An Idea A Day (or every time I get around to updating this thing) #1: Crowd Sourced Novel Starter

Posted on March 20, 2011 by squealingrat

I have a list of a ton of product/web ideas. Way too many to actually execute on. So, I have decided to just release them all, even some crummy ones. Get them all out there. If you like one, use it, morph it, create it, what ever. And let me know (ideas at squealingrat dot org). So, the first of many ideas:

A Twitter account which tweets awesome sentences each day. Each sentence is the beginning of a crowd sourced novel which will be finished by the end of the day. The novels are released for free as e-books, and the best ones will be created as crowd sourced audiobooks (like Librivox) and printed books (perhaps through Blurb).

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The Only Reason Mac OS X Lion Was Announced So Early

Posted on February 19, 2011 by squealingrat

So at the next keynote, when Phil Schiller mounts the stage, he can have more time to talk about Lion’s cloud integration (the one billion dollar North Carolina facility), using the now free MobileMe, and a web based iTunes (via Lala).

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With technology…

Posted on February 19, 2011 by squealingrat

it’s a writer’s world.

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Google Voice Tips

Posted on February 19, 2011 by squealingrat

(click on picture to enlarge)

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What Motorola Needs to do to Sell The Xoom

Posted on February 19, 2011 by squealingrat

Discount. Mass. Groupon like. Make it $500 for the first 3,000 early adopters. Stop advertising it and sell it at a discount to the people who care, who can show it off to their friends, and pump up the hype to make real sales.

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What Google Needs To Do

Posted on February 19, 2011 by squealingrat

One team at Google needs to be in charge of product integration. I’m not talking about a couple of folks who each get product integrator written next to their nameplate. I’m talking about several dozen networkers who are professionals at product integration, and can unify and simply Google’s storage system. Because right now, there are way too many storage allotments to keep track of from different Google services (GDocs- 1gb, extendable, Picasa Web- 1 gb, extendable another way….). And after they tackle that problem, perhaps a better Google Voice to Gmail integration using GChat? Or Google Reader to Books integration for custom daily newspapers? I’m sure they’ll have plenty on their plate to do.

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The Tech Hotel [Ideas]

Posted on February 19, 2011 by squealingrat

When I’m older and richer, I’d like to create something. One idea I’ve had for a while is what I’m dubbing ‘The Tech Hotel’. Here’s the concept:

Take over an entire hotel for a year. Allow any programmers, designers, etc to live for free there. Foster all the great ideas that people have, and allow people to connect with each other. Build small teams of people, each with at least one programmer and designer. Free domains, free hosting. Not-for-profit. For fun. For the sake of creation.

(I have a bunch of other project ideas I’ve dumped here)

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Random

Posted on January 30, 2011 by squealingrat

Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose and Glenn McElhose have been creating a really awesome show called Random for a while. The demands of their loyal viewers have reached me. They want a podcast feed. Simple enough, so on my day off, I decided to put them together, a video feed and an audio only one for iPod/iPhone/iPad/iTunes/Apple TV listening/watching (iTunes official links are on the way here). Just for you. I don’t own the content, and I’m not making any money off it. Enjoy!

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Apple’s Website Gets Darker… WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

Posted on January 28, 2011 by squealingrat

I’m surprised the Apple fanboys haven’t posted about this more… Come on, guys!

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Predictions: Live Blogs

Posted on January 14, 2011 by squealingrat

With Google Wave and Google Docs, we saw/see how well the technology of live writing works. The ability to type something on a keyboard in NYC, and see the typing in realtime in San Francisco is really wonderful. But other than collaboration, there’s not much other application for the realtime technology. Or is there?

I believe that in the future, blogs will begin a push for live writing. Some may make it a paid subscription model, but I think that more will simply offer it as an added bonus to get viewers to the site. What is live writing you ask? Well, here’s how I envision it:

Writers create their posts, and in real time, a section of the site updates with what they’re writing as it’s typed. One can see what a writer’s thought line is, perhaps give input before the post is officially published, and get a peek at ‘upcoming’ news, scoops and applications before the whole post comes out. Yes, some will consider it an overdose of unedited information. But with Twitter, aren’t we heading there anyway?

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