From the Mind of a Young Entrepreneur

San Antonio Mission

jon@beebeography.com — 2008-02-17T08:03:27-08:00

My parents have spent the past few years restoring and maintaining the gardens at the San Antonio Mission on the Fort Hunter Liggett military base. So, I end up visiting it from time to time whenever I go home. Of course, every time I visit, I take my camera with me. When perusing the Library of Congress Digital Collection I found some photos of the mission from 1890 – 1910, a few of which were taken from the same location as my photos. I blended the two together to give a then-and-now feel. Here is the result.

Unit Circle Visualization

jon@beebeography.com — 2008-01-29T12:19:02-08:00

I love math. I love it so much that I do things like this with it when I have nothing better to do.

If you follow the link to the delicious:suite blog you can read this post visualizing a unit circle and all the trigonometric data points that you can calculate from it.

Really, who hasn’t had the urge to play with a unit circle every once and a while?

Sunsets and Sunrises

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-12-30T08:19:45-08:00

I posted a new gallery today. This will be an ever-evolving collection of my best photographs taken during sunset and sunrise.

Enjoy!

ActionScript 3 XML

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-11-13T08:24:39-08:00

If any of you have tried to convert over XML handling code from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3 you have no doubt butted-heads with the new E4X standard that Adobe introduced. While, in the end, this method is much better for my needs it was (and still can be) a pain to learn. If you want to avoid the headaches just visit these two links:

They are the Advil of E4X. These articles will save you sooooo much time when trying to figure out how to target a namespace, or when figuring out the difference between a .. and a . and a :: as in this statement myXhtmlDocument..xhtml::a.(@class=="red");

Rich Ferguson

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-09-30T07:28:39-07:00

I want to share with everyone some fun videos of my friend and x-roomate Rich Ferguson. He is a magician and mentalist that does some of the most amazing street magic you will ever see. Check out these videos to see for yourself.

To see more check out Rich’s videos on YouTube.

Talent

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-09-22T06:55:27-07:00

talent |ˈtalənt|
noun
1 natural aptitude or skill : he possesses more talent than any other player | she displayed a talent for garden design.
• people possessing such aptitude or skill : I signed all the talent in Rome | Simon is a talent to watch.

I just read a great article about the nature of talent from http://freelanceswitch.com/. I like his thoughts on the difference between inborn abilities (talent) and the skills we learn as we progress through life. As a photographer & computer programmer I can attest that neither skill is easy. Both require a great deal of work to maintain and grow. However they are both also based upon a foundation of talent that I was born with.

Steve’s argument is right on:

“Those who’ve never truly indulged a creative urge (much less made it their course of study and their profession) tend to assume that what comes out of a designer (or musician, author, filmmaker) comes out naturally, and with ease. I don’t agree.”

I like to think of creativity as a talent. The skills that are nurtured and grown through life allowing creativity to be expressed in a certain medium stem from hard work and a persistent endeavor to grow.

Sierra Nevada Trip

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-07-07T20:31:50-07:00

I recently took a few days off to go play in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. You can see the first of the photos from the trip in my new gallery.

Update: You can see where these photos were taken thanks to Google Maps:

View Larger Map

Oahu Hawai’i, 2007

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-09-12T09:41:06-07:00

I recently returned from a trip to Oahu, Hawai’i. I am currently sifting through a little over 600 photos from the trip, so as a teaser check out the new gallery for a preview of my trip.

Yojimbo Rating System

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-07-13T15:29:18-07:00

If you use a Macintosh, and value organizational bliss, then you need to get Yojimbo. It will make you happy. Then, you need to get these AppleScripts that I wrote to rate your stuff in Yojimbo.

I wanted to rate my Yojimbo items just like I do my iTunes tracks. So, I wrote the following AppleScript to do the trick. It works by setting a special tag for the selected items. I personally like the bullet character (option–8), but you can edit the scripts to use any character you choose. If an item already has a rating tag then it is removed and the new tag is added.

Here is the script for giving the selected Yojimbo items a 5–star rating:

doScript()
on doScript()
    tell application "Yojimbo"
        set theSelection to selection
    end tell
if (theSelection is missing value) then return
if ((count of theSelection) > 0) then
        my removeYojimboTags(theSelection, {"•", "••", "•••", "••••", "••••"})
        my addYojimboTags(theSelection, {"•••••"})
    end if
end doScript
on addYojimboTags(theItems, theTags)
    tell application "Yojimbo"
        repeat with thisItem in theItems
            add tags theTags to thisItem
        end repeat
    end tell
end addYojimboTags
on removeYojimboTags(theItems, theTags)
    tell application "Yojimbo"
        repeat with thisItem in theItems
            remove tags theTags from thisItem
        end repeat
    end tell
end removeYojimboTags

Open this Script in Script Editor by clicking here. This link only works with OS 10.3 or later.

After downloading the scripts, put them in your ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Yojimbo/ folder. Then, when using Yojimbo, you should see these scripts appear in your script menu similar to this screen shot. All you have to do is select the items you want to rate, run the appropriate script, and from that point forward you can find items by their star rating. For easy access to your top-rated items make a smart-tag collection that searches by the 5-star tag.

Download the AppleScripts here.

delicious:suite has launched

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-05-27T19:12:43-07:00

It’s official! I have launched my first Web 2.0 product this month — the delicious:designer. For those not familiar with this project let me explain its birth and purpose.

The beginning of the delicious:designer

It all started about 6 years back when my business partners and I wrote down the core mission of our print business — BIG Images. This included a dedication to technological advancement. As the seed that spawned many projects, it ultimately lead to the development of the delicious:suite technology.

For the past 3 years we have been actively exploring solutions for bringing BIG Images’ product and service to the household level. We started with simple AppleScripts to automate away repetitive tasks. This lead to more advanced programs written for both the Mac OS X and the web. Soon it became a proof–of–concept for a creative designer that put everyone with an internet connection in the driver’s seat of our print production engine — this was dubbed Banner Works. As interest in our little project grew and we earned the attention of everyone from employees at Google to a V.P. of Apple, we realized that the delicious:suite, as we had now dubbed it, had a future far beyond our original design. Thus a suite of applications, destined to bring the creative power of computing to every corner of the internet, was born. The first of which is the delicious:designer.

The delicious purpose

Why would a print company be interested in developing creative design software? BIG Images’ printing niche is rather unknown outside of a few specific industries, and is virtually unheard of at the household level. Most people simply do not know that you can print a 20’ x 100’ banner in a single piece. For that matter, most people do not know that you can print a simple 3’ x 5’ banner as fast and inexpensively as BIG Images’ can. This is because these production methods have mostly been marketed to businesses, not the general public. But that is not the biggest stumbling block. Most people do not have the proper tools to create the computer files necessary to print that large, nor do they even know which to use. This is where the delicious:suite enters the picture — freely accessible software that gives anyone the power to create anything from a Christmas card to a Happy Birthday banner. BIG Images is leading the way in bringing large format printing to the household level. The delicious:designer is our first product towards this end.

The future

The delicious:designer is just the beginning. We are diligently working towards a future that cannot yet be revealed, as we are in the process of seeking venture capital, and patenting our secrets. What I can reveal is this: this software is yours and we are crafting it for you. Currently our publicly-announced projects include a specialized version of the designer for Second Life, and a unique viewer that allows anyone to freely share their designs on any web page. At this early stage we welcome your ideas and insights, your critiques and your creative cravings.

Learning from the mistakes of others…

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-04-28T15:43:14-07:00

Learning from the mistakes of others is a very beautiful thing. It’s an opportunity to gain some insight into life for free. Recently I had an opportunity to compare two companies, both releasing software (as I soon will be). One did it right, the other did not.

The mistake we can all learn from.

Cha Ching — a new money management application for Mac OS X from Midnight Apps — is touting itself as a “Quicken killer.” It’s a great idea, and their first attempt is valiant. The interface is beautiful, which they continually remind you of in their marketing and help files. The niche it attempts to fill is currently full of vastly underwhelming software, so their opportunity is vast. But they made a few really big mistakes that have created a slew of bad press across the internet.

Some of their mistakes:

Offering lifetime upgrades for early adopters and then rescinding the offer after customers bought in early.
Releasing what is obviously a version 0.6 or 0.7 beta as 1.0 software (essentially their 1.0 release was their 0.5 release, just made prettier).
Touting features such as “completely redesigned Budgets” that simply did not work. They were completely broken in the 1.0 release.
Releasing the software with no documentation or help files. None.

To sum it up: Midnight Apps released a product that fell far short of the company’s promises.

A company that did it right.

Coda — a new web development application for Mac OS X from Panic — is everything that Macintosh software should be and a whole lot more. This is the most impressive 1.0 software release I have seen. The documentation & support is great. It works as advertised. In fact, it continues to amaze the user long after getting settled in it. The interface is clean and well thought out — and here is the real differentiator between Coda and Cha Ching — the functionality of the application is as perfect as the interface is beautiful. It works. No, I said that wrong. It doesn’t just work. Its like having a sidekick that is with you at all times. It works with you and for you. The drudgery of web development is offloaded to the application, leaving developers to enjoy the fun that web development should be.

Coda utilizes the Subetha Engine from SubEthaEdit. Perhaps it is those same three green men hard at work in this application that make it feel like you have to do far less work to get so much more done.

The most interesting thing about both of these software endeavors is they are entering into niches that are already filled by plenty of alternatives. Each company recognized that there are major deficiencies in their competition, and they set out to one-up them. The difference is, while both promised to one-up the competition, only one delivered. The other is simply not ready.

Favorite Quote

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-04-21T07:51:40-07:00

And another, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“The heights by great men reached and kept,
were not obtained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
were toiling upward in the night.”

SubEthaEdit

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-04-20T22:39:27-07:00

SubEthaEdit — these three little men tirelessly aid in the writing process.

As a young entrepreneur operating a print shop in its fourth year, and starting up a software/technology company, I value good software more than the average person. When I find a quality piece of software that solves a problem with flare and panache, I get giddy. The bottom line is, in my chosen field of capitalist combat, good software saves time and money. At the same time it allows my company and I to produce a higher quality product and service.

SubEthaEdit is one of those pieces of software. You see those three little green men? They come with the software. Every time you start it up they jump to your aid. Its awesome — SubEthaEdit is so good at what it does it feels like these little green men are actually working at your side, cheering you on.

I could tout the brilliance of the application, the lean interface, the perfect balance of customizable elements vs assumed elements, but there have already been plenty of those posts — just ask Google. Just know that when you enjoy our first product, to be released on May 25th, it is written almost entirely using SubEthaEdit.

Centiare — the online directory

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-02-11T23:29:02-08:00

If any of you have ever tried editing a Wikipedia article and found your efforts thwarted by someone who deleted all your hard work, you should be grateful for Centiare.com — the wiki that allows you to post articles written in the advocate point of view (APOV), and that allows you to own your own directory listing. I am in the process of building the pages for BIG Images — you can check it out here.

Centiare.com offers some incredible SEO tools that really help to develop rich directory pages that cross-link services, interests, and related content very easily. Not only that, but the people who operate Centriare are very helpful, offering tips and tricks to help optimally format the pages. They are so good that I got a personal phone call from one of them when they did not respond to an email immediately, letting me know that they were not ignoring me and would get to it as soon as they had a chance. That is customer service that you do not often get, and Centiare is free.

If you are trying to increase your business’s online exposure I highly recommend you check it out.

BIG Images’ Centiare directory listing made it to the front page as image of the week.

Motorola v551 & iSync

jon@beebeography.com — 2007-01-21T14:23:45-08:00

My new Motorola v551 cell phone. It failed to Sync with OS X so I applied the hack below to iSync to fix the problem.

I just got a new phone — a Motorola v551 — and was rather excited because it is supposed to sync with Mac OS X iCal & Address Book. It failed. I could drag pictures to it and from it, but could not sync data with iSync. iSync gave me an error that the phone, model v555, was not compatible.

Evidently my phone is reporting to my Mac that it is a v555, not a v551. I found this article where someone fixed iSync to work with there misbehaving Motorola v551 cell phone. Taking a que from them I edited my iSync application and changed all references to v551 to v555 and it worked!

There is some risk that this hack will break something, so do not do this if you are feint of heart. So, if you have the same problem, and want to try this out, you can do it yourself by following the instructions below, or just download a fixed version of iSync 2.3 for Mac OS X 10.4.8 here.

To fix iSync so that it can work with a Motorola v551 when it thinks the phone is a v555 try this:
1) Duplicate iSync so you have a backup.
2) Control-Click the original iSync app and click on "Show Package Contents"
3) Go to this file:
/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns
/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns
/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist
4) Find the row for the v551
5) Change every reference to "v551" to "v555", accept for the icon name, leave the icon name alone.

Launch iSync and it should now correctly connect to your Motorola v551 cell phone.

Moleskine, 2007

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-12-30T10:14:15-08:00

I love Moleskine notebooks. I was first introduced the them by my business partner, Ken Pettit, a few years back and have used them ever since. This Christmas I received a new Moleskine from my mother (they can be SO thoughtful, can’t they?) and I turned it into my official 2007 goal tracker.

A side note — I don’t make New Years Resolutions — I make New Years Goals. Goals are about the desired result or the aspiration, and resolutions are about the decision or the plan. To illustrate this look at the following two lists of synonyms from the thesaurus:

goal: objective, aim, end, target, design, intention, intent, plan, purpose; (holy) grail; ambition, aspiration, wish, dream, brass ring, desire, hope

resolution: intention, resolve, decision, intent, aim, plan; commitment, pledge, promise.

An old teacher of mine, Cyndi Laurin, who teaches on Quality, Leadership, and Organizational Greatness, sums it up quite well:

“Consider creating goals as launching pads to something far greater.”

Goals carry more power and are more flexible whereas resolutions are to stiff and formal. Goals help lead you to the objective and beyond it whereas resolutions offer nothing beyond their stated plan.

Ok, back to the main point — how am I going to use the Moleskine to track my goals? I first needed to organize it into categories, so I referenced this article by Dave Terry and added tabs to the Moleskine.

I used Dave Terry’s idea for adding tabs to the Moleskine. The top three sections of the Moleskine notebook have 11 pages each, the bottom three sections of the Moleskine have 21 pages each.

Then I needed a calendar in a couple of the sections so I customized this compact calendar from David Seah. The first one, pictured on the left below, has been turned into a two-column layout with the months on the outside and the days on the inside. The second calendar on the right has been more heavily modified with an extra column added to each day.

I customized David Seah’s compact calender for 2007 for use in two different sections of my 2007 Moleskine.

Each section has enough room for an index page and introduction notes. Certain tabs offer a single line per day for the sole purpose of tracking data — like miles ran. Others offer a few lines per day for more detailed note taking.

And for the finishing touch Dickies makes these wonderful pants with a Moleskine pocket — I take this thing with me everywhere.

Dickies with a built in Moleskine pocket.

Crazy-Cool iPod Christmas Present

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-12-20T14:37:18-08:00

This is awesome — we gave all the employees of BIG Images iPods wrapped in origami boxes that were folded from $100 bills — and each iPod Shuffle was wrapped in two of these boxes!

A step-by-step collage of a Second Generation iPod Shuffle getting wrapped in two $100 bill origami boxes made by Jon Beebe. This was the BIG Images Christmas present for all our employees. Click here to view a larger image of the wrapped iPod.

If you like it go digg it here.

Amazing images of Pearl Harbor

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-12-09T07:25:58-08:00

Hopefully everyone knew that the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack just passed. This devastating attack has been recreated in many movies — if you want to see some very good photos taken in the heat of the attack go to this site. It has images like this one below of Pearl Harbor from above just after the attack. Some of them are quite intense.

Pearl Harbor from above after the attack on December 7th, 1941

iPhoto Keyword Tool

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-11-13T01:27:48-08:00

I noticed that a few of you were searching for my iPhoto Keyword Tool application. It has been moved, along with Remote iTunes, to delicious:suite. This is the home base for all of the bits of technology that my business partners & I have developed over time. It all started as an attempt to learn AppleScript & a couple other computer languages to help BIG Images embrace an automated & computerized workflow. As we developed our technologies further they took on a life of their own and we are collecting them all at delicious:suite.

Rapidly Weave a Web Page with Flare and Panache

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-12-03T23:17:19-08:00

I am going to let everyone in on one of the Mac's little secrets. It, and software like it, is why all entrepreneurs looking to bootstrap a business NEED Macintosh computers. That little secret is RapidWeaver. Well, it is not a secret in the strictest sense of the word, but most of the Mac people I meet do not know about it so it seems secretive.

RapidWeaver 3.5 Application Icon

Since there are reviews all over the internet about this piece of software I will not reinvent the wheel — I just want everyone to understand why this is a valuable application for a small business.

Simply put — it is THE way to simply and elegantly create a web page for your company with the flare and panache that only Mac software can deliver. Its extensive use of web standards means that Google will index it quite easily.

To quote VersionTracker “RapidWeaver is a next-generation web design application to help you easily create professional looking web sites in minutes. No knowledge of complex code is required, RapidWeaver will take care of all that for you. RapidWeaver now produces 100% XHTML & CSS based websites.”

While certainly not perfect — it has some very annoying bugs and performance issues — it is easy and fast. When you want results and do not want to spend alot of money or time then seriously consider buying RapidWeaver.

And for those times when you have questions the support from the community is unparalleled…I must hand it to the guys at RealMac Software for setting up the tools that encourage such open sharing. Any question can be posted to the bulletin board and are often answered within minutes.

To see what can be done check out BIG Images web site and visit the official RapidWeaver Site Showcase.

Official Poker, Inc. releases Poker Chip and Card Handling 4-DVD Gift Box Set

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-11-15T23:13:26-08:00

One of the best things about being an entrepreneur in San Luis Obispo, Ca. is that your not alone…there are quite a few other young men and women who are all making their own thing happen right here in my home town. Here in one example: Rich Ferugson, founder of Official Poker, Inc., has released an incredible set of DVD's demonstrating his skill and passing the knowledge on to us lay non-magic folk. Check it out, and go digg it.

Finally, there is a DVD Series that teaches Everyday people Everything with Poker Chips and Playing Cards. Why am I "DIGG'n" this so much?! This box set appeals to just about everyone I need to buy a holiday gift for! Poker, magic, card games, etc are very popular and this DVD Set works for all ages and skill levels. An incredible deal too! A must.

read more | digg story

A Better Keyboard — Logitech® Cordless Desktop®

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-11-13T23:11:19-08:00

My roommate got one of these so he could sit on the couch and use his computer hooked up to his HDTV. Naturally I could not resist and had to play with it (it is odd when things like a keyboard start to seem like a toy). And I must say…this is the most amazing keyboard I have used for a Macintosh. The keyboard is super slim and very light to the touch, and the mouse is very accurate (it jumps around far less than the Apple Optical mice).

Logitech Cordless Keyboard

What most impressed me was the buttons on the far left & right of the keyboard. With the control panel that is installed with this keyboard you can set any one of the buttons to run an AppleScript or Automator workflow that has been saved as an application. Oh the possibilities! This is a major benefit to a company such as BIG Images where a single button on the keyboard can be programmed to send files to print, or initiate a pre-flight check, or update the FileMaker database based on the currently selected Finder items. As far as a tool to increase efficiency this keyboard is awesome. With a single click of the keyboard you can hide all open applications and open only those needed for a specific workflow. That side of me that seeks to be ever–more organized is seething in anticipation. Now I just have to buy one for myself.

Sleep — an attempt to reduce it

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-11-11T23:06:17-08:00

Sleep. If only we could do without!

Sleep is not my friend. As a budding young entrepreneur I have a desire to go about life with less sleep and more waking moments in life. I always feel like those moments in bed are moments that could be used for a more noble purpose. I had such a strong desire to sleep less that I set out to do something about it.

As any good Industrial Technologist knows—for something to be controllable it must be measurable. So I wrote down the time I went to sleep and time I woke up every morning for a year. Measuring it gave me a good benchmark to improve upon.

Graph of sleep time for one year

To summarize — I slept an average of 7.40 hours each day and was awake for 16.6 hours of each day. This is a total of 112 days asleep and 253 days awake. Or, to put it another way, I slept away 31% of the year, and was awake for 69% of the year.

After the above graphed year I tried a few experiments with my day to see if I could reduce the time I spent sleeping. For example, I once tried strictly limiting my sleep to 5 hours each night … it lasted about 2 weeks and I gave myself a fever. Then I tried pulling an all–nighter once a week for as many weeks as I could manage. That did not last long either. Most notably because the 2nd day after the all–nighter was always so unproductive that the extra time I was awake did not produce a net increase in my productivity.

I guess I should feel privileged though. I slept 7.40 hours per day on average. That is 1.20 hours less than the average person my age in 1910.

Today, average young adults report sleeping about seven to seven and one-half hours each night. Compare this to sleep patterns in 1910, before the electric lightbulb, the average person slept nine hours each night. This means that today's population sleeps one to two hours less than people did early in the century (Webb and Agnew, 1975). — Stanley Coren, Ph.D. Psychiatric Times. 1998

So to make a long story short — I have yet to find a good way to sleep less on a consistent basis. Any ideas?

A Day in the Life of a Young Entrepreneur …

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-11-03T23:02:37-08:00

5:30 am

Wake up — normally with the assistance of an alarm.
Read in my Bible.
Eat — a small snack to start the day.
Read news — I am an avid RSS news reader.
Clean & dress.
Head off to work — approx 10 minute commute.

7:00 am

Make Coffee — this one is important.
Check email & servers for incoming work.
Respond to emails (make quotes, answer questions, update the to-do list, etc).
Continue reading news.

8:15 am

I am joined by my business partners and we normally talk for about 30 minutes about the past, present, and future. This is a fun time of day — we often muse over crazy ideas that we have drempt up and outline how we are changing the world for the better.

9:00 am

The real work starts — this could include any of the following:

Web Page updates
Sales & Marketing
Computer Programming
Print Production
Research & Development
Finance management
Networking & contact building
Project management
Answering phone calls
Meetings

1:00 pm

Lunch — often eaten at work where I read more news & emails.

1:30–2:00 pm

Continue with the work from the morning. I often shift focus here, devoting the rest of the day to projects other than what I worked on in the morning.

4:00–5:00 pm

At some point during the day we have to have our moment of comedy & story-telling. Normally this is during the end of the day as things wind down.

6:00-8:00 pm

Head home between 6 & 8 to make dinner.
Read something...more news, a novel (mostly sci-fi or philosophical orientated content)...watch BattleStar Galactica or FireFly...something like this.

9:00 pm

Write. This could be in my journal, a blog, a story, or another project...I just like writing and know that I need practice so I do it in when I can.

10:00 pm –12:00 am

I go to bed.

Life without T.V.

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-10-28T22:57:02-07:00

I do not own a T.V.—never have. In all my time in front of a T.V. I have never felt like a better person, and occasionally I have felt worse. I think it boils down to the lack of quality content & large percentage of bad advertising that give me such an aversion to it. What T.V. attempts to provide us—news, entertainment, and education—can all be had elsewhere.

News
Owning my own business naturally taxes my time and spending an hour watching news on T.V. to get 10 minutes of filtered data is ludicrous. So for the past few years I have been slowly building a workflow of alternative sources & tools for news. Here is what I use on a daily basis:

NewsFire—the ultimate RSS experience for the Mac.
del.icio.us—online bookmarking
Cocoalicious—a Mac App to access del.icio.us
Safari—web browsing with email integration

NewsFire allows me to receive news from all my favorite sites that support RSS—articles are delivered to me just like email. Any articles of interest are bookmarked to my del.icio.us account via Cocoalicious, which has integrated support in NewsFire. Lastly I use Safari to view the full news articles because it has full integration with Apple's Mail—I can email the entire contents of the web page if I want to share it with anyone.

Entertainment
Thanks to the world of legally downloadable movies, T.V. shows, and music there is no need to tune into the networks—just buy it off the iTunes store, or search for it on YouTube.com.

Education
This is the most fascinating (and scary) change that the internet has brought to life. I am old enough to remember a childhood without a computer, and schooling without the internet—I used to have to go to the library to look up information! But as a college freshman I got a Bondi-blue iMac and my life changed forever. My regularly used sources when searching are:

Google—a blanket search tool
AskJeeves—an alternative view of what's on the web
Wikipedia—taken with a grain of salt and some good cross-referencing
News archives (NewsFire & del.icio.us)—interesting things I have saved

But even more valuable than the ease of searching is the ease of networking—the internet has enabled rapid communications so I can ask a specific question on some appropriate message board and get an answer from half way across the globe in a matter of seconds. These chance encounters can lead to great opportunities for information-sharing.

Symptoms vs Causes

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-10-08T22:53:38-07:00

The Race for California's Governor

I read an article today that typifies the political arguments fed to us during political campaigns. Would-be-governor Phil Angelides said about our education system “I believe we have to make this our No. 1 priority. … I'm going to set a goal to … reduce our dropout rate by 25% …” Statements like this make me cringe and I hope my fellow Californian's can see how this goal will accomplish nothing. It would be like coming down with a cold (you know: the cough, sniffles, stuffy head) and setting a goal of "…curing myself by getting rid of the sniffles!" Sure, your nose might feel better, but the cough & congestion are still ever-present, and the bug that got you sick in the first place is still inside you. You have accomplished nothing towards making yourself not sick.

Our current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying “Right now the state is paying a lot of attention to how much money we spend, but not enough on accountability. We must be accountable …” This makes more sense. At least it will help us track down the root cause(s) of our failing education system. I appreciate that, while this is not what most Californians would want to hear, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not making ineffective goals.

So what does this have to do with being an entrepreneur? One of the lessons I have learned along the way is that I do not have the time or money to chase down symptoms. If I encounter a problem I must quickly and accurately identify the root cause of the symptom(s). Any effort before the root cause is identified will waste resources. Success is dependent on identifying the root cause and making its solution the goal. Curing the symptom(s) is the benefit of, or the natural outcome of, successfully solving the root problem. Like the cold we discussed earlier—when you get rid of the bug causing the cold then the symptoms will also disappear.

Source of quotes:
“Issues in the Governor's Race: Education.” The Tribune, San Luis Obispo. 28 October, 2006. A6.

Digital Content: to pirate or buy or…?

jon@beebeography.com — 2006-10-06T23:38:28-07:00

Until very recently there were two ways a company like BIG Images could get the software it needed. It could pirate the software. It could buy the software.

Pirating digital media like software is getting easier and easier with every passing day—the world of the torrent & gnuttela networks has seen to that.

Buying digital media like software is getting harder and harder—all the different serial numbers, registration systems, and rights-management systems have seen to that.

BIG Images buys all the software it uses. Managing the serial numbers & registration systems is becoming more and more of a logistical burden. On my laptop alone I have about 30 applications that require serial-numbers, many of which are part of site licenses, so I must manage the serial numbers per application, per machine.

There must be something better…

And there is! My third option for obtaining digital content: Open Source.
Why is this a big deal for a small business like BIG Images? Besides the obvious like complete customizability, scaleability, and rapid development and advancement (often faster than their commercial counterparts), there are NO serial numbers and rights-management systems—a complete lack of piracy control! Distribution & maintenance on a business-wide system is easier, faster, and less expensive.