The Past Few Months
It's been a while since I've updated my blog, so I thought I'd provide a rundown of what I've been doing.
Startup
We really found our focus over the past couple months. We are committed to making tools for mobile developers. Our name is Localytics, and our first tool is an analytics service for mobile applications.
We launched an early version of our analytics engine last week at a DemocampBoston1. Democamp involves a quick succession of presentations by local startups. Check out my recap.
We captured a video of our presentation. The presentation was 5 minutes with a 5 minute Q&A at the end. Check it out:
Registration is closed right now, but we will be opening it up in a couple weeks. During that time, we will add more features, documentation, and hopefully some guides on how to get the most out of the service.
For now, you can check out our demo, which might not make a whole lot of sense, but at least it's there and it works.
Gaming
I managed to get through a couple of the 2008 holiday season games. I have mixed feelings about most of them. The only ones I'd flat out recommend are Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead. Perhaps I'll go into more detail in future posts.
I finally discovered the wonder that is Xbox Live Arcade. There are some awesome games on there, many of them with a retro feel. Braid, Castle Crashers, and Geometry Wars are all great. Each is an update of classic game styles with gorgeous HD visuals.
Braid is a side-scroller with time manipulation, Castle Crashers invokes memories of Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles beat-em-up games, and Geometry Wars is Asteroids on crack. I especially like how Geometry Wars pulls in high scores from your friends, encouraging you to beat them.
TED Talk – Johnny Lee: Wii Remote hacks
Here's a short video of some of the coolest Wii Remote hacks I've seen to date:
Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with stats
The video I'm referring to, "Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen", is an insightful TED talk given by Hans Rosling in February of 2006.
While debunking third-world myths may be interesting, Hans is make an even more powerful point with his presentation: we can challenge our beliefs and vastly improve our understanding of the world if we improve the way we visualize and interpret data.
In other words, the analysis of statistics and research data isn't just an information problem, it's also a design problem. How do we humans, with a limited capacity to understand vast quantities of data, represent statistics eloquently enough so that we may understand their meaning?
This question is the focus of Hans Rosling's company called Gapminder, which he refers to in the TED talk. Him and others at Gapminder have produced an excellent piece of software, called Trendalyzer, which taps vast quantities of data and visualizes them with stunning clarity and interactivity. To see what I mean, try out Trendalyzer using this link.
The important thing to realize is that Gapminder isn't creating the data, they are just improving the way we look at it. In that way, they are solving a design problem, not an information problem.
The concept is a powerful idea, so much so that it attracted the attention of Google. In March of 2006, Google acquired Trendalyzer and its development team from Gapminder.
Despite the sale of the technology, Hans is still using Trendalyzer to demonstrate interesting world trends on the Gapminder web site. Check it out.
PubMatic: Ad Optimization
I noticed this article about Pubmatic today on TechCrunch, and I found it interesting. It includes a video of Amar Goel, founder and CEO, presenting at TechCrunch 40. They were a 2007 TechCrunch 40 finalist, and the company is based in India.
Pubmatic is an ad optimization service. Think of it as aggregating the different ad services out there (Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, etc.) in order to maximize the return you get on your ad space. While it seems mostly targeted at publishers - people who want to display advertisements on their own site - they also provide some features for those of us who want to place ads.
For publishers, the idea behind Pubmatic is simple. They automatically pick and display the highest paying, highest converting advertisements out of the major ad networks, allowing the publisher to increase their ad revenue.
It certainly sounds like something I could use, but how does Pubmatic make money? For now, the service is free to their beta users, but eventually they'll need to take a cut or have some sort of fee. I'll have to keep tabs on this service and similar services and see how they develop in the future.
Google and Yahoo Meddle with Search Ad Campaigns
While doing my usual daily perusal of digg, I found a useful video of Stacy Williams describing some liberties that Google and Yahoo may take with your search engine ad campaigns. This short video (just under 4 minutes) was filmed at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in Chicago, and in it Stacy touches on the following three points:
- Sometimes ads are not active even if Google/Yahoo say they are (because they are actually in the process of editorial review).
- Search engines may change your ad match types (broad vs exact and so on) sometimes without notification. Stacey gives a funny example.
- Swapping of text ad titles and descriptions in certain scenarios.
The moral for us online entrepreneurs is that if you are using search engine advertising to promote your new business, you may need to pay closer attention to those ads than you thought.
Funding Your Dream – Panelist Video
For any entrepreneur, funding is a critical step in starting your business. Tech startups in particular have a dearth of options in front of them. However, if you are just getting into the game, you may feel somewhat lost as to where to start.
Guy Kawasaki, an author, managing director at venture capital firm Garage, and all around interesting entrepreneur, has a post on his blog featuring a video of venture capital panelists. They answer many questions that should help you navigate the world of venture capital.