Tom Printy's Blog

Happy 4th of July

tprinty — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:24:37 +0000

Here is some patriotc music for you…

Where is the Patriotism in my Fireworks?

tprinty — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:51:57 +0000

I was researching the Chicago fireworks that will take place downtown tommorrow and found the songs that they will be using. Not one of them is what I would call patriotic, instead it is composed of the garbage you hear on FM radio. This is just sad! Here is the list of songs that will compose the musical portion of the fireworks display:

Intro (Before fireworks launch)
KAYNE WEST - Homecoming
CHRIS MARTIN
Fireworks
BON JOVI - Living on a Prayer
LENNY KRAVITZ - American Woman
RIHANNA - Don’t Stop the Music
PRINCE - Let’s Go Crazy
KILLERS - Mr. Brightside
SARA BAREILLES - Love Song
COLDPLAY - Clocks
GWEN STEFANI - The Sweet Escape
GOOD CHARLOTTE - I Don’t Wanna Be In Love
KAYNE WEST - Stronger
K. T. TUNSTALL - Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
MATCHBOX TWENTY - How Far We’ve Come

Ok so there are some local artists there and the is ok. But these songs do not even mention the very reason why we celebrate the 4th of July. For those who forget here is why this day is special

In the United States, Independence Day (commonly known as the Fourth of July) is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

A much more fitting song selection would be some of the following

Air Force Anthem (Off We Go!)
America (My Country Tis of Thee)
America the Beautiful
Army Anthem (Caissons)
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Marine Hymn (From the Halls…)
Navy Anthem (Anchors Aweigh)
Navy Hymn (Eternal Father)
Stars and Stripes
Star Spangled Banner
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Yankee Doodle

So while you are watching the fireworks this weekend I hope that you feel proud about our country and at least have something patriotic playing in your head and heart.

Ebay Developers Confrence wrap up

tprinty — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:39:49 +0000

I am really glad that I went to the eBay Developers conference this year. I learned a lot about internet marketing, seo practicalities and the general business of eBay and how one could make money writing software for the eBay platform. The big announcement was the echo platform. This platform will allow devlopers to write applications that will plug into MyeBay much like a Facebook application. This is really exciting news and I can think of a couple different apps that users could subscribe to.

Some interesting stats from the keynote address:

1/3 of eBay listings are from software made by developers

84 Million active eBay users

1 Billion page views

100 million listings at any one time

Paypal has 141 million registered uers

1.3 million people made at least some of thier living from eBay

Top 10 affiliates make 20 million in commissions.

As you can see eBay is a big pool to swim in, and I think eBay thinks so as well. There were a lot of eBay employees to talk to as well. I met employes from Paypal, eBay partner network, eBay Developer Network. They were very nice an knowledgeable people and seemed to want to know what I thought and if I had any suggestions on thier respective areas. For those that are saying eBay is dead you should really attend one of these conferences and see the energy, ideas and bright people that work for this internet giant.

As I mention I met some really great people while at the confrence here are some of them:

Kevin Kinell VP of Engineering at Acutiva

Damon Hougland Senior Engineer of Paypal Platform

Tina Mazzei Program Manger eBay Developer Program

Debbie Levitt Founder and CEO of As Was

John Coronella from OnlineMarketer.com

Ahmed (Alex) Mohammed from GuruOfSales.com

One last note is that I became a certified PayPal developer. They were giving the test for free so I thought I would take it. I passed!!!

Can You Judge The Economy By Traffic?

tprinty — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:38:19 +0000

While I was waking up this morning I had a thought….. Normally around 7:00am there is a rush of traffic down my street as people head off to work. This morning that rush was eerily absent. So this got me to thinking that you could judge the state of the economy based on the amount of traffic. I suppose to do this you could look at historical traffic data and compare the morning and even time commutes with things like stock market prices and offical job numbers from the government.

Of course this is all just an observation it could be that gas is so high that people in my neighborhood are choosing to walk or ride a bike instead of drive.

Creating a LifeStyle Business may be a better way to go.

tprinty — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:26:10 +0000

A recent video that featured David Heinemeier Hansson from 3t signals talks about having a business with being small as the main goal. This is a business that will sustain you and the people that work for the company. It it a company that you can have for the rest of your life and be perfectly happy with. This type of business will give you the freedom to live comfortably while still being able to pursue your interests. I am happy that this philosophy is being put out there. I think that this business philosophy more closely resembles what I would like to achieve and the types of companies that I would like to work for

Watch live video from HackerTV on Justin.tv

West Virginia Needs New Representation

tprinty — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:50:45 +0000

All I can say is WOW about Rober Byrds recent activity on the Senate floor. Take a look and see for yourself.

A Little Contest

tprinty — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:23:55 +0000

Blogging Experiment is giving away $100 this week

All you have to do is place a link on your website (either a blog post, text link on a content site, etc) to the blogging experiment. You can link to any page on this site, but I’ll give you some sample link ideas below you can use if you want…

Once you post the link on your site, leave a comment below with the URL of the page the link is on and also use your paypal email address in the email field so you can get paid if you win.

Here’s the catch (always a catch right?)…

You will have to send at least 30 unique visitors to blogging experiment from that link between now and Monday night at 10pm eastern (when I announce the winners). That’s a whopping 5 visitors per day. In other words, it just means you need to put the link someplace where people will see it and click it, not buried at the bottom of your site somewhere.

To make the drawing fair, I’m going to let you pick the winners. I don’t feel like dealing with the whining again like last contest : -)

On Monday, I’ll ask you to pick 4 random numbers and I’ll use those to select the winners.

I thought that it would be fun to see if I can actually send the required amount of traffic to his site. So help me out and click the link

CoWorking Space in Elgin

tprinty — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:46:08 +0000

Does Elgin IL need a coworking space? I would like to think so. There is a small tech community in Elgin that is growing. I can’t help to think that most of these people work out a home office.

What is coworking:

Coworking is cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.

Or, it’s like this: start with a shared office and add cafe culture. Which is the opposite of most modern cafes.

To prevent spam, we have a password on this wiki. It is coworking with the two “o”s being zeroes!

Welcome, have a look around! The best places to get started are right below:

http://coworking.pbwiki.com/

I think it would be really neat to have a space like this in Downtown Elgin. Anyone want to help me put one together?

Two New Recommendation Services Recieve Funding

tprinty — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:58:32 +0000

From mashable.com

Goodrec, a new social recommendation engine, has received $900,000 of a desired $1.05 million in funding from their series A round. According to PEHub, the funding for this round included SoftTech VC and Chance Technologies Seed.

Little is known about the company to the general public as it is in locked testing for the moment. What is known is that the service is looking to build a new system for remembering and sharing recommendations. The project is the brainchild of Mihir Shah, a former product manager at Yahoo Search. There is no word when the site will open to a wider testing, or even go public, but we’ll be sure to let you know.

I am not sure what “social recommendation” are, and how this differs from del.icio.us or other bookmarking services. I guess we will have to wait till they open up.

From alarm:clock

Israel’s Jinni has raised $1M in a first round from Start-Up Factory.

Jinni is developing a content search and discovery systems with personalization for consumers to discover movies, TV shows, and online videos. They plan to launch an affiliate program for Internet TV operators as well as to license its solution to global TV operators.

The premise is that consumers all gravitate to Iron Man and other blockbusters because they have a tough time discovering films and TV shows that suit their tastes. Yes and no on this. Consumers gravitate to IronMan because $200M was spent on it and because its nice to talk with others back at work who have seen the same movie. They can easily scan the film section to find other films that may or may not appeal to them but most don’t want to take chances on wasting a precious Friday night on a dud.

Jinni was founded by CEO Yosi Glick who was VP Marketing & BD at Orca Interactive.

There is a lot of competition in this space. It will be interesting to see if they are able to differentiate themselves.

Has either of these companies participated in the Netflix Challenge? If they did and were able to score a decent RMSE they might have something.

Elgin City Council Update

tprinty — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:50:37 +0000

I just wanted to thank to members of the city council for comments that they made during last night’s meeting

First I would like to thank councilman John Walters for keeping pressure on city staff to fix Edison Ave after the sewer work that was done on the street over the winter. With his help this maybe this nice street will return to the very nice street that it used to be.

Secondly I would like to thank and encourage councilman Michael Powers to bring back Public Access television to Elgin. We have a channel that airs some city announcements but it would be great if we could fill that dead air with some interesting content produced by the citizens of Elgin.

Lastly Congrats to Councilman Rober Gilliam for 35 years or service on city council. WOW!