This summer in Berlin, we worked all the time. Days would go by when I didn’t leave our apartment/office. I usually worked straight from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. Those precious hours of sleep were spent on an IKEA cot. Needless to say, I was tired for most of the summer.

Now with some pesky classes that weaseled their way into my daily schedule back at Duke, I seem to have less time that ever. Other people on the team are feeling the pinch too, and we’re looking for anything and everything to make the day longer and more productive.

I’m more of a traditional coffee and Pepsi fan for staying awake and alert. And it goes without saying that if you leave a Red Bull lying around the office, I’ll probably steal it.

But other people on the team are a little more desperate for feeling more alert. Matt, Tomas, and Justin are all trying a much-hyped sleeping schedule called polyphasic sleeping. This is where you get a couple of hours of “core” sleep at night, which usually lasts 2-3 hours. Then you take a 15-20 minute nap every 2 hours during the day. This series of short naps is supposed to make you feel really awake throughout the day.

The three of them have had a hard time in the beginning getting onto this insane schedule, but they all claim to feel amazing. They are writing a blog about their experience. Read it here.

And me? I think I’ll just go put on a pot of coffee.

When Taylor was convincing me to join the Shoeboxed team back in February, he talked about changing online shopping, about improving online security, and about making people think differently about how they can use the Internet.

Bold statements, for sure, especially when made in a college dorm room. But Taylor has had a really detailed plan for how to actually reach these goals since the beginning, and we’ve been tackling this project in phases. The first step for Shoeboxed was to become the leading online tool for receipt organization. The incredible success and support we’ve seen in this area is really promising for what’s coming next. Several of the most well-read blogs on the Internet have written about us, and we’ve exceeded pretty much every expectation we have had for growth. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, but Shoeboxed is so much more than receipts, and we’re getting ready to unveil the newest part of the Shoeboxed Idea.

So what is it? Where is Shoeboxed going?

Well I’m about ready to pee my pants about what’s coming next. We’ll be building off of our receipt organizer, and making Shoeboxed useful in a new kind of way. Instead of just being about organization and security, Shoeboxed will soon be able to more closely mirror the real-world shopping experience. The size of the Shoeboxed community is certainly unbelievable, and we are so excited to be a more engaging, personalized, and fun service for anyone who’s ever made a purchase… ever.

Keep checking back for the new stuff, and get excited for a fresh new look too!

Shoeboxed.com has launched! It’s a great day for everyone on the Shoeboxed team, and for everyone who is ready to make their life easier.

From day one we’ve said, “there’s a better way”, and today you will have the chance to experience it. Nobody likes to spend countless hours organizing their financial information. It’s about time somebody made it really simple. Nobody likes getting hundreds of unwanted spam e-mails in their personal inboxes. It’s about time somebody gave you the power to get rid of them. Nobody likes to give out their credit card or Social Security numbers. It’s about time you were able to track your purchases and receipts without releasing your sensitive information. Nobody likes an overwhelming amount of communication from businesses in their personal e-mail inbox. Shoeboxed is a secure, free, and fun solution to all these problems.

It’s not everyday that I have the privilege to write on the Shoeboxed blog. But at Shoeboxed it’s about the team, and I’m proud that we have such a great lineup of talented and dedicated individuals who will do anything and everything for Shoeboxed. After all, it takes a unique group of twelve students to survive working and living out of a small apartment in West Berlin.

So today I want to personally invite everyone to see what the Shoeboxed team has been able to accomplish. It’s new, it’s different, and it has the potential to change the way you live your life. I also want to invite everyone to keep reading the blog, which will continue to give informative, relevant, and entertaining updates as time goes on.

We are hard at work making sure the site runs as smoothly as possible. If you have any suggestions, we would greatly appreciate feedback. You can contact the whole team at help (at) team (dot) shoeboxed (dot) com or me personally at taylor (at) team (dot) shoeboxed (dot) com.

Take a look, let us know what you think, and stay tuned for what is to come. After all, this is just the first phase for shoeboxed.com.

Last week we were really excited about being in Zitty magazine in Berlin. But Shoeboxed is moving up in the world. Not only have we been featured in another magazine, but now we are on the cover! Towerview magazine, a publication put out by the Duke student newspaper, has identified us as one of the “Ten to Watch” at Duke in the coming year.

This is a big honor, considering some previous “Ten to Watch” winners have included the editor of the Internet phenomenon MediaBistro, Provost Peter Lange’s vision for Duke’s Strategic Plan, the once-upcoming Duke lacrosse rape trial, the Duke Global Health Institute, and of course, our friend Anthony Vitarelli. Needless to say, we are extremely happy about this honor.

The writer of this piece, sophomore Chelsea Allison, only communicated to us via e-mail and when we called her from the run-down Internet cafe down the street, but she managed to get everything she needed to write a great story. It’s weird to think that the conversations we had with her in those hot, small, and loud phone booths turned into such an awesome cover story.

Never before our recent launch has detailed information been publicly available, and Chelsea certainly did our product justice with her article. She wrote the article at the beginning of the month with some advanced, top-secret knowledge of the product that nobody outside the team knew. Towerview doesn’t have the opportunity to break news very often, but we’re very happy with how they handled it.

The process of putting together this particular issue was probably a little more complicated than usual because they have been switching over to a new design system this summer, and had to create a lot of their layouts from scratch.

If you are a returning Duke undergrad or a first-year Duke graduate student, you will get a copy mailed to your home address, so definitely look out for it in your mailbox. If you live on or around Duke’s campus, you can pick one up anywhere you would normally find a Chronicle. Otherwise, you can just access the article online here.

Stay tuned for more updates about Shoeboxed making the news in the coming weeks!

Wednesday was an exciting day for us, as Zitty Magazine, a publication focusing on the city of Berlin, featured the Shoeboxed team in its latest edition. They don’t have the article up online, but you can read the German version or our English version here.

Once we confirmed that we had made it in to this edition, Taylor and I went down the street to a place that sells magazines and bought all the Zittys. I made Taylor translate it right there in front of the store as passersby gave us some weird looks. Giddy Americans frantically translating a magazine that shouldn’t be that exciting.

Anyway, we are really happy with the story that Christoph Koch wrote about us. He was very interested in the fact that American students chose to come to Berlin instead of taking consulting internships in the States, which pay a lot more than they do in Germany.

He also focused a lot on describing the apartment where we live, and how we have so many people here. And even though our apartment can get messy sometimes, Christoph said that we are probably “the most productive apartment in the city.” I wouldn’t argue with that.

I’ll keep you updated on our press coverage, so you can see how journalists are reacting to our idea and team.

Earlier today I had the opportunity to read a particularly insightful interview with Richard Brodhead, President of Duke University. It originally aired on June 16th on China Radio International (CRI), China’s only worldwide radio station.[link] The interview was conducted by Xing Zong, a fourth year Ph.D. student at Duke University. He had the opportunity to ask Brodhead about his unique life as an academic and administrator and about his long-term vision for Duke.

Some people have criticized Brodhead for his lack of business experience, but in the interview, the president made it clear that entrepreneurship is a priority at Duke. Here is what he had to say:

Xing Zong: Once students are admitted, one of the big goals of a great university is to cultivate their independent thinking. It is far from enough to just learn what the textbooks give to the students. How do you think Duke has done in this aspect, so that students can keep learning for the rest of their lives?

Brodhead: First of all, the majority of our classes are small and the majority of classes are based on discussion, rather than allowing the teacher the final word. Therefore mental activity and independence are cultivated at an early stage. Right now we are also expanding the opportunities for independent research. For graduate students, needless to say, you already have to start your own research, but it is also important for undergraduate students. On the teacher’s side, it is important for teachers to realize, when you teach the students, the students also have something to teach you. So I think the real question is that whether the culture of a university favors independence, favors students taking initiatives, and favors students raising their own questions and trying to find the answers. Fortunately, the answer to these questions for Duke is “Yes”.

Xing Zong: I agreed that Duke has improved a lot in this aspect. Still I have a friend who studies in Stanford. He told me that Stanford encourages students to drop out of school and start their own businesses. How do you think Duke would treat situations like this?

Brodhead: This is a very interesting thing. When you think about Stanford, you always think about Yahoo and Google. If you study in Stanford, you will never get your physics Ph.D. (laugh) You will become a billionaire before that happens. We have a lot of students who study engineering, or biomedical engineering and from very early on, the school teaches the elements of design. You also learn entrepreneurship; how to solve the problem. So we are now consciously trying to develop the skills of entrepreneurship. We haven’t had our first Google yet, but just wait.

There’s not much more that I can say other than GO DUKE!

Consumers have always been hesitant to buy clothes online that they can’t try on or see in person. But in recent months, online apparel sales have continued to grow at a rapid rate — outpacing even the online computer and software industries.

This isn’t all that surprising. I certainly buy more things online than I did three years ago. But I can’t say that I am any more comfortable with the idea of buying apparel online today — after all, I still have to take a leap of faith when deciding to purchase something that I’ve never actually seen. So what’s driving the trend? Rapidly evolving technology is making online shopping more and more appealing.

In the past, retailers had to focus on making secure shopping sites that worked, and the shopping experience remained limited to photos and simple product descriptions. These days, technology incorporates photos, videos, and even audio into interactive and flashy platforms — all of which look to reduce the information asymmetry between buyer and seller and better convey a company’s brand and culture. Virtual runways, online showrooms, and dynamic product pictures help make the shopping process fun, personal, and reliable.
(more…)

Seriously, who doesn’t love Cory?

Yeah I couldn’t think of anyone either. He’s been bringing you blog entry after blog entry for months now with a tireless devotion to the Shoeboxed vision, the team, and inane local news bits, and I may be the blog’s biggest fan.

But over here at Shoeboxed, we’re a team: we share food, desks, one internet router, marketing ideas, train passes, and pretty much everything else. So some more of us are going to take a crack at the blog, and pursue some different angles and diverse perspectives. We love Shoeboxed for a lot of the same reasons, but it does mean different things for different people, and the uncommonly diverse group of people involved in this project have a lot of interesting things to say.

So stay tuned. Cory will still be around, but get excited about meeting some more of us!

We’ve all headed to our respective homes for a couple weeks before making the big move to Berlin. Taylor is on car #3 and continues to make tracks across the country on his trans-American road trip. The stories are fantastic, and the pictures are even better.

At this point, we’re just excited to be reunited so that work can continue as usual. It tough to communicate when everyone is scattered across the country.

Shoeboxed is officially incorporated in the beautiful and sunny state of Delaware! Not only has this been a huge day in the history of shoeboxed.com, but it reminded me that the state of Delaware exists in the first place (Dela-where?!).

School’s out, the shoeboxed team continues to grow, and the we’ve got a new logo. We’re making some serious progress.

After a rough week of final projects, papers, and exams, the team has bounced back and is working around the clock to make shoeboxed.com bigger and better. In the past, we’ve always had schoolwork and extracurriculars looming over us–and at times we were forced to pass our classes. Well, I’m excited to announce that everyone has made it through another year–and shoeboxed is our one and only priority. No distractions. No excuses. It’s frightening. Someone please remind us to sleep. And just as we have put 100% of our energy into shoeboxed, we have recruited several new additions to the shoeboxed team. They are already proving to be tremendously valuable additions to the team. This summer couldn’t get much better.

And then there’s the hot new logo. What can I say? We all need a makeover every once and a while. And this is just the beginning–the entire shoeboxed site will have a fun new feel. Now that we have much of the shoeboxed backbone completed, it’s nice to finally be able to start focusing more on our branding efforts and the overall user experience.

The nation is in need of shoeboxed.com.

It’s a simple idea that will change the way people lead their everyday lives.

Months ago, we tossed around some promising college-inspired ideas in our quest for the new Big Thing, and nothing was ruled out; we pondered delivering newspapers to bathroom stalls, engineering boomerang Frisbees, repopularizing ballroom dancing, and bringing text messaging to preschoolers. Ideas were flying. Nay, soaring.

But months later, we’ve focused our energy and put a lot of blood, Red Bull, and IPA into the shoeboxed.com movement. It’s the new and only way of looking at a problem that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. The problem has been approached for years in the wrong way and from the wrong standpoint. We’re creative folk. We’re begging to differ. We have the plan.

The concept behind shoeboxed.com is innovative and revolutionary. It’s the new pink, dare we say, the new orange? The new left, the new right, the new down. The question is, are you down? Well, the team at shoeboxed.com is ready and we are hereby announcing the launch of a movement that will one day give people a new sense of security and control.

It’s hard to convey how excited we really are about this idea. It’s like discovering-a-hidden-superpower exciting. It’s like hitting-the-jackpot exciting. It’s like witnessing-a-Macaulay-Culkin-comeback exciting. Okay, maybe not as hard to describe as we thought, but we’re still pumped.

And the launch is just the beginning. From the start, shoeboxed.com will be a practical and logical solution to a fundamental problem. But for all you cool cats who aren’t willing to give shoeboxed.com the time of day–you just wait. Once we get all our features in place, it’s entertaining, it’s fun, and it’s cool. That’s what we are especially excited about—making shoeboxed.com the national pastime. Just try and maintain your social status without us. We dare you. Outside of class, parties, and procrastination, we’re developing the software foundation that will bring you the future capabilities of shoeboxed.com. In the meantime, sign up at shoeboxed.com so that you’ll be the first to know when we launch our phase one beta version.