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Shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot

This last weekend, I was suffering from cabin fever.  Needed to get out, stretch the legs a bit.  So we went for a walk.

As we strolled down the avenue, on our 10 minute walk to the beach, we came across a craftsmen bungalow house for sale.  I wasn’t going to stop and look at it but curiosity got the better of me.  Why not just peak?

The price tag was $766k with a 1 minute walk to the beach (includes waiting at cross walk).  To be honest, $766k for this location was unheard of 5 years ago.

It was like dozens of other craftsman houses I’ve seen.  Two glaring exceptions: both bedrooms had closets and the bathroom was huge.  It was in remarkably decent shape.  The second bedroom needed a coat of paint because the clown murials scared me.

Moving right along.

What made this property stand out was not the house or the back yard.  The jacuzzi was nice but all I could think about was green algea for some reason.  No, what made this place stand out was the garage.

The garage had been converted into a large studio.  Not a studio apartment but rather a creative work space.  Lighting along the ceiling clearly indicated whoever used this area wanted to showcase their art along the walls.  The entire place was wired, for both phones and internet.  An adjacent kitchenette/bathroom off to the side indicated many late nights or possibly a guest quarters of sorts.

Suddenly I could see my corporate headquarters located there.  Didn’t Apple start out in a garage?

Anyway I’m kicking myself for not taking photos.  When I searched for a reason why, it occured to me: Sunday was my unplug day.  No iPhone.

If I make it back, I promise to put up some photos.

So a third competitor has arisen.  Found them on Twitter.

My expectations for this new product were quite high.  Really there are only two real estate investing applications for the iPhone:  mine and my ridiculously cheap competition.

In creating a competitive product, my approach would be to look at what the competition is doing and then make mine better.  What was interesting, however, was how plain their application is.

Feature for feature, all three of us offer the same mix of equations.  But there is no “wow” factor with their product.

Granted, my 1.x version doesn’t have much of a “wow” factor to it.  But if I were approaching this as a newbie, my focus would definitely be on creating a “wow” experience.  Something over and above just doing calculations.  The approach by this newbie was to copy what we did and push that out.

The good news in this: my 2.0 version is going to be leaps and bounds over this.

Oh, by the by, I got a chance to play with the alpha version of the software.  Oooooooooo yeah baby!

Out of all the social media that’s clogging the internet airwaves, I think Twitter has got to be the hottest item.  At least for today.  Tomorrow, it may be something else.

I’m finding that Twitter is, for all intents and purposes, a very powerful tool at reaching Tribes.

Yes, I read the book.  Watched the video.  Read the blog.  For anyone starting a business, you should too.

For those of you who don’t know what twitter is, think of this blog with each entry boiled down to 140 characters.

At first, Twitter seemed to be nothing more than a bunch of people shouting out their 140 characters worth of thoughts at a time.  This jumbled mass of thoughts made me wonder how anyone could make sense out of this.

Until I stumbled across TweetDeck.

This tool makes sense of the chaos.  Thanks to being able to search Twitters jumbled thought mass, suddenly I was able to connect with other people who are real estate investors, agents, brokers, wholesalers, enthusiasts . . .

I have to be selective in this way.  My business focuses on real estate.  It doesn’t do much good if 50,000 people are following my “tweets” and only 4 of them care about real estate.  The point of connecting with this real estate tribe is to have 50,000 followers where 50,000 of them are passionate about real estate.

I’m still learning how this model works.  Every day, I learn something new.  And there’s no doubt I’ll be able to use this to help the real estate tribe.

Some things I just wish I could share with the class.  But you’ll understand if we wait just another week or two before I can get detailed.

Today, I’m going to talk about the ether.

It never ceases to amaze me how when you’re ready to learn something or do something that the right people materialize that can help you.  I’m not referring to someone who ‘wishes’ they could do something.  But rather someone who “is” doing something.  Fate (or the ether) seems to know the difference.  When someone ‘wants’ something, the ether knows they aren’t ready.  When someone “is” buying, the ether knows they’re ready and presents opportunities.

When first designing my application, two overriding thoughts were in my head:  Budget and ease of use.  Those two ideas produced two applications which, for better or for worse, people seemed to like.

When developing 2.0, my heart spoke out and said that we really needed to do something special.  This time around, our software had to be special.  It had to sing.  My goal was to create an application that users would become passionate about.  But how?

Poking around online, this great website offered this video.

Then it hit me: hire a designer to work with me on designing version 2.0.  Wow.  How stupendously simple.  Guru.com, $100 and one Ukrainian later, we had a wonderful interface.

Now that I was on this “all about the user” kick, fate stepped in again.  My mentor insisted I read “Tribes” by Seth Godin.  I did.  When we discussed it, my mentor dismissed my thoughts.  “You obviously didn’t get it.  Read it again.”

One Page two, Seth listed a few names of “tribal leaders”.  No explanation as to who they were.  So I asked Lord Google.

Let me introduce Kathy Sierra.

Wow.  Simply wow.  All she talks about is the user experience from the programmer point of view.  I spent hours, pouring over her blog and sucking in all the goodies.  Each article I asked myself “Is there a nugget here I can use to enhance my users experience?”

Yep.  Just glance at the first image in this article and tell me she doesn’t have a point.  Actually if you’re bored, check out her office.

Here’s my point:  All of this information has been sitting out there in the ether for a few years.  Had I asked myself these same questions a few years ago, would I have found these same answers?  I argue probably not.

Last year’s thought:  I want to make the application easy to use.

Last week’s thought:  I am enhancing the user’s experience.

And fate responded accordingly.

Since launching my application, user interaction has become a consistent study of mine.  My thinking is simple: users that have a great interaction with your product tell others.

Too bad Microsoft doesn’t follow that model.

The other day, I was tasked to create a TPS report.  To make it easier for people to read I decided to add a Table of Contents.

Table of Contents (TOC).

My logic thinking brain says “OK, click on Insert and then click on Table of Contents.“  After all, this feature should be buried somewhere in some menu next to the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic symbols.

Nope.  Not there.

I consult the help menu.  Searchable it is.  The first result says “How to create a Table of Contents.”  So I click, being the dummy that I am.  Next thing  I know, I’m at Microsoft’s website where a 30 minute video is going to teach me how to create a Table of Contents.

Huh?

Buried 10 or 12 down in the search results is a link that says “How to create a table of contents“.  So I click, being the dummy that I am.  A pop-up window appears that says to insert a Table of Contents follow this trail:

1. Click on Insert
2. Click on Reference
3. Click on Index and Tables
4. On the pop-up window, click on Table of Contents tab located next to the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic symbols.
5. Click OK

Wow.  Stupid me.  I guess I’m not smart enough to figure that out on my own.  Duration of my stupid trail:  10 minutes.

The first time I wrote something inside of Pages that required a TOC, my first thought was “Click Insert.  Click Table of Contents“.

I grabbed my mouse and went like this:

1. Clicked Insert
2. Clicked Table of Contents

Done.  Total time:  0.5 seconds.  Yes, I timed it with my stop watch.

Now one could argue “But Cliff, MS Word has all kinds of features that Mac’s don’t have.  It’s not fair!“  True.  But guess which product, MS Word or Pages, has the design philosophy I’d like to have my users experience.

I guess I am cool after all.