EirePreneur

Clever memes are a once-off

The last really clever meme I saw was The Million Dollar Homepage which looks like its well on its was to generating the target revenue in advertising, 'one pixel at a time'. Today, BoingBoing points to One Red Paperclip where -

Kyle sez, "I started with one red paperclip back in July and I am making a chain of trades for bigger or better objects until I get a house.

Seeing as he's already up to a 1,000 Watt generator I don't doubt that he'll emulate the success of the Million Dollar Homepage. Even if he doesn't quite get as far as a house he should start pulling in the advertising dollars. You know what's so brilliant about these memes? They're all once-off affairs, never to be repeated. Each represents it own unique moment in internet history. And each is so simple as to make us mad with envy that we didn't think of it ourselves.

 

The lazy way to success

In a post entitled "How to start a business without money" Fred Gratzon relates how -

"Several decades ago, before I got interested in starting businesses, I met a friend who went from being penniless to becoming quite wealthy in a breathtakingly short amount of time. I asked him what the secret of getting rich was. He said that you should find something that interests you and become an expert.

When I started my first business, which was an ice cream company, I had no money, I had no business experience, and I had absolutely no idea how to make ice cream. Five years later, my ice cream was judged to be the best in America by People Magazine.

What drove the growth of my business was the growth of my knowledge of ice cream. And what drove the growth of my knowledge of ice cream was my love for the stuff.

One more thing: Your passion doesn’t have to be about any particular product or service. For me, my passion is the process "

Great words of advice especially in that last paragraph. My primary business revolves around an online sports forum, a niche sport in which I'm not particularly interested. I got into it by accident when setting up a website for my brother in 1998 - he's a professional in the industry. But what I lack in passion for the product I more than make up for as regards the process. I'm deeply passionate about building online community. And living a flexible digital lifestyle.

Clone the Google API

Could I possibly be the first blogger to support Dave Winer's call for Microsoft and Yahoo to clone the Google API? Well, am I Technorati?

UPDATE: Goddamit, I was only third :(

Revvr - more clever than I thought

I previously expressed indifference towards Irish entrepreneur Ian Clarke's new video sharing service Revvr but what I should have first taken the time to learn is that it has a unique twist, one which was probably a great help in securing first round venture funding -

"Revver adds a new touch, inserting code into the video itself that adds a small advertisement every time it is viewed, even if the video is downloaded and distributed from another site."

Now that is clever!

When hacker = entrepreneur

According to Cory Doctorow Irish hacker extraordinaire Ian Clarke is at it again, this time with a new 'flickr for video' called Revver. I'm jaded by all these lookalike services and don't see how this is any better than others that preceeded it but I'm still impressed by the boundless entrepreneurial energy of Clarke.

Pxn8.com and finding the perfect name

Cork based Walter Higgins seems to have a thing for the letter 'X' - his blog is at Xanadb.com, he parodies Web2.0 at sxoop.com and he has a clever web based image editor at pxn8.com.What a great name for an image editing app!

Give it a go - its a nice intuitive editor. The one thing I found confusing was how to save an image - apart from a right mouse click, save? I also made the mistake of clicking on the "Attention Flickr Users" link after making several edits only to find that those edits were lost on returning from the Flickr bookmarklet notice page. Small problems, easily fixed.

The point of this post though is to marvel at the discovery of the perfect name for any kind of online service nowadays. Only last week Seth Godin was explaining the trial and tribulations of coming up with the name for his new brainchild Squidoo -

"It quickly became clear, though, that descriptive names were too generic, so the goal was to coin a defensible word that could acquire secondary meaning and that you could own for the ages."

I'd love to know how long Walter spent thinking about a name for his image editing app because it seems to me that it is both perfectly descriptive and defensible.

Google does it again...

with Google Reader. This really is a brilliant looking online RSS aggregator and it even supports podcast playing directly in the browser!

Attacking online problems the webby way.

Its interesting to see how those immersed in Web2.0 thinking attack online problems. Bernie Goldbach suggests the use of collaborative web word processor Writely to share IP blocklists for our blog comments sections. As long as we can manage to keep the password secure and no-one throws 'good' IPs into the mix for a prank then I'm all for it.

I haven't used Writely yet but I did setup a test Writeboard yesterday and assume Writely will be just as handy. I like doing things the webby way.

Irish Entrepreneurs of the Year - winners all

So my tip of Jerry Kennelly (of Stockbyte) to win the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award didn't quite come though last night but congratulations to Jerry for making the shortlist of three by winning the Emerging Category.

And congratulations to Aidan Heavy of Tullow Oil for winning the overall prize. The ceremony was well produced with the theme from Dallas ringing out as Heavy approached the stage to collect his trophy. He quipped - "I always wanted to be Bobby Ewing, not JR."

And well done to John O'Shea of GOAL for collecting the special award for Social Entrepreneur of the Year. Nice to see him getting a standing ovation.

Ireland is uncreative?

Very interesting new article about entrepreneurship by Waldemar Ingdahl, director of the Swedish free market think tank Eudoxa, entitled - The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent

This discrepancy between creativity and economic growth creates problems for Florida. How could it be that the two most creative nations according to his world index, Sweden and Japan, show such lower growth than two so uncreative nations such as the US and the Republic of Ireland? The US and Ireland may score low on tolerance but still people move there, not to Sweden.

Now there's an interesting question to ponder.