Neville

Come 2007 I can technically move anywhere, as I have no physical ties to Austin, TX.

I had no plans to move, but I wanted to see what my potential city candidates were before I completely knocked the idea.

Asking some mentors, I was advised that any city I lived in would be most beneficial to me if it has the following things:

-Strong educational resources in the university environment.
-Strong relationship between science and business.
-A strong and established business incubator.
-High tech companies all around.

There are areas in the United States that fit these criteria:
-Silicon Valley in California (San Francisco & surrounding area)
-Route 128 in Massachusetts (Boston, MA.)
-Austin, TX.

There is simply more opportunity in these three places for a startup company than anywhere else in the United States.

Go to an internet store, any store, and it’s mostly the same thing. Click through products at different stores and with a few subtle differences, it’s mainly the same thing. It’s getting very difficult to differentiate one’s self with an online store.

I’m working on another ecommerce store and instead of being the designer/creator of the store, I’m officially becoming the photographer. I’m taking my own product photos to differentiate the store from the distributors website, but mainly to give the site personality. I have already begun the process of ordering all the products (About 20 at a time) and taking pictures/video of them.

Sometimes the promotional photos provided by the manufacturer is good enough to explain the product, so I won’t take photos of EVERYTHING….however I want a good majority of the site to have the photos taken.

FOR EXAMPLE:

In the pranks section of the site, there is a novelty fake cigar. Here is the provided photo for the fake cigar:

Now here is an “action shot” picture I took with the fake cigar:

Goofy! But explains the product much better. Notice the lack of photo editing. I’ve been purposely making these photos very amateur-ish. I’ve been taking 3 added photos of each product which will make it amusing for customers to browse the site, and give them a better sense of the product they’re buying.

I am hoping to build a popular feature much like ThinkGeek.com’s “Customer Action Shots” feature.

One problem is I’ve been finding it difficult to take unique pictures without the assitance of someone else, so I bought this awesome GorillaPod which is a tripod with bendable legs:

Since I usually take these pictures in spare time, I can’t always have someone around. However I can clamp this GorillaPod thing to the side of a door, fan, guitar…you name it and get a great shot!

I found out I couldn’t get out of a speeding ticket the way I hoped. Apparently the law concerning delaying a trial has changed in favor of the courts.

The plan was to keep delaying the court date until both officers involved in clocking and catching me didn’t show up. I asked several employees of the court, a lawyer and a judge how the process worked, and I got the same conclusion.

What makes it hard now is:

1.) You may ask for a continuance of the trial on a later date, but it’s at the discretion of the judge to grant it. I was told by the judge herself that she RARELY grants continuances on the same day unless for a VERY VERY good reason, which I most likely didn’t have.

2.) If the officer(s) provide an excuse for now showing up (basically they just have to say they’re on duty), the trial may still proceed even without them. This is probably better for society as a whole, because while I’m just trying to circumvent a ticket, I’m effectively taking a law enforcer off the street.

The court clerk told me they’ve basically shut down that particular loophole in the system.

So $160 later, I’m taking deferred adjudication. Now I must take defensive driving again and avoid a ticket for the next three months.