December 2010
Dec. 22, 2010
OpenCorporates (via) “The Open Database Of The Corporate World”—a URL for every UK company.
Is it a good idea to allocate URLs such as quora.com/username to users?
There’s an interesting discussion about this issue on this question: How do sites prevent vanity URLs from colliding with future features ?
[... 42 words]Dec. 23, 2010
What are the main things a non-technical co-founder of a tech company should focus on while the site is still being developed?
Building the right product.
[... 32 words]Audio Sprites (and fixes for iOS). Remy Sharp on the limitations of HTML5 audio support in iOS.
Dec. 26, 2010
I am, frankly, a mixture of disappointed and sad that after Yahoo! shut down Geocities, Briefcase, Content Match, Mash, RSS Advertising, Yahoo! Live, Yahoo! 360, Yahoo! Pets, Yahoo Publisher, Yahoo! Podcasts, Yahoo! Music Store, Yahoo Photos, Yahoo! Design, Yahoo Auctions, Farechase, Yahoo Kickstart, MyWeb, WebJay, Yahoo! Directory France, Yahoo! Directory Spain, Yahoo! Directory Germany, Yahoo! Directory Italy, the enterprise business division, Inktomi, SpotM, Maven Networks, Direct Media Exchange, The All Seeing Eye, Yahoo! Tech, Paid Inclusion, Brickhouse, PayDirect, SearchMonkey, and Yahoo! Go!… there are still people out there going “Well, Yahoo certainly will never shut down Flickr, because _______________” where ______ is the sound of donkeys.
All I can say, looking back, is that when history takes a look at the lives of Jerry Yang and David Filo, this is what it will probably say: “Two graduate students, intrigued by a growing wealth of material on the Internet, built a huge fucking lobster trap, absorbed as much of human history and creativity as they could, and destroyed all of it.”
Dec. 27, 2010
What are some other conferences that showcase cool ideas, like TED or the Renaissance Weekend?
http://www.poptech.org/ is quite TED-like—especially good for science topics.
Dec. 28, 2010
Why did Google Wave fail to get significant user adoption?
When Wave first launched, individual Waves didn’t have a URL. This made it impossible to link to them from outside of Wave—people were having to say “log in to Wave, then search for X”. If you can’t link to something on the internet, it may as well not exist.
[... 67 words]Dec. 29, 2010
Where is a good list of social media events in the San Francisco Bay Area for 2011?
Take a look at http://lanyrd.com/places/san-fra...
[... 29 words]Where can I find a calendar of upcoming tech events in the San Francisco / Bay area?
Take a look at http://lanyrd.com/places/san-fra...
[... 29 words]Dec. 31, 2010
URL Design. Thoughtful tips on modern URL design, from GitHub designer Kyle Neath. GitHub has the best designed URLs of any application I can think of.
Did Apple always plan the (native) App Store, or was it released in response to developer demand?
Personally I’ve always assumed that native apps / the App Store was planned from the start, and the “build apps with HTML” thing Steve Jobs originally promoted was intended as a stop-gap measure (and also to mislead the competition). It’s hard for me to believe that a multi-billion dollar marketplace was accidentally created because developers demanded the ability to create native apps. Also, the quality of the APIs discovered by people who jail broke the iPhone suggests to me that a public API was planned from the start.
[... 111 words]Is there any quantified proof that .NET or others Microsoft technologies are not good for web startups?
How can you “prove” such a thing? You can disprove the statement that “.NET is no good for web startups” by pointing to examples such as Stack Overflow.
[... 51 words]What interesting meetings will be held in March and/or April in Silicon Valley on topics relating to technology startups?
Try browsing through the list on http://lanyrd.com/places/califor...—or use our search feature.
[... 39 words]