Amazon Startup Challenge Videos

Posted by Matt on Sun, Dec 02 2007

I got an email tonight announcing the videos were online for the seven finalist. I wanted to encourage everyone to vote for UserTesting.com. I have no connection to these guys, other then my belief they're really the only finalist the both deserves and needs to win. Of course they're dead last right now. They're just two guys sharing an office trying to make something happen. Although for all I know they have a back room with 50 programmers playing ping pong.

A couple other notes after watching all the videos...
1) The MileMeter video pretty much confirmed my belief they're only using the Amazon payment gateway - the least unique of their services. They guy tried to make it seem like they had plans for the other services, but his reasoning was a stretch at best.
2) I was kicking myself for not making the "WeoGeo guys need to get in touch with the UserTesting guys, since they're website, although slick, is a usability nightmare", so I'm making it now.

If you don't think I'll keep posting about the challenge with the hope of ranking well of the search engines and casting a black could over the whole affair, they you've clearly underestimated how long I can hold a petty grudge for. I'm the Bill Belichick of web developers. I never forget a slight.

Posted in Startup

4 Comments

Chris Gay said on Dec 03, 2007
Matt,

MileMeter currently uses Amazon's EC2 for our load balancers, app servers, and databases. We also use FPS for payments, which we find quite helpful.

Thanks for the interest in MileMeter!

Sincerely,
Chris Gay
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Matt said on Dec 03, 2007
Chris,
Thanks for responding. I'd be interesting to hear how the process is playing out so far and if you think you have any shot of winning?

-Matt
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Chris said on Dec 04, 2007
Matt,

Thanks for writing about us. For the past few days we've been engaged in a good ol' fashioned grassroots political campaign to generate votes for MileMeter: shaking hands, working the phones, contacting alumni (across three generations), getting students and teenagers to network on campus/Facebook/Myspace, calling in favors, emailing everyone with whom we've ever lived/worked, and of course, mobilizing our extended family. Last night the National Organization for Women issued a national alert to their members urging a vote for MileMeter. The national NOW alert is a huge boon for us. Ironically, though, we can't seem to get our local papers to pay attention.

So while tomorrow may be a disappointment, for today we're celebrating the good news and the hope/possibility of winning. As of right now, we're in the lead.

-Chris
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Matt said on Dec 07, 2007
Hey Chris,
I see you've fallen to #2 now, but even that's pretty impressive. Although in the end: "The votes will be used by the judges when choosing the grand prize winner." ...whatever that means.
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