jonathan. tumbling.

just like to show some appreciation

For the last few years I’ve hosted various servers at Terra World, Inc. here in Kansas.  They’ve had a local colo here in Wichita, which was convienent whenever there were any problems.

 It wasn’t without it’s downsides though.  The closest employee was 3 hours away.  That meant that whenever something went down or they needed hardware swapped out, I’d be more than happy to run up and do what I could.  In exchange, they let me keep 2 servers there free of charge.

As I said in the title, just wanted to say thanks for that.  I know people don’t show their appreciation enough as it is.

After all, they were kind enough to just leave my two servers behind while moving the data center back to SE Kansas yesterday.  You know, right after they called me to let me know.  Right after they emailed me the week before to confirm the move date.  Yeah, like any of that happened. 

Actually, they just left them sitting on the desk I had up there.  Without power cables.  Took my UPS too.

Can I get a “WTF”?

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1 week ago

Search engines, RollYo, Davenetics and more.

Entrenched competition is tough to beat. You saw it happen with CLEC’s vs ILEC’s in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and then watched the collapse of the CLEC’s in the mid 2000’s.

… which is exactly why Google is going to be tough to beat for anyone out there. I’m probably not alone in this, but anytime I hear about a different search engine I just don’t really care. Whatever they are offering, chances are, is just an incremental improvement (if even that) over what we already use everyday.

Which makes it tough. Very tough, for anyone trying anything innovative in the space. It’s not that your product isn’t great, it’s just that people don’t care. Google is “good enough” for them and they aren’t going to be looking elsewhere unless there is a seriously compelling reason.

With that in mind, I remembered reading about RollYo a long time ago (a year?). I’ve probably heard of it a few more times since it launched, but again - never really cared to find out anything more.

So this afternoon while browsing through Davenetics (Dave Pell’s personal blog, the guy behind RollYo) I decided to take it for a spin.

In short, it’s an interesting take on search. By limiting your search results to sites you “trust”, you’re in effect filtering the web. It has it’s pros and cons, but in say, high school computer labs or other places where current filtering software falls well short of the mark, it’s a good option.

But what does it offer “normal users” (read: tech users) like me? Not much of anything off the top of my head. That may change, but who knows. But it would be perfect for my grandparents. For my mom.

That’s the lesson we have to takeaway from this post. What isn’t right for “us”, may certainly be right for people that use the web for much less basic things that we do. We are not mainstream. Your parents probably are. There is a lot more money to be made in applications that provide value to the mainstream vs. applications that provide value to people like you and I. The ideal scenario is of course when you can serve both masters effectively, but sometimes you just have to choose between one or the other.

It’s easy to choose to build it for us, after all, that’s what we know best. It may even be better to start out that way. One of my own personal litmus tests for products has always been a simple one:

Can I easily explain it to someone here in Kansas, and will they “get it”? (with wikis, this was nearly impossible)

Being outside of the valley has its advantages. You’re removed from the echochamber of FriendFeed (will someone get it here? Doubtful. If they did, they’d say: “Why would I ever use that?”). When you can explain your product to your mother in law, and she “gets it”, you know you have the potential for mainstream appeal.

What about other products? I could easily explain Mahalo. RollYo is another one. Twitter is getting there, if it’d ever stay up long enough for people to try it (sorry, had to throw that one in ;) Clickpass? No way. :)

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2 weeks ago