bouncingboomergirlgeek: fyi & fwiw

The Art of Bootstrapping

The Art of Bootstrapping is a list of practical business tips for tough times by Apple Evangelist Guy Kawaski published on the AmEx Open Forum. Click here to read. Also on the same web site by the same author,  The No-Bull-Shiitake Investor Wishlist. and the unfortunate but sometimes necessary “The Art of Laying People Off.” As Guy himself said while posting that last link, "Actually, I hope you don’t have to read it."

Create Without Limits - Sell Without Fees

The title above is the slogan for a nifty-sounding site just getting launched. Artfire.com is for artisans selling their self-designed self-made wares online (click image for a sample view). The art can be whatever you wish, from a piece of jewelry all handmade to a custom digital template for a new business card. A basic storefront is free, and artists sell without added fees. The biz model appears to make its money off the larger shops, but even the full boat package is cheap ($7 monthly) a price they will guarantee for life to the next 5,000 accounts. The site seeks to build community too. It encourages members to interact, even to blog, and it has a go green section. With this level of energy and ease of access, they might become serious rivals for the niche-leader Etsy.com.

Hands Across the Clouds

(click on image to see full size)

I have been exploring server-based apps online the last few months, trying to help an offline group with 100+ members develop a platform for sharing news and schedules. As with just about any volunteer entity, there is, to put it politely, a wide range of computer comfort among its members.

On one side there are the fast adapters who are quick to learn new things and find it fun to do so. In the middle, there are the semi-techs, or later bloomers, who may know the basics of a few favorite functions such as email and word processing, but not a whole lot more. On the other end of the spectrum are the semi-Luddites with high computer anxiety who mouse around reluctantly.

And the icing on this layer cake is that all of them use an assortment of software and CPUs, old and new.

In short, it's an IT management nightmare to get them all on the same page doing similar things online at a similar time. What seems like the simplest instructions aren't so simple at all for those who are flying blind and clicking by rote without much of a mental paradigm.

If they all stuck with their own applications and their old computing habits, supporting them all would become more than a full time job. That's tough for any entity run by volunteers for free.