stephenou

Don't let the word "failure" bring you down. Most highly successful entrepreneurs fail before they make a fortune. Those failure stories are just usually not being broadcasted so people are unknown and thought they were successful from their first venture. They are not.

Examples: http://mixergy.com/kissmetrics-hiten-shah-interview/

Hiten Shah and Neil Patel wasted half millions dollars into a hosting company that went nowhere. They learned and started KissMetrics.

Even though the technology behind HTML5 mobile app seems solid, there's still a big hole in the business aspect - no effective way to generate revenue. There's nothing near the App Store in terms of audience reach in the web space.

Put it in more perspective: Look how much iOS developers vs. general web developers are making. And I've also heard an iPhone app has more paid users than a web app (with the similar functionality)'s free users.

I tend to think that PG considers maintaining HN as his hobby, he enjoys keeping this knowledgable piece of work for himself.

Learn how to code. It is really not hard. People who said they can't code are at a mindset of not wanting to learn/don't have enough time to learn/can have other people to code, etc.

Commit yourself. Think about it this way: If I can code, I can turn my brilliant idea into reality in a week, whereas it might take 3 months if I need a dev to code and what the dev (that I pay $10000 for) makes aren't even satisfying.

Go to college. The college tuition will not be a problem if you can start taking on client work at your spare time. Simply go to less party and begin looking for clients.

Besides, you can gain some real-life work experience while you are in college. By the time you get out, you'll be more ready that everyone else.

[I haven't use the product yet, my comment is based on my observation on their website.]

I think the technology behind this piece of hardware is unquestionable advanced, I can't see people using it every day. The reason being is majority of people have set schedules, they rest and wake up at certain times that can't be changed because of their jobs requirements.

Go out on the wild and get some inspirations:

Dan Cederholm: http://simplebits.com

Spencer Fry: http://spencerfry.com

Mike Rundle: http://flyosity.com

Sam Brown: http://sam.brown.tc

Matt Mullenweg: http://ma.tt

Tim Van Damme: http://maxvoltar.com

Meagan Fisher: http://owltastic.com

Adii Pienaar: http://adiirockstar.com

It's probably because you are only dealing with the simple situation right now where you have few elements to display. But once you get into a more advanced level of user interface design, you will regret using tables because there are so many blocks of elements needed to be fit in.

Or, imagine building Facebook/Twitter using <table></table>.

I don't entirely understand why people are preferring to keep this kind of number under the desk. Would you share why?

In my mind, specific number/statistic is a layer of trust.

You can definitely try the 37signals method. Teach your customers. If your material quality is good enough, they will come to you, for free, everyday.

If you don't have an expertise yourself on marketing/advertising/writing, you can always reach out to them personally via emails. Or you can even find out their social media presence and see what they are talking about.

My advice is not to worry about scalability at this point. You can't really predict when and where your startup is going to gain popularity. Focus more on building a solid product, launch it, and you know what directions you are heading toward.

Imagine you waste 2 months of scaling your website that is only getting 100 users. I've experienced this before. Tears after all.

Great one. Fits my need on digging into old posts I found interesting that I now want to reference to again.

Let's say there are 3 types of domain: parked domain, in-use domains, monetized domains. Here's what I would do:

Parked domain: I would offer no more than $50. Most parked, un-used domains are going to be parked forever. The chances being sold are very low, so you can use this advantage to really push down the price. Also, if the domain name is just the name of one of your project idea, you can always pick something else that its domain is available.

In-used domain. At this part, it really depends. As jeffmould said, try looking up its search engine ranking and determine its value based on SEO.

Monetized domain. Usually the owner of this kind of domains wants to sell at a relative high price. Do a little bit of research and estimate how much the site is making every month. Let's say it's generating $1000 ad revenue per month, anywhere between $5000-$10000 will be acceptable.

To conclude, the golden rule is always offer your lowest expected price. Because the owner is 100% going to raise the price from what you say until you're both satisfied.

Lots of Twitter users already have push notifications set up for mentions and DMs from texts, emails, Boxcar, Notifo, etc.

Totally.

I am in the US.

That's like a form key. :)

Honestly speaking, I am not trying to make loads of money out of iTunes Instant. I can earn 5% of the commission which means it's only $60 if 1000 songs are being downloaded using my LinkShare referral links.

Though I do hope I will get the coverage of TechCrunch or Mashable. :)

That's a good find. Though I don't know if Google's suggestions will fit into Apple iTunes search.

Hm. I am not sure if that's possible through Apple's API. I will take a look.

Thanks.

Also, I've been thinking to make a more mobile-optimized version of the site right now.

Thanks, Daniel! :)

Yeah, I agree. I will probably cache search results if load time is too slow. Also, I have a 0.5 second delay (after keyup) to execute the search function.

Oh yeah, I've heard about it before. I will definitely implement it using <audio> if it doesn't heavily affect loadtime.

Good idea. I think that is totally possible through HTML5 right?

That is a definitely a good idea. I will look into it!