Steven Cox - Founder of TakeLessons. Build Something You're Proud Of

Cars I Want

I know it's not very zen-like to be materialistic, but when Forbes publishes its list of The Most Coveted Cars, I can't help but to lose all minimalistic tendencies for the day.

My Favorites include the Aston Martin DBS, the Tesla Roadster (first fast good-looking electric car), and the Bentley GTC convertible.

 

Free Book - Learn the Secrets of Apple's Marketing Strategy

Steve Chazin, a former marketing executive with Apple, has released a free (very short) downloadable e-book entitle "Marketing Apple: 5 Secrets of the Worlds Best Marketing Machine". In it, he gives a few pointers that every company or entrepreneur should remember when marketing their product.

Chazin, was a former Apple Sales and Marketing pro who worked with Steve Jobs in the re-creation and re-branding of Apple's marketing efforts. His new company, Tubes Now, aims to change the way people experience media over the Internet. On Chazin's blog, it's described as "Web 3.0".

Web 3.0 already? Can't wait for Tim O'Reilly's definition of this...

Google Maps Crash - Why it's tough to rely on API's

Today is Saturday, about 11:30 PST. I tried to do a search on Google for a new restaurant called "Currant" here in San Diego (I hear their food is good!). I kept getting a timeout error (www.google.com). Weird. So, I did a yahoo search and it came up fine.

Wanting to get more info on the new joint, I tried Yelp. Yelp's home page loaded fine, but when I searched for Currant San Diego, I noticed the page trying to load, but getting stuck on the google maps integration.

Uh oh...

We use a mashup of Google maps as well. I hopped over and did a search for piano instructors in NYC. Not good. The page took 68 seconds to load, and the map failed.

Then I tried loading http://maps.google.com. Yep. Something is wrong over at the Googleplex. The images wouldn't load at all. This is the return search I got.

As an entrepreneur, it's a constant struggle to know what to build, and what to outsource - who you should partner up with, and who you should politely take a pass on. Even the big guys like Google don't deliver 100% of the time, and smaller companies with API's you can tie into most likely fail even more frequently.

While we must partner with other companies to continue to move fast, this reminds me that while we mitigate our risk by partnering, we can also unknowingly increase risk if the partner goes down. By no means am I saying Google is unreliable. In fact, this is the first time I can remember that they have been down, and their API is free. So this is my gut nudging my brain to remember to be thoughtful in all the partnering decisions we make.

When our customers come to our site today, they won't know that "Google" (fill in name of your API provider here) is causing the failure. All they know is that our site sucked and didn't load properly.

In a perfect world, I'd like to be 100% in control of all we serve, but that's not reality. So, we're at the mercy of a third party. And that makes me much less than perfectly comfortable...

Can't Find What You Want on YouTube?

"Browsing YouTube is like panning for gold dust in a shallow river of dung"
-Maxim Magazine August, 2007

I think Maxim may be a 'bit' over the top, but it's always fun to quote them (...hey, I read just for the articles...)

Prediction for the future: YouTube has started a revolution that has finally caught on with middle America. For the first time, moms, kids, businesses, and everyone else can quickly learn to publish engaging video.

As more and more UGC (user generated content) floods YouTube, finding good, relevant video content will become more and more difficult. Sites like Blinx are focusing their efforts on becoming the Google of video. It's a good idea.

This leaves a wide-open space for smaller, focused vertical sites to aggregate highly targeted and useful video content related around one subject matter. A vertical video site can identify the good content, tag it using long-tail wording, and make it more useful for a user who is looking for deep content.

An example would be guitar videos. It's not just about "how to play Stairway to Heaven". It's about trying to learn "how to properly incorporate triads into your electric guitar solo using hammer-ons". For most people, they won't know what triads or hammer-ons are. But if you're REALLY into learning guitar, not only will you know what these long-tail terms mean, you'll be more apt to be loyal to a site that knows what they are as well.