January 2007 – Nate Whitehill

The 8 Million Dollar Maybach

The engineers at Mercedez-Maybach have built a truly amazing supercar. The Maybach Exelero is a one-of-a kind, handbuilt, 700 horsepower monster. The Exelero was originally commission by the Fulga Tire Company, who wanted to build a car of vast size and capability to prove they could make extra large low profile tires that could carry 6000 lbs and go 200 mph. The final cost? Eight million dollars. No other sports car in the world has tires this large.

What kind of vast size are we talking about? This car is 19 feet long, has 23 inch wheels and a gas mileage of 2.5 mpg at full throttle. Maybach insists that another Exelero will never be built. However, the worldwide reaction to the car has been so strong that Mercedes execs admitted they are considering a Maybach two-seater, although officially “there are no immediate plans.”

Click on a photo for a larger (1600×1200) desktop-size view.

Windows Vista Hits Stores Today

Today Microsoft is finally releasing Windows Vista after 5 years delays and broken promises. I thought this was a fitting cartoon to help clear up the confusion some of you may have about which version of Vista you should get…

From the CNet Review of Vista:

Compared with Mac OS X 10.4, Windows Vista feels clunky and not very intuitive, almost as though it’s still based on DOS (or at least the internal logic that made up DOS).

For more information about Vista, read this CNet review of Windows Vista Ultimate. The average user’s rating of Vista so far is 5.4 out of 10. For those of you who are sick of the never-ending viruses, spyware, and dysfunctional computing, now is the perfect time to Get a Mac.

Balance Is Key To All Aspects of Life

How many times in your life have you felt overwhelmed by all of your responsibilities? It happens to everyone, and in the past few days, I have felt so overwhelemed by work, life, and school deadlines that I am now wondering if I am just “really busy” or permanently stressed. Too often as we strive to work as hard as possible, we leave out important tasks that aid in effienciy and restore balance to the insanity.

For example, I have been working so hard on business lately that I have been neglecting working out, eating healthy, and getting a good night’s rest. Those are key tasks that if not done, will lead to even more stress in my insane work-life. Because I have spent so much time on work lately, I am starting to become much less efficient. I am tired, cranky, and just plain fed up with the same-old day-to-day happenings.

Clearly, the remedy to this problem has already been identified — I need to work out more, eat healthier, and go to sleep earlier. Every time one becomes too stressed out from the same thing, he or she needs to look at what is lacking in life. I am sure if I started doing those things, my stress-level would decrease by at least 75%. My point here is that BALANCE is key to everything we do. If I only focus on working out, I will not finish my web projects, and vice versa. Here are some things I like to do to help manage stress:

Work out. Nothing helps reduce stress like getting a good exercise in. The dopamine released from physical activity will immediately reduce stress-levels.
Eat a healthy meal. We live in a fast-paced, fast-food society where we sacrifice eating healthy for eating quickly. Try having a salad instead of that Whopper with Coke and I am sure you will feel better.
Get more sleep. Sleep is our body’s recovery time. Not getting enough sleep means you will not have the right kind of energy to work efficiently.
Take an hour to relax. Whether that means taking a nap, playing video games, or getting a massage, time for yourself feels especially good when you’ve been working yourself to death.

This is the question I am now asking myself whenever I become stressed…what is lacking? Oftentimes you will find that if you spend the right amount of time balancing all aspects of life, you will become much more efficient at daily tasks, especially work.

Tonight, I pledge I will go to sleep before 3 am (big accomplishment) and workout tomorrow morning before school. Tomorrow should be a much better day!

New Blog Topic – Business Development

I thought it would be fitting to add a new topic of discussion, as it something I will become quite familiar with over the next year – business development. For those of you who have not read my page about My Web Enterprises, I am currently developing four businesses with two partners. Our goal at the end of the year is to have a least two people employed part-time at each business. By 2008, our goal is to open our own office in the Phoenix area and start hiring managers.

This next year is going to be quite the entrepreneurial journey and a ton of hard work, but I wouldn’t want it any other way right now. I am almost 23, so if I can achieve those goals over the next year, I think it will be quite remarkable. I plan to keep my readers updated of my progress every step of the way. Additionally, I plan to write a book over the next year about business development as an Web Entrepreneur.

How to Prioritize Multiple Web Projects

At some point in every busy web developer’s life, he or she finds out that there are too many projects and not enough time. Right now, for example, I have four separate projects I need to have nearly finished in the next week. Not to mention, I have school and the blog I need to be updating.

So, the question becomes, how does one prioritize the most important projects and work efficiently? First of all, listing your projects helps as far as prioritizing which ones should come first. Here are the web sites I need to have at least 90% finished by the end of this week:

Cultural Media Collaborative – This is a site for a non-profit organization in New York City that specializes in filming documentaries. This client paid half up front and I should have it nearly finished this week.
Treo Express – This is a new blog/news site for the Palm Treo smartphone. This is a joint project by two other business partners and myself.
Dot Com Moguls – This is my domain investing business. Our web site will provide links and information about the roughly 170+ domains we are looking to sell.
Another new blog project – this blog is actually for my Mom and her group of friends. I am doing this project for free, because it’s for my Mom! Nonetheless, this blog will require significant design work from start-to-finish.

Here are the qualifications I use to determine project priority, in order of most important to least important.

Deadlines. Which project has the closest deadline? In my case, the web site for Cultural Media Collaborative should be nearly done by the end of this week. I still have a Flash header to intregrate into the site and this should take at least 10 hours. Projects with deadlines for clients should be taken care of with special attention. If you can meet all requested deadlines with clients, they are much more likely to recommend you to others. Even if you can’t meet a deadline, at least be upfront with your client and let them know you are running behind. Good communication can’t be more important when working with clients.
Which projects have paid up front? The projects that have paid half upfront deserve priority. Personal projects should always take a backseat to paid client work. If you are doing a free project for someone, you must make it clear that paying clients have prority, because afterall, this is your job.
Which projects will put the most money in your pocket? Money is especially important for the freelancer, because without it, we don’t get to eat! In the case of Treo Express, this project has the higest potential for financial returns because of the “Hot Deals” page we will be implementing. This project has a higher PPL than Dot Com Moguls, for example, because advertising DCM is less likely to produce many sales.

Oftentimes with how hectic life becomes, one forgets about the need to always be setting priorities. I believe that by setting priorities to each project, we are able to work most efficient and consistently.