Cameesa - The Blog

You ever curious who is blogging about you, or your company?  Well, here is Gooooogle Alerts.  In Google’s words, “Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results.”

How have I used Google Alerts?  Well, I told Google to e-mail me every time it comes across the word ‘cameesa.’  Get it?  So, I get an e-mail every time Google indexes the word ‘cameesa’.

Check out Google Alerts here.

My friend Charles was browsing around the flashy new website for the Samsung Instinct phone when he stumbled upon this gem.  Apparently Samsung forgot that QWERTY keyboards start with the letters Q, W, E, R, T, and Y.

They spent all this money to get the crazy flash interface and overlooked the basics.  How could something like this have slipped through the cracks?

To see for yourself:

•  Go to http://samsunginstinct.com
• Skip the Intro, and click on Touch at the botto
• Click on Explore Touch next to the phone

I would just give you a direct link, but they chose to develop an all flash site, making it impossible.  Let’s hope that we never do something like this with Cameesa.  If we do, you have my permission to flame me for it.

Newsknitter is a data visualization art project that uses clothing to display large scale data. There are a couple of things I find interesting about the project. The first being the removal of the individual from the design process and second the use of computer technology to create the garments. Information gathered from political news feeds online are aggregated and converted into a unique pattern to be knit into a sweater. It is the aggregate information from multiple individuals that help shape the patterns in the shirts and not a single individual in isolation. Finally, a unique and innovative way to use news in clothing. This should help people forget once and for all that CNN sells t-shirts.

I have a tendency, I’m sure you probably do too, of starting one book and stopping half way through it to read another.

At the beginning of 2008 I swore to myself that I would stop swapping books, unless the current book was “a bit crap (Ali G voice.)” I began reading Founders At Work by Jessica Livingston about 2 months ago and am almost finished. The book consists of 30 interviews with the Founders of startups such as Hot or Not, 37Signals, Blogger, Craigslist and many more. I highly recommend this book for people that want to start their own company, as Vik recommended it to me.

Here is some great startup advice from an interview with Joel Spolsky, the author of a brilliant blog, Joel On Software :

Don’t start a company unless you can convince one other person to go along with you. If you don’t have two people that you’ve convinced to devote their lives to doing this, it’s just going to be a different thing. There are a lot of programmers that are very tentative about starting their own companies. There are a lot of working programmers doing something they hate, with some company that they hate, but they need money to pay the mortgage. So they figure, “I’ll develop something in my spare time. I’ll put in 1 hour every night and 2 hours on the weekends and I’ll start selling it by downloads.” And you say to them, “Who’s your co-founder?” And they say, “My significant other-husband or wife. My cat.”

But because they never really take the leap and quit their job, they can give up their dream at any time. And 99.9 percent of them will actually give up their dream. If they take the leap, quit their job, go do it full-time –no matter how much it sucks — and convince one other person to do the same thing with them, they’re going to have a much, much higher chance of actually getting somewhere. Because they either have to succeed or get a job. Sometimes, “succeed” seems like the easier path than actually getting a job, which is depressing. So quit your day job. Have one other founder, at least. I’d say that’s the minimum bar to getting anywhere.

Are you willing to risk everything, or are you part of that 99.9% and going to give up your dream?

Do the following :

1. Find someone else that believes in the same idea as you do, and is willing to devote themselves to it. (Cannot be your wife, girlfriend, or cat)
2. Get private health insurance.
3. Quit your job.
4. Start the company with your partner and try it out for one year.

If you are succeeding after one year :

A. Continue succeeding.

If you are failing after one year and want to give up :

A. Put the company on your resume and find a new job.

B. Continue paying your mortgage.

Here is how I look at it, I’d rather pursue my dream with 100% passion, and suffer financially in the short-term, then to give up my dream and keep paying my mortgage. You will have the rest of your life to pay your mortgage.

By the way, don’t quote me on this one, I think that your income may be higher when you pick up that second job after failing in a startup. Imagine the experience, knowledge, and connections that you will gain in that one year of starting a company.  I think that all signs point to ‘quit your job and start a company.’

“90% of any application takes about 10% of the time to complete. The last 10% of the application takes roughly 90% of the time to finish.”

This is an old IT adage that holds true for many projects, including Cameesa. So, your application core is done rather quickly, while the final intricate details take the remaining 90% to finish. I think that the last 10% of the application are the difference makers, and take the longest time to finish because they are constantly being tweaked and perfected.

Anyways, Cameesa is 99% complete. We’ve been working on the last 10% of the site for the past 2 months, but we are almost ready. We will be releasing Cameesa on Friday the 13th, ha….knock on wood. We originally wanted to put in some final features but decided to JUST FRACKIN’ LAUNCH.

Click the image below to see our first draft of Cameesa.

We’ve been programming since January 2007, so this June release has been long awaited. Usually people acknowledge others’ efforts once a product has been released, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and pre-acknowledge The Cameesa Team. Thanks for all of your hard work guys, let’s do this…..Leroy Jenkins.

We would like to say thank you to all of the users that gave us feedback on the Beta Site, and we’d also like to thank the artists for submitting their artwork. We are sorry if we didn’t choose your art to be printed, submit it on Cameesa.com once we launch. We have room for one last design when we launch, so let us know if you think your design is the ish (short for sh*t). If we choose your design pre-Cameesa.com-launch you will receive $250 cash, and will start earning $2 off of each shirt sale (after the 250th shirt sold.)

Contact me at kamil@cameesa.com if you would like to submit a design or have any questions comments or concerns.

I have noticed that quite a few of my friends read blogs, and actually have a blog of their own. I have also noticed that not many of them are familiar with a Blog Reader.

So, a Blog Reader is a single place where you can read all the Blogs you typically do.

How does this help you? Instead of having to type in 5 different website addresses to read 5 blogs, you can read ALL 5 blog sites from the Blog Reader. It takes 2 minutes to sign up, DO IT.

I use Google Reader.

Then there is also Bloglines which I don’t much about.

For a great video explanation check out : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

HappyBlogging