Todd Lyden

Sarah Harris of Zen College Life wrote a piece over at Tycoonblogger .  She spoke to finding new sources for blog posts and invoked George Washington - that's enough to get me to listen.  I've been thinking about this and spoke with Brian Landi over at his blog, bits of business, about this. One thing I have found key is to make sure I can capture the notion, idea, or kernel before it disappears.  Everyone suggests keeping a journal or something to write on, but personally I have my cell phone to be the best. I send myself a text to my email to remind me or if driving, as I suggested in a recent post, I happen upon something that I felt worth sharing. That's the REAL key isn't it? Finding something worth sharing- on another lazy Sunday (especially before Labor day ), I've used other blogs to find something worth sharing.  Nothing wrong with that! Related articles Enjoy Your Labor Day; We're Back Tomorrow [Announcements] (lifehacker.com)

In my "job," I help people find the resources they need to start their business. While I can point them to many resources, online and in real life, the single best piece of advice is perhaps the most common sense. You can look at business plan templates at the library or wherever you can find them. There are PLENTY of great resources; I know, I work with many of them. This is not to suggest that you should talk to a SCORE representative, your local small business development center, or even a Chamber representative. You should.  But perhaps first and foremost, talk to someone who does what you want to do.  I'm sure others have said it, but it ALWAYS bears repeating. Find someone who does what you think you want to do and ask them questions.  Don't confuse this with finding a mentor. A mentor can be from ANY business, in fact, the best ones are probably NOT in the area you are in to give you the fresh perspective you will not find from someone who ...

Part 2 ( see the first half here ) Yesterday, I talked to George DeCarlo about his online incubator, Hatchable.com and the latest idea to spring out of his head: Woobox.com This serial entrepreneur had two other unique ideas that got their start through Hatchable. George, first tell us about FreeAppAlert.   FreeAppAlert.com shows you all the paid iPhone and iPad apps that are temporarily free.  It's a very simple concept but has turned into a very popular site. How popular would you say it is? T he web and mobile versions combined get over a million visits a month. What was the genesis for your idea? I was browsing the iPhone app store one day and saw a $15 app that was running a free promotion for a limited period of time.  I grabbed the app, and thought, wouldn't it be nice to know whenever a paid iPhone app runs a free promotion?  So I built FreeAppAlert, sent it to a few blogs and watched the usage grow.  Every day I update fans and followers with the ...

I was lucky enough to grab George DeCarlo , formerly of Dotster , to sit down and talk about his latest online venture, called Hatchable.com.  Crunchbase 's profile of George: "George is a serial entrepreneur who currently incubates and launches new web startups through his company Hatchable . Prior to Hatchable, George founded the internet services company Dotster in 1999. One of his most recent ventures is iAte , a company that tracks and makes discoverable restaurant reviews that Twitter users share in their status updates."   George, how did you come to start Hatchable? I've always found the launch and early stage of business the most exciting, challenging, and rewarding.  I created Hatchable to focus on launching interesting web businesses from the idea stage. The site lists it as "web ventures" to incubate web startups and turn ideas into businesses. What does that mean to you?   "Hatchable is an incubator for my ideas currently. I...

Image via Wikipedia While Twitter is still gaining traction with most folks, a recent study tell us: "The average (median) lifetime number of tweets for a single user is 1, while 10% of the users contribute 90% of the traffic." Perhaps not a great sign of longevity?  One tool I've started to use to cull my numbers so I don't appear to be OVERfollowing is Twitter Karma. Head here to check it out:  http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ I'm not going to review it per se because these fine folk have done that for me: http://oneforty.com/item/twitter-karma http://www.dragonblogger.com/twitter-karma-twitter-sites/ http://www.alonmargovskiy.com/2010/04/twitter-app-review-twitter-karma-review.html However, I will lodge a complaint- not all activity is current. I was looking to lower my follower numbers and it indicated that someone had not tweeted in over a year. Yet, go to their account and it was updated hours ago. Otherwise, it is a good way to visualize what is going on wi...

Thank god my youngest has finally discovered Pixar movies in their glory; especially, The Incredibles. As I rewatched it for the nth time recently, I was struck by one thing. Mind you, the movie is borderline perfection as it is. Very little goes wrong with any of the choices made by Pixar and the director Brad Bird. However, one thing stood out. The music. Michael Giacchino was a freshman film scorer when he was tapped to score this big movie. Sure, he had done Lost and Alias for frequent collaborator, JJ Abrams, but this was his first full on movie soundtrack! Watching the movie, I marveled at how the music added to the experience. One segment ALWAYS made me come back to this film. It is the exciting moment as the family is evading missiles in flight and then get hit! Listen here. I watched that scene realized how I would have STILL been mesmerized by the action and suspense. But listen to that clip again, you can FEEL the action and suspense in the music. It is impossible NOT to put...

I was lucky enough to get Mandy Boyle, graduate student , freelance writer , self-described cupcake enthusiast, and SEO Specialist to commit a few moments to discuss what she does on  Twitter !  You can find the full interview here at  Tweeterview.com , but here are a few great tidbits!  Mandy addressed what she does. "An SEO copywriter crafts SEO-friendly content for websites . We use SEO best practices along with creative writing skills. We research and use keywords in our text while providing value to a website visitor and/or searcher." Her advice in writing for  search engine optimization ?  "Do your research, always proofread, and don't sacrifice quality. It can be easy to get lost in the keywords.  Make sure that the content is always user-friendly and creative. Always make keywords occur naturally.  And don't be afraid to ask questions. When I was learning, I read books, blogs, and attended webinars. Always try to improve." Thanks a...