CommerceCubes

Interview with David Askaripour of MindPetals.com

March 7, 2007 – 8:47 am
I had a chance to talk with David Askaripour about his visions for running MindPetals, an online Entrepreneurship network, a few weeks ago. Since I made his acquaintance last fall he continues his goal of promoting MindPetals and growing it in a positive direction. The layout and navigation of his site is clean and straightforward to use and I think the words “Fresh”, “Clean”, and “Simple” are a few words that describe it well from a visual point-of-view. The site itself is packed with content for anyone interested in reading articles from entrepreneurs that highlight their successes, failures and how they are overcoming them. I had the following questions to ask David when it comes to running MindPetals… Lucas: When you started MindPetals, what was your goal and how did you plan on reaching it? Dave: My goal was to unite young entrepreneurs around the world in ...

Posted in General, entrepreneurship, Business Geeks | No Comments »

Blogging, Business and just doing it

February 19, 2007 – 2:15 pm
It’s funny. I took a look outside the bubble of blogging for the last month roughly and realized that I haven’t been focusing on my business goals. That’s a big “No No” because once you find a business that is worth pouring your time into, all your energy goes into it. In reverse, if you say read a lot of Blogs or watch a ton of TV or are preoccupied with other pursuits how do you (or in this case ‘I’) ever expect to develop a successful business? I’ve been wining myself off of outside distractions that take away from productivity. I am all for screwing off from time to time because its healthy, needed and refreshes you in a way that all people need regardless of whether they are building businesses, careers, families… you get the idea. Is there something that you’ve been putting off doing? Maybe you need to ...

Posted in General, entrepreneurship | No Comments »

What has Luc been up to lately?

January 26, 2007 – 1:05 pm
Lately you may see me posting a little less than the previous month on CommerceCubes and really I’ve just been getting my head screwed on right these days.  A project that I am currently involved with is WebmasterFarms (Catchy name I know ;))   I am utilizing the WordPress Architecture to develop a community for professional web people to submit articles and promote what it is that they know to a growing audience.  Keep in mind that this is only one goal of the site and I have a couple others that I will be releasing as the site builds and grows over time.  I am looking for a few things currently for this project…   1)      Web Designers & Developers – The reason for this is that the service side of this business is based on helping companies maintain their online environments.  I am moving away from a development based business to a ...

Posted in General, entrepreneurship, Lucas' Projects | No Comments »

Waking up to your mid-twenties

January 20, 2007 – 11:21 am
I must say that in the past few years things haven’t gone to plan. I know what it feels like to work in a personal hell. I am sure that other people out there in their twenties understand where I am coming from. You see our parents cannot understand why we just are not happy with the state of our lives. Here’s the thing, maybe you graduated with a degree in Business and now find yourself working at MacDonalds or maybe you never graduated because you thought it was a waste of time or maybe you are back in school working a job that you for lack of a better word “hate”. The point is this, you are not alone. Your parents will not understand because their world was a lot different when they were growing up. They didn’t have ...

Posted in General, entrepreneurship, Life Tools | 1 Comment »

WordPress Tiger Administration Plug-in Tool

January 19, 2007 – 1:13 pm
I came across this WordPress Plug-in last week on Jason’s Blog and just had the chance to add it today. I must say that Orderedlist (The Company that built this plug-in) did a good job at cleaning up the “rough look” that the standard WP Administration Console has. It does not add any additional functionality to WordPress but it increases the usability of what is on the backend of the site by putting things in more convenient locations that people new and seasoned in WordPress will like. Enjoy this little plug-in. It’s dead simple to use and install as well which is another great selling feature. Lucas

Posted in General, web development, WordPress Tools | No Comments »

Five Technologies changing the face of Consumerism

January 16, 2007 – 1:46 pm
I was reading about the five technologies that are changing and going to change the consumer buying landscape forever. Most of these technologies are becoming the “norm” because of the lower costs to implement said technology but it was interesting to learn about never the less. Self Checkouts It’s really quite neat being able to serve yourself at the grocery store when you head to the checkout line. About a month ago I was in Zehrs (a Canadian Supermarket chain) and saw this thing in action. It served customers left and right but there was creepiness about it. Where is the human touch? We are getting so smart that we outsource jobs we don’t want to do or automate them which in turn creates a greater need for what are known as “knowledge workers”. Why are they good? Cheap to implement and run They ...

Posted in General, Computers, Technology & Programming, entrepreneurship, Business Tools | 1 Comment »

Business Casual: Dressing the Part in Business

January 14, 2007 – 10:04 am
There is a saying that “The Clothes make the man” or woman but what do you think.  Personally I feel better when I dress better but sometimes I like to bum around the house in a pair of jeans and t-shirt.  Clothes and dressing in general tell other people a lot about a person and when you are representing a business that own the same needs to be said. Under dressing – A lot of web based business owners would, I suspect, fall into this category simply because if your main interaction with people is through a website, the website says more about you then how you look.  This is the Jeans, T-shirt and Sandals/Runners crew that gets written about by tech magazines for their almost rebel appearance.  You can show up to meetings in Jeans and runners but unless you are catering to the blind selling your service or business ...

Posted in General, entrepreneurship, Life Tools | No Comments »

Who took the training wheels off My bike?

January 12, 2007 – 1:04 pm
What you’ve got to realize about life can all be summed up in one line “You are the sum of your experiences”. That is no hard and fast manual for success outside of becoming a doctor, lawyer or professional of that sort. Sorry but the rest of us have to find our own way. If you want to become a business owner then again the path is skewed a little more because most people do not want the hassle of running a business. Going to school for business is one good step but that only teaches you how to work in a business and not necessarily run one or create one. Now I am sure that some people will disagree with this but to me it makes sense. By all means, go to school and get that education but if you really want to ...

Posted in General, entrepreneurship, Life Tools | No Comments »

Webmastering – What does it encompass?

January 10, 2007 – 7:12 pm
"Webmaster" and “Webmastering” are terms that have been around since the early days of the internet and many people believe that it means one thing or another. The truth is that it’s a broad and general term that has to do with someone who runs the day to day operations of a website. Webmasters can be developers and most are but it requires and touches on a bunch of different niches including… Branding Marketing Advertising Development Creation Administration A lot of people that start online businesses don’t take into account just how much and what is needed to become a true success online. Most simply figure and follow the dogma of “if you build it they will come” and really maybe in the early days there was a bit of truth to that but now you need to be on your game when it comes to promoting what you’ve built online. The best ...

Posted in General, web development | No Comments »

iPhone, the great disconnect and You

January 9, 2007 – 2:46 pm
I haven’t written much on CommerceCubes in the last few days with the stresses of starting a course and working this site hit the backburner for a little while but I am getting into the flow of writing again. Also all the holiday fanfare subsided finally so I can get back to focusing on writing Apple seems to continue to surprise the world with its technological offers and the latest of which is iPhone. From a business perspective the iPhone makes good sense because it’s small and light and you can pretty much do anything you need and stay connected to the heart of your business. From a personal point of view the iPhone is just cool and the “cool” factor seems to sell big time. The phone itself has some interesting price points $499 for the 4 GB model and $599 for the 8 GB Model. So ...

Posted in General, Computers, Technology & Programming, entrepreneurship, Business Tools | No Comments »