Josh Anstey’s Blog

Mark Cohen tagged me with this meme. It is quite fun. Here is how this meme works… Enjoy!

The ground rules for the meme are simple. Here they are…
1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Little known facts about Josh:

1. My first job was in a local computer shop at about the age of 8. I used to get paid about AUD $5 for 4 hours of work. My job was very important back in the day. I was in charge of formatting 3.5” Floppy Disks. Remember those? The ones that held a huge amount of 1.44MB. How times have changed.
2. When I was 13, myself and two friends wanted to buy a boat. Realising we needed funding; we decided to start a business. We considered a range of options including selling soft drinks on the beach, but then took a better option and decided to start our own Web Design business. One of the many reasons for my entrepreneurial flair.
3. I am a massive NFL (National Football League or American Football) fan. I am a huge supporter of the Dallas Cowboys. I would love to go to the SuperBowl one year.
4. I would love to learn the following languages fluently: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hebrew, and French.
5. I did karate for about 10 years in a range of styles from Shotokan, JKA and Kyukoshin.
6. One of the most motivational quotes I have ever heard was from my High School Principal, speaking to a group of us when we were elected Prefects at high school. His quote was 10 words, each word 2 letters and has stayed with me ever since. He said, ‘If it is to be, it is up to me.’
7. I was in the school band for a number of years and used to play the Baritone, Euphonium and then Tuba (brass instruments). I won the Music Excellence award one year in Primary school.
8. I am sure there is extra-terrestrial life out there, and am excited at the possibilities of meeting and interacting with other forms of life.
   

Hope you enjoyed that. Now for the tagging! I am tagging:
• ProBlogger – Darren Rowse
• Guy Kawasaki
• Jim “The Net Fool”
• Terence Chang
• Chris Brogan
• Scott Bradley
• Dan Schawbel
• Mari Smith

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TechCrunch has announced the details for this years conference, titled, ‘TechCrunch50’.

TechCrunch50 will be from the 8th-10th September 2008 in San Francisco, California, USA.

The conference is going to be a 3 day conference with the launch of 50 new start-ups.

The opportunity that this conference presents for start-up businesses, and those trying to secure venture capital is just incredible.

Entrepreneurs, if you have an idea, are getting a business off the ground, or are keen to see what is going to be the next big thing, don’t miss out.

Are you going to be there? Planning to travel for the conference? Let me know. It would be great to hear for you.

I hope I can make it to the conference. Will see what the coming months have in store.

For more information, check out the TechCrunch post.

That’s right. I am back in Sydney and ready to roll.

It has been some time since my last post, as I have been travelling for the last 2 months. The break was great and for an entrepreneur, travelling really opens your eyes and presents opportunities.

Over time I will discuss some of the trip and ideas more, and there will still be my frequent posts and normal.

I look forward to hearing from you all, and to a great year of blogging and working together!

If you have requests or ideas of what you want to read, and areas that we can cover and learn, feel free to let me know.

It’s great to be back!

Have a great entrepreneurial day.

Don’t miss out on the exciting blog posts coming up.

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I have been in San Francisco, USA now for 3 days, and as an entrepreneur, this city has got my mind working in overtime. Touring San Francisco up and down 24/7 has been incredible, and at the same time, I feel like I am in an entrepeneurs paradise.

In my opinion, this entrepreneurs paradise also known as San Francisco should be tagged: “San Francisco - creating your future”

Why?

• There are must millions of people and this points to one topic - consumerism. I would be interested to know the amount of money spent in one day in a city like this. From the number of people who live here, to the number of tourists, there is just opportunity, opportunity and opportunity.
• As I walk through the city, I am amazed at the massive billboards that are covered in advertisements from massive mulitnational corporation companies that have become household names. The exposure to your target market is incredible.
• The land of opportunity - it has been said that America is the land of opportunity, and I think that saying is correct. Walking around San Francisco gives entrepeneurs so much inspiration and motivation. So if you have an idea, give it a go.

Tomorrow I will hopefully head out to Palo Alto, Mountain View and Silicon Valley. These areas have become famous and epitomise opportunity and success for many internet entrepeneurs and Web 2.0 start-ups. I am very excited to check out these areas.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I will be blogging throughout my travels, and relating experiences to my specialised entrepeneur, marketing, Web 2.0 and networking topics. Travelling should bring some new inspiration, insight and ideas into my blog.

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Have a great entrepeneurial day and I hope you are as excited about these upcoming blog posts as I am.

Remember the main lesson from this blog post about San Francisco and all the opportunity - “Just give it a go!”

The .au domain name has registered its one millionth domain name today. This is just one of many milestones in internet history. It is amazing, that 5 years ago, the tally was only about 250 000. It just shows the massive domain name industry and growth of the internet.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

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Yes you heard me. Business is booming in the Web 2.0 world. What does this mean? Don’t miss the train, get on board. There is so much opportunity out there waiting to be utilised. Go out and get it!

Have you got an idea? Do you want to invent something? Is there anything that you think could be reinvented? Would you like to offer the world a new product or service?

Now is the time. Don’t sit back and relax. Take action!

The web offers you an infinite amount of ways to succeed, achieve something, and take your entrepreneurial sprit to the next level. Remember, you can only learn from the experience. So rather than not knowing, give it a go and take that chance because you never know where it will lead you.

If you would like to read an article about it, click here to read the iTnews article, ‘Business is booming thanks to Web 2.0’

It is sure to inspire you and give you that motivation.

If you would like to discuss business ideas with me, are looking for a business partner, need someone to bounce your thoughts and plans off, or would like some consulting and entrepreneurial advice, contact me! It would be great to help you.

Related articles:

What is Web 2.0
Web 2.0 Galore
Diary of a start-up #1
Diary of a start-up #2 – take advantage of your age
The art of the elevator pitch
Internet breaks barriers making US less relevant
Are entrepreneurs scared of failure?

The top list of IT influencers was recently released.

The list was compiled by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a tech trade group with 22,000 members. The poll got 473 votes, mostly from people who have worked in the tech industry for at least three years

The list was:

1. Bill Gates, chairman and co-founder of Microsoft Corporation (84%)
2. Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple (73%)
3. Michael Dell, CEO and founder of Dell (53%)
4. Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google co-founders (47%)
5. John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems (44%)
6. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle (36%)
7. Vinton Cerf, who (with Bob Kahn) co-designed the TCP/IP protocol upon which the Internet is built (35%)
8. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO (35%)
9. Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay (30%)
10. Craig Barrett of Intel (28%)
11. Louis Gerstner Jr. of IBM (26%)
12. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com (23%)
13. Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems (22%)
14. Leonardo Chiariglione who helped create the MP3 standard among others (17%)
15. Paul Otellini of Intel (17%)
16. Carly Fiorina of HP (14%)
17. Ray Ozzie of Microsoft (13%)
18. Mark Hurd of HP (11%)
19. Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe of MySpace.com (10%)
20. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times (4%)
21. Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com (3%)

Tim Berners-Lee, the man who is known to have invented the World Wide Web, which has provided opportunity to so many came in near the bottom of the list with 1% of the vote.

This is a really interesting list, and really inspirational.

What are your thoughts on who was in the list? Anyone not there you think should have been? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

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The iPhone has been named the invention of the year by Time magazine.

It has sold 1.4 million units since its release on June 29, and is looking to continue its strong growth and success.

There has been a huge amount of hype about the iPhone both before and after its release. It really shows how incredible and quickly technology is developing and gives us a taste of the future. And what a great future it looks to be. The Time Magazine article about the iPhone really presents a strong positive case about this amazing product that has won invention of the year.

It seems that Apple just can’t go wrong. I wonder what they are going to bring out next.

If you want to read more, see Time Magazine’s ‘Inventions of the Year’ article.

Got an iPhone? Tell us what you think about it.

Related articles of interest:
Mobile Phone Opportunity
There are two kinds of companies: brave and dead
Tools for Marketers 2.0
Web 2.0 Galore
Advertising Collection
Online advertising made simple

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Marc Andreessen, the entrepreneur and founder of Opsware and Netscape has said that businesses are not early adopters anymore and their IT departments are ‘stuck in the mud’. It seems that these days, whilst there is such an entrepreneurial boom, especially with Web 2.0, businesses are not welcoming these ideas and start-ups and entrepreneurs are experiencing barriers and closed doors.

I was reading this in an article ‘Evaluating tech startups: The risks and rewards’ from iTnews and it had some interesting information.

InformationWeek did research of 150 senior business technology executives and got some interesting results. 74% described their IT cultures as moderate and conservative only 26% called themselves aggressive. These stats are interesting but also worry to entrepreneurs and start-ups out there.

To those companies that fall into the 74% - step outside your comfort zone. You don’t necessarily have to be aggressive, but rather entrepreneurial, take a chance, give it a go, and help nurture and motivate the young entrepreneurial talent that is a click away.

As entrepreneurs, what can we do?
Look at this as a challenge! Don’t be afraid of it, but rather welcome these statistics and use them as motivation. Be prepared, and know that with determination and persistence you can succeed!

Some related articles:
There are two kinds of companies: brave and dead
Mobile Phone Opportunity
Business Cards for Beginners
Springwise – your daily entrepreneurial ideas

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What a great exciting month October has been for blog.joshanstey.com!!! We kicked off the month with ‘Networking with Business Cards’ which is really useful in getting a better idea of how to use your business card to your benefit.

‘UPOD – Pronounced “You Pod” – Under Promise, Over Deliver’ gave entrepreneurs some business insight and ideas for future projects and developments. This is quite an interesting theory.

We are in the middle of what has been coined ‘Web 2.0’ and what better way to explore this than to post ‘Web 2.0 Galore’. A few great Web 2.0 sites and web 2.0 logos are on show here.

The benefits of mobile phones were seen in the article ‘Mobile Phone Opportunity’. This is definitely some food for thought for all you entrepreneurs out there.

‘Advertising Collection’ was a list of advertising websites that are a great resource for advertisers. You can never have too many resources, so this list is guaranteed to give you some very useful information.

Who would have thought there were rugby entrepreneurs? The 2007 Rugby World Cup provided some interesting ideas and insights into the mind of the entrepreneur. I explain this with my post, ‘The Rugby Entrepreneur’.

A quick view of how those that inspire us are living in ‘How to live like a billionaire’. There are some images of where the wealth these guys have created has taken them.

I found an interesting site that made online advertising really simple. Check out my article ‘Online advertising made simple’ to find out more.

My ‘Diary of a Start-up’ series started. This was very exciting, and gave a few tips and tricks from some of my experiences. Keep your eye out for more of these by subscribing to my blog.

‘Second Life Virtual Career Fair’was really interesting and amazing to see where the web has taken us.

No entrepreneur can go without it. It is so important to the success of a business. ‘The art of an elevator pitch’ explains all you need to know and how to master it!

If it’s Web 2.0 why can’t we have Marketing 2.0? ‘Tools for Marketers 2.0’ gives some tips and sites for being a 2.0 marketer.

My post ‘Internet breaks barriers, making US less relevant’ is topical, in the news, and gives every entrepreneur opportunity!

I was lucky enough to attend an ‘ACS Young IT Talk’ and this provided some interesting ideas and posts including ‘A straight line career path doesn’t exist’ and ‘Short term pay, long term gain’. These are really interesting and there is a lot to learn from them.

‘Are entrepreneurs scared of failure?’ was an interesting post that was thought provoking and is a must read.

Finally, we rounded the month up with ‘Marketing and Networking YOU!’ As an entrepreneur, you have to read this article so that you can make the most out of marketing and networking yourself to benefit your business.

What an exciting and developing month October has been. November is shaping up to be even better, with lots more information, tips and tricks for all you entrepreneurs out there. If there is an area or topic of interest that you would like me to blog about, send me a message here.

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