imp

There's a guy making a real-time fantasy football forum called SleeperBot: http://www.sleeperbot.com/. It's pretty cool. The success of one would probably depend on what it's being used for. The SleeperBot forums are great when football games are running. You would probably need some sort of reason to have a 'live' forum instead of a standard one.

Same here. As soon as I started a basic weightlifting program, my mild pain disappeared.

No, all classes are public right now. Would you want the entire class to be completely hidden from others, or can it be publicly viewable and require an invitation to join and participate?

Thanks! Let me know if you have any suggestions for the site. It's a project I've been bootstrapping for about a year, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it.

I use Curious Reef (http://curiousreef.com), which is a learning website that I created. You can create a class based on a book, break it down into smaller lessons, and then add assignments to each lesson. As you progress through the book, post your work, and your progress indicator increases.

For example, I'm working through the Bash Cookbook (http://curiousreef.com/class/bash-scripting/), so I broke each chapter into a lesson and turned it into a class. Even though it's been a while since I've worked on it, I have a log of what I've learned and I know right where to pick up with it. Also, taking a big book and breaking it into smaller chunks makes it less overwhelming and easier to progress.

How do you know it's accurate? Have you calibrated it? :)

There are actually two different apps on that list with the name Iceberg, and neither uses iceberg.com.

I haven't had this myself, but a couple weeks ago there were one or two people who said that they initially launched with a site that prompted a correction from Google. After a few weeks or so the prompt went away because their search term became legitimate. I can't remember the specifics though. It probably depends on the term and how fickle Google decides to be.

Make $2.00 today.

I was in a very similar situation. I was 21, studying mechanical engineering, not sure what to do with my life, but had high expectations. One book that helped me a lot was "I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was": http://www.amazon.com/Could-Anything-Only-Knew-What/dp/04405...

The book sounds corny, but it can help you get a better perspective on your life. Make sure to actually do the exercises.

Do you have a background in econometrics or regression analysis? You might be able to develop a model to predict winning horses.

I bought a GeekDesk a month ago and I love it. Typing from it right now. It's big and sturdy, fully adjustable. Can't go wrong with it. http://www.geekdesk.com/

I don't know if he followed the formula exactly, but it roughly sounds like what Jeff Bezos did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

There. One down, four to go :)

One thing that hasn't been mentioned much yet is marketing. Read the big popular marketing books such as "Positioning" by Reis and Trout, because marketing is tough. There is little technical risk involved with most web companies. The biggest risk is not finding enough people to give you money.

Great! Thanks for the info. That's very useful.

Since you're an IP lawyer, would you recommend that people starting out file their own trademark applications? It seems daunting to me, and I would be concerned about going through the whole process and winding up with a trademark that didn't appropriately protect me. Is that a legitimate concern, or should I not worry about that and file for a trademark myself?

Edit: Any tips or resources for people who have never filed a trademark before?

I spent some time (and money) discussing this issue with a trademark lawyer. A brief summary of what I learned is:

- Even if you don't own a U.S. Trademark for your mark, you still have some limited protection against others using your mark if you can prove you started using it first.

- Filing a trademark is always a good idea. It would cost several thousands of dollars, however to have a lawyer do it correctly. Yes, you can technically do it yourself, but after talking with a lawyer about all the technicalities related to trademarks, I would never trust myself to do it. Maybe others who have done it without a lawyer can give their advice.

- Registered domain names are only tangentially related to trademark rights.

Unless you have tons of cash to burn and have already launched and have good traction, I wouldn't worry about filing a US trademark application yet. What you NEED to do right now though, is search through the currently filed marks and make sure that you don't conflict with any existing ones. If there are any that you have concerns about, discuss the issue with a trademark lawyer and they'll let you know if you should worry about it. It's even better to have the lawyer search through the marks though, because they know what specifically to look for with conflicting marks.

I wouldn't worry about a big company actively trying to screw you over by filing a trademark for your company. What I would worry about is unknowingly stepping on a big company's existing trademark.

IANAL though. Hope this helps. If you have any doubts at all, talk to a lawyer. It may cost a couple hundred bucks for a consultation, but you'll learn a lot from picking their brain. Well worth the money.

Bazinga!

It's more massive, but the radius is bigger as well. It could be as low as 1.5 Gs. Modifying the gravitational formula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earths_gravity), it's m/r^2, so 3/(1.4^2) = 1.53 Gs. That's neglecting any local variations.

To protect against marauders ;)

> I am looking at running two instances to separate the db and the web server. Is it critical to set up some kind of VPN/tunnel for them to talk, or just set the security settings based on IP address?

From my experience, you don't need a VPN. Something like what this article mentions should work just fine: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do-i-enable-remote-access-...

For backups, you should set up your database on an EBS volume and you can then run a cron script to take snapshots on a regular basis. Could be hourly even, because it freezes the database instantly and allows it to continue operating with minimal delay. I have a 2 GB database that I snapshot in under a second. This is the ultimate article on using MySQL on EC2: http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?ex...

I did a two server setup on Amazon, and it was nice because you can scale up the web and db servers separately, depending on where the load is. It's also a lot easier to debug system related issues because you've already narrowed down half the possible search space. Make sure CloudWatch is enabled, because that's invaluable. I scaled up to an extra large web server and extra large high-cpu database server, and that handled up to roughly 600 req/sec for my PHP app.

For security, I'm not an expert so I can't give much advice here, but EC2 at least does a good job of restricting access on all ports by default. When you set up your servers, make sure to punch a hole in your security group for port 3306 so that MySQL can connect between the two.

I like site.com because the url is shorter. Just a preference. In these days of browsers on phones and url shorteners, it makes sense to keep the base domain as short as possible. If you redirect from the www, it takes care of everything.

Wow, that looks interesting. I haven't seen that before. Thanks for the link.

But there are other non-programming things to do like clean the house, buy groceries, pay bills, etc that need to be done that should be higher priority than watching a movie. Movies are for the weekends and for people who get a fat paycheck every two weeks and need to unwind after a long day at work.

It depends on the level of risk you want to take on. A lawyer will tell you to incorporate ASAP. Personally, I feel comfortable going without incorporating right up until I start taking people's money. Just my own comfort level though. It's not particularly hard to incorporate, so there's no real reason not to do it sooner rather than later. It's nice to do it before you take any money because then you can open a checking account in the company's name and your finances will all be in order from day one. That's probably the biggest reason to incorporate early. The chances of being sued when you only have 10 visitors/day is extremely close to zero. IANAL though...

There weren't any rumors that I was aware of, but I also wasn't one of those guys who spent a lot of time gossiping about that kind of thing. I think it happened extremely fast with the one-on-one meetings in the morning and the group meeting right before lunch. There wasn't much time for rumors to spread.

I'm surprised that he says to make the announcement before telling the laid-off employees one-on-one. When I was at GE and they had layoffs, the individuals were told first, and then there was an all-employee meeting to announce the layoffs. I thought that worked out fine. That way, the people who are in the meeting don't have to freak out and worry about being laid off. Does anyone here have experience either way?

I agree about the cargo cult part of it. Some of the speeches at the higher levels seem a bit theatrical and focus more on the presentation style than the content. Most beginners need a lot of work on their delivery, however, so it seems to work out great for the first few years at least.

I've been in Toastmasters for three years now. I think it's great for building confidence. Although I still have a lot of room for improvement, I've come a long way already. It will help you become better with prepared speeches, leading, listening, and impromptu speaking. I was president of my club last year, which was a good experience as well. I highly recommend visiting a club or two in your area. Each club has a slightly different feel and you should pick one that you're comfortable with.

Edit: To give some specifics, I used to have awkward and distracting hand gestures. I've learned to control them and I've actually gotten comments that my gestures are good now. Also, I initially tried to fit in too many details into my speeches, and they would always go over the time limit. I've learned to highlight the important points and trim speeches down (that takes work though). Vocal variety is something I'm working on improving at the moment.

Also, if you want to experience presenting under pressure, there are speech contests twice a year which are fun and competitive.

My personal opinion is that there isn't a need for this, but others have pointed out menupages.com, which I guess is really big. I've never cared to search for restaurant menus online myself. Even if you covered the city I live in, I wouldn't use it. Sorry. That's my critical feedback. It sounds like others do see a use for it though, so I could easily be wrong. I don't consider myself a "foodie" so maybe I'm just not your target audience. Do a lot of people call themselves "foodies"?