Got a technical, software or programming question like, “Is a function larger than an array [in Javascript]?” Or, do you just want to know when the first use of a secret identity in a comic book was? Either way, I’ve got your answer.
Well, I don’t, but Stack Exchange does. There’s a lot of user- generated question and answer sites out there, finding information you want isn’t necessarily difficult on the internet. What struck me when I was browsing through Stack Exchange was that the quality of the questions was far better than your average Yahoo! Answers. This is not a venue for “how du u kno wen ur in luv?” It’s smart people needing information from other smart people. The homepage is an endless scroll of questions, most of them interesting enough I found myself browsing the site. If you’re interested, the gent that founded Stack Exchange also founded Super User, a Q&A site that focuses only on technical questions.
Founder Jeff talks more below about creating a super exchange (see what I did there?):
How would you explain what you do to somebody’s grandmother?
If you have a technical question and type it in to Google, we want Stack Exchange (and Super User) be the page with the best answer!
What are some industry specific challenges you faced?
There are a lot of sites and forums that already offer technical answers to computer questions. Getting heard above the din takes time and effort, but our focus on simple, clean presentation and a relentless dedication to quality pays off, particularly on new topics where there aren’t as many web pages out there.
If you could go back, would you do anything differently? If so, what and why?
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The video above shows Australian Magician James Galea performing an unbelievable magic trick with a deck of cards. How does he do that?
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image to the left is a fun look at what a movie poster for an Oscar-nominated film would be like if it literally wanted to communicate what the movie was about. More fun posters in the Other section below.
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The video above is a new Super Bowl commercial from Honda, featuring Matthew Broderick and reminding us how much we loved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
What Zappos Can Teach You About Becoming Irresistible to Customers – http://t.co/3UxbuL0b
Gamification: The buzzword that can ruin your apps and business – http://t.co/bdsJOO6q
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image above is a fun look at bottled water from Apple – if Apple made bottled water. That post, and other interesting posts are in the “Other” section below.
Crowdsourcing: a 7+7 Primer (tips for businesses on leveraging crowdsourcing) - http://bit.ly/wxqtb5
Starting a new biz with a friend? Good interview with @mike_samson about biz w/ friends – http://bit.ly/wBFfBv
Women Small Business Owners – America’s New job Creators [infographic] – http://t.co/74nUB76D
crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight of the Week: Studyers -http://bit.ly/wy7Qty
crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight of the Week: Twittapolls – http://t.co/aFHWJTmq
Current education (I speak as a U.S. citizen) is a little– how to say this delicately– well, stale. Kids come from playing highly interactive video games or browsing on the collaborative internet to sit in uncomfortable desks, read from textbooks published in 1969 that are falling apart, and take notes on paper in cursive. How students are learning in the classroom isn’t super relevant to how they are learning vasts amount of information outside the classroom. But how do you start to connect this disparity?
It can start with a service like Studyers. Studyers is an online note-taking service, marketed primarily towards college students (or those lucky, lucky high school and middle school students who are allowed to have tablets or laptops in class). Students can type comments, upload the lecture’s presentation if available, and even draw arrows or doodles to help remember. Studyers also allows users to share with their friends, who can the post their own comments and feedback. Pretty rad, right? If anyone wants to post notes on how to master the pen tool in Illustrator, I’d be happy to take a peak (but seriously…HELP).
Shlomi talked to me more about making an online, collaborative note-taking platform:
How would you explain what you do to somebody’s grandmother?
Studyers is the easiest way to take notes online and share them with friends.
With Studyers a student can create a course notebook and create lesson notes. In the notes the students can type in their comments, free draw, add the lecturer’s presentation, create charts and graphs and add additional content from Wikipedia.
Studyers is also about sharing your studies which your friends (or with everyone) and enriching each others learning.
What are some industry specific challenges you faced?
We wish to replace the traditional notebook. We have discovered that many students are really attached to notebooks and won’t replace them easily. Additionally we learned that in some colleges teachers will not allow laptops / tablets in class, yet that is changing. (more…)
So, we all know that social media is this thing that we’re supposed to use to promote our businesses. There are a billion articles telling small business owners that this is REALLY IMPORTANT and NECESSARY and VITAL, or else we should go crawl into an analog, Web 1.0 hole and end it. This is mostly for good reason. After all, it makes it relatively easy for your company to interact directly with customers and for said customers to submit feedback and suggestions. However, organizing this feedback can prove to be quite the challenge.
Twittapolls is a service does just that: organizes the feedback you gather from social media sites. It’s simple to use, too, all you have to do is launch a poll, the service immediately promotes it on Facebook and Twitter, and then gathers the results to view and share in an easy and compatible format.
Below, Dave shares a lot of insight on starting a small business, especially one in such a popular medium:
How would you explain what you do to somebody’s grandmother?
(assuming everyone’s grandmother is as smart as mine….)
Granny, you see there are FREE services on the Internet called ‘Twitter’ and ‘Facebook’. They enable people to share personal opinion quickly in short messages using your computer and/or phone. They are very popular, and are in fact used globally….
However, while expressing opinion is easy, it is NOT easy to collect opinions and organize them. We created a service called “Twittapolls” (twitt-a-polls) to make that possible. Users can simply launch a poll, and automatically promote and share it using their existing Twitter and/or Facebook account. Results are collected automatically and are available immediately for everyone to view and share.
It was designed for use by Radio and TV stations to connect with their audiences, but is also used by individuals around the world. Oh, and we make money by providing the service and selling poll sponsorships (e.g. This poll sponsored by…).
What are some industry specific challenges you faced?
Getting people to re-think their own views of “success” in social media.
We honestly think the number of followers is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. In our view it is about the “passion” of your crowd; specifically, what percentage (%) of your friends/followers are actually participating, passing it on, and how often, and what is the trend? Twittapolls is the perfect measuring stick for that “passion” because it captures feedback and opinion by using polls using your Twitter and Facebook accounts – measuring your crowd’s responsiveness and engagement to your brand/account.
What was your biggest learning curve/experience?
Awareness is HARD to get in social media – there I said it… If you are not offering something obvious, cool, easy to use and works… you are not going anywhere fast. (more…)
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The video above contains 160 of the best one liners from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. That post, and other interesting posts are in the “Other” section below.
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image above is taken in Takotna, Alaska during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on March 9, 2011. The green in the sky is the aurora borealis. More phenomenal photos from 2011 are in the Other section below.
10 New Years Resolutions For Small Businesses and Startups – http://bit.ly/t7wmEP
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image above is a print ad for the WWF. The ad, created and designed by Contrapunto BBDO (Madrid, Spain), educates people about desertification, which destroys approximately 6,000 species every year. More creative ads in the Social Media & Marketing section below.
crowdSPRING is the world's #1 marketplace for entrepreneurs, small businesses, nonprofits and agencies who need custom logo design, web design, a new company name or other writing and design services. Over 110,000 designers and writers work on crowdSPRING. We are trusted by more than 27,000 happy clients around the world.
Got a technical, software or programming question like, “Is a function larger than an array [in Javascript]?” Or, do you just want to know when the first use of a secret identity in a comic book was? Either way, I’ve got your answer.
