First Impressions of the iPad (my iPad review)

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So I decided to take some time out today to go to the Apple store and checkout the iPad.  It’s MUCH lighter than I thought it would be.  You can easily hold the device in one hand and can grip it enough that it won’t fall out of your hands easily.  In addition, the add-on case that you can buy from Apple has a thin rubber skin which helps with the gripping.

A nice pleasant surprise was the eBook reader.  My wife, who uses a Kindle, saw the eBook reader instantly said, if she didn’t have a Kindle, she would have probably bought the device on the spot.  That’s enough for me to say that I think the iPad will cut into the Kindle market share.  However, I would like to point out that the Kindle was specifically made to be read and to fade into the background, which is why it’s a dull gray color.   You can read the Kindle for several hours without it straining your eyes.  I’m not sure how long you could read the iPad without eye strain.  There still is a reflective gloss on the device and the brightness of the device may cause some issues to book readers.

One feature that definitely surprised me was the keyboard feature.  In my mind I thought that the device would most likely need a pen device in order for the device to be really usable.  But to my surprise, when I started using the keyboard functionality in the email app, it was really easy to type on.  I made several spelling mistakes, but only a few more than I would make typing on a normal keyboard.  I think this definitely lends the iPad to do more than I originally thought it would be able to do.  However, the only draw back to the typing functionality was that you would need to lay the iPad down on a flat surface to type much like you would need to do with a normal keyboard.  This is where I would imagine a pen-like device would work, so that you could write with one hand and not really need to lay down the device to type.

One downside that I saw was that most applications were not really made for the iPad yet.  The games seemed to have rendered fine, but other apps on the device looked like they were created for the iPhone.  You could tell because the anti-aliasing wasn’t as smooth and it should have been.  When you zoomed in on the application (to about the size of the iPhone), the application looked much better.

Fred Wilson's 10 rules for a startup success

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Fred Wilson has listed out the 10 things he thinks are necessary for startup success on his blog.  Keir Whitaker on Carsonified was nice enough to breakout the 10 things into a list for us:

1.  Speed – If your application is slow, people won’t use it.

2.  Instant Utility – the service is instantly useful to the user. no long configs.  it just has to work. (posterous comes to mind)

3.  Software is Media – your software has to have a personality, like media does.

4.  Less is more – keep feature sets trim and grow over time.

5.  Make it programmable – API API API – this is the one thing that Simplizt needs.  it’s coming… i swear!

6.  Make it personal – allow your users to infuse their personality into the application

7.  RESTful – make sure everything in the application has a clean callable URL. i think this lends the application to spread virally and have better SEO.

8.  Discoverability – SEO.  I think every entrepreneur needs to know the basics of this, even if you’re not a developer I would argue.

9.  Clean – the application cannot be busy on the page

10.  Playful – he describes this as: mobile, social, global, playful, intelligent.  I think this is the one i’m having the hardest time with.  I’m trying to figure out how to make a task management system playful.  I have some ideas that maaaaay work.  we’ll see.

So there are the 10 things that Fred Wilson believes will make a successful web app.  I’m pretty excited to my site directed toward these things! If anyone who comes across this posting has some feedback, please check out Simplizt and tell me what you think! I’m all ears!

The 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps from Carsonified on Vimeo.

Buy the ticket, take the ride

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So while I was sick last week (which is why I didn’t get my free idea friday out!  Sorry!).  I watched the Hunter S. Thompson documentary, ‘Buy the ticket, take the ride’.  Toward the end of the movie, they say ‘Buy the ticket, take the ride.   As you get older, the ticket gets more expensive and the ride shorter’.  That statement really rung true in my mind.

I see why the Seed Companies look for younger entrepreneurs.  They’re able to take a lot more risk coming out of school.  There’s nothing that they won’t benefit from.  However, as you get older, the more difficult it is to really “buy that ticket”.  Once you get kids, a mortgage, it gets even harder.  One thing that we all take for granted as well is time.  The ride truly does get shorter and shorter, because time is the only asset that we’ll never get back.  Money we can make again, once a minute is gone, it’s gone forever.

So for anyone out there reading this, if you’re coming out of school or sick of your job, buy the ticket, take the ride!

Finding a good co-founder

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Chris McCann covers this on his blog, and reiterates how some well-known investors look at the problem.  This is pretty difficult thing to accomplish.  I’ve worked with several so far and it’s pretty much been a bust for me each time.  Various personality conflicts, scheduling, and commitments ended each relationship.  And that’s what it feels like, breaking up… and now I have to move on and find another “date”.  It’s just like real world dating, you need to figure out who’s a good match for you.  If you’re a super star, do you want to date a nobody?  If you’re a nobody, is it possible to date a superstar?  What type of girl are you looking for?  What are the personality traits that match?  This is pretty much the process that i’m going through now, looking for someone that I can “sync” with and really dig into a project with.

Overall the problem I have is that I’m willing to dedicate my entire time to working on a project, night and day, and I’ve already given notice at my part-time job to work on Simplizt, my task management tool.  However, I generally don’t find the same dedication in my counterparts.  Since I’m the technical person, I expect my co-founder to be a person who’s willing to write all the blog content, write articles, focus on product features, and marketing/sales while I’m coding.  it’s surprising, but this really isn’t easy to find!  I’d actually love finding another technical person so I could focus on everything I wrote above!

Some resources for everyone to go date:

Founder Dating – a way for you to meet other co-founders in seattle and cali right now

Startup Weekend – a way for you to meet other people and decide together to conceive and launch a product in 54 hrs.

How Mint.com gained 1.5mi users

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Jason Putorti, blogs about how Mint.com gained 1.5 million users.  I always wondered how a site which I thought had no SEO from the actual application was able to garner so many users.  Now looking at the site, it’s actually a really well SEO’d site.  I started looking at some of the key words they were targeting (which can be found at the bottom of the screen on the homepage) and noticed they really did a great job at tackling some very specific keywords.  Googling each keyword shows that they’re #1 in each of the categories.  It’s pretty impressive.

I also find it interesting that the first thing that Jason mentions is the net promoter score.  It echos what Seth Godin says, which is focus on building a great product and it will be viral.  I  think this strategy coupled with blogging and becoming the #1 personal finance blog really helped propel their growth.  The other main thing that I think really helped them was PR.  I remember reading about them and seeing them all over the news, which is what led me to trying out the product.

All the rest of the items he mention seem to be based on the the three I mentioned above.  In the end it looks like they busted their butts in creating an awesome (and pretty easy product to use), great and rich content on their blog, clever SEO, and a PR push.  Thanks for posting the info Jason!