Hacker News Reader

agentbleuon Ask YC: Other than Google Adwords, what is the best form of paid advertising?

check out appsavvy

agentbleuon Easier browsing of Hacker News...for me

10 /10

agentbleuon The Uncomfortable story to the Background of Facebook

In the cold light of day, Mark has done nothing more than anyone else would, there are sharks everywhere 1) waiting to steal your idea 2) to claim you stole their idea. What counts is ideas first then a whole lot of other skills and elements but in the end, what happens in the market is the only law there is. The moral of the story is, if you have the idea and the skills to make it happen, do it. Don't for one second rely on legal tenets to protect you after the fact. They don't work and never have. This is the cold sober fact. If you have what it takes prove it.

Mark did nothing wrong here. There was nothing really novel about FB, it was clean and doing what others do. FB does not claim Ning and everyone else are coping them... The only thing that is wrong is the assumptions that others made about how the real world works and that they are now sour grapes is absolutely no surprise. It won't be the first nor the last case where someone strikes gold and the rest of the world claim they helped hold the torch and then want a cut.

This comes from someone who has had millions in ideas 'directly' (drawings off the desk) stolen from him...

I don't cry about that, I play by the rules of the world, it's tough out there and to play you do so by the real ruthless rules of survival of the fittest or you will be a looser in a court claiming your owed a living.

Sure I had loads of ideas stolen, but I'm also a realist and know that I also borrow from others whom I stand upon their shoulders when I make my way in my ventures.

Next time if you have a good idea, don't talk about it do it....

agentbleuon Flash on iPhone would be a huge revenue leak

This argument goes into some detail about the politics:

http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/03/what-is-adobes-crystal-ball...

"So a taste of what’s next: As Apple jostles it out with Adobe as to whether Flash is going to be incorporated on the iPhone we get a glimpse of what’s at stake for all involved. Live mobile streaming is the hot potato just out of the oven. With services such as Flixwagon and Qik setting new standards, I’m pretty sure that the Adobe Flash’s crystal ball is telling them they need to be at the forefront of mobile streaming.

To grease the wheels they are removing the paid license mobile operators have been incurring worth over 50 million USD annually to Adobe to incorporate Flash in their mobile devices and teaming up with every major player in the market, in effect forcing Apple to play the Flash game or be left out in the cold."

agentbleuon Slide says no more Facebook applications

That's the point. FB are trying to remain clean and stylish, thus their ads are small and not well made.

Magazines understand that 50% of the real estate must be adverts. Online is no different. The ads need to be bigger, better and automatically integrated as part of the apps. Share these profits with the app developers, have tougher, competition for apps and more value will come for all.

btw I'm S.Carroll

agentbleuon Slide Says It's Done Releasing New Facebook Apps

this is very serious all round>

http://thenextweb.org/2008/06/09/slide-says-no-more-facebook...

agentbleuon Ask HN: how did you fix problems with bad sleep?

also try monitoring your body temperature, especailly head and feet (socks and a hat), this can also help.

agentbleuon Ask HN: How to deal with patents?

http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/29/the-innovation-problem-no-o...

In this article I talk about how patent's are effectively nonsense for all but a very few who know how to 'work' the law who also have the fat to do so.

agentbleuon What to do if you are a good developer but no designer?

Is a designer really necessary?

I argue here that they are not for the proof of concept stages.

http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/30/the-power-of-elegance-in-de...

agentbleuon Ask YC: What do you use for outbound email sending?

try dodo

agentbleuon How do you get money from the outside?

Lets see the demo then...

agentbleuon Free ideas. Just add execution.

http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/29/the-innovation-problem-no-o...

agentbleuon Free ideas. Just add execution.

Typical coming from a VC though.

agentbleuon Free ideas. Just add execution.

what a load of crap.

agentbleuon The end of SEO, powered by Google

220K competition sure sounds like a lot to me.

So you agree then that white hat SEO, I.e. meta tags, H1 text, page text, page layout, content on the page, keyword density, validation, is all absolutely pointless. My point entirely!

agentbleuon The end of SEO, powered by Google

What actually happened was on the previous update google experimented with a PR hit on sites that were selling links. It was specifically targeted to sites who were doing so with intentions of altering the SERPs. Thus paid links that had specific keyword specific anchor text. Most of the sites on the Internet were affected. Sites with organic links, I.e links that were plain advertising without intentions to manipulate the SERPs were not affected! On this last update the vast majority of the sites which had a reduction regained their lost PR. Instead this time round Google have implemented another strategy which looks highly effective.

agentbleuon The end of SEO, powered by Google

Nothing out of the ordinary!

Not a single word on that page! No meta tags, no text, nothing but a 2 word title. That is out of the ordinary.

If you think that is an easy term to rank for, your mistaken, the next result down is PBS.

agentbleuon The end of SEO, powered by Google

See substantiated claims, in my other response.

agentbleuon The end of SEO, powered by Google

I will give you a page that breaks every SEO rule in the book but that is ranked very high for one of the most important search terms currently on the collective worlds mind.

The search term is “global dimming” and the result I am referring to which absolutely has ZERO SEO, is this:

http://www.documentary-film.net/search/sample.php

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=global+dimming&...

It is now up to others to disprove my claims, that: 1) General White hat SEO is no longer relevant 2) That you cannot game Google with any form of SEO on a new domain.

Enjoy the doc btw.

agentbleuon Some new thoughts on the "atomization of conversation"

This link gamed the HN system! look at who voted it up?

agentbleuon Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS)

install YC backed Virtualmin on debian and you can save all this.

agentbleuon Everything I want to do is Illegal

You should spend a few minutes learning about the OPV experimental vaccinations in the later 50s which is the leading candidate for causing AIDS.

http://www.documentary-film.net/search/video-listings.php?e=...

agentbleuon Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

I think some of these projects are better than whats out there. This one is pretty interesting IMO.

agentbleuon Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?

now if i was an investor, i would buy in.

agentbleuon What is the minimum budget to promote a site?

This response is at least an argument! Sorry to sound impolite, but bad advice/decisions costs money. Your main point is that there is another way. OK of course I accept that, but your examples are pretty lousy mind, these are not mum and pup stores, (like the free car ads site the author of this question is promoting).

I insist, even if you have a viral web app/widget, to not focus on SEO from day 1 is missing the whole point of the net and will cost you bucket loads in the long run at best.

FWIW I would be very interested to hear of the app / widget that you are enjoying the 8% weekly growth. Mine is myplaylist which is also enjoying high viral growth.

agentbleuon PHP Has No Culture of Testing

great article, but php bashing is akin to a class war, and yea sure - the upper classes are more secure (trustworthy) than the lowers ha?

agentbleuon What is the minimum budget to promote a site?

so when i search google for a red widget i never see ebay listings? are you f kidding? MS was before the net, as was apple, so count them out as they are manufactures not websites, google came up with the best search (given my argument is that the net is all about search) algo and thus gained success, so they dont count. Myspace made its way through the fog with SPAM, youtube got big because they tapped into myspace offering the best music video service, and lost 1 million a month in the process (im still not even sure if they have actually made any profit and I seriously doubt it), social networks have poor quality traffic, albeit alot of it, which costs them a fortune in data centers and makes no cash, Can I safely say the only social network to be in profit is linkedin.

"but not worth early focus for a lot of others" Total crap.

agentbleuon Ask YC: What is a good (and cheap) domain name registrar?

better to use one that has a good support, trouble I have had in changing registers is unbelievable. I now use omnis as they are quick, but not cheapest. Still not great support from them either. But at least there system works. Dreamhost were bad as was 1&1.

agentbleuon Greg Linden: "I should have focused on angels."

I see your now at http://labs.live.com/ so all in all the game was won IMO no? You got a great job as a result.

agentbleuon Greg Linden: "I should have focused on angels."

Maybe it was an idea that just didn't have enough innovation to make the traction better. But one hell of a good effort I would say for a bootstrapped startup, toughing it out in market with fully funded sharks.

Can I ask what's next in your pipeline, how does this experience influence your future projects?