Friday, July 10, 2009

think-local.biz

Upon discovering that think-local.biz has been acquired by someone in England, I try to find out their plans. It turns out a borough is planning to use the site to promote local businesses - only for their borough. Good idea, but a waste of a good domain name.

I discuss the issue with the government officials (who make decisions at a snail's pace), and find out the name of their web developer.

I share my ideas with the web developers, and they respond with over-the-top enthusiasm. But the talk is of writing a business plan and venture capital - top down, instead of my more organic grass roots approach.

I am hoping that I just might hire the developers myself, but they seem to have their hands full re-vamping the government site.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Shop in Berkeley

I meet with Lee Trampleasure, who has been running ShopinBerkeley.com. I am surprised to find that Lee is not using a database-driven site. He is tired of updating all of his links. He also believes it is foolish to try to compete with Yelp! and Google is now jumping onto the local bandwagon, so as far as he's concerned, the game is over. Like me, he has a day job, and this is a part-time gig. Unlike me, he was actually making money at it for awhile, but now his income on the site comes from google ad links? What's wrong with that picture?