Theo Sapoutzis Weblog

My apologies to the non-Greek speaking audience for the Greek message that will follow. It’s a request I saw today for a bone marrow donation needed for a four year old kid. This is a legit request and not one of the fake chain emails flooding the web. The request comes from Alex Alexiou and it’s for his small nephew. Alex can be contacted at alexiou_mrn@yahoo.com & on facebook: http://el-gr.facebook.com/people/Alex-Alexiou/726645379

Αναζητώ συμβατό δότη μυελού των οστών, για την 4χρονη ανιψούλα μου η οποία πάσχει από λευχαιμία (η κατάσταση είναι πλέον κρίσιμη) και θα υποβληθεί σε μεταμόσχευση τον Μάιο στο Αγίας Σοφίας… έως τότε πρέπει να κάνουμε τα αδύνατα δυνατά όποιος ενδιαφέρεται ας επικοινωνήσει μαζί μου, με τους εξής τρόπους :

alexiou_mrn@yahoo.com & facebook: http://el-gr.facebook.com/people/Alex-Alexiou/726645379

Πως γίνεται η αναγνώριση του ιστικού τύπου του δότη; (HLA)

Η εξέταση για το τεστ ιστοσυμβατότητας (HLA) είναι ανώδυνη και περιορίζεται στη λήψη μικρής ποσότητας αίματος (15 ml το πολύ), προκειμένου να καθορισθεί ο ιστικός τύπος (HLA) του δότη.

Πως γίνεται η λήψη του μοσχεύματος εφόσον είναι κάποιος συμβατός;

Η λήψη του μοσχεύματος γίνεται με δύο τρόπους. Με την μέθοδο της παρακέντησης και με τη μέθοδο της αιμοληψίας. Ο τρόπος εξαρτάται από τον εκάστοτε ιατρό ο οποίος θα κάνει την λήψη. Αυτό γίνεται γιατί ο κάθε γιατρός είναι εξπέρ σε μία μέθοδο. Ο δότης μπορεί να “επιβάλει” τη δική του γνώμη για την μέθοδο, πολύ απλά αλλάζοντας ιατρό.

Πολλές πληροφορίες μπορείτε να μάθετε από το τμήμα Ανοσολογίας και Ιστοσυμβατότητας του Πανεπιστημιακού Νοσοκομείου στη Λάρισα. Οι άνθρωποι είναι πολύ φιλικοί (μπράβο τους) και είναι διαθέσιμοι από τις 9:00 έως τις 14:00. Το τηλέφωνο του τμήματος είναι το 2410 682 579 & 682 580.

Σκέψου ότι μπορεί να σώσεις ένα μικρό αγγελούδι! Οι πιθανότητες να βρούμε δότη με συμβατότητα 100% είναι 1 στους 15.000 ανθρώπους περίπου. Περιμένουμε να μας βοηθήσετε να τις μειώσουμε αυτές τις πιθανότητες στο ελάχιστο δυνατό…Σας ευχαριστώ όλους για τον χρόνο τον οποίο αφιερώσατε να διαβάσετε αυτό το μήνυμα και πλέον σας ευχαριστεί και η μικρή Μαρία (αφού δε το βάζει κάτω και μας κάνει και πλάκα). Ο Θεός αυτού του κόσμου να έχει καλά εσάς και τους δικούς σας.

Καλό σας βράδυ…
Αλεξίου Αλέξιος.

It has been twelve years since I designed a web site for the first time and if I recall well it was done with the help of Netscape Composer, an early WYSIWYG HTML editor. It was hosted in a free host that later on vanished from the web. In my surprise my web site re-appeared online few years ago when another company acquired the database of the free host and used it (or better yet abused it) through a blackhat SEO attempt.

Since 1996 a lot of small revolutions occurred in the web design and usability field and overall on the Internet. So many things we considered as given facts collapsed, while others became standards to be followed. When I started my first Internet company in 1999 we were literally going against the trends of that period. We were using layers when most web design firms were strictly using tables, we were combining HTML with Flash when most were still having a separated sections for each and so on. We were far from pioneers, but we were adopting to new technologies faster than the dinosaurs of that era.

Most of the web designers back then belonged to the electronic desktop publishing generation that was already facing a financial crisis and were moving to Internet. They were extremely more artistic than today’s web designers, yet they had tremendous difficulties to apply their skills on the WWW. Eventually some of them adapted, while others changed business direction. Regardless if you are doing your first steps in web design or if you are an experienced web designer the following six books are highly recommended to read. Additionally, I recommend the below titles to all web entrepreneurs since they’ll find helpful a lot of information such as how to structure a user interface, how to properly guide a web designer, mistakes to avoid and more.

Designing Web Navigation (2007)
by James Kalbach

Balanced Website Design: Optimizing Aesthetics, Usability and Purpose (2007)
by Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol

User-Centered Web Design (2001)
by John Cato

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (2007)
by Jason Beaird

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed (2001)
by Jakob Nielsen

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2001)
by Steve Krug

From the man himself:

“Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause; a hormone imbalance that has been robbing me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve”

- Best wishes Mr. Jobs!

I came up with this topic idea after watching a movie called “Eagle Eye”. Eagle Eye shows a supercomputer that is capable to create the profile of any person based on his on-line activities during his past years of Internet usage. This is done by gathering information from forums, databases, blogs, social media sites, distributed media in P2P etc. Having a background in data mining and some minor studies in AI, I can confirm you that such scenario isn’t fictional. About 12 years ago, when I started using the Internet, I had already this privacy concern. I wasn’t that great prophet if you consider that any data you upload online may stick around forever. This is exactly what I had in mind.

With the currently developed technology, it is fairly easy to collect an enormous amount of information to do this. A barrier is going to be the correctly matching of people’s identities with the gathered information. People communicate with other’s and share info on-line by using either nicknames or their real names. In either case, while it takes an extra effort of properly matching them, it can be done in an accurate rate by utilizing various filters. Just imagine a form of pseudo-AI for now. I’m going to do a separate blog post in the near future for this. Finally, another barrier is the proper interpretation of the collected data. The exact same phrase posted by a user can be humorous, but it can also be a real threat. Such developed system cannot just take phrases out of the context and will have to consider additional criteria.

I’m confident that the intelligent services of major countries already utilize such technologies and their systems will only get more advanced, faster and more accurate by the time. I have no doubt that all of you have heard of Echelon. Most of us are in the state of mind that “CIA, NSA, Mossad etc have better things to do than focusing an Echelon-like system on me”. This is probably right, but have you considered that this profiling can go down to a decision level that wil affect everyone’s life? A hypothetical example of such application could be the answering of the following question: “What percentage of X’s country’s citizens find acceptable the invasion of Y country by a Z country for a W-whatever reason”? Such information can be used by a government before taking the decision to invade another one. The semi-intelligent system will be able to tell them which probably are going to be their supporters and which won’t. All this done in an almost automated way and best of all? In a totally discreet one! The answer of this question is likely to define the action that will be taken. Ironic dont you think? This is also one of the principles of democracy. The will of the majority is ruling the sum.

I recently promised to Mr. Richard Bernhardt who serves as Chairman of Bangla Hope (Legal Name: Bangladesh Christian School Sponsorship of America / 501c3 humanitarian organization headquartered in Kennewick, WA) to blog about this fabulous organization when my website will start getting a significant number of readers. Mr Bernhardt is president and COO at Silicon Valley Investment Group and owner & CEO of Bernhardt Communications Co. Today I decided to do an early blog post to let you know about it and keep up in the future with further updates.

What exactly is Bangla Hope? As Mr. Bernhardt best described me: “it is a wonderful organization that turns sad faces into happy ones with a real life potential”. If you visit the Bangla Hope website at http://www.banglahope.org you will soon realize what an excellent humanitarian work has been done by the people behind it and its supporters. Having a personal touch with most of my readers (a small, yet growing blog) I know some of you might be skeptical. You may wonder that this could be just one of the many non-profitable organizations where its founders enjoy fat wages and a lot of personal privileges. Take this out of your mind. Bangla Hope started by Mr Dave Waid and his wife, Mrs Beverly Waid. An effort with a lot of personal sacrifices as you can see and has remained like this till now.

Bangla Hope serves children and families in need and provides a safe, stable, and learning environment for children throughout the country of Bangladesh. It operates an orphanage, dental clinic, and provides services for women-in-need through handicrafts work in Dhaka, Bangladesh as well as operating fifteen village feeding schools (serving around 1,500 students) throughout the nation. In addition, Bangla Hope also works with associated boarding schools and finds and provides children in need with sponsorship and support.

Did you know that Bangladesh is one of the countries with the highest population density in inhabitants/km²? Spend just 3 minutes of your personal time and watch this YouTube video to find out more about this country and the efforts of the organization. There are a dozen ways you can contribute to such organization, not necessarily financially ones. Spreading the word about it is one of those. Pass the Bangla Hope website http://www.banglahope.org to your fellow friends! Of course every financial contribution makes a direct and instant impact to the kids and their families. Keep the Christmas spirit alive folks 365 days per year. Happy holidays!

Politics is out of my blog focus and will remain like this for now. Please, consider this as a social topic of discussion which involves my country. Internet gives us the unique opportunity to express and share ideas and thoughts. I’ll grab this opportunity to express my concerns and fears about where Greece stands right now and where is heading to. This post is written during major riots taking place in thirty different cities across Greece. The riots started exactly after the murdering of 15 y.old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a policeman. Five days later and the murderer hasn’t apologized to the family of Alexandros and shows no signs of regret…

Depression, the big chapter, the small introduction.

Depression builds up through a hard period of time where the patient wakes up one day and stares at a totally different world from the one he was used to. This is the same world he was living before, but during a depression phase it appears to be a different one. It is sadder than before, it is painful, it has zero perspectives, it is more unfair and uglier. A depressed person feels hopeless, is lacking the energy to do things, tends to be less creative than before and usually becomes isolated. What’s more, a depressed person is very often self-destructive and self-harming. He is either seeking a way to punish himself or a heal of his internal pain by harming his body and letting the body pain grow bigger than his soul pain. The cause of depression can be more than one and treatment is usually a long-term process.

The depressed nation, the big chapter, the big questions.

Can depression apply to a whole nation? Can this characterization be an exaggeration? Possible it is such, yet looking randomly a Greek in his eyes probably you won’t see hope left for a better tomorrow. You won’t see the smiling, happy face that used to describe him. The situations a Greek has to go through in the society he built are not new. He or better we (since I’m one too) have managed to survive during some of the hardest periods of mankind. We went through ancient wars, world wars and even a civil war. We used to have a strong immune system that was powered by hope, but when we started debating the existence of hope, we started getting sick. This is where we stand right now. We have started getting sick my friends. This is the outcome of misplacing our hopes.

We, Greeks, are daily battling with an unfair, corrupted system that is not powered by common capitalism, but by a non-stop greediness. We try to imitate a clinically obese person that keeps eating till puking. We have created a totally materialistic society built on corruption where the personal benefit goes before the well-being of the rest. It is all about us and this is because this is how they learned us to be. The society and our parents taught us that happiness is directly and strictly associated with the possession of materials. Money and power define the success or failure in life and ethics and means of acquisition are of minor importance. We will either possess them or we will be unhappy for the rest of our lives. We grew up with such principles and we reproduce this anomalous system in every shape and form we can.

In my humble opinion a proper application of capitalistic principles can provide a social society to its citizens. It is not a black or white situation and we must not fall into such fake dilemmas. Greeks destroying the property of other Greeks belong to a prehistoric tribe that is destroying the statues of Gods they were educated to pray. We constantly failed to reach this unknown destination of satisfying the demon inside us and we now want to kill it. The burning and looting will stop, today or tomorrow or one of the coming days. The demon inside us will remain. It will reproduced itself like the HIV virus seeking the next opportunity to collapse our organisms. In a week, a month or a year from now we will stand in a worse position asking again the exactly same questions. History is a martyr of a nation that never learns.

Healing process can only start on an individual level after self-realization. No protest or act of violence will cure our sickness if we don’t seek first inside us. We are the first to blame the others and the last to see ourselves. Nobody else except ourselves can kill the demon we carry, place back the hope and pass it to the next generations.

A catchy title isn’t it? ASmallWorld is exactly what the title describes, an online social site with a bit more than 350,000 “elite” members from the business world, showbiz, jet-setters and artists.

You may ask how such community remained untouched up to now by spammers, web junkies and didn’t become a monster-sized community like Facebook or MySpace? The recipe of success was described to me by a Russian entrepreneur during a friendly dinner when he explained me a similar startup plan that eventually wasn’t released. You create a network of suppliers of luxury products and services that are willing to distribute a private invitation card with each purchase. This card contains an access code necessary for signing up to the elite social site. A large number of the first members are given the right to invite a specific number of their friends. Rich people usually hangout with rich people, models with models, artists with artists etc. In most cases those are the ones they’ll invite and this way they’ll maintain the members basis to the desired for the community owners level. When you build a solid basis you review the members and you limit the invitation right to a handful ones of no more than 10% (Don’t request me an invitation, I’m still among the rest 90%). This way you keep the community clean and you also control the growth rate of it.

Both the technology used and the layout of ASmallWorld is outdated and has nothing in common with Facebook. Inside you won’t find funky applications, fan pages, groups of interests to join and so on. Still, ASmallWorld is a very active community and significant interesting topics take place. All topics and posts are strictly monitored by the admins for abuse. This is something you won’t find on Facebook. There are forums of discussions about traveling, business, fashion & beauty, watches, entertainment etc. One of the best parts you can access are the guides of about 65 cities. If you like to travel often or it is part of your work you’ll find them very useful. As expected the advertised products and services have as target group businessmen and generally rich people.

From my experience I can tell you this moment that ASmallWorld is ahead of any competition attempt. There is only one similar community of a much smaller size and any possible startups will have to deal with the fact that already a very large number of the audience they want to target is loyal to ASmallWorld. Such people tend to be busy and don’t spend their time trying new social sites. So, is everything great for ASmallWorld? Far from that! Their social site must immediately evolve, become more user-friendly, faster and add new important functions that will target the priority needs of their members and not waste time on silly stuff like send an ugly greeting card to your friends.

If you have been an on-line marketer for more than four years there is a good chance to have heard the name of Corey Rudl. Corey was the brain and the soul behind the Internet Marketing Center company and marketingtips.com.

I avoid using terms like guru and wizard, but this characterization applied to him. Corey, didn’t re-invent the wheel of on-line marketing, but he touched it with a simple, yet effective way. I had the fortune to talk to him in spring of 2005 and the misfortune to learn about his death in a car accident shortly after during a track racing with a Porsche Carrera GT. Sadly enough, his exotic car was the main reason the loss of Corey and Benjamin Miles Keaton deaths were covered by mass media. He left behind a family and many friends like most young people losing their life. He was only 34 y.old.

Under the leadership of Corey, marketingtips.com grew and became one of the largest on-line marketing companies targeting small to medium-size webmasters and affiliates. His techniques, strategies, pitches and layouts were getting used and copied all over the Internet. While we never actively used his services, I did read one of his ebooks regarding opt-in mailing marketing and that confirmed my perception that aside a successful, self-made entrepreneur, he was a brilliant marketer. After his death his wife assigned the company to Derek Gehl one of his veteran employees. I won’t hurry up to say Derek didn’t manage to keep up with what Corey built over the years. What I can personally testify is that during the last years I didn’t experience the stream of marketingtips.com ideas. For me it is like vanished from the web and the Alexa rankings of the venture somehow confirm this.

I don’t know if Corey’s ebooks are still available for purchase, but I highly recommend to have a look at them. Call them outdated, still you will find a lot valuable things to learn.

RIP Corey.

Two weeks ago the Startup Weekend took place for 1st time in Athens, Greece. Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event bringing together brilliant tech minds (developers, designers, marketers, etc.) together to create a company (or as many as the community wants) from concept to launch. While I was familiar with what it is all about, from the time Paul Stamatiou’s team participated in the Atlanta’s event, I didn’t expect to see it organized in Greece. I found about it just few hours before starting and likely enough I happened to be in Greece.

While the main purpose of my participation was the experience and not the desire to actively be involved to a new startup I can tell you the whole environment and the enthusiasm of the participants were a strong inspiration for such ones! The event was hosted at the new Microsoft Innovation Center. Microsoft was also one of the main sponsors of the event and Patrick Malone, the director of technology of Microsoft, was a brilliant host having next to him Lydia Morazzani. The main people behind the event were Andrew Hyde and Alexander Pagidas. As usual, George Tziralis was around to support another event related to startups. I’m sure I missed to mention a lot of people their contribution was important for this happening to be as much awesome as it was.

I don’t recall who said it was one of the rare moments you could have a bit less than one hundred Greeks of all ages and no fights or complaints of any kind…(maybe Alexander Pagidas?) so freaking true! Everything was well organized and people that didn’t know each others managed to form teams and make new friends in record time. Brainstorming and working was also at peak levels and whoever believed tech savvy people are not that social was proved wrong. The outcome of Startup Weekend was ten projects and a presentation of a business idea regarding a digital rights protection service by me. I don’t dare to call it a startup attempt or project, but rather a draft plan presentation. Every single project had multiple quality characteristics and I’m confident under the right conditions it can become a profitable Internet venture. I’m going to talk a bit now on some of the projects that made me an impression. Those were:

Pettycards.com – The winner of the fund that was given at Athens Startup Weekend. A brilliant concept that Panos Zamanis explained me before their presentation and convinced me this project is important and highly needed in the Greek market. I was glad to see it as the winner. It is not going to be just an innovative e-billing service, but can act as the primary wheel of moving the Greek marketplace forward. It will have significant barriers to overcome before and after its official release, but the team members of Panos Zamanis, Nikos Anagnostou, Alexandros Argiriou, Spyros Kapetanakis, Dimitris Moustakas and Dimitris Papadimitriou is capable for the best.

…to be continued over the next days with HowSocial.ru and BlogNudge.com projects.

This blog post is follow up to my recent offer titled as “I’m Offering 12-Months Free Consulting Service For 5 Greek Web Startups!”. Five team members contacted me so far and came to agreement with two of those. Both are startups by young, very capable and hard working guys and gals. They met me in the latest Open Coffee and shared their visions, ideas and goals with me. Additionally, a businessman that attended the event came in touch with me and we discussed on the possibility of consulting his multinational startup in the mobile communications field.

Why am I doing this free offer? Am I some kind of Santa Claus of consulting like one of the guys asked me? Of course not! While I do believe in openly sharing knowledge this offer may also result in future partnerships or business deals. It is far from rare event that startups I assisted in the past and were created by friends of mine to become clients. I’m in the business for the long-run and I’ve learned to value the elements that create a long-run perspective.

So, which are these two startups? I won’t mention their websites for now, I’ll firstly ask permission from the owners and I’ll do that when I’ll be in position to share with you some first data of progress. The first is a technological, informative blog and the second is a regional tube site. Primary goals for the blog is to increase exposure, traffic and create a revenue stream. For the tube site is to maintain the traffic growth and turn it to a profitable venture since for the moment the web hosting fees are higher than the revenues.