Tyler Hunt

Daniel and I have been passionately working on TallyHoh for a while now. It’s an online feed reader at its core, but it has big aspirations to be much more than that. You can “tally” and “folly” items from your feeds to cast votes for them in either a positive or negative light. The votes are use to promote the greatest or most controversial topics of the moment.

For those not familiar with the concept, “feeds” basically provide a way to keep tabs on your favorite sites so you don’t have to visit them everyday to find out if they’ve been updated. Using a feed reader you can then subscribe to multiple feeds at once so you can read all of your blogs and news in one place.

We also made one big opinionated decision when we developed TallyHoh: we’re using OpenID exclusively. If you haven’t heard of OpenID, it’s a technological solution to the problem of user account overload. It lets you use a single account to access all of the sites that you visit. While it hasn’t seen mass adoption yet, it’s gaining a lot of momentum, and we feel confident enough in it to put our full weight behind it.

There’s still a lot to come, but we think TallyHoh has value as it stands today so we’re opening it up to let everyone try it out for themselves. We like the fact that our feeds are always online, and TallyHoh does a good job of keeping track of the things that you’ve read so you won’t see the same content twice.

Try it out, and let us know what you think.

With making becoming so popular recently, it makes a lot of sense to have a facility with the space and tools that normally wouldn’t be available to the average maker. TechShop is just such a place.

TechShop is a fully-equipped open-access workshop and creative environment that lets you drop in any time and work on your own projects at your own pace. It is like a health club with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment…a Kinko’s for geeks.

With everything from automotive and manufacturing tools, to electronics, silkscreening, and plastics, there isn’t much you couldn’t make at TechShop. And, if it’s knowledge you’re lacking, they have plenty of classes to give instruction on using all of those fancy machines. In some of them you even build things like motorcycles or hot rods, which are then sold on eBay, with the proceeds split between the build team and TechShop.

It’s too bad they’re located in San Francisco.

I’ve been a little very reluctant to work with other people on my personal projects, mostly because I have selfishly wanted to keep any potential profits for myself. Up until now I had passed this off as logical by working under the assumption that if I were to ever make any money, it wouldn’t be enough to split two or more ways, so I’m better off keeping my ideas to myself.

I’m slowly beginning to step away from this thought pattern. I had the opportunity to have Kirby do some usability testing on my current project, and without even expecting it, ended up making some fairly significant improvements to the application within a very short amount of time. Makes me wonder what would happen working full time with someone else. Maybe the profits would be split two ways, but if we could actually get something done and out the door in half the time, then there’s really no loss in that, is there?

Marc Hedlund has posted a series of entrepreneurial proverbs from his talk “Entrepreneuring for Geeks” given at ETech. Below are a few that struck my fancy.

Pay attention to the idea that won’t leave you alone — this is taken from Paul Hawken’s Growing a Business. Sometimes an idea catches hold of you and you find you can’t put it down. Pay attention to that! Just start working on it. Can’t get yourself to do anything on it? Move on. Find yourself waking up out of bed to write down new ideas about it? That’s a good one to choose.

Cool ideas are useless without great needs — this is the classic engineers’ entrepreneurial mistake (or at least I’d like to think so, since I’ve made it). Techies love tech, and a new technology can produce a lot of companies that don’t really meet a need. Better to start with the need, and then see how what you know can produce a better answer to that need. (Marketers tend to have the opposite problem: real, pressing needs with completely unworkable solutions.)

Build the simplest thing possible — engineers have the hardest time with this, with not overdesigning for the need they’re addressing. Make the simplest possible product that makes a significant dent in that need, and you’ll do far better than you would addressing two or three needs at once. Simplicity leads to clarity in everything you do.

It has been a month to the day since I moved to Tampa. During that time I have been feverishly applying to every decent job to show up in the job search engines. After not hearing anything back for quite some time and beginning to become frustrated and depressed about the situation, I came across Indeed, which resulted two callbacks the next day. One of these was a company called Online Outpost. I interviewed with them this morning, received a call this afternoon asking me to come in to meet the developer and COO, and left shortly thereafter with a job.

I start this Friday as an Application Developer on AuctionSound. It seems like a great company, and I’m really excited about working for them. It will also be nice just to be working again.

In today’s corporate world, Microsoft’s software has a dominating presence, and this couldn’t be summed up more succinctly than by this list of options from a dropdown box on a form I’m working on for a client right now:

That’s it. Those are the choices. How sad.

After taking almost a week off to work on homework and recover from being sick, I went into the office to day to try to get some work done.

The Downside Walking into a locked, dark, empty office isn’t usually the best motivation for getting work done. Since there have been some non-work-related things I’ve been needing to catch up on lately, I spent a while just fooling around. Then I did some freelance work, as well. Ultimately, I was able to do a bit of work for the boss, but it’s just hard working in such a solitary environment.

The Upside I got a lot done today that I don’t think I could have accomplished by curling up in my bed with the PowerBook all day. There’s just something about the office environment that fosters productivity. There were also two brand new Xserves and an Xserve RAID sitting on the table when I opened the door. There’s nothing more exciting than new toys, especially ones you’re invited to play with. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make the play-date, but it’s nice to know I have the option.

It looks like there’s some more freelance work coming my way. These jobs just keep coming to me. It kind of makes me wonder what would happen if I actually went out looking for work. Needless to say, I already have more on my plate than I can swallow, but the pay is too good to turn down, so it looks like I’ll be pushing something out of my schedule for the next few weeks (or months). Being busy is nice, but at the same time it sucks to realize that my last real summer vacation is being spent taking classes and working the rest of the time. The Memorial Day trip was a nice little getaway, but it would be nicer to go somewhere and do absolutely nothing for about a week.

Today I had what was only the second interview of my life. The first interview, from what I remember of it, couldn’t have been easier. It went something like, “Oh, you know HTML? Can you start tomorrow?” That was over four years ago. I felt like the interview today was very similar, however. After briefly going over my resumé, I was asked to explain what CSS and JavaScript are, and what relational integrity means. Aside from those questions (and whether or not I drink beer, to gauge my potential participation in “Thirsty Thursdays”), that was basically all there was to the interview. They want me, but I’m still not quite sure I want them. I’ll have to wait and see what kind of offer they make.

A few new things going on with me right now. I received a call today from FCE (who Daniel works for). I put in my resumé last week, and I now have an interview this Friday. I’m still really torn about taking this job. The experience would be good, but it also means a much longer drive and a pay cut.

Class work is starting to pick up a little. There are now two programming projects and a third homework assignment with fast-approaching due dates. I’ve been putting off doing any sort of work or study for either of my classes, but I spent some time during class today to work on the Operating Systems project. I actually came really close to getting it finished and working in the limited amount of time I spent on it.

I’m really starting to look forward to the trip this weekend. With only two days to go, it’s time to start thinking about things to bring, and making other final preparations. Assuming I don’t become violently ill beforehand, there should be plenty of good times to come.

There was a point a few weeks ago when I was ready to try out a different job for a while. I was getting tired of working on the same old projects all the time at my current job, and was generally bored with it most of the time. Then when I start working (almost) full-time during the short break from school before summer classes started, I realized that working more hours wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. There’s always things to do, and when you work full days, you get stuff finished a lot faster so you aren’t stuck working on the same project for three weeks straight.

Well, now that I’m enjoying my job more, I had mostly forgotten about getting an internship or some other summer position. Then Daniel informed me yesterday someone at his company just quit, and they’ll probably be looking for a replacement soon. So I’m faced with a bit of a dilemma here. Keep working at the same job I’ve been at since high school, and am now enjoying again, or go and seek out something fresh to gain a broader set of experiences. I’m thinking that a new opportunity awaits, and I need to seek it out.

Having never been to one of UCF’s job fairs before, I thought it might be a good idea to go and get some experience talking to some of the recruiters. But while I was going to just see what kind of jobs are out there, Kirby is in the midst of his job search right now, and was going at it in earnest. It ended up being kind of lame in my opinion, at least for Computer Science majors. The majority of the companies seemed to be telemarketers, resorts, and government agancies. A lot of the remaining companies were looking for accounting or entry-level management positions, so that only left about three people for me to talk to. It was worth going, though, if for no other reason than the freebies being given out. They always have the best free crap at these things (that was the other half of my reason for going).

Kirby seemed to have more luck than I did, and ended up applying for a job with one of the companies there. Hopefully they’ll give him a call, because it sounded like a decent position at a good company close to home.

Lots of stuff going on right now. Kirby is back in town as of yesterday, and is a fully-graduated man now in search of a job. Let him know if you hear of any good ones that sound like something an MIS/CIS major would do. We’ve been hanging out the last couple nights and having some good times, so I’m glad he’s back.

I, on the other hand, still have another year before I graduate, but in an attempt to hurry that proccess along some, I’m taking a couple courses this summer. Having just finished with the spring semester two weeks ago, it seems pretty sudden to jump back into it again, but the first day went well enough. It’s still too early to say the whether they’re interesting, hard, or just a waste of time.

Work is still going well. I’ve been putting in a lot more hours, and even managed to go in today for a few before class. I talked with F some last week about the future of the company and where things are heading. Since I haven’t heard anything back yet about an internship at Lockheed Martin, it’s looking like I’ll be sticking around at my current job for a while. I’m happy with that, though. The idea of working for a company as huge as Lockheed never appealed much to me.

The speed of online retailers and shipping companies these days continues to impress me. I ordered some RAM for the PowerBook yesterday afternoon, and the free second day FedEx shipping ended up being next day. The fact that I can order something and less than a day later have it in my hands is amazing.

Then there’s the PowerBook itself, which not only was customized for my order and shipped a day ahead of schedule, but arrived all the way from Shanghai, China in two days, after making its way through Alaska and Indiana first. FedEx seems to be especially good about moving packages efficiently. My experience with UPS on the other hand hasn’t been quite as impressive. It seems like the standard UPS service is seven day ground, and when I can get two to three day FedEx for about the same rate, it’s hard to understand how Brown can stay in business. The good old USPS is often a faster, cheaper alternative. You have to wonder where all of this is headed, and if all of our mail in the future will be delivered the next day or the same day.

So I feel like I’m making some progress. I’ve kind of been slacking off from work for the last semester or so, usually working less than ten hours a week. Sure, it was a tough semester, but if I had really wanted to I could have put in some more time. I think it’s harder than I realize working from home, but working from the office has been a dread simply because I don’t have a decent box to work on. It’s funny how the PowerBook has started to change that. Now that I’m taking it in to work, I’m not as opposed to spending time at the office, and work seems more enjoyable. There really is a lot to do right now, and more stuff just keeps piling up. My boss couldn’t be better about letting me live my life and making work a lower priority, but he really could use me right now, and I’m going to try to put in a full weeks worth before I start school again on Monday.

It’s funny how I also feel like I’ve been learning a lot about web development lately, as well, even though I can’t think of anything in particular that I’ve picked up. I think just getting my hands into it again has sparked some interest that had faded for a time. I’m excited about getting some personal projects started up again, and hopefully actually finishing one of them sometime soon.