marklittlewood

Here is the app description and screenshots.

http://thebln.com/2011/09/did-apple-find-a-sick-sense-of-hum...

The links have been removed by Apple. You can see the screenshots and app description here though.

http://thebln.com/2011/09/did-apple-find-a-sick-sense-of-hum...

Thanks goodness I saved some screenshot! It seems to have disappeared from the App stores. I love how this has turned almost immediately into a bunch of Apple Fan Boyz talking about Apple.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2991512

Phone Story is an educational game about the hidden social costs of smartphone manufacturing. Follow your phone's journey from the Coltan mines of the Congo to the electronic waste dumps in Pakistan through four colorful mini-games. Compete with market forces in an endless spiral of technological obsolescence.

You can keep Phone Story in your favorite device as a reminder of your impact on this world.

All revenues from the sale of this app will be donated to organizations working to solve the issues mentioned in this game.

I don't think that means it falls flat. It was one of the key things that moved people across. I remember copying CDs into iTunes, downloading stuff from iTunes and putting all my music together. It was only when I got a non Apple MP3 player that I realised that all the Apple content wouldn't play on other systems.

Kept me locked in for years.

Balsamiq and profit sharing. Should be read alongside Balsamiq on salary policy.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986673

Read this alongside the salary article that was posted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986379

Balsamiq is a fairly unusual business and Peldi has grown something pretty extraordinary. This is a highly profitable business that has made a conscious decision to be great on its own terms, not on the terms that a Silicon Valley venture capital firm might impose on the business.

If you want some more background, go and watch this video of the talk Peldi gave at Business of Software last year. There is also a transcript you can speed read if you don't have an hour to spare.

http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2011/08/do-worry-be-happy...

Great post Peldi.

Before people get too bogged down in just the salary piece of this puzzle, you should also read Peldi's comments on bonus: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986673

Balsamiq is a fairly unusual business and Peldi has grown something pretty extraordinary. This is a highly profitable business that has made a conscious decision to be great on its own terms, not on the terms that a Silicon Valley venture capital firm might impose on the business.

If you want some more background, go and watch this video of the talk Peldi gave at Business of Software last year. There is also a transcript you can speed read if you don't have an hour to spare.

http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2011/08/do-worry-be-happy...

Jason Cohen's Business of Software talk in 2010 was a cracker. As someone who has consistently broken the rules he spoke about rules and when you might break them.

He also offers great advice about advice. He explains why you should always remember that advice, even from the best known and admired sources, should always be taken in context and offers a framework for filtering the legion sources of advice out there for entrepreneurs so that you can work out what is appropriate for you.

A must view if you are in the habit of giving, or receiving advice!

This is a video & transcript from Dan Bricklin's talk at Business of software 2010. Dan invented Visicalc, the first commercially available spreadsheet programme. Hugely insightful guy with some great pictures and home movies of the young Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and others.

This is one of the most unexpected, but welcome, reactions to anything I have put on Hacker News. Thank you wonderful HN people.

Mark Zaleski turned round a dotcom disaster as CEO before selling the business for well over $1billion. He was also involved in one of the biggest disasters of the dotcom boom - WebVan. He learned a lot!

This short video shows him talking at the BLN Growth Forum in 2010 where he talked about why great investors are not always great board members, why your board and advisers are so critical and how to build and manage your board.

Make sure when you look for cash and invite board members in that you remember, a fish rots from the head. If you don’t get it right, the rest of your business will go down the pan.

Ha! Indeed. I had originally written, 'couldn't overstate'. Then I wrote something else. Then a small child appeared and distracted me. Then I just posted nonsense. I blame the minors.

What I meant was Patrick was totally awesome and the video doesn't do his talk proper justice.

If you are going to pick something up and post it on your Posterous, ignore the copyright notices, then post it on Hacker News, it would be really lovely if you could include one small link back to the event page you took it from.

http://businessofsoftware.org/

Thanks.

It is difficult to understate how good Patrick was.

BoS has some of the best speakers in the business. Some you will have heard of - Seth Godin, Joel Spolsky, Geoffrey Moore - some you won't have heard from even if you have heard of them - Peldi at Balsamiq for example. http://businessofsoftware.org/prevyear.aspx

Patrick only had 7 minutes 30 seconds but he rocked the house. He will be back this year we hope.

Jason Cohen's talk at Business of Software http://businessofsoftware.org/

How to filter advice from others. Brilliant advice, but don't take it as the absolute truth.

If you are thinking of going to Business of Software this year, the first Early Bird discount finishes midnight PST on Sunday night. Over 150 places of 380 total gone already.

http://businessofsoftware.org/

Cool. A little birdie tells me that Adii Rockstar, founder of Woothemes will be coming from South Africa to talk at Business of Software this year.

http://businessofsoftware.org/

The good thing about Business of Software is you get to sit at the table with the cool kids the whole time. The capacity for the event is 380 people in total. That is a small conference by any standards.

Do you wear pyjamas at work?

Thanks. I hadn't really thought about it that way but have changed the title. Mea culpa.

There is something about those pictures that is making me want to make an airfix model - just for the benefit of my son of course...

I think they have a 40 mile no fly zone around the launch site.

Good picture of a launch being guarded by an F-15... http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123205663

I think it travelled about 59 miles in 2 minutes so they would have had a job!

I would like to point out that if it had been taken with a HTC Desire HD it would have been even better!

69 points! Perfect score.

Thank you for the clarification. Sounds a bit like being a VC in a large fund.

This is less about kick backs, more about the phenomenal cost of setting up new fabs.

Creating a new manufacturing industry is very expensive.

You could argue that it was a technology company that had to become a product company and got very distracted in the process. From the evidence that we have so far OEMs were probably right to hold off to ensure that electronics could be produced at scale. This seems to have been a key issue for them in launching the Que where the company had to focus on manufacturing but also running a number of product driven startups as per my comment.

I would never criticise a company for raising too much money though I would be inclined to query the wisdom of an early stage investor who thought that they would get a return.

What is 'Plastic Electronics?'

Essentially this is silicon chips without the silicon. Electronic circuits printed onto cheaper plastic substrates which offer promise of cheaper electronics with interesting properties such as flexibility. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_electronics