cubeboy

I think I might go for the solo ABN approach for now and move to a company approach once things improve.

Don't people recommend an 'incorporate' company as well? Thanks.

Yet China and India's population are so astoundingly out of proportion with the rest of the world, I am surprised it isn't them that we hear more of. I haven't even place India into my 'understanding the world' mental picture yet.

My main point is about moving a highly populated country TO a democracy. I look at the American civil war and how many lives were lost during that, and then wonder about the implications of allowing opposing ideas to rise. My initial reaction to the 'communist' regime in China is that it's wrong. But I then look at how large the population is and how well the government is working, and wonder if it's any worse or better than America's capitalist version of democracy.

What happens when China or India decide that they need to police the world in what is an appropriate way to run a country?

If one group successfully causes enough political unrest, and 5% of the population supports and follows this group, that's a total of 66,500 000 people, the current population of the UK. Its astounding when you start looking at numbers like this. USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memory when China and India start becoming major players.

How can a democracy successfully emerge when you have the potential to introduce great divergence and even possibly civil war?

Did you build your products on the side whilst holding a full-time job? And you just went at it, creating products and getting cash from users from it?

Are you a good programmer?

I've been thinking about these things a lot, but finding it hard to actualise everything around it. From what you've said, it appears to be as simple as it is. Build a product, try to get customers, and maybe make some money. Worry about everything else later.

What if a customer is unhappy with my service? What EULA/T&C do I need to provide? I'm just trying to get my head around all basics, and make sure that when I start I start in the right spot.

Another example, I suppose twitter is a case in point. Who owns Twitter? Is that the companies only product? How do they market Company X creator of Twitter. Or the original owners would just sell Twitter itself and move on to another product?

But it's the social party goers that use it. I have a few in my stream, like little sisters. It's used heaps if you're a party goer. Photos, events, global shout outs. It looks like less people use it because you cull a lot of the noisy users.

The next step was Myspace with its Geocities like system, but actual network style functionality. Along with the rise of the social network ecosystem was user-gen content websites and comments. Comments on blogs and discussion forums mixed with shared links pushed through 4chan, forums, and then Digg.

Along with these useful mediums was also the fad like rush. If its cool then you have to use it. Myspace was to ugly though and Facebook brought along format, and styling, like the Apple way.

Facebook has some brilliant underlying concepts - Events and Messaging mediums in an online world. Much better than email and sms.

There are also several layers of society and how they interact. The social to be social groups, and the not so noisy users who like it when they visit a city can see old mates.

Facebook will still be the top web-based social communication medium (besides email for business). When HTML5 comes out and web-gaming increases more, you'll see a bigger explosion of Facebook usage I think.

Some good information.

I think I envision my path as moving to contracting, then consulting, and creating a consulting company, while this funds my product company. pg suggests this is difficult though. However once the consulting side hits of, I could hire a reputable manager for x amount of profit share, while I receive enough to invest in my product based company.

How naive am I about all of this?

MySpace and Digg, now its Facebook and Reddit, what will it be next? HN still seems to be too intelligent for the main-mainstream to invade luckily.

And you are right, I had the same misconception of the iPad, now it is a common place name, and product that all CEO's must have.

I just desire that people not be so part of the -cult- of certain groups. My favourite are those who switch, Windows one day, Apple the next. I have a growing dislike for those who limit themselves.

But mostly, why am I bothering to comment at all. I'm just a cubicle worker. Its comments exactly like mine that I think pg and hackernews complain about when it comes to quality. Meh.

Is your Win7 experience a personal one though? I haven't yet required to connect to a hidden wifi network. And now that cut-and-paste has arrived, I have used it all of twice.

I'm always of the state of mind that the differences between Android, Iphone, and Win7 aren't that big; I wouldn't say that win7 is unbaked any of those phones, except when it comes to apps, and iPhone always wins.

I just hate being an Apple user. I want to have an iPhone with out the Apple fanboy stigma

I wanted to read DF's Apple-centric point of view, but couldn't get past the third paragraph.

Its difficult when you're independent of platforms and have to read literature written by those who are limited by their sole choice of one platform.

'If not for the existence and success of iOS, Nokia wouldn’t be in trouble..' If not for Nokia, iOS would never existed, touch screen phones would not have been invented.

If not for the competitiveness and success of Windows, Apple wouldn't have had to redesign itself. And now Windows is redesigning itself to compete. Apple didn't invent this stuff, they re-adapted existing technologies into a pioneering product. And now other companies are doing the same.

Gruber's points do not impact as much with such a thick layer of bias.

A bit clearer information. I've had one now for a while and I do enjoy the phone. It seems slightly limited but hopefully Mango will push it further, and we'll see tighter integration with Windows 8 next year. Zune software looks better than iTunes, but some of its configs are lacking. The current phone is probably between the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, but you don't have that feeling of App Silos, however I use the Facebook integration less and less. I think I will be leaning towards iPhone 5 instead though, as the apps are significantly lacking in this phone (and app development API/SDK access is terrible). Marketplace needs a big overhaul and move to something different than an App Store mimic.

The worst feature is Bing Maps. Last night I typed in location X and it said not available. So I typed in located X suburb Y and it still said it could not find it. So I typed in location X suburb Y and state Z. It then relocates to the centre of the state Z and points out that state Z is here.