lsemel

How are you going to get journalists to discover and pay attention to this?

Anyone creative and determined enough to come up with a lie like that to get around barriers and break into a business, would have creative enough to come up with an alternate route that doesn't involve lying.

SF - 12/7 http://realtimebooze.eventbrite.com/

NY - 12/10 http://realtimeboozenyc.eventbrite.com/

The only way I'm able to do this is because I live right in the middle of Manhattan, so I'm always able to go outside and see other people (even if it is just talking to the doorman), intersperse the day with meetings, occasionally rotate among nearby coffee shops, and plan nighttime activities. I can see how working at home might drive you crazy if you're in a less densely populated location with fewer people around.

I guessed as much. Any plans for what to do when you have more than 20k lists to monitor?

How are you pulling in all the tweets from the lists - won't you run into an API limit?

Check out http://listorious.com (a site I made) for a directory of Twitter lists.

It's just a sales buzzword for "lots of features", "covers all aspects of a problem domain", or "does it all".

I'll bet a robust, end-to-end enterprise coffee shop does. None of those dynamically typed, scripting, agile coffee shops for me.

After using a new Mac for two weeks, here's what I've noticed:

- The typography is a lot nicer once you get used to it. It's great to look at websites using type as it was designed rather than in the blocky rendering Windows uses.

- Keyboard shortcuts are worse. On Windows, all the menu options have underlined shortcuts, so I could usually guess what the shortcut was based on its menu position, even if I hadn't memorized it (i.e. Alt-F, S to save, Alt-S, A to Select All). Mac has 3 modifier keys that have to be pressed in combination, and the shortcuts have to be memorized. It took me forever to figure out Command-D was the shortcut for "Don't Save" because there was no onscreen indication.

- Desktop programs for the Mac are of higher quality, more creative, and seem to be free of viruses and spyware, thus safe to download and install. I rarely download any desktop programs for PC, but on Mac I've found a bunch of great ones that are worth paying for.

- Everything is smaller on a Mac screen and harder to adjust, so if you don't have perfect vision it can be a problem. There is no systemwide DPI setting.

- Having a Unix shell is very convenient. MacPorts is a pretty good installer for Unix programs but not as good as something like yum on Linux.

- The windowing system is document-based rather than applicaiton based, so you get lots of overlapping windows strewn across your screen. Once you get used to this, dragging and dropping between apps makes more sense.

- The progams I miss which don't have Mac equivalents yet are VanDyke SecureCRT and Macromedia Homesite (a great HTML editor but several years old)

- I haven't had to restart it for any reason. Installing software is much easier and doesn't seem to modify the underlying operating system or registry as it does on Windows.

- Peripherals just work. It recognized my printer, digital camera, etc. right away without problems. No futzing around with BIOS settings or drivers.

- Some of the system UI controls feel less standardized, are often missing keyboard navigation, and more annoying. For instance, the tree view control in TextMate for browsing projects has little arrows you need to click to open a folder, but clicking the folder name does absolutely nothing. On Windows this would be standardized, it would let you click on the folder name, and also respond to the keyboard.

- You need to get mouse with a right button.

I got health insurance through mediabistro.com

Quicken for personal, Quickbooks for business, and the bank's website. Also checking out Indinero.com for business version of Mint.

Availability heuristic and confirmation bias. It's not big news when someone who's 51 strikes it rich, but it's unusual when someone 21 does. So that what gets reported and that's what comes to mind when you think of starting a company. If you looked at the news you'd think everyone who's rich got there by starting a hot startup in college (or got a big Wall Street bonus), but it ain't necessarily so. Take a look at books like "Millionaire Next Door" for some more balanced info on the kinds of companies people start and what age they become wealthy.

It does seem to be a spamming tool, and they are right about the trademark. You can't just go and use another company's name as part of your product's name or domain. You need to create and build up your own brand.

Of course, any serious user of a C64 had an Epyx Fastload cartridge. Then you could just type $.

Almost inevitably, shortly after I launch something that proves reasonably popular, I see an ad for someone wanting to clone it on Scriptlance for $200.

Everytime the idea of registering a .ly (Libyan) domain occurs to me, I think of those terrorists from "Back to the Future."

If it's supply and demand then people should be rushing into banking and leaving other fields to take advantage of the high pay, which would bring it into equilibrium with other fields as the supply of workers increases. That apparently is not happening, because the pay is still vastly higher.

Do these bankers create so much more value than, say, entrepreneurs, that merits paying them so much? Or is there some other reason banks need to pay such high amounts compared to other types of businesses?

There's a big difference between a family making $75K and $250K a year. I wouldn't lump them together as 'upper middle class'

I'm at http://twitter.com/semel, I'm also cofounder of the 'Oscars for Twitter': http://shortyawards.com. My feeling is that Twitter is what you make of it. People use it for professional networking, sales, customer service, keeping in touch with friends, organizing events, letting people know what they're doing at the moment, or any other number of uses.

Big deal -- if you are not a CEO or a CTO who can afford a $25K fee, or a graduate student who wins a scholarship, but instead work as an entrepreneur or self-employed, you can't go.

NY has developed fairly large tech community over the last few years. Go to any Tech Meetup, and around 500 people show up. If you want to live cheaply, most people opt for Brooklyn, where a many of the startups now have their offices.

Republic is quite loud and crowded most of the time. Other good in the area: Grey Dog Coffee (University Place), City Bakery (18th Street betw 5 and 6), Tarallucci E Vino (18th street, big table in back good for meeting).

Once a society gets too prosperous, the highest-paying jobs end up in fields like finance and law, far outpacing science and engineering. That's one reason for the decline in science -- the return on learning hard material is higher in other fields.

Also, you have a greater number of kids growing up in already-prosperous families, who don't perceive the need to become prosperous themselves, and so don't pursue higher-paying fields like finance, law, science or engineering.

The conflict-of-interest Blodget describes seems to be a central problem in any situation where where one party is acting as an agent or performing services for another party. In the case of the mortgage bubble, the interest of the financial industry employees--to make the maximum short-term profit for themselves and preserve their jobs--directly conflicts with the interests of the investors whose funds they are managing. The same thing happens in companies in other industries, where the short-term interests of the managers to produce quarterly results conflicts with the long-term interests of shareholders and the interests of their customers. This also happens on a small-scale, when a small business owner or entrepreneur hires their first employee, because the interest of an owner and a salaried worker are rarely aligned. In these situations, everyone can be rationally pursuing their personal self-interest based on the incentives presented to then, but it ultimately leads to a worse outcome for everyone involved. I wonder if there are any ways to work around these situations, whether they occur in a small business, a large enterprise, or the economy as a whole.

There are no ownership rights in a twitter name. I had some company names and they were reverted over to the companies by twitter itself.

Congrats, Jeremy!

I went to public school but in the meantime taught myself computer programming, drawing, photography, and other subjects I was interested in. And I've worked for myself ever since graduating from college. So I'd say that attending a public school does not preclude becoming a self-starter.

Also.. if you find a design firm that has particular projects you like you can try to find the individuals or freelancers that worked on them, and hire them individually. I'd google for "portfolio" combined with the name of the design firm, project or designer's name, and contact them directly. This way you get past all the process, procedure, professionalism and project management that come with working with a firm (and which bigger companies really need) and work with the designer directly. Most designers who aren't principals of their firms do freelance work on the side assuming they have time.