Advice for Web Entrepreneurs

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Nuno Morgadinho

A collection of items that has been in my inbox for some time:

What Every Aspiring Photographer Should Know – can easily be applied to entrepreneurs.
how society should spend 100 million hours – part of the inspiring talk Matt Webb gave at reboot11 this year.
Introduction to Creative Thinking – how a different way of structuring your thoughts can unblock you.
The Truth about Freelance Web Development – covers several aspects anyone working self-employed on the web should pay attention.
Apache Optimization and NGINX – self-explanatory.
How to build a Web App business from A to Z – notes from the talk at the FOWD conference.
Online Business Plan Software - I haven’t used this yet but maybe there is some value to it.
Dropbox YCombinator Funding 2007 Application – an example of how to apply for seed capital at YCombinator.

Rupture

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Nuno Morgadinho

Photo courtersy of eHow.com
breaking apart

Sometimes we need ruptures. They make us grow. It’s easy to create a small reality around us and live the illusion that’s all there is. But it isn’t. And only by breaking away can we carry on. With rupture comes fear. The fear of not being able to, the fear of not having enough money, skills or something else. That’s just the bubble trying to keep you in. Stop thinking you’re in control. You’re not in control. Everyone is exactly at the point where they should be. And if your path is to arrive somewhere, everything you need will be provided to you. Don’t worry. Have confidence. If you’re not confident you’ll never do anything. On the other hand, if you’re too confident the worst that can happen is people thinking you’re a jerk. But maybe they already think that. Break away!

If you've never failed, you've never lived

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Nuno Morgadinho

shared via Nuno @ simplice.net

iPhone App Listens to Music and tells you the name of Song

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Nuno Morgadinho

There is an application for the iPhone where you can humm along a song and it will identify it for you. You can then even buy it from iTunes or see related videos on YouTube. The application I’m talking about is Shazam. We were talking about it over lunch and we all agreed it was impressive technology. We were wondering not so much the part of fingerprinting the music, which is already impressive to get right, but how is it possible to search such a large database, supposedly containing every song in the world, in a timely manner? Someone then asked: “who are the people doing such great software?” I then decided it was time to do some digging and found this great video, a bit romanticized I grant you that, but pretty cool..

Some of the things that caught my eye.. they started back in 2000. Also I was reading about the technology and how it works. Fingerprinting the music is based on the spectrogram. The database is an hash table, where the key is the frequency. When it receives a fingerprint it doesn’t need to search all the songs. Still there is an immense amount of work involved in making the whole thing work. It’s fantastic what they have accomplished.

The People

Chris Barton, Philip Inghelbrecht, Dhiraj Mukherjee and Avery Wang.

Chris and Philip were still in Business School (at UC Berkeley in California) when they started Shazam. Dr. Avery Wang comes from Stanford University. Not sure about Dhiraj.

Shazam Founders on Twitter

The beauty of the Internet these days.. you can follow these guys on Twitter.

Chris Barton – @bartonsurfer

Philip Inghelbrecht – @Inghelbrecht

Dhiraj Mukherjee – @dhirajm

References:

Marathon Training Applied to Startups

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Nuno Morgadinho

Today I’m going on a Fun Run so I’ve been reading on how to prepare myself. I found this nice website with guidelines and tips on preparing for the Marathon and what I realized was that the mental strategies they discuss can be applied for anything you want to obtain. I thought it might be a refreshing read if you’re stuck with a boring project or something you’re having trouble finishing off. Or even if you’re starting a new project it might help. We know that with the right mood and the right mind-set everything is easier. The question now is how to trigger your mind into that state. Like they say on the article: “arriving at the starting line in less than the ideal state of mind can have a devastating effect on your performance”.

Mental Rehearsal/Visualization – The process of creating pictures or images in your mind.
Imagery – Playing out/imagining in your mind the way you wish for an event to occur.
Self-Talk – The “voice” in your head that can be trained to provide positive affirmations during adversity and tough times.

from http://www.marathontraining.com/marathon/m_psycho.html

Do you use any of these techniques already?