sparknlaunch

Craigslist, Plenty Of Fish plus some others are examples of sites that took a really minimalist approach to design but managed to pull in a massive market share through fulfilling a customer need. Revenue from advertising paid the bills.

We wrote about ugly design before, how in some cases it actually increases conversion rates. It's odd but sometimes ugly is beautiful...

http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/keep-it-simple-...

> "Blogging mistake #1: Not prominently linking to your main site

> Blogging mistake #2: Not integrating with social properties

> Blogging mistake #3: Making it harder to subscribe to, and regularly follow, your blog

> Blogging mistake #4: Only blogging about product announcements

> Blogging mistake #5: Hiding what your product is about"

Agree in part to these but blogging and social media are overplayed. Building and integrating all these elements, and building a sufficient & quality following is tough work.

These tips certainly point novices in the right direction, but even doing these well doesn't mean you will succeed - at blogging or at your startup.

In a recent fictional book about poverty in the UK, two types if poverty were identified.

One was unintentional poverty- someone falls into trouble due to no fault of their own. Maybe illness, trauma etc

The other is intentional- individuals taking full advantage of government benefits. In the UK generations of families have been stuck in this category.

One group feel more deserving...

It's a great story however skeptical of these retrospective views. I wonder how much of her motives were driven by protecting the mortgage holders and the economy; or protecting her career prospects.

Saying this, Hunt seems much more deserving than the former banker in this article:

http://gawker.com/5553737/

1- When logged in comments and submissions (by logged in user) should be highlighted in a distinctive colour.

2- Comment karma should be shown publicly rather than privately. ie each comment should show value.

3- Comments within a thread should be able to be sorted by comment score.

4- Submitted links for same news stories should share karma points. Several times you submit the same story only to see someone else collect karma hours later.

5- Increase transparency on how comments ranking works.

6- Increase transparency on max submissions and comments allowable per day.

> [Campbell talks about boom and bust cycles...]

People always dismissed it, when I told them - if only I was born x years earlier I would have graduated at the start of the boom cycle. I would have landed a high paying role out of college/Uni and earned enough cash by the end of the cycle to see me through the bust years. With the work experience I would have a better chance competing against new grads. Considering the value of money etc, benefiting from a 2/3 boom cycle could put you well ahead financially.

While this is rather simplistic and exceptions to the rule, timing can make one hell of a difference.

Top marks for utilising feet for inputting. We have grown lazy with smartphones almost limiting our interaction to a shake of the wrist.

Could a neck collar or head band be developed to perform similar tasks? Eg you move your head left or right to navigate web sites.

> Why are Rails people so obsessed with accelerating the trivial?

From a Rails beginner perspective...

Having spent days trying to get Rails up and running on a Windows box, this product looks absolutely awesome.

Even the so called out of the box solutions still needs hours of customization. Every new release of Rails means starting from scratch with limited documentation.

Anyone who has struggled with installing Rails on Windows, then finding a decent IDE, installing all the other packages etc etc will appreciate being able to get to that point in 60 seconds via their browser.

I am sure some Rails experts and Mac Users may disagree but getting started in Rails takes a lot of effort.

>> Nothing ever get's built on schedule or within budget.

If anything, things always deliver on schedule and within budget. This is due to massive scope creep (scope reduction) and reduced quality.

From BA/PM perspective here are some possible reasons (with no disrespect to programmers):

1 BA/PM generally spend most of their time dealing with politics, governance and bureaucracy.

2 BA/PM spend a lot of time trying to elicit requirements and deal with scope creep.

3 BA/PM act as a conduit between parties and stakeholders who rarely agree. They attempt to gain compromise and keep the show on the road.

4 BA/PM take some risk and responsibility for things going wrong. And need to fix these things.

5 BA/PM act a managers, managing people, strategy, finances.

There are more but you get the context. There are lots of intangibles (or BS) needed to manage a project. You need someone to deal with it.

In certain industries BA/PM with a mixture of business, technology and BA/PM skills can demand more pay.

I was a doubter before but seeing the daily issues that come out on a challenging project, these BA/PM are probably underpaid.

Can better hiring method avoid the need to fire staff? Could you create a culture that retains the right people and forces wrong people to leave?

Looking at previous work experiences, you sometimes wonder how some people ever got through the interview process.

Looks good.

How does it work? What tool is being used to send the text message? And why text message over email or other online notification?

This post basically summarises the challenge with any idea. I have a great idea BUT.... It will take time, effort, money, the market place, the code, the people etc

And claims of billion dollars are typically baseless. Anyone would commit 10 years to a project if it would be worth a billion at the end.

So appreciate the authors musing on the next big thing, the problems described are the day dreams of any entrepreneur.

Sites look similar, but how different is this from using the same Hacker News orange colour scheme and aggregating stories directly from Hacker News?

"Hacker Monthly is a print magazine version of Hacker News — a social news website wildly popular among programmers and startup founders. The submission guidelines state that content can be “anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity.” Every month, we select from the top voted articles on Hacker News and print them in magazine format."

> "Another example: the Internet usage of depressive people tended to exhibit high “flow duration entropy” — which often occurs when there is frequent switching among Internet applications like e-mail, chat rooms and games."

Surely most people switch between applications and mediums? If not, then I fall within the 'depressive' category. Dual monitors plus smart phones and an iPad don't help things.

Odd that they are shutting this down. I thought there would be some value in the users etc?

I like Ash and his approach to lean but this recent post feels like overkill. The lean canvas (based on the business development model) was meant to simplify planning and decision making, not make it complex and time consuming.

http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/another-way-to-...

I would have googled "three horizontal lines" but interesting post nevertheless. From the maths prospective;

" A symbol with three horizontal line segments ( ) resembling the equals sign is used to denote both equality by definition (e.g., means is defined to be equal to ) and congruence (e.g., means 13 divided by 12 leaves a remainder of 1--a fact known to all readers of analog clocks)."

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Equal.html

I wonder if the recent integration into Microsoft Dynamics (CRM) had anything to do with this deal? Great result for Yammer.

There was a great 'On this week in Startups' podcast interview earlier this year with David Sacks (Yammer CEO). Interesting business.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Yammer-Integrates-Wi...

Totally interesting insight into the cinema world. My only questions is why they waited so late to test if the film would play? (I am sure there is a technical reason.)

>> "I hope for it to be around ~500 pages"

Firstly congrats on the contract. You must be an expert in the field to be offered a contract.

The aim of quantity (pages) rather than quality is troublesome. I would be aiming to write something that achieves an objective - like an average web developer will understand how to apply HTML5 after reading; or a complete newbie will be able to start using HTML5....

I recommend going to a bookshop and checking out the current books on programming languages/frameworks. Try and find a style that matches your objective. Look back at books you read and what helped.

Unless this is an extensive reference guide, focus on quality content rather than reams of paper.

I heard Adam Lashinsky speak on a recent Stanford Uni podcast. Pretty remarkable insights on Apple and Steve Jobs. Jobs turned the place into a pretty unique organisation.

Podcast: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2931

These are so good they cannot be real (humourous).They read like a Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G, Borat) film script. Here I thought the Swedes were the more intelligent inhabitants. Sonja has proved us right/wrong? Can't wait to see this new meme go viral.

There has recently been a few high profile cases of trolling gone bad. Anonymity has it's benefits, hence why certain communities work better than others. Although the trends towards transparency has seen sites like sprouter, quora, fb, stack exchange excel.

One troll was sentenced today for online threats however he didn't show up to court....

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4098274

I thought the big thing was that flame found itself into a network locked out from the outside world. So the intrigue lies in how it made it into this network ?

Thanks for sharing. Could you have achieved more/less with outsourcing the development? Bulk of sales came from spike-can the exceptional sales be maintained?

Impressive story. Hadn't heard the name before this story.

Don't totally get it but good luck. Site looks good.

Doesn't work in Chrome but the 'right mouse click' hack works.

There are likely some good opportunities for this code however speed of response may be a problem? Runs a little slow on my PC.

Dell announced this last week [1]:

"New initiative targets startup debt capital needs, connects firms with scalable technology solutions, markets and networks for growth"

"[It] provides entrepreneurs up to $100M in the financial and scalable technology resources they need to maximize potential for innovation, speed to market and job creation..."

This is a small change for the company and a great way to tap into innovation; plus support new businesses. May also get them early access to some new technology.

Good news for Dell and startups.

1- http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/secure/2012-06-07-dell-...