dougw

I just watched Revolution OS. Really enjoyed it. Indeed it is somewhat of old news to many of us, but it is also nice to see the faces and personalities driving the GNU, Linux, and FOSS movement as a whole.

The first spam has hit news.yc....

"IllinoisVENTURES is a seed and early-stage technology venture capital firm focused on research-derived companies in information technologies, physical sciences and life sciences, with a particular emphasis on those deriving from research conducted at the University of Illinois and other regional research institutions."

Also, look at their portfolio companies. I wouldn't say they are as software oriented as programs such as YC.

Regardless, they come off rather unprofessional.

I don't know how competent their application makes them seem...

"Week 9: Business model stuff"

Paul, there is nothing to the amount of attention given to applicants after acceptance?

Great post. Thanks paul!

I wasn't implying anything about Scribd's growth. Just commenting on the obvious, continued growth of Reddit.

"We manage to get back around 1AM and I’m stunned to see that kids are sitting and talking and playing ping-pong. What’s wrong with them?, I wonder. I just came back from an arduous journey and they’re playing like it’s nothing! I head up to my room, but nobody seems to notice a thing. My roommates are also just sitting at their computers, as if everything is normal"

I know the feeling. My friends and family do not understand my desire to start a company. The rush of creation that one expereiences when they are working for themselves makes all else seem insignificant and minor. Well put.

"Should Google and Youtube be forced instead to add a link to the contents official home (where legal copies can be purchased) and thereby referring potential customers back to the aggrieved party?"

Would this mean that the aggrieved party would then share some revenue for sales generated by YouTube? I think this is only fair. Mark Cuban talks about this a little in this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=4859

Yes, it is. Reddit sure has a nice, strong looking curve.

North Carolina. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to be exact. Yourself?

I like the wider layout. Much more engaging and consumable. Subtle, still YC, yet well done. Kudos.

Interesting.

For the lazy among us: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?site0=scribd.com&site1=reddit.com&y=r&z=1&h=300&w=500&range=6m&size=Medium&url=reddit.com

If only I weren't in school on the East coast.

Seems like a case of treating the symptom not the ailment itself...

Indeed, it has been widely noted that craigslist's authenic feel (hyped by the .org TLD) and community fostering ruggedness has created a cult-like following. It seems that their lack of graphics, change, and heavy UI development has kept the installed user base, well, installed, and growing.

http://www.startupnation.com/pages/newsroom/PR_2006_0128.asp

Tangentially related:

http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/03/07/five_questions.html

I am a firm believer that our schools should have a heavy financial component at some point around 9th and 12th grades. The amount of debt that many have these days in their early 20's is outrageous.

Just curious if there is anyone else on news.YC that had their first programming experiences with their first graphing calculator? I started with my TI-83 and z80 Assembly in 6th grade learning at ticalc.org.

This sounds like a wonderful idea. Not entirely new, but a great way to keep one ear to the ground during the critical phase of business development where you want to get a solid product core out to users.

However, this could never scale with growth. I don't think this is a problem as the early adoption gives way to regular customers and viral growth, but they need to plan for proper customer support after directly calling the CEO is no longer viable.

Does anyone know of a good FOSS product that emulates the functionality of Lotus Teamroom? I am anal about my organization and much prefer a directory structure for it's ease of organization. I currently use a hacked verstion of Relay (http://www.ecosmear.com/relay) with a custom written XML parsing function to add context to directory and files for my Wiki-/teamroom- like functionality. However, is there a good alternative to this that a reader knows of?