A few weeks back, we posted about the iPhone frenzy. People were waiting 3 days outside the Manhattan store, some had camped out in front of their local Apple retail stores, people were selling them for double and triple their value on eBay, and one person even sold his award winning dog to get to the front of the line. Maybe I made up the latter, but it was definitely a frenzy.

I bought the phone about a week after it came out though, and I’m glad to say I didn’t have to wait in any lines nor did I deal with the long activation time that many were complaining about. I have to say the phone has far exceeded my expectations of how a phone should work and what it can be capable of.

And what makes a great product even greater is the ability to personalize it - pimp that ish out. And I’m not talking about putting diamonds in it or lining it with Swarovski crystals. I’m talking about detailing the inside. Thanks to iPhoneAlley, we have the ability to now:

Many thanks to all open source groups and networks. We really appreciate the work and effort you place into making great applications! Even we at DBoost take it for granted at times that such great applications are available at no cost. So this is our vow to contribute monetarily or through our work back to these communities.

The truth is you have no idea where your business or website will end up a few years from now. And the more time and energy you spend figuring out the specifics of the future the more likely you are to loose focus on the now.

Nothing wrong with planning 90 days to a year out, but beyond that are you really serving yourself with these blind estimates? Or are you just hoping?

If you really want to impact your organization’s future, strengthen your core intentions and manifesto. Know why you’re here and why you matter to your core customer. The rest of the magic comes from constant improvement and quick turnaround.

Today two business leaders had the courage enough to say they don’t know and both explained why it was important to announce it publicly.

Jason Friend on 37signals
“At the end of every interview someone inevitably asks “Where do you see 37signals in five years? Ten years? 20 years?” My answer remains the same: “Still in business. Beyond that I have no idea.”

Fred Wilson on investing in Twitter
“As we stated when we made our investment in Delicious,
The question everyone asks is “What is the business model?” To be completely and totally honest, we don’t yet know.”

A lot of our young entrepreneur friends dream of the day when they’ll have a secretary. Someone to take notes, make appointments and of course, answer phone calls. Our friends view a secretary as a status symbol, but they may reconsider after hearing these words of wisdom from Jim Sinegal, CEO of Costco:

His philosophy is simple, he said. “We have said from the very beginning: ‘We’re going to be a company that’s on a first-name basis with everyone,’” he said.

That also includes answering his own phone. “If a customer’s calling and they have a gripe, don’t you think they kind of enjoy the fact that I picked up the phone and talked to them?” he said.

[link via 37signals]

The Problem

E-mail takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.

The Solution

Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.

five.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less. It’s that simple.

http://five.sentenc.es

Apple and Cingular released the one and only iPhone today. I didn’t have the opportunity to go to a Cingular or Apple store today, but based on this NPR interview, I can only imagine that it was a frenzy.

According to the interview people were lined up outside the Apple store in Manhattan a full 3 days in advance!

What can I say Steve Jobs is the man. A guru in my book.

I have always been just an average basketball player. I join a few pickup games with my friends when the opportunity arises, and I shoot the ball around when I’m looking for a short workout.

The challenge I face when playing is not a lack of confidence nor the willingness to play the game. It’s the expectation that I put on myself - that I should be good at it. Hey - I’ve been playing competitive basketball since I was in middle school, I should be right? And my ego loves to play games, trying to tell me I am better than my competition. Everytime I win (due to actually ‘good’ players), my mind tells me that I must be getting better. But in reality, I’ve probably only learned two or three new moves in the past 6 years. And when I go in with this mentality that I should be something, the ending result everytime is that I horribly lose when it comes to game time.

So two weeks ago, I tried out this experiment. I told myself the truth, that I’m not really good at this game and I don’t have too much skill. Was that hard to let go of? Absolutely, but I was already losing anyways so what was the hurt in trying it out. Did it make me better? Surprisingly yes.

The same thing has shown up for me when it came to sales in our business or writing on our blogs. When I set the expectation that I should be good due to past experience or something I was taught, I was at my lowest sales rates ever and I didn’t write a single post.

Its funny how our ego feeds off having to be someone/something compared to who or what we are. And the opportunities that we’re able to let go of this expectation, we finally play a game where we have an advantage.

If its your business or a volunteer organization, choose the people you want to work with and don’t settle. We’ve been working at putting together a 4-day non-profit conference this 4th of July weekend, and I can’t say how great the experience has been simply due to the team working on it. The team is small, agile, and has a passion for the work involved. Each member was hand chosen to be on the team and was given a unique role to fulfill. The roles were broken down to the T, and everyone was very clear on their responsibilities.

I bring this up because how many times have we found ourselves on teams where we hated doing the work, hated the people we had to work with, or just became apathetic to the situation? Apathetic is the absolute worse since you haven’t quit and still nothing is getting done. And all those situations get worse when you’re working with a volunteer or non-profit organization. There, everyone feels they’re doing this for a good cause so they can’t take criticism or delegation.

So I implore you, don’t assemble a team based on volunteers or just credentials and don’t get sucked into a team because you think its for a good cause. Hand pick your team based on how well you work with them and their passion for the overall purpose/vision for the business or organization.

“Do what makes you happy - because at first, happiness is likely to be your main reward” and 8 other personal business lessons from the article, How to get rich in America.

Who tracks time nowadays? When you’re working at a small business and you spend your hours doing multiple things at once all the time, its hard to add one more thing to your list. And besides, I don’t even know how much time it took to complete something a majority of the time. I may be working on a design scope and get interrupted by a 30 min client call.

But near the end of every month, I start to wonder how time went by so quickly. It’s right about the time when checks are coming in and we’re reviewing our budgets. I get this overwhelming feeling of anxiety that ends up putting a question in my head, “Did you spend your time wisely this month?”

To be honest - I don’t know if I did. I scheduled my day out, I wrote down my priorities, and I made sure I was accountable through my business partners. But does that mean I used my time effectively? Does that mean I did my best?

Who knows? But I know this dead simple application that will help me figure this out. It ties in right with Basecamp, it has a simple interface, and it gives you time assessment reports. You can’t go wrong when something works with Basecamp! Its called Harvest …

So I ask you guys - Dhru, Mihir, Arun, would you be down to use this application and see what happens? I’ll pay for the first month and I’ll even throw in my famous chocolate coconut smoothie as a bonus. Or how about some Yerba Matt Latte.

We’d like to congratulate The Green Office, online retailer of dark and light green office supplies, for being featured in the July edition of Newsweek Magazine (full page scan). Columnist Anna Kuchment recommended TGO in her article, titled Going Green At Work, as a recommended outfit for “buying ecofriendly office supplies.”

Last year dboost had the pleasure of working with partner BCM on the development of the world’s first Office Foot Print Calculator for TGO.

Working closely with Partners Alex Szabo and Garrett Miller was a very rewarding experience. Not only are they both extremely down to earth, but their passion for greening business even had dboost reevaluate our company’s environmental impact, (more to come on that).

TGO is headed in a great direction and we’re proud to have played a tiny roll in helping them out.

Related
- The Green Office on TreeHugger