Archive for the 'Technology' Category

New: A Mobile Version of 37Signals’ Highrise CRM

WhoBook MOBI is a version of Highrise optimized for mobile phones. If you haven’t heard of Highrise, 37Signals’ dead simple CRM web app, you should check it out. Basically it’s an online contacts database, with support for notes about contacts (“Left him a voicemail Tuesday”), tasks (“Follow up with John”), and cases (for organizing multiple people on a project). There are tons of uses for Highrise – it’s used by many small business to keep track of customer relationships, and even by one local pastor to keep track of interactions with his congregation. I used Highrise extensively in my job search – as I interviewed at multiple companies, in multiple rounds, all those faces started to blend together. I had amassed a huge stack of business cards with short handwritten notes on the back. I needed a way to organize it all.

Enter Highrise. I spent two hours one day typing all those contacts into Highrise. Now I can search by name, by company, or even by industry (I’ve tagged all my contacts with the industry they work in). Highrise also keeps track of every email I’ve ever exchanged with that contact, as well as any notes that I’ve added to help me remember who they are (“John loves the Giants” or “Steve has red hair and looks like Ron Howard”). In fact, my story and use case has been featured on the 37Signals Product Blog.

I became so dependent on having my Highrise contacts that I soon realized the biggest shortcoming of the application: no mobile version. Luckily, Highrise has a robust API, so I was able to program exactly the mobile version that I needed to get my Highrise contacts onto my cell phone.

The result is WhoBook MOBI. It’s built specifically for Blackberry and older mobile phones with WAP-based browsers, and provides read-only access to your Highrise contacts. Simply search for their name, and you’ll get back their contact information (with one-click dialing on the phone numbers) as well as any notes you’ve written about them. In addition to the mobile web interface, WhoBook MOBI also has SMS support – send a text to 41411 in the form “WHOBOOK john” and you’ll receive a text back with John’s phone number(s).

WhoBook MOBI is free, unlike some other websites out there that do similar things. I’m also pretty sure that it’s the only way to access your Highrise contacts via SMS that exists. If you find it useful or have any feature requests, I’d really appreciate any feedback at feedback@whobook.mobi or in the comments here.

UPDATE 4/11/2010: Since I wrote this post, 37Signals has released an iPhone app for Highrise. The official app works great for those with iPhones, but if you’re in the 90% of mobile phone users who don’t own an iPhone, there is still no official Highrise mobile app for you. That’s where WhoBook MOBI comes in – it’s entirely text-based and optimized for the basic WAP browsing available on old school Blackberries and “regular” mobile phones. I’ve just done a scrub of the codebase and added a few new features, so check out WhoBook MOBI if you’re not a member of the iPhone crowd and want to access your Highrise contacts on the go.

PHP: Remote Kill Switch – Make Sure You Get Paid

Web Developers: Have you ever gotten to the end of a project, and had a client withhold the last of your fee to exact additional changes or features that were not in the original plan? Perhaps a client that decided your work “wasn’t what we expected” and tried to withhold payment?

Well worry no more. Put the power back in your hands with a Remote Kill Switch. The idea is this: you build into their website a small function that checks with a server you control to make sure the client’s account is in good standing. If it is, the site loads as normal. If not, their site doesn’t load, and they get a message asking for payment.

We’ll accomplish this with a little PHP and a protocol called XML-RPC (remote procedure call). Your client’s server will transmit an XML encoded, unique string identifying itself to your server. Your server will check to see if that unique string is one you’ve specified as disabled. If there is a match, it responds with a XML encoded string telling the client’s server to disable the application.

Sound like something you’d want to implement? Here’s how it breaks down:

Part One: Your server. You’ll need a fairly reliable host, and a fast one at that. You don’t want to slow down the remote application load with requests to your server. However, the below code is set to continue loading the remote application even if it does not receive a response from your server, ensuring that downtime on your end does not cause downtime on their end.

Part Two: The code on your end. Also known as the RPC server. Create a new file and paste the following:

	require('XMLRPC.inc.php');
	function checkapp($the_app)
	{
		$deactivateMe = ""; // to disable a webapp, enter it's short code here
		if (isset($the_app) && $the_app == $deactivateMe)
			return true; // Application Disabled
		else
			return false; // All systems go
	}
	$server = new IXR_Server(array('activation.checkapp' => 'checkapp'));

You’ll also need to download XMLRPC.inc.php and upload it to your webserver in the same directory as the file you created above. You will need to change the file extension from .phpp to .php.

Part Three: The client code. Also known as the RPC client. Insert this code in your client’s site, preferably toward the beginning of execution:

	require('XMLRPC.inc.php');
	$appname = "UNIQUE_APP_SHORTCODE";
	$client = new IXR_Client('http://path_to_file_created_earlier.php');
	if (!$client->query('activation.checkapp', $appname)) {
		if($client->getResponse() )
		{
			die("Application Disabled. Please pay your web developer.");
		}
	}

Again, download XMLRPC.inc.php and upload it to the server in the same directory as the file you created above. This library is required both by the client to make the request, and the server to respond to it.

That’s it! If the client ever doesn’t pay you, and you want to shutdown the site you developed for them, just set $deactivateMe in Step 1 to the “UNIQUE_APP_SHORTCODE” you entered in the code in Step 3.

You can see that the above setup allows you to protect multiple web apps at once, just remember what shortcodes you assigned at what sites! I recommend keeping them in comments at the top of your XML-RPC server PHP file. However, a limitation of my code is that you can only disable one remote site at a time. I’m sure my code could be expanded to use an array that would allow you to disable multiple sites at once.

I realize that this is significantly more technical than my typical fare (which I will return to next post), but I hope it’s helpful to some people, if only as a demonstration. Feel free to rip my code apart in the comments, I’m sure I’ve left something out.

Why Starbucks Integration is the Best Feature on iPod Touch and iPhone

Today in San Francisco, Steve Jobs presided over one of the more product release packed press events in recent memory. We saw the entire iPod product family overhauled – new colors on the shuffle, a total redesign of the Nano (with video), larger hard drives and lower prices on the iPod Classic (as well as a new enclosure), and the introduction of the new iPod Touch with WiFi.

Jobs also had a guest on stage toward the end of the program: Starbucks Founder and Chairman Steve Schultz. Schultz was there to promote the new partnership between Apple and Starbucks, which is basically this: You walk into a Starbucks and order your latte. The song playing on the store’s stereo catches your ear. You pull out your iPhone/iPod Touch, which automatically senses that you’re in a Starbucks, and knows what song is currently playing. You can purchase the song over Wi-Fi before the barista is finished making your coffee.

Cool, but it’s certainly not going to “transform the marketplace” (to quote Steve) is it? I’m telling you that it will. And not just the coffee market, or the phone market, or the MP3 market. I mean the whole market.

Why is this such a big deal? Because the iPhone and iPod Touch are now location aware. We’ve been hearing about location based services for a while now, and there definitely some cool startups out there that try to bring people together based on location. However, this is the first time (to my knowledge) that it’s been leveraged to drive consumer spending. iPhone users can now make a purchase that is directly tied to the location they’re standing at that very second.

The feature as it stands now is not that amazing, nor is it going to radically change many people’s lives. However, imagine the ways that location based purchasing could be extended: Pre-order the DVD/MPEG of a movie as you walk out of the theater. Buy a song’s MP3 as your favorite artist plays it on stage at a concert. Receive a coupon for 10% off upon walking into a department store, encouraging you to buy more. The possibilities are endless.

Sure, all of this requires that infrastructure be built out in all of these places to notify your iPhone of its location. It will take time. But if Apple is smart (and I think they usually are), they will continue to expand the location based services on their mobile devices, and open up additional revenues for both themselves and entertainment venues and stores that did not exist before.

OpenID is so cool – what’s the holdup?

If you’re unfamiliar with OpenID, read up on Wikipedia. Side note: It’s really amazing how many times I start a post with that phrase and a link to Wikipedia…anyway…

It seems as though OpenID has achieved (or is on the path to achieving) that which Microsoft Passport could not – a widely accepted, trusted, and easily integrable single sign-on solution. It’s seeing adoption from the likes of Yahoo, AOL, Digg, Firefox 3.0, and more (links are to announcements of support). Why? Probably because people are unwilling to give Microsoft any more control over their digital lives than it already has. It’s also probably because Microsoft had a habit of charging expensive licensing fees to any sites wanting to use Passport authentication. Furthermore, OpenID is decentralized, meaning every sign-on system in the world doesn’t go down or get compromised if Microsoft gets hacked.

The benefits of OpenID are obvious and exciting. A single user/password combo that you can use all over the web. Automatic transfer of all your registration data to new services you sign up for, without you having to type everything in again. Never have to remember which of your 10 different user names or passwords you used to sign up for a particular site. One-click ordering from an online store, even if you’ve never purchased from there before.

OpenID has the potential to revolutionize the web, so what’s the hold up?

OpenID’s biggest problem at this point in the game (aside from widespread adoption, which takes time), is that OpenID seems to function as merely a really complex auto form filler. Most OpenID providers only store basic demographic and contact information, meaning having an OpenID often only saves me from typing my name and my birthday. There is currently no way to store my credit card and shipping information in my OpenID, meaning using it at an online store is pretty much out of the question.

I’d also love it if OpenID providers would do a better job letting your OpenID URL truly personify you on the web. What do I mean by that? What if, when you actually visited your OpenID URL, you were presented with an aggregate display of all of your “tracks” around the web. Your Flickr photos, Del.icio.us bookmarks, Facebook profile, etc could all be pulled in via RSS and displayed. Then with one click, you could jump to over to those sites, and be automatically logged in via your OpenID.

ClaimID is trying to do something similar, including integration with OpenID, however, the implementation isn’t really there. At present, they just provide a place to post links to your various profiles around the web. Granted, once OpenID spreads around the web, ClaimID has the potential to become exactly what I described – your one stop online identity shop. Keep your eye on them.

I’d like to wrap up by pointing you to a site where you can get your own OpenID, as well as links to a method of using your blog’s URL as an OpenID, and a number of code libraries that will let you run your own OpenID identity provider.

• Get an OpenID
• Use your blog as an OpenID
• Run your own OpenID provider

February is Blogtipping Month

Inspired by Ben Yoskovitz mentioning Ready Fire Aim in his blogtipping post, I’ve decided to catch the bug and do one of my own. Blogtipping is a simple concept -

1. Choose 3 blogs (I’ve chosen 4 though)
2. Make a list of 3 things you like about each one
3. Make one tip as to how each blog could be improved

Most of the blogs listed below are entrepreneurship focused, however, I’ve included a web design and technology related blog as well. Hopefully I’ve included one or two you haven’t heard of before…

Blog #1: OnStartups by Dharmesh Shah – Feed

• I love Dharmesh’s writing style, it’s very hands on and direct. I find it easy to immediately apply his tips in my day to day life.
• The “Pithy Insights” posts are brilliant. Often lists like these are generic, but Dharmesh’s are always unique and on point.
• Dharmesh writes regularly, and his post length is long enough to be thorough, but not so long that he drones on.
• Tip: Work a little on your design. The header is excellent looking, but once the reader gets down to the content of the blog, things are a little muddy. The tags and social bookmarking links are kind of jumbled, and it looks like you’re not exactly sure where they should go.

Blog #2: Bokardo by Joshua Porter – Feed

• I like the 3 column layout. Most of the time I think 3 columns is too much for a blog, but Josh’s flow together nicely, and contain relevant information.
• The “Colophon” box in the footer is an excellent touch. It makes me feel like Josh is not only instructing me in design with his content, but also wants to use the design of his blog as a teaching point, and exposing his color and font choices makes it easier for other designs to be inspired by his.
• Josh seems to make an effort to write to promote conversation. Almost all his posts either ask questions of his readers, or express his viewpoint, while leaving the topic open for discussion.
• (Bonus praise) Josh includes a RSS subscription link at the bottom of every post, prompting readers to subscribe if they liked his article. A good way to grab subscribers.
• Tip: I’m not sure I’m a fan of the excerpts on the front page. Some of them aren’t long enough to indicate the subject of the article. I’d suggest reducing the number of posts that appear on the frontpage, but including their full text.

Blog #3: WorkHappy by Carson McComas – Feed

• I love that Carson prominently displays a “submit” link where readers can submit content to his blog.
• The “Happy Quote” feature that is sprinkled throughout the content provides great quotes (I love quotes) amd breaks up the long blocks of text.
• Normally I skip over recommended reading sections, but Carson’s caught my eye. Most of his selections are extremely relevant, and I’m tempted to grab one or two on them from Amazon on his recommendation.
• Tip: I’d like it if your design was centered on the page. To me, it feels as though the whole site is sliding off the bottom-left of the page (especially at higher resolutions). Don’t change your design, just center the whole thing on the page, to distribute the whitespace evenly on either side.

Blog #4: The Entrepreneurial Mind by Jeff Cornwall – Feed

• It’s great to read about entrepreneurship from someone who’s made it his career to study and teach it. Jeff’s posts have an educational quality to them that is really unique, and I feel he’s writing to teach, not just to garner page impressions.
• I enjoy that Jeff occasionally strays from purely entrepreneurial content, sometimes writing on politics, economics, and world events. However, he always brings it back to how it affects the entrepreneur.
• I like the list of the 5 most recent posts at the very top of the homepage. It makes it easy to read the headlines and jump to a post I may have missed, without scrolling.
• Tip: So much great content, and unfortunately not a lot of feedback. Try to make an effort to encourage discussion in the comments section. Leave part of the issue open for debate, or ask a question of your audience. After all, what teacher doesn’t like a little participation!

That’s it for this time, I hope I’ve opened your eyes to some new voices, and been helpful to those blog authors highlighted above. See everyone next time.

Why Net Neutrality is Crucial for Entrepreneurship

If you’re not familiar with net neutrality, read up on Wikipedia.

I wrote before about the defeat of Senate bill HR5252, which would have dealt a major blow to network neutrality and changed the internet as we know it. There is still an uphill battle to be fought, however things are looking rosier. The November elections ousted many of the congressmen and women that were against net neutrality, a bipartisan neutrality bill has been introduced, and Ed Markey, chairman of the senate subcommittee that oversees telecommunication, has promised to keep the net neutrality ball rolling.

So why does this matter for entrepreneurs?

If the internet becomes a privileged medium, accessible only to those with deep pockets, then the traditional and unique equal footing that has been the hallmark of the internet will be lost. New companies will find it much harder to break in and thrive, reminding me of more traditional media outlets that are dominated by a few players, with high barriers to entry (see television, radio, publishing). Many of today’s most successful Internet companies (Amazon.com, eBay) began as small independent start-ups that thrived because of the Internet’s inherent freedom. Without that freedom, America’s small businesses will suffer.

Startups are small, cash strapped entities trying to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and wrest a market segment away from the big boys. Often those big boys have names like “Google”, “Yahoo”, “Facebook”, and “MySpace”. On a non-neutral internet, these big boys would have plenty of cash to play by the telco’s new rules, and ensure that their content continues to get served up at top speed to the web surfing public.

Your startup already has enough trouble hiring developers, creating buzz, drawing users, paying lawyers, and putting food on the table. Now not only do you have to do those things, you need to match Google and Yahoo’s tithe to the telcos to ensure that people can even access your site. And I hope you can pay for the same level of access they can afford, because we know web surfers aren’t going to wait more than 5 seconds for the next great thing, when the same comfortable thing loads instantly.

As the world’s last truly free and equal communication medium, the internet must remain neutral. I’d encourage all entrepreneurs (not just American, it’s not called the world wide web for nothing) to contact your political representatives and encourage them to vote for network neutrality.

Net Neutrality Survives – for now

A post on SaveTheInternet.com announces that HR 5252 has been defeated in Congress (background reading on network neutrality at Wikipedia). This is the famous “Anti Net Neutrality Bill” sponsored by Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens. Yes, the same Ted Stevens that gave us the following choice quotes:

“…an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why?”

“They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.”

Stevens’ bill would have stripped the section guaranteeing net neutrality from the upcoming rewrite of the Telecommunications Act. The bill was supported by massive lobbying by large telecommunication companies (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc), who have spent over $150 million on lobbyists and disinformation campaigns like the below commercial aired nationwide on cable and network TV.

The bill’s recent defeat is a testament to the power of the individual citizen, despite the power of big business’s lobbyists. Over 1,000,000 people signed a petition delivered to Capitol Hill in support of net neutrality. It’s encouraging to see our elected representatives listen directly to their constituents in this manner.

It’s a bright day for network neutrality and internet users across America, however, nothing will be secure until network neutrality is passed into law. A number of bills are in the pipeline that would create meaningful and enforceable laws protecting net neutrality, so call your congresspeople today!

PS – You may continue to sign the petition for Network Neutrality at SaveTheInternet.com

A Flickr Alternative – Zooomr

This post is to introduce you to one of the best sites on the internet that nobody has heard about. You’ve all heard of Flickr, the wildly popular photo sharing website. What you probably haven’t heard of is Zooomr, another photo sharing site that has been referred to by many as “Flickr on steriods”. My favorite additional feature is the ability to tag people in photos “Facebook-style”. Zooomr also even provides a function to view all photos of a person.

Below is just a sample of what a photo hosted from Zooomr looks like, and you can completely customize the HTML to display as much or as little extra information as you like. You can even remove the “Hosted on Zooomr” message.

Hosted on Zooomr

An exclusive feature to Zooomr is it’s “trackback” tool. Everyone is used to trackbacks on blogs, and now Zooomr brings them to photos. Whenever anyone on the web links to a photo you host on Zooomr, a comment with the referring URL will automatically be recorded on Zooomr.

Zooomr is also superior to Flickr because they don’t try to force you into buying their “Pro” account by severely limiting the features on the free account. While Flickr’s free account only allows a 20MB/month upload limit, Zooomr’s free account allows 100MB/month. Flickr’s Pro account costs $24.95/year, allows 2GB/month of uploads, and is required to make high resolution versions of your photos available. Zooomr allows even it’s free accounts to serve full resolution images across the web, and makes its Pro account, with 4GB/month of bandwidth, available for free to bloggers.

Zooomr also offers the standard features you expect from a photo sharing site: Full RSS 2.0 feeds of your recent photos, as well as any search term. Localization in 15 languages. Geotagging with Google Maps. Photo Comments. Online zooming and rotating. And of course Tagging.

I hope you’ll give Zooomr a try, and see why it’s being referred to as “Flickr on steriods”.

Add WFU Specific Search to your Firefox

Here’s a quickie, but I think a number of Wake Forest students will appreciate it. I’ve programmed a plugin for Firefox to add a Wake Forest site-specific search to the upper right search box. Just click the little arrow next to the Google logo, and pick the “WF” logo, and your search will be restricted to the Wake Forest website. It’s great for finding things like OGB articles and a link to the PDF of the course catalog that you misplaced. Just go to the link below to install it.

http://www.billda.com/searchplugin/