37signals have just launched a new product called Campfire. There is a chat room for all basecamp users that I’ve been having a look at just to get a feel for it.

The main benifit here over existing technology is to create a chat room that you can link to. The owner can create a chat room and then send a link or link of a webpage to it for guests to particapate in. So for example if you ran a community website you could easily create a chat room and link to it from your existing site. Personally I think this genius and I can think of hundreds of possible applications for it.

They however seem to be selling it more as a place where businesses can chat to clients. I really can’t see much use for this in reality but then again I’m sure people can point out situations were it would be useful.

It will be integrated into basecamp so that should be useful although i don’t think I’d pay extra for it at this point, I find it hard enough to get clients to use it instead of email.

To learn more take a tour.

New fun and interesting Google maps mashup.

The site basically allows you to view and rate pubs around Dublin using google maps as a way to find them.

More interesting than anything as it doesn’t have a big enough community yet to get some proper pub reviews. It has to be said very cleanly executed and definitely using a lot of up to date technologies including there own blog.

Someone on sitepoint recently asked for some advice on the costs of building a online store and if it was possible with $5k.

First off, building a website and thinking a your most of the way there is crazy.. like building a shop in the middle of the Sahara desert… it can be the best shop in the world but no one will find it. ecommerce is about marketing first and foremost… not the traditional marketing but pay-per-click and seo etc. (this may be obvious but i think it needs to be said.)
50% of time and money should be allocated to marketing at least.

Also, while dropshipping is a great option really you should buy stock if you have any confidence in selling your products.

Some possible steps to consider when building a online store with jshop for example (substitute oscommerce if you like)

Hosting & Domain Name Registration

Maintenance.

This doesn’t include,
Accounting, purchasing stock and shipping products and more i haven’t thought of.

Time is a real cost as mentioned earlier.. while you may buy stock, build a website and market it for 5k you won’t do it without sacrificing a large proportion of your time…How much is your time worth?.. value it on an hour basis… lets assume you don’t value yourself very highly and you think your time is worth $20 an hour.

A store like this built right for 5k could take 3 months of your time almost completely. That’s 10k worth of your time. So in reality it cost you 15k. If you pay a consultant and they do half the work for you then isn’t it worth 5k to you? I’d imagine you could do other things in the mean time.

Its all about ROI(Return on Investment) and understanding time really is money no matter how you slice it.

The money & time required to market a store is directly proportionate to the competitiveness of the market. So if your trying to sell ipods then you’ll have to pay a hell of allot to attract attention. The demand then determines your potential revenue.

Naturally there are smarter ways of doing things which give you the advantage. The question you have to ask is do you have an advantage over anyone doing well in the market currently?