Kevin Chiu

Jack Po, an experienced entrepreneur and local friend of mine, just posted some tools startups might find useful. While I agree with most of what he has to say, some healthy horizon-broadening is in order.

I’m new to the startup scene, but I’ve always been a tech guy. Here are my tools:

Website Registration: 1and1 has free private registration that you can toggle on or off. $7 is the base fee for a .com.

Website Hosting: Engine Yard (for rails), SliceHost (for custom stuff), Media Temple (for shared hosting), Google App Engine (easily scalable, but has had hiccups…)

DNS Hosting: I stick with whoever hosts my site. I’ve never had any problems.

Email, Calendar, Wiki, Internal Messaging: Google Apps

Actual Website: Ruby, Java, or Plain old HTML/CSS/jQuery

Phone: Skype, Grand Central (but GC keeps deleting my old messages… boo!), iPhone

Conference Calls: Skype - easy and free.

Surveys, Spreadsheets and Documents: Google Docs - The coolest part of this suite is the real-time collaboration. Plus, there’s a form-filler mode for the spreadsheet app that you can use to conduct surveys.

Newsletters: Google Groups (for continuous conversations) or Gmail email aliases with BCC (for periodicals).

Project Management: Lighthouse, Github, Google Code, Sourceforge, or just plain old face-time. I’m actually itching to build a way more intuitive project management system. But for now, I can live with these. (I used to use Basecamp, but it can be abused too easily…)

Website statistics: Google Analytics

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Google Sitemaps

Code Tools: Linux Shell, TextMate, Eclipse

Computers: Apple Macs.

Presentations: Apple Keynote

Graphics: Adobe Photoshop CS3, Omnigraffle

I just downloaded the Wordpress app from the iTunes app store. It’s pretty slick.

Cool, uploading photos works.

Looks like Dell beat Apple to this one. At least we know it’s possible. C’mon Apple!

On June 10, in a well-meaning attempt to get educate me and whet my pallet for esoteric non-mainstream music, my roommate, Zeke, dragged me to the SOHO Apple Store where we waited in line for 30 minutes in a heatwave before listening to a guy mutter repressed screams into a microphone.

However, the event wasn’t a complete waste of time. I did spot a cute girl wearing a teal shirt (who wasn’t an Apple employee) on the other side of the stairwell. I’ll probably never see her again. Oh well.

iPhone 3G - Coming July 11.

Is it time to switch away from my old Verizon flip phone?