iSawToday – The Coolest Thing I Saw Today on the Web

My new company GroupHigh is holding it’s first webinar focused on building blog lists in several weeks.  Earlier today i was sending out email invitations in which I wanted to include a very quick and easy way for people to tweet about my event.  The result is  a great url string that looks like the following:

http://twitter.com/home?status=I’m%20attending%20the%20Building%20A%20Killer%20List%20of%20Blogs%20for%20Outreach%20Webinar http://bit.ly/k3dMNv

This string pre-populates the click-er’s status box with my message, and a link to signup for the webinar.

Here’s how I framed this in my email:

Let People Know… (you will be able to customize your message before sending)
Tweet that you’re attending this event!

Cheers!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Over at Recipebridge.com we’ve had webservices available to the public since our early days but I’ll be the first one to admit I’ve largely neglected them.  Sure I threw up the token documentation and the ‘request an api key’ form but we’re not real good about getting users signed up.  Fast forward to last summer(2010)  we had a large client approach us wanting to use our webservices in their new startup.  Jumping at the chance to earn revenue from something other than advertising I signed the deal and charged the client a lump-sum for access on an annual basis.

I’ve often lamented that pricing webservices seems troublesome, after all how valuable is your data?

Some example pricing plans for API’s and webservices that I’ve found:

• WHOIS API
• yolink api pricing
• A great wiki on api pricing strategy

Monitoring and api management platforms.

• 3scale
• apigee

I’ve used both Apigee and 3scale.  3scale is much more powerful in that they handle all the authentication and metering of your api for you.  IE Create a plan and allow the user to run x hits per day/month/etc…

Apigee is closer to a google analytics for your api/giving you basis monitoring and stats.

In all, I’m about to open up API access to everyone who requests it at recipebridge.com and a pricing model similar to the WHOIS api (link above) fits quite nicely for now.

Popularity: 19% [?]

While some of you might think my lack of writing is due to mourning the demise of LOST, it’s not.  It’s been a busy summer transitioning to a new role as the COO of an online sports game company and landing some big, new deals for RecipeBridge.

Aside from that mtn. biking, lots of tennis, and sailing on Lake Michigan consume most of my time.  One of my good friends sent me a link that was just too awesome not to write about so here I am.

Snow.com has created not only one of the most beautiful homepages I’ve seen recently but one that displays a video detailing how social, mobile, and web technologies can be combined to do something just flat-out awesome.

1. Identify a niche that has existing, natural community and apply technologies to compliment (not replace) typical mountain communication.  Have you ever been on the mountain and wondered where everyone else was?

2. Engage those a degree away from the primary community, lodgers, parents, and children. Businesses including mine, have so much going on we can barely engage one community let alone reach secondary networks.  This video shows how well-thought-out technology can make this a snap.  This video shows not only the skiers and boarders engaged but friends back in the lodge can locate and communicate with friends.  Parents can monitor their children on a dedicated children’s version of the site and on and on.

Check it out:

http://www.snow.com/epicmix/home.aspx

Popularity: 7% [?]

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo

Popularity: 20% [?]

Being an entrepreneur, one of the most challenging/time-consuming/energy-usurping tasks is finding a suitable name/domain for a company.   While the process starts out being fun frustration quickly sets in as you realize every domain name under the sun is taken.

A good friend of mine named Dan has a solution of this. He looks up relevant words in another language, hoping to find a pronounceable word with meaning and available domain.

This morning I turned to a similar approach for a new company.  Rather than run tens of queries at Google Translate I found this awesomely handy tool which looks up words in multiple languages: http://www.nicetranslator.com/ .

Combine that with the fastest domain lookup tool I’ve ever used at https://domize.com/ and finding foreign company names becomes much-less painful…. although I’m still searching.

How do you find company names and domains?

Popularity: 14% [?]

Here’s a great interview with another Midwest startup success. Andrew Mason gives a great interview to Silicon Prairie News about the success and funding of GroupOn.com

Popularity: 13% [?]

Surrounded by entrepreneurs most days of the week I’m never short on ideas for the ‘next great thing’.  The harder part is finding and vetting an idea that can make money and be successfully scaled.  I thought the following post on vetting web startup ideas from Ash was a great read.  This is something that I do more or less everyday but never in such an organized fashion.  He’s got several great diagrams that describe the decision making process of going from idea to product and customer base.

Thanks for the great post Ash!

Popularity: 13% [?]

The holiday season is full of opportunities to network and meet/greet people so I decided to throw together a list of my top 5 small talk tactics:

1. Show up early – I did this by accident several weeks ago and had nothing to do but talk to the event organizers and help them rearrange the tables.  In return these two ladies made introductions for me throughout the evening.
2. Use an exciting opening phrase – Rather than the traditional “How are you?” greeting, incorporate a phrase such as “What are you working on that’s new and exciting?”  or “What’s new and exciting?”  I’ve used this at tradeshows for several years now and it’s a great way of getting other people to open up.
3. Give descriptive answers – Rather than answer the inevitable question “What do you do?” with “work for a software company”.   Try giving a more specific answer such as “I  sell and market data mining software to insurance companies.” Even though my example is tech-y I’ve given given my bogey the option of connecting on several fronts: software, sales & marketing,  and insurance.
4. Prepare – Formulate interesting answers to common questions that you know you will be asked. (apply #3)
5. Recommend & Refer – As you begin to meet people throughout the evening make recommendations and introductions between your new acquaintances.

What’s your favorite small talk tactic?

Popularity: 25% [?]

*Shameless Plug Warning*

2 weeks ago I was asked to speak to 30 small business owners as part of an alumni event at the local college. Although everyone thought they were coming to hear about social media I felt some reality would be more beneficial than the typical SM hype so often pitched these days. I reviewed each attendees online presence and decided to give them a GTD approach for things they could do to bolster their online presence.   Here is my presentation:

If you’re interested in learning more or would like to have me present to your group?  I always require a minimum fore-knowledge of the attendees so that I can adjust the GTD to-do’s appropriately for the group.

Feel free to email me via linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/theimer

Testimonial:

“We invited Andy Theimer to speak at our Business to Business Networking Night on the topic of social media marketing, and we could not have been more pleased with his presentation.  Andy presented to a group of about 30 alumni on the topic, “Getting Things Done with Social Media,” and it was clear from his presentation that he had done research into the attendees, their websites and their businesses and incorporated an attentiveness to their specific situations into his presentation.  His presentation was energetic, clear and well-organized, and not only were attendees taking notes during the presentation, but they also asked lots of questions afterwards and kept Andy answering questions well past his presentation, and even the end time of the event! Thank you for recommending him to us.”

Popularity: 12% [?]

If you’ve ever struggled to think of a clever way to meet that professional woman sitting next to you at Starbucks I may have stumbled upon a solution for you, offer her free WIFI.

A new application from Connectify allows anyone with a Windows 7 computer to share their internet connection with the people around them.  That’s right if you’re connected to a network you can hook your friends (and potentially new friends) up with no cost internet.

Here’s 4 quick steps to make it happen:

• Be running Windows 7, if you don’t have it already, go get it -it’s awesome!
• Have the Connectify application installed
• Be connected to Starbuck’s wireless network.
• Let the pretty girl two tables back know that she can connect to the Internet with the following details:
• Connect to network:<your name>
• Password: <you phone number>

Let me know how it works!

Popularity: 10% [?]