Ok, I know George and Bruce will probably kill me for this, but I just don’t get Twitter. For marketing purposes, I completely understand where it’s beneficial. However, social marketing is only effective if you have an audience. So, why is Twitter working so well?

I know people love to talk about themselves, but frankly I don’t think anyone needs to know what I’m doing every 5 minutes. I guess if I have something to say, I say it to the relevant people. I also personally don’t give a shit what you’re up to. I mean that out of love. I swear. I love to know where my friends are and what they are up to, but I really don’t need a play by play. Knowing you’re at work or out for the night is just fine. I just don’t care that you’re brainstorming for a big project, just beat someone at Halo, or just ran out to the bathroom. Really. Who really needs that information?

I’m all for a personal IM conversation with my friends, but I don’t need the whole world to know. I guess that’s why I don’t update my facebook status. I only write on people’s walls. That may be why the “mini-feed” pisses me off. Sure it invites more conversations, and I know people can view whatever if we’re friends, I just don’t think my friends need to know every freaking thing I do. I’m all for advances in technology, especially in our industry, but isn’t there a point where we’ve lost all personal communication?

I’ll give Twitter some credit for putting like-minded folks together. I think it’s a great system for bouncing ideas off other people or getting help, but do I really need to know that you had a snowy drive into work this morning? If the point of Twitter is to get information from people and share ideas, great, but that’s clearly not what it’s used for, at least not exclusively.

I’m sure the hate mail will come soon from Twitter defenders, but please someone explain why I should Twitterfy my life!!

We did it back in 2002, but here is how we’d do it again in 2008 on a shoe-string, bootstrap or sandal-thong budget.

Let’s assume you are starting a company because you’ve either been laid-off, had it with the boss or decided to pursue your dreams. My guess if you are like most Americans then you likely won’t be able to give more then $1,000 to the cause. Let’s be real, you are likely not going to receive a bank loan anytime soon.

1st.
Pick a company name and register your business with your State’s Secretary of State. I’d recommend using LegalZoom to setup an LLC, especially if you have business partners. The LLC let’s you get up and running quickly with minimal costs. As your business matures, then decide if another corporate suffix is better for you. You’ll be able to afford fancy lawyers at that point.

Cost $149

2nd.
Find a domain name. Good luck with this one! It’s the main reason why you see so many companies with funky, misspelled names these days. If you aren’t the most creative person use a services like NameBoy to toss around word variations. Once you find one which works, register it on GoDaddy.

Sure I’ve ranted about GoDaddy in the past but their service is still pretty darn good.

Cost $20

3rd.
Buy a Synology NAS with two 1TB internal drives. If there is only one thing I would suggest you spend money on, it’s this. The Synology NAS will give you RAIDed network file storage which can be shared with other co-workers as your company grows. It’s especially nice because the Synology NAS allows for FTP services for those co-workers which are connecting to you remotely. I’m figuring you haven’t closed on that fancy first office just yet.

Bonus: Synology can run FTP, SSH, DDNS and Apache so you can use it to run your web site while you start figuring out your business plan.

Cost $550

4th.
Using GoDaddy as your DNS server, point your email hosting to Google Apps and run your domain name using GMail. You’ll get a free email service which kick the crap out of spammers.

Google Apps also contains Google Docs and Spreadsheets but there is just something nice about having files on your a Synology NAS as opposed to in Google. Once Google develops a way for me to download a backup of the data then I might reconsider this.

Cost $0

5th.
Download and install OpenOffice. I don’t care if you are running Mac, PC or Linux. The OpenOffice team deserves a lot of respect for building a kick-ass free alternative to Microsoft Office and this desktop download won’t disappoint. It will allow you to create spreadsheets, word docs, presentations, drawings and simple databases. You might even consider keeping it as you grow.

Cost $0

6th.
Setup chat, AIM, Skype and any other of the plethora of instant messaging tools. This will help you resist the need to purchase land-lines from the blood-sucking telcos.

Cost $0

7th.
Setup YouMail. This service will give your cell phone some class. I’m guessing it’s going to play double duty between your home life and your new business identity. YouMail takes your cell phone voicemails and emails them to you as MP3s. It also let’s you personalize the voicemail greetings so you can filter the call for a more professional greeting depending on which client or prospect is calling in. Goodbye generic voicemail messages!

Cost $0

8th.
Purchase a real accounting package like Quickbooks. Yes, I know there are tools like BlinkSale and others which you can generate invoices with, but Quickbooks is time-tested and at the end of the year your accountant will thank you.

Cost $180

9th.
Lastly, use BaseCamp to setup a collaborative environment between your internal team and your customers. BaseCamp is free to manage your first project on, after that you’ll have to pay a minimal fee to add more projects and features.

Cost $0 (at first)

There, that’s it! This is how we’d do it again in 2008. The combination of these tools and services will give your new start-up the legs it needs to move forward as well as a polished image which will hide the fact that you are poaching wireless internet and working in a nearby coffee shop.

Good luck and don’t let this shitty economy get you down!

I’m a big fan of 37Signals and what they stand for so I know my feature request has a 99.9999% chance of never getting implemented but I’ve got to make these requests for BaseCamp.

REQUEST #1
Apply to All
When creating 10 or more Milestones, please give me the ability to apply my dropdown selection to the other 9 Milestones. For instance, if I’m selecting USER A for who is responsible, why do I have to select that multiple times?

REQUEST #2
JavaScript Calendar
Why is it when I add 1 Milestone I’m given a nice visual calendar to select a date but when I’m adding multiple Milestones I’m given a date drop down for both year, month and date. It seems as though this design choice is making me work too much.

REQUEST #3
Hasn’t Logged in Recently
This use to work really well but it changed a few months back. Now I can’t tell the difference from a user who hasn’t logged in verses a user who has never logged in. Perhaps a simple variation call “has never logged in” might help here.

Otherwise this is a great product, I continue to recommend it to my clients and associates but these few changes sure would be real nice additions. At least in my book.

The Mozilla team just posted Firefox 3 today. Go grab it now!

A few cool new features include Page Zooming, Smart Location Bar, On-Click Bookmarking and most importantly Improved Performance and better memory allocation. Personally, I’m struck by the sexy new interface, snappier feel and better organization of the browser interface.

For me the new Firefox feels a bit like Safari and Flock blended together.

Chances are if you’re a seasoned web developer at one time or another you’ve needed to insert Flash into a website but you have no idea what the dimensions of the movie are.

Previously there were basically three options for solving this problem:

1. Go directly to the person who created the flash and ask them the dimensions.
2. Open the .fla file in Flash (if you own a license) and get the document dimensions yourself. Chances are you’ll end up getting a cup of coffee at the same time because Flash takes so long to start up.
3. Shistily try to take a screen shot of the open Flash movie and measure the dimensions in Photoshop, usually ending up 1 or 2 pixels off and forcing you to go back to option one or two.

Or… browse to the .swf file in Finder and drag it into your TextMate file window. Wala! Now you have the flash insertion code right along with the exact dimensions of the movie. No more annoying hassles.