I recently started joining classes on Startup School and it is very good. They are using Adobe’s Connect Pro Meeting, so you get a video feed from the lecturer and you get to interact either by typing or speaking/asking questions. See you in class!

This blog post has been out there for a while, but nevertheless interesting. I like the metaphor with mountains throughout the discussion.

Imagine that products are mountains. To build a product, you will need to climb that mountain. Some mountains have a big pot of gold at the top, and some do not. In order to make money, you will need to pick the right mountain and then successfully climb to the top and gather up the gold. You can fail by choosing a mountain that has little or no gold at the top, or by dying on the way up.

Read more on Paul Buchheit’s blog: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2008/03/ideas-vs-judgment-and-execution_9197.html

A report by Taige Zhang on the European Web Startup Environment.

This presentation analyzes and ranks 32 EU countries based on three factors that make a country great for web startups: being tech-oriented, having an entrepreneurial culture, and possessing sufficient resources. The best places to start up in Europe are the following countries: Finland, France, Germany, Netherland, Sweden, and UK.

You can find it here: http://intelligentshare.com/2009/04/defragmenting-eus-web-startup.html

How do you turn consistency into something inspiring?

I think consistency is a very important factor and those who stick with their ideas and philosophy. It can be hard over time to keep in mind where this philosophy comes from or it could even be forgotten. That’s what happens when a company is suddenly offering products and/or services that are just not consistent with what the company was originally all about. And that’s when customers start to complain or just lose interest in the company and its products and/or services. It’s a very bad spiral that can eventually kill the company if it’s not identified and proper actions are taken.

So, how do we use consistency to find inspiration?

Look back at what inspired you to go down this path in the first place. Why did you decide your company was going to be based on this particular philosophy? Remind yourself! Have a chat with everyone in the company about what it is all about. Why are we doing this? Who are we helping and in what way? Is there something we can improve to make our philosophy more obvious in our products and/or services?

When you have spent some time doing this you are likely to feel that inspiration that got you started in the first place.

So remember. It doesn’t matter if you are just starting a company or if you’ve been going for many years already: Stay consistent and find inspiration in what inspired you in the first place!

The fact that it’s better to have someone else say good things about you is quite well established. But I think this blog post illustrated the differences in a good way:

http://www.quicksprout.com/2007/10/24/the-difference-between-marketing-pr-advertising-and-personal-branding/

Are you the kind of person who is constantly looking for the optimal solution to things? Whether it’s about what to eat or where to live? Chances are you are less happy than those who are “satisficying”. To satisfice doesn’t mean always choosing the not-so-good thing. There can be certain criteria to be met for that too. Satisficers have time to enjoy themselves whereas optimizers are just never, or at least not very often, content.

See this post: http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2006/07/happiness-data.html

I’m thinking was thinking about this in a business perspective. Too much optimization and you’ll just never get anything done. Others will outrun you big time. Satisficers on the other hand should be able to do a good job. They are moving fast and finding solutions that are good enough. But if attention to detail is important to what they do, then they might not be that well off.

Next week we are going to be making some changes to our music catalogue that we feel are important to communicate clearly. Unfortunately we are going to be removing a number of songs from our catalogue and adding country restrictions to some tracks, which may make them unplayable for you. Read more ->

Spotify announced that they are now going to put restrictions on their music library. What a drawback. I’m only going to repeat what I’ve said before. They are still stuck in the 20th century. Time to move on, people..

Is your company doing good things and you want to share it with the world? Go to MakeGood.com and show people what it is you do!

People care about social responsibility. MakeGood helps your company communicate the good things you do through an interactive badge that you place on your website. Customers and employees can click on the badge and see photos, stories and testimonials from the people you helped - without ever leaving your website.

When you think about it, there are a lot of web services and software that just never gets out of “beta”. Even though they at times charge the same amount that was going to be charged when it’s released. It’s like everyone is scared of saying it’s a live 1st version. “What if it crashes or won’t work and we call it v.1?” Big deal.

It’s like if Volvo would start selling a new car, calling it V90 Beta. Then when the journalist asks them why they would say something like “Yeah, we’re not sure yet if the breaks are completely ok, but let’s see.”

I just think that either you release something and charge for it, or you stick with beta until you are comfortable with the service/software and then start charging. If you need money, then ask people to donate and give something back to them.

I went on Amazon today looking for some new music and I found the All-American Rejects new album was out. So I listened to the preview and decided, well, I haven’t tried Amazon’s MP3 Download store yet so why not.. I’m not sure I want to buy a physical copy of this album because I have their last one and I’m not listening to it a whole lot.

I see that I will have to download Amazon MP3 Downloader to purchase the album. Well, I guess it can’t hurt..  The album is just $2.99 this way so whatever. I click to buy, log in, and I see this:

(Amazon MP3 Purchases are limited to U.S. customers.)

There we go. Great. Always these US-only and other regional rights boundaries. And it doesn’t end there. Even if I would have been a US citizen and able to buy the album, I would only be able to download it ONCE! Lose it, in a hard drive crash or forgetting to migrate it when switching computers, and you’re screwed. Even though you paid for it.

So basically I’m thinking… What the **** is my incentive here not to just go on a torrent website and download it? It takes out 99 % of the hassle of legally buying it and I can get it again should I happen to lose it.

Oh yea, and I wanted to get my Canadian friend an invite to try Spotify beta. A great piece of music software in my book. But that didn’t work out either because of the issues, again, with rights.