incomethax

I can agree from personal experience. Premature networking can kill a startup.

Edit: What I mean by this is networking at the expense of product/technology building.

How is this different from Hypertable, other than being written in java rather than c++?

http://www.hypertable.org

Add that to the fact that some people are estimating the facebook app industry to be making over $100 mil, while facebook itself still has trouble trying to moneterize, which is all conducive to facebook (legitimately in my opinion) charging app devs for a smiley face sticker.

But that also opens up an interesting business model for facebook: build the platform for users to use for free, then charge developers to use your platform to get access to the users. They could even go for a flat percentage of the app revenue.

So they're trying to replicate Bear? If they were, then paying $25-$30/share for Merill would be teh FAIL. Merrill most definitely has a better balance sheet (given the stockholder's equity section) than Lehman, and also less exposure to the types of risky securities that are failing.

I for one wouldn't want to be in ownership of any financial in this market.

On a side note, money seems to be going through almost a daily rotation of sectors. One day tech's up while everything else is down, the next day its biotech, commodities etc.. Tomorrow is going to be a down day for financials, which has meant an up day for techs in recent days. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

The fact that they are trying to build an ad business can be countered with the fact that they have not yet built an ad business _successfully_.

As such they don't really lose anything by taking away Google's core business in the form of an ad blocker. Microsoft has always been very worried about Google, and Balmer has compared Microsoft and Google as rivals in the software industry. If Microsoft can leverage their control over browsers in IE8 with an ad blocker, then they can potentially take a large chunk out of Google's bottom line, and make Google a much weaker 'rival'.

well, when its this easy it gets concerning... http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/how-to-hack-an-rfide.htm...

Seems like it, that's all I get as well

Just goes to show the power of a truly viral campaign

As a student (and founder) at UW-Madison, I can honestly say, we are still very much lacking in financial resources necessary for a web/tech based startup. Most of the VCs around here are interested in Biotech/bio based businesses and the angel networks are also heavily skewed toward that type of investment.

That said, both Google and Microsoft are opening offices here and the CS dept. is accepting more people into their program.

We've also recently gotten a Kauffman grant for UW-Madison, and student orgs like the UW Entrepreneurship Association and Collegiate Entreprenurs' Organization have been gaining popularity to allow for lots of different types of business ideas to develop if you're not looking for web based software. That's not to say there aren't any (We're one), but there are definitely fewer than SF/Boston/Twin Cities.

CNBC just reported that 8 people bought this app... That's just sad

I've actually added searchyc.com to my firefox search box, but even so, HN would be so much more usable if there was a search box in the orange navbar

Which incidentally also reflects the personalities of the three Operating Systems

Ruby Wranglers.

Link's expired

So of the increasingly fragmented population, one Chinese University has slightly more phD candidates than any other university.

Can't say that it really surprises me. What does surprise me is that the economist picked this up; generally their more 'internationally neutral' than blatantly pro-US.

I've been thinking the same thing. Some of the ways I think we can change the way this happens is by integrating multi-touch and gesture technologies and having a "double screen clamshell" design. I've seen designs like that around the internet, but I think that would be the way to go as a gradual move towards more natural human-computer interfaces.

I've thought about such systems when hunting for startup ideas, but the snag that I kept coming across was: how do you convince people that they need all of these other 'smart objects' in addition to the people need to mesh the variety of smart objects.

On the other hand, most large manufacturers use robotic systems in the actual production of goods.

blueroof.com has a widget that links MLS data to local listings in Salt Lake.

Methinks there is potential for a web startup to sell such widgets...

Its kinda ironic, Google had been seeing such high growth rates for a business of their age and size that it seemed as if they were defying gravity. Add that to the environment in the Googleplex, and you have a company that doesn't feel like a company.

This creates the potential that Google will overlook something, which will lead to some little guy taking their place as they took Microsoft's as the standard in software development

It also brings to mind a certain lawsuit involving Psystar and a certain product clone...

I bear no grudge against Apple, Microsoft, or Google for not 'contributing enough' to Open Source.

I love it when companies make their products open source, but after all, they are companies and their primary objective as publicly traded corporations is to create value for shareholders.

My opinion on the matter is simply, give Microsoft and Google a break.

Would you pay to access Youtube? Facebook? or even Twitter? Most hot web services work only because they are 'free' for most users, scarcity doesn't help Youtube, Facebook,or Twitter. Think about all the pain caused with every Twitter outage. The early adopters simply get the 'I've been here longer than you' status when you display publicly how long they've been involved with your service.

High oil prices weren't a problem during the stock bubble of 2001, or even the housing bubble of 2004. The reason that oil prices are skyrocketing, is simply that traders (mostly hedge funds) are putting all their money into commodities instead of, stocks, real estate or bonds. All that regulation will accomplish is forcing the collapse of the commodities bubble, and we'll end up with a bubble elsewhere.

I think what Spalding wants to get at is the fact that as entrepreneurs, we're overlooking the real change that we can induce at the whims of the VC community. There are other ways to finance. There are other ways to innovate. Isn't it time that we decided to take action on this "problem"?

I think that there are plenty of problems to tackle, especially in the way we handle information. Let's get out there and change the world.

Before I started my first startup, I used to see all sorts of problems and never really think that they could be applied to something. But after I started something based on what a friend of mine came up with, I've been able to see so many problems that I've had before, and come up with ideas on how to solve them. The only difference was that I had gone through the process to understand a fundamental problem that existed and focused on how to solve that problem.

What I'm trying to say here is that the difference in thought is really thinking if anything that you are doing could be done differently or better.

I would argue that my thought processes pre-startup and post-startup are very different, and also that I've been able to have new ideas because of it.

The site looks very wordy. Even if you're in the business of teaching language, you're users still don't want to see that many words on one page. Try breaking up all your benefits into separate pages like a tour.

I really like the idea and the interface once you get logged in, although I don't really like the background color, except for the purple on the bottom of the front page