Scott_MacGregor

I like this idea. One issue that looks like a bug. In IE 7.0.5730.11 there is no search box for Craigs list. The search box is present for eBay only.

Nice site. I like it. From a sales to the customer standpoint, if it were my site, I would put a button on the index page that says;

"Looking for a CHEAP Mattress and not a Luxury Mattress Click Here".

And offer maybe 5 very cheap mattresses for the traffic that can't afford or doesn’t want to pay for the luxury model. I would get some real cheapies and mark them up to make the same dollar amount as the luxury model.

I doubt the cheap ones would steal sales from the luxury models because they are not a direct competitor.

For a framework we both like Zend Studio, it ties in with Eclipse and Subversion.

Framework: http://www.zend.com/products/studio/

To learn Zend Studio:

Zend Studio for Eclipse Developer's Guide http://www.amazon.com/Zend-Studio-Eclipse-Developers-Guide/d... will walk you through it painlessly in a weekend.

Subversion Setup:

1. http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Subversion (This is unique to the Centos5/RHEL5 distro)

2. http://www.tonyspencer.com/2007/03/02/setup-a-subversion-ser... (This is unique to Fedora core 6) If you are using a different distro, look for it on the web.

3. http://www.kreci.net/linux/working-with-svn-how-to-start/

I am not a Subversion Guru, but as a PHP developer you will get the most benefit from it (productivity wise) if you can install it directly on your production server machine. This is because your development server, staging server, and production server environments will be identical, meaning you will not have to spend time re-coding to make your stuff run due to minor differences in servers.

You can find free Subversion accounts on the web http://stackoverflow.com/questions/59791/free-online-private... but I do not recommend it for PHP because you lose the benefit of using it in identical development and production environments.

For some entertainment, I like to visit http://www.shorpy.com/

It is just an old-time picture site. They add new "old-time" pics a couple of times a day, and they have tons of content to browse through.

It gives a snapshot of life BC (before computers).

Be psychological about it. Make it cool and forbidden, so they will brag to their friends that they have it.

At first, make it something they are not allowed to have. But let them freely get it so they can brag to their peers that they have it.

Make some little very simple thing they have to do to make it work once they get it. Like a simple jailbreak type of thing, but it is a secret that only they know and can tell their friends about. Pepper the web with how to do this "thing" beforehand. Maybe a secret serial number that has been leaked to the net or something like that.

If possible, figure out a way they can share the info that they have it jail broken easily with their contact list automatically as soon as it is jail broken without their intervention.

This is from Zend, try this and see if it helps you:

http://devzone.zend.com/article/627

Also if you are interested in Zend Framework and want to master Zend Studio quickly, the e-book "Zend Studio for Eclipse Developer's Guide" by Peter MacIntyre and Ian Morse is very good.

We looked at worker but decided that for us, prefork met our needs better. Nice article though, good job, I enjoyed reading it.

I think spreading the work over 4 years is too long. I would focus on getting something workable together and online before halfway through the semester. Push them to stay up late and code and hit a deadline. They won't melt if they lose a little sleep. Then have them work on iterating the design and the business based on feedback from adult relatives who login to the sites.

Also, maybe some of the students want to do e-commerce. Maybe you could offer them some flexibility in this area.

Will the PTA flip out if you involve the students with selling wine? Maybe you could work a deal with some local business where the students websites act as a reseller but carry no inventory. Farm supplies, or something. The customers can be local, if the newspaper does a story on this it is free advertising. Maybe somebody's mom cans preserves or something. Be imaginative. It is just to learn and maybe make some money, not corner the market.

Have them come up with an idea that they believe they can implement on their own, but with your guidance and advice. Something that will bring real money in the door quickly. Even if it is only $20, it is better than lofty goals that a high school person might not have the maturity to follow through on.

Do not let them try to build a Google competitor or something similar. It is unrealistic for them. Have them engage in some kind of e-commerce and use something like PayPal where there is a chance that money will actually come in the door. Have you local newspaper do a story on you and the class participants, maybe following their efforts over time in the Sunday edition.

Form groups of 5 students and have them come up with ideas that you put on a list. When you have 50 money making ideas on the list, break into groups of 2 and let them try to implement the ideas they think will work. If more than one group of 2 chooses the same idea, that is called market competition.

I think they need to learn to bunt, before learning how to hit home runs. If you think they will all hit home runs and work to make no money, I think they will be discouraged and it will be a negative experience for them. Probably not what you want.

Maybe some will discover that this industry is not for them and go on to own a restaurant in your town. I think that the lessons learned can be applied to any business.

I think you should include some examples of companies like Zappos that sells shoes as well as companies that develop and sell software or provide SAS.

Also instead of case studies (that’s a lot for kids to focus on and digest) do PowerPoint lectures and also "make them earn" the privilege of learning how to use PowerPoint to make a Pitch Deck on a special Saturday lecture at the end of the course. But of course they can all attend, it's just a ploy to get them to focus hard on the course work that you can dangle over them during the semester. The carrot works better than the stick.

Also, you should have one lecture about, accounting, taxes and legal entity formations where a CPA comes in and answers questions. Also explain what a Corporation is and why Delaware might be a good choice.

We both do front end and back end coding and design, and have the tools (and knowledge) needed to do it properly.

As advice from someone with experience, I would say do not expect to hit anything close to home run on your first attempt. It might be easier for you if you can find a front end that you like and do a screen capture as a jpg and try to build that verbatim using your own code. Then modify that code to do what you want. Dreamweaver might be a decent tool for doing this. You could pull all of the code and pics from a working site and rebuild that as your first model, but you can probably code it yourself quicker and better.

If you want to build from scratch, knowing how to use Photoshop or a similar tool might make your vision for the site easier to implement. Plus you can give the jpg you make to someone who can write code in your desired language and have it implemented by that person.

Anyone can build a webpage but, if you are trying to do this in Notepad or something similar, it is going to be a tough uphill climb, and you may never fully reach your desired goal. So make sure you have some good tools for the job.

I agree, PEAR does need to be easier. Maybe somebody in here can make some decent quick money making PEAR better to use.

I only had time to take a quick look, but I like the name a lot.

I also like the color and layout of the index page. Maybe in the green block though, think about replacing the text "micro to small size companies", with a more upbeat sounding "independent professionals". That is probably more of how your target market thinks of themselves.

Maybe somewhere put a graphic of a caduceus, Lady Scales of Justice, and a CPA logo, to catch the eye of your target market.

Also on my big wide monitor the left and right margin are not anywhere near equal. With medical offices it might be wise to keep the old narrow format for the layout hardcoded in, but when it loads in a wide monitor it is not centered, and looks a little broken because of that. You might want to fix that up.

Overall I find the index page attractive, professional, and inviting to explore further into the sight. Good job with it.

Interesting find, I love coffee too. I suppose someone could view this as potentially helping the environment by cutting down on a little bit of waste. Now all you need to do it turn the extra Starbucks rocket fuel into some great code.

As far as "point 1" is concerned, in our industry it really does seem "outrageous and unconscionable", but as far as case law is concerned I wonder if in the grand scope of new businesses in general it would be viewed as such. The court may be predisposed to believe that people and businesses have freedom to contract, and it seems reasonable to believe that the argument could be made that this clause should be left to stand as written.

New York may have been chosen as venue in order to "fit" with known case law on this and other points. Such as the allegation in paragraph 3 that Facebook is a "domestic corporation" in New York (a very basic detail to get wrong about this) seems like it might be an "error-on-purpose" to lay the foundation for using a particular case, either now or later. Sloppy errors do happen, so does venue shopping, and with a case that has this big of a potential payoff, feigned errors on the part of counsel might allow introduction of some "hoped for" piece of a supporting case. It is New York after all.

Bandwidth and some outsourced coding.

Edit: oops, I read it as $2000 not $20. With $20 I would buy both of us a fast food meal, or maybe a few rounds of pool.

Very well written, I got a lot out of this. I think it provides a good framework for thinking about this part of the business.

If you guys are fans of Don Draper, here is the real life Don Draper, a guy named Steve Frankfurt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjDSqQmcc90

Maybe pick a particular multi-level marketing company that is well known and successful. Contact their CEO and pitch him/her over the phone on endorsing your business for their business people to use. Maybe price it to the public at $X, but for them special deal "today only" $X-$y. Let them contact their people and do brochures or whatever it is they want to do to promote it.

Powercall 10 of these places in 1 day and see if you can get through to the CEO's and get some heat built up for your business. Basic business to business. Offer them the special price for a $10,000 fee to make sure they will follow through on their end. Be ready to close the deal, and be ready to bill for the fee if you get any takers.

Why bother with hardware, why not use the cloud? Hardware gets expensive, plus some sever fans can sound extra loud in a home. Maybe someone can give you a heads up on how to do it in Amazon or RackSpace.

Would laches necessarily apply here? If the contract did not specify that he needed to take part in the voting or other corporate formalities, it seems like a credible argument could be made that he is not trying to enforce anything until right now. Simply taking a hands off approach to his investments. Also, if he was not notified of Shareholder Meetings, does this raise other legal issues for Facebook's Board? Could this become a can of worms for the Board?

As an illustration, if he bought, or was gifted a Ferrari and didn't drive it for several years, but allowed someone else to drive it, then one day went to unlock the door to begin driving the car, but found the current driver had changed the locks would laches apply in this instance. To me this seems similar.

If you are outgoing, have you considered working in the sales end of the software chain? Just an idea.

I'm looking forward to "positioning against the competition". I think this is something a lot of startups will find useful. Many people have good ideas, but when it comes right down to it, it's a dog-eat-dog world, and the cash flows from the customer/users opinion of your offering weighed against the competition. You can iterate all day long, but to take home the money you need to be more attractive than the others out there. That takes a well thought out plan.

Thanks for the input.

I am a US citizen and I share some of your same concerns. Who knows what will happen in this pressure cooker we are all in right now. Sometimes it seems some things come down to a risk/benefit equation of sorts, when in the past that was not true.

If you decide to stay for business reasons, I would say be sure to keep a finger on the pulse of the issues that concern you. Continue to weigh them, and if you believe one of these issues is getting too uncomfortable for you or for a member of your family be sure to have a predefined backup plan or two in place. Just keep watching for the kettle to boil so to speak, and have some cash set aside for you and your family in case of any type of emergency situation.

One nice thing is, no matter where someone lives or works we can all still communicate easily via the net. We moved our business from Las Vegas to Austin to take advantage of the superior business climate here, and aside from leaving some familiar restaurants, it doesn't feel that far away because of the communication abilities of the internet.

* Zend Studio

* Subversion

* JIRA Bugtacker (It's cheap and I like this a lot)

* LAMP Stack on an inhouse dedicated 64 bit Dell development server

Here are some of my random ideas:

On your reggi.com site, make it into a blog (Wordpress is simple) about yourself and some aspect of tech that you are interested in.

Add some personal pics to the blog of your workspace, your pets and yourself so people know who you are. Let people add comments to your blog. Maybe add a short video of yourself to the blog.

Go to a tech conference in your area and just try to make friends with a people. You never who will know who, but it never hurts to have people know you.

We know you in here. Maybe if you were more visible online pics, etc..., maybe you will find the business partner you're looking for in here.

If it is ever seized they will just use another domain name with a hardlinked IP address. The actual domain is not needed to operate. The IP address will make the rounds and become as well known as the domain name.

Use Quickbooks, it ties everything together for you in a way that spreadsheets cannot.

I like this. I can see this catching on. For the "Report a Trend" input feature, you might want to consider having some artwork done to make it a little more friendly looking. To me it looks very much like input your credit card number here, and the rest of the page has a more trendy modern friendly look. You would want it to match the rest of the site, but not blend in too much. Maybe do a focus group and get some feedback on 3 or 4 designs for it.

I like this idea, and I think you are possibly onto something big here. Iterate!

([edit] I can see this thread has been pending without much activity for a couple of hours. You might want to try reposting later in the day when more of the guys are online in here. This seems like a good idea, it deserves some exposure.)

It might not be what you are looking for, but I like to visit this site:

http://www.shorpy.com/

It's an oldtime hi-def pic site that updates twice a day.