The Monkey's alive!

live
Originally uploaded by roupen

What a trip! From buying my first book Jan 12 to an app deployed live as of this post - very cool. The last time I wrote code was 10 years ago after doing it for 10 years. The last time I wrote code was for embedded systems - not web.

I took a deep dive into Ruby on the 12th of January, 2008, and flintstoning.com is the end result. I'm proud ;-) What a difference a decade and the web have made when it comes to programming.

If not for the tireless help of Eldon Alameda, author of the book Practical Rails Projects. His code warrior instinct and patience are much appreciated. Also thanks to the good folks at SpeedRails.com and Maykel Rodriguez Rivero for providing the hosting and excellent and equally tireless support. Lastly, thanks for Suren for key hints along the way.

The app has a few cool things going for it. For one thing, some cool Ajax that allows for drag-and drop of todo items under "Today's Tasks" in the center of the page. Plus Chronic natural language time parsing (so when defining a task you could specify things like "tomorrow" "next month", etc. Very cool).

From newb to first app in less than 4 weeks. This has been fun!

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Viral begot me a Virus...

For the last few weeks, I've put on my Marketing hat and have been working on user acquisition with a combination of viral and WoM (word of mouth) shoe-string plan. I've been testing the waters with text (IRC), pic (Flickr) and video (YouTube) viral marketing (using existing social networks to spread the word about a service) along with Google Analytics (thank God for GA). For the last week, I've been going to sleep dreaming about traffic and conversion numbers so much so that Friday night my throat started to scratch. As of this post, I have some sort of a VIRAL respiratory throat infection.

Sunday and Monday nights were hell. Every time I swallowed it felt like i was swallowing broken glass (to give you an idea). Tylenol PM, Theraflu, even good 'ol trusted NyQuil (which would knock me out into a bliss) didn't do any good. toss and turn toss and turn. Plus fever, plus chills, etc. Tonight, its less fever, less soar throat but more classical runny nose and sporadic deep coughing. I took NyQuil and an hour into it, nada - i am not knocked out - i am writing this blog entry. Sigh!

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Pride...

For the first time in life as a parent, I got to experience the joy of accomplishment with my eldest son Aram. Today, we received letters from two of the high schools that he had applied to. He has been accepted to both: Serra High School in San Mateo, and Saint Ignatius Preparatory in San Francisco both with distinction.

We're very proud and happy.

Next Step: Aram has to decide which one to attend.

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Lets do the numbers...

I plan to update this post with my flickr, youtube and MySpace numbers... daily for the next month... a snapshot taken at 7PM everyday.

I've been on flickr since May 2006; youtube since July 2006; MySpace since June 2006.

Feb 20, 2007 F: 12,849 YT: xxxxxx, MS: 151
Feb 20, 2007 F: 12,690 YT: 25,935 MS: 144
Feb 19, 2007 F: 12,621 YT: 25,800 MS: 142
Feb 18, 2007 I wasn't able to log numbers.
Feb 17, 2007 F: 12,479 YT: 25,493 MS: 136
Feb 16, 2007 F: 12,375 YT: 25,359 MS: 134
Feb 15, 2007 F: 12,313 YT: 25,202 MS: 130
Feb 14, 2007 F: 12,224 YT: 25,081 MS: 121
Feb 13, 2007 F: 12,037 YT: 24,937 MS: 116

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...and w'ere running

After a couple of months of getting to "get-to-know-you" with Hikkup, we're finally up and running in Redwood City, CA. We're all on the same page - inventors, investors and developers. We moved into an office at the end of last month.

Suren A. joined as dev lead and Noam L. as product manager for the next couple of months. Walter B joined the dev team also today.

It's taken longer than you'd think getting setup should take... we still don't have white boards - why do they cost so much anyhow? We've looked high and low, near and far - experimented with Plexiglas and wall coverings to no avail. Finally, it looks like we're going to pay $100 for a 4'x6'pre-owned board.

We're on target as far as defining the core scenarios... there are lots of questions on what people will use Hikkup for... we've started work on ways to get the word out...

"Tell someone what's on your mind and find out something about yourself"

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What a revolution!!!

After being on the sidelines for a long time, I finally began uploading pictures and videos online - the feeling of sharing is great!

As of this post, I have 62 videos on YouTube with the first one uploaded July 2. The traffic at this place is simply phe-no-mi-nal!

A favorite 10 second break activity is to visit YouTube and check my stats! If I had a timer at the corner of my screen, I bet it would be turning in real time (like your home electric meter, all bet it slow but alive). Mind you that my videos are nothing special. They are vacation videos and a few marginally interesting things. I just cross the 5,000 view mark in about 8 weeks. That's an average of 90 views a day and more than 3 views an hour. The most views I have is 360 (the long tail of the long-tail).

Here are a couple of random data points that to me illustrate the power of the traffic going through YouTube.

When I posted this clip I got a comment within 24 hours from someone congratulating me for having posted a video from an event that he also attended. So you might be thinking "so what's the big deal?". The big deal is that the event in question was an Opera ballet that I attended in Yerevan, Armenia, at the end of June that this same person was at. Not only those astronomical odds, but that he/she found the video of said event on YouTube and commented on it. What are the odds? Coincidentally, this is my most viewed video following by this unscripted moments from my last trip to Yerevan, Armenia.

Yesterday, during our weekly weekend ritual at a local computer enrichment center that we take our sons to, the teenage coach there asked my oldest (Aram) whether we had videos on YouTube. Apparently, he and his friend was searching around for a few choice tags and they stumbled on this clip. Again, what are the odds?

By comparison, flickr is slower going. As of this blog, I have about 1,400 photos on there - again mostly vacation stuff. My flickr is pushing 3,000 views.

I also took a step with Revver. As of 5 weeks ago, I uploaded about a dozen of the videos on YouTube. As of this blog, I have $11.10 in shared revenue which tickles me pink! However, something happened and the revenue stream hasn't grown this last week. I don't know if things are getting berried by new arrivals or what...

Here is the video I'm currently rooting for to push 300.



The feeling of being connected and sharing is just amazing and inspiring! Its a quiet euphoria when someone comments on a video or ranks it. This must be what it feels like when you're in the middle of a revolution.

On a related subject. Check out this from Blog Mavrick "when is a view a hit?" (good question - I don't know the answer).

The Net-Net:

1. I'm working on a NetVibes-ish front end for the various photo and video sharing services out there. Something that would let me tag and comment once. Also, something that summarizes the usage stats in one place.

2. I'm also interested in geo-tagging video. Search for the tags nahabedian and driving on YouTube for a hint. If you know of anything similar, drop me a line.

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My first post!

About a year ago, inspired by all the cool blogs out there, I created a TypePad account. I was enthused at first but then got lazy and hardly posted anything.

When I found out that I had to pay to post, after my TypePad trial account expired, that pretty much ended my nascent efforts at blogging right there and then. As it turns out, I had not reached the tipping point back then to join the blogosphere. That is, until I discovered Blogger which is free!

Earlier today, I tipped-over and created this account and I am now totally reinvigorated to start blogging. I hope and plan to blog here from time to time.

By the way, as I spell-checked this post (spelling is not my strong suit), the Blogger spellchecker flagged the word blogosphere as a typo ;-) Strange, no?

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