Lightbox:New Release (AJAX photo gallery)

For those of you who love the beautiful combination of AJAX and photo galleries, here's an upgrade to the latest release of a great gallery tool by Lightbox:

http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

Have fun!

Secrets of Entrepreneurship: Find Frugal Friends

You'll thank me for this one later!

I think that most would-be entrepreneurs fail relatively quickly because they haven't understood a simple principle behind the start-up: It's about NOT spending money.

What does this have to do with having impoverished friends? It has everything to do with it. Your social group, friends, buddies, etc., largely define your perspectives in life: how you dress, where you eat, what kind of car you drive. They will be the most persuasive individuals in your daily life.

Consider then that the people you spend your time with will determine your cash expenditures. In view of this I recommend to any new startup visionaries, that they find friends who have no desire to spend money. What is important is finding individuals who don't need "stuff" to be happy.

As an entrepreneur, finding people who can make you feel good about being cashless and without are the kinds of friends you want around. You want individuals who think that your dedication and self-denial are admirable traits. Having people around who make you feel low because you don't have a new car, don't spend money on expensive restaurants, etc., is a sure formula for feeling like a failure, and ultimately the path to an unsuccessful venture (since you will be spending money on "things" rather than the absolute essentials of your business).

Trust me, the last thing that an investor wants to see is their hard-earned (self denied) money being spent on a Porsche, rather than getting your plan to market.

Keep the faith my entrepreneurial friends!!!!!

Capistrino/Switchtower Screencast

Here is a link to a screencast featuring RailsMachine, which seems to be a RubyOnRails hosting site allowing for turn-key load-balancing environments.

http://railsmachine.com/screencasts/RailsMachineIntro.mov

Web 2.0 Design Styles

Excellent review of some of the Web 2.0 Design Styles for the current generation of websites. I would encourage anyone who is trying to get their head around current design concepts to read this article.

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/current-style.cfm

Thanks to Scratchmedia for this article.

My ACH Reading List (not for the faint of heart)

Hello Deep Thinkers! For those of you who are gluttons for punishment, I have compiled a list of resource information regarding the backend transactioning, banking, and payments processes, which I have recently scoured in my due diligence.

They are available on my delicious page - http://del.icio.us/daweedo/ACH

A Must Read: (Entrepreneurial Proverbs)

I had the good fortune of coming across this article called, Entrepreneurial Proverbs:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/03/entrepreneurial_proverbs.html

Join one of many bullets from the article:

Pay attention to the idea that won't leave you alone -- this is taken from Paul Hawken's Growing a Business. Sometimes an idea catches hold of you and you find you can't put it down. Pay attention to that! Just start working on it. Can't get yourself to do anything on it? Move on. Find yourself waking up out of bed to write down new ideas about it? That's a good one to choose.

I recommended it for any person considering, or already in entrepreneurship!