Today is something of a landmark for me. Just a few minutes ago, I launched my first full-time commercial venture when I flipped the switches and took Fwd:Vault out of beta. There’s an announcement over at the official blog if you’re interested in the details. Here I’d rather talk about what’s going through my mind, [...]
Read More entrepreneur, fwdvault, get inspired, startups…I suggest you do so immediately. We’ll have a major announcement by the end of the day, and the perks that come with signing up beforehand will go away at that time. Basically this is your last chance to get into the Fwd:Vault Beta, and enjoy the perks we have planned for our beloved early [...]
Read More fwdvaultI ran into the Youth Minister for my high school youth group at a friend’s wedding a few weeks back, and he graciously offered me the opportunity to write a letter to be read aloud at an upcoming retreat to the high school attendees. I was more than happy to oblige. Below is an excerpt [...]
Read More fwdvault, get inspired, personalI recently made the decision to store times on Fwd:Vault systems in Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. I decided to do this because I have time-sensitive events happening along several dimensions. Email coming into the system has several timestamps associated with it: the user’s initial delivery, relay from their mail server, and receipt by the [...]
Read More coding theory, fwdvault, software development, standards, tech support, Twitter, usabilityI was quoted in another IT World article last week discussing how mentoring occurs in open source communities. Below is the full text I sent to the author, in case anyone wanted more background on my comments. In my experience, mentoring in open source projects occurs between the project leaders (i.e. artisans) and their most [...]
Read More education, fwdvault, media, open source, zen cartI’ll admit it, I was real lazy getting on the SEO train. It took starting my own company for me to finally start paying attention. SEO for my previous major site work was handled for me. ClassicWines had other staff dedicated to the issue, and Destination ImagiNation had such a huge network of affiliate sites [...]
Read More frankomendations, fwdvault, optimization, seoLiving in a Philly suburb, I never thought my Philly proximity would have any effect on my startup, Fwd:Vault. However that was before I discovered the Philly Startup Leaders. Comprised of small businesses at all stages, manned by people of all experience levels and backgrounds, the mailing list we share alone is invaluable. When you [...]
Read More entrepreneur, fwdvault, phillyAs an email-based backup service, Fwd:Vault ran into spam filters pretty quickly. Most of this can be mitigated with proper server configuration and getting records in the right places (i.e. abuse.net). From there it’s simply a matter of reminding users to check the spam folder when things are missing. However through the tribulations of one [...]
Read More business support, crappy coding, customer service, fwdvault, spam, tech supportI was recently quoted in an article over at IT World, discussing underused developer tools (e.g. security testers). My quote is on page 2: http://www.itworld.com/development/74088/developer-tools-you-dont-use-and-why-you-dont-use-them Also FYI I am on vacation the rest of this week; return to our regular schedule next Monday.
Read More entrepreneur, fwdvault, get inspired, media, software development, usabilityMy code for displaying Twitter posts on your site is pretty handy, but it does have drawbacks. Each page load involves calling a remote URL, downloading a resulting XML file, and parsing the results, increasing your load times and using bandwidth. To minimize the impact, you can really only display a handful of the most [...]
Read More database, fwdvault, lifestream, mysql, open source, seo, social networking, Twitter