February 2012
1 post
Bizible raises cash for local marketing →
June 2011
1 post
Why Your Product Must be Social - My Guest Post on... →
April 2011
1 post
Facebook (finally) launches Deals →
March 2011
6 posts
Resource Fitness on Voice of America →
How to move your blog to tumblr
I just moved my blog from Blogger to tumblr and the first thing I did was search for a site that gave me all the details on how to do this. I couldn’t find one, so here are the steps I went through for those of you that may want to do the same thing. If you know of a better way to do this, let me know!
At first this seems pretty straight forward, but there are few gotchas like moving...
2010 Goal Recap
Overall I’m happy with 2010. Below is a re-cap of my original 2010 goals as of the start of 2010. I hit all but 1 P0 and none of the P1s. I’m very happy with this considering I also left Microsoft and started a company which were not in my original 2010 plan and thus derailed some of the other goals. This was very much a a welcomed change to my plans. Soon to come, a post on my...
“If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘Faster Horses’”
– Henry Ford (via mjking)
Interview on NPR
I was interviewed for All Things Considered about Resource Fitness and our electricity producing fitness equipment a few weeks ago. It aired on Thur March 10th. You can listen to it online here (it’s a quick 3 min segment). I’m really happy with the outcome and we have seen a big spike in traffic and calls since (as expected).
If you know anyone interested in investing in Resource...
Moving my blog to tumblr - UPDATE YOUR RSS FEEDS
I’m moving my blog to tumblr, so you will need to update your rss feeds. The new feed will be. http://feeds.feedburner.com/aaronbird Please update your RSS feed ASAP, so I can move my blog over. Note for those of you that blog: I’ve been with blogger for 3 years and never thought about how (or what would happen) when I move my blog (obviously, it breaks all your RSS subscribers unless...
February 2011
2 posts
Running Python Cron Jobs in Windows Azure
I have some python scripts that store some data in my SQL Azure database and I want them run daily from my web role. Why my web role? Because I only have a web tier and it’s not worth dedicating a worker for this task. It took about 5 hours today getting this just right, so here is what I did in case anyone else needs to do something similar. First, thanks to Steve Marx for some very...
Moving my blog to tumblr
Here is my first post on tumblr, I’ll set up dns for aaronbird.net and hopefully import my old posts soon.
October 2010
1 post
Google Integrating Local Results in Main SERP
It looks like Google is experimenting with integrating the local results interspersed with non-local results in main SERP page. See an example below, with a comparison to the previous version of keeping local results on top. This should have a very interesting impact on local SEO if these changes are made everywhere.
August 2010
5 posts
Perspective from Class of 2014
Every year the administrators at Wisconsin’s Beloit College put together a list of information about incoming freshmen to explain the perspective of the new class, here are some highlights: - Rarely use email as it’s too slow - Russians and Americans have always been living together in space. - Never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day - Never twisted...
From AdCenter to Windows Azure
Yesterday was my first day working in Windows Azure. I’m really excited to be building the platform that will enable the next generation of online services. More soon on the exciting stuff we are working on…
Subsidized Wages Rather Than Unemployment
My first observation in this post is that sites like eLance and the lower wage, on-demand workers they provide are critical to boostrapped startups these days. I’ve used eLance a ton over the past year and a half and I can say for sure that The Accountant Guide wouldn’t be were it is today with that source of labor. So, my first premise is that low wage on-demand labor significantly...
Starbucks Startups
I’m taking 2 weeks off, during which time I’ve been doing some work for 2 startups I’m helping with (www.seattleaccountantguide.com and www.resourcefitness.net) and I’ve been doing a lot of it from coffee shops. This is a familiar situation for me as I was involved in a startup in the past, and the 4 of us would meet in coffee shops in Santa Barbara and work for hours on end from...
Entrepreneurship and the “Math Isn’t There”
I was meeting with Adam last week and he was talking about the early days of TheGreenMicroGym – when it was nothing more than a concept on paper, when he pitched the idea to people, he often got the feedback on the business model that, “the math isn’t there”. The truth is, those people were right, given the current paradigm, the math isn’t there. Adam didn’t see the math, and he didn’t...
July 2010
1 post
Continuous Deployment at Digg
Interesting article on continuous deployment. I like some of the concepts but I’m not convinced this would work for an online system like AdCenter that operates a service people actually pay for. It would be interesting to know the number of bugs found in production, mean time to detection, and mean time to a fix with this system as compared to a more traditional release cycle.
April 2010
5 posts
Get Distance Between 2 Cities in Ruby
I had to find the distance between 2 cities using Ruby, here is my code. Note that you can find out about the Yahoo REST API and the geocoder.us service by following those links. You will need to sign up for a Yahoo developer key (it’s free and a quick form). I’ve included the default Yahoo API key below so the sample will work. I know, I’m not parsing the XML response the...
Hello CondoInternet.net, Later Comcast
I just signed up for internet from CondoInternet.net and it rocks. When I first read about it getting 100 mbs, I was VERY skeptical. However, after doing some research and realizing that their primary business is commercial internet for companies in downtown Seattle (like Real Networks) I realized that they may actually live up to the promise. I’ve been dying for a Comcast alternative, and...
2 yr Old Uses iPad
WOW, 2 yr old uses iPad for the first time. She navigated it better than your average 50 yr old uses their iPhone, commented that she wished it had a camera, and suggested that it would be great for gaming. Maybe this UI is a game changer as John Doerr suggests.
Price Anchoring
Great article on price anchoring, I’m still chewing on the suggestion that it is better to be the first to suggest a price when negotiating. Maybe this is true, but it goes against asking for offers, I guess ideally you throw out a very large number as a suggestion, and then let them come in with an official offer below that. Much like the attorney asking for billions example in the...
Math for Finding a Wife
Funny analysis on optimizing how many women you should pass up before marrying. For those of you that don’t want to dig through the math, here is their summary for N=100 where N is the total number of single eligible women you can meet. Thus the optimum strategy for N = 100 is to pass on the first 9 candidates and then select the next “best so far”. This gives an expected value of about...
Hiring on eLance
I’ve done some hiring on eLance over the past year with mixed results. This is a good post for advise from someone that has done it alot of it and found it successful.
February 2010
3 posts
Best Thing Since the Internet (really)
WOW, if this is half as cool as they describe it will change the landscape of energy forever.
PleaseRobMe.com Highlights Location Based Services...
A new site Please Rob Me tells you when Twitter, Four Square, and Google Buzz users are not at home (as they are “checking in” somewhere else). It also pings the user to tell the user the privacy risks: Hi @NAME, did you know the whole world can see your location through Twitter? #pleaserobme.com Interesting stuff, combining this with other public records could lead to similar sites...
Google: From Innovator to Follower
All great companies reach a point in their life cycle where they get too big to truly innovate and end up following and sometimes buying-up the nimble and hungry start-ups. I’ll leave why this occurs to another post, as that is an interesting topic in itself. What I would like to point out in this post is that Google has reached that point. With the announcement of Google Buzz, Google...
January 2010
5 posts
iPad - Newton the 2nd
The iPad is lame, like the Newton before it, it’s a device that tries to do everything ands succeeds at doing nothing. It’s not a phone, it’s not a laptop, it’s not a video camera, it’s not a camera, and it’s not an eReader. It’s got the computing power of my phone with a netbook screen and costs $800, basicly it’s a neat thing to use to surf the...
Seattle Accountants
It’s that time of year, tax season. I’ve been frustrated over the past two tax seasons not being able to find an accountant I like, so I started a web site dedicated to Seattle accountants. I’ve categorized accountants by city (Seattle, Bellevue, Everett, etc) as well as category (Small Business, Payroll, Personal Tax, etc) Let me know what you think, hopefully I can make it...
Obama Health Care Plan
Courtesy of my dad… Let me get this straight. Obama’s health care plan will be written by a committee whose Chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress which hasn’t read it, signed by a President who smokes, funded by a Treasury Chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that is nearly broke.
"Bing" Doesn't Like Google Leaving China
According to the NY Times… Actually, quoting “Bing” in an article about Google might be a very good SEO trick for the many people that will search for things like “Bing Google China” to see if/how Bing is reacting. Of the 300 trillion people in China to quote, Mrs. Bing was a good choice. However, this was of course their second choice after not finding anyone...
Official Google Blog: A new approach to China
I’m very interested to see the outcome of Google’s talk with China as well as Bing and Yahoo’s reaction. Official Google Blog: A new approach to China
December 2009
1 post
2010 Objectives
I don’t normally publish my annual goals this broadly, but this is a critical year for me and the more visibility the more likely they are to happen. P0 is a “must have” and P1 is not a must have. I consider the year successful if and only if all P0s are done. If all P1s are also done, it’s a great year. As with all goals, these may change as priorities change over the...
November 2009
1 post
Google Wave Invites
I have some left, let me know if you want one.
April 2009
1 post
Laptop Upgrade
Sorry for the somewhat confusing last post. Google hasn’t crawled my new site in over a week and they crawl my blog almost daily, so I added a link with the hopes of them crawling my new content soon. If only I knew someone that worked on the search engine at Google…. :-) Since starting the wedding directory company, I’ve been doing a lot of development on my home laptop and I...
March 2009
1 post
Hearst Reader
I’ll be watching this very closely, I’m interested to hear about the business model that would support a Cosmo consumer to own a physical reader in order to read Cosmo. Having said that, I’m cautiously optimistic that there is a business model here. Consider this post from TechCrunch that uses some fuzzy math to show that the NY Times might actually save money by buying a $370...
February 2009
5 posts
RIAA layoffs reduce their bite
My favorite part of this post - “Earlier this week, sources pointed to ‘significant’ layoffs in the range of 30, and chops across various regional, anti-piracy units.” Layoffs are never a good thing, but reducing the efforts of pit bull attorneys suing single mothers for $222,000 is probably a win-win for all of us in this economy.
Eye Witnesses and False Memories
Interesting study at Yale shows that simple suggestions can create false memories, including changing the face of a prisoner’s captor.
Google rolls the political dice... and it pays off
Typically companies donate money to both sides of the isle and across candidates within a presidential race to make sure that the guy who wins got some money from them. Google leaned very heavily towards Obama this race and it is paying off. When I learned about the shotgun approach to donations done by corporate America in my business school strategy class, my first reaction was: If company A...
Cisco: Mobile traffic 66 fold from 2008 to 2013
Here is the report. Some highlights: • In the 7 years from 2005 to 2012, mobile data traffic will have increased a thousand-fold. • Almost 64 percent of the world’s mobile traffic will be video by 2013. • APAC will account for one-third of all mobile data traffic by 2013. • Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2013, increasing 66 times between 2008 and...
Playmate BMI diverging from US average - Duh!
No shit, the fatter America gets, the thinner they want their women. Thanks for the in depth analysis Wired.
December 2008
2 posts
Snowing in Seattle
From my living room…
Holiday Plans
Here is Megan’s and my itinerary. Hope you can join us for some/all of it:Portland: 12/19San Fran: 12/20-12/22Reno: 12/22-12/25Vegas: 12/25-12/28 UFC 92!!!Santa Barbara: 12/28-1/2 Yes, we’ll be here for NYEBack to Seattle: 1/2-1/4
October 2008
2 posts
1 tag
My Jiu-Jitsu Matches
You can find my matches at these two locations (I’ll be updating this as more come online):http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=BirdManNWC http://www.youtube.com/profile_favorites?user=BirdManNWC
1 tag
Good businesses in bad times
Classic portfolio management tells us that industries such as health care, energy, and consumer goods are good investments in recessions, but CNN reported a 50% increase in sales YOY for Sentry Safes. That’s an interesting addition to the known list of safe haven (no pun intended) companies in a recession. And if you wonder what people are putting in those safes, I can’t help but...