You won’t want to miss tonight’s lineup, 4 companies with solid ideas, each in a different market. And for a clear indicator that this recession is turning around, the ‘We’re Hiring’ list at the bottom of this email is longer then the ‘Job Board’ for the first time since starting the job board this year. And if you subscribe to my emails via the group, you’ll be privy to $2,400 in free ticket giveaway’s this month.
trekaroo.com – A travel site focusing on a large interested community – families with kids. Find activities, share advice, and travel to all corners of the world. [Brennan Pang & LiLing Pang]
uShow.com – Turn your twitter fans into a video channel. Login to create a video channel with the videos your friends are sharing. [Joe Shapiro]
workingpoint.com – Simple invoicing and bookkeeping. There in prime territory after Mint’s acquisition. [Tate Holt]
plurchase.com – A secret y-combinator company that’s going to give you a sneak-peak before anyone else. [Tom Saffell]
Reminder – the newsletter has $2,400 worth of free ticket giveaways to the first to act! I work hard to sneak in free giveaways to the group each month.
Tonight’s lineup includes some fresh new startups and one well established company that has had recent success with another product launched on top of twitter.
feedbackjar.com – Allows customers at the local level to help answer questions and share ideas on products and services they use in their local community. [Nick Leung]
.
.
* nutshellmail.com – Get a single email sent on your own schedule that includes updates and notifications from all your social networks. [David Neubauer]
.
.
* philtro.com – Filter out all that noise on your twitter account with a simple but intelligent rating system. [Paul Singh]
.
.
* imageshack.us / yfrog.com – ImageShack is the in the Alexa Top 100 (#61) websites across the entire web. Learn about what they’ve done and where they’re going with their new yfrog service and twitter. [Mike Harkey & Jack Levin]
* DLA is hosting the America West Regional Finals of the Global Security Challenge on 9/29. Top contenders will present their security companies to an audience of security investors, advisers, analysts and other experts. [free event] http://bit.ly/boiYn
* I’ve submitted a panel to speak at next year’s SXSW conference on ‘Community Power: How to Use Your Users’. I would love your vote: http://bit.ly/sxsw-users
* nvidia GPU Technology Conference: http://nvidia.com/gtc – 2 FREE passes to the first 2 ppl to email me w/ the subject NVIDIA GPU (a $750 value).
yourversion.com – Save time browsing the web and let YourVersion discover the best web content for you. [Dan Olsen]
nombray.com – Own your online identity. Pull all your social profiles into one place on the web for people to find you. [Chris Lunt]
hollrr.com – Get rewarded for shouting about the things you love. – [David Hegarty]
Expert Talk [SEO] – Lawrence Coburn of sexywidget.com and rateitall.com is an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert and has helped a number of startups around the valley increase their rankings on Google.
——————-
When: Tuesday, Aug 4, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://meetup.com/svnewtech
Tonight should be interesting. For the first half of the demos, you’ll see two companies that are doing very creative things in the micropayment space. They both have services to help content creators (publishers, newspapers, bloggers, videobloggers, etc.) get small contributions from their large reader list and followers.
The second half of the demos will feature the hard work that a number of SVNewTech’rs put together for historical data on the past 3 1/2 years of svnewtech demos. Diagramic will be presenting this in their data visulation tool, and I’ll spend a few minutes talking about how web companies have been evolving over the past few years.
Special thanks to the following group members These two put in many hours of work to gather historical data on presenters. This data will be published to the group after tonight’s meetup.
* Lakshmi Narayanan http://www.qalegion.com/
* Todd Miner who gets to achieve “total consciousness” caddyshack style
Also, thank you again to everybody that changed their RSVP last month to make for a better meetup experience. They’ve been added to a special VIP list to gurantee acess to 2 months of meetups.
The Lineup
payyattention.com – A micropatronage network supporting journalism [Steve Farrell]
.
kachingle.com – Sprinkle change on the content you love. [Cynthia Typaldos]
.
diagramic.com – Automatic data visualaztion that helps ‘connect the dots’ [Alex Kouznetsov]
.
Review of Silicon Valley web companies over the past 3 years w/ Q&A from audience [me]
——————- When: Tuesday, July 7, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
——————————————————
Live Stream for those who didn’t make the RSVP list
——————————————————
Thanks to ustream.tv, Tuesday’s, June 2nd meetup will be live streamed for those who didn’t RSVP and want to watch from home/work/some mobile device:
We are overbooked, there was a problem on the meetup website and the 150 cap was accidentally removed. We need to get the RSVP list <280 and I need your help! Read below and I’ll give you a GIFT in return.
If you didn’t RSVP, we CANNOT fit you into the event (I will have a printout of RSVP’s) – but you can watch it live at the link above.
— Great lineup with another ‘Expert Speaker’:
notableapp.com – Building a website? Notable allows your team to comment directly on the website for faster development times and easier communication. [Hunter Block]
.
psd2cssonline.com – Turn a layered photoshop file into dynamic CSS file ready to theme your website or blog. [Shaun McIntyre]
.
ccBetty.com – Your own personal email assistant, from event manager to file manager, just ‘CC’ Betty and she’ll organize it for you. [Michael Cerda]
. Expert Talk (Educational Series): Christian Ashlock of Google will give a lightning talk and answer your questions on Google AdSense, Ad Manager, and Analytics
——————————————————
Need 50 Volunteers & VIP status
——————————————————
We’ve done extra work to make room for the larger turnout (we’ll be streaming the A/V into another room to split btwn 2 rooms). However, we still need to knock off 50 people from the RSVP list (get it down to <280) and I have two gifts for trade:
1. A 50% discount on a NewTech meetup happening on June 10 San Francisco. Similar crowd, similar format, and just as interesting. The organizer of the SF Meetup is doing a great favor with this discount (first 30 to respond). http://bit.ly/nBzDO Email vincent.lauria+sfnewtech610@gmail.com for the discount code.
2. A VIP status for 2 months on the SilicionValley NewTech meetup which gives you a guaranteed spot at the next two meetups in Silicon Valley (first 50 to respond). Email vincent.lauria+VIP@gmail.com for VIP status.
If you are willing to help out the group in trade for one of the above options, please email me at the links above AFTER you’ve changed your RSVP to ‘No’ so I can verify. You’ll help make Tuesday night a better event for everybody.
——————————————————
Free $50 bucks – no strings
——————————————————
Rob Garcia, of April’s Meetup is giving away $50 awards to members of this meetup group, just sign up for a Lending Club account (no strings attached): http://bit.ly/GLcix
And another FREEBIE just for the SiliconValley NewTech group. The non-profit, HandsOn Bay Area has an event on Wed from 1-4 in PA. Join entrepreneurs, VCs, and investors at a unique philanthropic event – Venture Out, a half-day of high-impact volunteering. 2 FREE tickets for the first 2 svnewtech’rs to signup with code ‘svnewtechfree’, everybody else gets a discount. http://bit.ly/biAY2
As you can see, I work hard to keep this event free and get rewards for you, so I hope that 50+ ppl can change their RSVP to ‘No’ to make Tuesday night fun and manageable!
——————- When: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 7:00 PM Who: Only those who made the RSVP list (sorry, absolutely NO drop-ins this time) Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
Last month, a friend at IBM asked me to give a presentation on what I’m seeing for the startup landscape from companies demoing at my meetup.
Below is the slides from my presenation. The short of it in a few bullet points:
We’re getting pass the social… and getting back to the practical.
2-3 years ago, 75-100% of a startups primary function was ‘social networking’ related. Today, a startup with a primarily ‘social’ function may pop-up only every other month.
Since Feb of this year, creative ideas & entrepreneurs are sprouting.
The new play is ‘Platforms‘. It’s no longer Open Source but Open API
Cloud Computing is just starting to hit on consumers, and it will take that adoption to make it really big on the corporate side of things (just like blogs/wikis/social networks made a bigger consumer splash before going enterprise)
Posted: May 7th, 2009 | Author:vinnie | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
A friend of mine just started a Meetup.com group and asked me for some tips on attacking members. Here’s 10 ideas I sent him:
free pizza and free beer (even 2 pizza pies and 2 12 packs is all you need to get a crowd in)
have it at a location ppl want to goto – either a fun bar/restaurant, or an office that is an interesting host, like a big firm that ppl would want to network with somebody at the firm (a normal office isn’t as exciting
tell everybody you think would be interested about it, i printed out biz cards for the meetup off the meetup.com website and always handed them out
invite ppl that you think will attract members, for me that was 4 companies to demo, for you it could be companies, or it could be a high profile individual. they don’t have to speak, but let the group know they will be there
send a personalized newsletter a few days before the event to remind me and let them know you want a true yes/no
use craigslist to repost the event in the events section, meetup.com helps with this. I also posted on sites like upcoming.org and eventful
be super friendly to all new members when you meet them so they keep coming back
ask your members to rate your meetup (meetup automatically does this, but if you don’t get a lot of ratings, ask again)
give out something free at the event (even a t-shirt) and mention this before hand
create a linkedin group around the event so there is a way to leverage the network offline
Posted: May 5th, 2009 | Author:vinnie | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Besides it being Cinco de Mayo today (I’ll bring some Mexican beers), we have another theme going tonight – alternate ways for you to make money (as an individual or a company).
lendingclub.com – Do what the banks don’t – show some common sense on loans and make great returns. LendingClub brings together investors and creditworthy borrowers to offer value beyond traditional banks. [Robert Garcia]
odesk.com – They’ve created a $70 million dollar market. Free lancers and firms have a market place to find new clients or contract hire individuals on an as-needed basis. [Gary Swart]
getgambit.com – A payment platform for onine gaming and communities that puts cash in your pocket from your customers based off of alternative payment systems they can easily afford. [Noah Kagan]
adroll.com – Boost your advertising income by connecting long tail advertisers that match your community. Or save money by hitting the right demographic with less money then other ad networks. [Jared Kopf]
—- When: Tuesday, May 5, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
Posted: April 18th, 2009 | Author:vinnie | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Bill Hunt of http://whuntpartners.com put together a very concise resource for entreprenuers going out for fundraising. The presentation has years of knowledge packed into 10minutes, and is the best resource I’ve ever come across about fundraising.
Tonight we’re marking a new addition to the meetup, an Expert Talk series geared to provide additional value and education to the group. I’ll be scheduling an Expert Talk into the meetup every 2-3 months. Tonight’s talk will be on the topic of Fundraising (which is picking back up). As always, there will be time for questions.
On Deck for tonight:
doodle.com – We have a visitor from Zurich, Switzerland in town who will be demoing one of the most popular online scheduling services. Schedule an event or come to a decision among friends with the simplicity of sharing a one-time link. [Myke Naef]
thirstypocket.com – Think craigslist for your iphone. Sell and buy items with a snap of a photo and the convince of automatically being placed on a map. [Tom Bleier]
uservoice.com – The fastest way to turn feedback into innovation. Improve your site or product with the bright ideas from your customers. UserVoice is currently powering both web startups and companies from the Fortune 500. [Richard White]
Expert Talk Series – Bill Hunt will speak on Fundraising. Bill has been a founder or senior executive in 5 start-ups, 4 of which were acquired, the top two for $180 million+ each.
When: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
–
== They’re hiring == Meetup members looking to hire: * Kosmix is looking for a superstar relevance engineer and Web application developer. http://www.kosmix.com/corp/jobs * SF Bay Area startup ready for a beta site launch is looking for a P/T VP of Engineering to work for equity. Skills: Python/Django/Html/GAE. Telectron@gmail.com * Kachingle – Save journalism w/ crowdfunding! Seek contract tech prod mgr/UI expert to finalize user experience in Kachingle. http://tinyurl.com/dytluo
Recruiting Firms [Sponsored Section] * Gravity – Web, software, marketing, and Sr. level roles, http://tr.im/gYvg * Albin – Engineering & high level IT placement company in Santa Clara, http://tr.im/albin * [Your Firm Here] -> Email me by replying to this newsletter.
Ramit gave a preview copy of his new book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, to Kristine and I last week. I didn’t think I’d read it, but on my way out for a trip to Pittsburgh, I grabbed it for some in-the-air reading. I ended up digesting it in 3 days – it was a quick and engaging read. I’ve heard many of the tips before, but never took much action, because this booked was to-the-point, it got me motivated.
After reading it, I’ve already taken the following steps: 1. Opened a rollover IRA for my old IBM 401k and opened a Roth IRA for new investments (thanks Ramit) 2. Opened a ‘fee-less’ checking account 3. I’m in the process of moving all my bills to my credit card.
1. Open a Roth IRA (and 401k if you can) When I was at IBM, they had an employer match program for my 401k, so I maxed that out. When I left, I didn’t think about it too much and didn’t keep investing. But investing a little each month (even if it’s just $50) can have a huge benefit over 30-40 years. I guess in the back of my mind it’s been, "Ohh, I’ll be super rich later and won’t need to worry about this." But in reality, no matter what your income or investments look like in the future, it always helps to have a tax deferred or tax-less cashout on the order of a few hundred thousand to a million plus.
2. Stop paying fees on your checking account Over a year ago, I got so fed up with Bank of America double charging me ATM fees that I switched to Citibank. I literally walked across the street on Market St. in San Francisco from BoA to Citibank and said "Bank of America is chairing me fees for everything, what can you do for me." They opened me a no fee checking account, or so I thought. It seemed after a year, some of those fees started popping back up (I later learned it was only for a limited time.) I’ve been okay with it, because the fees are minimal, but still annoying – such as a $10 hit if I use my overdraft. Open a Charles Schwab Checking Account -> They REFUND ALL your ATM fees. Kristine has told me about this for sometime now. It can really improve your buying behavior by never worrying about where you’re getting cash – and it helps you from taking out a lot of cash that you’ll spend when ‘you get the opportunity’
3. Move all your bill payments to credit cards. There are two main reasons to pay bills via credit card. i) It will protect you in any dispute. For instance, I still have a negative mark on my credit report by a Verizon charge-off because they raped me with fees and overcharges and I refused to pay. Yes, I am that spiteful & stupid that I will allow a negative mark on my credit report just to stick it to the man.
ii) Points, which amount to little, but still on the order of 2-3% of what ever you’re spending. If you travel a lot, Ramit recommends the Citi PremierPass Elite. For $75/yr, it gives you points on ever dollar spent, every mile flown (even if it’s not you), and free companion fare in the U.S. on flights over $299.
I considered this, but the $299 compainon fare is a bit restrictive, you have to call a certain number to make reservations between 8-5pm CST, and I hear you have to do it months before. So after opening a Charles Schwab Checking account, I added their 2% cashback card – instant into your checking account.
– Bonus Tip: Another thing I’ve been doing and Ramit really talks about in the book, is to set up a REAL monthly budget and automatic payment system. I’ve been doing this through a Google Spreadsheet for both joint expenses (Kristine & I) and personal expenses. Make sure to include things like ‘savings’ and ‘shit that goes wrong’ each month, and you’ll have no problem covering that parking ticket or flight you want to take. (ING sub-savings account are helpful here, Ramit has an example of this in action.)
A friend, Paul Singh, is working on a new site, www.philtro.com, and i’ve been trying to share any knowledge I can to help. Philtro lets you rate articles and tweets so you can find the most interesting, relevant posts first and filter out the rest – a great idea in this firehouse of a superhighway.
The other week he asked:
“I want to get more users on the system, what tips would you give me to help build some buzz around the product?”
Here’s a cleaned up version of my emailed response:
Twitter – If your service offers values to tweeters (which philtro.com does in boatloads), twitter is an easy wave to ride. I think if you get a twitter theme going and market it solely as a twitter add-on service, there’s real potential for it to spread by tweets
Ads – It can’t hurt to budget $60 @ $5/day to do some google adwords. To target the right audience, only buy ads on google search result pages (not ‘placement targeting’ ads that show on other websites). For Philtro, I suggested to buy keywords like ‘rss readers’, ‘rss filtering’, ‘feed filters’, etc. You will definitely get traffic to your site and you can work on converting this traffic. It’s not unrealistic that this would send hundreds of people to your site over 2 weeks, maybe only a handful will sign up, but it will let you know what people are looking for and want.
Audience – Make sure the initial group you invite (friends, etc.) are people that the service is solving a problem for. Figure out who this is solving a real problem for on your list and send them a personal email addressing two things:
Let them know you really value their feedback and need them to send you their thoughts (positive and negative)
Ask them if they know 3 friends who would use this and could they make an intro between you and them.
Blog – 1 of 2 thoughts here. Either create a company blog and blog daily on it – tips, developments, feedback, new features, etc. Or, use your own personal blog for the next month with 30% about the new site and 70% everything else.
Bloggers – Search google blogs/technorati for any bloggers talking about this problem, and leave an insightful comment and link back to your blog (or site). If the blogger is big time, or it’s a major publication, send them a follow-up personal email and ask them if they could review your site and send you criticisms over email because you want your service to be the best – they just may end up writing a blog post about you.
No private beta (this is a matter of personal opinion) – With such a small pool of users initially, you want no barrier to entry. After you get a few hundred, then you can put the barrier up.
Seed ‘buzz’ – Is there a promotion you can create? Maybe by creating a badge that people put on their blog, you can trade links from your homepage, like a scrolling featured blogger list. Big blogs won’t need this, but you may stumble across a lot of little bloggers who would love this attention.
Be a whore – mention the site everywhere you can, your blog, facebook, your flickr profile, vimeo, …. anywhere you have a web presence.
Feedback – When your service is small, it’s valuable to have a closed loop with people giving you feedback (it can’t be one way). As your product will certainly take a few directions in the first few months – talking to people to hear what they want or need on the service is vital. One method, is to add a chat widget (like AIM’s or meebo’s ) to your service so that anybody using the site can talk directly to you in real time (you can spare 5min here and there throughout the day. And by the time it ends up sucking an hour out of your day, you’ve probably passed 1,000 users and can take it off :P In addition to a chat widget, it’s always good to start a support forum on lefora.com (plug) or a feedback tool like uservoice.com.
While getting your first 1,000 users, you’re user base will most likely go through these stages:
* Stage 1 – your friends
* Stage 2 – bleeding edge early adopters who just like to play with stuff (removing private beta will allow these people access – however they find you)
* Stage 3 – early adopters
* Stage 4 – random users
* Stage 5 – real users
* Stage 6 – ???
* and hopefully at some point, Stage 7 – profit :)
There’s definitely a curve of how helpful ‘feedback’ is between stage 1 & 5, but I’ll leave that to another post.
Thoughts, other tips, and criticisms, I’d like to hear from you.
Looking forward to tonight’s lineup, I’ll keep this brief with the addition of the Job Board below – for people who are hiring or looking to be hired. You may have noticed I’ve put a hard cap on the 150 this month, we’ll see how that goes and if there’s a better approach. If you didn’t make it into tonight’s RSVP, you might be interested in another event today, http://laidoffcamp.pbwiki.com/SanFrancisco
With stocks dipping into 1996, it’s interesting to look back and see how much the internet has changed (and the companies). Here’s a clip to lift your spirits, Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy – http://tr.im/gYmn
On Deck for tonight
manymoon.com – Simplify your worklife by bringing in your google documents, tasked based emails, and team into one convenient project on the web. [Amit Kulkarni]
cellguided.com – Your own outsourced tour guide. Create or participate in a walking tour or a treasure hunt that can be accessed from any mobile phone. [Rajiv Aggarwal]
expensify.com- Your very own accounting department. Simplify business expenses for everybody – the spender and the finance manager. [Witold Stankiewicz & David Barrett]
icandy.ricohinnovations.com – Link your online world with your real one. Very cool application of 3d barcodes. [Jamey Graham & Matt Stewart]
—- When: Tuesday, Mar 3, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
The SVNT JobBoard
These are listing of people within the SV NewTech meetup community looking for new jobs:
* Andy Leeper – Looking for gigs that will let him use his web app development / systems architecture skills., <leepfrog@mochaleaf.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/andyleeper
* Kieran Chung – CTO / VP of Development, <Kieran_Chung2002@yahoo.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/kieranchung
* Auri Biswas – Director/Sr. Manager (Web Product Management or Business Analysis) – MBA (Duke) + Big 4 Consulting Background., <Auri.Biswas@Art-of-Innovation.com>, http://Art-of-Innovation.com
* Technical Executive in IT or Engineering, <sghajar@hotmail.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/sghajar
* Paul Wcislo – Strategic marketing programs and communications to enhance image, attract buyers, and increase sales., <pwcislo@sbcglobal.net>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwcislo
* human resources/training, <marilyncmesser@comcast.net>
* Mynampati – Product / Technology Management – Integrative & Analytical; launched 2 BI solutions, <mynampati@yahoo.com>
* Phil Hood – Publisher, consultant, <phil@drumlink.colm>, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/86/625
* Debra Evans – Pursuing Software or Web Development Project or Program Manager Opportunities, <debra_evans00@yahoo.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/debraevans
* Parul Raj Lodha – Biz Dev for Internet/ Web 2.0 Startup, http://www.linkedin.com/in/parulrajlodha
* Alicia Lin – Strategic Recruiter, <aliciasf@yahoo.com>
* Grace Hu-Morley – Product Management / Product Markteting Leadership Position , <SVCatalyst@gmail.com>, http://gracehm.com
* Benjamin Hill – Seeking a Sr. PM role in collective intelligence based company., <benjaminhill@gmail.com>, http://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminhill
* product marketing, strategy, business development, business planning, product management, <shellysshells@yahoo.com>
* Bonnie Wang – Helped launched the 1st Chinese edition of Rolling Stone mag. Seeking a position that draws upon her strengths as a bilingual communicator with marketing/PR and online community-building. <bonnwang@gmail.com>
They’re hiring
Meetup members looking to hire:
* Kym McNicholas <kmcnicholas@forbes.net> – Looking for a producer/videographer/editor for Burlingame Studio. Tech minded, easy to work with, flexibile, and knowledgeable in new media.
* {stealth project} – 2 roles, iPhone/Web Software Developer & Web Designer/Developer, http://tr.im/gYxf
* More openings [Gravity recruiting], http://tr.im/gYvg
A great superbowl on sunday right? What’s funny, is thing I hear talked about most around the valley is not the touch down scored via some Steealer’s head, but what advertising budgets looked like and how this was not a strong year for commercials :P
So there’s a new item at the bottom of the newsletter that goes out each month. Even as optimistic as I love to be, the effects of the economy have definitely hit Silicon Valley with lay-offs (the tech-sector globally has seen more then 1/4 million lay-offs in the past year). I think 2009 will be an interesting year and I have nothing but high expectations for solid companies to really shine through this time. Benjamin Hill had the great idea of including a job board on the newsletter – so that our community has another outlet to help each other out. A new member from nyc, Chris Hutchins, is organizing http://laidoffcamp.pbwiki.com. In addition to the newsletter, I’ll post a copy at on our forum at: http://forum.newtechmeetup.org/forum/category/job-postings/
On Deck for tonight
adhearsion.com – Write a mobile voice feature for your website. This is Open Source Telephony on a full featured framework. Go multi-modal and add voice capabilities to your website or mobile app. [Jason Goecke & Jay Phillips]
alphagrade.com – Help teens take a break from facebook! AlphaGrade is a tool to link school grades and chores to their weekly allowance. [Mahesh Hinduja]
peanutlabsmedia.com – New ways to make money on your site – From cell phone payments (for the kids that don’t have credit cards) to creating markets with virtual goods. [Murti Hussain]
—
When: Tuesday, Feb 3, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
Here’s to 2009! We’re kicking of the year with a solid lineup tonight – which was a bit difficult with the holidays. But your assistant organizer, Brian Solis of www.future-works.com, came through strong to help put together the companies tonight.
I’m looking forward to a fun and interesting year, filled with challenges – and I’m positive that the strong companies will do very well. Starting next month, we’ll be introducing guest experts every 2-3 months that should provide helpful knowledge to any tech company.
On Deck for tonight:
skout.com – find, meet, and chat with new people on the go. Works with any mobile phone wit a webbrowser and connects to sites like facebook. [Redg Snodgrass]
dabbleboard.com – a superior whiteboard tool that can help with collaboration around the world, or right in your own office. [Zohair Hyder]
thegroupery.com – enlist volunteers, organize activities, and manage donations – the new way for people to self organize for social good. [Darren Lancaster]
offbeatguides.com – create real, hold-in-your hand personal travel guides based on travel dates, destination, and personal interests. [David Sifry]
When: Tuesday, Jan 6, 2009 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
I hope everybody’s Thanksgiving weekend was filled with good food and great fun. Tonight we have companies that are perfect for this season and the current economy. From getting a grasp on the stock market to finding the best products for the lowest prices, the lineup tonight will prove useful this holiday season.
On Deck for tonight:
stockmood.com – A TechCrunch 50 finalist – Having trouble making up & down of the market news each morning? Stocknews uses machine learning to help predict the actual impact of news on a companies stock price and alert you. [Bill Hunt]
fixya.com – With over 1 million products in its database, Fixya helps ya find manuals, get tech support, and troubleshoot your product – providing a service that many manufactures left out. [Yumio Saneyoshi]
shoppingnotes.com – A holiday treat - ShoppingNotes lets you bookmark your favorite holiday gifts now and get notified when the price drops. [Meng-You Yang]
rateitall.com – RateItAll has presented their 5-star online rating engine for ‘everything’ at a previous NewTech meetup. And this week, Lawrence is launching something ‘radical’ and will give the group a sneak preview. [Lawrence Coburn]
When: Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 7:00 PM sharp! Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
Voting in San Fran is liking voting in someone’s garage. Ohh wait, it is voting in someone’s garage.
I made some last minute voting switches, including a Yes on Prop B for the affordable housing fund – it goes to redevelopment and new housing for mid->low income families, but i’m mixed on the cost, 100+mil a year in tax payer dollars (coming from 2.5c on every $100 of property taxes. I also swapped David Campos to #2 and Quezada to #3.
We have some special election coverage planned for Tuesday night, we’ll be streaming national voting results up on the projector. Red, Blue, or something in between, it’ll be an exciting night!
I’m limiting the demos to just three tomorrow night to keep things moving quickly. We’ll use some time between and after demos to hear about technologies you’ve been using (or creating) this political season.
On Deck for Election Day:
avaguide.net – Interactive video character’s for your website. Turn that boring copy into something fun. [Marek Borzestowski]
zimride.com – Find your ride share or carpool onlne. My trip down from the city Tue night is on there. [Logan Green]
hubpages.com – An easy-to-use content publishing site with a vibrant author community. And most importantly – tools to make you money. [Ryan Hupfer]
Ryan of Hubpages put together an amazing piece – a bio of yours truly: http://hubpages.com/hub/Vincent-Vinnie-Lauria (I couldn’t believe how much he could research and piece together from online sites. It’s like my very own wikipedia site.)
Global Entrepreneurship Week – From Nov. 17-23, millions of young people around the world will engage in activities, contests, workshops, and online communities to unleash their entrepreneurial spirit on business and organizations motivated to do social good. http://unleashingideas.org
And a special requirement, Brad and I want to see ‘I voted’ stickers on everybody that shows up (H2 visas spared ;) Or else you will have some explain’ to do… http://maps.google.com/vote
When: Tuesday, Nov 4, 2008 7:00 PM Where: DLA Piper, 2000 University Ave, Palo Alto More: http://newtechmeetup.org
Wow, for San Franciscans going to the polls this year, there is quite a lot of homework you have to do before hand – more than any other year in recent SF history.
San Fran currently has 22 props on the ballet, add that to the 12 props on the CA State ballot, along with your district supervisors, state assembly, congressional senator and other local candidates, and you’re looking at a 20min exam just to vote (let alone any reading you may want to do before hand).
At a local skateshop, I came across a pamphlet for the ‘League of Pissed Off Voters‘, which actually seems to have some pretty good suggestion. So if you want to skip the studying, grab a copy of their little yellow guide. The full ‘phone-book’ version is online: http://theballot.org/2008/sf
So here are Vinnie’s 2008 picks: (which i picked before finding the League of Pissed off Voters, and noticed I was pretty much in line with their picks, they even made some good points to switch my own argument at times)
One of the more important props is Prop 8 to eliminate rights of same-sex couples. Now my personal belief is that the word ‘marriage’ having a religious connotation mucks up this whole debate, but civil rights are fundamentally, vote No on Prop 8.
State Props 1A: YES on High Speed Trains 2: YES on fair treatment to farm animals 3: NO on the fish children’s hospitals bond 4: YES on Parental Notification on a minor’s abortion 5: YES on rehab instead of prison for non-violent drug offenses 6: NO on more $1bil for criminal penalties 7: NO on badly written renewable energy (many env. groups oppose it) 8: NO on Gay Marriage Ban 9: NO on victims’ rights. (the anecdotes they give don’t back their reasoning) 10: NO on alternative fuel (this promotes propane, not sustainable energy) 11: NO on redistricting (kinda hard to know if this will be beneficial) 12: YES to Vet bond
San Fran Props: A: YES on Trauma center for Earthquakes (as we’ll be happier for it when we need it) B: NO on affordable housing (subsidized housing doesn’t seem the best way to control housing prices, especially when it’s taken from other programs) C: NO on prohibiting city employees serving on charters (too broad, for instance, firefighters couldn’t server on an environmental board) D: YES on financing pier 70 (everybody approves) E: NO on increasing num. signatures req’d for recall F: NO on moving SF elections to even years only (will not save all the money, and if I think 34 props is big, imagine if another year was piled on!) G: YES on allowing Retirement Credit for unpaid parental leave (many parties agree) H: NO on clean energy deadlines and making all utils public (gov’t). This moves PG&E into the gov’t. What I would really like to see is what I had in NY. One company delivered my electric (PG&E in this case), and I could choose where they bought my electrons from (wind, solar, etc. and pay a premium for that) I: YES on Independent rate payer advocate for public utilities J: YES on historic preservation commission K: NO on decriminalized prostitution (have you walked through the tenderloin?) L: YES on funding Community Justice Center M: YES on prohibiting specific acs of tenant harassment (i was in this position 1 year ago) N: Yes on changing real property transfer tax O: Yes on replacing 911 fee as a voter controlled tax P: NO on Changing composition of public transit board to the Mayor. This wasn’t a clear call as MUNI and BART need to ‘connect as a system’ more then they are now, but I’ll follow the SF Bike Coalition on this one. Q: YES on modifying the payroll expense tax R: YES on memorializing the George W. Bush Sewage Plant S: YES on budget set-asides identification of funds (i like to know where the money will come from for new polices) T: Yes on free and low-cost substance abuse treatment U: YES against funding illegal war in Iraq V: No – Keep the military out of our schools, this tries to reverse an earlier decision
Local Candidates District 9 Supervisor (the mission). You pick in order of preference: 1. Mark Sanchez, 2. Eric Quezada, 3. David Campos School Board: still to decide Community College Board: still to decide Superior Court Judge: Thomas Mellon (current) BART Board: Tom Radulovich (current)
National: President: Obama Congress: Cindy Sheehan (cause she’s an independent and a strong critic of the war) I’m not happy with Pelosi saying "impeachment is ‘off the table’"
