apowell

Even better would be to integrate the anti-shelving filter with a GTD app (I use Things) so that I don't have to create a separate task every time I want to create a followup reminder.

However, I would never want to send an auto-notification to the receiving party (often they're my customers -- how rude is that?).

I'd be annoyed if I was on the receiving end of the auto-reminder.

"I tinker around the edges of the business, but I don’t have to. It’s on autopilot, and if I don’t do anything to it at all, it’ll keep earning. It’s as secure as any investment vehicle, and if I want to, I can make it grow at any time."

We have different definitions of "retire". It sounds like you're still running your business.

Also, the idea that it's "as secure as any investment vehicle" is misguided. I'd trade my content site, which has been generating consistent income since 1999, for T-bills generating the same income any day of the week.

Sure, but using Wikipedia content in manner permitted by its license is not 'stealing' it.

I've used "Consultant". It's not really what I am (my main business is advertising/subscriptions), but if I'm handing you my business card, then I'm probably a consultant to you.

Consider "Web Dev Consultant" if you want to be ever-so-slightly quirky while still being informative.

I bought a new Steelcase Leap from an office furniture store and paid through the nose for it -- but it's worth every penny. If paying more than $800 for an office chair doesn't make you think "but how will I pay my rent?", I highly recommend it.

I've only been a one-man band for about three months, but I have a separate room with doors that close set up as my home office. Big floating desk, ergonomic chair (Steelcase Leap), quality monitor -- and when I'm in here, it feels like work. If you have a room for a true home office -- not a corner in the living room, or a desk in the bedroom -- then I don't think incurring the overhead (expense or commuting time) of an outside office is worthwhile for a one-man band.

On the other hand, if the incubator is cheap and filled with interesting people, I'd probably do it just for the opportunity to interact with others.

A friend and I developed a proof-of-concept system in 2006 to address this opportunity. The central concept was that publishers would receive offers via our advertising marketplace, and then use their own selection algorithm to select ads to display (publishers could choose to use our hosted selection tools, use our open-source selection algorithms, or build their own). This would allow the publisher to use any combination of factors, such as ad format and perceived relevance -- not just eCPM. It is a flexible system that give the publisher the final decision to display or veto an ad.

If anyone wants to read the whitepaper, feel free to send me an email. The truly adventurous can check out the patent application (#11948995).

Tracking uniques with Flash cookies rather than browser cookies (when possible) should compensate for the one-user-many-browsers problem. I know there are ways for individual users to clear Flash cookies, but I don't believe this is being done on a scale wide enough to be statistically significant.

That's a really fascinating poll. I'd really like to see similar data on the perceived cost vs. actual cost of other federal programs -- do you know if anyone has conducted such a study?

It would be interesting to see how people respond when asked only about one or two pieces of the budget, vs. being asked to "complete the pie" by estimating the federal budget when looking at it as a dozen (or so) components totaling 100%.

Oh, absolutely! But that doesn't mean I want to see the Adsense/Casale revenue dry up at the hands of some opportunistic do-gooding scheme.

How is this an interesting twist? As a website owner, it not just as bad -- it's worse, because it gives the user an additional incentive (beyond convenience) to block my ads, and feel self-righteous doing it.

Final price: $6,350.00 - wow!

Why RAID-anything in a laptop? A single Intel SSD is pretty darn fast, and the second bay is more useful as a large-capacity spinning hard drive (unless you need the optical drive, of course). I have my MBP set up this way and I've been very pleased with it.

The entire rotor assembly on the Osprey pivots. On the Puffin it is fixed and the entire craft changes its orientation between takeoff, flight, and landing. Whether that makes it more reliable or easier to operate, I have no idea.

Nice! If you win, monitor the Ethernet port and let us know what it does.

He gets 15% of the value of subsequent sales, but 100% of the first sale. Plus, I'm sure a significant amount of time and material went into the piece.

I like it, but I'd like it more if it printed and adhered a shipping label to itself and scheduled a FedEx pickup after it was sold. Once you saw the label, all you would need to do is put it on your doorstep and wait for it to disappear.

Desert Drinks is a side project for me -- an experiment in the potential of a focused local directory. Right now, I have a single sponsor (the tall banner on the right).

I plan to more aggressively market and monetize the site this year (I just left my day job last month, and I have a to-do list a mile long). Even in the best-case scenario, I think it would be very tough to make a living on Desert Drinks alone. I can see it generating ~$1000/mo in this market of about 400,000 people.

I think the key is to figure out the formula and then build nationally market-by-market. In my opinion, that's how I think an individual could bootstrap this sort of business.

I'm doing something similar with http://www.desertdrinks.com, and I like your site. However, unless the dollars start flowing in rather quickly, you're going to find it difficult to keep the data current. Once you appear in Google for some local terms (perhaps some specific bar/restaurant names), business owners will seek you out. Are you prepared to monetize that?

Your "advertise" page suggests you're not serious about monetizing this site, which means it's likely to be dead before summer.

Regardless, I wish you the best and I'll bookmark it so I can watch it develop.

NYT, while you're charging for things, please let me purchase an ad-free version of your iPhone app.

How was the ~800% interest rate calculated? $245 / $35.18 = 696% daily interest rate, which annually is ... well, it's incomprehensibly huge.

Anyway, overdraft fees aren't loans, they're fees, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to think in terms of the APR.

I will agree with this -- that sort of transaction sorting is a terribly nasty business practice.

Will any banks simply deny the charge if you don't have the funds? That's what I'd prefer.

This article is from 1997, but the comparison to Apple is amusing:

SGI's sexy image prompted a Wall Street analyst to label it the new Apple. Sadly for SGI, that may prove all too true. Now, like Apple Computer Inc., the Mountain View (Calif.) company is a stark anomaly in booming Silicon Valley.

Your experience may be different than mine, but I've been advertising in a couple different verticals (including legal, so I'm familiar with the insanity there) for the past couple years and I've been involved on the Adsense side since early 2004, and I haven't seen click prices drop dramatically.

Here's some data, ending June 2009: http://www.clickz.com/3634374 (Click 'prior month' to get a feel for the trend. A chart would be nice. Some verticals, like mortgages, obviously took a beating.)

Sure, it's easy to set up a campaign and start blindly feeding money in to the Google machine -- but that's a long, long way from effectively managing a campaign.

In other words, not only has advertising on Google has become much more expensive over the past several years (the market at work), it's become so complex that a typical small business owner can't be expected to manage their own campaign without relying on outside consultants.

  Since it goes straight to your destination, 
  Google cannot store data on your behavior.

I think this is a very cool idea and does provide some level of privacy, but it shouldn't be overstated. Google still has your search history (arguably more sensitive than the actual search result clicked), and in many cases can back into your click behavior via Google Analytics/Adsense code which is embedded on many, many sites (unless you're scrubbing referrer data as well).

What's a decent ergonomic chair for under $100?

A real-time mirror won't help if your data gets corrupted (via a fat-fingered shell command, errant script, or a compromised system). When it's appropriate, it's awesome, but I don't think it's a replacement for a static "offline" backup,

I remember being Slashdotted in 1999. It was a brutal onslaught of traffic. Fortunately, more sites seem equipped to handle that sort of traffic today. (http://slashdot.org/story/99/12/04/158227, if you're curious.)

I'd add two more problems:

3) Too expensive. 4) Takes too long.

Getting a patent attorney to prepare and file a patent is very expensive. It takes $10k just to get started. The patent system is so byzantine that you can't reasonably expect to do it yourself and be successful. The cost is a drop in the bucket to a large corporation, but it's a major barrier for individual inventors.

Not only that, but it takes way, way to long to actually receive a patent. I applied for a patent about two and a half years ago, and I'm still waiting.

As an individual without infinite resources, I'm hesitant to built a business around my concept unless I can be confident that it'll be protected. If I'm not granted the patent, then it would be trivial for an organization with deeper pockets replicate what I would have created.

I know that patents typically don't make a business defensible, but in my case I decided to pursue a different business opportunity. If I'm granted my patent, then I suppose I'll figure it what to do with it then. On the other hand, what good is a patent on a technology conceived three years ago, except to make life difficult for others?

This is why I like restoring my backup slice every so often, just to make sure it's there. A couple years ago I had to use archive.org as my external backup, and it wasn't fun.