This Saturday we went to BarCamp Houston 3 at the Houston Technology Center and it was overall a pretty cool experience.  There weren’t as many presentations as I thought there would be and there wasn’t the variety of topics I was hoping for but for a FREE, self-run “unconference”, it was definitely worth my while to go.  I’ll keep my eye out for future BarCamps, especially because some of the BarCamp videos of other cities I watched on YouTube showed fairly sophisticated operations.

Unfortunately, some of the sessions that I wanted to go to overlapped with each other so I wasn’t able to see everything I wanted to.  But I wanted to share some highlights from some of the sessions we attended:

Mobile (WAP) Best Practices - David Herrold

• According to a poll on Pinstack, 59% of users surveyed check email while driving, 43% used AIM or BB messenging while driving, and 40% browse the web while driving
• According to Nielsen Mobile Report, 57% of US mobile subscribers were data users (SMS, mobile internet, email, etc.)
• 2.4 billion people use text messaging
• Shortcodes are extremely expensive.  Custom shortcode is $1,000/mo and random shortcode is $500/mo.
• Firefox is coming out with a mobile browser
• Skyfire is coming out with a mobile browser that will support Flash

Next Generation Biofuels: Global Markets & Trends - Will Thurmond

• Non-food source feedstock: Jatropha, algae, recycled waste, and sewage
• Jatropha: “The hardy Jatropha is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds containing up to 40% oil. When the seeds are crushed and processed, the resulting oil can be used in a standard diesel engine, while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power electricity plants.” - Wikipedia
• Per Thurmond’s book, Biodiesel 2020: A Global Market Survey, “China recently set aside an area the size of England to produce jatropha and other non-food plants for biodiesel. India has up to 60 million hectares of non-arable land available to produce jatropha, and intends to replace 20% of diesel fuels with jatropha-based biodiesel. In Brazil and Africa, there are significant programs underway dedicated to producing non-food crops jatropha and castor for biodiesel.”
• Algae can be used as feedstock as well and it serves dual purpose because you can use algae to capture carbon emissions.  The idea is to colocate algae plants next to coal plants.

Financing Your Startup 101 - Josh Tabin

• You can invest your 401K or IRA money into your own startup company (Guidant Financial Group specializes in this).  I don’t mean withdraw money (and incur huge penalities and taxes) but direct the investments to your own startup.
• Need to read Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
• Only approach Angel Investors when you have a product or something concrete (more than just an idea)
• Prepare your 5-minute pitch
• Small Business Loans are the most difficult way to secure funding
• Assess how proprietary your idea is, most ideas aren’t.  Most Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists do not like NDAs and will not agree to sign them
• The market is the most important.  You can have a great product/technology/idea but if the market is not ready for it or not receptive, you’ve got nothing
• Your team is second most important.  [Aside: Reminds me of YouNoodle, they take team relationships into account when predicting future value of startup companies]
• Comment from the attendees: “Providing data on market research and market demand is one of the most persuasive things you can include in your pitch.”

It wasn’t so much the things I learned directly from BarCamp that I enjoyed the most.  It was being in an environment where I was surrounded by dreamers, entrepreneurs– people who were doers and not just talkers.  It was really encouraging when during one of the sessions someone polled the group to see how many people had started a new company in the last 3-5 years and how many of them were already generating profits.  I knew I was in good company.  There was also plenty of downtime to talk and think things over.  It jump started some new conversations between the husband and I and shaped some of my ideas for the future.

The husband reduced our property value by $30,000 on the city’s books yesterday!  This is a HUGE accomplishment considering the fact that the houses that have been selling around our house have been inching higher and higher.  We were only able to reduce our property value from their original appraisal last year by four or five thousand dollars.

It’s such a strange game to play.  They introduced iSettle this year, proclaiming that you could protest your appraised property value online.  After the husband went through the online process, he received an email stating that he needed to show up and talk it over with an appraiser in person.  Nervous that he would be rejected for his lowballing, he studied our 50 page analysis and went armed with a lot of evidence of other houses that were similar to ours and were valued for less than ours.  Surprisingly, the guy he talked to took a low number that the husband offered, punched some numbers in his calculator and appraised our house for $30,000 less than what it was last year!  It’s kind of a weird position to be in.  The goal is to get your property value as low as possible so that your property taxes are as low as possible.  So that makes us happy.  But what does that mean about our market value when we want to sell the house in a year or so?  Are things really getting so bad?

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I’m not sure if CNN is taking their cue from Threadless in realizing that people are Tshirt crazy but the husband pointed out that they’ve recently added a Tshirt icon next to some of their headlines.  If you click on the icon, it takes you to a page where you can order a tshirt with that very headline.  You can even choose from six colors.  Check out their tshirt headline archive.

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I’m not ready to talk about The Dark Knight yet but I want to talk about formats.  I really enjoyed the IMAX version of The Dark Knight.  We got to the theater about an hour before the movie started and ended up somewhere in the middle of the long line.  They started seating us after only waiting for about twenty minutes or so and we snagged great seats that were pretty much centered and not too far down.  I felt really bad for the guys who looked like they were on first dates or first-ish dates and they were trying to find a good seat but there weren’t any good seats available.  The husband went out (in the most chivalrous way) to get us some salty snacks.  He returned with a large popcorn, a huge tray of nachos and a large soda.  I think I actually clapped when he arrived.

It was also horrible to see large groups of friends reserving rows of empty seats for their friends who were late.  I’ve been guilty of this on both sides but I’ve made a personal commitment to make sure that I’m never late for a show and that I won’t try to save seats for really late friends.

Anyway, back to formats.

The IMAX was such a treat to see.  I haven’t seen an IMAX film since elementary school when we went on a field trip and watched some sort of nature IMAX film.  I’m glad my reentry into the IMAX world was with the Dark Knight and not with the Polar Express.  A lot of the cityscapes were really just breathtaking.  You could almost imagine you were flying.  But here’s the thing.  I was strangely bothered by the clarity.  Or the lack of clarity I should say.  Maybe it’s because we watched Rambo on Blu-Ray the night before and the jungles of Thailand came through so piercingly clear (as did all the blood, guts and gore.)  I don’t know.  I honestly don’t know if I can say that IMAX is better than HD/Blu-Ray.  I mean, yeah, the size and the digital surround sound in the theaters is pretty incredible.  But if we turn out the lights and turn up our sound system at home with a Blu-Ray movie, I might prefer to see the bright clarity of things more than the hugeness of things.  Well, okay, that’s not true, I’d still prefer a theater experience.  But maybe if they come out with a 100″ HD TV, then I’d forgo the movie theater completely.

I opened up an account with Trading Direct back in my junior year of college because of their low trading rates and no account balance minimum requirements. I’ve stuck with it until now and they’ve gone through several upgrades. When I first signed up with them, their website was rudimentary and there were times when I seriously debated whether to change companies. They recently redid their website and it looks great and functions well. Their website is easy to use and comparable now to that of TD Ameritrade and E*Trade. I do have a TD Ameritrade account as well but I only opened it because there was this one particular health mutual fund that Trading Direct could not buy.

Other than that, I’ve been pretty happy with Trading Direct. Their fees are very straightforward, unlike E*Trade. Since it’s a smaller company, I also feel that the service responds a lot quicker and a lot of times you are dealing with a person instead of an automated message. I don’t know if I’d start off with Trading Direct if I didn’t know a lot about investing and needed a lot of over the phone guidance, but if you’re comfortable with trading and you aren’t doing anything complex, I would highly recommend using Trading Direct. If you are into margin trading, they supposedly have great rates for that– although I never dabble in that.

They have served me well over the past several years and it’s really easy to transfer money back and forth between your trading account and your bank account once you set up a ACH profile.

I always like to give kudos to the good companies out there and I definitely think Trading Direct is one of them.

I hope to see them continue to grow as a company and stay competitive with the big boys.

Hooray! The Spanish-American War is over!

Well, technically it was over in 1898 but we’re finally having the 3% excise tax removed. Yep, that’s right. For tax year 2006.

This is no hoax.

Click here for the CNN story.
Click here for the official IRS website.