The longer version:
OK, so I’m the first to admit that I often find myself with too many balls to juggle. I find that having more to do actually makes me more productive and when I get in the zone, things happen and it feels good.

However, when you’re starting a business, or working on something important to you, and you decide that it is the highest priority in your life, then other things slip down the priority order, and they simply don’t get done.

Cases in point:

1. I’ve needed to get a UK drivers license for at least 3 years now
2. I’ve needed to renew my South African passport for over a year now
3. I’ve been serious about taking up Kendo, or a Japanese Sword Art, for at least 18 months
4. I’ve needed to sort out health insurance for a long long long time
5. I wanted to organise a birthday bash for myself this year, for precisely the reason why it didn’t happen last year

I think you get the picture…. Basically you keep your life together somehow until something threatens to break, then you mend it so it doesn’t break in the short term, then you go back to being focussed. I know not everyone is like that, but I am, hence this post!

Anyways, I’m not really into recommending or plugging services that I don’t have a lot of exposure to, mainly ‘cos I get too many emails so it’s hard to decide whom to spend an hour for getting to know a service, and also ‘cos people don’t really read my blog for that reason I’m not Scoble or Arrington or Kirkpatrick, and neither do I want to be.

Back to the point – a while ago my friend Ed setup a service called Online Personal Assistant, and after a bit of nudging I decided to give it a try. My @Inbox was overflowing, and I really just needed to clear some stuff that was important, but not that important it could go above Kindo.

So I sent a list of stuff to my personal assistant Kevin:

1. Book Geek BBQ venue for summer in London
2. Book karting venue for my birthday delebration
3. Book bowling venue for my birthday celebration
4. Find me health insurance
5. Find me Tai Chi schools close to where I live
6. Find me Kendo schools close to where I live

As you can see, they’re all time intensive tasks that would mean me spending a few hours online for each one, at some point, getting to a place where I can make a decision and then do some actions… Getting my passport and drivers license require me to be somewhere in person, so I needed to do that.

Where we are now is that Ed’s team (thanks Kevin!) has spent about 9 hours doing all that stuff for me, for which I’ll pay an hourly rate. Everything is documented and tracked in an online workspace (not Basecamp), and I’m happy with the results. I have a few things to tie down now, but basically all the research is done, and all it requires is another booking, or an action on my part.

Bottom line – I’ve saved 9 hours of my time (which I value more than what I’ll pay for it), thereby enabling me to focus on things more important to me now, so as far as I’m concerned I’m a happy biologist.

I happily recommend the service, and am going to continue to use it.

Kindo.com is a “new take on the traditional family tree”. In this interview, we sit down with Gareth Knight to talk about Kindo and their user acquisition strategy. Gareth shares with us his experience of attracting users to the site and the effectiveness of strategies such as blogging, Google AdWords and PR.

If you’re building a webapp, could be useful

… That Leaders are those people who create trust in society and their businesses, and that trust is efficient. Success is forged through competition and human greatness is possible precisely because people are not the same and they have the option to choose whether they want to lead or follow….

Pretty interesting reading if you’re an entrepreneur – any thoughts?

Browsershots makes screenshots of your Web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your Web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your Web site in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

Hat tip to Steve, who finally has a blog, dammit!

_ Microsoft-Yahoo, Version 2.0

Every day it looks more likely that Yahoo! (YHOO) co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo will lose control of the company they built into the Net’s first iconic brand. Days after they appeared to have dodged an unsolicited $47.5 billion acquisition bid from Microsoft, raider Carl Icahn began buying millions of Yahoo shares, building up a 4.3% stake.

On May 15 he announced plans to replace Yahoo’s board in hopes of getting the company back to the negotiating table with Microsoft. Apparently with some success: On May 18, Microsoft signaled renewed interest in Yahoo by jumping back in with a fresh proposal that involves, as one option, taking over Yahoo’s search-advertising business

My take, it’s gonna happen – there’s too much to be gained from it, for it not to happen. Guess the question is in what form and when.

Kindo just launched in Danish! Our last name research pages for Denmark have been live for quite some time now, and finally we have launched Kindo in Danish! It should soon be available via http://kindo.dk as well.

Danish home pageThe new language was made possible by Aske and Brian who have translated the whole website voluntarily. Thanks a lot for your help guys! Especially Aske has worked incredibly hard on this; and amazingly fast as well.

The new Danish version takes our language toll to 15! The Kindo family is spreading the globe

_ Financial Mail – Here comes Neotel

SA’s second fixed-line network operator was meant to begin operating in May 2002, when Telkom lost its statutory monopoly over fixed-line telecommunications. Six years later, the company – known now as Neotel – will finally launch its services to consumers.

All signs are that Neotel is finally gaining traction – and that it’s prepared to take the fight to Telkom. Despite warning initially that it wouldn’t start a price war with Telkom, indications are that it will compete aggressively on price. The company is still reluctant to talk prices, but some details are emerging.

Hat tip to Tim, who still does not have a blog yet.. ;-(

To get to the title of my first post – “Life is too short to dance with fat girls”. I heard it yesterday while watching Episode 8 of Californication, a new American mini series, where David Duchovny plays Hank Moody, a famous author with writers block. Hank’s father tells him that while the two of them are having a father to son chat at a bar – I had a good chuckle when I heard him say it

Nice one Steve – looking forward to some good content!!

_ Kindo one of UK’s Most Promising Internet Company 2008 – Kindo Family Blog

Kindo was one of three companies, who made it to the Finals at the Internetworld 2008 fair, that is going on at Earl’s Court at the moment.

Well done to the Zoopla! guys, I reckon they’re onto a winner

During “The Award Final” at the Keynote Theatre yesterday the three selected start-ups were pitching in front of the jury and this time to the internetworld as well. Though finally the property site Zoopla took home the prize, it was a great opportunity to present Kindo to a internet-savvy crowd, and all that only about 10 Minutes from our Kindo headquarters in Putney Bridge.

2 comments about internet world:
1. more people than last time overall…
2. … and, way more honeys than the last time I was there

Aprende más sobre tus apellidos. Descubre cuánta gente comparte alguno de tus apellidos, y cómo son de populares comparados con otros apellidos.

My previous design lasted for almost half of that time. Despite its shortcomings (lack of a feature-rich CMS) and obvious design flaws, and given the amount of recognition that it received, I became hesitant to change it much. Until the waves of spam attacks began.

Since my blog was running on a bespoke system, it became increasingly difficult and time-consuming to manage, which partly explains why I haven’t been posting as regularly.

So after a tricky data migration and clean-up (the volume of crap I’ve written in the past 6 years is embarrassing), a tiresome metadata capturing process (adding titles and tags to 770 posts), and a couple of design revisions later, this blog has undergone a complete overhaul and is now powered by WordPress 2.5.1 with a super collection of plugins.

Please check it out, let me know what you think, comment on this post for feedback (or email me), and send me typos!

Once I’ve done one more pass of it and I’m happy it’s ready for consumption, I’m gonna create a page for it to live at (while other plans get rolling – thanks Ed!).

Here it is: Building a Startup You Love is Hard (BaSYLiH) – Final Draft.

Edit: If you’d rather read on Scribd, here it is – thanks to David for putting it there.

Enjoy