andrewacove

My tutor profile definitely exists, because I sent myself a message through the site.

Is there something messy with having a user account and a tutor account with the same email address?

And that's a cool suggestion, applying the TOMS shoe one-for-one model.

I'm rarely the pitch recipient, but I'd be interested to know how people would respond if you carried a video of your pitch on your phone. Sure, you'd have to iterate it a lot, and that's trickier with a video, but it might enable you to deliver the initial message clearly.

The other idea that comes to mind is . . . what about an interpreter? Could you go to events with a friend (or, ideally, a cofounder) who you can communicate with, who can then relay that information effectively?

Having similarly capable peers is really the primary advantage, especially if those relationships carry on after you finish.

It's hugely important in console game programming to know exactly how you're using the system's resources - memory and clock cycles. The styles he's criticizing aren't just bad for limiting resource usage, they're hard to analyze. On top of that, it can be very difficult to silo components of game code (and game engines) behind nice clean interfaces. When you're the engine programmer tasked with optimizing game code because you're the one who knows how to squeeze performance out of the console, you don't want to have to climb up and down hierarchies to figure out where everything's hidden. I've been there - it's especially prominent in 3rd party developers with cross-platform game engines - and it's a nightmare.

I don't foresee the telecoms giving up bandwidth caps (or worse, metered bandwidth). There's no way I'm streaming media over the carrier networks to my phone if it's using up my bandwidth allotment or running against a meter.

And my Rate My post from ~August: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672140

I've moved away from it since, though.

That's true, but you might develop a distaste for 'regular' jobs. Not that those will be your only option, but it might be harder to go back.

> lots of young people will never realize that youth is working > capital that should be spent while they still have it.

I'm in my mid twenties too, and I'm sure I'll sound like an idiot when I say that youth is also social capital that shouldn't be wasted. I've spent most of my 20s with my head down on work, and I would take a lot of it back to do some more living. I'm not saying that your youth isn't working capital - it is. But always work smarter, not just harder and longer. There's no immediate prize for effort.

Do you have an idea worth submitting to YC? Do you have a good network of people to mine for cofounders?

I'd say that if you've got other people to work with, and an idea to pursue, then try your hand at it and go after YC and similar programs.

If you don't, I'd pick the opportunity that will add the most valuable people to your network (other people who want to do start ups, people who complement your skills, people who could become your best friends/people you'll be willing to go through hell with). That's not necessarily a startup, something like APM at Google would be killer for your network and experience, and bigger companies => more people to connect with.

Final pro-startup caveat: If you find the right people to work with, join a startup. You're only 20, and you're not short on cash. There might never be a better time.

Currently debugging a change in the FB API that broke something. But still something to check out if you're into QR uses.

What I intended to get across was that I think Microsoft would love to use Kinect as a platform to recover some of its losses in the mobile, search, and cloud computing spaces, essentially to establish it as the new Microsoft platform to lock in users.

Not exactly a crystal clear explanation, admittedly.

I've thought for a long time that a successful Kinect would likely lead to a Kinect-optimized version of Windows.

I suspect that adding an "Archive" button to the contact info view (to go along with the 'Share Contact' button) would probably suffice for the former.

For the latter, I'd probably use the 'Recents' page in the Phone app as reference. That view has a two-way button at the top to choose between "All" and "Missed" calls. Something similar for "Primary" and "All" contacts (though 'primary' isn't the best word choice) at the top of the contacts view might function well.

Interestingly, there already is support for one other view of the contacts list built into the phone: the Favorites list. The Favorites view forgoes the All Contacts view's A-Z# list, but ignoring that, Favorites is like the white-list version of Archiving's black-list. If every contact started as a Favorite when added, and "archiving" removed its favorite status, you'd have pretty similar results (though that's a pretty poor way to do it).

Those are my initial ideas for it. It would be interesting to see whether archiving could be sufficiently abstracted so as to be easily added to iOS's other default layouts (and whether there would be use in those cases).

A number of companies in and around SF have meetups and hacker events, and sponsor other groups. Go to hackathons at company offices, build something on top of their products, and then tell them you're interested in a job.

Engage companies on social networks, too. Tweet at the companies and their employees when you have interesting things to say, like blog posts you've written about your ideas for their products.

None of that addresses the organizational difficulty of a job search though. I usually prioritize and proceed in small batches. Just a few companies at a time, starting with the ones I'm most interested in. Assuming you have the luxury of time on your side.

If you're going to start your own right out of college, the most important thing will be having people to do it with you. You'll get great work experience at either company. Go to the one where you think you'll be able to make more, stronger connections with other interns. Leave your internship with a list of potential cofounders. I'd probably choose Facebook based on the number of interns, unless you think that culturally you'll bond more with the people that Palantir attracts.

Main focus is on getting users past the home page to sign up for the service. What's there still doesn't do a good enough job convincing the users why they should sign up.

The next problem is getting users to actually connect through the service. Channeling users to download a scanner app and download their QR code is probably the next major step.

Why not just have an input box on the home page? The user puts in the english word, and you do the redirect.

I'm building Quirk ( http://www.getaquirk.com/ ) and I've got a related side project, a QR/URL-shortener - http://qrk.co/

Quirk is Rails on Heroku. qrk.co is Sinatra on Heroku.

Cofounders could come in a few forms. I'm a developer, but somewhat new to web dev. So someone with a deep technical background for web development with prior startup experience would work. Alternatively, someone with a really strong UX/design vision and some skills to drive the frontend would be great, too. I've been learning the necessary skills as I go.

There's contact info in my profile.

It's ugly, only has been tested in one browser, doesn't support user accounts/per-user encodings . . .

But it does do a geolocation query as part of the redirect. Seems like useful data.