MyDropBin: Beta Update

Things have been going fairly well with the testing of the system.  It is sometimes hard to get people engaged in testing it all out.  I find I am like that as well.  An initial burst of activity after sign up and then it tails off.

But I did get some good feedback from what has been done so far.  I thinkk the one major change I incorporated was to the UI, or user interface.  I am no designer, by any stretch.  But I tried to take some feedback and open things up a bit.  I took out a couple of elements, one being the meta-data pane, which form what I heard think confused people more than it really helped.

I will admit, having the code outsourced has been a bit of a challenge, especially recently as I try to tie up all the loose ends.  The main developer on the project that was working my stuff got married and was away from work for several weeks with little to no work being done to remedy the final bug fixes.  I am no programmer by any means as well, but I have been doing what I can to get in and learn and not only be able to troubleshoot and fix issues, but also to add new features.

I was proud of myself the other day for setting up a user admin page for users to be able to change their password.  It may sound simple, but it took a bit as it was my first foray into php connecting to my database and all … good thing I had a backup, right ?

There are still some outstanding issues I am working to get resolved and tie up this set of development.

• users getting undefined in the From area when attempting to email a link to an item directly after uploading it.  I have figured out what is happening here, just need to get it fixed.
• Few CSS issues with IE still to fix (If only I used Windows I could see the problem more often )
• Issue with the Javascript bookmarklet when attempting to bookmark a page with numerous images.

Those are the main ones.  Last time on my list was the integration of Amazon DevPay, which will allow a signal registration process with MyDropBin and an Amazon account.  Amazon just updated DevPay fixing an issue whcih was stopping my integration, so I am now going to start looking for some help in getting this taken care of.

Event Recap: Larry Page talks Wireless at “Google Unwired”

The power of Twitter (when it is up) is amazing.  The other day I saw an update from my friend Chris Parandian of MobileDiner about a new America Foundation event with Larry Page of Google, who was coming to town to talk wireless spectrum stuff.

I decided to go and sit in, it is not every day you can hear one of the Google founders talk.  It was a really interesting talk as Larry delved into a lot of issues to include:  internet openess, the amount of open wireless spectrum not being utilized, Google’s recent bid on a block of spectrum which Verizon ended up winning, and even touched on the Microsoft/Yahoo dealings.  He talked for about an hour and then took audience questions.

Some of the topics that he spoke on that interested me were their recent bid on that highly sought after 700Mhz block of spectrum.  More and more it seemed that it was simply a way for Google to force the closed carriers to open up and in the end they got their way.  While Verizon won the bid, the Google bid had many stipulations put onto the winner, to include openness.  Larry kept reiterating, “We would have found something to do with all that spectrum.”  Leading me to believe that they never truly wanted it in the first place.  But good for them for forcing the issue.  It is a bit daunting when someone says that the $4.6 billion bid they had to put up was not that big of a deal …..

Something else that I thought was conceptually a pretty revolutionary idea by Larry, was a suggestion to totally revamp the spectrum bidding process.  As it is right now, companies that get these spectrums, do so for a very very lenghty amount of time.  Larry stated that spectrum should be auctioned off, almost down to the minute, as carriers had the need.  Almost a stock exchange for spectrum.  It was fascinating.  Below is a full video of his talk, it is almost an hour long so sit back and enjoy.

Event Recap: Technosailor 4 Year Anniversary

Well a good time was had by all at the Technosailor 4 year anniversary bash. I really want to thank the folks at the Austin Grill. They really helped us get things set up and gave us a great area and great food on top of it all. Thanks Stephanie and Brent.

Anyway, I said it before and I’ll say it again, 4 years of consistent blogging is a great accomplishment and Aaron should be congratulated for it. As many of us know, Aaron is embarking on a new phase of his life. He recently left his position as Technical Director of b5 Media and is striking out on his own. He is working hard to make Technosailor a great blog in its own right. He is well on his way. He has 4 people writing for the blog now and is incorporating a lost of varied and great content. He also just announced that he is working with the gang over at Ligit.
Cograts Aaron, here is to 4 more !

A Great Idea From NY Video 2.0 We Can Use for DC

Many of us here in the area have been kicking around the idea of a “Meet the VC” event. One where local peeps can throw their idea out to a VC and get feedback on it. Is it a good idea ? Is it a bad idea ? Nothing pressure packed, rather a friendly exchange to kick your ideas and get valuable feedback from a good source.
We have not gotten around to holding the event yet, but I came across a post by Allen Stern of CenterNetworks about an event very similar to this they help in NYC recently. It was the NY Video 2.0 meetup. he had a great video up of the event where 5 companies gave a short talk and demo of their product and at the end, 3 VC’s gave their opinions. It was perhaps a little more formal than I had in mind, but nonetheless a great example for us to follow. I got his permission to post the video here, so please watch and let us know what you think.

Local News: Clearspring Raises $18 million

This was really exciting news here today in the DC area. Clearspring, everyone’s favorite widget network got a Seires C funding round of $18 million.  This is a nice infusion of cash and will allow them to

The new round will fund expansion of Clearspring’s viral marketing network, which currently serves and tracks almost four billion widgets monthly. It will also be used to extend Clearspring’s reach into international markets and further develop its rapidly growing advertising network and vast data infrastructure and optimization services.

Of course we are all happy to see a local company secure such a nice round of funding.  At the recent SocialDevCamp in Baltimore a ccouple of weeks ago, one of the final sessions of the day was about the local area and issues like funding.  Some of the good insight came from Clarence Wooten, of CollectiveX, who had previously cashed out of a company that was bought by Network Solutions.  He said that until the local area gets some major funding under its belt, the area would have a hard time standing out in the crowd.

Maybe a funding infusion to such a great company will help to continue to put DC on the technology company map.  Congrats to the team at Clearspring and good luck.  Use it wisely

Recap: Social Media Club DC - Chris Dorobek

Last night I battled the traffic to head down to see Chris Dorobek, editor of Federal Computer Week, speak about government and technology. Chris gave a great talk, I totally enjoyed hearing his take on government and technology. It was a really good time and as usual the conversation was terrific between all involved. Below is the full video of his talk. It was my first use of my new Flip Cam which I thought worked great. The quality suffered a bit in converting to flash as the original file was HUGE.

And make sure everyone goes and follow Chris on twitter at @cdorobek, he needs more followers from our area !

Enjoy his talk.

Event: Powerful Solutions for Small Businesses

Got tipped off on this one from the host himself, the Social Media Swami himself, Shashib .   Network Solutions in partnership with DC Media Makers is holding a pretty cool little event coming up in early June, the 4th to be exact at Busboys and Poets.

The evening will be hosted by our very own Par-Tay host Jonny Goldstein and the speaker is going to be Rohit Bhargava, author of the recently released “Personality Not Included”

Rohit is a marketer, blogger, speaker and author of the anticipated
new book, Personality Not Included — a guide for companies on
understanding and using their personality to better connect with
customers in the social media era. A founding member of the pioneering
360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy, he writes the Influential
Marketing blog (now ranked among the top 50 marketing blogs in the
world) and is often featured as an expert in media including The Wall
Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Fast Company. His new book,
published internationally by McGraw-Hill, has received significant
early praise and features a forward by bestselling author and
entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki.

It is at an awesome venue and I am sure the guest list will not disappoint.  Here are the details

Location:

Busboys and Poets

2021 14th St. NW
Washington DC 20009
Ph: 202-387-7638

RSVP - http://www.solutionsarepower-dc.eventbrite.com/

Hope to see many of you there !

SocialDevCamp East: Community Power

As great as the event was this past weekend in Baltimore, what was even better was how it came together.

There was a very short lead time and David, Ann, and Keith did an awesome job pulling together such an organized event in such a short time.  But who knows, it may not have happened ??  During the week before the event I saw Keith post a message on Twitter saying that they were like $900 short of breaking even on all of the expenses.  Right away I jumped in and pledged $100 to help sponsor the event.  More people soon followed and in no time the shortage was made up. (You can see Keith talk about it here)

What an awesome feeling, knowing how supportive the community is !  And how cool that we now have the tools like Twitter that made it possible to reach out to us in an instant fashion to start the ball rolling.

I am honored to have been able to help, especially after seeing how great the day was.  And I am sure they rest of the the sponsors feel the same way.

New Twittervision Adds Local Capability

Our friend David Troy, creater of Twittervision, and host of the recently awesome SocialDevCamp East, has gone and added a cool little nugget to the Twittervision.  Whereas previouosly Twittervision showed us the tweets on a full map, we now have the ability to look a little more local.  He released Twittervision Local, for lask of a better description.  This link opens up a map of the local DC area and shows the tweets happening in the local DC area.

In my opinion, this is awesome.  The big map was cool, but I could gain no real value out of it, like the Twitter public timeline.  I dont think Twitter is good until you find that niche, which many times are people that are in the community around you.  This is where you get the most value out of Twitter.  Now the visual aid of the local Twittervision makes me aware of more people I would not have otherwise known about.  Sure I see some people I am following, but many more I am not.  I can click on their tweet and see what their all about and maybe meet them further enriching my experience.

David is a pioneer in the field.  At SocialDevCamp, he lead a great session about Location Based Services.  I was totally impressed by his depth of knowledge and how hard he is working to make the space better with initiatives like openlocation.org.

If you are not in the DC area, check out http://twittervision.com/local for a comprehensive list of other areas.

Recap: SocialDevCamp East

Much has already been said and written about the event in Baltimore yesterday.

• SocialDevCamp and the Baltimore Scene
• SocialDevCamp was a Success
• SocialDevCamp, the Future of the Social Web
• SocialDevCamp East: Awesome People, Awesome Day

I can only say that Dave, Ann, and Keith did an increible job of bring this together in such a short time.  I was proud to be able to help sponsor and even more proud to be involved and have such great discussions with all the great people.

It is great to see all the local talent come together, and like Greg said in his post above, there really was an awesome vibe.

I attended the following sessions:

• EC2 and other AWS cloud computing
• Location Based Services
• Twitter/Microblogging
• Washington area startup scene

There was not a bad apple in teh bunch.  Great discussions and interaction, I learned a lot.

I met some great people who are working on some really cool things.  Mike Subelsky, a Baltimore programmer, is working with an Austin based startup who is in semi stealth mode.  Amy Hoy showed us here totally cool “app” called Twistori, giving us a different glimpse into the Twiiter stream.

Also ran into Patti, of 600block

We’re building a new website to help you and your friends find Baltimore’s top restaurants, bars, music, shops, events and more. It’s Baltimore’s best according to the people who live here. Personalize your own page and get cool city picks just for you. Baltimore never looked better.

I am totally looking forward to learning more about them and writing more in depth about what they are doing soon.

Overall, hands down, the best event of my year so far.  I cannot wait till the fall and the next iteration.

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