smysore

I'm curious as to why you think charisma is sometimes a negative influencer of success?

How old was Paul Graham when he started ViaWeb? I don't think it was mid-twenties -- maybe 30 or 31?

yup -- there's a thin line between "Don't be evil" and "Do good"

why hasn't anyone suggested this: els[i].addEventListener('click', new Function("","alert("+i+");"),false);

it works fine and it's much shorter and easier to read than nested function declarations

What's interesting in India is that you'll often find a slum right next to a super luxurious hotel like the Oberoi or the Taj. I've never been able to understand why squatting "sticks" there but not here (I've seen police trying to "clean up" the slums -- you'd think the violence would scare people away).

is it silly of me to think that this doesn't seem hard enough to be an interview question? i'd be more interested in whether (and how quickly) someone could grasp a complex problem

I don't meant to be critical in any way (I just want to offer a genuine perspective) -- I really didn't like it. Not sure if it was because of the bright yellow color or because I just took a long survey before checking out the site (which was another long form).

The culture slides on Netflix's job site do make it seem like a scary place to work but at least they are transparent about what it's like to be employed there..

I think it has something to do with the fact that Microsoft had just invested close to $10M in Heroku in the weeks prior to the acquisition (making Microsoft the biggest investee in Heroku). Right now, Salesforce is positioning themselves against the Microsofts and the Oracles (versus the smaller CRMs like ZoHo, Sugar, etc.); the Heroku purchase was probably more strategic than anything else...

I think it has something to do with the fact that Microsoft had just invested close to $10M in Heroku in the weeks prior to the acquisition (making Microsoft the biggest investee in Heroku). Right now, Salesforce is positioning themselves against the Microsofts and the Oracles (versus the smaller CRMs like ZoHo, Sugar, etc.); the Heroku purchase was probably more strategic than anything else.

I think this is one of the reasons why Salesforce has agreed to let Heroku "run themselves" instead of taking over and ruining the party. It's also a good sign for Heroku customers since it's unlikely that Salesforce will make a ton of changes to Heroku's service until they can figure out how best to integrate the two services.

The culture at Google is probably also driven by the fact that it's such an academic environment (in addition to the fact that there's a lot of pro-engineer sentiment). Facebook has an engineer-driven culture and it's apparently an awesome environment for programmers but according to Paul Buchheit (who has worked at both places) it feels a lot more like dorm room hacker culture and is totally different from Google.

He talks more about company culture here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/11/facebooks...

And the TechCrunch posts always get upvoted and make it to the top. Isn't there a way to make these "worth less"?

I second American Express -- awesome customer support.

A search for "google instant" on Google Trends doesn't really reflects consumer reaction, right? People searched for it a lot when it was news but now people just use it because it's awesome.

I think the cartoon style removes some of the seriousness from the app. It looks well-designed but I don't think I'd use it (maybe I'm not the target audience but who is?).

This is great. I see one immediate problem with group collaboration that sort of makes me not want to use the site -- I have to recruit all my friends and convince them to keep adding to the site. Is there some sort of feedback loop to encourage contribution and maintain content so I don't have to do that myself?

I have also already built one...and check out stippleit.com -- they have already launched and have a good product that had some recent NYTimes coverage.

The initial momentum that these kinds of programs provide is huge...you're right 6% vs. 0% is a big difference but so is an actual company vs. one that might never have been.

what is the longer term vision for the product? what's the next feature that you're planning?

you could probably make a cool demo just using camtasia. there's a 30-day free trial. it's a pretty good combination of screencast, voice, effects / production, text and is good for a first version. not sure what the best tool is..

very cool.

what about companies that never IPO but grow and become successful private entities (and hence, are never acquired)? that seems like a good place to end up

any first hand experiences?

I read a little while ago that Bing's numbers are holding steady (not sure if they are growing now) while other search sites are shrinking (other than Google obviously) -- guessing this has something to do with it

utah..hmmm

virtual goods are making zynga a ton of money on fb -- not sure how this business model would translate for your app?

yes

that and itll be hard to justify the interest lost on a loan to a college student...someone that loans $100k to a student and doesn't get paid back for 8 years is losing all the interest s/he would have earned if they had kept that money in a CD or some other low interest earning instrument...thats almost $40k? it would have to be set up so that students can take small aggregate loans that are then "bundled" and paid back...it wont be easy but they have a good idea

this is great but all the document preview pictures seem very small (much smaller than the frame -- possible to make bigger?)

just saw this...but because most of the article is about the superstarness of the team and not about the actual game, cuil was the first thing to pop into my head..