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MiCarga cofounder here. We wanted to tell our story, in a format that suited our position right now. It is an experiment, and we are fully aware that it may not be the right format for every investor. Regardless, we wanted a space to tell our story in more detail, and start better conversations with the right investors.

PS: We will update everyone in our progress.

Are you really going to try to keep repeating yourself in an attempt to compare this shady business to amazon?

Amazon is in it for the very long run (they just turned a profit this year). Good luck trying to continue to dance this song to the tune of amazon. It won't last. It is likely a legal practice, and your background might blind you into believing that unintended actions by well-meaning consumers is a perfectly reasonable business model to profit from (at least it is more transparent in the beating industry). At least you know that you are in it against the house, in most cases.

Shame on you.

"credits never expire. If you have 8 credits in your account, you can go get 8 pairs of shoes."

It is called breakage. If they do not expire now, they will start to expire soon. What good is it to accumulate some revenue, if you cannot claim it has no cost associated to it? Either you do not know what it represents, or you are playing a good card. Sorry for the sarcasm to start this, but it sounds fishy.

I have no ethical problem with sites that make it easier for customers to get an on-going service (a subscription), when it is more convenient to have it than the opposite. (cellphones, gas, electricity) In this cases, it is much more cool not to have to deal with $39 or whatever amount it is decided that the store wants to discount to call you upon that private VIP club. It is dirty pricing.

And yes, I did go to the link you provided, and I did noticed that it is not necessary to read 2,500 words to figure out that the company is walking a fine line in between ethics and law. Bravo, for the tack-team, probably composed of some 5th av creative minds and some hard knock lawyers.

But this does not exclude the fact that IF the site wants to be ethical, and IF it gets at least a very little percentage of its revenue due to this, it should try hard, very hard; to tell people that visit their site for their first time, that a little fuck you contract might fall in their lap that very day if they are not fully aware of what they are doing.

In fact, it it happened once, and you realize, it may be possible that it has been misleading, you should change it.

I really hope a more transparent player comes along and have you guys think about this very concerning issue deeply.

Sleep tight.

Beautiful. Thank you.

Looks like someone inside the Blackberry deal, trying to demonstrate how irrelevant BBM is.

With quicktime player, one can just create a new screen recording, and wait.

Same here. cmatthieu, what use do you want to give to this?

So a vanilla version of bangwithfriends?

Yes, please.

It may be, in the most darwinian sense. In the same sense that warlords justify genocides.

Interesting. Gotta try it some time.

I can attest that it is indeed the 'scummy side of the internet'.

I'm developing a real online business in Medellin (mentioned in the article as one place becoming popular) - and have run across a bunch of Timothy Ferriss groupies that spend their days perfecting the art of SEO, for businesses that they fully know bring in cero value to society.

They consider the internet a fool's playground, and their mission seems to be that of profitting from its fools.

Was the coffee move from Carte Blanche to Bourbon Coffee due to a change in location or a change in preference?

ALA New York Times. Although, I checked right before writing this, and it seems they got rid of it, or at least, they replaced it with a not less annoying, but potentially more profitable full page pop-up that forces you to sign up. I wonder if once singed, they have the auto-search. Can anyone confirm?

I see this as a direct boost of confidence to Khanacademy, MITX, and the likes.

My brother had just sent me this link while I was finishing up reading PG's essay: http://www.theuselessweb.com/. Coincidence?

No affiliation with Pando at all. Sorry to disappoint.

Sorry to disappoint, I wasn't joking. Nor am I in any way associated to Pando, Sarah, or anything related to them.

Thumbs up for the real-time hustlin' at the competitor's panel. You got me thinking on how to emulate it.

Off topic, you have something funny going on here: https://img.skitch.com/20121017-k22xwtq4ckqjattgd7xweyn6e2.j...

You may want to draw inspiration from http://www.sidereel.com/. Their interface is not that great. If you guys could improve on that, you may be on to something. Good luck.

Not all tech journalism is created equal - or for the same audience, for that matter. @sarahcuda at http://pandodaily.com is leading a hard battle to remain an unquestionable source of original content, investigative reporting and industry insights unseen elsewhere. Pando should not be placed in the same platter as TC, BI, Mashable or the likes. In my opinion, Pando is to tech, what The Economist is to business, or The New Yorker is to culture.

While we are on topic, can someone shed some light on the reason behind Mac OSX spelling corrector being so inferior to the one used in Microsoft products? I'm a big fan of Apple overall, but I find myself turning to MS Word to write what I really care about. Being in English or Spanish, Microsoft's corrector is light years ahead of Apple.

I was hoping someone would point out this issue. It's not just Egypt. Colombia suffers from the same luck. The real question is: What alternatives do non-paypal countries have?

I can imagine how the meeting after the scanners were proved worthless* went:

Boss: "Guys, the $1B investment in body scanners is worthless. Suggestions?"

Tom: "We could monetize the old way, call it another name, and pretend that we would actually do some extra security check to keep people from panicking."

Boss: "Good job, Tom. Get it done."

* http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3673462

I can imagine how the meeting after this posting went: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3673462

Boss: "Gentlemen: The $1B investment in TSA nude body scanners we made is worthless. Suggestions?"

Tom: "We could monetize the old way, call it a fancy name, and pretend we actually do something extra, so that people still feel safe."

Boss: "Good idea, Tom. Get to it."