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Justin and Jason discuss the progress they’ve made so far on AnyFu, why Jason thinks Sweden smells like ice cream and his idea for yet another TV series, life lessons from the very wealthy and preschool’s huge payoff, an update on Justin’s outsourcing effort, Jason’s idea for compiling CoffeeScript to PHP, Justin’s micro-depression about Pluggio and an update on the numbers, ideas on picking a designer and a design for AnyFu, what makes a good finisher and why women make teams smarter.
The CoffeeScript answer: https://github.com/socketstream/socketstream
You can use either JavaScript or CoffeeScript to write server/client code. Brand new, straight from the AOL oven.
Interesting show as always! You asked for a comment on the Sweden topic, so here it goes. Apologies for the lack of tech!
Yep, alcohol over here is totally state-controlled and only the state-owned stores are allowed to sell alcohol. Downside is limited opening hours and pretty steep prices on strong liquor. Wine prices are fine, though. Upside is that their staff is pretty darn competent and they offer quite a selection.
Alcohol in bars and restaurants is kind of expensive, but that’s more due to a high sales tax and high labor costs. A pint of beer in a bar is around 6-8 USD or so. Norway is more expensive for some reason, while Denmark is more like the rest of Europe.
That Ralph Lauren photo shoot thing was hilarious, and I guess you’re pretty much right. But if you venture outside of trendy downtown Stockholm, we sure got our share of rednecks, too.
Sorry to hear about your food poisoning, but are you sure you got it at SAS? I mean, with the latest cutbacks and all, I’m surprised they even serve food anymore.
As for socialism, you might want to check out Jon Stewart’s take on Swedish socialism:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-21-2009/the-stockholm-syndrome-pt–1
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-22-2009/the-stockholm-syndrome-pt–2
@Justin – In a recent podcast you literally said “that’s interesting” 23 times. 23 times.
Yeah I noticed that and was cringing about it. Not sure where it comes from. Will try to stop. Thx for pointing it out
@Robert Tassarone – I knew he was below his quota!
I know you’re excited about the full-blown anyfu, but maybe an MVP could just be a simple job board, while you figure out the details. If nothing else, I need to find some experts now!
Anyone an expert on UTF-8 character encoding and parsing euro symbols?
@Corey – I’ve been thinking about your comment for the past couple of days and I think you raise and interesting point. Would an MVP of AnyFu do the job? My initial thought is that it “might”. The core problems that AnyFu must solve are: discovery, trust and efficiency. A client (user) has to be able to easily find and identify an expert with the required knowledge and availability, the client will have to trust that the expert really knows their stuff and is worth a premium rate, the expert will have to trust that they will actually get paid for their time and of course this all has to work pretty seamlessly and without much friction. If we can solve these core problems and generate enough traffic to achieve escape velocity then we’ll probably have a winner.
My concern about throwing something up that’s ugly and/or unrefined is that the experts who we need to get started might not trust the site enough to want to invest the time to create a high-quality profile. This would be a problem because their profiles are largely what will engender trust on the part of their potential clients. I don’t think version 1 of AnyFu has to be complicated or needs to solve too many ancillary problems, but I do think that it needs to look and feel like a serious endeavor. That’s about as much as I have time to write on the subject at the moment, but we’ll discuss it more on the next show.
@Jason – I see your point. A job board introduces people, but the hiring process vets people on their actual expertise (and I hope most potential employees take the opportunity to vet the people hiring, too).
Oh, and speaking of money… A couple weeks ago I was revisiting my budgets, and couldn’t figure out a good way to track cash. So I took a weekend and built a little web app called the birdy – http://thebirdy.com I’d love a “le critique” on it…
Where are you guys? Two weeks and no podcast…
@JC – Justin had to fly to Ireland because a family matter and just got back after being gone for almost a week, so that put the podcast on hold. We’re planning on recording a show this weekend, so hopefully that will get us back on schedule with at least one show per week.
@Corey – The Birdy is a cute idea.
It’s funny, but Udi (another listener) has been building something similar as an Appignite beta tester, although his is only for personal use. We’ll definitely talk about it on this weekend’s show.
@Corey Hi, I’ll write my thoughts about The Birdy, as Jason mentioned I’m building small app for my own use (also designing a product in that area).
The problem with that kind of apps is that its hard for people to keep using it and stick with it, and its a huge challenge to make it as simple and convenient as possible.
What I loved:
1. The method – you sending the email already is a huge step to simplicity and convenience, and the fact that its not a “reminder” email, but something the user can work with is awesome.
2. The first screen after signup – very clear. I Quickly understood how it works, and its really important, specially in the first moments after signup.
3. The calendar – I love that I see the weekly expenses. Very useful.
Improvements:
1. I think you can turn it to a web product, so I recommend working a little bit more on the design.
2. Why it takes few minutes for the entry to show? you’re storing it as plain text and running a cron job to parse it and store it as object? I’m curious about that.
hey Justin
Love your pluggio app. I have been a follower of the podcast and initial website when it was called something else – yeah tweetminer I followed the podcast until some 70+ episodes and lost the road, and now am back on it. Great work.
Have two questions
For Jason –
Cheers
Arun
@Udi (and Jason) – sorry for the delay in response! I forgot to check back.
Thanks for the great comments, and talking about it on the show! Really appreciate it.
I stole the idea of the daily email from another startup in the startup collaboration space I work in. The startup is called idonethis.com and the collab space is called We Work Labs. So I always like to give them a shout.
I’m glad you found it clear, and like the display of the data. How would you like to see the design improved? Was it too simple? Not enough data shown?
Yes, it’s a cron job that parses the inputs. So it shouldn’t take more than 60 seconds. But it’s the #1 complaint that purchases don’t show up immediately, so I’ll fix that. I can’t fix the delay when an email gets sent, because that’s based on SendGrid parsing the emails and then passing the info along to my server.
Thanks again! Please email me any time through the site with feedback!
Homepage is updated, per Justin’s suggestions. I still need help with the copy, and testimonials. Anyone want to send me a glowing testimonial?
You can now edit and delete purchases.
Working now on instantly parsing entered purchases.