Posts by Janneane Blevins

Do you remember Del.icio.us? Or Delicious as it’s been simplified to today. I’ve been a longtime user now (since ’07). Their simple, but powerful, tagging system immediately became a trusty aid for me to catalog and organize my project management apps, blog inspiration, gift lists, wish lists, wedding, trips, and more. Delicious was a gateway solution for me (and millions of others) to tame the web and cull it according to my personal tastes.

Quickly after joining Delicious, I discovered other, more specialized apps to help me collect & share the web.

First there was Tumblr: a beautiful, engaging, simply designed and very compelling microblogging tool. Links became alive when you could display them…

There’s a great post over on The 99% that advises on how you can get more out of daily to-dos, by applying n-dimensional thinking. The resulting list is more dynamic and will help you (1) Focus on completing the most valuable tasks, and (2) learn new skills while executing them.

But there actually may be a third, more exciting value prop to amplifying your list: innovation, or even invention, of products.

The post details the common scenario of proposal writing:

For example, let’s say you have to draft up a contract for a client project, a rather humdrum task. Applying N-dimensional thinking, you decide to transform this task by increasing its overall efficiency (one new dimension), improving the contract template design (a second dimension), and learning

Recently our team began using Flow – a simple and powerful group task management app. During the free trial, I signed up with a couple different emails to see what it was like to interact with team members on Flow – without putting my team through the pains of dummy tasks, fake scenarios, and unnecessary email.

After signing up the whole team for paid accounts, I let my other test login expire. I had forgotten about it until today, when I had the chance to see some of Flow’s remarketing efforts.

I have to say, their campaign was pretty compelling (and this is to an already converted customer). They tell you straight up that the app has changed; try it again – for free.

My usual approach to project management, is making sure that we’ve planned for everything that our team has to do, and when we need to get it done by. But recently I’ve been realizing that it’s just as important to identify what we don’t need to do.

In a takeaway from The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World by Chris Guillebeau, the Startup Daily recommends creating a “To-Stop-Doing” List:

“Write down all the things you are doing that are draining your energy and are not essential to reaching your goals. Take advantage of the fact that stopping is easier than starting.”

So what kind of things do you need to stop doing? With each new…

Miranda July: The Future on Nowness.com.

I love this idiosyncratic solution from Miranda July, an offcut from her latest film, The Future. If often seems like a battle to be productive these days, with all the sources of distraction, entertainment, and information. Todd Henry refers to it as The Ping in his recent book, The Accidental Creative.

The Ping is that little sensation that occasionally prompts me to check my email or social media accounts. It’s the impulse to mindlessly surf news sites instead of doing something productive… it even has a life philosophy for me: “something out there is more important than whatever is right here.”

I use various software apps and online tools to help facilitate my…

When my friend Jenni and I started IndySpectator, we decided to base our business on email. Not a blog, Tumblr, Facebook, or a custom platform. Just plain jane email. Each week we send a few issues to our loyal readers exposing them to new things to love about Indy – food, arts, startups, music, events, and more.

The result has been a very engaged audience, that I don’t imagine we could have gained through a web-based platform. Our readers like us, because email offers the excitement of exclusivity and being the first in the know. No one feels special “discovering” what’s been broadcasted to millions. Additionally we come to our readers…

You can’t be everything to everybody. The Startup Daily delivered this short yet complex message in their July 5th edition. They advised:

Don’t water down your vision in an effort to appeal to a broader market. Proudly Exclude People. It’s a big world, you can confidently leave out 99% of it. The more narrow your focus is, the more passionate your customers will be about you and your business.

This is a hard-learned lesson, particularly as a young business or startup, eager and cash-starved. However, bloating your product with features to win sales, can quickly carry you away from the original vision. You need to “define the world’s appetite.”

But don’t take this as a writ large invitation to ignore these potential customers…

I started my morning off with some reading rather than email – Harvard Business Review magazine (the print version) and newspaper clippings, and slowly moving digital to enewsletters, Twitter, etc. I learned that:

Encouraging experimentation rather than PowerPoint has enabled employees throughout Intuit to move from satisfying customers to delighting them. – Roger Martin

and:

Despite Lady Gaga’s demanding world tour schedule this past fall, her team of seven quietly founded a start-up, the Backplane. The company, which has not yet been unveiled, is a platform meant to power online communities around specific interests, like musicians and sports teams, and to integrate feeds from Facebook, Twitter and other sites. – New York Times

I feel very inspired and light – agile. And although…

Once you step inside the tech world, it’s easy to forget about a slowing world economy, whether its a “sticky patch or a meltdown.” Tech bubble or not, there’s a profusion of new businesses, ideas and growth. And, as discussed at the recent D9 Conference, the Gang of Four (Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook) is leading the charge as people rush to build on top of these new competing platforms.

Today’s company founders only seem to be getting younger, seemingly with fewer traditional qualifications (bachelor’s degrees and MBAs). A phenomena that’s being supported by the likes of Peter Theil (who believes we’re in a bubble – a higher education one, that is) and his 20 Under 20 Fellowship, which is awarding $100,000 grants…

Since my first post on Fashion and Tech, Gilt Groupe raised an additional $138 million in financing, for a total of $221 million, and commands a present valuation near $1 billion. The “internet gold rush of the east” is official, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, as “would-be entrepreneurs ditch Wall Street or Madison Avenue careers to set up companies in New York-centric industries such as fashion, retail, finance and media.” You may have heard of other promising young startups from New York, too: Foursquare, Tumblr, SecondMarket, and up and comers Warby Parker, Etsy, GroupMe, and Kickstarter.

The phrase “New York-centric industries such as fashion, retail…