:Michael Anuzis

I’m on a roll predicting social-impact entrepreneurial startups that should come into existence! First I nailed some green technology stuff. Now I see that the open-bounties on innovation idea I described last march has pretty much manifested in the form of innocentive.com.

It’s not quite there yet as they still need to find a way to open the bounties up so anyone can contribute their $50-2,000 to the innovative dilemmas challenging humanity, but aside from that they’ve pretty much got it. The incentive is there to open it up since it’d mean growing their revenues exponentially, but they’d probably no longer be able to take 40% of the cash, and would have to find a way to handle the complications that come up when multiple people with somewhat differing objectives pool money for a common innovative cause.

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You heard it right – I’ll lay down $ for tiny ninja doodles. They could be doodles of anything ninja related. It could be a bunch of ninjas in a tree. Could be a ninja disguised as a pirate. Could even be a corn on the cob dressed like a ninja. I need as many mini-fun ninja doodles as possible to incorporate into ninja-based educational material.

You can come up with the craziest/zany-est ninja doodle idea you can think of and let me worry about finding a way to incorporate it into the lessons. No limits on the funky kind of stuff I’ll buy. I’m thinking of paying around $5 per doodle, purchasing up to ~20-50 doodles, so, up to around $250. I know my price is cheap, but it’s also a reflection of how small the doodles are I’m willing to accept. They could be 2″x1″, 3″x2″, 1″x1″, any random ninja doodle. (I actually would like a corn on the cob in ninja garb, if someone can doodle that; probably around 1″x1.5″)

The only thing is the doodles need to be in a digital form, e.g. a JPG or GIF file. If you can doodle it on paper and convert it to digital without it looking too weird that’s fine.

So, if you’re interested go ahead and send me a sample of what you can do! 1-2 sample doodles is fine, & if your stuff is usable we’ll chat about an on-going ninja-doodling deal based on how many you’re interested in making.

If you’re not much of a ninja doodler yourself, but you know someone who is please pass this post on to them. I could really use a great doodler. Thanks!

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I’ve been blogging for over a year about designing a gadget that tracks the unified environmental efforts of millions of people and allows everyone to celebrate their contribution. A few weeks ago it looks like Google released a gadget called ‘Energy Saver‘ that does just that.

It doesn’t allow people to track their contributions in as many ways as I’d like to see, but it does provide a beautiful/simple way for people to make a difference with hardly effort at all by “Enabling and optimizing your computer’s power management settings to help save the world energy.”

If I wasn’t already working on a different startup, I’d love to take this idea to the next level with my domain greenolution.com. Previous posts of mine detailing that business model & vision:

- The Greenolution Pitch
- Three Design Opportunities for a Brighter Future
- Anyone Join Me for $25 Million
- Count Down Your Carbon

If you combined CDYD and Google’s Energy Saver gadget and threw in a global goal, a gadget easier for people to paste on social networking sites than the Google Gadget, and some greentech product recommendations on the most cost-effective technologies currently available, you’d have my idea for greenolution.com.

Aside from possible ad revenue, you could add an e-commerce portion of the site to sell the greentech conveniently to consumers/businesses, or at least collect affiliate earnings.

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That’ll be the headline in a few months after my latest startup goes live. I’ve already discussed severe inefficiencies & redesign opportunities with the current educational systems. The time has come to take action.

This startup has been under development the past several months & it’s nearly time to unveil it to the public. Half a year ago I released a couple low-quality Game Theory lessons on YouTube to see the kind of response I’d get and what kind of market was out there for the concise teaching of academic material. Below shows some interesting feedback (see the comments.)

F’d up comment aside (hey, can you say he’s wrong?), if that’s the feedback for the junk recorded while hardly awake yet, I’m excited to see the impact & education I can provide when I invest significant time & effort and make it twice as fun. Wish me luck.

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I’ve made several mistakes on 4 entrepreneurial startups over the years. In this podcast, I rattle off as many lessons learned as possible within 30 minutes. There might not be exactly 50 mistakes, but I manage to squeeze in a good number.

In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you probably have to make at least 350 mistakes, learn from them, and keep persevering. I hope this podcast will save you thousands of dollars you may have lost through similar mistakes, so you can skip to more advanced [and enjoyable] mistakes & the learning opportunities associated.

For those of you interested in learning more details on the network security startup I bootstrapped in this podcast, I refer you to this older podcast focused on that startup that I released back in March – How to be an IT Consultant – Part IV

 50 Common Entrepreneurial Mistakes [33:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Sorry for the delay in posting – work has been quite busy. To make it up to you I’m giving out four $25 Kiva gift certificates to the first four people to claim them in a comment on this post. It’s basically $25 you can do what you want with, but I hope you will lend them out at least once before you choose to withdraw the money for yourself.

For those of you unfamiliar with Kiva, it’s a way to invest in an entrepreneur in a developing country. There’s a 97% likelihood they’ll pay you back, which is really great. When the entrepreneur pays you back, you can withdraw your money or re-lend it to another entrepreneur – whatever you want! Here’s a quick clip on Kiva for those interested:

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Entrepreneurial idea that hit me like a rock during this morning’s meditation. Recorded in under 5 minutes, seems like a solid way to motivate advancements in science, medicine, and technology. Feedback & critique appreciated!

 Advancing Science and Technology [3:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Welcome back to the final part of my 4 part series “How to be an IT Consultant”. Topics covered include:

Enjoy!

Edit 3/11/2007: I took parts I & III offline. They were ok, but I plan to cover them better in a new consulting series coming up. Stay tuned!

 Network Security [34:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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This is a followup podcast to my previous post, Marketing Advice for Content Producers. Topics include understanding the Long Tail business model and how virtually any individual can leverage it to automate a passive revenue stream on the side of their day job, college studies, etc.

Edit 3/11/2007: Took down the previous podcast as I plan to re-release a higher quality version soon. Thanks for bearing with me as I strive to improve the quality of my podcasts. Stay tuned!

 Understanding the Long Tail Business Model [10:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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A few people have e-mailed me asking for elaboration on the Greenolution idea. To save you the time, the pitch is pasted here:

The world should have a site like traineo.com – but rather than track calories burnt as a community, it tracks money saved and co2 emissions reduced through green-technology usage.

Traineo.com has a live readout of calories burnt by all their members – if we had a similar readout for $ saved and emissions reduced it’d be an exciting spectacle for individuals the world over.

With over $10 trillion currently invested in greentech R&D, more energy-efficient products will emerge in the thousands. Greenolution.com provides a quick-list of the most proven & effective products available at any given time, and gives users a simple interface to report their product adoption.

We’ll provide simple code for widgets to be embedded on private sites\social networking profiles that show our live results of $ saved and co2 emissions reduced alongside our global goal of 1B tons reduced & that’ll be an attention-grabber. People who click the link can see a quick flash demo on how the site works and how to get involved.

If such a site were in existence, it shouldn’t have any trouble getting picked up by NPR, The Economist, NY Times, etc. That’s the pitch. I don’t have the details worked out, but if we get enough intelligent people collaborating on it, success seems likely.

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