Currently I am a third-year Bachelor of Commerce student at the Telfer School of Management, specializing in E-business and Entrepreneurship.
Feel free to contact me through the contact page, or on any of the social networking websites listed to the right.
Last weekend my roommate Neil dug out his copy of Wall Street so we could watch it again. This viewing was spurred by this great trailer for “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps” – coming to theatres April 23, 2010.
Here is the trailer:
There are always people who trash sequels, but I will be rushing out to see it in April!
At the end of last summer I quickly created a classifieds website for Telfer students to buy and sell their used textbooks. Students often sell their books back to the bookstore at criminally low prices. TelferBooks would offer an easy way for students to cut out the middleman, and sell books directly, student-to-student.
Check it out at http://TelferBooks.com and let me know what you think.
As part of the ADM 3378 E-business course I did a group presentation on the topic of “Getting Started with E-commerce”. My part of the presentation covered domain names, web hosting, and e-commerce software. The presentation was very brief, only five minutes, and could not go too deep into these topics.
My slides from the presentation are embedded below or you can view them on DocStoc:
Getting Started With E-Commerce –
Having a cell phone is great, that is, until you get your bill. If you have every opened up a bill and found a ridiculous text messaging or minutes overage charge, you are probably looking for a way to avoid this! Rogers and Bjango have recently released two iPhone apps to help you keep an eye on these things.
Rogers My Account is an iPhone application for Rogers iPhone users (there is a Fido version too) to track their monthly data, text messaging, and voice minutes usage.The app also lets you view your statement balance and pay with a credit card. It is incredibly useful, however it is not the quickest or prettiest app.
Rogers My Account – Usage Screens
Rogers My Account – Balance, Payment, and the oh so slow Loading screen
However do not worry, there is a better solution! Thanks to the Australian iPhone development firm Bjango and their beautiful app Consume. Consume logs into your Rogers account and download usage statistics for you, displaying them in a wonderfully designed user interface. In addition to tracking your iPhone’s (or any phone account) data, text messages, and voice usage – it also displays your home broadband cable usage. If you have an iPhone and home internet with Rogers, this is a must-have app!
Consume – Internet Usage, Updating, and Mobile Usage screens
Consume – Settings and Add Account screens
Go get Consume now! If it saves you from a big Rogers bill, with many extra charges, it will have paid for itself in just one month!
Rogers My Account (iTunes Link)
A parade balloon of my favourite children’s book character Arthur. This video is fantastic, thanks to Derek who sent it to me.
Real Racing GTI is a demo version of Firemint’s game Real Racing, an incredibly fun racing game for the iPhone. However this is not your ordinary game demo. Nope. Volkswagen has sponsored the demo, featuring the new 2010 GTI as the only playable car.
This game is, as Michael Scott from The Office once said, a win-win-win situation. Firemint gets to upsell the full version, while likely making a pretty good amount off of the demo itself. Volkswagen gets to promote their cars with a really good game – compared to most sponsored games, and we all get to experience how great Real Racing is without paying for it (unless you get hooked like I did and need the full version).
BTW I wrote this post about a month ago, but every time I loaded it up to take some screenshots, I ended up getting sucked into a few races – that’s how fun this game is.
Screenshots don’t do it justice, watch this neat Volkswagen Commercial featuring the game!
Currently I am taking a course on E-business with Professor David Wright (ADM 3378). We had the opportunity to write an article for the Telfer School of Management’s E-business Wiki. I chose to write about URL Shorteners, such as Bit.ly. You can view my article embedded below from DocStoc or check it out on the wiki.
As a full-time student I don’t have much money coming in, however I seem to constantly be spending it. Recently I was tracking my expenses and attempting to determine a reasonable budget with an app called Cha-Ching (iPhone and Mac). However this solution was imperfect. I religiously entered every single transaction into the app on my iPhone, but something was missing – I was not able to easily visualize my financial standing over time.
As part of Telfer’s Entrepreneurial Culture Challenge that I am competing in, I have received some really interesting financial advice. Eugène Tassé said:
“You have to work and you have to save… I can assure you today, I never spent more than $0.50 of every $1 I made. It is impossible, unless you want to throw your money away”
As a student this may not be possible, however I am going to see what I can do. In the third workshop, successful entrepreneur, and uOttawa grad, Renaud Brault said:
“I always lived below my means” .. and… “produce a financial statement for your personal finances to see where you stand throughout the year”
Although I could create a financial statement manually from what I have learned in Accounting/Finance classes, I would rather find a better solution for this. Luckily the exact financial software I need is out there.
Dough is a web app for tracking your personal/family finances. It is the perfect solution for what I am looking to do, allowing you to easily:
It has been perfect for my requirements, and would definitely be a good application for any student looking to watch their money. It is simple to use and maintain, yet provides a thorough output on the Summary page.
As a web app, Dough accessible from anywhere you are connected and keeps all of your data online. My only wish is for either an iPhone app or iPhone optimized web interface for using the transaction entry function on the go.
Check out Dough here: http://yourdough.com/
Apparently I have over 26,500 e-mail messages in my willw.net account!
I’ve been using this address for three years, which works out to roughly 8,833.33 e-mails/year.
A neat application for the iPhone called reMail is what brought this random fact to my attention. reMail provides full-text search for any IMAP capable e-mail account, something Apple’s Mail app sorely lacks (it searches headers only). It does this by downloading every e-mail message in your account to your iPhone, all 26,500 in my case.
If you are used to the great search in Gmail or Google Apps, like I am, there is a free version of reMail available on the App Store. If you are using any other IMAP capable service there is the regular version for $4.99 (which also includes support for multiple accounts).
By the way, if you have thousands of e-mails like I do, you may want to start downloading your messages in reMail as you are going to bed, and leave it running overnight, as it takes awhile to download!
Recently I was selected as one of 16 students at the Telfer School of Management to participate in the Entrepreneurial Culture Challenge. The school describes this event as:
“The Entrepreneurial Culture Challenge (ECC) is a one year competition through which Telfer School of Management students create and implement an action plan to develop the culture of success from Eugène Tassé. This culture of success or “entrepreneurial culture”, helped Eugène Tassé become one of the region’s most successful entrepreneurs.”
The competition includes four workshops with business experts, mentoring, and the refinement/use of an action plan to work toward your goals. Following the program, three finalists will be selected to make a presentation on their progress and goals for the chance to win $7,500.
As part of the application process I had to write a definition of what I think it means to “live with an Entrepreneurial Culture”:
To me, living with an Entrepreneurial Culture means three things. First, setting a goal and doing everything possible to work toward it. Second, facing situations of risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity head on, and taking actions to overcome those situations. And finally, doing something you believe in, something that makes you want to work, rather than feeling like you have to work.
Entrepreneurs identify the actions required to achieve their business goals. This same approach can be used to tackle life’s goals, anything that you strive to achieve can be viewed as an entrepreneurial pursuit.
This competition should be an excellent opportunity to develop a strategy for achieving my personal, academic, and professional goals, as well as work with some very interesting people!
