We launched Shopcaste several months ago to help people more easily find great bargains across Craigslist, Kijiji, eBay and other online stores.

Today, Shopcaste is launching 2 new features: Alerts and new mobile experience.

Alerts

Ever since the site was launched, many of you has asked for the ability to be notified when new items that match your search term gets posted. Now, you don't need to search for the same search term over and over again everyday just to check for new items. When they get posted, we will email you.

Just click the 'Alert me' button on the search results page to get started. 

New Mobile Experience

From our website log, we know that a good percentage of you access our site with your smartphone. Today, we are also launching a new mobile user experience that makes the site more "app-like". You still get all the same functionality, but with a more native look-and-feel.

To use this new look-and-feel, simply navigate from your smartphone's browser to http://shopcaste.com. You can also add its app icon on your home screen for easier access.

That's it for now. If you like using Shopcaste, please tell your friends about it. Or, if you have any feedback, please send me feedback here. 

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I have been following Eric Ries's Lean Startup movement over the past year, and I think one of the most important lessons is the danger of vanity metrics. Although he speaks from the perspective of startups, I think vanity metrics are potentially even more dangerous for more well-established websites.

Quick re-cap: the core idea of vanity metrics is that it's dangerous to use metrics such as total number of users or downloads to measure success. Tracking such these metrics will often show a monotonically increasing graph that looks great for marketing but hides real problems. It is much more useful to use cohort analysis and track actionable metrics (e.g. active users, revenue per user, user engagement, and user retention) to measure the true health of the business.

Consider the following scenario: foobar.com has been running a successful online community about antiques. Each month, foobar.com gets an average of 10 million unique visitors and over 25 million page views. Sounds good so far.

Management has been using UV/month and PV/month as the main tracking metrics. Despite running the website for 10 years, they are still seeing mild growth of 5% to 10% a year on average, so they are happy.

The problem with using these metrics to track the "success" of the business is:

1. The up and to the right graph gives you a false sense of success.

2. You have no idea how particular changes to the website impact your business. For example, if you saw a 10% drop in the number of users last month, you don't know if it's because of a new feature you introduced, the launch of a new competitor, or because of a copy change on the landing page.

3. Relying on these vanity metrics hides what's really important. For any online community, user engagement and retention rates are very important. Registered users incur higher number of page views, resulting in higher LTV to the company. Page views and unique users don't tell you anything about user engagement or retention.

Imagine in the above scenario, management has been blindly relying on the vanity metrics and think their business is doing pretty well. But the reality is that user engagement is dropping. Previously registered users are logging in less; fewer new users are signing up. The only reason why the PV/month and UV/month are still going up is because of search traffic and the increasing amount of content being indexed by search engines. This represents a very precarious situation for foobar.com and management has no idea. When most of your page views are coming from 1 time search traffic, and when you are not converting those users into more sticky registered users, it's very easy for those users to vanish when a better alternative comes along. Imagine now a new competitor, betterthanfoobar.com, is launched with much more sticky social features. Foobar.com's traffic may start to dwindle quickly, and they won't even know why.

The moral of the story is that businesses (large and small), need to focus on metrics that really matter. By focusing on the right metrics, companies can build better products and businesses.

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1. Decide that you need a mobile strategy.

If you have any web presence, and you are not convinced that you need a mobile strategy yet, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. Smartphone sales have surpassed PC sales for the first time in Q42011, so we are officially in the 'Post-PC era'. See data below. 

Nothing can stop the mobile train, so you might as well be prepared.

2. Decide what mobile platforms to support. 

Now that you are convinced that you are going to make a mobile version of your app or website, you need to decide which mobile platform to support. If you already have an existing website, you should look at your analytics to determine which platforms your users are already on. But as a general broad stroke, you can use the latest market data to help guide your decision. 

Generally speaking, iPhone and Android are must support platforms. The others are optional, but of course you need to consider your users and your business. Don't forget about tablets.

3. Decide what technologies to use.

The number of frameworks, libraries and technologies that can be used to build your mobile app/website is bewildering. Should you go native? HTML5? Hybrid? Should you create a mobile website or mobile applications?

Each one of these approaches have its pros and cons - which approach is right for you depend on the type of traffic, your staff's technical abilities, the number of platforms you decide to support and your time to market requirements.

The Traffic Factor

If your users typically come to your website via search or links posted on social networks, they are unlikely to want to download a native app. In this case, a HTML5 mobile website works the best.

If your users typically come to your site directly, it would make more sense to provide a native app where you can deliver the most optimal user experience and highest level of interaction.

Having analyzed what many companies have done and talked to many developers, the most ideal approach is to support both. Have a HTML5 mobile website, and also have a native app. You can decrease your total investment by building a hybrid native app, where the mobile site is wrapped in a native wrapper (check out PhoneGap or Titanium). This will not only increase your exposure and distribution through app stores, it will also let your more engaged users have a better experience. Gmail and Facebook are great examples of hybrid mobile apps + mobile website.

Should go Native?

That depends whether you want to squeeze every ounce of performance out and provide the most optimal user experience, or you want to save time/money and have a more unified codebase. Going native on iOS and Android would at least require your team to have expertise in Objective C and Java. It will require you to keep two completely separate code bases, and it would be hard to keep them synchronized for small teams. But if you have the resources, that may be the right thing for you to do.

Another benefit of going native is that you will be able to leverage the latest and greatest from the native platforms, and not have to depend on 3rd party frameworks (e.g. PhoneGap or Titanium) or HTML5 to catch up.

Conclusion

I hope this post has helped you in developing your company's mobile strategy. There is no one-size fits all strategy, so the most important thing is to get started and see what works for you.

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I came across this article yesterday: 

Forget the Facebook phone, survey finds consumers want an Amazon phone

One of my friends commented: "Interesting but hard to see how Amazon' leverage in this game."

I would wholeheartedly disagree.

Amazon Phone actually makes a lot of sense.

• Amazon has all the core services to go head-to-head with Apple. Apps Store, Bookstore, music store, video store, etc. It even has something that Apple doesn't have: the world's biggest online retail store.
• Amazon has already seen success launching the Kindle Fire. Amazon could pursue a similar strategy where it sells the phone at cost, and accrue profit via content sales.
• Selling its own phone would allow "Amazon experiences" to be deeply integrated into the phone instead of tacked on. Mobile commerce has particularly strong growth potential and they are uniquely well-positioned to exploit that.
• NFC payment will become mainstream on smartphones over the next several years. Amazon would be able to leverage user's purchase analytics to sell them more stuff through their store, customize AmazonLocal offers, etc.

I am sure they are seriously considering it, given the rumors that they have considered acquiring RIM.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Amazon ships a phone this year or next.

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During last weekend's Super Bowl, Twitter reported that at its peak, it reached a rate of 12k tweets per second.

On Wednesday, Forbes pointed out that Twitter makes less revenue in a year than does Apple make in a day.

Somehow, Twitter needs to figure how to translate its busy social network into revenue and profit.

May I suggest 2 potential revenue streams: SkimLinks and TweetStore

SkimLinks

Twitter should take a page out of the most recent social startup darling, Pinterest. Twitter should start monetizing tweeted links to products with SkimLinks. Here is a rough back of the envelope calcuation.

• Average tweets per day = 200 million
• % of tweets containing links to products ~ 1% (rough guess)
• Average affiliate revenue from each link ~ $0.50 (rough guess)

Obviously the above can be further refined to be more accurate, but the rough calcuation shows that there is potentially a $1 million per day of revenue untapped right now. Not too bad if you consider Twitter's total revenue was around $150 million for all of 2011.

TweetStore

Another even bigger potential source of revenue would be a new feature that lets Twitter users monetize any link to something they have created. In other words, make it brain dead simple to sell a song, a video, a blog post through Twitter. Take care of doing payment processing for these users, and get a 10% to 30% cut of the revenue. What I am suggesting is basically like Gumroad.

It's difficult to estimate how much revenue this could bring in as it is enabling a new type of commerce via Twitter, but you can guarantee that it will be big.

Final Thoughts

Although not rolled out yet, I am sure Twitter is already working on self-served advertising in the form of sponsored Tweets. My final thoughts are that there are tremendous revenue potential in Twitter, and I hope the team will be able to capitalize on these opportunities.

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As an ex-Microsoft mobile device/software incubator, I have some thoughts about the Fire I'd like to share with the Kindle Fire Team.

As we are starting 2012, it's clear that Amazon's Kindle Fire is already a smashing success. It is the first Android tablet that has gained significant traction in the marketplace, and it's already Amazon's all-time best-selling product. You have undoubtedly worked very hard on creating this wonderful product, and I'd like to offer you my sincere congratulations. You might like to know that when I was hunting for a Kindle Fire to buy locally shortly after Christmas, I ran into an unfamiliar scene at Best Buy: lots of iPad 2's on the shelves, but no Kindle Fire. In fact, I later found out that the Fire was sold out at all Best Buy, Target and Staple stores in the Puget Sound area.

Winning Combo

At $199, the low price point is the first thing that most people say about why this tablet is getting traction in the market place. While the price is certainly a big factor in its success, I would also like to point out that there are almost 30 other tablets at Best Buy that are at the same or lower price points, but have not had  similar success in the marketplace (including Kobo, Nook Color, Nova and Playbook).

Your recipe of a low price point + great content and services + trusted brand is proving to be a winning combination. While any competitor can create the same price point overnight, the great content + services + brand are particularly difficult to duplicate. You have successfully created a great competitive position.

Hardware

While there is no question the combination is a winning one, the hardware is mediocre at best. While I completely understand that you have an aggressive price point to hit, I urge you to consider several future enhancements.

• Lack of hardware volume keys make adjust volume and muting very inconvenient. There is a reason why almost all other tablets, including the iPad, have hardware buttons for volume.
• Location of the power button is WRONG. I don't see any reason why the power button needs to be at the bottom in portrait mode. It makes it very easy for a user to accidentally hit it with his or her pinky.
• Lack of memory expansion slot. Because the device only ships with 8GB of flash, having an expansion slot for SD cards would help convince more customers to buy it. But I completely understand the rationale for not including this as your strategy is for customers to get content from the cloud. If I were you, I wouldn't include this either, but it's worth thinking about.
• Lack of Cameras, Bluetooth, Microphone. Again, I understand you are not trying to be a full-blown tablet at this point, so you have made these cuts. But as the price of making the hardware comes down, you would want to consider adding these things to make it more competitive. No matter how you position the device, some customers will inevitably compare you to the big boys (aka iPad), and you don't want to look too handicapped. Besides, having Bluetooth and microphone would enable new user scenarios (Hello Skype!). I wish all the Kindle Fire software was on the Playbook hardware.
• Lack of HDMI. This one is a bit more worthy of considering. If you guys are serious about being a media device, people need to be able to watch videos on their TV. Amazon Instant Video is not as pervasive as Netflix on TVs and Set Top boxes yet, but if your customers can connect their Fire with their TVs, you have suddenly made the device a much better media device (and sell more videos along the way).

A few other notes: I liked the feel of the rubber backing because it won't scratch easily. The 1024x600 display is bright and the speakers sound better than I expected. While the touch response is a bit laggy at times, it's adequate.

It would be smart for Amazon to consider licensing the upper stack of its software to hardware manufacturers. It's a win-win: tablet makers will sell more of their tablets because they can now access Amazon's slew of content and services; Amazon can get more tablet users to access its services and contents, which is how it makes its money in this game anyway.

Software

You guys did a great job in executing the software, but I has have a few suggestions for you to consider.

The entire first launch experience is fantastic. Booting up for the first time was quick, and all my Amazon "stuff" came down to the device seamlessly once I signed in. I commend you that you have created a great looking custom launcher that makes it not look like the other hundreds of Android tablets out there. The bookshelf metaphor is both easy to understand and visually appealing. However, there are some improvements in the custom launcher that should be considered.

• While the primary categories are shown at the top bar, the back and home controls are at the bottom of the screen. It's inefficient for the users at best and frustrating at worst to have to jump up and down to navigate through the device.
• While the flipping of the MRU items on the home screen is visually pleasing, it's again inefficient and will lead to some privacy concerns for some. All the recent activity of the user is exposed right on the home screen. It's also easy to flip to the incorrect item on the MRU list.
• To prove that the UI is inefficient, consider this: Right now, the user can only start 5 items with a single tap immediately after unlocking the device. (The first one on the MRU list and 4 items from the Favorites). Everything else they must do at least another swipe or tap and swipes. Compared that with the iPad, where users can start 26 of their favorite apps with a single tap.
• Another problem with the big MRU flipping list on the homepage is that it makes it necessary for app developers to add a larger icon. I have side loaded a number of apps, and as far as I can tell, the only reason they are not on the Amazon App Store is that the developers haven't bothered to submit the app with a larger icon.
• Many usability studies have shown that use of MRU list should be combined with a user configurable list. Since you already have a MRU list on the home screen, I find the MRU list behavior under each category (e.g. Apps) to be unnecessary and confusing. Users develop a memory of where they placed certain apps, and constantly changing it is probably not a good idea.
• The unlock screen looks beautiful, with randomly chosen pictures showing up. But if the user chooses to user a password, then the experience quickly deteriorates. Not only does the keyboard looks ugly, it's also very difficult to type in the passcode due to the size of the device. I would urge you to change this to a simpler passcode mechanism like a digit only password, drawing a pattern on screen, or pointing at places in a picture. Though arguably "less secure", I think each of those would be sufficient for your users.

A contentious issue is probably your decision to use your own Apps Store and not include Android Market. While I am sure you have no lack of customers complaining about this, I think this will turn out to be the right thing for Amazon long term. Since Android development is so fragmented and looks like the wild wild west, it's the right thing to have some process to ensure a great user experience for your customers, as well as build another revenue stream. But I do urge you to be more aggressive in getting more Android apps onto the Amazon market. A number of "must-have" apps are still not on Amazon market (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Google Maps, and tons of others). I have rooted the device so I can add GoogleServicesFramework.apk, Android Market and a bunch of other apps that are not yet available on the Amazon App Market. They all worked without a hitch for me, but I doubt your average user will go through so much trouble to accomplish this. So please, if you are going to lock down the experience, at least make it as easy as possible for developers to put their apps on your App Store  and give them more incentives to do so.

Content & Services

This is what makes the Fire really shine. I commend you for your decision to include 1 month free Amazon Prime membership. Not only are you giving folks free 2-day shipping, you are also letting them use the Kindle Owner's Lending Library and stream instant videos for free. I also very much enjoy the free App a day that you offer. These services along with the existing Kindle ecosystem are what set you apart from the competition, and why customers are choosing to buy the Fire instead of other more able tablets at the same price point.

As I pointed out above, you should seriously considering licensing some of your software to other tablet makers to broaden your user base to your content and services.

Big Opportunity: Shopping

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, is what I see as a big opportunity for you.

Amazon is selling Kindle Fire at a loss (or break even) and betting that revenue will come from selling services and contents. This strategy is certainly different than Apple's, who make huge margins on every piece of hardware they sell, but it could work. However, in executing this strategy, it seems like Amazon has forgotten about its biggest advantage: you are the biggest online retailer in the world. 

From looking at the Fire, it's clear that Amazon isn't really leveraging its tablet to bring a better shopping experience for its users. The shopping experience on the Kindle, bluntly, sucks. On the Kindle Fire, Amazon has the opportunity to make its shopping experience the best on any tablet. The shopping experience should be beautiful, personalized, and well-integrated into the device. The experience should be more like flipping through a magazine rather than visiting the online store over the web. The experience should be personalized not just through what I have looked at, but what my friends and people I trust have purchased too. Social shopping is also something you guys don't seem to be pursuing aggressive enough, but that's the subject of another post.

With its own tablet, you have the unique opportunity to make advertising not look like advertising. Shopping shouldn't be an app; it should be one of the top level categories, just like Music, Books, Docs, Apps, etc. There is no reason why you guys can't deliver the BEST shopping experience on any tablet. You should integrate flash sales and location-based sales deeply into the experience. This is just scratching the surface. You are uniquely positioned to the best-of-breed shopping experience that would be useful to your users. In other words, help your users shop!

Conclusion

The Fire is a solid first step into the tablet market, but there is still a lot of work to be done. I would encourage the Kindle Fire team to sweep through the forums and the Kindle Fire reviews to prioritize your work and to re-think how shopping can be better done on the Kindle Fire.

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About a week ago, I put up a small pet project online that lets you easily search across Craigslist, Kijiji (in Canada only), eBay and other online stores. It's more of a simple, small and fun project while I played with Ruby and JQuery, but I created it also out of personal frustration from using those sites.

While I love having free local classified sites that let me buy and sell stuff (mostly geek toys), I find a typical "shopping workflow" on Craigslist/Kijiji to be less than optimal. Here is a typical one:

1. Go to Craigslist, search for "foo".

2. Scan each item text, and then click on the ones that look interesting to see the pictures.

RANT: I think Craigslist is one of the wonders of Internet. The UI has hardly changed over the past 10 years, yet it is still the most successful and widely used classified ads site. That speaks to early mover's advantage in a big way.

3. Open a new browser tab. Go to Kijiji (I do this only when I am in Toronto)

4. Do the same search again. Kijiji is a bit better because it shows pictures in the search results, but they are a bit small, so I usually still have to click on the link to see the larger pictures.

5. Open another new browser tab. Go to http://shopping.google.com/ (I do this when I am in the US), to see how much online stores sell the same item for if it's new.

6. Repeat step 5 with Amazon.com. 

I don't know if I am the only person who does this, but I basically just got sick of doing that each time I want to buy something used.

So now, with a single search, you can easily search across Craigslist, Kijiji (Canada only), eBay and other online stores (US only) visually (yes, you can see photos even for Craigslist items). I also have the code to search on Amazon already, but I haven't incorporated it into the site yet.

Since I don't make any money out of the site, I have just hosted it on Heroku with a single Web Dyno. So the site might be a bit slow, but it should work ok.

You can try it out at http://www.shopcaste.com.

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Conversation snippet from the folks at iFixit.com with Siri:

iFixit: "Siri, may we disassemble you for all to see?"

iPhone 4S (Siri): "42"

iFixit: "I didn't ask for the meaning of life, Siri..."

iPhone 4S (Siri): "42 is the number of seconds you have left until I initiate the self-destruct sequence..."

iFixit: "Message received."

Source: iFixit

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Tim Cook & Co. unveiled iPhone 4S yesterday along with a slew of product announcements. Fanboys were disappointed because they didn't get their form factor redesigned iPhone 5 yesterday. 

I am getting tired of hearing my friends on Facebook and a lot media blabbing about how Apple disappointed fans, and how iPhone 4S is a stop gap solution. One of my friends on Facebook even claimed that Apple is running out of innovation (well, he works for Samsung).

I would just like to voice my opinion because I think these comments are very unfair.

First of all, nobody says that the iPhone needs to have a form factor redesign every year. In fact, if you look at successful products across industries, the opposite is true. Look at the BMW 3 series, which is commonly seen as the gold standard of sports sedan. BMW takes great care to only have a redesign every 3-5 years, and when such redesign happens, they are evolutionary. Let's even look at other Apple products. Macbook Pro is another great example. The current unibody design has been already around since 2008, and I will say this very loud. Macbook Pros are stil the best laptops out there. So if these very successful product lines don't get form factor changes every year, why are people expecting Apple to come out with a new iPhone form factor every year?

Industrial design takes a lot of time and effort. Industrial design for phone is a even more complicated matter as you need to take into componenet sizes, battery life, cost of manufacturering, ergonomics, durability, and many other factors. It's simply unrealistic to expect Apple to launch a new form factor every year.

Now, the iPhone is hardly "the same iPhone". Apple has been innovating under the hood with the breakthrough voice assistant, Siri (which they acquired earlier). The improved 8MP camera, 1080p video and world phone capability are enough to get anyone still using iPhone 3GS to upgrade. And if you are on iPhone 4 and you are not upgrading, that's ok. Chances are, you are not out of your carrier contract yet anyway.

I won't lie and say that, as a consumer, I wasn't disappointed that a large screen iPhone was not announced. But as someone who works in this industry, I think what Apple is doing completely makes sense. We just need to tame the fanboy rumor mills next time.

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It's bull shit. Don't waste your time on trying to ideate the next big thing. Instead, spend your identifying new problems that can be solved, improve current solutions and execute with excellence.

But wait. Why do you say that James? Surely, there have been many examples of leapfrog products on the market. The iPhone and the iPad immediately come to mind.

I never said there is no leapfrog products. There are many examples of them in the market today, but I assert that leapfrog products only exist in hindsight. It's extremely difficult to come up with a truly new and groundbreaking product idea. Smartphones have existed for years before the iPhone existed. And so has Tablets. Tablet PCs have been around for ages before the first iPad was shipped. Both of these products just improved an existing category so much that they are deemed 'groundbreaking'. But neither are truly new.

If you are trying to come up with an awesome idea for a product or feature, having brainstorming meetings that focus on coming up with the next big leapfrog idea probably isn't the best way to go. Many 'leapfrog' products on the market are simply products that have been executed extremely well, and they were not born out of any leapfrog ideation process. Over the past 3 years, I have spent many hours in many brainstorming meetings with a lot of smart people, trying to come up with leapfrog ideas. And guess how many we have come up with? Zero.

The point is not that you shouldn't aim to have breakthrough products. The point is that it's very difficult to have a breakthrough product just by dreaming up of breakthrough ideas. You will have much better odds if you focus on problems people have, think about how to solve them in the best way possible, and execute like mad.

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Thanks, Gizmodo!

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Today, I woke up to the great news that the Obama administration has announced Startup America, an initiative to spur innovation and entrepreneurship. This includes a $1 billion early-stage innovation fund for high growth startups, expanding entrepreneurship education and incubation programs, and collaboration with the private sectors. With these commitments and changes, one of the most startup friendly country in the world, and it makes good on Obama's promise to invest in technology and entrepreneurship. You can read more about Techcrunch's report here.

Sadly, across the border, my home country is taking a big step backwards by approving metered Internet. Starting in March 31, large telecoms such as BCE can impose metered Internet to smaller ISPs, who in turn will need to pass the extra cost to their customers. It remains to be seen whether the large telecoms themselves will impose metered Internet with a smaller cap. This is not good for online usage, especially in an age where video streaming is commonplace. Netflix had just started their operations a few months ago in Canada. If metered Internet usage becomes commonplace, it will increase the cost of Internet access for consumers, stifle innovation, and slow down technological growth. Internet usage is like the lifeblood of technology. Charging more for it will slow down overall blood flow of the system and dramatically slow growth.

Please join me in signing this petition to stop metering Internet use at http://openmedia.ca/meter.

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Even non-techie folks are aware of the huge security issue in accessing popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter over public WiFi networks these days. How do I know? Because my wife is a non-techie, and she is concerned :) Let me try to explain what the issue is in the most non-techie way possible and offer you a solution.

Problem

The problem here is when you use a site like Facebook, over an unsecured WiFi network, the authentication token (which identifies to Facebook that its you) is transmitted in clear text. How do you know if you are on an unsecured WiFi network? Unfortunately, most public WiFi networks are unsecured today to make it easier for users to connect. If you just have to click a check box and say I agree to connect, it's an unsecured WiFi network. Actually, both Windows and OS X warn you before connecting to unsecured WiFi, but most people just ignore the warning. Encrypted WiFi networks require you to type in passwords, which is commonly found in people's homes.

Ok, so what's the big deal if things are transmitted in clear text? The guy sitting next to you at the coffee shop could be running a tool like Firesheep to *very easily* steal your auth token and log into Facebook or Twitter as you. Trust me, it's *really easy*. This problem does not only affect Facebook and Twitter, and you should avoid logging into any website over unsecured WiFi network if the web address does not start with HTTPS. HTTPS web sites use what's called SSL or Secure Socket Layer to encrypt traffic between you and the server, but HTTP web sites don't. Both Gmail and Hotmail use HTTPS by default, so you are safe with those services.

Now, this situation is not only bad for you, it's also bad for me. I like to work at coffee shops and my work involve working with sites like Facebook. While I like working at coffee shops, I don't like it enough to hand out my Facebook authentication token to strangers. What to do?

Solution

The easiest way for you to safely login to Facebook over public WiFi is to use a browser extension that forces the use of HTTPS on Facebook. Facebook actually supports HTTPS, but it's just not persistent. You can try it for yourself. Go to https://www.facebook.com/. You can log in, but the problem is right after you click something, it will go back to the non-https version. By using a browser extension like Use HTTPS for Google Chrome or HTTPS Everywhere for Firefox. After you install one of these extensions, you can try going to https://www.facebook.com. Now you will notice that as you use the site and click on links, the HTTPS remains on the address bar.

To be clear, the browser extension won't help you with any website. It just happens that both Facebook and Twitter have HTTPS versions of their websites but they haven't enabled HTTPS persistence. The two browser extensions above force the connection to use HTTPS.

Now you can have peace of mind when using Facebook in the public.

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I have been developing my app on my local machine. The app is still far from complete, but I think the time has come to try deploying it on Azure just to go through the motion and identify potential problems. I have done this once in the past with a previous application (Buddywishes.com), and it went smoothly. So I wasn't expecting any problems.

But this time around, the experience was anything but smooth. I started trying to deploy last night, and I only got it working about 10 minutes ago (obviously I didn't work from 10 pm to 3 pm non-stop; I do sleep). The problem I was hitting is that the deployment get stuck in this busy/restarting loop forever. Searching through the web, it's apparently a very common problem, and many people have come up with "check lists" to resolve the problem. Here are some that I came across:

• http://blogs.staykov.net/2009/12/windows-azure-role-stuck-in.html
• http://blogs.staykov.net/2009/12/another-common-reason-for-windows-azure.html
• http://blogs.staykov.net/2010/07/windows-azure-web-role-deployment.html
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg277962.aspx
• http://blog.toddysm.com/2010/01/windows-azure-deployment-stuck-in-initializing-busy-stopping-why.html

The most common things mentioned were making sure the DiagnosticsConnectionString for the web role project is not using the default and should be using your own account credentials. The second most common thing pointed out was to make sure referenced assemblies that are not in core .NET FX have the Copy To Local property set to True. I checked everything on the check lists and I was still getting no luck, and I felt like I was completely in the dark as I was just brute forcing. Then I came across Jim Nakashima's blog entry about using IntelliTrace to debug Windows Azure. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me as I couldn't even get the log files for some reason.

After a couple more hours of brute force debugging and researching, I noticed that my web project is missing the WebRole.cs. Interestingly, none of the check lists above mention this as a problem, so I wanted to highlight it here to save someone's time in case others are running into it. My web project was also missing several references that I noticed a plain vanilla MVC2 project created via a new cloud project would have. Specifically, I manually added back:

• Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics
• Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime
• Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient

After I added WebRole.cs to my project (copied from vanilla project) and the above references, I was tried deploying to the cloud instead. This time, I was at least able to use IntelliTrace to get the logs and saw that it was throwing exception because it could not find System.Web.Mvc.dll. That's an easy fix: just set this reference's Copy To Local property = True. I deployed again, and everything worked.

Hope this helps someone out there...

- James

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What a remarkable day today! Some of you may know that I used to blog quite frequently on SkratchBoard.com about mobile gadgets. About 4 months ago, however, my domain got taken over a cybersquatting company called Demand Domains.

I am happy that I finally got my domain back today! The folks at Demand Domains were at least nice enough to give me back my domain when I explained to them that I own the common law rights to the SkratchBoard.com mark. I had registered an LLC with the same name a while ago, and I have been publishing things under that name. They were very understanding, and cooperated in transferring my domain back to me.

Instead of putting my old blog back up, I have decided to move my Posterous blog here. SkratchBoard is no longer going to be about mobile devices. I am going to use this space more as a personal blog moving forward.

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Today, I stumbled upon a nice article on Seattle 2.0 from Aaron Franklin. The article resonated with me in particular since I just left Microsoft. I can already identify with a couple of things he mentioned, and I agree with his perspective on growth. In some sense, growing is the most important for me as I embark on my first year as an entrepreneur. I resolve to work hard and to create something of value, and ultimately it will be judged by the market. But I also believe there are factors in success that are beyond my control, yet I think growing is completely determined by me alone.

Hopefully in a year, I will have lots of learnings and growth to share.

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Today's my last day at MSFT. It feels strange to know that when I wake up on Monday, I don't have to go into the office. I guess that's understandable given that's pretty much what I have been doing everyday for the past 7 years.

I am thankful for having met all the great people with whom I had the opportunity to work with over the past 7-8 years at MSFT, and the company has treated me well. But I am also very excited about the next chapter of my life. Today marks the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new one. What lies ahead is mysterious, unknown and quite frankly, a bit scary. But that's also why it's tantalizing and exciting. What lies ahead completely relies on what I do and there is unlimited potential to be tapped. Having said that, I know the road ahead will be rough at times too. That's why I am writing this blog post for myself, more than anyone else. I want to remind myself that being able to pursue entrepreneurship is a privilege and not a right. This has been my dream for a long time, and I am finally doing it. I know of many others who also dream of the same, but due to various circumstances, they cannot have the luxury to do this. I feel blessed to have this opportunity and to have the support of my wife and family.

Now, let's get going...

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