PixPulse Your LIfe!

Google Nexus One vs. iPhone

2010-01-22T16:52:00.000-08:00

I just got the Google Nexus One. I have owned the Apple iPhone for over a year now (3GS) and have a few thoughts:

What I don't like
1. My phone was not activated out of box so had to spend 20 min on call with Tmobile to fix this issue.

2. GPS accurate is very off. iPhone can get it to about 40 feet and Google Nexus One at best is 2 - 3 blocks off which is not good for GPS or apps that use the GPS SDK.

3. iPhone UI is still much better.

4. Automatic backlight adjustment is terrible. My phone goes from bright to dark a lot so I had to turn this off.

5. Use only 2G networks was turned on as default factor setting--this seems very dumb.

6. iPhone keyboard is far superior and more accurate.

7. I can't add more than one weather city.

What I like:
1. No need to sync up with iTunes and just charge via A/C.

2. Apps that I downloaded are much higher quality than on the iPhone (ie Skype, etc).

3. Google voice native integration

4. Sync with my Google Apps which we use for corporate email (the yellow star feature is all I needed).

5. Larger screen

6. Noticeably faster

In the end though for me the iPhone still wins.

Funny outsource post I found on Craigslist

2007-11-29T16:22:00.000-08:00

Outsource Needed!

Reply to: gigs-487646658@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-11-23, 9:20PM PST

I am a very busy person and I am looking for a company to out source my online dating. Your task will be to contact potential dates for me via various online dating services and social networking sites. I will let you know my background and my preferences of dates and you will contact people matching my preferences.

I will pay for each successful dates that has been scheduled. Please contact me for more details. Thank you.

Location: Los Angeles
it's ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: I will pay for each successful dates that has been scheduled.

PostingID: 487646658

My New Puppy Rocky

2007-11-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

So I just got a puppy Friday night. Poor guy had to fly from DCA ->ATL -> SEA. About 7 hours of flying. I picked him up from Delta Air Cargo. Puppies are A LOT of work, but I've been told it was worth it. So two things.

1. Little dude barks/cries a lot when I'm not there--separation anxiety.
2. Still needs to be house broken--I'm trying to teach him to use a litter box.

Other than that he's a good boy! His ears got cropped last week, so they are still bandaged up, but are starting to stand up nicely.

My rant on DST

2007-11-05T16:37:00.000-08:00

Every year I don't look forward to DST. It's just plain dumb and outdated, but no one is going to change it because there's no incentive or carrot to make this change politically. I'm not sure was it was for originally (WWII, farmers, electricity savings etc), but the USA and western europe should just drop it.

It's also much safer to have light out til dark and save more lives. Maybe time to move to Asia or Afrika :)

My Likes

2007-10-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

Here are my current top favs:

1. SprintPCS SERO Plans - I'm paying $50 + tax for what normally would cost $90 + tax.
2. Macbook Pro - Just makes my life easier (although the paint off my keys and laptop are scraping off)
3. Entourage on HBO - AMAZING show, probably the best show I've seen on TV
4. Mercedes and Audi Cars - The AMG 63 engine is amazing (55 was amazing too), then the new Audi's coming out have been nice (R8).
5. Washington summers - but that's gone now...

Summer!

2007-07-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

Gosh, haven't posted in a long time. I'm not a big blogger. It would be great if I could put aside an hour a day and write a really thoughtful blog every morning.

So....what's been going on. Mostly PixPulse has me slammed. Hired 3 more employees the past week and still need to hire more.

Housing market has slowed up quite a bit--this is not 2005 anymore! Which is a bummer since I have two homes on the market now.

Cheers! and happy August everyone!!! My favourite month of the year! Too bad no down time for me this year. Here' s funny photo of a limo beached in SF:

My Unhappiness with Macbook Pro

2007-05-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

I've had my Macbook pro for about 100 days now--it is the 15" Core 2 Duo with upgraded 2gig ram. Here are my gripes:

1. Two hardware defects: The "F1" key is lower than all the other keys (probably just a $14 fix for the white backing to the key). The backlight of the LCD is partly broken and has a vertical dark strip in the middle and causes the laptop to buzz. This is fixed by turning on brightness to maximum and waiting 10 or so minutes.

2. My biggest gripe is that the bottom edge of the laptop case cuts into my wrist/arms and this really hurts. I have to use a wrist rest all the time--an no, this is not because of my posture or my chair being too low.

3. My laptop doesn't come out of sleep. After I login, I get a black dark screen so I have to put my laptop to sleep and try again.

4. The laptop runs really really slow. All the normal MSFT and Adobe programs run shit slow. My last laptop was a 1.4ghz Intel Centrino with 1.5g ram and it ran many programs faster. Another small gripe is that I like more tactile keys that press down more, but this is just more of a personal preference.

Ok, that's the end of my rant. There are definitely positives to using the Mac like installing programs is much easier than a PC, widget are great, etc.

Update

2007-04-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that when you type in my name "David Xue" on Google this comes up as the #1 search result. Which probably means that I probably need to update this a bit more often with more useful and relevant information.

As my family and friends are very aware, PixPulse takes up the majority of my time and the team here is having a lot of fun. We've been working on some very cool technology at PixPulse and have signed up quite a few new customers. We're able to deliver on key value for social media communities and mobile commerce.

I'll try and update this blog as much as possible, but quite honestly I'm not much of a blogger but it will be a mix of PixPulse, real estate development, and my personal life.

Check out my new real estate project on MLS.

PixPulse.com blocked in China?

2007-03-09T20:54:00.000-08:00

Found a site on Alexa tonight. Test out your site and see if it's blocked in China: http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/

2007 Mercedes G320 CDI ???

2007-02-12T00:08:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting on this car forever (either white or black)! Looks like they won't be bringing any diesels to the US until 2008 or maybe even 2009--who knows. Perhaps being stuck with a G55K is not so bad after all :)

I'm a New Apple Convert

2007-01-12T15:27:00.000-08:00

I just got a new Apple Macbook Pro 15" Core 2 Duo this week to replace my old Sharp M4000 laptop (great Windows laptop btw). After just a few hours I can say that Macs ROCK!.

Some must download software for Mac users:

Adium - chatting
VLC - viewing media
Textmate - coding
Camino - browsing
iTerm - SSH
CocoaMySQL - GUI to mysql
Parallels Desktop - VM of Windows so I can test on IE
Toast 8 - creating and mounting ISO or data CDs
CoreDuo Fan Hack - bump you fan up to 3000 rpm to make your notebook cooler

Then of course the normal production software:
Office 2004 and Adobe CS2.

For web presentations I had to switch from GoToMeeting to GatheringPlace which supports Macs. GatheringPlace is also a cheaper :)

Upcoming Event: Community Next

2007-01-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

I've been to many industry events and spoken at a few as well. I'm sure we agree that there are very few quality events that are really worth your time and money. You spend 8 hours at an event and probably only 30 min is really worthwhile information to your business.

I've been to two of Noah Kagan's Entrepreneur27.org events (I have to fly from SEA to SJC) and can say that they are very good and really hit on the key topics you want to know about. The quality of the people is good as well and you'll come away with real contacts.

Here's the link below and also take a look at the agenda:

What Super Villian Am I?

2007-01-01T16:09:00.000-08:00

Your results:
You are Apocalypse

Apocalypse		86%
Magneto		82%
Dr. Doom		80%
Venom		79%
Lex Luthor		78%
Juggernaut		77%
Kingpin		70%
Green Goblin		69%
Mystique		65%
Dark Phoenix		61%
Mr. Freeze		60%
The Joker		55%
Catwoman		51%
Poison Ivy		44%
Riddler		41%
Two-Face		33%

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

HAPPY 2007 ALL!

Back from Beijing

2006-12-13T21:53:00.000-08:00

I flew back to SFO from PEK yesterday for a business trip. Overall Beijing is a very nice metropolitan city on par with NYC. The city is very big, fairly clean and easy to get around in.

Audi A6L, VW and Buick cars are very popular in China--in fact GM sells for cars in China than in the US (the only reason Buick is still alive is because of China). Food is great as well.

On my time off I visited the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the temple for the emperor (forgot the name), had Peking Duck among other yummy food stuff, and did some shopping in WangFuJing.

I enjoyed my visit a lot and hope to be back soon--I want to visit Shanghai next time as well. My other rant is the there are NO direct flights from SEA to PEK or PVR. I'll post up some photos soon :)

$50+ CPC on Loan Consolidation Clicks

2006-12-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

On a non-PixPulse topic, my friend Mbwana sent me the link of another GSB student's blog. I know that some mortgage comanpanies pay $400 per lead.

Here's the post by Rohin:

Loan Consolidation & Insurance is a Yummy Business
Dudes, below is a listing of the most expensive google keywords. If you click on google ads related to these things, the companies pay around $50 to google. Crazy! I'm going to run an experiment where I start putting google ads on this site to verify if this is true. Shocking, no?

school loan consolidation - $69.16
college loan consolidation - $68.35
car insurance quotes - $66.88
school consolidation - $66.29
auto insurance quotes - $65.90 c
ollege consolidation - $64.04
student loan consolidation rates - $60.14
sell structured settlement - $59.82
sell annuity - $58.92
federal student loan consolidation - $58.58
auto quotes - $58.09
auto insurance quote - $57.99
student consolidation - $56.96
student loan consolidation - $56.91
student loan consolidation interest rate - $56.52
consolidate student loan - $54.61
san diego dui attorney - $54.56
car insurance - $53.16
structured settlement - $52.96
consolidate school loans - $52.88
student loan refinance - $52.44
consolidation of student loans - $52.43
consolidation loan rate - $52.04
citibank student loan consolidation - $51.85
car insurance quote - $51.80
consolidate student loans - $51.23
private student loan consolidation - $51.05
lasik new york - $49.86
student loans consolidation - $49.82
private loan consolidation - $48.95
insurance quotes - $48.78
teleconference services - $48.72
the art institute of seattle - $48.68
federal loan consolidation - $48.61
plus loan consolidation - $47.74
student loan consolidation programs - $47.58
bad credit equity loan - $47.46
houston criminal attorney - $47.44
student loan consolidation calculator - $47.19
cash settlement - $47.12
consolidating student loans - $47.09
orlando culinary institute - $46.84
student loan consolidation program - $46.77
orlando culinary institute - $46.69
consolidation loan - $46.54
loan consolidation - $46.54
ditech - $46.32
auto quote - $45.77
sallie mae student loan consolidation - $45.69

Off to San Fran Again!

2006-11-14T21:52:00.000-08:00

If you're doing a serious startup, you need to be in SF. That's where the talent is and where all the industry events are and money as well :)

PixPulse is the first company to present at the Under the Radar Conference on 11/16.

That evening we'll be going to the DFJ Schmoozefest.

Happy Halloween from PixPulse!

2006-10-31T23:04:00.000-08:00

Photo from PixPulse.com

Email is dead for teens?

2006-10-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

This article confirms what I have found regarding teens and email. They don't use email that much and don't even remember emails to their best friends. I don't even know the emails to all my best friends, but I do remember their IM :)

That's also why I don't have an 'email-a-friend' feature on PixPulse.

Quote from article:

"E-mail isn't dying, but it's grown a little sick. comScore Media Metrix found that in April 2006, teen e-mail use was down 8 percent from a year before. Teens are using IM and MySpace for communication with friends, but they haven't abandoned the tool—that's why 89 percent of teens who use the Internet still use e-mail, while only 75 percent use instant messaging."

PixPulse Invited to Under the Radar | Mobility!

2006-09-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

PixPulse will be at Investor's Business Daily's Under the Radar Conference at the Microsoft Headquarters in Mountain View, CA on November 16th.

CONFIRMED PANELISTS TO DATE:
Motorola, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Orange, Engadget, Rutberg & Co.

Selection Committee:
Each submission will be reviewed by our selection committee, which includes representatives from the IBDNetwork advisory board, Microsoft, August Capital, Qualcomm, Motorola, France Telecom/Orange, Bay Partners, Intel Capital, Panorama Capital, Perkins Coie, SAP, Trident Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners, WaldenVC, and LewisPR.

The First Annual Wine Taste Off

2006-09-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

Noah Kagan put together a fun event that I attended last night in SF. About 30 entrepreneurs and 30 VCs attended at the TechCrunch house. Some cool companies that attended: CrazyEgg, Event Robot, Doostang, etc...

Check it out here.

Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List from Seth Godin

2006-08-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

An amusing post on 1000 Web 2.0 startups ranked by Alexa. I take Alexa with a grain of salt, but interesting nonetheless.

MMS Usage Up 40% in the US

2006-07-27T19:19:00.000-07:00

From MobHappy:

Messaging company Mobile365 says the number of mobile-originated MMS messages it processed in the US increased 40% from the first to the second quarter, a pretty significant jump. The raw numbers are higher than I’d expected as well, up to 52 million and change in the second quarter. Keep in mind this is just what Mobile365 processed, and doesn’t represent the entire US market (got a message in to the company’s PR folks for some clarification on that Update: Mobile365 processes half of the country’s inter-carrier MMS traffic — so this figure is much more representative than it is comprehensive).

m:metrics is another mobile analyst company that I use to get good data.

MySpace to Secondary Markets: Drop Dead

2006-07-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

This just came out this week. Interesting stuff... MySpace will not allow external URL linking on Flash 9.

Best of ITALY goals!

2006-07-07T01:39:00.000-07:00

MySpace Video Hits Back

2006-07-04T00:17:00.000-07:00

Mashable has a cool post on stats for MySpace Vidoes--looks like they are gaining on YouTube pretty quick.

Have a fun and safe 4th everyone!

World Cup 2006 Update!

2006-06-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

So I'm 7 - 1 this World Cup so far! I think Spain is going to win it all this time around. I still can't believe Italy knocked in a goal for the US, or else I'd be 8 - 0 and up a lot of cash instead of riding on breakeven.

Photo from PixPulse.com

TechCrunch Party Tonight in Seattle

2006-05-31T17:37:00.000-07:00

I'm heading over to the TechCrunch Seattle party around 8p tonight in South Lake Union.

It's amazing that I know like 50% of the people going there. Check out the attendee list here.

Jon Staenberg of Rustic Canyon Partners is also hosting a summer kickoff party at Palisades in June along with a bunch of other BBQs in the area.

WORLD CUP 2006!!!!!!!!!!

2006-05-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

For 30 days in June my life will come to a stop. I've waited 4 years for the World Cup. Futebol life.

FORZA ITALIA e VAI BRASIL!!!

WSA Investment Forum 2006

2006-05-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the WSA Investment Forum 2006 in downtown Seattle. Saw some really good sales and funding pitches. Wireless and digital media are clearly very hot right now. Startups included mobile photo sharing, podcasting and web services firms.

Some of the companies had questionable revenue strategies and I just didn't think that the market opportunity was there. I don't feel like the "Revver" type revenue sharing model works well for every startup where content creators and the service providers split revenue. A startup can't also rely completely on advertising revenue because once traffic dips your revenue is gone.

Guest Blogging at OkDork.com

2006-05-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

Check out my post today at Okdork.

Mobile Monday in Seatte

2006-05-09T17:59:00.000-07:00

Attended Seattle Mobile Monday last night at the convention center. Mobile Research and Mobile Complete presented. Both seem to be pretty cool tools if you're making a mobile application, game or WAP site. Looks like WAP use is really going to take off in the coming months.

Mind Camp 2.0 Afterthoughts

2006-04-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

Pros:
Event was well organized
Good food
Decent location

Cons:
Should be called blogging camp and not mind camp.
Classroom sessions should be A LOT more structured. Ideally we should pick out topics before it starts or have votes on subjects and really have 1 or 2 people lead the discussion so we stay ON TOPIC.

Would I go again? Probably not, but I did have a good time and met some cool people. Maybe it's time for me to host a eastside startup forum...

PixPulse Reaches 10,000+ Members

2006-04-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Wow, the 10k member mark just rolled pass me a few days ago. I want to thank the PixPulse team: Jason, Jon, Ryan and Dima for all their hard work and late nights.

Also special thanks to the PixPulse extended family who have help to make the site a success:

Noah Kagan from Okdork and Facebook
Hiten from CrazyEgg
Paul and the Meetro mafia
Andrew Chen from Revenue Science
Gaurav from Billmonk
+ many many others

Now if I can only motivate myself to do 10k runs!

New Send to Mobile Phone Feature, and more...

2006-04-17T23:52:00.000-07:00

PixPulse makes it easy to send photos and videos to your own phone and your friends phone. If you're sending to anyone in the US or Canada, you just need their mobile number. Click on these links to the right of any media:

Tags, tags, tags! Tags are back and better on all media.

Plus lots of little feature enhancements a new blogging template. Have fun!

Seattle Mindcamp 2.0 on April 29

2006-04-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

I missed the first once since I was at Entrepreneur 27 down in San Fran.

I hope some good people can make it out to the event (hopefully there's good food and beer too :). I really want to see more people who build companies and work in operations.

Check it and register at: www.seattlemind.com. I notice they are charging $25 this time around.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

On another note, had dinner at Buca with my good friends Noah Kagan who runs product management at Facebook and Gaurav the founder of Billmonk.com.

PixPulse Wins Web 2.0 Award

2006-04-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

PixPulse wins honorable mention in Web 2.0 Awards announced on March 28, 2006. Click on the "Photos & Digital Images" page.

It's quite a complement to be aside companies like Flickr, Riya and others. Many thanks to those who supported PixPulse!!!

New PixPulse Release

2006-03-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

Notice something different about PixPulse? We just did a release with some big features :) PixPulse is

1. New User Experience - PixPulse is cleaner and even easier to use. The site is one big "easy" button :)

2. Customizable Blogging Templates - Choose your blogging format and select from different media sizes.

3. Flag as Adult - See something that's not appropriate on PixPulse, FLAG IT! So we are not spending hours a day being porn cop (don't worry your media is not deleted, it's just only available to your friends).

4. User Profiles - We all know why people come to PixPulse :) So have fun with this feature.

5. Added 20+ mobile carriers - We now support a lot more mobile carriers which should make quite a few people very happy :)

There's a lot more features we haven't mentioned, so enjoy, and be sure to SEND US FEEDBACK

Yikes! Support Emails

2006-03-14T23:42:00.000-08:00

We've been getting tons of support emails a day. Here's the break up of the support requests:

30% - requests for new features
25% - questions on how to use PixPulse or a certain feature
20% - requests for partnership and other biz dev activities
15% - requests for new mobile providers
10% - strange emails that don't much much sense at all :)

We try to answer support emails within a few hours, but they keep on coming. It might be time to create a support forum or pump up the FAQ quite a bit.

Also, while driving back from working out in downtown Bellevue tonight, I saw a gold Nissan Z350 on NE 8th turning onto Bellvue Way--I wonder who this might be???

Photos of Carnival from member "fariathiago"

2006-02-26T23:24:00.000-08:00

Ahh Rio.. I need to make a trip soon to visit my friends there.

Photo from PixPulse.com

Photo from PixPulse.com

Photo from PixPulse.com

Photo from PixPulse.com

Easier Photo Uploading

2006-02-17T20:59:00.000-08:00

Haven't blogged in a bit...but the PixPulse team is hard at work. We will be releasing some new features shortly.

A few members have long usernames and uploading is pain if your address is: 15digitusername+XXXX@pixpulse.com.

We've shorten it to the "first 6 letters of your username" + "your secret code"@pixpulse.com.

For example, instead of opusdrinksXXXX@pixpulse.com it's now opusdrXXXX@pixpulse.com.

Your old upload address still works, so no worries.

Cheers!

Go Seahawks!

2006-02-05T17:26:00.000-08:00

Seahawks @ Superbowl XL

Photo from PixPulse.com

Here's the money I'm betting

Photo from PixPulse.com

The enemy

Photo from PixPulse.com

New WAP Portal Features

2006-01-24T05:48:00.000-08:00

The PixPulse WAP portal for mobile phones has just been exchanced with new features this morning (yikes it's 5:51am as I write this post!). You can now organize your media via your mobile phones when you're on the go or not around a computer.

Check it out on your phones at wap.pixpulse.com. We've adding quite a few new features to our wap portal and more cool stuff is on the way :)

OT: GO SEAHAWKS!!!

Backing Up Your Website

2006-01-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

FedEx just dropped off 2 packages today. (5) 250gig drives from NewEgg and the Infrant ReadyNAS X6. Now I have 750gigs of storage on a RAID5 setup with a spare HD (too bad it's not a hot spare).

Hats off to the guys at Infrant. Their product rocks! Put in the drives and the RAID array builds itself and I was up and running in less than 1 hour. Their web-based management console is easy to use. I am using it to backup PixPulse via rsync. I do daily incrementals at 4 hour intervals and weekly full backups which are all automated. This backs up the codebase, database and filesystem. PixPulse is also backed up offsite to another server as an added failover precaution.

For anyone running a web service on a single server, please please please backup your files. This doesn't have to be on a RAID 5 system, but hard drives do fail and that's millions of dollars of equity that you lost which will be very hard to build back. I actually know a few consumer startups that have 20 - 100k users and don't backup anything--at minimum backup your database.

Hot Seattle Area Startups

2006-01-14T11:46:00.000-08:00

Here are the Seattle startups I really like (in no particular order), these are companies that have strong sales revenue and/or innovative technology:

Farecast - This is a startup that wants to become a travel portal by predicting future prices for airtickets to answer the question "Should I buy now or in 2 weeks?". Leisure travel is a huge market and they just might be able to carve out a niche with strong partnerships. Their service is still in development and testing, but will be launching shortly.

Zillow - Founded by Rich Barton, the former CEO of Expedia. Zillow is tapping into the huge real estatement market and bringing it online by helping consumers buy and sell properties-a la HouseValues but with a twist. They are launching in early 2006 as well.

Revenue Science - A startup with Bay Area money that has been around for quite sometime. Formerly DigiMine, Revenue Science provides targeted contextualized and behavioral online advertisements. What this means is that the know the profile of who's visiting your site and can send them very customized ads. They have a great pipeline of deals and I expect to be an IPO candidate or very large M&A.

Isilon Systems - Company headed by the former top sales exec at F5 Networks. Isilon provides smart clustering file storage for databases and filesystems. Companies who store lots of photos, videos, data and other media who required load balancing and redundancy should take a look at their solutions--MySpace uses them and hopefully PixPulse will one day too. The company has had strong sales revenue since their product completed beta.

Honorable mention to Lockdown Networks:

Lockdown is a network security startup offering Network Access Control (NAC) solutions in direct competition with Cisco and other NAC vendors. The company's vision is spot and all they have to do is deliver a GA product that delivers and vision and execute, execute, execute. Their products allows computers and other network devices on the network according to IT or government policy.

There's a few more I like, but they are in stealth :)

Mashup Camp in Bay Area

2006-01-13T01:18:00.000-08:00

David Berlind is putting together Mashup Camp which will happen somtime between Feb 18 and Feb 25 somewhere south of San Fran. People that are interested in taking the Google or Yahoo maps API and mashing it with some webapp should find it interesting.

Startups represented so far: EVDB, Ning, JotSpot, Flock, Zazzle, Mobido, LinkedIn, Sharpcast, etc. Full List and event signup page

I'd really like to see the Seattle startup community get together more with events, forums and collaborate on ideas. Everytime I'm back in the Bay Area I always meet amazing people and get really "hooked" into the startup community--this needs to get replicated in Seattle and the eastside.

A New Year and a Better PixPulse

2006-01-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

We've been busy making updates to the site with lot of behind the scenes stuff as well. Members can now send videos and photos directly from the PixPulse website to their mobile phone. We've also make it easier to activate notifications and made the following pages cleaner: login, accounts, upload, help and enchanced the WAP site for mobile users quite a bit.

Thank you to our members for their feedback and suggestions on features--quite a few of them made it to our most recent release.

Here's one of my favorite recent photos:

Photo from PixPulse.com

Back to the Bay Area

2005-12-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays to everyone! PixPulse just passed a membership milestone this week. We enjoy getting feedback from you guys so keep it up.

I'll be returning for a week to the Bay Area to visit family and friends. If anyone wants to chat about PixPulse, mobile media and cool things for me to do, just send me a note.

Cheers and Happy 2006!

Web 2.0 Valuations

2005-12-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

The latest Yahoo-Del.icio.us acquisition have people talking about Web 2.0 valuations all over again.

Om Malik of Business2.0 wrote an article on valuations from the acquisition of properties such as Flickr, MySpace, Weblogs, etc. Full Article. The value of a unique monthly website visitor currently hovers around $38 (average over past year).

With all these recent Web2.0 flips, doesn't it make you wonder that quite a few new Internet technologists are positioning themselves for a $10M - $20M acquisition? The bar clearly needs to be raised. My official response for PixPulse is that we don't have an exit strategy; we have a "stay in the game and win strategy".

PixPulse at December Mobile Monday

2005-12-05T00:14:00.000-08:00

December is Demo Night II at Mobile Monday. PixPulse will be doing a mobile demo of our service--courtesy of Noah Kagen of Okdork/Facebook. More event details (time & location) at Mobile Monday.

Companies presenting:

Mobileplay
gearON
PixPulse
Mobile Voter
nThrum
StarNews
SoonR
Adamind

Thanks to Mike and Russ for putting on the event!

Introducing the PixPulse Team..

2005-12-03T00:13:00.000-08:00

PixPulse is made possible by the David and Jason duo. We're located in the Seattle area which is home to Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, RealNetworks and Costco which is a fun place to buy 50 rolls of toilet paper and enough ketchup to last a year.

All the emails and thank you's for the site have been really encouraging and make me feel a bit better for turning down Friday night dates for the past 6 months :)

David

View my PixPulse Channel

Jason

View my PixPulse Channel

Thanks to all our PixPulse members who have supported this project and to the PixPulse mercenaries for which the site wouldn't be possible without them.

Shoot us feedback here

My New Sprint PPC-6700

2005-11-30T00:18:00.000-08:00

I picked up the new Sprint PPC-6700 smartphone over the weekend. This phone has been reviewed quite a bit, so I'll just talk about my experiences.

Mobile Burn Review
Mobile Tech Review
PC Magazine Review

+Pros:
Awesome camera--much better than my Samsung A800 which is a 2MP cameraphone.
Battery recharge time is amazingly fast. I can get a full charge in a little over an hour.
My EVDO speeds are a consistent 400kbps!
I can talk on the phone and use WIFI at the same time.
Windows Mobile 5.0 is a big improvement over WM2003.

-Cons:
Backlit keys are hard to locate--next time backlight the entire key and not the letter.
Earpiece is not very loud even on highest setting (good luck hearing someone if you're at a noisy location) and the speakerphone has static.
Data use kills battery life.
Phone should have included Microsoft Voice Command.
Ships with ActiveSync v4.0 which needs to be updated to v4.1 to sync with Outlook.
Outlook Email and POP3 can't be integrated into a single mail account.
I can't remove "Get Biz Conn" and "Action Info" ads on the main screen.
Onscreen keyboard input won't stay closed on new screen with text input even after I close it--usability bug.

Guest Blogging at Business Opportunities Weblog

2005-11-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

I'll be guest blogging over at Dane Carlson's Business Opportuniies Weblog. He's the genious behind the "How Much Is My Blog Worth?" widget.

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

Obviously my blog isn't worth much since it just launched :)

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving to all!

A Startup's Most Important Asset

2005-11-14T10:28:00.000-08:00

By far, the number one most valuable asset to a startup is human capital, this is more imporatant than an A+ business plan, technological advantage or money in the bank. The first 20 employees are key because they will create the company culture and work ethic that all future employees conform to.

Experience and ability only add up to 50% of the equation when putting together a solid startup team, the other half is is the drive and determination to win. Successful entrepreneurs do startups for 3 reasons:

1. You love to build companies and just couldn't see yourself doing anything else
2. You want to make millions and can't work salary the rest of your life
3. You want to be famous and/or enjoy working on cutting edge technology

If you're looking to hire someone, you better make sure that they have at least of the 2 of the 3 above.

Seattle Mind Camp

2005-11-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

Mind Camp is going on from Nov 5 - 6 in Seattle. Seattle Post-Intelligencer calls it a "slumber party for geeks". 150 people are in a building for 24 hours to be creative, innovate, discuss technology and go through challenges. Sounds fun. Too bad I'm still in the Bay Area--at least it's sunny down here! Andrew Chen and Robert Scobble are attending.

PixPulse at Entrepreneur27 Conference

2005-10-31T04:54:00.000-08:00

I'll be in the Bay Area speaking at the Entrepreneur 27 conference on Nov 2nd with other startup founders and meeting with some media publications. We're going to Blue Chalk Cafe (aka Paly reunion HQ) afterwards for a few drinks and anyone else is welcome to join.

Founders attending Entrepreneur 27:

> 6th Sense
> Firefox
> imeem
> Makeshiftonline
> Meetro
> PixPulse
> Plaxo
> Ramit Sethi

PixPulse Launches!

2005-10-31T02:28:00.000-08:00

The team here at PixPulse is happy to announce our beta launch on October 31st (happy halloween!). PixPulse is a new mobile media network to share "live" in-the-moment photos and videos.

PixPulse lets you:
> Broadcast your own mobile media channel
> Share mobile photos and videos directly from your camera phone to your friends mobile devices so they can view and comment
> Super easy to use (as easy as sending a SMS message) and works with all mobile carriers in the world

Get your own PixPulse channel here: http://www.pixpulse.com/

You can reach the PixPulse Team at pixpulse@gmail.com with any suggestions or questions.

Cheers,

David X