brianmckenzie

Oddly enough, Google transit hasn't stopped the government. I use nextmuni.com nearly every day, and it's a life-saver. How did I ever use public transit without it? If even the government can compete in this area, a small startup could wipe the floor with both of them.

I think PG mentions this in one of his articles, but if you read 'How to Win Friends and Influence People', get the original edition from the 1930s. It only costs 3 bucks or so on Amazon, and it's better than the newer ones. I highly recommend this book - it can be a true revelation for us technical types.

I wanna see the robots! So I'm coming. I can also pitch in for food if that would help.

I absolutely agree about the support costs - that alone makes the Macs worth it.

Having never used the Mac mini I don't feel qualified to compare it to a Dell. I suspect that the performance is similar, yet I also suspect that a $900 display-less iMac would blow the Dell out of the water, with the drastically lower support costs.

1. Facebook is pretty solid, and I think its openness is one of its major strengths. It does strengthen my existing friendships, and I've made some new friends on there as well. With the new apps coming out, it seems like the sky is the limit. The only thing I dislike about it is the design - it is very usable, which is priority #1, but otherwise so-so. I especially hate the offset-header thing they do, it makes me feel as if something is missing/broken. Many of the apps are counterintuitive or obnoxious. I hope people aren't getting mad at me for ignoring their zombie invitations.

2. There is a lot of weakness here, which seems odd considering the obviousness of the solution: I should be able to watch any TV show from any network I want, whenever I want. I should be able to pay 50 cents to get rid of the ads or something, or just run the ads outside of the shows entirely. In addition, when I go to a network site the landing page should be a video player playing whatever is being broadcast in my time zone at that moment. 1) Put TV on the internet. How hard can that be? 2) Make it random-access. 3) Have all the shows on there, past and present.

3. Online news is even weaker than online TV, if that's possible. I'd rather bathe in motor oil than read the comments on Digg or Newsvine. There does seem to be a correlation between how long a news site has been around and how badly it sucks. Could a million bored secretaries flaming randomly eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare? I don't know, but they're giving it their best shot.

I'm going to say something heretical here: social news is a lousy idea unless a narrow focus is maintained, like news.yc. I read news looking for insights that I as an average American cannot reach on my own. The commentary of millions of other average Americans adds NOTHING - in fact, it's a negative value proposition.

The solution, if you agree with me that news should provide insight, is exceptional reporting, top-notch writing, and a variety of ideological viewpoints. You aren't going to get that stuff from the internet masses.

That being said, I do like very focused social news sites like news.yc. Then again, you guys aren't a bunch of 'average Americans'.

Coffee, but just one really big cup when I wake up. I'm a few-months-on, few-months-off smoker, but hopefully will give it up entirely. Although many disagree, I think that coding on a nice three-beer buzz is a blast. That's as far as I'm personally willing to go, but I've worked at places where the IT department was better stocked than the Mexican mafia.

Yet most corporations only give laptops to employees whose jobs involve travel - everyone else gets a sub-$1k Dell desktop, with a hand-me-down display. This is the segment he's suggesting Apple address.

Laptops for everyone would be awesome, but hard to justify if they'll never leave the office.

By including the display on the iMac, Apple ensures that they sell a display with each unit shipped, they maintain their volume discounts in the supply chain, etc. This is just conjecture on my part, but it wouldn't be surprising.

I graduated seven years ago and my writing still suffers from bad habits I learned writing college papers.

Hmmm...yeah, that makes sense. It keeps things from getting overly personal.

Why not let us see who has upvoted/downvoted our comments? It's frustrating when someone downvotes without explanation, especially if it's not an obviously stupid comment.

But all posters are not created equal - what if we could consider the source? If some guy with -27 karma downvotes my comment I could care less. If it's someone like Paul Buchheit, on the other hand, I have to consider the possibility that my comment was really stupid.

That's easy: the meaning of life is doing cool stuff, and not doing stuff that sucks or is lame.

It's funny because it's true.

He's missing the point. User reviews are as much about the reviewer as they are about the object of the review. All the same it's important to remember that there are many people like this guy.

I apologize if someone has already mentioned this, but it seems to me that what you're proposing is to provide seed funding for marketing companies. By marketing companies, I mean companies that place product quality second to the marketing apparatus.

I have worked for several such companies, and at one time I was Information Coordinator for the American Marketing Association, so I've been exposed to a lot of marketing 'genius'. One thing I noticed time and time again in all these places is the prevalence of 'internal marketing'. When stripped of trendy buzzwords and platitudes about 'empowerment', internal marketing is a De facto ideology which stipulates that marketing is the primary driving force in every organization. It places product quality, customer value, and strategy in a distant secondary position.

The problem with marketing companies is that their myopic focus produces reactionary organizations - more ad hoc institutions than enterprises. 'Marketing companies' are sometimes profitable, but rarely maintain a commanding market position for long if they get there in the first place.

Contrast these with the real product companies of our time: Apple, Google, Craigslist, Facebook, Toyota. The real profit and value are being created by companies who focus on actual products. Some of these companies have little marketing apparatus at all, at least in the sense you're talking about.

This reminds me of a silly aphorism: You rob a bank because that's where the money is. Providing seed funding to 'marketing geniuses' is like robbing twenty hot dog stands and hoping that one of them forgot to deposit their earnings that week. It's only a good plan if you can't figure out how to rob the bank.

Absolutely! This past year I took the proceeds from all the lesser-used items and bought one pricey, high-quality, heavy-use item. It has completely paid off - I use the new computer (completely loaded iMac) constantly and it positively blows away any other computer I've owned. It does more for me in one week than all the junk I sold to buy it did for me in a year.

Which brings us to the subject of quality. I used to buy budget PC's - the cheapest thing I could find that would run what I needed. What a mistake that was. I have found that for heavy-use items it almost always pays to get the best I can possibly afford. I'm more likely to use higher-quality stuff and it performs better under heavy use.

There's a corollary to this: I have also found it preferable to buy the cheapest available product if it's a marginal or lesser-used item. Like a cheese grater or something. It's also good to question whether you need such an item at all, as you point out.

Starting a startup has led to big improvements for me in this area. Back when I worked for other people I was constantly buying stuff. Oh, the rationalizations I came up with for purchases of very dubious value. I felt that I had to have every piece of the puzzle, only I didn't realize that the puzzle can never be completed.

Now that I've gone out on my own I don't have the time or money to spend like this anymore. It's such a change for the better.

Here are some stuff-reduction techniques I use:

Books: I have one large Ikea bookshelf. Several of the shelves are reserved as a 'rotating collection' - when the shelf gets full, I make myself sell some books on Amazon before I get new ones. The collection can never exceed the capacity of the one decent-sized bookshelf.

Every August, I take an inventory of everything I own and how often I'm using it. This includes books, clothes, office supplies, everything. Everything gets divided into three categories based on usage: heavily used, not used at all, and marginal. I keep everything in the 'heavily used' category. I sell, give away, or throw away everything in the 'never used' category. Then, I make a list of everything in the 'marginal' category and keep it until the next year. If any given item is still 'marginal' the next year, I sell it.

You'd be surprised how effective this is. What's especially amazing is the crazy stuff you can sell over the net - someone paid 50 bucks for a t-shirt I hadn't worn in 15 years. Last year I made enough cash doing this to buy a new Mac. The reduction in clutter is even better.

Creed sucks so bad that burning one of their cd's wouldn't be cool. Not even for charity.

Wow, this is one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile. Nice work!

I answered a question, thus I had to register. Twenty minutes later, my answer has not appeared.

Did I do something wrong? Doubtful.

A few months back, a friend and I got hit by a car.

We were minding our own business, talking about our startup activities, crossing on the green, and some idiot ran the light and hit us. Neither of us saw it coming, and it hurt really, really bad. ER bills were big, I'm glad I had insurance.

Two weeks ago I was walking to work and saw a guy collapse against a building. I called the emergency number and tried to help him, along with several others, but the guy was completely out, he died right there. I wish I could say differently, but that's what happened. He wasn't particularly old, either.

Ready or not, you might as well have health insurance.

Way to go, Zenters!

Explanatory text is probably bad for something this simple.

I'd set it up like this: If you click the button you vote, if you click the picture you go to the candidate description. But - if you go to the candidate description page you should still be able to vote for that candidate against any other candidate.

What if I want to vote for someone who isn't displayed on the front page? Do I just have to wait for a new smackdown to come up?

It's appropriate that Marc should post this piece today, the first weekday since I quit my job to work on my startup full-time. Just so I truly know what I'm in for.

Can't wait to read the rest of this series. Good times!

I'd like to thank everyone who has responded to my question - you all rock.

The verdict: I will not be going with my friend the lawyer, but rather look into some sort of fee-deferral arrangement with a firm that specializes in this type of thing.

Thanks for disabusing me of that notion - I don't mean to spread misinformation or anything.

Peanut, you've hit on something of importance, that I was mis-valuing before: do I need his money?

Upon further reflection, I probably don't need it. And when I reach the stage where I do need it, I probably want to get it from a real angel investor. Even if that didn't work out, I still have better places to get funding than this guy.

Guess I'll just have to pay a lawyer who specializes in tech startups.

This really clarifies the decision. Thanks!

I know that many people say this, and pg often cites it as a major benefit of YC. That's why I'm wondering.

Thanks for that link, yubrew.

You're right - I know dealing with this guy is a bad idea and I'm not going to do it. What I'm really trying to figure out here is what my options are.

Wow, this is great news. Not the crashing and destroying your data part, but that they're porting OpenOffice in the first place. I'm using it in X11 now, can't wait for this to be stable.

So, I need to incorporate my startup. After some research I'm pretty sure I want to be a Delaware C Corporation so I can sell later.

A friend of mine, a corporate lawyer, is interested in funding my startup and providing the initial legal services, but there are a few big catches: this guy is extremely difficult to deal with (history of mental illness) and doesn't seem to know much about the issues surrounding startups. I had to explain to him why I want to be a C corp, and I'd think he should already understand that.

My intuition obviously tells me to avoid this guy if I can help it, but here's the real problem: I'm a complete bootstrap startup and I have to pay the bills in San Francisco. If my friend doesn't incorporate me, I'll have to use one of those incorporation websites - I can't afford to actually pay a lawyer to do it. Am I insane to even consider this option?