Ray.VC

Find my blog at: http://Ray.vc/

Where Are The Posts?

I’m sure many of you have noticed that I haven’t made any posts yet this month including my startup reading.

I assure you that a good reason can be had for this as Startup Reading and other startup items will be moving over to a new kickass site soon.

Just keep your eyes peeled because it will all be back soon enough at a cool new place.

Twitter – Sorry, I can’t handle the noise.

I deleted my Twitter account. I gave very little warning. Just up and deleted it.

I’ve been on Twitter since nearly the beginning. I had one of the lower user numbers, I had over four thousand followers, I got tons of clicks from the stuff I posted. None of it mattered. None of it does matter.

Twitter is a great marketing tool. It is a great way for users to get in touch with brands. It is great for creating a brand. Twitter is even a great tool for having conversations but I felt that whole aspect which was the most important aspect to me when I signed up had been lost.

Somewhere along the way I got lost. I lost my way on how it should have been used. Instead of having conversations it became just another tool in an arsenal for marketing something or reaching someone who was trying to market something to me.

Was I using Twitter incorrectly? I wouldn’t say that. Twitter is what you make it and I had made it the wrong thing along the way.

I needed a fresh start. I could have deleted a ton of followers and started looking closely at who I was following but when you reach a certain level you realize that the level of work required to make that happen is a bit higher than you might be willing to sit down and do. I wanted Twitter to be about real conversations with real people who are relevant and interesting. So I deleted my account and made a new one.

To take it a step further and be sure that I’m going to use Twitter correctly, I am going to only approve requests to follow me from people who are real. Not people who are just going to send me messages about a new product, not people who just follow for the sake of having more followers. Real people who have real conversations and are truly interested in what I have to say as well.

Everyone wants to be heard. With my new Twitter account, I assure that I’m heard and that I can hear people.

If you are interested in following me I’ll post a occassional link to my blog and to things that I find interesting but more importantly I’ll be having true dialogs with people who are truly interested.

I’m now @260ray. Head over and request to follow me if you think we can have real, productive conversations.

Playlist of the Week: Wonderful Pop of the 80′s

Anyone that knows me personally knows that I love a variety of music from a range of eras but should also know that while I love my 90s Alternative I also adore music from the eighties.

Every once in a while I’ll get in a specific mood to hear some music from the 80′s and this week I got on one of those musical tangents that lead me to look for a great playlist that contained a variety of hits that I love and adore and some that I just plain forgot existed.

boomer226 has created a rather extensive and large playlist simple called Wonderful Pop of the 80′s that has music from the likes of Eddy Grant, Madness, Europe and more.

With over 225 tracks on this playlist and over 15 hours of musical material you can indulge yourself in a variety of hits from the 80′s and nearly forget what year you now live in.

It Could Be Vanity

As I ride in the car today using my brand new EVO 3D I realize that while the screen is huge I’ve become terribly spoiled by my iPad and the larger screen.

I’ve stewed on a few blog entries that I’ve wanted to finish up as of late and how I had several new ideas that I wanted to capture while the chance presented itself. So I whipped out my phone, pulled open the WordPress application on my phone and started typing.

Whilst writing, I realized that typing has always been very easy on my Android phones, and even on my older iPhones, but now I was struggling.

The reason?

I had used my iPad so much lately that going back to the smaller screen was difficult.

The iPad to me has been pure vanity. A device that serves no purpose while serving many purposes, a conundrum if you will. I’ve owned one for a few weeks now and find myself consuming more and more of the web on it than I had previously with my EVO 3D or my netbook.

The whole purpose of the iPad 2 is to work on an application that a rather large social networking site is working on and outsourcing much of the development to third-party developers. It has however, in the meantime, seen action for me to take notes, consume news sites and offer great entertainment. Things that I previously would have done via the phone or netbook.

While the iPad is larger than say the Galaxy Tab that I had my eye on and other Android powered tablets and can’t fit in my pocket, I find that it is still easier to carry than my laptop or my netbook and as such it allows me to get more done with ease.

The more I’ve used the iPad 2, the more I’ve come to find that it a piece of gadgetry that makes me more productive and gives me a great opportunity when I have the free time to relax with some great games.

Playlist of the Week: So Hot the Mercury Busted Out

Welcome to my new break from all things serious with my new Playlist of the Week.

Each week I will select a playlist from Spotify that I want to share with others. I’ll try to vary my selections each week for everyone and I’ll be creating my own playlists often that I’ll be sharing via my blog with my readers. (I will also share my new playlists via Twitter as I complete them here)

This week’s playlist is called So Hot the Mercury Busted Out and features a selection of songs for the heat of the summer from artists such as Will Smith, 2Pac, Harvey Danger and more.

The playlist comes in at just about one hour in length and contains 18 tracks.

Take a listen to the playlist by clicking here and let me know your thoughts.

Here is the first of many Spotify playlists I'm creating. This is a summer one called 'So Hot The Mercury Busted Out': http://bit.ly/qz0GMq

July 14, 2011 2:17 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@rayrayangel

Raymond Angel

July 2011 Startup Reading

Welcome to the month of July and to another Startup Reading post.

This month, I’m featuring a book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good written by Sarah Lacy, that covers the rise and fall of the first Internet bubble and then those entrepreneurs who learned lessons from the first bubble and have created new and exciting new companies.

While many of the technology terms will seem overly simplified in the book to those who are tech literate, the history section is pretty good (albeit quickly becoming out of date) and the overall story still holds true. The book only comes in at 300 pages and is a quick read.

The stories in the book will motivate you to create something, if you aren’t already doing so, or shed light on the more human side of startups that many have only experienced from the outside.

While the stories of the book are great, I find that Sarah Lacy struggles to communicate the message at times. You can still sort through and learn how Silicon Valley business patterns have been created, what the first dot-com bubble was like and how many are still working to overcome it today.

I consider this book an easy to read cliff notes on how the first bubble progressed and a history lesson that should serve as a teaching lesson on what needs to be done differently this time around.