I’m OK

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I just received an "Are you OK, I haven’t seen a blog post in awhile" message from my friend Marshall at GotSpeech.Net.  It’s nice to be missed, and yes everything is fine.  I should explain that my entrepreneurship postings have been going up at the Kauffman Foundation’s eVenturing site.  The Kauffman Foundation is a wonderful organization that makes the world a better place by improving education and supporting entrepreneurs.  I was asked to be their entrepreneur blogger last year, so this blog has leaned more towards tech, with a lot more pictures according to one local media person.

I do have some stories to tell, and I will get them posted this weekend.  Here’s a quick one though.  I’m a big believer in organizations like YPO and YEO (Now just called The Entrepreneurs Organization or EO), but I’m no longer a member, so late last year I convinced a small group of local entrepreneurs to get together at a local pub.  We had a great time, despite the fact that there seemed to be some sort of play-off kind of game on all the TVs and people around us would just start screaming for no apparent reason.  We left when the screaming became non-stop.

So now it is time for another get-together, and one of the folks sent this email:

The purpose: to discuss how great it is to run a business (sometimes) and how exhausting it is to run a business (sometimes), sort of like raising a kid but just a little bigger though it throws up on you about as often (but who would have their life any other way). And of course to drink a beer or two, eat some pizza and talk with people of similar interests and life journeys.

That pretty much sums it up.  Have a great weekend!

The future of search?

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Thanks to Bo for sending me a link to www.msdewey.com/  You’re going to want to check this out, because in about 10 minutes everyone is going to be asking if you’ve seen it, er "her."  It, uh "she," is a real search engine but when you first go there Bo instructed me to not do anything for a few minutes.  You’ll then probably waste 20 minutes typing in different words to see her reaction as I just did, which is why I’m posting this on the weekend.  I don’t want to be responsible for a dip in the GDP on Monday.

Msdewey2   

New Apple iPhone

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My buddy John was the first to tell me that the Apple iPhone has been announced. A few minutes later I got a newsletter with a link to a review of the announcement. It sounds great and I look forward to seeing one, but if it won’t sync with my Exchange server I’m not going to be able to try it. If it raises the bar for phoneset design, then we (the consumers) all win, whether we buy one or not.

One good thing about snow

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We’ve got another Winter Storm Warning in Colorado this morning. In Boulder people are driving a little slower but it isn’t that bad. The nice thing about it is that it’s easier to find a parking spot at Turley’s, my favorite Boulder restaurant.

Paul Turley is a great local entrepreneur and his daughter Sandy is carrying on the tradition. The service is always fast and friendly, and the menu is five pages of great food. You can eat Boulder-healthy, have breakfast anytime or go for the cheese burger and fries. Beef or buffalo if you prefer.

During the dark days of late 2001 Paul and I would commiserate on being an entrepreneur and what the future might hold. He was always quick with a smile and his optimism definitely rubbed off on me. Maybe that’s where my "keep smiling" mantra came from.

WiFi Fridge

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I got so excited when I saw this that I dropped my phone and my memory card popped out and flew under a washing machine. This is a pretty common reaction I think.

On the right door is a TV display. I’m not sure if it is HD. The small display on the left is where you set up the wireless connection, get recipes off the internet and view your photo albums.

I wonder if I could hook up the Xbox to it?

Update 1 The fridge is made by LG and it has already been discontinued from Smarthome.com.  It only has one connection to the display, and it is Coax, so you could connect an Xbox, but the resolution wouldn’t be good and you’d need a switch to be able to watch TV or a DVD.  It’s a nice Version One by LG.  Being able to get the day’s weather is something I’ve always wanted to do with a refrigerator, and the Aniversary Reminder feature is a nice touch.  I can’t wait to see Version Two.

Update 2 This is a video of the fridge.

Frys

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I was driving through Atlanta when the Garmin GPS suction-cupped to the windshield of the rented Chevy began to glow.  My stomach was doing flip flops as I realized that I was closing in on a Frys.  Many years ago I discovered by accident the wild west of the Palo Alto Frys and since then I’ve been drawn to Frys like I’m drawn to, well, fries.

Frys

The Atlanta Frys seems to be bigger than most Wal-Marts.  I knew I was home when a guy walked up to his car, hit the remote and a second after hearing the beep of his car alarm, the engine started.  The guy just grinned.  You need remote starting in Atlanta to warm it up on those cool winter nights.

Frys_cafe

I was tempted to stop at the cafeteria, for a Jolt and a Moon Pie, but I had promised I wouldn’t be gone long. I decided to walk every isle to see what was new.

Motherboards Frys has something for every geek.  Building a computer?  Check out the Wall of Motherboards. Network

Building a network?  That’s 64 feet of gear stacked five shelves high.

Oscopes

Need an Oscilloscope?  There must be $100,000 of inventory in this store alone. 

Resistors How about an isle of nothing but resistors and capacitors? Probably more parts than all the Radio Shacks in Georgia carry. Refrigerators

Frys isn’t just about electronics though. The have more refrigerators than the average Best Buy.

They have 24 feet of shelves full of TV wall mounts.  Not TVs, just wall mounts.  Who knows how many actual TVs they have in stock.

They have 88 feet of phones, but that isn’t counting cell phones or the 14 feet of VoIP, video and conference phones. I particularly liked the looks of the Ojo Phone by Motorola.

Nascar1

Speaking of appliances, they of course had a vacuum cleaner section and a large display of Rumba robotic vacuum cleaners.  But who else stocks the TracVac, a robotic, remote controlled NASCAR vac that is ". . .so fun. you’ll find yourself throwing stuff on the floor to use it!"  You can get the Lowes number 48 vac, or Jeff Gordon’s number 24.

Powerstrips

Throughout the store there were special displays of random things.  Like the display of 10 outlet power strips.  Each display (there were at least two) were 4 feet by 4 feet by 5 feet high.  I wonder if the TSA would have let me carry one on the plane?

Checkout

The best part of Frys is the checkout lanes.  In my picture you can see 34 cashier stations.  To get to one of the stations you walk through a maze of junk food, gadgets, batteries and gag gifts.  What you can’t see in the photo are the 36 cashier stations on the other side.  That’s right – at full capacity they can check out 70 people at one time.

The most amazing thing?  I didn’t buy anything!

Think

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One of the My Way blogs that I read is 2-Speed by Will Herman.  Today he had a post called Think – A Good Reminder To Do Just That.  I tried to leave a comment, but for some reason I couldn’t get it or an email to go through, so I thought I’d just share the story here.

Will tells the story of IBM’s "Think" slogan and he has a photo of the very same Think plaque that I have on my desk at work. 

Update 1 The link to Will’s photo stopped working, so I’ll have to take a photo of mine and post it.  Until then you can click here to see a great webpage of Think plaques and IBM collectables at IBM-Collectables.com.

My dad always had this plaque on his desk at home when I was growing up, and now I have the desk and the plaque in my office.  Reading Will’s post reminded me of one of my early lessons in customer service.

My dad was an IBM’er and I have that exact Think plaque on my desk now.  I grew up being reminded to "think" and I learned a lot about integrity and customer service by watching my dad.  When my dad died, he had a printer in pieces at home that he was repairing for a customer.  This was back in the 70s when printers were big mechanical things.  It was long out of support and there was no one else locally who knew anything about it.

Since my mom had helped him disassemble and clean the printer, she offered to put it back together for the customer.  I believe she could have done it too, but the customer insisted that the printer be allowed to pass.  Even though my dad had just died, my mom wanted to keep the commitment that he made, which was to take care of his customer.  I would never expect a Gold Systems person to be that customer-focused, but then IBM didn’t either – that was just my dad’s nature, and my mom’s too.  They believed in keeping their commitments and helping others. 

so close yet so far

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I made it to Denver, but we’ve been sitting on the ramp for 90 minutes waiting for the person to wave us in the last 50 feet. The story is that most of the ground crews couldn’t get to work today, so they are only handling a few at a time.

I’m still smiling, though it has been a long day and I still have to dig out the FJ.

Spiremedia advice for non-profits

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In November I asked for help from anyone who wanted to help a few local non-profits with their websites.  The demand is greater than the supply, so if you want to help you can still email me.  I asked my friend Mike Gellman for advice.  Mike started SpireMedia in 1998 during the dot com boom, and he survived the bust and has a great business that has customers such as Echostar, MapQuest a bunch of the Colorado ski resorts.  I admire Mike’s perseverance and creativity, so I asked him, "What should a non-profit with a very limited budget do for a website?"  His answer was so good I asked if I could just publish his email.  Here it is:

Here are my thoughts on non-profits. The first thing they should do is see if one of their volunteers knows how to make web sites. Some of the best non-profit sites have come from people are truly passionate about the organizations. Plus, they will always be available to update and maintain it.
Next, they should start contacting local web firms, especially smaller, newer ones, to see if they have a non-profit budget or want to develop a marquis site for exposure, access to donors, or display in their portfolio. A lot of the newer firms need live sites that will display their talent. They may decide to do the site for free or at a majorly discounted rate. Many of these companies will also have a rudimentary content management system that they include, which will allow the non-profit to update it themselves.
Finally, if they can’t find a donor, they should consider using some of the inexpensive online site building tools like Godaddy or Yahoo Small Business. These tools offer templated designs, content management, and if necessary, e-commerce for anywhere between $10-$50/month. Once established, they site can be managed by an administrator who doesn’t have any web knowledge.
Overall, non-profits need web sites that will provide up-to-date information. They do not need to be too extravagant AND they definitely should not take large amounts of money from their budgets that can be spent elsewhere. The previous three options should get them where they need to be.
— Mike
Thanks Mike!

Real-time flight tracking

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Here’s another travel tip.  You can track flights in real-time at http://flightaware.com/ and other sites.  Flightaware is showing me exactly where the plane is that will be used for my flight out of here.  It also predicts that it will arrive here at 5:04, which is about ten minutes after my airline claims I’ll be departing.  Assuming the airline is not changing planes, that means my airline is fibbing a bit and I’m going to be delayed again.

That reminds me of the time that my airline was saying that the flight was delayed because of fog in San Francisco and I brought up a web cam of the airport showing nice sunny skies.  Never lie to your customer.  It’s bad karma and you will probably get caught.