Posts related to technology category

Ingredients of a Successful Bootstrapped Startup?

Vinay Patankar · 09 Dec, 2012 · Business · Technology

I've been meeting lots of people and getting lots of feedback here in San Francisco. Here are some of the consistent ingredients of successful startups I have collected from observation and feedback. Note, these elements will probably not leave you with the next Facebok, but just know, for every Facebook, there are 1001 companies who tried to be Facebook and failed. - Solve a problem - A focused product of which the core feature set can be built relatively fast and cheap - Recurring payment model - The core feature set (MVP) should be good enough that you can actually charge people for it - There is the ability to grow out to different markets/features to increase your customer base and how much you charge (aka scale potential) This is similar to what 37 Signals teaches. Basically this will remove the NEED for funding, but you can still take it if you want. It will allow you to grow based on revenues of your company, and the fact that it is recurring will create a more stable model. Vitoto - has almost none of these ingredients. But then again, we want to be the next Facebook :D Quite the conundrum.... For another Business angle, read Looking for a Co-Founder for New Startup - UI/UX.

Idea: Create Separate Instances of Browsers for Separate Web Apps

Vinay Patankar · 08 Dec, 2012 · Business · Technology

I always get lost in my browser tabs. I am a heavy heavy internet user and often find myself with 20-40 tabs open at a time in Chrome. Many of them running web apps that I like to keep open all the time: - Multiple gmail accounts - Google Calendar - Google Docs (Drive) - Asana - HasOffers - Cacoo The annoying thing about tabs, compared to icons on the bottom of the screen (applies to mac and PCs - I use both) is they its very easy for them to change position. For example when you open links from a web app, it opens a new tab and pushes all the other tabs over. Meaning your reaction to go back to the 3rd tab to check calendar, is no longer there caus its been pushed along. What if there were a way to create browser tabs that broke off and could be pinned as an icon to the bottom of the screen. All they did was launch a new Chrome window, but that window was mapped to that icon in the task bar and made it easy to navigate between different chrome "instances" or "apps". I know it would make me more productive... UPDATE: Turns out this feature is already built into chrome :P - Click here to see how to do it. For another Business angle, read How to get Asana (and other web apps) onto your Taskbar.

Google Apps Removes Free Version Completely

Vinay Patankar · 07 Dec, 2012 · Business · Technology

I just got an email from Google stating that they are removing the free version of Google Apps completely. This is not going to effect existing accounts but new users will not be able to sign up for the free version. I am a heavy user of Google apps and use it on 20+ domains. This is a sad, sad day... > | Hello from Google,Here's some important news about Google Apps—but don't worry, there's no need for you to take any action. We just want you to know that we're making a change to the packages we offer. Starting today, we're no longer accepting new sign-ups for the free version of Google Apps (the version you're currently using). Because you're already a customer, this change has no impact on your service, and you can continue to use Google Apps for free. Should you ever want to upgrade to Google Apps for Business, you'll enjoy benefits such as 24/7 customer support, a 25 GB inbox, business controls, our 99.9% uptime guarantee, unlimited users and more for just $5 per user, per month. You can learn more about this change in our Help Center or on the Enterprise Blog. Thank you for using Google Apps. Clay Bavor Director, Google Apps | | > | --- | --- | If this Business topic resonated, continue with How to get Asana (and other web apps) onto your Taskbar.

App Idea - Turn iPhone's into Public Hot-spots

Vinay Patankar · 25 Nov, 2012 · Business · Technology

So you already know that you can turn your iPhone into a hotspot, but a PUBLIC one? that anyone can use? Here is the idea. Its an app that allows you to create a public hotspot that anyone can access with NO password. But for the user to access the hotspot, they need to watch a 10 second video advertisement. Video ads pay anywhere form $30-80 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). The app provider can organize rev share with its users, so that they get a percentage of the advertisement revenue (say 50/50). This could be a great additional revenue stream for cab or bus drivers, or just a great way to offset your phone bill costs. A strong follow-up in Business is Idea - Thoughts to Extend the iPhones Battery Life.

Email Optimization

Vinay Patankar · 23 Nov, 2012 · Business · Technology

I've been working on email optimization lately. Here are three plugins I have found that are awesome: Snooze your Emails - allows you to set a reminder to re-visit that email at a later date, instead of just losing it in your inbox. Yesware - allows you to track who is opening your emails, and create templates that you can fill in with just the click of a button. Boomerang - allows you to schedule emails to be sent at a later date. Check em. Oh, and make sure you are logged into Chrome with your Google Account, so that your plugins and settings are synced across all your computers. For another Business angle, read Emailing Awesomely – The Definitive Guide to Email Structure.

Vitoto Editing Features Launched

Vinay Patankar · 23 Nov, 2012 · Business · Technology

We just released an update to Vitoto which includes the ability to edit your videos, its bad ass. Check it out at Vitoto.com Or on the iTunes App Store. For another Business angle, read Vitoto Officially Shutting Down.

Idea - Thoughts to Extend the iPhones Battery Life

Vinay Patankar · 14 Oct, 2012 · Business · Technology

iPhone battery life is a huge problem that I hear people all around the world bitch about. Here are my ideas to solve it: 1\. Put a solar panel on the back of the phone. This will give you the ability to charge anywhere there is light. 2\. Implement kinetic and heat inductors. This will be the phone charges when it moves and when its in your pocket. 3\. Have lock screen access to turn off and on the biggest battery drainers. Including 3g/4g/LTE/WiFi. If this Business topic resonated, continue with Start-Up Idea: TailSearch - Search for Retail Stores.

The Future of Video Storage

Vinay Patankar · 21 May, 2012 · Business · Technology

Imagine free, unlimited, unmetered video storage service for all your video needs. A service where you could quickly upload, download and watch all your own private videos for free with no restriction on size, quality or content. And a service that was 100% redundant meaning that you could never lose your data, an important factor because there is no way to get back those home movies of little Timmy as a toddler if the house burns down. - For the father who has all those CDs he doesn’t know what to do with - The professional video editor who has hundreds of hard disks full of data from old projects - The local convenience store owner who has to erase his CCTV footage every month due to lack of space - All the way up to big corporations who might have thousands of cameras running at once. Is it really such an unrealistic service? YouTube already hosts hundreds of millions of videos for free, not to mention the plethora of other free video hosting sites out there. Dropbox is giving 10gb+ away for free to its users. The costs of data storage are reducing while the capacity is increasing all at an exponential rate. That being said, it’s still not cheap. Building a service like this would likely set you back in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So how could you afford to build such a service? Since the data is not for public viewing and you won’t have large amounts of traffic you can't sell advertising. The one asset you are building up is all the data you are storing. Data is information, if you can turn that information into knowledge, into usable data, you may be able to turn a profit from it. I could guess that most people reading this post probably have either a Google, iTunes or Facebook account. If you have any of these, you've probably accepted a privacy agreement that allows these companies to use all of your personal information. To analyse your browsing activities, monitor your interests, what you talk about, what you read and who your friends are. Many speculate these companies already sell your information to other corporations and even the government including intelligence divisions like the CIA and FBI. I personally don't think there is anything wrong with this. If you don't want your information shared, don't use the service. Nobody is forcing you to. So assuming you create a privacy policy drafted in a way that allows you to do analysis on the videos that you are storing for free, here are a few ways I think you could use that data. There is probably thousands more I haven't thought of. 1\. You could use the data from cameras in certain locations to collect and analyze data about the real world. For example how many cars drive down a road per month or how many people pass a shop front each day. You could even go deeper and use it to analyze demographics. How many men vs women vs children pass a particular shop each day. How many cars above $50,000 drive down this road each day etc... Many companies can use this kind of data. 2\. You could use it to find people around the world. Easy examples would be for agencies to use. Maybe to find a kidnapped child or a wanted terrorist. 3\. You could sell the data to universities for human behavioural analysis 4\. You could sell (some) footage to MTV/Funnies Home Videos - this may cause issues but I'm sure you would capture a bunch of hilarious shit. 5\. You could provide video data analysis for your individual clients as an upsell service. Companies who want to know the behaviours of their staff or customers in their stores. Of course all the above would be done by an autmated software product that was able to find results in near realtime. Outside of monetizing the actual data, you could also: 6\. Create a Freemium model where the higher users pay for more bandwidth 7\. Create a Freemium model where users can pay so that their data is kept private and cannot be used for analysis Many companies collect a large amount of data but don't monetize it correctly. This is a crying shame because in today's information age there are so many different ways to monetize data at generally little to no cost. If this Business topic resonated, continue with Video Failure and a New Future - Niche Site Duel 04.

Cacoo - Cool Tool for Process Diagrams

Vinay Patankar · 15 Feb, 2012 · Business · Featured · Technology

So haven’t updated this blog much lately, went a bit crazy for a while last year but have been camping out in the Dominican Republic, in Santo Domingo working since New Years. I’ve been working on a number of projects, but one of my main focuses has been on building systems and outsourcing a lot of my tasks. Try and streamline everything that is going on with my income businesses. I have been training my Virtual Assistants using a variety of tools. I have created a little training area using wordpress, uploaded videos and training documents etc, but they were still having trouble grasping certain tasks, it was at this point that I started looking for an easier way to map out the processes needed. I remember in university having to do process diagrams and thinking how silly they were, never again, these things are awesome, and an amazing tool for training virtual assistants (any staff really). The best tool I found do to this is Cacoo. It also allows for collaboration so multiple people can work on documents at the same time and you can see who is editing what and the history of changes to the diagram. Process documents are the easiest way to document a process (duh..) and Cacoo is the easiest way I have found to make, store, share and collaborate process diagrams. A strong follow-up in Business is Cool Trick to Manage Too Many Open Tabs.

Clean your Inbox - The Ultimate Newsletter Filter

Vinay Patankar · 23 Apr, 2011 · Technology

Do you find that your inbox is constantly clogged with marketing emails. Basically every website and marketer in the world uses email as a major form of advertising, and the more websites you sign up to, the more email you receive. I am all for receiving email marketing emails, heck I am an email marketer myself, but I like to read through the emails at my own leisure and not have them clogging my inbox each and every day. Here is a cool tip on how to clean up your inbox once and for all. I have only provided instructions for gmail but I know there are similar feature sets in all the major web mail platforms such as Yahoo and Hotmail. First thing you need to do is create a "filter", you can do this by clicking the small link to the right of your search bar in Gmail. In other mail platforms it may be called a "rule" or something similar. (click to enlarge) Next, add the text "unsubscribe" into the "Has the words" field. Since it is required by the CAN Spam laws to allow users to unsubscribe from newsletters, 80-90% of newsletters will contain this text. This is the easiest way to capture the majority of newsletters in one hit. (click to enlarge) On the final step, there are 3 options you need to modify. First, select the "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)" option, then select "Apply the Label" and select Newsletter (or something similar). If you have not yet created a newsletter label, select "Add New" and create it. And finally select the "Also apply filter to X number of conversations below". (click to enlarge) And you're done. Now you should have a folder on the left with the majority of your newsletter emails. Just click it to view those whenever you feel like it. The great thing about this rule, is that it will capture the majority of new newsletters too. But remember, if you sign up for a website of some sort and are waiting for a "confirmation" or "activation" email to come through, it might be in your newsletter folder. Same with lost password email etc.. Basically any email that comes from a website of any sort. A strong follow-up in Technology is Ultimate Youtube Video Ranking Guide.

Founders of Youtube, Twitter and Skype Speak at Dublin Web Summit

Vinay Patankar · 24 Nov, 2010 · Business · Technology

My friend Michael Clyne of Pathpacific.com just posted up the recording of the Dublin Web Summit where they had some truly amazing speakers. The line up included Chad Hurley - Founder of YouTube, Jack Dorsey - Twitter Founder and Niklas Zennstrom - Skype Founder to name a few. Michael runs a video production studio in Dublin so check him out if you're in that part of the world. ## Chad Hurley - Founder of YouTube ## Jack Dorsey - TWITTER Founder ## Niklas Zennstrom - Skype Founder There were a few other great speakers including Brent Hoberman - LastMinute.com, Sloane Berrent - AnswerwithAction.com and Soraya Darabi - FoodSpotting.com. More related clips are available on YouTube: Dublin Web Summit 2010 talks. Related read in Business: Idea: Create Separate Instances of Browsers for Separate Web Apps.

Social Network Shopping

Vinay Patankar · 07 Nov, 2010 · Business · Technology

This is a guest post I just did on awebsitedesigner.com.au ### Social Network Shopping – The Dawn of a New Era We all know about social media and social networking. It’s been a hot topic in the news, on the internet and in Hollywood. But as a business owner who runs a business in the real world, what does it mean for you? How can you actually use social media to help achieve your business or life goals? It’s true that social media can have a positive impact on business. There are methods such as running viral competitions to mass increase subscribers and more innovative approaches such as the Old Spice campaign. But while it’s true that interacting on social media can boost brand awareness and interaction, is it really the best use of time for an employee? Read full post... For another Business angle, read Long SaaS Ramp of Death.