Archive for August, 2008
I am silly!
August 8th, 2008
Well well… what do you know… Writing the story on the "I am rich" application made me think about something funny.
One bet, 10$ down the drain for a new domain name and a quick and dirty web page hack later, I present you the "I am rich" beer coasters .
You know you always wanted to show your wealth in bars to pick up girls. Now you can! I only need to sell one in order to generate a profit (unlike most startups).
This is a joke serious test experiment to see where people will go. You can really order them and I will really ship them. Enjoy! 
Posted in humour, ideas | Comments (0)
I am dumb
August 8th, 2008
Today, while trying to catch up with my RSS feeds, I noticed many posts about the removal of the "I am rich" application. It’s really sad as I already had a draft written up for this wonderful application. But do not fear as I managed to edit it and keep it newsworthy (or at least rant-worthy).
My first reaction to this application was: Oh god… how stupid. My second reaction was rather: Oh god… Why didn’t I think of this before?!
The application was removed from the Apple store after 8 idiots persons downloaded the application (one by mistake? ). That’s close to 8000$ in pure profit. I’d say, that’s even more profit than many startups will ever make in their entire life. The publicity just started to kick in. That guy could’ve easily made 100 sales. 100 sales means $100,000 of free money from rich err.. mentally challenged people who have nothing else to do with their hard earned money. I say free money because although there was some initial investment let’s not fool ourselves: there was probably less than 3 to 4 hours of work involved, and I’m being generous… Most of it was probably put on the "ruby" image - if not taken directly from Google.
I get rather upset that I don’t have those type of ideas that are so dumb that people fall for it. Just like the million pixel page or the pet rock, these ideas require so little time and yet are financially rewarding. I only have ideas which require gazillions of dollars and a team of 50 developpers.
Since many great ideas work well in other domains, is anyone willing to buy a $1000 ruby picture from me? You’ll look really cool and people will know you’re dumb err.. I mean rich…
Posted in Rant, humour, ideas | Comments (2)
UNYK.com launches new features
August 5th, 2008
UNYK which was launched in 2005 is a smart address book that centralizes all your other address books in a few clicks, and updates itself automatically as soon as one of your contacts changes their information. UNYK is accessible through multiple platforms (web, toolbar, Outlook, and soon on any mobile phone).
The public profile can contain all the information included in the user’s UNYK profile (education, professional experience, hobbies…), except for contact information, which is always reserved to authorized contacts. Each user is given a unique URL in the format: http://www.unyk.com/id/firstname-lastname, which is easy to communicate to others.
Also, when a person accesses a user’s public profile, either through search results or through a signature on a blog, they can send a connection request to that user, to be able to make contact with them.
This is a great new feature for people who want to reconnect with old friends, or who want to be visible for potential employers or business partners. “On Google, 30% of searches are to find people. We want our users to be able to use their UNYK profile as their identity online,” says Sebastien Brault, UNYK.com’s CEO and founder. “They can share as much information as they want to be visible to other people. This way, they control their own visibility, and their own online identity. And they are able to make sure that the information visible about them is 100% accurate and up-to-date!”
Posted in Startups | Comments (0)
How to kill your brand in less than 24h
August 5th, 2008
We all read about the Cuil screw up. One reason I decided to wait to talk about it is that everyone was bashing them and jumping on the pile wasn’t interesting nor insightful. I did take some time however to step back and think about all this.
The big question is why on Earth was Cuil labeled as a Google killer? I don’t know but here’s what went wrong. We all know about the David & Goliath story. In my version of this story, Goliath is Cuil and David is, well, the user. Where the story went wrong, is instead of having a fearsome, scary Goliath (Cuil), David (us) is faced with a 2 years old toddler. Sure, everyone in Goliath’s village said how big and brave he would eventually become. So Goliath’s ego grew immensely and he went on his quest and met with David.
Here are some mistake that you must not reproduce in your product.
First mistake : don’t let your ego blind you. In "David & Goliath" terms: what you want to do is train until rumors spread outside of your village that you are so good that you can beat anyone. Do not label yourself or let anyone else label you as a warrior when you are not one. In business language, let your product do the talking. In geek terms, let your coding do the talking. This applies to all aspects of life. If you are the best, people will find you. Bragging rarely works in life. Does Tiger Woods brag about how good he is or does Bill Gates brags about his bank account? No. Staying low is cool.
Second mistake : don’t use a name that is not pronounceable or that sounds like a male body part in French. This could be excused as domains are getting harder to find. Or perhaps this is a marketing scheme well implemented by Cuil. Indeed, instead of the famed Google slap, Cuil will be holding you by the balls. I guess this could prevent black hat SEO from happening after all… English is not my native tongue but even some native English speakers are not too sure how to say Cuil. If you’re not sure how to write down the URL, you’ve got major problems.
Third mistake : have a scalable, user friendly interface. Cuil has none. A simple search for the word "test" returned millions of results but only 11 results on the first page. One thing I particularly hate is to scroll lots of pages so I like to have a lot of information on the first page. Cuil forces me to click next many times. Another user interface issue is the "home logo" on the top RIGHT coder. I think this is the first time that I have seen a logo on the top right corner. Very annoying and confusing. It’s ok to make it simple, but please make it correct/logical at least.
Forth mistake : be bold, but don’t be bold, italic and underline at the same time. I’m curious why journalists and even many tech bloggers claimed that Cuil was a Google killer. It takes some guts to write this down without losing all your credibility. Even a non-tech journalist could have quickly concluded that Cuil is obviously not par with Google. Not even Yahoo. Not even MSN search. Now when your product is not as good as Microsoft’s product, you’ve got a big problem (that’s almost an insult actually). Why did people even spread this information? I don’t know. The problem here is that users will not return on Cuil’s website for many months as they know the product doesn’t work well. Had it really been a Google killer then things would’ve been different and the fire would’ve spread by itself. But this is not the case. I, myself, will probably not return for a few months even if I tend to give the runner a second chance. But most won’t give this extra chance. It’s just too late…
Cuil is dead. Long live Google.
I don’t think anyone will be able to compete with Google just now. So what should you do if you are in the search industry? The obvious choice is to partner with them. One thing I can think right away is to outsource the crawling of web sites. Since the Google index is not updated in real time, if you can do something for a few cents cheaper in another country then you might have a case.
I’m not a Google fanboy, I believe that Google will eventually collapse on itself just like other search engines did in the past. It’s life. Webcrawler, Hotbot, Inktomi, Altavista were all good search engines until they were left behind by users. I’m not saying the fight is hopeless but that if you claim to be a Google killer, then how come no one is using your product?
So there you have it. How not to do marketing.
Posted in Google, Marketing, business, humour | Comments (0)
Business culture and productivity
August 4th, 2008
Excellent post by fellow blogger and entrepreneur Jean Fahmy. How to innovate when you’re big? Will Google collapse on its own? A must read!
Posted in Culture, business | Comments (0)
