Archive for the 'Project Ideas' CategoryPage 4 of 5

Talk about Caffeine Rush…

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 20, 2007
in Project Ideas and Web Development
. Comments

I think being up late plus the Dew brought me to this point of high alertness.

I called both Derek Remund as well as Alex Argo to check out my newest idea yet. I’m not sure still as to how serious I am about the project (i.e. how I’m going to be making $$ from it…), but it sounds like a project that might… definitely… attract some attention, regardless of it being profitable or not.

I set up a deadline for myself to do some more direct research into the area, and write up some documentation by the end of the month. One week is all I need to make some really large decisions about where this project is going to go.

Not only that, but now I’ve been tasked by a friend for yet another freelance job. I’ll be researching CMS’s and trying to customize it for jmbarrie.net. I’ll be in charge of a slight redesign, as well as a complete change in the back-end essay posting system.

And on top of this… there’s still that half-time (which I’ll be working full-time hours for) job I’ve got with the College of Education.

This week, is going to be amazing.

But alas, amidst the hecticness, I must refocus daily and… WIMPE it up daily.

PS: Yeah, I know you’re curious, but let me figure out a little bit more about what I want to do. I’ll then share it to the world.

Robert Greenberg on Donny Deutsch

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 17, 2007
in Project Ideas
. Comments

Robert Greenberg, CEO and founder of Skechers on one of my most favorite shows, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch.

I asked myself, since all I do on YouTube is waste time, why don’t I look up some really good TV shows that I missed… you know, the ones that will actually help me with the goals I want to achieve in life. (Becoming a Korean Pop star is not one of those goals. I’ll just write off all those Korean Music Videos and Variety Shows off as a means to my goal to become a Korean media mogul…)

The first time I saw Mr. Deutsch’s show was when he was talking with Howard Schultz, founder and CEO of Starbuck’s. Then I saw him on with Bill Gates, Paul Mitchell…. I was hooked.

One of those really motivating videos.

Summary: It’s not what their selling… it’s about the persistence. Don’t ever stop trying. Can’t see the turns at the starting line. Just start running. You’ll get somewhere. Preparation meets opportunity.

For me, I know for a fact what I’ll be doing is going to have to do with the web. I’m not sure why I’m going to start this race with that kind of mindset, but it makes the most sense for me.

However, I need to continue to understand that the web is only the platform. I can choose to sell whatever I want, whether it be a physical product or a service; be it B2B or a consumer-based market; be it advertising-supported or tiered fee-based monetization strategy. This is why this stage of beginning to understand the nature of the web will help me as I start this race.

And with that, I’m all motivated out. Back to reality.

Side note: Why is YouTube out of sync while Google Video isn’t? It’s those l33t hack monkeys at Google… I get so frustrated when I see audio out of sync with the video… someone should program something to fix that timing… but who…?

Confusing Features for a Company

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 15, 2007
in Project Ideas, Web Applications and Web Development
. Comments

The Web 2.0 Myth

So well put, I should print it out and paste it on my wall. This one line just made me want to shout it from the rooftops:

These entrepreneurs confuse a feature for a company.

Freaking yes. I hate “Web 2.0″. Not just how the phrase came to be the quintessential phrase of my type of people, but I’m talking about the endless trash that Michael Arrington gets to cover on a day to day basis.

Seriously, if the idea is to make your own Digg + Flickr + Del.icio.us + Advertising, you need to go back to the drawing board. Not only is that silly, it’s doable RIGHT NOW with the help of… ugh… I have to say it… the “Web 2.0″ mantra of having open APIs. If it isn’t doable now, trust me, it will be.

So, as for me, it’s continuing to hiding in the bushes and taking notes, while silently honing my skills and looking out for the killer team of coding ninjas.

6 Startup Lessons For The Year 2007

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 6, 2007
in Project Ideas
. Comments

Read/Write Web - 6 Startup Lessons For The Year 2007

A great list of things I need to follow for the startup. Pretty much puts into paragraph form I’ve been thinking about what I need to do for a startup.

One thing that I disagree on is the idea of the small niche market. The example used in this article was a community of Persian cat owners. Even though there might be a thousand people out there interested in such a site, how incredibly difficult would it be to reach them? Where’s the advertising budget on this one? Don’t even bring up “word-of-mouth” advertising… it’s not like you have a small town of Persian cat owners.

My belief is that there are small markets that actually are too small. Prices on hosting and other costs in creating an application is dropping, but who’s going to know about these tiny TINY applications. (Mind you, I’m talking about social networking sites… B2B is another story… which is where I might consider going into…)

I would add this to the list:

  1. Monetization Where the heck is the money?

YouTube was able to sell for a ridiculous price tag, but they’re still (written in Oct 2006) not that profitable. If they do start advertising pre and post clips, chances are the community that came with that $1.65 billion price tag will start to leave to the likes of dailymotion or metacafe.

I believe that passion to develop the product is the most important thing a startup can have. It’s not always about the money; in fact, it shouldn’t be. It should be to create what the users want, and make the world a better place.

But seriously, someone’s gotta pay for the bandwidth, the coding monkeys… This is why I’m holding off on a lot of my projects until I figure out how to actually monetize on it. And until I learn Ruby on Rails fully. Here’s a lovely reading on the subject.

One Good Thing About a Failing MacBook

Published
by
Josh Kim
on November 29, 2006
in Project Ideas
. Comments

… is that I get to think again about how a desktop or a laptop computer’s role in today’s Internet society is changing.

This must be the 4th time I would be reformatting on the MacBook Pro(if I do reformat…). Every time I do reformat, I make sure I backup everything and anything. I even do an incremental DVD burn sometimes. I recently burned 2 DVDs worth of pictures and movies from my iPhoto, just so that I’ll have a physical backup, just in case my external hard drive blew up.

Just as I do with everything in life, I try to be as efficient as possible, by taking time to see if there are better solutions to problems that I face often. Backing up data is one of those things that deal with all the time… as should all people who use computers. While the Internet is fast enough to just purely store my photos, songs, movies on a remote server, I can’t have access to it with the speed of double clicking on something on my local machine: It’s still fast enough for me to use an external hard drive to back up my media (including my documents) and keep burning DVDs regularly (Hard Drive is still faster than my Internet connection… maybe not so in Korea… but still, even if the Internet was faster than my Hard Drive, then the Hard Drive becomes the limit.) Back in the day, I would make backups of the ENTIRE file structure I had, without knowing that there are programs out there that would make things a little bit more efficient. By making backups of ONLY what changed, I could save lots of time and space… For this solution, I could go ahead and buy some incremental backup software such as SuperDuper or wait until Leopard’s Time Machine comes out. But this doesn’t actually solve my problem.

I want to identify what I need access to, and have all these areas covered by web applications. Call me crazy, but it would be awesome to be able to move seamlessly from computer to computer, while ONLY needing to access my media by an external hard drive. (This is until Internet gets fast enough to be able to stream media from a home server… we’re not there… yet.)

  • Email
    • Gmail is a great place to keep your email “backed up”, as long as Google stays un-”evil.” Currently, Gmail keeps copies of all emails that come in, while Mail.app gets a local copy.
    • I just hope there’s a way to send myself the old emails I have archived.
    • Also, if there was a way to make Gmail label emails properly depending on which folder I dropped the email into in Mail.app… that would be great.
  • Contact Information
    • Cellphone numbers: No complete solution yet. Facebook is a close solution, but it’s not as complete, since users can choose not to put up their information and not everyone that I know has a profile on Facebook. I think an application that does this is a possibility…
    • Screen names: AIM/Meebo. But I still like using Adium… because I can log conversations and have more features…
    • Email addresses: Mail.app keeps track of them… and there is Address Book.app for the Mac, also I could use Gmail to keep track of this.
    • HOWEVER: There is no complete online solution to contain all such information… and I would also want whatever this system it is to play with my favorite application, Quicksilver.
  • Bookmarks
    • Del.icio.us. I heard Ma.gnolia was better… I might have to try it sometime. But this is a great solution… and it plays well with Quicksilver, Firefox (plug-in), and Safari.
  • Feeds
    • I dislike most online feed readers. I love Vienna, because it’s free and open source and fast and responsive and does EXACTLY what I need.
    • I can go through feeds in very quickly, by being able to delete articles that are completely worthless (about 90% of which are Digg crap stories that link to the blogs I’m already subscribed to…)
    • I still want to be able to set it up so that OPML file is still saved somewhere…
  • iCal
    • There are plenty of Calendar tools out there, but iCal is just too easy and great to not use.
    • Easy to backup, since the feature is built in… but once again… have it automatically backed up somewhere.
  • Random notes
    • Sidenote: I love this program. I think it’s because it’s triggered by a keystroke, and it’s extremely useful. I shun the mouse for almost all tasks, since it’s less precise than a keyboard is. First reformat I did, I forgot to back this up from the /User/jk/Library folder, and lost a lot of tidbits of information I had. If there was a program that somehow posted all the information I made onto a server… hmm…
  • Docs
    • All of the files I’ve downloaded, including applications and full notes I make on presentations and articles I read online.

I see desktop applications becoming more and more useless unless there is an online component to them. The ideas of collaboration and connectivity are just too awesome to not utilize.

I guess until there are solutions for each and every one of these suckers… I’ll be just backing up my library folder…