Brainnovate

Prebuilt software like Wordpress (which this blog uses), Drupal, Joomla, and other similar systems are bad for innovation. There… I said it. I love Wordpress after avoiding it for years. The past 2 weeks have been the best 2 weeks of blogging in my life. And these tools are great for 95% of use cases- most sites will benefit immensely from putting them in the engine box.

Although I haven’t used it, Drupal sounds like Wordpress on steroids, with an attached boat anchor to slow you down. My friend Jeremy over at QuitYourDayJob lost two weeks of his life trying to teach it to sit, stay, and fetch. Now it works great.

These tools are immensely powerful, don’t get me wrong. But they are really optimized for doing something that has already been done. If you want a simple blog, brochure site, forum, simple social networking features, etc, then this will get you there quickly. Not a bad strategy if you can find a corner of the market without good coverage yet. But this blog is about innovation, and doing things that haven’ t been done before.

If you really want to do something unique and revolutionary, relying on a CMS will kill you dead. Imagine if the guys who built Twitter started out with a CMS platform and went from there. You think Twitter has problems now There are a lot of people “gunning” to be the next Facebook, Myspace, etc. They are not using a CMS either.

So if you are new to all this, step back and think about other tools that are available. Personally, I recommend and use Ruby on Rails extensively. Python with Django is quite strong as well. The main difference with these things is that you can write applications that do things that haven’t been done before, or at least haven’t been done by thousands of other people.

So I had an idea as I was writing the previous post for a “TwitterStumble” type site.

Like Stumbleupon but with peoples home page links in Twitter. It may (probably already exists so let me know if it does.)

What is interesting is that the audience on Twitter represents the 1 million earliest adopters, and crawling through peoples links you are bound to find something good.

It would should be easy enough to build using the Twitter API. I just added it to IdeaCV:

I was reading the “Public Timeline” at Twitter yesterday and found a rather interesting web application. Many of you may be wondering how I have the time to read the public timeline… and well, I don’t. It was a moment of shameless self indulgence and Twitter exploration. I find it interesting to click people links to try and gain an understanding of who is actually using Twitter beyond my own network. As I have mentioned in my past posts, Twitter is currently made up of 1 million of the earliest adopters, so you are bound to find something interesting. Does TwitterStumble exist yet?

What I found is IdeaCV- sort of a social brainstorming and innovation tool. This is almost identical to my original vision for Brainnovate, before I decided to just build a blog with it. In fact it was the reason I registered this domain name in the first place.  Ultimately I identified a number of reasons why I didn’t want to invest the resources to do this, so it became a great name for a blog about innovation and brainstorming instead.

Here is how it works and why its an interesting idea: Brainstorming and coming up with great ideas is tough, and its seldom a solo endeavor. With IdeaCV, you post your idea to the site and get immediate feedback from other users, hopefully helping to refine the concept. Other users post their ideas, and you can help them by offering suggestions, criticisms, etc.

The site is well executed and appears to be built using one of my favorite innovation tools- Ruby on Rails.

The company behind this site, Increo Solutions claims on their site they are just getting started and expect to have more on the way, but their site just says that the software is in alpha. We’re looking forward to seeing what they come up with. I am guessing some kind of enterprise version where you can lock down outside access to the system.

Personally my biggest complaint about sites like this revolves around intellectual property, and that people are generally unwilling to share their ideas publicly. If I have a great idea, the last thing I am going to do is go and post it in a public forum for other entreprenuers to “cherry pick” and then become my competition.

Then there is the whole concept of who owns what. If you post the next Facebook, and the core concepts are developed collaboratively, isn’t that like wearing a target on your back that says “Sue me?”

The best part for me anyhow, is that I no longer feel compelled to build something like this.

Michael Arrington pointed out a new service this morning that I was not aware of for keeping tabs on what links get tweeted the most at any given time.

Twitturly is kind of like a Digg for Twitter. It takes a pulse of what the 1,000,000 or so Twitter users think is currently important by displaying a “Digg like” list of the most popular links. As links get passed around, they show up on the Twitturly radar, and get “voted” up the page. Arrington surmises this may help increase the editorial value of Twitter. In my opinion, services like this (there are others)-

1. Can help people quickly see what arguably the 1,000,000 “earliest adopters” think of various interesting new things out on the web. This is how Digg is supposed to work as well, but it has gained much broader acceptance and has become the target of spammers, etc.
2. Is yet another service that points towards Twitter winning the micro blogging platform wars- despite questionable service quality. As I mentioned in “Are Twitters Marketing Problems a Marketing Ploy?” - the best option out there is not always the winner.

A big problem I see right now is a general lack of numbers. Being a numbers/math guy I cannot look at something like this without considering the stats behind it. With a total sample of 1 million Twitter users, are there enough to really trust these results as “statistically reliable” of what the greater audience thinks? I tend to think not. But it is still an interesting way to see some new sites.

For some reason I had never heard this term before. The “Fortune 5 Million” represents focusing a product or offer on the millions of overlooked small businesses 1-50 employees. These little companies can’t afford big “enterprisey” type solutions and have similar although slightly different needs.

I think this term was first coined in 2005 by 37 Signals, although I can’t say for sure. Last night I started watching the excellent Startup School videos out on the web, first with “David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08″

As you may know, David is the guy who created the wildly popular Ruby on Rails framework, which I talk about in this blog.  However, this video is NOT about Rails, but focuses instead on building a profitable, sustainable business.  In his typically charged and humorous style, David makes some great points about why trying to be the next Facebook is akin to being killed in an act of terrorism.  At only 30 minutes, you are really doing yourself a disfavor NOT to watch this video.

One of the points David tries to get across is the importance of the Fortune 5,000,000 and how his company, 37 Signals, has built their business appealing to this market.  So today is Friday, carve out 30 minutes and go watch “David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08.”

The newest version of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) has been released today, with many enhancements to ease common pain points of the OS. I have been using Ubuntu as my primary operating system for about 3 months now- and a lot longer on a part time basis. I love it.

In a world dominated by Microsoft, it is great to use an alternative OS, that is just as good, and in many ways, better.

• Ubuntu rarely crashes
• Is secure out of the gates- there are no open ports
• Boots Quicker
• Runs better
• Installs WAY faster and easier
• is more innovative
• has better graphics
• is much better for open source development

Now all these things being said, there are some pain points, some of which this new release aims to reduce. Dealing with large screen monitors and dual monitor setup in particular has been frustrating, and this is supposed to be much easier on Hardy Heron. Likewise, sound/multimedia configurations in Gutsy have given me fits, and this is supposed to be better now. Then there are countless other enhancements as well.

Will you try it now?

One of the cooler new things is the WUBI installer, which makes testing out Ubuntu on windows super easy. You just install it as a regular program, and it sets up a self contained version of Ubuntu that co exists with your Windows set up. No repartioning of your hard drive needed. So there is really no excuse or not trying out Ubuntu now….

Except as of right now, http://www.ubuntu.com is down. A victim of its’ own success I suppose.

• Watching Tuesday Night Tech http://snurl.com/25del Funniest show on Ustream.tv! #
• @marcoponce unfortunately the audio didn’t work out, but the slides are posted. #
• @marcoponce Thanks Marco, downloading now… #

Only one day after launching, Brainnovate (this blog) has climbed into the number one slot for the search “Brainnovate” on Google. One of the reasons I chose this name for the blog was because it is truly unique, and only had 3-4 competitors for the term. Hopefully this means additional SEO will come just as easily!

• Getting ready to launch new blog #
• making final preparations for webinar: http://tinyurl.com/43fv29 #
• announcing my new blog- http://brainnovate.com check it out #
• @nickohrn I wish I designed it instead of just choosing it #
• Time for todays webinar… going to make final preps now. #

I am not going to do much work posting over here, but since I made specific reference to this blog in the presentation I am obligated to mention, the slides are now posted over at http://www.vertster.com/blog

If you attended todays webinar, thank you.