thehickmans

Accounting/record keeping/informatics systems, industrial controls - anything that would lead to a catastrophic loss of some kind.

Did you do any validation on the book idea before you started writing? How much time did you invest before you decided to publish it?

What was the response like when you originally posted on Reddit? Which subreddit did you post in?

Reddit seems like a great place to test ideas, but I'd be concerned about being labelled as a spammer.

Another point - I agree that adding customer reviews would be a nice addition, but how about a twist - allow for "trip advisor" style reviews to show off the designer's end product. This niche has a large emotional buying component to it and so a story and pictures would lend itself better than a 5 star system.

First, beautiful design and implementation!

A couple ideas for growing and monetizing:

- partner with wedding planners to help grow your community of designers and users - start subtle (prime placement or pro's choice) advertising relationships with magazines, planners, and other communities - expand to include other aspects of the wedding "package", i.e photographers, florists, dressmakers/designers

I did a few quick searches and Vancouver would be at 25 on their scale for a single-family detached house. That's using a median listing price of $900,000 and median rent of about $3000/month.

The data is out there and the Canadian real estate sales market could certainly use the shakeup of someone like Trulia.

Plug and Play Tech Center is supposed to be opening a branch office here, but nothing concrete has happened AFAIK.

You might find http://www.leadgenerationbook.com/ useful. It will seem like common sense, but for me the book was valuable in that it showed what a comprehensive sales and marketing program might look like.

What an excellent app, great job!

Have you thought about adding a social angle, i.e. allowing users to make comments on or recommend specific seats? Perhaps another heatmap layer to display desirability?

Personal beef - Rogers Arena in Vancouver is "Seating Chart Pending" with no ETA... coming soon?

You could combine IP geolocation and caller ID phone verification. Geolocate the user's IP during the sign-up process and provide the user a code to activate their account through a 1-800. Compare their area code against the location they provided and see if they're close enough to trust.

Thanks for the painfully juvenile replies, guys. I was looking for something more insightful than the press releases and media coverage that turn up in search results.

That is fun to play with! It reminds me of Circuit Simulator? from the MacPlus days.

I think you should make the simulator stopped/active control more obvious.

This idea has a lot of potential, especially if you were to focus on a few situations that I've seen over and over in the corporate world. The most common scenario I've seen is data coming in an extract format like CSV, containing information required for another business process. You've got data coming from an expense reporting web app that needs to processed before entries can be made into an accounting system. A spreadsheet or database is created by a computer-savvy manager, and a clerk uses it on a weekly basis to do their work of posting entries. If the data format changes, the manager tweaks macros and formulas to adjust, and life goes on. Any new clerks coming on board learn how to use "the spreadsheet" and the business process keeps chugging along. Change managers, and 9 times out of 10, a lack of documentation and knowledge transfer will cause things to blow up in a short period of time. If you were to introduce a tool that exposes the funky macros and formulas in a more visual, understandable fashion, I think it becomes more easily maintainable. Providing some data validation, error handling and notifications would be valuable. Finally, provide some version control to prevent accidental deletion or modification of important functions. The key would be a much better user experience than the Excel function editor.

Any plans for receiving SMS messages?

I have the same issue with the naming - it needs to be related to suggestions, comments, feedback.

I had to chuckle when the 'create a premium dropbox now!' button took me to... a dropbox! You're taking the MVP approach pretty seriously, aren't you?

I can also see the benefit of providing some embed code to allow users to integrate it on their own site.

Good job on the design, BTW.

I'll second a few that have been mentioned already:

* http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/ (Brian Carroll's blog) * http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Get-Real-Not-Play/dp/1883219507

you can read more from Mahan Khalsa at: http://www.ninetyfive5.com/default.aspx

I found both of these very helpful in building my understanding of the sales process and for the tools they provide you with. The biggest shift in thinking they provided for me was that selling is about asking questions, finding a connection between what you're offering and what your customer is looking for and then asking for the business. They also showed me that selling is about focusing your activities on the right things to meet your goals, not just spending time "busy" selling.

I would caution you against looking at e-learning as a single market - there's the K to 12 market and then the post-secondary market. You also need to look at geography and the educational direction of countries, regions, states, etc. For example, the UK market is very different than the US or AUS markets, and potential clients in each country are looking for very different things.

Blackboard doesn't really play much in K to 12, but virtually owns the post-secondary market in North America. I think you could spend a lot of time and effort trying to build a Blackboard competitor and not get very far.

However, if you take a look at what teachers are doing with Moodle http://moodle.org/ or Joomla http://www.joomlalms.com/, there's probably a niche there to get your hands onto.

In reference to some of the sales comments - if you can connect with teachers, professors or curriculum oriented staff and get them excited, there's a good chance to find some budget.

I'll second http://kuler.adobe.com as a great tool to find or piece together a color scheme.

This sounds like a good way to keep motivated, having tried and failed to get through SICP on my own. Count me in.

I've incorporated a number of companies in BC and the process has been simple enough to do on a self-serve basis. After a quick search, I found the following site for incorporation in Ontario, http://is.gd/eDJP - it looks the same as what I went through in BC. The big thing you'll have to deal with in Canada is the GST as you'll likely have to remit on a quarterly basis, so you'll need to watch your cashflow carefully.

Dealing with American customers is largely a matter of choosing whether to accept payments in US dollars directly or do a currency conversion with each payment before it hits your bank. I'd recommend caution with this one as some banks will hit you with a currency conversion fee and give you a crappy rate, so a good payment provider may help in this area.

PM me if you have any other questions.

You've got to look at the native resolution of the LCD, which for a 1080p TV would is 1920x1080. For a comparison, a 30" Apple Cinema Display is capable of 2560X1600. So, fewer pixels over a greater screen area = kinda chunky!