So I realized the problem is that once the inspiration goes away, and it always seems to run out at some point, I end with this ‘meh’ feeling and things just aren’t as fun as they use to be. It sucks to admit this happens, and I’m writing this blog post to help myself from making lies in believing that I’m still pumped about things I’ve started earlier and convincing myself that I’m just too busy at the moment to put time into it. Instead, I need to just suck it up and get back to work on things that I’ve started until they’re finished. If I was excited enough at one point to put so much work into it, I might as well complete it and stick to it so that it at least has a shot. My goal with any project of mine is to just have people use it and appreciate it, not to make millions and cash out quick. So quitting is obviously the worst thing I can do, but also the easiest thing to do, because I can always make excuses as to why it would never have worked anyway.

Some of the past projects I’ve quit include a web app directory in 2007 that I didn’t see a market for after it was all built and complete. It was also designed terribly code wise so changes took far too long, never try to roll your own framework if you really don’t know what you’re doing. Now I see about 5 or 6 clones that all have a decent user base and I think, that could have been me.

I also had a podcast with two friends that was running for about a month back in 2008. We had about 10 listeners by episode 5 and since we were expecting overnight success and didn’t get it we decided that “we just don’t have the time to keep doing this.”

Finally, I created a Craigslist alert app which, after spamming twitter quite a bit, ended up with about 100 happy users. I saw some opportunity to make it even better so I started from scratch and started developing what I would describe now as Notifo + Twilio + other cool features. Neither of these services existed at the time, and I had a family friend who is an amazing web designer on board for equity to help out. I had some personal issues that set me back about 6 months and by the time I came around I saw too many competitors in the space and decided to stop development and not even give it a shot.

So after thinking last night about all these things, I ended up little disappointed with myself, and here I am writing a blog post to make sure I never make these mistakes again. So I’m asking you to keep me in check, if I say I have a project to share with you, hound me until I release it.

Django authentication backends are quite simple, essentially whenever you call the django.contrib.auth.authenticate() function, Django uses the authenticate method in any of the classes specified by the AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS tuple set in your settings.py. If one of the classes fails to authenticate the user, Django moves on to the next one until either one successfully returns a user object or there are no other backends to attempt, in which case it results in a failed login. A very simple authentication backend which allows users to login via email rather than username is the following code in backends.py:

from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

    def get_user(self, user_id):
        try:
            return User.objects.get(pk=user_id)
        except User.DoesNotExist:
            return None


And you simply need to add to your settings.py:

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
'path.to.this.backends.EmailModelBackend',
'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',
)


I generally place my backends in whatever app I create to store extra user info, but you can put it anywhere, just make sure it’s in your PYTHONPATH.

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Hopefully this saves you some time because I sure wasted a lot of mine solving it.  I ended up having to add ‘django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware’, and  ‘django.middleware.csrf.CsrfResponseMiddleware’ to my MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES in settings.py and my problems were solved.  All I had to say was mutha eff.  Django also was no help with their debug.  My MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES now looks like:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfResponseMiddleware',
'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
)

Hope this helps.

You don’t realize having the ability to run apps in the background is a necessity with a smart phone until you have it.  Honestly, I’m not going back to the iPhone until it gets that feature.

Yesterday I made the trip from Pittsburgh to Syracuse to attend the Syracuse University iSchool’s SXSW Report (and to see some family, but that doesn’t make it sound as cool).  I really had no idea who these students were or why they were doing this presentation nearly a week after SXSW but I figured I’d give it a shot.  I was greeted by cool people and beer so I knew it wasn’t going to be a complete bust.  Come to find out, the SU iSchool actually paid for the entire trip for these students because they recognized how important the event was.  That completely blew me away, an educational institution that realized how important and relevant SXSW was for its students that it sponsored them 100%.

Kate Holloway (@KatiePunkin), Shay Colson (@shaycolson), and Andrew Farah (@andrewfarah) did a great job sharing their experiences of SXSW.  As an entrepreneur I was happy to hear them say that they recognized how many small companies that were there that were simply building and hustling as opposed to going after large amounts of investment to start their venture.  They said that seemed to be the theme with most of the companies, a lot of them were bootstrapped or had received a very small amount of funding to start up.  I think a lot of people are finally realizing how cheap it is to start a business and aren’t writing huge business plans, instead choosing to get their hands dirty and build it themselves.  They also confirmed that Mark Cuban is indeed an asshole all the time, not just at Mavericks games and on his blog.

It was really great meeting the people from the iVenutre Upstate Forum, I think there is a great thing going on there and I hope to see a lot more people start to contribute to the discussions.  I must say my heart has officially moved to Pittsburgh but I like to do anything I can to help create opportunities like the one I have been given from Alphalab in Syracuse, and last night proved that the right things are being done for that to happen.

Again, it was great meeting everyone last night and thank you for opening the event up to the public.  I really enjoyed myself.

I don’t actually think Google Wave is worthless, it’s just the fact that no one has found any practical use that allows everyone to see the value in it.

Anyone else who absolutely hates Lotus Notes, please check out I Hate Lotus Notes where you can vent your frustrations and even buy a T-Shirt to show your anti-support.

I went on the YES Conference Facebook group page last night to see what type of activity and discussion there was about the event.  To my surprise there was only 23 people in the group, and a mere 4 comments on the wall.  I then started doing Twitter searches with every combination of search words imaginable to see if people were having any discussion about the event on Twitter.  Of course I found nothing again.

So I arrive at the conference today with no idea what to expect.  Walking in I realize there were only around 100 people there, 98% of which are high school students.  This event was “advertised” for 12-25 year old aspiring entrepreneurs, and only 2% were 19 or older.  On top of that, there were only 2 students from Syracuse University actually attending the event, and Syracuse University was the one putting on the conference in the first place.  That’s not to say there weren’t Students from the Whitman School of Management helping, but I found it very odd that during the keynote speaker these students who are getting “Entrepreneurship” degrees (whatever the hell that even means) weren’t even interested to hear the story of a successful entrepreneur and simply hung out in the common area.

They kicked off the conference by showing Shark Tank (if you like Shark Tank, and I really hope you don’t, please watch This Week in Startups instead because Shark Tank is reality TV and isn’t how things work) and during intermissions they had a fantastic DJ blasting beats forcing you to scream during every conversation which made networking extra easy.

Very disappointing conference, with little to show of what comes out of the EEE program at Syracuse University.  As I’ve heard many people mention, there are only 2 companies in the last 9 years that are even doing anything right now who came out of the Universities Entrepreneur program.  Not the best track record considering how many come out of the program in the first place.  However, there was some good that came out of the day.  I had the pleasure of meeting some of the smartest young guys who are very motivated and I have no doubt are going to kill it one day.  I wish I knew as much as these guys do now back when I was in high school.  It’s just very unfortunate that they will most likely be successful anywhere but Syracuse.  It’s just lost opportunities like these that make Syracuse the dying city it is.