maineldc

Not in the Bay Area which is what the original article is describing.

@strathmeyer - you say that you have never met anyone who would help you so here you go: I will. Contact me at this handle at gmail (I don't always check that address but I will check it for the next week or so). I will share my background and let you decide if you will find it valuable.

That spam IS the LinkedIn business model and it's not coming from 3rd party apps that have access to the API - it's coming from LinkedIn's main site and the (premium) features they offer.

I am almost the complete opposite. I only start companies with friends and while there have been some issues, it has served me very well.

I think it partly depends on the definition of friend. I don't start companies with acquaintances, I start them with people that I love and respect.

When you do that, starting a company becomes a really special endeavor.

This is very relevant for me at the moment because I am starting a new company and the person that I am hounding to be the founding CTO is a "newer friend" (we have only known each other for 4 years or so) but I am convinced that we will be a great team.

My advice is to start companies to work with people you love vs. trying to make a bunch of money. It's such a great way to "work" and greed will have a hard time breaking that.

Water, electricity and sewer are stellar examples of things that fade into the background and are often run by highly regulated public entities. I would love for my internet to be as reliable as my power.

I am not an expert but it seems to me that hashing of phone numbers is relatively useless here because there is a relatively small search space of potential phone numbers so I can just brute force check, right?

That's a great idea though I worry that it would totally tickle my OCD productivity crazy side...

Is your lawyer an in-house general counsel? Probably no. Do you require this person's services for ~40/hrs per week, every week for years on end? Probably no.

I would certainly pay an amazing engineer $600/hr if I could call on them at any time and get billed at increments of 6 minutes, but that would be an insane way to build software (I know lawyers who think its an insane way to do law, but it is the system).

AWS has pretty good support for taking external drives and importing them to S3 which could then be used with this service:

http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/

I am assuming that you have 1TB to start, not generating 1TB per day which obviously changes the equation.

I think you over estimate how much apple relies on "making the old model look old and dated".

My 2011 Macbook Pro 15.4 looks remarkably similar to my old 2006 Power PC Powerbook. The 3GS is one of the best selling smart phones on market even though the form factor was set introduced in 2008. There was some compelling analysis a few months ago that made a compelling case that iPhone 4 sales were constrained by the ability to manufacture them.

That's not true. He mentioned that for sensitive documents you can use Windows Live Mesh without Skydrive and have the equivalent of Dropbox's LAN sync without having your sensitive documents in the cloud.

Is it just me, or is this a killer feature? I had no idea this was baked into Live Mesh. I use rsync for this today but I am definitely going to check out Live Mesh.

Sounds like someone who is looking to generate PR by coasting on other news and slamming California. As someone who has started a company in CA, I don't find the business climate "repressive".

The problem, or the solution depending on your point of view, is that Rails is not backward compatible between minor releases. Each minor version is work to upgrade to it. My recommendation has always been "start with the latest version of Rails even if it's RC status" since upgrading will be a pain. Hopefully the RC will be complete before you need to launch.

Then you have to make the decision for each app - "Do I upgrade or stay on the latest version"? I personally prefer that tradeoff - Rails can cleanly add new features even it breaks the past. Then I decide if I need those features more than I need the pain of upgrading.

Can you expound upon that? What limits did you hit, how has geocoder fixed those, etc?

That's usually not good enough since the Boxee Box handles flash website different than the version that you download and install yourself. For instance, many sites on the DL version start in full screen but with the Boxee Box they don't. I think this was done to satisfy content owners but it significantly hampers my experience with the Box.

They do try to do two clever things with the box to make this better: Hit menu and sometimes there is a full screen button, sometimes not. Also, they try to place the mouse cursor over the "Fullscreen Button" in the Flash player, but this is wonky at best.

Wow, this is a tough read. I know things look bleak right now, but I think you need to step back and realize that things are going to be fine.

First off, start looking for a job. I know that you are worried about credit reports, etc, but if you are good, someone will hire you. Don't assume that you will fail to find a job because of this.

Second, consult someone knowledgeable about bankruptcy. I don't believe your house will be at risk and you will be able to start fresh without the debts weighing you down. Bankruptcy isn't a personal failure (this is possibly a controversial statement but I strongly believe it).

In short, don't give up, don't assume that job search is hopeless before you start looking, and just try to make progress a little bit every day. In a few years this will be distant memory.

Good luck.

You should check out the freedom chair with headrest. I have 3 and love them for exactly this reason, though now that my daughter has taken over my home office, I never get to actually use them...

http://www.amazon.com/HumanScale-Freedom-Chair-Headrest-Fabr...

I think that this sounds more like being the first employee of a company rather than a technical cofounder. When recruiting the first few employees, this is exactly the pitch that I give to them but if you are going to be a cofounder, then reasonable hours, working environment, etc. are really up to you and the other cofounder. Thus, you make what you want. The point about "reasonable guy" is thus paramount. In fact, I would argue you need much more than reasonable.

I was a technical cofounder and I have joined several startups as either the first employee or the first technical employee. This has evolved over the years, but the big thing that I look at is the person or team that I am going to join. It's cliche but true. That manifests itself in two ways:

1. "Smart People That I Like Having a Beer With" is a must have. There is so much that happens in a startup that its more like a family than a job. And in this case, picking your family is wisely is the path to happiness AND success. 2. Deep experience in their field and / or a clear way to generate early revenue (through network, former company, etc.). The hardest part of starting a company is early traction and if I can't bring it then I want it in the people I work with.

Notice that none of this is really about the idea because if you have someone with deep experience or early sales, then the idea will evolve over time as it finds the right Customer Need.

Good luck!

I disagree that apps are not being "Authorized". I never use facebook connect for any site and I found Gizmodo listed.

Also, I think just the fact that Yelp, Pandora, etc. had access to my details without permission is also "Authorizing Apps" without my permission.

Is anyone familiar with something like this that is usable in commercial systems?

Our first child is 11 weeks old now and we asked the same question to our pediatrician. Her answer was that "neither she nor any other pediatrician she knows would do private banking at the moment". I agree that public banking is the best idea and we were going to do that, but our child came 5 weeks early before we had a chance to set it up.

The thing that became clear during this whole thing is there were going to be MANY times in the coming years when spending "only $3K just in case" was going to be offered and this seemed like a bad precedent to set. The vast majority of children will never benefit from private banking, so go public!