tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48744263467544985182012-01-30T18:44:39.849-05:00Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comBlogger411100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-28835691657367395662010-01-05T23:03:00.041-05:002010-01-07T22:20:37.862-05:00

Image via CrunchBase I've been managing a mailing list with MailChimp for a few months now and I'm tremendously impressed with it.  It's a powerful application that produces effective email campaigns and it has a huge array of features. I thought I'd write up some work I just did with their API this week to show you how to effectively manage your communication strategy. User Registration So

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-59431034066874381312009-12-20T14:27:00.000-05:002009-12-20T14:27:25.899-05:00

Image via CrunchBase When I first constructed OtherNum we had a list of priorities about 1000 items deep (I'm sure you can relate...) and way down near the bottom was something like "Write some content for the About page".  I had a short blurb up there about Walter and I and Twilio but it was extremely terse.  I didn't think it mattered. But after we launched our public beta I was looking at our

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-11250322678706942492009-11-16T23:35:00.000-05:002009-11-16T23:35:44.811-05:00

@RedMaven just asked me a question related to my latest post on the OtherNumber Blog. @andrewwatson which would you say is more important in a busines: the team, product/service, business model, or the market? I answered him this: @RedMaven 1. team 2. model 3. market 4. product  But it's a great question so I wanted to write a more in depth answer to it. TEAM I've seen it written many times that

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-52347036383540078052009-10-19T22:25:00.000-04:002009-10-19T22:25:08.279-04:00

This message will get indexed, show up in search results in Yahoo, Bing etc... and be out there forever until I delete it. There isn't anything else I can do about it.

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-5120433684146047492009-10-15T21:32:00.001-04:002009-10-15T22:20:19.497-04:00

Too Many Social Networks I have to confess something.  I have too many accounts on too many social networks.  They all pretty much do the same thing.  I post a link, a picture of something insane I saw or some text that describes what I'm doing at the moment.  I post it on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, Tumblr... I don't even remember half of them.  Oh, and FriendFeed.  See! It's insane

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-2304632208436705972009-09-27T23:20:00.000-04:002009-09-27T23:20:31.562-04:00

I get asked sometimes what Twitter is.  I know, it's a little hard to imagine, but it happens.  Sometomes people know what it DOES but the big question is WHY do I use it? So what is Twitter to me? 1. Twitter is a marketplace of ideas On Twitter, ideas that resonate with people get passed around.  Ideas that don't, die a short painless death in the abyss of the 5,000 tweets / second public

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-68603155774306435522009-09-03T23:22:00.001-04:002009-09-03T23:26:31.832-04:00

Today I filled out a simple form and applied for membership in the ATDC for OtherNum.  The new ATDC has about 100 member companies now, which is staggering considering over the course of its history it graduated 120 companies total.  The new model for the ATDC is really amazing.  There are several great articles about it from Stephen Fleming, Lance Weatherby on their own blogs, Peachbuzz and the

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-91902064062453146692009-08-15T22:07:00.003-04:002009-08-15T22:20:25.797-04:00

I was just reading the 37signals "Signal vs. Noise" blog and they had a link to a great post by Kent Beck about the concept of the Minimum Viable Product. The idea is really interesting because it addresses the one limited resource that you can't really do anything about: time.I was thinking about that a lot when I first created the prototype of OtherNum. I was working on it all by myself and I

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-79584056082986723282009-08-15T21:35:00.003-04:002009-08-15T21:41:31.447-04:00

I think he lost me at "Stay with me for a second here..."God i got. I'm sorry you missed my call this is Harold Erin, Because the dad free army I stay with me for a second. You're receiving this call, because at some point you about a red NIST attended one of our seminar as requested, the free book miracle. Monique from Brother John. I haven't seen your myself or maybe even see me on the rich

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-62622255721006223422009-08-14T23:02:00.003-04:002009-08-14T23:06:03.946-04:00

Image via CrunchBaseIt's so much more fun blogging from my Powerbook. Why? Because I have Zemanta installed on it. Zemanta is a great plugin that helps you include links to relevant images, tags and online articles about the subjects you're blogging about. I always find creative images to add to posts when I use this machine!Also, the best thing I've ever added to my blog was the Disqus system

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-18277618420021122232009-08-14T22:53:00.002-04:002009-08-14T22:58:14.168-04:00

I find it useful to keep my resume up-to-date after a milestone or achievement. If I don't update it immediately, I forget some of the salient details. In the past I left my resume alone for months, years and then when I needed it I had to go back in and fill in details but my memory was fuzzy.So, having just spoken at the CableLabs conference in Keystone this week, I just updated my resume

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-83480829785005995472009-08-13T11:49:00.004-04:002009-08-14T23:01:33.828-04:00

Image via WikipediaAfter reading Paul Stamatiou's review I already knew what to expect of GoGo Inflight WiFi on Delta with regards to security. I wasn't prepared to do anything that required me to authenticate without SSL due to the complete lack of wireless security. I had thought I would at least check on the news, check my email (SSL of course) and a few other things.What stopped me? $12.99

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-43971170351454744852009-08-12T22:46:00.006-04:002009-08-14T22:59:34.616-04:00

Image via WikipediaI'm finally home from CableLabs. It's really good to be home with the wife and kids. The conference was absolutely fantastic but it's always good to be home.The highlight of Day 2 for me was the panel discussion on OSS/BSS problems face by MSOs. I can't discuss it too much publicly (it was a closed forum) but I can say that it was great to hear my own sentiments on many

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-79129917506309306052009-08-11T00:58:00.003-04:002009-08-14T23:00:22.429-04:00

Image via WikipediaSo today was my first day ever attending the CableLabs Summer Conference. There were over 1000 attendees there from the US, France, Holland, Japan and many other places. There were people from all kinds of MSOs, hardware and software vendors and even engineers from Apple and Google.Today I attended a session on IP TV where a panel of executives from Cox, Rogers, Comcast, Time

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-35842140438979982022009-07-15T00:27:00.004-04:002009-07-15T00:42:40.158-04:00

Image by Toni Travels via FlickrAndy Sweet and I headed over to the King building in Dunwoody because his brother Rob works there. We were walking in through the wrong door when we crossed the path of Duncan. Duncan is an 81 year old, former US Marine. He saw Andy's Georgia Tech polo shirt and his face lit up! He pulled us aside and told us that the thing that came to mind when he thought about

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-31725727024236331502009-07-12T00:17:00.004-04:002009-07-12T00:23:39.562-04:00

I should be a asleep but allow me to brain dump here:I'm excited about Pub Sub Hubbub. I wish it was just PubSubHub but it doesn't matter. It's a cool technology!So here's what I'm thinking for possible uses so far:decouple systems that are using synchronous messages like web services and don't need toapp to app push notifications without sockets left open constantlyit's RSS without the POLLING

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-85430321532525991582009-07-01T00:16:00.003-04:002009-07-01T01:20:08.887-04:00

So I'm working on a simple app to get my feet wet with Google App Engine and it seems fairly powerful and straightforward... but I keep running into odd problems.Part of the problem is I have very little Python experience. It could be that the errors I'm seeing would make sense to me if I had more Python Chops.Anyway, here's a synopsis of the issue:So I have this webapp Handler defined:class

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-2251980588030106422009-06-30T21:46:00.004-04:002009-06-30T21:57:44.037-04:00

I've been playing a little Mafia Wars lately on Facebook and on the iPod. Zynga classifies both versions as "Social Games" but I don't think the iPod version is social at all.First of all, it's not integrated with the Facebook version at all. You can't easily recruit new members to your mob except to send emails to people in the address book on your iPod. It's not integrated with Twitter

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-78510565946646100332009-06-15T11:32:00.003-04:002009-06-15T12:44:38.151-04:00

Saw this link via @courtenaybird and had too much to say about it to fit in a tweet...http://gawker.com/5288759/flickr-founder-calls-nuked-user-a-dickButterfield doesn't work for Yahoo of Flickr anymore. This isn't a "PR" or "messaging" problem for those companies. It's a "PR" problem for him personally if at all...Also, I don't really think he's too far off base with his assessment. This user

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-13426110136003959512009-05-25T11:59:00.003-04:002009-05-25T12:13:20.226-04:00

Image via CrunchBaseI launched the very first version of a new project today! I'm very excited about it even though it's in the very early stages!The project is called OtherNum and the idea came from a tweet by @amdev about having to provide a phone number as part of an email campaign. His problem: his startup didn't have a "phone" and he didn't want to provide his cell.So I created OtherNum

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-86897320548230008012009-04-28T22:54:00.010-04:002009-05-13T11:10:26.459-04:00

Image via WikipediaMuch has been made of the changing entertainment habits of people in the age of the internet, but most of it focused on the effect of internet distribution on the people who create the content and the people who program it. I've been thinking a lot lately of the effect it's going to have on the companies that provide the last leg of the journey to the consumer: The Cable

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-37777772331829516642009-04-18T23:32:00.003-04:002009-04-18T23:58:49.784-04:00

Image of Miles TilmannI went to college with some great people and I enjoyed the experience immensely. I'm proud of the groups I belonged to and the friends I made - especially two friends who are really doing well while doing what they love to do!Miles Tilmann and Rich Grillotti have been working together on PixelJam Games now for a number of years and their games just keep getting better and

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-90908811591975915222009-04-11T23:45:00.002-04:002009-04-12T00:01:16.492-04:00

Image via WikipediaI have had this idea on my basecamp todo list that I called "Everybody Writes / Nobody Reads" for a while now. The idea is that there are 100,000+ new blogs started every day (I don't know the exact number) with people writing about anything and everything. The internet makes it possible for anyone to publish their opinions / research with little or no cost to themselves.

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-35784620220714008802009-04-11T21:56:00.006-04:002009-04-11T22:32:32.989-04:00

Wow. What a long week that was! I took my wife, my three kids and my Mom to Orlando for a week to go to Walt Disney World.We stayed at the Nickelodeon Hotel which is just down the street. It's very family / kid oriented and it was a lot of fun. They have 2 GIANT pools and huge slides. The kids had a blast.Ironically, the TV in our room didn't work very well. I say Ironically because it's

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-60261275754486641532009-02-28T14:19:00.005-05:002009-02-28T15:55:43.525-05:00

Image via WikipediaTyrannyWe are moving from a world with large, centralized, tyrannical power brokers that decide who can access what content, what they can do with it and even what you can say about it. They erect barriers to prevent competition and assert control over the world. They use things like digital rights management and lobbying congress to extend copyrights another 50

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-527379068157891222009-02-16T00:45:00.004-05:002009-02-16T00:51:40.578-05:00

WOW! This is a really neat tool. I even went back and edited some old posts so I could spice them up with it. Good work Zemanta!

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-19833904548644342832009-02-15T23:54:00.007-05:002009-02-16T01:01:26.098-05:00

This is a followup to a previous post I did in haste after a local "incident" where there was some confusion between a local entrepreneur and a reporter. You can also read Lance Weatherby's take on this at Force of Good.I think one shift in journalism that's been going on for a while ( and may have accelerated due to tools like Twitter ) is that people's working relationships exist

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-62747527244767262992009-02-15T23:34:00.000-05:002009-02-16T00:43:06.180-05:00

Image via CrunchBaseFirst, a disclosure: I work for a cable company. I write this from the perspective of someone inside the industry, concerned about its future.As a consumer, I look at the bills I have to pay and I naturally start asking myself what I really need and what I can live without. Some things are essential services - Electricity, Water, Natural Gas... those things are candidates

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-53735005428257258092009-02-13T10:45:00.004-05:002009-02-13T11:05:16.280-05:00

Recent events in a small corner of the Atlanta technology community have recently shone a light, for me anyway, on the evolution of the relationships between journalists and their subjects. Whereas a reporter in the past might only have occasion to talk to the CEO of a local company or a GP at a VC firm when they had a story to write, they now can converse frequently (and quite publicly) via

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-89488172353470679612009-02-06T07:13:00.007-05:002009-02-16T00:44:48.712-05:00

Image via CrunchBaseI've read some people's ideas about latitude. Fred Wilson had a good post on the subject but I think I have a different take on it.I installed it on my blackberry immediately because I was curious. It seemed ok. Then I started thinking about it. I'm not sure I necessarily want everyone to know where I am. I tend to get paranoid. Yes, you can specify different levels of

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-22733471904849278662009-01-31T22:36:00.002-05:002009-01-31T22:38:54.144-05:00

I've integrated Disqus into my blog now because it seems like an interesting platform. I'm hoping it's really useful.

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-74051960963305990992009-01-24T00:27:00.001-05:002009-01-24T00:29:19.779-05:00

I've started a separate blog for the new venture I'm starting up with my friend Richard Achor.Check it out!

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-53756213142293268492009-01-23T13:30:00.000-05:002009-01-23T13:30:01.035-05:00

When I was at GT in the EMSMOT program we formed teams and worked on building a venture around emerging technology and then going through the whole process of writing the business plan, the elevator pitch, doing the market research and financial projections... the works! It was a phenomenal experience! (My team won the business plan competition too...) Since then I've been back in the land of

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-34613916021846279872009-01-18T21:45:00.000-05:002009-01-18T21:46:32.405-05:00

I moved this blog to http://blog.gleep.org/ so up my street cred and make it more portable once thousands of people have bookmarked me... come on! start bookmarking! :P

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-2238257565667217912009-01-17T21:09:00.003-05:002009-01-17T21:20:42.171-05:00

Watching my Aluminum G4 PowerBook age has not been easy. It's about 4.5 years old now and it looks pretty rough. My 15 month old yanked on the power cord and ruined two AC adapters. My 2.5yr old pulled a number of keys off the keyboard. The battery failed completely about a year ago and I haven't felt like replacing it. Again.Still, it's a workhorse of a machine. I've got it on a desk now

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-17774218557696135662009-01-17T15:43:00.005-05:002009-01-17T16:11:55.534-05:00

SURVIVALYou can get through your daily routine by focusing on just what has to be done to get through the day or the week. It's a survival tactic. It's also a long term disaster.I think I've been doing this for some time now. It's been a very busy couple of years for us. We've had 2 new babies born and we've moved further into the suburbs. Those are all very stressful things so that was my

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-1917604805283073372009-01-16T21:59:00.002-05:002009-01-16T22:01:11.861-05:00

Lessons Learned: Sharding for startupsThis is a really interesting concept to me. We used this time of partition when I was at FedEx only we had a Tuxedo routing layer that stored the shard routing in memory and persisted it in a Sybase database.I can think of innumerable uses for this in my current work too but I hadn't really given it much thought until recently.

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-77400155941997940032009-01-16T21:47:00.001-05:002009-01-16T21:48:43.238-05:00

I have added a Skribit Widget over there on the right so if at any time someone wants to suggest a topic for me, please do!

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-22270819986600147692009-01-16T21:29:00.003-05:002009-01-16T21:37:36.139-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about the next evolution in the Music Business. The transfomation of the industry by the availability of inexpensive recording / mixing equipment and the means to self-publish has completely transormed the audio side of the business in a very short period of time. Now virtually anyone with a computer can record their band (multitrack even), apply serious effects, mix

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-11026424907317603662009-01-16T14:05:00.007-05:002009-01-16T21:29:06.139-05:00

I'm really hoping that with the enormous sums of money that the stimulus package pours into the economy that sufficient capital finds its way to companies that are really ready to work on building the Next America, not just paving over the old one.I hope that places like the plant Obama visited today really benefit from the spending and that renewable energy and other new relatively new

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4874426346754498518.post-86667338480811454562009-01-16T13:09:00.000-05:002009-01-16T13:10:34.483-05:00

I know I set up this account 14 months ago so it's a shame I'm just getting around to posting it. I guess up until now I had nothing to say!

Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16819368718533906896noreply@blogger.com