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.

Innovation is the process of trying something new and if it works or survives, you keep it, otherwise throw it away or tweak it until it grows and changes things for the better. Andy Singleton, from Assembla.com, writes about the Theory of Innovation requiring exploration, observation and optimization. People and companies who don’t challenge themselves to innovate themselves as well as provide a culture of team innovation are likely to fall by the wayside and be beaten by competition. Whether you are looking for a new job or whether you’re looking to grow sustainable advantage against your business’ competition, innovation mindsets are the key to success.

Re-invent, pivot, tweak, learn and optimize are alternative actions that I think of for innovating myself and my businesses. Out with the status quo and in with better ways, tools, methods and thinking.

The successive waves of innovation over the last century has taken us from electricity to telecommunications to microchips all the way into the ubiquitous nature of the Internet and has changed the way humans live and continue to advance into the future.

Science fiction has also inspired researchers, engineers and scientists alike to take visions of the future and attempt to innovate these visions into reality. From Star Trek’s communication devices to cell phone technology, human kind undoubtedly has an innate backbone and curiosity to innovate.

I wrote this post because I often come across a common theme in various sectors of our technology driven world — resistance or ignorance to innovation.

Working as a hive mind, an organization or business of any shape or form, must work to better themselves, achieve their shared vision and hopefully do good in the process for the world.

Whether driven by shareholder value demands or passionate social good there are many reasons why innovation isn’t in every nook and cranny of society.

Just as one example, cloud computing as an innovation has helped to reduce costs, reduce waste, increase profits, increase scalability and make better use of our energy resources. At the same time, ignorance and resistance to change have led to common beliefs that cloud computing is inherently insecure. With the right strategy and execution cloud computing can be highly secure, it just depends on your situation and needs.

I’m a firm believer that each and every person in this world should work towards betterment of themselves and so should the organizations where they work. Corporate values and social goals alongside innovation is paramount to everyone’s future. Eliminating disease, war, hunger along with conserving resources and capital waste are all very good reasons for leaders of society to innovate.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people innovating throughout the government, business sectors and even non-profits, but having an understanding of why you may not be innovating may be the first step in continuing to advance the progression of innovation — whether incremental or game changing.

Here are some reasons that you should look for in your organization or team to understand why you may not be innovating!

Lack of internal support or buy in

• Resistance to change
• Management discourages innovation in it’s culture
• Lack of focus, vision and direction from leaders
• Lack of association of innovation and differentiation with growth
• Leaders defensive to new ideas that challenge status quo

No common definition of innovation and how to measure success

• Lack of understanding of the types of innovation
• No key metrics and tracking for baseline and targets

Lack of innovation processes

• No idea management
• No new ideas, new problems or learning opportunities
• No process to bring idea from vision to growth
• No research and development
• Lack of effective communication between team on innovation process
• Failure to execute projects effectively
• Lack of measurement and tracking on projects
• Lack of user and stakeholder analysis
• No monitoring or communication on innovations

Lack of Customer Focus

• Lack of listening and talking to customers
• Lack of understanding of market and customer development interaction

Lack of long term goals

• A focus on risk mitigation and risk adversity
• Short term focus with no time spent on long term
• Focusing on unrealistic financial returns or short term gain

Lack of resources

• Lack of adequate funding
• Lack of prioritization of resources

Lack of teamwork

• Lack of challenging your team
• Lack of effective communication between team on new ideas
• Lack of knowledge management
• No perceived incentive to be innovative

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.

My web projects across businesses, non-profits & government are currently using both .NET and PHP in various ways. I personally love open source technology especially PHP, MySQL, Apache and I contribute to open source projects like GeoMashup, a plugin for WordPress that among other projects. We also use a bit of Java when there is a simple way to integrate it through say web services and if we have expertise to work with it.

What I’ve learned from other experts and from my own experience over the years that technology is a commodity and the experts that are fluent in different technologies, may feel that they are better at PHP than Perl, or better at PHP then Java etc. So it’s sort of biased to say that one technology is better. Facebook, Yahoo and other big internet businesses are using PHP and are doing it well. PHP is not as ‘fast’ as C/C++, Java, .NET or any compiled language but unless you’re a web developer or software architect, you don’t need compiled languages for your website. You need compiled code for back end stuff a lot of the times and Perl can be compiled.

If you can still continue reading this article and aren’t bored out of your mind (to those reader’s that are not techies), you’ll realize that having these argument’s may be pointless.

When I build web application or website prototypes, I almost immediately go to PHP because of good frameworks or platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Symfony and others because I have an infinite amount of functionality and customization options as well as pretty cheap hosting solutions already where PHP/MySQL cost me a lot less than running say Microsoft SQL Server. I also use my Mac Book Pro most of the time I’m in my lab where I build and deploy many sites from my local XAMPP stack that gives me a web development stack that includes Apache, PHP, MySQL etc. When I need to work on .NET I fire up a virtual machine, Remote Desktop into a Windows box or use Mono – the open source .NET Runtime for Linux. But I can even be disconnected from the web and go to the coffee shop and continue developing.

Focusing on specific needs and the ‘right tool for the job’ are probably more realistic so I think developers and technology folks shouldn’t waste time with the “versus” debate. What matters most is what your folks are good at, documentation, having a pool of resources in case you need to grow (PHP has a lot!), whether or not you plan to integrate something that uses a certain technology, licensing concerns (Windows is not free), operating or hosting costs, scalability, and possibly acquisition concerns if you’re planning to sell your business.

Also I should note that if you have an existing investment then there a lot of CTOs and decision makers in organizations do not want to consider adding PHP into the mix even for certain things, like intranet, collaboration, content management due to their reliance on Microsoft. I just advise those folks to stick with their vendor-lock if they don’t understand open source’s benefits since they already have invested too much say in a pure-Microsoft environment including Exchange, Sharepoint etc.

I look forward to seeing what other great applications, frameworks, solutions and products come out but I can bet that these debates will always be alive. New technology from HTML5, CSS3 and more what will continue to push (new and old) developer’s into learning new technology both to build their resume and continue to scratch their learning itch!

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.

Personally I find that a certain amount of ego is complementary to your professional reputation. One of the first answers in the interview suggests that if your ego has been boosted by success in the past, if one is not careful, that success creates the illusion that it was them alone that achieved that success. And the more publicly visible they are, the more they believe the headlines that attribute their success to just them.

I firmly believe that if you work hard on something and achieved success, your reputation will be increased naturally because word will get around eventually. So keeping modest and being humble of one’s success is not a bad thing at all. The author suggests that a potential combination of ambition, ideas, and healthy ego drives one’s success. So as with many things in life, finding the right balance is something one may just have to learn by making mistakes.

Several obvious tell tale signs of breaking the barrier to becoming an egomaniac that I found interesting in the article:

• Seeing someone you work with as a rival and think about how to beat them.
• Taking disagreement with your ideas personally.
• Compulsively following a competitors lead so they’re not doing anything you’re not.
• Criticizing competitor’s strategies and prematurely discard them as irrelevant.
• Disagreeing with someone’s point just because they’re the one who said it.
• Feeling worse about where you are when you see what others achieve.
• Seeking acceptance: desiring respect and recognition interferes with success.

So now you’re probably wondering what might be considered a “healthy ego”? The following interview excerpt might enlighten you:

Genuine confidence; confidence that doesn’t have to exert itself to prove it’s confidence. Healthy ego keeps us from thinking too highly or too little of ourselves and reminds us how far we have come while at the same time helping us see how far short we are of what we can be. But to understand what healthy ego is, you have to understand the relationship between ego and humility. For most people, tradition holds that the opposite of excessive ego is humility, when in fact having too little ego is just as dangerous and unproductive as having too much.

There are also those people who say that extremely confident and ambitious people can also show signs of being an egomaniac. I can’t argue with this idea either, but if you can balance the image of the ego with your humility and remembering how you achieved success in your life (if you started with humble beginnings), then you might just live a more harmonious life.

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.

A lot of it is common sense but the gist is as follows:

1. Missing deadlines.
2. Charging too little.
3. Lack of preliminary research.
4. Choosing the wrong clients.
5. Getting too personal.
6. Letting off steam.
7. Not proposing a follow-up idea.
8. Not having multiple income streams.
9. Allowing yourself to slack.
10. Failing to be yourself.

If you’re interested in what you’ve read so far, I recommend you check out the original blog post.

In addition to this post, there are several other good articles at FreeLanceSwitch.com:

• The Dos And Don’ts Of Selling To Clients
  

  Do you have loads of clients fighting with each other for the chance to hire you? If so, you can skip this article. If not, you likely spend some time selling yourself to potential clients. So read on, because we’re going to talk about the dos and don’ts of selling.

• Balancing Employment and Freelance Work
  

  Not all of us have the guts to freelance full-time right away and you can count this intrepid journalist as one of the cowards.

  As self-employment can be slow to begin, some of us do prefer the security of a steady pay-cheque while making the transition, so here are some of the ways I’ve found to make it work while working for The Man.

• 10 Essential Habits for Freelance Workers
  

  The key, I’ve found, is to develop certain habits that will keep you not only disciplined but successful. Simple habits, to be sure, but ones that can go a long way towards taking you from a broke freelancer to a happy and productive one.

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!

My Favorite TabletPC Software

• ArtRage – It’s free (limited features), and it’s amazing. Kids, adults alike have loved this application that I’ve had on my tablet they love the ability to be able to paint on a canvas just like an artist would do. You can create some AMAZING art with an organic quality I’ve just never seen on a PC. Try installing it now and use the “Load Tracing Paper” feature and show off your masterpiece to everyone
• Microsoft OneNote – This is the most used tool on my TabletPC. I use it for meeting recordings and notetaking. I use it for brainstorming ideas, designing business requirements and workflows for my ventures. I love the ability to OCR anything (screen clippings from other apps or websites, and even what I doodle or jot down). The software allows you to organize yourself in hierarchical groups of tabs so you can organize your notes the way you want. Honestly I’m not trying to make a sales pitch here, but just try it out, whether you’re a student, a doctor, or engineer you’ll appreciate OneNote’s power.
• Alias SketchBook Pro (now owned by Autodesk)- It’s not free, but it is different from ArtRage. The tool is more for penciling, concept drawings, sketches, illustrations, fine art, drawings, annotation, education. Check out what people are doing with Sketchbook Pro.
• Mindjet MindManager Pro – MindManager software, a mind mapping tool that’s also optimized for the TabletPC, inspires people and businesses to align individuals and teams, engage and excites employees, accelerate business processes and win new business faster.

TabletPC Software Directories

• Microsoft TabletPC Powertoys – All of Microsoft’s Powertoys made just to take advantage of the TabletPC
• TabletPC Post
• TabletPC2.com Software Directory

TabletPC Enthusiast Related Blogs, News, and Forum Sites

• Scott’s List of Great Tools for your TabletPC
• TabletPC Buzz
• Student TabletPC Blog and News Site – An excellent blog for students to keep up to date on the TabletPC world
• TabletPc2.com –
  The Place for Tablet PC and UMPC Comparisons, News, Reviews and Information

TabletPC Developer Resources

• TabletDev.com – Essential information for Tablet PC developers and users.
• TabletUML.com – A UML tool for Tablet PCs (that I highly recommend if you’re a software engineer or architect)
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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!

The hype around the iPhone was not over done, it really is all that. Everyone that’s seen me using the phone is immediately attracted to it, asking a bunch of questions and about the AT&T Plans. Apple predicts 10 million iPhones to be sold in 2008, and they have the right idea especially if they release 2GB Nano-style models so that people can afford a better price point.

Besides being the all-in-one mobile gadget that people have dreamed about in the mobile industry for years, the idea of a truly powerful and useful internet experience is a strategy that Apple and Steve Jobs have been promoting since the hype began. With the touch screen innovation built in surfing the web even on non-mobile designed web sites is fast, easy and intuitive. Within days of launch of the iPhone coders have been releasing stripped down versions of existing services (chat, widgets, rss readers, games, etc.) all using the Safari web browser. Natively compiled applications like Google Maps and Youtube that come packaged with the iPhone are great and people have already gotten around Apple’s lack of a native development SDK by hacking into the file system, writing “Hello World!” apps, tweaking tools to control home screen, ring tones, and more.

Apple’s stock has been doing well but I think over the next year and this coming holiday season you should keep an eye on their metrics.

I’ve been talking to BlackBerry lovers who aren’t keen on the business benefits of the iPhone. But I think in time they will come to see the benefits, especially when more of Google’s services are optimized for the iPhone, native or via Safari. One of my friends said “well I like the BlackBerry scroll wheel, and not having to look at the keyboard to know what I’m doing when I’m driving.” I said “oh ok, good luck with driving and multi tasking on your phone!”.

Email, web, iTunes/music, documents, PDFs, Text Messages, Photo Gallery, Camera, Calendar, World clock, youtube, Google Maps, Weather updates, calculators… you wonder what this list is? This is a list of features I remembered just looking at the pretty, sleek device’s home screen. To add to the iPhone usefulness, check out this clip from Conan O’Brien :

I know this phone won’t be in everyone’s budget just yet, but before you knock the device itself, go to the Apple Store or an AT&T store and play with it. It will change the way you think about communication and mobile phones in general.

Stay Tuned for my essential tools, gadgets, tweaks, hacks and favorite links for the iPhone.

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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.

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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.

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