In my family, I manage the money. I pay the bills, I collect the receipts, and I balance the checkbook. I think it was my mom who taught me how to do all these things. I have this clear image of her at the dining room table about once a month, using her pencil (always) to balance the checkbook.

Things are different now. Instead of writing a few checks every month and paying cash or straight credit for everything else, Chris and I both use our ATM cards to pay for almost everything. From $4.14 at the Dunkin Donuts drive through to $56.77 at the gas station, we almost never pay for anything in cash. This means that balancing the checkbook has become a much more time-intensive exercise.

For the past two years, I’ve used Excel to manage the accounts. My financial management spreadsheet has multiple tabs for each account, and every receipt, check, and transaction gets entered into one or multiple tabs. This is a huge pain and a major time-sink. I’ve been talking to friends and family about their solutions, and none of them seem to have a better option that would work for me.

So I decided to examine the online personal finance options. The three solutions that I tested were Mint.com, Quicken Online and Geezeo.

MINT.COM
Going in I was most excited about Mint. They won the TechCrunch40 best of show, their online budgeting and money-saving tools look really awesome, and the service is free. I was able to sign up without any difficulty, but when I tried to enter my primary checking account information, the trouble began. I selected my bank from a list, entered my username and password, answered some questions and waited for the service to authenticate.

Error message: Wrong username or password?

After about two weeks of trying to get my account set up with Mint, after changing my username and password twice, I started searching the user forums for information about my bank (Citizens Bank, one of the major banks in the New England area, with more than 1,600 branches in the U.S.). I should have checked there sooner, because the forums revealed a number of threads about Citizens Bank, all with the same theme - it can’t be added. Here are some examples of threads related to this topic and the number of “views” of the threads:

Adding Citizens Bank a No-Go (11,204 views)

Problems adding accounts (27, 252 views)

Official Citizens Bank Support Petition! (10,337 views)

I also received confirmation of this fact from a Mint representative (about a week after I sent in a question via their Web form), that said basically the same thing: Citizens checking and savings accounts are not supported, and we can’t provide the eta for the addition of any bank.

Foiled.

QUICKEN ONLINE
Quicken Online, from Intuit, was the next solution that I tried. I had used the software version of Quicken in the past, and had a good experience. I was able to easily sign up for a Quicken Online account. There is a fee to use the service ($2.99 per month), which is certainly a reasonable amount in order to save myself some of the current money management pain that I am having, plus there is a 60-day free trial to make sure that I like the application before ever paying.

The test came when I tried to set up my checking accounts. Success! I spent some time using the tool, and thought it was easy to use and intuitive.

GEEZEO
Still, I thought I could go for a free solution, so I tried Geezeo. This solution was one that I hadn’t heard of, so when I got to the site I clicked the link to watch the tour. The link didn’t work, there was no tour. And that was the end of Geezeo.

THE WINNER
I have been using Quicken Online for two weeks now, and it’s been fantastic. Dare I say that it is changing my life? It is definitely making managing our family’s personal finances a great deal easier.

Money photo by jenn_jenn

It’s the weekend, so what better thing to do than to procrastinate using fun online apps? There were two that I have been eager to try - Yearbook Yourself (discovered via TechCrunch) and Mosaic Maker from Big Huge Labs (discovered via Non Society).

What can I say? These apps are fun. With Yearbook Yourself, you can upload a recent photo, and use it to find out what you might have looked like if you graduated in the years 1950 through 2000. Some of the images of me are frighteningly close to home. And I kinda wish that 1966 would come back because it turns out that I look groovy with a giant ball of hair on my head (second row from the top, fourth picture). I took the images created from Yearbook Yourself and uploaded them to Mosaic Maker to come up with this great grid of images.

Both tools are fun. And if you Yearbook Yourself, please do share.

Guy Kawasaki just formally released his latest project. It’s called Alltop and it’s getting widely panned across the Internet. Michael Arrington doesn’t like it, and neither do these people. (Although some people like it.)

Alltop basically is simply lists of blogs and publications, organized by category. Kawasaki calls it an “online magazine rack.” The most popular criticisms of the project are that it’s a redo (of popurls and Original Signal) and that the format neglects all the benefits of RSS.

Eliminating a discussion of whether the site is good or useful or worthy of attention, I find this launch particularly interesting because I just started reading Guy’s book, The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything. And it’s not often that you get to read a book about starting companies while the person who wrote the book is starting a company. So here’s my take on that aspect of the launch.

(Major Disclaimer: I am only on page 31, so my analysis of the book is going to be weak, and is not the point anyway!)

Guy says: “Make meaning - create a product or service that makes the world a better place.”

Does he do it?  I would say yes. According to the official announcement of the release, the “goal is to satisfy the information needs of the 99% of Internet users who will never use an RSS feed reader or create a custom page.” This is a pretty meaningful purpose, and one that I can really relate to as most of the people I know in my non-work life do not use RSS or even know what it is.

Guy says: “Make Mantra. Forget mission statements…instead, take your meaning and make a mantra out of it.”

Does he do it? Heck yeah. Check out this catchy mantra - “aggregation without the aggravation.”

Guy says: “Get going. Start creating and delivering your product or service….Don’t wait to develop the perfect product or service. Good enough is good enough. There will be plenty of time for refinement later. It’s not how great you start - it’s how great you end up…The wisest corse of action is to take your best shot with a prototype, immediately get it to market, and iterate quickly.”

Does he do it? YES! And I think that this is the No. 1 best thing about this launch. Guy didn’t wait until the product was perfect, refined, pretty and loved-by-all to launch. It was “good enough” and he let it fly. Now, he’s getting unbelievable feedback and commentary by everyone who is watching the launch. Love it or hate it, the feedback is real and immediate, and I bet that tomorrow he’ll be working on version 2.

Verdict: Guy Kawasaki practices what he preaches - at least what he preaches in the first chapter of his book.

In October, I posted the Internet Advertising Bureau’s estimates for U.S. online ad revenue for 2007; at the time, they were predicting $20 billion to $21 billion.

According to the numbers released today (which I saw first in TechCrunch), the IAB’s preliminary estimate for 2007 is that Internet advertising hit $21.1 billion in the U.S. - just slightly higher than they initially predicted.

TechCrunch also reports on the estimated numbers from a couple other sources:

Kelsey Group: $22.5 billion
IDC: $25.5 billion

This is pretty trivial, I admit, but since I heard that the most recent iPhone update allows you to create a custom icon for your Website that will be deposited on the iPhone home page, I have wanted one for 16th Letter. It doesn’t help that I saw BoingBoing’s and TechCrunch’s and had some Web clip envy.

And now I have one. So go ahead, add it to your iPhone (or iPod Touch)!

Here are the instructions on how to create your own Web Clip icon, from Apple.

This is another set of step-by-step instructions.

I hear that this is pretty easy to do. (I had a developer who did this for me, but he said it was a piece of cake.)

I just got an email with the subject line: “Thanks from the Industry Standard.” Here’s what the message had to say:

“You were one of the first in line to ask to see the brand-new Industry Standard. To show our appreciation for your interest, you are being notified of today’s official launch!

“The site is not only designed to give readers insights into technology and the Internet economy, but also provides a unique community feature — a predictive market.”

I’ve written about the Industry Standard in the past, related to the fall of the mighty business (print) publications that I used to follow. But today the site (as a Web-only property) is relaunching.

The site is positioning itself as a “prediction market,” offering analysis and opinion from writers and experts, and then giving its readers the opportunity to agree or disagree - and hopefully use the “power of collective intelligence” to predict the correct outcome.

From the site:

“The prediction market articulates the same emphasis on community knowledge and networking that is perhaps the Web 2.0 era’s most important contribution — the power of collective intelligence. Prediction markets have proven to be remarkably powerful tools for gauging events and trends, and we think that the addition of this technology to the site will provide a very special type of meaningful interaction.”

From my first look at the site, it is debatable whether it will have much of an impact. The contributors and analysis are good, but nothing to truly distinguish it from the content on any other site. The predicition market stuff is vaguely interesting at first glance, but who has time to vote on more news stories? Even so, my prediction is that the Industry Standard brand and the IDG parent company (with the top tech brands in its arsenal of sponsors - Intel is the “launch sponsor”) will be enough to guarentee a revenue-generating future.

Looks like I may be betting against TechCrunch on this one.

In a recent article, I made a series of predictions about the future of the music industry - one of those predictions was that “many new online and digital services will rise and fall.” Now that I think about it a bit more, that prediction seems kind of cheap because in the course of researching that story, I came across lots of the new online and digital services that have already risen. So half of the prediction was more just reporting than prophesying.

Even so, I thought it might be helpful to include a list of the new music models that I found while doing the research. If my prediction holds, many of these will eventually fail, and most of the others will be acquired or consolidate. Staying on top of this quickly changing industry will be tough for awhile, but knowing what’s out there now is a good place to start.

This list is obviously not exhaustive, so if you know of others, or have feedback on any of those listed below, please leave a comment. Also, some of these companies have revenue models that are clear, but others were a bit less so. If you have any input, let me know.

Goombah - Music recommendations based on your iTunes playlist and a comparison of what other people who share similar music interests are listening to. Goombah scans your iTunes library, finds other people who share your musical tastes, and then recommends songs to you based on the songs that they listen to. Revenue model: Affiliate income with potential to get into paid placement, with labels paying for their artists music to be part of the recommendations.

finetune- This site lets you type in an artist and they will createa custom playlist of songs based on that artist and others “like” them. Alternately, you can build your own playlist of up to 45 songs from 15 artists. You can then take your custom playlist and embed it on your blog or MySpace page. Revenue model: advertiser-supported

Groove Mobile - The leading music-for-your-cellphone provider, they have mobile downloads, P2P sharing, music recommendations, streaming radio and music subscriptions. Groove Mobile also powers Orange’s Music Player (U.K.) and the Sprint Music Store. Revenue model: Subscriptions

Livewire Musician - This Web application lets bands, labels or managers book gigs and tours, communicate with fans, manage radio promotions, manage the press, and track radio play. A basic account is free, and there are a la carte premium services available. Revenue model: Licensing fees

matchmine - Suggests other songs (and movies and blogs) that you‘ll be interested in based on your preferences. The company is a product of The Kraft Group/New England Patriot’s interactive media and innovation team. Revenue model: Sells general user data to partners

Nextcat - Social networking for the entertainment industry, which in the entertainment industry looks more like traditional networking. Revenue model: Advertising and sponsored listings and placements

nimbit - Business management tools for the indie musician. The company’s mission is “to put musical artists in complete control of their own music business and brand, enabling them to reach their full potential as quickly as possible.” They do this by providing solutions that allow artists to sell CDs and digital downloads, merchandise, and provides assistance with online ticket sales, e-mail list management, Website design and content hosting and a variety of other services. Revenue model: Paid services

OurStage - This site works kind of like a traditional “battle of the bands.” Bands upload their music, users of the site vote on what they like the best. Every month there are winners of cash prizes. Revenue model: The site sells the music that is uploaded to the site.

Sonicbids - Connecting bands and music promoters. The site allows musicians to put together one digital press kit (DPK) that is then distributed to promoters and helps the artists book gigs without having to send out physical press kits. Revenue model: Promoters pay a one-time fee and artists pay for submissions.

Amie Street  - This site allows indie artists to upload their music - the more popular the song, the more expensive it is to download. All songs are free to start and then move up in cost the more popular that they get. When users recommend songs to their friends, they get credit to buy more music. Revenue model: Earn 30% of every song sold

Strayform - Artists put proposals online and they are (or aren’t) funded by the fans who see them. According to Strayform, “Fan funded proposals let artist get paid without giving up a big cut, without blowing money on ads, and without long term restrictive contracts.” All the media is Creative Commons licenced, so fans can use everything freely on any device and share on P2P networks. Revenue model: ?

SellaBand - With this site, musicians need to find 5,000 people who “believe in them” (people prove this by giving $10 to the artist) and then SellaBand takes the artist to the “best producers and studios in town.” Then the three (artist, believer and SellaBand) split the profits from sales of $.50 downloads. According to this article from TechCrunch, some artists have hit the $50,000 mark and have already headed to the studios. Revenue model: Splits revenue with the artist and users

CDBaby - Online record store that sells albums by independent musicians. They only sell music that comes direct from musicians, and pay the musicians directly, weekly. They also help to facilitate the digital distribution of music. Revenue model: They take $4 per CD sold, plus an initial $35 fee.

iTunes - This is a site that probably needs very little introduction. MP3 library, from which users can download songs for $.99 per track, $9.99 per digital album. Revenue model: iTunes takes 30% of each sale.

Amazon MP3 Downloads- Works just about the same way that iTunes does, except that users don’t have to download a special player to get songs, and digital albums cost $8.99 each. Revenue model: Amazon takes a percentage of each sale

Rhapsody- Another MP3 download site, this one features unlimited downloads based on various subscription deals. Revenue model: Memberships plans starting at $12.99 per month

TuneCore- This site allows artists to upload their digital tracks, and then TuneCore manages their relationships with digital distributors, including iTunes, Amazon.com and Rhapsody. I wrote a more in-depth assessment of the site here. Revenue model: Charge artists a yearly fee

In compiling this list, I relied heavily on TechCrunch and Xconomy. Thanks!

Everywhere I turn it seems that there is a story about the demise or revolution of the music industry (depending on your perspective), sparked by two huge music-related stories that broke last week.

The first was the report that music sales were down 9.5% in 2007. The bright note from that report was that the sale of digital music tracks was up 45%, but even that huge leap didn’t help the industry overall. The second was the announcement that Sony BMG will be joining the other three major labels in offering DRM-free songs.

The music industry is scrambling to deal with the impact of the Internet on its traditional business models.

In this October 2007 post, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch sums up nicely the issues that are facing the music industry, and ReadWriteWeb echoes some of the same sentiments. Basically, sales of CDs and digital downloads are not going to make huge amounts of money for anyone going forward. Both argue that the real money will be made from ticket sales for live performances, merchandising, and special limited-edition physical copies of the music.

But there is money being made from digital downloads - it’s just not of the scale that the major record labels are used to. In 2007, there were 844.2 million digital tracks sold. Radiohead’s recent experiment, in which the band released an album online for free download and asked listeners to pay what they wanted, made them more money from the digital distribution then they made from the digital distribution of all the rest of their albums combined. If this seems strange, there is a simple reason - Radiohead was released from their contract with their record label, a contract that in the past excluded them from any royalties from the digital distribution of their music (remind anyone of the current writer’s strike?) Many signed bands and musicians are currently stuck in contracts like these, the relics of an era when digital distribution didn’t really matter.

Of course, there is still money being made in the music industry, but as fewer people are buying CDs (that are costly to produce and distribute) and as more people are downloading digital music (that is practically free to reproduce and distribute), less money is being made. And, the money is being spread among more musicians. The Long Tail is in full force in the music industry, allowing more people to make money as consumers spend their dollars on a wider variety of music and musicians.

So this puts the music industry in this strange position. The indie artists, who are making some money on their small but loyal audiences and the Long Tail, but often not enough money to live off of, would be psyched to get a record contract because the record companies have the marketing and distribution capabilities that they don’t have access to. The big (and already famous) bands, are trying to get out of their contracts in favor of the freedom that the indie artists enjoy. And the record companies are panicking. This is creating a weird, wild situation where everything is about to totally implode if change doesn’t happen quickly.

The really big question is: What online business model is going to work for the music industry going forward? Any successful model will have to support both the record labels and the artists who are producing music. And it will have to be one that consumers will spend their money on.

Here are my predictions:

1. The new model will be all about the audience.In the past, bands knew how many records or songs they sold, but not the name of the individual that bought them. Digital download and distribution, as well as social networking sites like MySpace, now let musicians know much more intimately who their audience is. By collecting the name of the individual who downloads their song (whether they pay for it or get the download for free), musicians will be able to have a much more personal relationship with their audience - and they will be able to re-market to them in the future. As musicians begin to realize that having the name of their fan is worth more money than the $0.70 they get from iTunes, they will either begin  offering all their songs for free, or Apple will have to adjust their business model and begin sharing data with the artists. Radiohead may have been the first major label to try offering free downloads, but many others are following suit. Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame), just produced a Saul Williams album and released it online the same way that Radiohead did - and he has told everyone about the data that they collected. Reznor is bemoaning the fact that only 18.3% of the people who downloaded the album paid $5 for it. He thinks that this stinks (and it might) but he is neglecting the really exciting fact that 154,449 people downloaded Williams’ album! That is an audience of 154,449 if you at least collected an email address. That is a significant fan base - and in my opinion, it is going to be the primary model of the future.
2. Musicians will begin releasing songs more frequently, as well as more versions of each song. When digital downloads become the norm (and that day is close), there will be no need to stick with the CD format where musicians release all their fully produced songs in one giant lump. Instead, they’ll release things as they are done, there will be more live performance and acoustic versions of songs, and more interesting bits, more looks into the recording studios, more evidence that songwriters and musicians are humans and that every version that they play isn’t perfect. (UPDATE: Looks like Mark Cuban agrees with this prediction.)
3. Record labels will try to hold onto their business models. They will succeed only until current contracts run out, but they will eventually fail. They will do this not because they don’t see the writing on the wall, but because they can’t figure out how to change.
4. A new type of record label will emerge. The new label will serve more as a helper to the artist than an owner of the artist. This new label will assist with marketing, bookings, networking and the other promotional aspects of the music business. But instead of owning all the rights to the artist, musicians will PAY their labels for their help, and the musicians will retain their rights. The new labels that will be successful will be the ones that know how to do SEO, online marketing and social networking. These types of labels will become the norm. (And they probably wont’ be called record labels.) (UPDATE: Looks like CNET agrees with this prediction: “If we end up ridding the world of labels, we’ll only have to re-create them–in some other, probably more nimble form.”)
5. Apple will be one of the new “record labels.”
6. Many new online and digital services will rise and fall. In 2-3 years, we’ll be left with the winners. At least three of the winners will be companies that no one has even heard of yet.
7. There will be new ways to buy music. Walking through Target, no longer will you head to the music section to buy music. Instead, as you hear a song piped over the airways, or walk past a TV that is playing a music video and decide you like the song, you will be able to use your phone or mp3 player to purchase and and download the song instantly.
8. The stuff inside the CD case will still be valuable in digital format, but it will look completely different. People still buy CDs for the lyrics and the liner notes inside - as well as for the artwork and the experience of opening the case and looking through the packaging. This won’t change, there will always be a market (although a smaller one) for the special edition hardcopy CDs. And it won’t be long until someone comes up with a way to sell that stuff in digital format, as well. But although the digital information will be the same, it won’t look the same as the CDs of today. This will be a huge money-maker, much bigger than anyone expects.

UPDATE: This Music Lessons post by Seth Godin is an awesome add-on to this article. Go read it.

Photo by SqueakyMarmot

After years of claiming that it most definitely is not a publishing company, yesterday Google announced that it is going to be a publishing company after all. 

The company is launching a new tool called “Knol” (in private beta). With it, Google’s “goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it,” said Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering in a blog post about the new project. From all accounts, Knol will eventually work something like Wikipedia. Google will provide a technology platform that will allow authors to contribute content. If the author decides to make some money on the entry, Google will split the advertising revenue.

Google didn’t come right out and say that it’s becoming a publishing company; in fact, it seems to be taking pains to try to prove that it isn’t one. Manber was careful to include this bit in his post:

“Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write.”

Does Google think that this means that they aren’t becoming a publisher? They aren’t convincing me.

The business model with publishing companies is that they have a group of writers (staff writers or freelance writers, it doesn’t really matter) who write content for the publishers. The publishers then have the ability to sell advertising around that content to monetize it, and often pay the writers for their efforts. Google may argue that it isn’t writing the content, and that it is leaving ownership of the content with the authors, but Google is in essence paying writers to contribute content to a giant database of information - that Google will own. And monetize. And Google is incentivizing writers by offering a revenue split. This looks like publishing to me. As Duncan Riley from TechCrunch writes, “Google is moving away from simply indexing the worlds content to being a content provider itself.”

Aside from the content/publisher issue, there is also a potentially tricky conflict having to do with Knol content showing up in Google’s “independent” search results. As Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land put it: “Does hosting content turn it into a competitor with other content providers and set up an unfair advantage in gaining traffic that might otherwise flow to them?”

I am not surprised by this move by Google. But I think it’s now time for Google execs to give up their claim that Google is not a publishing company. Claims like these:

June 12, 2006 - Eric Schmidt, Google founder - LA Times article

“It’s better to think of Google as a technology company. Google is run by three computer scientists, and Google is an innovator in technology in our space. We’re in the advertising business — 99% of our revenue is advertising-related. But that doesn’t make us a media company. We don’t do our own content. We get you to someone else’s content faster.” (emphasis mine)

May 15, 2007 - Marissa Mayer, Google VP - at the 41st Annual Carlos Kelly McClatchy Memorial Symposium “Pressing Times: Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism” at Stanford  

“We’re computer scientists; we’re not journalists. For us, it’s really about partnering with content providers and ultimately finding distribution and monetization channels for them.”

And this article about the same event:

Mayer didn’t add anything more than confirm that Google is not a publishing company, but aggregating, data mining and filtering of information.

Web 2.0 is a term that has existed since 2004. The phrase is now widely used by anyone who works on or with the Internet, but Web 2.0 is one of those expressions that many business people outside the Internet industry only “sort-of” understand.

To understand Web 2.0, you first have to be familiar with Web 1.0. Web 1.0 is the Web as it existed up to and immediately after the Internet bubble burst in 2000. Web 1.0 followed the “broadcast model,” meaning that any content that existed on the Web was one-way - the content was written and published by the author (a company or an individual) for the reader. The best way of understanding the broadcast model is: “We talk, you listen.” There are still many sites that are Web 1.0, including most corporate and informational Web sites. Examples include Weather.com and GM.

Web 2.0 was born when the broadcast model started to change to a conversational model.

The hallmarks of Web 2.0 are conversations and user-generated content. Sites that provide technology platforms that allow users to interact and to contribute content are Web 2.0 sites. Examples include Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and blogs - these sites provide the technology that lets users submit content and interact with each other in various ways, such as by submitting photos and videos, chatting or by commenting on on each others content.

Today, many Web 1.0 sites are moving toward Web 2.0 by launching Web 2.0 features. These sites publish content, but solicit a response from users to further enhance the conversation. For example, retail sites such as Walmart and Target now allow visitors to post reviews of products. Traditional publishing companies like the NY Times have opened up their articles for comments and have discussion areas to facilitate reader interactions.

The following are some of the most useful articles you can read to find out more about Web 2.0:

• What is Web 2.0- This article by Tim O’Reilly is often sourced as the definitive treatise on Web 2.0.
• Web 2.0 - This 2005 article was written by Paul Graham, and is a very good explanation of Web 2.0.
• What is Web 2.0- This 2006 documentary from TechCrunch features Editor Michael Arrington’s interviews with start-up CEOs about Web 2.0. (24 Minutes). The CEO’s definitions of Web 2.0 really illustrate why this term is so difficult to pin down and how everyone defines it a little differently (around minute 5).
• Web 2.0- The Wikipedia entry about Web 2.0.
• Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0 - This post will help you understand the differences between 1.0 and 2.0.