Pajama Entrepreneur

This is an amazing story of how three bloggers in Spain managed to create the most popular pro basketball site (Hoopshype) in the US. Never mind that one of them doesn’t even like the sport or that they’ve been blogging (and continue to blog) out of Madrid. Fantasy Sports Ventures bought Hoopshype from the founder, Jorge Sierra, for an amount in the low seven figures, according to the Wall Street Journal, and continues to blog with his colleagues.

I have also been running Muniwireless for several years out of Amsterdam and am often asked how I managed to become the authority on the US municipal wireless market. My answer: anyone can blog from anywhere and become an expert, if he or she is interested, writes well, has passion and . . . a good broadband connection. I can do my work from anywhere in the world as long as I have broadband. Indeed, if you make good money from ads on your site, why not live in a place that has good broadband but a lower cost of living? Why not Buenos Aires or Bangkok?

From an article in the Guardian [Wave goodbye to the nine to five, and say hello to virtual enterprise]: A report on the nature of employment in 2018 predicts an exodus from the traditional workplace caused partly by environmental pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of commuting and partly by the demographic pressure of an ageing population, with fewer employees able to avoid looking after older relatives, leading to a blurring of boundaries between family and career.

Years after the publication of Dan Pink’s Free Agent Nation, we are finally seeing better arrangements for people who don’t necessarily want to work out of their home all the time, but who can’t afford to rent a full office for themselves.

Co-working is a fancy term for sharing an office with several people who work for themselves. Typically these people are web designers, consultants, advisors, etc. According to this article in the International Herald Tribune, many co-working spaces are popping up around the world to serve the needs of this growing class of independent worker. The example given in the piece is the Hat Factory in San Francisco. You rent desk space and share an office (including printers, fax machines, full kitchen, Wi-Fi) with other people for the recession-friendly price of $200.

Advantages:

• low cost: office space rentals for $200 and up
• social: dispels the loneliness and isolation of working alone at home all the time
• concentration and productivity: if you have small children at home, having an office allows you get work done
• meeting space: gives you a place for meetings with clients

In Amsterdam, there have been a lot of co-working spaces opening up. Indeed, recently, Dutch designer Marcel Wanders announced that he and his business partners are turning the former Amsterdam Central Library into creative workspaces, a hotel, cafe and museum.

I like the flexibility of co-working and the low cost, of course, not to mention the social and networking aspects of being around people in your profession. Even though our homes are well equipped with broadband and we can work at home just as easily, I miss the camaraderie of the office environment.

Famous Dutch designer Marcel Wanders has been hired to do the interiors of a new creative class hangout in Amsterdam, which will be in the former public library on the Prinsengracht. The building will house a cafe, ateliers, work spaces, museum and design hotel.

In the past few years, the city has realized that there’s a need for more ateliers and work spaces for the growing number of entrepreneurs who work in technology, advertising, media, etc. And of course, their counterparts abroad need a cool place to stay when they are in town.

Let’s hope the library has a superfast connection to the Internet (gigabit, anyone?). I know the new public library, which is a magnificent space, has very fast connections.

Anyway, this is a great addition to the city.

Since everyone is making a list at the end of the year, I decided to create one, too. Here’s my top 10 most useful applications — things I couldn’t live without in 2007. Some are online apps, others are software that you download to your computer. I have a Mac Book Pro running Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.1).

(1) Gmail: Google’s online mail application has reduced the amount of spam I receive to nearly zero. The mobile client is stable and fast. You can use Gmail to send and receive emails from other email addresses. Since your email is stored online, even if you lose your laptop or the hard drive dies, you always have access to it.

(2) Google Docs and Spreadsheets: perfect for sharing documents and spreadsheets. Like Gmail, you never worry again about your hard drive dying or losing your data.

(3) Backpack: create to-do lists, keep reminders (that send SMS or emails to you so you never forget anything) and keep an online calendar that syncs with Apple iCal. Backpack is one of the excellent online applications developed by the wonderful 37 Signals. They are known for Basecamp, the project management and collaboration application. There’s a free and a paid version.

(4) Transmit: fast, easy-to-use FTP software for the Mac. I’ve tried others, but this one is the fastest and most intuitive.

(5) Wordpress: the best blogging software around, with a huge community of developers of plug-ins, themes, widgets, etc. Wordpress powers this blog and other blogs I have set up in the past. Wordpress also has a hosted service, called Wordpress.com, for those who can’t be bothered to set up, host and maintain their own blog. Created by Matt Mullenweg, it is used by thousands of bloggers and big media companies.

(6) Netnewswire: RSS news reader. I don’t like online RSS readers because it takes forever to load the feeds. I like Netnewswire’s clean interface.

(7) Skype: this application has saved me thousands of Euros in phone calls. I can’t imagine life without Skype. I have no more long distance phone bills and since most of my contacts are on Skype anyway, it’s much easier to reach people or IM them.

(8) Gizmo Project: like Skype, Gizmo Project allows you to call people for free (if they are also Gizmo Project users) or to call landlines and mobile phones for low rates. Most of my contacts are on Skype so I use Gizmo Project primarily for calling landlines and mobile phones. I use it also on my mobile phone because unlike Skype, Gizmo Project has software for the Nokia phones. So when I am abroad and in the vicinity of a Wi-Fi network, I avoid roaming charges by using Gizmo Project on my mobile phone via Wi-Fi. I buy $10 units and it takes me months before I use it up. Another true money saver!

(9) Ad Block Plus plugin for Firefox browser: This plugin blocks obnoxious advertising on web sites. No more miserable flashing banners, video ads that suddenly play and blast out your ears, nasty advertising animations. My web surfing experience has improved dramatically since I installed Ad Block Plus.

(10) Super Duper: this is the best backup software. It is easy to use and fast so there is absolutely no excuse anymore not to back up your hard drive every night. Tech support is very good. I emailed their support team and got a response within 24 hours (they solved my problem — which had nothing to do with the Super Duper software but with errors on my hard drive).

Stats: iPhone has 0.09 percent of Web usage — yes, that’s a lot: In this post Valleywag points out that iPhone users tend to use the Web more than non-iPhone users. Excerpt:

Windows CE, which encompasses every Windows Mobile device shipped, holds a 0.06 percent share; Danger Research’s Sidekick product family holds a tiny 0.02 percent share; and the Symbian S60 smartphone platform, favored by Nokia, has 0.01 percent.

My take is that it has everything to do with the user interface and how easy it is to visit sites, check maps, look for information online. A lot of phones are clunky (terrible design) with the typical phone dialing pads or have ugly, impossibly small screens. Who would want to browse a website on that?

Microsoft launched a unified communications platform (merging email, instant messaging and telephony) that Business Division President Jeff Raikes claims will put an end to telephone tag:

“The era of dialing blind, the era of playing phone tag, the era of voice-mail jam…that era is ending . . . I don’t want to get in touch with your number. I want to get in touch with you.

Sorry Jeff, but actually most of the time, I don’t want to talk to people. I want them to leave a message in my email box which I can either read or listen to in order to determine whether it is worth responding to. Based on what I hear and read, I will respond.

Why do companies love offering products like this - a hodgepodge of stuff that does not really solve a pressing problem? Right now my problem is I get too many emails from business contacts, friends, family, email newsletters, etc. The last thing I need is people managing to reach me via phone interrupting my already busy day.

I want FILTERS, intelligent ones, and I have a few solutions already using email, but nothing is optimal. Messages from close friends and family go into a mailbox marked “read right away”. I have various mailboxes for different levels of urgency. But what I certainly don’t need is a solution that allows people to talk to me whenever THEY want, not when I want.