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Wifi map – update

13 Jan

You may remember that at the weekend I wrote about a new wifi hotspot map i’d put together for Cardiff. It took me 30 mins, and zero stress. And I don’t have any particular technical web skills to speak of.

Well, within an hour or so of finishing and telling the world about it, two friends had set up maps in exactly the same way for their towns (Exeter and Bristol). It gave me an idea for a truly user generated, UK wide wifi map where the regional maps are owned by the people that set them up, allowing them to promote them independently, and take all the credit in their local web community. So I set up www.wifi-in-uk.co.uk to act as the portal, and have already had a Birmingham map added to the fold.

I’m looking for people to set up maps all over the country. If you’re interested, then head over to here and you could have a map for your town in a matter of minutes.

Just goes to show – with about 2 or 3 hours work in total, you can easily get web ideas up and running. Even without any technical know-how….

The interwebs is, like… amazing!

10 Jan


Seriously. I never stop being amazed.

Before I tell you this story you have to remember that I have no technical skills in the coding department (I can just about make some text bold in HTML), but I’m a relatively heavy user of the internet and I like to think I’m pretty quick at picking up new apps etc. So what I achieved in a fairly short space of time could be done by my nan (albeit maybe a bit slower).

So, it’s midday on Saturday (about three quarters of an hour ago) and I need to find a place in a certain area of Cardiff that’s got free wifi. I’ve often been confronted by this problem before, and there doesn’t seem to be a comprehensive list anywhere online. Anyway, earlier in the week I’d written a piece for Enterprise Magazine about business agility, and how the web affords us the opportunity to turn ideas around very quickly (I’ll post the article up here once the mag hits the streets), and thought I’d put my learnings into practice:

Step 1: Used Twitter to ask for tips.

Step 2: Received advice from Oli Mould, who follows me on Twitter.

Step 3: Realised how insanely easy it was to set up a map on Google Maps that was publically editable so the world could share their knowledge about wifi hotspots in Cardiff.

Step 4: Set up map, putting a few of my favourite places on there.

Step 5: Make the map public.

Step 6: Register www.wifi-in-cardiff.co.uk (6 quid) and point it at the Google map.

Step 7: Tell my friends on Twitter and ask them to retweet (share with their Twitter followers).

Step 8: Watch Twitter start to buzz with “retweets”, and then marvel that the whole process took me 30 mins.

Thirty minutes from start to finish. Even I’m amazed. And very chuffed!

Anyway, I just thought I’d share that with you. If you’re based in Cardiff, please chip in and share your wifi hotspots!

The interwebs is, like… amazing!

10 Jan


Seriously. I never stop being amazed.

Before I tell you this story you have to remember that I have no technical skills in the coding department (I can just about make some text bold in HTML), but I’m a relatively heavy user of the internet and I like to think I’m pretty quick at picking up new apps etc. So what I achieved in a fairly short space of time could be done by my nan (albeit maybe a bit slower).

So, it’s midday on Saturday (about three quarters of an hour ago) and I need to find a place in a certain area of Cardiff that’s got free wifi. I’ve often been confronted by this problem before, and there doesn’t seem to be a comprehensive list anywhere online. Anyway, earlier in the week I’d written a piece for Enterprise Magazine about business agility, and how the web affords us the opportunity to turn ideas around very quickly (I’ll post the article up here once the mag hits the streets), and thought I’d put my learnings into practice:

Step 1: Used Twitter to ask for tips.

Step 2: Received advice from Oli Mould, who follows me on Twitter.

Step 3: Realised how insanely easy it was to set up a map on Google Maps that was publically editable so the world could share their knowledge about wifi hotspots in Cardiff.

Step 4: Set up map, putting a few of my favourite places on there.

Step 5: Make the map public.

Step 6: Register www.wifi-in-cardiff.co.uk (6 quid) and point it at the Google map.

Step 7: Tell my friends on Twitter and ask them to retweet (share with their Twitter followers).

Step 8: Watch Twitter start to buzz with “retweets”, and then marvel that the whole process took me 30 mins.

Thirty minutes from start to finish. Even I’m amazed. And very chuffed!

Anyway, I just thought I’d share that with you. If you’re based in Cardiff, please chip in and share your wifi hotspots!

Knowing what’s good for you…

4 Jun

I’ve been incredibly busy and stressed of late. I tend to deal with it pretty well as a rule, but the lack of sleep, added to the travel and poor diet, has resulted in me being pretty wiped at all times for the last week or so.

So at the beginning of this week I committed to being in bed by 10pm for three consecutive nights, gorged on vegetables, and went out for a couple of long runs. Result? Bags of energy and feeling like a new man.

It’s so important when you’re working on several projects to manage your time effectively, but most of us (me included) never seem to schedule in time for “self-maintenance”. Schedule an hour of your day to looking after yourself (swimming, running, tai-chi, meditation, press-ups or all of the above) and your productivity and energy levels will sky-rocket.

News in brief –

- I wrote and produced a documentary about Prince, a childhood hero of mine, a few weeks ago for an ace internet radio station. You can download it here. Nudge me if the link has expired and I’ll upload it again.

- I’ve been working with Milen from MTR Design and Marc from The Undercard to get a new Pollen website up and running. It’ll be going live within about 24 hours, I hope. So keep checking back to www.pollenhq.com to see the utterly brilliant site they’ve put together. It’s been a genuine pleasure working with both of them and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

- I’ve decided to make my blog a bit more attractive by using some of my photos in it. They won’t necessarily relate to the blog (this week features a shot I took in Lyon when I was there doing a gig a few years ago), but they should make it a bit more colourful around here….

Knowing what’s good for you…

4 Jun

I’ve been incredibly busy and stressed of late. I tend to deal with it pretty well as a rule, but the lack of sleep, added to the travel and poor diet, has resulted in me being pretty wiped at all times for the last week or so.

So at the beginning of this week I committed to being in bed by 10pm for three consecutive nights, gorged on vegetables, and went out for a couple of long runs. Result? Bags of energy and feeling like a new man.

It’s so important when you’re working on several projects to manage your time effectively, but most of us (me included) never seem to schedule in time for “self-maintenance”. Schedule an hour of your day to looking after yourself (swimming, running, tai-chi, meditation, press-ups or all of the above) and your productivity and energy levels will sky-rocket.

News in brief –

- I wrote and produced a documentary about Prince, a childhood hero of mine, a few weeks ago for an ace internet radio station. You can download it here. Nudge me if the link has expired and I’ll upload it again.

- I’ve been working with Milen from MTR Design and Marc from The Undercard to get a new Pollen website up and running. It’ll be going live within about 24 hours, I hope. So keep checking back to www.pollenhq.com to see the utterly brilliant site they’ve put together. It’s been a genuine pleasure working with both of them and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

- I’ve decided to make my blog a bit more attractive by using some of my photos in it. They won’t necessarily relate to the blog (this week features a shot I took in Lyon when I was there doing a gig a few years ago), but they should make it a bit more colourful around here….

Top 100 Startups

24 Apr

- Apologies for the lack of updates. I have lots of things I want to write about, but they don’t seem to lend themselves to quick and pithy posts. Normal service will be resumed soon.

- Startups.co.uk have just published their top 100 startups for this year. It makes interesting reading. Lots I’ve heard of, and lots I haven’t. Many of them are based in the financial sector, but there’s a reassuring amount that are creative, or creative solutions to traditional problems. But it’s still a shame to see that only a quarter of the entrepreneurs are female, and the majority of all the businesses are still London-based. I’m not sure if this is because London based startups get more exposure, being in the hub of all things media and publishing, but I don’t actually think there’s any in there from Wales. Let’s hope we can change that soon!

Edit: I had a closer look at the list and it appears there is at least one company from Wales in there (Afan Films). I think any stats for Wales must be lumped in with the South West, or just not reported at all.

Developer trouble….

28 Mar

I was chatting to a friend from America recently about the problems I’ve had over the last couple of years with web developers. I’ve worked with a couple who’ve both let me down really badly and put me back to square one with my web-based startup. Admittedly much of this was my own fault for not being tough enough with them when it seemed like they weren’t committed to the project. And also my lack of capital meant that I had to engage the developers with equity stakes instead of cold, hard cash. The problem with this, as I wrote about in this post, is that developers don’t often see the potential future value of things. So giving them a share of the company didn’t excite them into action in the way I thought it would, and I slowly drifted down their priority list until I wasn’t hearing from them for weeks at a time.

I understand that a freelancer’s gotta eat, and so therefore will have to take other jobs that offer to pay upfront. But if you have been given a substantial stake in a potentially very lucrative business that you would find the time to make it work. Where are all the programmers out there that have developed the sites for the multi-million dollar businesses out there? I don’t believe that all of those were funded by entrepreneurs backed by Silicon Valley funders. Surely some of them must have been started by geeks in their bedrooms with groovy ideas – like these guys who had to quit the UK and head to the States?

So what’s the solution for cash-strapped entrepreneurs like myself?

Sadly i can’t say I can think of many ways other than using shares / equity as “payment”. A good chat to my developer friend Paolo (who’s one of the rare breed of “geeks” who’s also a great creative entrepreneur – check out his spendamillion.com project) has clarified a few possible steps to consider in the future:

  • Networking events to bring geeks and entrepreneurs together – but will the geeks still be as potentially unreliable? Maybe I should organise one…
  • Using sites such as elance and getafreelancer to find cheap labour – quality and reliability an issue?
  • Break the design, wireframing, development etc into smaller chunks so that it’s less daunting for the entrepreneur, plus developers are less likely to go AWOL at any given stage. Especially if you give each stage to a different developer.

Sadly I think the ideal solution is to find a good, well-respected freelancer or small company, pay them for however long you need them for and make it clear that for that fortnight, or whatever, they completely belong to you and you expect twice daily updates. Now, finding a freelancer with the necessary skills and time….. That’s another matter!

I’d be really interested to hear from anynoe who has any thoughts on how best to get quality web work done with as little capital outlay as possible. Any ideas?

Ticket Touts, Microsoft, China and Digital Nomads

11 Mar

* “Concert promoters have joined performing artists’ managers in their battle to get secondary ticketing companies to pay a levy from the profits they make on live shows”, says an article on FT.com. In essence this means that they want the likes of eBay to pay a percentage of any profits from tickets sold online. Part of me says this is an important way to start to eat into the “problem” of ticket touts buying up normal price tickets before the real fans can get there, and then selling them on at several times the price. Another part of me thinks we can’t mess with market forces. If I sold a car to a man for a price I’d set, and then found out that he’d later sold it on for more money I couldn’t demand a share of his profits too, could I?

* I’ve been keeping half an eye on the swelling giant of a market that exists in China. There’s so much potential for any entrepreneurs who are willing to take a punt on providing for the burgeoning middle classes in this exciting country. I can’t say I’m much of an expert on consumer goods, but if you can leap the cultural hurdle (if you’ll excuse the metaphor) and find a product or service that captures the imagination of the Chinese nouveau riche there’s plenty of exciting opportunities ahead. I for one would love to spend time out there. It’s a vast, intriguing country that is just asking to be explored. My friend Rob has been out there for the past year and I always enjoy checking out his photos.

* You may remember that I wrote about working from my new local cafe recently. Well, a few days ago Microsoft’s Steve Clayton blogged about the very same thing. He links to some great articles on the subject of “Digital Nomads” (hey, I’m a Digital Nomad. I like the sound of that!). Definitely worth a read if you’re the type who does (or could) work from anywhere.

* I mention Steve Clayton because I’ve really enjoyed reading his blogs of late, and he has really “humanised” the Microsoft behemoth for me. They are often seen as the faceless, corporate flipside to Steve Jobs’ “hip and groovy” Apple. But through reading Steve’s blogs I’ve got a sense of the passion with which Microsoft go about their creativity and innovation. I was lucky enough to meet one of his colleagues, Steve Beswick, recently when I sat on the panel of a Dragon’s Den style event for Make Your Mark‘s “Ideas Igloo”. A really cool event, supported by Microsoft, which aimed to identify and encourage young entrepreneurs and innovators. I really enjoyed the event and it reassured me to see that this bunch of young students had some amazing ideas and tons of energy.

Working environments

15 Oct

Well, our first Pollen event was a big success. Over 50 people turned up and drank the free drinks* at City Canteen and Bar. It was really cool to see everyone having a bit of a laugh and chatting. I never intended for it to become a serious networking event, and I’m glad that it was all very relaxed. I hope that people do benefit from it. But I don’t believe that it has to be as stuffy and business-like for this to happen. Anyway, I’m shortly to announce the new dates for November (prob 6th) and December (prob 4th).

I popped into my new local coffee bar today on my way back from the shops. It was just after lunch and I bumped into my friend Jason Soudah. It was the second time in a week that I’d bumped into him there. Jason’s a very talented singer/songwriter/musician, and along with his drummer Matt seems to have decamped to the new coffee bar. They appear to be running a campaign from there. They turn up, have breakfast and coffee and sit there using the free wireless to email their contacts all over the world.

When I sat down Jason was half-way through emailing an American radio station that’s been supporting his album, whilst Matt was out on the terrace earnestly phoning a record label exec. At least that’s who I supposed he was phoning. It could have been his mum for all I know!

What was great though, was to see Jason and Matt using a great, relaxed location to get all their work done. Although I’m estimating they’re spending about 10 quid each a day on coffee and cake (!), I was very jealous of their working environment. I spend all day hunched over on my sofa. It’s not very good for my back, and I often go days without seeing anyone from 9-5. They’re sat in a big open-plan “office” sharing ideas, whilst people bring them skinny lattés. I’m sat in my lounge, with the temptation of the TV etc to keep me from getting down to work.

Working environments are obviously so important, and those of us that don’t have an office to go to are often stuck in a spare bedroom with no-one to talk to. Making the most of free wi-fi and light, airy environments is a must, even if it’s only once in a while for the change of scenery.

If Jason and Matt are unlucky, they’ll be seeing me from time to time over the coming weeks!

:)

*Thanks to Claire and all at Creative Business Wales!

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