wejustblog

Photo Courtesy of Josh Bancroft

A few hours ago, we did 2 firsts.

We officially launched t.widgeo.us as part of our run-up to the actual beta release and we pushed out our first newsletter. I won’t talk much about t.widgeo.us because I’ll leave the honor of doing that to the guys that built it — Aen and U-Zyn.

I do, however, want to talk a bit about what I’ve learn about creating real value over the past few months…

We knew what we wanted to do but being afraid that what we launched wouldn’t have enough value proposition for the early adopters, we kept beefing up the plans by throwing in more and more features. It didn’t take long to realize that we would take an enormously long time to reach that level of development.

Unknowingly, we had made that mistake of focusing too much on perfection. What Cobalt Paladin had said in an earlier post was pretty much the start of a series of discussions to trim down our roll out plans and to really… focus.

And it’s here that I asked myself, “How are we creating value?” and came to the realization that sure, we would be rolling out a platform where people can use apps that run across multiple communication channels seamlessly and that’ll save people time and save businesses money and all that…

…but that value isn’t realized if no one has something to actually use. So even if we actually had a 10 gazillion dollar solution, keeping it in our vaults would do nothing for people.

I feel that that was an important realization. One that helped me asked a list of other questions to find a good balance between the business and real-life priorities. Maybe if you’re developing something, it’ll be useful to you. And if you have other questions that are worth pondering over, do share

1. Does it actually make life easier? What is the cost of that convenience?
Sometimes we fall into the trap of building something so cool that it blinds us from the fact that it comes at a price. Take the scenario of a new social network user. He joins because it helps him stay connected with his social circle. At a first glance, it does make life easier with the automatic updates of friends particulars and actions. But it probably doesn’t take long for people to realize that eventually it becomes quite a chore to have to clear all the spam invitations and having to always set permissions for the application invitations.

So at the end of the day, was it worth the trade-off? Does the user’s life in general get easier?
If yes, you’re on the right track.

2. Does it come at the price of making someone else’s life more difficult? What impact does this bring?
I asked this because some solutions simply shift the balance of responsibility to other parties. In the case of offering a portal of high-quality suppliers for instance, it would help for businesses which would no longer need to spend as much time doing tedious due diligence. But it does mean that the provider must have a reliable system that can do that due diligence for the users.

In another instance where a platform provides users with a repository of applications built by external developers, it might be easier for end users to find apps, but is the platform able to attract and sustain the developer’s needs (since they would the ones generating applications for users)?

3. Can you sustain that solution or at least attach a business system that makes it sustainable?
This is an important question that always has to be addressed. It would be pointless to create a world-changing solution that lasts 6 months. It’s bad for the business and it’s terrible for the people. To me, it’s akin to giving people a drug, getting them addicted, and then telling them they can’t have it anymore. Do you remember the last time you were hooked on the features of a site only to have it shut down one day? (I felt that sort of deep sadness when Pandora was blocked… of course, it wasn’t their fault in this case)

What do you ask yourself when you try to create value for people?

This is probably a problem faced by many startups that are in development.

For the past 4 months, it had been our intention to complete Alpha development before opening up the platform to a very small group of developers for evaluation and feedback. It would have been like a pre-beta invitation list. But at the end of that phase, I made the decision to withhold the opening up of our platform until later. Let me explain why and perhaps illicit some feedback.

The Widgeo.us platform has a component that comprises an application developer tool. It’s supposed to make the job of creating applications a lot more intuitive. In fact, we go so far as to say that we’re aiming to have it so intuitive that even non-coders will be able to create simple apps. The problem here is this. Apps that are too simple in nature serve little purpose. I’d hate myself if I allowed Widgeo.us to create a tool that allows everyone to only create apps equivalent to the “Hot Potatoes” and “Vampires and Slayers” apps on facebook…I just don’t see how that improves communication between individuals.

In addition to that, the operative word here is “Application Developer Tool”. Based on our quality control measures, it just didn’t make the mark. Sure, we cleared alpha goals. But if we released it to even a select group of developers, the last thing we want is to have them think we’re a joke and never return.

Of course the dilemma is that if we wait too long into the development, we might be wasting precious time and resources developing stuff that no one wants….

I say, let’s just hold out and give everyone something worthy of at least a decent criticism.

What do you think?

I frequent a few online forums and one of them is a private community known as Lobby45. One of the admins Keith posted something about the 90’s that really made my day. If you are in your 20 somethings this year some of these things will be familiar and you will probably feel the kind of nostalgia I did. It goes something like this.

You remember watching

• Doug
• Ren & Stimpy
• Pinky and the Brain
• AAAAAAAH Real Monsters!
• Rockos modern Life.
• Animaniacs
• Gargoyles
• KablAAAMMM!!
• TRANSFORMERS

You’ve ever ended a sentence with the word “PSYCHE!”
You just cant resist finishing this… “I in west Philadelphia born and raised…”

You remember

• Step by Step
• Family Matters!!!
• Dinosaurs
• Boy Meets World!!!!

You remember when it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons.
You remember reading “Goosebumps”.
You still get the urge to say “NOT” after (almost) every sentence… not

When everything was settled by

• Rock paper scissors
• Bubble gum bubble gum in a dish or
• Ms. Mary Mack

When kick ball was a daily activity.
When we used to obey our parents.
You used to listen to the radio all day long just to record your FAVORITE song of ALL time on a tape.
You remember when Super Nintendos and Sega Genesis became popular.
You remember The Original Game Boy.
You always wanted to send in a tape to America’s Funniest Home Videos… but never taped anything funny.

You remember watching

• The Magic School Bus
• Wishbone
• Reading Rainbow
• and Ghostwriter on PBS

You remember when Yo-Yos were cool.
You remember those Where’s Waldo books.
You remember eating Warheads and Splashers Gum.

You remember watching

• The 1st Batman
• Aladdin
• Ninja Turtles

You remember Ring Pops.
If you remember when every thing was “da BOMB!”
You remember boom boxes .vs. cd players.
Making those little paper fortune cookie things, and then predicting your life with them.
You played and/or collected “Pogs”.
You had at least one Tamagotchi, GigaPet, or Nano and brought it everywhere.

one word… trolls.

Windows 95 was the best.

You watched the original cartoons of

• Rugrats
• Wild Thornberry’s
• Power Rangers
• Rocket Power

All your school supplies were “Lisa Frank” brand.
You collected those Beanie Babies.

Carebears

Lambchop’s song never ended.
Silver dollars, which were cool to have.
Everyone watched the WB.
If you even know what an original Walkman is.
You know the Macarena by heart.
“Talk to the hand”… enough said.

You went to McDonald’s to play in the playplace.
You remember playing on merry go rounds at the playground.

Before the MySpace frenzy.
Before the Internet & text messaging.
Before Sidekicks & iPods.
Before PlayStation3 or X-BOX 360.
Before Spongebob.
Before Tupac was shot.

When light up sneakers were cool.
When you rented VHS tapes, not DVDs.

When gas was $0.95 a gallon.
When we recorded stuff on VCRs.
You had slap bracelets!
You actually played outside until it was dark!

Way back.

Before PLAYSTATION!
The Dreamcast being the first online system…

There you have it. My post on the 90’s for the weekend.

Sure we set up a blog, nice theme and all, had some visitors coming by. Things are all good but we want it better. We didn’t really know what to blog and Ridzuan has writer’s block each time he settles himself on an office chair. We have a lot of discussion: what can we blog about; how frequent should we be blogging; and how to blog about communications without sounding like an excerpt from a third-year engineering textbook.

Someone - I honestly can’t recall who - brilliantly suggest that we should have some sort of a blogging roster where everyone sort of have to blog once per week. And yeah, my turn’s on Friday and this is my first time blogging in Widgeo.us Blog.

Also, we’re aware that the name Widgeo.us Blog simply didn’t sound just catchy enough. During our board meeting (our board has 4 people, coincidentally the size of our company), we started suggesting new blog names.

And then I suggested “we just blog” after hearing John Legend’s We Just Don’t Care on radio.

John Legend - P.D.A. (We Just Don’t Care)

So… yeah, we adopted the name. It’s short, sounds fun and is (probably) most descriptive of the purpose of this blog - after all right here, we just blog.

[On a side note: My proposal to make the song our official anthem has been rejected.]

You know sometimes when you dream and then you wake up feeling totally inspired? I had that magical feeling 3 days ago. I was cycling in my dream and cycling was something I have not been doing for 5 years, ever since my beloved BMX bicycle was stolen. It was an aluminium Haro tricked out with an array of high-end components like “Shimano XT” V-Brakes and my favorite French “Mavic” Rims. I locked it outside my flat with a thick chain and apparently it was cut in the middle of the night while I was asleep. The dream was almost lucid and the first thing on my mind when I opened my eyes was that I have to get a new ride.

A trip to my local bike shop and I have my new ride. It was a hasty decision but a good one nonetheless. Cycling was one of my major hobbies and living without a bike for the past 5 years somehow made me incomplete. The bike I bought is a 2008 Avalanche 2.0 Disc from GT Bicycles. As the name implies, it comes with Tektro Auriga Comp disc brakes stock for great and responsive stopping power, especially useful for a heavy person like me.

Pardon me for the messy background of my art materials.

Aside from the quality brakes, it also has a good frame with the proven GT Triple Triangle design 6061 butted aluminum with hydroformed downtube and zero stack headtube. Basically it means the frame is strengthened at the parts where it matters and lightened where it does not, for strength and lightness. The stock drivetrain components are pretty crap and I’m definitely swapping them for a more decent system.

Unhappy with the stock components, I upgraded some of them to lighter, prettier ones. I replace the longish GT stem with an AtomLab Aircorp short stem. The wheels are replaced with a pair of disc-specific Mavic Crossrides. I’m a big fan of Mavic! The current gear shifting feels sluggish and soft so I’m changing that as well. I have the 2008 Shimano Deore-XT group in mind. I like swift and light shifting so the aluminium triggers do me a big favor.

Do you have a ride too? Show me show me!