Nothing But Words

Kai’s Candy Company - Going Out of Business Sale

Topic: Family and Friends
Tags: Client Projects

It was quite an adventure, starting our own candy business. But now that the Presidential campaign is over, Kai’s Candy Company will be closing its doors on December 17th. If you haven’t gotten around to ordering some Obama candies yet, now is the time. All candies are 40% - 65% off their original prices.

I’d like to especially thank all our friends who got our business off the ground this summer by being our first customers. We really appreciate your support. (See this post if you’re wondering why we’re closing the business.)

Introducing Kai’s Candy Company

Topic: Family and Friends, WordPress and Web Programming
Tags: Client Projects, Election 2008, Japan, Me

My blog has been quiet recently, as I’ve been focused on creating and launching the site for my new business, Kai’s Candy Company. Our goal with the company is to seek out the most unusual, fun, and tasty candies from around the world, and sell them! We’re starting with Obama and McCain candies that we’ve made especially for the 2008 Presidential campaign. The candies are hand made by artisans in Japan, using traditional kumi ame (rolled candy) techniques.

We also have a Halloween candy poll that’s waiting for your vote! Your votes will help us decide which candy designs to pick for our Halloween candies.

Mystery Revealed

Topic: Family and Friends
Tags: Client Projects, Me

I can now explain why I stopped blogging for a month.

I’m going to leave my position at Penn at the end of the year. It’s the best place I’ve ever worked, so it’s not because of job dissatisfaction. Part of me thinks I must be crazy to leave. The reason is that Maria and I have come up with several business ideas we want to pursue. We’ve been making slow progress on them since we got back from Japan, but if any of them are going to have a chance of really getting off the ground, I need to dive in whole-heartedly. (I should point out Maria is not leaving her job no matter what happens - she loves what she’s doing and where she’s doing it.)

We came back from Japan with two ideas, and figured we’d try to pick one to focus on. Instead, we ended up adding two more. Unfortunately I still can’t go into much detail about a lot of it, but here’s what I can say publicly:

• One is a software application that I’ve developed (it’s currently in prototype form), and I think there may be a market for it. I’m working with a friend of mine in California to see if we can generate some interest from the venture capital community there.
• Another is an ecommerce site, selling really cool hand-made candies from a certain foreign country (take your best guess which one) that no one is currently selling online in the US.
• A consulting business, along the lines of the Eurasia Group, but with a somewhat different focus. This has a lot of different aspects to it, and primarily involves Maria and several of her colleagues. But an aspect that interests me is E-government. It’s exciting because it fuses the two fields where I have professional experience and training: political science and internet technology. First, however, I have about 10 years worth of e-government literature to catch up on…
• Web consulting: I’ve heard several horror stories over the years from friends and acquaintances who’ve paid ridiculous amounts of money for really lousy web sites. I figure if there’s room in the market to sustain people who do a bad job, there’s room for people who do a good job too. I’ve found someone to work with here in the Philadelphia area who specializes in the marketing and design side of the web business, which isn’t my strong suit. I’m interested in this partly because I think I have a good shot at being successful with it, and partly because I’m hoping it’ll serve as a sort of glue that can hold things together for me financially as we see how the other ventures go. The idea is that I can ramp up or ramp down on it as the other projects warrant (of course, that’s assuming I can find work when I need it). Penn is planning to hire me back on a part-time basis as soon as I leave my regular position, and I have a couple other small projects lined up, so I’m off to a good start.

I should know by the end of the year whether there’s any investment interest in my software. And the candy project is well underway, but we’re expecting it to take another 3 or 4 months before we’re ready to go live with it. So… stay tuned

Phonatic.org status

Topic: Phonatic: Pho Reviews, WordPress and Web Programming
Tags: Client Projects, Pho, PHP

Update: I ended up abandoning this project, because of lack of time, and the rise of the excellent pho-king site.

In an earlier post I mentioned a new site I’m working on - phonatic.org. My goal is to make it THE pho destination site on the web (pho is Vietnamese beef noodle soup). One thing going for it already is that there’s no competition (if you Google “pho” you won’t find much beyond individual restaurant sites and recipes). The main feature will be restaurant reviews. For the traveler seeking pho, the site will be a godsend, as there are few things that are more satisfying than a good bowl of pho, and few things more disappointing than a bad one. I’m hoping that the content will be community driven, so I won’t have to do much beyond admin once the site is up and running.

I’ve been building the site with TikiWiki, but it’s been an exercise in frustration, so I’m going to try something else. I started with TikiWiki because I was unfamiliar with CMS (content management systems) and TikiWiki was the first one I came across. I was dazzled by the massive feature set. But TikiWiki is just big and ugly. The installation requires installing the files for all the features, even if you only want to use a fraction of them - it can really eat into your disk quota. The admin screens are a maze, and it takes a lot of effort to become familiar with where all the controls are. Many of the included themes don’t really work (bad css), and it’s fairly opaque in terms of understanding the modularity (i.e. figuring out how to customize anything involves a lot of hacking). Even with the nicer themes, it also just doesn’t look very good.

So I’ve been exploring some other options. I was on the verge of installing PHP Nuke, but then I found XOOPS. XOOPS looks like it’s very lean and modular. It appears to have a slower development cycle than PHP Nuke, which is a good thing (with only a handful of new versions of the core each year, module developers have a more stable environment to work in). Also, it seems to have a smaller and more professional community of developers - there aren’t a bazillion maybe-it-works-maybe-it-doesn’t add-on modules, and from what I can see the add-ons they do have are fairly stable. Lastly, it looks like someone already developed a “reviews” module, which may save me some work (XOOPS, like most CMS systems, comes with a built-in news/articles module, but that doesn’t quite provide everything you need for doing something like restaurant reviews).

If anyone reading this knows a thing or two about any other good CMS options, feedback is appreciated, Thanks.

Web Projects

Topic: WordPress and Web Programming
Tags: Client Projects

I haven’t been able to shake this cold. I’m still going to work, but it’s been slowing me down. But each day gets a little bit better.

Anyway, you may have noticed that - other than this blog - I’ve slowed down on my updates to toppa.com. That’s because I’ve been working on some other web projects:

VC~Angel Roundtable: I’ve been working on this site for my friend Stewart since last summer. I enjoy working with Stewart, and the work helped keep me afloat while I looked for a full-time job. We’re just now switching hosting providers, and I implemented a site redesign. I created some no-nonsense publishing tools for the site as well. The work on this site is now winding down.

phonatic.org: I’m in the early stages of setting this site up (it’s online, but not open to the public yet). It will be “your online pho knowledgebase.” Pho is a Vietnamese beef noodle soup dish, and it inspires fanaticism among its fans (I count myself among them). The site will be Wiki-based, and I hope to turn it into “the” online resource for pho, mainly for restaurant reviews (there are thousands of pho restaurants around the world). There’s nothing more delicious than a good bowl of pho, and nothing more disappointing than a bad one. So I’m hoping other phonatics will contribute to the site.

I’m also expecting to resume work soon on dracoconstruction.com (not currently online), which is for the contractor who managed most of the work on our San Mateo house.

I also want to build some user-friendly, real-estate specific publishing tools on my Dad’s real estate site - so he can make updates to it on his own.