sabj

As a current college student sending out a lot of cover letters and resumes at present, I have to say I sure wish that the resume was obsolete.

I definitely try to supplant it personally with my online branding / presence, but right now people still use resumes a lot for some positions. I have enough good, sexy things to put on a resume that I don't mind, per se, but...

What I have 150% observed from my painful process at the moment is just how very, very ripe for disruption this whole horrible 'job application' process is. So many terrible software solution providers out there, with so little innovation or competition apparently going on to make their products more usable, less painful, etc. I can't imagine that they are doing so much to help make things simple for HR on the back-end, either.

If this was a subject that I was really passionate about, I'd definitely be trying to start a start-up there... would probably help if I could code half decently, too, but the point remains valid. I don't find it sexy, but it's a big opportunity. Happy to vent in more detail and help someone who is inspired though.

I can see good reasons for Facebook to build a phone, and would bet even money that that's what they're doing right now. However...

Media: "Facebook is making a phone!?"

FB: "No, absolutely not. Definitely not."

Media: "Well, that's exactly what you would say if you were making a secret phone!"

FB: "..."

I think Facebook is likely at least considering making a phone, and mocking something up in its skunkworks. I don't know that it would be very good, though. Only time, or lovely leaks to Palo Alto bars, will tell!

I think that decent, comfortable headphones - for a third of that cost - could do a lot of the same job without the added expense.

It doesn't seem like all hot air. Problem is, how to actually apply? Their jobs page doesn't have any links or email addresses.

Great story! Impressive that you were able to pull it together all the same.

Two questions:

1) At what stage did you realize that you really wished you had some help?

2) Looking back, what capacity / role do you most wish someone else had been able to fill? All of them, or maybe someone especially to do design for you, or something else...?

Very cool project, followed on Twitter to track those beautiful photos.

I'm not going to upvote any of these comments just to prove the theory false!

While there is always room to create your own role depending on what you bring to the table, in my existential struggles on this topic recently I have come to the conclusion that there isn't really a very satisfying role to be had unless you're able to really fill a niche well, or have excellent timing.

People for non-technical roles for startups seem to be much more fungible -- still hard to find great people, but a much larger pool to search from than just for developers.

That Apple store has the highest percent of "come in to play with / look at Apple products" customers that I have seen in any Apple store. They do make a lot of sales still, of course...

Coasting / running on momentum is not enough to defend the future prospects - stock prices are based on future expectations, not present success!

Might be a nice 'to-have,' but it was so easy to sign up I wouldn't really mind either way. It would take almost exactly as long to use connect / oauth as to put in info, since no email authentication or anything is needed. Especially since that way, no one else's servers can mess up your login scheme...

I thought it was really neat!

First thoughts: Would be helpful to have shadowed "username / password" in the first fields. I wasn't sure if those were for registering, or for logging in, or what. So that would be helpful.

Second thoughts: Love the simplicity, wish I could do more. Maybe that's not what you're going for - in which case, awesome! - but I'd love a way to go beyond the simple functions and have a simple but subtly powerful ability to do more. Fine though, can move on from there.

Third Notes: Your feedback logo is missing from the first page, just has the link. Intentional? Also, when I want to delete something, I would want something better than a "pop up" asking me if I wanted to delete it - a bit obtrusive. Better to have a fade out or something clever.

Final thoughts: Does something very very simple very well, I just wish it were less simple for my own needs. I also wish there were some quickly user-configurable style sheets to change the colors, since the shades of grey kind of mask the tasks etc and don't quite pop out in a way that makes it skimmable.

But I really like it and it seems to definitely meet the need you wanted to address!

I'd be interested to know stats about the impact of Y Combinator on companies with a nice control setup. Revealed preference: people who get in, but choose not to go to Y Combinator, vs. those who do... or something like that.

Flashbacks to summer 2009 - Twitter has lots of way to make money, and is doing so quite well at present. Sponsored trending topics, ads in the tweet stream, geo things, local things, other kinds of corporate tie ins... I don't know enough to say that X$ billion is worth it on their current business model, but honestly there are lots of way they can (and are) monetizing.

I've had bad problems in the Tenderloin but during the daytime I really enjoy upper / lower haight, find it to be very lovely. Beautiful houses and lots of nice shops and restaurants.

I've had problems with Muni, but uh, nothing ever that bad. The bigger beef for me is that on most bus routes, from A to B less than a mile, you can outwalk the bus.

Lots and LOTS of delicious crepes, everywhere you go!

I try to use them... whether the new Presidential ones or otherwise. People get angry and I say, you'll take your dollar coins and like them!

Obviously, I agree. I think that pennies are unfortunate for the opportunity cost, among other things. I like them for nostalgia and wouldn't want them to die completely, but if they went the way of the $2 bill, that would be OK - rare novelties, not a bother for pricing.

I actually want people to use more $2 bills, they're quite lovely.

@phamilton, not sure I follow. You could just round up or down as needed?

Whether Google Fiber ends up coming to Ann Arbor, keep fighting for the cause! A municipal effort could do much the same of what Google is doing. At the very least, it often scares companies into offering more competitive service!

I thought the game was really neat. Very impressive.

Feedback:

1) Control scheme was not as intuitive as it could be. Maybe it would be more obvious on an iPhone using my finger? I lost 95% of my health trying to figure out how to move my character.

Not a big deal since I could restart, but I was frustrated and might have left if I wasn't trying to figure it out : )

Also problematic is that this leads me to keep accidentally using up grenades because I keep thinking the intuitive behavior is to click-to-move, not drag-to-move.

2) Something of help could be to show gun ranges, so you know better how to move / draw a path.

3) Bigger issue: it would be very helpful to have a notice or info on what the kinds of Zombies are and what their special abilities are. Tutorials can suck, but even a few lines of text might help here, or something to help out the novice player. Likewise how to use health packs.

Well, it does that, too. It has auto-complete with suggestions.

My advice is to try to find a middle ground here, since the mental and other risks associated with option #2 might undermine your awesome ambitions.

What's your current visa status?

It's like the normal version, except very fast!

In the case of Google Instant, results start to show up as soon as you start typing. So if you wanted to find a page about "Vermont," you would see:

v... [results about "v for vendetta," let's say]

ver... [veryfine juice beverages]

vermo... [vermontster ice cream]

vermont... [normal vermont ads].

Kind of like that!

This was definitely an interesting case - I think I am angry at MSFT for not trying to do more to stand behind civil society groups.

For those interested, here is a direct link to the NYT article that Engadget just has a blurb about: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/world/europe/12raids.html?...

Post your resume here for more feedback... or e-mail me, happy to offer suggestions.

It's hard to say which projects you should or should not post without having some exposure to the scales you are talking about. What I can say from firsthand experience, though, is that school projects are definitely great if they showcase interesting thinking or ability.

Something isn't bad or worthless just because it was done for a class; plenty of companies, even, developed that way.

One thing that worries me about the android-as-tablet platform is that it's one space where a less strict control of the OS/hardware combinations means that there will be a lot of BAD products that come out, especially those that are racing out now before Google has released what sounds like nicely polished updates to Android.

I hope they don't do serious damage to the branding / concept of the Google Android tablet-sphere, since I am sure that a lot of great innovation could come from the combination of freely innovating companies and great Google software.

Too bad I'm not a software hacker, and don't speak Japanese!

I have a lot of experience selling Pocky and Ramune to teenagers, and speak Chinese fairly well, have studied in China... anyhow.

Sounds like great fun. Share stories, whoever joins!

Good parsing of the numbers here.

The stat that is traditionally used to show socioeconomic diversity (or lack thereof) is the % of students receiving Pell Grants, and in this department Yale remains weak, but it's not for lack of effort...

While median / average family income at Yale remains fairly high, financial aid is huge. I'm someone who gets crushed in the fuzzy middle range, but I still appreciate its generous policies. Wish that they were more generous, or that the cost of living in the greater Boston area was lower so that my family income was lower and aid was correspondingly higher. That's one big bummer - something reasonable in one part of the country might make you rich in Oklahoma, but that can't be, or isn't, taken into account.

:(

Zynga is feted as A Next Big Thing, and it spends and lives like the high flying start up it is -- I hear stories about Zynga taking its employees out in shifts over the course of a week to super expensive dinners, bringing in all kinds of other goodies, etc etc etc. (n.b., Google still _does_ bring in inflatable bouncy castles on occasions...)

But then I read articles like the ones in SF Weekly that have been doing a number on the company, and I saw, where is the real innovation? The business model has been successful thus far but I am hesitant to speculate about the future of the company because I haven't seen a consistent process for generating new material.

Then again, maybe that's no so hard, or maybe not even so important. Looking at big (non-'social') game developers, they are quite able to mechanize their processes for financial success...

This story made me think about the social fabric of America, and what it means. Think about it: how many of you don't know the names of the people who live near to you? How little do we interact with those in our immediate proximity?

Great sociology questions about big city life addressed in Doormen, btw: http://www.amazon.com/Doormen-Fieldwork-Encounters-Discoveri...