I think you should go for a Ruby on Rails / Groovy on Rails / whatever framework. My reasoning? They encapsulate a lot of the configuration files that you don't want to deal with (ugh, Spring is just annoying, with all those XML files... and I'm a Java person!). Moreover, because they're so ubiquitous, you'll find loads of plugins/code samples online for things you're looking to do. It will really cut down on your development time.
i always thought of email as a way to get you to get a username, which is just a "gateway drug" into other services the company offers. For example, all of a sudden it's easy to find yourself on the Picasa site, and upload pictures doesn't require ANOTHER username/password because you're already logged in (cookie)
sounds cool, though, with 25 deployments a day, it seems like you're just deploying quick fixes. How involved could changes be with such small time intervals? I applaud the approach though.
Also, could you also talk about how you track all the end-user impact, given the very frequent changes? How does this feed back into the analytics (is change A causing rise/fall in conversion, or change B)?
Interesting.... Could anyone be more specific? Plenty of "serious" firms ask about last salary earned (in fact, if you were to fill out an application on line, you may not proceed, as these fields tend to be mandatory). Is your advice to simply fill out $0?
I've always thought "current salary" was irrelevant and just a nasty tactic.
<quote>there's no way they can find out (legally)</quote>
Really? Is that really true? What about all the forms one signs, allowing for background information check (education, employment information, etc)?
sure, though rendering random shapes on the screen might be easier and will achieve the same results (utter confusion by pharmacists, nurses, etc, and subsequently poor patient care)
I agree that IBM has a "high purpose." Though, I'm not convinced. Given that Google also tries to branch out to other domains, why shouldn't IBM do the same? Google offers enterprise search boxes, it is (try to get) involved in the healthcare domain (through collaboration with medical institutions as well as Google Health), etc.
Chess, I think, was too limited and market share is too small (hence, no threat to EA). But something like this is applicable to many different domains, including a web search.
ok, and your startup is....? We'd need to know, at the very least, what the domain is, so people could advise you about pitfalls/things you should look out for.
"... and I sure was articulating like they do on national television" Not sure what they trained their algorithm on, but this articulation might have been the culprit. If they have a corpus of "normal people" speaking Dutch, and then you go and articulate, you will get poor results.
Congratulations! Never been in this situation, but I tend to be the suspicious type :-) I'd be careful, if I were you, and make sure they're not just trying to size you up and get info about your business (maybe they want to start a competitor? maybe they want to see whether it's a viable business how much traffic you're getting, and then decide whether to buy you out).
Paranoid? Maybe. Only the paranoid survive... :-)
I went to college for one year, left to work for 3 years, and then back to school. Obviously, no right answers. However, take into consideration that when you do come back after a few years, all your friends will be out of school, and you may find your new classmates a bit young (you'd think to yourself, "I've already done A, B, and C, and now I need to deal with this crap??" :-) ). At the beginning you'll feel a bit out of place, but then you'll find the crowd you want to hang out with. If you only take 1 year off, I think you'd be ok :-)
you can structure your agreement with IBM/Accenture/etc based on deliverables. If they don't hit the deliverables by a certain deadline, they take on the extra costs. That's why they charge a lot up front -- as an insurance policy to guard themselves. At least that's my experience with IBM.
I just assumed that the person did not know the crush's address. But I suppose he can still employ affiliate programs if the person DOES know the crush's address.
could you give some examples? bjonathan could benefit from learning more about the other services (what worked for them, what didn't).
I remember back in the day there was a Facebook app that did something like that. Though I'm not sure how well it did because I never used it. Or did I...? (No, I actually didn't :-) )
An idea for you: give users the option to send flowers (or anything else, for that matter). When the email is sent to the crush, it might say: "your secret crush would like to send you flowers. please fill in your address" or something. The initiator's credit card it charged if the crush fills in the address. You make money off the flower shop affiliate referral.
Fair questions.
A bit of a background first. My co-founders were: an MBA student with a healthcare concentration (Wharton), an MD/PhD student (Columbia), and me, the techie (grad student Columbia). Unfortunately for the start-up (and fortunately for my co-founders), they graduated and moved to Denver (to work at a healthcare company) and San-Francisco (residency), respectively. Although I wanted to continue working on things, with 66% of the founding team away and unwilling to commit to putting in the time, the project is bound to fail. Now, one may argue that I should have continued on my own, which is a fair point to make. However, what I've learned about healthcare is that it's a VERY tough market. It is not because of there exists some crazy technological challenge that the tech world has never seen before, rather because of the people in the industry and the industry's regulations. Physicians and institutions are VERY suspicious of anyone even remotely trying to enter their "domain," and they would thwart any attempt. Our intention was to help them with their workflow, so they could see more patients and thus make more money. When you approach MDs, for the most part, they fear that you may try to replace them (although that was not our intention). It follows with immediate resistance. Also, if you were to get into this domain, you should know that you can't just put up a website in 4 hours and start testing (Snowcolypse!! :-) ). Medicine is so "academic" that people want to run clinical trials, etc. In short, there's a lot of bureaucracy.
Interestingly, I now lead the implementation of the clinical data warehouse at a major medical institution in the US (though I was always a programmer, not a DB or BI guy. Sortta fell into this position). The other week I spoke to the director of the stroke center at a medical institute in Brooklyn NY. A 50-something year old guy, one of the only 1200 stroke experts in the US. Super nice guy, super smart (taught himself python and Fortran to have a common language with the technies and to know when they're trying to pull his leg). He's very much into technology and its applications within medicine (he's trying to push telemedicine to strokes, because every second counts). As he put it, "the problem with healthcare is that the stakeholders think that this is the most complicated domain in the world. People are so arrogant to think nobody has tackled these technological problems before." They, therefore, push off any suggestion for improvement (what worked for Pfizer, BMW, or Goldman Sachs, who have millions of transactions a second, will not work for us!) Same sentiment exists at my current employer.
A few years ago I was involved in a start up in the medical domain (software, not hardware). My cofounders and I got "funded" by winning business school competitions. Although the amounts are not huge, getting funded was big help for 2 main reasons. First, it's nice to know that you're not the only one who believes in the idea. It, in a way, gives you legitimacy and the power (mentally) to move forward. Second, money is a great motivator because you now have to answer to someone. Anybody giving you money will want to know what you did with it. Some you really need to spend it wisely and make progress.
First, I have friends working for Microsoft as well as Google. I like and hate both companies, for different reasons. Now, to the meat of what I wanted to get to:
"We have brought a number of things to market that we are very proud of -- our daily home page photos, infinite scroll in image search, great travel and shopping experiences, a new and more useful visual approach to search, and partnerships..."
Seriously?? Are you going to put "daily home page photos" as (first!) point to be proud of? Is it such a technological feat? Kudos for the rest of the items, but I just found it funny
i find it demeaning and Big-Brother like. Imagine your boss' robot going up and down the corridor checking to see whether you're working. I think there have been plenty of discussions here about how looking busy doesn't mean that you're necessarily productive. If my boss really cares about taking to me, s/he can either speak to me face to face, or on the phone. I'd appreciate it a lot more if I got a phone call to my desk asking me how I was doing or if there are any problem on the project he can help with (besides, is the boss expected to remote control the thing the whole day? Doesn't s/he have other stuff to do than play with the joystick all day?)
At most, I think it's a nice gadget to have for pranks at companies that can afford the $15K price tag (Google?)
sounds like knighthood titles and special last name salutations (I don't speak Polish, but my understanding is that last names ending with a "tzky" indicate some royal/lord designations). Some of these are transferrable.
Some of us don't have an Android phone either, so we won't be able to run it. It'd probably be useful if you elaborate some more about what's your "take on about.me/threewords.me", if you want some feedback about the idea and ways to improve it.
I was an early adopter of Facebook back in the day it was only open to a handful of school (VERY early 2004). It was nice and exciting and whatnot. But I've lost interest in it completely. I speculate that it's only newcomers that find it interesting. I now use FB only as a means of sending someone a quick note, getting invitations to events (a la evite -- remember that?), or maybe looking up a picture I was tagged in by a friend. If back in the day people put in their hobbies, activities, interests, and list of classes (yup, that was available. Great stalking tool...!), I find people's profiles completely empty.
Anybody with a different experience? Do you ACTUALLY use FB, or are you only drawn to it because of the reasons I outlined above?
Please note that I'm not hating on FB. They do what they do well. Just sharing my experience (and at this point, I will never ever be able to get a job at FB... ;-) ).
I got to the onsite, day-long, interview stage at Google (about a year ago). It's been awhile, but I do remember they asked some VERY real world questions, ranging from lists related traversal questions, to "how would you implement xyz." Some running times questions, etc. The questions were challenging, but do-able, I suppose. My biggest issue was not so much with the questions, but rather with 1 or 2 of the interviewers who felt it was more of a pissing competition, always trying to undermine the answer. The rest of the people were just phenomenal -- super professional and a pleasure to talk with. In retrospect, it was the younger interviewers who were "problematic." I suppose it has to do with insecurity (I later found out that they weren't at Google for that long, nor were they such hotshots).
Lastly, I believe that none of the interviewers asked for any particular coursework or GPA, but the internal Google recruiter asked for either a transcript or flat out GPA, to send to the committee (who reads the interviewers' comments and makes a decision whether to continue further with the interviewee, or not).