HardyLeung

Like I said in the other comment, I did study this issue (to understand under what condition I can offer Tagxedo to users and when I can sell Tagxedo artworks).

Use of the logo design is fine. The use of the entire essay with distillation of selected words is definitely fair use (very transformative). The word "Y Combinator" is ... generic, but I'd buy that this is subject to debate (and yes I did refer to pg's YC not the math term). OTOH I can argue that this is really a commentary of YC so ...

And I didn't do this out of profit motive. It is first and foremost a tribute. Second, Tagxedo as an entrepreneurial venture is partially inspired by pg and YC. Third, I spent several hours to process the text and come up with the best design (much more than I usually do). Unless somehow boatloads of orders come in, I don't see how I can break even time-wise (which I already knew before I started).

I offer Tagxedo for free and many kids love it. Teachers told me that Tagxedo opens their eyes, seeing words and languages not as boring, but fun and artsy. If there is a any hint of profit motive it is to perhaps allow me to justify continuing to offer Tagxedo to everyone for free.

That said, I might take it down if I get a C&D from Paul Graham and associates. I wouldn't mind if pg takes this and run with it (sans Zazzle), adding to the famed gray and black T-shirts :D

This is actually the "Tagxedo" shop in Zazzle, and the category is called "Y Combinator".

The link goes to http://www.tagxedo.com/shop/y-combinator so this is also Tagxedo shop Y Combinator category. It's clearly stated that this is a tribute. I don't think I used language that is misleading, but I'll triple check.

Thanks!

I studied these issues a lot (copyright, right of publicity, etc), and I think this particular use is fine. You are right that sometimes it is easy to figure out the text from the cloud, just like you can make out a famous photo from a very small 10x10 thumbnail, or draw Mona Lisa in 50 polygons http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolut... or as a single tweet http://www.flickr.com/photos/quasimondo/3518306770/

To each his own.

I see it as an art, and I wouldn't say art is meaningless. Perhaps you want to check out https://www.facebook.com/tagxedo to see some more examples. It's much more than a blob of tags arranged in some random order to "help" navigation (that might be a bit cliche).

Some of my favorites:

http://daily.tagxedo.com/may-20-linkedin-rockets-skyward-in-...

http://daily.tagxedo.com/may-16-space-shuttle-endeavour-blas...

http://daily.tagxedo.com/march-23-faster-much-improved-firef...

This is cool! If you could use characters with different font sizes it may look better. Also kinda slow. You wanna explain a bit what you do? Is it just image -> choose a random point set -> draw? Is this based on Canvas or CSS?

I find it an excellent shorthand. I don't need to use much brain juice to remember that:

2^10 ~ thousand

2^20 ~ million

2^30 ~ billion

2^32 ~ 4 billion

I got one. I tried it, and it was okay for web browsing and it does the job well, 90% of the time. Unfortunately the remaining 10% of time requires use of desktop applications and I gravitated back towards my laptop. Since inertia is a big factor, I ended up not using the CR-48 much. I could say the same thing about my iPad.

The image cannot be the result of seam-carving because SC does not result in duplicated patches of the region. Moreover, the patching up (as others mentioned, to remove the scores) results in both non-zero offset both horizontally and vertically, which will not happen if you run SC (you'd expect either horizontal or vertical movements).

And you get tons of angry visitors.

Not according to cost/benefit analysis.

Amen. You spend, on average, say $1-$10 to acquire a customer, but you lose them in a dramatic, angry, disgusted fashion by trying to steal $0.000001 from them.

Javascript is way too slow compared to GPU, by at least a factor of 1000 or more. If you have 1M daily unique visitor and you manage to "steal" 10 CPU seconds from each of them, the amount of work would be equivalent to 1e6 * 10 / 1000 = 10000 seconds which is about 2.8 hours of one dedicated GPU-based mining machine.

Not hard to imagine. 700M users at a $70B valuation = $100 per user. I guess that's why how the current valuation of LinkedIn comes about. And if you use this metric, and believes that LinkedIn's growth potential is significantly stronger than Facebook, you could even argue that LNKD is still way undervalued.

BTW I made a Tagxedo (word cloud) of this morning's LinkedIn News, and one prominently featured word explains all (the word starts with "F" and ends with "k" :D)

http://daily.tagxedo.com/may-20-linkedin-rockets-skyward-in-...

Change it. Definitely.

I have Facebook email for a while, and I find it incredibly hideous. I have already "trusted" Facebook to more things than I wanted, and I guess I'd hold on to my gmail which is at least operated by another company that is less evi... uh never mind.

I like it! Please change the name though (I don't like anything that starts with "pha...", okay I may have a dirty mind).

Here's a good one for you: faxcinate.com faxcinating.com :D

That's amazing! Would love to know how he did it (I know he was quick, but still there are plenty of competition in a short amount of time).

You need better font choices (especially the name of the source).

Need sign in with Facebook.

I don't like the background... need a lot more work.

Your open double quote is not matched with a closing double quote. This is awkward.

What's your monetization strategy?

The submission should have been titled:

"Essential Lessons Showing How to Hack Hacker News with Data Visualization"

and it will be ranked #1 in no tim... never mind :D

I think '|' denotes the beginning or the end of the title, and '_' denotes a wildcard.

Amen. In fact, Microsoft should hire the Mono team, redouble the open source effort, integrate Mono Droid and Mono Touch into Visual Studio and offer them for free (like VS Express). This looks like an easy way to attract app developers to the all-encompassing Microsoft platforms, and help make Windows Phone an equal of iPhone and Android... This could be a major win!

He is active on Twitter and lots of people talked to him and asked him exactly that question, but there is no response.

Perhaps he should move to Microsoft to run .NET now that Scott Guthrie moves on to Azure App Platform ;)

Ideally Miguel de Icaza would clarify if this "rumor" is false but he's not saying anything (yet) and plenty of people are guessing.

Congrats! I use Colourlovers a lot and I think it's a great service. My application requires a lot of palettes (I can "themes"), over 200 of them, all of which come from Colourlovers. I tried to use Kuler, but it's just not as good.

It's just fascinating don't you think?

I think you're arguing for the sake of arguing, so I won't spend much time going back and forth. But I'm sure someone somewhere is thinking really hard about making an iPhone game that takes advantage of this development (e.g. "Angry CIA").

[no that's not what I was thinking about; one of mine is along the line of American psyche as defined by the event, the pivot (optimism), and the potential impact on customer behavior]

Note the word Most, instead of All.

The paragraph right above that sentence: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

I find it interesting, and the story gratifies my intellectual curiosity beyond belief. Also remember that hackers are typically young and a large part of their psyche can be defined by that monumental event happened almost 10 years ago. Hey, if you look carefully you might find startup opportunities out of understanding of this significant development.

You can always follow stories of famous prodigy.

Bad case - Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber) Good case - Terrence Tao (Fields Medalist)

I especially suggest you check out Terrence Tao's because he writes a lot and a lot of people write about him. I would consider him a success story as he is super intelligent, smart, and clearly grew up fine. However, I remember he warned prospective parents to "not do it".

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao Quote: "At the age of two, during a family gathering, Tao attempted to teach a 5-year-old child mathematics and English."

I'm disappointed with what Kai-Fu Lee is doing; I guess I expect more from him.

Disappointment aside, though, this strategy works. Take something that works, and apply to the China market. Why reinvent the wheel? But I'd argue that they should do a better job with "copying" -- you don't really want to invite criticism for no gain, unless the blatantness of copying is part of the strategy (to show investors that they literally and successfully cut-and-paste working startup businesses, like an assembly line).

Hmm, now that I think about it, perhaps that's the whole point.

Funny it doesn't seem that long ago (okay, ten years ago) Henry Blodget was on the other side of the fence.