Kevin Ohashi

I've noticed this feeling of perpetually feeling stuck at 80% (or 90%). It's almost finished. The main functionality is done and it works. But.

But some of the details are missing. But this little feature doesn't work yet. But I haven't got a name I like it. But my logo isn't quite right. But.

The only times I can recall this feeling of being stuck at 80% is when it is something I have invested a substantial amount of time and effort into. I care about it; deeply. It will never be perfect but I see (real or imagined) unacceptable flaws that prevent it from being done or ready to show the world at large.

Perhaps this is another reason why this emphasis on launching early, failing fast, and getting your product out there is so popular. I've been working on showing potential customers and iterating based on feedback from users but it still isn't public. Once it is out the door, you lose control (or the feeling of it) and that is scary.

If I reflect for a moment on my current startup and the past year it really is scary. I've spent about a year working on this startup full-time. I've never worked on any one thing for that long of a period. It's my most ambitious project and I absolutely love it. But I also canceled launching it many months ago because the design was so ugly that people were outright turned off by the whole site because of it. So now I am very happy with the design I think I am beginning to worry about everything else and the what-if scenarios. It's a dangerous road to go down, so to avoid it, I need to set concrete dates and things which must be done. I will launch; soon; but.

I wanted to report the bug to mozilla but it took me 15 minutes to even find their bugzilla and then it wanted too much of my time and to share my personal info (email address). So I will just post it here instead.

So basically the problem is if you double inspect, you can't escape the inspector and the close box (X) disappears.

Screen shots after the jump.

From: Ryan F (ryanf@ggadget.org)
Date: Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 11:40 AM
Subject: Featured Tech Site Award
To: -------------

My name is Ryan, and I work at Green Gadget -- a PR6 technology and gadget review site located in Austin, Texas.
The reason I'm emailing you today is because we’ve selected you as an exceptional technology site. We would like to highlight you on our site and present you with an official sidebar badge for your site that will distinguish you as a Featured Tech Site.

Our selection criteria are based on several factors that we feel defines a great tech site. We selected you because we feel your website is a great resource that offers exceptional information on technology.

Attached is the html code to insert the badge. We are very excited to have you as a Featured Tech Site and I look forward to hearing back from you.

Best Regards,

Ryan

First off, who mentions their Page Rank (PR6) in a legitimate award?

There is no mention of what my site even is or any indication that it was viewed. It's all probably automated anyway (or should be considering the lack of anything requiring a human to do since nothing is tailored or personalized in any way).

You want to see the 'award'? It's pathetic.

I hope nobody falls for this bullshit but sadly I am sure some people will. This one should go straight to the spam bin.

I took the top 1500 sites from Alexa.com and checked their registrar. Some companies have already said they were moving (Hi StackOverflow!). Huge thanks goes to Mike St John for his help in querying the registry.

Here are the 144 companies using Godaddy as a Registrar :

woothemes.com
proboards.com
stackoverflow.com
alot.com
wowhead.com
xkcd.com
seriesyonkis.com
exoclick.com
flipkart.com
goodreads.com
twitpic.com
babylon.com
bytes.com
opera.com
foursquare.com
r7.com
thechive.com
realclearpolitics.com
yousendit.com
dreamstime.com
justdial.com
ilivid.com
github.com
multiply.com
imesh.com
optmd.com
wimp.com
youm7.com
urbandictionary.com
amung.us
informer.com
pingomatic.com
networkedblogs.com
histats.com
chicagotribune.com
grooveshark.com
infusionsoft.com
buzzfeed.com
trulia.com
yoo7.com
hawaaworld.com
bearshare.com
slutload.com
piriform.com
incredimail.com
noticias24.com
ioffer.com
buysellads.com

I ran into an interesting problem recently, I didn't want to change my links to some sort of URL forwarding script (facebook.com/l.php=http://kevinohashi.com) to track outbound clicks but I still wanted the outbound click data.

I thought it should be possible using JavaScript and the onClick() functionality. My first inclination was to just go to jquery and bind the click to a function that would simply make an ajax call to record the click data and then forward the user.

Upon further research I found out Google Analytics has this functionality and tracking already built in.

You simply include another javascript snippet:


<script type="text/javascript">
function recordOutboundLink(link, category, action) {
try {
var pageTracker=_gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXX-X");
pageTracker._trackEvent(category, action);
setTimeout('document.location = "' + link.href + '"', 100)
}catch(err){}
}
</script>


And then for any click you want to track you simply add:

onClick="recordOutboundLink(this, 'Outbound Links', 'example.com');return false;"

Outbound Links is the label for the link. It all shows up in the Event Tracking reports in Google Analytics. Simple.

Or so it seemed. I tried this method and some users complained that it broke things like middle click (open in new window) functionality. I am also not convinced it actually worked for every click, my click volume didn't seem to match on the links I did have access to stats on the outbound side for.

So I turned it off and canned the idea for now. I guess that's why facebook, twitter and everyone else seems to use link tracking scripts like l.php and t.co.

What is Gift Lizard? It's a gift shopping site where you describe the person you want to buy a gift for using tags. It helps you discover interesting and awesome gift ideas.

First Off, The Numbers for Gift Lizard

11,870 Visits (11,509 Uniques)

15,984 Pageviews (1.35/visit)

24 Seconds Average Time on Site

89.20% Bounce Rate

96.96% New Visitors

75% US Traffic

54.60% Chrome / 34.03 % Firefox / 3.89% Safari / 1.83% Internet Explorer

Failures

Facebook

Fail. I did, so can you. I created a Gift Lizard fanpage and invited my friends. I got maybe 4 likes from messaging ~600 people? My facebook status did better and got 15 likes and 12 comments, 2 shares and someone posted it back to me. Not bad, but total facebook traffic for the week: 105 visitors, almost all from the status. Fanpage is probably a more long term benefit.

Twitter
I know some traffic came from here, but it doesn't actually show up on my logs once. Nothing big enough to notice any substantial traffic coming from the 12 or so tweets broadcasting the site.

Reddit Advertising
It's only run for 1 day and there has been no a/b testing. I am still running this ad with the copy:

“Gift Shopping Made Easy! Describe the recipient and instantly get gift suggestions tailored just for them.”

It generated 44 clicks of 71,551 impressions on 26,877 different users. However, those users had 1 minute 54 seconds average time on site and only a 37.14% bounce rate. Better users, incredibly small volume. I also got some fantastic feedback from one particular user about some ways to improve the site that I was unfamiliar with.

MVP Launch

I launched with an MVP (minimum viable product) and there is a lot of things people didn't like (and still don't like!). The interface isn't as good as it could/should be to make it clear how the site works with tagging. There are still bugs in the way it behaves and improvements I know I should be making. But the site does function and I fixed major problems as the came along as best as I could. Other more structural problems are still there and probably won't be solved before the end of the holiday season.

Those are some of the biggest failures and problems I ran into when launching.

Successes

Finding a marketing strategy that works and can be replicated is hard. But I think I've found one.

My original plan of finding 'good' gifts and tagging them across multiple categories was well meaning but it was/is highly subjective and hard to scale. I will still add gifts in targeted popular categories, but that's not where I will spend most of my time.

I realized that niches were far more engaged in their very specific interests and more likely to interact with something targeted than a blanket message about finding gifts.

To that end I tested my idea with a starcraft gifts page and posted it to starcraft subreddit. The thread received around 99 comments (about half were me responding). I engaged them in a constructive and inclusive manner adding any item they thought would make a good addition. It's also important not to be greedy, I want people to find good gifts and share it with their friends of similar interest (funnily enough some of the people's sites I linked also responded on the thread thanking me for promoting their products - and I was genuinely happy to to it!). The goal is creating a great collection of gifts for anyone who likes starcraft regardless of what site the product may be on or what type of relationship I have with that site. It was a HUGE success. The result was 10,494 visits this week to the starcraft page and I only posted it 3 days ago (so it's only 2 days worth of stats).

Fluke or repeatable?

The next day I decided let me try it for another niche and see if I can get a similar response. I created a World of Warcraft gift page and posted it to the WoW subreddit. The result was 1,143 visits to the WoW gift page. The article was more popular in terms of relative ranking (peaking at 5th versus around 12th for starcraft post) but the subreddit is a lot less active it would seem. The engagement was a lot lower, despite being only half the size, it received 10% the traffic volume. The gift collection was still relatively popular in its niche. Success! And it looks like the model is repeatable and possibly scalable.

This massive influx of traffic from one social media site was nice. A secondary effect was linking and stumbles (I got no facebook likes or tweets from these it would seem).

StumbleUpon generated 134 visitors though from one person stumbling the page and setting off a chain of stumbles presumably. Content was sticky enough to be shared and promoted. Success!

Someone even bought me 1 month of reddit gold for the starcraft gift page (thanks anonymous stranger <3)

Finally, email lists worked well. I am on a couple mailing lists and sent a message out to them, the more personal and connected you are and/or your message are, the better it worked out. My co-working space had an amazing response. I saw people browsing it all day and they would come up to me and give feedback (and even bought a few things! <3 Affinity Lab)

Lessons Learned:

• Easier to connect with a niche audience.
• Don't be greedy and help others, it makes people like you.
• Launch it and fix it on the fly.
• Just because it's not perfect or even great doesn't take too much away if you have great content/value.
• Google Analytics is mesmerizing (that's going to have to be another post!)

What I would do differently:

Facebook Event in conjunction with a facebook page. I would like to try creating an event and invite everyone to it announcing the launch. Events are stickier I think because the user has to either acknowledge it to remove it or ignore it for a long time while it shows up. Of course the risk is you may only get one chance with this strategy because users may ignore event invites from you. High risk, high reward. I'd choose who I sent the event invite to carefully.

Link directly on social media sites, it may seem like a less popular idea, but I posted to a few subreddits as comments to get feedback (design_critiques, startups, twoxchromosomes) and it generated very little interest or traffic. I think direct links, when possible, are a better idea if you can communicate effectively in the short title.

Happy to hear thoughts, feedback, questions, ideas, your stories or anything else you wish to share!

I would advise anyone thinking of an .xxx domain to reconsider. Although you can register the rather pricey domain (~$95 a year) The ICM Registry are in full control of whether or not the domain resolves.
According to their website you need to register as part of their 'sponsored community'. 'Fair enough' you say, 'where do I sign up'? Well you can't. At least not until the ICM send you an email with a valid link to a sign-up form. What they don't tell you is when you will get that email, and no amount of emails to ICM will enlighten me either. For me it has been seven days so far. Meanwhile the domain is earning me nothing and the registered year ticks along.
When will I get the email? Two months, three, never? Who knows. All I know is this is a very shady practice and I would stay the hell away.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/nattk/the_great_xxx_con/

Yesterday I launched http://www.GiftLizard.com

Gift Lizard let's you describe the person you are shopping for and it makes recommendations based
your description. It's a more natural and free way to search for gifts because you don't need
to know what you want to buy for them but can get customized suggestions for the giftee.

The story behind the idea is kind of interesting. I was at Startup Weekend a couple weeks ago
and I didn't join a group on the first night. I went home after a long night at the bar and woke
up before my alarm clock with this idea in my head. It was a unique experience waking up with an
idea stuck in my head (and being up at 6am without an alarm going off).

So I quickly wrote it down on my idea pad and went back to the event. I started designing a mockup.

I showed a few people and we decided to work on it as our weekend project.

The final result was interesting, but it wasn't exactly what I had imagined. I didn't think much
about it for the next week or so. But eventually I realized I couldn't let it go. I had to build
my vision out or I wouldn't be satisfied that I had at least tried.

So yesterday, I launched Gift Lizard.

Instagram Engineering Challenge: The Unshredder
"Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to write a simple script that
takes a shredded image in as input and outputs an unshredded and reconstituted image."

So here's the sample image:

We're given the information that the slices are 32 pixels wide each, so I don't actually
address finding slices.

My Solution Process

Disclaimer: I've never really worked with images before and have little to no
knowledge of the research and techniques often used in this area.

The challenge appears to be figure out the best way to put pieces back together.

My first thought was I can sample X pixels from each edge of a slice, grab the RGB
value of each pixel and compare the difference.

The reasoning behind this was RGB is the easiest way I can think of to compare
differences in colors between pixels. Sampling would hopefully make it faster.

I made one critical mistake, instead of comparing pixel to pixel, I calculated
total R,G,B on an edge and compared the sum of an edge instead of a difference.

I didn't understand why that was wrong until the example of a checkerboard was
given. If you had a slice on a checkerboard they would actually be equal on
average but very different on a pixel to pixel comparison.

So, I had to revise my solution to compare pixel to pixel on each slice against
its opposing slices. So left side of slice 1 was compared against right side of
all the other slices in the image. The logic being that the slices with the
least amount of difference between them probably fit together.

Almost. Something is wrong here. The striped building seems to throwing it off.
The striped building has the highest difference value of any left-right pairs.
So my algorithm kept putting it on the side.

How can I make the striped building fit together? I tried cheating and seeded the
proper right end image (slice 10) and the image constructed itself perfectly.

Well, the only solution I came up with was somewhat brute force in nature. What
if I try compiling the image with every slice as an edge and see what the total
computed difference of the image is?

Voila! The only way I could think to overcome this was proving the whole image turned
out better despite the high difference pair.

My code is publicly available on Github

I apologize if you actually read the code, it's a mess, there is a lot of testing going on, commented out code and things that aren't used in the final version. I thought it would be a good way to learn about ImageMagick and PHP's Imagick class (which is the worst documented thing I've seen on PHP.NET)

This was the expected, default even, outcome.

We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding.
Please don't take it personally. The applications we receive get
better every funding cycle, and since there's a limit on the number
of startups we can interview in person, we had to turn away a lot
of genuinely promising groups.

Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know
we make lots of mistakes. It's alarming how often the last group
to make it over the threshold for interviews ends up being one that
we fund. That means there are surely other good groups that fall
just below the threshold and that we miss even interviewing.

http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html

We're trying to get better at this, but the hard limit on the number
of interviews means it's practically certain that groups we rejected
will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate