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Boo! Happy almost Halloween.

Hi, Robbie Vorhaus here, RunMyErrand’s chief storyteller, back to talk about my favorite subject: great stories and, of course, RunMyErrand.

Let’s go back a couple years to my best Halloween costume ever. I wrapped my entire head in white gauze, stretching the last layer thinly across my eyes so my head appeared completely covered behind very dark sunglasses. I wore my grandfather’s felt Fedora hat from the 1920s, a deep blue double breasted suit, white button down cotton dress shirt and conservative rep tie, and after I covered my wrists with more gauze, I wore black leather gloves. Not an inch of skin showed anywhere on my body; I was the Invisible Man.

There was no identifiable part of my body, I couldn’t talk, and aside from my posture, there was no way to know I was me. I attended several parties that night, closing the evening on a friend’s roof deck, a little chilled from the night air, although enjoying my anonymity.

Just before I was ready to leave, a 20-something, red haired woman dressed in a Cinderella costume asked me to dance. She grabbed my hand just as the music changed to a slow tune. She said only one thing, “My name is Amanda, and I don’t care who you are. Just hold me close, say nothing, and when this song is over, walk away.”

Cinderella and The Invisible Man intimately dancing under the stars on a cold Halloween night, not saying a word, yet connected by a warm, intimate, anonymous embrace. I never forgot that tender dance with a stranger I will never know, and it reminded me of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 bestselling book, The Invisible Man, as he expressed how society often discounts the unknown – the invisible – yet for those who believe in opportunity and potential, there is great power, almost super power, in the unseen.

There was, indeed, a short time when RunMyErrand was invisible, but no more. We’ve been discovered and it feels so good.

Since this summer, on an invitation from Zipcar’s CEO, Scott Griffith, we’ve been based in Cambridge, operating and incubating out of Zipcar’s headquarters.  Also this summer, our founder and CEO, Leah Busque (our superhero), won Facebook’s prestigious fbFund Rev 2009 incubator program, and spent most of the summer in Palo Alto, CA, working alongside Facebook’s leadership, investors, mentors and other entrepreneurs. And get this: RME was the only east coast company to win!

Scott Kirsner wrote a fabulous piece about us in the Boston Globe, and Robin Hauk featured Leah and RME in her popular blog, Misstropolis.

And while I’m tooting our horn, Leah Busque was named 2009 Hall of Fame Start-Up/Small Business honoree for the Boston Herald’s Women’s Business Hall of Fame. You go, girl!

And also now great companies like IBM, Caturano and Company, Mass General Hospital and Zipcar are offering RME discounts to their employees. More to come!

I’m still trying to decide what to wear for this year’s Halloween, so if you have any ideas, please let me know. Also, tell us about your best Halloween costume. Share with us your favorite RunMyErrand story. Or just take a minute and tell us why you’re happy being alive. We love your stories, and can’t wait hearing more about your adventures.

Had a blast at Hubspot TV on Friday with @karenrubin and @mvolpe … thanks for having me guys! I enjoyed chatting about yellow labs, facebook, honda’s social media nightmare, and Karen’s obsession with the whopper. Or was that Mike’s? I can’t remember.

Last week, after working in the office all day Monday, Steve and I thought we’d get out and run an errand on Friday. I offered to help carry some of the boxes, but Steve wouldn’t have it. With my hands free I decided to try out the video recording on my iPhone. Enjoy.

Side note: In the process of posting the video, I discovered Youtube’s AudioSwap feature. It allows you to legally use music in your videos. The bands benefit from an ad which makes it easy for viewers to purchase the song on iTunes and Amazon. There isn’t the biggest selection, but I managed to find one of my favorite groups: Brand New. I’m happy to see that these guys get it and aren’t locking down their content. Although I doubt I’ll put them at the top of the iTunes chart like Jill and Kevin did for Chris Brown, I hope I send some people their way.

Last week, I was lucky enough to receive an invitation to TEDxBoston- an independently organized TED event.

“TED is an annual event where some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to share what they are most passionate about. “TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future… The diverse audience — CEOs, scientists, creatives, philanthropists – is almost as extraordinary as the speakers, who have included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Paul Simon, Sir Richard Branson, Philippe Starck and Bono.”

Well, we didn’t have any Presidents at TEDxBoston, but we did have my favorite speaker, Benjamin Zander, leading the Youth Orchestra of the Americas to Beethoven.  Here is a video of Zander in action at a previous TED event.

Here are  a couple connections between TED and RunMyErrand:

-  TED exists because there have always been people breaking assumptions, and now TED has devoted itself to spreading these ideas for free! For any dreamy entrepreneur, it is relieving to connect with other people who have their own BIG dreams and aspirations.

-  Like TED, RunMyErrand is site where people connect in a community and share resources.  TED makes these connections in a virutal community, and RunMyErrand does it in a physical community.  The power of this technology is making connections where they didn’t exist before.

RunMyErrand and “Service Networking” are ready for TEDxCambridge-  tweet @tedxcambridge on our behalf!

Hello from inside the RUNmyERRAND (Zipcar) offices. My name is Cody Kieltyka and I am one of two Boston College students interning at RUNmyERRAND.com this summer. I’m done with finals and ready to start contributing in anyway I can… even if it means dressing up in a modified Gumby costume once in while  (more information coming soon).

After taking a glimpse at the fun and excitement of entrepreneurship in @gallaugher’s TechTrek  field study to Silicon Valley, I knew I wanted to work at a startup technology company this summer. For me, I found that although it was cool to visit the tech giants like Google, Apple, and Ebay, it was way more interesting to speak with the founders and managers at startups like Facebook, Digg, and SocialText.

Back in Boston, I found this same intrigue during my interview at RUNmyERRAND.com. Not only did I like the idea behind the company, I relished the opportunity to have a big impact even while only being an intern.

We have some very exciting plans for this summer and I look forward to keeping everyone in the loop about them and other fun things happening in Boston.

I have been wanting to do this for months … set up a RunMyErrand Community Blog.  Whallah … here it is!  Thanks to Cody, one of our fabulous summer interns, and the IT guy for helping us get it ready for debut.  I’ve kept a link to my “founder’s blog” at the top, but it was time to severe the direct tie between my personal blog and the main RunMyErrand.com site.  In the last few months alone, we have been growing very quickly, including people and personalities far beyond just myself … which makes things a lot more interesting, doesn’t it?!

Since RunMyErrand is about harnessing the power of a community,  it is only right that we incorporate as many of those voices as possible into our Community Blog.  You’ll hear from Senders, Runners, Advisors, Interns, Employees, and yes, I’m sure to chime in here from time to time as well.  Enjoy!

We are running LIVE with the newly relaunched and redesigned RUNmyERRAND.com … Check us out!  Lots of work went into this, and I think it was all well worth it.  We are now ready to really start cranking on the business.  I’ve been swamped in Ruby and CSS code over the last two weeks, with a big push over the weekend to get everything in order.  It will be nice to shift my focus back to the business now.

The last piece of our redesign is our logo – we need a new one, to match our hip new site!  As a young startup, with bootstrapping roots, we engaged in a crowdsourcing model for logo design.  The site, 99designs.com, allows you to post a contest with a prize, and then any designer can log on and make their submissions.  We had almost 180 entries in 7 days, which gave us a fantastic range of options to choose from.  We picked the top 5 designs and created a short survey – please participate and give us your option – Click Here to take survey.

I am a big fan of this crowdsourcing model, especially since we are a community based platform ourselves.  I did a poll when we were thinking about a name change, and had an overwhelming response to keep RUNmyERRAND.com.  Now, as we establish our logo, I’m interested to know what the community is thinking.  I really enjoy getting the feedback and realize that the business can only benefit from keeping our community involved and engaged.  Communities are strongest when everyone plays a role. – well stated from the April issue of Harvard Business Review.

We are almost there … consider this your sneak peak!  As previously mentioned, one of the things I am most excited to be working on right now is what I am calling our User Interface Refresh.  I’ve been bouncing around a lot of terms – redesign, just seems too heavy, overhaul – sounds like a big mess, but refresh seems to fit.  We are re-skinning the current site, updating the logo, graphics, and icons.  The collective “we” being our “User Advocate”, Eric Sagalyn, and our original design guru, Brian Thomas.  This is going to go a long way as far as usability is concerned.  We are definitely simplifying, removing the noise, and reassessing what is important.  We will be cranking the rest of the week to pin down the design, swap out icons, and get all the interior pages layed out properly.

As I complete this refresh, I would like to integrate a feature that I am starting to see everywhere – the “Give Feedback” widgets.  These widgets are developed by third parties and are designed to remain sticky no matter what page of a website you are looking at.  On any given page, users can click the feedback widget button, and provide their opinions, ideas, frustrations, and general comments about your website.  I’ve researched GetSatisfaction, Kampyle, and UserVoice.  They all have this feedback widget I am talking about, but beyond that, they are very different and I’m not sure how robust I want to go right now.  To start, I am leaning towards Kampyle for its easy Feedback integration widget and analytic tracking.  The piece of the feedback form that sets them apart is the very first question they ask you: “How do you feel about this site?” and you have choose one of these little faces:

This was really compelling to me, because I not only want to get my customer’s feedback, I really want to know how they are *feeling* about the experience overall.  GetSatisfaction has some nice additional features, where users can rate on a scale of 1 to 10 whether they would recommend the site to their friend, and UserVoice had a really cool way to vote suggestions up and down in Digg style.  All seem to fill the market in different ways, and it is tough to decide between them.  If there are other suggestions or recommendations on other feedback widgets I should take a look at, I am all ears!

It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks.  It doesn’t even feel like weeks … its feeling more like months, but everything is moving so quickly.  Not sure that makes any sense at all, but I am sure that there is probably someone out there that can relate!  Please give me a shout-out!  

One of things I am most excited about for RUNmyERRAND is the UI overhaul we have got up our sleeves.  We are working with a brilliant graphic designer, a self proclaimed "user advocate", named Eric Sagalyn.  Super talented and works quickly, which is important for our situation.  We got our first peak at the new design late last week and it is just so thrilling!!  Finally, my true vision for the site is going to start shining through.  As a software engineer, my expertise is in back end coding, algorithms, and feature development.  I can do the UI, I’ve learned a lot of CSS, but I certainly am not a self-proclaimed "user advocate"!  I did what I could while I was bootstrapping to get the first cut of the website launched, to prove the model, and now I can finally work with an expert to convey the magnificent beast that is in my head.  So keep an eye out for an exciting new look and feel coming soon!

The other great feature that I believe is going to add a ton of value, is our new Blackberry Application.  The code was merged late last night, so this is the first day it has been live.  Take a peak … all feedback is welcome!  We did a ton of testing on different simulators, but would love to hear how everything is looking on the real devices.  We tried to just make everything really simple, not graphic heavy, so that it will load fast and be useful.  Just like the iPhone you can: Login, Post an Errand, Run and Errand, Purchase Credits, and Mark Errand Complete.  All the basic, most important functionality is there.

In the words of Finding Nemo … "just keep swimming" ….