johnl

Hollywood controls the distribution pipeline (Theater,TV,DVD,etc) and the timing of each (the release). Hollywood advertises each to build up demand. So you can also beat Hollywood by solving the "advertising to build up demand" over the internet part of the equation. Right now it's Facebook?

You could model after the pharmaceutical companies where the drug gets a waiting period before generics can compete. Use 12 months, Require downloadable files be zipped with a header that can be searched and automatically deleted.

I noticed the same thing, though: maps and local services, public affairs, and business operations sound like departments best lead one on one. I would assume the departments in the inner circle have more need for coordination and direct leadership.

I search forums for DIY home projects and have found I need at least 10 responses to my question before I can arrive at a result I feel comfortable with. Going back over the responses with the overview from the search, I can now understand responses that I originally thought were poor, weren't. I keep thinking something like a do-it-yourself thread builder that you build, save and share while you do your Google search, sort of a tumblr except you access multiple sites might be a better approach than an exclusion approach.

How about a display ad presenter that a user places at the bottom of their blog or their posterous. It doesn't pop up or jump around but needs to be dragged up as if you are resizing your window in order to view the ad. The ads would compete against magazine ads, not Google ads. This would be a proof of concept program.

I always thought that the best way to avoid losing a lot of money is to diversify and avoid leverage. Derivatives is leverage big time, it's speculation, not investing, you can lose much more than you invested. Diversify and avoiding leverage as a VC would be to invest a relatively small amount of money over many potential companies. So can avoiding leverage to conserve your investments work the same way with time? Leverage as a small company might be like sub'ing out your work to others. I've never read anything positive with that approach. How about at the personal level of the article - some wasteful activities can be avoided but stuff like email is not going away. So leverage this down time by multitasking. It would take me 4 hours of planning for 2 hour of programming. While I wade thought these emails I am also going to think about, plan, research, and write down what my 2 hours of programming is going to be. During these non productive downtimes, I can get really boring jobs done, the time passes quicker, and I have a head start when my productive time starts.

It's just another form of stock options except cash always sounds better if the stock is going nowhere or your company doesn't have any stock to give. It's also an approximate 10% yearly bonus held for 5 years. I would rather have the bonus up front instead of the carrot on the string deal.

Plotted against years in business would give me a measure of where I am based upon my experience.

Maybe requiring registering and stress testing of HFTs over a specific volume is a solution. Or as a cost of registering a HFT is a requirement to "make the market" whether the HFTer likes to or not , there should be plenty of opportunities to hedge or offset any unwanted positions.

Maybe Microsoft will have to redesign both the operating system and the PC architecture so that the PC still does the stuff of old on one half and competes with the cloud on the other.

Doesn't F3 in Firefox do the same thing? Then F3 for next instance, etc.

Seems like there are a lot of directions these guys could go if the original direction doesn't take off. Might try downloadable-auto updated scrape books. Also know of a few companies making a living off of renting and selling copies of photos/artwork to businesses, could go in that direction.

It could also be a hedge position by someone who sees the trade as insurance on an existing portfolio and not a outright bet.

I think of RAA when I think of project management. R=Responsibility A=Authority A=Accountability Make sure the team member understands what his Responsibility on the project is. Make sure the team member has the Authority to carry out their Responsibility. Make sure the teem member understands how they are going to be held Accountable. Once underway, communication and feedback are the keys.

When I played American Army a while back I was placed in jail for a cool down period when I hit one of my own team mates. Seems like Google ought to do the same thing, sweep the accounts looking for red flags and place into limbo. Write a program (I think Google knows how to do this) to globally communicate the best bet for correcting the red flags and reinstating when acceptable. It's good customer service, and could be a good startup idea. You solve the issue and in turn get loyal customers. Now all I need is two good programmers.

I would think businesses could use the "public circles" for event marketing and give Google an entry into display marketing.

Here is a good follow up article about Myspace.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_27/b42350539...

Article gives a good overview of the type of corner both Facebook and Google don't want to be in.

Business really seems to like Facebook. More and more I see "check us out on our Facebook page". I want to see how Google addresses the display ad advantage Facebook presently has.

Companies that can maintain relatively high margins operate in niche markets. Groupon is anything but. I think what will be Groupon's downfall however will be against someone who can market to as large a group of "local and interested" people at the same cost.

I break the goal into doable tasks and challenge myself towards the accomplishment of each task. Each task has a timeline so I can pace myself. I then know when in the future I an going to be complete so I really don't worry about it, I can enjoy the coding. The final task always seems to be testing, I hate testing.

I don't know if it's the male/female thing. I think it is a "amount of discussion" thing. Women discuss the topic more without being positional so a larger quorum is reached. The men are too hierarchy oriented which results in a small quorum. So 50% would be optimum, the women force the discussion, the men force the decision. %100 women would not be optimal but still better than the men.

For a senior coder, comments may feel redundant but for the junior coder, it helps. If they can't comment the program from beginning to end, they haven't thought the logic through enough to write clean code. And what I like about well written comments, it's easier and faster to either modify or have someone else "step in" with the coding project if necessary, and use to explain to a non-technical manager where you are and what you are doing.

Those are good questions if I was sitting next to one in a bar and starting up a conversation maybe but since most of the questions can be answered on the VC's web site (including lists of companies they have already funded), in an interview I would concentrate on discussing my proposal.

I am going to get slammed for this but I really doubt if they care. 7.84M shares was the IPO makes a total of 94.5M shares outstanding. That's less than 10% outstanding if I am reading the press correctly. The other 90%+ shareholders will want the IPO to pop just so the market impression of the company is positive so they can sell their shares at a good price when their holding period ends. Like any investment, I would look at the current position of the company and it's long term prospects before investing.

The way PG controls comments here is with the up-vote down-vote ranking. It works in separating the article discussions from the opinion oriented posts. Without the ranking the opinions mix with the article oriented posts, creates a sloppy discussion board. Another approach is not to bump opinion posts downward but horizontal into a new list of posts where you expect the posts to be bumpy at best and offtrack of the original topic. On the opinion list, confrontational posts are upvoted, 5 strikes and your out for a month.

Hardly, here's why: If you can link the phone with desktop applications you have a hit that neither Apple or Google can duplicate. Think of you desktop as a server for your phone. Who better to coordinate the operating systems of the two than Microsoft. If that's what he is thinking, I can't wait to watch the dog fight between the three of them.

This is why you want to deal with a ycombinator from the getgo. Poking around and signing contracts to get some momentum going could end up biting you in the leg down the road.

The grass patterns say technology is changing the game. Same with Golf (distance) and Basketball (height). Haven't seen it in football or baseball though.

At least I find it impossible to find anything in my email archives. So maybe an app like a bicycle wheel, the emails come in, route to the hub, and get directed elsewhere. Digital magazines are getting pretty snazzy, but should end up on your desktop, not stuck in your email. Similar emails can get parsed,tagged and directed to personal blogs. Nice and organized like.

Email lists are undervalued. You can get some unbelievable % responses in the Retail business. I would think a startup company that you can create a web blog from an email would be the perfect candidate for this type of marketing.