kleneway

Best advice I've ever gotten:

"Doesn't matter where you are or what you are doing, just who you are with."

That one hasn't let me down yet.

Definitely agree, just had a long conversation with a coworker about MS's need to apply research to real-life products. FYI, here's the "post to Facebook" feature, it's still in beta and was done by an intern this past summer. I believe eventually the photo program will come pre-installed on every Dell, hopefully this plug-in will be as well. I just started using it and it's pretty slick.

Here's the thing - the really smart people at Microsoft are out there working on the hard problems, like improving facial recognition for image searches, writing software that synchs up your work and home laptops to your phone, making it easier for average users to take photos from their digital cameras and post them directly to Facebook, etc... www.microsoft.com is probably run by someone in the marketing department, with the actual html/css/javascript/Silverlight coding outsourced to either an external web agency or an in-house team of entry-level devs - it's really not a good indicator of whether or not MS "gets the web". Good headline for an attention-grabbing blog post, though.

This article reminded me of a quote I heard a while back: "People pay for atoms, not for bits". Not 100% accurate, but if someone is going to fork over cash, you really, really, really need to make it worth their while. Unfortunately I don't think that individual news articles qualify.

I don't know if this is the solution, but here's one idea I had around this problem that I keep coming back to. It's a way to combine the disciplined process of a traditional news agency with the economies of scale and spirit of the citizen journalism movement: http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/y-combinator-ch...

http://astartupaday.wordpress.com

I'm tired of them, too. However, here are a few areas where I think building a Twitter app can be useful.

First, if you take advantage of the fact that a semi-interesting Twitter app can get lots of press right now, you can use it as a way to promote your real money-maker app. For hackers, it's probably way more fun (and cheap) to spend a day building an app than sending 50 Emails to bloggers begging for a post.

Second, if you truly do it on your downtime for your the pure joy of imagining something and seeing it come to life. Wasting time is relative, it's more productive than watching TV, playing WoW or Xbox, random web surfing, etc...

I'm working on the finishing touches for the next phase of my "A Startup A Day" project. The goal is to bring together experienced entrepreneurs, high-potential hackers/designers, and (eventually) investors in a step-by-step process to build new companies.

First, users can collaborate to identify major market opportunities (aka 10x problems that desparately need a 10x solution). Members can then brainstorm potential solutions and the corresponding business model. After getting feedback from the community, members who want to tackle the idea can get paired up with a compatible co-founder and kick out a prototype. Members provide feedback on the prototypes and work with the team to help promote the app once it's ready for prime time.

Right now I'm keeping it invite-only for the alpha, but if you're a killer hacker with a keen sense of the big problems that everyday internet users are facing, drop me a line at kleneway@hotmail.com and I may be able to hook you up.

This is definitely the post to read if you want a good perspective of what's really going on. I don't have any firsthand knowledge, but around this time every year MSFT seems to do a reorg, which can cause a lot of people to have to find new roles internally (which most people do every 3-4 years anyway). I suspect that internal roles will be more difficult to find, and a percentage of the internal job seekers will eventually run out of time and will quietly leave the company. But I highly doubt they will come out and announce a blanket 17% cut on 1/15 - just doesn't make any sense.

Better question - would Facebook apps improve to the point where they would be worth paying for if FB built out a payment platform? Would enough pro devs start building FB apps if they knew they might have a revenue stream besides the dreadful social networking CPMs?

Facebook had this same "Quit your job, get easy money by building stupid little apps like this one!" buzz about a year ago. I actually know some people who quit their very well-paying jobs to take a shot at it...and unfortunately it hasn't yet panned out that well... Maybe the App Store's ability to provide direct revenue to devs will make this platform more sustainable, but I think it's more likely that it will be a similar pattern to FB (where the apps launched in the first two weeks and a tiny percentage of very compelling later apps will do well, and the rest will get zero attention)

Good idea for those with some extra time during the holiday break. Here's one I like that I've been saving for my blog (http://www.astartupaday.com) but I'll go ahead and post it here.

I'm predicting that over the next 1-3 years, we're going to start to see a major shift as users move from mouse+keyboard to touch as the primary input to their computing devices. However, today every mainstream website is optimized for the mouse+keyboard.

My idea is to get ahead of the curve and create user experiences for all the major mainstream web verticals (such as Email, social networking, news, search, etc..) that are designed primarily for use with touch. For verticals that have a high switching cost (such as mail and social networking), instead of trying to build from scratch, the focus should be on a front end that pulls from an existing service (i.e. pulls from gmail pop or Facebook connect). Users could choose the verticals that they use on a daily basis, and each service would be available from different tabs. The core UX elements would be consistent across all services, and would be optimized for use with a touch screen.

If anyone's interested in hearing more or maybe hacking out a prototype with me over break, feel free to contact me at kleneway@hotmail

Come on, this is funny.

Any guesses on how many "To Do List" apps are going to be available within the first month? Note to to do devs: I've got the killer To Do List app framework - it's a spiral-bound noteback and a cheap Bic pen. Problem solved.

Seriously though, kudos to Yahoo for this. I'm honestly very excited about the potential for creative new apps that can be built on this platform.

Hey man - thanks for taking the time to put this post together. I work for MS and use the products on a daily basis, and while I don't completely agree with all the conclusions, I appreciate the spirit of trying to provide suggestions for improvements. One thing you may want to check out is the XNA studio software (www.xna.com) that allows you to write your own games for the Xbox. If you're a student you can get this for free via the DreamSpark program (www.dreamspark.com). Feel free to shoot me a mail at kleneway@hotmail.com if you want to chat about this.

In addition, just think of the massive amounts of cash these researchers are stealing from the network TV execs and advertising agencies, since they may be working on this in their spare time in the evenings instead of watching TV. Despicable.

Why not? Not disagreeing, genuinely curious what your thoughts are.

I took a crack at this problem space a few months back: http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/y-combinator-ch...

I was messing around with way I described the idea (partially because I thought it was a good idea and wanted to hide it a bit). The core idea is users can tag celebrities based on the clothes they are wearing and products they use. Similar to your tagging furniture idea...but I chose the celebrity niche as tagging celebs = interesting, tagging furniture = boring.

I think there's a business in there somewhere, the execution would need to be really fantastic and all the use cases and motivations well thought through. Feel free to ping me if you want to brainstorm around this (kleneway at hotmail)

Option 1: Remove it completely. I think it's pretty obvious that there are two links. The simpler you get, the more weight you give the stuff that's on the page, and to me this falls below the "useful" threshold.

Option 2: "Use the following two links to send and manage your event invites" (or something like that)

I love this site. Last year I posted an idea on my blog that was a collection of extremely simple sites where you get instant answers to questions like this. Is it raining, did the Cubs win today, is the stock market up or down, etc... Cool to see this one in action.

http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/startup-32-is-i...

Two words: Rescue. Time.

IMHO, Hulu's incredible success is a big milestone in the inevitable digital entertainment convergence story.

Prediction: The next-gen gaming consoles will bring together TV and movie streaming services to put a ton of pressure on both the traditional rental market and cable companies. I could see Xbox 720 partnering with Hulu + Netflix streaming, PS4 hooking up with YouTube, and potentially Apple building a gaming platform + iTunes (or maybe partnering with Nintendo). Along with a convergence of tv, movies, and gaming, the platforms already have a social network component that will bring together social media experiences that will create new forms of entertainment that cable companies simply can't match. Just like home phones were a no-brainer necessity prior to cell phone ubiquity, so are the days numbered for big cable.

Developing for a client is much different than developing for the web. I see two options here. 1 - If you don't like doing client development and your true passion is in web development, quit or find a new position in the company where you can do web development 2 - Take the opportunity to learn a new language and platform. Adding a tool to your belt is never a bad thing, and as a professional programmer, getting caught up in "X is evil, I'm only going to use Y" religious thinking probably will do more to reduce opportunties than to open up new ones. Good, experienced devs use the best tool for the job, and if the only tool you have is a hammer... As for WPF, for Win client development, it's (worst case) as good a choice as any and (best case) probably the right tool for the job.

For #2, you might want to check out Zuckerbucks, which is a virtual currency for Facebook that paid out real prizes. Careful if you go that route, I know the guy who built it and it can be difficult to constantly be mailing out physical items to people.

Congrats - great idea, well executed. I can't wait to start using this.

Question to you or anyone else on this thread - are there any tools out there that could convert a UI mockup for a webpage (like one created with Dabbleboard or Basalmiq) into standards compliant html/css?

When I graduated from high school, I would not have been able to go to college if not for lots of help from the gov't in the form of grants and loans. After graduating, I personally felt that I should spend a year "giving back" to the country by participating in AmeriCorps. Ironically, I ended up learning way more from the experienced than I actually contributed during my year of service. Ask anyone who participated in either AmeriCorps or Peace Corps and they'll likely tell you the same thing.

So, as someone who voluntarily went through basically this exact program, it absolutely worked for me in terms of getting both a formal and non-formal educational experiences.

I saw these guys present at a local startup meetup a few weeks ago: http://frugalmechanic.com

Start slow, and take advantage of your time without readers to find your voice and figure out what works and what doesn't. Once you get that figured out, just do all the standard stuff. Here's a good list: http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2008/10/how-to-launc...

This is great advice. I go to as many local startup meetings as I can. Besides being a great place to meet people, they're almost universally a lot of fun.

You might want to check out http://www.smashingdarling.com. Not saying that there's not room for multiple competitors in this space, but thought it might be a good place to see what's working, what's not, and some areas where you might be able to make improvements.

Congrats!! I love Weebly - a few weeks ago I was doing a post about how easy it is to create an online web shop using a local startup, and even after wasting 20 mins trying to fiddle around with a similar site, I was still able to get the site up in under 2 hours. Absolutely the right balance between ease of use for noobs and flexibility for more advanced users. http://tinyurl.com/weeblyrocks