MarinaMartin

There's a lightbulb in the bottom right you can click to give feedback. We have already gotten feedback that it's a little hard to find so we will fix that in the next day or so! And if you're a coder we would love comments and PRs in Github.

Did you include HHS hospital charge data? If not, might be a nice fit: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2013pres/05/20130508a.html

StackOverflow and its variants are part of my morning routine. Never know when the random question you read today will solve a future problem!

Brilliant!

If you ignore the photo-sharing capability for a moment, it sounds like they're trying to create a more accurate alternative to GPS. In the 1700s Britain awarded about £100,000 in "Longitude prize" money to people who contributed to the development of [accurate] longitude. I tried to figure out what that is in today's pounds and found a calculator that said it's £147,000,000.00 today. So if Color really can create an alternative to GPS for $41 million, it would be cheaper than what it cost to develop longitude :)

No idea if they can actually pull this off, but thought the Longitude Prize story is cool (thank you, "Stuff You Should Know" podcast, for mentioning it earlier this year).

My favorite part of this experiment is that he tested with Monkey Island. Go Guybrush!

Me.

Anyone know how to sign up as a SOLE volunteer? Ironically, I cannot seem to find the answer via a web search.

Some companies created at SW have gone on to be real companies, but SW is really better for getting the feel for working with other people and then working with them on other projects. I can think of five funded (not that that's a metric for success) companies that grew out of Seattle Startup Weekend relationships. While I'm not seeking a co-founder at the moment, everyone on my co-founder shortlist is someone I met at Startup Weekend 3 years ago or I met directly through someone I met at SW.

Do the tutorial at http://railstutorial.org. It's SO important for the non-technical folks to at least be able to whip up an app on occasion, to be able to hire technical people effectively, to communicate your needs effectively, etc.

Drupal is fine for a prototype, and your partner may want to cut his teeth on it because he just enjoys learning new technologies. What technologies is he familiar with?

I really expected this article to be about photos of these draft dodgers drinking booze, making out with a guy, etc. But updating your Facebook profile on the Sabbath? That's hardcore attention to detail, Israel.

I personally open a (yellow) phone book to a random page and brainstorm ways to make that particular industry more efficient. But then again I'm an efficiency consultant.

I'd peruse idea/complaint websites and see if one idea tickles your fancy:

http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html http://www.whynot.net/ http://www.quirky.com/ http://logolalia.com/ideafactory/ http://mybiggestcomplaint.com/ http://www.ilovetocomplain.com/

Slicehost's documentation is the BOMB. I aspire to be like PickledOnion one day.

Don't give away half of your company for two months of work. Pick up some consulting work pronto. Sell your car. Try to get up-front payments from future clients.

Anecdotal stories of people securing funding in one day over lunch are true, but not the norm. Usually fundraising is a six month full-time process. If you're on the precipice right now and truly feel (and I think you have to truly feel it!) that revenue is right around the corner, then stick to that path for at least a couple of months. You can always get jobs and pursue funding at that point.

I read the first paragraph of this article and thought "this article is clearly written by an angry female." Lo and behold, the author's name is Cindy.

Go Wired magazine for choosing your covers based on what will sell and not based on the loss of the five readers who might be offended by it. They can read "Bitch" (which is somehow not an offensive name for a magazine if written by feminists?). If Wired doesn't sell magazines, Wired doesn't exist.

IANAL, but based on many conversations on the topic and a few close friends' personal legal experiences, WA generally doesn't uphold non-competes unless they're very specific (in geographic area and in time).

If someone is encumbered a geographical non-compete and they're leaving another state where they signed a non-compete, I'm willing to bet that the court battle will actually be in the original state, so CA law wouldn't apply. But again, IANAL.

I'm anti-non-competes unless a truly specific case warrants it (for commissioned sales teams, for example... I think it's reasonable that your new salesperson can't come in, print off your leads and go off on his own the next day).

This speech is the perfect blend of humor and sound advice:

"I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average."

At what point will CA's abysmal tax environment stop Silicon Valley from being a sought-after destination for entrepreneurs and talented employees? Reinforcing the idea that CA is a great place to start a business while they're sucking businesses dry is like buying the school bully lavish gifts every time he sticks your head in a toilet.

If you opened the same company in Seattle instead of SF, you'd get to keep around 9% more of your income. That was enough margin for me to leave CA for WA five years ago. (Though the recall election didn't help my feelings toward the place.)

Reading The Pragmatic Programmer helped me a lot with the problem-approaching aspect of things, but then I didn't pick it up until I was moderately comfortable with PHP. (I'm not a FT programmer so my learning process tends to be s-l-o-w w/o many opportunities for practice.)

I'd definitely be interested to see two different programmers write up their approach to a given problem. Something like this would be an excellent monthly blog post.

When I first read this title, I thought "Why is Chris Dixon on welfare?"

I had trouble reading past his suggestion for a "bill of rights" for Internet users. Real, important rights are being trampled on all the time in this country. A "bill of rights" that guarantees the right to watch football on your computer insults and minimizes our actual rights.

I'm in the same boat, a little further down the river. Also started with MIT OCW and How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (in addition to the O'Reilly Python book).

Best thing for me was to escape the textbook-like examples (quadratic equations, rock paper scissors) and actually [attempt to] build real things. Once you have cursory Python knowledge, pick up "Practicel Django Projects" -- you'll build a working CMS by page 28 and feel really good about yourself. By the end of that book I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I was writing other programs, even if I am slow as hell and have a reference book open in my lap.

I'm not sure I'd be suspicious. Many programmers aren't particularly savvy at business negotiation (hence the need for a biz-dev co-founder).

Crossword puzzles.

I've been considering an arrangement like this too, only I've heard a number of stories about people who kept taking "weekend" trips to renew their 90 day visas only to one day not be able to re-enter the country. I've overstayed an EU visa and no one seemed to care (I was traveling so much between EU countries that I honestly wasn't even thinking about it) but if you overstay somewhere like Singapore you can literally get caned. I'd look into countries where there are easier ways to get >90 day tourist visas, like Cambodia or Hong Kong.

My Dropbox folder has replaced my documents folder entirely. I also save preferences and sync files within Dropbox, so I can run the same program (say, 1Password) from multiple computers with exactly the same data.

It's sad how many of those words I had to look up.

Groupon lets you cap the maximum number sold.

This conference sounds awesome. As an efficiency consultant, I can't think of anything better than getting all your business basics taken care of in a single day!