http://growingdata.tumblr.com/

Color Wheels are wrong? How color vision actually works

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:05:06 -0500

Color Wheels are wrong? How color vision actually works:

An interesting article about colour theory, from photons to colour tags (#FFFF00).

TED: Visualizing the medical data explosion

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:10:52 -0500

TED: Visualizing the medical data explosion:

Today medical scans produce thousands of images and terabytes of data for a single patient in mere seconds, but how do doctors parse this information and determine what’s useful?

Amazon.com announces "Elastic Beanstalk" for AWS

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:45:00 -0500

Amazon.com announces "Elastic Beanstalk" for AWS:

Amazon Web Services have made yet another announcement for increased functionality (its just about weekly at the moment!). “Elastic bean stalk” is an automatically scaling solution for Java. Despite its awkward name (I thought it was a joke at first), this looks like an interesting development, going after Google App Engine, Heroku and other managed hosting providers.

Java means we won’t be using it any time soon, but if they come up with a managed .Net solution it would probably be worth a look.

Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 22:38:25 -0500

Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate:

Things don’t look too good for the revenue and earnings outlook of the worlds biggest social network. Not only do most of its revenues appear to come from “Social Gaming” (Zynga), but now it appears that its 3rd biggest advertising client is for a site that is VERY scammy.

Makes you wonder if it can really justify that $70 billion dollar valuation!

How would you like your Graphic Design?

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 19:14:00 -0500

How would you like your Graphic Design?

SQL Server: Use of Rank and/or Cross Apply in sub-queries

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:30:17 -0500

SQL Server: Use of Rank and/or Cross Apply in sub-queries:

Here is a great article from a former co-worker, Khaja on the performance benefits of using Cross Apply in sub-queries.

Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:44:49 -0500

Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation:

Goldman Sachs has reached out to its wealthy private clients, offering them a chance to invest in Facebook, the hot social networking giant that is considering a possible public offering in 2012, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google's Chrome climbs its way to 10% of the browser market

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:19:47 -0500

Google's Chrome climbs its way to 10% of the browser market:

NetApplications published its year-end market browser share numbers today which had Google’s (GOOG) Chrome nearing 10% of the overall browser market share. If you look a the last two years, you see a steady decline in Microsoft’s(MSFT) Internet Explorer which has lost 12 points in that time. At the same time, Chrome has gone from almost nothing to 10% of the browser. Firefox peaked at 24% last year but has since dropped back to its 22% and change. Safari, which shares the same Webkit rendering engine as Chrome, make modest gains over the past two years.

Google's Chrome climbs its way to 10% of the browser market

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:12:00 -0500

Google's Chrome climbs its way to 10% of the browser market:

Evolution of Lean: The MEAN Start-up

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:34:35 -0400

The concept of the “lean start-up” has got a lot of traction recently. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the lean start-up methodology, it centres on building products that are relevant to consumers. It does this by suggesting you test your assumptions about customers by building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), taking it to customers and changing it (or Pivoting) until you have reached Product Market Fit, where you have a business that actually does something of value.

This all seems rather wasteful to me, so I would like to introduce a new start-up company methodology, called The MEAN Start-up.

The MEAN Start-up does away with the wasteful testing of assumptions, creating an MVP and pivoting. Rather than innovating to build a new product and learning from contact with customers, you leave all that hard work to other start-ups run by young passionate entrepreneurs who often read Hacker News and want to give back to the start-up community.

Instead you read Hacker News to find out about other start-ups who have already achieved product market fit and steal their idea. That’s where the MEAN part comes in.

With the idea in hand and a perfect template available (their app), you can easily out-source the creation of your new competing / stolen product to India (or the Philippines) for less than $15k. When you consider that the start-up you have copied / stolen from has probably invested, say 4 person years in getting to the point of product market fit (through developing, iterating, pivoting, etc.), you have just saved yourself around $500k!

You can then spend the rest of your money on PR, marketing and sales people.

My personal favourite example of companies using the MEAN start-up methodology is Zurb, with their app http://verifyapp.com/, which appears inspired by http://fivesecondtest.com. Another example is Facebook, which used to be a lean start-up but has since evolved to the MEAN start-up with its inspiration from Twitter (News Feed), Foursquare (Places), and now Groupon (Facebook Deals).

So don’t waste your time innovating or building something new, simply steal the idea from someone who has already done it!

Standby for my new start-up: SuperBingoCardCreator.com

8 things I wish I knew before starting a business

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:04:53 -0400

8 things I wish I knew before starting a business:

A great simple list of things to be mindful of in any venture. I especially like points 7 & 8.

“7. Avoid the myth and misery of sunk cost”
Basically, if some things not working perhaps you need to let it go. Don’t get emotionally attached to anything that may weaken your business.

“8. Fill the pipe, always fill the pipe!”
Not only ABC (Always be closing), but also make sure that you always have a full sales pipeline.

Cheers

Hey how did you replace the title with your own image? I understand the tag but how did you provide it to their server?

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:16:27 -0400

Heya, yeah I couldn’t figure that out either, so I just put the image up on one of my servers. If you send me the image you want I can put it up there too.

Although its an EC2 instance, so its not 100% reliable.

To make it work, you just add the following custom css.

#logo .site-title a {

display: block;

background: url(‘http://content.growingdata.com.au/header_logo.png’);

height: 68px;

width:268px;

position:absolute;

top: 15px;

}

Hey how did you replace the title with your own image? I understand the tag but how did you provide it to their server?

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:15:44 -0400

Heya, yeah I couldn’t figure that out either, so I just put the image up on one of my servers. If you send me the image you want I can put it up there too.

Although its an EC2 instance, so its not 100% reliable.

To make it work, you just add the following custom css.

#logo .site-title a {

display: block;

background: url(‘http://content.growingdata.com.au/header_logo.png’);

height: 68px;

width:268px;

position:absolute;

top: 15px;

}

http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 23:07:13 -0400

http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/

Australia gets its own Y Combinator-type fund (StartMate)

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:46:00 -0400

Australia gets its own Y Combinator-type fund (StartMate):

Australia gets a web start-up incubator, http://www.startmate.com.au/

Their primary offering is in mentoring early stage start-ups, but they also provide $25k worth of seed funding.

Could be just the thing for the next GrowingData project!

Facebook launches "Places" - LBS going mainstream?

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:29:15 -0400

http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/403

Finally Facebook has entered into the “Location based services” market, choosing to partner with, rather than compete with Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp.

Currently location based services are very much a niche product, with only a tiny (albeit growing number) of people using it. Describing Foursquare for example, to someone who doesn’t get technology for technologies sake is an exercise in futility and quite frankly makes you sound like a bit of a loser (“No, but you don’t get it, you get BADGES and can be the mayor and stuff…”).

Facebook’s foray into this area is exciting because of its 500 million+ users who will now become familiar with it, regardless of whether they want to.

It will be interesting to see how these services are received by “normal” people over the next few weeks.

No doubt it will prove yet another way of distracting yourself from socializing in real life.

Startup marketing

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:17:38 -0400

Startup marketing:

Resources for getting noticed!

Why free plans don't work

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:07:19 -0400

Why free plans don't work:

If you are going to offer a free version of your service, its prudent to make it somewhat hidden. After all, who is going to pay for something when they can get X% of it for free?

Why do start-ups fear their idea?

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:03:32 -0400

Why do start-ups fear their idea?:

A really interesting article on why many start-ups create bloated, unfocussed products rather than going with their instincts and focussing on one key pain point.

Optus iPhone 4 pricing

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:51:00 -0400

Optus iPhone 4 pricing:

Hmmm, do I just take the free 16GB version or spend extra $10 /month to get the 32GB version? Decisions, decisions!