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dynamIt Confidant:

We’ve worked with some great people over the years, however, there are a choice few on which we bestow the title “dynamIt Confidant“. Our list of confidants is short and includes IA people, programmers, designers and a few bus. dev. guys who we know are ridiculously talented and who we also know we can count in our circle. Our confidants get dynamIt email addresses, are part of the family, eat Thurman with us, wear dynamIt t-shirts and are, in general, people we can count on in life, yes, but more importantly in WEB.

Ryan Cook:

One of our confidants is Ryan Cook (cook, cookie, ry-guy, vooder, etc). Ryan has worked with us in strategy, research, IA and programming capacities. He is absurdly talented and has an acute sense of detail. His curiosity and (to quench that curiosity) knowledge of web is seldom matched. Ryan takes the initiative to be up-to-date on the industry/world (if that’s possible) and looks constantly to contribute to it. His skills include IA and database schema, XHTML, PHP, MySQL, CSS, JS, AS and anything else that he’s researching at the time. His official academic accomplishments decorate him with a degree in botany and minors in computer science and computer engineering (typical diversity exhibited by a member of dynamIt). I had the pleasure of gallivanting around Europe with Ry for about 6 months a few years ago including sailing the Greek Isles for a week. Those months gave us plenty of time for other conversation [read lack of consistent connectivity in hostels and on night trains]. Ryan’s complexity doesn’t end at algorithms. In fact, it only begins. Ryan happens to be a certified tracker and talented in wilderness survival. He’s a great skier, an entrepreneur, an avid reader (loves philosophy/religion), eclectic music lover and passionate outdoorsman and extreme athlete.

Ryan has recently, well, in the last 2 months, moved out to Boulder - an incredible natural environment and a hotbed for entrepreneurship, technology and business. He is currently the head of operations for VC Wear and is also the founder and facilitator of TechTreks.

Ryan’s move to Colorado was somewhat catalyzed when he pursued an idea that came from StartUp Weekend Bloomington in the spring, but has since found his place in the diverse and progressive community.

Look for Ryan to guest post on the dynamIt blog soon. All of you StartUp Weekend Junkies may be interested as Boulder is where Andrew Hyde resides and where the whole idea was born. Ryan will be shedding some light on the scene out there.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @protonron; Check out Ryan’s site: WhereToCaptain.com.

Who are your Confidants?

What does your network look like? Do you work closely with industry-folk, strategists, programmers or designers around the country?

one.

nick

It has been almost a month since my inaugural post on our blog and I get the feeling you all are in need of some music news. Ready or not, here it comes.

First up (and time-sensitive) we have the Jazz & Ribs Fest starting tonight right here in Columbus. It will run all weekend. Find out more here.. and if you’re in the Columbus area, I recommend following ‘ExpCols‘ on twitter so you won’t miss things like this in the future!

Next, I will be attending New American Music Union Festival in my hometown of Pittsburgh, August 8-9. Although heavily branded and sponsored by American Eagle (kind of lame, but whatever), the weekend is shaping up to be one to remember. Headlining artists include Bob Dylan, The Raconteurs, The Black Keys, Gnarls Barkley, The Roots, and Spoon (one of my favorite rock bands touring today). They have managed to assemble quite and eclectic and well-rounded lineup partly thanks to curator Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Kiedis said this about planning the festival:

“My experience tells me that concerts can be life changing. That is how I approached putting this lineup together. The thrill of seeing Bob Dylan next to The Raconteurs next to Gnarls Barkley next to The Roots is reason for us all to celebrate. Music is still the most inspiring creative force that I know of and this seemed like a prime opportunity to let it shine. Add to this the fact of a generously low ticket price and that it all takes place in the streets of Pittsburgh and we have the most rocking block party of the summer.”

There are also a number of college bands from across the country which will have the opportunity of playing at the same festival as many of the artists that have inspired them. Each one will be judged and the winning band will receive a full-day recording session in LA as well as lots of promotion from AE.

As of right now, all the tickets are sold out (!), but something tells me all of the South Side of Pittsburgh will be rocking regardless of admission. Feel like making a road trip? This might be just the time to do it.

In other music news, Pirate, a band featuring friend of dynamIt Nat Hagey (bass guitar), will be performing at The Basement on August 3. They are opening for We Are Scientists, a very good indie band hailing from England. I know I will be there, and I’m sure the guys of Pirate would like it if you stopped by too. Tickets are $12 and you can get them here.

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Album I’m currently digging: Evil Urges by My Morning Jacket

Journalists lead interesting lives, their work takes them to unique places even in the local setting. This is a life that most of us will never know beyond what we see on the news and in the papers.

However, I have found that technology allows us to dig a bit deeper and have a stronger experience than traditional media. Consider this scenario:

Last week dynamIt was interviewed about StartUp Weekend Columbus, which was held over the weekend at TechColumbus. We were talking rather informally with the reporter and the camera man while they setup in our office. We developed a good rapport with the camera man and so I began following him on Twitter (@AndYL_WCMH).

Andy is an avid Twitter user and often tweets (to use the parlance of our times) from his mobile phone while on the job. For example, the day after the dynamIt interview, Andy was down in Cincinnati to shoot an interview with presidential hopeful John McCain. Twitter received periodic updates of the trip, including a few camera phone pics.

Meanwhile, back in the office, I was following along via Twitter, and I could not help but feel almost as if I were there standing right next to Andy as he was at work. When I watched this story on the news I recalled the behind-the-scenes story told by Andy via Twitter. I was captivated by this story because I knew how it came about. I got so much more out of a simple news program because it was supported by web and mobile technology.

The homepage of our website reads the following:

“We are passionate about web and excited by new trends and web technologies.”

We received an e-mail from someone who had visited the dynamIt site after seeing Nick and Dan on NBC 4 news last week. In his e-mail, this gentlemen informed us that we had a typographical error right on our homepage. He claimed that it should read, “We are passionate about the web…” We quickly thanked him for looking out for us, but confirmed that it is as we have intended.

At StartUp Weekend Columbus this past weekend the same gentlemen approached me about the exact same issue insisting that we were wrong. I was not looking for an argument so I smiled and said something along the lines of “it makes sense to us, we see web as not just a singular object, but as a much larger concept.” But, this man was not convinced. He claimed that it is grammatically incorrect and that the language makes zero sense to the average person. He told me that from a marketing standpoint using this language will just confuse our potential customers and they will not want to work with us.

The audacity of my inquisitor encouraged a range of emotions, but I stayed cool and sincerely thought about what he said. In certain contexts does it sound silly to use the word ‘web’ without the definite article preceding it? Why is it that I left the article off when I originally wrote that blurb for our front page? Why does it sound so natural as it is? What is (the) web, really?

To me, the web is not an object, it is not a thing you use, it is not a place you go. Rather, web is an idea. The web is does not exist to do to a denumerable number of tasks. I do not use the web to just do x, y, and z. Sure, you may just need to do x, and we can help you with that too, but we see web as an endless array of possibilities. When you work with dynamIt we want to open up all of these paths to you. Every application we’ve built is different than the last and every one in the future will be different still. This is what keeps us passionate and engaged. Each project we work on is its own unique little puzzle that we receive great pleasure in solving.

So, within a matter of minutes I was able to craft this argument.

“What is the definition of a noun?” I asked, to which I received the response, “a person, place, or thing.”

“Well, yes,” I said, “but, there is one type of noun that you are forgetting. A noun is defined as a person, place, thing, or idea.” He complied.

Next, I asked, “give me an example of some other nouns that represent ideas.” He responded quickly with two: philosophy and chemistry.

I concluded, “Does it not makes sense if I say, ‘We are passionate about philosophy’? When referring to the subject as a whole, Would you ever say, ‘We really enjoy the chemistry’?”

So, what does everyone think? What is (the) web, really? Did I win the argument? Or, is dynamIt just a little bit crazy? Comment below.

Fred Wilson is a well known and respected leader at Union Square Ventures, a New York City based venture fund that has invested in the likes of blog management system Feedburner and online marketplace for home-made goods, Etsy. Fred has a ritual of taking a vacation to Europe for a month every year. He describes it as a way to refresh, and achieve a unique perspective on how his particular area of interest, web, is affecting and improving the lives of those around the world. Before his plane took off across the pond, he took a moment to reflect on Web 2.0 and where’s its headed on his blog. Clearly, there is a tone of frustration and anxiousness in his discussion as he laments about “Throwing food at your friends on Facebook” and he explains, “The work that we do at Union Square Ventures can’t just be about making money. At least that’s not enough for me. It has to be a force for positive social change. It needs to be about making the world a better place for our children and their children.” Wilson goes on to mention a series of objectives presented in media strategist Umair Haque’s musings titled, “A Manifesto for the Next Indutrial Revolution”. This next revolution of web, Haque argues, must seek to achieve the following goals:

Organize the world’s hunger.
Organize the world’s energy.
Organize the world’s thirst.
Organize the world’s health.
Organize the world’s freedom.
Organize the world’s finance.
Organize the world’s education.

It’s an incredibly daunting list to look at. Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger, 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, over 2 million people die each year from AIDS, and nearly one billion people in the world are illiterate. Soaring oil prices stare us in the face each day at the gas pump, tuition costs are rising faster and faster, and the U.S. economy is on a downhill dive.

Can all of that change? Is it changing? And how can web 2.0 even attempt to begin to organize, or better understand and improve, some of the world’s most pressing problems and topics? Well, web 2.0 in this regard is not perfect, and it’s not the full answer, but it’s significant, and it’s making a change. It may even be safe to say that web 2.0 is changing the world. That’s not something new is it? Well, take a step back. We’re not talking about changing the world in all the obvious ways that are commonly associated with web: not how it’s changing the way we communicate, the way we establish and preserve relationships, not even the way we find information. No, changing the world, in this conversation, is about taking on the most impossible tasks and creating significant improvements in each field. Take a closer look:

Organize the world’s hunger.

The Hunger Site- The perfect example of how a single click of the mouse can make a difference? The Hunger Site, where visitor’s clicks are turned into food donations, supported by sponsors and advertisers of the website. Since its launch in 1999, the site has funded over 573 million cups of food. More than half a billion cups of staple food have found their way to people in need in 74 countries that the program supports, and all it took was a click of the mouse from the estimated 220,000 people who visit the website each day. The Hunger Site is part of the GreaterGood Network, a series of websites that operate in a similar manner and support other issues including literacy efforts, breast cancer mammograms, and rain forest preservation. Each click generates just a penny or so, but it adds up - the network generated over $1.5 million last year to dedicate towards their campaigns. COO Lisa Halstead says, “There is now this forum for people all around the world to take action together to support an issue, and small actions can really add up to do a lot of good.” Small actions that would not be possible if it weren’t for the advent of the internet. Take a moment, and go click- it will make a world of difference.

FreeRice - What if you could improve your vocabulary while donating food to those who need it most? Free Rice operates on this principle. Visitors to the site are prompted to answer questions asking about the meaning of words such as “despoil”, “wizen”, and “intrinsic”. For each word correctly defined, 20 grains of rice is donated through the United Nations World Food Program. Words get more difficult and obscure, going up to level 50, which features words like “inimical”, “anamenesis” and “coquille”. FreeRice defines its two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

The premise is working -visitors contribute an average of 100,000 grains of rice to the fund each day, bringing FreeRice’s total to nearly 38 billion grains of rice! (By the way, inimical=hostile, coquille=scalloped dish, and anamenesis=recollection.)

Organize the world’s energy

TerraPass- Dr. Karl Ulrich biked sixteen miles a day to and from his office: a classroom at the University of Pennsylvania. But, sometimes he needed to drive, especially when he headed up to build a new cabin in Vermont. A strong environmentalist, Dr. Ulrich was torn and wished there was someway to offset all the emissions that his weekend drives created. He did some research, but wasn’t satisfied with the current options. So, in the fall of 2004, Dr. Ulrich walked into his classroom and presented his students a check for $5,000 and a mission: to create an easy way for everyday citizens to help offset their carbon dioxide emissions. Today, TerraPass is the brainchild of the students research and ideas. Users purchase different levels of carbon offsets based off the Carbon Footprint Calculator, and TerraPass uses these contributions to help fuel clean energy and efficiency projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as Wind Farms. TerraPass is making a difference: 946, 421, 186 lbs of co₂ has been reduced through the purchase of over 100,000 offsets. Adding TerraPass to simple, everyday changes to help combat the energy crisis and save the environment is a smart move that makes a big difference - something that wouldn’t have been possible without the web.

Organize the world’s thirst

PlayPumps International -Sure, PlayPumps International would be okay without the web - they’d be going about their business and helping create some change. But factor in the web and a dedicated following, and PlayPumps is creating a world of change. The groups mission is simple: leverage playground equipment into valuable tools to create clean water. PlayPumps are a powerful system of water pumps that operate through the power generated by children playing on the pumps. The group uses the web to expand and promote their mission - they use it to execute donation campaigns, including a recent drive that helped fund 100 new pumps in just 100 days, they use it to create interactive Google maps that show the location of their pumps, and they use it stay involved and connected on a number of popular social networks. Their efforts are working, and they are creating a world of change. Over 1,000 water pumps (each creating clean water for thousands) have been installed in 10 countries in Africa since 1994. Their future goals are lofty: reaching 10 million people in their target countries in the next few years. Sure, it’s a big goal, but with the advent of the web, and a potential audience of 1.4 billion users, anything is possible.

Organize the world’s health

Google Health-Google Health offers a way for anyone to organize their health information and create a unique health profile that compiles medical records, medications, and surgery reports into a powerful system. When you add a new medication into your profile, Google Health automatically checks for drug interactions and warns of possible side effects. The system also makes it easy to connect to relevant, local doctors and health care professionals by reviewing profiles and patient feedback ratings. Google Health is new, it’s still in Beta, but it’s an idea that has the potential to completely revolutionize the way people store and use their health information. Lethal interactions between multiple medicines result in the death of thousands of Americans each year, and many are blamed on doctors errors. Giving patients the ability to look out for their own well-being and take control of their health profiles may be an answer to stop the growing rate of drug error deaths.

WebMD- WebMD is the leading internet source of medical related resources and information. Research at Miami University has found services like WebMD to be beneficial in doctor-patient relationships, and has also found a growing trend in people using the services- up to 62.5% of patients say they now look up their medical information on their own before they meet with doctors. Clearly, WebMD is changing the way health information is organized and accessed, and its bringing that change into doctors offices across the country and around the world.

Organize the world’s freedom

Political Base- Every statistic reads the same: Americans, in comparison to other countries, just don’t vote. Our level of political activism is low, and our knowledge of the potential candidates who are vying to lead our countries is often inaccurate or flawed. People point to a number of barriers, with lack of interest and concern being atop the list. In comes Political Base, an online wiki powered community that attempts to make politics a little more interesting and much more interactive. The site is robust- it’s a full community, populated by candidate and voter profiles, driven by numerous blogs and message boards, and overflowing with exciting, useful interactive features like Issue Comparison Grids, Company Contribution Lists, and Election Polls and Trends. Knowledge empowers…and empowerment creates change.

Organize the world’s finance

Kiva - Loans can help people buy lots of things - cars, houses, even expensive jewelry and fancy clothes. But loans can also change lives - truly change them in a powerful, meaningful way. That’s the whole idea behind Kiva.org - an organization that seeks “to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.” Kiva allows entrepreneurs in developing countries to have an audience for their pitch, and pitch they do - potential investors can sort through dozens of entrepreneurs who dabble in the agriculture, commerce, and services fields to support themselves and their families. Lenders make small loans - say $25 or $50- that are usually paid back to them within one year. Kiva has a dedicated, large following, and it’s working. 270,000 lenders have helped some 40,000 borrowers in over 40 countries. These numbers add up to $27 million in funds lent to deserving entrepreneurs in developing countries - a huge accomplishment that would not have been possible without the internet and the Web 2.0 movement.

edun LIVE- Does something as simple as a T-Shirt have the potential to change the world? edun LIVE thinks so, and they may be on to something. edun LIVE is a socially conscious t-shirt company launched in 2005 by U2’s Bono and his wife, Ali Hewston. The company distributes t-shirts that are 100% African grown and produced, supporting sustainable and safe employment in the five countries that edun LIVE operates in. One of the key ideas behind the venture is: trade not aid. edun LIVE is a for-profit initiative, a deliberate move that is mean to allow outside firms to see the economic values of sustainable and socially conscious operations. So how did edun LIVE leverage the internet to expand their brand? They partnered with Zazzle, a site that allows shirts to be customized, to give users unlimited freedom and flexibility in designing edun LIVE shirts. The brand also operates edun, a high fashion socially conscious line, and edun LIVE on Campus, which seeks to bring the shirts to the college market. Maybe one shirt really can make a difference.

Organzie the world’s education

MIT OpenCourseWare - How would education change if anyone, free of charge, could have access to over 1,800 courses at one of the leading universities in the world? Massachusetts Institute of Technology is dedicated to finding the answer by operating MIT OpenCourseWare, an online collection of the universities offerings in the form of lecture notes and videos, exams, and teacher guidance and discussion. The site isn’t inexpensive to maintain: the university, corporate sponsors, and individual donors work to cover the nearly $4 million it costs each year to operate OCW. It’s a high price - but one peek at the statistics and success stories of the program reveal that it has paid invaluable dividends. 1 million people visit the site each month, 59% of them are outside of the United States, and 49% of them use OCW solely as a self-learning tool. With time and dedication, the uses for using OCW are nearly endless.The most popular course include Physics, Linear Algebra, and Psychology, but the offerings also include some unique courses like Toy Product Design, Soil Behavior, Hip Hop, and Advanced Kitchen Chemistry. With 1,800 courses and access unhindered by location or tuition costs, OCW is truly changing how the world’s education is organized and accessed.

It’s a start. And, after all this, maybe it’s time for a new list…

So…

Answer a question and donate food or Click and feed the hungry.

Calculate and make up for your pollution.

Play and create clean drinking water.

Diagnose yourself and help your doctor or Track your health profile.

Participate and make your political voice heard.

Design a t-shirt and help an African farmer or Lend and change a life.

Educate yourself and make a difference.

If you like this post, please digg it and help create change.

Want more like it? Please subscribe to our dynamIt Blog.

For those not familiar, API is short for application programming interface. An API is a tool that programmers use to integrate elements of an existing application in with their own. One bit differentiating Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 is the abundance of useful APIs. Web 1.0 application were what they were, there was no extending them, mash-ups were not yet dreamed up. Web 2.0 rolls around and people start to see the many advantages of making their data and functions open.

Yeah, as a developer, they can sometimes be tricky to get the hang of, but once you’ve got an API figured out, they are quite powerful. An application we build can access an API but still be entirely ours, nothing within the UI spills the beans that it is really on loan from someplace else. In addition, there is an often unrecognized consequence of using an API, that is, it saves development time. No need to build an administrative interface to add/update data, the web app which provides the API takes care of that for us.

So, when one of our company siblings B&a brought us the design and plan for a site for Gramophone and suggested we use the flickr API to build their gallery, one word came to mind….YES!

Yes, yes, yes. This is a sweet idea, we need a gallery to which we can upload photos, tag that photo under one of Gramophone’s services, and add a textual note which references an (x,y) coordinate on the photos. Flickr can do all these things using an interface that is proven usable, an interface with which the client is probably already familiar. What a clean solution - I do not need to design a backend, I do not need to setup a database, I do not need to make sure it all works and uploads the files to the right places. Instead, I grab the data from flickr and run with it.

With the launch of the site just last week, Gramophone, a company specializing in custom home entertainment technology, has a gallery showcasing their premium work. And when it comes time to display their latest and greatest custom home installation all they need to do is add a photo or two to their flickr photostream and watch it seamlessly appear in the Flash gallery on their website.

Gramophone. Sweet Life. Sweet Web.

Planning a site sometime soon? Here are some APIs worth taking a look at: Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, anything Google (especially Maps, Calendar, and Docs).