July, 2009

Start-Up — 1 Comment
31
Jul 09

Starting a business changes how you…write?

My co-founder once described my writing as having the density of a dictionary but with none of the brevity.  In my defense, my previous job was to write and review technical documents.

But lately, I have been reading Paul Graham, Jason Fried and the master of get-to-the-point, Seth Godin.  Yesterday, I started on a 2,500 word article for the American Planning Association’s Planning magazine.  And I noticed that my writing has lost some of its density and now uses bullet points and questions.

I figured starting a business would change how I eat and sleep.  But I didn’t occur to me that it would change how I write.

Social Media — 4 Comments
30
Jul 09

How to do Social Media in 6 minutes a day

Anthony and I just finished lunch with Tim Walker.  Check out his back-of-the-napkin sketch for a blog concept.

Back of Napkin Sketch

Back of Napkin Sketch

Tim rejected my line that I don’t have time to write blog posts.  His concept for a company blog seems obvious in retrospect—a three pronged approach focused on

  • our products,
  • entrepreneurship and
  • social media.

His 5 minute idea: repurpose emails.  Take 5 minutes to repurpose 1 email into a blog post each day.

Add a 1 minute tweet about the blog post, and you’ve got a 6 minute prescription for social media.  I’ll commit to investing 6 minutes a day (M-F) into blogging and twittering for the next 30 days and report the results at the end of August.

Tim blogs at http://www.hooversbiz.com/ or you can follow Tim on Twitter.  Also, follow me on Twitter.

NEPA News — No Comments
28
Jul 09

AASHTO Section 4(f) Guidance

aashtoMuch as the name implies, AASHTO’s “Complying with Section 4(f) of the U.S. DOT Act” assists practitioners in managing Section 4(f) compliance.   Section 4(f) is a law that protects public parks, recreation areas, wildlife and waterfowl refuges and significant historic sites.

All in all, it’s a fairly comprehensive resource about Section 4(f) questions, practices and documentation.  I especially like Appendix B—Special Rules and Exceptions for Section 4(f) Applicability Findings.  Appendix B points you towards specifically applicable regulations based on property types (i.e. golf courses, fairgrounds and zoos).

Cubit News — No Comments
7
Jul 09

Get Example Language for PCEs, CEs and EAs

approved document Check out the NEPA Library (beta).  It’s a free library of recently approved NEPA documents.

Right now, the Library has all PCEs, CEs and EAs that were approved by TxDOT and FHWA for May 2009.  We hope to add more approved NEPA documents from different agencies and different states each week.

Cubit’s July newsletter has more details about the Library and other NEPA tools.

Design — No Comments
2
Jul 09

Design Decisions: username vs. email address

how_it_worksCPIn order to allow Cubit users to save their projects we created a feature called “projects”. In order to save a project and retrieve it later, we asked folks to create an account. Creating an account wasn’t hard, it just required you to create a login ID, enter an e-mail address and pick a password. We didn’t think it was easy enough.

The thing we disliked most about creating an account was the ‘login ID’. I know I have too many login IDs or usernames to remember. I can’t always remember if my username is anthony123 or anthonyfromcubit. But I always remember my e-mail address. So, we switched all new accounts to require only email and password.

Using email address as username is nice because it’s one less thing to think about when creating an account. It’s pretty normal to enter an e-mail address for an account: for news from the company, or alerts about the account. Why not make it do double duty? So we did. Hope you like it.

Cubit News — No Comments
1
Jul 09

All Accounts Now Have 5 Projects!

We’re happy to announce that we’ve increased the number of projects you can build to five! Enjoy the additional elbow room!