Protoscopic » Books

Stock Photos

Brad — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:15:38 +0000

Like this, for example

Stock photos are an Internet entrepreneur’s friend. A surprising number of people are willing to allow you to use their work for free. In a lot of cases site administrators try to capitalize on this and put themselves in as a middle man, but there are still plenty of places on the web where you can get stock photography and graphics for free.

A good starting place is the Wikipedia Page listing a good number of resources on the topic.

If those don’t work for you, here’s an Older List, which has quite a few possibilities as well.

There are of course plenty of ‘scams’ out there, so we have typically found a few that work for us and stuck with them. Some favorites of ours are:

One way you can thank them is by putting a link back to them!

Review: Getting Things Done

Brad — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:15:35 +0000

A Chorus of Praise

I sometimes think that everyone has read this book. It’s featured prominently on sites like 43 folders. In fact “personal productivity” or “life hacking” is an entire genre of blogs out there, and a useful one at that.

While I don’t consider Protoscopic to necessarily be one of those sites, I think improving your productivity is one of the best ways to improve the returns of “You, Inc.” If you can waste less time and let others waste less of your time, you will be able to devote more time to side projects and possibly bring your “hourly rate” up. For those of us who keep our “day job” and still try to build an Internet Empire, increasing productivity is often a must.

Given all the attention already given to David Allen’s method, why am I still bothering to post a review? Well to some degree I want to reach out to the skeptical, like myself, and explain why I think that this book is a must-read even with all the hype. It’s not rocket-science, but it is fundamentally sound. So allow me to add to the chorus of praise.

Lists, lists and more lists

As I started reading Getting Things Done I became quickly annoyed. I am a list-maker by nature and his advice largely seemed to boil down to “make a bunch of lists and put stuff on them and periodically check them over.” I didn’t need a book to tell me that!

Despite my skepticism I followed his plan as I read. I didn’t wait until I got to the end to start his method, and as I proceeded through the book I found that the system was working. After this I decided to try to identify what it was about his lists that was so much better than mine.

I quickly came to the conclusion that his methods aren’t nearly as important as his goals. I think everyone who reads this book implements things a little differently, but his fundamental tenets sink into your mind and color how you do things. I think for me the key piece of advice that made the difference was (paraphrased):

Get everything on lists so you know what you have to do and don’t have nebulous worries floating around in your psyche.

If you keep up with your lists and manage them correctly you know what you’re supposed to be doing, have done and what’s behind. I so often find myself feeling “behind” without having enumerated exactly what I’m behind on. As I implemented the system I found that I easily knew what I was behind on, so even if I was behind I didn’t just have a vague feeling of dread. I knew what needed to be done and it seemed much more manageable with it all in front of me.

Required Reading

This book joins the exclusive club of books I would recommend for just about anyone. I suppose if you aren’t feeling like you don’t have enough time, then productivity concerns can wait. But I think that most of us are feeling a time crunch and a quick dose of Getting Things Done, can help alleviate things.

Review: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law

Brad — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:15:47 +0000

The Entrepreneur\'s Guide to Business Law

Rarely can I give an unabashedly positive review of a book. In this case I can unequivocally say that I recommend The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law to anyone who wants to be an Entrepreneur.

What It Isn’t

Lest I too badly disturb anyone used to my usual cynicism, let me first warn potential buyers what this book is not. This book is not a guide to trying to conduct certain legal matters without a lawyer. There are tons of books out there on “Incorporating Your Own Business,” and this is not one of them. The value of this book is in limiting how much time and money you spend with your lawyer and having an understanding of your options and what your lawyer is advocating.

What It Is

Ultimately The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law is simply a high-level guide to the subset of the law that most affects entrepreneurs. The language is very easy to follow and concepts are presented in a logical order. In an excellent choice, the subject matter is presented in the order that it will usually be relevant to people. So for example, it first focuses on “quitting your day job” with rights to all of your work and proceeds all the way to IPO law.

One complaint that many may lodge is that so much is covered that none of it will apply to everyone. I think this is an illogical complaint for several reasons. First, the book is quite long, so even if you don’t use all of the information you still probably got plenty of value out of the book. Second, and more importantly, is that you can’t really know which of these sections does or does not apply to you without reading them. Information, even if not applicable now, may indeed be as your business progresses.

While you may never have an IPO, after reading about what it entails you might have a better idea of when it might be feasible. Even if it wasn’t your intent, you may find out that it’s more realistic than you thought. Or the book may recommend small changes you can make to make an IPO more feasible even if it’s not really in your plans. Even if you think that pollution may never be a concern for your business, the book makes some valid points about why you should be concerned about it, even if you aren’t in manufacturing.

Strong Points

The strongest points of the book are:

Easy to understand language.
A ‘case study’ at the end of each chapter that follows the progress of a fictitious startup to illustrate certain points.
An appropriate amount of detail on most subjects. Enough to be useful, but not too much to make it not worth reading.

In summary I would recommend this book to anyone who plans on starting any kind of entrepreneurial venture. A few dollars spent on it could save you thousands in legal fees. Even if you never hire a lawyer, your improved knowledge of the law can make you more astute and informed when dealing with other parties.

Review: Wikinomics

Brad — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:34:53 +0000

Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything is written by Don Tapscot and Anthony D. Williams, two consultants from the New Paradigm “think tank.” It is a broad overview of the new web economy and what “Web 2.0” means for the future. They also boldly apply these concepts to non-web related production and espouse the global application of their four principles:

Being Open
Peering
Sharing
Acting Globally

Armed with these four principles they then proceed to attempt to do several things. First, they try to show examples of when these principles have been effective. Second, they endeavor to explain why these principles have been effective. Finally, they attempt to explain why these principles are universally applicable and will be defining characteristics of success in the future. They are very successful in two of these attempts.

One of the strongest attributes of the book is the authors’ clear and obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter. They clearly believe what they are preaching. However that enthusiasm becomes advocacy many times, and these are the points at which the book is its weakest. While I found their accounts of companies that had succeeded with these principles fascinating, and I thought that their analysis of why they were successful was very insightful, they would then proceed to explain why companies that do not comply are doomed, which I found off-putting.

At the end of each chapter they give advice, followed by dire predictions that typically look something like this (from page 63 of my edition):

The old, ironclad vessels of the industrial era will sink under the crashing waves, while firms that create highly nimble and networked structures and connect to external ideas and energies will gain the buoyancy they require to survive.

While I understand that consultants are paid to advocate their positions, a dose of moderation would not go amiss here. I agree with many of their tenets and think there are advantages to be gained; I do not think the authors come anywhere near providing an adequate case to make their grandiose claims about the future. The reader walks away from the book with the implication that every company that doesn’t go open-source, give away some proprietary information, and start a wiki immediately is a dying dinosaur.

Meanwhile, the sections in which they draw these “conclusions” are very brief and are mainly full of vivid language and short on facts. In fact, the entire first chapter is just a mellifluous flow of praises of their methodology, which nearly put me off the entire book. They don’t actually get to refuting the critics of their principles until Chapter 10, which they still do not do adequately enough for my liking. It is clear that their target audience is mainly those who are desperately ready to be converted.

Not to get too involved in challenging their claims, I will touch on a few points to illustrate my complaint. First, in the same breath that they say how every company should be perusing this approach, they also say that one of the big advantages to these companies is the goodwill they garner as a result. If these procedures were to become standard operating procedure, then no one would gain much goodwill from doing something that was seen as commonplace.

When they really go awry is when they start talking about manufacturing. For example, while the content on how they feel the boom in China relates to “wikinomics” is interesting, their notion that commerce has been adversarial for so long and only just now are the “wikinomics” advocates bringing collaboration to them is ludicrous. Commerce always has and always will work best when both parties involved work together and are happy with the results. To act like it took the “Web 2.0″ generation to bring about these concepts is simply absurd.

Given all this you might find it surprising that I highly recommend those that are exploring business on the web read it. While in my estimation they fail to make their case for these principles being universal and mandatory, their enthusiasm for describing the companies that did it and why they succeeded is fascinating and insightful.

As I mention, I was nearly put off by the first chapter, however once they actually got into describing how these companies do business I really got interested in thinking about what needs to be proprietary and what doesn’t. Even more compelling is their description of why people like these products and what “Web 2.0” really means. All of these things are vital to those of us trying to capitalize on this new arena.

I simply advise that you try to take their input with a grain of salt when they enter advocacy mode. Typically you will find that to be rampant in the first chapter and in their “advice” sections at the end of each chapter. Other than that, it is an engaging read, and their vision is compelling. My expectation is that we’ve been in a pendulum swing where we’ve been too proprietary, and those who can harness collaboration can gain advantages in the market. In twenty years it may be the case that everyone has bought into collaboration and those who keep their secrets to themselves have advantages. Either way I think for navigating the near future, Wikinomics can give valuable insight into the modern “net generation” and the products that service them.

Review: The 4 Hour Workweek

Brad — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:46:02 +0000

Hack Through the Hype and Find Some Good Theory

You can safely assume that a book with the title ‘The Four Hour Work-Week’ is the product of a hype machine; at least you know you’re not in for a stately discussion full of nuance and trade-offs. While his writing style and all the promotion in and around the book can be off-putting, we think if you approach it with an open mind almost anyone can gain something from the book, even if its not quite as much as Mr. Ferriss intended.

Some of the book’s main points with which we heartily agree:

‘Rich’ is a function of lifestyle, not net worth.
Freedom–and the ability (including the financial ability) to do what you want when you want–is more valuable than stockpiles of cash.
Strategies to obtain said freedom include:
- Eliminating wasted time from your day.
- Analyzing your income on a per-hour basis and outsourcing when you can.
- Generating passive income.

Getting Past The Hype

To enjoy and find this book useful, you must “translate” it as you read, applying its ideas to your own life instead of getting wrapped up in specific examples. (If you’re the type of person who takes things at face value, you’ll get quickly frustrated with both book and self-promoting author.) So the key to getting past the hype of this book is disregarding those parts that don’t ring true to you, personally. True, there’s no reason to think that a 30-year-old author who launched a hugely successful company at 25 and has lived a fairly unconventional life overall would be able to prescribe the secret to success for the average person. (We find that guys in their early thirties who have no kids and little experience with ‘real jobs’ don’t necessarily know what 44 year old single mothers’ lives are like.) However, if you boil this model down to fundamentals, it has many implementable pieces.

FOR EXAMPLE: We have heard repeated criticism that, “This plan doesn’t work if you have kids.” We think if you take the message from this book to be that you should quit your job and travel constantly, then, no, the ‘plan’ is not feasible for parents. But if you look at the principles behind the ‘travel’ and ‘quit’ messages, i.e. “value freedom” and “identify why you’re really scared of risk”, then maybe his plan is more universally applicable. And as skeptical as many people are about ‘outsourcing’ things, there’s a good chance you ‘outsource’ your lawn work or housekeeping. The concepts are pretty easily translatable.

RE-ENGINEERING YOUR THINKING…AND TESTING OUT SOME NEW IDEAS

Re-Engineering Your Thinking…and Testing Out Some New Ideas

To us, this book is about re-engineering your thinking about work, how you make a “living,” and how you allocate your time. We think it should be used as inspiration and not necessarily as a how-to guide. That said, Mr. Ferriss’ efforts to take theory down to practice are not to be ignored when “getting started” on whatever your next venture may be. His highlighted websites and resources are quite useful in practice and his examples can be thought of as high-level templates for your own trial and error efforts. Transversely, sections like the end on ‘how to enjoy being able to do whatever you want’ seem largely superfluous, as do several of Mr. Ferriss’ “comfort challenges.” We didn’t find them useful or necessary to the book’s overall purpose.

Welcome to Protoscopic.com!

admin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:34:32 +0000

Protoscopic.com is an experiment in Internet Business.

Starting from square one, we hope you’ll join us as we research, test, and review information and opportunities in the “online entrepreneur” market from a realistic perspective. We’re looking for what really works and what’s a flash in the pan, and we look forward to sharing and getting feedback all along the way.

Send a comment and let us know of your efforts, successes, and even failures in the internet business space, and let us know what would be helpful in your online entrepreneur journey. We invite you to be a part of our “perpetual beta test.”