Month: June 2010

We don’t need to see a mgmt team in place for an early stage company seeking seed capital. Actually it probably doesn’t make sense to have a “management team in place” right now anyway.

Great idea and prototype is what we would like to see at this stage.

(question via Tumblr Ask)

Since I started my blog I have always enabled comments. The value, community, interaction and fun are tremendous.

And i appreciate other blogs that enable comments. It gives me the feeling (sometimes accurately and sometimes not) that I have a connection to the writer.

For the blogs I frequent, the comments are 99.9% respectful, entertaining, informative and rewarding. Occasionally there is a bad apple …but that’s just life. Same is true on my site.

Some folks choose to not include comments. And some of those blogs include some of my favorites including those by David, Marco and John Gruber’s Daring Fireball.

I already know David and Marco so I don’t necessarily need comments to interact with them. Although I would like to interact with others that read their blogs. 

I don’t know John (although I’d love to meet him someday). He is pretty direct about why he doesn’t include comments on Daring Fireball:

Used to be, back in the early days of DF, that those complaining about the lack of comments simply were under the impression that a site without comments was not truly a “weblog”. (My stock answer at the time: “OK, then it’s not a weblog.”) Typically these weren’t even complaints, per se, but rather simply queries: Why not?

Now that DF has achieved a modicum of popularity, however, what I tend to get instead aren’t queries or complaints about the lack of comments, but rather demands that I add them — demands from entitled people who see that I’ve built something very nice that draws much attention, and who believe they have a right to share in it.

They don’t.

That’s pretty clear and a rationale point of view. Obviously I don’t share it since I have comments enabled here. But then again my site and his are like night in day in terms of traffic. 

I would love it if every person had a blog that commented on this site and others. I would encourage you start your own if you haven’t done so already and treat your site with care, kindness and respect. And feed it daily. It’s you and represents you. So take care of it. 

As John Gruber points out:

 It’s my firm belief that all websites eventually attract the attention and respect that they deserve. The hard work is in the “eventually” part.

I think what’s missing though is a way to easily discover blogs that link to anothers so you can discover and participate in the conversation. Without comments, discovering new blogs can be challenging. 

I remember several years ago, I would visit technorati and enter the url for my blog and see any incoming links from other sites. Unfortunately in recent years Technorati doesn’t work properly and misses many (most?) incoming links which is a bummer. 

It would be great if there was another way to discover these incoming links.

It could look like a distributed version of Techmeme across the web that clusters posts by subject matter. Enter in a blog post url and see related posts and all incoming links from social media sites as well. Right now Techmeme is the go to start page for the major news of the day with particular attention to Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter.

But clearly we all have a lot more to share on our blogs. The question remains: how do we discover them. I think it’s still a challenge and worth figuring out. 

I used to run with the Garmin Forerunner. But it was just too big and clunky for my taste. The software was also a let down. 

These days I workout with Nike+ and the iPhone. It’s a fun way to keep track of my runs. But I don’t always carry the iphone with me and you can’t keep the app running in the background – and with limited battery capacity, I’m not sure I would want to do that anyway.

On Friday, I received the Fitbit.

FIitbit is a tiny device that you wear and it keeps track of your movements all day long. An easy way to think about Fitbit is as a fancy connected pedometer. But I believe it’s more than that.

First, it’s very cool looking. It’s also really tiny, battery lasts forever and the UI is clean and well done on the device. 

But the best part – it’s an internet connected device. Set up is very simple and then after that everytime the fitbit comes close to the (included) cradle it will send data to your online profile. 

The website is cool. Simple charts, stats & analytics are built in. You can also compete or just compare your fitness habits with friends. I think building social stuff into health products like this make so much sense. 

As you can see I’m just getting started. I didn’t bring it with me camping this weekend because we left at the crack of dawn and I accidently left it at home (total bummer). I plan on keeping fitbit with me everywhere I go. 

Fitbit also comes with a wrist strap so you can monitor your sleep history. I plan on doing that this week. I’m extremely curious to know how well I’m sleeping these days. I have a hunch but I’d rather see the data :)