September 2017 – Failed Normal

Lead with Your Website

September 30, 2017 Eli 0

Yesterday I went to the Ask a VC event put on by Tech Breakfast in Georgetown. This even offers startup founder the ability to ask questions directly to a panel […]

The Financial Value of Playing

September 28, 2017 Eli 2

I was at a Meetup last night watching a presentation on Augmented Reality. The presenter talked about his credentials, what he did, and how he became interested in AR. To […]

Cloudflare Stream to Kill YouTube

September 28, 2017 Eli 0

Cloudflare has now put into beta their own video delivery platform. On the surface level there doesn’t seem to be a lot to say. Essentially this is their take on […]

Elliptical Machines for Aspie Hamsters

September 27, 2017 Eli 6

The thing with now being 41 is that over the years I’ve gotten into shape, and then back out of it many times. At certain points my life was physically […]

Smart Coffee Machine from Smarter

September 27, 2017 Eli 3

One of the problems with so much of the technology that is currently being sold is that it does not in fact solve any problems people actually care about. Tech […]

Are Race Focused Tech Meetups Wise?

September 26, 2017 Eli 0

I was on Meetup last night to see what’s going on in the tech scene in the Baltimore area and came across, “Baltimore Black Techies Meetup” for which the tag […]

Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket with Touch Sensitive Fabric

September 26, 2017 Eli 1

Whenever the conversation about wearable technology comes up it invariably leads to smart watches and AR powered glasses. The people in “the know” all seem to agree this is where […]

Star Trek Discovery and Yet Another Crappy Paywall

September 25, 2017 Eli 1

To my surprise Movie Bob says Star Trek Discovery is good. It’s too bad I may never see it. One of the issues we’re running into currently in the […]

Matternet Station: Robot Serviceable Robots

September 25, 2017 Eli 2

Matternet has been working on a system to use drones to be able to automatically deliver packages by air. They’ve been at it a while, and were the first company […]

PayPal vs. Patreon: Daily Income

September 23, 2017 Eli 4

I decided a long time ago for a number of reasons not to use Patreon. The TL;DR is it’s a financial tech startup run by a musician. Do I really […]

Milking YouTube

September 22, 2017 Eli 1

Let me clear. I’m not “back” to YouTube. I’m milking the hell out of something I spent years building until it falls in on itself. I did a Livestream today […]

Make Money as an IT Consultant

September 22, 2017 Eli 3

The good old days of making a pile of money for swapping hard drives, or setting up routers is long over. Whatever value there remains is being eaten away by […]

YouTube Needs to Buy a CRM

September 21, 2017 Eli 0

Here’s the thing… You’re only paranoid if you haven’t been screwed with consistently. At the point you’re screwed with at an ongoing basis it’s no longer paranoia rather it’s just […]

SmartDesk 3 for Augmented Reality

September 21, 2017 Eli 2

A company called Autonomous has come out with an “AI” powered standing desk. Basically this is a desk that raises and lowers like a regular standing desk, but also has […]

TechCrunch Disrupt 2017 Videos

September 21, 2017 Eli 2

Do you know what’s better than flying across the country and paying a crap ton of money to attend TechCrunch Disrupt? Sitting in my “may the forest be with you” […]

YouTube Sponsorships and the Adpocolypse

September 20, 2017 Eli 2

YouTube has started offering the ability for viewers to sponsor Gaming channels for $4.99 a month. This is supposedly in response to many gaming channels having their ad revenue tank […]

MacOS Text Autocorrect Problems

September 20, 2017 Eli 1

Because I have been creating text based content over the past month you have not been able to watch me slowly lose my mind as my shiny new MacBook Pro […]

Linus Torvalds and the Weirdos of Tech

September 20, 2017 Eli 4

One of the things that is lost on many n00bs in the tech field is that many different types of personalities are required for a tech venture to be successful. […]

Byte 3 Mini PC with 8GB of RAM from Azulle

September 19, 2017 Eli 1

Mini PC’s have been around for awhile, but have really only become useful in the past year or so. Before then you could say that they “technically” worked, but even […]

Danger of External Validation

September 19, 2017 Eli 4

I was sitting at the bar with a buddy a few days ago and we were talking about business. He looked over and said, “Tell me about this new site […]

Tunnel Economics Lesson from Elon Musk

September 19, 2017 Eli 1

I was watching an interview of Elon Musk on TED’s YouTube channel and was hit with a concept in the economics of boring tunnels. Musk was saying that in order […]

elistair Safe-T: Power Tether for Off the Shelf Drones

September 18, 2017 Eli 0

Drones are becoming more useful for many everyday tasks, but a major problem is battery life. With some DJI drones you can get up to 30 minutes of use, but […]

The Danger of Examples…

September 18, 2017 Eli 0

I was talking with a founder the other day and they were espousing all the great things about their startup. By and large I was sold on the idea, but […]

Listening to Tone Instead of Words

September 18, 2017 Eli 1

My career has put me into in an odd position when it comes to to the concept of “truth”. It’s not that “truth” escapes me, but rather truth is generally […]

Blaming “White” People is Dangerous

September 16, 2017 Eli 4

So apparently Fast Company has a “7 Lessons that White People Can Learn…” article about the brouhaha over the naming of the startup called Bodega. Now I think there are […]

Every Startup is a Pizza Shop at Heart

September 15, 2017 Eli 0

It was in the late 90’s and I was on my first day as a delivery driver for a local pizza shop. As the owner walked me around and showed […]

What Customer Did You Lose?

September 15, 2017 Eli 1

I was talking with a startup the other day, and I thought everything was going well right up until they started talking about the paint. The startup has done some […]

Advice that’s Replicateable

September 14, 2017 Eli 2

On a rather routine basis I get the question of why the hell anyone should listen to me, and to be fair this is a good question that you should […]

I Don’t Wanna

September 14, 2017 Eli 7

When I started working on Failed Normal the idea was that I was going to continue creating a large amount of video content. I setup Vimeo so that I could […]

Bodega Startup Attacked by Hipsters

September 14, 2017 Eli 4

I woke up this morning, sipped my cup of coffee, and learned of the evils of a new startup called Bodega. Bodega is essentially a fancy vending machine with a […]

Significance of Apple Watch Series 3

September 13, 2017 Eli 0

When looking at the new Apple Watch the first thing that comes to mind is, “I still don’t want a watch”. The second thing that comes to mind is, “This […]

Too Many iPhone’s

September 13, 2017 Eli 3

Can I be the first to admit that I’m lost? I’ve been reviewing the announcements from the Apple event yesterday and by and large they seem interesting. The Watch with […]

Weaponized DMCA

September 12, 2017 Eli 1

So the story up until this point is that PewDiePie said the “N” word with a hard R (you can’t forget the hard R) on a live stream, and now […]

PewDiePie’s Destructive Utterance

September 12, 2017 Eli 2

I want to take this moment to bow our heads and offer a silent prayer in thanks for no longer being on YouTube… So a major YouTube content creator did […]

Churn and Addressable Market Space

September 11, 2017 Eli 0

The concept of churn and the overall addressable market space is something that many startup founders do not think about. Founders use an odd variation of math where the minus […]

You Can’t Buy “Authentic” Marketing

September 11, 2017 Eli 0

Thanks for your reply. But your site FailedNormal.com is not very related to our products in general topics and other parameters like domain authrioty and traffic. I don’t mean that […]

Approaching People for Business

September 8, 2017 Eli 2

Knowing how to approach people in regards to business is a vital skill in the tech world. You basically have to convince people with far more experience, clout and resources […]

Building a YouTube Competitor…

September 8, 2017 Eli 2

So… I guess I’m having a Skype meeting with a founder who wants to create a competitor to YouTube next week… yup… I feel like I’ve had this conversation before… […]

Pluralsight Live 2017 – Yet Another Crappy Tech Conference

September 8, 2017 Eli 0

When I read the spam that landed in my inbox from Pluralsight about their conference my first thought was that it was a joke. I then clicked the link to […]

As I have said, a case like this is extremely draining — especially on an emotional level — and can create massive chilling effects on free speech. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170906/13431338159/case-dismissed-judge-throws-out-shiva-ayyadurais-defamation-lawsuit-against-techdirt.shtml Over the […]