Monthly Archives: April 2007

Technosailor Version 7 Hits the Street

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I’m really, really happy right now because we’re begininning the three year anniversary celebration a little early here. Back in March, I started to discuss the possibility of a professional theme with the fantabulous Lisa Sabin. I gave her some of my ideas and in essence let her go to town creating something suitably professional and refreshing for this blog. I had only a few specific ground rules:

  • Whitespace
  • Home Page NOT being the blog – more room for pulling together content in a better and more useful way than a linear blog
  • Done before May 20, in time for my three year blogging anniversary

So I’m very, very happy to launch version 7 hitting all of those points and delivering a month early! We have taken a departure from the historically consistent nautical theme, grouped content better more effectively, implemented a del.icio.us powered link blog. And Chad, our director of sales, loves the ad placements, so there’s an added bonus! Commenting and posts look nicer too!

Your thoughts? Lisa is scared, but I think she did a smash-up job! :-)

Business Plan Series: Part 4 – Products and Services

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Last time we discussed what you should put in the company overview section and the different formats it may take depending on the stage of your company.

In this part, Part 4, we will get at the heart of your company – its products and services.

This section covers what you provide to customers and how you deliver it. It is the reason you are in business. There is something here you decided would revolutionize a market, fill a need that has been desperately looking for a solution or provide something that rides a hot trend.

In most cases you will want to answer in an summary format what your company is providing and why it is so different. This should catch the reader’s attention and make them want to read the detail supporting your intro paragraph.

After you have caught their attention and told them how and why your offerings are so great/revolutionary/needed, you need to include the following things:

Product Offerings – This describes your products in more details and should communicate why you are unique. If you are not providing a physical product (i.e. widget, web site) then go right to the next part.
Service Offerings – This covers the services you offer and really needs to communicate how you are going to stand out because services are not as tangible. If you are providing products this is where you discuss services that support the product and complimentary services that will increase your revenue potential.
Pricing and Revenue Strategy - After you have discussed what you are offering you should discuss how you are pricing everything and how you are going to go about making money with these product and service offerings.
Goals and Objectives - This is the place for major milestones including your pricing and revenue strategy, customers and other important metrics.
Methods and Differentiation – Here is where you really need to show how you will stand out against competitors and differentiate your company as a whole with its products and services.
Relationships and Partnerships - This section is to build on your offerings and demonstrate your success and reach with important vendor relationships and partnerships/joint ventures you have established to increase your revenue potential. You might also want to include customers and important case example to demonstrate the success your offerings have already achieved.

NEXT TIME: COMPETITION- After you have explained how compelling your products and services are you will need to discuss the who else it out there doing something similar and how you will stand out and beat them.

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Everything I needed to Know About Politics I Learned from Facebook

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Recently, I recieved an email that came as a bit of a surprise to me. Well known political blogger James Joyner from Outside the Beltway emailed me and asked if I would mind guest blogging at OTB while he attended an event in Los Angeles. I’m pretty happy about that considering James and I had a pretty rocky start but obviously our relationship has come far enough that he gave me keys to his blog.

I posted Everything I Needed to Know About Politics I Learned on Facebook over at OTB this morning and I’ll share a few excerpts here. Then you can go read the article for yourself. I’m really curious to know your thoughts.

Social Media is the wave of the future. You don’t have to be a blogger or a blog follower or even a blog agnostic to recognize that the cool kids are hanging out at places like Facebook, or MySpace. Have you heard about Twitter – the pseudo instant conversation maker that mashes up web, IM and SMS into something that has become the tool of instant conversation and marketing? Twitter is heavily used by the tech web community, a typically left-of-center political demographic, and last month took the SXSW Interactive conference by storm, tripling the number of daily users from 20k to 60k in 3 days.

<snip>

Social media is a generational thing, and the vote cannot be secured simply by speeches. Netizens probably won’t pay a lot of attention. However, Giuliani might just notice that there are over 1500 members in the Facebook group America’s Mayor, “œAmerica’s President. Giuliani 2008″³ and that there are 57K+ members plus in the “œAnti-Hillary Clinton for President “˜08″³ group.

James asked me to blog while he was gone because he felt like the areas where I write on Technosailor – the areas of technology and new media – intersect in an important way with politics. I think he’s on to something, though you might want me to go back home. Regardless, my postings over the next few days (which won’t be nearly as prolific as James’) will hopefully bring some of the discussions in my area of interest to bear in the political and cultural world to the forefront.

The Job that Blogging Built

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The Boston Globe has an article this morning called Blogging for Dollars. It is interesting, if rehashed (we’ve all read articles from mainstream media sources that look at blogging as if it is ‘news’and how some people, wait for it… actually make money from blogging).

The article, written by Carolyn Johnson, a staff writer for the Globe and probably handed to her by some editor who still has no clue about blogging outside of the buzzwordiness, cites folks like Darren and Shoemoney as examples of success stories for the blogging industry and claims that most people will never money from blogging. She is right, however the scope of the article is so very shortsighted.

Let me switch gears for a brief moment and talk about open source software (trust me, it’s related!). I was flying home from Toronto the other day and sat next to one of the guys from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition who owns a company that creates software for the “smart home”. It’s natural he would be called on for EM: HE because a brand new home given to a family in a high profile “look what we’ve done” kind of show will have the best bling available for the home. A smart home that is a well-connected computer to itself, allowing occupants to turn the heat on remotely, get the fireplace roaring or even kick the washing machine on via the internet, is a compelling sort of thing for a show on ABC. Continue reading →