I am making a list of the qualities/categories of qualities that we as a society reward people for. This is for a new social app/game I am building called Kayvaa that lets people give social dap, props, kudos, etc…

Here is what I have so far, can you think of more?

• environmental
• financial
• manners
• business
• standing up
• equality
• awareness
• mover
• kindness – nice guy
• sexy/hot
• fashionable
• daring
• honesty
• bravity
• innovation
• social intelligence
• individuality
• technically saavy
• spiritual

what is kayvaa?
Kayvaa in short is a social high-five, exchanged digitally amongst friends and strangers alike for simply being awesome in one way or another.

Kayvaa is a game that is played by both friends and strangers via the web and mobile networks. The game itself is distributed in that you do not have to come to the site to use it. It should be used in your daily life via mobile and text and on the web. The idea is that in your daily routine or out with friends, you often give each other props, dap, cred, cool points or some variant thereof. Kayvaa is the system that sets rules and keeps the points digitally for this social game that we all play – and allows everyone to play. Kayvaa dap, points, what have you are given to friends that you have made and acquired through the site or it may be given to strangers who have done something that deserves recognition. The underlying principal is to allow people to be recognized for their actions, if the actions benefit the society as a whole.

DESIGN:

version 2 is up, it will get more colour (mandy…) and some more nav in the coming days.

GOT COMMENTS ON THE DESIGN (of kayvaa, I know the blog is tacky) ? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!

How to Research Your Business Idea – Entrepreneur.com.

taking some notes from this article – here are my thoughts

lots of ideas are cool, but only a few of them will actually fly. By conducting some very simple research it will be easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Gather:

marketing research is about determining who will use the product or service that you are building, determining how many of those people are out there, and figuring out a way to get in front of them. Ultimately, what we are trying to do is determine if there are enough people in the world that you can reach who will pay you for your product or service. To find that number we need to define them very carefully and cross section all of that data to put together an estimate for a potential market.
right here the article goes a bit blurry, and says that your should research based on what your product or service is. For my type of work I want to form some general assumptions about my customer and then find the number of people who fit that assumption. For instance, the last business idea i wrote out was for the digital business card link (Jiminie, i need a new name for that). After familiarizing yourself with the idea we can come to some general conclusions about the people who might use that. I would assume that they use business cards to make contacts (owners, marketers, salespeople, freelancers to start), want to be reached in multiple ways (digital – chat, url, email, blog  and IRL- phone, fax, mail), have additional information to share (links of interest, resume’s, business reviews, portfolios/samples),  and are too pressed for time,  not technically competent enough or do not have the authority to set up some form of this on their own (brand blog, company blog, whatever). so i need to find out the number of salesmen and women, business owners, marketers, and freelancers who do not have an easy to find public page on a public facing website or who want to present some additional information that is important for a new contact. Now i need to determine how many of those people are early adopters and would be willing to use the service – and how many of those are willing to add something onto their cards instead of the information they currently present. As you can see while i think the idea is cool, it’s going to be a few special people that would use it. Is that set of people large enough for me to make a profit? if the answer is yes, move on to:

Analyze:

There are 4 major vantage points that you should see your product from:

1. company: think of how the product/service will be presented to the end user. this includes features/promises, the ‘personality’ of your brand, and the promises that you intend to fulfill.
2. customer: there are three different customers that you will have to think about, if they are all the same person – you are really lucky OR you’re not doing it right.
   • purchaser – the one writing the check for your product/service
   • influencer – the one who will influence the decision to purchase
   • end user – the actual person who will be using the product or service.
3. competition: again, three types.
   • direct- these people are doing the same thing that you are doing, sign up for their service and see what they do. particularly what they are doing better, write that down and top it. as for what they are doing worse, improve on that immediately. For their marketing, look at any public data they have provided: public talks the ceo has given, associations they belong to, data about their intended customer base that they list on their site, and public postings (blog or whatever) that could lead you to understand who they think their market is – and therefore help you understand who your market is.
   • secondary – these people are doing something similar or could take customers away, take notes as to what they would have to do to compete directly with you and reevaluate that every week/month/quarter, whatever. also watch your customers and see if they are using the product or service as well as yours. if so, ask why and consider incorporating that into your offering.
   • tertiary – they slightly resemble your offering – just keep an eye on them and move them into a secondary position if you start seeing a trend in marketing or customer base that resembles yours
4. collaborators: associations, media and other organizations that do not compete with you or make a profit when you do, but are going after the same customers. Watch what they do and how they market and take cues from the more successful ones. Often you may be able to purchase lists of data about their customers. In the least – look at who they are marketing to and how to determine whether or not there are techniques that seem more successful or data that can help you better estimate your market.

UPDATE 2:

found it – check out my chi.mp profile.

UPDATE:

Rethinking this it seems that the need for a qr code and new cards are actually in the way of the end result, which is to present a lot of contact information that needs to go in a small space. perhaps the best way to think of this is as a protocol, not necessarily a service – with a vanity name or number that will deliver all of the information that was to be presented to the user’s database of choice. if i had a card that had name, number, company url and a digitalcontact id of 5546 – entering 5546 into the website or mobile app would just import all of that information, additional links, and an image of the contact and the card into my preferred dB. So like a vCard: this is just an expanded version. removing the qr code removes technical hurdles (how do i use this?) and physical hurdles (if have to go through another company to get my cards made now) and allows the end user to provide one simple line of text that will connect the card holder to lots of importable and useful information.

Business cards are not going anywhere for a long time. there has been many attempts to try and replace them with digital alternatives such as beaming a vCard from phone to phone. But honestly have you ever had someone offer you a digital business card alternative of any kind and then been able to retrieve or reuse it? Did it feel the same as the exchange of an actual business card? Handing someone your card has always been a very personal gesture – one that solidifies a meeting and possibly  a prospective relationship. It is somewhat an institution in and of it’s own.

Elegantly presenting all of the information that we like to present in this digital age however, is a bit of a task – but since i have seen the introduction and funding of stickyBits has given me the idea of connecting the traditional business card with the rest of our digital identities, using the same sort of technology (qrCode possibly).

Applying a generic sticker to a stack of cards is not only impersonal but a quite a hassle. If one could order new cards with a digital stamp already added that would link the card holder (either via some sort of recognition built into card scanning software, via mobile device with mobile image recognition software, or with a number/shortcode of some sort in case you do not have the ability to use either of the above).

the link would be to a digital representation of the user who presented the card with whatever social connection information they choose to share (even imagine setting preferences for individual users, based on their email address or some other identifying information).  the site itself is an index, but not necessarily an open one – the key to the connection is the card, and you can only browse basic information until the user has presented you with a card. Access to this would allow you to add all of the users contact information (whatever they have chosen to share with you) to whatever info database they keep.

All this seems complex, but there is already scanning software and libraries built for iphone, android and i am sure windows and mac. The cards themselves would be printed by a third party (white label and drop shipping done for me) and the site would start as a simple frontend (photo, links, about me, about my business) with a simple backend to setup these links and information.

There is an argument to be made that several websites already serve this purpose. Facebook, myspace, my personal blog. All of these spaces are places where we open up portions of our lives to our friends and people who know me. Linked in has this possibility but i do not feel that they are taking their position to the fullest and are expecting people to connect with their website and with others on their site.

The key to this would be offering a professional look and feel, and not be cheesy. The brand should be one that is prestigious and that the user should be proud to be affiliated with. Ordering the cards should be as easy as ordering professional quality business cards or sending us a card to recreate with the (insert the brandname here) digital mark added to it. Introductory cards and services should be free just to get users in.

Comments and suggestions always appreciated.

i don’t know how many times i have gotten a text or photo on my phone and needed to get it back to my pc – like a twitter message that was delivered via sms or an image that i want to save and i am sitting in front of my comp at work or at home.
when the twitter message comes in i can view it on my phone by just clicking the link but it would be so much nicer to view on a desktop. i can either log into twitter and find the post by the person and click on the link there – or i can type the link in while i look at my phone. either way is a bit of a cumbersome process.
What if there was an app where i could select something on my phone and send it to my pc – and once it showed up i could click it from there.
or in the case of an image, i could either save the image and email it to myself – or plug in the usb and collect it that way – but if i had an app to just send it to my pc – that would be much easier.
Another: i hate that i keep all of my passwords on my phone and have to type them in – this should be a simple element that anyone could incorporate into their app and use – passing the password and link to the pc, but noting it as disposable, so that it is not saved in my m2pc history.
So this would be a service that i had a username and password to and once entered on my phone i could just send things back to whatever pc was logged int to it – and it would show as soon as it was received so i could just link to it or save it there.
the service would allow me to see the last x number of things that were sent back to my pc – and browse through them in a web interface.