From Dimes to Dollars

Photo credit: Jonathan Lopez

by Ben Lopez

This past Sunday I was visiting my family and having a wonderful little afternoon spending time with them. That is until a tornado hit in the back yard, and the neighbour’s roof narrowly avoided destroying the side of the house as it blew off. Something tells me it’s not going to be a good week…

You may have noticed I haven’t been around much lately. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I’m wading through some difficulties right now, the cleanup after the tornado the least of my troubles, and I need to square a few things away before getting back to business as usual.

Sometimes you don’t just get hit hard, but with many things at once, and it’s not easy to maintain your everyday routine. It turns your life upside-down. My lease was suddenly compromised recently due to circumstances beyond my control, and I’ve been forced to spend a good amount of time seeking property as the clock ticks down. I have resigned from both my Google News syndicated writing position that has since plateaued, as well as stepping down from my marketing director spot when I saw disaster on the horizon and took an early exit. And after taking a moment to check the status of my former company yesterday I’m glad I did, as they seem to be at a complete standstill.

I postponed my own startup to pursue these positions that I foresaw getting me ahead, but I’m now behind the curve. Hey, that’s why they’re called risks, because there’s a definite possibility you could lose, and in this case, I lost. But like Jason Calancanis frequently alludes to, crying about it will do nothing for you, it’s time to move on.

Kind of puts me back at square one, doesn’t it? In the weeks to come I will have to make a firm decision on how to proceed, and what projects to pursue next. I could feel sorry for myself, or I can look at the positive learning experience this was and give myself a pat on the back for taking the initiative to resign while there was, to the untrained eye, still potential on the surface. Sometimes you just need to cut your losses and move on when your gut tells you to. Maybe you’re in what you consider a good position, but you see trouble down the road; just remember that objects are closer than they appear.

But it may be for the best, there are plenty of new opportunities, and I have a whole list of Plan Bs. Think about how many hours are in the day, and the sheer mass of what can be accomplished if you’re truly dedicated and uncompromising in your work focus. Whatever lies ahead, one thing is for sure: From Dimes To Dollars is here to stay.

What difficulties have the D2D readers seen coming their way? Share what you’ve learned from overcoming them: you never know who may find encouragement in your words.

by Ben Lopez

It’s time once again for the week in review: for those that can’t be bothered reading all of those pesky articles in their entirety, this is the weekly post for you!  Of course, if you find one that strikes your fancy, just give it a click.  But enough with the patronizing instructions, onto this week’s highlights:

I decided to start off the new week with a bang and jump right into a topic that had been bothering me for a while now: Tumblr blogs that don’t allow comments.  I go on for a while on why you would never, ever want to do that.

 Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of 37 Signals, share their thoughts on business plans.  37 Signals is an excellent blog that I heartily recommend.  I also own their book, Rework, and can hardly put it down.  These two men will make 30-year CEOs question traditional business wisdom, and embrace technology like a new born puppy.

 Some of the other entrepreneurs had some excellent blogs this week as well, so I went ahead and reblogged Phil Ricci’s experience with a crappy business owner who is sure to fail miserably and added a few thoughts of my own.

 But that’s not where the reblogging (are we allowed to call it RBing?) ends; Mr. Postling himself, David Lifson reblogged some interesting thoughts on Tumblr and @Replies.  Naturally, I had to put in my two cents, so I reblogged the fella and did just that.  

 In this week’s humour, an animated office worker shows precisely how I used to be before I got (semi) organized.  Though I do still have a row of post-it notes lining the top of my computer monitor, so maybe I’m not quite there yet…

 Last, but certainly not of lesser importance, I cover the phenomenon that is Quit Facebook Day.  For those who aren’t quite ready to quit, but are fed up with the privacy issues and still want to show their disgust, I also share when and how you can do just that.

If you found any of the above particularly interesting or useful, please consider recommending this blog for the tech, startups, or entrepreneurs category.  Thanks for reading!^_^

I hate to be so disappointing with a lack of content this past week, I’ve just been incredibly busy trying to get my new project off the ground while still juggling my day-to-day tasks.  I elaborate a little on what’s been going on with my personal projects here if anyone has any interest (unlikely, but possible, I suppose).

This week’s highlights:

I shared some encouraging and insightful quotes from Steve Jobs and Tim O’Reily.  They lend a bit of advice for startups, and provide valuable wisdom on how to treat your peers.

 Google made a huge announcement this past week as they unveiled Google TV to the world.  I made it clear that in my opinion GTV will soon change the entire market, which I believe will lead to, at long last, custom channel packages.  I had some good discussion with other bloggers on this, and even had a brief interaction with Gary Vaynerchuk, who agreed on the custom channel packages.

 Twitter dominated the #1 spot in the iPhone App Store this past week.  It was dethroned after several days by a Farmville clone…which is pretty sad when you think of the implications on our society’s priorities.

 This week’s humour comes in the form of a very unique Twitter service, which I’ve sarcastically deemed “The most useful Twitter service in the history of mankind”.  No spoilers on what it is (little clue in the thumbnail), you’ll have to read the full entry and judge for yourself how useful it is.;)

Typically I put a small mention down here to recommend this blog if you find it useful.  However, I’m not going to do that this week because I don’t think I delivered the past 7 days.  In any case, I’d like to thank you all for continuing to read From Dimes To Dollars, I read every one of your comments and e-mails.

TOMORROW:  I get opinionated in a big way, and publish an open letter to Tumblr users.  I won’t say what it’s regarding, but let’s just say not everyone is going to be happy about it.  Get your trigger finger ready to send that hate mail!

by Ben Lopez

Twitter finally launched it’s 1st-party iPhone application this Tuesday to skyrocket to the #1 spot for 4 straight days to this point.

I downloaded and tested it last night to find a very clean interface (no labels), a few borrowed touches from Twittelator (such as “pull to refresh”), and an added feature to save drafts, which is convenient on the go.  It is of course a free app, and does support multiple accounts.  However, I was surprised that there was absolutely no tweet confirmation, either visual or audio, and push alarms are not supported.

Have you tried the Twitter app yet?  Post your thoughts on the program itself, and the supreme victory of Twitter’s stranglehold in the App Store.

On top of that, it’s a great alternative to Wii Fit for those who can’t be bothered to stand up.  Say hello to Tweet Calories.

According to TC, I have burned 7.21 calories in the last 24 hours alone.  Whew!  I may need a break from all this before long…

How many calories have you burned?  Share your results!

It’s been another eventful 7 days! Like I explained last week, from this point on instead of spending an entire blog entry begging for recommendations, I thought it would be more useful to give a weekly recap of what has been covered the past week.

This week’s highlights:

Some excellent quotes ranging from encouragement to common sense were shared by entrepreneurial masterminds Jeffrey Zeldman, Gary Vaynerchuk, John Caples, and Tim O’Reily, whom I was fortunate enough to have my questions answered by directly thanks to Inc. Magazine.

I decided to debut a new series this week, volume I of the Beat The Clock Challenge! There wasn’t quite as much participation as I would’ve liked, but  it was certainly a difficult challenge, and this blog is still growing steadily. With a little time, I think we can get some great involvement, and perhaps a little competitiveness from week to week. If you have any good ideas for future challenges, shoot me an e-mail or message me via the Ask button on the left.

Once again, I decided to do a bit of news reporting on an issue that I believe is very important. Mark Zuckerberg’s illegal activity conducted in the past is enough to warrant possible FELONY charges. If you’re a Facebook user, you should know about the shocking actions of the man running this company. The link above gives my brief commentary and a direct link to the full article.

As a follow-up to the poll last week “Do You Consider An Internet Business Professional?”, I have posted the results in two parts. Part 1 shows the poll results and goes through much of the comments sent in by the participating respondents. In Part 2 you can read my personal response to skeptics of internet-based businesses. If you’re a skeptic yourself, let me know whether or not it changed your mind!

Finally, to finish off the week, I decided to offset some of the seriousness with a little humour courtesy of Mr. Glasbergen. His comic gives a good illustration (pun intended) of how different future generations will be due to the rapid evolution of technology.

Please consider a recommendation (direct link via highlighted keywords) if you found any of the above to be useful Tech insight, or otherwise helpful for an Entrepreneur or Startup.

As always, thank you for reading, and your feedback is both welcome and appreciated. Let’s dominate the rest of out week to become the best entrepreneurs ever!