secret

With 'dir' you could build a directory service where users send you a tweet containing another user name and you would return a link to a page with all the info you could find about them. For example: '@dir paulg' would result in me getting a link to a page that contains other public profiles from pg and links to his personal site and YC. Not sure how much of a business this is, but I guess it could be like the yellow pages for twitter.

I'll second that. I've used HostGator in the past and they are very reliable for the price.

I think the real potential FB has is not in ads at all, but in credits. If they can evolve that into a real alternative to PayPal that works on- and offline, it will be huge.

I was dying for something like this in grad school. Haven't had a chance to play around to much with it, but it looks useful.

Wow, I had this exact question this morning and was about to post something similar. In my case, the question was: say you know the beginning of a search phrase someone may use and you want to target long-tail variations of it, how could you rank the possibilities in order to start targeting from largest "market" to smallest. In your case, if you knew a keyword that the professional is looking for, I believe our problem is the same one.

For example, say you wanted to focus on wordpress templates. The set of possibilities of what type of template someone may want is open ended. ("Wordpress template for doctors", "wordpress templates fishing website", etc). I've tried using Google's Adword tool, but it doesn't quite do what I need, unless I'm missing something.

Anyone have any ideas?

"As far as I'm aware from the economics blogosphere, arguments about "structural unemployment" are popular these days mostly in right wing think tanks."

Actually, I heard Bill Clinton talking about the same thing on the Daily Show this past week.

I desperately want for this to be true. It's too awesome not to be.

It is something to think about. Service jobs were appealing because they seemed impossible/impractical to outsource, but its not necessarily the case with many anymore. Doctors/lawyers/realtors and the like will always be protected by their professional associations creating a barrier to entry through licensing and legislation. Maybe we'll see a rise in these sorts of regulatory boards for other professions.

Maybe we'll see a rise in business creation when people can't get a job working for someone else. It happens during every recession. I wonder what the impact would be of corporate jobs becoming increasingly rare.

Can't one problem solve the other? I know Google Answers flopped, but people were paying for research. What if instead you had to pay for membership like Metafilter? Granted, I don't think that would end up being a huge business, but it's one possibility.

Upvoted because its a good starting point for discussion, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with the premise. Why should anyone go into a productive industry (by which it sounds like he means anything in which there is an end product) as we move into a service economy and production continues to be off-shored? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding/missing the point. It seems like people at all levels should go where the money and jobs are.

I've read both magazines and agree that there is not much depth to their coverage (or most business magazines for that matter). My background is in math/business, so I do enjoy the logistics and finance aspects. The interesting challenge seems to be the initial market research/product development. Finding the right thing to sell and then putting together that thing seems to be the toughest part (someone correct me if I'm wrong because I have no experience in this).

The web in general is flooded with stores selling the same dropshipped products, so to stand out I believe someone has to take the path you did and have something unique produced, otherwise you're just competing with Amazon and the like.

I remember reading an article in Business 2.0 about "micro-multinationals" [1] and the thought has always been in the back of my mind to try creating a completely distributed company, with ecommerce being the initial distribution channel. Work and grad school kept me too occupied to give it much thought, but reading about things like this always reminds of the article.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...

I've been wanting to hear more about this type of business, but don't really know a good source that covers it. For example, the other day there was a story on here about a site that had just reached 200 subscribers paying $10/month after I believe 2 years. It was a lot of work and more successful than most apps will ever be. It was a really interesting read, but got me thinking: wouldn't it have been easier/more profitable to get into e-commerce?

The samples were really well made, they deserve something flashy to show them off :)

I'm not sure that's entirely true, although I've seen certain topics frowned upon in a general sense (I'm thinking of politics). What do you have in mind?

I really like it. As soon as I started using it, it was clear how to do anything. My suggestion would be to change the sample links on the home page to images. Also, it would be nice to try a demo before signing up.

I think you missed his/her point though. Captchas should prevent spam, allowing a user to include an arbitrary link that will appear on any random site is not much of an improvement to the site owner.

I think that actually happens in one of the sequels to 2001, but my memory is fuzzy about it.

I imagine we would lose the ability to learn about certain aspects of the planet (atmosphere, etc) if we changed it, but would the trade off be worth it given everything else that would be infinitely easier to study? I'm asking because I don't really know.

One Hundred Years of Solitude- The English translation is some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read. The story is amazing and its understanding of people is unlike any I've encountered before, but the writing alone gave me a completely new understanding of what literature should really be.

It's been described as "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Garc%C3%ADa_M%C3%A1rque...

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the tag line "no frills dating" will appeal to women. I get what you're going for, but I would try to reword that.

I would also suggest to try a different design for the page as it looks like a template for a dating affiliate site, not an original project.

Seems like you were doing them a favor in the first place.

I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt first, chalking it up to an overactive legal department, but on further thought it sounds as if what they have going is a roundabout way to sell their endorsement. In which case, their endorsement is meaningless, at least from a philosophical perspective.

For what it's worth, I completely agree with you about the fair use, but I'm not a lawyer either.

Very true. My point was that this just seems like a bad idea to me, and it would scare me from holding the stock if management keeps making deals like this.

Intel offered 60% more than McAfee was worth yesterday. Basically if you buy MFE now (up 57% as I write), you're essentially just buying a bond with a 3% return between now and when the stock switches to Intel. Of course, there's always a chance the deal isn't completed for whatever reason.

As for Intel going down, I would sell too. I don't really see how this deal makes sense.

It really does seem like the questions are worded to create contradictions where there are none. Almost like the author is trying to trap people instead of being intellectually honest (or even a decent philosopher).

It would be nice to have a section with all the "review my start up" posts. Those are usually some of the best ones.

I just finished my MSc Mathematics (in quantitative finance). If anyone is looking for a math or finance person that also knows some coding (basic C++, etc) I'd be willing to relocate.

I found it kind of cool how out of all the possible examples that aneth could have picked, this one actually happened.

Very nice. I like it more than evernote. There should be a way to save to the site without visiting (for instance, to send myself a bookmark). An Android app would be awesome too.

I don't know if you've seen this, but WolframAlpha now shows the steps to a solution in human-readable form. For example: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integrate+xe^x+dx Click on "show steps" by the solution.

It's interesting that you bring this up. I was an econ undergrad, so it made me think of how this will change because of technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm