Clint Nelsen (Seattle, WA)

I had been having a huge debate with myself about what phone to get next. I’d been using a Blackberry and have a lot of experience with the iPhone. After two days with the Evo I could not be happier, it does things people on AT&T won’t see for years.

If you’re thinking Evo/iPhone like I was here are a few things worth considering. First AT&T is moving off of unlimited data, that is scary for me as I consume a lot! iPhone has a 5MP camera Evo has 8. I live in Seattle and have 4G access as well as the ability to tether up to 8 other wireless devices. AT&T is going to have tethering enabled for $20 a month and will be charging for the data you use. That’s scary if you’re a heavy user!

The Evo is amazing, even tho Skype is only supported via android on Verizon I found an app called “Fring” and was doing full video calls while walking down the street and had access to all of my skype contacts.

To really sum it up, I love this phone. The only drawback to take into consideration is the battery life, it does leaving you wishing for a lot more! With that said they phone is build to allow for massive data consumption and data sharing. The 4.3in screen and 4G eat battery like nobody’s business. For me it’s a trade off I’m more than willing to make. I have a car charger and may get a second battery, think of the phone as something in between iPad and iPhone. If you are in the market for an iPad I’d suggest you play with an Evo first. You might find it does everything you need.

Plus I work and live on Google Apps and so all of the Google integration is seamless, so nice! To have the ability to pop into any cafe in the greater Seattle area and power my laptop and iPad with the Evo is amazing. (I bought a iPad 3G but don’t use AT&T in the states for data, just feed it with the Evo).

The power plug for the Evo is smaller than an iPhone charger and can be used with a standard outlet or a USB port from your computer. If I was going out for the day I’d turn off wi-fi and 4G and would not be browsing heavily especially if I was a tourist in a new city and wanted some juice to find my way home.

I travel a lot and it’s not often that I’m away from an outlet or a USB port. Maybe you even want to consider getting a second battery. Think of it like driving a Ferrari vs a Civic, this phone was not build for MPG, it was made for blazing speed and turns the entire city of Seattle into a viable office space for me. Thats incredible!

When you turn the keyboard into landscape mode it’s not far off from iPad key size. I love this as I really had trouble with iPhone keys that are soooo small. I can ripe out an email in record time on the Evo, not to mention it gives the ability to use my laptop anywhere the phones gets a signal to do email etc.

While it is a compromise on battery life the phone is so powerful with just a little bit of planning you’ll likely find yourself saving money each month being off of AT&T as well having multiple capabilities other cell phone users won’t see in 2010 maybe even 2011.

I don’t do this often enough but want to be better about talking about things that I am spending my time on.  Lately I’ve been really focused on Startup Weekend, and getting back into a healthy daily routine.  Initiatives that I’m working on for Startup Weekend include a lot of upcoming cities.  One that I am particularly excited about biting off is Haiti Startup Weekend.  My goal is to raise money and direct it to local entrepreneurs where it will have the most impact.  To the end, Microsoft has stepped up and agreed to sponsor a 400 person fundraiser at the Speakeasy in Austin, TX at SXSW on March 13th.  Attendees can expect a live band and open bar for $20 to get in.  We’ll be donating all of the proceeds from the event to our efforts in Haiti (400 x $20 = $8,000) not a bad start!

This initiative is less than a week old and we already have a lot of support.  The New York Times has already picked it up and will begin to write a piece on it tomorrow, hopefully this will mean a lot more support for the cause!  It’s mind blowing what can be done with the right people behind it.  If you want to get involved with this feel free to contact me I’d like to see this take off and there is no end to the amount of support we could use.

Aside from that I’ve been working on launching a new website and social community for Startup Weekend.  I think that new site and community will be live in 2-4 weeks.  I’m eager to have that done since the site we are using now has a lot of issues that I’m well aware of .  One other project of note, Marc and I have been working on our own startup, a platform for event management.  We are working with the team behind Zip-Line and have a lot of exciting things in the works.  After a year of running a global campaign I have yet to find a platform that does even a mediocre job of running that.  It’s already pretty far along, I’ll keep sending updates as it goes live.

Lastly, we’ve been seeing interest from some corporations to do technology specific Startup Weekends.  I like the idea of doing this and think it makes sense in conjunction with Startup Weekend.  In the future I think it would be cool if someone could attend a Startup Weekend event and pick an idea as well as a technology to build that idea on.  I think it makes a lot of sense to plug people in with people and companies that offer more support once they have chosen the pieces of technology they will be incorporating into their startup.  For example, we had at team come out of Atlanta Startup Weekend called TwitPay which incorporates Twitter and PayPal.  I think there is extreme value to be able to connect a team like that to internal folks at Twitter and PayPal that know the API and technology inside and out.  The idea being come to Startup Weekend and pitch any idea on any technology, then (hopefully) we can continue to help teams move forward with their idea by plugging them in with the very people behind the pieces of technology that are using.  One thing I do not want to do is change the agnostic nature of Startup Weekend events, I like that we are somewhat of an externality and don’t push a specific agenda other than startups, community, networking, and having a good time!

One ask that makes my life infinitely easier and allows Startup Weekend to be more effective is VENUES!  If you have a venue that is suitable for 75-200 people that is a critical ingredient to making Startup Weekend events possible.  I’ll post again soon.

HI, I’M ANDY MACDONALD.

Voicify

Over this past weekend I went to Atlanta to participate in Atlanta Startup Weekend 3. I was involved in last year’s event and had a great time despite the team I worked with blowing up and not developing a product. This year was different though.

Startup Weekend is an event where tech-focused entrepreneurs from a city or region come together to pitch ideas for new projects, divide into groups interested in working on a certain number of these ideas, and spend the next 48+ hours (sometimes straight) working to launch a version of their new product. The team I chose to work with this year ended up being an amazing group of developers. To create our product we decided to leverage the power of a new platform for voice services called Twillio. In addition we also learned Django, figured out the Google App Engine, and integrated RPX’s user management system.

The product we developed is (currently) called Voicify (http://voicify.me). We designed it to be a quick and simple way to find out what people think about any kind of issue. The service allows for users, such as business, organizations, individuals, and political campaigns, to designate the questions they want to ask and the phone numbers to be polled, and it does the rest. We feel this caters to a very prominent market need for small business in particular, who now more than ever need to connect with their customer bases and determine how best to build those relationships.

We are very excited about the new product and are continuing to develop it even further to provide more advanced functionality while maintaining its simplicity. You can try it out for free simply by logging in (no signup required) at http://www.voicify.me . If you feel like you might have a good way to use it go ahead and get an account today. And feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions.

Check out the post from TechEd in Phoenix for the SAP conference!  Great podcast with the guys!  Loved talking about the future and learning about a lot of new technology.  Imagine holding your breath underwater for 4 hours.  Really cool stuff!   Podcast Here.  Really enjoyed my time with all of you!  Here is a post by Ed Hermann  Post here

The world is small!  Lets backup a bit, it’s August and I’m at Gnomedex in Seattle watching Bre Pettis present a killer movie of his maker bot making egg salt and pepper shakers and a figure head of Darth Vader.  Bre lives in NYC and the girls that were making the eggs are Loz and Kegan of Design Glut.  I thought the video was cool and the Maker Bot rocked.  Then Gnomedex ended.  Now it’s mid September, Marc and I bought a jetBlue all you can jet pass and are hitting 10 cities in 30 days. I emailed a few people on Couch Surfing that live in NYC for a place to stay while in town.  Liz got back to me and offered her place.  After making my way over to Liz’s place in Brooklyn I still had no idea who she was.  Then I saw the egg on her table and it dawned on me, you’re the girl from the Maker Bot video!  It was a really strange small world experience, maybe you had to be there Liz and Kegan are really talented and cool people!  Take a look at Design Glut.  In their spare time, they also interview entrepreneurs and post blogs on their page!  Here is what they posted after an intense interview! Startup Weekend Interview