Don't underestimate natural selection, specialization is more common than not. Most animals are so specialized to their environment it would be impossible for them to survive without these inborn essential traits. We can't demonstrate how they could survive while evolving these essential traits.
Exactly, survival for most animals are always based on their immediate ability to adapt, not the ability to adapt over thousands of years, that is the paradox
of evolution. Animals supposedly evolved to have these specialized features essential for survival over thousands of years, but natural selection is in conflict. Animals need to survive their conditions immediately, they can't wait for their bodies to evolve.
I love science & technology therefore I'm alarmed because so many scientist and technologist don't see the inherit paradox in evolution. Natural selection makes it virtually impossible for animals to adapt via the proposed mutations. Natural selection happens immediately, valuable life preserving mutations are suppose occur (typically) over thousands of years.
To illustrate Arctic terns are dying because they are not able to adapt to climate change.
Arctic terns eat herrings a cold water fish, as the water gets warmer, these fish seek colder waters, possible
by going deeper in the waters. According to biologist other birds in the Arctic can dive deeper to grab the cold water fish Arctic terns cannot, so they and their chicks starve to death. This is natural selection, there is no time to adapt via mutations, adaptations must happening quickly.
Perhaps not, Solar app: http://thisissolar.com has very similar effects. It was not rejected and it is still in the app store. Off course it does not have the full marketing of Apple behind it, but still.
The key to proper analyst of data is deciphering what is correlation and what is causation. The article mentions that in Spotify’s home of origin Sweden, where it is extremely popular, majority of people stream music, and do not pay for individual albums sales. Easy to argue his album popularity on streaming only services was mere correlation and did not lead to increase album sales. If you follow the industry closely, you’ll notice the article left out the well known sales boost Grammys performers get. This post Grammy Awards sales boost is a know fact. Justin Timberlake had an advantage, he was the only popular performer at the Grammys releasing something new after the Grammy Awards. The other performers albums were already out for a year a more. We can also argue that the free streaming on iTunes also help lead to sales. The streaming on iTunes is ideal, it is only temporary, so if you really like the album you’ll have to buy it. Another important data point that was left out of the article was Justin Timberlake's album was heavily promoted on the new Myspace. Despite Myspace seemingly zombie status it still has millions of users, many of whom still go to myspace for music.
Not too many pure educational programming plays. Certainly not the majority.
->Non-talent costs really can be dramatically reduced in a non-union world...
Producing content is like anything else you have to make, a lot of times you get what you pay. I've worked with a lot of new workers, the good ones rise
to professional level pretty fast and they won't work for equity/portfolio for too long. I think Youtube has gone as far as it can go with cheap content, which is pretty good. Now they are experimenting.
Quality matters everywhere, quality matters on T.V. and online. 300 million is like the budget of a handful of popular T.V. shows. Game of Thrones has a budget of about 60 million a season, House of Cards cost about 100 million. 300 million spread across hundreds of channels is not going to give you the best of T.V. The T.V. networks make big bets on a smaller number of shows. Time Warner alone has over a billion dollar budget for their content. It’s really high risk, high reward for them and I don’t think it is something Google is ready to stomach. The budget would have been better spent on more educational programming, which T.V. channels offer very little of. Educational programming is popular on Youtube and other sites.
"This argument is wrong because it ignores the impact of war and corruption has on our economy. The economy can’t grow when trillions of dollars are lost to fighting wars and bailing out wall street. Inefficiency does not add value to society, technology never killed a job that is of great value to society. Advance technology has not replaced the highly skilled worker, craftsman, engineer or artist. "
There are plenty of studies that show users typically ignore anything that looks like an ad, google "ad blindness". Those ads on the right looks like the typical online banner ad, distracting. Even if you're designing for high ad viewership this is the wrong way to design it. If you buy ads like these you're spending your ad money poorly. These types of bad ad design has lead to a move to so called "native ads", you can google that too, which is really just a return to the traditional offline method of advertising. Traditional offline publishers could overlay their content with ads but they don't because they know people will hate it. Granted it is a lot easy to ignore/block internet advertising, but it is illogical to make things worse with this sort of disdainful design. "Native ads" is really just a buzz word, people like John Gruber of Daring Fireball have capitalize on traditional advertising for years. His rss feed sponsorship is just like a radio show sponsorship where the host/dj of the broadcast reads an ad to it's listeners. Think about it, Daring Fireball makes more money from rss sponsorship then it makes from banner ads. Companies buy the feed sponsorship because it works.
This is fine, but where’s the lyrics ? I’ll argue people want to see lyrics display inline when they do a lyric search. I understand licensing will be an issue with the major labels but Google could take a bottom’s up approach. Before Myspace collapse, it was on top of the social network world. Developing software on the web for indie musicians helped Myspace get to the top. Soon majority of independent musicians and their fans were using myspace. When Myspace become a popular place for discovering music the major labels all did deals with Myspace. If Google made effective cross promotion/sales tools with lyrics search for indies, I believe the majors will follow
Not many people like you do, but reading a blog or magazine is not regulated to scene-obsessed teenagers. Moreover these so called scene obsessed readers contribute to the majority of sales. Comic book fans represent the majority that count in this case not the occasional reader with not time for your so called comic book scene. To illustrate outsiders may think HN readers are tech obsessed minority, when compared to general population they are, but the traffic HN readers can provide is significant to a tech based startup.
The author makes the assumption that people use Comixology for discovery of new titles, but the vast majority do not. There are many blogs and magazines for that type of discovery. Comixology is used primaryly to buy and read what you've discovered elsewhere. Comixology works, which is why Comixology and a few other comic apps usually rank in the top 25 grossing apps for the iPad.
I've learned not to work with entrepreneurs who do not understand the value of design and user experience.
There are plenty of entrepreneurs who understand the value of ux/ui. My job is to design an a app that is not a pain to use, not explain cost-benefit of this.
On a side note, the op is wrong when he writes "Bring in the UX designer before you’ve attempted any UI work." Yes you want to do UX first, but UI and UX are inseparable, because from the user perspective, the user interface(UI) always has a bearing on the user experience (UX). The UX should dictate the UI, but a good UX designer will always design the UI.
Your paraphrasing is wrong, because he did not say Non-free services both platform and non-platform do not work. Fred was specifically referring to potential paid competitors to twitter, facebook and similar services.
to illustrate:
Fred: "Free TV does not commoditize paid TV. They co-exist nicely. But we had free TV well before we had paid TV. Free is the foundation that creates a paid tier. "
followed by, Fred:
"I would encourage folks to compete with them to keep the web, the mobile web, and the Internet free and open. But I would not encourage those same folks to build paid services."
So Fred was not speaking against all non free services.
Developing for any platform that is not your own presents risks. Just because a developer is paying for app.net does not mean anything goes on app.net. Moreover I would not assume it's bad for innovation. Both Twitter and Facebook know they cannot alienate the majority of their users, they will innovate on their platform as needed. They also know they need to strike a balance when providing services for both their advertisers and users.
Don't underestimate the amount of work, expertise and experience required to arrive at word lens, to date I've to yet to see this technology duplicated elsewhere. Google has acquire hire before recently with milk inc, I don't see why they can't with this team.
For a titanium example I recommend Wunderlist. It is used by millions of people on multiple platforms, I use it everyday and it works well. Moreover Wunderlist is a good example for hackers because it is open source: https://github.com/6wunderkinder/wunderlist
One caveat, I'm not sure how many of the current apps (there are 5 versions with an addtional blackberry app in private beta.) still uses Titanium, and Wunderlist has been ported to platforms that are not supported by Titanium. However I know that the first few releases did use Titanium.
Adobe offers their software at a much lower rate to high schools, collges and their students. The liberal arts classes with computers have Adobe suite. Web design teachers teach almost exclusively using Adobe software. If you are a high school student majoring in art or design in the U.S more than likely you will have no cost access to Adobe software at your school. This business model has serve Adobe well for years.
It does not have to be a lie, he could be a prodigious talent and not know it. Some people learn certian things much faster then the general population. He may have a naturally high amplitude for learning language, add a very efficient learning method, and it is not far fetch.
"couple developers forked it within hours, and offered new versions for the world to install."
A couple of developers did not fork Svbtle, only one developer copied the design but wrote original code. Dear Techcrunch, that's not a "fork". Nate has since changed the design and he plans on refining it.
Exactly , his post is not objective. Front page of hackers news is essentially word of mouth marketing, which the author(Noah) says matters. Based on the data provided Noah does not know if the HN readers who signed up for the free accounts are recommending the paid services to others. So the value is at the very least $300 a month, it could be significantly more than that. Moreover what effect does the HN traffic have on their advertising, their job board, book sales ? He does not measure, so I doubt the accuracy of his conclusion.
Very good advice, but I'll also recommend you educate yourself further. Take 90k and save it, it is easy to burn money on a business. -
read: http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html
Also keep in mind, most great products / services are not revolutionary but evolutionary. Google, Facebook both improved on existing ideas, Apple's ipod was not an original Apple idea/tech either : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053152/Apple-admit-...
This could work, but how good is YCombinator at judging an initial team & script ? The investors YC knows and work with, invest primarily in tech not entertainment. Will the investors be willing to take risk in a different sector ? Not every great talent has a hit on his/her first or even second try.
Indie movies have itunes too. Still, just getting your game in the app store or your music or movie in itunes, doesn't mean it will sell well. Angry birds cost over $100,000[1] to make and those Modern Warfare games cost tens of millions of dollars market and produce. The big budget production typically dominate mind share in these markets.
A $1000 recording won't give you great sound quality, not 24/96 K. It easy to marginalize a recording engineer until you try to record an album yourself. To get the the sound you want there are number of things you want to get right, the right equipment, the right space, mic placement, recording levels. Still not as expensive or hard as making movie, but not so easy either.
We have tech, cost of tech is going down. But you still need talent to operate the tech, and the best talent are not cheap. The workers have unions and the ones that are not part of union do this full time and want to support at the very least a middle class lifestyle. For a hollywood movie, you don't want to use just any crew. You want the best film crew, the best makeup, wardrobe, casting, post & pre production. All the above cost money, lots of money.
You pretty much nailed it. YC don't understand entertainment, just like the entertainment industry refuse to understand web technology. Transformers is really an edge case, many hollywood films can be made for half of that[1]. Not your typical YC type of investment, but still doable by tech industry, after all we have tech startups like color getting 40 million for an app. The question is will the Tech industry be willing to make investment in an industry it really does not understand. Contrary to some misconception being a great entertainer does require some kind of discipline and experience like being hacker. It takes time, many entertainers start young and spend many hours working on their craft, just like hackers. The stereotypical drugs and alcohol abuse come after. Hollywood type talent is not something you can just whip up. An interesting note, Mark Susters is a tech VC investing in entertainment[2] to disrupt the market. But Mark is working on the low end of the scale, with very low budget productions (compared to hollywood) and average actors and directors. This too is not enough. If YC is seriously going to attempt to kill Hollywood it's going to have to take on risk it never did before. The entertainment crowd is much different from the tech crowd.
[2]
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/11/03/the-future-of-...
In his presentation Mark Suster made some correct but to obvious observation, what I disagree is his take on talent, namely he thinks the cost of talent is going up. He's not completely wrong, in that the cost of mediocre talent has gone done, but talent that people want to see, the talent that can sell tickets and drive views, their pay is going up.