IOU 1 Bill Monk
Jan 30, 2006 Business & Marketing
Bill Monk is a new Web 2.0 company (sorry guys, I know you hate that term) that rings a “I can’t believe no one has done this before” tone to it. How many times have you and a group of friends sat down to lunch and when it was time for the check only half of you had cash and the other half had plastic? Then the “Oh I’ll pay so you don’t have to use your card” and the “I’ll just put it all on my card” debates begin, often time leaving someone with a heavier end of the bill. Sure, it’s informal. And sure, it will probably be made up for at some other outing, but why carry that unnecessary weight around?
Bill Monk makes all that simple. In comparison, with being less than a month old, the buzz surrounding this idea is similar in thickness to that surround Paypal (X.com at the time) in the 90’s. Everyone gets the idea: “What? I can just send the payment to you via email?! How cool!” was PayPal’s, and “What? I can just send the IOU through email or SMS?! How cool!” is BillMonk’s. It is a very simple idea that changes how I do things on a daily basis. The fact that billmonk transactions aren’t money based, but rather IOU based, makes this idea even more powerful than the first. Everyone can use it immediately, no need to verify your bank account and customer support will never have to investigate anyones payment schemes. BillMonk deals with simple notes, while PayPal deals with invoices. Something to think about.
What really makes Bill Monk work is that it is based on the principles of social networking. You can form groups and track spending within the group. Soon, you’ll be able to tag items so that you can track multiple purchases within a group. The example they give is a group ski trip. Tag all items related to the ski trip as “ski-trip” and the group can settle out differences after the trip. That takes a lot of worry out of the vacation and everyone can just enjoy it!
The name Bill Monk represents a neutral third party, a monk, to handle the escrow between friends. All parties involved can rest comfortably knowing that the transaction was tracked, aggregated against other transactions, and settlements can easily be discovered and made.
I’m already a huge fan and daily user of BillMonk. And I just barely found it. Rarely do I come across a useful site that I don’t feel a need to improve upon it drastically or develop a competing idea. BillMonk’s site is almost zen to me. They seem to be doing everything right for what I need it for and I can relax and just use it. How cool!
BillMonk.com everybody. I do predict it will become as everyday a term as Paypal within a year or two.
Things to Do Before I Die #4: Pound Some Sand
Jan 29, 2006 Blog General
(Hey John, go pound sand.)
So all along when I thought the term tag was something web 2.0 ‘ish, I get smacked in the forehead with a good old game of blogger tag. And since I haven’t blogged since December, I feel oddly compelled to play along. Funny thing is, I just read Kottke’s a few days ago and was hoping it wouldn’t come to me. Feel sorry for the folks below who have to do this.
So enjoy, this piece of my life, hope it keeps you checking my site that one time a month for even more juicy content. But first, here’s some amazon loaded stuff:
Four jobs that I’ve had
…Loading Dock Boy
…Commissioned Computer Salesman (back when they used to earn more for selling a computer than most guys earned selling a used car)
…I was a “Not a Spammer“…Twice!
…Internet Marketer
Four movies I can watch over and over
…Baraka
…Donnie Darko
…Freeks And Geeks
…Plasmaquarium Aquarium
Four places I have lived
…Layton, UT
…Port Orchard, WA (Man I miss that place)
…Golden, CO (another very cool place)
…Olathe, KS
and now living in henderson, nv, which by the looks of Google Maps, appears to be on the edge of the world.
Four TV shows I like to watch
…Lost
…24
…Arrested Development
…Grey’s Anatomy
Four acclaimed TV shows I hear about all the time but have never watched a single minute of (adopted this section from Kottke):
…The Sopranos
…Two and a Half Men
…Invasion
…Battlestar Galactica
Four foods that I like
…Enchiladas
…Salads lately, but not really healthy ones.
…Plain ol’ Potatoes and Gravy
…Any burger that is so sloppy that you probably should use a fork and knife, but you eat it with your hands anyway. Especially good when you have so many dressings that the burger slides out of the bun and you have to check to see that no one was watching, then grab burger with your hands, try to squeeze it back into the bun all while its slip-slidin all over the place. Quite a fun game to play. It’s like…the burger doesn’t want to be eaten or something.
Four websites I visit daily
…digg
…puregenio.us (its like digg but less elitist)
…portagame
…scriptlance.com (seriously)
Four things I want to do before I die
…Get Published (on paper)
…Remove all the spam from my sites (and take the time necessary to setup anti-spam measures)
…Create a hit web 2.0 website
…Learn Spanish and Japanese
Four things I should be doing instead of this list:
…Learning AJAX
…Writing for my other sites
…Sleeping
…Sudoku
Four Five people I’m tagging:
…pappy
…chad r (and/or his band)
…lunacy8m
…chad w
…these guys seem cool
Finally! Can I go to bed now?
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