Millarian

As I stated in a previous post, I attended the Gotham Ruby Conference this past weekend in NYC. It was a great time with many interesting talks. The weather was amazing as well. I don’t want to spend a lot of time rehashing the conference because you can view the GoRuCo 2008 presentations for yourself, but I did want to mention a few things I got out of it.

Bryan Helmkamp gave an interesting introduction to story driven development using rspec and story runner. This is something we’ve been talking about at Integrum, but haven’t had a chance to use in a real setting yet. Derek and I got to spend some time at the WePlay offices (where Bryan works) and they showed us some of the stuff they’re doing, including using story runner. It was awesome to hear about their experiences and hopefully we’ll get a chance to use it soon.

Next up was “Archaeopteryx: A Ruby MIDI Generator.” I was skeptical about this one, but was blown away by Giles Bowkett’s presentation. From recounting his life adventures, including a “psycho throwing rocks at his dad until he threatened him with a piece of rebar” to calling venture capitalists “weasel-brained muppet fuckers… they’re not fools, they’re liars.” He kept the crowd well entertained, but threw in some really interesting and well-delivered points about startups and life. It is well worth watching.

Another one that really stood out was Ryan Davis’ presentation about “Hurting code for fun and profit.” He had a lot of really great things to say about being a developer, so go watch it already!

These speakers helped me to become aware of a few things:

• I don’t read enough. Ryan mentioned that the average developer reads 1 book a year. Is one book a month really so hard?
• I don’t hurt my code enough. I don’t use flog or heckle consistently and I often don’t take the time to correct code that I know should be improved.

I definitely have some things to work on… how about you?

The first real day of the conference. I’m not gonna lie to you, the first day seemed pretty light. Registration was from 10:00am until 2:30pm with no panels, sessions, etc. scheduled during that time.

We got to the convention center in Austin at about 11:00am, registered with ease and proceeded to B. D. Riley’s Irish Pub for an Austin Refresh meetup. Not wanting to partake in the suds before noon, Gist and I headed for Starbucks for some early afternoon pick-me-up.

After the Refresh meeting we headed back to the convention center to prepare for the first panel of the day. Then a strange thing happened… While we were shooting the shit, Gist comes up with a great idea for a simple application for Twitter. We laugh about it, throw some ideas around and viola we have the beginnings of a new project. After taking a poll amongst the others, we decided to devote a triple to working on a first release – me, Jade, and Gist.

While Gist drew some sketches, Jade and I borrowed a laptop from Heidmo to begin development. Just a few short hours later we have our first version of an app we are calling “Props and Drops”. It is a way for people to give props (or drops) via Twitter. It’s pretty easy to get started, just visit http://props.integrumtech.com and click ‘About’ to get started. It also has a nifty iPhone interface, so if you’re lucky enough to have an iPhone check it out!

It was really awesome to see an idea progress so quickly. Here is a brief timeline of the day (totally estimated):

• 1:00pm – Mother jokes
• 1:07pm – Gist mentions way to vote people up or down via Twitter
• 1:08pm – Someone says props
• 1:12pm – More mother jokes
• 1:17pm – The idea turns serious and Jade, Gist and I volunteer to build it in the few hours before the 5:00pm panel
• 1:21pm – Another mom joke…
• 1:35pm – Gist sketches interface
• 1:30pm to 3:30pm – Jade controls laptop while I pair and we write the app in under 2 hours
• 3:30pm to 4:52pm – Deployment takes about another hour, including minor tweaks discovered on deployment
• 5:00pm – People begin to use ‘Props and Drops’ during the 5:00pm panel
• 5:45pm – Strebel gains a substantial props lead over all others
• 6:10pm – High fives are exchanged amongst Integremlins
• 6:11pm – Mother jokes resume
• 6:40pm to 2:00am – Alcohol is consumed

What a completely awesome day. Thanks to Jade and Gist for kicking ass to get this app out there and ready for use. Thanks to everyone already partaking of the Twitter Props and Drops goodness. Send us feature requests!!

Props and Drops

In August 2006, I left my employer to embark on a journey to change my skill set and mind set. My previous employer was a very large defense contractor who offered a decent workplace, average salary, excellent benefits, and, of course, job stability. I announced to my friends and family that I would be leaving this employer, returning to Arizona and leaving the ranks of the employed for an undetermined amount of time. It seemed ludicrous to most people at the time, myself included. I was sure of only one thing at that time: I intended to refocus my career goals in an entirely different direction.

Unemployment

I had attempted to take my career in a different direction while still working, but I found that after 60-80 hour work weeks, a Master’s program in Computer Science and a wife and two young children, I didn’t have the energy. Voluntary unemployment was a calculated risk that I could learn what I needed to enter my newly chosen career path before I was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Unemployment is not really as bad as I thought it would be. I was able to spend time learning the things I was truly interested in, including Ruby on Rails. I spent a lot of time with my family and generally enjoyed myself. I found that I could actually work longer with more focus that I ever did at a previous employer without feeling tired or burnt out.

Eventually, our finances drained to the point of alarm and I began to look for a professional position working with Ruby on Rails.

Contracting

Since early 2007, I have been contracting my Ruby on Rails services to various employers. While this was lucrative it was also very frustrating. During that time I learned a little about myself and the environment in which I work best. I invest myself in what I do and as a contractor I found it hard to not get involved beyond what was required of me.

My first contract position was a fixed bid contract that was referred to me by my brother. It allowed me to choose the technology and create a simple student tracking system for a wellness center. It was deployed internally in January of 2007 and as far as I know it is still being used. My first real, deployed and used application! With that experience under my belt, I placed my resume on various websites advertising my interest in Ruby on Rails development positions. In a few short days I was contacted.

My second contracting position was an 18 month contract to create an EMR system for a local, privately held behavioral health organization. This was the big test for me to gauge if my calculated risk would pay off. Unlike the previous contract I was interviewed about my knowledge of Ruby on Rails, databases and Agile development. Two weeks after advertising my resume, I was hired to work professionally with Ruby on Rails. I learned a lot during my time contracting for that company, including how much I didn’t know, and met a great Phoenix Ruby on Rails developer, Josh Huckabee. I also attended my first RailsConf in Portland, OR in May with Josh and a few of the full-time employees.

Attending RailsConf was a real turning point for me, in many ways. Part of what I was missing as a lone wolf developer was the sense of community and interaction with other Rubyists – I met some great people at RailsConf! Upon returning, I began attending the Ruby User’s Group in Phoenix, Phoenix Rails Group and Refresh Phoenix to connect at a local level with other enthusiastic Rubyists, developers and designers.

This was the beginning of the end of my time at my current contract. As I discovered more about agile Ruby on Rails projects I realized that it would be highly improbable to influence the current direction of my contract employer. For three more months Josh and I attempted to influence the direction of our project and rescue it from impending failure. In August, we made our exit and, because of RailsConf and local networking, we began contracting for a Phoenix Ruby on Rails consulting company, Integrum Technologies.

Integrum and Me

In January 2008, Josh and I became full-time Integrum code monkeys. Integrum is an amazing place to work and completely unlike any company I’ve worked for. There is a level of openness and transparency that I have only read and dreamed about. Of course, Integrum is not perfect, but we are working hard to constantly improve ourselves while still having a blast. My wife constantly reminds me that Integrum is fueled by fun :) I believe that this year will be an important one for our company. You can keep up on what’s going on with us by reading, or subscribing to, the Integrum blog.

A year and a half has passed since I resigned my comfortable, full-time position in California. In that time I have accomplished more that I could have hoped for and am happier than I’ve been in some time – my calculated risk paid off.

Part of the startup I’m pursuing involves using the Google Maps API to display a map containing location markers. The number of location markers could exceed 4000 at any given time. I currently have a sample dataset of around 500 and found that the map loading was starting to slow down. I considered several reasons this may be the case including how I was generating the JavaScript on the page using Ruby on Rails. I decided to do a little testing using examples from the Google Maps API Documentation.

I found a wiki reference that discussed marker optimization techniques and tried some of them to see the differences. There are others besides these, so if you are interested visit the link.

• Only Draw the Points in the Area Viewport – Great suggestion, but is only valid when the user zooms in. At the highest level, if all points are displayed then this has no effect.
• Load Different Points at Different Zooms – Another good suggestion. This is accomplished through the use of the GMarkerManager. However, the question remains as to how to breakup your data. Do you provide a generic icon at higher zoom levels and when clicked on it zooms in and displays markers? Do you display “preferred” locations at higher zoom levels (e.g., paying users)? Do you display higher ranking/rated (assuming you have a ranking/rating system) locations at higher zoom levels? For my particular app, I use the GInfoWindow to display information about a particular point. If I don’t go with the generic icon approach then I would be giving preferential treatment to some locations and would need to figure out how to justify it. For example, people might not zoom in to reveal other locations and thus the highest zoom level markers would get all the attention. If I did use a generic icon, then the data on my map would not be as impressive because you could only see a few icons until you zoom in. Additionally, it would not be possible to see the locations in relation to each other at higher zoom levels.
• Add HTML to InfoWindows (Bubble) Using Click Event – Yea, I thought about this one too, but found that during my testing without using the InfoWindows it was still slow.
• Preload the marker images – Hmmm… special case for IE? Nah, I say let ‘em suffer.
• Omit the shadows – Those pesky shadows… This actually did seem to make a difference during my testing, but it doesn’t look as nice.

So, what to do? I am considering trying a combination of the approaches above as well as delaying the loading of the markers. For example, at the highest zoom level, all markers are visible, so I might wait about half of a second before adding markers. Then when I’m adding, I allow about an eighth of a second between batches, where a batch is 20-25 locations. Instead of using the GMarkerManager at the highest zoom level I would just use addOverlay. This gives the map the appearance of pretty smoothly adding markers to the map. Although it is kinda cool to watch, adding one marker at a time takes too long, so it has to be a few at a time. Not so many that it appears chunky though.

The other techniques that I think might be useful are delaying the InfoWindow data until the onclick event as well as factoring in the viewport area for marker display. Theoretically, this should allow me to load all of the markers with the smallest amount of information possible and increase the performance as the user zooms in.

I really don’t like the clustering approach as is tends to obscure the data. Part of what I am trying to accomplish with using Google Maps is to present my data in a way that allows for easy visualization of the points in relation to each other. Clustering seems to defeat that purpose. I also like the shadows because it makes it look nicer. If it comes down to it I will, reluctantly, lose the shadows.

My other options are to disallow viewing all of the locations at once. This might be accomplished by loading an empty map and asking the user to search first. Additionally, I could limit the search results to a few hundred. I’m not keen on this approach, but I may be forced to go this route if I can’t improve the performance otherwise. I could also try using an XML file with GDownloadURL, but I can’t see that actually being faster.

I had an extremely hard time finding information about Google Maps and performance, including tips, techniques, hacks, etc. If you have any suggestions please post in the comments. It would be very interesting to see how other people are handling this problem.

I am about to end my first contract position with the Gila Community College Wellness Center in Arizona. I have been developing an internal web-based application for them and will deliver it at the end of this week. I was able to convince them to let me use Ruby on Rails for the development with a MySQL Database. Essentially these are the same technologies I have been using on my startup.

Have I mentioned recently that I love Ruby on Rails? No? Okay, ummm… I love it. For the startup I was concentrating on pushing features as quickly as possible and I was least concerned about formal testing. In a contract position though I needed to really delve into how to test my code using the built in functionality provided with Ruby on Rails. With a little help from the Agile Web Development with Rails book I was testing in no time. The testing framework in place makes it very easy to develop and run your tests. Eventually I will need to go back through my startup code and add tests. I was dreading that activity, but now it seems like it will be easier than I expected. Of course, I am a bad programmer for letting it lapse in the first place… baaaad programmer!

Testing is one of those activities that is often overlooked during the course of your academic career. When I completed my BS in Computer Science at the UofA testing was not on the curriculum. Our introduction to testing was when some teaching assistant developed a rudimentary suite of tests to grade our program. They usually released some of them so you could get a feel for how well you had coded, but your grade was based on a super-set of the tests you were given. Now that I look back on it they probably knew only a little more than us about testing, but of course they needed something to base a grade on. I remember several times when people discovered errors in the TA’s tests!

There were very few people who developed their own tests. In fact, the philosophy I heard espoused most often from students and faculty was “Just get it working!” There was one guy though, Tal, who created tests and, compassionately, allowed others to test against them. He was a special case though as he was light years ahead of anyone else I knew in that program. Only later did I find out that he was a chess grandmaster... He eventually went on to pursue an advanced degree at UW and currently works at Google.

Anyway, I have wanted to try test-driven development for a while, but keep putting it off. Why? Why is it so hard to do? I think I have been conditioned to think of tests as a secondary activity. Sadly, this looks to be a difficult habit to overcome. Anyone have any suggestions for these testing withdrawal symptoms? Any advice is appreciated.

Over the holiday break I had a chance to talk with a lot of friends and family members about starting a company. I have been working on this venture for a few months, but had been keeping everything hush-hush. Most of them had no idea what I was doing. So, I decided to spill the beans and talk openly with people I know I can trust for an honest opinion. Just like I said in a previous post, reactions were mixed.

It got me thinking about what it means to be an entrepreneur. Merriam-Webster defines entrepreneur as “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” I think that the role of entrepreneur is more difficult than that short definition implies. It’s not enough to be the one who has an idea and organizes the company to realize the idea. As I have been finding, there is a social aspect to being an entrepreneur that takes you on a roller coaster of emotions, from depressed to uplifted, frustrated to satisfied, empty to fulfilled. It is the job of the entrepreneur to push past those feelings of depression and inadequacy and focus their energy on the task at hand.

There have been several times when I thought I should throw in the towel and get a “real job”, as my parents so eloquently put it. It took the advice of an old friend who I recently reconnected with on LinkedIn to put me back on track. He is also trying to start his own company called Webographers, but he’s a few steps ahead of me. Sharing his own experiences with me about his company helped me to reaffirm my intention of making my venture work.

While it is good to get many opinions about your venture, be sure to surround yourself and keep in close contact with people who will renew your focus and ambition. It is easy to quit something when it becomes tough, in fact, our society almost encourages it. It is far more rewarding to persevere in the face of adversity. As an entrepreneur we must not only steer the company through rough waters, but we must fend off these dark thoughts and emotions that creep in from time to time. Only if we do both successfully will we have a real chance to succeed.

I took a little time before the holiday to go on another fishing trip with my dad. This time we went to Bartlett Lake, just northeast of Phoenix. The fishing wasn’t great, but the location was spectacular. The lake itself sits in the Tonto National Forest, an area overflowing with saguaro cactus, desert vegetation, and wildlife. We only caught three fish between the two of us, the largest being my large mouth bass. It was about 15.5 inches and probably around 2-2.5 pounds, although we didn’t weigh it. We may take another trip before the new year, but that is yet to be decided.

I met my end of year goals of revising my executive summary, creating a presentation from it, and submitting it to a handful of VC firms. I also updated my resume as a few firms would like your full resume, not just a paragraph description of your accomplishments. I also met a stretch goal of releasing another version of the site, although admittedly it is only a minor version; mostly backend changes. I feel really good about what I have accomplished this year.

I hope everyone has a happy holiday. I will be spending time with my family and relaxing for a few days then it’s full steam ahead into 2007. I am confident this will be a great year.

When I was completing my Master’s in Computer Science I took several classes on Software Engineering. Software Engineering deals mostly with the lifecycle of software from conception through maintenance. It is different from core CS classes because it does not focus on the software itself. Instead, it focuses on everything that goes into and around the software to make the project successful. I took classes on software process, maintenance, standards, testing, etc. All of this was in addition to my core CS classes on operating systems, networking, graphics, etc.

I found that I already knew a lot of what was being taught in those classes through my experience at my former companies: Project Technology, Inc. (acquired by Mentor Graphics) and Raytheon Company. Some of it was also common sense. However, common sense is not always common practice.

One of the things that I thought I understood well was the concept of vision. Communicating your idea about a product as a whole; what it is and what it will become. As you carve up your vision into manageable chunks, or projects, you define the project scope. That is, what portion of the overall vision is addressed by this particular project. Vision shouldn’t really change much, whereas scope may be more fluid and adjust as needed.

So now that I am shifting into the entrepreneur’s seat, I see parallels with this line of thinking and the business entity itself. I realize that not only do I have a vision for this particular product (a niche social networking website), but I have begun to shape a vision for the company that will create the product. This vision includes ethical and moral codes of conduct that are modeled after my own personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects. I have thought about how the business entity should conduct itself when dealing with members, clients, etc. I have also thought about employees and the culture I would like to see in the company.

All of these thoughts happened subconsciously and then bubbled up to my conscious thought. Maybe it is all coming about because of my pursuit of the business side of the company in recent days. Regardless, it is comforting to know that my brain has already thought about and formulated an opinion on these topics that I can use as the basis for building a solid company.

It has been about three months since I started this project. Here is a recap of what I have accomplished:

• I learned the Ruby language and the Rails framework. I know I still have a lot to learn, but I am far enough along that I’m feeling comfortable in my ability.
• I created an executive summary for the business. This helped me to nail down just what I was thinking for the site and got me to focus on how the business would work.
• I created a depth-first prototype of the site. Of course, being a prototype it was hacked together, but contained about eight major features that I would like to see in the real site. Not pretty, but functional…mostly.
• I successfully released an alpha version of the site and gathered a group of testers to try it out. Based on their feedback, I released several minor releases for bug fixes and improvements. All of this served to improve the site.
• I successfully released a second version of the alpha containing bug fixes, improvements and one new major feature. This is currently being tested by my group and I have already received some good feedback.
• I have compiled a large feature list to be implemented on the site and I am progressing steadily toward the next version.

I have been having a great time working on this. I have learned an enormous amount in a very short time and discovered a language that I enjoy very much. I have told myself from the beginning that, if nothing else came of this site, I would learn a lot in the process. Now that things have gotten so far along, I don’t want knowledge to be the only thing I get from this. I want to see this site be used. I want to see the membership grow and the community thrive. I want it to succeed in it’s purpose…

To tell you the truth, I am almost at the end of my rope financially. I am worried that I will not be able to see this through to the end that I would like. That’s why it’s time I seriously pursued venture capital…

I believe I am in a good position to attain some level of funding, but the world of investment seems so foreign and mysterious to me. I have read a lot about funding, but I still regard it as a strange and wily beast. However, I am going to try in earnest. I believe that having a functional site will help. It shows that this is more than an idea and I have taken serious steps to make it a reality.

Tomorrow begins my focus on capital. This means that the site will take a backseat for a couple of days so I can get down to business. Please share your advice on pursuing venture capital in the comments. I would love to hear other peoples experiences.

Ah, the eternal question of a startup. How do you attract a user base? This is a question I have been pondering much in the last few days. As I neared my second release, I began to think that it was good enough to really start inviting people. Not just testers, but real people!

For some startups out there the targeted user is…well, anyone. They might be able to spray-and-pray, hoping they attract enough users from the massive ocean of potentials to make the site either profitable or attractive for acquisition. My case is slightly different, though.

For my startup, I am targeting a specific niche market. I know exactly who will use the site. Chances are that nobody else will use it because it would not be of interest to them. I’m choosing to focus on the US market first, see how it goes and then expand as necessary. In the US there are around 30 million potential users. Not a pond by any means, but not an ocean either.

So, does knowing who your users are make it easier or harder to attract them? I guess this is something I will find out soon enough. Here are some random thoughts about it though:

• The viral effect could be more rapid as the market is smaller and therefore likely to be a tighter group in the real world. However, the smaller potential user base could also be detrimental as it may not have the critical mass necessary to actually go viral in the first place…
• With a smaller group who may actually know each other in real life, a single misstep could spell disaster. However, there are currently few offerings in this market and those that exist are poor. That is, expectations might already be low…
• I know who they are and I know where to find them. In fact, there are several “hubs” which could be central points for locating potential users and spreading the word. However, the domain is far from my expertise, so a straightforward approach may not work best. I have access to addresses, email, phone number, etc. of the “hubs” and could get in contact with them in any number of ways. I think I may need to approach groups of these “hubs” in different ways and see which approach gets the best results.
• I strongly believe that if I build a better site with the user’s interest in mind then I will not need to worry too much about getting the users. That is, I won’t need to sell them on the idea. They will want to use it because it fulfills a need in a useful way. My naivety on this subject is going to be tested…

Let me know if you have any other thoughts or opinions on the matter.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since the first alpha, but I am moving on an aggressive schedule to release significant new features every couple of weeks. In addition to the major releases, I have been adding or modifying smaller items as I see them. So really there were several 1.x releases in there, but I didn’t keep close tabs on them.

My deployment time is way down. This time around it took me less than an hour to fully deploy the site. Part of this release made some improvements in that area to allow things to go more smoothly. I also know more about what I should be wary of changing in the host environment.

This version was live on the site as of this morning, but I allowed the notice stating changes and downtime up all day just in case I needed to work some things out. I spent the rest of the day adding content to the site. Wouldn’t be a very useful site without content, eh? Got a taste of my own medicine and for the most part, I was pleased. There were a few things I was annoyed with and made notes to change them soon. Funny how things look different when you put on your user hat…

Yet another step closer to ending my self-imposed closed-registration, invitation-only alpha. It will be a great feeling to open registration to the general public. Still lots to do before that time though.

I’ve been at this for a couple of months now and I’ve started to notice some things. When I tell people what I do (i.e., I work for no pay on a dot com that may not take off) I get a wide range of responses. Here are some common ones:

• Huh?
• Congratulations! That is great!
• Interesting…
• Well…good luck with that.
• Man, I wish I could take the leap… maybe I will… I should!... just as soon as I finish my current project…
• You’re doing what?!? Are you crazy??
• I hear it’s another bubble…

I get follow-up conversation almost every time; more questions than I usually care to answer, but I answer anyway. It helps me to formulate more clearly how to communicate what I am doing and what my vision is. I am surprised at how many people cannot hold a conversation about the Internet and the current technologies being used. I realize that we really are in our own little world. Despite the hundreds of blogs that are talking up a storm about Web 2.0 and the “new” Internet, most of the people I talk with are clueless about it. Even when I tell them about it, they don’t really get it and most don’t care.

Makes me wonder if we, as developers, entrepreneurs, etc. are hyping this amongst ourselves, but the rest of the world could care less. Kind of a collective “That’s nice…” coming from potential users. Fortunately, I’m persistent and have convinced several people of the benefits of these technologies and their uses. A long road though…

Anyway, in my follow-up conversations, I usually get one or more of the following questions. Depending on the person I am talking to it may be the first question or they may take a while leading up to it. Some people ask all three straight-away. Regardless, they all want to know:

• How will you make money on it?
• How much money do you think you’ll make?
• When will you start making money?

Notice a theme? It’s funny how interested people become when they are asking you about money. I usually fend them off by explaining my theory about startups and money. Considering this is my first (second really, but the first one was a practice run, right?) startup, this could be completely bunk information – your mileage will almost certainly vary. The theory goes like this:

If you concentrate on money first, you will fail. If you concentrate on users and follow your vision for the site, you will eventually find a way to monetize, and perhaps not fail.

Another funny thing I have been getting a lot of lately reminds me of why I wear a “No, I will not fix your damn computer!” t-shirt (thanks Kim!) as a programmer. In shifting from programmer to programmer/entrepreneur I now get many ideas for startups thrust at me by friends, family, and complete strangers. It usually happens after a lull in the conversation. Then they begin, “You know what’s a great idea for a startup….” or “You know what you should do…”. I think I will make a new t-shirt that says “No, I will not implement your damn idea for a startup!” Actually, I’m making a list for the future… after all, I didn’t sign an NDA….

This weekend was my dad’s 60th birthday, so I was too busy to work on the site, but I had it uploaded on Friday. I wanted to ensure that deployment to the server hadn’t broken anything (it had) before beginning the invitation process.

My first server deployment took me 18 hours… Wow. There were some strange differences between my environment and the hosting environment. Eventually I got all but one problem figured out.

The remaining problem has only appeared in Production mode. I suspect that it is either an RMagick or possibly NFS weirdness. When I attempt to upload a picture, the site hangs. I sometimes see a .nfs* file appearing in my server directory during this time. Thought maybe there might be some kind of file size limit, but have not yet discovered such yet. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Since I am in alpha, I am currently in Development mode and I have not seen it there yet. Could it possibly be Production mode strictness?

I have invited about 20 people so far to try it out and give feedback. It has only been a couple of hours and I have already taken my first support call and have three feedback items for suggested changes. I’m sure that there will be many things coming up that I did not think about. It should be very interesting.

I’ve been neglecting posting lately because I have my head down working on my startup. (Speaking of startups, a good friend is embarking on his own startup journey)

I have also been neglecting reading other blogs. My Bloglines account is overflowing with unread postings. I worked off about a third of them this morning, but will not spend further time on it today. When you work from home, it is easy to become distracted. That is partly why I donated my TV to The Salvation Army. I enjoy my daily reading, but when it is time to work it must sit idle. Eventually, I will have time to resume reading.

My prototype has come a long way and I am almost ready for people to begin using it. It’s exciting to see something you’ve spent so much time working on become mature enough for people to use. I’ve already solicited feedback from a half-dozen people and the reactions were positive. I expect it will only be a couple of more weeks before I enter private beta. I am pleased with what I have so far and considering I have only been at this for about six weeks, my progress has been amazingly fast.

Back to work – words of encouragement are appreciated! Or share your own startup experiences in the comments.

Update: My brother is also launching his own site called May All Be Well.

As you may have noticed, I am not located in Silicon Valley, yet I am pursuing a technology startup. The NY Times ran a story entitled It’s Not the People You Know. It’s Where You Are. . The premise is that you should be in Silicon Valley if you are a startup.

Of course, I disagree as do others. What do Skype, Last.fm, Netvibes, Xwiki, and Feedburner have in common? Hint: not Silicon Valley. And those are just the ones I know about. I’m sure there are others.

That’s not to say a location in Silicon Valley would not be beneficial. It certainly could be, but don’t believe the hype that you absolutely must be located in the valley. Take your idea and run with it wherever you are.

Know of other non-Silicon Valley startups? Post them in the comments!