My friends over at BitRock have put together an interesting site that makes it easy to get your favorite open source applications installed in minutes. I have to say I've tried unsuccessfully to install about half the software they've got packaged up and am looking forward to having an easy way to try these apps out.
I caught Keith's post today on his blogs third anniversary and it made me realize that last October was my 3rd year anniversary. I actually had to go back and look to be sure it was 3 years because it didn't seem possible that it's been that long. It's wild that I blogged for an entire year before HelpSpot was even launched.
Here's hoping the new three are as good as the first three!
What's the modern day chamber of commerce? I've almost joined my local chamber a dozen times, but there's just nothing there for me. I want to be part of the local business community, but they simply don't provide services I find valuable. They're not designed for a web based business. They're not designed for a company that's never sold a product in it's own area code (that's right, never one sale in 845). Bank financing, no thanks. Pitches from the local paper and discounts on ads .... uh no.
I suppose the various shareware associations are along the right lines, but I've been a member of those before and don't find them to be that great either. I think there's an opportunity in there somewhere, but I can't put my finger on it.
Interesting post by 37sigs about why they don't want to sell installable software. Pretty much it's standard saas reasoning. Obviously I don't think they need to sell installable software to be successful.
One thing I strongly disagree with them on though is their last point. The ability to offer instant updates is always touted by saas providers, but there is never any discussion of the significant down side of this. Namely that you're throwing all your users into a new system randomly at the time of "your" choosing not the time of "their" choosing. So when you release a new update with UI changes, it's just different one day when you login. As a business this idea is not very appealing to me, especially if I have less technical users who I would prefer to train or at least brief on the impending update.
One of the keys to the success of HelpSpot is the fantastic customer base the product has. I think having great customers is really something most entrepreneurs don't consider, but they should. You have more control over your customer base than you might think. Having great customers makes your life so much easier. Great customers provide insight into how a product is used and how to make it better. Great customers become your sales force and your marketing team.
What's got me on this rant is a really nice post by long time HelpSpot customer Stephane Grenier. It's a perfect example of how great customers can help spread the word on your business. Not to mention it's just flat out cool when a customer takes this kind of time to discuss your product.
An interesting project from our friends at Freshview. If you're involved with HTML emails in any way you'll want to keep an eye on this project.
In a follow up from yesterday's Calendar post, Mike has now added a free iPhone / iPod Touch wallpaper option. So if you have one of these devices and want some really cool free wallpaper check it out.
Mike Rohde has created a beautiful Coffee Calendar. If you're into that type of thing I suggest you check it out. I just purchased one.
I second Charlie's thoughts on this. In addition, every day I use a million year old business technology called a fax machine. It's totally insane and archaic, yet here I am faxing PO's back and forth. While emails day of being cool may be over there's no way it's going away anytime soon.
I love when technologists drink the cool-aid, it really makes for funny blogging.
In this post about Mahalo by Andrew Baron he has one of the funniest lines I've read in a long time. You should go read it in context, but the line is:
"Mahalo is fundamentally flawed because its purpose is to provide useful, valuable information about a specific subject matter, but ultimately so that users who are looking for that information will be lead astray by clicking on less relevant advertising.
Mahalo is unlike Google which uses advertising to help pay for the technology of generating great search returns"
Huh? So Mahalo is bad because the money generated goes to the founders, but Google is good because the money generated goes into search technology. Can he actually believe such a ludicrous statement? Last time I checked the Google founders flew around in a 767 they own for fun and company masseuses are becoming millionaires. So I guess not every dollar is going back into search result technology eh.