The objective of the entire ad industry is basically to determine what it is you're in the market for. Funnily enough, I'd have no problem telling someone/thing what I'm in the market for providing the offers received matched my specified criteria.
On any given day of the week, we're all in the market for something, right down to a tube of toothpaste. I've always thought that if advertisers knew, from the source, what that item was, their focus would shift to the value of the offer versus today's focus on identifying potential buyers.
It's something that's occurring elsewhere in the world on the basis of a) a population wanting to consume a thirsty crop such as rice, which requires water they don't have; and, b) not wanting to give up its food security and rely on traditional imports.
I don't know that this is something the US has done but the motivators noted above still stand.
Big problems, create big opportunities. Some of the developments that may occur to address this issue over the next 10+ years:
- Development of a robust water entitlement exchange
- Decoupling a water right from the land to create a more tradable asset
- Regulation change to allow for water leases
- A shift away from growing 'thirsty' crops in drought-prone regions
- Decentralization of water treatment plants to reduce distribution costs
- Increased use of grey and recycled water in the home
- Pricing changes based on its use within high water use industries
- Increased use of GM crops designed to require less water
- State-sponsored overseas farming specifically for US import of thirsty crops
- Less water exporting occurring. I.e. selling thirsty crops to China
As someone from Australia who's quite accustom to experiencing droughts, I can tell you such a scenario is handled very differently overseas. Off the top of my head, this is how I've seen it approached in Melbourne:
1. No outdoor water use, whatsoever. That includes washing the car, the dog, watering the garden, hosing down a sidewalk. If you're caught doing any of these, you're in for a $500 fine
2. You're not allowed to fill a swimming pool and all public fountains are turned off
3. The water company will go door-to-door exchanging water restricting shower heads for those currently installed. Egg timers for use in the shower are also given away
4. A marketing campaign is launched promoting the 4 minute shower (the duration of the above-mentioned egg timer)
5. Water saving products receive government subsidies. I.e. rainwater tanks, low water use toilets, etc
I see almost none of this happening in CA and, for the life of me, I can't understand why.
Putting the article aside, I love the functionality. Mapping a story to exactly where you were on the trip when it occurred, the way the NYTimes has, is an amazing way to present the story.
As a user of the product, I love what these guys have done. Although I'd be curious if the end goal is similar to that of AddThis; i.e. selling user data for ad targeting?
http://upperlane.com/ I stopped working on it about 6 months ago. There's still an opportunity there, however, it wasn't going to provide me with a visa.
If the US and Europe's Universities are at all similar to Australia's, the company is going to have an uphill battle. Australian universities receive a lot of government funding based on metrics that are heavily weighted toward the number of papers published. The Prof. and the university therefore view commercialisation as a competing interest that restricts the publishing process while the technology is patented.
For me, meditation is a way of separating myself from the issues I'm dealing with. The act of distancing my mind from the issue itself provides renewed vigor when returning to the problem.
I moved to SF 3 months ago from Sydney and have found the place very cheap to live. SF is viewed as very expensive by most Americans, however, it's got nothing on Sydney or Melbourne. I.e. my currently monthly rent is $845 p.m. for a room in Dogpatch.
I'm a big fan of creating task lists, however, I don't think anyone's going to solve this problem by making the user do the work, no matter how nice the design.
There was once an Australian company called Liaise, which went a long way toward automating the task creation process by automatically identifying action requests within email. To me, this is what I imagine the future of this activity will look like. Here's an old Liaise demo video, which may help illustrate the point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyrWD7hTnFc
An interesting note to this is that there weren't any ads on the site, which is not a surprise given it's a promo video.
However, given the vertical and horizontal scrolling, there's not really any way to include static sidebar ads the way Facebook does. It'll be interesting to see what they do around advertising on the site.
Firstly congrats on putting the app out there. It's great to see you've actually paid attention to your web presence, which is neglected by so many app developers. With that said, there are a lot of PT routing apps out there and I think you'd be a prime candidate to utilize your web presence to truly demonstrate how the app works by using Kickfolio - http://kickfolio.com
A speaker at a Founders Institute event, his name escapes me, spoke about his experience starting this very business. The problem he encountered was that at events, or any social gathering, there was typically a small percentage of people in attendance, call them the stars, that everyone else wanted to meet. But the stars only wanted to meet other stars, meaning the demand is not evenly distributed across would-be users. So, if you are to go ahead with it, I suggest you consider how to overcome this issue.