plaggypig

Sage advice. If you haven't done it yet you need to own something authoritative about yourself, e.g. yourname.com, or better yet yourname.tel, which is like a business card at the DNS layer (with a window from the web of course).

I also periodically delete my Facebook status updates and tweets, although I'm not yet sure whether Google/others will be archiving those indefinitely.

This Bill is even worse than feared - see London based Telnic's (.tel registry) response to the government informing them that the statutory instrument to seize managerial control of domain registries applies to them:

http://prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=272545

Allegations of "abusive" behaviour on the part of registrars or end-users could lead an ignorant Secretary of State triggering this instrument.

So what's "abusive"? Well just for starters, registering an expired domain name is. Yes really, that's what the government believes (see the Digital Britain report).

So a company with about 12 employees has gone from being heralded at the UK IT awards last week for "the biggest innovation to come out of the UK since the www from Sir Tim Berners-Lee.".. to fearing nationalisation!

Brown thinks he can run the "Digital Economy" like a Soviet tractor factory. Who would want to invest in this?

What a joke.

I'd like to see more libraries in more languages for .tel domains (reading and writing DNS records, i.e. NAPTR/TXT/LOC), and more mobile apps too. It's an open platform, see: http://dev.telnic.org/

I should also declare my interest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/12/internet-mo...

This is a really interesting discussion, spurred by Dave Winer's posts on the need for a global namespace for dispersing microblogging away from centralised services:

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/06/anotherBrickInTh...

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/07/tradingOneCentra...

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/13/looselyCoupled14...

What's the best way to resolve simple usernames to feeds (and other endpoints)? .tel? webfinger? i-names? Something else? All of the above?

With a little bit of creativity you can do a lot with language, e.g. there are hundreds of millions of names in each of the biggest namespaces (AOL/Gmail/Skype/etc).

One shouldn't assume that the John Smith you know has JohnSmith.tel, but to use a specialised search engine to find the correct one. You may already know one piece of his contact information, his location, or some keywords that might define him.

It's hardly expensive ($10 /year). Everything is open source and compliant with preexisting standards. You can run your own TelHosting provider if you want to. It's decentralised (obviously). Why would you say it's not scalable? DNS is the most distributed and well balanced network that we have.

Finally, you OWN your data. There is no malevolent third party.

You're right, it doesn't, but see my other comment.

Why are you so disparaging about a company that's trying to innovate and make money?

You can use NAPTR/LOC/TXT records for any domain name you like, providing you have sufficient control over your DNS zone.

However, many domain owners either don't have this ability, or lack sufficient knowledge to manage them. Many people, even businesses, don't even own domain names. .tel comes with tools and services that make it simple.

In terms of privacy, you can encrypt specific records that only certain friends/groups can decrypt and read, so you can absolutely keep your phone number private. As a bonus, you could become liberated from it and can change it seamlessly, without having to tell any of your friends.

I believe I heard that Michael Jackson used to change his number on a weekly basis - obviously an extreme case, but you get my drift.

.tel is about using existing infrastructure (the DNS) to resolve contact information. Will it make phone numbers as inconsequential to the experience of communication as IP address are to browsing the web? Discuss.

Google Wave?

This is totally contrary to what was said last year: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=682790

I'm very disappointed by their cack-handedness.

This is ridiculous. On Nov 21st 2008 a representative from Twitter said this,

"There are certainly many applications out there that include Twitter as part of their name, but we prefer that you not do so. Twit, Tweet etc. are all fine."

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:SGqicWFJttIJ:groups.goog...

Many people, myself included, acted upon this information in good faith (and in my case at a monetary cost for a domain name containing the word "tweet").

Does this public pronouncement affect their legal standing when it comes to defending the trademark "tweet"?

Edit: Should I continue with this? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=677643

Interesting idea and I can think of a novel interface for this. I upvoted you, and that's where by influence will end.. for now :)

There is an API so I believe your suggestion ought to be possible. Just to play devil's advocate though; wouldn't people overestimate Wolfram's capabilities and expect the bot to be able to answer all sorts of difficult questions that it can't grok, particularly about ongoing political/cultural events which seems to be the lifeblood of Twitter, thereby making the service look kind of lame and useless..?

I'll do whatever gets the most votes but it seems this thread was forsaken. Would have been nice to see more discussion/refinery!

Are there any grants available to entrepreneurs in the UK? If so, does anybody have any experience with the process?

This forum post (http://www.namepros.com/3416506-post4355.html), and others posted it elsewhere.

It's a 20% project.. 80% of my time writing the post, 20% setting it up ;)

The people using it are .tel domain owners, performing searches to figure out how Google is indexing and ranking them. It will eventually grow into a real .tel search engine.

Why? It's version 0. The next release will be in the summer.

General purpose search engines like Google aren't sufficiently appropriate for .tel, since its specific utility is for contact informaton, rather than content. You can find out more about it at telnic.org

So then, if only Netflix had a checkbox on its registration form:

[ ] Yes, I am a pretentious psuedo-intellectual scenester!

Perhaps you've discovered the most important demographic unit of the century? I guess then, the greater problem would be to glean which people answered the question sarcastically.. damn.

I didn't downvote, I didn't upvote, I didn't vote sideways, and I didn't vote for the down-up-vote, etc. because I just don't care. You're thinking: what a jerk! Well, I care as much about this poor soul as I do about any of the other thousands of people who died today. I am a compassionate person, but I have some gripes, so please hear me out.

I live in the UK, and for the past several weeks we've had to suffer the media being obsessed with itself over [this](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7741322.stm) and [this](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7740926.stm). They've each consumed 4 or 5 days of consecutive news headlines at the top of the bill. Politicians even get themselves involved - no doubt to disassociate themselves from having to answer real questions about their calamatous mistakes! It's a real circus, with destructive consequences, and this too is a circus, albeit a smaller one.

Yesterday I clicked on a link regarding this whole saga; it was worded with (fake) outrage over the Justin.tv CEO's notable lack of compassion from the press release. Personally I always find that press releases are great vehicles to show compassion! Anyway, right there in the middle of the screen was a very prominent screencaptured image of that boy's dead corpse. Uh, yeah, thanks for that er suicide porn. Very appropriate. Very well considered decision.

There is apparently good reason why established media don't go in to the details and gratuitous imagery of suicide that it reports - studies show that it can inspire further tragedies to take place, perhaps by indulging the fantasies of those among us who may be contemplating taking our own lives. With journalism, professional or amateur, online or offline, comes a great responsibility granted to it by a free society that shouldn't be taken lightly.

I fail to understand why tdavis felt the need to post a "public apology" over this. I can just imagine him standing in front of a press pack, his humiliated wife by his side, trying to worm his way out of some scandal to salvage a career. It never seems credible to me when people retract something they've said - why didn't you just say that you acknowledge that you have a dark and twisted sense of humour and that you won't apologise for it?

I thought HN was supposed to be a community of tech oriented entrepeneurs collecting relevent content, but judging by the cumulative editorial process that I've witnessed lately it seems to be descending into becoming nothing more than just another category of foxnews.com.

Now, you can release the hounds and I'll just stand here.

Can anybody share a video session that they themselves commissioned? I'd like to see how the quality of feedback compares with the "official" demo of tripadvisor.

P.S. Somebody else mentioned eye tracking - I think commercial solutions for this are pretty expensive, but I've seen a few hobbyists roll their own using low cost webcams, though I'm not sure how they fair in terms of accuracy.

P.P.S. And somebody else mentioned just embedding a screen grabber directly onto your website - I'm sure it's achievable but with a browser extension, i.e. Mozilla. I'll have a play around and see what I can come up with.

Because when they went under they took all of their depositors money with them, and left their creditors in the lurch. This point is really why his thesis is so important.

I just want to say something about the banking crisis though, to get it off my chest - it will happen again, sooner or later. Even though new financial regulation will likely be introduced to prevent a crisis like this from happening again, over time institutions will develop ever more complex instruments and trading rooms to find a way around them - as they have done so historically - and make turkeys out of all of us, once again. The fundamental problem is the lack of political will to maintain oversight and keep regulation up-to-date.. politicians (and the rest of us) only really take notice when something goes badly wrong. How do we solve this problem?

Sorry, I must have removed it - it's there now.

I'd certainly like to hear more about it - can you contact me? Email address is in my profile.

Why are these competitions always restricted to the US? I'm in the UK; Amazon sells European-based S3 storage and they have offices in the UK. What's the problem?

I'm working on a cracking idea that I'm sure would arouse their interest. It's so disheartening when I see these kinds of competitions and then realise I'm disqualified for being a dirty European.

Perhaps there's somebody who could demonstrate trustworthiness on here who would allow non-US residents to enter this competition (and others) by proxy through them?

pg - Would you be interested in doing this?

There are many things about this project that don't make any sense, as others have commented; it is not a wiki, does not compete with Wikipedia, seems to stand alone from other Google products in terms of design and yet they still haven't changed the name even after the owner of knol.com refused to sell.

One of the things that I like about Wikipedia is that I can just hand craft a /wiki/Title URL - Knol's URLs are obfuscated behind strange ID's and author's names. Do they not consider these things?

On a similar topic, I'll never understand why they decided to shelve Google Answers - there could have been a great synergy between that community and a wiki.

Knol will fail simply because it does not beat Wikipedia in any respect.

Was this born from a 20% side project by any chance? I can imagine some executive sitting behind his desk thinking "we need to buy wikipedia, but we can't.. so anyway, this knol thing looks close enough.. let's promote it to production".

I think you're absolutely right, and eventually the RIAA will have to adapt to accommodate services like these. It's an inevitability.

I'd like to see a single global licensing body with a harmonised and simplified model covering every component; record labels, publishers, performers, writers, download rights, artwork, etc. There could be ways for them to support small broadcasters - by providing access to a large catalogue of digital music, waiving fees in exchange for delivering ads, etc. From this we'd see some really innovative services bubbling up to the top.

However, I still stand behind what I said - if you want to turn a service like mixturtle into a viable business then you have to play their game, which is very difficult. I know it makes me unpopular, but it's just a reality we have to live with (for now).

I had discussions with PPL and MCPS-PRS here in the UK a long time ago - their model is pretty complex - and if I wanted to have users in other countries then I'd need to get licensed with their representative bodies too. Not to mention the issue of download rights and artwork - all that has to be negotiated directly with the copyright holders. I'd wanted to build an ad-based model, but in the end I couldn't see any alternative to subscriptions, so I gave up - I couldn't afford the £10,000 advance fee.

It's pretty good - one of the better music index services I've used. Others here have commented on a few small issues but overall it seems well executed.

However, is this really a viable business? I assume you intend it to be, based upon your description of it being a startup, but please correct me if I'm mistaken. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'm going to have to piss on your parade a little bit.

I have considered developing something similar to this in the past, but I've always stopped myself - simply because if it becomes any sort of success and is seen to be either (i) taking in revenues or (ii) encouraging others to develop similar services then the RIAA will give the slightest of gestures.. a wince of the lip perhaps.. to direct a battalion of lawyers to march upon your place of business and annihilate it with a bombardment of 4,000lb bombs stuffed with subpoenas and the internal organs from children and puppies.

Although many (including myself) argue that what you're doing is probably legal, it is not really open and shut - the RIAA would argue that you're encouraging and cooperating in the acts of copyright infringement. It's going to cost you a fortune to defend yourself.. and even if you manage to generate enough revenue to successfully defend yourself once, they will keep coming after you time and time again, from many different angles.

If the CoS can sue the IRS into submitting to its demands for tax exemption then the RIAA can shut down your little operation. The law can be cruel if you can't afford it.

If anybody else (with legal training) can enlighten me then I'd love to have my doubts assuaged.

Most phishers probably aren't going to have $50-100k spare either.

I think there has been a great misunderstanding with this scheme due to how its been reported by the likes of BBC News - applicants will have to submit business plans and demonstrate a technical capacity to maintain DNS servers - I bet they will have some pretty strict requirements by the time it's finalised, and I'm sure they will heavily scrutinise all applications.

It's not like any old Joe can just set up their own TLD overnight.

The cost will probably be so prohibitive to most people that only large brand names will bother. And even then, they will have to overcome huge challenges with marketing such exotic TLDs. If they an achieve this, it will benefit us all.

I doubt take-up on generic keywords will be that strong, except amongst naive speculators.

I might be able to help you salvage something (at least a working prototype) pro-bono if you'd like to contact me (my username @gmail.com).