I’ve been working with a good friend and colleague, Paul Singh, Founder of Dashboard.io to beta test his new analytics tracking solution for startups/founders/investors which is based on the metrics standard AARRR from Dave McClure, Founder of 500startups and the guy behind Startup Metrics for Pirates. Dashboard.io allows startups to see how they rank against other startups while investors benefit from it the same way.
I threw together this blog post and WordPress plugin based on Dashboard.io tracking integration and AARRR standard to save time on applying the code on wordpress sites and to eventually make the plugin seemlessly integrate for all stages of the conversion funnel proposed by AARRR.
So far Dashboard.io is working well for me on my sites like Music.com and is helping people understand relevant metrics and conversion goals for their websites.
If you’d like to fork this plugin or download it for now I just have it on github. I’ll publish to WordPress.org CODEX if there’s demand for it.
I welcome feedback and kudos to Paul Singh for releasing this analytics app.
Innovation is a key driving force that has enabled our modern civilization to become what it is today. Innovation has taken us from being simple wandering hunter gatherers and nomadic tribes all the way up to the social, military and economic revolutions that have propelled us to where we are today.
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There are countless articles, forums, blogs and other sites that try to either defend or blast PHP for use as a professional language for web development. There are a ton of PHP developers than ever before and there are many great options to choose from in terms of your web development technology.
A good example of these debates are like this one — which I will warn that you not read too much into as well!
Considering PHP is dominant due to it’s default installation with Apache on Linux web servers – the most dominant server distro on the web — this debate could greatly be ‘closed’ if these folks look through a magnifying glass for specific scenarios, or if they look to people that have worked on both sides of the debate — such as me.
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Have you ever been into a meeting with a presentation being shown by some techie or project lead that attempts to describe some kind of trend or probabilistic projection and been bored by the visualization? Well many sectors of the economy rely on very simple visualization tools that aren’t at the fore front of data visualization and mining techniques that are available nowadays.
In the recent past I’ve posted about Google Maps mashups with heat map technology but there are many powerful tools out there (some web based, others not) that intrinsically yield powerful trends that may not even have been discoverable with simple charts, graphs and basic visualization tools of the past era.
An article in SmashingMagazine.com has catalogued and captured screenshots of the most amazing and beautiful data visualization models out there including everything from 3d heatmapping/contouring, content clouding, to mind mapping.
One of my favorites is a 3d visual population hill/spike density map from Time Magazine:
If you are in the business of analysis of any kind, you should definitely read this article and check out the screen shots. You might find the technologies that these companies are creating useful to your endeavor.
A recent article of an interview by Guy Kawasaki on the authors of a book called “egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability)” is a great read for anyone moving up the ranks of their career and other avenues of potential success in life. 
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Having been a freeleancer myself in several realms (branding / design, IT / software architecture and engineering, business development and strategy planning, operations) I’ve learned a lot from my own experience dealing with clients of all types. I recently came upon a great Digg post that might help fellow free lancers out there to avoid certain mistakes that could hurt your livelihood and career. A lot of these tips I’ve learned through my own sweat but the writer of the original post puts it altogether so well.
These mistakes can easily be made by design firms and other outsourcing companies as well so this doesn’t just apply to potential freelancers.
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So I’ve been yapping about touch screen technologies a lot this year (Apple iPhone, Microsoft Surface, Jeff Han’s Multi-touch) and you may have enjoyed the essential tools I’ve posted for Apple’s iPhone but I thought that my fellow TabletPC friends out there could enjoy some of the tools and resources that I’ve been enjoying on my TabletPC.
Also if you’re not yet a TabletPC lover and are thinking about getting a laptop PC in the near future, I recommend you review and compare the prices / features of your choice notebooks and also the top TabletPC’s out there. I own the Lenovo Thinkpad X61 TabletPC which I believe to be the best TabletPC out there by far in comparison to the others.
Now here are your tools. Enjoy!
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Well it’s been about two weeks since I’ve gotten my Apple iPhone. I must say overall I’m in love with the phone. I say this adamantly because honestly I’ve never been able to say this about any other phone I’ve purchased before. I’ve been a Microsoft Mobile and Pocket PC user for years but with the Microsoft phones and PDAs I’ve also experienced OS issues, had to reboot. I guess I’m used to that with Windows in general!
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Being that I live in Loudoun County, Virginia, I thought it would be helpful for other home owners and investors to know that within three years a long awaited World Trade Center will be erected which implies that the Loudoun County residential and commercial real estate market will boom not to mention commerce in general.
See the Commercial Property News article from 2006 for more information.
Having started 2 startups in the last 3 years, I’ve come to benefit greatly from understanding and reading material from the venture capital realm. Even with the most brilliant of ideas to launch a new venture, no amount of planning or selling will overcome the habits that some entrepreneurs inadvertantly do in their projects. The habits in question pertain to keeping morale up in the arduous times of stress and tension that come with bootstrapping and even with seed-funded startups. The key is not to stress and ensure you can take small steps and small wins instead of looking too far ahead. For nearly everything in life it’s a good idea to consider the value of all your actions, decisions and habits and reconsider them to improve your yourself to both survive and prosper.
Enterpreneurs are faced with potentially monumental hurdles in their way such as overcoming threats from competitors and keeping the ‘bloat afloat’ when it comes to capital and operational stability. Many times startups have ended up failing within a few years due to any number of reasons. These are big risks we take as entrepreneurs, and we can’t just ignore the climate in the office or people’s morale.
An recent article on CNN Money talks about particular habit that I just recently overcame due to a suggestion from my good friend @paullyvenne. Paully hinted to me that I had an unknowing habit of saying ‘no’ in many of my responses to people’s statements, even if I was agreeing with them! I did not believe him at first, but then I noticed it.
From that point on I recognized it and did my best to avoid this habit. I suggest you read this article in case you’re worried that you have these habits. They really apply to anyone, not just for leaders or entrepreneurs.
