The JP Allen Blog

After the first run of the new Social Networking/Online Community seminar for 1st year business students at USF, we’re ready to do it again in the spring.  Curious minds can find the updated syllabus and detailed reading list for the course here.

The student project for the seminar was to propose a new business use of Social Networking/Online Community technology.  Here are the concepts they came up with:

RateMyCaf.com

A site for college students to rate cafeteria food items, and provide food suggestions.  Proposed pilot at USF (Bon Appetit), but with an eye towards a nationwide rollout.  Revenue from ads targeted to a college age demographic, and subscription fees from cafeteria food providers.  72 of 75 USF students surveyed said they would want to use this site.

Gimme-a-ride.com

A ridesharing site that would interface nicely with couchsurfing.com, a popular service for finding free places to stay.  Unlike the rideshare forum on Craigslist, gimme-a-ride.com would use profiles and user feedback to give potential ridesharers more confidence in who they’re catching a ride with.  Gimme-a-ride.com would also allow searches based on when and where a ride is desired.  Revenue from ads focused on discount travel services.  Longer term, the proposal is to develop forums with travel advice focused on the bargain domestic traveler.

iConnect

A proposal to add voice-driven messages, status updates, and ratings to the existing BMW iDrive car computer.  Provide social networking focused on location-based topics of interest to drivers, but within an exclusive community of BMW drivers.  Software would be added to all BMWs equipped with iDrive, but activation would require a subscription.

RecruitMe.com

A site focused on recruiting underappreciated ‘non-star’ high school players for NCAA competition.  The site would combine stats from MaxPreps.com, video hosting from YouTube, and Skype video chats with a social networking layer to create an easy-to-use site for athletes to specify their playing preferences, and for coaches to quickly search for talent they wouldn’t ordinarily be exposed to.  A premium service model based on how much material student-athletes load onto their profiles.

The Acer Aspire One netbook is out to prove that Linux is something even Grandma can use (as long as she has little fingers and superb eyesight).  It has a very simple application launcher, with all the basics.  But as soon as you want to add new software, it often requires a trip to the command line.  Sorry, Grandma.

Here’s my quick guide to setting up a new Linux-based Aspire One.

First, download and install Skype and Firefox 3 from the Acer support site.  Once the download is complete, select the file and click the ‘Extract’ button.  If you use the default directory (/tmp) for extracting, you need to launch the file viewer (’My Files’ on the home screen), and type /tmp in the address bar.  You will then see the directory that has your installation file.  Double click on the .sh file in the directory, and let it churn away.  (Um, Acer, it can’t be that hard to make your installs automatic.  How is Grandma supposed to know where the /tmp directory is?)

Next, I used some of the tips from The Register article: “Ten tweaks for a new Acer Aspire One“. Specific tips I used:

• (Tip #1):  Ran Live Update to update the system software.
• (Tip #3):  Enabled the Advanced Menu so a right-click would give me access to Linux behind the scenes (including a Terminal for command-line geeking).
• (Tip #9):  Improved SSD (Solid State Disk) performance by changing a line in a configuration file.

If you want to add other software that isn’t available at the Acer support site, the macles* blog has great instructions.  I installed Thunderbird, but didn’t bother with a better media player (VLC), or version 3 of OpenOffice.  Most people agree it isn’t worth installing a different flavor of Linux, such as Ubuntu, because of the usual hardware device issues.  Now I’ve got my Aspire One the way I like it.  I’m happy using it for travel, coffee shops, around the house…anywhere I don’t feel like dragging my heavy and expensive (but wonderful) MacBook Pro.

I’m considering the tweaks that make the fan run less often, but so far I’ve been too chicken to turn up the heat on my Aspire One for the sake of a little peace and quiet.

Could this finally be the fabled Year of the Linux Desktop?  The good news is that everything works out of the box.  That’s no small accomplishment.  But to keep people from running back into the arms of Redmond, Grandma has to be able to install new software without touching a freakin’ command line.