You may have noted my post on the 24 hours of lemons, but you probably didn’t realize,, we were in it. Here’s a quick video by Jacob Meggers, our Punk Rock Chef who helped make our race awesome.We drove a 1977 280 to 37th place (out of 96 cars) with only 1 30 minute penalty (Shaun unintentionally removed the rear bumper from the San Jose Scallywags (and their awesome #1 Miata with it’s pirate)).

Sadly there was a severe loss of one of our racing brethren at the event, Court Summerfield lost his life at the event.  If you wish to donate to the Court Summerfield fund please do click here.

It turns out I actually knew a member of the winners team Krider Racing Steve Coonts, (he coached my sister in swimming years ago).

Our team is made up of myself, Jaime Furtado, Mike Przybylski , Jukka Valkonnen, and Shaun Donovan. We all had a blast!  Our crew chief was none other than the ACTUAL race driver Scott Schroeder who drives for TRG racing. The pace of the race went from speedy to nutty rapidly, and we all had a blast!  For a better review, check either our team site for ScuderiaPRC (Punk Rock Chef) or the updates by Murilee Martin for Jalopnik.com

Look for us at the race at ThunderHill Raceway in December!

My next racing event will be at the Jim Russel Kart School in late June for the Advanced Sprint Kart 1 day class (more on that after I do it).

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Wednesday I received this email from my friend Pamela Slim over at www.escapefromcubiclenation.com (she’s awesome,, visit her site often, also her coaching prices are great and she really helps (and yes, I pay full price for her amazing help)).

Here’s what she sent me:

“I would like to share this (took off the name to protect identity) email that I got today.”

“I’d be interested to read about interactions you’ve had with successful product inventors. I am exploring what it takes to create a product that I’ve thought of. Whenever I look up inventors I find resources that look hobby-ish. I haven’t seen one with a professional feel. Maybe this is who inventors are, hobbyists looking to strike it big like
the rest of us.”"

I do see the “hobby” reference, and the confusing distinction about “inventions/inventors” and product development (it keeps me up at night). ‘Inventors’ I prefer to use the words “product developers” and professional ones at that, are thought of in many ways, this is my simple breakdown

1.wacky inventor: Has an idea, and has no idea what it takes to design, prototype, protect, manufacture, ship, sell, and market an idea, typically wastes a lot of time and money and accomplishes little to nothing.

2.Product developer-hobbyist class: someone who develops a product unrelated to their day job to generate extra income. They have a job they like, and while they’d like it to “hit” and get rich, or parlay it into a full time gig, no matter the outcome they’ll be ok, they’re doing it for enrichment, not as a do or die effort.

3.Product development professional: Typically a person (or design group). These people focus on a portfolio of products, with product life cycles. They may be a single person, generating 1 or many products, and know where to access the information they need to execute the many parts of product development. Typically as solitary actors, they have a technical bent (if not a degree). In the case of “development houses” the action is to move both in house designs forward and consultant level incoming ideas through as well.

The “Big difference” through all of that, is that on the professional side, it is the whole action. It is keeping all the balls moving all at once (or having a team to do it). There are some reputable firms and individuals available if someone does seek that. A great place to seek them out can be people who have to interface with individuals that interact with people and businesses of this nature and know where to start. Another way to go (especially for licensing) is to identify the industry being targeted with the idea, and make in-roads there. Many times a product can be developed and sold online to build a following, then ramped up in terms of production.

If they are looking for hobbyist data, it abounds and is free all over, however, true product development requires creation of a complete “business” (no matter how small or large). The only way to cut the amount of “business” required is to license directly (again this can be done with a reputable product development/design house).

The knowledge base to look for in a professional is this:design, manufacture, web, marketing, sales, fulfillment/logistics, budgeting. Without at least some knowledge (or a relationship in all these areas) the group is likely on the “hobby” side.

The industrial design houses, that typically specialize in this sort of endeavor for large companies are also open to working with individuals (and frankly prefer it when they come with money). They are professional, have a process for all of this in place, and can work with an “idea person” to generate a working product from beginning to end.

A great place to start looking for a real design firm (and not an “invention group”) would be at idsa.org, or www.coroflot.com There are plenty of small scale (read 1 or 2 person teams) that are ready to help you make your great idea reality. They will cost you some money, (you’re lying to yourself if you feel otherwise). They likely will want to be paid for work done, you will rarely find people that are willing to partner for equity alone, they’ll want hourly and equity/royalties,, don’t worry, for the price you’re paying you’ll still be vastly better off, with a better design, a better product, a better supply chain, and a much better looking design.

I’ll generate a few more posts on this topic (finding designers, marketers, salespeople, and more)

Last but not least, there’s always me www.ds4design.com

Oh right, you’re already here.

Thanks again for the inspiration Pamela!

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As many of you know I’m a fan of online apps, but I frankly have trouble with one aspect. Bridging the gap from online to desktop. There has always been a huge disconnect in that ability.

Evernote is the creepy huge band-aid that fixes all of that.
My “notebooks” so far (just think of them as folders) are as follows
DS4 Blog (that’s for blogging, web design, and general blog related stuff,,, but not)
DS4 Post ideas (this is where I can write articles anywhere anytime and then when I get home, just post em (I’m even going to design a template so I can have it prepped and include keywords and SEO stuff!)
ebooks I’m reading (come on you have ebooks you read, but there’s no good way to “bookmark” them properly. Now you can read and take notes!
Iwants (let’s face it, I want a ton of stuff, now I can index all of it and come back to it (I watch stuff for years, then get bored with it and trash it without spending a fortune,, cool!)

I have Onenote on my tablet PC, and I have the earlier version of Evernote, but this is a completely new level of the two of them together.

It’s not having the app in multiple places, it’s putting together those multiple places that make it that wonderful.

I’ve got 4 free beta invites for interested parties. Drop a way to reach me in the comments.

I’m very excited to see that the real gap between the web, mobile, and the desktop is reducing.

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Thanks to Bezos and Jobs and a few margaritas, now you can download and read ebooks straight from your iphone without an amazon eBook purchase. The AT&T network has bought it all up and now any iPhone owner can read their ebooks all day long for free, any book from Amazon

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Ok, so Dave is probably going to hurt me for using the picture at the bottom of this article, but he’s got funny ones of me too, while we sat Sunday at Coffee Society in San Jose (he was in town from the East Coast on a project, and chatted about our respective plights.

David Seah (Dave to humans who have met him for more than 3 seconds) is the mastermind behind The Printable CEO and other amazing time management/productivity/organization sheets and forms. I even got him to autograph(see the pic above) his own form (that reminds me, I should get Tristan to sign an Ionic Breeze!)

I make a point to communicate with people online who I find fascinating, and that generate truly amazing content, Dave’s work is quite singular in this regard. He, surprisingly to me, began to ask many questions of me and my process, as I was curious about him and how he went about things. He has run the gamut from web design to game design, currently experience design. He’s well rounded, well spoken, and will likely shove a camera lens in your face that is about twice as big as you expect. Wait till he posts about the cool little hack on said camera!

Dave and I are both in the position of trying to develop products, sell them, and actually make things that people want (and are useful). We discussed a lot about fulfillment (personal, and places to ship your products from). We discussed virtual products and how to interact with the aspects of rights management therein (a scary proposition) (more on this and the rest of these conversations in later posts, fear not).

Of course we began with the hysterical introduction of getting out our various writing tools and pads, anyone watching would have likely been rolling their eyes. Out came two Moleskines, mine book style, his reporter style, we of course compared our built in hacks, his copiously readable and designed notes, and a filled pocket with tricks galore, mine with volume label, pen holder (on spine) and again the pocket filled

(personal moleskine pocket stash: stamps, $20 bill, post it tabs (mini), prepaid postcard, and a spare biz card).

Having someone to converse with on your projects, especially as removed as someone who has shared interests and goals, yet there is no overlap (his sales will never impact my sales) is such a great type of person to find. I cannot recommend this sort of discussion enough. Each of us is working towards developing products, and generating income while doing what we love. It was great as we both have been researching many of the same things, and it was interesting to see where our knowledge overlapped, and where one of us had found much more information on a particular topic.

We also discussed Linkedin, as we have both been searching for a number of particular answers (that neither one of use knew exactly where to go with) and we noted that it seemed by far to be one of the best places for genuine business knowledge transfer. We also noted that for “old school business info” SCORE (the SBA’s retired executive coaching wing) is a really useful place for knowledge on simple things like getting a business license, which ones we needed, and the like.

Do go and read Dave’s articles please, you’ll be better for it!

He even did a post about our meeting,, cool!

It’s so funny, Dave is so introspective, while I sat there and we talked his pen flowed across the page. I always enjoy watching people who take copious and excellent notes, as it is a wholly different experience from my hideous chickenscratch.

Apparently I should go do things now, but there’s much more to write of Dave’s and my meeting in the near term (as well as enumerating my ongoing projects and how Dave’s advice has helped me.)

Have a great day! Go make an online friend a real friend!

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I’ve been reading Brad Feld’s stuff for quite some time (he’s a V.C. in colorado who runs really far, and does cool stuff all the time).

He’s got a great piece related to an article by Josh Kopelman about “Feed Frenzy” and what to do about all our feeds.

Brad accurately distills the info Josh generates in his article (here)

The crux of it is all pretty straightforward. There are feeds for everything. You get tons of email. Why don’t you get a smart dashboard that integrates them nicely?

It’s a simple question, there’s probably a few simple answers, (damn I’ve got to learn to code). My guess is it’s somewhere between a video game interface, digsby, netvibes, and google reader. It’ll be fun to see soon, (hopefully).

This also brings up a bother I’ve had for some time. I’ve always wondered about setting up, as Tim Ferris is wont to say “rules for email.” I haven’t added them (I’m fairly good at weeding out the chaff, but I need to be smarter about them.)

Additionally, I’m web based (ok, at home, not at the office,, it is the land of outlook, I don’t mess with the system). I want a way that yahoo, gmail, (and, shudder,, hotmail) can play nicely together in an interface I don’t want to vomit on. Additionally,, please Gmail,, give me an option to use “regular” style email (no threaded conversations). So far Netvibes and Pageonce (I think that’s the one) haven’t really scratched my itch here yet. Also,, let’s find a way to get plaxo less “flashy” and more integrated with this magical service. Then I can have a “web button” (I won’t even go into my “art button” that’s a combo of all adobe software, solidworks, and painter, but I digress).

Whew,, there’s my diatribe and it’s late.

Tune in again when Fred says something else inane! (wait,, I’m Fred)

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Cleverness, and free web tools are what reduces barriers to entry (startup costs). The analog in real life however is totally different.

A great example of a real life barrier to entry being lowered and turning out to be game changing is happening to some friends of mine.

They wanted to drive race cars.
Race cars are expensive, and the safety gear involved, prohibitively so.
A great, great man, Jay Lamm and his associates has created a race that’s perfect for lowering that great barrier to entry.

First of all, it’s a race for cars costing LESS than $500. Yes, that’s right, morons on parade at “race speed” on real tracks (no ovals, actual “road courses”).

What?! You say ? Why would fully capable, able to use their own body parts humans participate in this sort of event?

Well, for some it’s a very low cost way to participate in something they’ve never had an opportunity to do otherwise. Additionally, there are a bunch of safety concerns involved so that the humans participating will only be covered in bruises of their own creation (mainly due to likely cheaping out on getting a real race seat).

The safety costs are “unlimited” while a full fire suit and helmet are required for racing (along with fireproof underwear, socks, shoes, headsocks, and gloves).

The best part is that Jay has gone out of his way to secure low cost (and high performance) driver safety gear kits so that newbies can save over $300 on good gear.

Now you’re asking yourself,, “Self, why is this lowering a barrier to entry?”

A simple, fun sport, previously out of reach for mere mortals without trust funds, personal fund managers, and their own helicopters, now can be participated in by normal humans, with 8-5 jobs, wives and husbands. More than that, once said humans have said safety gear (the main barrier to entry) they say things to themselves like, “gee, you know I have a race suit and helmet, I bet there are other places I could go and race!”

Now realize that Jay is doing this on 6 courses across America this year! Each race has around 40 entrants. Each team has at least 4 and up to 6 drivers. Some quick math says, that if half the teams participating are new racers, then this year, Jay will have created (5*20*6=500) 500 new race car drivers likely to participate in other racing events at another point in the year. Think of what this has done for Jay, his business, and the business of auto racing. Who in that industry isn’t going to bend over backwards to help him, when he is able to nearly Guarantee he’s creating more business each year for anyone in the racing business?!

When was the last time you went out of your way to lower a barrier to entry in your given field?

24 Hours of Lemons

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In the words of Optimus Prime,,”For too long,, you have been a RetardaCon Fred.”

Yep,, I’ve been stupid,, there are ways to do this stuff (upgrade wordpress) easily. Stupid, silly me.

Here’s the answer,, click here.

Upgrade wordpress with the wordpress automatic upgrade plugin!

It’s pretty darn easy (I sure wish I’d found this,, oh about 2 MONTHS AGO!)

Follow their directions, they’re really straightforward,, but just in case, here they are (I recommend using the automated style, since,, well, its automated, and I’m a nincompoop!)

Here they are!

Wordpress automatic upgrade upgrades your wordpress installation by doing the following steps.

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step.

Whee!! The interwebs work!

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Ok, so I found a bunch of great plugins, now I’m going to try and use them to update my wordpress. Let’s see if it works,, wish me luck!!

If it works, I’ll be linking to it in the next post!

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