For a while now, I’ve used two different platforms for listmaking: Outlook Notes and Backpack. There are pros and cons to both. Outlook Notes are stored on my computer and synced to the Notes app on my iPhone, making them easy to access when I’m at home or on the go, but not at my work computer. Backpack is beautifully designed software that I can access online anywhere, but it leaves me wanting more.

So a few months ago I mocked up the exact kind of listmaking app I wanted. The examples I used were story ideas, but I’d happily use this software for any type of list. Note that this is for personal use, even the “thumbs up” option. I find that I go back over my lists of ideas many times,

A friend of mine started to create this software, but he got caught up in some other things (family, friends, paying jobs…really?). So the other day I was chatting with another developer, and he recommended a free site called Trello.

I’ve been using Trello for a week now, and I’m happy to report that it’s quite close to the listmaking software of my dreams, especially for idea logging, sorting, and tagging. It is a must-have for writers and compulsive list makers.

Trello has various ways of helping you break down ideas. You have multiple pages to use, and on each page you can create multiple lists with different tags to sort the individual ideas. The ideas themselves are on cards that you can drag and drop to any list on the page or to any position on a list. If you click on the card, you can store a wealth of information on it, as if they represent index cards with a few lines on the front and a full description on the back.

I would highly, highly recommend loading Trello and giving it a try. It’ll take about 5 seconds to have your account ready, and Trello’s tutorial is cleverly built into a preloaded page that you can play around with as if it’s one of your lists.

Let me know what you think after you give it a try. What do you currently use for lists and sorting ideas?

Why wouldn't you invest in Van Wilder? He throws a great party!

I’m thinking this is a win-win proposition: Why can’t we invest in individuals in the same way we invest in companies in the stock market?

I’ve been toying with this idea for a few days now, and a comment on yesterday’s blog post made me want to write about it today. The comment mentioned a scholarship program in which you “invest” in talented young people so that they can afford to go to college, and many of them end up being donors to the program after they’ve achieved success.

I think that can be taken a step further, beyond mere philanthropy. This is a very rudimentary version of how I see this happening:

From an investor’s standpoint, you would have access to a vast portfolio of high school seniors in whom you could invest (the students have opted into the investment portfolio). Most of the data about the students is quantifiable: GPA, standardized test scores, extracurriculars, etc. Students could also submit 2-minute pitch videos and/or essays.

The government has a formula for determining student aid, and from that formula you’d derive how much money each student would need depending on the school they attend. So say John Parker has selected Stanford as his university of choice, but he needs $20,000 a year to attend. If you like John’s potential, you could invest all or part of that money, and John could avoid taking on federal or private loans.

For four years, you wouldn’t reap any dividends from your investment beyond good feelings. But then he graduates and gets a job (sure, he might go to grad school too–there would have to be stipulations about that). Out of every paycheck he receives, you get a cut based on the amount of money you originally invested in him. It’s risky for you, because John could go downhill in college and never make a decent wage, but there’s also the chance that he’ll get a great job or start a huge company, and you’ll reap the dividends of your investment.

How long would you reap those dividends? I’d say quite a while, especially since it’s only good for the benefactor if you make a return on your investment.

You might be wondering, why doesn’t the student just take a loan, even a private loan? Because it’s much less risky for them. If they take an $80,000 loan with 6% interest after college, no matter what job they get, they have to pay off $80,000 (plus 6%). Which the investment option, the amount that they pay depends on the amount that they make. They may end up paying less than $80,000 or they might pay significantly more. But the latter only happens if they’re making big bucks.

I truly think this would be good for everyone. Wouldn’t it be great for individual students, especially poorer ones, to know that someone out there believed in them enough to invest in them. And wouldn’t it be neat for regular guys and gals like you and me to be able to invest in our future, even if we’re just chipping in $500 or so?

What do you think? Have you heard of anything like this?

The price hike happened a few weeks ago. Since then, Netflix has lost a million subscribers. So the other day, Netflix members got an e-mail from the CEO indicating that in order to alleviate further dissent, Netflix would divide into two different companies, Netflix (for streaming) and Qwikster (for DVDs by mail). Two separate services, two separate queues, and the price hike (if you subscribed to both, just now separately) is still in place.

I’m amazed that this is something that people are outraged about. We’re all talking about watching movies at home, right? That’s it? And yet we’re outraged? I’m truly hoping that Hastings has a whole slew of e-mails in his draft box, all ready to send at the right time. Some messages I’m eagerly expecting:

• That Qwikster will be divided into two separate services, one for DVDs, the other for Blu-Ray (called Bluester).
• That he’s giving into to public pressure and reuniting the DVD and streaming services, but he’s sticking with the name Qwikster instead of Netflix “because he can.”
• That he has no idea of what to do, so he’s having a contest to determine the best solution–just like the million-dollar contest for someone who could create a better recommendation engine for the site. Again, he insists that the solution be called Qwikster.
• A picture of Hastings giving us the finger, followed by a short note saying that he’s made enough money, and he’s shutting Netflix and Qwikster down immediately. The P.S. would inform me that I have 7 days to return my copy of Ella Enchanted before he sues me for a million dollars.

Honestly, the switch wouldn’t be a problem if every movie and TV show streamed on Netflix. But they don’t–the selection of streaming video is actually quite small.

So here’s what I think Hastings should actually do:

1. Recombine the services, reduce the prices to what they were two months ago (but still delineate pricing between DVDs and streaming), and give every Netflix subscriber (and recent unsubscribers) two months free. But announce that changes will be coming in the following form.
2. Pledge to get every movie (and maybe every television show) on the streaming service by January 1, 2012. However, when they reach a critical mass, the way they charge for streaming will change. Unlimited streaming when you every movie available is preposterous. Us consumers shouldn’t expect that. We should expect to pay for what we watch. Thus the streaming plans will be determined by hours, with the caveat that you can roll over unused hours to the next month. That way consumers will assign a specific value to a streaming video, unlike right now, when $7 = infinity. $7 should never equal infinity anything. I think that change may actually help Netflix sign studios that currently don’t allow for streaming. As part of the exchange, Netflix should give them data, tons of data. When do people watch different types of movies? When do people pause movies? What types of product placements cause people to open a new tab in their browser in search of the product? What movies and scenes do people watch more than once?
3. Announce that from now on, every year on July 1, subscription prices for all services will go up in correlation to postage increases and inflation. DVD rental today should not cost what it did in 2005, nor should it cost the same in 2016. It’s not sustainable that way. However, in recognition of loyal customers, you get grandfathered in for DVD rentals. So if you pay $10 for 2 DVDs a month now, you’ll always pay that much for the rest of your life. This is not only good for loyal customers, but it would also be great for Netflix–imagine the business they’d do every year on June 30th!

In all this fuss, people are forgetting what Netflix does right. Netflix has amazing, forgetting, transparent, and informative customer service, and that’s getting lost in all this fuss. Get rid of the fuss and go back to being an affordable, convenient, consolidated service, and we’ll go back to remembering why Netflix is awesome in the first place.

What do you think? What’s your solution?

The other day I checked my mail and discovered that I had received my reward for backing a Kickstarter project for a company called Quinn Popcorn. It’s a startup that sells simple, delicious organic popcorn with real flavors, not artificial ones. My reward for my pledge was a box of microwave popcorn from their very first batch, lemon and sea salt.

The popcorn was absolutely delicious (who knew that a splash of lemon would be so good on popcorn?!) But my one big disappointment was the box that the box of popcorn came in. Rather, I was disappointed that such a box existed.

Pick up a box of popcorn at the grocery store and tell me why that box can’t be shipped as is. Why does it need to be stuffed into another box?

This isn’t just about popcorn–it’s about anything that is packaged inside a box. We shouldn’t have to put those boxes inside other boxes to ship them. It’s such a waste.

I’m sure there’s a company out there that skips the second box because of a clever design on the product box. Do you know of one? If not, are there any designers out there who could create such a box? I challenge you to do this.

Online dating way more about rejection than acceptance.

Which, in a way, is great. No one likes being rejected, but if you learn to deal with rejection in a healthy way, it will make you more likely to enter high-risk, high-reward situations.

We all have different ways we like to be rejected. However, sites like Match leave people guessing. I propose that my improved Match.com remove guessing from the equation and make it part of any initial email to someone new. See below:

 Note that you’re simply stating a preference in those checkboxes. If Amy Adams really wants to tell me exactly why she’s not interested in me (probably the distance), she can do so against my better wishes.

I’m curious, if you were/are on an online dating site, what is your preferred way to be rejected after an initial email?

Take Our Poll

I have this perception that poor people buy a lot of cigarettes and lottery tickets, perpetuating their poverty. I can’t speak to the cigarettes, but when I got home with my Slurpee, I Googled “poor people” and “lottery tickets.” I found this article and this information:

“A study by the Commission on Thrift reported that households with an income below $13,000 spend 9 percent of their money on lotteries. By comparison, households making $130,000 spend 0.3 percent of income on lotteries.”

9 percent versus 0.3%? That’s a huge difference. (9% of $13,000 is $1,170 and 0.3% of $130,000 is $390, in case you’re curious.) It’s absolutely idiotic and irresponsible for you to be spending $1,170 lottery tickets if you’re only making $13,000 a year.

Some states are testing out lottery programs where your money goes into a savings account and you have an entry entered in a lottery/raffle once a a year for a decent payout. It’s a good idea, a good start.

But many states don’t like those lotteries, because states make a ton of money off of poor people buying lottery tickets. It’s a magical source of income. But with all the bad stuff that comes out of impoverished people, I bet states end up spending way more on those people in other ways.

So here’s my lottery solution: If you haven’t been a student the past 5 years, you’re over 21, and your income has been less than $13,000 for the last 5 years, you are eligible to be a part of this solution. All you have to do is give up your right to gamble or play the lottery for the rest of your life, and your state will pay you $50,000 cash.

Now, I know there are tons of loopholes here. You could give the money to a friend and they could buy lottery tickets. You could go abroad and gamble. You could go spend the money on drugs or 20 plasma TVs.

But let’s say those things could be worked around. Maybe it’s not even cash. Maybe it’s a college scholarship fund for your kids. I yield to you in the comments for some creativity here.

The point is, by offering a huge, irresistible payday, you could cure millions of poor people of a self-destructive disease for life. This could have an incredibly positive effect on society.

Now, I don’t think the middle and upper classes owe anything to the poor. (There’s a BUT to that. It’ll come later.)

The one big exception to that statement are poor kids. Poor kids have it the worst. They have an uphill battle to climb. Some will make it up that hill, while many will stay poor. I think it’s worth the time and resources of non-poor people to help impoverished kids get out of the sinkhole that is poverty through organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters and Angel Baked Cookies.

I think that allocating similar resources (like programs that help recently released criminals find a stable place in society) can have a positive effect on society. But I think that allocating funds to  to impoverished adults–whether its welfare or a dollar to the panhandler on the corner–is a mistake that doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help the poor escape the cyclical nature of poverty. And the negative habits of the poor–crime in particular–have a hugely negative impact on all of society.

Thus, even though I don’t feel that I owe it to the poor to help them, I feel like I have a vested interest in decreasing the number of truly impoverished people in America (and the world). There must be some ways to incentivize poor people to help break some of their self-destructive habits. I wrote about one solution a while ago. And maybe today’s solution would have a positive impact as well.

What do you think?

In my experience, it’s completely true. When you’re on a trip, you’re outside of your comfort zone. Your raw, unedited side comes out, and you get to see what your significant others’ raw, unedited side looks like. I actually think this would make an interesting dating site idea: Your first date is a trip somewhere. It would combine a flight deal and date stuff.

I remember one of the first road trips I took with a girlfriend. I remember nothing about the trip except that I discovered that she drove about 200 miles an hour on the highway, pulling right up behind cars until they moved out of her way. It didn’t change my view of her personality–she really was a lovely woman–but I saw a different side of her. And I had to deal with it for many hours, so part of the test was seeing how I reacted.

This past weekend, essentially on a whim, I used some frequent flyer miles to purchase a ticket to Ireland. For a while (about a week) I’ve been fantasizing about spending some time in Ireland, writing and reading on rolling hills and in ancient castles, buying rounds of Bud Select in pubs for cute Irish girls.

So when I spotted an available frequent flier ticket in the fall, I jumped at the chance. I’ve also lined up a five-night stay at a castle hotel. That’s right. I’m going to live in a castle for almost a week.

My natural inclination is to include someone on the trip. Not someone in particular, just someone, a lady companion. But just like my intentionally single period back in ’09, I really want–and need–to go at this alone. A solo trip will be a huge challenge for me, a huge stretch.

Basically, it’ll be a great test of my relationship with my single self.

Have you ever taken an enlightening (or difficult) trip with a significant other? Have you taken a solo trip abroad? How was it?

That being said, I have an idea for a better Match that combines the dating site with a daily deal concept. The idea is to add urgency and simplicity to online dating. Groupon works because you have a limited amount of time to make a single decision once a day. It wouldn’t work if you had a month to buy the Groupon or if you had 30 different deals to choose from every day.

So the basic idea for Daily Date is that once a day, you get an e-mail with a single match for that day. You have until the end of the day to decide if you want to go on a date with that person (and that person is concurrently making the same decision about you), and after that, they disappear.

The site would be free. However, intrinsically tied to the choice to go on a date with the person is the choice to purchase an exclusive first-date deal from the site. Restaurants would sign up to be eligible for the deal, and the site would triangulate each deal based on where the two people live or work.

One other note: The site would only match you with people that meet your key specifications. I regularly get matched on Match with women who hate cats or have kids or smoke–those are dealbreakers for me, so it’s a waste of my time to have to remove them from my daily matches. I’ve added a rating system for attractiveness and grammar for that same purpose. There are a few other touches I’ve added–you’ll see them on the infographic.

Here’s the infographic. What do you think? Also let me know if I’m getting too creepy with the Amy Adams bit.

For a while now I’ve been trying to invent a better Groupon. I think the basis for Groupon is brilliant, but there are so many possible iterations of it that I figured I could find a more fun way to play. (Of course, at this point, it’s extremely difficult to compete with Groupon and Living Social. They simply have too many subscribers.)

Well, I haven’t figured out a better Groupon. But while playing around with a well-known game theory called the Prisoner’s Dilemma, I came up with a new deal structure that could potentially benefit the user and the seller more than Groupon does. I don’t think it actually works, because nobody wants to screw over their friends (or do they), but take a look at the self-explanatory infographic and let me know what you think. Do you have some friends that you’d send this to as a good friend and others as a mischievous friend?

Every once in a while on one of my favorite shows, How I Met Your Mother, the gang blurts out in unison, “We should open a bar!” The running joke is that every fretful 20-something has a moment when they want to do something cool for once, and naturally the answer to that inclination is to open a bar.

There’s even an episode where they get to take over their bar for a night. It does not go well.

My idea is a bar that switches management once a week. So if you’ve always had that dream of running a bar, you get to do it for a week. You get some buddies together to decide the name, the theme, the setup, the menu, the music. You serve the drinks. You open and close every night (the bar would be open whenever you want it to be, but probably just at night since people have daytime jobs).

For one week you get to live the dream.

And then you’re done. No risk. In fact, if you love running a bar for a week, you could sign up to do it again sometime in the future. You’re not limited to one week.

One of the cool elements about it is the clientele the bar would attract. Every week you’d have friends of the temporary managers coming out to support them and feel like they’re VIP, and you also have people who want to see what different bars do differently. It would be a good mix.

As for how to split the profits, I’d have to figure out those logistics. I think each group of temporary managers would put down a deposit so they don’t destroy the bar and to make sure they actually show up. And I think the alcohol would have to be measured in some way to make sure I’m covering my costs. If they want to give away shots for free, that’s fine, but that should hurt their profits, not mine. I think there should be some reward to the temporary owners if they do really well on their week.

I could record the various bars and experiences on video and post them to a website, and perhaps have an annual contest based on profits and popularity.

What do you think? What would you do with your bar for a week?