PeepCode Restful Rails Screencast

November 13th, 2006 by Duff OMelia

Ryan recommended this screencast to me and I’m glad that he did. If you’re a rails programmer and you’d like to write a RESTful Rails application, then this screencast by Geoffrey Grosenbach (a.k.a. topfunky) will be quite useful to you. Geoffrey did an excellent job creating it. It was well worth the price.

Interview - Derek Sivers of CD Baby

October 22nd, 2006 by Duff OMelia

I greatly enjoyed this podcast show of Venture Voice. Derek Sivers created the website named CD Baby, the largest seller of independent CDs on the web.

Greg Galant does an excellent job interviewing Derek and helping entrepreneurs to learn a number of lessons from Derek’s experiences. I love hearing about how companies start and how they grow over time.

My favorite quote from the interview was in response to a question about advice for starting a business. Derek said, “Just give yourself a 10 day deadline, and just launch it with almost no features.” 10 days is not a lot of time!

CD Baby started out as a shopping cart on the website of Derek’s band.

This was an excellent interview.

Blog Post - "In Over My Head"

October 22nd, 2006 by Duff OMelia

I found this blog post by Scott Adams to be quite inspirational. He’s the creator of Dilbert.

I never realized he had accomplished so much. I never realized how often he fails. It’s a great post.

I think I need to fail more often.

Article: What Sways Consumer Opinion

August 16th, 2006 by Duff OMelia

This was a pretty interesting article by Laurie Sullivan which was published in Information Week. I liked it because its conclusions seem to indicate that websites like Soapbox have a good future ahead of them.

Here are my favorite parts:

  • JupiterResearch analyst Diane Clarkson wrote in a report that recommendations from family and friends are among online travel researchers’ most used resources…
  • JupiterResearch advertising analyst Emily Riley said word of mouth, defined as online conversations, between two people that know each other is the most trustworthy method to gain information…
  • “The days of reading some review from an expert is dwindling because people want to obtain their information from other users,” Rogoway said.

Article - 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

August 1st, 2006 by Duff OMelia

This is a an excellent article by Steve Pavlina. If you’ve ever considered starting a business, this article is for you.