lambtron

As someone without a trained programming background and never once used any version control (last time I programmed was for the ti-83 in middle school), Git at first was tough to pick up.

It wasn't until I went through Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial that I actually learned Github, master/branches, etc., and understood what are commits and pushes.

It would be fascinating to see in separate 'spheres of water' the make up of all the oceans, all the atmospheric moisture, etc.

Very nice app. Just curious as to the distinction of this among similar apps such as Stamped and Oink?

Very useful. When I bought my Honda '92 on Craigslist, I was optimizing for cost and therefore spent a few weeks just feeling out the price range for model, mileage, and title (I was only looking at clean titles). It seems that the search settings here do a good job covering what my primary focus was.

In order to jump on the hottest deals, I would set up an IFTTT condition to email me when new queries were posted on Craigslist. Would be cool to have some monitoring with this site.

Regardless, very nice work!

you can live a reasonably cheap life in new york--live in brooklyn/queens/nj, make food at home or eat in one of the three chinatowns, etc.

the expenses add up when you live in manhattan (probably $1k/month minimum depending on neighborhood), go out to eat and drink, and, essentially, exist. every time you walk outside you can deduct like $20 from your bank account.

there have been stories of people who scavenge for used/old/rare books and resell them for an exhorbitant mark up (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/10/confes...)

some arbitrage of used goods can be a business; but it ultimately depends on the effort required and sustainable the income generated.

techcrunch analysis should standardize their metrics with dividing by total number of startups funded. in addition to including revenues/profits, etc.

yes, definitely. not sure if the digital one is just a fad or if it is going to shape the way we perceive data ranges for the future

thanks for the great insights into the chinese entrepreneur landscape.

i am definitely interested in learning more about the details when and how the government becomes involved in the startup process. the reasons why companies like google and facebook have been denied entry to china (and why the chinese government supports its own versions, baidu and renren) are attributed to the fact that china does not want a US company to have access to the immense trove of data about its citizens (though other countries are ok with that). it is interesting to speculate how the internet and mobile startup culture in china will evolve as the rest of the world continues to innovate also.

i agree. america's financial system has been relatively constant since the 1980s but only recently have received overwhelming criticism due to the financial crisis and economic recession. when times were good, nobody complains. these protestors are just unhappy with their current circumstances. i admire their courage to voice their opinions but they need a clearer vision and focus in order to enact any change.

nokia has been continuously losing market share in both their high end and low end products. if microsoft is in a better position, it could be accretive for microsoft to buy nokia to support microsoft's flailing mobile division.

stephen elop's only hope is for nokia's vertu sales to remain high.

thanks for sharing, i think this is a fun, light-hearted application! i would be interested in seeing a percentage of how east coast rapper i am (60% east coast / 40% west coast) just to see the break out. also, it would be cool to show some of my tweets that feature some of those keywords, to remind me (as i couldn't recall any tweets that had those words).

aside from that, great work!

probably a good idea for groupon. though i enjoy bagging on Groupon's highly unconventional approach to wall street bankers in preparation for its IPO, seven years ago Google was in the same position [1]. Google exhibited hubris and showed no clear purpose for the proposed raised equity, ultimately IPOing shortly after the peak of its 'hotness'. That is not to suggest that Google's business is comparable to Groupon's, but that anything could happen. Google may have not IPO'd like a pro, but they are one of the largest shakers in the tech industry today.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14939-2004Aug19?la...

i agree. many small businesses are using groupon or livingsocial to bring in foot traffic, then switching the new consumers over onto their own loyalty programs to retain them. if the consumers like their experiences, they can join a mailing list, where the vendor can send their own discounts.

this, and highly unconventional approach regarding the IPO by andrew mason (not remaining quiet during pre-IPO quiet period, recent executive reshuffling), as well as questionable sustainability, will probably delay the IPO for several months. i, as i'm sure many others, are curious as to what the company will look like in a year.

i wonder if the company plans to pass along the staggering costs of a helicopter, private jets, and fleets of cars, to the end user. what would be the end users pricing plan for a helicopter from midtown to jfk? what other revenue sources does this company have? (maybe a marginal source from delivering food? delivering vital organs from hospitals?)

currently, to call a cab with uber in new york is more than 100% more expensive than it is to get a normal yellow cab. i can assume a small fraction of the general public would be willing to pay more for privacy and convenience (probably financial/legal elites). to keep a 'high liquidity' of cars will be expensive (particularly compared to new p2p car sharing models), especially when there is a high fixed cost and any unused cars would be eating away from margins.

i am just skeptical about this business model.

would be interesting to see the various balance of profitability and growth of competing groupon clones. maybe groupon can shift their emphasis from growth to profitability before time runs out.

thats true; i have yet to see structured financial data for cheap. although depending on the targeted audience, that 'structure' varies. equity analysts might be concerned about operational performance, top line growth, margins, and stock buyback programs. debt/credit analysts might be concerned about cash flows, revolver draws, commercial paper programs, etc. there are many niche markets and existing services out there may have already provided these structures (albeit not cheaply and they may be proprietary if at a firm).

building a retail brokerage firm around structured market information i think is harder than it sounds. unless the transaction costs for each trade reflect the value-add of having a 'free' service structure financial data. currently, transaction costs reflect the quality of investment reports prepared by (usually) CFA investment professionals. i'm not sure if the free structured investment information would yield a transaction fee material enough to warrant a sustainable business model.

seems like a great product for a pain that most people have. i don't seen professional investment firms or bulge bracket banks would use this, however; at citi we use factset and capiq and even those services don't reveal everything and have errors sometimes. the analysts, at the end of the day, usually goes through the filings no matter what.

like other comments posted here, professional investors, on the other hand, generally already have another service they pay for, or proprietary data/information (for hedge funds or prop shops at least) that aggregates the specific data they are looking for.

not quite sure what the target audience of this is; if its investors with the intention of condensing data to just q/q and y/y operational performance, then the financial information technology space is already pretty crowded.

i think this will be accretive as $39bn of cash was just sitting there collecting minimal interest and motorola is moderately profitable.

google has a strong management team with a pretty successful bolt-on acquisition history. even though this is one of their largest acquisitions, i have faith in the management team to either sell off the hardware component of the business, or otherwise somehow make this transaction a success.

even though i have my qualms about andrew mason, it seems as if it were the bankers working on the IPO that are doing all they can to get it approved by the SEC so they can earn the fees and to cash out before the public is allowed to invest in groupon. and we are still figuring out if the daily deals model is profitable and sustainable.

i believe keynes approach during times of economic recession is the right one. when firms and household spending declines, economic output will decline, leading to a deflationary spiral. government spending needs to increase to buoy the economy.

this was the one of the mistakes that occurred during the great recession; government chose to shrink its spending, thereby letting asset asset prices fall, thereby reducing production, wages, and demand.

had we allowed our large banks to fail, would have only amplified the impact of the impending recession. without government support, there would had been no confidence in our financial system and therefore our economy (as short-term credit markets are essential for the day-to-day operations of businesses). though not the ethical choice to bail out banks with tax payers' money, it was the right choice for the economy in the long-run.

however, the government bail out of the detroit big three is a different story.

technology is an inherently fiercely competitive landscape--a missed technology cycle can materially adversely impact a businesses operations.

coming out of the 2008-2009 recession, companies are flush with cash, of which shareholders encourage companies to invest in various operations, assets, etc. using these cash stockpiles to buy nortel patents and prevent google from enhancing their dominance / protection against litigation in the android space is a form of competition. it is all a game.

interesting to see this area of the smartphone marketplace, as opposed to OEM or OS market share by units. apple definitely has the upper hand in that it owns the entire vertical, from the iOS software to manufacturing the phone itself. furthermore, apple, having planned extensively what will go into the phone, is able to bargain for cheaper raw material costs, thereby increasing profit. not only does apple know how to dominate market share in iphone users, but also they know how to make incredible amount of money off of that segments business.