Read this

I’ve been planning to put together a list… Pema’s suggested reading for tech entrepreneurs. 37Signal’s brilliant Getting Real will be in there, as well as Adam Morgan’s fantastic book about branding, Eating the Big Fish. I’m reading another one that will make the list, Founder at Work by Jessica Livingston.

Founders at Work is a collection of interviews with the founders of some of the highest profile and most successful tech startups of the last 10 years. There is Steve Wozniak of Apple, Max Levchin of PayPal, Mike Lazardis of RIM, Blake Ross of Firefox and 28 more.

Not surprisingly, the interviews make for pretty compelling reading. Livingston gets the founders talking honestly about the highs and lows of getting their companies off the ground. In totality, the book offers some great advice and paints a wonderful picture of what life is like inside a startup shooting toward mega success. Great inspiration.

My favorite day at GigPark

…is new feature release day. It’s always the toughest, busiest day but there is nothing more satisfying than watching people use a feature you’ve just worked hard to create.

Today we launched a big one: You can now ask friends for a recommendation and post messages to friends to help them find what they’re looking for.

This came from an insight we had a few weeks back, that recommendations aren’t often volunteered, they ‘happen’ as part of a conversation between friends. It sounds obvious now, but it took this little realization for us understand that if we really want to make sharing recommendations easier for people we need to facilitate the conversation.

So far our wonderful beta users are telling us they like being able to ask and respond to questions and are sending through some great ideas for improvement – just the way we like it.

I’m already looking forward to my next favorite day at GigPark.

Shawn and Richard sell Quotiki

Quotiki, a great social quotes site started by Toronto locals Shawn and Richard, announced their sale today to Utora of Yaphank, New York.

I’m a big fan of what Richard and Shawn have done with Quotiki. They chose an interesting little niche to focus on, quotes, and went about creating the best site on the web for quote lovers. I think their pragmatic approach of deliberately focusing on a smaller, under served category for their first major project together was a clever strategy. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next!

Congratulations Shawn and Richard!

BTW – Does anyone know who Utora is? And why they’re based in Yaphank?

Wings worth traveling for

Rosalynn is shooting a TV commercial in Buffalo next week and I’m trying (desperately) to convince her to same day courier me some Buffalo wings from the Anchor Bar.

If you live in Toronto and haven’t made the trip south yet for these wings… What are you waiting for!

While you’re in Buffalo make sure you visit the three Frank Lloyd Wright houses there, including the spectacular, recently renovated Darwin Martin House Complex.

Toronto gets a new building by Will Alsop

I’m late to this, but if you haven’t heard already Toronto is getting a new design by the British architect Will Alsop. The building will be the flagship for the mammoth new film studio development being installed in the portlands – Filmport.

Most people in Toronto will know Alsop by his incredible (and incredibly controversial) Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Although I’m by no means a raving Will Alsop fan I do really appreciate the amount of high profile commissioning going on in Toronto right now. Buildings like this pave the way for more innovative design in this city – something that benefits Toronto in many ways. There are the obvious pluses like increased tourism of course, but beyond that I think beautiful, challenging architecture creates a much more inspiring urban climate for citizens. When we are surrounded by buildings that challenge us I believe it becomes easier for us all to have thoughts and ideas beyond the ordinary and mediocre.

GigPark launches private beta

I’m extremely happy to let you all know that about 5 minutes ago we announced the launch of the GigPark private beta.

From the GigPark blog:

Pema, Paul, Tony and I are extremely excited to announce that we have a site ready. We’ve taken a page out of the brilliant book Getting Real by 37signals and kept it simple, but we think we have a fun and very useful application on our hands — a way for you and your friends to all receive great service by sharing recommendations.

Rather than start a publicity blitz, our plan is to introduce GigPark to a small group of people that we know and make it absolutely AMAZING for them. We are going to spend 100% of our time listening, building features the group asks for, and fixing problems they spot. We want to make a genuine difference in the lives of these people: hopefully giving them access to great new service people and allowing them to really help each other out.

The long term plan is that once this group is stoked on GigPark, we can take the walls down and get more people involved.

If you want to try GigPark, just ask and we’ll hook you up the next time we hand out beta codes.

And to our fantastic beta group, let the great service begin!

Come to DemoCamp

DemoCamp was kind of my introduction to the Toronto technology scene, along with the Mesh conference. It is a (sometimes) monthly get together where a passionate group, fueled by beer, demo interesting tech products they’ve been working on and share ideas. Regulars include developers, designers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, VCs, lawyers, media folk, marketing people and the general geekorati. They are great places to hear about new projects in Toronto and kick ideas around and, if you’re a startup, meet many many people that will help you along the way.

I’ve brought a few friends along to past DemoCamps and they’ve always got something out of it. So, if you haven’t been before – come along.

What: DemoCamp 14
When: September 17, 2007 6-9pm
Where: Toronto Board of Trade, 1 First Canadian Place, Toronto
How much: Free

The announcement from David is here and you can register for free here.

I’m back!

Sorry about that folks. Blogging took a little break as I ploughed my time into GigPark. I’m still a busy man, but I’m happy to say blogging is back on my to-do list. Look out.

Stencil by Banksy.

The firestorm will begin in 3… 2… 1…

Get ready to hear from some rather unhappy WordPress.com users over the next couple of days. The hosted blog site decided to remove feed statistics this afternoon, and we all know how much bloggers like to obsess over their stats. WordPress is an incredible tool (hell, I’m using it right now), but I think they might have some very unhappy customers on their hands.

Here is the quote from Matt:

As important to us to be constantly adding new features and functionality for you guys, sometimes we have to retire or prune things that just didn’t work out or that we don’t have time to focus on right now.

So today we bid farewell to our good fried Feed Stats, which tried to tell you how many subscribers you had to your blog and what software they used.

UPDATE: Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought. I guess WordPress users are a mild mannered bunch. Personally, I got around the loss of feed stats by switching to FeedBurner for my RSS feed.

Back to Algonquin Park

Tomorrow morning Rosalynn, Duncan, Deiss and I are all heading into Algonquin park for the first time this summer, and I can’t wait.

Algonquin is an absolute gem in my opinion. Having it so close makes living in Toronto twice as enjoyable. For anyone who lives in Toronto and hasn’t made the trip north yet – Go For It!!

Blogging will (obviously) not be happening in the next few days, but if I can get cell coverage I’ll try to send some photos to flickr.

Have a great weekend everyone.