greglockwood

There is an identical ask thread to this that I just posted an answer to, so I will crosspost my answer from there:

If you want to do front end web dev, learn these languages in this order:

HTML - http://www.w3schools.com/html/ CSS - http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp Javascript - http://eloquentjavascript.net/contents.html

And then pick one of the following two: PHP - http://www.tuxradar.com/practicalphp or Rails - http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book

There are many languages that you can learn for front end other than RoR and PHP, but they are two of the most popular right now, and will almost certainly suit your needs. Good luck, and stick with it when it gets frustrating, learning how to code is definitely worth it!

If you want to do front end web dev, learn these languages in this order:

HTML - http://www.w3schools.com/html/ CSS - http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp Javascript - http://eloquentjavascript.net/contents.html

And then pick one of the following two: PHP - http://www.tuxradar.com/practicalphp or Rails - http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book

There are many languages that you can learn for front end other than RoR and PHP, but they are two of the most popular right now, and will almost certainly suit your needs. Good luck, and stick with it when it gets frustrating, learning how to code is definitely worth it!

>I just moved to San Francisco not too long ago. Maybe I don't want to know about the best Mexican food in SF from someone from SF, maybe I want the opinion of my Texan pals, who share a similar taste in Mexican food....cuz damnit, I want that certain type of salsa (or something).

I agree with the sentiment (DFW'er here!), but how are Texans supposed to know about restaurants in the Bay Area?

>Personally, I'm really glad that Facebook didn't see the same opportunity for Questions that I do, now if only they stay clueless for another year...

We might have different ideas, but I thought the same thing. But if we have the same idea, I'm only giving you til September :)

Unfortunately, I really think this is going to be a bust, just like the first time they tried to introduce Questions, for a few reasons.

First, some people have a very impersonal friend network, meaning that they probably don't care about the "favorite movie" (this was an example in the article, I'll use it here) of a lot of the people on their friends list. For example, people they met once, or people that they went to high school with 5 or 6 years ago, etc.

Secondly, Facebook is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Their entire basis for this new direction is that Quora and others are too impersonal, but then they add that you can query the network of your friends' friends. Friends' friends is a pretty wide net, and the original argument for Facebook Questions becomes invalid if you expand the question to that many people. Yes, I know that it's optional, but to me it shows that Facebook is trying for the shotgun method, trying to cover as much ground as possible instead of focusing on a feature that people actually want.

Finally, if I want to know what my friends' favorite movies are (again, using the cited example), there's already a place on Facebook for that: their info page. I don't know if people still fill that out, but I know they used to before Facebook mandated that everything on the info page be tied to Pages (which was another goof on FB's part, IMO).

They may prove me wrong, but this just seems like something Facebook won't quit pursuing because it's trying to be the Internet. Personally, I'm more interested, and optimistic in seeing how and if Deals is going to dethrone Groupon and its ilk.

I have to admit that it is actually refreshing and enjoyable to see the YC application process come and go without being an applicant this time. I applied for the W'11 batch and was all I could think about was the application, the possibility of an interview, and obviously the ultimate possibility of getting into YC.

I couldn't look at others' demos and ideas without viewing them as the competition. I was judging the other projects instead of actually being interested in them. Since I'm not applying this round (not because I've become disillusioned with YC or don't think it would be a good opportunity, I've just determined that I'm at the point in my life where I need to focus on taking care of more immediate needs than swinging for the fences), I'm actually enjoying seeing what everyone is bringing to the table. It makes me smile to see everyone's enthusiasm to get into YC. Good luck to everyone out there, and if you have something that you truly believe in, make it happen, YC or not.

Thanks. :) Although from graduation til about December it was about what I wanted, I have definitely realized at this point that there are bigger priorities in life, and I am working on being responsible for those priorities.

And the collective of the YC W'11 hopefuls just let out a wistful sigh. At least I did.

The goal is to build a consistent, and eventually large audience, and the value of the site being access to that audience. Yes, you can host your content on Youtube, LinkedIn, Wordpress, or any number of CMSs, but you still have to find a way to drive traffic to your content, and that is usually not easy. The selling point down the line will essentially be, renting the eyeballs for a day to jumpstart awareness for your content.

Clickable: http://theeverchangingwebsite.com

Not to be brash, but just because you are spending $25 a day on ads and are making $300 a day, does not mean that formula is going to scale linearly upwards ($600 if you spend $50 a day, $1200 if you spend $100 a day).

That said congratulations! $300 a day is nothing to sneeze at, and I hope it's consistent for you.

When I decided I wanted to learn coding, this is the first book I purchased, and I can't recommend it enough:

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-Step-Step/dp...

It goes through a good amount of material while still being a beginner's book, assuming only that you know a little html. It's very thorough in what it does cover, and should give you enough confidence to decide what you want to learn next, ie, more in-depth PHP, another language, etc.

We have not given up on the college degree idea yet, but we see it as a longer-term project in terms of setup, so we put it on the shelf while we were able to get this setup in a relatively quick order (a month).

So no, we haven't given up, and we too think there is a market for the site.

Zazzle is a large custom t-shirt company. We do not make custom tees for people, we are our own brand that offers select designs created by artists around the world.

If I was to compare us to an already established company, it would be much closer to Threadless, Design by Humans, or Uneetee than Zazzle. We are aware that we are not the first to create a shirt company in this manner, but we believe that there is plenty of room in the market, and that our original and exclusive designs will help us cave out our own niche in the market.

Very good point. Doing that now. Thanks again everyone for the suggestions!

On the submission page, there is a large font link to the Submission Release form which answers any questions like that. (http://www.invincibilitee.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=125) As long as it's just a submitted design (as in we have not accepted to use the design), you give us a 60 day window of not offering it to other sites or vendors. If we don't ask to use it within that 60 days, you can do whatever you'd like with it again. If we reach an agreement with you to use the design, you retain ownership of the design, but transfer exclusive rights to use it to us. So, basically, you can't let anyone else use it, but we can't take it and sell it either.

The Submission Release form explains it in a more "legalese" way. We use LegalZoom for our legal documents such as the Submission Release form.

Point taken. I'll see about getting it changed.

We have, but they are under the Limited Production page: http://www.invincibilitee.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=101

The link you posted is for legacy shirts, that have proven to sell well and will be available permanently.

I know the 3-tier system might be a little confusing, and we are trying to make it as intuitive as possible. That's why I posted this, so thank you for the suggestions!

Clickable link: http://invincibilitee.com

I don't know if you can edit the submission title, but the upcoming YC cycle is actually Winter 2011. I don't say this to be nitpicky, but when I first saw the title I was confused, and thought others might be as well.

>>> in each case above, there's a specific tight circle of connections I'd like to draw on, but they aren't always the same

Which, presumably, does not include Ron Conway or Michael Arrington.

Isn't that line of thinking antithetical to the startup business as a whole?

I was in the same position as you a few months ago. I had an idea for YComb!, and I didn't know any technical guys well enough to be a technical co-founder, so I decided I was going to be the technical co-founder.

I would recommend picking up SAMS Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours: http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-Hours-Coverage/dp/... and O'Reilly's Learning PHP, MySQL, and Javascript: http://www.amazon.com/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-Step---Step/...

Do the SAMS guide first, then O'Reilly. Do the examples, do the examples, do the examples. That's the most important part. Even if you only have a few spare hours per day, you can get through 3-4 chapters of HTML/CSS, but I would recommend only doing one chapter of the O'Reilly book a day, since it's a bit more to learn than the SAMS book. So, it should take you about 3 weeks to work through both of those, and have at least a competent grasp on web dev. From there you can probably make your own decisions about where you want to go from there.

I think resisting the urge to perfect the video is part of the same mindset as not using marketing lingo and buzzwords in the application. The entire YC application is about cutting the bullshit and being genuine. PG and the others don't want to see perfection, in the app or the video, they want to see who we really are.

Me and my cofounder did our video Tuesday night. We didn't do any preparing, messed up the first take, took maybe five minutes to get an outline set up, and were happy with what we got in the second take (51 seconds). It certainly wasn't perfect, but life goes on.

I have to say that I think the new logo is pretty terrible. It's obvious that they were trying to be clever, but the problem is that, in my opinion, the "space" is too weak of a space.

The litmus test I use for a logo is to imagine that I were to make a batch of stickers of the logo, that I wanted to go around and stick on walls or whatnot. How well would the logo stand out? How would it make use of the space? And to me, a sticker of the word "My" followed by an underscore does not pass that test.

$250 just to get your application looked at? I think someone here is missing the point (or maybe the concept) of shoestringing.

Kind of reminds me of Dropbox's viral referral program. The spam-ish aspect can get annoying at a point, but the interesting thing is that it's not the website that's spamming you, it's your friends, so you can't really be mad at the website.

This makes me think the viral referral model still has some untapped potential.

Yes I do. You, sir or madam, are a smart one.

> As you can see on the left side of this example, the blue block recedes...On the right side of the example, you see the opposite effect, with the red block looking almost as if it is a tower extruding towards you from the blue block.

I see the opposite, with the red block receding and the blue block extruding. What does that say about me?

My suggestion would be to take the "Added" activities off the main feed, as it looks a little redundant to say "Someone drank [X beer]", immediately followed by "Someone added [X beer]".

Besides that, on the About page, the word "remember" is misspelled and I would capitalize Miller/Coors/Bud to make it look more professional.

But I like the idea!