grishick

This is awesome! I've seen different startups try to tackle this problem for the last 4 years and so far this looks like most useful solution.

word

we even have our marketing guy use lechat. Try making your marketing use emacs ;)

We have a distributed team of 4 engineers in 3 different locations. We have been using lechat.im for the last month and it has improved the information flow dramatically. Before lechat.im we tried hangouts, Skype and gTalk and those all fall short of the features that matter for a distributed team. Things that I love about lechat: search, SVN and git hooks (checking go into a separate room as messages), notifications, chat history.

Rather pathetic of them to run this challenge

Maybe when we hit first 10 million downloads :)

International or local, anyone who is arriving to SFO and is not a Bay Area resident qualifies.

Thanks for the advice. I think, we'll do that too. Personally, I don't like when people come up to me in the street and demand attention, but maybe that's just me.

If you have wifi on the flight, you could test while on the flight.

Yes, the app is Citybot. It isn't in the app store yet, but we can deliver it via Testflight and as an APK file. The app lets you create custom itineraries in seconds.

what bothers me is that giving any money to the gov-t is the least efficient way, because the gov-t is not efficient with money. That brings the question, do we really need to raise taxes or open more opportunities for charitable foundations to do what gov-t cannot.

As a friend pointed out. This guy is unemployed by choice and his 2011 income is probably $0. On the other hand, if this gov-t got around replacing income tax with a consumption tax, that would actually tax those who can afford it.

Large patent portfolios owned by big companies represent the most danger for small companies trying to make something new. Big companies can afford to fight each other with armies of lawyers and settle on large piles of cash. However, if your startup gets a threatening letter from Google telling you that you are infringing on their patent, you are done. Google is a public company, so they have an obligation to their shareholders to turn their investments into profits. Hence, I don't see any reason, why Google's lawyers won't google through their newly acquired patent database to see how they can extort some juice settlements or shut down some small players.

On having used the app and having talked to people who worked with Bill Nguyen.

I don't think Facebook's valuation is "bubbly". However, the valuations of many early stage startup companies are inherently speculative, because they are based on projections which rely on assumptions, and only time will show whether this assumptions were true or false. This bubble is only as "bubbly" as these assumptions are overly optimistic. This is why investors learned to bet on people and teams, rather then on ideas, because the quality of the team is a better predictor of its success then the business idea.

IMHO, it is very easy to distinguish between a "social" smile and a genuine smile. When the smile is just on the lower part of the face - it's fake or protective, when the eyes are smiling - it's genuine.

Once, a co-worker told me post-factum that the biggest hesitation about hiring me was that I didn't look excited enough. Luckily for me it's a known stereotype and there was someone who said "he is just Russian, they are all like that". It took me a few years to get used to the American smile, and then couple more years to get used to the meaningless "how are you?". What I still cannot get used to though is the "stranger nod". Every time you look at an American, they nod at you and say "how are you", even a stranger in a shopping mall. Once, when I was visiting Moscow, I tried looking at a stranger and nodding. The most friendly reaction of a Muscovite was a confused look, the least friendly almost got me into a fight. Maybe it is just me being "Russian", but to me this nod and the meaningless "how are you", and the protective smile mean the same as a Muscovite's angry "what do you want?"

this is the best comment on the whole thread

When I first came across Agile Manifesto, it sounded to me pretty much the same.. except for the PF references and mathafakas. IMHO, when you do not obscure agile method with management processes, agile is "programming, motherfucker!".

Thanks! Awesome read! Makes me love Escher's work even more.

LinkedIn, unlike other social networks is actually useful

I disagree. I think it varies depending on profession. An offline analogy would be framing all the little awards and recommendation letters you ever received and hanging them on the walls of your office. If I see something like that in an engineers office, it is a bad sign, because it is not a good measure of an engineers quality of work. However, when I am in a doctors office, I expect that, because I want to see that this doctor has been certified, re-certified and recommended by a thousand other people. When I am interviewing a marketing or a PR professional, I expect them to have a baggage of flashy nominations and awards that they got for their previous jobs/clients, because that's a fair measure of the quality of their work, because I will want them to do the same for my business. Recommendations by clients is a good thing to have for direct sales reps, it shows that their clients are happy with them, are willing to spend a few extra minutes on a paragraph of good words and are likely to become clients again.

Great article! Thanks!

The only times when I wish for a microwave are when I am staying in a hotel room without one. Maybe tablets will replace the hotel brochure, the room service menu and the bible in the hotel rooms at some point?

I think it applies to tablets in general rather then to the iPad

Good analogy. To add to the analogy - I don't have an iPad and I very rarely use a microwave, because freshly prepared food tastes better then microwaved food, movies look better on the HD projector, and it is much more convenient to read and type on a macbook pro then on an iPad (with or without a wireless keyboard). And yet, at some point everyone will have an iPad, when it is cheap enough to replace the magazine basket.

Got tired of AT&T's BS with iPhone plans, bought a Samsung Captivate, flashed it with Phoenix ROM and now have free tethering.

Partially responsible for the situation is the fact that many (if not most) of us (nerdy geeks) are to some extend autistic, or rather "aspergerish". Go read about Asperger Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome) and tell me that you don't recognize your own traits. Not only we enjoy being abrupt and critical, but we are also better fit for being around people who are like us and so we don't mind it as much as other people do. That said, it wouldn't hurt to learn some human interaction skills.

This quote sounds funny today: "Unlike other social networking sites, Lycos Circles focuses on helping users to stay connected, share content and manage relationships with people they already know as well as find new people who share their interests."

I like the point about hands being in the way. That was the first thing that turned me away from iPad when I tried typing an email. I still think tablets are best for information consumption such as browsing internet and simple tasks such as making an order at a restaurant. The best uses of an iPad I've seen are mounted in the dashboard of a car, back of the car seat, table in a restaurant, and magazine basket.