HardyLeung

Way too little information to convince me to give out my email address.

My site Tagxedo (http://www.tagxedo.com) makes is a word cloud app, so naturally I set up a Twitter search on the phrase "word cloud", and I track it using Tweetdeck.

However, I think at least 1/3 of the tweets captured by this search is of the form:

"Stop using the word cloud!"

"If I hear the word 'cloud' one more time my head will explode!"

and so on.

Well, don't we already have to do that for "open", "closed", "evil", "chrome" (multi-definition), "app" (web, native), "social", and so on?

and BTW, Microsoft didn't start this. Remember Native Client?

I tried it but frankly I am not a fan of this. Experience-wise it reminds me of those "Enter to Win a Prius" box in the mall where you fill out your information in hope of winning something which even you realize will not happen. In the meantime your personal information got sold to various mailing list...

I know you are not like that but that's my first impression. Your site is too showsman-esque (even the logo, and your NAME) and in this age of privacy (or lack thereof) I think many would be turned off. Try to think of some other ways to come across as less slick-oily.

For example, you may want to do this in a way that participants always win (instead of entering for a chance to win). Give smaller prize that doesn't cost your advertiser much. Hammer the fact that participants not giving away any personal information -- I think you said it in the website but the message was not strong enough.

I have to say, this is simply brilliant!

I think the Google folks will disagree with you :D

I think it is a brilliant marketing term. yes they hijack the term "native" but if in fact they can deliver, it will be a clear differentiator in users' mind, like this:

IE10 = native = fast

Chrome = not native = slow

Simple message, and it works IMHO.

I'm watching MIX'11 live and so far the demos are great (like the fishbowl benchmark, completely blowing Chrome's fish out of the water ;D) but they are still just demos.

Come to think of it this way. If there is even a 10% chance that this is true and the settlement would be at least in the range of $200M to $1B (wild guess), and the lawyer's fee is 30%, that's an expected payoff of $60M to $300M. Nothing to sneeze at.

Even if they lose, think about it, DLA probably already have some spin about how they are just being "professional" about due diligence and doing the best they could for their client. No loss in reputation.

I am hopeful. I think privatization and space tourism will make the field of space exploration more interesting in the next 50 years.

I hate it. I understand the motivation, but the coin has two sides. Sometimes I want to contribute, and the karma-less system allows for greater discussion instead of easy convergence to groupthink. Sometimes I want to just benefit from the insights, and I can no longer do that effectively without the comment karma.

You should not base your strategy on eventually getting accepted into YC. There are just too many applications and the acceptance rate is very low. The majority of the applications were rejected, and I am sure many are very good. YC is just one route, and if you are willing to take YC out of the equation, A/B/C/D are all doable and the best route really depends on your situation (how much do you believe in your startup, can you bootstrap, do you need coaching/funding).

I learned C, then C++, then C#. I'd say I love them all.

Dave McClure has some strong opinion about this.

http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/why-not-to-do-a-startup

This won't weed out TechCrunch submissions because they are usually upvoted above average. But the idea of charging against Karma is sound -- inferior submission incurs a certain "collective" cost to the HN audience and hence must be paid for. Only downside, as many have mentioned before, is that this turns the focus to Karma.

I wish you didn't.

I don't mind.

I think this make it more colloquial, hence more personal (at least to some).

Like "Wanna lunch"? You most likely would prefer that over a fully formed, grammatically correct subject line.

and I would add that the content distributor problem is also a good one to solve (with your solution). May even be more profitable... a lot of people want to sell stuff, not link.

great idea, but if your site is getting traction, you'll have to face tons of imitators -- after all, you already said that this is a weekend project. They are going to undercut you like crazy if you are doing 30%. So might as well make it as enticing as possible, maybe just 3% overhead (or even 1%).

If you are considering Flash app, take a look at Picnik and Pixlr to see whether you can really beat them (hard).

If you are considering AJAX, don't. There were a multitude of webapps but they got killed by Flash-based apps (Picnik, Fotoflexer, and Pixlr).

Java (client-side)... not really. Name an advantage over Flash... actually there is one, which is something you can use on Android. This may call for a come-back.

HTML5. Check out Sketchpad. It uses Canvas very well, but there are things that are very hard to do with Canvas (that Picnik/Pixlr has perfected with Flash). It depends on the type of image editor you want to implement. HTML5 may be sufficient. Look into what functionalities Canvas can offer you and cross-check that with what you want to accomplish. Contrary to public perception, HTML5 is not a cure all, certainly not as a platform for image editing.

I hope this is not a homework/research problem :D

Why not plain old Javascript?

Yes.

That's brilliant! I wholeheartedly agree. Given that developers are going to develop Android no matter what, reduce their obstacle to building WP7 apps will result in lots of goodwill from many Android developers and the opportunity to ride the developer curve. This is truly the "Developer! Developer! Developer!" strategy (though not one Steve B. has in mind).

Disappointed. This actually reads like an eHow article. Almost all points are trivial, and are nothing more than pitching the other side of the coin (of why you should start your company in the Valley):

Indepedence? SV: Connected

Low Cost of Living? SV: Center of the Universe

Lower Wages for Top Talent? SV: Where talents are

Fewer Nearby Competitors? SV: Where the action (people/market) is

Relative Obscurity? SV: World renowned

I think the question is something most entrepreneurs in and out of the valley have thought about a lot, myself included. I personally very much like to see more action in Pittsburgh and Portland (OR). I don't think the author offers a very compelling, deep argument beyond what a content-farm author can put together in an hour or two.

I vote for Posterous. Really easy.

Excellent service! I tried it and it's very simple and easy to use. I'm curious... how does one initiate a P2P transfer between two computers using just browser technology?

sure, just to experience what a fundamentally new and important class of device feels like. You may even be inspired to develop something that takes advantage of what iPad can do (that other devices can't easily do).

On the other hand, I hope something better comes along. Grubhub charges restaurants 10-15% commission on order (10% figure from $8.5M revenue on $85M food order, 15% figure from other sources I've heard). There got to be a better way.

I haven't experienced much downtime. I think I'm more weary of the quality of content than the down time. The quality of content has gone down quite a bit. There seems to be a group of topics/meme/techniques which dominates the top posts. You can even call them the "Strange Attractors" of Redditsphere.

I wonder if it is possible to write it as a Chrome extension?

this is a wonderful and easily monetizable application. Hope you're successful in bringing this to the mass. Two very minor aesthetic suggestions: (1) when I hit the play button, it should play automatically instead of just bringing up the popup, (2) plan & pricing ... I think it is better you say something about the plan rather than "free for now".