Stupid Spam

Today I received a spam email with this message:

Academic Qualifications available from prestigious NON-ACCREDITED universities.

Your Degree will show exactly what you really can do.

Academic Qualifications available from prestigious NON-ACCREDITED universities.

12066666129

First of all, pointing out the weak point of your statement (that the school is not accredited) in capital letters isn't exactly step #1 to gaining customers.

Second of all, even if this email made me all giddy and super excited to join, I have no link to click and no name to reference. And repeating the same message a second time did nothing for me.

To top it all off, the email came from "AlphonsechemotherapyMacdonald@bump.net"
If you are going to make a fake email, maybe throwing "chemotherapy" in there isn't the best idea for trying to get people to join a NON-ACCREDITED and non-existent school.

Sadly, the quality of spam emails has really gone down.

Twitter

After having heard about Twitter a billion times since 2006, I decided to finally give it a shot. So far, I'm really liking it! It's perfect for all those times where I have a one line comment or something that I want to write, but don't have the time or the energy to write a full blog entry.

Unfortunately, I don't know if any of my friends are also using Twitter (highly unlikely given their lack of geekiness).

If you happen to be on it, let me know! I can be found at:
http://twitter.com/chaparyan




(logo taken without permission, Armenian style)

PP: Planning Prevents Procrastination (And Stress)

There have been many times where I have absolutely dreaded doing something I needed to do. Many years ago, it was homework. Now, it's some of my work. In the end, it's still the same: you wait too long to get started because you can't wrap your mind around how you are going to get it all done. Once you start doing it though, you realize it's not that big a deal and you should have started long ago so that you wouldn't be rushing.

It's not about laziness, and that's not just me being stubborn and denying I'm lazy. The real reason is planning. If I said you need to build a house and get it done within 2 years, you probably wouldn't get a hammer out today and get to it. 2 years, you'd say. I have *plenty* of time. Before you know it, a year has passed and all you've done is thought about working on the house a half dozen times. Now you're panicking (as you should be).

If instead I gave you a very long yet very thorough list of steps to take to make the house (including a list of everything to buy, whom to call and when, and each step took anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours) you probably *would* start right away and not feel so stressed out.

The difference, of course, is knowing what to do and breaking it down to bite-sized pieces.

The only reason I bring this up is to remind myself that nothing is too big to handle. No matter what it is, if I step back and really plan things through, it becomes much easier to accomplish. A great side-effect of this is that you discover things that you need to clarify and discuss much earlier on in the process.

The planning part is fairly self-explanatory, but there is one important thing to remember: don't expect to be able to plan every single item from the beginning. It's just not possible to think of everything little step months in advanced. Be as detailed as possible, but revisit every your plan every so often and add more details. There's nothing wrong with going back and adding so much detail that you end up doubling your initial list. That's not a step back. If anything, it makes moving forward even easier because things are now even more clear.

(I didn't even reread what I wrote, so not all of this is going to make sense)

Daylight Saving Time Sucks

If I really needed an extra hour of daylight during the summer, I would wake up an hour earlier!

My Client, Taltopia, Raises $800,000

Well this is pretty exciting stuff for me. My job mainly entails creating websites and software for people who plan to make a living from it. Some think they can just put up a website and expect sales to come flooding in. That's not how it works.

Allen Vartazarian and Anthony Zanontian, the Taltopia guys (formerly known as Famesource) came to me in October of 2006 with a brilliant idea: A website focused on letting talented people show what they can do and letting others vote. It's "America's Got Talent" meets YouTube meets Digg. I loved the idea from the beginning.

We signed the contract October 19, 2006 and started our long road ahead. After many sleepless nights and even a week-long hospital visit days before our planned launch, the website was finally live March of 2007.

However, that was only the beginning. We added new features, changed many things, and got a lot of bugs worked out. Starbucks (specifically, the one in Downtown Burbank) became our new home, since that was where we would meet to do most of our work together.

It was an uphill battle, but it has finally paid off. Last week, Taltopia closed on their Series A funding of $800,000. It's a great start and, knowing how very frugal Allen and Anthony are, they will make that money go very far for their users.

Congratulations guys. It's one thing to get paid for doing work. It's a whole different story when that work provides the foundation for a successful business. Here's to many more years of fame! (Now... where's that Ruth's Chris dinner I was promised?)