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Justin and Jason discuss the status of the Swarm SG AI, ideas for increasing the TechZing listener base and why they’re launching a mailing list, whether or not Jason should buy a Mac, the need to improve the design of the TechZing website, potential names for Jason’s new blog, whether advice offered by 37 Signals is relevant, Jason’s thoughts on applying to TechCrunch Disrupt, coder.io as an alternative to Hacker News, Justin’s desire for telepresence, balancing pragmatism with thinking big, the physical consequences of sitting all day and not getting enough sunlight and whether Justin is replacing fat with muscle or vice versa.
You should definitely improve the design of the website. Andrew Warner from Mixergy in one of his interviews with the entrepreneurs mentioned that after redesigning of the website, so it looked much more professional, entered totally new, quantum leap like, dynamic phase of traffic growth as well as access to guests. So no doubt there will be benefits from it. Btw. change the name to the Hacker Radio and then 1000 downloads treshold in 48h will be peace of cake!
Why aren’t you just using a theme for WordPress? It’s probably the cheapest way to improve the desgin.
@Jason the concept you were talking about of robots getting creepier the more they are like humans is called “uncanny valley”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
@Chris Boesing Justin and I looked around a little bit for a WordPress theme when we first set up the site, but at the time we couldn’t find anything that we liked any better than the current ugly theme. That said we didn’t look around for very long, so maybe it would be worth giving it another shot.
Uncanny valley – that’s right! I used to know that, but I couldn’t think of it off the top of my head. Justin and I don’t share topics before the shows, so it can be difficult to remember the names of things on the spot. I know I suck at it. 😉 Anyway, thanks for posting the link.
@devster Do you think the name TechZing is so bad that it turns people off before they even give the show a chance or is it just that you believe the name Hacker Radio would be able to leverage off the popularity of Hacker News as Hacker Monthly did?
By the way, for anyone who might happen to read this comment, I’d appreciate any feedback you’d be willing to provide on this topic.
No, I don’t think that it is bad too such a degree to turns people off. Simply for me the name is little fuzzy. When I hear it I don’t have instant visualization what the true nature of podcast is … ok I get it tech … but there is a lot types of tech subjects. Many of which are tech gadget funboys related, while you are talking about some real bleeding edge startup/hacker/microISV stuff :).
Read this:
“If you’re a hacker, you’ll probably like our show ;)”
I would say to jump on the “hacker” term bandwagon before someone else will try too grab it in the podcast space. Seriously ;). Just a suggestion based on yours previous discussion with Justin when you considered the “hacker radio” name . When I heard it, first what came to my mind was, that’s a really cool name for the podcast.
@devster Do you think it’s a problem that http://hackerpublicradio.org exists? Wouldn’t “Hacker Radio” clash with what they are doing?
@devster Those are very good points. The one big concern Justin and I have is whether the existence of Hacker Public Radio (http://hackerpublicradio.org/) creates a branding problem for us. HPR is a site where anyone can submit an episode, which is clearly something a little different than us, but still it concerns me. That said Hacker Radio is my favorite name so far of the ones we’ve considered.
So, what do you think when considering the existence of HPR?
@Justin Wow, you beat me with your response! 😉
And one more thing. From the SEO perspective, with the name “Hacker Radio” for example, every link to your podcast will have hacker term in it. So you naturally will get “link juice” for that word. And there are a lot more people searching for “hacker” keyword than “techzing” ;). So your podcast would get more free traffic only from this fact.
It dependance how well this HPR is recognized? Maybe they are not well known, so you could easily overbrand them. Still they have “public” in the name while you wouldn’t have. So there is some kind of distinction.
Hackers And Aliens
What do you guys think of something like this? http://pluggio.com/hacker-radio-5.png
“People with high IQs don’t necessarily make the most money.”
Phew, I’m safe there.
How much weight does the term “hacker” adds to the podcast? I think it will be great at the beginning to get some traction but are “hackers” in reality your target audience?
If I understand correctly your target audience is more about entrepreneurs that want to launch their products than people that want to “hack”. For example I was aware of hacker news and ycombinator for a while but not until I heard on your show about all the good stuff that sometimes is posted in hacker news I didn’t automatically think of hacker news as something for entrepreneurs. My fault of course but I wonder how many people have not put too much attention to that area of the site just for the title.
Maybe, you are one of the exceptions that can turn around a term such as “hacker” and make think people think about a blog that discusses a broad number of subjects besides someone trying to do “hacking”.
In regards to the theme for your site, may I suggest woothemes? There is a similar company that sells very professional wordpress themes for less than $100. But personally I believe that if eventually you want to stand out from the pack you need a custom theme that is unique to your podcast.
Finally, there is a misconception that with a laptop you suffer of real state but let me tell you that this is not the case all the time. I bought my first laptop 8 years ago and never turned back. Laptops give you so much flexibility. Granted you may not travel much but if you eventually start to do so you can put your laptop and you are free. Back to the real state issue. My latest Mac book pro comes with a high definition 17″ display that gives me even more pixels than a standard screen. Attach that to an external 32″ monitor and you have enough room to play around, if that is not enough you can buy a component that allows you to connect up to 2 monitors to your laptop.
Anyways, I personally enjoy your show and look forward to the next edition. Just no more ET stuff please! :).
Sorry for the grammatical errors. Hard to make corrections on mobile devices.
@Justin you don’t need to buy a mac to write Iphone apps you can use a virtual machine when you need to test and compile. Just make sure that you get a processor that supports VT-x/AMD-V and you can do this http://lifehacker.com/5583650/run-mac-os-x-in-virtualbox-on-windows
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh
“Attack of the Hacker Aliens!”
Every major IT project starts with the project team coming together to discuss the goals and explore the different methods of achieving the goal. It’s called “Iteration Zero.” For anybody whose life goal is to “leverage technology into financial independence” then TechZing is where that conversation starts and the entrepreneurial-tech-success dialogue takes place. So it would be appropriate to re-name the show “Iteration Zero.” Plus, you can re-record the theme song with that as the chorus.
@Neville Nice idea, except the song can’t be re-recorded since the band split up in 2000! 😉
Ways to tell you work in an awesome office: network lag causes telepresence robot to accidentally attack our dinosaur http://bit.ly/9UMbZw
I started listening to the show after following Justin on twitter for a little while. I was really impressed with the quality tweets. The ‘startup/zing’ description of the podcast kept me away until I listened and discovered that the show is more about product development than CEO hot air or ‘zinging’ the latest tech mishaps. The technology and developer POV is what I love, but the more i listen the more I appreciate the business/entrepreneur side of the podcast.
I think you could come up with a few more names for the show, but even more ideas of how to get the word out. Get links to the show on sites where your audience is spending time trying to get their ideas off the ground. I listened to the ChangeLog because i found their show while browsing projects on GitHub. ‘Versioning’ their show was a great gimmick. I’ve only listened to a few other shows like that, but none of them had the same repertoire, quick to-the-point intro/outro, and diversity of guests and topics.
Keep up the great work!
I’m with Jason on the whole vertical/horizontal market thing. Rob knows what he’s talking about and I highly recommend his “Start Small, Stay Small” book (wish I had it when I started), but I would rather do consulting than spend next few years developing some wood tracking software for lumberjacks 😉 Yes, vertical products are much easier to market. Yes, you know where to find your customers and word of mouth works much better. But boredom kills more projects then anything else. Chances are you’ll get bored and don’t get to the selling stage if you start developing something you don’t really care about.
Also I think people overestimate how much work it takes to market a horizontal product. Marketing is like going to the gym. You have to do it 30-40 minutes every day and it will become a habit. After 6-8 month you’ll get much better at it 😉 Plus if you have large enough customer base in a horizontal market you can leverage it for your next product. Doesn’t really work with vertical markets, having lumberjack software won’t help you with selling to teachers for example.
PS. Justin, Pluggio might be a niche product but it targets a horizontal market. Vertical market usually refers to a single industry/profession/hobby.
I’ve always liked the name TechZing because it’s unique and brandable. I have a tendency to listen to at least one episode of a podcast in the tech space. I never thought about the issues Rob Walch raised but he makes some good points. I really dislike “Hacker Radio” or anything generic like that. Generic names are horrible for branding.
@Jason, when you’re new to working out you absolutely will lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. It’s (unscientifically) called recomp, newbie gains, and plenty of other things. The plateau is when these gains slow down from your body adjusting to working out. It then becomes much harder to gain muscle mass.
Weight loss is NOT what you should ever focus on. Fat loss is what’s important. Fat loss is simple math: calories in – calories out.
@Dan DeFelippi Re techzing vs hacker news, I have to admit that’s been in the back of my mind. Generic vs branded. You have been able to say it better than i have been able to thus far.
Also here’s an interesting article regarding “recomp” http://leanbodiesconsulting.com/faq/Simultaneous+Fat+Loss+&+Muscle+Gain
@Dan DeFelippi You’re probably right about the muscle gain / fat loss recomp, I’m just generally very skeptical when people new to working out claim that the reason they’re not losing weight is that they’re putting on muscle. My guess is that this effect is usually not nearly as great as they’d like to believe and that the harsh reality is that they still haven’t altered their calories in – calories out equation enough.
That said, I think Justin is on the right path and should be proud of himself for the progress he’s made so far. I just hope that if he doesn’t see at least some weight loss over the next couple of weeks (making it a total of 8 weeks of training) that he makes the necessary adjustment to either increase the length, intensity or frequency of his workouts or reduce his caloric intake, or both.
For Justin — about that slow form your instructor is asking of you?
I can think of a few reasons.
All those guys that are “throwing weights around” are not lifting correctly.
They are using momentum instead of muscle to move the weight. HUGE pet peeve of mine. I am ELATED to hear your intructor has your movements slow and controlled.
The higher reps with a lower weight are to burn fat.
You are learning good form and are getting the maximum benefits from your workouts.
Plus, is safer to lift correctly.
Dan Defelippi was spot on about muscle gain.
Great show guys, and I know the health conversation was a tangent, but I appreciated hearing it covered because it DOES apply to the lifestyle.
@CitizenX Thanks for the positive feedback! I was actually a little worried after the show that we spent too much time on the health stuff. I don’t know, maybe we should create a Hacker Health segment. 😉
@Jason
Well, one of the problems for people like us is we often let physical and emotional development fall by the wayside in pursuit of our coding highs. Hacker Health may not be a bad idea for a new podcast. Imagine all the sponsorships you could get 🙂
Just caught up with the episode and when Jason mention about the logo, I was like isn’t the cover art you used for your podcast could be considered as a logo or some sort?
It’s funny that when you mentioned about it, Startups and Aliens pops up into my mind and I had the impression that the logo may look something like this:
@Felix Leong
Gah! WordPress ate my image link:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v95/seh_hui/Photo-0214.jpg
@Felix – nice! Now that takes techzing into the ultra quirky domain 😉
@Justin
It’d probably be even quirkier if the tag line is “When aliens meets startups”… or something to that effect? :-p
I also meant to QUESTION
the ownership of
http://modusoperandi.com/ — shenannigans!
I was jealous of you , momentarily.
Remembering when I was hovering over
onomatopoeia.com – still kicking self.
Entertaining show guys! I was both laughing and being creeped out by the prospect of finding robots sitting in my teammates cubicles when walking in to work that morning! 🙂
On the topic of the podcast, although I like the sound of Hacker Radio, I am now starting to think that it will be tough to make it work. HPR vs HR will be confusing now that HPR is live. And I am still unsure about the appeal for “Hacker” despite the success of HN. I feel that having the word “startup” in the name is quite important. Too bad Startup Radio is already taken. How about Tech Startup Radio? Or some variation on that?
I am already queue-ing up the next show for this week-end. Can’t wait to listen to it!
@Fred Ditto that, VMware for OSx, I’m in the process of repurposing an abandoned intel Macbook, Half way through windows 7 install 😀
Good show guys…any advice on macbooks? I was thinking about getting one just because I’m tired of hassling with the Hackintosh hoops (currently have a desktop dual booting…no sound and selective about updates).
If you bought another mac Justin, which would you get, what would you change about your previous selection?
btw, awesome job on getting the diet under control. Good thing you caught it in time!
@botj I’m very happy with mac book pro 15″ i7 🙂 Thanks for the kind words re the diet. Now I just have to keep on track! 😉