sharpn

That's true, but it ignores the loss of reputation you get if either recipient considers the intro spammy. And I wouldn't give my email address to anyone I thought would not have the courtesy to ask me before sharing it.

I agree, but would add that a frugal company will also beat a less frugal competitor (or potential competitor) - because they can advertise more, pay better etc. And when you are more frugal than your competition, you can win any competition on price, all other things being equal.

I'd also suggest that VC's will always fund a frugal company over their rival(s) - although that's somewhat hypothetical as I've never accepted outside funding.

Having worked in UK Banking I can only suggest you google phrases like eg. 'know your customer KYC regulations' and 'anti-money laundering AML' to see why Apple cannot send, and your bank cannot recieve, funds in the ficticious company name to your non-UK account. If you try having Apple ammend your company name & location to your own name - that could work. Good luck.

Ah - I see, fair enough. Thanks.

Interesting, but I thought MySQL was Swedish, not Finnish?

If you found a cure for cancer and only put it on a website, maybe noone would find it.

But if you also mentioned it to a few people (especially a doctor or cancer victim) then it would be featured in news articles, broadcast, tweeted etc. because it's a big deal. Soon your website would appear first in any relevant search.

think that's where the phrase 'a spanner in the works' comes from too.

You have a point. But I think the sample is biased because of fame. A founder who goes from $0 to $10m is rags-to-riches by most definitions of the term, but goes largely unnoticed unless they seek fame - and many don't.

Conversely, you cannot easily go from nowhere to successful in either politics or entertainment without becoming widely known - almost by definition of success in those industries.

That said - I can think of relatively obscure rags-to-riches stories in entertainment (writers/producers etc. Rod Temperton springs to mind) so you could be right. Would be interesting to see a better data set, as you say.

You got screwed. The cash single fare is about double the incremental fare using an 'oyster' card.

Tokyo & Singapore both have excellent public transport networks (at least until around 11:30pm)

What I did (with fewer sticks):

Copied whatever pdf files I found useful as a startup (example incorporation templates, cautionary tales, relevant essays, useful tips etc.) onto them & passed them on to whoever wanted them. Great feedback so far - although that wasn't the goal.

I agree he's not in a good place & I empathise. But the awkward fact is that his work is lowering in value because of greater transparacy, not because of a decrease in worth.

There are several good UK writers earning decent money via newspaper readers today - for example Alexander McCall Smith serialises fictional accounts of ordinary lives, Robert Fisk explores international injustice, Luke Johnson muses on small businesses and Jeremy Clarkson rails against what annoys him - and many others.

Unfortunately, there are also many people paid to write for newspapers because previously nobody knew which articles customers read - now that's becoming clear, some people will lose out. Sad, but true.

I didn't go to either so I don't know. But in a previous job I hired programer grads from both & found them all excellent (& much better than Harvard - but nb. tiny sample size). I strongly recommend you make some connections in London whilst at either, and take advantage of the cheap flights/train to Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Berlin etc. for weekend breaks. Good luck!

Yes, there are. But if your living is content, then ignoring developments in your industry is a failure to engage in your career - and if you blithely blame others for the result of that failing in print then you diminish your authority with your readership further.

Sadly not. I'm British & this guy is not joking. His 'career' is making unobservant remarks about his life for a newspaper. The internet has opened up what he does to comparison & he is discovering that the market places a low value on his work. Rather than wonder why he is not popular he blames 'nerds'.

One approach you can use:

If you're working 1.8x fair rate, work out what 0.8x your salary is & imagine you were an investor with this sum to put to work - how much equity would you require? That's a starting base for your negotiation. Good luck.

The data isn't secret, but commercial access to the database is restricted. If you want to find a few postcodes (I think <=5 per day) it's free. More, or if you want a manipulatable copy of the dataset you need to pay.

I don't know what that means, but I did think this was a brilliant marketing post from a company, and an interesting read.

Good point - I can't find anything twitter does better for me than my current behaviour, but if others do then that's great; I might find a use for it in future.

I liked this on a few different levels:

-Hacking data to reveal the answers to important difficult questions.

-Exploring contentious issues in a neutral & intelligent way.

-Great example of how to attract potential customers by providing valuable information that also gently demonstrates competence related to your service & differentiates your offering from competitors.

I enjoyed reading this, I learnt something, and I thought favourably of the website based on this. No idea how good they are, but that post was a good marketing lesson.

Yes they are:

http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/about_iplayer/lic...

Interesting. However, I would note what they do:

"Through storytelling and technology, we helps brands engage the connected culture"

And that they are 'sponsored' by Microsoft. I can't find anything on the site explicitly distancing the blog from the company's main marketing function.

Or maybe I'm being too cynical.

I can't find it, but there was a guy doing the same thing (but with .doc as well as pdf) about a year ago on here. I think he had some sort of monthly subscription option as well as a 'per-use' fee. Try finding out how he got on.

[edit] This is apparently going to extend into Sweden: http://www.freepostit.com/Home.aspx

Good luck asking authors to identify which parts of their book can be safely ignored.

Seriously - if you're coding then that is what you should be concentrating your attention on. Listen to an audiobook while you're cooking, exercising or whatever. [edit] mechanical fish puts it well (currently) below:

Assuming their answers are all honest & display competence, I've found that the quality of questions a candidate asks are a better long-term indicators of likely success.

for me, signal < noise.

I agree the mail is terrible, and as other comments have said it's no secret (try googling 'dry baltic index' for business news stories on the topic). But besides that, this article is far above the mail's usual standard.

I guess the author hit 'replace all' when editing in the word 'Christmas' somewhere:

"You used to look Christmas from here straight over to Indonesia..."

http://code.google.com/apis/finance/ I expect yahoo has something similar.

Good point - I think of this as the difference between a pupil (absorbs instruction) and a scholar (seeks knowledge).