skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not a fan of Powerset so far but I think this is a good idea. Yahoo embraced PHP. Google did Python. Now Powerset with Ruby. They picked a language with as much hype as themselves.
Searching text inside images seems like an obvious thing for Google to do. Translating is just the next step beyond that. It's a hard problem but not insurmountable. If someone wanted an idea for a company to sell to Google...
"... Really, that seems to miss the point. If all you want is to know who your friends are then you wouldn't need any website at all ...."

Have you tried to re-find your friends after moving to another social site? Thats the problem. It's not having a site of just friends it's about being able to re-build your social network on new sites at a level above. A means to independently store, record & modify your own network not relying on the clumsy & ill-conceived tools that new sites pass for adding existing friends.

You would think that companies would try to improve this. Doing it right could mean the difference between so-so and good membership sign-ups.
Well that works out nicely, my search engine is 100% Common Lisp and I'm just as obscure... ;)
I think it's about time for you to let the community go off-topic. I understand the motive for keeping this site focused on start-ups but allowing another area of the site for general link-sharing and discussion will be enlightening for all of us.
"... Translating is just the next step beyond that. It's a hard problem but not insurmountable. If someone wanted an idea for a company to sell to Google ..."

So parse each image, use text recognition to find the text (determine language), then re-render the text using the same font (have to recognise fonts) & render the changed image (or just re-build an approximation), the same colour (edge cases like colour fading) then store the image and display it.

A much better way would be just to substitute text extracted from the image. At least you could read it (technically it works) but the result would (without some clever hackery) look crap.

Maybe a better way would simply extract the text & rebuild a page in a standard format?

"... It's a hard problem but not insurmountable. If someone wanted an idea for a company to sell to Google... ..."

good point.
At the earliest I think, before you make some costly mistakes
you could be in acquisition talks not because you wanted to get acquired but because the acquirer approached you first and wanted to acquire you.
"... One downside of having an anti-jerk culture here is that people are more trusting. ..."

But there are checks & balances. For each user, history (past intentions) allows a simple metric, 'karma/created' to base any decision on. That and the fact 'double clicks', 'easter eggs' are a windows paradigm & the user is a cheeky 'Kiwi'
Now that is something people want. I'm much more excited to see this go into production than a hyped web 2.0 phone.
Looks like a nice app. I especially like the descriptions here ~ http://blog.ridethebandwagon.com/about/ Thanks for posting this it looks interesting concept of creating backups for iTunes ... they need all the help they can get to back their music up.
Since you mention the words "smalltalk", "seaside", and "dabble" ;), drop me a note - avi@dabbledb.com.
CalacanisCast beta 29: Interesting and "Lively" Discussion with SEO Guys About Jason's Startup Mahalo [video, mp3, podcast]
Brain-machine interface spins off new businesses
Andrew Chen: How much is a Facebook user worth anyway?
Andrew Chen: Has anyone seen Microsoft Surface?
They are worth way more than your site:P
I haven't read much of valleywag now, but anyway - I guess it is a touchy subject. But I am pretty sure that women in a group will also comment on the attractiveness of their male colleagues. It doesn't imply that people can't work together.
"My guess is that someone has to move forward with a large direct response ad network that can deliver relevant ads in a very very small ad unit that is easily embedded into the widgets."

I think the appropriate ad unit would be a single sentence, fifteen words or so. Will a successful company emerge to do this or will facebook give their widget developers a way to monetize without a middleman?
Haha...funny stuff.

Humor aside, this does put things like MS Surface into perspective...it will be too expensive for most of us to afford, and it won't be quite as cool as advertised...
As a college student who has tried starting a business and still does consulting work on the side: yes, but don't rely on them. Allow me to relate my situation regarding working while in college:

I have one particular client who relies on me greatly. They accept the fact that school comes first and we work around that, but things have slowed down significantly while I'm in school. I find it more draining to sit in boring classes all day than to sit at a desk working on an interesting project. Between that, homework, and the distractions of college life, I get little consulting work done.

That's just me though...I flourish when at a desk with a large monitor, not sitting in my messy dorm room with a 13" laptop. He may be the type who can handle both an education and work, or he may be at a school that requires very little of him. Everyone functions differently in different situations. Bottom line? Keep him with you with small projects, even if he is busy. You never know when he, like myself, will have the sudden urge to take a semester off and work on a startup (and be sure to be there to take advantage this opportunity if it should come along).

P.S.-There's also a lot to be said for working in the same location as someone, telecommuting kills my productivity, but again, I'm not the standard for anything :)
"... (Thanks for starting to add (comments) to the title.) ..."

Believe me it makes a difference & really solves the crappy title problem. But it can be improved. I haven't used the the rss feed much ( http://news.ycombinator.com/rss ) but doing so I found that there is a cut-off on the browser I use (Firefox = toolbars = bookmarks ) toolbar cuts the text off at 40 characters. So If the title contains the most accurate info in the first 40 characters it even works in the RSS feeds (reader) with readers truncating the rest of the message. The other problem I noticed with the RSS feed is the transporting you to the direct link, not the news.yc feed which as the original link in the title. So rule of thumb: good title in 40 char http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/587744795/
It's not too far from an interactive book, ie: Nells "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer". Just add an interactive component and you get something out of science fiction ( Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson, 0-553-38096-6) ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

Another point that parallels Stephensons book is the failure of AI. If you can add digital content, hook it up to the web who needs AI?
The OED is actually kind of terrible as a dictionary. It's great if you want to know the history of a word, but if you just need to know the most common meaning of a word quickly, it's beyond overkill.
The Opaque Value Problem (or, Why do people use Twitter?)
It's unfortunate that some RSS readers limit the amount of displayed text, e.g. Firefox's menu items.

As for the RSS linking to the external article, the feed has both that URL and a "comments" URL. Some RSS readers appear not to show or give access to the comments URL, others do. For those that give both, I choose the comments one first to get more of a clue as to whether anyone bothered to comment.

There are posts elsewhere about some RSS readers ignoring the comments URL and what if anything can be done.
This deserves an upmod because that's exactly the essence of software engineering, in my opinion. "How do you sidestep this hard problem in an elegant way?" David is one of the most valuable engineers in the world.
This is absolutely not how myspace started.
Out: Trade Publishers. In: Gigaom and TechCrunch.
Getting My Brain Around PersonalBrain
Verizon CEO: No need for iPhone killer
Free Software: Do You Get What You Pay For? - Anti Virus - Spy Ware - Photo - Video - Document
ARM says it's ready for the iPhone
Tech capitals of the world (Seoul,Sg,Tokyo,HK,Stockholm,SF/SValley ...)
Swap mobile phone for a million pounds? (Of 1,256 UK people aged 16 to 64, 1/3 wouldn't part with phone)
I was looking for this exact thing for a small app I'm writing... i figured it was already out there. funny.
Facebook: web's plug & play application platform
UI discussion on Firefox 3  (Alex Faaborg, UX designer, Firefox 3)
Clarium is a global macro hedge fund; the Founders Fund is a different entity run by some of the same people.
If you look at the relevant logs, and see what Peter Seibel said to you, your question was answered immediately. I'm not sure that you noticed though.
Keyword Economy
Finding a VC Mentor
Agreed. The whole thing reads like one long smartass comment.

Especially this line:
I replied (somewhat smartly) that no, since I didn't work for Google, why would I be promoting Google Checkout, "but what if I was?

Not only does the author pat his own ass by adding in commentary on his own comments ("somewhat smartly"), he had the audacity to throw in a sophomoric quip to the Ebay guy ("what if I was?")

I would have tossed him out in an instant.
I'm not sure how many people are in this position, but I have a start-up Web 2.0 company that's completely finished and is already generating enough revenue to cover our operational costs after going live for one month and
signing up one company. However, we've used up all our capital to get here and neither of the two founders are on salary. We need an additional $150-$250k for expansion, advertising, and sales staff. But before I go out
all gung-ho seeking VC capital (since I have no experience seeking VC Capital), I know that I need a Mentor/Advisor. Most people who get hooked up with Mentors are introduced to them (meaning they have a contact somewhere). But how does someone who just starts a company on their own and concentrates solely on development of the start-up meet these contacts? I know we have something of interest here. We have a finished product with gigantic growth margins targeting the biggest upcoming market (China) in the world. Plus, we're on the web so our overhead costs are minimal. But before I start slapping together an amateur Business Plan to seek VC funding and maybe screw up the one or two pitch opportunities I get, I would like to see if I could find a mentor or advisor first. Any particular sites out there for these types of introductions? Does "cold emailing" work if I just emailed Marc Andressen straight off his blog? Or maybe someone on a lesser scale off of their blog?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Damon Chang
www.teacherjames.com
damon@teacherjames.com

FYI BACKGROUND: Our project is called Teacher James and we are targeting the Chinese Education Market. We combine several Web 2.0 applications such as Live Private Tutors based in the US teaching Asian students in China/Taiwan
via Webcam plus Social Networking apps where students select their own teachers based on "Apple" rankings. Plus we have search engines to target specific teacher qualifications and our teachers post 15 second Video Introduction Profiles so students can immediately see their native accent. Futher, our integrated Classroom Interface allows up to 10 students at a time with whiteboards, screenshares, and automatic recordings that students can download to portable players for reviewing the lesson. No other online company currently has our combination of new Web applications in this $50
billion dollar Asian market where most online companies are stuck selling Educational DVDs online or have strict cirriculum based fees. The closest successful competitor is MegaStudy of out Korean, an online English Tutorial
site which sells DVDs of English Teachers, not live tutors. It went public in 3.5 years.
New Technology Lets User Control Electronics With Brain
Very low cost global calls with Nimbuzz, a creative mobile startup...
I tried your site: www.teacherjames.com and it took minutes to completely load the first page. Is that normal?
No, that is not normal at all. We have been trying to implement GOOGLE Adwords on our site, and had some trouble with it. Maybe that's what is bugging it up. I'm checking on it right now.
I have 250,000 users, now what?
How I Lost a Company by Losing the Details
Even if you somehow tackle image translation, those crappy auto-translated pages will look even crappier. As an example open www.sun.com and try to imagine what would happen to their front page. "Sun" and "microsystems" on the logo will be translated too, not to mention that the whole graphical look of the page will be ruined, which won't be welcomed by the owner of the web site.

(Not that I care about Sun's web site too much, but this is an example.)

Isn't translating img alt's enough?
What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence
Google just open sourced their OCR the other day, it's multi-lingual, has natural language modeling, and a plug-in system for lay-out analysis and character recognition.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/google-and-open-source-ocr.html
Isn't Batiq one of your competitors. www.batiq.com
I'm seriously thinking of doing something like this, but as a separate site, not part of news.yc (though using the same sw). I miss the old reddit.
How can one monetize a Facebook app?

I've been thinking about this recently.. If your facebook app does well, then you will pay for it in terms of servers and bandwidth, but where can you make returns?

Unless you can somehow draw traffic to your site through your facebook app I think it might be an uphill battle. I heard reports that iLike actually LOST website traffic after the release of their facebook app.

You are getting some degree of brand recognition but the user base really isnt yours if they never use your product outside the facebook sandbox.

Any thoughts?
Waterfall - International Conference on Sequential Developmentn
Yes, iLike lost about 70% of their traffic. People now think iLike is just a part of the facebook. They'll be in similar situation as the author of the app discussed in the article.

Problem with monetizing facebook apps is that not even facebook can monetize its users through ads: http://valleywag.com/tech/advertising/facebook-consistently-the-worst-performing-site-242234.php

Maybe virtual gifts/items will help facebook's bottom line? Who knows... but clearly advertising might not be the holy grail.
One quick tip:

You need to implement server-side thumb nail creation. You are resizing the original images directly in the HTML which is wasting bandwidth and looks bad. Some of those images are friggin huge!
Ahhh...yep. I'm definitely doing that. Thanks for the suggestion.
Suggestions on web hosting providers for a startup
Add a layer of interaction to the process. The default behavior would be to leave the text in images untranslated, but when viewing the translated page there would be an easy way to select specific images for translation. There would also be a "translate all images" option.

Perhaps an even better product to create would be an interactive translation overlay that semi-intelligently created "areas" on a page (such as body text, images, menus, etc). You could simply click on the area you desired to have translated. The app would take note of which areas you clicked on and if you browsed to another page on the same site would automatically translate the corresponding area on the next page.
Details on server configurations & bandwidth contracts is appreciated :)
Hi, I took a look at their website. While they are tapping into the East Asian market with mentors from UK and US, they do not specifically target "Teaching English". Instead they aim for lots of different types of mentoring. Also, you have to enroll as a mentor, and on the student side parents pay for the mentorship (I'm thinking similar to a tuition).

Our site is immediate registration, searchable teacher database, and no long term commitments or tuitions. You negotiate each lesson directly with your teacher.

I would not consider batiq.com as a competitor, but more as a company with similar ideals.
"... the Founders Fund is a different entity run by some of the same people. ..."

So they do. Thanks for that, the errors mine ~ http://www.thefoundersfund.com/team_bios.html & http://www.thefoundersfund.com/portfolio.html
But there are two categories of ideas: features to release to users, and decisions about how to write/structure code. Of course users are the best people to bounce features off of (although an initial 'partner filter' is often valuable), but they most likely have nothing to say about actually writing code, or for that matter almost any other business decision.
Been discussed before...

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+hosting&btnG=Google+Search
I hadn't heard about the Yahoo/PHP thing. When did that happen? And from what I've read, Google is still mostly C++ and Java, with Python a distant third: smart humans (think Norvig) have an easier time thinking in Python, but computers (see Norvig: http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html ) aren't so lucky.
Sure would. I'd start on a contracting basis (more "at-will", less paperwork)...

The challenge is actually understanding whether a telecommuting college student was really digging in, putting in the hours, and generating high-quality code. And, of course, there's the challenge of a distributed team (but that's a pretty well-understood challenge).

If you have a passion for productivity/GTD and that sorta thing, feel free to drop me a line. If you have passion for other things, it might be worth posting a link to a bit more information about you and what you enjoy. The only thing cooler than writing great software is writing great software that solves a problem that you care about.
I was under the impression that 250,000 users would be sufficient to attract VC funding to a startup.

Is this not the case with Facebook apps? Can Facebook apps attract VC funding at all?
iLike is selling songs and albums. That's a fine business model...

But the apps like the one mentioned in the post.... He could potentially sell targeted travel related advertising, but CTR on travel ads are woefully low unless you are really close to the deal (i.e. someone is searching for "tickets from Seattle to London"). 99% of travel traffic are people who window shopping.

And, of course, if places like iLike REALLY take off, why wouldn't Facebook behave like Microsoft and just build the functionality into the platform? I remember when Netscape Navigator had tremendous market share...
Step 1) Get 250,000 users
Step 2)
Step 3) Profit!

That's all you gotta do.
At first I thought this was ridiculous... but as I thought more about it, I think the 1/3 are the smart ones. Making a million pounds in a lifetime is a reasonable possibility, but in our increasingly technological world, not EVER being able to own a phone would be a HUGE hindrance to success. 20 years from now, that may be about the only way to communicate with people.
There's a free gifts facebook app, so no more money from buying gifts.

Advertising is most definitely the holy grail for social networking sites. Just because no one has done it yet doesn't mean it can't be done.
What's in a domain name?
Would you settle for a longer name that ended in .com or a shorter one that ended in a .net or .org? Or does it really matter?
It looks to me like you can place ads on the pages of your Facebook application. If you go to the "Music Challenge" page of the iLike application, you will see banner advertising.

Since the ad is on the application page, I'm guessing that iLike is collecting the revenue for it, not Facebook, but I would love to know for sure...

Does anyone know?
Not when your burn rate is through the roof due to rampant hosting fees. More users != profit.
Close to the Vest - The search giant's young millionaires are cashing in and checking out
Bouncing code-related ideas off each other may be important for some. I'm a good enough coder that if I had someone to bounce ideas off of, I would be doing it more for fun than for any tangible business advantage. Not that my code is perfect, but I'm experienced enough now not to create any messes that will be a nightmare to clean up.
By trying to be the next Google, the company may significantly lower its probability of getting any money at all out of the deal. So it's an expected value issue -- which expectation is higher? Is it really so obvious that the larger sales price the company would get outweighs the hit in payout probability?
Gigaom though is reporting that at the SF event CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: "you can serve ads on your app pages and keep all the revenue, sell them yourselves or use a network, and process transactions within the site, keeping all the revenue without diverting users off Facebook."
I had a couple issues with this article. In the first para, Yi-Wyn writes, "[the Zenters] wanted their online version of PowerPoint to get bought by Google." Wow, I thought. That's news. I mean sure, everyone probably wouldn't mind being bought by Google, but the Zenters apparently were so bold as to say it in an interview. But if you follow the link, you see what he is referencing is a guess that he made: "Crosby and Robby Walker must surely be hoping they'll go big and get bought out by Google." Lame.

The headline is also a let down. I wanted to know "how a six-month-old startup got bought by Google." How did they meet Google? Was it the YC connection? Was Google at Demo Day? Who approached who?
Aggregating data to sell to businesses is one bmodel. iLike for instance can probably track statistics on who's listening to what and at what age group and what school, etc.

Surveys could be another model. Present a link to a survey inside the app and companies can target and pay per survey completed.
iPhoney : Looking for a way to see how your web creations will look on iPhone?
Networks:Social Networks :: Advertising:Social Advertising ?

Networks:Advertising :: Social Networks: Social Advertising?

If not social advertising, then what? What would social advertising look like (and I dont think 'viral advertising' is the complete answer) Perhaps this will be a fruitful thought prompt.
Time to revenue versus time to cash
I think .com is the way to go especially if you are working on a web application. At grabagooddomain 99% of people request .com domain names.
So, in the case of the map application in the article, he could allow a user to list 0-5 countries for 'free' then if a user wants to add more countries, they would first have to complete a survey for a travel related business.

Alternately he could offer a 'prize trip' to a person who completes X number of surveys.

He could also add a "I want to go here." feature and then send targeted travel deals/information.

He could allow functionality so that a user could link their uploaded pictures to specific places they have been and even offer reviews of their trips that he could compile into a "College Student Created Travel Guide." 'Oh, I see that you are going to be traveling to France, $5 to access 1000 reviews and recommendations." Spring Break comes around, "Here is the Cancun special . . ."