http://del.icio.us/ - A social bookmarking web site… if you don’t use it, try it out… You can see all of my “favorites” at http://del.icio.us/rjmartino.

Does anyone use twitter.com?

      

Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe I’m confused. Maybe it’s inexperience. Maybe it’s poor management. Maybe it’s poor people.

But in my short experience it seems that when I’m pushing someone to get involved in a project, I’m doing most of the work. I can motivate someone to get involved with a project that they’re not initially excited about but after a few weeks, that fizzle goes away. Once the fizzle goes away, I’m the one that’s baby sitting, making sure work is getting done and making sure that the fizzle, that was once there, doesn’t go away. Many times the fizzle is long gone and they’re just doing the work so they don’t disappoint themselves or me.

Well, I think from now on, I’m going to look for people to bring ideas to me. I think I’ll wait to find the people that are willing to stick it out through the inevitable highs and lows. I’ll wait to see what ideas I want to get involved with rather than bringing ideas to people. I won’t try to change people’s minds or ideas until I’m completely sold on the people.

As I’ve said before, people are more important than ideas. Once I know I have solid people then I’ll share ideas. But I still won’t push ideas onto people. I’ll do my best to explain a vision and hope they catch fire… I’m not interested in the fizzle, I need to see the fire.

      

Well… I’ve started a new project that involves real estate… specifically - single family homes in Michigan, South Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, and Indiana.

Its been a lot of fun and I’m learning a ton about other state laws, other markets, and meeting new people. This opportunity has great timing, great planning, great vision, and a lot of potential… But, I still feel like we’re missing something.

Its something I talk about a lot… great people. They’re hard to find…

When I find good people, its hard for me to share my vision… its hard for me to get them excited.

When I find great people, they just get it… Sometimes they get me excited. Sometimes they see it before I do!

I love working with great people… but they’re hard to find.

I’m looking for partners in the states listed above… Or you must be willing to relocate there

If you’re interested, let me know.

      

Google’s OpenSocial is exciting. I talk a lot about “integration of applications” being the future of software; OpenSocial is proving my point.

OpenSocial is a set of common API’s which will allow developers to write applications that leverage a number of different functions from participating web sites…

Good usage of an API can be seen at FORECLOSEDmaps.com. FORECLOSEDmaps.com uses Yahoo Maps… the way we’re able to use Yahoo Maps is by utilizing the Yahoo Maps API. If we decided to switch to Google Maps, we would have to register with a different vendor and re-write all of the code… Long story short… its a pain to use multiple API’s

OpenSocial will allow developers to quickly leverage mutliple sites using 1 API!!!

There are a ton of articles about it and everyone is really excited but the API isn’t publicly available yet… I can’t wait… I’m going to make something cool… I don’t know what… but something cool.

My Predictions

1. As I stated (and its been proven) with the facebook platform, there are going to be a lot of new applications developed.
2. The first (not necessarily the best) applications developed will see a flurry of users and will quickly go from thousands-of-users to hundreds-of-thousands.
3. Acquisitions of the most popular applications
4. You will see many new integration applications… that is… applications that allow you access to many of your favorite web sites from a central location (Facebook, myspace, linkedin… all from one location)
5. People will become more transparent and data will become more seamless. Now that developers can easily marry your information across different platforms you will be able to connect a linkedin profile with a facebook profile.

      

GrandCentral.com is a phone project brought to you by Google… free of charge.

My GrandCentral.com phone number is: 501-859-6035. You can call me now or you can even click the “call me” link on my page.

I’ve recently started using it and I’m really impressed. It make screening phone calls (something I do a lot) easier. Here’s the short version… Once you sign up, GrandCentral.com assigns you a phone number. When someone calls your phone number it immediately asks you who you are and why you’re calling… it then starts ringing… you can play any ring back… it also gives you a list of funny ring back options.

I told GrandCentral.com my “real” number and GrandCentral.com then calls my cell phone when I get a phone call from 501-859-6035… I pick it up and it says “X is calling.” I then have the option to answer it by pressing “1″, ignore it by pressing “4.” If I press “4″ to ignore, I can listen to the message that they leave… if I feel like answering while they’re talking, I can press “*” to pickup immediately… while they’re leaving a message! I can see a list of calls that I recieved on any day… and

It records the conversations and allows online access to voice mail. I can change my “real” cell phone at any time and just redirect where GrandCentral.com calls me from… I can switch phones while I’m on a call… I can immediately block unwanted calls (telemarketers hear a “disconnected” ring)…

Its pretty cool and worth taking a look at… if you’re interested, call me and ask me for a private beta invitation (I have a few left).

PS… I think this will be heavily used with the Google Phone. As a matter of fact, my prediction is that it won’t be network specific (like the iPhone, which only works with AT&T)… it will work across any network because the features are independent of the network you’re on…

      

Okay… here is a free business idea.

I want a recruiting system, that allows potential employees to submit their resume, allows our guys to sort through those resumes, search the resumes and store the resumes. Thats it… really simple… I want it to look good and run fast.

We have a recruiting system now but I’m not really happy with it. Its slow, complicated and not user friendly.

The Free Idea (lets call it XYZ.com)

What would be really nice is if XYZ.com was a job web application like monster.com. But, XYZ.com created an API which my web site could use to allow John Doe to submit a resume for my position. Then, using their API, I could view, search, and store any resume submitted through my web site.

When John Doe submitted his resume, although he sent it to my company, it was actually stored at XYZ.com. XYZ.com, as a service, offers companies the ability to search through the “global resume database” for a small fee.

After John Doe submits his resume to my company, he can now easily submit his resume to other companies that use XYZ.com.

The Revenue Model
XYZ.com is basically a monster.com… it gains revenue by companies paying them money to search through resumes and post jobs.

What Makes XYZ.com Different
What makes XYZ.com different is their ability to obtain a vast number of applicants… its viral marketing… its distributed networking… its pushing “the work” onto other people.

The application is given away but the data is saved. It is inherently integrated into a business with no need to change the way business is done. People and businesses hate change… the requires NO CHANGE.

Conclusion
Do you like the idea? Good… me too… As a business owner, I would use it because it would allow me a cheap way to obtain a recruiting system… I’d be your first customer

If you like it enough, higher iProv to write the software.

Or email me and lets do it together as a joint venture

Call me, we’ll do the development

      

One of my non-techy friends introduced me to something pretty cool a few months ago.

Did you know that you can send a text message to Google at 46645 (which spells “googl”) and it will return to you a list of things….

the main thing I use it for is when I’m looking for a phone number. I can text “Pizza, 72211″ and Google will instantly reply with the phone number and address to pizza places near 72211. Alternatively, I text “Pizza Hut, 72211″ I will receive the phone number and address of the pizza hut.

This is a broader search and returns more information than the traditionall “*411″… and it’s cheaper! It only costs you a text message.

For more information, check out Google’s SMS help page.

      

This week I was able to show someone the power of RSS… If you don’t know what RSS is, or if you know what it is but don’t know why its so cool… check out the wiki for RSS it or try using an RSS reader like Bloglines.

      

So, we’ve purchased a new apartment complex in Jacksonville, AR. It’s 46 units and is currently full (no discounts given to facebook-friends). It should be a good deal. I’m 100% confident that we bought it at a great price, the cash flow projections look good, the management is solid, and the occupancy rate is high.

We’re doing a good job at aligning our properties such that they are relatively close, the management is getting better as screening tenants, contractors are more understanding of our terms, and most of the properties have similar goals.

With any organization there is a “culture” that everyone buys into… that includes the owners, contactors, employees, management and even the tenants/customers. If you can’t get everyone to buy into the culture, you either have to change the culture or change the people.

The guys at the top typically define the culture… the guys at the bottom have to buy into the culture… if you’re at the bottom and you want to change the culture, you get repromanded… thats why turnover is so much higher at the bottom…. thats why you hear of so many employees that “just didn’t work out.”

If you want to change culture, the guys at the top have to change… and I mean they have to be replaced. Changing people is too hard to do.

      

I think its funny that you’ll see celebrities reading gossip magazines. Yet they kick and scream about how much they hate paparazii. They feed the frenzy by reading the magazine. I don’t blame them, I just think its ironic.

Facebook is the same way… when the minifeed was released, people were outraged. They yelled that they didn’t want people to know all their business. Yet every day (yes… daily), we log into facebook and skim the minifeed looking for entertainment or gossip.

And if you can’t view someone’s information, you kind of get upset. Is it a laziness/convenient issue??? Is it a “need for gossip/entertainment”? Who knows. The point is, the minifeed is just like the paparazzi… we love to hate it… and although we may hate paparazzi, we love them when they focus on other people.