Gavin Baker

I realized that I love other people’s recommendations – what iPhone apps they are using, where they are eating, what they are driving and what books they are reading.  Yet, I don’t share all of those things well with others.  So in a hat tip to those who’ve shared with me, here are my top 9 favorite iPhone apps.  I will make the disclaimer that Foursquare, Facebook and LinkedIn apps get used weekly.  But I consider them utilty players and really not all that sexy so I’m going to void their use for my top 9.

TOP 9

	Dragon Dictation	This app takes my speech and turns it into emails and tweets with crazy accuracy.
	Twitter for iPhone	I used SimplyTweet for months, but Twitter (aka Tweetie) knocks it out of the park
	eBay	Push notifications so I know I can swoop in a grab an auction?! Yes please!
	Notifo	Google SMS and @notifications at the speed of light speak my name
	Logos Bible	The most comprehensive bible study tool, now in my pocket
	State Farm Pocket Agent	Always have my insurance card with me now + how to report an accident!
	Meebo	Persistant chat via push. Love it.
	Zillow	Housing search and research made easy
	Pandora	My radio

Ok, I’ll throw one to the bonus round, Sleep Cycle is the closest thing to a WakeMate I’ll get since they just returned by deposit.

Happy to be in the running for East Tennessee’s Best Tweeter with a couple others from the team at Moxley Carmichael, including Scott Bird and Cynthia Moxley.  (Cynthia’s also nominated for best blogger for The Blue Streak!)  Thanks for the nomination and your votes.

Please vote! Ends tonight Aug. 20!

Vote for Best Tweeter

Vote for Best Blogger

While doing research on my last post about Samasource I was taken an article by Leah on HuffPo.  What I found interesting was that they’ve built their own Google Chrome Extension for their publication (scroll to the bottom for what it actually looks like).  Super smart idea and one that I’ve become familar with in the mobile world e.g. “Download our app for faster news and cooler whirlygigs”  but this one took me by suprise.

Smart for a few reasons, primarily because HuffPo makes money off advertisements.  The more impressions and visits your site receives, the more you can sell.  The more you can sell, the more you can make.  For all I know they are planning to run extension only ads at a CPM double their current rate.  All in all it’s a good idea.

Here’s why extensions are smart:

• Google Chrome users trend geek. They’ll find this novel and install it. (+1 impressions for HuffPo)
• HuffPo is a news site, if I can get pushed teaser updates I’ll visit more often.
• The web is moving towards simple.  The extension is well designed to make it easy for me to get to what I want.

Surprisingly Slate, USA Today, Engadget and TechCrunch aren’t following a similar strategy.  Most of them have user created extensions but nothing promoted and nothing official.

Perhaps we’ll see a new industry emerge, extension advertising.

Samasource might be my favorite new non-profit.  Why?  Because they bring together the scrapiness of a startup with the social effects of a non-profit.  Like charity:water they operate under the model that their “return” is about bringing an American commodity to the global poor.  So what is Samasource?  It’s pure and (not) so simple social entrepreneurship, using technology for social good with the powerful tagline of “Give Work.”

It was founded by Leila Chirayath Janah who is currently the CEO (and about my age) and she shares her vision in the video below at TEDxSV.  There is also a great write up here if you’d prefer to read than watch.

Leila Chirayath Janah: Ending Poverty in the Digital Age from TEDx Silicon Valley on Vimeo.

You can use them for the tasks below:

• Basic data services – business listings verification, data scraping, image and text tagging, content moderation, and data entry
• Advanced data services – subjective tasks including image- and text-based judgments
• Language services – audio and video transcription, video captioning, and translation
• Call center services – outbound services

So Give Work if you can.  I know I will.

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• Leila Chirayath Janah: The Virtual Assembly Line (huffingtonpost.com)
• Expedia launches new charity program (bizjournals.com)
• How Samasource Helps The World, And A Secret Tattoo Unveiled (Video) (techcrunch.com)

Recently I was eating a great breakfast cooked by my friend Alex and we were discussing startups and entrepreneurship in East Tennessee and we started discussing “original” startups vs buying existing businessnes or franchises and the bias in the start up community that exists against the later.

Granted Alex and I both have experience in the consumer Internet startup space, but I do find it curious that there an unspoken bias against those that do not have the genisus but just the execution.  Curious since execution is prized over creation since “ideas are a dime a dozen” yet we look down our noses at those who buy their ideas vs pulling them out of thin air.  Even though pulling them out of thin air is an important skill.

So where they fit in the ecosystem?

How do we learn from these entrepreneurs who aren’t always obsessed with technology, yet often produce results?
Where do we engage with them?

What do you think?

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