Click to Enlarge — Our Performance Dashboard Socialize is well known for the robust infrastructure of its drop-in social platform, which handles over 20 requests per second — over 1.5 million requests in the past 24 hours across thousands of mobile apps and millions of end users.  But how does a team of just ten employees set up and manage such an infrastructure?  Here’s a sneak peek behind the curtain so you can...

Those of you who know me well know I call myself a “lifehacker” which basically means I hack & use technology to be as efficient as possible.  For example, I strongly recommend that those who are in front of computers all day learn to play them like instruments. I’ve had people ask me how I use technology to be efficient when I’m in sales mode (which, really, any entrepreneur is most of the time)....

My iPad is blue and says “Socialize” due to a skin from SkinIt.com I’m a big fan of my iPad, and I’ve found that I can take it to meetings instead of a laptop.  But typing is still a pain and really slows me down.  Even though I’m pretty good at touch typing on the iPad, it’s still way more difficult than on a computer and forces me to take my laptop with me more often than I’d like.  So I...

Thanks to the folks at CES and the Department of Homeland Security for inviting me to participate on a panel focused on mobile security titled Tale of the Tablet. http://www.vimeo.com/34881442 The panel focused on hardware, software and social security on mobile devices.   If you’re curious about the challenges the enterprise is facing securing mobile devices in this “BYOD” (bring your own device) world, you’ll...

To me, this is part of what being an entrepreneur is all about. Turning around in the taxi line, embarrassing yourself in front of hundreds of people, and seeing what happens. Often times, it’s something good, because nobody else is willing to try...

It’s no secret that Google calendars and iCal don’t play super nicely together.   And it’s even worse on the iPhone.  It got so bad that I was using the Google calendar web app instead of the native calendar app because subscribed Google calendars (called “delegate” calendars) weren’t even showing up. But here’s a trick — a way to sync your subscribed calendars from Google’s...

I recently wrote about how I’ve swapped PowerPoint out for something I call PowerPinch (a term I made up). When it came time to make a demo video for Socialize, I wondered if I could use PowerPinch to make the video, and then somehow capture what was happening on my iPad.  It turns out, you can.  Here’s the finished video, and below is how I did it. http://www.vimeo.com/33939244 First, I made the demo video using my...

Sick of endless PowerPoint slides?  If you want to take your presentation to the next level, and you know basic HTML, you can hack together a presentation on an iPad that lets you interact with your content like never before.   I call it “PowerPinch” because you can pinch, swipe and zoom seamlessly with your presentation, and focus in on the content you’re talking about, then zoom out quickly and move on to the next...

Mark Jacobstein, CEO of iSkoot, sat down with me to talk about Qualcomm and its upcoming initiatives. iSkoot was acquired by Qualcomm last year, and now Mark is VP of Product Management for Qualcomm. The reason I’m so fascinated by Qualcomm is due to its integrated approach to hardware and software.  I always thought of Qualcomm as a hardware company, but many of its current initiatives are software-focused.  And not just that...

I was one of the mobile and social engagement experts at the 2011 LavaCon conference in Austin, TX this week.  LavaCon is a very well attended niche conference for digital media and content strategists — not the “social media gurus” you so often hear about, but actual content strategists who create, curate and publish content for some of the world’s leading brands. They have an interesting predicament on their...

In my series about using agile processes not just for software development but in everyday life,  Socialize VP of Engineering Jason Polites has offered up a guest post about what often gets overlooked in software development: Nice post.  I think there are some very basic tenets relating to SCRUM, or agile in general, that tend to get overlooked though.  Actually.. throw out the word SCRUM for a second and just consider what the...

Google engineer Steve Yegge let an internal Google memo slip publicly (he later called it “the great-granddaddy of all Reply-All screwups in tech history”) where he argued that Google was royally screwing up by not building its social technology and other internal technologies as a platform.  He compared Google to Amazon, which does. If you’re interested in understanding the importance of a company ‘eating its own...

We’ve been using the Scrum agile development framework (or just “scrum”) at Socialize since early this year.  Hats off to Jason, our VP of Engineering, for really championing it and to Sean and Isaac for implementing it with the developers.  Our workflow is to use Basecamp to discuss ideas (Basecamp is like Democracy: it’s not great, but it’s the best thing out there — you can read my rants &...

Sue and I took a tour of the Tesla Model S factory in Fremont, CA today.  This is the old NUMMI plant.  If you haven’t heard the NUMMI story between GM & Toyota, and you’re a car buff, there’s a This American Life episode about it that’s just mind blowing.  The net of it is that GM tried to learn Just In Time assembly practices from Toyota, they built a factory together for Toyota to transfer...

I often get questions about how I take my killer panos.  Here’s my secret: I take the pano on my iPhone with an app named, appropriately, Pano.  Although there are other pano apps out there, this is my favorite by far. Then, I import it into Camera+.  I apply the clarity exposure filter, then the diana overlay filter and use the cross-process border. Here’s the result!  You can also see my full...

A few years ago I saw some amazing videos of ‘Where the hell is Matt,’ who danced all over the world. Today I stumbled across another mind numbing performer and internet sensation, Marquese Scott. They both do amazing things with dance, in two completely different ways.  So I put the question to you for the comments:  Who’s more amazing, and why? Marquese: Matt, 2006: Matt,...

Today I learned about the Startup Genome Report from the Startup Genome, as well as the Startup Genome Compass. This amazing project by Max Marmer, Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, Ron Berman and Ertan Dogrultan compares over 3,200 startups to find parallels between them that are predictors for success or failure. the Startup Genome Compass is a ~30 minute form you can fill out to find how your startup compares to others. Here are a few excerpts...

It’s hard to over hype the significance of the interest graph, once you really understand its magnitude.  On the flipside, it can be confusing to hear people talk about the interest graph without knowing what all the fuss is about.  (As background to this blog post, you can learn about the origins of the interest graph in this slideshare document and this Quora Q&A post). I’m going to lay out an argument for the...

I was recently invited to a Napa retreat along with others in the mobile app space by Trevor Cornwell & crew from AppBackr.  It was a great, intimate event with about 35 people total. The panel I was on was: What challenges do developers face?  How do apps get to market effectively?  How does a developer get noticed and build sales?  What strategies work?  What do developers really need?  The core question is:  What is the...

My wife and I have been making an effort to eat unprocessed foods as a part of a healthier lifestyle.  Simply told, that means if there’s a label on the food (or if it’s in a box), we try not to eat it.  I’ll write a more comprehensive blog soon about the thinking behind this approach. Part of this initiative is to buy organic fruits and vegetables (Rainbow grocery in San Francisco is just amazing) and consume them...