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    Monday
    Jul262010

    Helping out the local rock stars at NWC

    The guys and gals of New Work City, an awesome coworking space in - you guessed it, New York City - is raising money to help with the renovations at their new space.  NWC provides space, support and fun for local entrepreneurs and independent-type people.

    It was started by a small group that used to work out of a small space and has now grown up to need a larger space (it's huge and is perfect for this kind of work) down off of Canal Street.  Now that they've signed the lease they are ready to make it home.  You can support these guys by pitching in a bit of moolah on Kickstarter (or using the widget below).

    If you have questions about what they do, feel free to post them here or reach out to those guys direct.

    Wednesday
    Jul212010

    Want to customize Google Apps a bit more? Add links!

    When we started looking at Google Apps for our domain there was one thing that stood out that always irked me.  There was very little space for domain wide customization.  Sure, Google is working on making it easier with a new user management tool, widgets, etc but something as simple as quick links to our other services were no where to be found.  After searching high and low, I came up with this solution and I hope it can help you out too.

    The very first link we wanted in Google Apps was one to Postini, one of Google's own services for anti-spam.  It's no where to be found in the web interface and yet people need access to it every day.  This is where a bit of hacking came into play.  I popped over to the Apps Marketplace (Google's new playground for third party developers).  I paid the $100 to publish an app and began working on my non-app-app -- I'll explain that in a bit.

    Go ahead and login to the marketplace and get over to your Vendor Profile so you can "Create a new listing".  Make sure "My product may be directly installed into Google Apps domain" is checked off.

    Choose a category (it doesn't matter which one), fill in a name, a summary and a full overview (again, these don't matter either) and put something into the "Pricing Summary" box.  I typed, "It's free because it's mine" but you can enter anything you want.

    Next it where the real process happens.  Copy the code below into the "Manifest" box:

     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
    <ApplicationManifest xmlns="http://schemas.google.com/ApplicationManifest/2009">

      <!-- Support info to show in the marketplace & control panel -->
      <Support>
        <!-- URL for application configuration, accessed from the app settings page in the control panel -->
        <Link rel="manage" href="http://www.example.com/google/admin.php?domain=${DOMAIN_NAME}" />
        <!-- URL explaining how customers get support. -->
        <Link rel="support" href="http://www.example.com/google/support.php" />
        <!-- URL that is displayed to admins during the deletion process, to specify policies such as data retention, how to claim accounts, etc. -->
        <Link rel="deletion-policy" href="http://www.example.com/google/deletion-policy.php" /> 
      </Support>
      <!-- Name and description pulled from message bundles -->
      <Name>Links - LiveMeeting</Name>
      <Description>A simple application for testing the marketplace</Description>
      <!-- Show this link in Google's universal navigation for all users -->
      <Extension id="navLink" type="link">
        <Name> ✮ Some Cool App Here</Name>
        <Url>https://www.somerandomapp.com/someotherdir/</Url>
      </Extension>
      <!-- Declare our OpenID realm so our app is white listed -->
      <Extension id="realm" type="openIdRealm">
        <Url>http://www.example.com</Url>
      </Extension>
    </ApplicationManifest>
    There are only two areas you need to be concerned about for our purposes.  The first <Name> to </Name> section is what shows up in the Google Apps admin panel.  I recommend calling it something that you'll remember later.
    The second area, <Extension id=navLink" type="link"> is where you fill out what you'd like to show up to your users in the Global Navigation bar in Google Apps.  Just fill in the values you want.
    Finally, hit "Save and Preview".  You should be taken to the "Review your listing" page.  There's no need to publish it (The big GOOG will reject it anyway) but instead click on "Add it now" on the right hand side of the page and enter your Google Apps domain.
    Follow the steps to add it to your domain, click through any approvals and make sure you you click to activate any licenses (sometimes it pops up with an error, just try again) until you see three green check marks in your admin panel.
    And then you're all set.  It takes about 15 minutes for them to show up for your users but you should see links (as you see in the screen shot at the top of this post) that your users can now click.  You can add as many as you'd like (at least I haven't hit a limit) and they always show up in alphabetical order.
    Let me know if this helps you out with your Google Apps roll outs and if you have any other cool tips or tricks to share, leave them here in the comments for others to try out.

     

    Sunday
    Jul042010

    How important is a great website while trying to raise capital?

    Not sure how many of you readers out there are subscribed to the jasonnation.com email list (Jason Calacanis' mailing list which I highly recommend you get subscribed to) but his most recent post was entitled "How to raise an angel round" and it got me thinking (uh oh).  His email talked much more about how to interact while going into the round and dealing with angels than most other posts I've seen on the topic and most of it was very interesting.  One part in particular really struck me:

    Product wins, so product speaks. Here are 10 things you can get right to impress angels.

    ...

    3. Professional design: it's really simple to hire great designers from around the globe to put together professional presentations and mock ups. If your stuff is ugly, you are not trying hard enough--and that's a tell.

    Jason was talking about needing a professionally designed website while courting angel investors.  I'm not quite sure A) I understand the thought process or B) I agree with it.  Let me explain.

    What I don't understand about this thought...

    I do get that having a professional design is both good for the brand and pleasant for people to look at, many times the design is the last piece of the puzzle.  Say you're making an awesome new VOIP service or a cool iPhone app and you've got most of it down pat but a logo and (maybe even a proper name) were not nearly as important as the underlying code.  You may be pitching an angel/group of angels to raise the money to push the product over the edge.  If having a professional design is that important to an investor, are they really getting the point of the product?

    And now for why I disagree with it...

    As I mentioned previously, it can be tough to get a design down long before you've raised money.  Sure you could use one of those services like 99designs (that he mentioned in his email) but is this a great way to spend your time/money?  I would think that most investors are looking for smarts, ideas and execution while looking to invest.  Sure you have the great idea and you may have executed but is it really smart to spend a small amount of cash on something that should surely be handled by someone that understands branding, design, SEO and so much more?  My thought would be that part of the first round of funding would push just these things forward by allowing the startup/entrepreneur to bring someone in who's truly talented at this.

    I know from talking to enough friends who have raised money or have built a product that knowing where your skills start and where they end are two of the most important things to making a product or business successful.  When you need help coding, you should probably seek out a coder.  If you're looking for legal advice, don't go it alone.  And surely when you're looking to design your site, you probably shouldn't loose sleep over not knowing the proper CSS tags or whether or not your code is fully XHTML compliant.

    Do you agree?  Do you believe that having a great looking website is that important to landing capital?  Does it depend on your product or is this sort of a blanket rule?

    P.S. - I'm very interested in this topic as the project I've been working on rides a lot more on technology and mobile apps/sites than it does on pretty web pages.

    Wednesday
    Jun232010

    The power of amazing customer service

    I don't know how many of you have moved to a new city and were in need of new physicians but my wife and I found ourselves in that spot only 7 or 8 months ago.  We moved from Philadelphia (where we had great doctors) to New York City to join the LivePerson Nation and we needed to find new family care and a good dentist.  I had heard of a site called ZocDoc, which allows you to find doctors, read reviews, choose a time and get to your appointment without ever picking up the phone or waiting on hold. I decided to hop on their site and give it a whirl.

    After only 10 minutes of searching for the right doctor/doctor's office I came across One Medical Group.  I booked my appointment, got an email and text reminder and was in and out of that visit in record time.  It was one of the most pleasant experiences at a doctor's office I had ever had.

    Fast forward a few months later and I am now facing having my wisdom teeth removed.  I went ahead and found a great dentist, Dr. Sarin, on ZocDoc again.  I booked the appointment for the following morning.  That evening Dr. Sarin called to ask me if I could push the appointment back by an hour.  I said yes and showed up for my appointment about twenty minutes early the next day.  Not only were his office assistants pleasant and helpful but he even came out and apologized for pushing the appointment back again and for me having to wait a few minutes.  I considered that excellent service.  But my pleasant medical experience didn't stop there...

    Finally I got a call in the afternoon following my appointment from Cheryl at ZocDoc.  She also apologized for me having to push my appointment back (it was no bother to me and surely not her fault) and offered me a $10 Amazon gift card for the inconvenience.  I have never in my life had such an amazing experience with both an online service and a doctor's office (which are many times notoriously slow and unfriendly). 

    After all of this rambling the point of the post was to let you know about ZocDoc and how helpful they can be.  They offer their services in NYC, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, DC for now.  If you're in one of these areas I highly recommend you try out their service.  Let me know how your experience goes.

    Friday
    Jun182010

    TrueNew for Chrome Helps You Hit Inbox Virtual Zero!

    Image courtesy of: Nerd Merit BadgesI was super excited when I heard that Dave Martorana, the creator of MultiFirefox and Mailroom for the iPhone, was launching TrueNew for Chrome.  After testing it out, I couldn't be happier with a Chrome extension that's both useful and unobtrusive.  Dave explains what it does over on the Chrome Extension page:

    Instead of showing only your unread count (blue lozenge), it also shows you the number of new emails since the last time you took any action on your mailbox (the green, right-half of the lozenge). If the unread-count lozenge has a green right half with a +NUMBER in it, that NUMBER is the number of new messages since you last took any action on your inbox.

    Now instead of worrying about unread messages and useless unread counts, you can always have an accurate count of what is NEW, which is much more helpful.
    It's pretty simple.  Go ahead and install it in Google Chrome (it works with both Gmail and Google Apps accounts) and see how much better you feel about hitting "Inbox Virtual Zero".  Let me know what you think of this snazzy little extension.