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Josh Petersen
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Erik Benson
Chief Janitorial Officer
Todd Gehman
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Daniel Spils
Glue
Ivan Opalka
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SDE VIII
Eric Hodel
Fact Checker
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Thoughts
Apparently, the world is full of twinklers. Here’s a list of goals from around the world. Have an idea what these say? Add your translation to the comments.
Update: Steve Rubel predicted we’d see some press on our 43 Things preview, Twinkler but, as if on cue for the point we were trying to make about international users, here comes this international story from a news site in Norway. Today we’ve seen as much traffic from Norway as from the USA!
In the first 2 weeks of the preview, we’ve seen traffic from the following countries (listed in order)
Posted by Josh Petersen | Announcements | Comment [8]
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After months of vague allusions and subtle hints, I’m excited to be able to toss out the first tangible form of the idea we’ve been working on:
43 Things, Twinkler
This is a stripped-down version of the site we’re building. As a former creative writing major and failed novelist, I love paring things down to their bare minimum and then building them back up. It helps you find the essence of what you’re trying to do. So, upon Jason Fried’s suggestion, we reduced our big idea into a 3-page site. We can throw this out there and learn from it in our favored prototype quickly, iterate often, fail (and learn) early fashion.
Over the next 43 days, we’ll be unveiling a little more about what we’re building, give screenshots, explain our motivations, reveal our hopes, invite people to the beta, and talk about our new favorite lunch-time game, Credit Card Roulette.
The basic idea of 43 Things is this: it’s a well known fact that by writing down your goals you greatly increase the chances of actually completing them. Part of it is just knowing what your goals are. Another is being able to hold yourself accountable. Here’s a place to write down some things you want to do with this life, look at what other people want to do, and generally think about what makes life exciting for you.
When the full site launches, you’ll be able to export your information if you so desire. So, I challenge you to add a few things to your list, save it, and take a look at what everyone else is adding to their lists. If you have any feedback, comments, or suggestions about good places to go for lunch in the Seattle area (or about Twinkler), we’d love to hear them.
I should mention that we’ll be releasing a lot of this data out there for people to play with if they’re into that (I know I am). Things like number of people who have a particular thing on their list, similarities, etc. So if you want me to let you know when this stuff is available, send me an email (erik at this domain).
Posted by Erik Benson | Announcements | Comment [23]
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It’s flattering to get so many inquiries about what we are up to, and we are excited that you are excited. But really, if this turns out to be a neat idea, it’s going to be because you make it neat. So dial your anticipation down, as we start to pull back the curtains back a bit.
Here’s the first revelation: the product we are building is called 43 Things.
What does it do? Well we will get to that, but we’d love to hear your ideas for what you think it should do. What are your hopes for 43 Things?
Later in the week (when there are 43 days left in the year) we’ll start inviting people to check out a little pre-alpha demo version of an experiment (are there enough qualifications in that description?) which will give us a better idea of how to “finish up” the product. After that, we’ll have an invite only trial of the site. We are looking forward to seeing how people use 43 Things, but mostly, we are hoping you’ll share your thoughts for how our idea could grow.
If you want to be on our announcements list, enter your email in that form box to the right. Thanks.
Posted by Josh Petersen | Announcements | Comment [4]
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Can we just say that what we are building isn’t going to be that amazing. It is not some form of technology the world has never seen before. It won’t help you get up in the morning, though it might help you get a date.
To try and keep expectations low, we are going to try and push out a little sample of the sort of thing we are working on later this week.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Josh Petersen | Announcements | Comment [2]
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The Robots are rounding out our roster in October with the addition of Bob Cottrell, Todd Gehman and Ivan Opalka.
We’re thrilled to have Bob Cottrell join the Robots. A JD, MBA and BS in Mathematics makes Bob the only person I know who can sue himself for bad business and coding practices.
Todd Gehman brings with him a wealth of web development knowledge and some cool shirts. In a recent past life Todd worked in Seattle on a big website that sold lots of stuff.
From the original land of Robots comes the one and only Ivan Opalka. Ivan joins the Robots with an enthusiasm for building things from scratch. I’ve seen pictures of his hand-built motorcycle in his homeland of Slovakia—he built the engine, frame and fiberglass body by hand from the ground up. To je spica!
Posted by Daniel Spils | Announcements | Comment
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