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marcomonteiroon TestFlight SDK Released

I've been using the beta since it was first released and I've never seen any data for released apps, though I suspect it wouldn't be difficult. I haven't looked in to why it only work in Ad Hoc builds. I agree it would be awesome if only to get crash reports and console logs back through TestFlight.

marcomonteiroon How to Write Good iOS Apps

Personally I only use autorelease when I create an object I'm not responsible for. For example, if I create a view somewhere for another object to utilize. I also like knowing that as soon as I'm done with an object that it gets killed and the system can reclaim the memory.

marcomonteiroon BoltJS: Another Secret Piece Of Facebook’s Spartan Puzzle?

Agreed. I don't see why this would be more appealing.

marcomonteiroon BoltJS: Another Secret Piece Of Facebook’s Spartan Puzzle?

Yes just noticed it on my iPad.

marcomonteiroon Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding

Thank you PG, I really appreciate your reply. The person I have in mind is brilliant and picking up programming concepts quickly. We also work well with each other and he is someone I can count on to stick with me through the hard times.

marcomonteiroon Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding

I applied for Summer 11 and didn't get in and I'm still serious about what I'm doing so I'm applying again. If nothing else maybe they'll remember me and if I dont get in there's always the next session. It doesn't hurt to keep putting yourself out there. Good luck.

marcomonteiroon Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding

Third time's a charm. Good luck. For what it's worth keep the focus on you. YC companies have changed ideas mid-term many times from what I've noticed and it seems they're entirely interested in the individual members of the team.

marcomonteiroon Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding

Why not? I applied previously not so much for the money but rather the mentorship, advice and relationships that could be built.

Don't sell yourselves short because your "old". Sell the fact that your mature, disciplined and responsible enough to commit to this company and bring tremendous experiences along with you.

marcomonteiroon Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding

What do you guys (and gals) think about non-technical co-founders? Well at least co-founders who are barely learning to code?

marcomonteiroon Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding

Here we go again, or should I say here I go again. ;)

marcomonteiroon Smooth Wallet - Personal finance that doesn't suck.

I like gutsy! Good luck. Maybe we can talk about an iOS app to go along with it.

marcomonteiroon Misadventures in VC Funding: The $24 Million Moz Almost Raised

I loved this post. Well written, personal and insightful. I'm starting a SaaS company and I truly appreciate being able to learn from others experience. Thanks for sharing Rand and best of luck for you and the rest of SEOmoz.

marcomonteiroon If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

"If I had reputational stock I'd be IPOing right now." I love that! lol

I'm sure that I'm a little biased living in Silicon Valley but here being a geek and being sexy is not mutually exclusive. Being a "programmer" is respectable but being a tech entrepreneur is respected much more.

marcomonteiroon If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

It has nothing to do with respect. Parents in most cases do not understand technology, much less programming whereas they can understand what an attorney or doctor does. The lawyer can keep you out of jail. The doctor can keep you from dying. What the heck does a programmer do that's so important? Note - I'm a programmer. I'm just look at it from their position. Then again, I live in Silicon Valley. When I say I write iPhone apps nobody looks down on me --- in fact quite the opposite.

marcomonteiroon Crazy easy dialogs for iOS devs: QuickDialog

I did fork it and will be taking a look at it. Thanks for open-sourcing this. It really does look like it can be extremely useful.

marcomonteiroon Crazy easy dialogs for iOS devs: QuickDialog

Understood, but technically we're not supposed to submit to the App Store using beta versions of Xcode. Whether Apple would notice is a different story but a rejection would set us back so I'm not willing to risk it.

marcomonteiroon Crazy easy dialogs for iOS devs: QuickDialog

Looks cool but if possible remove the dependence on ARC.

marcomonteiroon An iOS Developer Takes on Android

Interesting.

marcomonteiroon An iOS Developer Takes on Android

I hate to be picky about this but in all the time I've been doing iOS development and throughout everything I've ever read I have never seen anything to suggest that iOS using OpenGL for all of it's drawing (simulating a 2D interface in a 3D environment like the article suggests). Drawing is done using the Quartz system and animation is handled by Core Animation (which creates "an illusion of motion").

marcomonteiroon Open Education Resources

That was my first thought after reading the article.

marcomonteiroon Facebook takedown followup: what happened and what FB needs to fix

I completely agree with your original post. Relying entirely on Facebook is foolish as they have complete control. On the other hand, ignoring Facebook is also foolish. People share links, and for major news sources/outlets will continue to do so but there's a lot of value in being present on a social network.

I think the smart thing to do is to take precautions. Host your content and auto-post it to Facebook, Twitter, etc. You should also have some way to contact your users/fans directly so that if things like this happen you can notify them.

marcomonteiroon Khan Academy Redesign

I noticed that too and wondered if it was by design or a bug in the implementation. I haven looked at the source though so can't answer knowledgeably.

marcomonteiroon Rails 3.1 shipping with CoffeeScript

DHH seems fairly convinced that CS "lifts JS/CSS handling in Rails to a whole new level. Very excited to have this as part of Rails". So it would seem the point of making it default is to make it so one can't think of Rails and not CoffeeScript.

I don't really have an opinion either way as my JS skills are minimal and I know almost nothing about CS.

marcomonteiroon C's index[arr] notation

I don't know what I was on. Proof positive that sleep depravation does not give me more time to be "productive". Thanks for the correction and apologies for my mistake.

marcomonteiroon Start-ups Rejected By Y Combinator (And Investors) Flock To YC Reject

Most startups do fail. Most new businesses fail though unfortunately. That doesn't mean the team wasn't any good. There are so many dynamics involved. One of course is the quality of the product being developed by the team. Another being the marketing strategy, including pricing. And another being market acceptance.

I'm curious how you're defining YC's success compared to other angel groups. YC is a pretty amazing group, no doubt, but being great at publicizing and helping storm up investor interest in a startup can't be the only measure. Not that I'm trying to insinuate that's all YC is good at because I'm not.

marcomonteiroon C's index[arr] notation

It's not the same as (index + arr). arr is a pointer to the beginning address of a series of particular "types". These types have a specific size in memory. Index increments the pointer by (n * size_of(type)).

arr[index] == arr + (n * size_of(type)) == (n * size_of(type)) + *arr

marcomonteiroon Start-ups Rejected By Y Combinator (And Investors) Flock To YC Reject

I disagree, I didn't put words in the author's mouth. I didn't chose the questions or the framing. I also disagree, it is out of line to suggest that. Startups existed before YC. YC does not hold a monopoly on determining or ensuring success. Their "rejection" letter alludes to this fact.

YC has a tremendous amount of experience and their intuition and insight I'm sure leads to better decisions regarding startups, but they're in no way infallible.

I suppose my main point is that there are plenty of good companies that are fund worthy that don't get into YC for various reasons. One of those reasons being that YC doesn't have the time or resources to take them in. The YC model has been successful but there is still an underserved market here and that is why others are popping up, not that there is a bubble necessarily as the author suggests. There's no reason why angels wouldn't "invest in companies that are not vetted by Y Combinator?".

marcomonteiroon Start-ups Rejected By Y Combinator (And Investors) Flock To YC Reject

And if all an investor knows is that you're a founder or team that wants to do a startup, the odds are that you're no good.

So the investor's knowledge about your project determines the founder or teams quality? YC applicants disclose more than that they want to do a startup, does that the automatically improve the odds that they're good? What specifically makes them "good" anyhow? YC Rejects would be disclosing more than they want to do a startup and in fact it's been noted that the angel would review applicants and determine who gets in.

The problem is that the prior probability that you're good is already low, not that the conditional probability that you're good given that you're rejected by YC is any lower.

Based on what exactly? Why is it more likely that your not good to begin with?

So the real question here is, can these people learn to first evaluate their applicants, and then support the ones they fund, anywhere near as well as YC does? I think the YC formula is nit going to be anywhere near as easy to duplicate as they seem to think.

It doesn't have to duplicate the YC formula in order to be successful as even YC proves that their formula doesn't automatically lead to successful startups. I do think that the YC staff and alumni network is a huge asset but that doesn't preclude others from providing valuable resources. The rest remains to be seen.

marcomonteiroon Start-ups Rejected By Y Combinator (And Investors) Flock To YC Reject

I thought the article was fairly straight forward until I got to the point you quoted. It's as if the attitude is that YC picks all the great startups and non-YC companies are second-rate throw aways that are destined to fail.

While I personally think YC is a great program with a lot to offer, which is why I applied, they don't have the resources to take on every group that applies. It also wouldn't be in their best interest. I was skeptical about YC Reject at first and wasn't sure about applying or looking for work and working on my startup part-time but I'm considering it more and more now.

marcomonteiroon Ask HN: Why can't I make as much as I make?

I fell on this path by accident. I started hacking when I was young. I always loved tech and programming. Between 18-20 I went through two jobs as a software developer while still going to school but this was circa 2000 and the market tanked. I got into real estate because I didn't want to depend on someone else to give me a job. Along the way realized I hated doing real estate sales everyday and the technology really annoyed me so now I'm creating the software I always wish I had as an agent. If it weren't for the experience of being an agent I would have never understood the pain.