SHOwnsYou

If your job isn't to handle security, this may be slightly overstepping your bounds (ie taking time away from whatever you do to toy around with the latest exploits).

Probably better to give it to the people in charge of security.

If that person is your boss, then you have a dilemma. Either your boss doesn't fully understand what happened or perhaps the bug you found undermines his security work and he viewed your testing it as a sign of insubordination.

I'm sure your company is open to this sort of thing, but send it through the proper channels. If there aren't any proper channels, this would be a good time to ask around to see if something can be created to handle situations like these when they come up.

I don't use twitter, but I have a few things to say about the site in general.

It looks great. Looks like a very nice interface and design.

Provides a great presentation layer to the API functionality.

One thing though -- your *Tweeting Machine image in the upper left corner links to /public/index.php instead of /public/index and throws and error because of it.

Based on this reply, it sounds like you want the easy way out. It's time to "nut up and make a decision" (Liz Lemmon).

If you want to go to Silicon Valley, go. If you want to stay at home, time to become an adult and not rely on your parents for everything.

Maybe you'll tell me it's the smart way out, but it is a compromise I will not make.

Yes, you can save 6-8 grand each year by living at home, but you're living at home. I guarantee that your friends that went out and are living on their own are mocking you behind your back.

You and probably a lot of other people aren't going to like this advice, but here it goes...

You're in your 20s with a full time job and still living at home? Fix this immediately.

Honestly it sounds like you need to learn some responsibility. You have a full time job, but you don't like it, so you're going to quit. You have the parents to fall back on.

Maybe a start up will give you responsibility, maybe moving out and financially separating from your parents will give you responsibility. Maybe both with give you double secret responsibility.

I'm actually shocked no one has said this until now. Someone having a full time job but still living with their parents (unless for special circumstances) speaks volumes about their maturity.

Time to start living in the real world. I say jump in and begin your startup. Best case scenario you succeed and end up doing what you love, worst case you took a shot (hopefully one of many) and got out of a job/lifestlye that is making you miserable.

Yes.

Weather is a crucial input toward supply.

Supply can be constrained (as in your example) and output will be lower. Lower output can cause decreased profits or any other host of things that can lower stock price.

Another example could be a drought affecting a publicly owned fruit producer.

>"Lesson: Let people come to you. Let them have the need first."

That is not the lesson your experience. The lesson is the make sure there is demand before putting in a ton of time, especially when you're going to be bitter about it later.

Your project was doomed from the start.

You committed the time to build 5 websites and SEO them to the top spot before you had any demand.

If you had waited until a restuarant actually wanted a website, and then realized that even a small application can be made in a few hours for a few $hundred, then you may have had better results. Pre-emptively making websites or scripts is the opposite of what I've suggested.

So the next lesson is to not do work before getting paid (unless it is also a hobby - like building a database class that you will use in freelance projects).

I would have also approached selling the websites differently. Showing someone a website you're trying to sell them and then finishing with "I just need to change some pictures and stuff" isn't that compelling. You have 5 websites. Customize one for each restuarant you're talking to. They pass? Change it up with different pictures and titles. Let the customer see what they're buying, not some representation. This is more time consuming, but it will help sales. You already sunk time to designing, building, and SEOing the sites, so an additional unpaid 20 minutes probably won't hurt you too much.

Also you can't just assume why people didn't buy the websites. You should have done some random calling after the fact to determine why people weren't buying. But I will throw out a few ideas on that too.

You approached restaurants trying to sell them a commodity without knowing what they want. They could have not bought because of the price, because they didn't like the colors, they were intimidated by it's complexity, underwhelmed by its simplicity, or because they didn't think they needed a website (you really need to be making calls).

When someone comes to you with a budget and a need for a website, you are in a position of power. You can dictate more terms. Building a random websie without requirements or a scope and then approaching people takes the power out of your hands.

Finally, there are thousands of companies that don't have a website because they don't know how to make one or think they cost tens of thousands of dollars. These are the types of companies you can be trying to advertise to (but not cold call/approach).

I am either giving up a huge secret or revealing how little I actually value my time...

You guys are giving up a huge opportunity.

It is easy to make a thousand or more per week from these types of jobs. A thousand isn't a lot, but it is easily done in a few hours.

If they are paying commodity prices, then you give them a commodity.

The key? Boiler - Plate. Have a standard contract. Have a standard website theme, perhaps with multiple skins. Make it easy for them to enter their own content. You can build a decent CMS in a few hours or a great CMS in 10-15 (for clients like this that don't need extensibility). Amortize it over the 5-10 websites you're selling each week and you're time costs go down drastically.

I stumbled onto this strategy accidentally.

I had nothing else to do for a few hours.

My BATNA was earn $0/hour. I wasn't going to let my pride get in the way of easy money.

So I took a small "build me a website" job. Knowing they had small requirements, it was easily done in a few hours. I kept getting more requests, I kept sending out virtually the same website, over and over. I was getting them onto the host I use also and making an additional $50-$100 for each client as well.

Eventually it was only a matter of explaining how hosting works and how to add new pages and content. After the 30-45 minute explanation, it was coming out to move like $400/hour rather than $200 for a website.

Big Tip: Record your phone calls and meetings when you're explaining how hosting works and how to work your CMS. Go over what you said each time and work to actively improve it. Take 30 minutes, record screen capture videos with voice over. Give these to the client when you give them the minor training required.

Look up the demographics of your users that bring in the most money. Are they professionals? Are they students? How did they find you? See if you can tell how most of your purchasers are coming to the site. Facebook? Google? Direct links?

Use this to get some idea of where to start. Might be smart to invest some money in increased ad spend where your high volume sellers are coming from.

Alternatively, cut directly to the people you're interested in. Virtually every university sustains some kind of picture taking business, at OU it was http://partypics.com - they go to all the parties and events and then sell their pictures online and do well enough at it to stay in business. Target these companies to become their exclusive ecommerce provider. A single one may seem small, but there are thousands of universities just in the US.

Draft a nice sales letter and send it to every college photography business you can find.

Seach google for wedding photographer + area and harvest addresses or phone numbers. Assault them all with sales letters and calls. Start actively reaching out, don't just place an ad and sit back.

After you've started making calls and sending letters, start split testing headlines and opening paragraphs. Always ask yourself "How high is high?" Don't settle for a 10% ROI even if it pays your bills.

Yes exactly. I'm sorry I was not more clear. The phrase "HTML Snippet" may turn some people away if they don't immediately understand it, and those that do understand it will often not be your target market.

I'm saying that people that understand what an "HTML Snippet" is and how to implement it are likely not your target market.

Seems like a great idea if you can keep it to a very low monthly price with excellent reliability and usability.

I might consider changing the name... Just doesn't feel right.

I would initially think to remove "HTML Snippet" from your page, just because the people that are likely outsourcing their problem reporting to you may be confused by that.

I would also look at how Google sells the simplicity of adsense to users to get them understand they are putting Google's code into their website (or some alternatives to "HTML Snippet"

I would also probably never offer a one time payment for this service. After your first month's fixed costs the early "one time fee" adopters are riding it out until the end for free.

Maybe it's not too obtrusive. I can't sit around at work and watch full videos (especially one with lots of random stops). So I tried to make some guesses about the toolbar.

One thing I would certainly do is get some audio in the video and remove the pauses.

As I mentioned in another thread, the actual toolbar seems kind of obtrusive.

But you may want to consider reworking the splash page (or the others too, but definitely the splash page).

http://yobiz.com has a nice splash page. Headline, subhead, video on the left, benefits on the right, all above the fold.

http://icontact.com has a smart layout. The first thing you see is social proof in the form of testimonials + actual, non professional pictures and real benefits for real people on each slide.

My first impression is that it looks way too obtrusive.

I hate to be the one to break to this to you, but your robotics teacher was off his or her rocker or was trying to make a much larger point with a bad example.

If walking was simply graceful falling, it would imply that once we begin the process of "falling" onto the next foot, we couldn't significantly affect the outcome. However, because I can start walking and then stop with a single leg half way between it's highest point and the ground, this explanation of walking as falling becomes very problematic.

Interesting idea, but I'm not sure what your revenue model is...?

You might want to consider changing the wording on the site. It makes it seem like your landing pages will remove facebook/linkedin/twitter from the search engine results ("instead they will see your ProfilePin page").

Finally, I would SEO the hell out the John Q Sample page (or pick an easier name that you can SEO). I search John Q Sample and your page is no where to be found. Does not speak well to your credibility.

There is nothing inherently bad about a lack of status symbols, if you even consider a cell phone a status symbol. You can get a cell phone for free on a $20/month contract.

Meanwhile, luxury items stay out of reach for most people, even if they want them (designer anything, expensive cars, mansion sized houses, etc).

I digressed, but there is no danger to cell phones or any new tech for that matter, being universally available.

The question itself is an implicit test of logical deduction to determine the most likely assumptions given the restraints imposed by the question.

Just because random things are possible (the husband had two wives!), does not make them the most likely assumptions given the nature of the question. If the answer was "Unrelated - Jane's dad had a harem of several women", the question wouldn't make much sense on any type of quiz designed to determine intelligence.

This is a kind of polarizing answer. It seems like people that understand it, just understand it, and people that don't, don't.

But the answer is balls (or courage/bravery/confidence). I fail at stuff every day. If I let it affect my mood I'd be pretty F-ing depressing to be around. I don't want to be depressing to be around.

The one thing you have complete control over and costs you absolutely nothing is your attitude. So grow up, stomach your losses, and move on to the next project.

So you failed. Big deal. You still have a roof, clothes, and food. Time to get past it and keep moving.

I can't remember who said this, but I am going to do a hell of a paraphrasing job.... If you live periods of your life in misery, when you remember back to those times, all you'll remember is the misery. The misery robs you of great memories you could otherwise be making.

If you wrote the code and have nothing documenting who owns the IP rights, then you're likely in the clear (though still consult a lawyer).

But the larger issue is to not dick over your friends or associates. I can't stress this enough. The law may be on your side, but really that is only a small amount of the total equation. I don't believe in karma (except here - upvote the shit out of me), but it will just be easier in the long run to be nice and friendly about it, even if you never see them again.

See what they think. Tell them your concerns and you're thinking about jumping ship and getting a new team together to execute the idea. If they aren't that committed to the idea in the first place, they may likely accept it and move on. Otherwise maybe you could offer them a buyout as a gesture of good faith.

I do want to make it abundantly clear that I am not from the please everybody at any cost mindset. It is just important to not dick people over when you can likely easily avoid it with words.

Solid base for American political thought and law: Democracy's Discontent It will give you valuable insight into the current political process, how it was formed, why some laws are the way they are, and it has chapters discussing privacy law, free speech, religion, and a multitude of others. The chapter over the 14th Amendment offers such a great framework to view the Constitution that reading this book alone before college allowed me to ace any government type class I ever took.

More dense and more theory: Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. I have read it 3 or 4 times and I still haven't digested all of it. It starts with an excellent argument for the primacy of justice and then destroys it. My favorite section of his book was about morality/enforceability of contracts in a philosophical sense. Worth several reads.

Regardless of whether there are, it would be infinitely more beneficial to buy a few books and jump in on your own.

Theory and practice assignments can only teach you so much. You really need to be creating real applications to understand performance, reliability, and security.

Nice idea, but ultimately it is impossible to know if the customers in your store are resellers or people buying for consumption.

The way to prevent resellers from picking through your inventory for arbitrage is to correctly price your books from the start. With accurate pricing you can still undercut resellers and not make each book a commodity -- Resellers incur a multitude of costs: time, shipping, 15% amazon fee, etc. If you raise your prices to resaleValueOfBook - resellerCharges + $0.01, you cut out the combing by resellers and still offer a sizable discount from Amazon.com

I agree that his conclusion of instability is difficult and will offer the idea that of all the critiques of the stock market, instability is probably the least credible.

A stock market with round the clock, instantaneous transactions is one of the most efficient markets that exist. Instability would suggest that it frequently allows for inefficient outcomes. A stock market's prices are determined exactly by buyer demand and seller supply. It corrects itself in the event of freak transactions (like the flash crash) and if it doesn't correct itself, that means the supply and demand have changed and the price of stocks nearly instantly reflect those changes.

You might start kicking yourself when winter rolls around all you have are cargo shorts and a few ironic t-shirts.

I went to the University of Oklahoma.

It is very easy to find whatever you're looking for.

1) Explore campus a lot, even if you don't really have a purpose. There were things that I was finding my third and fourth years. You will eventually learn where all of the buildings are and the random class gifts and old meeting places and anything else cool your campus may have.

2) People will be helpful. "Hey, you do you know where the engineering building is?" You've found your answer.

3) My school had maps everywhere and online if all else failed.

My only complaint: Some of our buildings were too small for their original purpose or got re-purposed for other reasons. They became a mishmash of offices, class rooms, and every other function you can think of. If you were looking for a building by type (say, engineering), it could be difficult, because a few different buildings might all have overflow for that building.

http://icontact.com has a smart design

The first thing that hits you is a sliding list of benefits + social proof on each slide + prominent buttons for a free trial and a video tour.

You need better PMs. A PM that can say no is a hugely valuable resource.

My guess is that you either don't have PMs that say no or there is a really poorly structured chain of communication (ie - you have clients contacting more than just their PM for changes) which is changing the PM/Client relationship.

It is largely about drawing a line in the sand. If you let your clients overrun you with requests, then they will keep doing it. Why wouldn't they? Get billed the same for more features? Sign me up. Luckily I have PMs watching out for me.

http://eretail.yobiz.com/ips or it may currently be http://yobiz.com

The owner posts here frequently. I'm sure he will find this and can give you more details than I am able to.

Forget the technical things. While in college, get a job in marketing. Get a second job in technology if you want, but chances are if you are a CS student that can actually program, then the technical side is the least of your worries.

Running a business is extremely hard for some people. Expose yourself to it. It would be even better if you worked for a smaller company to get a more holistic view of it.

When I was in college my first job was managing the entire ecommerce side of our business from building to maintaining to figuring up innovations. There were 4 of us. I got significant experience in accounting, marketing, cash flow, customer service... everything. Having that exposure has helped me immeasurably thus far.