So back to practical advice: what do you do if you’re a startup looking for help in getting the word out about your company? First off, don’t hire PR help until the volume of inbound requests by press are simply too much to handle without help. That’s way down the line for most companies.

Until then, take the time to start reading blogs and other publications that cover what you’re doing. Go to an event or two. This should be fun for you, since they’re writing about stuff that you’re spending all your time on. You’ll start to see links to other relevant sites, and before long you’ll fully understand who’s who in the space, get a feel for people’s personalities and passions, etc. Leave a few thoughtful comments. Better yet, start your own blog and link appropriately. And in your leisure time participate in the fascinating conversations occurring on Twitter and FriendFeed.

Suddenly you are no longer just a spectator with an agenda. You are now part of a community. You are a person that gives and takes. Someone who makes the overall network stronger. And I guarantee that after a few weeks of actually participating in the community, you’ll have far better press connections than most of the PR people we deal with daily.

-- from TechCrunch

There's some solid comments on the post contesting the assertions made. Here at dropcard we've witnessed blog pickup, but I'm pretty certain we'd hardly have the know-how to get into trade journals and the non-web-2.0 crowd. Could be wrong.

Knowledge is virtue

I've been reading some random philosophy texts I found at Nikita's apartment, and the texts are helping me explain to myself some of the thoughts I've had lately (or ever, really).

The concept that "knowledge is virtue" is something I'd often heard but never really seriously considered. It always sounded like some silly proverb without much meaning. But I guess I've been learning that proverbs are some of the most honest, al beit convoluted, messages out there (maybe in large part because they don't pretend not to be convoluted). From what I understand, Socrates refers to "knowledge" as knowledge of self - what makes me tick? What angers me, disappoints me, exhilerates me? Most importantly, what makes me happy? If I understand what can truly make me happy, then I can establish a morality (in other words, a heuristic) to live by. I can create personal rules that, if followed, will lead to happiness.

Socrates then argues that what makes us happy is virtuousness - that is, doing "good". He would argue that we would rather suffer than cause suffering, for suffering is "of the body" (physical) while causing suffering is "of the soul" (existential). We would rather damage the finite body rather than the infinite soul.

I don't know if I entirely agree. At least, I agree on a personal level, but it's hard for me to impose such reasoning on the world.

I was having lunch with my buddy Alex yesterday and he made a fascinating, largely true comment - humans are fundamentally competetive. We want to be judged to be the best, and since the only entity that can judge is humanity, we compete on the basis of social reputation and judgment. "This sounds crazy, but if aliens show up tomorrow, I guarantee you we'll all stop fighting each other and come together.". And I think he's right.

I'm on a train home and will finish this thought later.

The nature of relationships

While working on dropcard, I've had a lot of time to think about the nature of first-time interactions. We've received a ton of feedback (some supportive, some critical), which has led me to make some insinuations about how people exchange contact information.

• We know that there are two parties.
  
• At least one party is interested in collecting the other party's contact information and (presumably) following up.
  
• The relationship can be either imbalanced (only one party strongly wants to collect) or balanced (both parties strongly want to collect).
  

Imbalanced Relationship. In such a relationship, one party seeks another party's information, generally in order to sell something or to grow their network in the hopes of eventually selling something (IMO, everything is sold, although the exchange may not involve currency). As such, there are two very different participants in an imbalanced first meeting.

1. The strong party: this person seeks to invest minimal energy in communicating their contact information. In the case of dropcard, they would likely not take the time to take out their phone, type a text message with their new acquaintance's contact information and send it. They're perfectly comfortable with giving the least-effort form of information so that the other party can actively pursue it. Even more convenient than business cards, such individuals might even say "Just LinkedIn me" or "facebook me". Maybe, as Boris suggested, "dropcard me"?
2. The weak party: this person will invest serious effort in acquiring the contact information of their new acquaintance. The weak party would, of course, be happy if they could immediately deliver their contact information digitally (complete with website, maybe even sales product) through a bit of effort, but they wouldn't stop there. They need the other party's information, or else they risk the chance of never being able to follow up. How can we solve this other, more important problem?

The ultimate solution would be ubiquity -- if everyone has the service, then the weak party can demand a reciprocal information transfer a la Tapulous' Friendbook, LinkedIn or some other prominent social network. I'm increasingly becoming more and more a fan of Friendbook; the shaking is a process that's not far from the standard handshake and does not necessitate the learning of any new technology.

In a balanced relationship, our service is pretty useful. I can get my information to you with a bit more effort, but you can now store and search it and I have a list of contacts at my fingertips. No scanning, no typing.

Startup reviewed on CenterNetworks

The good news: the startup I co-founded with two buddies, Tal Raviv and Ariel Allon, was reviewed today by CenterNetworks. See the article at http://www.centernetworks.com/dropcard-business-card-replacement.

The bad news: textmarks, the company we use to send and receive text messages, is down. They're not able to receive or send text messages.

So net net, good news or bad news? Probably good, but we can't be too sure.

A couple interesting UI thoughts

I just finished a video by Aza Raskin for Google (video embedded below). Great speech with some really interesting points. Two were particularly interesting for me:

1. Random vs. Linear Access: Our physical senses limit the way we can analyze and search through content mediums. For example, our eyes can scan through a text randomly (random access) and pick and choose fairly quickly what we think is important. Our ears can only analyze content in a linear fashion, since we can't jump from sound to sound intelligebly. But what about video? Is it possible to scan through video intelligebly, given that it's a combination of moving images and sound? A buddy just told me that there's a video search application that breaks videos up into 1 minute bits and enables the user to find segments that are interesting. I wonder how usable such an app is.
2. Pagination vs. Scrolling: If we look at a graph of user views of search engine results, there are huge drop when content is paginated. That is, on page 1 we have a ton of clicks, but on page 2 the number drops drastically. On the other hand, scrolled rather than paginated content results in a gradual drop-off curve. This might maximize the number of views, allowing users to drop off as soon as they find results or they get tired of scrolling through potentially relevant content.

The video is embedded below.

Free Ad Notebooks for College Students

This looks like a sweet deal -- ABS Notebooks partners with universities to produce free notebooks with valuable university information. They fund the notebooks through advertising.

http://www.absnotebooks.com/

Marc Andreessen's Analysis of Charlie Munger's Biases

Here's an interesting article (part 1 of 6) from Marc Andreessen regarding 25 biases identified by Charles Munger, Warren Buffett's partner and cofounder of Munger, Tolles & Olson.