Overheard in Sublet Office Space

"I'm usually skeptical of the whole e-book thing,
you know, 'make millions', but . . ."

And then a few minutes later, I heard something about life coaching.

Domain Sale Datapoint

A friend of mine told me last night over a beer that he sold the domain 'latenighthookup.com' (no need to visit this site) in 2005 to an Eastern European gentleman with a mailbox in Florida for $7500, promptly paid. The buyer first offered $1000 but then went straight up to $7500 when my friend told him that he had some interest in developing the site himself, etc.

Dear Bot Herders

Dear Bot Herders,

Paul Kedrosky has a fun post called the Largest Pump-and-Dump Scam in History. Up 60%? Please! You can do better; penny stocks routinely bounce around by factors of 2 or 3 without image spam. Lets work together - I have a perfect candidate stock for manipulation - PM me :)

Sincerely,
Mathew Johnson

Easy To Code Vs Easy To Use

Quote of the week:

"That sounds like you are advocating for what's easiest to code, not what's going to be easiest for users to use"

totally blist out!

I have just started at blist – a new Seattle technology company. blist was started by Kevin Merritt, a repeat successful entrepreneur, who I have mentioned here before, but not by name.

I am definitely a diligent student of startups, and we are getting so many things right already. There’s real innovation here and a ton to do – as it should be! It really seems like each day we march forward and make strong progress.

Basically, I think we are really putting ourselves in the sweet spot where growth sustaining usefulness and innovation intersects interest-sparking awesomeness.

blist is going to make a huge impact; the site is pretty stealthy now, but we will shortly be revealing more information there, and I can already speak a little more freely in person. . .

Exciting stuff!

Super Lightweight E-Commerce

Finally, for the first time, I saw an AdSense ad pointing to a Googlepages page. Those of you who know me well may have heard my theory about 'the good kind of lazy' - and this is certainly a great example. Crappy, you might say, it isn't even a good page by Googlepages standards - but hold on. There is a real logic behind this. I bet the owner of Island Nutritionals would point out that the ad/page combination sells product with zero upfront investment and zero change required on the offline side of the business (if there is one).

If this is can be a business - no one has any excuse not to become an entrepreneur!

PS - Don't nobody say: "Matt, this seems like the kind of business you would start"

Loosely Couple, Loosely Couple

Loosely Couple, Loosely Couple.

Business people have been known to victimize web developers with this phrase – usually in an attempt to beat down release schedules by ‘minimizing complexity’ around connecting back end data sources and front end front-ends. This approach is usually not too happy or well-informed – but there really is something to loose coupling (and I don’t mean ‘open marriage’ either).

Say you present some content on the web, and further say you use a blog platform because it’s so convenient. And then say you easily add a form to your site using a form-specific online database like Wufoo.

What do you know, you have just loosely coupled 2 completely separate databases and interfaces (interfacii?) together to accomplish a business goal really quickly. Sure there are limitations, but, extremely rapidly, you have a place on the Internet where people can go and input information – seems like that could be useful for a start. What's more, loose coupling offers enormous flexibility for things like personalization, which is why the smart technologists at Amazon use 100 web service calls to dynamically tailor their homepage to the visitor, time of year, product releases, etc.