calydon

I think you nailed it in your last sentence. Where are the articles that point out how industrial 'batch' education is no longer serving kids of the present (the future)?

This type of shortsighted paternalism is peculiar to higher education, not just any system bloated with bureaucracy.

The sanctimonious and patronizing reaction by UCF is a perfect example of why the model is ripe for disruption.

It reminds me very much of the MPAA right before bitTorrent's invention.

I hope that this entrepreneur will realize they are wasting his time and money and drop out, and start charting his own course.

What this post really brought home for me was the importance of 'knowing your shit'. Steve didn't have the degree, but he had the knowledge and could basically prove it. Lots of graduates with the paper couldn't do that.

If you have gaps in your knowledge that should not be a life-ruining situation but it needs to be corrected, hence Udemy, Coursera, and the new wave of ed. startups coming down the line.

Actually a 2009 University of Waterloo study showed that affirmations might do more harm than good.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19493324

A great idea.

Ctrl-shift-T is the key for repeating duplication in Photoshop, but it's also the shortcut for create the most recent tab in Chrome, so it's impossible to enter it unless you change your browser settings, which I'm not sure I want to do.

This reads like there is something missing from the story. They already had an office and a 9 person team, but they needed to borrow $4k from their parents to meet Branson?

Reminds me a bit of the plasticene game, Creachi. Same musical feel too.

http://dougburnett.com/game/creachi/

Isn't that what Azure is all about? I don't know for sure. That's one of MSFT's classic flaws, too many options, too many platforms, too many ephemeral products.

Mirrors are not the only way to gain insight from an externality - other people hold up mirrors we can't see.

After the perceived slight from the conceptual poet, I would have pointed out that their question might not be a challenge or putdown but an invitation to a debate - best answered with another question. "Why would you think that your work is not intrinsically interesting to everyone?" etc. This insight did not and probably could not have come from within.

And again, "whenever I go out into the world, whenever I get involved in a relationship, my idea of who I think I am utterly collides with the reality of who I actually am."

That's at least one great reason to go out.

If they cheat this much, it's basically lying. I mean, I don't care. Lie to me. It's better than the truth, frankly. I haven't eaten at McDonald's in years and this is just one of 100 reasons why.

However when she says 'we use the exact same ingredients they use in the store' that's a blatant lie. For one thing all McDonald's stores use slightly different ingredients (whatever can be bought at best market prices) and they definitely could never produce a cosmetically perfect burger using stock ingredients.

In addition, she doesn't tell you about all the non-food items that are used to make this look so good - hairspray for gloss, polymerized rubber for filling, etc.

I will add, gratuitously, the money McD's is paying looks good on her.

I agree with you completely but you're omitting that Steve & Steve and Richard, and almost all the mythical entrepreneurial successes had found a way to fire their boss and landlord (in some form) so that they could focus on what they do best. Everyone's situation is different so if making an early YC exit is your method (or plan) to achieve this then it shouldn't be gainsayed.

I think their landing page needs to indicate how they are different from Evernote. The ability to 'find cool new stuff' is intriguing - a bit like Stumbleupon + Evernote then?

Also there needs to be a way to contact someone and/or ask questions and/or provide feedback. An Olark tab would work.

I know this is a fraud, and it's only because of the voice-over.

I think I basically agree with the 3 premises here, but of course the trick to produce 'novel self-expression' is a struggle unto itself.

"Humans have a deep-seated psychological need to feel like they belong or that people appreciate them." What does this have to do with the rest of the article? First it started with what makes a great product, and now it's a psychology essay. Know when to stop writing!

I totally agree and in fact I would go further to say that the notion of 'genius' is nothing more than an inchoate, rudimentary classification system used to group together successes or extremes in the realm of mental pursuits. Handy when you want to evince notions of extreme-ness but since there are thousands of different possible mental pursuits, the term is basically meaningless.

It's not the same. I've been looking for something like this for a while, and as long as the free plan stays free I don't see why it wouldn't be quite useful.

I think this is great, but I'm still unclear about why market researching your idea would have caused you to not pursue it further. If you had asked users when you first started, or even now, "would you use an awesome flashcard/memorization service that is FREE" I would expect the results that came back would encourage the idea of going forward with the business, because I know flashcards are a popular tool for studying and lots of people study.

Are you saying that the number of existing quiz/flashcard sites would create a research result that would discourage attempting another one? It seems like you knew while you were building Quizlet that you had something different in mind, so the only unknown was whether people would use it en masse. As it turns out, you were right, but, and this is a sincere question, was this vision or luck?

Isn't it more accurate to say that the art lies in knowing what questions to ask the oracle, and how to ask those questions, rather than ignoring the value of prophecy?

I think the consensus is this isn't really a new feature (around since at least 06/2010), just extended to include files in any folder, not just the 'public' folder.

It can't have been that long ago because I've been able to copy public folder links and share files with users who don't have Dropbox since I first signed up - back in June of aught 10.

Isn't this it?

Factorialboy - it looks interesting although I can't get it to work on our office browser which is a bit outdated (FF6.1). It works well in Chrome.

It looks like the downvote police are out in full force - but I'm not backing down. The redesign is strong. The only concern I have is how the current layout will grow with the addition of more courses.

Michal - why not permit some comments on your blog so we can bring the discussion to you? You made some strong statements that deserve a rebuttal.

Jsavimbi - without specific examples of what you're talking about, I call trolling.

Taking a stand on something publicly takes courage so I don't want to be too dismissive, but respectfully, Michal, I disagree.

I'm taking the Javascript courses and I barely noticed the page had been redesigned. (That's good design!) I had no trouble finding and walking right into what I wanted. The layout is clear, logical and looks good. The 'start here' tag is probably superfluous because it isn't needed. It's obvious where you should start, depending on what you're after. I immediately got that the HTML course material had been added, but really it seemed like not much more had changed.

I think overall, your article was bad advice.

The slight misalignment of a few elements should be corrected, but actually, why bother - NO ONE but someone with a bone to pick would notice something so trivial. Build, measure, learn - don't obsess over UI pedantry.

Michal - I looked at your proposed redesign and found it cluttered, hard to read, and confusing. Codecademy - here's a good example of when to ignore your vocal users.

So if the web was originally intended to be a document/project management system, what would you end up with if you tried to invent an (improved) global system of interconnected computer networks?

Change for change sake isn't always good but in this case its understandable why Quora is changing (more users = more $) and it's too early to say that Quora is dying because of the lowering of the average user IQ. If Quora is in danger of becoming a less popular version of Yahoo Answers it need only make some new changes.

Steve Pavlina is a known charlatan whose lies have been disproved on several occasions.

Further reading: http://stevepavlinalies.wordpress.com/ http://www.scottfreethinking.com/2010/02/why-steve-pavlina-i...

I don't think he lasted 5 months on his polyphasic regimen for the same reasons listed in the sleepmemo article.

It's hard for me to say anything on this topic without resorting to hyperbole. I have a serious sleep disorder and in desperation, I tried a polyphasic experiment about 7 years ago.

I was determined to see it through no matter what the cost. The conclusion I came to was that it is a complete scam, perpetrated on life-hackers who are often, productivity hounds. Polyphasic sleep does not work; it does not improve productivity; it is not healthy. The only people who have slept like this on a consistent basis are soldiers or other people in extreme situations, where wakefulness is equivalent to survival and so the damage to your mind is a trade-off. If you are not fighting to stay alive, then you gain nothing by not following your body's natural rhythms, and you can seriously mess yourself up by experimenting with alternatives.

Then again, you're young so you'll probably recover. Probably.

I'm not sure what I did but while messing with the settings at one point the top slider was bouncing back and forth like a pendulum. Chrome 17

I could not solve the problem and gave up after an hour. I gave the problem to my preschool child and they also could not figure it out. Since the article didn't provide a method for 'childifying' our minds I guess the only solution is suicide.