Brooke and Mark » Technology

The first iPad post

mark — Sun, 02 May 2010 22:48:16 +0000

So I went out and bought an iPad. It’s just a 16 gig but it’ll be handy on the plane to Kauai and to have in general. It really is an amazing device to browse the web, check email, and other cool things. Now Brooke doesn’t mow yet, she’s out of town in Phoenix for her sister’s baby shower. She said I could talk her into one so I took that to mean I should buy one.

Stumbleupon and Crowd Rent

mark — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:21:46 +0000

So I was trying to think of ideas to increase traffic to Crowd Rent and I remember Stumble Upon. I signed up for SU back in August of 2005. It was a lot of fun and a great way to waste all day at a job I didn’t want to be at anymore. I quit U-Haul in October of that same year and move to Colorado. Well I submitted Crowd Rent and at the same time I’m tailing the log files on the server. It’s been pretty stagnent today as my Criagslist postings have fallen out of the first few pages. About three minutes after I said I liked it on SU the logs starting flying by. I have no idea if anyone is staying on the site, if it’ll translate into signups, or even rentals but the traffic is impressive.

Crowd Rent

mark — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:41:10 +0000

So I’ve been working on an idea to allow “peer-2-peer” rentals. Imagine being able to find people in your area renting the things they don’t use. Not just tools in the garage, but their camper trailer, their kayaks, their bread maker, even their cars. American people are voracious consumers, well they were. The times are changing, we’re realizing we can’t keep spending and consuming. It affects the environment and it leaves us with no money. So if we aggregate the “stuff” we all have and offer it up to the community for a daily rate we’d be able to find what we need without needing to buy more. Reduce packaging, reduce transportation costs, and save some money for things that matter.
Now I came up with the idea on my own, I have hundreds of them bouncing around in my head to tell you the truth. While it was my own original idea, I wasn’t the first person. There are two other major sites out there that allow you to do the same thing basically. Zilok and iRent2U both offer the same thing, both are substantially more advanced at the moment, and both are seemingly infinitely more complicated. What I was trying to accomplish in Crowd Rent was a simple process. Reduce the forms, the questions, and process to what it is, renting your things to people in your area. I also wanted to make it safe to pay. So I used a system that charges the customer up front when the rental is confirmed and allows them to give the owner a payment code to redeem. This could be a pain if people don’t know how it works but it protects people and allows them to use their credit card. So in a way, we’re ahead of the competition.

Yesterday I finally opened it up to the public and the response was good. I got three new users but only one new item listed. This was from one ad on Craigslist that generated quite a bit of traffic. So I was excited but also dissappointed. I know full well this is a long process to build a viable business but that’s what I like about it. Sure I want to work for myself, set my own hours, and be filthy rich but more importantly I wasn’t to build something. I developed the U-Haul reservations site so I know the technical aspect of these things but the thing we took for granted was the traffic. We’d work up something new, flip a switch and overwhelm ourselves with our success. With good reason, the reservations site was generating over a million dollars a day in rental revenue and that was three years ago or so. It something I’ve seen with gAuto.com, another venture with a few former coworkers. It’s a great idea and we have great talent but we need customers. They’re coming but it’s always slow.

Welcome and such

mark — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:21:37 +0000

This is the new Brooke and Mark dot net website. I got a great deal with Dreamhost.com so I had to take advantage of it.