Todd Sattersten :: Astronaut Projects

What is the definition of "quiet"?

YouTube's pact with NBC Universal is on the front page of The Wall Street Journal today.

This part I enjoyed:

They're quietly building an online ad system with Google-scale ambition, which they intend to use to entice producers to post their best videos on YouTube.

I am not sure you are really doing something quietly if it on the front page of the Journal.

Mind Manager For Mac

I want to point you all to Mind Manager and the fact that it is now available for the Mac.  I was always jealous of others I have seen using it and am super happy to see it on OSX now.

I downloaded it a couple of days ago and have been using it alot.  It is $229 for the single person license. There is a good chance I will be forking that cash over.

[Hat Tip to Bren at Slacker Manager]

Same Rules Do Not Apply and The 5% Rule?

Rogue Amoeba is a creator of Mac Software and are among a handful who create really good stuff.  One of their more popular products right now is AirFoil, that lets you send any type of audio from your computer to any audio system via Airport Express.  It was initially released for the Mac, and the lure of a much bigger installed base led them to write a version for Windows,

They wrote an interesting post on Thursday about their experience selling to the Windows market.  There are disclaimers all over the post about their limited data and beta release, yet they still draw conclusions.

Here are a couple of my responses:

• There is a hive for Windows users.  200,000 downloads of Vista show that Windows is alive and well.
• The software depends on you have an Airport Express.  How many Windows users are running out the down to get an AE?  The hardware adoption is going to drive sales.  I think their slightly higher conversion rate for the Windows version is geeks with multiple computers want to be able to stream from wherever they have audio.

I think there are equally as good questions in the comments of the post.

My comments are a little bigger than the conversion rate questions from the post.  RA wrote a follow-up on Friday and asked for others to talk about their conversion rate.  Unsanity,  The Little App Factory, and  Gaucho Software all provided more numbers. 

Something around 5% seems to be what all these companies are seeing.

Housing Update

We have now had five shows of the house.  No offers yet.

The whole process has been interesting.  From our vantage point, it is a buyer's market.  There is a huge inventory of houses on the market here.

The big discussion we have been having is whether there are buyers out there who can afford the cost of today's homes.  We bought our place from $180,000 and it looks like it is worth around $300,000 today.  A $1000 monthly payment is very different from a $1700 payment. We just wonder if the only way you can afford to get into a new house is by selling one.

The Business 2.0 Blog feed was screwed up today and they listed some really old posts.  One was from a NYT article from August 2005.  The important part is the graph.

I think this pretty much tells the same story.

UPDATE: Here is the link to the original NYT story.

World Cup TV Schedule

I become a bit of a soccer nut during World Cup.  In 2002, I actually got up and watch the games live from Korea.

I was looking for a good schedule of where I could find the games. 

SoccerTV.com has a complete rundown. 

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Ch-Ch-Changes

Today is the third birthday for A Penny For...

I remember when I started that APF was meant to be an outlet for my passion about business.  I often tell the story of how Amy just got sick and tired of me telling all of these "cool" business stories over dinner.  I figured blogging would be a great way to still tell the stories.  My goal was to find 50 people that shared my passion for business.

This blog got me a job with the best company of have ever worked for.
This blog created a book.
This blog built relationships with too many to name (and many I have never met in person).

After such as sappy start, I probably have you all thinking that this is end of my blogging.

It is not.

I am moving my blog though to astronautprojects.typepad.com.  I just don't have the technical skills to stay ahead of all the spam I am getting in the comments.  I am hoping that a hosted application will work better.

I also found that I like the Astronaut Projects brand a little better and I want to build the rest of my work around it.

So, join me over there.