skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm sick and tired of Reddit-knockoff social vote-on-something sites, the idea is simplistic and derivative, I can't imagine taking advice from 14 year old internet trolls about what I should do with my time...

...and yet, for reasons I can't fully explain, I really liked it! It's simple, local, and with the opportunity for vicarious thrills imagning other's experiences...

My only suggestion is that a site like this (more than Reddit/Digg/YCnews/etc) would benefit from having multiple different groups or interests to filter with. Maybe front page is most popular events all around, but you can filter the list to show only the most popular events by music, or bicycling, etc.

Nice work, looks like it could become something great.
I think menuism.com is doing something similar. They are based in Chicago and are targeting only select cities at first.
Long before microsoft, there was SAP (Systems Analysis & Programming). A bunch of funky long haired ex IBM programmers who perfected their applications first consulting with their clients (big business). Then sitting down at a desk and creating their applications with nothing but pen, paper and cards. Programming stripped bare. Then typing in (or transferring by punch card) the application(s) into the clients own machine (they couldn't afford personal IBM minis) and configuring it.

Development has speed up a lot since then with developers working with live code at the console. Has it got that much better?
Microsoft buying aQuantive for a massive $6bn... larger than youtube & doubleclick combined
I wouldn't say the content was fake. They posted real urls to real stories they found interesting but under many different user accounts.
Sounds moderately interesting.
Wil Schroter (Go Big Network): http://www.gobignetwork.com/wil/
Bay Area leads the nation in nanotechnology centers
Study: Click fraud widespread / Web sites dispute Fair Isaac report that claims they don't catch suspicious traffic
For those who just can't wait to pay / Latest technology will enable speedier purchases
Cyberwar, Or Just a Taste?
SF Wi-Fi plan hits snag on supervisors panel (Governed by Fools)
IBM to debut Power6 servers Tuesday
Microsoft to buy Aquantive for $6 billion
Backers of stronger copyright laws form lobby group (Hollywood/Music + MS)
I don't get it..I do not see how auctomatic can defend their company from eBay just redoing some of it's UI.
you'd be surprised. i work for a market research firm for start ups, and most of it is knowing how to search online, figuring out who to call, and pounding the pavement to get feedback from people most likely to use it.

that said, it's a lot easier to build something catered towards a specific user first than to build something, and try to find a use for it.
PG is a Lisp hacker, I don't think he plays golf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl_Golf
PATIENCE, grasshopper. Give yourself longer than two weeks to build up 'traction'. The more stuff that builds up on your site, the more people will want to go there. And that takes time.

I would not worry about yelp or any other sites people are comparing you to. Google emerged after the problem of internet search was 'solved', and Flickr appeared and succeeded after photo sites had been around for years.

You might want to concentrate on (and emphasize) what differentiates you.

If you have not already, use every channel you have available. Tell everyone you know, and remind them. Link to other food sites (even competitors?) and post on restaurant forums and sites.
Have fun basking in your honesty, all alone on your fantastic new site.

(if you were against it, that is.)
no doubt... the front page is meant for events that similar to events u voted up
Sorry i meant time off from coding.. i'll still be here gathering feedback
Hmm.. Looks like GWT?
Someone Already Thought of My Idea - Now What?
"By virtue of the fact that..."

I think you mean "because."
More anecdotal info: Digg didn't have very much traction until Paris Hilton had her Sidekick hacked, and someone posted a link to her photos. All of a sudden everyone went to Digg to see Paris kissing girls, and apparently the traction started there.

Even with a Digg/Reddit effect, there is no guarantee of traction. It takes time and persistence.
Pentagon defends move to block Web sites (MySpace + YouTube)
tiny nitpick: "dont" should be don't. :-)
i think the idea is that they will innovate and add features much faster than e-bay or other competitors will.

from a user's perspective, i would much rather use the tools and software provided by a capable team that caters to my needs. that said, you don't really need a brilliant team, just one that does the job better than other current competitors. this is a great opportunity that aligns well with the strengths of the founders.
The man who discovered the entrepreneur
i said contextual 'text' ads.
what i mean is that you can't have adsense and YPN text ads on the same page, and if you have YPN on the same website, it needs to have a different color scheme than the adsense box.

http://www.johnchow.com/google-updates-adsense-tos/
http://www.johnchow.com/adsense-intellitxt-together-at-last/
MIT launches tech TV (youtube for techies)
Facebook growing, but more roadkill coming?
The Day The Day Job Died - Celebrating the Plunge
Seth's Blog: Blow up your home page
How I Spent My Billions: A Brief History of Ad Network Acquisitions
Microsoft Launches Popfly: Mashup App Creator Built On Silverlight
Seems like misplaced irony.
eBay seems to do everything in their power to prevent usability. Auctomatic hopefully will capitalize on this.
Sun is, and always has always been, a complete rip off. So is Apple, unless running Mac OS X is worth it to you. A year or so ago I was purchasing ~$1m in server hardware and the closest Sun could come to competing was offering me a bunch of oddly configured servers that some client bailed on.

Dell is good. Silicon Mechanics is good. Rackable is (generally) good. No name hardware can be the best, if you're careful on exact models. Testing is key, but there are some golden rules: Don't buy anything from Sun, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, etc. These guys need insane profit margins to sustain their bloated businesses.
Boy, Microsoft seems to be really working Arrington.
What happens if ebay decides they don't like what they're doing, and shuts them out or makes it hard to connect?
Yep... is it just me or does everything on TechCrunch get glowing reviews? Apollo, Yahoo Pipes, Silverlight, and now Popfly... Arrington touts them all as the best thing ever.
Of course always a possibility (myspace/photobucket), but I was just supporting Auctomatic's decision seeing as at every turn eBay seems to make their tools harder and harder to use.

There are a million reasons why Auctomatic shouldn't bother, but if they are a great team you'll never be able to convince them of that.
Does Your Startup Make Meaning? The Two Word Litmus Test
I guess it would be to eBays benefit to let people use Auctomatic. And I guess it be easier for eBay to buy Auctomatic then to copy eBay.
Here's what I do: just scan the headlines on TC and go to the sites he links to and make your own opinion about things. Arrington and Duncan don't know what they're talking about and they just regurgitate the PR they're fed. Discount everything Arrington says... he's not a techie (he's a lawyer). TC was cool long time ago when there were no alternatives but these days, it's downright awful and there are a ton of better sites.

I switched to GigaOM as my primary news source and Om Malik is a lot more objective and he actually has a bullshit filter. It's tough to influence him since he's actually a real journalist. And he's also a friend of YC ;).
The Uncanny Valley of User Interface Design: Why web apps shouldn't look like desktop apps
I signed up for an account and submitted an event "Checking out the site." The trouble is, in order to post an event, you must select a venue and there are none in the database at the moment so no one will be able to submit events.

Obviously this could be fixed by populating the venue database, but I'm wondering about letting users submit their own venues. It would be really nice to be able to submit "Tupperware party at my house" and provide the address, but then you worry about "Toga party at Steve's house" that Steve doesn't know about.
This is a case of going from feeding brain fast food and actually giving it a five course meal to enjoy.

Without your laptop you actually had to use your brain and not rely on brain fast food and use your brain for what it was intended, complex thoughts.

Now, put that into your schedule, every 3rd and 20th of the month you will not even touch your laptop and you'll have more miracles occur in your life.
How do pronounce 'auctomatic'? [okshomatik]? [oktomatik]?
Whats up with the colors on auctomatic homepage? Makes my head hurt... is it just me?
Intriguing idea in the abstract, the current implementation isn't quite grabbing me. Getting more content would help, but if I were you, I wouldn't be too eager for a lot of users just yet. What you need are a dozen or so people who are intrigued enough to give you some content and feedback to act on.

Things for you to consider:

Where have you been plugging this thing? Are you active in other food related communities, like eGullet? Have you thought about simple ways this can complement existing "web 1.0" discussion board based communities (like eGullet)? How about people who already have their own blog and sometimes blog about favorite meals/restaurants?

How about forums/communities for business and/or pleasure travelers?

Finally, what's in it for me, why, beyond self-expression, would I contribute to your site? If I enter my favorite restaurant at lunchtime, will I be glad I did by dinner time?

Some nits: Why are you showing me a map of Palo Alto by default after I register, and why isn't it easy as pie for me to change it.

Having the toolbars for the text editor be almost as large as the text area = not good. Simplify.

Make the logo a link back to the home page.
Nine Things you never know about google!
Wow! And here I was thinking $3 billion for Doubleclick was rich!

Whatever the merits of the acquisition on its own, deals like this is bound to send a strong signal to entrepreneurs and investors that the 'new' MS sometimes will buy rather than crush. Since they're sitting on the biggest cashpile this side of China, that is a sweet thing indeed!
Routermods ROcks
Or just copies them.

I suppose their plan is to have ebay buy them out, and given that they've spent so little, a nice seven figure sum might work for all parties.

Then again, how open is ebay to something like this? Other sites don't mind if you use their api to make enhancements, but is ebay one of them?
How to hire someone from another country?
Like say you like this coder from UK and you're based in US.
You allow working remotely, so him being in UK is not a problem.

But what about the legal side? The tax you have to pay for this foreign worker? etc.
Good points, but then again, oddpost got acquired specifically because it was so much like a desktop app.
I think they get points for being the only startup since 1988 to require a working knowledge of COBOL.
I haven't used auctomatic, but how is it different from Andale? They have been making tools for ebay for years now...
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions! It's all been very encouraging and I now have a lot of new ideas as a result.

There were a couple suggestions about linking my site to other existing food sites, like eGullet. I have a hard time thinking about how to do this without having it appear like shameless self-promotion or even spam. I posted something on chowhound.com about my site, only to find that it was quickly removed as spam.

As for marketing, I'm working with a shoestring budget, which consists on spending about 50 cents a day on google adwords. I guess I really just need to go out there and tell more friends about it. For whatever reason, I tend to be a little shy when it comes to making a big splash among my friends about my startup.
Read Paypal Wars if you want to know how that's done. They spent their entire existence about a week ahead of being crushed by eBay. The trick is to start with brilliant people, hire more brilliant people, and give them all stock options. Or something. They might have just had a longer outlook: if competing with eBay was a zero-sum game and eBay was worried about a bad quarter, Paypal could come out ahead by accepting bad quarters in exchange for good years. I think that's essentially what they did: eBay could (for example) lose 10% of their customers by completely locking out Paypal, or they could try to winnow that down to 5% or 1% or so by coming up with Paypal-like features.
Rumor: FeedBurner to be acquired by Google
Is this new? They've been acquisitive for decades.
Hmm.. Why wouldn't G4 Media sue them for trademark violation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechTV
Wow,

Things are developing quickly right now!

I know there are a lot of MS detractors here, I still have to say that this software looks like it's for real. I was able to create an address book mash up in 15 minutes. From zero knowledge of what PopFly was, to maps with Flickr photos in them in minutes. I believe a lot of the "ideas" guys out there, who don't have a lot of programming expertise would be well advised to take a look at this. Couple it with Microsoft's hosting and you can probably make compelling sites with little tech expertise. That is, you can make sites as compelling as a lot of the Web 2.0 stuff you see out there, with little tech expertise. Ask.com would be a challenge to build with this, YouTube would be a cinch.

You know it is occurring to me as I write this post that we first saw the value of consumer software trend toward zero cost with open source. Then we saw the value of consumer content trending towards zero cost with Napster and later YouTube. I wonder if things like PopFly will make even the value of offering consumer services trend towards zero cost. I am hard pressed to believe that we all can survive on web advertising with 100 other "little guys" doing the exact same thing, only with Microsoft shunting the pure user to their web sites.

So if we can charge for very little of this what is left? I guess the model of grabbing the largest audience possible and selling it to Google or Yahoo doesn't look so bad after all.
For people of a certain personality type working for someone else is a traumatic and harmful thing. He sounds like someone back from the front lines of a bloody battle.
Adam Smith (Xobni) personal blog: http://blogs.xobni.com/asmith
I don't think there's anything wrong with seeding your early content personally. As noted, the reddit folks did exactly that, and over time, it worked out.

I'm doing something similar with http://www.DailyHub.com (a social content site for business geeks). Right now, most of the links submitted are mine, but my hope is that over time, others will also start contributing.

Not all of us have a wide network of early users via YC. I'm envious.
1) Perhaps he reviews stuff he likes. 2) There's a lot of incentive to say things are great in case they take off and you're looking for advertisers, connections, exclusive news, etc. Big companies like Yahoo and Microsoft are going to be around for a while and I don't think Arrington is interested in burning any bridges with them.
Most startups these days have blogs, and the better ones seem honest and transparent, and are written by founders. I think this is a good way try and get extra publicity, too -- get picked up by google's blog search and technorati. Take every link you can get!
Interview of Frank Schilling, the World Famous Domain Investor
This is a good interview.
I think for money, you can treat the coder as a contractor? How can you give the coder stock options though? Can a Delaware corp give stock options or restricted stock to people who don't have social security numbers?
I'm in agreement with the article. Most of the desktop-mimic web apps I've used just plain suck. They feel like really slow, crappy desktop apps, as if you were running Lotus Notes on a 10-year-old windows machine, only worse.

This isn't to say that 'web'-style interfaces don't have room for improvement, but it's a different ballgame than the desktop. On the web we have load time concerns, a different toolset for building the interface, and different considerations in terms of color and space.

Not to mention the precedents set by every other web page that has come before which people are used to. Geez, we have to do a scriptaculous hilite on every xhr just so people will notice what's going on.
Yahoo 'censored' Flickr comments (how to make it to BBC frontpage)
well my point was that I believe this is a joke on valleywag's bashing of scribd for their overly optimistic job posting. hence this ironic understated job posting.
We're a little outside of the tech circle, but an interesting startup none the less. We build workout programs for iPods, and more importantly we have a social net where personal trainers can build workouts for their clients (for iPods) and then sell these workouts.

The blog talks about the company and also teaches personal trainers how to use technology (and our products) to make extra $$. http://pumpone.wordpress.com
Interesting how Canada jumped on the bandwagon so quickly
I think you want to focus, focus, focus. Ex. become the absolute authority on Pizza places on the lower east side of Manhattan (or whatever your thing is). Be SO important to a tiny 'slice' of the world that restaurant owners are encouraging their customers to review.

Definitely post your own reviews and talk about the idea an insane amount = as much as you can. How did CL grow - there may be ideas there.

All the easy ideas have been taken. Build it and they will come just isn't easy anymore. You have to immerse yourself in the market to get traction.

If all else fails, hire some hot girls.
not so traumatic and I learned a lot, just lost the focus with all the clutter of politics.
I find it interesting that he doesn't see much of a future in .tv, .mobi etc. Not sure I agree with him there, but then I'm not a multi-million domain speculator.
These events are getting pretty packed now. Maybe better to meet up before at the bar downstairs or something for those who are interestd...
I said it's a good idea, and think it's probably effective. I still don't like it though, even if all things considered, there are a whole lot of worse things going on.
The most pertinent Bill Higgins quote is this one:

Gmail uses Ajax to accelerate common operations (e.g. email address auto-complete) and to enable data transfer sans jarring page refresh (e.g. refresh Inbox contents) but its core look and feel remains very similar to that of a traditional web page. In my view, this is not a shortcoming; it's a smart design decision.
Makes perfect sense to put google ads in Feeds.
"web-based graphical interface"

How is it "web-based" when you need silverlight - which is client side software - to use it?
RailsConf07 Notes: Building Community Focused Apps (Cork'd)
Congrats! I quit my job last week and have planned to write a similar article but I don't have time because I'm working too hard on my start-up. Maybe once we get over the first milestone, funding, I'll be able to talk about my experiences.
yeah. how can you give the coder stock options? if you don't tie him down somewhat with options/equity, there is the danger that he might run away with your company's intellectual property
same situation here. last day at the day job was last friday. rock on :)
TechCrunch is more of a news site than a site for critical analysis. I think it's nice to give every website the benefit of the doubt, that everything will be fixed soon enough.
I suppose it makes sense for their first Silverlight project to be focused towards techies because they would be the most likely to install Silverlight.
I was thinking more along the lines of a coder I already trust... I see stock options as a way to ensure that s/he participates in the upside.
It's about time someone put together good documentation for those two. I wonder if it will be more of a detailed reference book or a book of examples.
this post reads like a parable, not a transcript of an actual conversation. it's cleverly crafted to appeal to anyone who 1) is not extremely wealthy and 2) has the ability to procreate.

it makes us feel better about who we already are. so maybe not parable, but movie script
Most of the other responses deal with changes to the karma system - I'm not sure that's the only way to go.

How about placing some nice text above the comment submission field that reminds the poster to be nice, ie "Please be polite.", or even better, throw up random literary quotes about politeness/helpfulness/communities.

It would be a neat experiment to see if the ratios of mean-spirited responses to other types of comments decreased due to the suggested (mine or otherwise) changes.
Planning on it. Just thought I'd toss some advice out for the whippersnappers out there :)
I think this is also a big reason why flash hasn't become more common for interfaces. It just doesn't feel like the web.
Web 2.0 Media: Share Music Simply
Joost Deal Plans Exposed
Google schools them again. Microsoft is late to the party again, getting #2 for twice the price.
This has a bunch:

http://www.startupping.com/venus/entrepreneurs/
Wedding 2.0 (some humor for a Friday afternoon)
Don't forget to click on the links in the article.
Microsoft to Buy Online Ad Company for $6 Billion
That's basically what Starbucks does -- they essentially charge people what they're willing to pay by offering $.05 worth of extra ingredients and labor for $1.

http://www.slate.com/id/2133754/
Starbucks Economics: How to charge consumers what they really think your product is worth
Thanks goes out to the YC community for all the help...
I bumped up the font... better search.. a little bit higher contrast.. no registration required to post or vote (events only)... not just limited to boston anymore...
RailsConf07 Notes: Testing "legacy" rails apps + rcov + Heckle
Top 16 Things Customers Want From A Business
What a shame... It's because of people like him most Web 2.0 companies have shitty names: because all imaginable .com names have been stolen by these scumbags.
Huh? Have you seen this?

http://www.projectsandimas.com/

Good luck beating this... it's a dream app. I've seen it demoed and power sellers were all drooling.
Good presentation, but I'm stumped by this item:

Have a real revenue stream. Ads don't count.

I searched the Cork'd site but can't find any revenue model except for sponsorship. Any idea what they're talking about?
make something you want to use
You definitely should include some geo-location, google maps.... Would be cool to type in your zip code and see nearby events and integrate the voting feature you have already made. Keep up the good work.
That would only serve to give the MIT site more publicity. Let's hope they do sue or make a fuss about it :D
http://blog.richcollins.net/

http://quiblz.com/
Hmm ... good point. I honestly don't know, I just took the notes. He did say that Cork'd was sold to another company and the presenter wasn't working on it anymore. Maybe they changed something. I'm not too familiar with the Cork'd site aside from this presentation.
Two great blogs by a brilliant mobile entrepreneur:

Jason Devitt: www.brash.com/
His company: http://skydeck.com/blog/
I see event #2 is "Drinking beer". So in the "Search for events" I type "beer".

Sorry we didn't understand what you meant by search for events beer, try using "in beer"

So I search for "in beer".

Search result "for events in beer" yeilded 0 match(es)

Keep working on it.
Anyone going to the "Invite only" Y-combinator 'wannabe' programs?
Widgets the best way to grow for any site, a widget for Ruby on Rails causes site traffic to increase 10000x overnight