jharrison

What we're seeing is the result of Sarah busting out her business with minimal overhead. Virb + Wufoo + Tumblr = She got started on almost nothing (at least as far as her web presence). She's setting a fantastic example and following the "Get something up and iterate" advice pretty well, IMO.

Wouldn't the FBI want to get HBGary's copy anyway? Why wouldn't they expect the torrent to be tainted or incomplete?

Whose fault is it if a designer chooses to engage in a contest and they end up spending their time in a losing effort?

We all have to compete but rather than disparage a business owner for being a good steward of their money could you instead present a valid argument for using a designer as opposed to a contest? Some good reasons why a designer, that might hypothetically cost 10x more than a contest, would be better money spent in the long run, would offer a lot of value to this conversation. I feel like the last quote in your post is valid. Why would someone want to pay a lot and possibly get nothing for it? Is that not a waste of the business owner's time and money?

I'm not trolling. As a business owner on a limited budget and with clients in the same boat, I'm genuinely interested in the answer.

My mistake. Thank you for pointing that out.

To be fair, I didn't clarify a timeline. I'm just curious what HNers think would be the fastest option. Fastest could mean 2 years.

Thanks for the correction and clarification.

Thanks, Patrick. I meant to exclude consulting. I'm thinking of something that happens in your sleep, like a "safe" investment would. Web apps/niche software are where I would lean as well but that's why I'm asking. I'm hoping the collective experience of HN can expose other options.

Could I live without it? Sure. In that way it's probably a little over the top.

As many replies to your comment suggest, the user experience is pretty great. However, in my opinion, OP was probably referring to the awesome performance of V8 (the Javascript "engine" under the hood). Chrome has become my defacto recommendation to anyone who uses Javascript-heavy web apps. There's also a nice set of developer utilities for Chrome that make it a very useful tool when developing web applications. Perhaps he's suggesting that, as a tool, he finds it indispensable?

What do you do when the answer is, "Nothing"? I find myself in situations that I really really want to change but can't come to a solution that I feel will work for everyone involved (family). My solution is basically to delay action and tell myself that THAT is my solution, for now. One of the comments in the post was to "change your mind". Maybe that's what I'm doing.

His site is in his profile. You can probably surmise at least a portion of his story from that.

I agree. He's not as SOL as he thinks, in general. I think where the SOLedness comes from is that he has a tax bill that he knows he can't pay right now. It's a scary place to be and probably feels like the end of the world. It's not (yes, speaking from experience).

It's unlikely that the IRS will do anything drastic in his case. He'll probably just go on a payment plan and figure out how to move forward with his website. They'll work with him.

It seems pretty clear by the article that he wasn't doing any of the "business" things like tracking deductions or documentation of any kind. He could probably muster up his hosting and domain name bills but that would be it, and probably the majority of any deduction he could take anyway (recognizing his library and other "support" items as deductible as well).

I have to agree. The parent seems to be basing his comment on some form of logic or reason, neither of which seem to be prevalent in government dealings. Not recognizing the burden of 1099ing every entity that I do $600 of business with shows how disconnected the author of this particular bill is from small-businesses. The good news is, there ARE a few politicians who have seen the error in this bill and are attempting to do something about it.

As a small-business owner myself, I can sympathize with the OP about having to get all businessy with his website. Being a small-business and "doing it right" can be a lot of work. You either do the work yourself, or you pay someone to do it. There are plenty of ways to go wrong if you're not on top of it.

I believe they are using HTML5 to accomplish this.

Great job! Having tried to create my own file sharing service a few years ago, I applaud you for getting out an MVP. It's really easy to keep adding features and never get a product up and running.

I'm not sure if you want bug reports yet but I had one file appear in the list 4 times just after upload. I only uploaded once. When going out to "Your Crates" and back to the particular crate the filename was only appearing once so just something in the rendering after upload, it seems.

Congrats omarish. I had this exact same idea rattling around in my head a week or two ago. I have recently been thinking that I needed someone to work with as an accountability partner, someone that would keep me on point. Not wanting to burden anyone with that I began thinking of a way to automate it. Your new service looks like it fits that bill. Thanks for executing.

Thanks for jumping in, Austin. I wouldn't expect a direct answer as to your monetization strategies. I was hoping others had monetization ideas that were as yet escaping me.

Can we expect any kind of data report from you? A growth chart, usage data, anything that might defend the viability of the concept to those who question whether we need another social network?

Thanks, malloreon. It was indeed your unanswered question that prompted me to ask again. I appreciate Austin chiming in below.

Ah, yes. That IS a replacement for the "Profit" step.

Who would buy such a thing? Seems like an interested party might not like the idea that the TOS is so locked down (I'm presuming that the privacy is spelled out in a TOS, I haven't looked). Is a developed social graph really worth that much, especially if (as is mentioned in another thread) the groups are temporary, one-time use? I guess there's always the possibility of buying it and dispensing with the TOS and replacing it with a more open version.

Again, I'm just very curious. Having a hard time wrapping my head around this.

There have been a few threads on HN about Fridge and in at least one the question about the magical "Profit" step was asked. I'm genuinely curious how a platform specifically targeted at people who want to maintain more definitive boundaries in their group memberships makes money.

Maybe I'm just not savvy enough to get it. The only thing I can think of is targeted advertising but even that seems a little sketchy given the premise that Fridge is ultra-private. How do you capitalize on a social graph without seeming to cross the line with privacy?

I guess the other option is to eventually charge for features in a sort of Freemium model.

Anyone have any other ideas how you monetize such a thing?

Technically he's a javascript "star guy". Thomas Fuchs, creator of the script.aculo.us library and core contributor to the Prototype library. Both libraries have been a big part of Rails development for years although many people are now moving to jQuery.

I don't think it will. Jasons's new project isn't just run-of-the-mill WP hosting. It's a cultivated WP environment with a different target than the Windows Live platform, in my opinion.

I'm certainly not qualified to argue with you on anything security related (nor would I want to). I'm simply clarifying Rails default handling of destructive actions which is probably semi-offtopic.

Not to be totally nitpicky but if they're using any recent version of Rails (I haven't looked at the source yet), the DESTROY action doesn't respond to GET by default. That doesn't change the fact that they don't scope deletes to the logged-in user's assets.

Their primary product (the SEO tool) isn't what this article was about. It was about NEW offerings that he wanted to test, how he went about it, and what the results were. IMO it was exactly what was represented in the title.

This seems to be somewhat related to the idea of test marketing an idea with some Adwords and a landing page. In both cases this is a wonderful example of what can be done with the many valuable services that have popped up over the last few years.

This was a very timely article for me. I hadn't heard of Unbounce before so thanks for the tip.

Linode is a VPS provider, not a cloud provider like EC2. Instances are always on, not on-demand. If they are ever killed it would be because of some kind of outage but I've found that to be extremely rare in my experience. Slicehost has also been good for VPS.

I spent a couple years in South Korea a number of years ago and challenged myself to squat as the natives did. It didn't take long to achieve full heel contact with the ground but I never felt entirely balanced.

FWIW I found regular sitting toilets in most homes and establishments that I visited. The "squatter" was actually not common in the parts I traveled (25 years ago and mostly in Seoul). I think I used one twice in 2 years.

If you're removing your rear from the seat while leaning forward, then maybe. The point of squatting, besides the angle of the innards involved, is the pressure on your bum. Leaning forward, or raising your feet of the ground, as is mentioned, won't decrease the pressure. That motion is more likely to increase the pressure. There are a number of articles regarding this rectal pressure as it contributes to hemorrhoids. IANAD...just my 2 cents.

i7 920, 6BG DDR3, Dell 24" monitor running Windows 7 64 bit host with Ubuntu VM and Win 2003 server VM (both via VMWare). Ubuntu in the VM is faster than Ubuntu on bare metal Core 2 Duo E6550@2.33Ghz w/2gb ddr2. Only downside (totally non-critical to me) is VMWare won't support the advanced graphics stuff for Linux.