but not a way to build a huge, high-growth business. There’s a big question of whether India’s tech sector has a worrying lack of product-building know-how.

Murthy says it’s a progression. “India missed the industrial revolution, but Indians had intelligence,” he says. “We had to make do with pen and paper. We were always forced to look at the abstract. What is happening in India today is the creation of jobs. Let’s create jobs as long as they are legal and ethical, it doesn’t matter, as long as we make money. The time will come for creating products. I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. If we create enough jobs we’ll raise the confidence of the youngsters and they’ll create products.”

India’s Infrastructure. Here’s something it’s hard for even Murthy to be upbeat about: India’s shoddy physical infrastructure. Murthy has traveled the world and it’s frustrating that so much money has poured into the country he loves, and yet, the infrastructure is still so shockingly bad.

There is progress—Infosys for instance has benefited from a new overpass that cuts down on the drive to the campus by more than thirty minutes. (See!) But it’s not moving nearly fast enough, he says. “I don’t know if we will reach the level of the United States or China,” he adds.

Murthy gave a more nuanced explanation than the usual “it’s corruption” answer you get in India. He explained that 65% of India’s population lives in rural areas and 35% live in cities. And there’s such polarity between the quality of life that politicians have to appear to be doing more for the villages than the cities if they want to get re-elected. That leaves prosperous economic cities blighted by poor sewage systems, pollution spewing generators and beggars weaving through traffic tapping on car windows. “Different emerging nations take different paths,” he says. “In China, they chose to emphasize giving people economic freedom first and political freedom second. In India we chose the opposite path.”

Hurting or Helping US-based Indians? All you have to do is read the comments on one of Vivek Wadhwa’s posts to see the ugly, anti-immigrant, anti-Indian fervor that’s been whipped up in America, post-recession. A lot of it has to do with outsourcing. I asked Murthy if he felt his company and industry’s huge success has indirectly made life harder for Indian-Americans. He turned the blame on xenophobes like Lou Dobbs and grandstanding politicians who use the wedge issue to get viewers and votes.

But it’s an issue he has to address a lot. He answers it by saying every morning he gets up and gets a Pepsi out of his GE Fridge and drives his American car to work where he sits down at his Dell computer. India used to have companies that made soft drinks, refrigerators, cars and computers. But the American ones were better. Allowing them in hurt Indian workers in the short term, but provided a far better quality of life for a much bigger swath of Indians long term. He argues outsourcing has done the same thing for US companies. Greater efficiencies and cost-savings enables these companies to stay competitive and there’s no reason they can’t—in theory—plow those savings into better local jobs or job training.

This argument isn’t going to pacify hate-mongers, because nothing will. Murthy knows that too and while he regrets it, he seems to accept it as reality.

Advice for Entrepreneurs. Murthy has started a $170 million venture fund, so although he spends most of his time still at Infosys, he clearly cares about encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. He had two big pieces of advice for them. One, be able to articulate what you do in one sentence. If you can’t, you don’t have a good idea. And two, make sure the market is ready. Businesses are killed, not congratulated, for being ahead of their time.

Kevin Rose, Digg's founder, spoke this week at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand and covered 10 amazing tips for entrepreneurs. They were truly insightful - and obviously came straight from the heart and soul of someone who worked a day job and built his dream after hours. This is our take of what he had to say.

1: Just Build It: You don't need anyone's approval and in fact, you probably won't get it, so don't even try.

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2: Iterate: Build, release and iterate. Make a list of the features you want to create over the next six months and get going! For small companies, once a week; for larger companies, maybe twice a month.

3: Hire Your Boss: Make sure you hire people that you would want to work for, who challenge you and you can learn from.

4: Demand Excellence: Ensure staff are committed to and understand your vision. Passionate, committed staff have a tendency to rub off on people. There is nothing like a new junior developer who runs circles around everyone to get people hyped up and raise the bar! Stay involved in the hiring process as long as you possibly can.

5: Raising Money: The higher your evaluation is, the more equity you have to work with. Beg, borrow and steal. Be creative about finding ways to cut costs. For example, tell the bar you are having a "birthday party" instead of a corporate event (which they would charge you $5,000 for). Rent servers, don't buy them. Don't just take the cash, make sure your investors can add value. Stick with angel investment. Venture capital mean board meetings, which is a huge sap on time and resources.

6: Hack the Press: Hit up the lower-end bloggers at your favorite tech blog. They have just as much opportunity to write about your product as any other blogger on the team. Attend the after-event parties. The same crowd that attends the events also goes to the parties, but the parties are free.

7: Invest in Advisors: Give away a small amount of stock to advisors (which they can vest after a few years) who you can call on in a pickle or for general advice as issues arise. Set the ground rules so you and the advisor know how much time you have access to.

8: Connect With the Community: Hold a live town hall where you can collect feedback and get advice from your users.

9: Leverage Your User Base to Spread the Word: Facebook notifications is a great example of how to do this.

10: Analyze Your Traffic: Pay attention to how people are using your site, and then learn and evolve. Use Google Analytics to understand and track traffic sources and entrance and exit paths.

Photo credit: althecat

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Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself —

A month ago in our list of the "Top 6 Colleges with Entrepreneurial Programs" we highlighted the opportunities for the forward thinkers at Babson College in Massachusetts. Babson also happens to be the professional home of Daniel Isenberg, a management practice professor, who recently contributed to the Harvard Business Review's "The Conversation" blog with a post titled, "Should You Be an Entrepreneur? Take This Test." In his post Isenberg provides twenty questions that any aspiring entrepreneur should ask themselves before quitting their day job to make sure they have what it takes to succeed.

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"I've learned in my own years as an entrepreneur -- and now an entrepreneurship professor -- that there is a gut level "fit" for people who are potential entrepreneurs," writes Isenberg. "There are strong internal drivers that compel people to create their own business."

Isenberg's self-examination includes true/false statements like, "I don't like being told what to do by people who are less capable than I am," and "I would rather fail at my own thing than succeed at someone else's." After completing the 20-part checklist, Isenberg gives you the entrepreneurial green light if you answered "yes" to 17 or more of the questions.

According to Isenberg's checklist, the ideal entrepreneur likes to win, likes to "question conventional wisdom", is "rarely satisfied" and gets so excited by their ideas that they "can't sit still". Of course, having some entrepreneurship in your blood can't hurt either; one of Isenberg's signs of an entrepreneur is having members of their family or close friends who run their own business. For his final question, he suggests that a worthy entrepreneur "could have written a better test" than his.

Isenberg warns that while answering "yes" to most of these questions could mean you'd make a good entrepreneur, it doesn't necessarily mean you should quit your job right away. "Do you have debts to pay? Kids in college? Alimony? Want to take it easy? Maybe better to wait," he writes. Finally, he adds that risk-takers and money-seekers do not make for good entrepreneurs.

"People don't choose to be entrepreneurs by opting for a riskier lifestyle," writes Isenberg. "Risk is ultimately a personal assessment: what is risky for me is not risky for you."

Can a simple checklist weed-out the true entrepreneurs with potential from the wannabes looking to make quick cash? Or is there more to one's potential for success as an entrepreneur than these twenty attributes? Let us know what you think makes for great entrepreneurs in the comments.

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