Kevin Leneway

A Startup A Week - Episode 1 Day 5

Kevin Leneway — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:12:00 GMT

With less than eight hours to go, the team comes together one last time for the conclusion to Episode One of "A Startup A Week". The concept of the show is to bring together top developers and designers, pitch them an idea for a startup, and give them just one week to take the idea from concept to reality.

Today the team prepares for the final presentation to the head of the Seattle chapter of the non-profit Room to Read. Our team is building out a Facebook application that can use the viral power of the social graph to raise money for a computer lab in Cambodia.

If you're watching this video right now, chances are that you had access to a computer when you were a child - or your children have access today. In just five minutes, you can help be a part of a community that will share that gift with real children living in Cambodia right now. Here's how:

Click here to view the application
Dedicate a five dollar brick to a friend or loved one
Share the app with five of your friends

The person at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the project will get to dedicate the school, and everyone who donates will receive updates on the progress of the lab.

Thanks for watching the pilot episode of A Startup A Week, and be sure to check out the first four days of the project via the links below:

Click here to watch the Day 1 video
Click here to watch the Day 2 video
Click here to watch the Day 3 video
Click here to watch the Day 4 video

A Startup A Week - Episode 1 Day 4

Kevin Leneway — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:59:00 GMT

It's Thursday and the team has just one day remaining to complete their project for "A Startup A Week". The concept of the show is to bring together a few rockstar developers and designers, pitch them an idea for a startup, and give them just one week to take the idea from concept to reality.

For the initial project of this series, our team is building out a Facebook application that can use the viral power of the social graph to raise money for a computer lab in Cambodia via the non-profit Room to Read. On this episode, our developer Adam Loving shows how he used LINQ and SQL Server to keep track of donations, our designer Jay Dokken of Design Commission gives us a very quick sneak preview of his awesome design, and Kyle Cressman sits down with our special guest Dominic Canterbury from D/C Strategic.

With less than 48 hours remaining, can our team come together and create a startup in a week? Stay tuned for the finale tomorrow, and be sure to check out the first three days of A Startup A Week - Episode One.

Click here to watch the Day 1 video
Click here to watch the Day 2 video
Click here to watch the Day 3 video

A Startup A Week - Episode 1 Day 3

Kevin Leneway — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:06:00 GMT

It's Wednesday and the team has reached the halfway point of the project on "A Startup A Week". The concept of the show is to bring together a few of Seattle's top developers and designers, pitch them an idea for a startup, and give them just one week to take the idea from concept to reality.

The team has been working on Facebook application that allows users to work together with their social networks on a Room to Read fundraising campaign to build a computer lab in Cambodia. On this episode, our developer Adam Loving sets up the donation system with a great PayPal hack, our designer Jay Dokken of Design Commission gives a 3D preview of the virtual computer lab, and our marketing expert Kyle Cressman calls up the non-profit Room to Read to get their support.

With only three days remaining, can our team come together and create a startup in a week? Stay tuned for new episodes each day this week to find out!

Click here to watch the Day 1 video
Click here to watch the Day 2 video

A Startup A Week - Episode 1 Day 2

Kevin Leneway — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:49:00 GMT

We're back with day two of a new online reality show called "A Startup A Week". The concept of the show is to bring together a few of Seattle's top developers and designers, pitch them an idea for a startup, and give them just one week to take the idea from concept to reality.

Today the team got started building out the Facebook application. Our developer Adam walks through the basics of setting up a Facebook app using Visual Studio 2008, our designer Jay gives a 3D preview of the virtual computer lab, and our producer Stephen runs into the first setback of the project.

With only four days remaining, can our team come together and create a startup in a week? Stay tuned for new episodes each day this week to find out!

A Startup A Week - Episode 1 Day 1

Kevin Leneway — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:16:00 GMT

Today I'm happy to announce the pilot episode of a new online reality show called "A Startup A Week". The concept of the show is to bring together a few of Seattle's top developers and designers, pitch them an idea for a startup, and give them just one week to take the idea from concept to reality.

For the first episode, we headed down to Design Commission, a design agency in Seattle's historic Pioneer Square district. The team met up on Monday morning and we started filming. In today's episode, we'll introduce the team, unveil the idea, and get started with an initial brainstorming session. Can our team come together and create a startup in a week? Stay tuned for new episodes each day this week to find out!

Live Love and Other Short Stories

Kevin Leneway — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 07:07:00 GMT

I got married a few weeks ago. It was definitely the highlight of the past month, followed closely by the beta release of the new Live Suite. I downloaded it mainly for the fantastic Windows Live Writer, but while attempting to upload some wedding photos, I was pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful touches added to the Photo Gallery app. Things like the intelligent time-based filter to allow you to import pics based on specific events, or the ability to upload videos directly to the web. The new Live Mail and Messenger are nice as well, but probably won't displace my current communication combo of Outlook and my cell phone.

Speaking of life-changing events, I recently became an ActiveWords convert and now I have an Atkins-like compulsion to spread the good word. If you haven't heard of it, it's basically a lightweight background service that allows you to assign keywords to launch programs, open websites, or execute simple tasks. I met with ActiveWords evangelist extraordinaire Buzz Bruggeman last week and he described the app as an extension of our natural interface methodology, which can be broken down to three simple concepts: thought, utterance, action. Do yourself a favor and give it a shot - it's very, very cool.

Tafiti launched today. Though the card-catalog motif unleashed several traumatic childhood memories, overall it's a beautiful reminder of the power of great visual design. It's no surprise I want to lick the screen each time I run a new search, as it was co-created by one of my favorite Seattle startups, Jackson Fish Market. They have a great blog, here's a quick snippet describing their unusual moniker: "The name is a bit odd, but it was the only remaining .com name in English, so we took it." Nice.

Speaking of odd names, buy this album and listen to it twice straight through. If you don't love it, let me know and I'll give you your ten bucks back.

Are people still using Twitter? That's not a knock, I think it's a great service, but I personally stopped using it a while back and haven't seen much hype lately. Back in the day, I was a huge Twitter believer. I burnt a few March weekends putting together a little app, which is still kicking around in the depths of the interwebs. I even signed up under several Email addresses in an attempt to "Twitter Squat" on some usernames that I thought might be valuable when Twitter became mainstream. Anyone willing to give me fifty bucks for the name "Horoscopea" (For people who misspell "horoscopes", which was already taken). Or how about "adgj", which can be entered quickly by typing '2345' on a standard cell phone?

Last but not least, for all you Seattle-based techies out there, next Thursday is another meeting of the Seattle Tech Startups group. You don't need to be a bootstrapping entrepreneur to attend, it's open to the tech-loving public and is great place to check out some demos of cutting-edge new startups. This month's meeting features some real-life marketing advice from Tony Wright, which should be pretty fantastic. Details are here, be sure to say hi and offer to buy me a beer if you stop by. :)

Experimenting With Live SkyDrive

Kevin Leneway — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 19:30:00 GMT

First, credit where credit is due. Anytime you create an MS product name that makes users think of a Beatles song, you're doing something right.

A lot has already been written about the basic functionality of Live SkyDrive, but so far I haven't heard about my favorite feature: the bouncing ball game that pops up while you are waiting for a file to upload. It was completely unexpected, and turned what should have been a dull and frustrating user experience into something surprisingly fun.

Why is this important? Because it tells me that the team really thought through the user experience and focused in on all the little details that can make or break a service, especially one in such an already crowded space.

It's interesting to watch the Live offerings evolve. I used to look at Live and see three things: Hotmail, Messenger, and Search. Now I'm starting to look at Live from a different perspective. Hotmail is the front end to a robust, massive, scalable data center. Messenger is a social graph with a quarter of a billion active nodes, which is the foundation of any viral distribution platform (the social graph is Facebook's "secret sauce"). And Live Search could leverage their existing ad platforms and new acquisitions to build out a monetization engine that fullfills that magic Web 2.0 equation: 'users = currency'. Add to that a federated identity solution. New development tools. And a consistent set of APIs that can tie everything together.

That's why I'm excited to see the progress that Live SkyDrive is making. It's a compelling offering, for sure, but for me it's a taste of the types of applications that can be created when the pieces of the Live puzzle start to fit together.

Kisses and Interrogations

Kevin Leneway — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:02:00 GMT

First post titles are hard. For a split second I thought "There's a New Scoble In Town" had a good ring to it, but I figured Josh would kill me for linkbaiting in my first post. I could have gone with an old standby geek classic like "Hello, World!", but at the end of the day I settled on "Kisses and Interrogations". Why? Because I get to tell a story that lets me drop the fact that I was in a band.

When I was living in Detroit a few years back, we opened for a great little indie band called Judah Johnson. After the show they gave me one of their demo CDs which featured a song called "Kisses and Interrogations." What does that have to do with anything? Well, one key aspect of being a tech evangelist is to try to win the hearts (kisses) and minds (interrogations) of the developer community. Also, I think I'm a typical Microsoftie in the sense that I love my job and my company, but I'm also not afraid to ask a hard question from time to time. Hence the title "Kisses and Interrogations."

Did I mention that I was in a band?

Anyway, on with the introductions. My name is Kevin Leneway and I'm the newest member of the Innovate On team here at Microsoft. I have a personal blog over at www.AStartupADay.com where I attempt to post a new Web 2.0 startup idea each day (79 to date!). Josh was nice enough to invite me over here to make an occasional post - think of me as the Nick Gonzalez of visitmix.com. I'm a developer by training, I love Michigan football and the TV show Lost, and I still firmly believe that the best artistic work ever created in the history of mankind is the movie Wayne's World.

In closing, I'd like to say greetings and salutations to all you mix visitors out there. I'm definitely looking forward to our upcoming conversations. By the way, if you or someone you know are building out anything cool, feel free to drop me a line at kleneway AT microsoft.com or give me a call: 425.705.1119.