NewOfferings

The APP Company is official – Apple doesn’t make it easy on iPhone developers!

Posted on 30. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

As many of you know, I formed a new company and am in the final stages of launching a new app for the Apple iPhone. We recently realized that our Apple Developer agreement was not registered with our official name in the contract. How could it have been? We initially were christened as ‘The iPhone App Company’ but Apple didn’t allow that for trademark reasons. Lucky for us, ‘TheAppCompany.com’ was available and actually works out better since we will be making apps for all popular mobile platforms.

So it shouldn’t be too difficult to change the name in the contract. Right? Not right! The first hurdle is contacting Apple. The developer portal on the their website lists no contact phone numbers so we used the email form on the website. Fast forward a week and we still hadn’t heard from Apple. We did some searching around and after about an hour of surfing from page to page and reading how everyone agrees that there isn’t a phone number we finally found one. It’s clearly very, very difficult to get this number because a guy from Scotland answered the phone on one ring and was extremely helpful — he must not receive many calls!

I gave my new Scottish friend my reference number from the email I sent and he explained how it can take weeks to get someone to read the email, but now that I’m speaking with him I’ll jump to the front of the line. He was right, because that day I heard from a rep that the change is being processed and today I was asked to fax the appropriate documents to prove that we are in fact who we claim to be. Three days later and I received the official notice. THE APP COMPANY is now an official iPhone developer!

I’ll give you more details shortly about the app. You can visit theappcompany.com for a bit more information. Be sure to read the ABOUT page to learn about my fantastic partner Jason Moskowitz.

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Google Analytics – Optimal AdWords Campaigns – Google Conversion University

Posted on 14. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

This video comes from Google’s Conversion University. Many of these tips are fairly well known, but the video is worth watching to help reinforce your knowledge and there are some tips such as Auto Tagging, optimal positioning, conversion metrics and reporting that will likely be new to you. Enjoy!

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The Most Expensive Spreadsheet Ever Written?

Posted on 13. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

I recently came across a Twitter post on the most expensive spreadsheet blunders of all time. You can see the article here and here (I couldn’t find a next page on the first article — go figure!).  Some of these mistakes are quite amazing such as a simple error costing $24 million!  Can you believe that?  Well I could!

Way back in the mid-1980′s when I was an investment banking associate for Dillon Read it was my job to run the analysis for all of our bond transactions.  Many of these deals were several hundred million dollars each.  I was trusted to develop the spreadsheets which were the basis for computing all of the particulars on many of the deals.  I can remember having Managing Directors breathing down my back demanding that I give the okay that the deal could close.  It was a high pressure position, and luckily, I had the guts to ask my superiors “Do you want it now, or do you want it done right?”  Well, I never made a major mistake, but I did witness several mistakes which cost our firm over a million dollars!

The Most Expensive Spreadsheet Ever Written

The article got me thinking about the most expensive spreadsheet ever written, or in other words; what is the most that a spreadsheet ever sold for? Back while I was at Dillon Read my largest client was the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA is responsible for all of the subways, buses and toll bridges in NY along with Metro North and the Long Island Railroad. Dillon Read was one of three investment banks workiing for the MTA at the time, and the Finance Director wanted to have a competition among the three firms to build a financial model to manage their eight billion capital plan. They were planning to sell dozens of bond issues over several years and this model would have to keep track of everything. I won’t bore you on specifics here, but I built the model in Lotus 123 and translated it to Excel a few years later. MTA selected the model and paid us $400,000 for it! What’s more, we received more than our normal share of bond deals because of this spreadsheet. I don’t have specific details on our increase in fees, but I would guess that my firm received at least another $2-3 million because of the spreadsheet.
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Guy Kawasaki Presentation on How He Uses Twitter

Posted on 11. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

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Bounce Rate – How Much Do Visitors Really Like Your Site?

Posted on 07. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

Sure you can use more visitors, but you’re seeing traffic steadily rising week after week. Or perhaps you’re paying for traffic using Google Adwords or some other form of advertising and you’re getting plenty of visitors to your site. Once visitors come to your site, do they like what they see? Are they sticking around to read your content, buy your products or participate in your discussion forums? Well the answers to many of these questions can be found in a little discussed statistic known as BOUNCE RATE.

Bounce Rate measures the percentage of time that a visitor comes to your site and doesn’t visit any further pages. In other words, they don’t like what they find on your site and do not even give you the courtesy of clicking one link. You can drive all of the visitors in the world to your site, but in most cases, if they leave right away, you are clearly doing something wrong. Different kinds of sites, have different “bounce characteristics” but in most cases, a high bounce rate is a bad thing. If your goal is to get people to click on Adsense ads, perhaps you are looking for a high bounce rate. Many blogs will have high bounce rates. Why? Visitors come to the blog to read the latest post which usually appears on the home page. Once a visitor reads the post they will leave, so you weren’t really expecting them to continue reading older posts. For most sites, however, we want to see a low bounce rate.
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Dropbox – a Rare Software Utility that Just Works!

Posted on 03. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

Dropbox is a backup and synchronization tool that combines a web-interface with a local client.  Sounds a bit geeky, but in a nutshell this is an almost perfect piece of software that everyone can benefit from.   I’ve been using Dropbox for a few months now and am extremely impressed.  It’s become a critical piece of my daily arsenal right up there with Google, Firefox and WordPress.

Dropbox can be downloaded for free at getdropbox.com.  It works with both Windows and Mac computers and will install a “DROPBOX” folder in your MY DOCUMENTS directory under Windows or under PLACES on a Mac.  Once installed, any file you save in this directory will be automatically backed up behind the scenes to a folder on the web under your account.  Sounds fairly basic?  Well, here’s where the fun begins.  You can install Dropbox on several computers you own such as your office computer, your laptop, your home computer, etc.  These computers can be both Mac and Windows systems. It doesn’t matter. All files in your Dropbox folder will be replicated and synchronized on ALL computers and that’s just the start. [...]

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How to Have Homes in Beverly Hills, New York City and San Francisco

Posted on 02. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

Why stop with these three cities?  What about Maui, Miami Beach, Pebble Beach?  You can live everywhere and anywhere all at once.  Sounds too good to be true?  Well, it’s not if you know a little secret.

Take a look at susansworkreview.com.  Notice anything odd? Look more closely in the right column ‘about me’ section. Still don’t see it? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Susan is living in the very town where you are sitting right now. Am I right? I know this because her website tells me that she’s living right down the street from me, and it also says she’s down the street from you.
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Amazing Home Depot Slow Motion Prank

Posted on 02. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

This video is somewhat off-topic for this blog (okay, maybe VERY!), but from time-to-time I want to simply share things that I find are really cool and I believe you will too. Perhaps we can learn some lessons in business from this. I have some thoughts, but I’ll leave it to you folks to suggest some lessons we can gleam from the video.

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WordPress – What is All the Fuss About?

Posted on 31. Mar, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

WordPress is a free blogging platform used by millions of people.  According to this CNET article, 0.8% of all internet sites are powered by WordPress.  Wow.  That’s a lot of sites.  Have you jumped on the WordPress bandwagon yet?  Perhaps you’re not a blogger or if you do blog you’re happy with sites like blogger.com.  Well let me let you in on a little secret.   WordPress is a heck-of-a-lot more than a blogging platform.  Sure, it’s a great blogging tool, but it’s also a wonderful platform for any small to medium-sized website.  Let’s take a look under the hood. [...]

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What Constitutes a Great Idea for a Web-based Business?

Posted on 31. Mar, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

What Constitutes a Great Idea for a Web-based Business? It has to be unique, right? The market must be huge! There needs to be a great way to monetize the idea so investors can earn back their investment in 3-5 years. The business should fall in a sector where there are many well-capitalized firms to potentially buy it. Of course, the hot ideas need to be in alternative energy. Isn’t that what everyone is talking about?

So which of the above do I think are the most and least important? [...]

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