Just how 2.0 are you?

web 2.0 logos

I finally managed to get a little time to go through SEOmoz’s 2008 Web 2.0 awards list and it occurred to me that a good way to see how 2.0 you are is to tally up the number of their award-winning sites that you use regularly.

They have 174 sites listed and I use a grand total of 17 of these, so I guess that makes me not so much web 2.0 but more web 0.2.

In my defence, I will roll out the usual line about being so busy that I don’t have the time to keep up any more.

Once you have counted up, check below to see how you did.

0-30: Really, why did you even bother trying.
31-60: Nope, you still have the stench of 1.0 about you.
61-90: Not bad, you can hold your head up high.
91-120: Yep, it’s official, you can now add 2.0 after your name.
121-150: Crikey, don’t you have a life?
151+: You bloody cheat! Go back and count again properly.

Seriously though, what did surprise me a little bit is the lack of 2.0 features in this awards list. Don’t get me wrong, I love SEOmoz, but if you are going to put together a list of the best 2.0 sites why not make the actual awards list a bit more 2.0 too?

That said, this is a great list and come 2009, expect to see Snagsta up there with the best, even if they have to create a new category for us!

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Do all massages have a happy ending?

Last week, after another hard day whipping staff in the Snagsta sweatshop, Alex G went in search of some relaxation.

What he found wasn’t quite what he was looking for…

Stumble It!

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Lights, camera, action (well almost)

Help! Get me out of here

The long arm of the law finally catches up with Alex G and Bjorn

Yesterday, Alex G and our creative consultant extraordinaire Bjorn Turmann hit the streets of Bangkok to film a couple of videos that will help us spread the word of Snagsta just before our public beta launch.

When we asked them how things were going a couple of strange messages came back – Bjorn sent me a text that read, “What a day! It had it all: emotion, action, laughter and danger…”. Alex G’s description was even more intriguing, “I have a bad headache, a large lady has been jumping up and down on me all afternoon – I think she managed to cut off the blood flow to my brain”.

During the filming the guys were cornered by the Thai police who wanted to see their permits; which of course we didn’t have. They eventually managed to talk themselves out of trouble: but only just. The rest of shoot one had to be done covertly which Bjorn assures me will add a certain “edginess” to the scene.

Shoot two took our protagonists to a local spa. This is where the incident with the rather full bodied lady took place. To find out what happened next you will have to wait until the video appears on our blog. Stay tuned.

In the mean time, I will leave you, as always with a list. This comes from an excellent investigative journalism site named Mother Jones and it’s one that I hope Bjorn and Alex G will read carefully before they head out for shoot three!

8 Tips for an Easier Prison Stay

1. Leggo your ego: Be humble. New prisoners will “lock eyes with the wrong person and have problems,” says Steven Oberfest, an ex-bouncer and personal trainer who won’t say what he did time for. “This is not Fifth Avenue and their penthouse anymore. They’re just a number.”

2. Hard knocks: Never enter someone’s cell without permission, says Steve Scholl, a former management consultant who now goes by the moniker Dr. Prison. “It’s about respect. People get killed over that.”

3. Presumed innocent: Don’t go asking what someone is in for, advises Oberfest. Ask what he’s accused of.

4. Ethnic cleansing: Don’t mix with prisoners of other races, Dr. Prison warns. “Things we don’t even consider a problem between races here are a very extreme focus inside. If there’s a fight, every race needs to depend on their own race to protect them.”

5. Sleeping dogs: “Miserable people want to be miserable…treat them with extreme caution,” advises Robert McDorman, a former Texas car dealer who did 26 months for federal bank fraud.

6. The best defence: Just in case, Oberfest says you must learn to “drop someone incredibly fast.”

7. Unwanted interest: Says Oberfest, “If you bum a smoke and the guy with the cigarettes says, ‘Sure, it’s a twofer,’ you should know a twofer means, ‘I give you one for two, so now you owe me.’”

8. Alone time: Oberfest advises high-profile clients such as politicians to request solitary confinement, or even feign mental illness to get into the psych ward. “If you’re segregated, you’re going to have a much easier time.”

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Shape up or shut up

The rule of engagement for bloggers is: add value or go home.

Often people that should have gone home blog anyway. That’s because blogging is cheap, easy and global. Read Hugh Macleod’s thoughts here. And, of course, because the meaning of ‘adding value’ differs considerably!

Lacking inspiration, I thought I’d show you some respect and go home (nothing to do with the fact that it’s Friday afternoon and sunny in London) but at the last minute decided a little aggregation rather than originality would suffice as adding value today. And since Snagsta is all about gathering cool things here’s a list of inspiring and amusing speeches I’ve collected.

1. JK Rowling - Harvard Commencement Speech 2008
   
   

   Wow!

2. Kurt Vonnegut - ‘alleged’ Commencement Address at MIT
   Tips for life - uplifting stuff. (Actually written by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune)
3. Steve Jobs - Stanford Commencement Speech 2005
   Truly inspiring.
4. Will Ferrell - Harvard Commencement Speech 2003
   At his usual best.
5. Conan O’Brien - Harvard Commencement Speech 2000
   Funny but with a message about the value of failure.
6. Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) - ‘alleged’ Yale Address
   It wasn’t Larry but it was funny.
7. John Cleese - Eulogy for Chapman
   Classic Cleese. (this is the version that includes ‘Always look on the bright side of life’)

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Cover versions are never better than the originals

I just experienced first-hand one of the things Phil talked about in his TechCrunch pitch (by the way, the event write-up is now online!), when I tried to book a hotel earlier today.

I know, I know. Phil has said it already, but I want to do my own “cover version” because it just happened to me and besides, I am sure I have a better singing voice than he does.

I was browsing AsiaRooms, with TripAdvisor open in another tab for reference, but just got tied in knots trying to get to grips with making my decision based on the reviews. In Asia Rooms, I had back-to-back reviews that were as different as “The room itself was horrible…” and “Good hotel, with huge rooms…”.

And TripAdvisor didn’t help at all either, with their 6th best hotel in Manila displaying the review “Biggest Hotel Disappointment I’ve ever experienced!”.

Eventually I managed to find a hotel that seemed to have a fairly consistent set of reviews. Hooray!!

Of course, when I tried to book it, the rooms were all gone…

I’ll finish with an extremely tenuously-related list of interesting cover versions that you can see on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXbgSMT-0j4
London Bridge - such a great version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-8nkkOA_AM
Hey Ya - the original is great, but this is as good in an oh-so-different way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DctCyO-E3s
Living on a Prayer - not such a great original, but mad skills in this cover

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMB6YOWzQMY
Umbrella - surprised at how good Mandy Moore sounds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMmu41UQHAs
Boulevard of Broken Dreams - I just wish a bit more of a Japanese accent came through

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCplsXu1HRk
The Godfather Theme - not sure what Brando would make of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlbFJANujaU
Feeling Good - but are they?

PS So maybe I don’t have a better singing voice than Hofmeyr, but that’s okay. He needs a good voice to go with his rock-star looks…

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Chasing the Dragon

We chalked up a major milestone this week and replaced our blackboard pre-alpha site with the real thing. Chalk you can rub out but now we’re committed. We’ve only given access to a handful of people so far - we want to spend a week or two tarting ourselves up first. Because you’re worth it.

The other really exciting news is that we were selected ahead of several startups across Europe to present at Mike Butcher’s inaugural TechCrunch Pitch event last night. The event was hosted in St Anne’s Church in Soho - a misleadingly peaceful venue considering the somewhat hostile audience that included the likes of Doug Richard (ex Dragon’s Den) cast in the Simon Cowell role, London’s top VC’s (DFJ Esprit, Atlas Ventures, Balderton Capital, etc) and some other interesting people like the co-founder of Bebo, Paul Birch (who has incidentally shared his list of favourite business books with Snagsta).

Alex M and I met some really cool entrepreneurs and investors. It was a great night despite the fact that we didn’t win Mr. Butcher’s contest. That honour went to Raphael Arbuz’s fun site: WhatZatSong.

Jan Andresen from weblin, who travelled all the way from Hamburg, stood his ground impressively despite the roasting Doug gave him.

Evgeny Shadchnev has started a great community site for scientists called Kappa Prime.

We met Jay Adair whose business connects his two great passions: photography and motorbikes.

And also Alfie Dennen from moblog, an awesome site that puts mobile video & photos on the web in one easy step, who managed to capture our presentation (be warned the phone video is a little jumpy - but then so was I!).

Today’s list comes from Mike. Concerned by the fact that some start-ups struggle to get their point across, he set up this event to strip things back to basics and get startups to answer the following fundamental questions in just 10 slides (and only 5 minutes!):

1. Problem: what is the market pain, size and how are you measuring it?
   
2. Your solution: You have opportunity to be “the Google/eBay/Skype/iPhone etc of what”?
   
3. Business model (and potential for revenues)
   
4. Underlying magic: Technology / What you are trying to build: how much and for how long?
   
5. Marketing and sales: How will you get distribution?
   
6. Market: Drivers & dynamics / Your positioning and sustainable advantages
   
7. Competition
   
8. Team
   
9. Milestones so far and projections
   
10. Funding requirement & potential exit routes

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Summertime and the searching ain’t easy

The sun doesn’t always shine here in old London town but when it does, this city sparkles. Today is one of those days.

Spending summer in this place certainly has its advantages. The biggest problem for me is choosing where to go and what to do and with the limited amount of spare time I have right now.

Before I had Snagsta to play with, finding new things to do in London was always a bit of a hit or miss affair. I might read something in the Evening Standard or pick up Time Out Magazine but most of the time I’d rely on a recommendation from a friend or take a peak online and roll the dice.

Search engines are a great place to research things but only if you know what you are looking for.

A search for “good London restaurants” on Google for example, will return an impressive but baffling 963,000 results: that’s several hundred thousand different opinions from people you may, or may not agree with.

Review sites can also be equally frustrating to use as they often contain conflicting opinions. Trip Advisor often delivers vastly different opinions on the same hotel.

A bloke named Win Wenders once said, “The more opinions you have, the less you see”. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Now that Snagsta’s database is filling up with great lists, it’s much easier to discover new things via recommendations from friends and like-minded people.

I just searched for London pubs on Snagsta and the following list from friend and pub aficionado Andrew Rogoff magically appeared.

I now have some new places to check out on my way home tonight where I can enjoy some early evening summer sunshine and perhaps one or two beers. Oh happy day!

My favourite drinking spots in London

By Andrew Rogoff

1. The Lansdowne

This pub in Primrose Hill is laid back, unpretentious and attracts quite a cool crowd. The food’s nothing amazing but I’ll let it off.

2. The Ebury

This bar is just about the only decent place in Pimlico (where I live) so I absolutely love it for that reason.

3. The Mitre

Holland Park Avenue - if you’re sick of poky little pubs where you’re constantly jostled by other punters then this place is big enough to swing your elbows (unless it’s packed of course).

4. Builders Arms

Little pub off the King’s Road that has a good atmosphere and does pretty good food. Watch out for the toffs though.

5. Windsor Castle

Notting Hill. This is a great place to be on a hot summer’s night in London. The trouble is, too many people know that!

6. Troubadour

Earl’s Court. Very atmospheric live music venue with a great history.

7. The Engineer

Primrose Hill. Another great spot in Primrose Hill. The only thing is that the bar area is quite small. Great if you want to eat.

8. The Endurance

Probably the best pub in Soho.

9. Pigs Ear

Old Church Street, SW3. There’s something about this place that I really like - just can’t put my finger on it. Does great food too.

10. The Abingdon

Off High St Kensington. Great bar/restaurant - nice big sofa and excellent food.

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Cheating on Della

As many (many) people will tell you, I am (occasionally) a bit of a twat, no more so than when I have been sitting alone for too long in front of my computer, and it was after one of these prolonged periods of isolation that I decided to christen my faithful computer Della - an incredibly clever play on the fact that it (she) is a Dell machine.

It does feel sometimes that I am married to her, since we spend so much time together and she controls large aspects of my life. However, last week, I began to cheat on Della in the worst possible way.

I bought a MacBook.

I’m trying not to feel too guilty, but it is hard when I know I look so much better sitting with the MacBook than I ever would with poor old Della.

The fact of the matter is, I had to do it. Absolutely no choice in the matter because far too many of the kind of people we want Snagsta to attract are also using Macs, so we have to test very carefully on their behalf.

Now all I need to do is come up with an equally clever name for my second wife - Macy perhaps…

I leave you with a great list from Jeff Zweig, Web Guru extraordinaire:

Favorite ways to make Mac OS X suck less
Let’s face it. Windows really sucks and Mac OS X sucks, too, but not as much. This is my list of third party software add-ons that help make OS X suck even less!

1. Get Pathfinder
Significantly improves the lousy usability of Finder.

2. Get Google desktop
Much easier to use than Spotlight in its lame, native form plus it’s free.

3. Get Quicksilver
Outstanding and mega-powerful keyboard control, application launching and so much more for those of us who shun the mouse plus it’s free.

4. Get Parallels
Run Windows apps that can’t run in OS X

5. Get SuperDuper!
Best backup software ever!

6. Get WiFind
This tasty little app costs only 8 bucks and lets us know in advance whether available WiFi networks are secure or not and how strong their signals are.

7. Get Firefox
THE browser of the civilized on any platform. Better than Safari for its huge range of free plug-ins and better cross-browser support than Safari.

8. Get Office 2008 for Mac
Anything is better than the Rosetta converted Office 2004 dog that runs on Intel Macs. We can only hope that the promised Office 2008 universal version will run properly on Intel.

9. Get Spot Inside
Essential add-on to the lame, native form of Spotlight and it’s free.

10. Get Laserlight
Another essential add-on to the weak native form of Spotlight and it’s free, too.

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Are the best entrepreneurs pertinacious* pigs or flexible fools?

We have repeatedly been told that we have to be prepared to follow Snagsta wherever it takes us. Very often the dream founders start out with is totally different from the website they end up with. This can happen for a variety of reasons:

1. Along the wide and varied path that is web development better ideas turn up out of nowhere

2. The founders’ idea is slightly off target (I think the diplomatic wording for this is ‘ahead of their time’)

3. The investors ’suggest’ a ‘new approach’ (as an aside: we’ve been given all the latitude we’ve wanted so far)

4. The users decide they have a much better idea for how the site should be used (this was certainly the case with Twitter (according to Biz Stone) and Bebo (as Michael Birch explains).

It appears flexibility is important.

And then you’ll walk into another meeting and someone will tell you what they look for in founders is an unwavering pig-headed determination to see their idea through against all odds.

But even the best ideas occasionally have to be abandoned. So the question is: how do you know when enough is enough?

And the answer is… predictably: you don’t.

The good news is you can’t be criticised because nobody knows. It’s luck (certainly if you take Taleb’s word or the FT’s)

The bad news is that this decision could either make you or lose you A LOT OF MONEY.

At Snagsta we’ve built our solution to this problem into the management team. Alex Moore is possibly one of the most stubborn people I know and I’m extremely flexible (some people call me indecisive… but I’m not so sure).

The point is that one should have some contingencies. And I am pleased to be able to demonstrate to our readers that we are ready. In the unlikely event that Snagsta needs to shift focus we have strategically also registered the domain www.shagsta.com.

Have a great weekend!

footnotes:
* pertinacious - don’t be embarrassed, I had to look that up too.

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!

Time to Party!

We launched our private alpha (geek-speak for test site) yesterday so the mood under the arches is buoyant to say the least! Well, it was buoyant until we reviewed our bug register… 170 and growing! But all the major functionality is working well so we’re pretty amped!

I need to get back to squishing those pests so will hand you over to someone a lot smarter than me (not easy to find that sort of person I hear you say). Today’s list comes from the tail end of a recent interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Sunday Times. And I can proudly say I have permission from Taleb to publish his words of wisdom. To give things a slightly different spin this week I have tried to add a comment beneath each of his tips that reflects its relevance to entrepreneurs and start-ups. When I couldn’t think of any, I have done something completely different and made sarcastic comments at the expense of myself and those around me.

1. Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

I think scepticism is one of driving motivations behind many entrepreneurs: a healthy scepticism for existing products and people’s predictions invokes the ‘challenger’ mindset. I have honed my scepticism on the small & aesthetic for long enough now…

2. Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.

HOW can you possibly fault a man who holds amongst his top 10 tips: ‘GO TO PARTIES’

3. It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

There is ONE exception to this rule. Never tease a Venture Capitalist. Regardless of the size of his tie. Buy him a drink, complement his colour-co-ordinated cufflinks, but never tease him.

4. Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.

Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) once said: ‘If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” And so it is with Snagsta. When the time comes we’ll be wearing our best but at first ‘site’ it may appear as if we got dressed in a bit of a hurry… tucking in our shirt on the way out the door. Kind of my ’style’ I suppose, given I was once described as looking like an ‘unmade bed’…

5. Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.

I didn’t understand that but I am sure it’s deep.

6. Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.

There is an interesting debate on the correlation between success and past failure. In my industry the US is very pro-failure, whereas Europe is far more risk-adverse. Statistics suggest there is no correlation but I have hedged my bets by establishing a long track record of failure…

7. Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).

Bit late for this advice given I am now inextricably linked to Alex M… he’s not really a loser but has exceptionally dodgy taste in music.

8. Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants… or (again) parties.

I’ve talked about this before. Ironically this list came from the business section of The Times… a Black Swan perhaps?

9. Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

The central theme in Taleb’s book (Black Swan): success has a lot to do with luck. Do whatever you can to put yourself in its way. Luck is less likely to visit you in your bedroom while you’re watching dvds…

10. Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

Given his instantaneous reply to my mail I know exactly how junior Taleb thinks I am. To those of you that I haven’t written back to recently… it’s because you’re so important.

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!