Yury and I just got back from Los Angeles. We had some great meetings out there and participated in Startup Weekend LA. We came out with a cool new product that will be available very soon. For more information on what to look forward to from diibs.com (site not live yet), check out this video.
The video is fairly long, it’s the entire Sunday night event with speakers and pitches from all teams, diibs presentation is at 2:07 – 2:20
Great wiki page on SMS message regulations.
Regulations and best practices for SMS messages are governed by the Mobile Marketing Association, which publishes a code of conduct and a best practices guide for use by those involved in mobile messaging activities. Ultimately, all SMS messages sent using Recess Mobile applications must include the following elements.
Your SMS messages must include a double opt-in process, where the subscriber confirms twice that they wish to receive SMS messages from you. For example, an MO JOIN message would prompt the following MT reply:
Reply YES to receive Example.com Sales. 1 or more msgs/day 4 desired alerts. Reply STOP 2 end. HELP 4 info. Msg&Data Rates May Apply.
From there, a MO YES message would prompt the following MT reply:
Your 1st alert will arrive soon. Reply STOP to end, Help 4 info. Msg&Data Rates May Apply.
What do I mean, by ‘next four billion’? discusses the inevitability of >100% mobile penetration worldwide. Exciting times. The impact of mobile in the developing world has been immense. The short of it is that mobile, not WiFi, laptops, school buildings, micro-financing (despite received wisdom) will bring the largest number of people out of poverty, by facilitating transactions, giving access to grain prices, mobile banking (here and here and here and here) and more (PDF here).
From The New Yorker (Shouts & Murmurs), on social media, Subject: Our Marketing Plan. Reëducational.
Getting out of the building is a lesson for Langley. Customer development isn’t just for startups.
We’re making waiting in a hospital or doctor’s office less painful. Here are some other companies using technology to solve problems in the healthcare space: Start-Ups Aim to Transform Visits to the Doctor (from the Times’ blog).
For those of that have worked built or are building iPhone apps, you’ll recognize the complaints in The Pains of iPhone Ad Hoc Beta Testing. Check it out, commiserate. Now scroll to the comments and read this gem, from Eelco Lempsink (n.b., I’ve cleaned up the post a bit for readability):
There’s a few things you can do to alleviate these pains:
1. Create an .IPA file instead of sending a (zipped) app. The process has been described at several places, e.g., How to automatically build an IPA file from XCode.
2. Learn about versioning and avgtool. This prevent you (and users) from having to remove the application before being able to update. Tutorial here.
3. Use a form for users to submit UDID’s (so they won’t send you screenshots and you can check validity). Make sure to stress that they can actually copy the number to the clipboard in iTunes, that’s really bad UI design on Apple’s part.
Check out the evolution of cell phone design.
And now for something completely different: Text/Messages: Books by Artists. Incidentally, I’d love to see card catalogs replaced or enhanced with text messages.
Take a look at this idea, Hansel and Gretel Marketing, as implemented at Barney’s. This would be an awesome use case for text messaging. From the linked article, here’s how it works:
1) A computer system at Barneys tracks the weekly spend of their regular clients by looking at data from the client’s Barneys credit card (this is another reason besides high interest rates why department stores push so hard for their credit cards: They can track individual customers).
2) When weekly spend for a customer drops below a certain threshold, an automated alert is triggered: They assign one of their employees the task of handwriting a letter to that customer, enticing them to come into the store for a free facial.
The New York Times recently published an article titled “The Small Business Guide to Text-Message Marketing“. If you’re a small business looking at new innovative and effective marketing methods, text message (SMS) marketing is the way to go. Let’s review –
1. Don’t even think about doing it the illegal way.
Probably one of the most important characteristics to consider is the inability to spam via text. Due to U.S. mobile regulations, it’s very difficult (and expensive) to spam using SMS. If consumers are receiving spam, they can simply dial their service provider (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) and inform them that unauthorized messages from number xxxxxx are being sent to them. Guess who wins in this situation? Unlike email, SMS is hosted and controlled by a higher authority, an authority who can shut down spammers in no time. side note – stay away from SMTP email-to-text services, they don’t offer the proper opt-out functionality due to their one-way nature and are unreliable at larger scale campaigns.
From The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine (Wired)
There comes a point at which improving upon the thing that was important in the past is a bad move,” Shirky said in a recent interview. “It’s actually feeding competitive advantage to outsiders by not recognizing the value of other qualit ies.” In other words, companies that focus on traditional measures of quality—fidelity, resolution, features—can become myopic and fail to address other, now essential attributes like convenience and shareability. And that means someone else can come along and drink their milk shake.
Here’s the Recessy bit on healthcare:
In the case of health care, the Good Enough mindset can be seen in a new initiative by Kaiser Permanente. The largest not-for-profit medical organization in the country, Kaiser has long relied on a simple strategy of building complete, self-sustaining hospitals—employing 50 doctors or more—in each region it serves…
From Inc Magazine, This Is How It’s Done: Smart Business Moves. Below are the examples that Recess can help further improve (otherwise, I’d just be reading for leisure, an antiquated notion that died with the landed gentry, supplanted by self-improvement. Cf The Evolution of Divorce.).
Direct Tire differentiates itself with a less painful wait time:
5. They are also served who only wait Uncomfortable chairs. Cold coffee. Issues of People magazine older than Cloris Leachman. So go the waiting rooms at most auto service shops. When Barry Steinberg launched Direct Tire and Auto Service in the 1970s, he insisted on bright, clean waiting areas with comfortable chairs and good coffee. To ensure employees would be chipper no matter the time of day, he interviewed applicants on three days at three different times. The myriad service awards still look great on Direct Tire’s pristine walls.
I recently read an article entitled “Managing Real and Virtual Waits in Hospitality and Service Organizations”, published in 2005 in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (CQ). If you manage or own a business where customers experience a wait, I highly recommend reading this article (link at bottom).
There are three ways to manage waits –
We’ve recently come out of beta and Recess is now available to the public. We’ve updated the website to reflect these changes. We’ve added more information to the homepage and made some small aesthetic modifications to the subpages. Also, check out the top signup tab, we’re pretty proud of it 
You can actually sign up for an account now!
Coming soon — brand new demo that will knock your socks off.