rafski

Well done, even June results are above "ramen profitable" where you live—unless it's the capital.

http://begfor.it and http://facebook.com/begforit I understand…

In other words, US citizens are US property.

This is distinctive for the US from what I understand. People in most western countries don't have to report to them once they've left other than to renew passports.

Not trying to take away from how fantastic and inspiring a story this is, what's with the "check for grants/subsidizing" bit?

Is the ultimate advice "be from a wealthy country that lets you travel on welfare"? :)

Leeches? Not the best choice for a comparison.

Leeches are free medicine, as opposed to today's as-closed-as-it-gets med/pharma industry. They are still in use in official medicine, not only in the form of synthetic blood anticoagulant hirudin.

There's quite little information on hirudotherapy on Wikipedia, no mention of the range of beneficial substances leches' saliva contains (other than hirudin) and no mention of e.g. benefits of iron depletion through bloodletting.

This might be considered controversial medicine, but dismissing medicinal use of leeches sounds a bit off to me.

But I might be totally wrong, I am part of the Wikipedia generation too after all :)

Will Apple's solution be limited to Safari? I would think Marco's customers are rather a tech-savvy crowd who wouldn't tie themselves to just one particular browser.

I use Instapaper for the multi-browser support (mostly in Firefox), but also for the Kindle support, both for reading in Kindle Webkit browser and as downloads.

I think Marco has a big chance to catch the long tail of read-later'ing.

If you look at desktop Safari's Reader Mode… It is a fantastic feature but I don't think I ever heard of anyone I know using it.

It should've been implemented in iOS Safari long time ago, btw, this is where it's been missing.

The crazy idea that files are obsolete reminds me of how Skype thought that the old multiwindow communicator paradigm needed replacing and forced Skype 5 on disgruntled users.

Skype insists they see the future while users keep downgrading to 2.8

As cyborganics says, having companies sponsor it to virally launch products might be the thing…

Fun facts:

At the time of the AppStore announcement by Steve Jobs, the word trademark APPSTORE and the domain APPSTORE.COM belonged to Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com dropped their APPSTORE trademark in 2008, just about the time Apple applied for APP STORE trademark. The domain APPSTORE.COM now leads to an error page within apple.com domain.

I guess we can safely assume Apple got the trademark green light and the domain from Salesforce.com, especially after—if my memory serves—Salesforce.com app was featured in one of the Steve Jobs stage announcements.

In many European countries it costs considerable money to keep a business alive, REGARDLESS of any income.

In Spain you have to pay €250 a month Autonomo, a social tax, even as a sole trader/freelancer. €250 x 12 months is €3000 (roughly $4000). This is a lot of money to get taxed for nothing annually in a country where minimum monthly wage is in the region of €550 and rent prices are high. Ever been to Barcelona and wondered why it wasn't the design Mecca it had all the makings of? The fantastic design scene seen in the design of posters, flyers, logos, shops, interiors, all the design festivals, the conferences… yet nothing significant comes out of it. The social tax prevents small business there from starting up, a policy that makes room for large companies.

In Poland, it costs a similar amount of social tax (ZUS) just to stay registered as a company (a sole trader that is, there are higher costs associated with keeping a proper company registered).

It's better in the UK and Republic of Ireland:

In the UK the minimum amount of social tax (NIC) for a sole trader with minimal or no income is £2 per week, which seems fair enough.

In Ireland the social tax (PRSI) is 3-5% of your income but no less than about €250 per year (might have gone up this year). Seems bearable as well.

In both countries (not 100% sure about UK) you can register a Business Name (€20 in Ireland) without having registered a company. In Ireland you can start trading without even registering with the Revenue until you make around €3500.

The 100 million for schools is a preemptive publicity stunt ahead of "The Social Network" film premiere next week.

It will be interesting to see how hundreds of millions of people seeing a film (on- and off- cinema screen) – supposedly depicting shady roots of their favourite website – will react.

Most likely, with a "meh…" but let's wait and see.