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"A web-based SRS app."

I am sure you can come up with a better description than this.

I know what Markdown is and yet this turned me off: "Ability to format posts with Markdown"

If that's a differentiating factor from CL then you have ways to go. Sorry to be negative - I just don't think any CL user would care. This is a feature worthy of a footnote.

Knuth's take: http://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calcu...

Ryan, that's great. I have been working on something similar for many of the same reasons you mentioned. Check this out: http:/www.pdfamigo.com I think you may find it interesting.

In all seriousness, I think you should pick something other than a pig for your logo. I realize you are going for "piggy bank" but most people will think "H1N1." Or, perhaps it's just me :) Good luck anyways.

Just like the public library. Or Hacker News. Or... Sorry, but I find your argument fallacious.

No offense but the first thing I thought was: what a terrible site design; large clickable quadrants to move between sections, that resize. I've never seen anything quite like it. :)

Hmmm, good question. I think my target audience may be a bit too broad (I hope!) to define... but I am sure there is a lot of companies that produce PDF forms all the time. So, in a sense, I am mostly targeting businesses rather than individuals.

In any case, form examples, screenshots, etc are an absolute necessity so thanks for pointing that out.

Your suggestion is spot on. Form distribution and data collection is part of the plan. This is one of the features I am thinking of charging for.

The tricky part I believe is secure handling of user data as these form can contain sensitive stuff...

Most recently http://www.pdfamigo.com which lets you create PDF forms online. In fact I asked for and got feedback right here just yesterday.

This might be nitpicking but I feel like the "Clear" button is misplaced. There must be another position for it that allows me to quickly reset and start drawing another character. Come to think of it, it would be great if there was a key for it. Click and drag with the mouse, reset with a keystroke. Almost like playing a first person shooter!

Just an update: I have fixed this and your PDFs should work with Preview now. I had accidentally commented out a fairly crucial line of code residing very close to a not so crucial line of code... ugh.

Having said that, Preview is not the best in rendering PDF forms unfortunately...

Thanks for the suggestion. Will do.

Thanks for the feedback. Great idea for streamlining the UI.

I tried to implement that using jquery but it proved to be tricky. Still, no excuse. It's on the todo list! Thank you.

Thanks a lot. That's very useful. I've mainly used Acrobat Reader to test the generated PDFs but they should really work everywhere.

Thank you patio11. That's a great tip (starting non-empty) - more so given that it's backed by actual data from your site.

[I have edited the following paragraph a few times revising my understanding of the definition of live-preview as I go along] With regards to the live preview: by live-preview do you mean editing the text in rich-text editor fashion within the actual page? Or, just applying attributes as they are changed in the attribute editor without the user having to click the "Apply" button? The former would be hard I guess. The latter should be easy.

Regarding element placement, it can be confusing right now. You might be scrolled down all the way, add a text field and not even notice because it's placed in the top-left corner. Drag and drop would be the way to go.

Thanks, these are subtle yet crucual points you're making - your experience is invaluable.

Boryas thanks so much for the feedback.

These are all really great points you are making. I am indeed working on adding UI features like the ones you mentioned. I just want to make sure that they are built on solid foundations and that's why I asked for feedback at this point in time.

As for the 1 vs 100 lines in a text field, good observation. It is an omission on my behalf as I forgot to enable multiline text fields. I will fix it asap.

Thanks again!

A year is hardly enough time to gain perspective on grad school. Give yourself some time. Eventually you will find a research project that interests you. In the meantime I'd suggest you continue cultivating inter-departmental relationships, eg, by working on the project you mentioned.

Also, worth noting, most people find the first couple of years of grad school the most frustrating because they don't align with their expectations. Once you are past that and you have a well defined research project things get better. Finally, regarding "finding elegant solutions to difficult problems that have wide-reaching implications": you'd be surprised to discover that incremental work can also be elegant and make an impact. Especially is CS that's how most research is done. So, don't set yourself up for disappointment. Pick a small problem that interests you and start reading on it...

Good luck.

As far as the development of ideas goes I agree with you. But what you state above is not what comes through in your blog post. But then again I am but one sample from your readership.

Regarding your last question here are some things you could say without revealing much while providing valuable insights:

1) we will differentiate ourselves by hiring k top scientists and attacking the problem algorithmically something that hasn't been done been before (or we'll hire k top marketers, you get it)

2) we will provide the service for free in a market where everyone charges for subscriptions (or the other way around, doesn't matter)

3) we will be able to charge less because we have identified this and that way to be more efficient.

4) we have xyz superstar coder/designer/etc in our team.

I could go on. But the point here is dual really: not only you are giving people more info about what you are doing (without revealing much) but you are also telling them you've done your homework (market research, etc).

Regarding the 20 reasons you are doing it this way, yes, I realize there are reasons (marketing is probably #1, great story to tell) but again I think you will benefit from explaining. What I am trying to convey is that there is a positive correlation between the effort you are perceived having put into this thing and the confidence/money you'll get.

Thanks for your response. Sorry if I was sarcastic but honestly that's how it spontaneously came out and certainly it's nothing personal. My point regarding the $25K was that some people may be concerned about your ability to raise capital so perhaps this is something you should address (otherwise put: why crowd-sourcing in the first place?).

If your idea is fully developed then I misinterpreted the following statement on being stealthy: "I don’t want to build up one idea, just to iterate and have it be something totally different."

I am looking forward to the blog post about your entrepreneurial skills. One more thing: you could perhaps say much more about your idea without revealing what it is: eg, how big of a market is it that you are entering? How many competitors? How are you differentiating yourself? How long will it take? What will your sources of revenue be? You get the gist... give potential investors more info so that they can place an educated bet.

Good luck.

Apologies but: hahaha.

You are asking me for money and you'll owe me a favor and membership to a service which you admit isn't quite well defined yet? Under the current economic circumstances? And you cannot raise 25K on your own?! So when the 25K runs out, what?

OK, I'd rather provide some constructive feedback. Please tell me why you are a skilled entrepreneur. Here is an idea: you mention running a social media company for 3 years. How did it grow under your leadership and how did the initial investors do?

Alternatively you can just be funny: http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/09/29/080929sh_shouts_bo...

Sorry to be negative, nothing personal - best of luck to you.

I remember when, having coded in emacs for a few years, I used it for the first time to do a 3-way merge on thousands of lines of code. The amount of time and effort I saved astounded me. The point here is twofold:

1) emacs is very well integrated with extremely powerful tools (in this case diff, merge)

2) emacs is deep; even as an advanced user you can keep improving your efficiency (albeit at a lower rate)

Having said that, I have a question: once I had become fairly comfortable with emacs I switched back to vi. I felt there was a positive correlation between learning new keystrokes/tricks while coding and the quality of code I produce. Has anyone else observed that? If yes, why do you think this is so?

Can you use the User-Agent string is some intelligent way to guess the screen size instead of asking me to enter it?

Also, might be nice if you had some presets like, say, Macbook, Macbook pro, etc.

Totally agree - pompous. That's the word I was looking for. The kind of author who creates a fictional character based 100% on himself, makes said character the intellectual and professional superior to his peers, the only one who survives the ups and downs of the market; and to top it all off names the character Nero! Seriously!

I found that "When Genius Failed" gives a great story-telling journalistic perspective on some of the same incidents Taleb talks about in his book while "The Drunkard's Walk" provides a good mathematical intuition (sans math sadly) behind seemingly rare events.

I think he would totally agree with you. Try to read Fooled by Randomness to see what I mean. I gave up after the first few chapters because I couldn't stand his unstructured - almost incomprehensible at times - arrogant, self-referential prose. Perhaps he has a lot to say, I just wish he could write too.