I’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into StudyBob. I’d say its 60% complete, not bad for a month’s work. I’d like to launch just before school starts back up (August 25th). Barring any unforeseen issues,  I don’t see this as overly ambitious.

I’m working diligently to follow the ideas laid out in 37signals : Getting Real . A lot of it I knew from the beginning (Ch 2: “Build Software for yourself” or “Your passion or lack-there-of will shine through”). They did a great job organizing all of these thoughts into a development mindset. It’s really a must-read.

I’ve been devouring every internet entrepreneurship story I can find. Mark Levchin (paypal), Jawed Karim (paypal + youtube), Evan Williams (twitter), just to name a few. There’s definitely some common trends, most notably passion.
(If you find internet entrepreneurship interesting iinovate is a stellar source. GigaOm and TechCrunch are also daily reads.)

I’ve definitely learned the value of ‘outsourcing’. I spent hours installing a mail server, creating accounts, adding a gui, re-doublechecking security… only to stumble upon the glorious Google Apps. Done. Shoot me an email: john <at> studybob.com . I should have learned my lesson, but instead I uploaded a wordpress directory and began hosting studybob blog. This put stress on my meager server, created more databases, etc… So I scrapped the entire install and  started a free wordpress.com hosted blog and threw on the first cool skin I found. Done. Check it out: studybob.wordpress.com. The lesson: time is finite, do cool things with it… leave the mundane to everyone else.