Collaborate with Clusterify

One of my strong beliefs is that there are enough good ideas in the world to go around, and thus sharing those ideas early is a good thing. That is the whole premise surrounding my idea of Concept Buzz and it would appear the folks over at clusterify have a similar belief.

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GAE Tools – Google App Engine and Twitter

Tonight I have had a win. It’s a small win, but a win nonetheless. I have uploaded a small application which is making use of my new GAE tools library. The purpose behind this library is to make application development in the google appengine even more enjoyable. At this stage a python version of the library has been released, and I don’t currently have plans to build a java equivalent as I’m finding quite a pleasant language to develop in (not a language I have coded much in before).

The GAE tools library started it’s life with me calling it “Twawler” or basically a twitter search wrapper, but it grew to include other functions inside the library the meant it deserved a more generic name. The high level functions are are described below:

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The OpenHub and Coworking

I was surfing around the blogs of some Australian consultants recently and came across The OpenHub in Melbourne. This is a coworking environment in Melbourne which sounds like a really great place to be if you are an independent developer or consultant.

The coworking movement looks really interesting to me – eventually I hope to go out on my own and create a successful startup, and what better place to spend the infant years of your startup that doing that with like-minded individuals. It just makes sense. I mean most of my ideas come to me when I am driving home from a day of work, so whilst at the time the ideas is formulating I am on my own, the idea is generally related to a conversation I have had with someone that day.

So, therefore, if I went out on my own and worked from home then firstly I wouldn’t be driving anywhere (and thus get my thinking time) and secondly, I wouldn’t be mixing with people from different backgrounds and experiences. Thus I could potentially get stuck in a rut… coworking seems like a great way to combat that. Not only that, but it’s an effective way to set up shop somewhere without the massive initial overheads.

Stupeflix – API Enabled Online Video

Online video is something that helps to make a product or website standout from the rest. Whether it is a screencast tutorial or a promotional video for a product, the presence of video can help your offering stand-out from the crowd.

Stupeflix is a site that enables you to automatically generate video from a series of images, and apply text and a backing track to make a video that is quite compelling. In the past I have used Animoto and recommended it to friends as a great and simple way to put together a great video from existing static images. Honestly, I will continue to recommend Animoto as an excellent tool for generating video online – the effects and overall feel of the video coming out of Animoto has an edge over the end product Stupeflix creates (you can do a side-by-side comparison of their demo videos and you’ll see what I mean).

What makes Stupeflix different, however, is that it exposes a RESTful API for generating the videos. This in turn opens up some amazing opportunities for websites that already have a large amount of static imagery they would like to present in a more compelling way. Mike Butcher in his techcrunch post suggests a few application possibilities around generic eCommerce sites which includes some potential uses of the generated videos to assist with monetization of your own sites.

One of the most useful real-world examples I can think of would be on property sales / real estate websites. Nothing would showcase a property better than a video of the still images taken by the property photographer. It would certainly be more compelling than the clunking slideshow mechanisms most of these sites currently offer. The same of course could apply to car sales sites and the like.

Image hosting and stock image sites are another obvious big area that could put Stupeflix to good use. So the next thing to do is to get some time get mashing with their API (I’ll post any updates on this post).

Concept Buzz – Generate Concept Interest

Background and Motivation
I find taking an idea and turning into something real can be quite a challenge. This isn’t because I struggle to technically execute the vision, but more because I require some external motivation to see an idea through to fruition (otherwise I’ll probably just come up with some other concept and divert my attention to that). In most cases, this external motivation comes through a number of others showing genuine interest in the idea or by finding an external party who will behave like a client for the project – setting deadlines, mandating requirements, etc, to help things move along.

Part of my vision for the conceptual advantage site is to use it as a mechanism to push out some of my ideas for critique on the global stage. Some might think this seems like a ludicrous concept – why would you share an idea that someone else could potentially deliver on and make themselves a lot of money with? Well for one, I know that without some of the external motivators I require, I will probably never deliver a single one of my ideas. Secondly I feel confident that I have enough ideas (be they good or bad) that I could afford for a couple to be delivered by others if that means I deliver on some of those myself.

The Concept – A website for gauging concept interest
So how do I plan on generating some of this external motivation and enthusiasm to get things done? For now this blog serves as a mechanism for that, but based on my own experience it takes more commitment from a visitor to leave a comment than it would to simply give a thumbs up or down to an idea.

So what next? At this stage the plan is to set up a website that enables someone to register and submit a concept to be evaluated by visitors to that site. Additionally, I envisage using social bookmarking style bookmarking buttons to both communicate and gather interest for the concept – for instance, if the site was up and running this article would have a little widget in the top right corner saying “18 buzz – get on board” (or something similar).

Additionally, rather than force a potential fan of the concept to register on the site also (really I don’t want to force people to register with sites more than they have to) – I would probably explore using existing social bookmarking sites to assist with aggregating buzz for a concept. For instance, I can envisage a number of urls being associated with a particular concept: an initial blog post, a project site, the conceptbuzz.net site page itself, etc, etc and the amount of buzz for that concept should be the aggregate number of social bookmarking links for any of those urls.

So what would all that buzz mean then? Well for myself, I would commit myself to a concept relative to the amount of buzz. For instance, I see a concept moving through a number of phases before it’s released as a finished product. Lets say it goes from concept > prototype > public beta > release. In that case, I would set myself some “buzz thresholds” to inspire me to move it to further phases. In the case of idea A, I might determine that 100 buzz is sufficient for me to build a prototype of the idea, but for idea B I would want to see 2000 buzz before embarking on building a prototype given the complexity of the idea.

In closing, while I think the conceptbuzz.net site idea represents some risk around exposing your concept before having something in the market and competing, I believe this can be a measured risk for someone like myself. Let me know what you think. If you think it’s a good idea and something you’d like to see then use some of the key principles that I will implement (commenting, social bookmarking, etc) and get me motivated to deliver something! Additionally, let me say I welcome critical feedback too – happy to have someone shoot holes in the idea or throw questions in the mix that will cause us all to think.

Updates:
2009-03-23:
Modified conceptbuzz.net to www.conceptbuzz.net as I’ve started using Google AppEngine for hosting.