Team XYDO has been hard at work on XYDO, our drive toward reinventing News on a truly social level. After crawling out of our bat cave of over 9 months of development, we are pleased to introduce you to XYDO.

We all know there is a place on the web to buy books, shoes, do searches — but what about news? What if there was a place to get the best news content, all 100% curated by real users? And even better, what if there was a way to get that news via the web, twitter, or the many reader apps, including Flipboard?

Introducing XYDO. If you have not yet signed up for the beta invite, you should. Xydo needs you, and I think you will find very quickly — you need XYDO.

XYDO takes news feeds from all over the world, combines them with your social graph, and then links that to all the hottest content flowing from twitter and other sources. It’s totally free, fast and amazing in it’s discovery abilities. XYDO is so much more than just reading the news, XYDO is all about “you” shaping the news.  XYDO cuts through the noise and delivers a highly tuned signal.

XYDO keeps you up to date and totally informed with a powerful notification engine, and a complete mail/inbox system. So… Give it a go. We would love your feedback.

As a reader of the Roachpost, signup and we will make sure to get you in quickly. Also, please do share your invite via both Twitter and Facebook.

We have some really exciting news to share later today.. But hey, that’s for a later post. The media is discovering our little secret…

Come on in.

We’re currently recruiting beta testers for our new startup — XYDO, a new and engaging way to get news and information from people you trust. If that sounds interesting to you, leave your name and email address and we’ll shoot you an invitation!

David Heinemeier Hansson – creator of Ruby on Rails, a partner at 37signals, and a NYT best-selling author – has written an interesting post over on the Signals vs. Noise blog about how he learned to program. It’s a quick little piece, but worth the read if you have, or ever plan to dabble in programming. David’s approach is quite simple: forget about programming as an intellectual pursuit, code because you have to, to solve a real problem, or to achieve a real goal!

Personally speaking, learning Ruby is a goal of mine for this year. I’m not a programmer in any real sense, but as a founder/CEO/etc. of web/software startups, most of which have used Ruby, I’m always looking for new ways to more intimately engage in our product development efforts. My near term goal is simply to be able to plumb through our product code (and understand it!) and to work on some simple personal projects (e.g., create a blog). Having already read a few books and endured a number of podcasts, I definitely buy David’s point about focusing on an achievable goal (as he puts it, “coding out of anger”). Setting achievable goals that actually solve a problem (not matter how small) and produce a result is critical to grinding through the learning process.

Will be posting more on my own experiences in learning Ruby as the months go by. In the meantime, take five minutes and go and check out David’s post. Will leave you with a little hacker humor…

Great interview conducted by 37signals with Chris Wanstrath, CEO and Co-Founder of GitHub. This article is part of 37signals’ “Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud” series which profiles companies that have $1MM+ in revenues, didn’t take VC, and are profitable. This is a must read if you’re thinking about starting a business in the tech/web space anytime soon.

Get the full article here.

Clearly web based video is taking over the masses. I’ve noticed that when people in their twenties get together to check out something new or funny, almost without exception, it is in front of a Youtube or other video. As my Father used to say, “The trend is your friend.” We all had better be paying attention.

Now businesses are working to exploit social media. Some have created amazingly funny videos that go mainstream and drive massive traffic to their site, others use it more as a tool to show their wares, almost like an optimized tutorial designed with the goal of conversion.

I’ve included below a story I found on Xydo.com that shows 12 different CEOs and Founders giving us their take. I encourage you to take a quick look at them and see what spark it creates in you. With that spark, get in the game and create your own. Since I think we all agree it is the future, no time like the present.

Here’s the Xydo link.  ”How 12 CEOs & Founders are Leveraging Web Video.”

What’s your take?

Does graphic/functional design effect SEO? According to Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz, the answer is yes!

As the worlds of web design and SEO merge ever closer, we’ve been seeing design-specific elements produce a positive impact on SEO for the sites that employ them. It’s terrific news for SEOs who love design and are capable of and passionate about making it part of their repertoire. It’s also great for designers who find that as they evolved from Flash designs to machine-readable CSS and separated markup from content, they’ve earned more links and more organic search love.

Read Rand’s complete article here.

Website design is a science all to itself.  I have felt for a long time that the goal of every website should be to create an emotional connection to a user.  Something that once used and then taken away leaves a sense of loss.  Often we refer to this as becoming “indispensable.”

At the core of this effort is the store front, or in web parlance, the home page.  The interface design needs to create a real connection, one that fits the personality of the app, and yet one that alligns with the taste and interest of the user.

I was reading over on Xydo.com in the startup subject, and came across this article which I would highly recommend for your reading and study.

Emotion Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users

Give it a read and let me know what you think.

If you work for or are thinking of launching a new consumer web startup, chances are you’ve noticed an increasing number of articles discussing the topic of content monetization: credits (Zynga, Facebook, etc.), advertising/sponsored posts (Twitter), add-ons (Tumblr), and straight up paywalls (News Corp). Ah the times they are a changin’, or are they?

In a new study conducted by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s, researchers found that while half of all Americans surveyed have tried a free web app like Twitter, zero percent of them would be willing to pay to use Twitter or a similar service. More than half (55%) of the respondents in this study said they’d rather be exposed to display advertising than pay for content. Yet the same people also expressed strongly negative views about online advertising, calling it “annoying” (70%) and saying that they never click on it (50%).

Click here for the full article here.