VuongN

Thank you so much for your words. I will definitely keep them in mind as I continue my research.

In term of your suggestion about incorporating the business, I assume that I need to trademark the product's name and taglines? Is that enough protection?

Again, thank you so much for your advices--very helpful!

Bringing Your Friends to Bing: Search Now More Social is one of the popular stories. I'm not sure if I trust that list of "popular stories"

Have you contacted Google with you question yet? I would imagine if enough people ask them about this, they would have to come up with a solution somehow. Perhaps you might start a campaign requesting Google to provide a tool for legitimate businesses and companies to "migrate" their .cc traffic to a new domain name. Again, it wouldn't happen if you don't ask and if you don't ask, it would never happen. If there are enough people asking --> publicity --> Google will answer. But sometimes, all it takes for things to change is one person. That person can be you :)

Hubspot is doing this. I found it to be very refreshing while working at Hubspot. It was a very wonderful way to work. "Come in when you want, leave when you want as long as you get your work done" Your schedule is agreed with the small team you're in and when you're tired, take as much rest as you want.

I think the touching thing about it, was that the CEO's Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, were worried that people would forget to take their vacations.

By the way, Hubspot isn't a small company. They're above 200 people now--and it's working great for them.

I think when I have the opportunity to run an organization, I'll go with the no vacation policy as well.

As an Asian male who grew up in a culture with deep-rooted sexism elements, I found this article very sad. Every time when someone hint that women is in any way inferior, I think about my mother, with her 5th grade level education and a determination to raise us kids well.

Both mom and dad work a day job, but when both of them come home, mothers are the ones who take care of dinner, children etc. I grew up with a promise to myself that I will break that cycle of sexism with my own family (I'll be a 1 year old husband in August :P)

Just thinking about it, what do you think Hackers community can do to make it more warm and welcoming for female hackers? I remember reading an LA Times article recently about how startup culture is inherently male--what can we do to make it more equal in our own community?

We should sell all of Facebook to China. Now that Google+ and the social network scene is getting hot, let China buy a bunch of hyped up virtual assets (which I think is already plateauing). Then we play the waiting game with China... again.

How about you start with this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714304

I think it's the same concept. But you are definitely in a much better position because you can produce the product? Find a good adviser and deal with the non-technical co-founder once you have the MVP. I think it serves you better if you do your own marketing (blog, socialnetwork and other unobtrusive marketing). I'm doing that right now and I think I feel very good about it. I guess the question is: do you need one right NOW?

I completely agree with this article, I would also add the following. I'm so tired of seeing these posts on HN--I do appreciate the genuine feelings, but my gosh, I am so frustrated when I see posts on Ask HN: 1) What should I build? 2) What programming language should I learn? Both question tells me the poster hasn't done enough thinking and research on their own and is asking a VERY BUSY community to do the legwork for them. The questions should be from this stage:

1) You are trying to build this idea, you've researched and tried a few strategies in thinking about this [then explain what you're thinking], any other suggestions before you go build this thing? Fine, this is a meaningful conversation we can have and will afford opportunities for everyone to learn from it. Most of us are building something because we mostly CAN'T sit by/live without it NOT being built.

2) If you're a young and a starting out hacker, all you have to do is Google your questions. Most questions, believe it or not, have been answered. All the programming language X vs Y, framework A vs B questions are usually answered extensively by many other wise hackers that went before you. If you don't spend the time to read, understand and appreciate those reading/researches which many hackers in the community had spent the time writing them out specifically for YOU, all ou're doing is asking a VERY BUSY community to do your basic legwork for you. No, that's now how it works. Most of us learned stuff/languages because we are hungry for it. We ask questions on freenode etct, read articles, books AND discuss in depth about what we're trying to learn.

/rant

I don't think so. Asked a few people who has access and some even work inside Google--there isn't an invite "box" yet. It seems like Google is keeping it tight on this beta. But in the words of Principal Seymour Skinner: "Prove me wrong, children! Prove me wrong!"

Worked for me when I did it on Debain Squeeze. I later ended up uninstalling the apt-get version and install the newer version from pipy via pip.

I definitely keep going back to my MVP plan to cut down the scope-creepiness so-to-speak part of my work. It's getting better.

Are you breaking up with your girlfriend to do startup? That's a bit of an extreme case isn't it? I could understand if there is implication of bigger issues--but the world is quite a lonely place without people, my friend.

I wanted to commit to startup/entrepreneur life for 2 reasons: I can't live without it and I want to take care of my family with the rewards :) You can't possibly conquer the world without love ones' support. It is such a lonely path, being entrepreneur, already. Any love a long the way would only enhance it.

By the way, some might trade everything for a snuggly full night of rest.

Stay enthusiastic, my friend and good luck.

I'm learning python on the fly, but I tend to ask a lot of question on freenode's #python. Installing lxml wasn't so bad. I just did "pip install lxml" (easy_install lxml should work too) on my Debian VPS and home server. Seemed to work for me.

I am sticking with lxml only for my scraping and html5lib to do my richtext parsing.

I drink tea and water. Only when I have to (social events), that I'll have a beer or two. But yes, tea and make it into a serious thing--I have tea room at home :) Hope you feel better.

PS: I hear green tea is suppose to be good for you.

I think most (PHP) web startups tend to use frameworks (CakePHP, Codeigniter, Zend etc.) rather than CMS. Believe me, the trouble of hacking up a CMS to do what you want is more than just build stuff from scratch with a framework.

Yes, you definitely need to create a login/signup links. Just ask yourself this question: "what do I gain and loose by not having a login link?" Not all people read and not all people look at icons, so you usually have to have both icon and text to get all your users to take actions. If you make it less of a guess work for your users, they will appreciate you for it.

One thing is for sure, don't use the same password for all your important sites. To make them easier to understand, have a system of differentiating from 1 site to another. As always, I try to: 1) numbers and letters 2) not a real dictionary word 3) Mix of lower and uppercase

My real paranoia is still: "what if this/that website doesn't encrypt or hash my password?"

Believe it or not, I was in your shoes about a few weeks ago. I decided against the online/web services because I felt it was a bit limiting and I rather have my stuff on my own computer. Here's something I found that fit all my needs and yours: http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx

You can generate stuff into other formats AND html with jquery tab. Some pretty nice options. And everything is free and open source.

I would like to learn French and Chinese. Being Vietnamese and trying to understand more about Vietnam's history, I know that there are a lot of ancient tomes written in French and Chinese (Vietnam had 1000+ years of Chinese occupation and about 200 years of French). My hope is to some day read those original tomes in their full context and meaning rather than translated ones.