Disqus - Latest Comments for evbart

Re: Scalability

evbart — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:27:46 -0000

I know this is a bit over-used, but I think what you were saying about "only comprehensive services providers can compete our business. But users today seem to be more willing to visit many places on the web." Is really addressed by some of the Long Tail concepts.

Listing services (listible, digg, emily chang's ehub, etc) help match consumers with the sites and services that they want to use. All these tiny little services target more and more niche markets, that might not make them interesting services to be purchased by Yahoo and integrated with a massive portal page, but as long as some "acceptable critical mass" of consumers can find the site or service, then they might be more viable.

As to the quote about "that’s a feature not a company" I see this as becoming a very fine line. Some companies are pulling it off, while other companies are truely trying to commercialize one feature that won't stand on its on. I guess what makes are breaks these companies is the value that can be generated by this one feature, and the potential for their target market to adopt this one feature.

Re: Scalability

evbart — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:27:46 -0000

Re: Hot new features: Search your accounts, Notes, European QIF, and more…

evbart — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:51:31 -0000

This is a cool new feature. Starting to head in the right direction. Wesabe is a bit step, but the analysis tools are a long ways off. Its great to be able to pull from my bank account, and the intelligent tagging is much appreciated, but if it doesn't tell me anything about my spending, its not going to help much.

Aka, things like the spending and earning summaries, should at least total up what you spent and earned that month. This shouldnt be based on tags and categories. Imagine how confused your everday user is going to be when they see their spendings are way over estimated.

Keep up the good work, and help us analyze our spending!

Re: Why I hate Evite

evbart — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:40:22 -0000

At least he disclosed his interests. If you're unconvinced by the rant, then just keep on using Evites, and now harm done.

I've personally used:

just very simple and easy to use invites
- http://www.goovite.com/

a very slick app that helps you choose meeting times
- http://www.meetwithapproval.com/

more of a social network
- http://www.skobee.com/

other options or "alternatives" include:
- http://renkoo.com/login.php
- http://www.doodle.ch/

And in the name of shameless self promotion I do some ranting and raving over at http://www.lifeinlists.com

Re: Spokeo — integrates MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and more

evbart — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:56:58 -0000

An aggregator for social networks is a great idea. Having friends in different networks scattered across multiple sites is really a pain, and being forced to use MySpace's UI is equally painful.

I wonder if facebook could benefit from pulling off of myspace. Those are the big two, and this would solve my problem.

Re: Monetizing social networks

evbart — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 11:16:15 -0000

Calling linked in a social network is a bit of a stretch. Its more like a spam network, always trying to send emails to all of your contacts, not to mention that its too technical to really catch on in the mainstream.

A social network like facebook could build in this functionality in a heartbeat and have a lot more users.

As for monetizing traffic on social networking sites there was a good article a few weeks back on how certain sites (i think it was piczo or xuqa) engaged their users with the advertising more and where able to convert this into much higher revenued. I'll post it if I find it.

Re: Le Web: Like a web conference, without the web

evbart — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:29:28 -0000

Seems kinda harsh for Arlington to bitch when le web was down at TC50 too. Guess even cali can't be perfect!

Re: Le Web: Like a web conference, without the web

evbart — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:29:29 -0000

Seems kinda harsh for Arlington to bitch when le web was down at TC50 too. Guess even cali can't be perfect!

Re: Let Your Blog Posts Marinate (4 Steps to Forming Great Ideas)

evbart — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:59:16 -0000

I'd really like to hear more about the workflow aspect of this.

I'm having trouble finding the right blog editor that lets me focus more on the content and less ont he formatting shortcomings.

One thing I did like, when I used ecto (ecto.kung-foo.tv/ ), you could store drafts and come back to them later. It would be nice to be able to group them in folders, or create a more defined workflow of how a post makes its way to being published.

Anyway, great post!

My quick posts are definitely junk, the ones that wait are definitely better, and I think I would get more good posts out if I had a better workflow involving this "marinate" step.

Re: Let Your Blog Posts Marinate (4 Steps to Forming Great Ideas)

evbart — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 10:58:16 -0000

I've been "letting them marinate" for a couple of months now and the results are getting better. I've been generally using the blog editor, ecto, and its ability to store drafts of articles before you actually publish them to your blog.

Re: A Nordic trade-off

evbart — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:17:12 -0000

Interesting post. I spent most of last summer touring Europe working with early stage private equity investors (mostly angel investors), and I wish I'd had more exposure to the entrepreneurs.

Given the segmented nature of the markets and the different language barriers, I think entrepreneurs have a great opportunity to get proof of concept before deciding to bootstrap the rest of the way or to seek private/institutional money.

Whats the EU VC market like? Is it a common strategy to find tech working in one country, and then expand it to the others?

Re: Social media more popular than porn on the web

evbart — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:47:24 -0000

"More popular than porn", or "at least as popular as porn" should be an industry benchmark. There would be no questions about Twitter, if that comparison was reached. haha.

Great post.

Re: Open-ness in the mobile value chain

evbart — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:27:18 -0000

I agree completely! When the iphone launched everyone talked about how Jobs was taking it to the carriers and breaking their backs. Well, in the end, all they did was shift who gets to decide how to block apps on the platform.

My buddy Justin launched the Instinctive player for the iphone and Additunes (similar to the genius playlist) long before apple did, and now both of these apps aren't allowed anymore.

Time to go look at Tmobile and Android, or my fav, blackberry.

Re: http://gary.tumblr.com/post/78889856

evbart — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:53:25 -0000

Really interesting point, and great follow-on discussion. I agree with "lish" when he says "master of the obvious", but not with the rest of his harsh comments.

It is obvious! Many times its the obvious things that we miss, and Gary has definitely reminded me of that through a couple of these videos.

At Angelsoft, we've spent years trying to build the perfect tools for investors (and even then we didn't get huge adoption at first), but people eventually saw that we were building tools for them, and that our interests were aligned with theirs. Some were suspicious, and that has been extremely frustrating for me as a business development guy, but our persistence keeps winning out. We go back to the drawing board, we call in more users to get feedback, and we get it right for our users.

The real kicker here I think it Authenticity! We are marketed to all day long from every angle, we don't like anything fake, and we're getting better at sniffing out the fakers

Re: BlackBerry Storm reviews surface

evbart — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:44:04 -0000

Wow, thats a thrashing.

The crunchgear review was worthless, but engadget and bgr did a great job and really covered all the details.

I was really pulling for the storm, and I was on the fence about the "clickable" screen, but it looks like they dropped the ball.

Guess that means I need to consider the iphone again (which I'm open to), or the bold?

Re: SugarSync Offers the Best Method Yet for Replicating Files

evbart — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:08:13 -0000

The itunes sync is critical! I wrote about it here http://lifeinlists.com/2008/03/file_syncing/

I don't really need the sync for anything but media and ITunes/Picasa/iPhoto integration would be a huge deal maker for me.

Otherwise, many of these features are part of Get Drop Box http://getdropbox.com/

Now that my Mozy (online backup service) just came up for renewal, maybe I'll try Sugarsync or GetDropBox and kill two birds with one stone?

Thanks for the interesting article.

Re: Scalability

evbart — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:27:46 -0000