rodyancy

Without a regulatory body it would be too easy for an unqualified person to pose as an electrician, doctor, dentist or lawyer. Do you really want someone with no experience or training wiring your house, pulling your teeth, operating on your knee, or defending you at trial?

Consider what this guaranteed $150k will do to other incubators. YC is going to be so much more attractive to other incubators, the best startups may not bother to apply to other incubators.

Sure, there will be winners that go through other incubators, or no incubator at all, but this is definitely going to tilt the field towards YC.

Sure. What is your background?

C-Corp. Deleware.

Manpacks is hilarious, super well done, and the undies are good too. I can't wait for them to start sending me shampoo, soap and all that stuff in my manpack. I hate shopping.

http://www.betaspring.com/ is missing.

University of Oklahoma

Go Sooners!

To target this use-case they would need to limit the number of wide-eyed, open mouthed monkeys they use on their sales page.

I've ran into this problem so many times I've developed a workaround using various applications.

Google maps on the iphone gets me the phone number. If I have to see a menu, UrbanSpoon or Yelp works sometimes. I don't even bother with mobile browsers.

I used to play high limit poker and it is quite common in the poker world for the best players to "share" themselves in a tournament or, more likely, in a game where the stakes are huge.

Being able to self-fund isn't always reason enough to self-fund. In this case, Joel may want to expand into 10,000 niches, but may worry whether the venture will be profitable. I'm just speculating. If there is VC willing to take some of the risk with him, for an equity share that he accepts and thinks is a good deal, is it still wrong for him to accept it? I don't think so.

This is a touching piece of writing. I think anybody who has lost someone close can relate to this. It is tough being pulled between continuing and mourning. You never know what to do, and no matter what you do you're no closer to the one you lost.

This is great. I came to the same conclusion some time ago. Of course, I never articulated it so elequently.

Anyway, anytime I bring new stuff into my house I take the same amount of stuff and put it in a box. About four times a year I call the Salvation Army and they pick up the box.

Before buying something new, I have to think about what old stuff is going in the box. Normally it isn't hard. On Christmas, when I get a lot of new stuff, it can be a challange. The worst is when someone gives me something I will never use and I have to put it right in the box, which seems ungrateful. Other than that, the box is liberating and putting stuff in it feels great.

She's making deals and writing binary.

I've done the sober equivalent to this (coffee shops). Not only did it point out some usability issues, like, "oh, he thinks THAT'S a button," it also proved to be a great way to generate ideas. Most of the input we received was dead wrong, but we had to think about why it was wrong, and that got us thinking in ways we hadn't thought before, which led to good ideas. I suspect the drunken version would be more fun and just as useful, assuming you are producing a consumer product. As for B2B, if your domain is specific, this might not be the most valuable use of your time.

In a small startup the analog to this is turning on a wide-scale Google adwords campaign with no site optimization, no keyword optimization, and no idea about what your customers/potential customers want, and watching Google charge you $2000 in a week.

This is what Facebook would be if instead of having friends, every day you were thrown in with a group of 100 strangers and there was a video feed. Some people (especially men) act strange when they are in front of a bunch of strangers for a short period of time, with little chance of meeting them later.

What matters:

If you aspire to do something great, you need knowledge of what you are good at, a love for what you are good at, and you need to be good at something many people care about, but few people are good at.

This video is way better.

I would love Apple to create a Photoshop competitor. As powerful as Photoshop is, there is a ton of room for simplification. You know there is a problem when software provides five different ways to perform a task, yet users have to have 5 years experience, or Google, to remember how to implement it.

Flash on the iPhone wouldn't end the App Store. Flash developers would still release in the App Store because it is easier to make money in the App Store than over the mobile web.

It seems like the argument presented should be testable using amnesia patients. Assuming that their past memories are erased and that all experiences are "new" and need to be fully encoded, shouldn't science be able to question them to see whether, novelty is in fact linked to our perceived length of time?

You have a Chrome problem on PC. I haven't checked on a Mac yet. Apparently, Chrome is up to 6% of browser share, so it is probably worth supporting.

I opened it up in Safari and it looks amazing. Really, your work is fantastic.

The navigation threw me off for a second. Considering your audience, and that you are trying to show that you can come up with newish UI, design, etc. I think the coolness of the effect is worth the potential confusion.

After reading your blog post, I think it is an improvement over the last iteration, especially when it comes to the copy. The old copy looks a little daunting. Too much text, in too small of a font. The newest version seems to shorten things, and spreads out the copy. It is a lot more reader friendly.

Everything looks great really. Nice rework.

You will have to pay apple $99 a year to be able to provision for your phone. That same $99 will allow you to distribute through the App Store, and on up to 100 devices outside of the app store. Right now, you pay to provision on phones, even if you aren't interested in distribution.

It is possible to create the app and run it in a simulator using some of these tools.

I have a feeling that 37signals has tested that page extensively. It may be that they convert better when the page designed that way.

I personally like the sparseness of www.checkoutapp.com, but that doesn't mean that 37signals' page is "too cramped." The only way to know is to test.

Look at Amazon. They have been through so many iterations and have tested so much and their pages are still too cramped for my taste. It probably make good business sense for them to design them that way.

#8 Google Apps

"The only thing that's missing is the ability to sell "icons" on the app store that merely subscribe one to a web app and stick the link on their home screen."

The thing that is really missing is iTunes accounts, i.e., the ability for your prospective users to pay you with the touch of a button and a password. Although, on a larger display, Amazon payments and Google Checkout will be more relevant.

Just had one clear in 6 days with a weekend included.

The iTunes stores! It is monopoly at its finest. Apple could eventually half the price if the masses by their books and software and rent or buy their movies all from Apple.

Eventually, there will be an iPad to Apple TV interface, and they can cut out the cable companies too.

Scary now that I think about it.

One of the more disappointing thing about programming for the iPhone and not the web, is that Apple's approval process makes it impossible to pull this off for any non-webview/data features. I guess that is the price paid for an app store that isn't littered with hardcore porn and scams.

"AT&T came up with the idea for buzz.com about a year and a half ago, says David Krantz, president and chief executive of AT&T Interactive"

He says that so casually, like it was an original idea. And, he's not bothered by the fact that it took them a year and half to launch.