DemoCamp Montreal

Congrats to Austin Hill and Fred Ngo for putting on a great DemoCamp last night – I know they worked very hard behind the scenes. I shouldn’t be surprised, but this “self-organized” event was easily one of the better technology events I’ve attended. It was held at the Société des arts technologiques, which easily accommodated the 100+ people that attended. The presentations were great, and the crowd looked like it had a good mix of young programmers and artists, as well as more experienced angels and VCs. It was a free event, but it was easily worth the standard $50 you would pay to attend events like this.

Best of show for me was Bumptop, from talented young entrepreneur Anand Agarawala. Anand is a Calgary native earning his Masters at U of T. His master’s thesis is a new paradigm for the desktop, and his demo on YouTube has created some incredible buzz – so far, over 2.3 million views. He’s gotten so much buzz that he was recently invited to speak atTED, where speakers included luminaries such as Bill Clinton, Richard Branson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

I also met Jeremy Wright, CEO of b5media, who tells me that his company is well ahead of plan, burning less cash than expected, and that his board members applauded his presentation at their last meeting! A great story from another great Canadian entrepreneur!

Franchising Queer Eye For The Straight Guy

I spend one day in Montreal, and I’m already feeling a little bit more cosmopolitan. Austin Hill and Alex Eberts, the guys behind Akoha, invited me out to see a group of young entrepreneurs pitch their companies for prize money and gain valuable exposure to angel investors and VCs. I was feeling like a fish out of water most of the evening because most of the presentations were in French. However, one of the best presentations, according to some of the other audience members, was presented in english by Ian Sutherland of MANN.

Ian’s concept was simple – MANN is an all-in-one grooming destination exclusively for men. Currently, men have a few alternatives – go to a barber shop and get an incomplete set of services, or go to a standard spa and hang out with the girls. Ian spent some time explaining how “manly” his shop is, but I didn’t think that was necessary. The services he offers include “manscaping”, pedicures, skin treatments and massages. Let’s face it, most straight guys don’t care about this stuff, but should. (I’ll include myself in this group, as my wife often watches Queer Eye and says stuff like “gee, that shirt would look good on you”).

MANN is looking for money to expand and franchise. I think it could be every bit as popular as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy – the men that aren’t enlightened enough to go on their own will be strongly encouraged to go by their SO’s. Congrats to Ian for identifying a niche, and proving it out – MANN’s first location is profitable after less than one year of operations.

Link: “Man-O-Lantern“, the chest-waxing scene from 40 year old Virgin [warning: coarse language] – probably not good advertising for a men’s spa.

Apple Should Encourage Apple TV Hackers

I just got my Apple TV yesterday, after placing the pre-order 2 months ago. I know it’s just a box that turns my TV into a computer monitor, but somehow, I’m very impressed. I immediately synced up some of my movies, video podcasts and image library to the box, and started navigating the interface. As with all Apple products, I didn’t have to reach for the manuals – they remain in the original shrinkwrap. I expected nothing less than a great interface, but was still floored by how simple and elegant it was.

Then I got bored.

Why? Because I still want to watch television shows on my TV set. Canadians have surprisingly few alternatives when it comes to PVR devices. There’s the devices that the cable companies offer – but they’re closed boxes that don’t allow for IP networking or file transfer. I could go with a Windows or Linux PVR, but then I’d have to maintain multiple OS’s and file formats. What I need is a system that will unify my AppleTV with my cable/satellite system, PVR, Slingbox, and iTunes/video iPod set up.

I think Apple should support and encourage their fans and enthusiasts to come up with a solution if Apple isn’t going to come up with one themselves. I’ve been a huge Apple Macintosh fan for the last 23 years, and I’ll likely spend a significant amount of money in the next month on a non-Mac PVR. Hey, I know Apple is a busy company – how about crowdsourcing it?

Some people are already busy hacking Apple TV:
Apple TV running on a Macbook
Running xVID files on Apple TV

Buzz vs. Hype

In his book Brand Hijack – marketing without marketing, Alex Wipperfürth studies how Doc Martens, Napster, The Blair Witch Project and other projects/brands were able to rise above the noise of regular marketing tactics and use crowds to shape brand meaning and create buzz. One of the key take-aways from the book for me is that brand must be built into the DNA of the product. It’s amazing how companies can go through years of product development, only to bring in a branding and marketing guy at a later stage to make their product “cool”. All too often, it’s too little, too late.

Here’s an excerpt from the book, highlighting the differences between Buzz and Hype:

• Buzz is genuine; Hype is fabricated
• Buzz is co-created with the market; Hype is autocratic, leaked by the brand owner; the market is an audience, not a participant
• Buzz travels through grassroots, peer-to-peer communications; Hype uses mass media and staged events.
• Buzz carries an authentic social message – it’s news; Hype carries a biased product message – it’s publicity.
• Buzz is seductive and spreads exponentially; Hype is loud and aggressive
• Buzz is trustworthy; Hype can easily be distrusted
• Buzz is a long-term learning model; Hype creates short-term awareness.

Brand Hijack is an outstanding read that is both entertaining and educational, and for that reason alone, it’s near the top of my list of essential business books. After reading this book, it’s likely that you’ll be inspired to create some new buzz for your company, something that is ultimately less expensive and more enduring than advertising.

Link: An interview with Alex on Design Mentor

Zooomr Update – still working on it!

Kristopher Tate is still working on the new release of Zooomr, and in a sure sign that it’s not coming soon, he released a video of their enhanced lightbox feature in this blog entry. Zooomr shut down their website on March 13th in hopes of launching their new release within 2 days, but decided to rollback to the old release on March 18th, after experiencing difficulties with the new version. Releasing news on upcoming features is normally a good thing, but in this case, it’s a sign that the release may not come for a while.

You’ve got to feel for Kristopher. Having built Zooomr on his own, he’s undoubtedly exceptionally talented. However, as with any other major project, it really helps having a second qualified opinion in the room. This makes me think back to the old days of iStockphoto: I was extremely skeptical when our VP of Software Development introduced pair programming and other extreme programming methodologies to iStockphoto a few years back. By pairing up two programmers to do one task, the methodology was supposed to allow for knowledge transfer and reduce the number of errors in the code. I immediately thought that our productivity would drop in half, but that never happened. I think our developers ended up being happier with their jobs because it allowed them to learn more and learn faster. We often treat developers as if they should be in a dark room programming all day, and forget that they would benefit from working on team projects as well.

I think the biggest benefit of pair programming was the amount of thought that went into a project before coding started. Because two minds never think exactly alike, this essentially forced a discussion regarding methodology and structure, and issues were brought up before they committed anything to code. iStockphoto has some super-talented developers – and this only made them even better. Maybe it’s time for Kristopher to find a partner?

30 Days

30 Days is a show created by Morgan Spurlock, the man who ate nothing but McD’s in the documentarySuper Size Me. If you’re A.D.D. like me, you truly admire anyone who does anything for a week, let alone a full 30 days. For 30 days, Morgan’s recruits go through some interesting situations:

• A man with staunch anti-illegal immigration views moves in with a family of illegal immigrants.
• A computer programmer who was displaced by Indian programmers moves to Bangalore to live with an Indian family and work in a call center.
• An atheist moves in with a family of evangelical Christians.
• A stressed-out, short-fused dad skeptical of new-age therapies submits to 30 days of new-age rituals, culminating in a fire-walk over hot coals.
• A pro-choice feminist lives in a Christian pro-life maternity home.
• Morgan Spurlock spends 30 days as an inmate.

I applaud Morgan’s efforts to bring more understanding to the world. All too often, viewpoints are manipulated until we have nothing but polarizing, right or wrong and nothing in-between debates. I don’t believe that Morgan advocates one viewpoint or another in these shows – quite the opposite. He shows that people of seemingly opposing viewpoints can co-exist, and even like one another.

Link: The 30 Days Ning Group

Site Traffic Analysis Tools

For those of us who don’t have access to ComScore, Neilsen//NetRatings or Hitwise, here are a few tools to check out:

• Alexa (of course!)
• Compete (a relatively new Idealab offering)
• Marketleap: link popularity, search engine saturation and keyword verification tools
• UPDATE: Popuri [link via Techcrunch]
• UPDATE: Quantcast

Typically the paid services are much more accurate, but also much more expensive. Alexa is currently the standard because of its universal availability, but Compete is looking to provide a more accurate offering, while remaining free of charge.

The most compelling reason for anyone to buy traffic score reports is not to look at relative rankings, but to look at traffic patterns. For example, Hitwise tracks over 25 million users at the ISP level, and can give you both upstream and downstream click information on a competitor. So, if you’re HP, or Lenovo, or Acer, wouldn’t you love to know how people are getting to Dell.com, including the search terms they used, if they came from a search engine? Then, wouldn’t you love to see where they go after they leave Dell’s site? Hitwise provides these reports.

I’ll have to admit that overall, Alexa is a really fun and addictive tool, but is mostly used for verification and due diligence. However, I think that most competent online marketing managers would be able to turn a Hitwise competitive analysis report into additional revenues for their companies.

Upcoming Road Trips

I recently confirmed my attendance at two Eastern-Canadian events:

• DemoCamp Montreal on Thursday, March 29th
• Mesh Conference in Toronto on May 30 & 31

I’m really looking forward to both events – DemoCamp Montreal will be a great primer for me, seeing as how we’re going to hold our own DemoCamp in Calgary next month. Mesh looks like it’s going to be as good as any conference I’ve paid thousands for south of the border, yet goes for a low, low price of just CDN$399.

Mesh is happening just days after Calgary’s first BarCamp – it would be great if we could round up a bunch of BarCamp attendees and continue the discussion in Toronto. If you’re going, let me know!

DeviantArt & iStockphoto – Web 2.0?

A quick shoutout to DeviantART, which recently topped 33,000,000 “deviations” (images) on its site. I bumped into Angelo Sotira, DeviantART’s CEO last fall at the Web 2.0 Conference, and we wondered aloud why his company, as well as my former company, iStockphoto, are rarely mentioned in web 2.0 discussions and lists. It’s not that either site isn’t popular – DeviantART’s Alexa ranking is currently 102, and iStockphoto is 249. It’s not that either site doesn’t have a ton of images or a bunch of really passionate users, either. In fact, both companies have worked tirelessly to bolster their infrastructure to accommodate the amazing growth in images and traffic.

We didn’t come up with any answers, but took solace in the fact that both companies have amazingly sustainable business models, and have done incredibly well – with or without the web 2.0 hype.

Bill Gross Must Hate Google.

Bill Gross, possibly the world’s greatest innovator couldn’t possibly be happy with Google. You see, he created a company back in 1998 called GoTo.com. GoTo invented Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, the dominant business model in today’s internet advertising sector. GoTo sold to Yahoo! in 2003 for 1.7 billion – not bad, right? Well, read on . . .

GoTo sued Google in 2002 for copying their business model, and Google settled for 2.7 million shares of Google stock with Yahoo! after the acquisition. Those shares are worth about $1.257 billion today. Sounds like a lot of money, but you have to look at it in context. Considering Google’s main revenue source is PPC advertising, and considering Google took in $10.6 billion in revenues last year, I think they got a bargain.

In 2004, Gross was at it again, launching search engine Snap! with yet another innovation in Internet advertising. Snap! offered PPC advertising AND Pay-Per-Action (PPA) advertising. This meant that the advertiser only pays when a customer completes an action – be it the purchase of an item, or the completion of a registration form. Snap! pitched us a few years ago, and I loved the concept – still do. Unfortunately, Snap! is one of the Internet’s best kept secrets, (with an Alexa ranking of just 2,533) and never got to prove out the PPA model with any significant volume.

Now, here comes Google, with a beta of their version of PPA. Go get ’em Bill – and this time, don’t settle for a lousy billion dollars. In all seriousness though, is there any room left for innovation in search, or is everyone just incubating features for Google to implement?