TwitEye streams ideas for new applications and services based on questions asked by Twitter users, so, for example, “is there a service that lets me translate news feeds into different languages?”. At the moment it is categorising requests related to applications, software, iPhone apps, plug-ins and different services. The idea behind it was that the “idea” isn’t the most difficult part in getting a new product or service together; it’s what happens with the idea that counts.

The latest update to the service is the addition of an ideas blog & RSS feed which will publish a selected idea each day from the stream. With a lot of applications that have limited functionality or aren’t doing something that I immediately “need”, I generally take a look at them once, think “oh, that’s nice”, and then forget about them. The addition of the RSS feed is a way to share some of the good ideas that are coming through the TwitEye stream, without people having to come to the site & watch the stream flow by (although there can be some good stuff in there if you do).

The app itself is at TwitEye.com, and you can find the ideas blog and the link to the daily idea RSS feed at twiteye.com/ideas/ (and if you’re not up for the full commitment of an RSS feed you’ll also get the updates through @twiteyeapp on Twitter!).

The best way to further improve it is through feedback & comments, so don’t be shy…

If you’re looking for your next big idea, TwitEye could be a good place to start. I’ve already had some suggestions for improving it which I’ll be adding in over the coming days. If you’ve got any more feedback, I’d love to hear it.

You can read more about the thinking behind it in the Introducing Twiteye post, or check it out for yourself at twiteye.com

Running in the opposite direction to the usual approaches to Intellectual Property protection, Damien is giving away copies of his Online Marketing Documentation for free.

I was emailed a copy this morning, and its well worth a read if you’re interested in figuring out how to get your business talking to  (and more importantly, listening to) the customers you have online. It covers lots of material including Search Engine Optimisation & Marketing, the use of Facebook advertising (which was a new area to me), and the various tools that help you to hear what customers are saying about your products or services online. There  are lots of companies whose service would benefit with setting up some Google Alerts or a Twitter search on their company name.

Coming from a different angle, Iarfhlaith posted his analysis of his Real World Networking for 2008 today, which shows where all his business came from for the year. He reckons that Referrals have been the key to new business.

Two things strike me about these two posts:

1. Damien’s document is about implementing a strategy for communicating and developing relationships with customers & users online; while Iarfhlaith’s post highlights the value of relationships in bringing in new business. Not a coincidence.

2. The openness of both. It’s unusual for businesses to disclose where their business comes from; and its more unusual for a company that offers training to freely offer its materials to anyone that wants them. Even in universities, where training is not being sold (directly), learning materials are often hidden away in systems such as Blackboard. Free distribution & openness of information has worked as a business model within Open Source Software, so why not for materials of other types of knowledge-based business?

I’ve decided to split the findings into two parts due to their length. This first part gives details of peoples’ use of the cameras on their mobile phones, the second part  details their use of the Internet on their mobiles.

152 people were good enough to give me a couple of minutes of their time, and this is what they had to say for themselves:

Where did you hear about this survey?

Sources were mainly from blog posts, with Twitter also figuring highly. Other sources included some people I emailed, friends on Facebook and some respondents from IGO People. In general, the sample is of people who are technically aware, and many are early adopters (see Twitter usage further on). This introduces some bias into the survey, as I wouldn’t regard the sample as being representative of the general population.

Age Profile

Respondents were concentrated around the 25-44 years old age groups, with 82% falling within these groups. The high proportion within this age group is due to the way the survey was promoted.

Does your mobile phone have a camera?

In the last number of years, cameras have become almost a standard on mobiles, so over 96% answering Yes was unsurprising.

How regularly do you use the camera on your phone?

I was surprised by how often people use the camera on their phone, with 47% of people using  it “Several times a day”, “About once a day”, and “More than once a week”. I would have expected the number of those using it only on special occasions to be higher than the 24% found.

What do you usually do with photos you take with your phone?

41% of people upload their photos to the web (either by first transferring them to their computer, or directly from their phone). This bodes well for photo sharing sites like Pix.ie, Flickr. Another explanation for this finding could be the emergence of photo sharing services like TwitPic which allow photos to be shared easily using Twitter (there are a significant number of Twitter users in the sample).

Over 23% of respondents usually keep their photos on their phone. Given the sentimental value with which people used to view photos, I found that a little surprising – do people attach less value to digital images, or is it a lack of knowledge on how to back-up photos from their phone that lead to this?

Have you ever used your phone to take pictures of:

Over 3/4 of respondents have taken pictures of each of the people at an event (which I would have expected), scenery & locations (again, as expected). I hadn’t anticipated such a high number of people taking pictures of “an item they wanted to remember” (I’ve done this in the past and had people look at me strangely!). I’m curious as to what the 6.7% who haven’t taken pictures of any of these things have taken pictures of. Perhaps animals?!

The second part of the survey results, which deals with people’s use of the Internet on their mobile phones, is in a separate post.

The first part of the findings look at mobile phone camera usage and profiles survey respondents.

How do you access the Internet on your Phone?

Key points:

• Only 6% don’t have Internet access on their phone
• Just over 20% never use it
• 34% use WiFi on their phones

The high proportion of respondents using WiFi surprised me. However, it is unlikely to be representative of the population; instead it is likely due to bias in the sample where the sample are generally technically-aware early adopters, (Twitter & RSS adopters). It should be noted that multiple answers were possible, which is why the figures exceed 100%.

How often do you use the Internet on your phone?

Key Points

• 50% of respondents access the Internet on their phone on a daily basis (with 43% accessing it several times a day.
• Almost 25% never access the Internet on their phone.

Again, I do not think the 44% who access the Internet several times a day is representative of the general population; it is more likely due to the profile of those who responded to the survey. It does cast a bit of doubt on the reports that people aren’t that interested in using the mobile internet (via Pat)

What do you use the Internet on your phone for?

Key Points

• 2/3 of people who answered use their phone for general browsing of websites;
• Almost half use it for accessing Twitter, with almost the same number using it for accessing Social Networking sites.
• A quarter of users access productivity tools (such as calendars & to-do lists) through their mobile.

Some of the numbers for “active” use are quite high, such as sending emails (almost 50%), using productivity tools (almost 25%). Given the small size & more limited functionality of mobile phones, I hadn’t expected high levels of this type of active use.

Does your phone have GPS (Global Positioning System)?

GPS is still an early adopter technology and it isn’t widely bundled with phones yet, as shown by the finding of 75% not having it, don’t know if they have it, or have never used it.

So what? Well, this means that location aware applications are still some time away from gaining mass adoption (on mobile devices, where they will be most useful). It’s unlikely that these types of applications will find a mass market until integrated GPS on mobiles becomes more widespread (i.e. bundled in the lower range handsets), and users become comfortable with the technology (by using it in other contexts, for example, in the car where adoption seems to be rising).

Having said that, with one quarter of respondents having used GPS for its most basic application, and just under 10% having used it for geo-tagging photos, there are early adopters out there.

Response Rates

During the time the survey was open, 203 people viewed it, with 152 completing it. This data is available by comparing the stats generated by Short.ie, which shows how many people clicked on the truncated link I circulated, with the total number of responses. (This number has since risen to 310 views).

There were no cases of the survey being abandoned after it had been started (meaning all responses were usable).

Credits

Thank to everyone who took the time to complete the survey; it’s much appreciated. Also, many thanks to Damien Mulley and Joe Scanlon who both promoted the survey on their blogs, which contributed to the high response rate.

I carried out the survey to help fill in the blanks on an idea I had; the good news is that it did, so I’m working away on turning it into something that works. More on that here in the future.  If anyone would like any more details on the results feel free to contact me in the comments, or directly.

I’ve seen lots of posts reviewing the past year, and predicting what’s likely to happen in the coming year. So I’m jumping on the bandwagon.

For me, 2008 saw a lot of changes, mainly related to work. I reached a big milestone when Ambient Age hit its first birthday in October; at times in the first few months, I wasn’t sure I’d see that day. In November I moved into the GMIT Business Innovation Centre, another big step I was really happy with. The change from working at home has taken some getting use to (no smoking cigs & listening to loud music while I work)…but it’s been really positive so far with some great advice and new found motivation to develop the business. I also learned lots from people, including some great media stuff in a course by Damien, and lots of good stuff during Barcamp in Cork.

So, what’s to come in 2009? Here are a few things high on the list:

1. Complete the development and launch of the BeautyBoss web-app that I’ve been developing. I’m coming into some exciting times as I move from completing development into getting early user feedback on how to improve it further. The support I’ve been getting from GMIT is moving this along.
2. Develop ideas into something usable. I’ve had lots of ideas for apps / services that solve problems over the last year. Time to do anything with them always seems to be a stumbling block, but this year I’m aiming to turn two of them into things that work. One into one working web app, and one site. I read somewhere this year that solving a problem you have yourself is a great place to start with a new service; so somewhere between that, and, as Joe points out, developing something that users need, hopefully I’ll get together a couple of interesting projects.
3. Move along my PhD. This has been more or less shelved as I tried to develop my business over the last year. The academic side of things is always something I loved, but with bills to pay, it’s been taking a back seat. The thoughts of leaving aside 3 years of interesting work doesn’t fill me with any joy.
4. Teach. I spent 3 years lecturing in web development before I started working for myself, and it’s something I miss.  There’s a lot to be said for helping people to learn & develop new skills, so I’d love to put this side of things to use again.
5. Publish more on the blog. I’ve been very poor at writing on both this and my work blog (which I’m rennovating at the moment). I spend quite a bit of time learning from the experiences of lots of people by reading their blogs. Sharing some more of mine is something I plan to do more of.
6. Who knows? This time last year I wouldn’t have forseen all that’s happened, so I’m interested to see what I’ll have to look back on this time next year….time will tell.

Have a great 2009, and if you’re on the fence about starting your own business, or developing something new, you could do a lot worse than have a read of the great blogs written by some of the people whose posts have motivated me this year.

I’m doing a small survey on mobile phone Internet & Camera use; it’s 10 questions that you’ll have done in less than 2 minutes. It’s for something I’m working on, and it’d be a HUGE help if you could do it!! You can get it here.

I’ll be publishing the results here, so if you don’t already have the RSS feed, you can grab it now!

Thank you!

Image via Wikipedia

In the last month or so I’ve seen two blog posts which have led to very worthwhile discussions around start-up businesses. Combined, these posts highlight the problems facing people thinking about starting Irish web-based business, or existing web-based start-ups.

On Pat Phelan’s blog, the question asked was How can we foster start-ups and innovation in Ireland today?. Weighing in with excellent ideas were a large number of people that have gone through, or are going through the process of establishing their own business. The second post, by Paul Walsh, asks a more fundamental question of What is a Startup? Scattered through the discussion, there are useful comments.

In looking at how people define start-ups, there is the common theme of them being small & having limited money. When looked at in conjunction with the comments on Pat’s post there is something interesting – in Ireland there are real or perceived problems, when developing a start-up, with access to information & finance (and more generally information about finance).

How do they survive?

If a start-up is defined as a company less than 2 years old, and the main problems for start-ups are access to funding or other supports, the question needs to be asked, how can they survive for 2-3 years?

In recent years, the government has placed huge PR efforts behind the idea of a knowledge economy. Through this, they aim to “foster” innovation by investing in research (of which I benefited via the IRCHSS). A recent example is the EI launch of the Business Partners Programme, which I linked to recently. However, outside academic institutions, there is a lack of information on how this drive for innovation is put into practice. This is perhaps counter-productive in developing an economy strong on indigenous innovative companies.

Access to Information

When I set up a year ago I started using the web, and blogs in particular, to help get a feel for the web community in Ireland. It is from these accounts of the experiences of others that I found any information regarding sources of support, the battles involved in accessing finance and the other necessary ingredients for setting up.

I also found that small networking events such as Barcamp, the Digital Media Island events are also great for meeting others that are going through the same problems starting out.

There is information out there, however finding it, and knowing how best to use it, are the problems that I ran into. Here are some useful sources I found:

• I came across some great work by Forfas (2007), under the title Developing an Entrepreneurship Policy for Ireland (the report on “Mapping of Initiatives to Support Entrepreneurship in Ireland” ( pdf ) is an excellent resource covering publicly run support initiatives).
• The Government run BASIS site has a section on starting a business. Mostly high level information with links to state bodies.
• Enterprise Ireland – Start-up section. As a web resource, this is of limited use; it provides contact details for their start-up team.

A way forward?

Together, these anecdotal accounts and more formal reports can be combined into something useful. However, there is a gap to combine the two in a more structured way. By linking information on on-going programmes with people’s experience of them, I think there are a number of potential benefits:

• It would give those starting out a “first-stop” to get a picture of available supports, potential pitfalls, and a roadmap to move forward
• New entrepreneurs will be able to make better judgements about what supports are most suitable to them;
• It would concentrate expertise & knowledge in one (online) location;
• It provides a way to identify weaknesses with current supports, and a source of data on how to improve them

In my (limited) experience, people are generally open and willing to help & share their experience with those starting out through their blogs and at networking events; drawing on this online would provide an extremely useful knowledge base. Perhaps that is an idealised view, however to me, it seems like a way forward for some or all of:

• An agency interested in fostering innovation,
• An academic institution interested in studying localised innovation or entrepreneurship, or
• A network of interested people with experience to share.

[Update: I was just about to hit publish, and I saw this pop up in my RSS feeds, from Web2Ireland: Venture Funding in Ireland… some discussions, good timing!]

There were a number of problems with the old one, such as too much of the screen being taken up things that weren’t content. Because the original site was designed before the blog was added, maintaining how it all looked was awkward (with separate stylesheets being used), so I sorted that out too.

The old site was also being overrun by the daily postings from del.icio.us, so I’ve just added a listing of recent bookmarks to the footer of the homepage.

I’m also going to start adding the notes and examples for CSS & JavaScript that I’ve used when lecturing in the past. It’s mainly introductory material, but will be of more use up here than on my computer. I’ll update links when I get them onto Slideshare.

As always, any comments on the new look are welcome below!