fun2have

Bob Geldof? Boomtown Rats to Deckchair.com In the late 90s, when Bob encountered problems booking a family holiday over the Internet for his children and his French actress girlfriend Jeanne Marine, Geldof founded online travel agent Deckchair.com. See: http://www.personallyspeaking.co.uk/sir_bob_geldof__147.html

John Perry Barlow: Grateful Dead to EFF. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perry_Barlow

As roel_v 3 said no other country in Europe can stop you trading in another country. You must pay tax on where the business is located. Where Irish companies are often used is to hold IP, a trading company then pays a royalty to the IP company. Where the business is located, for tax reasons is independent of registration. You need to get some professional advice on domicile of the business.

Irish companies are also useful in that they are quite easy to set up and maintain. The usefulness of them compared to the UK is that Ireland is within the Euro.

It very much ok to have a company registered in one country and work for it in another . This is the whole idea of the Treaty of Rome, which is the treaty that forms the EU. Some famous examples are like Air Berlin which is a UK PLC. Where things can get a bit complex is the tax situation. You need to pay tax where the business is, which can be different from where it is registered.

Separate corporate structure from where you base yourself. For example to start a limited company in Ireland with accountant fee's etc is about €300. Capital Requirement is €1. And that company can base itself anywhere in Europe. One of the advantages of the Single Market.

Holland has some very good tax breaks for start-ups. To encourage innovations income from innovations is taxed at 10%. Also if you a foreigner living there, there are some over tax breaks. You can also get tax breaks on employing people.

Berlin is cheap, but hiring people is expensive, but there are loads of start ups there. German Tax laws account for 2/3rd of all tax laws in the world. Somewhere there are tax incentives for R&D investment.

For corporate structure you should look at using a Irish company, as this is far simpler than starting a company in the Netherlands or Germany.

I think the difference between www.peerfx.com and currancyfair is that the later is already doing transactions peer to peer while according to peerfx they have not launched a p2p service yet. Maybe peerfx.com where too fast with a MVP.

Do we need banks? Normally when we transfer money the bank gets nearly 5% on the spread. And it looks like they are only charging $4 per transfer.

Ok Nielsen did this test with 7 users

We have moved along way since the simplistic rule of thumb that 5 users is enough. A very good argument in why 10 is not enough is Woolrych and Cockton 2001. They point out an issue in Nielsen formula (1-(1-0.31)^5) in that he does not take into account the visibility of an issue. They show using only 5 users can significantly under count even significant usability issues.

The number of users you need is dependent on how many issues there are, the cultural variance of your user base, and the margin of error you are happy with. Five users or even 10 is not enough on a modern well designed web site.

For example if we assume that designers of a web site have been using good design principles and therefore an issue only effects 2.5% of users. Then 10 users in a test will only discover that issue 22% of the time. If your site attracts a 1 million visitors a year the issue will mean that 25,000 people will experience problems.

The easy way to think of a Usability Test is a treasure hunt. If the treasure is very obvious then you will need fewer people, if less obvious then you will need more people. If you increase the area of the hunt then you will need more people. Most of the advocates of only testing 5 to 10 users, experience comes from one country. Behaviour changes significantly country by country, even in Western Europe. See my blog post here :

I don't think anybody that knows about Usability Metrics takes "Neilsen" that seriously. Neilson is more popular with the 5 user is enough camp while most people dealing with Ux Metrics believe that you need to be testing with at least 50 to 300 users.

I agree with you. Participatory design is not the same as testing a Hypothesis, which is what CD is about. The easiest way of thinking about it is what Henry Ford said "If had listened to my customers I would have bread faster horses". What Ford did was look at the Activities of his customers (need to go from a to b faster), and their needs and then came up with a Hypothesis which was the car.

He still researched the market, he still listened to his customers, but he did not use the customers solution, which is what Participatory design is about.

Our product webnographer.com is very much following Steve Blanks ideas of testing the Hypothesis. Webnographer is a online tool for remote usability testing. To start off we have been offering the tool combined with a consulting service, this has led us to to actually get very close to customers and understand their needs. From day one we have been charging customers, and therefore get rapid feedback if people will actually pay for it.

What is hard? All start ups are hard, but compared to the other start ups I have been involved in following the "customer development" mantra has been easier, because the feedback is faster and you can alter coarse faster. No business plan is ever going to be spot on, and no Hypothesis is either. Blanks ideas means that feedback is faster, and therefore risk is lowered, without reducing profitability. The more traditional seams like the waterfall method compared to agile.

Normally in Software there is two approaches a single software solution , or a best of breed. I.e. Office vs Lotus 123, word perfect, etc.. Or in the world of ERP having HR, Accounting, Planning software from different vendors. The interesting bit from this article is that is implying that cobbling bits together is a more reliable approach.

I have always been amazed in how the unix approach of cobbling bits together is often more reliable., than trying to write one large program.

We are using Grafico which is based on based on Raphaël and Prototype.js. It lacks PieCharts which g.Raphaël has. See: http://grafico.kilianvalkhof.com/

Totally agree there is nothing wrong about it been Turtles all the way down, but it would mean that "a little old lady at the back of the room" in 1927 came up with a ground breaking theory :)

Is this not a Turtles all the way down theory. We are in a Black hole which is inside a Black Hole?

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Grafico is really good but lacks pie charts. You have to use http://g.raphaeljs.com/ for Pie's. But that is not so bad as Grafico uses raphaeljs.

The judges have also adopted the US ruling over a libel action over a scientific controversy :-

We would respectfully adopt what Judge Easterbrook, now Chief Judge of the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, said in a libel action over a scientific controversy, Underwager v Salter 22 Fed. 3d 730 (1994): “[Plaintiffs] cannot, by simply filing suit and crying ‘character assassination!’, silence those who hold divergent views, no matter how adverse those views may be to plaintiffs’ interests. Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation. … More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models – not larger awards of damages – mark the path towards superior understanding of the world around us.”

From http://www.5rb.co.uk/docs/BCA%20v%20Singh%20[2010]%20EWCA%20...

Our startup Webnographer is run by my partner and me. It works well. We have had the funny situation of having separate hotel rooms booked, as a client did not know that we where together.

Some in Academia have debunked that testing with 5 is enough... See http://uxexchange.com/questions/328/ideal-number-of-candidat...

Groovy?

Users can't give you the solution, but they can give you the challenge that needs solving. By listening to your users you can see that they want a faster means of transportation. The issue is to listen to them for the solution will point you in the wrong direction.

The article is in fact wrong. See my comment above....

The article is wrong. The actual new law states :-

Where it is technically possible and effective, in accordance with the relevant provisions of Directive 95/46/EC, the user's consent to processing may be expressed by using the appropriate settings of a browser or other application.

Spoke with English Heritage and found out that they only do plaques inside London, outside it is done by the local council.

And this would be under the exceptional circumstance of an important historical event.