Startup Idea #94 (Part 2): Helping independents to earn a living

Continuing my posts about creating tools to help independents earn a living, I will be talking about software ideas to help the independent t-shirt designer. Before going further, I want to share this statement from Six Part. I didn't notice this before but what they are saying fits very well into how we can create tools to help independents become more successful:T-shirt designers are proliferating and yet no tools exit to help them become more effective at what they do. One immediate thing that comes to mind is a tool that helps independents upload their designs to multiple aggreator sites and then tracks their comments.A cross between tubemogul...

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Startup Idea #95: 4 ideas to turn beautiful interfaces into meaningful applications

I saw some great interfaces recently and was wondering if they can be adapted to solve some real economic issues and create value for its users. This is by no means an implication that these current sites offer no value. Rather, if we can alter the content or context, they can deployed to realise raically different values.1. Determining the independence of a company's boardThis site has a great interface to allow users to flow from one topic to another. The power comes from the relevant topics that pops up when you click on a post. Rather than topics, why not make them people? Related people can pop up whenever I click on a particular, and when...

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10 random startup ideas

Here is a list of 10 random ideas, in no particular order or relevance.- A tumblr for inspirational web design: a light-weight service that enables users to 'copy' any parts of a website you like and share it in a tumblr like service, that is easy and beautiful to set up. A place for 'river of news' style of web inspiration. A bit similar to PatternTap with a flow to it.- Daily inspirations: A service where daily or hourly pictures of inspiration are posted. Have a big comment box where users can post, in 100 words or less, their reactions to the pictures. Comments are limited to the first 50 users before they are closed. Think this is stupid?...

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Startup Idea #94 (Part 1): Helping independents to earn a living

As the markets continue to take a pounding this week, I was reminded of a great post by Bernard Lunn called the Emerging Main Street Web. It talks how Web 2.0 can survive in the recession by enabling people to make money off the Web. It is a fantastic and well written article that any startups should read and reread it."The way for Main Street Web ventures to make money is to help other people to make money."Enabling people to earn a living is also why I am a big fan of Topspinmedia, the company that helps musicians connect with their fans through social widgets. In fact, I believe there should be such a company in all industries to help independents leverage the web and earn money. Let me take this post to brainstrom how it can be applied in some the industries where there are many independents...

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Startup Idea #93: Contextual recommendation for self publishers

Zemanta is a startup providing contextual recommendation services to bloggers. This idea of contextual recommendation is something I have thinking about last year when I receive a proposal that wants to deploy such service in travel planning. I though that was a good service but lacked a market entry point. I think Zemanta has found such an entry point by targeting bloggers.With its API, it is now possible to leverage on what Zemanta has built and to apply in other domains. One area I am interested in is in self publishing. While Lulu provides a fantastic set of marketing tools, there are no applications that help authors, especially those writing non fricition books, with their market research, case studies, figures et al. A more focus Zemanta can help with all these.What is more interesting...

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Startup Idea #92: Ad insertion for self publishing

Ever since I learn about Topspinmedia, I have been researching for such equivalent in other media sectors such as games, video and books. One company that caught my eye is Lulu, the platform for self publishers. Beyond providing a publishing tool, Lulu understands that getting attention, not distribution, is what self publishers need to monetise their work in this age of abundance. Let's look at some of the tools they have put in place.First of all, they understand the importance of search. Tools like online marketing and Google book search enables authors to easily leverage search to gather more attention for their work.Lulu also enables viral...

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APIs that I love

Two recent announcements by the Big Boys on their APIs really got me excited about the possibilities. The first is by Best Buy. If you are keen to find out more, the below links should serve as a good research point:Open Beats Closed: Best Buy's new API: The o'reilly team discusses how open beats close and why other big companies should follow sueThe API bugs hits old retail and old media: An NYtimes article descibling the API trend among the more 'traditional' businessesThe API itself: All the documentation you need to start coding.The second one? Netflix of course. Again, some references if you need to catch up on the reading:NetFlix API, What it will and will not do: A layman description of what the Netflix API can enable.5 business ideas built around Netflix API: a fun discussion on some...

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Link based journalism

Scott Karp is on fire recently. His interpretation on the importance of links to disrupt the news industry is sharp, insightful and totally on the money. If you have not read his blog, here are some recommended links (to practice what he preaches):Starting of the link journalism manifesto, which in turn is based on Jeff Javier's 'do what you do best and link to the rest' memo;While link journalism is about an individual post or news item, the equvialent of link journalism is what Scott terms networked link journalism. This is in effect using similar citation methodology as practiced by the likes of Google;Link journalism can be used to power...

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