BTW, Andy Hertzfeld was an early employee at apple who made the mac happen. He has a site - folklore.org - that talks about his days there. Very great insight.
This Steve Blank guy is absolutely amazing. His blog is really one of those rare gems on the 'net that you'd wish were more common. His insight into the intelligence community, entrepreneurship, and the beginnings of sillicon valley are invaluable. Steve, thank you for blogging.
Mike, I've got to hand it to ya. That's pretty fuckin tight. You've certainly proved me wrong. You've got talent, a sense of design, and most importantly, alotta balls.
Jessica, your blog has amazing insights. Don't listen to these people, you've been successful since an early age. I bookmarked your blog (keep them coming).
By far my favorite part of the post...
"[..] I cried my brains out from thoughts of being a failure [..]"
I think everyone in the YC Rejects thread went through this step........and they don't have vagina's.
really sad. Live Labs was probably the greatest innovation out of MS.
If anybody from the Live Labs team that's been re-assigned doesn't want to go back to working on shitty products...i could use some of that brilliance.
no, no, no. Microsoft is far from dead. PG is simply wrong.
Just look at the work that Live Labs is producing. No "Web 2.0" company can compete with the brilliance behind photosynth. They are kidding themselves if they think they can.
I'll tell you why Microsoft won't survive. It's because Microsoft isn't a leader in innovation. Steve Ballmer doesn't have any balls. He's simply satisfied with being #2 and playing it safe while letting Steve Jobs create new markets and dominating them (with style).
Again, Microsoft isn't dead. If anything, this whole "Web 2.0" and Ycombinator incubation thing is dead. If the big boys think that there is any serious competition coming out of these programs then they have another thing coming. The recession has reduced a lot of this noise, and the real animals have been let out of their cage.
I find it funny how Arrington links to previous posts where he cites himself having some profound knowledge about the importance of a company or product.
Hey mike, you're a journalist, not a CEO.
When it comes to business, you really don't know your head from your ass.
I don't know, but this is the type of shit that really makes me mad. If you decide to do business with a large corporation that has enough internal resources to deploy a half-assed product that is based solely on the decision to add competition to an existing market, then this is what you get.
What kind of crap is netflix(and microsoft) trying pull here?
-There is no reverting back to the old-player (a subtle TOS)
-No Mac support
-Silverlight has to be installed on all PC's that use the netflix service
...this list goes on
Microsoft's primary focus has always been to use tacky business strategies that will increase shareholder profits rather than building great, dependable products....and it really needs to stop.
SMSGYAN Looks like a really cool application. I'm glad to see some innovation in God's country. However, I have just one recommendation. After reading some of your team bios, it seems that you guys are also enjoying some of the perks that come with success (partying, beautiful women, etc) and this is great, but i've noticed that two of your team members have the same blog theme (the one with the shirtless guy flexing his back muscles). I would suggest changing that theme because you come off as a little gay.
All in all, except for that slight suggestion, keep up the good work and keep innovating!
jgrahamc,
That is some very impressive stuff. Do you know of any good places to start to get into image processing? (specifically the mathematical tricks (DCT's and such))