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BenSchaechteron The news embargo is dead. TechCrunch killed it. Let's move on.

While I understand your points, I still think embargos still have value -- especially from an entrepreneur's perspective. As someone who has worked for TechCrunch and now have since started my own company, I completely get the power of press and how hard it is to get if you're not a Quora, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

When you have news as a burgeoning startup, it is like gold. Your startup's traction may be in large part due to having people just know you exist -- which if you've ever started a website/company, you know how hard that is.

That being said, for the press to break embargos just to have reported the news first seems sort of unfair to the entrepreneur who worker his/her ass off to get to the point to even be in a position to have press. Usually the reason the press breaks embargos is so they can "break the news first". Then, no other blog/press will cover it because its "dead news" regardless of it may have value to their readers -- even if they're a few minutes behind.

Obviously, its a bit of a gray area. However, to me, the majority of the time its competition amongst the press to "break the story" that really ends up hurting up-and-coming startups.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (May 2011)

Palo Alto, California

GoPollGo : http://gopollgo.com

We're looking for a few good troops to join us in poll domination. These will be our first hires and will be full-time salaried opportunities with solid stock options.

We're looking for people who know Ruby / Rails / Redis / Nginx / Git / Javascript / HTML (HAML) / CSS (SASS) / Ubuntu.

We're located on beautiful California Avenue in Palo Alto, California.

Read more here: http://gopollgo.com/about/jobs

If you're interested: ben@gopollgo.com

BenSchaechteron How Quora Has Helped Answer My Questions About Starting a Company

Shameless plug: We're looking for really smart hackers to join our team -- including an Employee #1 position: http://gopollgo.com/blog/gopollgo-is-hiring

BenSchaechteron Quora engineers accused of vandalizing a clone’s website

From the comment thread:

"So Qato was caught plagiarizing and now they're complaining about supposed "vandalism"? Reminds of those newspaper headlines where the robber hurts himself breaking into a home and tries to sue the family."

I have to agree. This is basic javascript injection. Can you say, "blown out of proportion"?

BenSchaechteron Ashton Kutcher's Twitter Account Hacked at TED

So someone in the audience was using Firesheep. Horrors.

https://twitter.com FTW

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Who's Hiring (March 2011)

Palo Alto, California

http://www.gopollgo.com is a social polling platform and we're looking for rock-solid talent. Our stack is Ruby on Rails / JQuery / HAML / SASS / MySQL / Nginx / Passenger / Git. Competitive pay + options. Sadly, we are not accepting remote workers right now.

Check out our opportunities: http://gopollgo.com/about/jobs

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Who's Hiring? (March 2011 Edition)

Palo Alto, California

www.GoPollGo.com is a social polling platform and we're looking for rock-solid talent. Our stack is Ruby on Rails / JQuery / HAML / SASS / MySQL / Nginx / Passenger / Git. Competitive pay + options.

Check out our opportunities: http://gopollgo.com/about/jobs

BenSchaechteron Ask HN Startups: Which web language/framework are you using?

Ruby on Rails

BenSchaechteron UberMedia, Indeed. Bill Gross’ Twitter Ecosystem Empire Just Acquired TweetDeck

As a previous CrunchBase developer I can tell you that while it is usually pretty accurate there are times where it doesn't have a funding recorded. I usually go with what's written in the article because it is usually a quote directly from the source (in this case, $5M).

BenSchaechteron What New Twitter Employees Do For The First Week

Huzzah, I asked this question!

BenSchaechteron Yuri Milner, SV Angel Offer Every New Y Combinator Startup $150k

This is what I was thinking. It might be better for people trying to raise money from other angels who aren't a YC company because the new YC batch now has their boats floated for quite a bit more time.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Is it worth $60k and four years?

As someone who felt the exact same thing as you going through school, I say just enjoy school if you can. I loathed school -- but looking back, I wish I had embraced it more. Not necessarily the academia -- but the atmosphere. Plus, your GPA doesn't matter at all -- especially if you're going into the startup world (at least it didn't for me). I got a job at a startup right out of school and have since started a company with a few others. What is meant to happen, happens, in my opinion.

I now look back and wished I had spent a bit more time forming relationships with people and doing stupid things while I still could. It gets much harder to meet people after college as well in my experience. Just hack in your spare time and keep building projects. If one really takes off -- go for it.

BenSchaechteron Please Review My New Site

Thanks -- I'll definitely put one on the home page. Thanks for the feedback!

BenSchaechteron Please Review My New Site

Thanks for the comments. Great advice! Very much appreciated!

BenSchaechteron Please Review My New Site

Two others and I just launched http://gopollgo.com a few days ago and its starting to pick up a bit of steam! There are two parts to it: There is the free, consumer side of the site for anyone to use. People can create, vote and comment on polls. Think of giving your Twitter followers a poll to vote on rather than getting a bunch of @replies. All polls can be embedded as widgets where javascript is allowed. If anyone from Twitter is reading, we'd love to be able to embed polls that slide out pane as well ; )

Soon we will be launching a premium, paid version ( http://gopollgo.com/images/marketing/analytics.png ) where you can dive into your votes and segment data on a variety of mediums. The screenshot shows the USA, but we're collecting data for individual cities, counties, countries and will also have the ability to segment by arbitrary areas like political divisions, zip codes, or sales regions. Think of it as PollDaddy on steroids. I built this site because I was so fed up with PollDaddy. We hope to work with big brands on Twitter and websites with large amounts of traffic: Think FoxNews, CNN, and large technology/media blogs.

I also hope to release an API at one point so that websites can easily integrate polls into their websites.

All suggestions, comments, feedback, criticism more than welcome. I also would love advice for how to get this more publicity and users. Everyone seems to like it, but I just am having trouble getting it in front of people. I would appreciate it if you liked it, that you tell your Twitter / Facebook friends.

BenSchaechteron New "How Airbnb Works" video (shot at 13 locations around world)

This is going to sound so fan-boyish -- but I really respect what team Airbnb has done. Its so exciting to see them continue to kick so much ass and grow.

BenSchaechteron On Improving When Your Friends Aren’t

http://gopollgo.com

I'm creating a consumer/social polling website set to launch in about a week or so. On a consumer level it is basic. But we're going to offer advanced reporting, etc for bigger brands to connect with Twitter followers / Facebook friends, website visitors, etc.

If anyone would like beta access, feel free to shoot me an email in my profile.

/shameless-promo

BenSchaechteron On Improving When Your Friends Aren’t

I can really relate to this post a lot. While I have feelings of being sort of a dick when I come to terms with this, it is completely true.

I don't really hang out with a lot of startup people (perhaps I need to). But mostly it is because I really need a break from the scene sometimes. However, my only friends in the area are the same friends I had in high school who aren't doing a whole lot with their lives. It is frustrating to say the least.

Just tonight I got text messages from my friends telling me they drunkenly ran in my ex-girlfriend and are all having a great time out at the bars. Meanwhile, I'm sitting programming stuff into the night trying to make a business that could ultimately fail. But I'm learning a lot. Sure, I'm living in near-poverty. But I'm overall really enjoying myself -- even if it is quite lonely.

In a way, it is motivating. On the other hand, it bums me out quite a bit.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: How to fire sell a web startup?

Bah! I met you guys at a TechCrunch event. Sad to see it not work out. I would recommend Flippa. Or, perhaps what all the cool kids are doing: "Offer HN"

BenSchaechteron Show HN: Buffer - My November Sprint App

Yup, I initially clicked a paid plan, then clicked back, then clicked the free one. I was redirected to PayPal upon creating an account.

BenSchaechteron Show HN: Buffer - My November Sprint App

Very cool idea and I agree that the site looks awesome.

Something sort of annoying though: If I sign up for a free plan, I don't think it should automatically redirect me to PayPal to try to get me to upgrade. I think having it redirect to the account page is a bit more graceful.

Cool work! I can definitely see myself upgrading to a paid plan at one point.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

I built everything myself from scratch in regards to the maps. This includes all vector paths (you wouldn't believe how much work this is), JQuery & Raphael interaction. There is also some websockets goodness. 90% of everything is handled in the background then pushed to browsers via websockets (for browser which support them).

To get location I do a variety of things mostly based off of the IP address of a user. However, I've built up a lot of meta data around locations which I may release later on down the road. Happy to talk more if you want to email me.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to best solve this problem without complicating the UI.

I've thought about making everything ajax so you can use your arrow keys to navigate through polls much easier. The overhead for that would take some time.

I believe we may launch publicly launch as is (after bugs are fixed), then go from there. I'll keep you updated though.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

Actually, your location is determined automatically based off of your IP address. The map displays the majority votes for their respective regions.

I'll email you about the misspelling, though. Thanks.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

Yup. Once we actually are public and people are making polls, I think "take another poll!" will be very interesting.

We actually do infer location based off of IP address and a few other things.

Grok.io is cool. I like the look and feel of it.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

We should chat. Feel free to shoot me an email listed on my profile.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

Yes, this mouseover problem has been confusing me as of late. I'm using JQuery + Raphael to interact with the SVG map objects. I need to figure out this bug (which I believe is something particular to Raphael) by diving into some docs a bit more.

The geolocation is only as great as your ISP allows. I hope to allow people to change their region if they're logged in. If anyone happens to know a good geocoding service, please let me know.

I'll try to get something worked into the interface to show this.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

So right now there are 3 polls I think. And I have very odd polls that I've made. So that is part of the problem. I hope to make something in the future where you can follow topics and get emailed polls that interest you.

But I think you're right. Skipping should be easier. I'll try to figure out a good solution for this.

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

Ah, awesome. Nice find. I'll get this fixed. Thanks!

BenSchaechteron Ask HN: Please Test my New Project by Voting

We track where users voting come from so you can segment by particular referrers. For example, you could segment votes by Facebook users or Twitter users.

Mostly, we aim to work with larger websites/companies with large amounts of website visitors, Twitter followers or Facebook fans to easily aggregate what their users think.

I'm not positive we'll be able to eliminate bias though. Its on the to-do list =)