bkbleikamp

Twitter is allowed to protect their copyright. It's a C&D. Not particularly interesting.

As a designer and front-end developer I view it as a service to people to force them to realize their browser is out-dated.

Interesting post on this topic: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/27/office-chair...

I also use a terrible chair and am looking at investing in a more ergonomic one.

I've always asked. The worst they can do is not respond.

This is stupid.

The $5 fee, whether it's small or not, still requires people to pull out their wallets. A lot of people simply don't want to get out their wallet and go through the sign up process, so they won't.

A lot of their news is available everywhere else. Why would I need the NYT.com website to read about Obama winning when MSNBC.com had it for free? So the question should be "Are our op-ed's and in depth reporting worth $5/mo?" And if the in depth reporting is big (e.g. CIA eavesdropping scandal) it will be covered elsewhere shortly after it breaks.

So the number of page views they lose to $5 kills their advertising dollars. Is that $5 really going to make up how much they're losing? Not according to this post: http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/04/paying-for-online-news-sorr...

Depends on when he sold stock options, how many stock options he had, the details surrounding him leaving and coming back as CEO, and about a million other possible variables.

>> Maybe they are targeting companies that have already been funded.

This is definitely the case.

I can't imagine an angel would be happy if their money was spent to present at DEMO. A YC company would have to spend their entire 3 month stipend to get a spot. Insanity.

I used to buy and sell sites on SitePoint ~4 years ago.

Selling: I would build a simple blog, drop in Google ads, and get some basic traffic with AdWords and then they would generate some clicks on AdSense. That would give me a few dollars a day in revenue, I'd post the site, and sell it for $500-$600 – I could do about 3 of those a month.

So people got a fully functioning & designed WordPress blog, but the income may not have been completely accurate. It beat getting a summer job.

Buying: Be careful. A lot of these sites take time to manage, market, run customer support, etc. It is not really passive income.

Many people sell after a traffic or revenue spike and give you average numbers. A lot of people flat out lie. SitePoint has some great/honest people, but I always ask myself why someone would sell a site that generates $50,000 a month (extreme example). If it's a need for cash, surely the bank would loan them money against that income...

Just be skeptical.

I golf a lot, and this seems like A "No kidding..." type of statement to me.

Birdie putts are less common, even for great golfers, and so when it comes up everyone tends to put a little bit more pressure on themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to capitalize on the birdie putt.

Even when you have a short one (less than 5 feet) you friends will say "Oh, don't miss..." etc.

I don't think they're enforceable in CA.

Agreed, Arrington's initial comment seemed to be a joke playing on all the accusations of him not disclosing his interests in start ups that are reviewed on TechCrunch.

I usually just ask on one of the phone interviews before coming in "Do you guys dress casually or prefer business casual?" and they tell me exactly how they dress. It is that easy.

Their fastest growing demographic is women in the mid 30s, last I heard.

If their revenue projections are accurate, then $10bb is not that crazy. They also have 200 million users and each user has some value - though I have no idea what it is.

And I know people will say "but they're not accurate with their projections." If you were projecting revenue or growth for your start up you'd be saying the same things Facebook says to their investors, showing the numbers that make your case. You cannot blame them for the valuation when investors seem to agree. No one is forcing them to invest.

I've always been told that before you marry someone you should discuss money.

Whether that be how much credit card debt and student loans they have outstanding, how much money they have saved up, or whether they have declared bankruptcy it is important to know the financial history of someone you are legally tied to.

Don't micromanage the developers. Work with them to set goals, get explanation when goals aren't met, and celebrate when they are.

In my experience, developers actually work way more than the 30-40 hours a week they're "in the office" - they are thinking about the problems they're trying to solve when they're at home or when they're laying in bed, etc. You can't think of it as a clocking in / clocking out type of job.

I always do a fixed rate for my work and go out of my way to help customers, sometimes years later, with simple problems for free.

Guess who they call when they have another job? Me. Guess how much more they're willing to pay than new clients? A lot more.

Customer service being a first priority is not just a marketing phrase - it really does make a huge difference.

That being said, it is very important to define a clear scope, explain how much extra certain pieces would cost if they go out of scope, etc. Most clients are very receptive to changes in the quote - note the use of the word QUOTE - when the scope changes and you explain why it will cost more.

I enjoyed the line "Sometimes, it's important to wake up and stop dreaming."

I think is a nice balance to all the advice you get about "dreaming big" at commencement speeches. Dreaming big is only good if you have the motivation to accomplish those dreams.

Have you tried searching LinkedIn and Craigslist? Craigslist is definitely hit or miss and you'll be browsing through a ton of scams, but you might get lucky - some good companies do use it.

LinkedIn always seems to have interesting jobs, though I've never actually applied for one on there.

The tech market in in Columbus is starting to grow quite a bit (I graduated from Ohio State). They've had 2 startup weekends, have a number of smaller web development firms, and also he could try to find an opportunity at Ohio State or with the state government.

I grew up in Cincinnati - might try applying to GlobalCloud.net - they are a pretty big web dev firm in Cincinnati.

960->1020 isn't necessarily that small depending on what the space is used for.

If it's just making a content column wider then it's not really that useful in most cases, but if it's adding another column with useful information for the user, then it is a big deal - it makes the website that much easier to use.

"Observe everything. Communicate well. Draw, draw, draw." Frank Thomas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Thomas_(animator))

I just graduated from college in June 2008 with a BSBA in Marketing. I am now the lead UI designer for a major Rails site. Based on just that, yes, it's obsolete. I am not using my degree in any official capacity and it cost $60,000.

But while I found it easy to write off my degree and what I learned in college when I graduated as unnecessary, at least initially, I have found myself recalling lessons I learned in class more than a few times.

1. A lot of hackers and tech people look past business and marketing as the boring part of running a company. It's not, it's actually one of the hardest parts. It's easy to believe that "if you build it, they will come" but most successful software is the result of good marketing and good business sense. I learned a lot about this in school and I am glad I learned the basics where mistakes didn't cost real money.

2. While it may not have been necessary to attend school to read and discuss cases, it helped a lot. Working through marketing problems and understanding business with a group of like minded people helped it all click faster. Much like discussing technology issues on Hacker News can help make sense of everything faster.

I saw the site a few days ago when @mike9r talked about it on Twitter and I am impressed with it.

I have tried Blinksale and FreshBooks (who I guess are your two most obvious competitors) and neither of those really worked out for me, so I am anxious to give Ballpark beyond clicking around a bit. I am constantly looking for something that is only as powerful as I need and fits nicely into my work flow.

My favorite feature is definitely the "news feed" that shows comments / payments / etc. - that is a great way to visualize what has gone on with the project.

And yes, great design :)

So we are supposed to take Scoble seriously because he has a lot of Twitter followers? His track record with companies indicates he doesn't really predict the future too well.

At Microsoft he made a name for himself by blogging when no one else was doing it. That was a good move and is what propelled him into the public eye.

Since then, he hasn't really accomplished much. He went to work for an unsuccessful podcast company, was booted from Fast Company, and now wants to tell us what the future of the web is?

I think taking what "experts" predict seriously is almost always a mistake. Look at the stock market - experts were running the companies that are collapsing and experts told people to invest in Bernie Madoff's fund. Oops.

Those occur constantly on the site. And even hackers are allowed to make jokes.

Yawn. The downmodding here just gets more and more crazy :) I only said that because I have seen multiple single pages like that hit the front page. Did not realize it was such a controversial thing to joke about.

I was half expecting a single page site that said "Use Rails." or some other framework.

Exactly - I do not think the coding Mark Zuckerburg or Larry Page/Sergey Brin did while they were students was trivial + it lead to two "game changing" companies, so to speak.