New UI preview 2
We're getting closer to release a Touristr update on which we have been working for a long time now. It includes a new UI that we believe will make the web a better place. Conor has been working on fixing bugs for the last 3 weeks (especially some very annoying Internet Explorer non sense) and he has made some great progress today. Here's a preview with the new add story tutorial.
Add Story Tutorial from jan blanchard on Vimeo.
The San Francisco effect 1
After just one week in San Fran, Conor is fitting well into his new city. It looks like he already belongs to the local mafia family! how will he look like after 2 weeks?
Conor in Ireland ------------------------- Conor in San Fran
Bosco is my hero is back
Conor wade started his personal blog, bosco is my hero. This coincides with Conor moving to San Francisco to be the eyes and ears of Touristr. I’m looking forward to follow his adventures as he discovers San Fran spirit.
Anyone can cook 1
We’ve been very quiet in the last few weeks and that is because we’re cooking up a serious update of touristr. I guess all big chefs go quiet when they experiment with the ingredients and taste the mix. The wrong flavour could just ruin the complete receipe. So we’re experimenting, developing, testing, designing and it smells better every day.
Of course we got out to meet real people and share our experimentation and the feedback we received at blogtalk and creative camp was amazing. More rosemary, less garlic, more secret ingredient… we love it. I need to get back to the kitchen, people are waiting, hopefully it didn’t burn yet!
Lovdbyless
Congrats to the Less boys (pronounce lessbos) for releasing the first open source social network.
“most sites can benefit from some sort of social interaction, software is about communication after all. We want to help people get off on the right foot and wish you the best in your project. Enjoy!”
Seedcorn 07 Award 2
We just received an All-island Seedcorn Business Competition 2007 highly commended award certificate.
“our judging panel were very impressed with the standard of your entry and consequently your business plan has been highly commended.”
Seedcorn is a competition organised by Intertrade Ireland and aims at accelerating business for start ups. First prize is €100,000, next year we’re in for a cash prize!
Where should we blog? 3
We’ve discussed this many times over the last few months. Where is best to blog, our company tourist republic, here on TouristR, our personal blogs? and what should we say? If I want to talk about politics and the environment , can we do it on our company blog? Do we risk to potentially damage the company image? Do we risk to confuse our users and loose focus.
Some people successfully blog on all fronts. Best example is Conor O’neill who blogs here, here, here and there. We’re not ready for that yet. A few weeks ago, I came across a twitter conversation between Joe Drumgoole and Paul Walsh. In short, keep your product blog for industry content and blog about the other things on your personal blog. A good way to stay focused and build up a profile for both you and your start up.
We’re following Joe’s advice and are back blogging here. This blog is an insight into the TouristR world, we’ll link to our personal blogs on the team page when we have it up. Thanks for following us.
Yahoo Brickhouse 4
Helene from Nubiq posted a good review on our visit to Yahoo brickhouse.
Salim Ismail was our host and I have to say he was just brilliant. Salim is heading Yahoo Brickhouse for 8 or 9 months and he seems to have lots of fun doing it. He gave us a presentation on some very innovative start ups and work that’s happening there. All is confidential so I can’t talk about it here but Salim was very open and answered many questions from the group. He also facilitated presentations from Chad Dickerson on Hack Day and gave us an opportunity to pitch our products. It even gets better, Jerry Yang came down to say hello and we were welcomed with beers and pizzas!
I met Salim in Cork last year while he was giving a presentation on his start up confabb. Salim speaks perfect French, has lived in many countries and is a true serial entrepreneur and leader. I’ll leave Catherina, co founder of flickr, the last word.
Salim sharing one tip with the Paddy Valley’rs
Jerry Yang saying hello
Glowday pitch
Vinnie and Meetro 2
Vinnie is just the coolest guy I met in San Francisco. From raising funding and creating buzz to where to get the best beers in the city, Vinnie is your man!
He welcomed us with home brewed beer, took us out to some of the best bars in San Francisco (Mission street) and shared many tips on getting on with a web start up.
Vinnie works at Meetro . Meetro is a location-aware IM client. Meetro is the start up that kicked off the high-tech tradition of the 24/7 geek house, where the team locked themselves in the same house for months to start up Meetro and oragnised mad creative parties. They now have moved down to a proper office which still looks like a rock n roll band garage. Check out the creativity desk!
Vinnie is also the organiser of the Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup which counts over 2,000 members. Here are quick videos of Meetro’s office and Vinnie sharing one tip.
Loic Le Meur and Robert Scoble 2
Last week, during the first Paddy Valley night out in San Francisco, we got to meet with Robert Scoble and Loic Le Meur. Here is one tip they gave us on the night.
I was especially happy to meet with Loic and his wife Géraldine. Apart from reading Loic’s blog, I secured our first seed funding the day following Le Web last year. I got to present what was just an idea at the start up corner of the conference and the rest is history. Loic said that getting guys with ideas in front of investors was the purpose of the conference. I took up the challenge to be on stage for “Le web 4”.
More Paddy Valley videos available here. Forgive bad image quality, all videos were taken with my phone!