While I can appreciate the desire for user feedback, I would challenge the assumption that it's "valuable". The very first point of the article touched on the difference between information that you will gather from free VS paying users. One kind is valuable because it can help you develop the product to be more appealing to those willing to pay, whereas the other kind may end up taking you on a very costly goose chase that won't help you generate any revenue.
The article opened my eyes to that. I am treating all feedback as valuable, whereas that might be the wrong way to go about it. It's clearly something I need to think about more deeply and work on discovering the true customer pain points, not just the "it would be nice if you had x, y, z" type of response I'm accustomed to reacting to.
Please forgive the self promotion, but in an effort to teach myself something about code, and to help people I know in a similar situation as you described, I have been building out a Website with resources for making a little bit of extra money that I think you might find helpful.
Personally, I would suggest taking a look at both LeapForce and LionBridge, because they offer 10-20 hours a week working from home at $15/hour evaluating Google's search results and doing other online tasks. They have an application/approval process to go through, but it could be a good fit for what you are looking for.
Side note: I know the site isn't really polished yet, but I'd love some constructive feedback if you have any.
EDIT: I'm sorry, but was my request for a source considered rude? I don't understand the knock. I would really like to see some data showing the consolidation of wealth, if it actually exists.
Your phrasing reads with a sarcastic tone to me, intentional or not.
But I'd also love to see a source, the claim alone does not convince me.
I'm actually not even sure what the claim is, actually -- are we talking about the top 5%? The top 1%? And are we talking about distribution within the entire world or within some specific nations?
I believe at least when you get to talking about the single richest person compared to their nation of residence, the richest person for the past few decades has controlled a smaller percentage of the wealth than in the early to mid 1900s or late 1800s -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_f... -- but beyond that I have no idea how the distribution has changed either worldwide within nations.
I was simply trying to be helpful and providing data in response to someone who wanted some on wealth distribution. I can't believe you thought providing a source to closely related data deserved a downvote.
Sure, wealth and income are not the same, but they must be pretty correlated. I have read that the Gini is higher for wealth that income, but I haven't seen data for American wealth Gini coefficients over time. If you have that data, then you could be constructive and provide it.
I have college degrees in Entrepreneurship and Marketing and have been just a "non-tech" guy for too long. I got tired of not being able to build anything myself, so I'm working my way through your book right now.
Of course I have a specific application in mind that I'd like to build, and perhaps this is evidence of my naivete, but it seems like if I were to just learn how to do that, I would be limiting my creativity. The difference between learning how to program only a specific type of application and learning to program in general seems like the difference between learning how to paint a bowl a fruit and studying the art of painting. What happens when you want to paint a bowl of fruit with a landscape behind it?
Again, I may just be one fool, but it is not the allure of being able to program a specific application that I am after, it is the pain of being ignorant that I am trying to assuage.
You present a false dichotomy. You don't have to choose to just learn how to program one kind of program or how to program generally. You can do both. And in my experience, having an idea and executing on it is a great way to start. You get instant gratification in learning one small subset of programming and you move on from there.
I know it will be awhile until the hardware in the phone can be powerful enough to compete with laptop performance, but I hope it comes soon. Also, while I like ASUS' concept, I think it really needs Apple's design thinking to take it from good to great.
If you try to value gold objectively (its industrial and possibly jewelry use), its price should be significantly lower than what it is today.
I think you might be misunderstanding what gives things value. The $20 bill in my pocket has little objective value by your definition. Sure, I could use it as a building material by papering a small piece of my wall with it or I could make an origami ring out of it, but the object's value is not determined by what can be made out of it.
Value is subjective to people's desires and beliefs about what is worth trading for. Gold has value because (almost) everyone anywhere on the planet will accept it in trade.
Gold is priced in dollars and when dollars are flying off of the printing press, but very little new gold is being produced, it follows that the price of gold would increase in terms of dollars. It is inflation that is mostly responsible for driving the price of gold up, not fear.
I'm not suggesting that everyone should be 100% into gold, I merely think that people looking for real value, would find gold very attractive as a reliable way to preserve it.
Yes you are correct. I use fundamental or intrinsic value in the financial sense. That relies on summing the future income and then discounting it to the present value. As a $20 bill has no future income, it has significantly less value than $20 invested in even a government bond.
What makes gold "real" value and other exchangeable items not "real" value?
You had better stick to talking about exchange value, because once you get into nebulous discussion of "real" value it becomes immediately relevant that gold is nonproductive at best and prone to fluctuations and bubbles in reality.
If you define the discussion of value as being limited to immediate short term exchange, then it's no surprise that you end up concluding that the only things of "real" value are whatever gives you liquidity. That is a part of the story, after all Berkshire keeps $20-$30 billion liquid as a matter of policy.
But that doesn't tell you anything about future returns or opportunity costs, and it is not the whole story. The idea that gold's value is "real" because others think it is real (or better, have long thought that it is real) is just as viciously circular as saying that currency's value is real because others believe it is real.
Mr. Buffett, like a lot of people, mischaracterizes gold as an investment. It is not. Gold is a store of wealth, not a tool realizing future gains (although that may happen). It is disingenuous to compare gold to stocks, or even to farmland as Buffett does. When you buy land, it doesn't miraculously produce crops (wealth) for you, you must input labor and resources (money) first.
I know this is nothing new, but investing in yourself through education is far and away the best investment out there. Governments, thieves, natural disasters and who knows what else can seize or destroy your stocks, bonds, gold, and land, but they can never touch your knowledge and experience. Even if you loose all of your possessions, you can use what you know to reacquire them. If the goal is "preserve AND grow" wealth, educating yourself is the best investment.
The labor part is his whole point. Gold has little to no utility ("...some industrial and decorative utility"), but land can be used to build more wealth ("A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops").
He absolutely prefers actual production over mere investment in trends. "More succinctly, investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date." This whole philosophy is at the heart of nearly all of his letters to investors and other writings.
As a lover of road trips, I really dig what you're doing.
If I may offer two observations:
1) I would appreciate some sort of filter to hide multi-location stops like Sub-way, Exxon, etc. If you are going to have such data at all, I would appreciate the ability to hide it. I can find a gas station by reading the highway signs, but it's not as easy to find the super unique and interesting stops.
2) Scaling the page to see more of the map makes the text very difficult to read.
Anyways, pretty darn good for a week. Thanks for sharing!
Is it unwise to do the research/vetting before I actually need the services?
I am hoping to launch by the end of the year, so I have some time, but I want to have some idea of what I should be thinking about so that I have one less thing to distract me from my users (assuming I can get them).
My real concern is CRM, but I am having trouble wrapping my mind around where various CRM solutions end and Email marketing/social marketing/helpdesk/feedback solutions begin. All I know is that I will need a database of my users and the ability to keep them informed via email once I launch, but I don't know what I don't know.
