wmboy

Lifehacker came out with a 'Learn to Code' series a few months ago (http://lifehacker.com/#!5744113/learn-to-code-the-full-begin...) and used JavaScript as the language for the same reasons that imechura has given above.

Sure, setting false expectations will obviously do yourself a disservice. Not quite sure what your comment means with regards to building buzz and doing pre-launch marketing?

Maybe for speed readers that's the case. IMO though, life is too short to read mediocre books if there are better ones you could be reading (same is true of mediocre music and movies).

You should be able to carry the buzz through for a while, if you have to delay shipping. i.e. keep people updated via your blog/email list with promises that the wait "will be worth it" etc...

There are no cons, only pros (that is, if you want to maximise the number of users that sign up)!

Building buzz is nothing more than a part of marketing, something which every business should be doing. You can think of building buzz as the marketing you should be doing before your product is available to the public.

I assume you mean in regards to entrepreneurship?

How about Pursuit of Happyness in the drop in center where he's fixing the last X-Ray machine in the middle of the night, long after the last light inside has automatically switched off. (sorry for the bad description, haven't watched it in ages). It really shows the tenacity he had to become successful.

One option is Clickbank.

No need for a merchant account and they easily handle affiliate commissions (if that's something you want).

Downside is that people will see Clickbank.com on their credit card statement, not your merchant name (but that's the same with a basic PayPal account as well).

Upside is they have a very good track record at processing recurring payments successfully (much better than PayPal) and they don't freeze your account like PayPal or Google Checkout does.

Cool story. My question is, if you were going to do the same thing, what skill would you try and master?

Agreed, just take your customers' pricing advice with a grain of salt!

$10 to install on unlimited domains and unlimited updates? If you want to offer quality support you'll need to be charging more for the product...

Mixergy interviews are great to listen to. Not sure if they're still available on iTunes, I simply download the mp3's from the website as I like to pick and choose.

Note - most interviews are about an hour long so you'd have to listen to them over 2 commutes.

I've got a 2 year old son and a 7 week old daughter. For your first born you can forget about the first 2 weeks - that's time to devote to becoming a father (sounds cheesy but that's the way it is).

Once a routine is formed it is still very hard, especially when you little boy finds his way into your office with a storybook in his hand wanting you to read it to him. Expect to be doing some late nights when the house is finally quiet.

Perhaps you could consider investing your first considerable revenue in an outdoor office so that you're actually "leaving the house" when you go to work. That's what I'll be doing...

Brazil sounds good, but that's a huge country to become a hub. It would surely need to be a city within Brazil like São Paulo or Rio.

Of course it's not really something you can engineer, if it was I'd suggest New Zealand =D

It gets complicated the more things you want to be involved in. If you have no girlfriend/wife, no responsibilities, don't care what your few friends think of you and have no ambitions to add value to the world (other than through your startup) you can go hard, day or night.

For those of us who are married, have kids, do community work, go to Church (Sundays and weeknights) etc... we have a lot more to juggle and finding quality time is very difficult. You really need to put in at least 20 hours a week to have traction so it's a case of making time (and learning to live with less sleep). There's little to no room for procrastination for people in this boat.

Of course I'm not complaining - having a wife, family, helping the community and participating in a local church are great ways to add value with your life. It's all about priorities I guess...

I guess that's one of the reasons why successful startups are an anomaly.

Which of the ideas do you already have potential paying customers?

Ask around, pitch both of the ideas and find out which one people are more inclined to hand their credit card details over.

I agree. I think the apprenticeship model would work far better for programming than the lecture/assignment/exam model. Solving real world problems and learning on the job under the eye of a mentor would be invaluable.

The person/company offering the apprenticeship would get cheap labour for a few years in return for helping the young apprentice learn everything they need.

> If the State gets our of control, a roll-back function could be implemented

But who decides when it gets out of control?

There was an article about this on Lifehacker written by Clay Johnson; "...there's an optimal number of pixels you need to complete the tasks you need to complete. Worry about that number, not the number of monitors you have. That optimal number, for the vast majority of people is about 2500x1400. In 2003—before widescreen became commonplace—it was the case that 2 17-20"(2560 pixels wide) LCDs was the only affordable way to acquire an optimal number of pixels. Today, you can pick up a 27 inch display with 2560x1440 pixels along with a computer attached to it for under $1500. This number of pixels allows you to accomplish most tasks—whether it's writing code and debugging, writing a blog post and reading primary sources, or editing one spreadsheet with data from another."

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5616859/is-the-multiple+monitor-prod...

That was written back in August of last year, so the price of a 27 inch display is even less now...

Host the video file on Amazon S3 and then use something like JWPlayer to show the video on your website.

Once the app is big and famous your lawyers will sort out getting the .com for you. ;-)

Lol, and force all app developers to use their email newsletter software...

Just wondering... is it against Apple's TOS to have locked levels you can only unlock if a user signs up to your newsletter?

Because if it's not, that would be a great way to build an email subscriber list.

Admit it, you're more likely to read the book now than you would have been...

He obviously wants his book to be successful (though not for monetary reasons) so it would make senese to write about something controversial - in this case putting Bill Gates in negative light is obviously the easist way to get attention.

Puts an interesting spin on SEO. It seems the best technique is still to simply produce quality content that people want to link to and share with their friends.

"Create levels of priority access. The more friends who join, the higher level of attainment. See for yourself at http://fab.com/priority-access.

Good idea. I guess if one was planning on launching a different kind of business (e.g. a SaaS) you could award people who refer X number of friends with a free lifetime account...it won't cost you anything except for a few missed sales.

Just don't go down the "Win a free iPad" route, as that'll bring in a whole lot of free riders that have no interest in your product and are only in it for the chance to win.

Definitely keen to know this! Unowned 3 letter domains are long extinct...

The Paleo diet is interesting but is not the be all and end all.

Check out http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/ , http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ and http://www.westonaprice.org/ for more viewpoints.

The general consensus though is to avoid processed foods and stick to whole foods. A big one is to eat animal fat instead of industrially produced vegetable and seed oils.

Also, limit carbohydrate intake (ideally eating only fruit and vegetables).

What will the new knowledge they gain allow them to do?

Will it make them more money? Will they get more clients? Will it save them a whole lot of time?

$47 is a lot for a document in digital format. However if that $47 will land you a new paying customer worth $3000 then it's more than worth the price...

Just my 2 cents (not meant to be an 'answer' at all...).

If you're passionate about business & entrepreneurship I'd say you'd be the perfect person to take your parents' business to the next level. Look at what Gary Vaynerchuk did with his parents' wine business...

Are your parents both taking full time salaries? Are they willing to transition out of the business to allow for increased salary expenses?

Also, if you have any ambitions to become wealthy DON'T give away share options/ownership of the company unless you absolutely have to. I'd suggest working for nothing if it meant you could retain ownership and survive off your ramen profitable start up...

Once we realize that obesity is (by and large) a modern lifestyle disease caused by needless stress and a diet consisting of mostly fake food perhaps we'll return to eating a whole food diet consisting of real food?

e.g. margarine (which has color added to it to make it look yellow, otherwise it'd be gray) is NOT a healthy alternative to butter.

Here's the progress blog - http://www.proudn00b.com/ (mentioned in a similar thread today).