Cuisinart Coffee Maker

Here's a question: who owns the rights to this review I just posted over on Amazon?

...................................

An exercise in frustration and time-wasting,

If spending 10-15 minutes fiddling around with pieces of plastic trying to assemble them into the right combination is your idea of fun every morning, then I heartily recommend what Cuisinart has given us here. For the rest of us mere mortals, who arise in a slightly grumpy state and need that first coffee hit in order to get our day started, stay away from this. I have seldom encountered such a poorly designed product.

The fiancee picked this one up and it has become an unmentionable topic between us, guaranteed to spark flare-ups and snappiness in the kitchen. So this secret review will have to suffice instead.

Pros:
- looks nice

Cons:
- what feels like 47 separate little pieces of plastic that all need to washed/assembled/disassembled every time you use this monstrosity. These are: (1) the black plastic basket thing which clips on in a weird way (2) the hanging thingybob that you have to turn around and screw in there (3) the grinder which only seems to disperse about 80% of the ground coffee down into the filter paper and basket waiting below (meaning that every time you have to remove the grinder and bonk it against the side in order to knock the rest in) (4) the clear plastic top of the coffee grinding part so you can look in and think "That's never going to be enough ground coffee, is it?!?"

And you are always right.

It never is.

OK it was only 4 pieces, but their ultimate fiddliness makes it feel like 47.

- Next disadvantage: confusing digital lights and buttons at the front of the machine. When you finally have poured in the water, ground your beans and switched the "on" button, a soothing green digital light appears. You walk away to the bathroom, confident that you will be welcomed on your return by a full pot of steaming coffee. Instead you return from the shower, towelling your still-wet hair to find an empty pot and this constipated machine refusing to release any liquids. ("But it's easy," the fiancee explains. "First you have to switch it off. Then you need the orange light that says 'grinder off' to be on. Then you press the 'on-off' switch again." (and then turn around three times, click your heels together and do a shimmy)) My method has become: press a few buttons, hope for the best and put your head against the machine listening for gurgles inside. (I look like an expectant father these days...albeit a very irritated looking one)

Yes, I am sure that given enough training and instruction, I would be able to assemble these parts like a rifle expert. And decipher the cryptic codes of the digital lights like a morse code radio operator.

But you should not need an advanced degree in mechanics to make a cup of coffee.

I would not consider myself a non-technical person. (I can repair bicycles, fix the miniature screws that fall out of my glasses every 6 months and I can program a little HTML to do web design. I have a degree in business. I solve Su Doku puzzles. I taught myself to play the fiddle. I am kind to children)

But life is just too short and precious to waste messing on this. Do yourself a favour when you choose your coffee machine, keep it simple. Avoid this train wreck from Cuisinart!

Brand Identity Guidelines

Developing a strong brand identity is the most important thing any company can do to develop its brand. It cannot get any simpler than that. Most organizations fail miserably at this very basic task though. Brand identity is how you want your company or products to be perceived. If you get this wrong it could lead to big time problems later in your brand image. So how does a company build its brand identity?Start with performing some branding research. When was the last time you went out to customers, prospects and past clients and asked them what they thought of your industry? Do you really know what clients desires are? What about what they do not want? Do you know where they go first to find a company like yours? Are they going to the internet and doing searches or finding you in a trade publication?Now you need to perform that same research internally with key employees. What do they think? How do they perceive the company? Is this in line with what you want your brand identity to be? Do you even have a clear identity? Do your employees know your brand promise? Is there a brand promise? Do you have a value proposition? Do they know what it is? If you have answered no to any of these questions you will need help!Okay, so your research is done and you know what you want your identity to be. What do you do next? We recommend establishing a new positioning with that identity. If Volvo the automobile equals safety and Apple computer equals creativity what do you want to equal? It should be very clear and easy. What are the next steps? Start with developing strategies and tactics that will leverage that new brand identity and positioning. They should all tie back to corporate objectives. Avoid wasting money on reactive marketing that gets you know where and wastes your marketing budget. Some of the tactics may include search engine optimization, direct mail, advertising, banner ads, e-newsletters, e-mail marketing, trade shows and much more. It is imperative to choose the tactics that will benefit you the most. Do not waste money on advertising if you are only going to place two ads for the year. It will not work. Instead invest in tactics that will give you more bang for your buck like search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a great way to build brand identity and increase sales.

Keyword Articles: http://www.keywordarticles.org

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading brand identity company and market research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts. As a branding agency we specialize in strategy and creative.

The Negotiators !

How is this for a potential business model: a price negotiating service.

Once you have been quoted a price by a seller, you submit this info to The Price Negotiators! They spring into action, get on the phone and negotiate on your behalf. If they negotiate a further saving/discount on your behalf, they get to keep half.



Presumably this could only be a sustainable business model for big ticket items (a car, a boat, a house), otherwise we'd be talking about piddling sums here.

Possible website domains?

www.TheNegotiators.com

www.WeNegotiate4U.com

www.five-thousand-dollars for-this-piece-of-shit-are-you-kidding-me.com


Would it work? Would you do it?

If anyone knows of a service like this, I'd be interested to know about it.

Anyone interested in setting it up with me?

Effective Management: mini video course

A self-help reference tutorial for how to manage effectively.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday





Holiday Special





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Boston Consulting Group: punching managers between the eyes since 1963!

I found a fascinating document on the Boston Consulting Group website today that details the foundation and growth of the company. The 50 page PDF gives a year by year documentation of how Bruce Henderson, a former Bible salesman, grew BCG from a firm with just two consultants to an organization with 3,300 consultants and offices all over the world.



Henderson started off by mailing out controversial essays designed to provoke senior management thinking on a broad spectrum of business issues. They called these 'Perspectives'. When writing these texts, they eschewed anything that was considered conventional business wisdom and instead sought significant and thought-stimulating ideas. Henderson liked to describe the Perspectives as a Punch between the Eyes.

Here's the timeline itself:
http://www.bcg.com/this_is_bcg/bcg_history/Printable.pdf

And here's just one of the Perspectives, 'Capitalizing on Anomalies', that particularly appealed to me:
http://www.bcg.com/publications/files/Eng368-CapitalizingonAno.pdf

Robot spider terrorizes lazy translators!

I come across so many poorly translated websites on the internet that it gave me the following idea as to how a language translation company could generate leads: build a robot or spider program that crawls websites searching for errors. Program the spider so that once it finds an error, it then notifies the programmer and automatically emails the website owner or webmaster. Some standard blurb like "Dear Website Owner, while looking at your website we saw that there are errors in the translation into English. This creates an unprofessional impression of your website and your services. If you would like this and any other translation errors corrected, please email us."




I'm not a computer programmer, so I have to ask those who ARE and are reading this: how feasible would this be? I imagine you'd probably need to be able to program the spider to find a specific incorrect phrase like "The customers is satisfied". Or could you set it up to substitute the word 'customers' for any plural noun, so that when it comes across the plural noun clashing with the 'is', it can identify it as an error and flag it.

Cheap accommodation: sleep in a New York coffin !

So next idea: I realized recently that there are next to no capsule hotels in New York City. Are there any at all? For those who don't know, capsule hotels (or coffin hotel as they are sometimes known) come from Japan and look like this:



Guest space is reduced in size to a plastic block roughly 2 m by 1 m by 1.25 m, providing room to sleep and that's about it. There may be a TV if it's a fancy shmancy one. The capsules are stacked, two units high or more. Luggage is usually stored in a communal locker area away from the capsule. Washing facilities are communal. The advantage of such a hotel is the price, usually around $16–34 per night.

I mentioned it to a friend who got extremely excited by the idea. Since we were at a bar and therefore unable to access the internet, we made various conjectures as to what would be involved.

- male and female capsules to be separated into different areas
- vending machines in the communal area could bring in additional revenue
- set it up near railway station therefore probably the Penn Station area, maybe 10th or 11th Avenue where rent / property would be slightly cheaper.
- need to prevent homeless people adopting it as some kind of dosshouse. Prohibitive pricing therefore necessary?

We became convinced that there must be some regulatory hotel body that prevents their existence in New York otherwise surely there'd be a few.

This morning I checked on wikipedia and saw that there's just one hotel listed in NY as being a capsule hotel:

http://www.pickwickarms.com

(But I think this is a misnomer. Their rooms are HUGE compared to what you get in a real capsule hotel)

If you were a tourist in NYC and on a low budget, would you stay in our capsule hotel?


UPDATE: June 25

OK. So in order to judge whether or not there's going to be some law that'll stop this particular idea, I did about 4 hours research on the internet.

- Yotel is the brainchild of Yo! founder Simon Woodroffe
- The central London Yotel will be priced at £80 for an overnight stay, and the airport hotels at £40 for four hours
- A third hotel will open in central London in 2007, as part of a plan to be in all prime city centres and key airport locations in the next five to 10 years.
- EasyHotel plans to use demand-based pricing to reduce vacancies. The fewer people want to stay at a given time, the lower the price will be. (Easyhotel is from the guy who gave the world Easyjet, Mr. Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a Greek lad). EasyHotel plans to rent rooms for $9.75 a night.

If you're interested, here's where I did the background reading:

http://www.frommers.com/articles/4359.html

http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2006/03/16/305754/hotels-touch-of-luxury-on-a-budget.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/travel/08cheapchic.html?ex=1273204800&en=50bad28e4ef64f4c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

http://www.japanaddicted.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2431


So, I learned much about small cabin-like hotels from the likes of Yotel and Nitenite, but precious little about capsule hotels in the USA.

Why not?

Why not? Why not?

Whynotwhynotwhynot, goddamit?!

Coz they really do not seem to exist! The only two references I came across for capsule hotels were from two guys, Brett and Brehd, that run a blog commenting on building developments in Knoxville (Jeeze!):
http://www.knoxpatch.com/?p=553

And a techie guy named Jan Chipcase who even has a photo on his blog: a view from his capsule hotel in San Francisco:
http://www.janchipchase.com/blog/archives/2007/03/ideo_presentati.html

Is that real, Jan? Or did you photoshop it? Because I can't find ANY other reference on the internet to capsule hotels in San Fran!

So I emailed the trio of characters above, but so far have heard nothing back.

Another thing I did was create the following text:

Hello John,

I came across your website while doing some research on the internet. I am investigating the feasibility of opening a capsule hotel in New York City. (I'm sure you have at least heard of the concept, which comes from Japan?) No one seems to be able to tell me whether such a densely packed hotel is actually legal or not according to city laws. Do you have any wise advice you could provide me with or at least a few pointers? Is there some paragraph of hotel regulations that would immediately knock our business concept on the head...

Sincerely,


...and email it to all the following hotel experts of some degree or other:

1. various professors of law and real estate at the Hotel and Hospitality School of Cornell http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/

2. Hotel Industry Consultants www.pinnacle-advisory.com

3. Juliana Shallcross, Senior Editor of www.HotelChatter.com

4. Hotel Industry Consultant www.jeffcoy.com

Feedback ranged from " I don't have any experience or knowledge on this type of hotel" (which I found kind of amazing, considering even I had heard of capsule hotels and I've never been to Japan!) to advice referring me back to one lawyer here in New York that I had actually phoned up and quizzed already.

The longest and most helpful response came from ...

5. www.melvingoldconsulting.com with Mr. Gold from the UK even offering to put me in touch with the Yotel people!

But the end result? No one really knew off the top of their head.

So, finally, I threw together the following mock-up of an ad and put it on craigslist to at least get a feel for what demand there might be out there:






.....................
CRAIGSLIST: New York accommodation - inexpensive and cool sleeping quarters

Inexpensive accommodation available for tourists in midtown Manhattan area. Our Japanese style capsule hotel offers you a clean and compact sleeping module. An ultra cool and hip place to stay in The Big Apple. Bathrooms are communal but very hygienic. Male and female quarters are separated. Friendly and welcoming staff. Ideal for students or those on a low budget. We are located a few blocks west of Penn Station. For $70 per night, you will not find cheaper accommodation in such a great and convenient location.

To enquire about availability, email us:

1. your exact dates and
2. number of guests

We will email you back more exact details about our accommodation facilities including photos, availability and how to reserve a sleeping capsule.
.....................

...and, because I know that Craigslist removes it's postings within 7 days, I'm also throwing it up over here too at this spin off blog: http://new-york-capsule-hotel.blogspot.com/


But so far, about 4 days later, how many people have responded?

None.

Are we barking up a wrong tree here?

Input and ideas welcome... Help!

Sneezing panda captures eyeballs !

Hmmmm....today I discovered how to embed utube videos in blogspot. Click on the play arrows below (sometimes you have to click twice) to take a look at some entertaining videos and then rejoin me once you've scrolled down below the videos for some more thoughts on this.

The sneezing panda. You have to watch this one twice to really appreciate it. Very funny inter-bear interaction at the zoo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtLzvOsQ80k




This clip shows a guy named Noah who took one photo of himself every day for 6 YEARS!!! It's very interesting to see the effect of aging. Kind of poignant effect with the music. Quite beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo




Some clever choreography from four guys running/dancing/bouncing off exercise treadmills of all things. Nice idea. (I'll give two dollars to the first person who can write what the song is in the 'comments' section)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINJQ5LRh-0



Cute kid talking about some guy getting kicked in the 'penith'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9hgFXftG2g




So. Now you've 'hyucked' it up, tell me this: could there be potential here for grouping useful utube videos together in order to create huge web traffic? I'm thinking of categories that spring to mind like

1. putting a series of useful clips together. For example: http://traditional-irish-music-session-tunes.blogspot.com

2. Or all the smaller parts of one documentary (as I've done by putting all 6 parts of a Velvet Underground documentary onto one page here in my spin off blog):

http://watch-tv-on-the-internet.blogspot.com

3. Or all the Utube videos of songs by one artist as I've done in an example spin off blog containing video clips of songs by the wonderful Regina Spektor:

http://regina-spektor-videos.blogspot.com

4. Or putting a series of Utube "stand up comedy" videos together on one website. Call it http://stand-up-comedy-clips.blogspot.com or something



What do you think? What might be other value-building groupings of YouTube videos that one could 'assemble'? Write a comment, drop me a line, make me a suggestion (or an offer I can't refuse!) by using the email address listed elswhere on this page.

What do you think of this business idea?
	Brilliant idea!
	Has potential
	Not so hot
	Doomed to failure!
pollcode.com free polls

Oh and by the way: do you want to learn "how to put videos on my blogspot"? It's a cinch! Here's how to upload video to your blog:

1. Go to Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com

2. Do a search for some video clips related to your blog or whatever it is you'd like to put on your blog.

3. Got one?

OK.

Now while the video is playing, do you see the "Embed" field to the right of the video? (in my example screenshot below, it's circled in red). Go in there. Do 'Control + A' to select everything in there. Now do 'Control + C' to copy it. OK. You've got it! You've got the precious little HTML code. Don't drop it, for God's sake! Be very very careful. Anythign could happen at this point! Hold your breath until I tell you to breathe again.




4. Now go into your blog and find the area where you can add HTML code. Assuming you're using Blogspot or blogger, it'll probably be when you create a new post and then you just do 'Control + V' to paste the code into the post.

5. Save your post. Check how it looks when you view your blog. You should have a real live little Youtube video sitting there with a play arrow, waiting to be pressed. Like this:



6. Breathe again. Congrats. Say to yourself "I am now the proud owner of video content on my blog. I now know how to upload videos to blogspot!".

7. Have a nice cup of tea.

Cool Birthday gift: star in your own comic book!

Would this be a good 50th or 60th or 70th Birthday present? A graphic novel based on the life of the Birthday Boy or Girl.

- the gift giver supplies a selection of photographs + stories from the person's life
- scan the images and a graphic designer assembles the comic using these photos and some other pre-prepared images/backgrounds.

You'd need to keep the style of artwork relatively abstract so that it's not inaccurate, for example in terms of the layout of the person's town or home etc. Also, because it' be pretty labor intensive for the graphic designer/illustrator, you'd have to charge a nice high price tag!

Any talented comic strip artists out there interested in giving it a try with me? So far this website looks free: http://www.birthdaycomic.com

What do you think of this business idea?
	Brilliant idea!
	Has potential
	Not so hot
	Doomed to failure!
pollcode.com free polls

.....................
(c) 2007. The small print: All business ideas and website URLs first cited in this blog are copyright. Please email me if you would like to collaborate on developing these business ideas or purchasing these URLs.

Crap business ideas: Identify them! Avoid them!

Generally speaking: what's a good way to evaulate business ideas?

Fabrice Grinda, a 31-year-old entrepreneur who once sold a company (Zingy) for $80 million once admitted that he steals brilliant internet ideas from USA and bring them to Latin America or Europe or vice versa. He 'throws stuff at the wall and see if it sticks. And if it fails, it fails.'

His series of business selection criteria when deciding which company to go into are as follows (and he does make the point that these are personal and based on his own skillset:

1. Is this a billion dollar market option?
2. Is this a valid and understood business model from the start? Do you know how much you’re going to charge? Do you know what your gross and net margins are
3. Is this a biz that doesn’t require more than 5 – 15 million dollars in series A funding, more than $2 M in seed money coz if it s more than that then its probably not for a start up.
4. Is it scaleable?
5. Is it something I want to do (coz it needs to be fun)
6. Is it something that’s at no risk or little risk if there’s intermediation or market repression from suppliers or customers? Don’t be involved in a biz where there's a risk of disintermediation!
7. is it something that’s part of a growing market?

His blog
www.FabriceGrinda.com

Screw internet dating websites! I need a friend!

Ever thought that? I've heard people remark on how difficult they sometimes find it to make friends in New York. Particularly if you're a busy person, meeting new people can be difficult.

Especially on a platonic basis.

Is there grounds for a friendship website? A speed dating version for friendship. Does such a thing exist? I'd call it:

www.speedfriending.com

or

www.speedfriend.com

Let me know if you konw of such a thing. If not, maybe it needs to exist...

Add your thoughts on this in a comment or email me.

The Creative Process and Martin Amis

Martin Amis was once asked why he gave one of his characters a fat cigar and he said “Anything that hangs around in my mind for a while gets in , purely on the strength of that. I think , ´What´s this doing in my mind? It must resonate with some experience´.”

Office worker killed by Excel spreadsheet !

When you get that frazzled feeling and feel like you are being overwhelmed and cannot meet deadlines, follow these Top Ten Office Drone tips:

1. Delegate!

2. Adjust/re-negotiate deadlines to give yourself more room!

3. Send quick emails to people asking for their input on things so that without realizing it, they are doing some of the gruntwork for you!

4. Write "Awaiting your response on this" at the end of every email so you are covered and you cannot do further on this until they get back to you (ie now THEY're the ones holding the project up)!

5. Never respond too quickly to something or you'll find that the next email already gets sent back pushing you to do the next stage. Now the ball is back in your court and you're the botleneck, 'holding things up'. If you get something completed unexpectedly early before a deadline, sit on it and don't send it out until the deadline approacheth. If you send it off too early (eager-beaver-like), you'll find other people have time to make some criticisms/suggestions and hand it back to you to re-work all over again.

6. At meetings, shut up. Don't venture bright new ideas or you'll find you're the one assigned to 'look into that some more'.

7. Ask yourself 'Is the job repecting you as much as you're respecting the job'?

8. If you have to cherry pick the things to focus on, always answer the bosses emails/requests first! After that, choose the things that will boost your resume's value eg. recently I have let some vague, potential clients' calls unreturned coz I was concentrating on trying to land a project with a major client: one of the Big Four. If I pull this off, you can betcha bottom dollar it will be appearing on my resume one year from now.

9. Don't worry excessively about lists always being a round number. It doesn't have to be a magic number of 5 or 7 or "10 things you should know about your cat"

10. There's no number 10. See number 9.

Storytelling: how to mash up an ancient skill

I propose a giant grid, something mashed up with Google maps or something. The website visitor can click on a street corner and add their own personal story or anecdote. Something similar to this already exists on the internet where the map indicates the bar or store or sightseeing attraction with a little info about it. I think there's also rock and roll history...yes...that's it. Now I remember, For example, it'll show the Blue Ribbon Bakery in teh West Village and there'll be pop up information that Jimmi Hendrix used to buy his fresh bread there. (If you know the website, please add a comment linking to it as I cannot for the life of me track it down on the internet)

I'm proposing something a lot more personal, something very texty and anecdotal. I think it'd give people a real behind-the-scenes look at teh city. People could post stories about where they met and hooked up with some guy or gal or their new york horror stories ("This is the corner where my friend Billy and me were mugged. Three guys came up to us with knives and one of them even had their girlfriend there and she was almost as aggressive as the guys. I just gave them everything and ran down Seventh Avenue! Billy was 100 metres ahead of me!")

Obviously this wouldn't have to be limited to New York. Every major city in the world could have one. Call it...

http://www.citymatrixstories.com

...or

http://www.matrixofstories.com

...or something.

What do you think? What would the business model be? How do you suggest it would be possible to make money from something like that?

Email me!

Riots break out as crowds fight to rent violin

Wanna practise playing the fiddle?

I bought my violin (plus bow) second hand from Sam Ash for 300 plus something dollars about one and a half years ago. I'm learning Irish fiddle tunes on it myself. While I'm not using it (like right now for a week or so) I'd be happy to rent it out for someone to use. It'll give you a chance to fool around with it. See if you like it or not. It's from Ars music and made in the Czech Republic (see sepia colored photo attached to this ad). It comes in a hard cover carrying case along with bow and rosin and a mute.

The fair rate I'm asking is: $10 per day, money to be paid in advance. Minimum number of days = 2, maximum is 2 weeks (because I don't wanna get TOTALLY out of practice!). As a deposit I'm asking $50, just in case you break all my strings or something. The deposit will be returned once you return the violin to me in the same condition you received it.

In order to ensure you don't disappear with it forever, I'll need to see your driver's licence and you'll have to swear on your great great great Grandmother's grave that you'll return it.

If we meet and you seem sketchy eg. you are wearing a mask and have tatoos on your neck and are called "Louie", I'll probably change my mind. Ha ha. This is nothing against anyone called Louie. Some of my best friends are called Louie. Hoo hoo hoo.

Note: this fiddle does NOT come with the dancing highland lassies.

Is there potential for renting other things out on a temporary basis? What do you have at home that's unused right now or for the weekend, but you'd be prepared to rent it out to make some money? A computer? A scanner? A guitar or piano? Your apartment? Or maybe just a room in your apartment? A space in your car when you drive from New York to Washington next Tuesday. Whatever!

Add it as a comment, along with your city and zip code and what price you are asking for the rental of whatever the hell it is. Include your email address or telephone number if you want. I'm open to any further comments on this. Email me your ideas on how to grow this into a profitable business.

What do you think of this business idea?
	Brilliant idea!
	Has potential
	Not so hot
	Doomed to failure!
pollcode.com free polls

.................

UPDATE: 2009 July

Just came across an interesting website which offers the capability to loan and borrow like this and earn money from it. Check out: www.loanables.com

Seems to mostly be for power tools, which is indeed a great example of something you might use once for a project and then not ever need again. Any of the users there are seem to be primarily based in Texas. Practically nothing at all listed for New York!

Except for a newly-posted listing, that is.

A violin! ;-)

The Perfect Book

If you could buy The Perfect Book that would seem to have been written just for you...

1. What would it be about? (eg. a book about how to meet the ideal partner? a humorous book that makes you laugh? a guide to making money? a book that changes your perspective on life?)

2. What would its title be? (eg. "How to meet your Prince Charming", "Turn $1 into $10,000 in 6 months or your dollar back", "10 big ideas that will change your life")

3. What might be another cool title of a book that you'd be very interested in?

I'm thinking of commissioning an eBook to be written so I'm interested to hear what it is people just like YOU would like to read! Please shoot me a quick email. A sentence or two will do, even just a few keywords.

It's Business Baby! Interviews with business people

Here's another cool business idea that I'd like to roll out.

I'm looking for some chatty and talkative people who would like to be featured on my new blog. I'd like to record a 20 minute interview between us, transcribe that and post it to the blog. I hope also to make a downloadable podcast from the recording so that the blog visitor can either listen to the audio or just read it. Obviously it'll be great promotion for you and we'll have a link back to your website.

There's nothing much yet to see at the blog but here's the URL:

http://itsbusinessbaby.blogspot.com/

Email me what your business is (incl. website), a few sentences about why your business (regardless of whether it's your own or you are working for someone else) is interesting enough to be featured. Include your telephone number please. I'm looking for some interesting anecdotal material here, more than just "my-product-will-change-your-life-blah-de-blah". The end interview we come up with should be either E or E: entertaining or educational.

Add your comment or email me at mouseloveselephant at yahoo dot com

Make your own Audiobook!

Elsewhere on this blog, I noted the business idea of offering customers the service of converting a book they own into audio. I actually tested this out on the New York version of
www.craigslist.org
to see what response there was. Here was the ad I placed:


.............................................................

Perfect gift: convert that Special Someone’s favorite book into audio



Enjoy ‘reading’ your favorite novel again by listening to it on your iPod. We will convert your book of choice into audiobook format for your personal aural pleasure and enjoyment. Relax, close your eyes and unwind ...



...while you listen to your personally recorded book. Tune out as you listen to your favorite author while traveling by subway or car. For the more voracious reader, this is also the perfect way to catch up on that backlog of books you just haven’t had time to read yet. Makes a wonderful gift!

Book length and prices:

1 – 100 pages = $5
101 – 200 pages = $10
201 – 300 pages = $15
301 – 400 pages = $20
401 – 500 pages = $25
501 pages and above = $30

Additional cost: $3.85 packaging + shipping.

How it works? We mail you a protective bag, you use it to mail us your book, we make the recording and mail you back both your book and your new CD containing the recorded MP3s. (You may also download your MP3 files from our website where we will store them)

Email us the following details...

Your name:
Your address:
Your telephone number:
Book title:
Number of pages:

...and we will be in contact almost immediately with details on how to proceed.

.............................................................

The result? A grand total of ...guess how many enquiries.......go on, guess beofre you scroll down!!.......










....have you guessed a number?..........













.....are you ready?..........














....was it ten enquiries?..........








or five?










or fifty three??
















No it was.......







(wait for it)

















....absolutely none.

Which kind of amazed me. I mean I didn't think it was SUCH a terrible idea! Other research on the internet revealed that perhaps others were thinking in the same way.

OK, here's what others had to say on this topic:

"I have been lurking in this forum for a long time and really appreciate the professional advise given out.

well i have this idea for an application, however i am not sure whether there is any market for it. The application i have in mind is to allow you to specify files or web pages to convert the contents to speech (via speech API) and into a mp3 file. so the mp3 file can be synchronised to portable mp3 players for you to enjoy on the road.

would anyone want such a product? Toh Yen Cheng
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Ask these guys if they make any money of their text to mp3 application: http://www.nextup.com/TextAloud
or these guys: http://www.tomdownload.com/audio_mp3/music_creation/visual_text_speech_mp3.htm Patric J
Thursday, April 06, 2006
If it converted the text to clear, understandable speach then it could be a valuable application. I have a lot of notes in Word or text files and it would be really handy to be able to convert them to mp3's so I could review them via audio while I am driving. I would buy it given a reasonable price. ps
Thursday, April 06, 2006
I would say no, there isn't really a market.

Firstly, there are far too many tools that do this both well and free. You'll struggle to compete in this marketplace.

The other problem is that, unless you're thinking of doing some really heavy duty R&D, then computer generated speech is almost universally annoying. It doesn't flow like human speech, and listening to it for any length of time really jars. For vital information, people are willing to listen, but no one will listen for entertainment. Graham Thorpe
Thursday, April 06, 2006
When I first downloaded some podcasts, I found it more difficult and slower to listen to them (passively), than reading their transcripts (actively) and skimming over parts if necessary.

Other people might have other differences.

So in a nutshell, for me, a speech-to-text application would be better. What you are proposing is a text-to-speech application (it's not that they don't exist yet, but don't let that stop you), and there may well be a market for that, too. Philipp Schumann
Thursday, April 06, 2006
thanks graham and ps. will take into consideration both of your view point. seems like the natural speech output will be the feature that kills or make the product fly.

the heavy duty RND is another concern indeed. all in all thanks. Toh Yen Cheng
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Try using Acrobat Reader to read aloud a few documents. If you (and perhaps a few friends/relatives) can stand listening to more than a paragraph, then perhaps there is a market. My thesis advisor wanted to listen to my thesis introduction before a meeting and tried using Acrobat to read it aloud. Suffice to say he didn't get past the first page.

Personally, I find it too monotonous, and with too many mistakes ("co-presence" became "company presence") to be easy to listen too. A good idea in theory, but I don't think the technology is there yet. Jamie Lawrence
Thursday, April 06, 2006
As many people have pointed out, in practical use it doesn't work as good as it sounds in theory. However, you asked if there is a market and I believe there could be. For one thing there are thousands of blind people who every day use screen readers. Those same people may very well want to hear things while disconnected from their computer. Also I think you can sell it to the impulse buyers who believe it will help them more then it can. And some people may be able to tolerate text readers more then ones on this board. Phil
Thursday, April 06, 2006
I've already written such an app (for personal use -- haven't released it) where it's like a combination of Web Whacker and a text-to-speech app and a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book... I use it every day on my (long) commute with my mp3 player -- it's terrific.

However, it DOES drive everyone else nuts who hears it! The robot voice can easily grate on your nerves if you're not used to it... anon
Thursday, April 06, 2006
The theory behind it sounds interesting, and I would love to see the source code (actually, what I would really love to see is the hacks you would have implemented to get around non-standard or 'unexpected' pages HTML/CSS/whatever), but I don't think I would have any interest in this as a consumer.

How about centering the approach of this as something targetting people who are deaf or otherwise incapable of 'standard' browsing. Andrey Butov
Thursday, April 06, 2006
"How about centering the approach of this as something targetting people who are deaf or otherwise incapable of 'standard' browsing."

The deaf market would probably not be the best target audience for audio software ;) Smart A$$
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Is there a market for this program? I don't like that question.

The new question should be:

If you create a program like this, will it generate interest within some group's worldview?

The answer then is always "Yes", because there are a billion worldviews out there. If someone says "no", they have a very narrow worldview - which is unfortuneate. The odds that you won't sell even one are pretty unlikely.

I think what people are really asking when they ask "does this program have a market?" is, "if I create this program will thousands of people show up instantly and start buying the program so that I can live off of it forever?"

Well, any business requires elbow grease and time. Don't bank on being the overnight millionaire.

So to say that it won't work because there is competition, free or not, is just bad advice. I can go on for quite a while why competition means nothing when it comes to your individual sales.

It's safe to assume there is always a "market". But how much work will you do to sell a significant number of copies to that market?

If something out there is free, and a corporation wants it, they will opt for the "for sale" version of the program quite often. Creating a supported, paid version of a free application can actually be a good idea.

Anyway, yes, text to audio can sell, and converting it to MP3 would be nice. Can you get to the core of this though? Converting text to audio. Then, if that's an API or service of some kind, can it be applied to any style of software application or any developer's need?

For example, I need a system where a client can type in a description to a web page, that text is converted to audio, and can instantly be played on their site that I host. Or, some of my ebook vendors would like a quick and dirty way to convert their books to audio and put on CD so they can sell an audio version that buyers can listen to in their cars. Ben Mc
Thursday, April 06, 2006
It sounds like Talkr http://talkr.com/ does pretty much what you are thinking about doing. I interviewd Chris Brooks, the creator of Talkr (http://perlcast.com/2005/08/21/interview-with-chris-brooks/). From what I understand, this type of business is working okay for him. Josh McAdams
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Thanks ben for the thoughts. difference or 'getting' it or not does shows through. josh thanks for the link. talkr's result for voice is really great. Toh Yen Cheng
Thursday, April 06, 2006
There's a winamp plug-in that did this a few years ago with the Windows speech API. It sucked from the natural voice perspective but was a big hit due to it's (accidental) comedic timing; the pause and emphasis made any text document incredibly hilarious.

The problem with the OP's idea is that text has an internal voice that humans quickly decipher and adopt while reading; a machine code never do this. Take Mark Twain: you start to read his works with the voice of the characters - a computer would sound like gobbley-gook. Mark D.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Is there a market? If you manage to transfer text into a pleasant voice that you can't differentiate from a trained speaker, a voice that is absolute real and live, you will be a billionaire. There're endless applications. Ben
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Hi all,
just an update. I've checked out the AT&T TTS engine. sounds definitely great. www.wizzardsoftware.com .

i would see the cost of the licence as an barrier to entry. would i be right on this? but there will be the fear of having the most important component of my application being made by another company.

i guess the only thing that i could make my application stand out from the rest would be the GUI and hopefully ease of use. that is if i decide to pursue this any further.

thanks everyone. Toh Yen Cheng
Sunday, April 09, 2006
What about leaving the task of converting the text into speech to human beings? Conceivably, you could pay someone peanuts to read it out loud and save it as a digital file. Also, another benefit of this is that a human eye can scan the page and find the important content....Amazon's mturk service comes to mind... Andrew Cheung
Monday, April 10, 2006
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What do you think? Is it a turkey of an idea? Add a comment or email me at mouseloveselephant at yahoo dot com

Compartmentalize your life/business and save yourself

You have to compartmentalize in order to fend off danger or threat. Imagine all your friends know each other. You know that they know each other becease as you met new people, you have always introduced the new people to your group. One day you do a terrible thing and people hear about it. Very quickly, all your friends know about it. Try as you might to rectify the situation, no one believes your side of the story. Because you have not compartmentalized your friends, you have now lost every single one of them. Your friendship capital was all in one basket. Imagine now if you had compartmentalized your friends. You would have your arty set, your business set, your colleagues, your wild party boozing people. Damage to one group would not mean damage to the entire group. Compartmentalizing your people is always a good idea.





I remember when I did one-on-one training with clients in Germany. None of them knew each other. If they did, they might have cross compared prices and discovered that I had different price models going with each of them. United, they might have been able to exert some pressure over me as regards price setting. Divided, they didn’t have this knowledge and, although I liked the social idea of having all my clients come to a party at my place, I was reluctant to hand this power over to them. Compartmentalizing your people is always a good idea.

Take 33% and grow it. Keep everything else safe, but take 33% and grow it. It might be more. Or less. When it grows to a certain amount, split it and start growing it again until it gets too big again. That is compartmentalizing your investment. Managing your risk.

To what extent do you compartmentalize your business or your life in order to protect yourself? Add a comment or email me.

LIFE 101 class: online elearning for individual development

There shoud be a giant database of self-accessible materials so that a person can improve their entire LIFE. Einheitliche holistic classes where a person signs up like for a sports studio but instead of working on their body they work on their personality. Like group therapy but these are not sick people, not deficicnt, instead there is an atmosphere of goal setting and getting ahead.



There will be split off classes for people to get their finances in order, to get their relationshisp in order, to get their heads in order, to provide career guidance, to get life coaching. Physical exercise is also a part of these classes. Essentially it’s like having an Anthony Robbins associate except much much cheaper. It’s like psychotherapy but much cheaper. These classes bring meaning to the masses. Members pay a subscription in order to attend the classes and to ‘stay healthy’ mentally, physically, spiritually, financially.

Finance 101
Setting up a business 101

In what way do these classes differentiate themselves from going to such a course in another school?

Could offer all the above via eLearning!

eLearning for dealing with a death.
eLearning for breaking up
eLearning for getting out of debt
eLearning for career guidance

What do you think? Does such a database exist alreay? Are you interested in working with me to create one? Add a comment below or email me.

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