HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

willphipps

202 karma · joined August 27, 2007

submissionscomments
willphipps··on 7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls
my karma ran over my dogma. it's all good, man..
willphipps··on 7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls
i don't get how karma works..
willphipps··on 7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls
you guys are way ahead of me, man..
willphipps··on [dead]
Cheers, Sidmitra!

OK, so the market is saturated with similar apps. - however - it is still very early days with regards to internet radio and there is still plenty of opportunity and room for innovation and indeed, profit. More so, if done in a collaborative, non profit kind of way...if you get me..

Existing apps. are by no means perfect - Last.fm makes very obvious recommendations - I type in Jimi Hendrix and it plays me The Doors. I want it to play me Space Guitar by Johnny Guitar Watson but I didn't know that. Or perhaps some 60's Jap Rock...

So there's that and there's also the apps. that just focus on indie/unsigned music. I think they are leaving out a lot of the good stuff by limiting themselves to offering just unsigned material.

willphipps··on Ask HN: Market research?
Would tech VC blogs help?

http://www.theequitykicker.com/ http://www.the-accelerator.blogspot.com/ http://maxniederhofer.com/ http://www.freddestin.com/ http://www.avc.com/

Best of luck.

willphipps··on SnapTalent (YC W08) Shuts Down
so sorry to hear this.
willphipps··on The Guardian launches open API for all content - but they still control the ads
I've been using webmynd recently, hopefully this means it can include guardian content now. Cool if it does.
willphipps··on Slghtly unrelated to hacking..
Why do ideas that change the world always create wealth?

Mozilla, Miro, Wikipedia....the list goes on. If it was inverse - i.e. the number of non-profits outweighed the number of for-profits - I am quite certain you'd see a bigger change in the world.

willphipps··on Slghtly unrelated to hacking..
here here
willphipps··on Slghtly unrelated to hacking..
but why? money comes and goes, changing the world is permanent.
willphipps··on Ask YC: Learning to hack...
angel tech is a good book
willphipps··on Teach yourself you to Hack in 6-9 months
this is useful, thanks
willphipps··on My side project: an open-sourced comedy community
This is a cool idea - but I think you definitely should have video.

If you could reach out to the stand up community and get them submitting videos it'd be cool - there are thousands of them as well, so filtering the good stuff is always tricky. Maybe you could tie your voting system into that.

If you are using wordpress I would recommend showinabox.tv - it lets you easily add video to your blog and let people subscribe to it. I'd consider offering footage in HD or Hi-Resolution on Miro (www.getmiro.com) it's by far the best video rss aggregator. I think youtube videos are such poor quality they really don't do most videos justice, when there is an opportunity for people to watch them full screen in DVD quality.

willphipps··on Ask YC: Who do you use to print your business cards?
moo.com! by far the coolest - everyone can be different and you can upload a library of a hundred snaps in one zip file.
willphipps··on So, what's the next step? Let's network.
great idea...done.
willphipps··on Music 2.0 book - Gerd Leonhard
It's free.
willphipps··on Google CIO Douglas Merrill Quits Becomes President of EMI
Yes, I wonder if they will eventually get involved with the Warner Music/Jim Griffin plan to charge for music at the ISP level. That's how most people I know would like to pay for music.
willphipps··on Learn PHP from Scratch or outsource?
Learn PHP. I started trying a while ago, it doesn't take that long to build a basic application so you can at least get a prototype going.
willphipps··on Solo Entrepreneurs: Big Bucks from Tiny Computing Startups
fanpop seem to have done pretty well bootstrapped - hovering around the 5000 mark on alexa..
willphipps··on Ask YC: Internet Startup or Big Powerhouse for a summer internship?
It would surely depend on what your longer term goals are. Do you want to set up your own start up? if so, go for the start up option. Being in a smaller company also exposes you to a wider area of activities, which can also be a great advantage, especially if you hope to one day start up your own thing.
willphipps··on Ask YC: Any newbie coders?
there's a lot to be said for jumping in at the deep end - especially if you have some friends that can help you when you reach a mind block or dead end.

as for my project, it's very early days, i'll let you know when i have something more substantial to show you..

willphipps··on Ask YC: Any newbie coders?
i absolutely agree - building an app. i would want to use has made it a much more powerful learning exercise. i found the tizag.com tutorials also useful for the basics, but once i had completed them, it was much easier to envision how i could go on to create my app.
willphipps··on Ask YC: Any newbie coders?
definitely help from friends cannot be underestimated!
willphipps··on Where can I get music legally?
check out www.amiestreet.com, a lot of the tracks there are affordable, or even free.
willphipps··on Ask YC: How important is it to be friends with your co-founder?
i think it's really important. not only from a trust perspective, but also the amount of time you are going to spend with them means its vital you can have a laugh together when things get a bit tough. the risk is that you may fall out over something related to the business - this is something only you can decide, but if you address the possible scenarios early on and have agreed upon a way of dealing with possible outcomes (good and bad), then i think this risk can be limited.
willphipps··on BT to UK customers: Share your WiFi... please!
Good idea. I know so many people who have to wait weeks for broadband after just moving into a place - with this they could legally use their neighbours connections...sweet.